5c Worth - Office 2007 to bring back "left-side close"

From: Jensen Harris - You Windows 3.1 Lovers!

Great news!

...We removed left-side close as a planned experiment. If people could get used to closing on the right side, we'd be better off because there wouldn't be two ways of doing the same simple action. Clearly if we were building a new window manager from scratch with no pre-existing users, we would only have one way to close windows.

But, of course, we have hundreds of millions of users, many of which (like me) literally have left-side close burned into the lower levels of our brain stem, along with breathing and keeping the heart beating. Honestly, I can seem to relearn anything except for this.

Nonetheless, we tried taking this out--we shipped Beta 1 Technical Refresh and Beta 2 this way and waited for feedback. Could people adapt? Not really, as it turns out.

Honestly, we knew all along that there was a strong possibility we would have to find a way to add this functionality back. It was worth a shot, but in the end, creating an affordance for left-side closing eliminates one huge annoyance that stands in the way of some people's enjoyment of the product...

I've been a Windows user since V3.0 and I can understand the frustration of having the "left-side close" abruptly removed in Office 2007. It is refreshing to read Jensens Blog and actually see Microsoft caring about what customers want. I wish the Team behind Vista took some notes from the Office Team at Microsoft.