Announcement

**Whirl-Secret** · 7 June 2006, 12:15

Yeah I went to a MS demo of Vista + Office 2k7 about a month ago. Office especially was disappointing; as an IT tech monkey I will be explaining the new interface every day for 6 months (if we buy it - unlikely), they call it radical but seriously it just uses those 'ribbon' horizontal menus instead of vertical ones, and the rest of the new features (live preview of font changes, self-destructing / unprintable word documents) are just gimmicks really. The fact that it's native documents are not readable even in Office2k3 is rediculous - you could buy office in christmas 2006 and not be able to read documents that are created the next easter (in 2k7).

Best of all was the announcement that now you must double-click on selected text to bring up a contextual menu becacuse MS research showed that right-clicks were "too confusing". It seems apple was right with their one button mouse in the 80s

**Claymonkey** · 7 June 2006, 14:13

I've been skeptical of this new interface since they first started talking about it. I've been hoping it would truly be something innovative but MS has been dropping the ball on that one lately. I'm getting close to just using Open Office on my home machine for awhile and seeing if it does what i need it to do.

**Jessterw** · 7 June 2006, 14:41

Actually, I quite like the ribbon. It's different for sure and of course will require some retraining, but I wouldn't go as far as to call it a gimmick. Toolbar and menu clutter has long been a problem in Office and a major complaint with most users, so I have to give MS some credit on attempting to solve it.

That said, the UI as a whole is an interface nightmare.

As far as the new file format goes... is that shocking? Office has a history of incompatible default file formats, even when they're essentially supposed to be the same.

**Dr Mordrid** · 7 June 2006, 16:43

I'm hooked on Oo2 and the wife is using it at school. Her Oo2 use, and that of others, has caused many others to do likewise and now the district is looking at switching to it.

Basically; why spend $$ on dozens of Office licenses when it could go to the classrooms?

Dr. Mordrid

**Jessterw** · 7 June 2006, 17:16

I had high hopes, and still do, for OpenOffice, but as I watch it progress through development, it's become blatantly obvious that the developers (or those driving the design decisions) have learned nothing from the bloat that is now MS Office (and has been for years).

Not saying it isn't a perfectly suitable choice instead of MS Office, because it well and truly is a great alternative in that regard. The design decisions just make me cringe. They've done nothing to improve usability, that much is sure.

Sorry to say, but MS is being more innovative than some of the OSS crowd these days.

**Jammrock** · 7 June 2006, 19:52

I actually like the new layout of Office 2007 B2. Once you get used to the ribbons they make finding and use features pretty easy, imo. Haven't had any ClearType issues, and the interface to Outlook is pretty much the same as 2003, except you not have the optional daily task bar on the side (which is easily turned off), and the ribbon for email editing options.

OOo2 is nice, especially for free, but Office is still better. Not to say that OOo can be better some day, it just isn't right now.

**The PIT** · 8 June 2006, 08:53

One thing you've got to remember though is most users don't use all the features in office mainly becuase they don't need them. I didn't call it a gimmit rather it's going to confuse the user by throwing too much at them.

Okay I haven't looked but does it have a classic option??? If it doesn't perhaps it should. Ms will probably find loads of users going back to the classic.

The bloat is a good problem but then you also get users installing loads of clipart that they never use. Annoying when you're virus checking.

**High_Jumbllama** · 8 June 2006, 09:26

Originally posted by Whirl-Secret

. . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
Best of all was the announcement that now you must double-click on selected text to bring up a contextual menu becacuse MS research showed that right-clicks were "too confusing". It seems apple was right with their one button mouse in the 80s

Must double-click. Dumbass morons. THis goes right up there with single-clicking on icons and hiding file extensions. Stupid!! Make it the default or only option and then confuse people more if they go between machines that have a different setup.

**Jessterw** · 8 June 2006, 11:39

Originally posted by The PIT

One thing you've got to remember though is most users don't use all the features in office mainly becuase they don't need them. I didn't call it a gimmit rather it's going to confuse the user by throwing too much at them.

Okay I haven't looked but does it have a classic option??? If it doesn't perhaps it should. Ms will probably find loads of users going back to the classic.

The bloat is a good problem but then you also get users installing loads of clipart that they never use. Annoying when you're virus checking.

I believe there is a classic option, or at least one was planned.

In terms of throwing too much at the user, the ribbon was created to do just the opposite - provide quick access to the most used features. True, every user has their own set of most used features, but the majority of the prominent items in each ribbon are those that were consistently noted as those that users do utilize (via surveys and usability testing).

Another reason MS came up with the ribbon in Office is that previously the menus and toolbars were often inconsistent in the display and implementation of the functions that appeared in both.

I think the main problem here is that Office 2007 is too little (and too much in some cases) too late. If the ribbon had been introduced previously then it might have helped give Office some new life, but it's only been recently that screen real-estate has been giving enough to allow for something as large as the ribbon.

**Nowhere** · 9 June 2006, 09:55

Jamm, sure it's better...probably. At least from my perspctive - I,m sure it has some nice options/functions here and there, but I haven't actually used them. Probably I don't use een 5% of functionality of OOo. As is the case with most users...too bad they still insist on using MS Office.

BTW Jesterzwild, when KOffice will became available for Windows it might get interesting - next, planned, version has some interesting interface ideas.

**Jammrock** · 9 June 2006, 10:11

*shrug* to each his own. Having been using Office 2007 from the days it was called Office 12 Beta 1, I can say it's the best MS Office release to date. And having used more office suites than the average bear, it's the best one I've used so far.

But that's just my opinion. And coming from someone who doesn't really like MS as a company (thought they are great job security for me), that's saying a lot.

Jammrock

**Jessterw** · 9 June 2006, 10:26

I assume you're speaking of their Flake and Pigment libraries which are slated to appear in 2.0. The ideas being put forth on those are interesting, but nothing new per se. There have been a few other lesser known Office apps that implement similar features. Is there something else that is planned?

Also, when you say KOffice on Windows, are you talking about the KDE Cygwin project that could lead to KOffice being able to run on Windows?

I commend all the work their doing, but I just don't see anything in the apps currently or proposed that offers a worthwhile reason for using KOffice.

**Nowhere** · 9 June 2006, 11:47

Yep Jamm, to each his own...I'm just pointing out the thing that I very, very rarely see a *.doc document that couldn't have been done in Wordpad & *.rtf...but for some reason MS Office is almost a muss for almost eerybody here...

Jesterzwild - QT4 is under GPL also for Windows version. And apparently now, thanks to this, there is some effort to port KDE/KOffice (not really sure about he specific) to Windows, to run nativelly, without the need for Cygwin. And as for the GUI ideas, I meant this

As for why KOffice...well, it would be certainly more than enough for needs of many, and is much lighter than OOo.

PS. If anyone is loking for an aternative to OOo right now, Gnome office might be sufficient (it has different style than MS Office/OOo - basically separate apps, and two of them - Abiword and Gnumeric are available for Windows)

**Umfriend** · 13 June 2006, 08:23

OK, having just had my first look at Excel 07, I have two comments:
1. Nice to have a larger sheet available, but 16k columns is a tad much. 1024 would have been nicer.
2. WHERE"S THE F***KING "Options" MENU???? :grr: Where's the add-in menu?

I HATE the new UI and certainly hope we get a clasic mode. My colleague challenged me to find the "File - Open" and it took me over 2 minutes....

I wonder, is there any info on changes wrt VBA?

Announcement

Office 2007 Beta

Office 2007 Beta

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment