Aug 31, 2011 07:26 GMT  ·  By

The new Windows Explorer Ribbon / Fluent UI in Windows 8 made its first appearances earlier this year in various leaks of the upcoming platform, but it was still nice to get official confirmation and actual details on the component’s evolution from Microsoft.

But while the public still has to digest the new look and feel of Windows 8 Explorer, the Redmond company has been busy developing and dogfooding the operating system.

Despite the wide internal testing program of Windows 8, softies have managed to keep mum on Windows 7’s successor, save for the bragging rights that come with creating some 600 ribbons for an event related to Windows Explorer. (via Long Zheng)

“I made more than 600 [ribbons] for a recent internal event. Got rid of them all too. "Explorer gets a ribbon. Everybody gets a ribbon!" noted Microsoft’s Ilana Smith, who works on Windows 8.

Smith is one of the Microsoft employees that got involved in the conversation which followed the official unveiling of the Window 8 Explorer Ribbon UI. There are over 850 comments on the “Improvements in Windows Explorer” post on the Windows 8 blog at the time of this article, even though the announcement is just two days old.

From what I’ve seen so far, I consider the Ribbon UI to be a huge improvement on the traditional user interface of Windows Explorer. It’s NUI-ready, it’s customizable and it enhances the discoverability of commands and options.

I used Office 2007 for quite some time, and Office 2010 on a daily basis since it was in Beta, and I would not trade the Ribbon UI for the old interface. I suspect the same will be the case with the new Windows 8 Explorer.

“Windows Explorer is a foundation of the user experience of the Windows desktop and has undergone several design changes over the years, but has not seen a substantial change in quite some time. Windows 8 is about reimagining Windows, so we took on the challenge to improve the most widely used desktop tool (except maybe for Solitaire) in Windows,” revealed Steven Sinofsky, president, Windows and Windows Live Division.

“Judging by the passion on file operations and user interface design, we know this is an important subject so we expect a pretty engaged dialog on the topic.”