Why did UI's turn from practical to form over function?
E.g. Office 2003 vs Microsoft 365
It's easy to remember where everything is with a toolbar and menu bar, which allows access to any option in one click and hold move.
Seriously? Big ribbon and massive padding wasting space, as well as the ribbon being clunky to use.
Why did this happen?
Not sure I follow, even in the example above there's many icons that are interactive but aren't enclosed in a button, do you have any other examples?
To me, buttons and icons provide the visual cue that "clicking here does something", without having to mouse over them to discover that they're clickable.
It's the unadorned text strings that aren't as obvious.