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Part of the reason why it has been quiet on the RibbonCustomizer front is that the mainboard of my main computer (a good old Gigabyte mainboard with an AMD 64) died after years of faithful service. Unfortunately, replacing my computer with a brand-new Core i7 based machine became a nightmare on its own.

Used to the American Newegg, I had to find out that its most similar German equivalent Alternate symbolizes the “Servicewüste” (service desert) Germany has often been described as. My mistake was that I ordered correctly as the company I am, instead of as a consumer, as I in retrospect should have done with that online seller of computer hardware: As a consumer ordering from an online seller in Germany, one enjoys a legal right of return for any reason (including not liking it/not wanting it anymore) within 2 weeks of receiving it. On the other hand, the German lawmaker assumed that corporations are more informed market participants than consumers and hence did not grant them a similar right. However, this has not stopped many companies from extending a similar right to corporate customers, even for purchases not made online. Alternate, however, is the exception with its call center personnel obviously trained on blaming the German lawmaker for not extending this right to corporations, instead of admitting that its their corporate policy of offering only the legally required minimum.

What happened to me? I ordered the individual parts for a new computer, built it together, turned it on and watched in horror as nothing would boot. More than a week of troubleshooting later, and at some point enough parts here for 3 new computers (all purchased either as consumer or from local companies with a better return policy), I finally had the new system booting and sent the faulty combination of parts back to Alternate. As it looks right now, I’ll be receiving working (and by now totally unnecessary) replacement parts back instead of being refunded my money.

Lessons learnt for me?

1. Never order from Alternate again
2. If ordering online, make sure the online seller offers an acceptable return policy to corporations and, if not, order as consumer and deal with the accounting implications of that later

The other part of why it has been quiet with RibbonCustomizer is that I have been spending time looking at the Office 2010 beta. As it has a built-in ribbon customization feature, I don’t know yet what exactly RibbonCustomizer’s support of Office 2010 will be. If you have any suggestions (and have used the beta), please leave me a comment!

Hallo everybody,

going forward, I’ll be aiming to release a new beta build every other Monday.

Today I posted a new beta build that comes with a major visual change: RibbonCustomizer will now adapt its look to your current Office 2007 color scheme. I also took a look at the automatic update feature and this should be working now.

If you encounter any bugs or annoyances, please post them in this forum thread. This will help me tremendously in getting a new stable release up and running. One to finally replace the outdated 1.1 currently available.

On my roadmap for the next stable release is adding one last feature (the ability to load a package, currently you can only save one), increasing the performance of the add-in (especially the time it takes to open the Customize Ribbon dialog), fully translating it into German, updating the documentation and fixing any bugs I encounter or hear about from you.

Thanks for your help!

Patrick

Hello everyone,

I just posted a new beta version of RibbonCustomizer (V1.2). That version should fix the bug that a lot of you are experiencing with RibbonCustomizer not working.

It would be great, if you can download and install it. Please give me feedback, whether the add-in works for you again afterwards or not.

Thanks,

Patrick Schmid

Hello everybody,

contrary to what it looks like and contrary towards my habit of not answering a lot of your emails, RibbonCustomizer is not dead. My problem is that I am short of time due to my full-time job as a management consultant.

I hear all your concerns though and especially the ones related to the beta version of the add-in not working at all for some of you. That particular issue I am trying to resolve, but unfortunately it will take some time as it is difficult to debug.

Thank you for being my customers and I apologize for my prolonged absence.

Patrick Schmid