It's All About Context
A good article about context menus used in Microsoft Office ...
"Right-click contextual menus were first introduced in Office 4.x (which included Word 6.0 and Excel 5.0) and went on to become a ubiquitous part of using software starting with Windows 95. The basic idea behind context menus was to give power users a more efficient way of executing commands. The concept of "object-oriented" design, both in programming languages and in user interface design were starting to hit their stride.
Back in the early days of context menus, however, we couldn't have paid real people to click on them. Had we given people an electric shock when they used the right-mouse button (ala Dr. Venkman at the beginning of Ghostbusters) context menus couldn't have performed any worse in the usability lab.
Then, over time, something interesting happened. More and more people would come into the labs versed in the language of right-click. Even people we considered "novice" users were regularly exercising the context menus. Today, more often than not, people try right-click almost before anything. Right-click, right-click, right-click.
Why has this revolution come about, and how does the new Office UI take advantage of it? It turns out the answer is only superficially rooted in efficiency and is, instead, all about context." continued ... (Via Jensen Harris)
"Right-click contextual menus were first introduced in Office 4.x (which included Word 6.0 and Excel 5.0) and went on to become a ubiquitous part of using software starting with Windows 95. The basic idea behind context menus was to give power users a more efficient way of executing commands. The concept of "object-oriented" design, both in programming languages and in user interface design were starting to hit their stride.
Back in the early days of context menus, however, we couldn't have paid real people to click on them. Had we given people an electric shock when they used the right-mouse button (ala Dr. Venkman at the beginning of Ghostbusters) context menus couldn't have performed any worse in the usability lab.
Then, over time, something interesting happened. More and more people would come into the labs versed in the language of right-click. Even people we considered "novice" users were regularly exercising the context menus. Today, more often than not, people try right-click almost before anything. Right-click, right-click, right-click.
Why has this revolution come about, and how does the new Office UI take advantage of it? It turns out the answer is only superficially rooted in efficiency and is, instead, all about context." continued ... (Via Jensen Harris)
Office 12 Contextual Tabs.
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