Licensing the 2007 Microsoft Office User Interface

Microsoft has assembled a 120-page book detailing the user interface guidelines for Office 2007, but you must agree to their licensing terms before you can use it. Licenses are free, but are not available to anyone building software that competes directly with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Access. Most interesting to me is that the license terms require that if you use any aspect of this new interface, your app must comply with the entirety of the guidelines.

There’s a 16-page PDF preview that pertains to resizing the ribbon.

★ Wednesday, 22 November 2006