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Office 2003 Beta 2 Screen Shots
frooyo writes "ActiveWin is displaying screenshots of Office 2003 Beta 2 including pictures of Outlook, Excel, Word etc. As seen by the screenshot - the task based interface is much more prominent. Also - Outlook's three-vertical-pane interface is now the default." Nice to get a head start on what we'll be cloning next year ;)
I've already seen all the comments about clone wars blah blah blah
on a more serious note is cloning the way to win? doubtful - how about innovating making it better rather than just cloning
Can someone kindly explain why I should pay more money to upgrade from 2000 to 2003 when 2000 does more that i need and i can get Open office which also does more than i need for free.
Ctrl-Z
Nice to get a head start on what we'll be cloning next year ;)
What's sad is it is all too true. Instead of innovating, a lot of OSS projects that are supposed to be like MS apps usually just mimick, rather than truly innovate.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
Another $600 word processor from Microsoft. Even when I'm at a job where they use Office, nobody ever uses anything but Word to type some useless bullet points, or Excel to make a pointless chart. Tasks? Never used. I had a PHB who tried to assign me tasks once. He couldn't hotsync for a week after that.
I also reply below your current threshold.
Personally, i like the office interface, but perhaps that's just because i'm so familiar with it.
I think you just answered your own question.
"It's a very tangled subsystem." --Windows kernel guru
Nice to get a head start on what we'll be cloning next year ;)
that points out a very specific problem with the open/free source movements... plenty of hardcore coders but a serious lack of good ui designers.
moo
The only thing that needs cloning out of Office is simply the compatibility aspect of it's documents.
No need to clone the rest of the package: the bloat, the security holes, etc. ;-)
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
Well now that's an interesting thing to say. I've been using Outlook primarily for several years and I can't say that I've ever had a virus... let alone a virus caused by Outlook. I've received plenty, the trick is to just not open attachments from people I don't know.
Username taken, please choose another one.
I can't wait until MS finally loses its dominant desktop position, and the onus of cloning their interfaces to make it acceptable to Windows users is gone, and the OSS world can strike out on its own.
May we never see th
This will likewise fail it.
Part of innovation is taking what works from past technology and then improving it. And both sides do this--and ought to. If one person came up with a very nice way of doing interfaces, it's really dumb to reinvent the wheel when you could, in fact, be refining the wheel and making it work *better*.
Obviously, nothing should be 'taken' to the point of intellectual property violation, but I think if *more* of this so-called 'theft' happened in software development, it'd result in much better software in general. Take what the other people did, fix the problems in it, make it better. Then maybe they'll take what you did, fix it even more, make it better.
And in the end you've got products on all sides that're more useable, more stable, and so on and so forth. I don't know how anyone can say there's something wrong with that. Building a better mousetrap doesn't necessarily mean you have to build it completely unlike every mousetrap ever made in the past.
Because a lot of us are going to have it rammed down our throats at work whether we like it or not. Then our lives will be made miserable by the viruses, the bugs, and the general awkwardness of Microsoft's legendary innovations.
It's nice to know beforehand what will be eating up all my free time and making me crazy later this year.
The trick is to just not open unexpected attachments especially from people you know.
- No new features that you will actually use. Most of them you will probably end up hiding away in some toolbar far away, simply because it annoys the hell out of you to see.
- More zany XP balloon like menu bars. In addition, even more light blue and Aqua-like design rip offs.
- Like Office XP, and Office 2000, you definitely won't rush to buy this release, however the minute you, or your friend warezes it on IRC, you will most likely install it -- just because.
- You will be further annoyed by the traditionally bland Windows GUI design. Recent attempts in XP to spruce it up only look like JeffK was hired as a designer at Microsoft.
- If you are an owner of a Mac you fold your hands together, thankful for OS X, and its great design. If you are Linux or BSD user, you are likewise happy that you have a beautiful design. If you are a Windows user, you are most likely reading this from your corporate headquarters, feeling constrained by the tie around your neck, and uncomfortable dress shoes. However, you are refreshed knowing that through your extreme conformity, and love of mediocrity, you will make much more than your neighbor yearly, and are anxiously awaiting to moment you can upgrade all of your machines to this marvelous new piece of Microsoft engineering -- but you still don't know why. Now if only you could find time for sexual relations within your 9 AM to 10 PM daily work schedule . . .
Personally, i like the office interface, but perhaps that's just because i'm so familiar with it.
Unless there's something seriously *wrong* with the Office interface, you grow to like it. Kinda like how I "like" Windows, because there I know where everything is. Just moving a menu option to somewhere else will make me spend more time until I get used to it, no matter how "smart" it is. And unlike us, some corporate users just won't find the new location without retraining (no, I'm not kidding). Personally, I'll stick with webmail/eudora/pine though, as long as I'm in windows. Evolution looked pretty good on my linux machine, but I'm not quite ready to make that my desktop yet.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You like MS Office, you say? Who's going to buy this for you? Are you going to buck up for your own copy at home? Or, like most people, are you expecting your company to buy it for you? That way, it's kind of like it doesn't really cost anything, right? Except it does cost something. It's money your company could have paid you directly. It's money your company could have used to improve their market penetration. It's money your company could have used to improve their facilities. It's money that could have been used to increase the R&D budget. It's money that could have been used to hire additional staff. And on and on.
But a new version of Office with pretty new buttons and a three panel view like Outlook? A new version that's intentionally incompatible with everything else in the world, including Microsoft's own products? That's precious.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
True, OSS doesn't have the money to put into UI research, and while RedHat and the other commercial distros have tried to help out to some extent, it's still a game of catchup with Microsoft most of the time, which is why we seem to be always playing catch up with MS and Apple. Should this be an area to advance Linux in? Maybe; I do think that with the right minds, new, non-WIMP GUIs could be developed that could be more intuitive for certain functions.
But Linux is trying to gain acceptance by all computer users, and to migrate people from Win or Mac to Linux requires familar surroundings, otherwise, your Linux support person will be running non-stop trying to answer every question under the sun from those that 'just don't get it'. So the 3-paned mail client, the Word- and Excel-lookalikes, and even media players that mimic their Mac or Win equivalent are better poised to help Linux gain market share than some abstract UI that may look good and is more efficient, but otherwise quite different from any standard UI elements.
The other problem is that developers generally make poor UI developers, particularly if the same developer works on the code and the UI. That developer will know exactly how a program is to work and thus may lay out UI elements that make sense to him, but not to the average lay person. Even if a different developer was doing the UI, there's a different mentality that computer programmers have over average computer users that would typically end with the layout being programming reasonably but low on usability. It may behoove OSS developers to get people with graphic art or usability skills on board some projects to help plan out better UI interfaces.
Basically, we need to copy, if we want Linux and OSS to be accepted, but there should be a challenge to more creative developers to build new, unique UIs.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
lol. Ever wonder why you find yourself saying this to yourself every year?
And the more they pay, the more vigorously they will defend their purchase. Hell, they will go out of their way to describe in great detail how it affects their life? Ever hear someone gush about their car? Yeah, probably never got it for free either!
It's strange, but if people don't sacrifice for something, money, time, energy, they just don't feel like there is any value in it. Some people love free stuff, but the majority want to feel some sort of ownership.
i.e. In Best Buy, ATTBroadband offers an empty box for sale. $10 is the listed price, and all it contains is information on how to sign up for the service and receive your $10 back. But, they are selling nonetheless. Best Buy offered them for free previously, but there was no take up. Place a sticker on it, and the question is... Ooooh! Broadband for $10? I'm sold!
Go figure!
Its really sad that the concept of running a computer nowdays necessitates the use of extra software above and beyond the OS to basically secure the OS.
"Doesn't everyone run anti-virus software?"
In reality shouldn't we expect more from modern OSes? Shouldn't the code be more solid than requiring monthly patches. Souldn't e-mailed executables be run in a sandbox? Its a pity we HAVE to have virus software and even its not good enough, you have to constantly update it.
Basically I'm just saying that our expectations on software quality are so abysmally low that we are willing to put up with this crap. Imagine if the manufacturer of your car said - Airbags are your responsibility, you should install those on your own. Then people could say "Doesn't everyone install airbags in their car?". Its ridiculous, software should be better.
"There is no such thing as computer viruses. There are computer worms, and outlook viruses."
.com files- it's just easier to share viruses now with outlook.
Nice troll!
Not.
Before the internet was popular we used to exchange viruses with our friends using floppy disks with infected
graspee
In reality shouldn't we expect more from modern OSes? Shouldn't the code be more solid than requiring monthly patches. Souldn't e-mailed executables be run in a sandbox? Its a pity we HAVE to have virus software and even its not good enough, you have to constantly update it.
Nice argument. Funny.
And yet, people like you (not flamebait, I'm just trying to generalize here) will be complaining once Microsoft adds anti-virus features into the OS about program feature bloat and monopolistic anti-competitive practices.
I'm not a Microsoft apologizer, I like some things they've done and very much dislike others, but we can't have it every which way.
With assinine comments link this "Nice to get a head start on what we'll be cloning next year ;)", as the footnote to this news posting. It now becomes clear to me why the computer GUI will never truely evolve beyond what it is today. Thanks Taco for the insight!
I'm sort of ashamed to say this, but I'm glad Microsoft is starting to tell users (in a roundabout way) 'sorry, you can't play with the big boys, because your OS SUCKS' (in relative terms).
Administering a Windows 98 machine on a 2K network is horrible. The methods for implementing everything are mixed up, you can't specify a home directory, the netlogon scripts don't even run (they run, but do nothing), and so on.
Microsoft's problem has always been keeping backwards compatibility until it shot them in the foot. DOS compatibility screwed up Windows 95, Windows 3.1 compatibility screwed up Windows 95, but of course they had to have it. The extra code, the extra junk, the more support, the ifs, the whiches, the switch/cases to make it all work on OSes that just aren't reasonably modern, it's a joke. If you can run Office 2k3, you can run Windows 2k. Upgrade. Seriously.
Kudos to Microsoft for leaving the stragglers behind so they can make a better product (god knows they need it often enough).
--Dan
Open source could do just as well as Microsoft by employing graphic artists -- expert UI designeers need not apply. Apple seems to at least be trying, but sometimes I wonder if Microsoft's even employing user interface experts at all. If they do have them then they're not taking any serious notice of them. It seems more like they're aiming to make the interface look pretty and attractive, but no more useful than before.
A lot of what's being shown off in the screenshots are feature enhancements, but the basic problems of the UI with Windows and Office haven't changed at all. It's as if Microsoft is just throwing in any idea the programmers or feature-developers come up with, without properly testing it or verifying that it's actually useful and not going to create more problems for the user than it solves. For example:
Assuming that these screenshots are genuine, then Microsoft might have made minor presentation tweaks here and there, but it still hasn't fixed any of the real UI problems. Every one of these issues has been documented for years by experts who've spent a lot of effort researching them. Most of the issues have suggested solutions, but Microsoft's done absolutely nothing about it that's reached the consumer.
If open source developers want to mimic windows to attract users that way then I guess they can. But this doesn't mean it's a good interface. It's the opposite. Personally I'm hoping that the various independent-from-Microsoft open source UI projects come through and win the race with some good UI's, but I don't know what the chance of that is.
What on earth has "security problems" got to do with "word processor"? I realize the macro facility in Word & friends has some potential for abuse, but that is a very unique feature of those products. Remember when we told everyone that virus warnings about word processor files or e-mail were scams and to just ignore them? It wasn't very long ago.
If the Claris Works 3 that came with my 7-year-old Mac does what I need, I don't need to upgrade. No security issues, nothing. Legacy systems don't _have_ modern security issues because they don't have the "integration" with "duh internet". Heck, if it isn't on the net, what security issues are there? (Besides, Macs didn't used to have listening ports by default.)
Still like PaperClip on the old 8-bit micros? What possible security issues could there be? You're not going to get 0wn3d through a 300 bps originate-only modem.
I know Office is a whole other problem security-wise, but I take offense at the blanket statement that ALL old software should just die.