So, I work on one of those applications with a million little modules and a menu with hundreds of options.
We'd like to simplify this since 90% of our users use 5% of the options on the menu and we've developed better ways for them to get at the features they use than even to use the menu.
With Delphi 2009 and Up, we (slowly) became interested in redesigning the toolbar to use the Ribbon provided in the Delphi VCL.
The guy who is designing it thought he could just replace the existing toolbar (which has always been directly under the menu, showing only the things the end user has the ability). It looks a little better and is nice because it has the parts of our program grouped in a much more comprehensible way.
However, it doesn't do anything to really benefit the program. I was thinking that it would be more useful to move the toolbar buttons on our specific modeless windows to the ribbon whenever the focus changes between windows. It would require a lot of reprogramming and retraining but might be worth it to unclutter all our screens.
So my question is, are there any examples of MDI programs making use of the ribbon interface? And do they use it more as a menu or a toolbar?
Can't show screenshots because of NDA, but I can make a mockup if necessary, although I think this is more of a question of proper use than proper design.