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 ;)

Comments

First Look!

[Anonymous Coward]

at Open Office 2013!

but

[REBloomfield]

It's just a shame that they're remooving support for the legacy operating systems. New collaboration features will be a great benefit, as will the native XML support, so it seems like they're shooting themselves in the foot by removing older O/Ss from the requirements

Although, as an active directory admin with a few Office 97 clients left in an office XP environment, Office 97 shoots right through my GPO lockdowns.... god knows why, it just bypasses all the security... so if this helps bring a unified base, then I'm all for it....

Re: but

[Black Parrot]

> It's just a shame that they're remooving support for the legacy operating systems. ...it seems like they're shooting themselves in the foot by removing older O/Ss from the requirements

I'm sure they'll be happy to make you a deal on a new operating system.

Re: but

[REBloomfield]

;) Yeah, but it's running it on the legacy hardware that's the issue. We've just managed to squeeze 2k pro onto our old NT workstations (P166), and they chug along at an only-just-usable pace, but if we ever moved up to the next step, we'd lose these PC's... which would be a good thing, but it's securing the funding to do so :)

Re:but

[Ed Avis]

Perhaps this will be the first really good reason to port Wine to Windows.

Re:but

[wobblie]

... so if this helps bring a unified base, then I'm all for it....

lol. Ever wonder why you find yourself saying this to yourself every year?

Re:but

[xmutex]

Yes, but Apple is a "visionary" and "forward thinking" for doing the very same thing.

Re: but

[REBloomfield]

actually, we chose to upgrade the software so that we could remove the last of our NT4 workstations. We're *required* to keep the PC as we are an educational establishment, and therefore have ratios of PC's to students to keep to. We'd have a great ratio if we were still using DOS, but we have to draw the line, sofwtare needs upgrading, but we don't always have the resources to meet it.

So no, we weren't 'stupid' enough, me made a decision based on the requirements we have to meet. :) 'kay?

Re: but

[Wee]

You seen Open Office? Works swell (except for macros). I've got Linux on a P166 laptop and it's not bad at all. I carry iut arouynd more than my Thinkpad A2M. It doesn't get nearly as warm. :-)

If you need to to have those aging PCs there, you might give them a new lease on life with Linux. Just a thought...

-B

Re:but

[Sentry21]

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

Re:but

[poot_rootbeer]

Mmmmm... port wine...

Re:but

[Zerakith]

Can everyone afford the cost of upgrading OS AND Office Software? Why not release a lite version for newers os's?

Re:but

[Anonymous Coward]

> 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.

Excuse me, but did you think that this was 'accidental'.

> Microsoft's problem has always been keeping backwards compatibility until it shot them in the foot.
MS's _actual_ problem is that the older OS's, '98, 'NT, and 2000 and Office '97, '2000 have been 'good enough' for most users. These users stopped throwing money at MS, which is a real problem.

The solution, of course, is for MS to make software that fails to work with older versions and force users to 'keep up' and provide MS with adequate revenue.
The next step along will be DRM documents. When someone sends a Word Document or EMail and you can't read it because of DRM the 'solution' is to buy the latest Windows, Office and get a passport account and MSN subscription and _then_ you will be able to activate the enclosed virus.

> so they can make a better product

It isn't about making new products better, it is about making old products worse.

Re: but

[stephanruby]

Open Office doesn't work swell, but nevertheless, the poster is right to some extent, Linux will certainly give you a new lease on life for your legacy systems.

Re:but

[bloxnet]

It's just a shame that Windows GPO is a joke.

I mean seriously, it's sadly useless. I have implemented GPO in both a user control scenarios and a limited admin control schemes. In both cases it was so easy to get around lock downs in either case that really all GPO boils down to is an initial layout/scheme that your end users are told "You should not being doing this". That's it....a lock made of straw. If they want to do something they shouldn't, it's as easy as a help request, 3rd party app that uses notepad to edit files, etc, etc away from being circumvented.

I have worked with GPO extensively, especially for "securing" an environment. One of my final phases is to once over everything from an account with the GPO initiated, and try to break through it. Then I have a third party try the same (trusted third party being a couple of kids I know that constantly work around these types of thing from being in schools and other work places that try this...your basic l33t haxx0rs if you will)....every time it comes down to that final phase being a list of "how" the GPO can be circumvented, and how to deal with it and what to look for, etc.

Back to the subject, MS is screwing themselves in other ways. I mean really and truly, what features are NEEDED in the next office, Office XP, hell Office 2000 was more than sufficient for pretty much any and all businesses....they will really need to get something a lot more than a shared work system or XML formatting to justify the expense...especially if they finally move to their subscriptions model.

I am not anti-MS, that's just cutting yourself off from a lot of revenue...but every few weeks MS does something that makes the alternatives look better and better.

Re:but

[York the Mysterious]

I really hate when people say stupid stuff like this. Windows is not $200! It's only $200 if you're stupid enough to walk down to K-Mart and pick up a copy. Any mid-sized company can get a Select license and buy the stuff for like $40. $40 for Office too. Consider that when people talk about TCO and Linux/Windows. Yes Windows is expensive, but not as expensive as most people on Slashdot believe. BTW: When Windows 98 came out it sucked for secure environments. All the people here make it sound like Microsoft tweaked Windows 2000 Server to make it suck in a secure environment. You shouldn't expect them to redesign a home product to work in the business environment (years later) because that's what you want an employee to use. I've run a 250 machine environement of 2k Pro and 2k Server. We tried to throw a 98 box in there. It's not pretty, but neither was 98 with NT Server. -Tim

Re: but

[arkane1234]

I use AbiWord on my P133 laptop with 32 megs. It's all I have mobile-wise, and it works quite nice when I'm typing out a paper for school and want to spend time with the wife and daughter in the livingroom.
Of course, I also use Window Maker, which in itself saves one hell of alot of ram in comparison to KDE and Gnome lol...

Re:but

[operagost]

My logon scripts run on Windows 98 and 2000 clients. That's probably because I use Kixtart, and don't have to worry about WSH versions and crap. Even if you were just using the command shell, you should be able to at least get your drives mapped if you follow convention. There's environment variables that tell you your home directory and user name.

Re: but

[jonbrewer]

We've just managed to squeeze 2k pro onto our old NT workstations (P166), and they chug along at an only-just-usable pace

A quick note on this. It's not the processing power that's important here, it's the memory. Find some surplus 72 pin simms and give each box 256 MB ram. The machines will be more than usable for Win2k and Office 2k. I have had much success with this formula using circa 1997 hardware. (AOpen motherboards and IBM/Cyrix 166 mhz chips)

Re: but

[Wee]

Yeah, it does load slow. But I don't deal with many Word docs or Excel sheets. When I know that will need to, I just leave OO running. It should also be noted that I have a lot of RAM in that machine.

Abiword works great too. But my point was that he might be able to get by for a couple more years if he uses Linux instead of Windows on those old machines.

-B

Re:but

[Moofie]

Gosh, it's almost like MS is a predatory monopoly, uninterested in the desires of their customers.

Oh, wait.

Re: but

[sonamchauhan]

But my point was that he might be able to get by for a couple more years if he uses Linux instead of Windows on those old machines.

Actually, its the opposite: if (with emphasis on the if) you run a GUI, you'll generally find Windows (most flavors, including NT 4.0) giving a better user experience (i.e. a faster, more responsive GUI) on older hardware. This is especially true if you need Office applications (OpenOffice is the only serious free-software contender here) and run a general-purpose GUI (i.e.: you run Gnome or KDE -- WindowMaker is not simple enough for most users).

Re: but

[Wee]

Actually, its the opposite: if (with emphasis on the if) you run a GUI, you'll generally find Windows (most flavors, including NT 4.0) giving a better user experience (i.e. a faster, more responsive GUI) on older hardware.

I don't know about that. My 166 dual boots to Win98 and it seems pretty pokey. Although I've had that partition around for a long time, and it's probably got fairly severe bit rot. I typically use Blackbox, but occasionally fire up KDE. I swear even with KDE it seems faster.

I had a job a couple years ago that came with a Pentium Pro 150 that ran NT4. I somehow wound up with the hardware, tried Linux on it (like Red Hat 5.2 or something) and noticed a pretty striking difference.

I've got Red hat 8 running on an old cash register (no GUI). It's got a jabber server, apache, mysql, etc. Does really well. NT4 took forever to even boot. And it only has 48 MB of RAM, so that may have been the issue. I did wind up building a very pared-down kernel and that may also explain the difference I see.

It's all pretty subjective. Being able to tweak the kernel and drivers is nice, though. And like you say, with Linux you get the option to not have a GUI running, so that may help older servers.

Having said all that, I must say that old Sun hardware has IA-32 hardware beat cold. I know of a lot of Ultra1s still chugging along. I've even seen Sparc20s here and there. My old Ultra10 still has enough bang for the buck to be usable, even with a GUI. Although CDE always seemed to run as fast on a Sparc5 as on an Ultra80... :-)

-B

Re:but

[Sentry21]

> 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.

Excuse me, but did you think that this was 'accidental'.

No, of course not. I can tell you what it was though: Windows 98 was designed with this idea of 'hey, what if you could do x?' and so they implemented it, and you know what? It sucked. So in Windows 2000, they said 'hey, that sucked, let's get a clue and do it right', and they did.

> Microsoft's problem has always been keeping backwards compatibility until it shot them in the foot.
MS's _actual_ problem is that the older OS's, '98, 'NT, and 2000 and Office '97, '2000 have been 'good enough' for most users. These users stopped throwing money at MS, which is a real problem.

No, Microsoft's actual problem is that people keep using Windows 98, and complain that 'Windows is unstable'. They don't patch their systems, and complain that 'Windows is insecure'. They use MS Word to type up a resume without even changing a single font, and complain that 'Office has too many useless features'. They complain that the Windows interface is ugly, and then complain that 'Windows XP is ugly'.

Yes, MS has planned obsolescance, but you can't sit down with the Linux kernel, version 1.0.35, and expect that all your hardware will work, can you? You can't view my CSS-enabled website in NCSA Mosaic the way it was meant to look - and HTML was *designed* to fall-back. Why? New tags. The markup I use didn't exist back then, nor did the image formats.

The difference between MS's changes and HTML's or Linux's is that the latter two aren't PLANNED. Microsoft will publically say 'As of the end of 2003, we are no longer supporting Windows 98 in any way', and if you want to upgrade to 2K, go ahead, and if you want to change to Linux, fine. They don't care. That being said, you can't use an OS for five years and expect it to stay perfectly well supported.

As for throwing money at MS - can you HONESTLY blame a corporation for trying to make money? That is the sole purpose of the corporation. They don't exist to help you sleep at night, to tuck you in and read you bedtime stories and look under your bed for monsters, they're there to make money, and by god, they'll do everything in their legal power to do so, because the CEO can be sued by the board of directors for doing something they (the board) see as a bad business decision, as if losing a $500k-1m/yr job isn't enough of a kick in the face.

It isn't about making new products better, it is about making old products worse.

I've been using Windows since before Win3.1. There are improvements. I've been using MS Word since before Windows. There are improvements. There are a slew of features in the recent versions that make my life scads easier. The newer versions are, believe it or not, smaller (Office 2k3 is the smallest install yet, and I installed more stuff than I usually do... and it's *beta code*), they're as fast or faster (Outlook 2k3 loads about as fast as Outlook Express or Eudora, and it does more and looks nicer), they include features that people actually use, and they work as I expected them to.

As for DRM, here's what I'm expecting: You're not entitled to view a document, you can't. I can write a memo to my boss's boss without risking that he'll get a copy somehow and read it and see me overruling him. I won't end up on the street because people shouldn't be reading my confidential memos. Companies won't have to worry as much about getting 'hacked' (think social engineering == remote network access), because important documents can't be read outside of the company.

As for your pseudo-witty virus comment, Office 2k3 lets you not install VB scripting support. Yeah, they should've had that as an option before, but at least they added it eventually. Gift horse, and all.

Yeah, MS is no saint, but neither am I, and neither are you. If you don't like it, vote with your money. I do like it, and I vote with mine, and apparantly, MS is 'good enough' for most people.

I shouldn't be ranting to an AC, since you'll probably never even know I replied, but a lot of the points you make seem good on the surface, and I don't like FUD, no matter whom it is against, and I feel this post in particular needed a reply, just to clear some stuff up.

--Dan

PS: If you do read this, why not post as a user next time, and attach your name to your ideas?

Re:but

[REBloomfield]

My experience was that GPO sucked, until I started adding extra templates. The three core ones are useful in a TweakUI sort of way, but no major security. I had to edit a couple of the .adm files by hand because they didn't do quite what a wanted, such as the lockdown drives. I wanted access to only A:, U:, and P:, but this invloved figuring out a large binary value for it, and making my own policy entry....

Re: but

[sonamchauhan]

Hmmm... it could be the cruft in your Win98 partition - Win 9x does need frequent reinstalls+ regular defrags. :) My 433 celeron/192 MB laptop runs NT 4.0 faster than it runs RH 8/Gnome. I guess a fairer comparison would be to compare RH 8 with Win XP ... but then the functionality is comparable, and I've seen Win XP run acceptably on PII/Celeron-level hardware.

It could be the RAM - IIRC if the machine has enough RAM, Linux does a good job of disk caching and this makes the UI appear to be quite fast.

I guess one thing we both agree on is that Linux is better than windows as a server (no GUI) on older hardware.

reply

[Anonymous Coward]

"Also - Outlook's three-vertical-pane interface is now the default."

Well that is all good and swell but am I still going to get a virus everytime I use it?

Re:reply

[anotherone]

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.

Re:reply

[hendridm]

I've been running Outlook without problems too, mostly because I can't find a suitable IMAP replacement that isn't SLOW as hell. Of course, I do run anti-virus and keep it updated. Doesn't everyone? AFAIK, Norton catches script exploits too, which is cool (I've had it pop up with a warning about malicious JavaScript anyway, and it has a built-in connector for Outlook).

Re:reply

[Tony-A]

The trick is to just not open unexpected attachments especially from people you know.

Re:reply

[penguin_dance]

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.

Heh, heh...have you asked your friends lately about that? I'm getting this mental image of them saying, "Damn, Tom keeps sending me that 'I Love You' message."

Because opening attachments from friends is JUST as risky as opening ones from strangers. And an email that uses HTML only and opens in a preview pane is at risk of the next Nimba that comes along.

Re:reply

[yatest5]

Especially as Outlook happily opens and runs evil scripts in e-mail messages

That is just bullshit, pure and simple. Outlook Express does that, Outlook does not.

Re:reply

[1010011010]

The problem on Windows is that the name of a file indicates that it's executable. As opposed to any kind of "execute" permission applied to the file.

I'd like to see MSFT fix *that.*

You can download virus.exe all day on Linux, and it won't run until it's chmod +x. Windows already thinks it's executable, by virtue of the ".exe" (and .vbs, .bat, .pif, etc.).

Re:reply

[The Evil Couch]

wanna bet your hard drive on that?

a virus can and will infect you by using security holes in the preview plane. the viruses use Outlook only exploits. there's a number of them out there and a simple search on norton's site or google will turn them up.

Re:reply

[someonehasmyname]

Actually, Outlook has had a pretty decent track record. It's Outlook Express that's the problem.

Re:reply

[Zigg]

Which is all well and good until you have scripts embedded in document formats, at which point you're going to get exposed anyway. But when this was brought up to people "in the know" on Advogato, they all hid behind the chmod +x defense. Pretty pathetic.

Re:reply

[1010011010]

Automatic execution of embedded scripts is also a problem. In some cases, the ability to embed scripts is a problem.

However, ".exe" is a system-wide problem that doesn't go away just because there are or are not scripts embedded in document files.

Re:reply

[cgenman]

[begin pseudo code]

vim outlook.vbs

main

int i = 0
do
outlook.send(outlook.addressbook[i++], "Here's that file, Bob", "I send you this file in order to have your advice", outlook.vbs)

while(outlook.addressbook[i]!= NULL )

[/pseudo code]

Any program that allows you to do this is BADLY designed. You may claim that your copy of outlook has never been compromised, but all of the viruses you have recieved have come from outlook. There is no such thing as computer viruses. There are computer worms, and outlook viruses.

"Oh look, those new explorer things have been flipping over during turns."
"Well, when we get our explorer we'll just have to turn slowly."

The "trick" is simple.

use...something...better

-C

Re:reply

[ergo98]

I'd like to see MSFT fix *that.*

You mean like this (it prevents Outlook users from being able to access executable content)? To circumvent this the executables must be sent as compressed files which have to be then uncompressed and then execute: It's no different than chmod +x. The attributes on the file are hardly that different from the extension of the file, and indeed many compression utilities store the attributes of the file.

In any case it's interesting that what you're talking about is something that Microsoft is making great strides in "fixing", to the consternation of many Slashdotters. A heavily debated feature of Paladium is the fact that executable files have to be signed by a trusted authority (configurable by domain. For instance your corporate IT department) to be executable. There have been third party utilities that only allow configured executables to run as well via an executable database.

Re:reply

[scott1853]

No, just don't open the first attachment.

Feel free to open the second attachment to find out what kind of perverts your friends are ;)

Re:reply

[1010011010]

You mean like this [microsoft.com] (it prevents Outlook users from being able to access executable content)?

That's specific to outlook. It doesn't fix the brokenness in the operating system.

In any case it's interesting that what you're talking about is something that Microsoft is making great strides in "fixing", to the consternation of many Slashdotters. A heavily debated feature of Paladium is the fact that executable files have to be signed by a trusted authority (configurable by domain. For instance your corporate IT department) to be executable. There have been third party utilities that only allow configured executables to run as well via an executable database.

Palladium isn't about fixing this problem. "stpooing viruses" is, at best, a side effect. Palladium is about control -- control by Microsoft. It conveniently kills open development for Windows, including free software and shareware.

Re:reply

[AppyPappy]

Well that is all good and swell but am I still going to get a virus everytime I use it?

Would you rather have ANARCHY? Bodies in the streets? Blood coursing through the gutters? Children wailing for the dead mothers Huh? IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT? ANSWER ME!! WELL THAT'S WHAT YOU'LL GET IF YOU SPREAD YOUR LEGS FOR OPENOFFICE AND THE OTHER WHORES OF BABYLON!!!! COMPLETE AND UTTER CHAOS!!!!!!!!!

A little bitty virus isn't too much to ask to save the WHOLE FUCKING WORLD. Think about someone else for a change.

Re:reply

[JWW]

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.

Re:reply

[Graspee_Leemoor]

"There is no such thing as computer viruses. There are computer worms, and outlook viruses."

Nice troll!

Not.

Before the internet was popular we used to exchange viruses with our friends using floppy disks with infected .com files- it's just easier to share viruses now with outlook.

graspee

Re:reply

[generic-man]

Opera M2 supports IMAP and is pretty fast. I registered it solely because I love the mail program so much.

Re:reply

[ergo98]

That's specific to outlook. It doesn't fix the brokenness in the operating system.

The operating system is hardly "broken": It merely operates in a fashion that you disagree with. A execute bit or a exe extension hardly seem like the big chasm of difference that you make them out to be. In any case, the NT line of operating systems have highly pervasive ACLs: Hypothetically there should be little that could be done if a errant exe were run.

Palladium isn't about fixing this problem. "stpooing viruses" is, at best, a side effect. Palladium is about control -- control by Microsoft. It conveniently kills open development for Windows, including free software and shareware.

Palladium is actually largely a bunch of technologies that have existed for years. ActiveX, for instance, is a code signed binary. .NET includes a wide range of code signing and code authentication technologies. ITs have fully had the ability to set up their own internal trust hierarchies to internally sign and distribute their own code.

Re:reply

[1010011010]

The operating system is hardly "broken": It merely operates in a fashion that you disagree with. A execute bit or a exe extension hardly seem like the big chasm of difference that you make them out to be.

Yes, yes it is. Any program needs only to register a handler for an extension, and files with that extension become "executable." It's worse with files ending in .bat, .exe and .com extensions -- the OS itself considers them to be programs.

You imply that magic filenames are the same as an execute permission. I'm saying the same thing, but stating that it's a bad idea to confer execute permission to a file based on its name. Why don't you think this is a problem?

Re:reply

[anotherone]

OK, let me revise... don't run attachments which you're not sure about. If I ask my friend to email me a copy of some random peice of software because the download site is down, then I'll run it. But if I get an email from the same friend with an engrish message, and "picture.jpg.pif.bat.com.vbs" attached, I'm not going to run the thing.

Re:reply

[Anonvmous Coward]

"That is just bullshit, pure and simple. Outlook Express does that, Outlook does not."

My company runs mostly Outlook 2000, they have since it came out. About that time I took over as sysadmin and it was my job to keep the machines going.

Only one virus ever got through, but it wasn't through an Outlook vulnerability. The subject said "FBI Photos" and it had an executable or something with it. The email pretended to originate from somebody we've worked with before that actually had dealings with gov't agencies.
It was a virus that relied on social engineering, and it picked a lucky winner that time. heh.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that Outlook 2000 is virus proof, but I can tell you that my mailbox gets a number of virus attempts every day. None of them have gotten through. I'd say Outlook's default settings are working pretty well.

Unfortunately, 2002 is a little too solid. It blocks all .EXE files. Which I guess is fine, but the option to turn that off is a registry hack. Thanks MS! I didn't want to spend any time making a decision on that!

So yeah, we're still OL2000. Quite happy with it, though.

Re:reply

[gpinzone]

>That's why I run this.

Re:reply

[mosch]

That's a great way to handle your email. Assuming of course you don't run a business, or have a job. And assuming that all of your friends are completely virus-conscious. And assuming that you have the preview pane turned off.

Face facts, your "solution" is as bad as the problem. If you can't use your email client to read all your email, then your client is broken.

For what it's worth, I use Entourage and mutt for my email.

Re:reply

[dmayle]

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.

Re:reply

[TopShelf]

Yes, but they'll be spiffy, brand-new 2003 virii with built-in XML, a handy task interface showing how many emails are being sent out, file corruptions and deletions sorted by file type, etc. It's a bold step forward...

Re:reply

[Anonvmous Coward]

"Shouldn't the code be more solid than requiring monthly patches."

Who says it's necessarily the quality of the code? The real problem here is that new features get added, and gee surprise surprise, people find creative ways of being annoying with them. Take the saran wrap on the toilet seat example. Toilet seats have a flawed design when it comes to recognizing a well placed piece of plastic intended to give you a pressed fruit bowl. Is the toilet badly designed? Are we accpeting horrible quality?

Lock down a computer to where all that stuff is 'safe', and where are you then? You've got a computer that is rather inflexible.

Re:reply

[patter]

I've received plenty, the trick is to just not open attachments from people I don't know.

No it's not, outlook used to execute JavaScript when you PREVIEWED documents.

I got my first virus by attempting to delete message that looked like a virus, and when i previewed it, the JavaScript ran the executable. No stupidty on my part, I couldn't stop it. Nor could you have.

You've just been lucky, not clever, that basic advice anyone knows, that's why recent viruses don't give a damn if you bother opening them. Previewing is sufficient.

Re:reply

[cscx]

You're full of it, and admit it as your first and second sentences contradict each other!

That's like saying "Linux doesn't support USB at all."

"That's been fixed in the 2.4 kernel though."

Re:reply

[graveyhead]

... the trick is to just not open attachments from people I don't know.

This may not even be enough. From yesterday: Lovgate.C worm spreading across Internet. In case you're too lazy to click thru... the worm propogates by sending itself to the people in your address book, making the attached virus look innocent.

Re:reply

[jez9999]

The biggest problem with Outlook (Express) that I have, and that remarkably few people seem to realise is a problem, is that it will automatically load any remote object embedded in an HTML e-mail. Sounds harmless until you realise that *just by previewing an HTML e-mail message*, you are allowing a spammer to know that your e-mail address exists. I'm sure this is happening to me, there is NO option to turn it off (except for the ingenious "go offline every time you read your e-mail" solution given to me by an IRCer), and because of this, I'm going to start using Pegasus Mail instead. They actually have programmers that have a clue.

Re:reply

[erdna]

I've read that the new version of Outlook 11 has HTML preview turned off by default. Finally!

Re:reply

[Vaughn Anderson]

no, airbags isn't the right analogy, I think you were meaning "seat belts"...

Re:reply

[generic-man]

Not for me. You can cache the messages locally, but they're still stored on the server. Only the headers live on the client.

One annoyance: if I read messages using another program and mark them "Read" on the server, Opera still considers them "Unread" because it hasn't seen them yet. Nothing's perfect.

Re:reply

[mentin]

You imply that magic filenames are the same as an execute permission. I'm saying the same thing, but stating that it's a bad idea to confer execute permission to a file based on its name.

Can you provide any better argument to why it is bad except "I think so"?

Why don't you think this is a problem?

Why do you think this is a problem?

Re:reply

[zome]

(C)-brain anyone?

uh-uh, dont forget Jerusalem too :-)

Re:reply

[mentin]

And assuming that you have the preview pane turned off.

What is wrong with preview panel? There was an exploit, but it is fixed a year or more ago.

If you can't use your email client to read all your email, then your client is broken.

He said "the trick is to just not open attachments from people I don't know", not "not to read my email".

If you think you have to run all the attachments you got, you should save the .sh files you get in emails to disk and run them, hoping your OS will protect you. The result: it does not.

Re:reply

[tomhudson]

The real problem is that people have been told they need "features". "Our new version of product XYZ has 226 new reports... yadda, yadda". People look at this and think, "Wow, it MUST be better."

Problem is, they don't have a clue as to what they're going to do with the new features, how the new features mess up existing features, or that they don't use 95% of the features they've got now. Html, and executable content in email is a good example of featuritis.

Until users grow out of the "bigger is better" mentality (in other words, until users mature) vendors will continue to sell based on more features. That's the free market for y'all.

...and as every /.er knows, educating users who don't want to be educated ranks right up there with accidently clicking on a goatse.cx link.

Re:reply

[spectecjr]

The biggest problem with Outlook (Express) that I have, and that remarkably few people seem to realise is a problem, is that it will automatically load any remote object embedded in an HTML e-mail. Sounds harmless until you realise that *just by previewing an HTML e-mail message*, you are allowing a spammer to know that your e-mail address exists. I'm sure this is happening to me, there is NO option to turn it off (except for the ingenious "go offline every time you read your e-mail" solution given to me by an IRCer),

Emphasis mine.

Perhaps you should spend more time learning your tools, before waxing lyrical about problems in them that don't exist.

Tools->Options...->Read->Read All Messages In Plain Text.

Re:reply

[LiquidCoooled]

hmmmmmmmm I seem to remember a certain SQL Server exploit that was also "fixed" a while back.......

Re:reply

[zinity]

But on your cars you don't put in any person tells you on the roadside that you can use it as gasoline. On PC's people do run any crap exe they download. Even if you they were run in a sandbox, some of the functions would not higher privileges and they would simply refuse to run. Why do most people run with administrator privileges on windows and run any crap they download off of the net.

Re:reply

[JWW]

You're right, that would have been a better analogy.

Thanks.

Re:reply

[JWW]

Funny I don't remember typing Microsoft anywhere in my post.

But, actually, I would perfer intrustion detection and prevention capabilities more than anti-virus features. Mainly because this would be more capable of stopping a "new" attack or an DOS based attack.

Re:reply

[Vaughn Anderson]

I would hardly call "turning off activeX" and cranking up the default security settings to "high" as actually "locking down a computer" in a bad way...

If you need active activated to view a website, then use mozilla... too bad for MS...

Also, "new features" as you have referred to them are often times things like "MS now has a back door to your XP box so it can update your software for you", nice feature, I am sure there is no security problems with it nor are there any bugs included in this part of the upgrade...

As far as flexibility goes for the normal Joe (which is basically the mass of virus spreaders and zombie owners) they check emaila and surf, maybe play games, why do you need "flexible" and buggy software to do that?

Re:reply

[You're All Wrong]

I thin kyou've missed his point.
He says "we shouldn't need anti-virus software, the system should be more solid".
And you reply "but you'd complain if they added anti-virus software to the OS".

Darn right he'd complain - as would I. You've (MS) not solved the problem of insecurity, you've elastoplasted the system with post-facto (the virus must be known about to be detected, in general) kludges.

YAW.

Re:reply

[jez9999]

Well, ok. But Outlook (Expres) still has shit rule-based mail filtering. It doesn't even allow wildcards!!

Re:reply

[cgenman]

Odd, I wasn't trying to troll.

Viruses did happen over floppies. It doesn't happen anymore, people don't pass viruses like that. Infected .exe files? Only if it uses that privledge to attack the network, at which point it is a worm. When was the last time Symantic issued an alert about a floppy-borne virus? When was the last time a virus that didn't transfer itself over the network made it into the top ten?

I did forget to mention word macro viruses, which oddly do get passed around manually. Which means, of course, my list is hackneyed and out of date. But that doesn't mean the point is invalid: nearly every time Cnet refers to a "computer virus" outbreak, it's talking about an outlook virus. Nearly every major virus people get are outlook viruses.

I should also point out that I didn't mean to imply that Outlook is as bad as it used to be. It was designed badly, and has been mostly patched in post-production. However, that design should never have gotten to the production stage with such a flagrant security flaw.

I do not object to address books being accessible outside of protected programs, and in fact wish they were more transparent. I object to running scripts from e-mail, as they have no business being there. I strongly object to scripts running automatically from e-mail, and feel that is one of the least security-conscious decisions I have seen short of ftp passwords being passed in plaintext. Worse, actually, as Outlook was designed for the internet and ftp for direct computer to computer communication over a trusted channel.

But to point to these band-aids and workarounds and say "see, there is no problem anymore" is just sad. A new exploit comes out every week to get around those band-aids. Messenger is nearly as popular as outlook, yet has relatively few exploits because it was designed reasonably well.

use...something...better

Re:reply

[slimak]

Its a pity we HAVE to have virus software and even its not good enough, you have to constantly update it.

We only have to continually update it since there are continually new threats. If there was a simple way to classify any file/attachment/etc as virus or non-virus then all threats would cease to exist - but in the real world we cannot since those who write/distribute the viruses are too stubborn to include a "virus identifier" in the viruses and there is currently no way to classify we must update to keep ontop of things.

Re:reply

[cgenman]

What's to stop a shell script from reading your Pine addressbook and using 'mailx' to send e-mails out all over the place?

Because shell scripts don't execute automatically from pine?

Re:reply

[operagost]

Or they could have implemented it in the options, and you could have checked boxes to decide which file types would be allowed. That would have taken all of two minutes to code in. Instead they treat IT professionals like diaper-shitting babies.

That's when they're not treating us like thieves.

Re:reply

[ozric99]

Key text in that article: "The self-replicating worm spreads through network shared folders and subfolders as well as through the traditional method of an unsuspecting user CLICKING ON AN ATTACHMENT." (emphasis mine)

Re:reply

[drsmithy]

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.

Which definition of "OS" are you using here ?

Re:reply

[drsmithy]

Darn right he'd complain - as would I. You've (MS) not solved the problem of insecurity, you've elastoplasted the system with post-facto (the virus must be known about to be detected, in general) kludges.

Please explain how - architecurally - one could make an OS virus proof.

Re:reply

[drsmithy]

Any program that allows you to do this is BADLY designed.

Like, say, your average unix shell ?

Re:reply

[drsmithy]

I hate to reply to my own posts, but before someone suggests something effective, but ludicrous (like auditing all source before compiling and running), I meant a way - architecturally - to defeat viruses and retain (or exceed) the ease of use present today.

Re:reply

[viperblades]

read the post "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." notice how he said SANDBOX not anti-virus.

Re:reply

[magadass]

Dude you are the type of people that put humanity to shame. Let me whip out my magic wand so we can have software that has no bugs, a world without war. Seriously you are as ignorant as a rock...Lets relate this to other objects in the world. Lets elaborate on your metaphor a bit. Cars get recalls for what reason? Oh thats right there was a bug in the design of the vehicle..ooops..now we gotta fix it.

"Our expecations on software quality are so abysmally low" WTF are you talkin about...Plus your logic is flawed. Airbags are in cars because everyone needs them in order to survive a car wreck. I dont think everyone needs virus software. I sure as hell know I dont because Im not stupider than a rock and opening executable mail attachments from someone I dont know. With your logic a TV should turn itself on probe my mind for the movie I want to watch and turn itself off when im done. Go read some more newbie books and maybe you will be able to think like a real engineer rather than a lil computer newbie that just learned how to assemble his own case...God people like you piss me off...

Re:reply

[Ninja Programmer]

• I've received plenty, the trick is to just not open attachments from people I don't know.

That's nonsense, a lot of the Outlook viruses rummage through address books and in fact send themselves to you under all your correspondents names.

Re:reply

[You're All Wrong]

"""
What's to stop a shell script from reading your Pine addressbook and using 'mailx' to send e-mails out all over the place? Nothing.
"""

Straw man.

A human needs to run a shell script.

The concept of *automatically* executing anything not in a sandbox is _broken_, and that makes Outlook broken, and Pine not broken.

YAW

Re:reply

[richie2000]

That is just bullshit, pure and simple. Outlook Express does that, Outlook does not.

Care to back that up with references?

It is possible to activate the virus by viewing an infected email message within the Microsoft Outlook Preview Pane.

McAfee Security W32/Nimda@MM Help Center

We used to think that you had to open or, in some case, preview a message for it to infect your system with a virus. It's now been proven that malicious code can enter your system via an Outlook mail message from the Internet -- even if you do not open or preview it. The flaw is in an Internet Explorer component that Outlook shares with Outlook Express. See Microsoft Security Bulletin (MS00-043) for more details and remedies.

Outlook Virus Misconceptions

Microsoft has released a patch that eliminates a security vulnerability in Microsoft® Outlook® and Outlook Express. Under certain conditions, the vulnerability could allow a malicious user to cause code of his choice to execute on another user's computer.
The patch eliminates this vulnerability as well as those discussed in Microsoft Security Bulletins MS00-045 and MS00-046. Customers who already have taken the corrective action discussed in either of these bulletins do not need to take any additional action.

Affected Software:
# Microsoft Outlook Express 4.x
# Microsoft Outlook Express 5.x
# Microsoft Outlook 98
# Microsoft Outlook 2000

Microsoft Security Bulletin (MS00-043)

Win32/Bugbear.A@mm exploits a MIME vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook, Internet Explorer and Outlook Express, allowing an executable attachment to run automatically, even if you do not double-click on the attachment.

Win32/Bugbear.A@mm VIRUS DESCRIPTION

Re:reply

[JWW]

I am a real engineer asshole, and the post was a WISH. The primary object of current OS development should be to make more secure and virus proof OSes.

There are ways to engineer this, there are things that can be added to the operating system to assist in this. Will there ever be a perfect, virus proof OS, no. But they sure as hell have room for a lot of improvement. I mean buffer overrunns, emailed executables allowed to run in a state capable of ruining the system, c'mon. Prevention for these things can be engineered into the OS (buffer overruns shouldn't be engineered in their in the first place).

People like you with their "Holier than Thou, I'm so damn smart" attitude really piss me off...

Re:reply

[You're All Wrong]

I'm a magnanimous fellow - I agree with you on this point. I said "system" rather than
"operating system" for a reason. i.e. the whole box. Everything between the mouse and the network card is included in that.

(I'm not being silly with th mouse - imagine one that maliciously claimed mouse movements and clicks in order to simulate a human's actions. 10000 pels up, 10000 pels right, 20 pels down, 20 pels right, right-click, 40 pels down, right-click - who knows what I've just invoked, but it could be bad.)

It's the apps that claim to be doing what the authors think the human will want to happen that are the problem. Blaming the underlying OS is pointless if the mail client can do anything autonimously that the user might want to do interactively.

I certainly blame outlook more than I blame the NT kernel, for example, for the state of affairs virus-wise in the world today.

YAW.

Re:reply

[yatest5]

Care to back that up with references?

Yes, you've done it for me. You've gone and searched for all the Outlook problems and found none where, and I quote, 'Outlook happily opens and runs evil scripts'.

The Outlook problem that gives anti-M$ zealots the firmest hard-on is the one where vbs scripts in an email were run automatically. This is what I, and the parent poster, who was full of shit, were talking about.

The problems you have highlighted are, although similar, fundamentally different problems.

I wasn't saying that Outlook is perfect (hell, even Linux isn't perfect!), just that the said allegation was incorrect.

Thanks for all the effort you went to though.

Re:reply

[richie2000]

This is what I, and the parent poster, who was full of shit, were talking about.

No, note that I never said VB scripts in the parent post. Most of the stuff I linked to are about one of the older HTML exploits (some of them are a HTML buffer overflow). HTML is (arguably, but in this context definitely) a script language, especially when the HTML code that's run contains ActiceX controls with VB script in them, as these viruses do. Removing VBScript support from Outlook doesn't stop it from running the HTML code (in the preview pane) but it stops all of the currently known exploits of that hole since they require the VB Scripting Support in Outlook 2000 and XP to execute their payload.

cloning

[oooooops]

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

Re:cloning

[Space Coyote]

on a more serious note is cloning the way to win? doubtful - how about innovating making it better rather than just cloning

The cloning thing worked for MS...

Re:cloning

[tjansen]

on a more serious note is cloning the way to win?

If it is cloning improvements: yes, certainly. It's not like MS would not clone features of the X11 desktop environment. For example the Longhorn previews showed CDE/KDE/Gnome-features like virtual desktops and panel applets.

Re:cloning

[govtcheez]

The cloning thing worked for MS...

No, remember, this is Slashdot. If Linux does it it's "cloning"; if MS does it it's "stealing".

Re:cloning

[13Echo]

First we have those that can't do without MS Office because it is "Oh so perfect" and "The standard"... Then we have those that complain about free subsitutes that have almost all (and then some) of the functionality at a price of $0.00., just because they aren't "innovative enough". If the price can't justify it, then what can? People aren't going to be able to pull new features and UI improvements out of their asses, guys. Come on. This is the same, sorry argument that we keep hearing by people who harp about how software designers "copy" the Windows and Mac features for Gnome and KDE.

I just don't get it. Sometimes, in order to make something usable for most people, there is no such thing as "innovating" to the extent of making it vastly different. Some people just want to have a similar, comfortable interface to work on their spreadsheets and reports.

Re:cloning

[tjansen]

Yes, but a email editor with three vertical panes isnt that revolutionary either. It just may be a good idea with todays resolutions (or maybe not, didnt try it).

*Very* few things in today's desktop systems are revolutionary. Most are just features from experimental systems in the past or copied from 3rd party products.

Re:cloning

[jon787]

Yep they've been copying X for a long time check out the Power Toys page for win95:
"Xmouse 1.2--make the focus follow your mouse without clicking in the same way X Windows does"

If you want it, the virtual desktop toy for XP:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistl er/In stall/2/WXP/EN-US/DeskmanPowertoySetup.exe

Re:cloning

[Sabalon]

There is a large difference between copyin features of X into windows, and some tool that a bored programmer put together in an hour or two that was released to the public.

Re:cloning

[Anonymous Coward]

All cloning does is ensure open source and free software will always be a couple steps behind. You can't win that way. At some point you have to stop cloning MS and forge your own identity.

Re:cloning

[antv]

Problem is, people are used to MS Office. And for complex apps like wordprocessor/spreadsheet there's more user needs to learn, than when, say using Windows vs. OS X vs. Gnome/KDE. Users expect wordprocessor to behave a certain way. I had users complaining that WordPerfect gets formulas "right away" - Word usually fcked up and user needed to type it again - but user learned this as "normal" behavior. It's psychological, people get in trouble when they use slightly different car or VCR with 2 extra buttons on a remote.

Now, there aren't many ways office applications could work in a first place, and MS Office is what people are trained for. OO needs something like "evolving themes", i.e. it should look exactly like MS Office right after install, and then gradually give user tips, enable new features, etc.

Re:cloning

[kfg]

Actually, there is a lot of innovation going on, it just slips below the radar of those who insist they'll only use software just like the stuff on their Windows box.

Most Open Source(tm) software that been around for a while gets better, and then better some more, and then when it's best *stops dicking with it,* because it doesn't have to have new chrome added to it every year to sell the new version.

Here, I'll give you an example:

In the old days we had vi.

Now, after years of hard work we have vi improved: with bluing for extra whiteness.

See how it works?

KFG

Re:cloning

[Graspee_Leemoor]

" If someone makes a clone of Outlook (Evolution comes to my mind) "

The sucky thing about evolution is that when it encounters an error during mail collection it stops collecting mail and puts up an alert dialog you have to ok to continue.

OK, so it's easy to fix- but it just shows how not clued up the evolution team is about testing and "user experiences" and all that.

graspee

Re:cloning

[sdmartin101]

Hmmm... But is this reproductive or theraputic cloning? ;-)

Re:cloning

[UU7]

leading would be a nice change ?

Re:cloning

[Jennifer Ever]

I had the PC Tools desktop enhancement or environment or whatever for Windows 3.1. The virtual desktops were great. The whole package was great, for that matter.

Re:cloning

[Jennifer Ever]

Wouldn't the fact that the default behaviour for the mouse doesn't emulate X mean that MS in fact did not copy that particular feature?

What are you talking about?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice to get a head start on what we'll be cloning next year ;)

Don't bother saying 'we', cause I wouldn't touch that piece of poop with a 10 foot pole!

Re:What are you talking about?

[squiggleslash]

Isn't it great?

If you want to stay current and able to use current file formats, etc, you have two choices, you can either go with what Microsoft has built and designed, or you can go for something that Microsoft has designed.

And all in the name of ensuring that people used to the Microsoft stuff will have a "choice". Because we all know that people who like Microsoft stuff are going to switch away, and that people who do not like Microsoft stuff are looking for something that, for all intents and purposes, is identical except for the lack of the word Microsoft on it.

(And my open source enthusing friends wonder why I, who switched them onto the idea in the first place, have switched to OS X...)

Another upgrade

[mike_c999]

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.

Re:Another upgrade

[91degrees]

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

No.

As far as I can tell, the desire for constant upgrades exists because everyone else keeps upgrading. I only ever upgrade when the upgrade offers something new. This applies to hardware as well as software.

Re:Another upgrade

[iceT]

Other than Outlook, I haven't seen an improvement in Office since Office 97, and even THAT was iffy over Office95...

Re:Another upgrade

[FooBarWidget]

For the same reason why everybody and his pet whines when a new version of a Linux distro is released? *They* don't *have* to upgrade either! Yet they still complain about it.

Which means either those people are stupid too, or YOU are stupid because you're the minority.

Re:Another upgrade

[richie2000]

I wouldn't call Outbreak an improvement unless you're a virus writer. First thing I do when forced to install it for a client is to remove the Vicious Basic support, #2 is to install a virus scanner.

Re:Another upgrade

[Planesdragon]

Other than Outlook, I haven't seen an improvement in Office since Office 97, and even THAT was iffy over Office95...

Word XP can do non-consecutive text selections (you have _no_ idea how nice this is until you have it). 2000 introduced a multiple-item clibboard, and it doubled in size in XP--in addition to an overhaul of the word mail-merge wizard, and numerous other small improvements (like the HTML export being almost standard).

Not sure of these are $100 upgrades, but they ARE improvements.

Re:Another upgrade

[penguin_dance]

Probaby so you get the privilege of being set up in a subscription based service so you can spend $$$ on forced upgrades.

Re:Another upgrade

[bill_mcgonigle]

Because there aren't going to be security updates for the version you have and the US Corporate world has adopted Office as a standard file format, made possible by the abuse of a monopoly position.

So, if you don't upgrade you're going to get a .DOC file one day that will wreck your computer.

Do you see a problem with this scenario or were you just asking rhetorically?

Re:Another upgrade

[mike_c999]

One thought I just had.
Just suppose MS decides to add some "nice new features" that will mean Office 2003 files won't be directly compatable with 2000. *sigh*

But I do agree, Upgrade when you need to.
I last upgraded my pc 2 years ago to 1.2Ghz from 350Mhz Still plenty fast enough for me and I work it hard. And I only upgraded to win 2K when I got a free copy from Uni as part of the MS academic aliance thing.

Re:Another upgrade

[mike_c999]

Little from column A, little from column B.

Re:Another upgrade

[yatest5]

I wouldn't call Outbreak an improvement unless you're a virus writer. First thing I do when forced to install it for a client is to remove the Vicious Basic support, #2 is to install a virus scanner.

If you're such a genius I'd expect that your clients would all have virus scanners on their PC's already.

Re:Another upgrade

[gmuslera]

Because "everybody" will send you attachments in office 2003 format. At least, that is what everybody will think, then upgrade, then send themselves the o2k3 attachments

Re:Another upgrade

[ScriptGuru]

In theory, the interface is more efficient and you'll get more work done. Of course, my Word 6 for Windows 3.1 has everything I need, so stick with whatever version is the best for you.


In regards to your sig, it took several hundred years to make the ark, and I don't have that much time on my hands. I guess I'll just risk the Titanic.

Re:Another upgrade

[Nakago4]

Yeah.. the multiple item clipboard that you have to hack the registry to get it to stop popping up everything you copy something! I mean really! its kinda neat and all if you actually would use something like that, but they didn't include a way to disable it. Hopefully they will include that "feature" in the new version, but I haven't been able to see the site yet due to slashdotting.

Re:Another upgrade

[anotherone]

The non-consecutive selection thing is probably the best thing about Word, and I'm not being sarcastic. It's basically Mother Teresa in software form.

Re:Another upgrade

[Xpilot]

OpenOffice? Bah! Back in the day when I used to walk uphill to school in snowstorms, we used LaTeX and were happy about it!

Re:Another upgrade

[fobbman]

For the extra three, I'm assuming.

Re:Another upgrade

[grub]

Simple: Microsoft shareholders.

Microsoft doesn't make money for them if people use "old" versions of their software. They have to make a newer version, with incompatible formats, to ensure as many people upgrade as possible. It's software extortion.

Re:Another upgrade

[Mr_Silver]

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.

You should upgrade if you want the features that 2003 offer. If you don't need them, then you shouldn't "need" to pay more money to upgrade.

That is, of course, until everyone else on the planet uses 2003 and you'll be forced to upgrade so you can read all the documents floating about.

But seriously, you can apply your question to any piece of commercial software. That is why these things get bigger and more processor intensive. They're adding the features that they hope will entice you to part with your pennies.

If the older version does it for you, stick with that. There is no reason why you should upgrade, but there may be a few compelling features.

Re:Another upgrade

[teamhasnoi]

This is why.

Re:Another upgrade

[mike_c999]

Thats not true Noah did it in less that one life time with his sons.

But having said that the Titanic looked prettier :-)

Re:Another upgrade

[Sloppy]

You should pay more money because someone else will, so you will eventually receive a file in a format that only MS Office 2003 can read. If one person gets it, eventually everyone needs to get it.

Either that, or you have to have the courage to Just Say No, and ask for RTFs and SYLKs. But if you're using Office 2000 then your stance on that issue has already been established.

Re:Another upgrade

[b17bmbr]

I can't, but I bet Ballmer can!!

Re:Another upgrade

[TKinias]

scripsit jacoplane:

Is the same kind of support for XML planned in OpenOffice??

Actually, OpenOffice's native and default format is XML (for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and vector graphics). OOo is way ahead of MS on this one (if not in some other features).

Re:Another upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

For those that still don't know, OpenOffice's native format is XML.

Re:Another upgrade

[secolactico]

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.

You shouldn't, unless you need document compatibility with people who use a more recent version and can't be bothered to "save as..." a previous file format.

I was quite happy with my Office 97 until they made me upgrade to Office 2000. Didn't cost me a dime, but I haven't really used any new features. In fact, the first thing I did was turn off autocorrect and those squigly red lines.

Re:Another upgrade

[pjrc]

You should pay more money because someone else will, so you will eventually receive a file in a format that only MS Office 2003 can read. If one person gets it, eventually everyone needs to get it.

In the case of office 65 -> 97, the first to get it within most companies where the upper management, who upgrade their laptops much more frequently that just about everyone else. Their new laptops came with '97, and they of course sent emails to all their minions with Word 97 documents attached, that of course were unreadable in Word 95.

Apparantly the reasonable for such a change in the file format was the move to 16 bit unicode characters for supporting all languages.

Maybe this time it'll be DRM ??? A lot of people were pretty pissed off that Word 97 produced by default unreadable files for users with all older versions... and that was in the day when almost everyone outside academia/engineering/science thought Bill Gates was the a god. Maybe they'll be able to get away with it again, maybe?

Re:Another upgrade

[Planesdragon]

Yeah.. the multiple item clipboard that you have to hack the registry to get it to stop popping up everything you copy something! I mean really! its kinda neat and all if you actually would use something like that, but they didn't include a way to disable it. Hopefully they will include that "feature" in the new version, but I haven't been able to see the site yet due to slashdotting.

Yes they did. It's either on the "Options" window, or it's something you can alter from the system tray.

In 2k at work, I have the problem that the clipboard keeps deciding that I don't want it, and it keeps disabling its auto-popup!

Re:Another upgrade

[mcowger]

You shouldn't. If you don't need it/want it, why would you even consider buying it?

Re:Another upgrade

[Tyreth]

Of course, it's really quite simple.

You'll need it to thread DRM support in your documents and view other similar such documents :) And once you do this and begin to save your documents in such a way, you'll force others to need an upgrade.

Heaven forbid that I suggest someone install the free OpenOffice software so they can read my documents, yet it is oh so natural for people to ask me to use Microsoft Office on my home desktop. Hypocrites, slaves to the borg. ...and yes, I've noticed a recent number of posts along the lines of "I'm cool because I don't mock Microsoft like all the other slashdotters" that gather karma - but I still don't trust these guys [Microsoft] and am annoyed at a lot of the rubbish we have to put up with because of a direct result of their practices)

Re:Another upgrade

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Word XP can do non-consecutive text selections (you have _no_ idea how nice this is until you have it).

I do know how nice it is, because I did have it. In Microsoft Word 4.0 for the Macintosh, in about 1988 or so. I'd forgotten all about it; in truth I didn't use it too much at the time.

I guess everything old really is new again.

Re:Another upgrade

[Twirlip of the Mists]

You're absolutely right. Select some text, hold down the command key, and select some more text. Like I said, I'd forgotten all about that feature. Seems like it's been there all along.

Re:Another upgrade

[dash2]

Ah, but Noah lived about 900 years...

Re:Another upgrade

[91degrees]

Ah yes. I'm stil planning to upgrade my 500Mhz p3. I tend to go for 4-5 times speed upgrades. This meant 486-sx25->5x86-133->AMD-k6 350. I ended up witha 500Mhz machine because it was being practically given away.

Some people are surprised how few times I've upgraed. Non techies are impressed that I still have the computer I got in 1994 (with a replacement CPU, Case, hard disk drive.... everything else except keyboard).

Re:Another upgrade

[oni]

First thing I do when forced to install it for a client is to remove the Vicious Basic support

I didn't even know you could do that.

Re:Another upgrade

[TALlama]

No.

Re:Another upgrade

[nobody69]

I think that there may be confusion over what the OP meant by 'non-consecutive' text. In Office XP you can select some text, copy it to the clipboard, select a second batch of text and copy it to the clipboard, rinse lather, repeat. A window pops up and you can select which one you want to paste.

Re:Another upgrade

[StressedEd]

...we used LaTeX and were happy about it!

I still am thanks. LaTeX is really (still) the only choice for producing long complex good looking scientific documents.

Re:Another upgrade

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Nope. Read the original post.

Word XP can do non-consecutive text selections (you have _no_ idea how nice this is until you have it). 2000 introduced a multiple-item clibboard, and it doubled in size in XP.

The OP mentioned non-consecutive text selection, then mentioned the multiple-clipboard "feature" separately. He was talking about multiple non-contiguous selection of text, a feature that Word for the Mac has had at least since version 4.0.

Re:Another upgrade

[jilles]

Actually the pathetic attempts of the linux community at trying to come up with a good alternative for outlook are the living proof of how much better outlook was all along. Versions of outlook before the 2000 version and outlook express had severe security issues that could be addressed easily by installing virusscanners (irresponsible not to do on a windows PC), using the patches (also irresponsible not to do) and configuring the software properly.

I've never been affected by an email virus. I know several people who were affected by a virus. One of them was a computer scientist who actually believed that the sender of a particular email was in love with him, had no virus scanner and double clicked the exe file. If my sister does that, I understand because she is clueless about computers. I would however silenty swear at the incompetence of her sysadmin (not me). If a computer scientist does that I silently think "you stupid idiot, didn't your mummy tell you not to accept candy from stangers?".

Re:Another upgrade

[spasm]

Yeah, you've just described why the San Francisco Department of Public Health migrated to StarOffice two years ago. And why many of the agencies who deal with them (or rely on them for funding) have also started to trickle towards OpenOffice or StarOffice.

.DOC is slowly but surely losing its position as the one true document format, at least in the field I work in (cash-strapped public health), and forced migration / lack of legacy support from MS is hardly going to reverse that trend.

Re:Another upgrade

[rowanxmas]

Wow! Imagine having multiple cuts/copies stored, as many as 12!! That sure beats my emacs buffer of several 100...oh wait.

Re:Another upgrade

[jonis]

The next thing they reinvent will be Emacs' kill ring...

Re:Another upgrade

[addaon]

Word 5.1 still runs great under classic... and everyone knows that was the best version of Word ever. I mean, I use Excel 2000, but Word 5.1. And talk about quality! All 8 floppies that it originally came on installed without any bad data.

Re:Another upgrade

[nahdude812]

yeah, I doubt that they're worth $100. Frankly, they're the sort of thing one might expect to be released in a service pack.

And I friggin hate that multiple clipboard thing. No matter how many times I've tried to get used to it, I'm always less efficient with it getting in my way.

I'd *love* to be able to turn it off. But each time I copy something, realize I didn't get the period in the selection, grab the period, and copy again, it pops up. The stupid paperclip I repeatedly ask to go away then comes up and says "Would you like me to turn this feature off?" To which, of course, I reply, "yes," which he pretends to do until the next time I miss a period. Then I right click on him and hide him. He asks if I'd like to disable him. I say, "yes," and he goes away until the next time he thinks I might actually want him back again.

A feature in Office that I'd pay for is the ability to disable new features, for good and truly, to never be bothered by them again unless I completed some mystic Zennish quest to reenable the feature, wherein I need to become one with my software, and utter the mantra, "clippy, clippy, clippy."

Re:Another upgrade

[erc]

I guess I've been around longer than you - I cut my teeth on nroff/troff :P

Re:Another upgrade

[dollargonzo]

analogy with christian holidays, i.e. m$ office is the standard (and please don't tell me it isn't). the majority doesn't understand it is the standard (i.e, there is something different) and thinks that it is the ONLY way. If i tell some of my friends that i don't have IE or even if a expand the acronym to "internet explorer", they are like "what?? what do you mean, you don't have the internet?". you cannot explain away ignorance, it's just there. m$ created it and is tailoring to it, nothing more.

Re:Another upgrade

[Trogre]

If you mean being able to select several portions of text while holding down the key, then this comes as standard in OpenOffice.

Re:Another upgrade

[ealar dlanvuli]

And now I ask, what does descrete math have to do with email?

Re:Another upgrade

[NordicMachine]

I have a good reason to upgrade - maybe not for an individual, but for a corporation: Visual Basic scripting support Why do people want it? Lots of reasons. What does it have to do with installing Office 2k3? Simple. You don't have to have it. That's right, you can uninstall (or just not install) visual basic scripting support in general (i.e. for the office suite), and you can do likewise for vb support in Outlook. Sound like a good thing? It does to me. For people who will say 'Microsoft shouldn't have had these gaping security holes in the first place' or 'they should have fixed it sooner': you're right, they shouldn't have, but they did. Now, they're fixing them, and this is good. Also, for people who want to complain about this version just being full of more bloat and blah blah blah, this version installed faster for me than Office 2k, the install was easier, and it took less space than 2k - even though I installed Excel, which I never do, and threw in tons of templates and wizards, and other junk I never do. Hate Windows, but Office is a good product, and it's what brings in money for MS. Believe it or not, they take the time to do it right. --Dan

Re:Another upgrade

[Datafage]

900 LUNAR years = 75 solar years.

Re:Another upgrade

[richie2000]

I normally install Office right after Windows, but before the virus scanner. I guess I'm afraid the virus scanner wouldn't let me install Office if I have that running first...

Re:Another upgrade

[richie2000]

When installing - don't select the Default Settings stuff (don't remember off the top of my head what they call it, it's some Individual Settings blah, blah) - that gives you the ability to select options for the various Office components, among them Visual Basic Scripting Support for Outlook and also the option to not install the Office Assistant. If you already have Office installed, re-run setup and select the Add or Remove Features option. (This is for Office XP, but I seem to recall it was available in Office 2k too)

Re:Another upgrade

[richie2000]

living proof of how much better outlook was all along.

As one who have used e-mail extensively long before Outlook arrived, I think you're just plain astroturfing, making a silly comment like that. I got my first (Unix shell-based) e-mail account in the fall of 1990, migrated to Lotus Notes in 1995 and to Netscape Mail in 1998, long before Outlook was usable or even existed. How those actual facts can translate into Outlook being "better all along" is frankly beyond me. Outlook really doesn't do anything for the users that MS Mail together with Schedule+ couldn't do years before and Exchange+Outlook can still not touch the groupware features of Lotus Notes or Novell Groupwise. Remember the first "Exchange Client" in Windows 95? You know, the one that couldn't actually connect to an Exchange server? "All along", my ass.

I've never been affected by an email virus.

Anecdotal, at best - what does that prove? Me neither. Then again, I've never used Outlook. I have lots of clients using Outlook though, and before I started forcing them to install virus scanners, they had lots of problems with viruses. That doesn't prove anything either - on the other hand, a brief scan of Symantec's and McAfee's virus databases...

Re:Another upgrade

[oni]

don't select the Default Settings stuff

right. I always do a custom install. The thing is, I occasionally get an email that pops up a message asking me if I want to run a VB component. wtf? I just want the text - I don't even need bold or underlining. just the text. thanks. And no img link either.

you said you'd "remove the Vicious Basic support" so I thought maybe you knew something I didn't.

Re:Another upgrade

[General Cluster]

You personally probably shouldn't upgrade. However about six months after MSFT offers a new version, they take away their oldest one. So expect 2000 not to be supported in about a year or so (So bug fixes and exploits are not addressed as often)

Again, this is not an issue for you personally, but if O2K is the main app on 5000 boxes that you support, then you should at least consider the upgrade.

I won't deny that all of this is a good argument for open source, but if an organization has already decided that MSFT office is what they want, then many will feel that it pays not to get too far behind in their version.

Re:Another upgrade

[richie2000]

I occasionally get an email that pops up a message asking me if I want to run a VB component.

I've never gotten that. My take on VB in an e-mail program is that it may be good in specific intranet app situations (though I'd be hard pressed to think of a good real-life example) and viruses. Not sure if you even would get that popup without the VB support installed, though. It might ask you to install it. :-)

Just for kicks, if you have one of those e-mails lying around and wouldn't mind sharing it, could you forward it to me? It'd be interesting to see what it does.

Re:Another upgrade

[oni]

I'm having trouble decoding this:
slashdot2@@@webhackande...se

Re:Another upgrade

[richie2000]

What, are you a spambot harvester? ;-) Remove two of the ats and two of the dots. Any two. :-)

imitation

[eric6]

For how much crap MS gets, they sure are imitated. Is this

• flattery?
  
• lack of creativity in interface design?
  
• following the lead of a big company with lots of usability research?
  
• a big bandwagon?
  
• camoflage, to keep from scaring off [new] users of non-MS products?
  

Personally, i like the office interface, but perhaps that's just because i'm so familiar with it.

Re:imitation

[redfenix]

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.

Re:imitation

[Planesdragon]

Personally, i like the office interface, but perhaps that's just because i'm so familiar with it.

I like the office (WORD!) interface too, but I also like QWERTY, my mouse, and video game controllers with the movement-control on the left.

Office is the default, and the various OSS clones can do worse than just copy it's major interface.

OoO is good and all, but not being able to make it look like Office is rather annoying.

Re:imitation

[0x0d0a]

To give people a product they're familiar with. Once Microsoft has lost the desktop, then really radical improvements will start.

Re:imitation

[govtcheez]

Because CowboyNeal's their PR man?

Re:imitation

[Alan Partridge]

"following the lead of a big company with lots of usability research?"

oh, you mean Apple!

Re:imitation

[xianzombie]

I think most of us can agree that M$ has the concept "simplicity of use" pretty well grasped from a typical user standpoint.

And for linux newbies, it does give them something familiar to work with.

Just think about trying to convert your grandparents computer over to a *nix box with only VI and EMACS....

Re:imitation

[qoncept]

Office is the default, and the various OSS clones can do worse than just copy it's major interface

Isn't the goal to do better?

Re:imitation

[Rojo^]

I think it's because most people consider Microsoft Office to be the Industry Standard (R) office suite. If you're emailing a document to a client, better make sure you're emailing it in an MS Office format. If you're reading people's resumes, better have MS Word installed. I'm not saying I agree with this -- just that I know it's *unthinkable* that the university I work for would have any computers that might not have at least some version of Office installed. And since our email system has recently been downgra^H^H^H^H^H^H^H converted to a MAPI service on an MS Exchange server which only MS Outlook can access, every computer on campus has to have at least Office 2000 Professional. Our Mac users are just screwed for email, having to use either the no-longer updated, weak-featured, POS version of Outlook 2001, or our web-based Outlook which is so cumbersome and takes forever to load. MS Office is not the only program that the proprietary format of Office has locked Office users into using.

Re:imitation

[Planesdragon]

Isn't the goal to do better?

Ideally. But "exactly as good as" is a nice goal to shoot for first.

Re:imitation

[qoncept]

Yes, and perhaps it even happens in your perfect world.

That is to say, Microsoft is already making it as close to perfect as you can get? That's not very /.

Re:imitation

[Ed Avis]

Aren't there programs which fetch web pages from Outlook's web interface and act as an IMAP server? I don't know of any, it just seems that they ought to exist.

BTW - it could be worse - they could be using Notes.

Re:imitation

[IDIIAMOTS]

Exchange supports IMAP, POP and SMTP. I presume you were downgra^H^H^H^H^H^H^H converted from one of those standards??? Which version of the Exchange are you on that you say OWA is cumbersome and takes forever to load? Exchange 2000 web-client was orders of magnitude better than Exchange 5.5, and the upcoming Exchange 2003 webclient is essentially Outlook in javascript.

Re:imitation

[Mysticalfruit]

I like your sig. However, since Easter is a coopted pagan holiday, I don't think Jesus would be too keen on it for a bunch of other reasons... Well, considering what people do in his name, he'd probably be siding with the pagans...

Re:imitation

[Malcontent]

Mostly it's letting somebody else do the research for you. MS uses apple for research, OSS uses MS for research.

Re:imitation

[JHromadka]

I think most of us can agree that M$ has the concept "simplicity of use" pretty well grasped from a typical user standpoint.

I disagree. MS has the concept of "usability through inability", as in its software is usable because people are unwilling or unable to switch to something else because of how well entrenched Microsoft is. Look at the Pocket PC and tell me that is simple to use from a user's standpoint when compared to the Palm OS.

Re:imitation

[Planesdragon]

I like your sig.

Thank you.

However, since Easter is a coopted pagan holiday, I don't think Jesus would be too keen on it for a bunch of other reasons... Well, considering what people do in his name, he'd probably be siding with the pagans...

AFAIK, there were several hundred years of sliding years--counted using a calendar that didn't sync with the real years, thus causing quite an ammount of confusion for the early (persectued) Christians.

Considering that they didn't have exact dates (or the proper techniques for finding the correct dates), the church could do worse than co-opt holidays that were already being celebrated.

I suspect that J.C. doesn't really care, and would approve if He cared to comment. I mean, the church did at least get rid of the Beltane Orgies--too bad they couldn't come up with something else to replace it that would stick in society. :-/

Re:imitation

[IDIIAMOTS]

Overall Exchange is not a crappy solution, although it is a bit of overkill for simple mail and antiquated client machines. You (the student body) need to communicate to your sysadmins to keep IMAP/POP open for people who do not require advanced functions of Exchange/Outlook. They also need to configure an front-end OWA server for folks off campus. Outlook (at least until Outlook 11/Exchange 2003 and RPC/HTPP proxying) cannot cross firewals due to RPC, and yes its a dog over VPN connections.

It just sounds like your admins aren't thinking about deployment from the ease of use angle :(

Re:imitation

[Wouter Van Hemel]

It's not the GUI that's bad, necessary. Microsoft spends a lot of time, blood, sweat and tears into designing their software, hiring the best companies, even for the sounds, fonts etc. That's the good thing about MS. It's rather the implementation that tends to suck; and the attitude. And the price. And... You go on.

Re:imitation

[MasonMcD]

The new office interface is asstastic. Click on those screenshots and... quickly now... what program is it? So many panes and popups and tooltips and wizards. Email a database to your contacts... no, wait, I want to make a database from this PowerPoint slide info... oh, wait, sorry, I want to make an Excel array from this Word doc verbiage... errr, mail a slide presentation? No? "Looks like you're trying to createadatabasefromyourpowerpointpresentationfromt hatworddocyou'vebeenworkingonthatwasmailedtoyoufro moneofthesalesforceteaminexcelformat. Would you like assistance?

MS APPWOE (AccessPowerPointWordOutlookExcel). Why muddy the waters with different app icons?

We all hate Microsoft, but...

[trezor]

...we all rush to slashdot the one site we know with screenshots of the new Office-suite...

Or it might just be that "there is nothing to see there, now move along". Nothing useful ever came to Office since Office2k anyway :)

Re:We all hate Microsoft, but...

[13Echo]

Who says we are rushing as a result of an article that most of us care nothing about?

Re:We all hate Microsoft, but...

[Orig]

559 Comments and still counting?

You know it's a reputable site...

[Jonboy X]

...when it starts popping up online casino ads at you.

Re:You know it's a reputable site...

[tuanjim_2001]

what is this thing you call pop ups? signed, happy phoenix user #247582094375098.8

Re:You know it's a reputable site...

[gosand]

.when it starts popping up online casino ads at you.

You need to get a real browser. :-)

Re:You know it's a reputable site...

[rsheridan6]

As a phoenix user, I have no way to tell which sites are reputable!

Fuck!

Re:You know it's a reputable site...

[stevejsmith]

You know it's a reputable browser when it doesn't have mouse motion thingies. Er...well...maybe not, but...but...use Opera.

Re:You know it's a reputable site...

[sheldon]

Activewin.com is a labor of love site. It's basically a half dozen guys in the free time, they haven't sold out to some larger dotcom company or anything like that.

I've spoken with the site operators, and they have a fairly steep colocation bill each month, and they have to run the ads to offset that.

They're certainly looking for alternatives, if you have any to offer. Maybe they should run a cyberbegging article on slashdot?

Re:You know it's a reputable site...

[Jonboy X]

Meh, I'm at work, whrere NS7 is the standard. Rest assured, at home I run a "real" browser.

Re:First QBASIC post!

[snack-a-lot]

Oh, man. The nostalgia! That brought a lump to my throat and a tear to my eye.

I hope you get FP with Nibbles.bas on the next story (but avoid that awful Money.bas thing please ..)

The difference?

[Fulkkari]

Could anyone tell me the difference what Office look like? Ofcourse it's nice if the interface is good etc, but I can do everything I need with my Office 2000. I could even managage with Office 95 for sure. I see no reason why to buy a new Office. What we really need is stability.

Re:The difference?

[yatest5]

Could anyone tell me the difference what Office look like? Ofcourse it's nice if the interface is good etc, but I can do everything I need with my Office 2000. I could even managage with Office 95 for sure. I see no reason why to buy a new Office. What we really need is stability

No, what you need is a grammar checker.

Re:The difference?

[REBloomfield]

Couldn't give you a full list off the top of my head, but the big new features are collaboration services, and native XML support, although, as with .NET, they've changed the name of XDocs so many times, i don't know what they are any more :)

Re:The difference?

[TKinias]

scripsit yatest5 in re Fulkkari's post:

No, what you need is a grammar checker.

Dude, what you need is a life. AFAICT Fulkkari is from Finland. You may bitch about his English when your Finnish is beyond reproach.

Re:The difference?

[yatest5]

Dude, what you need is a life. AFAICT Fulkkari is from Finland. You may bitch about his English when your Finnish is beyond reproach.

So in what way does this reduce his need for an English grammar checker - would this not aid him?

Re:The difference?

[Fulkkari]

He is probably right. I really could have use of a grammar checker. :-P

But how did you know I was from Finland anyway?-) My journal? My nick?

Re:The difference?

[TKinias]

scripsit Fulkkari:

He is probably right. I really could have use of a grammar checker. :-P

Your grammar was not perfect, no. As a native speaker of English, though, I am grateful that it is the international language of communication now, and I don't feel it is appropriate to ridicule people for whom it is a second or third language. If I had to post to /. in French, for example, I would regularly make an ass of myself.

But how did you know I was from Finland anyway?-) My journal? My nick?

Your journal mentions a Helsinki newspaper, and one of your `friends' is `anttijaakkola', which can only be Finnish (double-A, double-T, and double-K all in one name <grin>). And your nick (to my untrained ear) could be Finnish, too, so all the signs pointed Suomi-ward.

Re:The difference?

[Fulkkari]

Hey. You're quite good at this! You haven't thought of becoming a linguistic expert of some sort? :)

As a native speaker of English, though, I am grateful that it is the international language of communication now, and I don't feel it is appropriate to ridicule people for whom it is a second or third language. If I had to post to /. in French, for example, I would regularly make an ass of myself.

Thanks for your understanding. I actually find it sometimes quite difficult to post here in English; don't find the right words I'm looking for, spelling and word order problems etc. It is definitely a problem for people like me writing in my third language (after Finnish and Swedish - programming languages not included ;P) with my not-so-great-language-skills(tm). It still is a good thing I don't have to write in german. You can believe what that would be like. ;)

... one of your `friends' is `anttijaakkola', which can only be Finnish (double-A, double-T, and double-K all in one name )

Heh. I'll mention about this, when he returns from his holiday. ;)

And your nick (to my untrained ear) could be Finnish, too...

Yeah. Well actually my nick is Fulcrum, but it was unfortunately taken here, so I used this Finnish-like version of my nick used by some of my friends.

... so all the signs pointed Suomi-ward.

So I'm guilty as charged? ;)

PS. I have to admit that I ran this trough a spell checker this time. :P

Re:The difference?

[Richy_T]

PS. I have to admit that I ran this trough a spell checker this time. :P

Classic.

Rich

Re:The difference?

[Datafage]

No, he may point out an issue in his English when he sees an error. If he tries to get high and mighty about it, sure, he needs perfect English. However, for pointing out a mistake, all you need is to notice it. No one's English is beyond reproach, and yet people validly correct each other on a regular basis. Correction is requisite for improvement.

Cloning...

[flewp]

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.

Re:Cloning...

[AssFace]

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.


Perhaps because most of the time "truly innovating" is a waste of time.

People sure do love to hate MS because they are huge and because of that push people around.

But when it comes to UI design - both they and Apple have the money to do a lot of research into actual usability.

Something that becomes obvious when you use "truly innovative" software - when someone tries to do something new just because it seems right to them.

More often then not, it looks cool, but proves useless for day to day use. (a few of MS's "features" are much like this - fading menus and such, but some people love them. Apple too has much fluff, or dare I say cruft? but for the most part, they have a very strongly researched base of design methods, hence why they are mimicked)

Obviously there are exceptions - but for the most part, MS is oft imitated because they have already invested literally millions of dollars and tons of time in research into making products that people can sit down and use.

(I'm sure someone will chime in and say that vi is far more usable for themselves and that an luser that can't see that is an idiot.
But the obvious point should be that when designing for the massees - there are certain techniques that will be seen over and over - because they work.

All that could be summed up in "why reinvent the wheel?"

Re:Cloning...

[prgammans]

The problem comes that users don't like change, especially innovative changes. They have become acustomed to the the querks of the system they are using, ie they are comfortable with it.

If you fighting for users an innovative change has to be SO innotave, that the advantage of the change out way the trouble of learning it's querks.

Most of my friends that are old mac users don't like MacOS X because it isn't identical to earlier version, The way they do thing has to change even though now once they have learned the new way it more efficent.

Re:Cloning...

[ryanvm]

There's a reason companies like Microsoft and Apple spend millions on R&D - innovating is HARD.

Why not piggyback on the positive results that their usability labs return?

Re:Cloning...

[gosand]

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.

This of course assumes that everything MS does is innovative.

To the end user, it may seem that MS innovates, but in reality they buy (or partner with) the companies that innovate. Now I am not saying that they don't come up with some new ideas, you would be blind to think that they haven't had one or two good ideas. But I truly believe that all the REAL innovation comes from smaller companies.

I don't deny that MSOffice is a good product, but I don't use 90% of the features in it for home use. There is a need for basic alternatives to MSOffice for the home user. How many home users use revision tracking, embedded notes, and a lot of the other features included in Office? There needs to be alternatives to MSOffice that MS cannot push around.

Re:Cloning...

[IDIIAMOTS]

How many home users use revision tracking, embedded notes, and a lot of the other features included in Office? What percentage of Office sales goes to home users as opposed to corporate Knowledge Workers? The was a basic alternative to Office from Microsoft, it was called MS Works. Except no one used it because they had Office at work and couldn't fathom anything else. When Win95 shipped, all OEMs included Works. These days it's Office, even though Works is still available. Why is that?

Re:Cloning...

[gosand]

What percentage of Office sales goes to home users as opposed to corporate Knowledge Workers? The was a basic alternative to Office from Microsoft, it was called MS Works. Except no one used it because they had Office at work and couldn't fathom anything else. When Win95 shipped, all OEMs included Works. These days it's Office, even though Works is still available. Why is that?

I think that the key here is that people can get a copy of Office from their friends or from work for home. I don't know too many people that would shell out the money for MSOffice at home. Is it technically legal? No. Does it happen? Yes, a lot.

People may have Office at home, but how many people use all the components of it? MS bundled them together, and people are used to the name. Brand recognition is HUGE. I wonder how many people reading this are saying to themselves "What is MS Works?". One could argue that by bundling the components of Office that MS was ensuring that they would all get purchased, installed, and used.

Me? I don't care, because I don't use it at home. Even though I have it installed (won't say where I got it..., umm, I mean I bought it), and I also have Open Office installed, I don't use them. I don't do anything at home that requires a word processor. I was all excited when I got OpenOffice downloaded, but after installing it I think I launched it once. But that is just me. People use Office because it is the standard. Now WHY it is the standard can be argued.

Re:Cloning...

[bicho]

No, its because innovation comes from the need to solve a problem/limitation, and since the userbase of MS OFFICE is so much huge than any 'equivalent' on Linux, Linux app developers of its equivalents dont get as much feedback on needs, and the developers themselves havent found any limitation.

Besides, it is fun to try to mimic and thus prove yourself you could do it as well.

on the Userbase side, I dont use OpenOffice when I can type my documents with LyX or TeXmacs. I havent had a need for a spreadsheet, but when I do, I will probably use Gnumeric, or even octave! (yeah, octave is not intended as that, and so what) and pass it to either Lyx or TeXmacs. Hence, this just probes that the userbase on linux is not that big yet.
On the Evolution side, Its still young. On the nautilus side, It is so much ahead of its Windows counterparts imvho, as I havent seen what XP can do.

Will they never learn?

[LT4Ryan]

From Klez and other email based worms that defaulting to the preview pane in Outlook is potentially dangerous? Seems like a pretty simple thing to do, it would save a lot of IT support's time, and maybe even put a tick in the smart bin for Microsoft.

But of course, that would make too much sense, right? :)

Re:Will they never learn?

[olethrosdc]

Bah, I mean.. wait.. reading a resource of non-guaranteed length is when you start checking for buffer overflows, isn't that right? The preview pane is just one exploit. Bah.

Re:Will they never learn?

[ciryon]

Seems like a pretty simple thing to do, it would save a lot of IT support's time

I doubt that Microsoft would want to save time for IT support. There's a huge business for supporting and servicing MS products and it would be unwise to upset them.

If they were in for that strategy they would surely have done it allready. One of the most humorous things with Outlook is that it warns about sending .EXE files and automatically blocks these files. But lets all kinds of scripts get through.

Ciryon

Re:Will they never learn?

[KvalCom]

Actually, the new Outlook blocks all scripts and attachments by default.

You may want to do a little research before posting such FUD.

Luxury

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't even hit the site to get the popups!

Young spoiled kids today. *Grumble grumble*

Good thing Taco is an editor

[ACNiel]

His ideas don't jive with the slashdot crowd. Sort of funny, in a way, how the people he attracted have taken his creation in an entirely different direction. Not totally different, but definitely more zealous than the creator.

That comment about what will be cloned next year, if in a comment, would be labeled as flamebait or a troll. I find it refreshing that at least the editors realize certain realities.

One of the main ones is that, yes the linux desktop borrows heavily from MS, and not the other way around, which a lot of people like to proclaim.

Re:Good thing Taco is an editor

[Ponty]

You're quite right. It's one of my favorite effects. For the most interesting (IMO) example of the second generation taking and perverting/overextending/overpurifying the ideals of the creators, read "Darkness at Noon" by Arthur Koestler. It's a novel by a disillusioned former Communist. The evolution of the USSR from Lenin, through the '20s, to Stalinism is spellbinding.

Re:Good thing Taco is an editor

[horza]

One of the main ones is that, yes the linux desktop borrows heavily from MS, and not the other way around, which a lot of people like to proclaim.

Not true. Though it's obviously a good idea to use innovations that work, no matter what the source, the linux desktop does not borrow heavily from MS. You can give it any personality you want. If you want it to look and act like WinXP you can. Likewise an Apple Mac or OSX. People have given the linux desktop all kinds of wacky personalities, which you can see on the KDE and Gnome web sites (and that doesn't count the other window managers such as Enlightenment, fluxbox, etc).

A lot of Linux advocates would like to make Linux more accessible to the man in the street. This involves weaning them off the M$ environment. In an effort to make this painless, key apps are emulated as close as possible to help them move environments. Hence the Outlook and Word clones. Relearning an application also means a loss in productivity for those considering switching their business to Linux.

Microsoft does borrow off everyone else in a big way. The original Windows stolen from Xerox, their look and feel from Apple, their taskbar from RiscOS (it had that look and feel in '89, though it first came out in '87). They produce little innovation except in their legal department.

Phillip.

Re:Good thing Taco is an editor

[Bob Uhl]

The thing is, Communism (which is, incidentally, identical to Socialism--read up on history...) was rotten to the core from the beginning. Stalinism mas the logical extension of Leninism. In Lenin's era they brutally murdered the tsar and his family (incl. his daughters and young son), as well as hundreds of thousands of bishops, priests, monks and nuns, and many of the aristocracy. Stalin just brought mass-murder to the masses.

Stalinism isn't a perversion of Leninism: it is Leninism.

Re:Good thing Taco is an editor

[pyrrho]

so having, for example, socialized police protection in the US makes us communists?

Or is it the socialized road infrastructure? Is that what makes America communist?

No I get it... socialized military systems... that's the communist making thing.

Or is it just socialized medicine that makes THEM communists?

Re:Good thing Taco is an editor

[Ponty]

Besides the fact that you're wrong (which I may explain later when I have more time), your response has nothing to do with my post. My post is about an evolution of the expression of ideology, not differences among ideologies. In fact, that Stalinism can be a result of an evolution of Leninism presupposes that they have substantially similar aspects.

screenshots HERE!

[dogas]

I'm not sure if they are the same as the slashdotted server, but here we go.

HERE!

god I'm such a karma whore.

Re:screenshots HERE!

[tjarko]

Look at the title of this screenshot, it shows a recovered file. Hope thet filed a bug report.

Re:screenshots HERE!

[richie2000]

Nah, it's not cool to whine about bugs.

Re:screenshots HERE!

[Lxy]

Wow... I'm amazed. it looks like.. yup, EVERY OTHER version of Office. Wow. The interface is so... like Office 95.

I'm not interested in screenshots, what I'd like is a good reason to upgrade to it. Is there a comprehensive features list? Can Microsoft give me a good reason why this is their Best Office Yet(tm)?

Re:screenshots HERE!

[kinnell]

I'm not sure if they are the same as the slashdotted server, but here we go.

"Warning: Too many connections in /usr/local/www/ratgeber/screenshots/image.php on line 2"

Nothing like a good dose of irony to end the working day!

Re:screenshots HERE!

[gsfprez]

I have to learn German to use Office 11? oh fsck that...

I'm moving to Mac OS X. [/ha ha]

Seriously tho, other than that they now suck up a portion of your editing window by using 30% of the right side for clip art searches and multi-clip clipboards... what really is different? And i bet you a donut that you can make those dialogs float above the window if you like.

This looks like more justification to whine about the fact that MS really needs to move to a subscription model.. cause if i was a MS shop (which i'm not), id be pissed as hell about this... Office 2003 does not look substancially different enough to justify the migration from 2000, hell, 97! 97 looks like it pretty much does the same junk...

i don't know, but i bet that i'd feel like an ass if i had to dump $300/box for the move to 2000, and then another $300/box to move to this. If i have a lot of machines, that's a lot of money for what doesn't look like a whole lot of anything togive a crap about.

if you can by Office 97 for $15 at any software surplus.. i'm thinking we're entering an age where office suites are commodity items... much like the PC's that they run on.

Re:screenshots HERE!

[WhaDaYaKnow]

Nice job yanking it through a translator; /. two sites at once! :-)

Re:screenshots HERE!

[acarey]

Punt it to Longhorn!

Re:screenshots HERE!

[IntlHarvester]

Yup. It looks like Word has the exact same crappy modal formamting dialog boxes they've had since 1994. And, once again Excel's charting is identical to the stuff they put out in version 2 (1988).

Oh, but there's another variation on the toolbars and some more singing-n-dancing help screens.

Sometimes I wonder if Microsoft has lost the source and therefore is unable to any core features to Office. Or maybe they are scared shitless by the corporate training costs. Or maybe hiring more than 3 programmers would put a dent in the $Kajillion they make from Office every year.

Anyway, it would be nice if they at least took a look at Office for Mac and copied the formatting pallettes, and thought of a few "innovations" that aren't wizards or help features.

4 Minutes On front page

[secondsun]

And their server is already grinding.

Back on topic though, who should buy it? I use Open Office and have no problems doing anything (writing papers, making spread sheets etc). Is Office now more for workgroup environments? Or is Office just another Office suite that costs much more?

Re:4 Minutes On front page

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

The only reason I've had to buy any MS Office products since maybe 95/97 is that I've got to be able to open the occasional document produced with the "latest and greatest" version. But I'm getting to the point where I'll just start telling people to send it in a different format - if it's really important that I see it, they can take a couple of minutes to convert it.

Funny how the only reason to upgrade is simply because everyone else has upgraded, not because of some new "must have" feature or big batch of bug fixes. Honestly, have there been so many innovations and advances in word processing, spreadsheets and presentations that I need to upgrade every 18 months? I don't like paying money for things I don't need.

I have been using Open Office for a while now, and I love it. There's even some areas where I think it kicks MS Office's ass, like the formula editor. I do all my math and engineering homework in Open Office whenever possible. :)

Re:4 Minutes On front page

[Zathrus]

The classic (and largely true) answer is - because everyone else has it.

Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and Powerpoint documents are de facto standards. This is a pretty bad thing, but that doesn't change the fact that it's true. If you're going to send a document to someone else, and they need edit capability, then a .doc, .xls, or .ppa (or whatever Power Point's extention is - I don't use the thing) is your best bet. (No, text or RTF don't cut it. Table of contents, links between sections, general markup, footnotes, comments, revision markup, etc.)

That said, OpenOffice.org can read/write most Office docs now, which is a wonderful thing. It's missing some needed functionality though, like macros (if you don't think Excel macros are needed, go work in the financial industry for a few weeks).

On the workgroup front, there's very little out there to replace Outlook and Exchange. The calendering and integration with email and other tasks is what makes it king of the hill. Most of the other solutions are either too slow and cumbersome (Notes) or too lacking in features (pretty much everything else). Open Source software like Ximian's Evolution is making strides on the client front, and there are several efforts to replace Exchange as the backend, but none of them have borne fruit yet.

So why should you buy MS Office? Unless you know a specific reason that OO.org doesn't handle what you need to do, you probably don't. The caveat is that you'll be playing Russian Roulette with files - never knowing when you'll run across a file you can't open, or generate a file Office users can't open. But if you're just doing light-duty word processing, spreadsheets, etc. then it's unlikely you'll run into this issue.

Re:4 Minutes On front page

[mobets]

I use it for Outlook. It is still the best E-mail / address book / calender program. I used Evolution for a while, but it was missing a few things (auto archive among others) and was otherwise a direct rip of Outlook.

Re:Sad

[FooBarWidget]

Because, in contrary to popular belief, Slashdot is actually a pro-Windows site. A poll from a while ago proved that the majority of the Slashdotters are using Windows, *not* Linux/Unix/Mac. More and more moderators are modding critism against Linux up and anti-MS posts down. Slashdotters are slowly converting to pro-Windows; in fact, 65% has already been converted.

Great...

[maxbang]

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.

Re:Great...

[mbbac]

I live by my task list. But, I would rather enter them in iCal (why didn't they call it Calendar?) than Outlook.

cloning

[Bender_]

Nice to get a head start on what we'll be cloning next year

Thats the bitter truth. But I have to admit it isnt the worst way. Although I am an avid LaTex user, I have to admit that I really like the User interface functionality of Office XP. However, the admiration stops when it comes to text editing in word byself .. :(

27 posts

[twinstead]

And already slashdotted. Guess they don't have enough bandwidth for the popups...

Re:27 posts

[bheerssen]

Yeah, I sure wanted to see those pop-ups, but they wouldn't load. Damned slashdotters clogging the pipes.

I also noticed their 404 page loads just as slowly as their main page. That can't be good. Folks, 404 pages are supposed to be light and fast, so don't load them down with images and whatnot.

Thankfully I'm not really that interested in the Outlook screenshots since I won't use that stuff anyway.

Re:27 posts

[mobets]

I just got a Directory Listing Denied error. It's been a while since I've seen us kill a server this bad.

Re:27 posts

[Trogre]

And already slashdotted. Guess they don't have enough bandwidth for the popups...

popups? what popups?
Oh, you must be using one of those legacy browsers :)

mmmm

[odyrithm]

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.

Re:mmmm

[slide-rule]

... plenty of hardcore coders but a serious lack of good ui designers.

I can't debate how accurate that point is, but I have noticed, having recently read through the gnome interface guidelines, that most of the "not like this" examples are the myriads of various gnome apps. It'd probably go a long way if the developers that *do* write UI code (regardless of how "good" they are at "designing" said UI) actually follow UI guidelines.

Also, I wonder how well respected someone who mainly does "UI" design/layout things would be respected by the core development team of some project that actually has to code up the critical working guts.

Re:mmmm

[odyrithm]

Also, I wonder how well respected someone who mainly does "UI" design/layout things

Thats a good point, I guess its a mix of what your saying and that with allot of open/free source apps the core team can move at such a pace the poor ui designers have no choice but to botch things.. and thats even if there is a ui designer which if not will lead to the ui being hacked up by the various members of the core team.

Re:mmmm

[odyrithm]

offcourse not, but this is slashdot and we pitty the fools who dont love open/free source we do! we do!

Re:mmmm

[root 66]

I agree with you. I don't use another operating system because it's the same as the old one.

If I'm not using (or forced to use) Windoze, I'm all for the GNUstep UI: very clean and well thought; great environment (drag'n'drop, services, etc)...

And of course, there is Apple's OS X, which gladly still kept some of the nice NeXT stuff.

Re:mmmm

[odyrithm]

Ive never used GNUstep, Im a kde/enlightenment man myself.. but I will check it out, cheers.

Re:mmmm

[slide-rule]

and that with [a lot] of open/free source apps the core team can move at such a pace the poor ui designers have no choice but to botch things

I agree that can be a contributor. It is perhaps a function of the development model's potential attraction of a mix-n-match design team that code is written before a good overall design is worked out on paper. (This isn't to say I haven't changed my mind and direction a few dozen times on some pet projects of my own, of course.)
As for the hue and cry of "cloning" the current beta(s) for next years projects, I think it probably serves our development communities more good than ill. On a personal note, I'm attempting to write a clone of a fairly useful and popular MS application. (Mainly for personal use, but, hey, if anyone else finds it useful, good for all of us; not enough done to make anything available yet or mention just what it is.) Given I want it to work similarly to the MS version, given I find that their interface actually works and is logical for this application, and given they've more than likely invested some resources into usability studies, it behooves me to mimic the overall layout/appearance.

Re:mmmm

[odyrithm]

Given I want it to work similarly to the MS version, given I find that their interface actually works and is logical for this application

MS actualy do make a very plesent UI, and theres nothing wrong with cloning them, Id just like to believe that instead of just cloning them, we could enhance and maybe even come up with a few new concepts of our own(the o/fs groups). But at present all we seem to be doing is cloning, which is the basis for the freesource movement Id say.. not sure about opensource... but neway.. Im rambling now..

Re:mmmm

[thatguywhoiam]

I can't debate how accurate that point is, but I have noticed, having recently read through the gnome interface guidelines, that most of the "not like this" examples are the myriads of various gnome apps. It'd probably go a long way if the developers that *do* write UI code (regardless of how "good" they are at "designing" said UI) actually follow UI guidelines.

I'll go you one further.

I'm a UI designer. I have designed a new OS UI. It's quite radical, and new. I've solicited opinions on it from slashdot (here)as well as from a few friends.

Basically, I'm sitting on the thing right now, for two reasons: 1.) the core group of people its designed for - techies, early-adopters - are incredibly resistant to changes of this type and 2.) its nearly impossible to solicit useful feedback from said group, for the reasons you outlined in your post.

It can be summarized in one of the responses to the above-linked post; I asked if anyone was willing to undergo (possible) major learning pains to learn a more productive system. I got the only one-word response I've ever seen on /., "No."

Everyone, absolutely everyone has an almost unshakable opinion of what they like, visually, and behaviourally. Witness the near-revolt of Classic Mac OS users trying OS X, versus the newbies and Unix/Win coverts who think it's the cat's ass (er, that means 'great'). You cannot underestimate this. In 10 years of graphic design, it still boggles me. Graphic design and particularly UI design in general get 'no respect', because its simply something that people don't respect educated opinions on. Put another way, if your code works, only another programmer is going to criticise you for sloppy coding. A user doesn't care as long as it works. But if I show a UI design to a room with 15 people, you will have 15 angrily opinionated asshats barking off about how this and that should work, with no thought whatsoever to how one arrives at those conclusions.

And the kicker: you must listen to every asshat in that room, because in a way they are all right.

Anyways. My point is this: I'm the guy you're talking about, and I find it really hard to 'break in' to this group. I don't even know where to start, actually. Hell, I get dissed just because I built the UI demo in Flash.

Re:mmmm

[Azghoul]

Well, I haven't touched a pie menu yet, but I'm game to try it out... SOMETHING new has to be done, but no one ever seems to have any real ideas (like I don't).

I'm sitting here using Windowmaker on RH8 because I can't stand the 'panel' interface currently in vogue. I am more comfortable doing one thing at a time (but with extra side things keeping me up to date -- like gaim and system monitors). But it's still not comfortable, and I'm always poking around for something new.

Too bad I didnt' see your original post when you wrote it, this one shoudl rightfully be modded down as off topic. :)

Re:mmmm

[thatguywhoiam]

Okay, I'll let you know when it's ready to go out. For obvious reasons, I'm trying to polish the demo as much as I can, because one little omission and I'll get crucified.

Although I will warn you, I wasn't kidding when I said radical. One instance, as food for thought - would you give up the ability to have a desktop image of your choice, in trade for having 1-click access to all your data right on the (so-called) desktop? This is the kind of thing I'm talking about.

Re:mmmm

[slide-rule]

Moderators please mod parent up!

As to the parent poster: aside from /.'ing too much for a workday already, I'd love to see what your new approaches are w.r.t. a new OS UI. Here at work, I made a GUI for a completely cumbersome system process where no UI of any kind (even really CLI) existed, and I did it at everyone else's request. When it was all said and done (about 30,000 lines, accounting for comments and junk), all I had was, as you mentioned, a roomful of people too stubborn (as engineers, mind you, not as computer technophiles!) to see past the working proof-of-concept UI to understand that, if used, it would save untold hours in upfront work, downstream re-work, and general PITA-ness. So they lost interest, I got put on a new task, and -- what might've been the best work improvement that group has ever seen -- never got polished, or used. Case in point of stubborn refusal to change methodologies to get demonstrably greater productivity. (And an interesting lesson for yours truly.)

Re:mmmm

[nytes]

Any screenshots?

For all the complaints about "cruft" and MS's failure to innovate, techies seem to want the same UI's and the same OS API's that they used 20 to 30 years ago.

I agree that the time has come to drop the desktop metaphor. It was OK when we were weaning office workers from typewriters, but maybe it's time to move on.

I'll throw in an idea that I've toyed with, because I'm not sure that I'll ever get around to doing anything with it. Maybe you or someone else can do something with it.

I've never actually used a pie menu, but I've toyed with it on paper, and noticed a problem with menu realestate and the number of menu entries. These deficiencies were pointed out in the original article on them (in Dr. Dobbs? Computer Language? - I forget which).

My observation: try a six pointed star (aka "Star of David" - yeah, this idea won't go down well in Arab countries :-).

The advantage is that: you've got an area (a hexagon) in the middle which you can use as special buttons (cancel and/or OK), or as a title box for the menu, or divide it into 6 smaller triangles for menu items. The pattern of the 6 pointed star allows you to get 12 items into a circle, with more predictable geometries, whereas the normal pie menu (IIRC - I read the article on pie menus a *long* time ago) they found the limit to be about eight. And the pattern lends itself to nesting concentrically (again, with predictable geometry) if more than 12 items are needed in the menu.

It seems like it provides a good compromise between the easy to read grid layout of conventional menus and the direction oriented pie menus.

Re:mmmm

[thatguywhoiam]

Any screenshots?

I'm dying to release screenshots, but I've held off. Sometimes just seeing a screen of something, without seeing how it works, can be damaging to the impression, you know? Of course I'll have to eventually.

For all the complaints about "cruft" and MS's failure to innovate, techies seem to want the same UI's and the same OS API's that they used 20 to 30 years ago.

I agree that the time has come to drop the desktop metaphor. It was OK when we were weaning office workers from typewriters, but maybe it's time to move on.

Yeah, that's pretty much where the idea came from. We've come to think of 'icons' and 'folders' more naturally as their digital counterparts, so why bother calling them that? Although, this messes with my idea too. I get hung up on names. Essentially there are 'nodes' that represent folder structures, with 'points' or regular icons representing individual files. Which brings me to...

I've never actually used a pie menu

Think Sims, as a starting point.

The advantage is that: you've got an area (a hexagon) in the middle...

You're right, and came to a similar conclusion I did. 8 points isn't really workable in terms of relationships with other 'bubbles' (as I call them.. like a constellation of files). Six in a hex shape is more manageable.

Another thing I've maintained is that this interface requires a 2-button mouse with a scroll wheel. Right-click opens the node, mouse wheel scrubs through files, left-click selects.. this also gives you a nice multi-selection ability, as opposed to standard drop-down menus where you need to make multiple 'trips' to choose more than one thing.

Ah, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll put you on the list for more news if you'd like.

Re:mmmm

[root 66]

I can only encourage you to do so.

But be aware that the gui part of GNUstep still has its rough edges.

Be sure to subscribe to the discuss-gnustep mailing list and post your thoughts/problems/etc.

Re:mmmm

[krogoth]

And what's wrong with copying features that other people come up with? If every software project wrote and designed everything from scratch, we would never get anywhere - doing things yourself might be fun, but in the end you usually don't do any better and it takes far longer.

Re:mmmm

[LeBleu]

Could you let me know when it is ready to go out as well?

Re:mmmm

[nytes]

Yeah, put me on. I'd love to see it. (Hey, maybe we can get you slashdotted! :-D )

Re:mmmm

[geekoid]

I design UI and I'd love to see this UI you designed. e waned, I will write up a bullet list of whats good and bad and send it to you. If you don't think your ego can handle that, disregard.

Re:mmmm

[Spy Hunter]

Hey, that UI idea sounds pretty neato. I especially like the concept of using pie menus. Where is this flash demo you refer to? I'm interested in UI design myself, though I'd be lying if I said I had much experience or knowledge in it.

Re:mmmm

[infinite8s]

Please put me on the list too. I couln't find you're email, otherwise I would have emailed you personally.

infinite8s@yahoo.com

Re:Sad

[yatest5]

I give your karma two minutes ;-)

The only thing that needs cloning

[penguin_dance]

Nice to get a head start on what we'll be cloning next year ;)

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. ;-)

Cloning...yuck

[0x0d0a]

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.

Re:Cloning...yuck

[Izeickl]

But I thought OSS was all about inovation right now? Surely it cant be copying designs from Microsoft as only Microsoft doesnt inovate or create.

Re:Cloning...yuck

[yatest5]

I can't wait until MS finally loses its dominant desktop position......

Is that because you will have died during a tragic flying accident on your pet pig long before then?

Re:Cloning...yuck

[Some Bitch]

No matter what other faults they may or may not have (fence sitter ahoy \o/) MS spend millions on research into human/computer interaction and user interface design. Occasionally they take ideas from OSS (did I read elsewhere in this thread about virtual desktops and taskbar applets?) if the idea is good and why shouldn't they? We (I use the word 'we' very loosely here, my coding isn't exactly top class) are more than happy to build interfaces based on the results of their millions of dollars worth of research and linux is all the better for it.

Re:Cloning...yuck

[siphoncolder]

This isn't insightful. This is ignorant, and I feel dumber for having read it.

There is no onus to clone the Windows interface. The interface has been cloned not because it's so good, or because it's better than the original XWindows interface. It's cloned because OSS GUI developers are quite simply unable to create anything better. This is not a chide against their skill - they actually don't have the time & money to spend researching how to make the most effective user interface. (That, and they can't emulate Apple's Aqua interface because Apple would just sue their pants off.)

However, if you're content to sit there and wait for MS' desktop dominance to subside, you're going to wait for the rest of your life. MS' desktop dominance has less to do with "superior UI design" and more to do with marketing.

OSS should stop trying to chase Windows' features - it's not just the product that you have to emulate to defeat Windows on the desktop. Emulate service, support, consultancy, and business partnering. THAT will make a dent. If you're selling people the idea of "Almost-But-Not-Quite-Windows", you'll "Almost-But-Not-Quite-Sell-Them".

Re:Cloning...yuck

[0x0d0a]

But I thought OSS was all about inovation right now?

To RMS, it's about freedom.

To ESR, it's about better software quality.

To suits, it's about lower costs.

As for "innovation", that's a word that's been more wildly misused than any other term that I can think of. If someone's crowing about "innovation", they probably haven't had a fresh idea in years. Freenet, rsync...now *those* contained clever, useful ideas that were new when they were written.

Re:Cloning...yuck

[0x0d0a]

No matter what other faults they may or may not have (fence sitter ahoy \o/) MS spend millions on research into human/computer interaction and user interface design.

And what has it led to?

A filesystem browser squashed together with a web browser (done for political reasons).

The Start menu (this has been torn to pieces on the Interface Hall of Shame).

WMP 9.

Outlook's custom widget (with the mailbox name).

Each version of Office using completely different widgets than all other apps in Windows.

All with poor UIs.

Most of the rest of what Microsoft's done has been heavily based on Apple's ideas, or HCI driven by technical flaws. There was the dual filename system because they made the poor choice to use 8.3 filenames. Then the Start Menu, because Windows developers used masses of completely unidentifiable data file names slapped in the same directory as the executable. MDI, which was produced for Windows 3.1 because the VM system sucked and MDI reduced load on it.

Occasionally they take ideas from OSS (did I read elsewhere in this thread about virtual desktops and taskbar applets?)

I *wish* they'd take the idea of virtual desktops. One of the biggest things Windows needs.

are more than happy to build interfaces based on the results of their millions of dollars worth of research and linux is all the better for it.

Is a combined web browser/file browser really that crucial or useful, or just included to help out ex-Windows users?

Re:Cloning...yuck

[0x0d0a]

This isn't insightful. This is ignorant, and I feel dumber for having read it.

Ah.

There is no onus to clone the Windows interface.

Really. So, you believe than someone who has used Windows for the past five years will just as happily use Linux if the interface is completely different?

It's cloned because OSS GUI developers are quite simply unable to create anything better.

Already, despite the constraint to appear "Windows-like", OSS developers *are* out putting new UI ideas into play. GNOME has tear-off menus -- I don't see that in Windows. It also has menu accelerators that I, as a user, can rebind just by moving the mouse over them and tapping my desired key combination. KDE is making major leaps and bounds towards making *everything* a dockable pane.

That's off the top of my head (*and* I don't use KDE). What improvements has Microsoft come up with in the past five years? The Office Assistants?

However, if you're content to sit there and wait for MS' desktop dominance to subside, you're going to wait for the rest of your life. MS' desktop dominance has less to do with "superior UI design" and more to do with marketing.

And now there are competitors who offer a price edge, the ability to avoid vendor lock-in, and just as many services as Microsoft does.

Emulate service, support, consultancy, and business partnering.

That has nothing to do with OSS. Anyone can offer these services, and many do right now.

If you're selling people the idea of "Almost-But-Not-Quite-Windows", you'll "Almost-But-Not-Quite-Sell-Them".

It's not an attempt to be "another Windows", it's an attempt to keep close enough in UI to keep ex-Windows users comfortable.

Browser integrated in Word Processor

[Vicegrip]

Rename it to something fuzzy like 'research assistant' and add happy pastel colors, 1000$ please! ... next

Everyone I know still uses office 2000/97 on Windows. These new versions bring nothing new to most users.

another site

[suhit]

Since this site seems /.'ed already, here are another ones that have some screenshots too -

http://www.wininsider.com/news/comments.aspx?mid=3 069.
http://users.pandora.be/AMDtje/Office11_2.htm
http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/ol11.htm

Suhit

Re:another site

[shayborg]

Xdocs looks pretty good, actually ...

-- shayborg

More Screen shots

[CleverNickedName]

Another shot of it can be found here

Re:Sad

[tempest303]

Let us not also forget that BSD is 99% dying! :P

Re:Sad

[Kibo]

So what you're saying is, "Resistance is futile," right?

Re:Clone wars!

[WumpusKiller]

Shouldn't that be: "Begun the Clone Wars have!"

Numb

[mao che minh]

I have become numb to Microsoft upgrades. There was virtually no difference between Office and Office 97. The differences between Office 97 and 2000 were mostly visual (and the addition of broken compatibilities). The differences between Windows 98 and Windows ME were just pointless. I still consider Windows XP an expensive, restrictively licensed downgrade to Windows 2000.

This will likewise fail it.

Re:Numb

[Lxy]

The only drawback to running Office 95 is that everyone else is running a newer version, hence incompatible files.

Office 97 added bloat, Office 2000 added more bloat, even Office instructors agree that Office XP is a waste of time. Seriously, Office 95 was the last good version. Just like Windows 95 was the last usable version of Windows, sana USB support.

And besides, Office 95 came with Excel Doom. Doesn't get more productive than that!

Re:Numb

[Planesdragon]

There was virtually no difference between Office and Office 97. The differences between Office 97 and 2000 were mostly visual (and the addition of broken compatibilities). The differences between Windows 98 and Windows ME were just pointless. I still consider Windows XP an expensive, restrictively licensed downgrade to Windows 2000.

In all that, you're right on the money for 98/ME; ME never should have been, and if not for RAMBUS it wouldn't have been. But as for the rest: MS has got lots of small improvements in each iteration of office. Blame planned obsolescence.

* Office 97 was the first package with reasonable HTML built-in. Yes, it's bloated HTML with all of the Office metadata, and yes, they'd have been better if they copied Acrobat's Word-UI. But that's neither here nor there.

* Office 2000 introduced a whole heck of new features--most notably for most of us, those auto-hiding menus, multiple windows in the taskbar, and a built-in clipboard that can hold twelve "cuts."

* Office XP doubled the size of the clipboard, gave word discontinuous selection ability, and introduced that somewhat-useful task pane.

* Windows XP, over 2000, has a major improvement just in explorer.exe. You can customize your start menu to your heart's content, the system tray auto-hide (or mannualy hide) icons, and the gooy GUI is, if nothing else, "new." (And being able to turn off all of the above is rather nice, too.)

Re:Numb

[bitmason]

It depends what features you use. In my environment (basically writing/publishing) we make *extensive* use of revision tracking. It could still be much improved but Office XP is materially better than its predecessors (or indeed Star Office). So no, not "virtually no difference."

Re:Numb

[Mike Rucker]

If you think Windows 95 was more usable than Windows 98, 2000, or XP you must be smoking some REALLY good shit!

For the record I primarily use Linux but to say that Windows 95 is better than the newer versions is just idiotic!

Re:Numb

[Sgs-Cruz]

Actually, there is one feature that justifies office XP for me... the actually-good document recovery. Although with the increased stability of windows XP (i'm serious! Way more than 9x, anyway...) it doesn't crash as much, the document recovery in Office XP simply kicks ass. It's almost AutoCAD-good now.

In addition, though it's not enough to justify upgrading every time (maybe every two or three versions...) the Office package is getting more and more tightly integrated. It used to be clear that Excel and Word were led by different teams. Now they have been grouped together as Office for long enough that it finally _feels_ like one package. They have extremely consistent UI, features, menu selections, etc.

Re:Numb

[Zigg]

... to say that Windows 95 is better than the newer versions is just idiotic!

No, it isn't. Windows 95 preceded the Great IE Integration Push (most versions, and those that didn't can be .INF edited on installation to be IE-free) that really managed to kill both any kind of stability and simple user experience. I still install 95 places where I need to use Windows today.

Re:Numb

[Billly Gates]

I actually paid $300 to downgrade from XP to w2k. It was worth every penny. I needed to install it on several pc's (Microsoft can kiss my ass on one pc per install)and I upgrade my pc's as a hobby. I also had stability problems with utitilies designed to flash copiers and other printing devices which I use for work. The fact of the matter is I approached the 10 re-install limit to XP. After that I have to call Microsoft and prove I didn't steal it.

To me the money was well worth the upgrade. I needed to blow another $200 to install XP on a second system even though I would be the only user?? I agree with the 1 user should pay per license but now Microsoft is getting stricter and stricter in licensing terms. I heard stories that Microsoft and the BSA are making companies that have several people use a single pc to have a license per user.

I would of totally switched to FreeBSD if I didn't need Microsoft for my line of work( I flash copiers firmware with a windows based utililty).

I do not own a copy of Office and think the price of $900 for a word processor and an access database is laughable. Its openoffice all the way for me.

Re:Numb

[EinarH]

I still consider Windows XP an expensive, restrictively licensed downgrade to Windows 2000.

Although I do agree on your general oppinion on the restrictive license following the Windows XP End User License Agreement there is more to the story:

If you install Service Pack 3 for Windows 2000 you have to agree on the same EULA as for Windows XP. And as we all know, because of security conserns you have to do that.
This really pisses me off. After all, when you install your OS of choice, for example win4k ultra edition, Microsoft should not force their customers into accepting the next license agreement.

Re:Numb

[skinfitz]

The differences between Windows 98 and Windows ME were just pointless.

They were not pointless! The extra crashes and idiotic problems present in ME provide more encouragement to upgrade to XP.

Re:Numb

[quantum bit]

That's just moronic. The 2k and XP machines I have regularly have uptimes longer than the 95 timer rollover crash time. And that wasn't found for years because nobody had a 95 machine that ever stayed up that long. If you want stable without IE than at least get something in the NT line.

We need to figure out a way to rip IE out of 2k (replacement shell, probably). Call it NT 5.

Guess you could always use cmd.exe as your shell :P

Re:Numb

[angle_slam]

those auto-hiding menus

I've always hated those menus. I know where menu items are. But, by hiding the menu items, their position changes, and I can't find the menu choice I need.

Re:Numb

[poot_rootbeer]

Office XP doubled the size of the clipboard

Wow, they changed int clipboard[12] to int clipboard[24] and recompiled!

Better upgrade today!

Re:Numb

[pmz]

I've always hated those menus. I know where menu items are. But, by hiding the menu items, their position changes, and I can't find the menu choice I need./i.

I concur. Auto-hiding menus are a symptom that the current Windows UI is reaching its limits. Just how many features can be two clicks away, anyway? What Microsoft really needs to do is think hard about how to factor their UI into a deeper hierarchy. I know a lot of people will cringe at that thought, but what other options are there?

Re:Numb

[dr.badass]

The problem with auto-hiding menus (Personalized Menus, Smart Menus, whatever) is that they only work well in a few places. Poorly-organized menus, like program-launching menus, (Accessories, QuickTime, Office, Mozilla, etc) are well served by the self-organization, whereas menus that are already organized into some kind of intuitive grouping, like in a word processor (New, Open, Close | Save, Save As... | Print, Print Preview | Exit), see that order destroyed.

Re:Numb

[zurab]

Office 97 was the first package with reasonable HTML built-in.

As you mentioned yourself, that HTML output was utter crap. Nobody was or is expected to use that feature for any meaningful data storage or presentation purposes. Did anyone?

Office 2000 introduced a whole heck of new features--most notably for most of us, those auto-hiding menus

Very annoying hiding menus - many have pointed out that when menu options that are not used are hidden, user is likely to never find out about those options, thus sticking to what they did know - Office 97 functionality.

multiple windows in the taskbar

At first, I thought it was for some technical reasons; taskbar is unreasonably congested with open windows. Try opening Outlook, few documents in Word, and browse a little in IE; after a few pop-ups you won't recognize what apps you are running unless you increase the taskbar size or place it vertically.

built-in clipboard that can hold twelve "cuts."

Everyone seems to be saying this was an improvement in Office 2000, but if I recall correctly, I remember using this in Office 97 w/service pack update.

etc., etc.

Anyway, these features are hardly worth few hundred bucks per pop for upgrade, or $500 or so for full release. Especially when most of the new actual useful features never get used. Combine that with MS' one product fits all strategy, and it looks even less valuable.

Re:Numb

[Planesdragon]

As you mentioned yourself, that HTML output was utter crap. Nobody was or is expected to use that feature for any meaningful data storage or presentation purposes. Did anyone?

Actually, it's very good for backing up Word Documents. The simplest way to attempt to clean a corrupted file is to save it as HTML, then open it in a new Word session from HTML and save as DOC again.

I use Office 2000 in conjunction with the website I have to update for work. The HTML works reasonably well, despite having all of that bloat.

Very annoying hiding menus - many have pointed out that when menu options that are not used are hidden, user is likely to never find out about those options, thus sticking to what they did know - Office 97 functionality.

Most users only use a subset of the features of any given program because _that's all that they need._

Those hiding menus and toolbars are annoying when you want to use a button for display, but not for input. *grumble grumble.*

Everyone seems to be saying this was an improvement in Office 2000, but if I recall correctly, I remember using this in Office 97 w/service pack update.

We just upgraded to 2000 last year, and the clipboard was new for us. I'm pretty sure that the clipboard wasn't universal in the latest 97 service pack--though I don't doubt that it may have showed up in a subset of service packs, or that there was a third-party utility for it.

Anyway, these features are hardly worth few hundred bucks per pop for upgrade, or $500 or so for full release. Especially when most of the new actual useful features never get used. Combine that with MS' one product fits all strategy, and it looks even less valuable.

You're completely right. If you have a massive discount or "software assurance" it makes sense to upgrade, but other than that--well, skipping a few "generations" of office is probably not a bad idea.

Slashdotted server

[Degrees]

is getting content from "instanet" (and it isn't.)

All I see at the moment is placeholder text for a graphic "The Active Network". Which it isn't.

Is this what we should expect from Office 2003? Loooong periods of wait from their ardent supporters? ;-)

Re:i've had enough of this `innovation' bs

[flewp]

users don't fucking WANT innovation ffs

I suppose that's why the vast majority of users are using GUI driven OS's these days, and not DOS or other command line interfaces. I suppose it's also why we're using office suites instead of FRED (or whatever that word processor was on the Apple IIe). Oh, and if you actually read my comment, you'll notice I said "a lot of OSS projects", and never once said even said "office suite", ffs.

Yep, I bit. Great troll.

Wow...

[Jon Abbott]

So you're saying that Microsoft has reduced all of their Office apps to just show the words "500 - Server too busy"? :^)

whew

[Meeble]

thank God they didn't get rid of the wavy WordArt. I don't know how half the briefings I have to sit through would survive!!

Obivously you can't form an intelligent opinion from the screenshots but I don't think there's been much incentive to upgrade since office 2000. There's already 2000+ features I have absolutely no need for, or companies disallow use of anyhow. And as someone else mentioned OpenOffice is completely free and almost complimentary.

Re:Sad

[CleverNickedName]

So is it "\." now, not "/."?

I hope the interface is theme-able !

[mgpeter]

How could anyone work at this version of Office for any amount of time - All of the blue in the interface is way too depressing.

I might have to buy that bullet-proof vest for the office !

This is wrong ...

[DJ FirBee]

This article presupposes three things.

1. OpenSource programmers will stop making kernel mods and other fun hacks and come together to make a good office suite for Linux.

2. That after hell freezes over and #1 above happens that they should make it look and act like Microsoft Office.

3. That the programmers can even see the screenshots as if the server was not already slashdotted into oblivion.

But I don't remenbar any spelling errars. So. Good Article Slashdot !!

While your waiting

[bstadil]

Read how MS office comes to Linux Servers or how Microsoft collects data on installed competitive software on your machine. This goes on while they proudly display that they are not collecting any "Personal Data".

Too lazy to send in a story.

Re:While your waiting

[IDIIAMOTS]

How else do you expect Windows Update to determine which drivers you need? Would you rather pulldown the entire known devices database down and check local hardware against it on the client machine, or would you rather send a small manifest of local hardware to the server and few seconds later start getting patch summaries?

Actually, it goes both ways.

[Corvaith]

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.

Re:Slashdotted

[snack-a-lot]

Okay here are links to all the images, as they've 403'd the index.html:

calendar
research-site
welcome
error
welcome2
error2
error3
flags
junk
research-integrations-ie
reply-account
permission
openmessage
open
newmessage
month
mainpage
junkmail1

(filler material ...)

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Re:Sad

[Trav42]

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.

Unknown TLA

[Malc]

GPO???

Re:Unknown TLA

[REBloomfield]

Group Policy Object

The replacement for System Policy in Windows 2000 Active Directory implementations. HTH :p

Re:Unknown TLA

[Malc]

Ahh, thanks :)

Slashdotted..

[Quixote]

Call it truth in advertising. The screenshots are as slow to load as the Officer2003 will be on then state-of-the-art hardware.

It is nice to know that Microshaft is not only letting you see what it looks like, they are also letting you feel what it feels like to use it.

I must say I'm impressed. :-)

Update...

[Aquitaine]

9:56 AM: ActiveWin is displaying screenshots of Office2003 Beta.

(thundering noise, something catches on fire)

9:59 AM: ActiveWin sincerely regrets ever having displayed screenshots of Office2003 Beta. Move along, please.

Re:First QBASIC post!

[snack-a-lot]

No, it's a bigger lump than that. I don't think I even noticed yours, sorry.

Summary for those who didn't see

[bedouin]

- 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 . . .

Re:Summary for those who didn't see

[yatest5]

Now if only you could find time for sexual relations within your 9 AM to 10 PM daily work schedule . . .

Sorry? Can you just confirm this for me? The general plebian public who use Windows get less sex that the general Slashdot user, who obviously contributes extensively to open source projects? Is that right? Is that really what you're trying to say?

Re:Summary for those who didn't see

[Sunnan]

And that's better... how?

Re:Summary for those who didn't see

[bedouin]

Your post is a piece of unbridled invective and unabashed FUD the likes of which I seldom see here in WinBash country, and that's saying a lot. In fact, it's so "out there", it's even slightly funny, especially if we turn it around and apply it to you.

Apparently obvious satire translates into "out there" for you. Perhaps I only proved my point about your flock's inherent dullness.

Re:Summary for those who didn't see

[phoenixTMW]

It's a shame someone has to point this out, but this is not "obvious satire." It's not even satire. And it's modded insightful?

I think you hit the nail on the head yourself...

[Kjella]

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

Who has the money to buy it?

[Pathetic Coward]

Really ...

What company, in this economy, is going to upgrade?

What home user, in this economy, is going to upgrade?

(Someone give me a patch to remove Clippy, and I'll be satisfied with 2000 forever ... )

Re:Who has the money to buy it?

[October_30th]

(Someone give me a patch to remove Clippy, and I'll be satisfied with 2000 forever ... )

You know you can choose not to install Clippy in the first place? Do a custom installation and deselect office assistant. No patch required.

Re:Who has the money to buy it?

[SuiteSisterMary]

Download the right bits from Microsoft.com, free of charge, and you can even build a custom installer and image that doesn't even have the option to install that bit. You can even build it into an intellimirror or SMS auto-distributed package, and schlump it down to computers, or just burn it onto CD for easy installation.

Saw this at the Tablet PC Expo/Unified Interface

[mattyohe]

Yeah microsoft was touting this program... Its not bad.. Its visually better and looks like they are just adding more and more shit... Only people who use crap like franklin covey shit will enjoy all the features, becase now they wont need to buy that program.

Also they are releasing a new program with all of this... OneNote link here

This brings up my next rant... Why can't we have a unified interface for everything I need to do?! Its like.. All of these updates are nice and all.. but I don't see any real innovations. Word Excel Powerpoint Access Outlook all in different programs is still a clumsy way to operate. Alt Tabbing or dual monitors isn't cool enough anymore.. I need it all in one program. Is there any project that is actually working on something like this?

Not Outlook

[mbbac]

If the Linux herd is going to clone anything; it should be Apple Mail, iCal, and Address Book. Small, lightweight, and excellent utilities for their functions.

Re:Not Outlook

[Sunnan]

A free clone of Apple Mail.

Re:Not Outlook

[asv108]

ICal is great, but Apple Mail is no better than many mail clients available for Linux and windows.

Re:Not Outlook

[mbbac]

Excellent.

Now then. I just installed Red Hat 8 on one of my computers not too long ago. This is the first time I've run Linux on one of my computers since 1995. How would I go about running GnuMail on Red Hat 8? Would it work with one of the existing window environments (Gnome or KDE) or would I need to install GnuStep?

Re:Not Outlook

[mbbac]

I'd have to argue that point. It is very lightweight. It supports IMAP and POP. The drawer is a very conveinient place to locate the mailboxes. It integrates well with an excellent address book application. It has a wonderful learning spam filter. I've launched and toyed with KMail, Mozilla Mail, and Evolution recently. None of them match up.

Re:Not Outlook

[GlassHeart]

Linux "ui cloners" should copi Apple design interfaces.

The problem is that is infinitely easier to get access to a Windows machine than an Apple one.

Apple publishes its Aqua Human Interface Guidelines. In fact, since Apple violates some of its own guidelines, the guidelines themselves might be an even better source than actual Apple apps.

Re:Not Outlook

[jsimon12]

Outlook has crappy IMAP support, ever try and use filters on it? If you don't have Outlook open when the message hits the inbox it doesn't filter. Pretty darn useless if you ask me.

Re:Not Outlook

[Sunnan]

You need to install GNUstep but you can run that as well as Gnome/KDE even at the same time. Read the documentation before you begin.

Heh

[nomadic]

Nice to get a head start on what we'll be cloning next year ;)

Yeah, right. Next year. Heh.

Find me an open source project that has the functionality of MS Office from 4 years ago. Or 5. Or 6.

Re:Heh

[AlgUSF]

Name me a microsoft Operating System that has the functionality of linux.

Re:Heh

[nomadic]

So there's no good Linux office app, but that's ok because there's no good MS OS? That doesn't make sense.

And you know how clueful its' average user is...

[labratuk]

...when it has

'You have 1 message [ok]'

'Dialog box' ads.

Cloning or not ...

[timothy]

Actually, when I look at these screenshots, I think "Phew, I'm glad that I have OpenOffice and other things to type with!"

Now, Office has a lot of Big Complicated Features which may be interesting and useful to you if your office / job has evolved to rely on them. I don't use office-suite progams much, and when I do I don't usually have anything too exotic in the way of combining features. I do find that I can paste in sections of spreadsheet, graphics and such into OpenOffice pretty well though.

OpenOffice does have a big problem to me, though, which is that fonts are usually ugly, reminds me or the way Word (3? 4? whatver version is was) looked on my old toaster Mac. This is not, strictly speaking , OO.org's fault, since ugly fonts are the result of complicated interactions among a lot of things in the system ... on a system that's been tweaked to look nice, this becomes not-a-problem.

It has some other problems too (annoying default behavior wrt to autocompletion of words, lists, etc), but these are in Word and most other Word Processors, too. On the whole, I'd much rather write a letter in OpenOffice, and have :)

Upshot: these screenshots don't inspire envy the way I thought they might when I opened them.

timothy

Re:Sad

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

Well, duh! Of course the majority of Slashdotters are running Windows; how else are they going to sit and read Slashdot at work all day? :)

task based?

[dextr0us]

Am i the only person who doesn't like the "task based interface"? it seems like a peice of "innovation" that makes things too easy.... and by too easy i mean that it over simlifies something that isn't that complex.

Windows XP UI widgets?

[Captain Rotundo]

I have to know, is it skinnable? or does every one who uses it have to put up with the ugle blue and green title bars and panel ? - not even mentioning the rest of the widgets.

I must say I thought the grey '3d' widgets of Win9x were pretty blah, but at least they weren't as annoying as those screenshots look.

Maybe Microsoft figured that while they were crushing Java with .Net they would throw Sun a bone by actually making a UI that was uglier that Metal ?

Re:Windows XP UI widgets?

[D4MO]

Yeah, just disable the themes services and that stops all that bubblegum crap.

Nothing to mod

[kahei]

Well, I've been wandering around with a handful of mod points looking for some posts about the actual new Office UI/features to mod up, but there aren't any because everyone was trolled by the cloning bit in the original item!

Ah well, it wouldn't be slashdot otherwise :)

Re:Microsoft Works

[Speed Racer]

Whatever comes with Works is most certainly not Word, and it doesn't talk to the .doc format either.

Sorry to disappoint you but Works does come with Word and Word obviously "talks" to the .doc format. See http://www.microsoft.com/products/works/ for proof.

Virtual Desktops

[ShaggyZet]

Virtual desktops go back a really long time, at least until 1992 with vtwm and olvwm

Ah, the good old days when everyone used there own window manager, everybody's unix desktop looked totally different and you actually had to know something to have a desktop that was cool.

Who's going to buy it?

[wfrp01]

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.

Re:Who's going to buy it?

[smack_attack]

I'm not getting a raise, I might as well pirate some uber-sweet software that they think they need so badly instead of happy employees.

Re:Who's going to buy it?

[thebatlab]

A lot of problems and bloat with these programs is maintaining backwards compatibility with old outdated file formats and functionality. I think it's a good step to start breaking backwards compatibility. How else can you get a fresh release of a product without getting rid of outdated code? Sure, they should have "done it right" the first time but at least they're working at fixing the product properly.

> pretty new buttons and a three panel view

Don't forget, lots of people like flash and style over functionality. Of course that's usually until they really start using it but by then they're already tied to the product. It's all about marketing :)

Re:Who's going to buy it?

[RATBOON]

yea, the only people i can see buying this are business users who have it 'bundled in'...

Re:Who's going to buy it?

[JewFish]

you are a damn fool, I am going to steal Office 11 from IRC of course, so its not costing me or my company a penny. As far as I am concerned Word is the only application that can handle .doc format. Yes I have tried OO and AbiWord and have not be to pleased with the way they display word docs. if that means I have to borrow a copy of VMware and run MS Office (insert large number here) then so be it.

One diff between Linux and Win/Mac...

[Masem]

...is that Microsoft and Apple spend millions on user interface design, a complete separate process from the coding of the program engine, while Linux/OSS developers will generally worry about the UI last, and in that that UI will be designed by the developers themselves with only the response of various alpha/beta/stable testing to improve it. While both MS and Apple's UI R&D have put out duds, such as Clippy, MS Bob, QT4's control set, and The Dock (for some at least), they have both had a large number of very useful additions to good UI design elements (Apply's consistant Human Interface Guidelines, IE's drop-down toolbar buttons, etc). Even Macromedia and Adobe are big on UI design, and have both had patents filed for some of their design elements. Will anyone on Linux ever devote that much ? Not really, I think, as the average Linux user is more worried about functionality than UI most of the time (delegating the UI handling to their window manager of choice (KDE/Gnome/WM/E!/etc)).

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.

Re:One diff between Linux and Win/Mac...

[Foosinho]

Not really, I think, as the average Linux user is more worried about functionality than UI most of the time

Functionality, and more directly productivity, are influenced by the UI. Human factors is a big field, and often overlooked in many areas, including software interfaces. For example, I write software to assist Human Factors Engineers design and conduct experiments for evaluating effective hardware and software interfaces. Right now we are working on finding upgrades to a fielded system that is so bad you could write a textbook on bad interface design using it as the only example.

In fact, our customer could have saved a _lot_ of money in the long run had they invested some time and money upfront in UI design. Instead, we have to spend all this time and effort on the back side to design improvements, and then we have to roll the improvements out to existing products. Ugh.

There is a lot more that goes into making "good" software than it's functionality. If it's not easy and intuitive to use, then people won't - regardless of how awesome the functionality is - if they have an easier to use choice. Microsoft has understood this from the start, and it's why they've got the market-share they do, despite buggy and bloated products.

Re:One diff between Linux and Win/Mac...

[bonch]

I would rather we innovate, and create something so new and great that users can see how obviously better it is than the rest and switch in droves.

But, instead, we continue to copy the GUI mistakes of the past in an attempt to gain a slightly larger userbase.

The potential is there, if people could just get their priorities straight.

link to Screenshots W/out article

[Tha_Big_Guy23]

Here's all the screenshots I could find, barring reading the article as it's slashdotted. maybe the article's important, maybe not.

Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 1
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 2
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 3
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 4
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 5
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 6
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 7
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 8
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 9
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 10
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 11
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 12
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 13
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 14
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 15
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 16
These screenshots aren't in any particular order, and there's a few shots of what appears to be the next version of Visual Studio, although, I could be mistaken.

Re:link to Screenshots W/out article

[REBloomfield]

That next version of Visual Studio is 'Everett', or VS.NET 2003. It should be out soon, i've had the final beta for a while, it just looks odd because they've got it running on top of they're new codebase. I forget what the next version of SQL server is, but i bet it's under there somewhere, i read that it was required for Office 11 potentially anyway...

Re:link to Screenshots W/out article

[broeman]

xml-coding ... I am doing a project in a company now, which is using an xml-based system for their literature (they used adobe pagemaker like everone else before). The look is simular to this, but I doubt that anyone in that company want to use office that work... they are using office to write small papers to hand out or so, but it breaks down so many times that they can't take Office seriously (eventhough Outlook runs like a charm, except when the servers are down (which they often are *sigh*) ... the company employes 15.000 people worldwide, and just recently upgrade to windows 2000 (some of the win95 was getting really on peoples nerves :)

Re:link to Screenshots W/out article

[haloscan]

That blue-ish gradient filled menus and the tube like menus make me want to puke. :-\

And here's a shot of Office 12

[shadwwulf]

Here is a shot straight for the UI testing lab for Office 12

Or at least it could be considering how pre-schoolish UI's are getting these days.

Re:And here's a shot of Office 12

[frank_adrian314159]

straight for the UI testing lab

F*ck you, man. I'm a college graduate - I use all ten toes...

all very pretty? but....

[oliverthered]

Does Excell handle CSV in any kind of reasonable way?
when I input 01234 does excell still want to format it as 1234, and when I change it to text (or whatever) does it keep my original entry?
Do dates work properly in excell yet?

Can I turn of HTML mail in Outlook?

Can I uninstall stuff without the CD.

Every time I goto search in windows (F3) does the Microsoft Installer dialogue pop-up and anoy the hell out of me?

Does fastfind sit in the background and hammer my pc from time to time?

How easy is it to install shit head the paper clip?

Can I tell Office that I'm english and have A4 paper, english dictionaries, the correct date format, paper size in inches etc..... without going through all the dialogues.

What about that horrible auto-crap, is that still on by default?

And finally, Can I use non-mdi, does ctrl+tab work, and can I copy using ye-oldie ctrl+instert instead of having to use ctrl+c (which sfaik is a break signal)

Re:all very pretty? but....

[thebatlab]

I don't use the new beta but I use Office 2000 and thought I'd respond to a few of these things.

> Can I turn of HTML mail in Outlook?

Why couldn't you before? I use text email in Outlook just fine. It even highlights URLs for me in text mode which I find nice . Maybe you don't?

> Does fastfind sit in the background and hammer
> my pc from time to time?

If you don't turn it off, yeah probably :)

> How easy is it to install shit head the paper clip?

Why would you want to install it if you hate it? ;)

> Can I tell Office that I'm english and have A4
> paper, english dictionaries, the correct date
> format, paper size in inches etc..... without
> going through all the dialogues.

In Page Setup, there's an option "From this point forward" that should save your Page setup setting.

When I insert a date, my format choice hangs around for the next go at it. I don't use the keyboard shortcut though maybe the choice sticks around if you go through the menu once then start using the keyboard shortcut.

As for english dictionary, try the Set Language option in Tools???

> What about that horrible auto-crap, is that
> still on by default?

I assume it still is but you can turn off a fair bit of that auto stuff from Tools->Auto Correct

Re:all very pretty? but....

[TKinias]

scripsit thebatlab:

> Can I turn of HTML mail in Outlook?

Why couldn't you before? I use text email in Outlook just fine. It even highlights URLs for me in text mode which I find nice . Maybe you don't?

I had the same problem. (I was forced to use O2k/Exchange at my last job.) It was like having a horrible skin disease -- I was afraid to show myself on any respectable mailing list. It didn't matter how you fiddled the settings, it still sent HTML. It would appear to you that you were sending plain text, but what it would actually send was HTML. The difference, of course, was that the HTML message was formatted to look like plain text -- fixed pitch font, etc. Truly, truly evil.

Even if they have fixed this evilness I won't go back to it. I just hope that someone comes out with OSS that can talk to an Exchange server, because I may not always be able to avoid those.

Re:all very pretty? but....

[oliverthered]

I don't want outlook to render HTML mail in html, I want my font, at my size in plain text please.

Re:all very pretty? but....

[Zathrus]

Does Excell handle CSV in any kind of reasonable way?

Define reasonable. I've always found Excel's handling of CSV to be pretty damn good, although a bit overbearing for simple CSV import/export. But at least it allows you to be complex enough to do tough CSV import/export.

when I input 01234 does excell still want to format it as 1234, and when I change it to text (or whatever) does it keep my original entry?

If you change it to the proper "whatever" then it will keep leading 0's. It won't automagically restore the zero if you change a field back to text, but there's a large number of Special and Custom fields that will retain leading 0's, whitespace, and whatnot. It's not Excel's fault if you can't be bothered to find them. (Although, honestly, it would be nice if it detected input of leading 0's and changed the field format appropriately).

Do dates work properly in excell yet?

Define properly. Excel has been a bit whacky with dates. So is a lot of other software - including minor databases like Oracle. As with anything, if you know what the hell you're doing it's not an issue though.

Can I uninstall stuff without the CD.

Pet peeve, and good question.

Does fastfind sit in the background and hammer my pc from time to time?

Doubt it... it's part of XP now! Woohoo. Get thee to Services and disable it.

Can I use non-mdi

Office 97 was the last Intel version of Office with MDI.

I copy using ye-oldie ctrl+instert instead of having to use ctrl+c (which sfaik is a break signal)

Works in every Windows app I know of (except terminal emulators - which generally don't like Ctrl-Ins either). Just a helluva lot less convienent than Ctrl-C.

What about that horrible auto-crap, is that still on by default?

Probably. Why? Any modern system can certainly handle it - what else is your GHz+ CPU going to do while waiting for you to type the next character? Maybe if you're running on a Pentium... but even a P2 has plenty of spare cycles for this kind of thing.

And, frankly, after reading your post I'd highly recommend you leave it enabled. Honestly. You need the help.

Re:all very pretty? but....

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

>> Can I turn of HTML mail in Outlook?

> Why couldn't you before? I use text email in
> Outlook just fine. It even highlights URLs for me
> in text mode which I find nice . Maybe you don't?

Outlook HTML mail has two forms, coming and going. Going is the least evil, coming is the big problem.

Going out, you may have places that won't appreciate HTML email. You may have to turn it off, run through some dialogues to make it permanent, maybe even go to your contact list and say "no HTML ever to this guy/group".

Worse is it coming in. Though HTML mail in general can be bad (HTML spam with webbugs, see who opened it up) a scriptable HTML email client is truly scary. Since Outlook renders things with IE web components, you've just pretty much inherited all IE bugs. "Hey, lets allow random unknown and untraceable people send other people scripts that will run on their computer". That was initially, soon enough they plugged some of the holes, but instead of realizing that the basic idea was flawed (allowing an email to execute things remotely) they decided to have a list that limited what people could do. The problem with such lists is there may be things that got left off. Sure enough, some components were marked "safe for scripting" that shouldn't have. One of these was a component that allowed file system access. Hmm, so an email could run some VBscript, script a component, and erase files on your hard drive. The Good Times virus becomes real. The only reason these bugs never caused widespread panic was that there were much easier ways to achieve the same damage. Why bother climb up to the second floor and break a window when the front door is unlocked and open.

HTML email is just bad. There are a lot of holes. There are privacy requirements and security requirements for email that go above whats required for general web browsing. Trying to close the holes after is hard.

Re:all very pretty? but....

[oliverthered]

1:
"Define reasonable", well
hello,01234,this is a test
will turn into
hello 1234 this is a test

reformating 1234, to say text, will not keep the 0 that was in the original.

2: refer to 1, Excell should default to 'I fucking typed it in so that's what I want', not well I think you really wanted this. General format should keep what you typed, it doesn't.

3:
"Define properly", my system local is setup as mm/dd/yyyy but it sometimes accepts some dates in ##/##/#### format where the days and months are impossible. Try debugging that over the phone.

4:
ctrl+insert works some times, but not when a microsoftiee has coded a 'special' input box, and forgot to add the keybinding.
Try find in outlook.

ctrl+insert &co work well in a lot of console apps, (ref ctrl+c == break)

5:
'auto-crap'
"Probably. Why?",

refer to I fucking typed it and that's what I want unless I ask you to check it for me. 01234.

Re:all very pretty? but....

[oliverthered]

> Can I turn of HTML mail in Outlook?
Why couldn't you before?

not inbound.

> Does fastfind sit in the background and hammer
> my pc from time to time?

If you don't turn it off, yeah probably :)

I don't want it on in the first place.

> How easy is it to install shit head the paper clip?

Why would you want to install it if you hate it? ;)
opps that should be un-install.... delete osa and help returns to normal.

> Can I tell Office that I'm english and have A4
> paper, english dictionaries, the correct date
> format, paper size in inches etc..... without
> going through all the dialogues.

"In Page Setup, there's an option "From this point forward" that should save your Page setup setting.

When I insert a date, my format choice hangs around for the next go at it. I don't use the keyboard shortcut though maybe the choice sticks around if you go through the menu once then start using the keyboard shortcut.

As for english dictionary, try the Set Language option in Tools???"

Ok, but I only wanted to tell office once, maybe it should look at my windows setup so I never have to tell it.

Re:all very pretty? but....

[NineNine]

Most of what you're asking can be changed just by reading the instructions.

Re:all very pretty? but....

[mixmasta]

Bull. Just because MS f'd it up, doesn't mean there is anything wrong with html email.

Now scripts, that's another story. I use mozilla for mail, and java and javascript are off by default. I can use html mail if I want, no problem.

I wouldn't use outlook anything with a ten foot pole and it has nothing to do with html !! =)

The UI is too small

[Anonymous Coward]

Monitors get bigger and bigger but the application windows get smaller and smaller. All the new stuff (even games!) I see previewed on the web seems to be shoehorning the interface into the space of a thumbnail. It seems the new version of Office 11 scrunches up the UI into little postage stamp sized units. It might save some desktop real estate, but I bet it's almost unreadable on my 21" monitor. I know that PDAs are more popular than ever, but some of us still have full-sized screens.

Re:Clone wars!

[Jugalator]

English: The Clone Wars have begun.
Yodish: Begun, the Clone Wars have.
Soviet Russia: In Soviet Russia, Clone Wars begin you!
Yodish Soviet Russia: You, in Soviet Russia the Clone Wars begin... Umm, no wait... Arrgh!

Re:Sad

[Sgs-Cruz]

Actually, this has been the case for a long time.. there are just too many people interested in tech out there that aren't interested _enough_ to run Linux. Including me :) (of course, I'm at work right now, on a scrounged celeron running win98, but even at home I use winXP)

And you know what? I'm happy with that. I think it's good if Linux beats Microsoft because Microsoft sucks. But if Microsoft changes so they don't suck anymore, then what does it matter if they win, to me, the average user? (well, more than 'average' user, but you get the idea). What I mean is, as Linux gets better, so does Windows. So the proportion of people on /. using windows will probably stay the same.

ooooo.... office suite screen shots. wow!

[digidave]

Have we really become this desperate for new software that an MS Word screenshot is worth posting?

"Look, ma, it looks like a word processor!"

Holy crap!

[M.C. Hampster]

I didn't know Word XP can do non-consecutive text selections. I have been wanting that for years. Now I have a reason to upgrade...

MS has cloned since Gates cloned pdp10 BASIC

[Anonymous Coward]

MS has cloned things since Bill Gates transliterated pdp10 BASIC to produce an 8080 interpreter (which then could run all the BASIC programs for pdp10, which were available via DECUS). The sad thing is that nobody called him on it way long ago. Taking from the commons is fine, provided you give back. Taking and not giving back is reprehensible.

People WANT to pay

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Hush!

[Ungrounded Lightning]

CmdrTaco says:

Nice to get a head start on what we'll be cloning next year ;)

Jeez, Commander! Don't rub their noses in it! Or next time they might hold off until the release rather than leaking early.

So what?

[root 66]

Now it's coloured...

Informative?

[M.C. Hampster]

Another $600 word processor from Microsoft.

Hmm, you may want to switch from wherever you purchase software. The full version is only $300 at Buy.om. And if you have a previous version it is only $69.83 for the upgrade version.

Re:Informative?

[Malcontent]

He was saying people buy office but only use word (well he also said something about pointless graphs in excel).

Re:Informative?

[M.C. Hampster]

Then he shouldn't call Office a "word processor". Just because some people buy more than what they need doesn't make Office any less useful.

There is a ton of extremely useful functionality through the entire Office suite. Just because people don't or don't know how to use it, doesn't mean it's not there. It's not Micrsoft's fault if people make unwise purchasing decisions. They give people the option to only purchase Word.

Re:Informative?

[GlassHeart]

Microsoft [...] give[s] people the option to only purchase Word.

Hardly. Office v.X for the Mac is $446.99. Word X is $379.99. Excel X is $349.99. Powerpoint is $389.99. Entourage X is $94.99. [Amazon.com]

Individually purchased, the four cost over 2.7x more than the Office bundle, and buying any two individually will already reach or exceed the cost of Office.

Software pricing, more than any other industry, reflects intent. Since engineering costs (and profit, of course) dominate the price of packaged software, it's clear to me that Microsoft isn't interested in selling just Word at all. Assuming a generous per-unit cost (including Office) of $50, Microsoft wants to make $320 if I buy just Word and $400 for the whole Office suite.

If there was a real option here, I should at least be able to get two of the four for significantly less than the bundle.

Cloning or stealing?

[fudgefactor7]

From the post: "Nice to get a head start on what we'll be cloning next year ;)"

Has anyone out there actually put any effort into designing a better interface, or are they just deciding to ape MS on everything? I know for a FACT you guys are creative, come on! Somebody make something NEW!

Re:Cloning or stealing?

[IDIIAMOTS]

Interesting thing to note on the subject. Ximian's Exchange Connector mimics HTTP traffic generated by a browser when its talking to an Exchange web-client. They could be talking WebDAV to the server, but nooo... Oh, the best part it, Exchange connector is closed source and not free.

Re:Cloning or stealing?

[uncadonna]

A creative, original, important open source project is here .

Unification

[octover]

I think one thing that having MS is good for, is that it provides an overall real world example of what the programmers are going for. I know that when I can't devote serious constant time to a project, it is real easy to lose the vision of the forest down in the trees, especially around the wrap up time. A lot of the work being done is by people that have lives (well at least jobs/school) outside of writing software. That with the often times broad geographic differences, time schedule conflicts lead to a office clone, for example, not being able to have the focus and such that a programming team in a company has.

I really like the concept of open source software, but at the end of the day I want applications that work, and work well. That is why I have MS Office on my mac. I don't think that we would even be at the level we are if it weren't for something to clone/copy.

OMFG - Latex is BACK !

[sien]

Wow, look at the Word screenshots. XML tags all over the place. Hmmm, looks familiar - yes folks - Word processing with the simplicity of LateX is back.

Guess what IT training all over the world is going to be doing - teaching people to use something Latex like. I can just imagine teaching every office worker how simple all these tags are.

BWA HA HA HA HA

This is going to be funny.

So we should have usability testers

[siskbc]

Maybe UI should be part of the testing process. I know there are a lot of people around here who are pretty computer-savvy but who write crappy code. Yeah, I'm talking about myself here, so what? I wouldn't mind doing some UI testing.

Furthermore, maybe what we need are more customizable UI's. Mozilla is doing a great job with it's skin design tools - maybe other applications could do something like that - provide hooks to the main functions that skin writers could access.

I think the functionality of OSS-ware is getting close to commercial, but the usability still sucks. OpenOffice, for instance, is the most horribly laid out piece of crap I have ever used.

XML, woohooo!

[override11]

OK, I dont know about you guys, but I dont have a whole lot of end users who come up to me and complain about how they cant import or export their word documents into XML... Mostly its just 'word is frozen' or 'I cant move my mouse'. I honestly dont get why this is so hyped. I can allready search through .doc files on my network for text..

Re:XML, woohooo!

[rendle]

At least XML's open, unlike, oh, /every/ previous M$ file format.

If it can use XML as a source for mailmerges, then I'll be really interested.

What is it, a corporate intranet portal?

[curious.corn]

What's the point in dumping all the deployed office managment tools (standalone client or web-based... sap anyone?) to redo everything with Office? What's the point in placing out-of-office requests from Word, can't I just login the web portal? Can you see the m$ marketoids massaging your PHB's visions of a new 'office automation' utopia into M$ Reality? (email script viruses and global udp DOS)

Re:Microsoft Works

[maxbang]

You're absolutely right - but try explaining that to management. For some reason they like to spend money on Microsoft while cutting jobs left and right. Go figure...

/.'ed

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

"The site www.activewin.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000"

Does anyone see the irony?
heh

Re:/.'ed

[PDHoss]

Yeah, because any Linux box could have handled the fucking ass kicking that massive simultaneous connections from users downloading large screenshots generates. Also, no doubt the available bandwidth for that server is not sufficient simply because it's Windows.

Windows suX0rZ!! Yeah!!

Re:/.'ed

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

Windows suX0rZ!! Yeah!!

It was a joke, Watson.

There are plenty of innovative UIs...

[HiThere]

Linux has plenty of innovative UIs. But for some purposes, it needs to clone the appearance of others. (If allowed to. Apple sued to cause the Aqua UI to be removed, if I remember properly.)

The thing is, people want something that's basically just what they're used to. So if you want to please a group of people, then you need to provide them with something they find pleasing, i.e., something like what they're used to. And that means cloning. Nothing else can even possibly do the job, barring direct brain stimulation (and it's work-alikes).

Now it's true that Red Hat has been cutting down on the number of skins that it provides, but they still exist. Gnome2 and KDE3 will accumulate new ones after they've been out for awhile. There are numerous people who LIKE designing desktop skins. They may not be professionals, but they might, also. It lets people play around with ideas about how things should work, and the best ones become (and remain) popular. Think of it as evolution in action. This doesn't mean that there aren't a large number of relatively less useful/pretty skins out there... but they tend to become less easy to find, because nobody is interested in them. It's not quite random variation with selection and cross fertilization... but close.

Re:Microsoft Works

[TKinias]

scripsit Speed Racer:

Sorry to disappoint you but Works does come with Word and Word obviously "talks" to the .doc format.

I'm not sure when that changed (I never used Works [not MS, not Claris] myself), but it didn't use to be the case. In the mid-1990s we had lots of trouble with students bringing in Works docs which MS Office couldn't open.

Think about it, really..

[Lysol]

If some os office suite was to come out with 3d flipping menus, half the features (read: really needed and used features), half the bloat, twice the speed, etc, no one would use it.

why? cuz that's not what they're used to. look, when my parents, your parents, the 'older' office workers around us started to get familiar with pcs (remember those people that looked at a mouse and asked 'what's that?'), they got familiar with windoze & ofc. no one is going to code a new super ofc app that deviates from those lines - yet!

the current generation of users is gonna pass the torch at some point. what really needs to happen is like what ms did for all the 1-2-3 and wordperfect people: provide an emulation layer and then move on to the next step. give all the people that expect CTRL-S their keys and then provide more things on top like "See what SuperOffice offers besides MS-WORD compatibilty", etc...

then you'll get those users that wanna use the stuff (i.e. the younger users) and it'll progress from there. just like it did from DOS wp and 123.

i guess you could say office is a standard. but this whole notion of 'keeping up' or 'imitating' is not the whole story. a bad geek is someone who says 'screw you dumb end-user, this is how you're gonna do it and you're gonna like it' (hmmm, sounds like a specific software monopoly i know). a smart geek will quitely give the user what they're used to and then go beyond that. m$ ripped off the apple gui who ripped off the parc gui. so what. developing revolutionary products will come at an expense so they need to, must contain backward (and i really mean backward) compatibility, must do it seemlessly, and then and only then can they go to the next level. that's the way the backwards business world works.

Re:And that says it all...

[taj]

"No wonder why you're always one step behind MS..."

The office tools will only be as good as the governments/companies that sponsor the work. Open source does provide a practical means and could be even more inovative given enough resources.

But most hackers don't use these tools. Its never going to be something done as a hobbiest itch. Even worse, the measure of success for such projects is usually bug for bug compatibility with a moving target.

Projects that do interest hobbiest are far more interesting than softies work. ogg, gnutella, xmms, ...

Re:I think you hit the nail on the head yourself..

[kmellis]

It took me a long time to finally give in and go with Outlook. First, for years I just telnetted into my shell acount and used Pine. Then, I switched to Eudora. Finally, I guess in '99 or so, I finally switched to Outlook.

Not that this is very meaningful. But I'm quite happy with Outlook now. As long as I have everything locked down properly and don't have to worry about viruses. Norton's email scanning gives me some more peace of mind about that.

Re:Microsoft Works

[HiThere]

Possibly MSWorks currently comes with Word, or a truncated version of it. There were definitely periods when it came with a much less capable word processor (probably that thing that notepad refers you to if the file is at all sizeable).

For any of the MS package deals, remember that they are continually morphing the composition of the package. E.g., some versions of Office include MSAccess, and others don't (didn't?).

I remember a copy of MSWorks that my mother got (through a school she was attending). The word processor wouldn't do either footnotes or indexes. I think that it claimed to be word, but it wasn't what anyone who used the full product would recognize. The spreadsheet was slightly less crippled, but the database that came with it wasn't sufficiently useful to even do a good mailing list database. Now this *was* over a decade ago, so this isn't a claim about any current version of MSWorks. But don't assume that just because some one version of MSWorks has some feature, that some different version will have the same feature. (I can't believe, and couldn't at the time, that they could have sold the thing my mother bought. It was more difficult to use than DOS wordstar, and less capable, even though it was running on Win95. For that matter, it was more difficult to use and less capable than DOS MSWord. [But I seem to remember that it handled fonts about as easily as the current MacWrite, probably 2.0])

release schedule

[briancnorton]

while I realize that their subscription people are entitled to it, their release schedule appears to be completely out of whack. It always used to be 3 years between each version of windows and 3 years between versions of office. It stuck to purchase cycles of computers in companies. There was much rejoicing. Now we have three (maybe four) versions of windows and three of office in four years. The differences between windows or office XP and 2000 are so slim that one has to wonder how they manage to keep people upgrading at 200-600/seat.

Re:release schedule

[jenns]

While that may be true with Windows XP, Office XP and 2000 are significantly different. I know many law firms going from Office 97 to Office XP and skipping 2000 simply because 2000 was NOT an upgrade as far as they were concerned.

Office XP has a number of major changes that are actually useful. I almost fell out of my chair when I realized that, but it's true...

Anybody Catch This?

[The Angry Mick]

From the "slipstick" pages on Outlook 11 (in the "Infrastructure" block - emphasis is my own):

"Cached Exchange" mode maintains a local replica of the mailbox and Favorites folders automatically, adjusting data retrieval to bandwidth

50-70% reduction in network traffic when running against Exchange "Titanium" with "cached Exchange" mode

Support for RPC over HTTP when running against Exchange "Titanium," eliminating the need for VPNs

Increase in maximum size of PST/OST files to a theoretical 33TB; administrator can control size with a policy

Status indicators -- in minutes and megabytes -- for downloads from Exchange

Now maybe its just me, but this looks as if MS is continuing to tailor their software to be fully optimized only for their architecture.

Isn't this what got them into trouble with the anti-monopolists?

Re:Anybody Catch This?

[soulhuntre]

I fail to see why it is a bad idea for MS to upgrade their inter-operability with other MS products.

Of course, if the didn;t do this someone at /. would whine that Exchange and Outlook "don't even integrate well with each other - how st00pid!".

Two truths:

1) One of the benefits fo being a large, multi-product form is that interoperability is improved.

2) most /. users will complaina bout MS no matter what happens.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Check out your own proof.

[Kwil]

Do you actually read what you link to, or do you just hope it's right and nobody actually goes to take a look.

Microsoft Works Suite comes with Word.

Microsoft Works does not.

And I also know from experience that the Works wordprocessor default format is not readable by Word.

I don't see the images!

[tsa]

I have just read 200 comment about MS being so bad etc etc. Has any one of you seen the images? I don't see any images when I go to the link using Mozilla with the flash plugin! Maybe you can help me?

Will Outlook support PGP/MIME?

[sunbeam60]

The only thing I am interested in regarding the new version is if I can *finally* get rid of that ugly PGP text cluttering up my messages. According to the PGP Coperation, the problem with PGP/MIME in Office XP is a problem with, well, Office XP.

Re:"what we'll be cloning next year"

[rendle]

"becoming"? Say what you like about their operating systems, but Office has been innovating for years.

Slashdot made me cynical...

[Graspee_Leemoor]

It's very sad, but now whenever I see a post that's quite long, on-topic, raising valid questions or points etc. I automatically think "Karma whore!".

Sad, isn't it?

graspee

It isn't Office that we have to use - it's Outlook

[dgrgich]

I hate to say it but Outlook is the only reason that we're sticking with Office in my company. We've done evaluations of StarOffice & OpenOffice and other packages like these. However, none of them interact with our Exchange system the way that our customers demand. They want seamless calendaring and the other features that Outlook & Exchange provides.

Looks like KDE

[BreadMan]

I'm not a big fan of KDE's UI style, either. The UI seems to waste a lot of space with 3D effects and other decoration that looks nice for the first 30 minutes and then becomes distracting or even tiring.

Aside from the look, a lot of what makes a good UI can't be conveyed via a screen shot, so its difficult to pass judgement on the quality of the interface just by looking at the pictures.

Re:Saw this at the Tablet PC Expo/Unified Interfac

[Sunnan]

Emacs?

MS Office is still quite good

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen a lot of posts on MS Office, and how it "sucks".

I hate to say it, but MS Office is still the best office suite out there. It has many features that just aren't in OpenOffice or other GNU kin. It is well-used in industry, fairly stable, and, most importantly, does what I need it to do.

I can print from Word without having to curse my CUPS daemon. I can paste an (OLE) chart from Excel, then edit the original doc from within Word. I can send my office docs to someone else and they'll actually be able to open them, likely because they too have access to MS Office.

Funny thing ... but MS Office does what I need it to do, and does it well; GNU office suites just aren't there yet.

But why Microsoft?

[Rosyna]

Why base clones of Microsoft? I mean, seriously... even though we are in the digital age software design based on the design of other software behaves more like analog copying in that it gets worse with each generation. Linux and things like Evolution (Ximian) are the 4th generation! (Xerox Parc->Apple->Microsoft->Open Source)

This is not a good thing! If you want to do it right, hire some decent designers that know nothing about programming (would hate to polute their creative minds with knowledge of code) and get them to draw up the designs. Have some usability labs. Hire your mom, grandmother, or neighborhood AOL user to do some ease-of-use tests and don't get angry when they complain or ask for help.

You can help make the world a better place. And oh, yeah... eat meat. It's good for you.

No it's was...

[Robber Baron]

Begun this Clone War has!

An Exchange Server cloned I require! Clone it they need to attempt...yes, yes!

I dont like apps that does everything.

[miffo.swe]

This is the reason that i prefer Scribus, Gimp and others over Open Office/MS Office etc for my work. The reason is that applications made to do everything including taking the dog for a walk is always halfgood at what they do. Single applications made for one specifik purpose doesnt have those problems. Having separated applications is also something that spurs interoperability and standards adherence. I really want to be able to swap out any of the applications i use without having to change the fileformat and export/import everything.

I think the best approach would be better adherance to standars in the open source community. We should develop and adopt standards for every format of documents avaliable and tout them harder than ever. The MS format lockin must be broken from within MS own user base and that can be possible if every other company and entityoutside MS supports an open standard.

Re:Sad

[johnkoer]

Statistics are meaningless.... 78% of all people know that.

Did they decide on the new logo yet?

[symbolic]

I'm thinking about a picture of Joe Average Computer User in shackles and menacles, with the caption, "Palladium Inside".

Why not?

[twitter]

Yeah, it's true, they will catch up to Emacs one day and have a browser in Word. Of course Emacs does it all in 20 megs, Windoze will do it in about 2 gigs of hard drive space. Netscape/Mozilla has had an editor with a spell check for years, also fitting in less than 30 megs.

Bloat Rule: No simple text editor is complete untill it contains a web browser. No web browser is complete untill it contains a simple text editor.

M$ rule: Do what everyone else has been doing for ten years, say you invented it and call it innovation.

I give up... the GUI will never really evolve...

[gmezero]

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!

activewin is now inactivewin

[scorpion1976]

( ./ effect )

The relative ruler -- a parable

[ianscot]

Completely trivial (but also allegorical) peeve that I'm still seeing in this set of screenshots, I think: What's with the idiotic ruler behavior, particularly in Word?

Anyone who's tried to tweak the position of a table using the ruler, which changes to show you not the actual position of the table but rather the relative position of the page based on the table's position (or even an individual cell's position)... Argh! Who would want this frustrating behavior?

I mention it because it's a handy little metaphor for how MS leapfrogs its products so that you're always bumping the next thing up. (Upgrading to W2k? You need Office 2k. Office '03? You need a new OS.) You can only really judge what you need relative to other MS products -- it's like that "relative" ruler, yes? Bonus: the ruler itself is a good example of one of the clumsy UI changes at the point of departure for this MS tactic -- Word 5.1a, the last version to do rulers the intelligible way, was also the last version before the whole "Office Suite" approach really took off.)

(slightly OT) Re:Another upgrade

[CoolVibe]

Actually, LaTeX is very nice, once you understand how it works. The trouble with WYSIWYG has always been that you only get what you see.

Not trying to start a flamewar over this, but (strictly IMHO) I feel I am more productive with LaTeX because I don't have to worry about layout. But that's just me. Second is that I loathe proprietary formats, but that's a whole different bowl of wax to mull about.

ha ha, you seek an empty set.

[twitter]

Well, I've been wandering around with a handful of mod points looking for some posts about the actual new Office UI/features to mod up, but there aren't any because everyone was trolled by the cloning bit in the original item!

What, you can't find another fanboy crowing about how wonderful the new features are? Where are the IE trolls when you need them? I wonder why you are having such a hard time.

Wait a minute, those idiots never did mention anything specific now did they? They always say silly general things about "lots of features" "great user interface" and what not that means nothing.

Perhaps you can do something useful and NAME A USEFUL FEATURE anyone might find on M$. In two years of slaving as an engineer in a M$ "partner" I never saw anything impressive. Most of the newer features, such as autolist and auto spell change were anoyances. The older features, like drawing tools were inferior to those available in free or no cost drawing packages such as the GIMP or Paint Shop Pro. Synching my visor to Outlook was nice, but Outlook was vastly inferior to the applications that came with the Visor itself. Outlook lacked the ability to tack notes into appointments and the notes it did have did not fit enough information to be useful. So, tell me a nice story of innovation instead of bitching about your fellow troll and fanboy posts not meeting your expectations.

Re:ha ha, you seek an empty set.

[kahei]

I'm not completely sure what you're talking about, but it's *definitely* time for a nice cup of tea and a lie down.

Looks Horrible!

[frostfreek]

This is what I saw:

The page cannot be displayed
There are too many people accessing the Web site at this time.

HTTP 403.9 - Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected

I thought they would have put more effort into their GUI. Bah!

J.

Abiword

[horza]

If Abiword supported tables and pinched the Word filter from Star/Open Office, it would suit 99% of all my WP needs. In fact, if Office keeps going the way it is then it may actually become popular as "Word without the bloat"!

Phillip.

Not bloody likely

[0x0d0a]

People said the same thing about IBM and business computer systems at one point. DEC was pretty overwhelming at one point. Apple pretty much controlled the personal computer market at one point.

If there's one thing certain about the tech industry, it's that no one holds their position forever. MS went from being a dinky applications vendor to having an enormous amount of control over the desktop because the then-dominant vendors screwed up and they had a couple of lucky breaks. The same thing will most certainly happen to some smaller company at some point in the future.

Maybe it'll be Apple, maybe a Linux vendor. If you think MS is here forever, though, I've got a bridge to sell you.

HTML viruses

[marga]

Indeed it does. There was a virus called "HapTime" or something, that infected a lot of machines in a company I work for.

It used simple VBScript, only that it was not an attach as with the "I love you" and all his children, it pasted itself in the content of the messages the person sent (if sent in HTML).

The trick was that the mail was for real, and there was no attach. So, if you wanted to know what the person had to say to you, you would get infected.

I thank God I use Evolution.

If I had mod points...

[Wakko Warner]

...you'd be getting them.

Thanks for reminding everyone that Windows 98 is a 5-year-old legacy operating system. I think it's unfair to expect Microsoft to support something this ancient. Upgrade or keep using what you've got, people; don't expect Microsoft to continue caring about your old junk.

- A.P.

Re:If I had mod points...

[thx2001r]

Well, you misunderstood my post.

I am not a corporate zombie, thank you very much. What I was saying is that if people want to get the latest software for their computers (ie, upgrade to Office 2003, what the post was about, remember?) then it's not unreasonable for the vendor to only support the platforms they choose to.

If they choose not to create new versions of Office for Win98 and older that is their right. Guess what?

I didn't say, everyone out there, throw away your old software and machines! Guess what, I have a PI running Win98 SE as well, don't need to get rid of it. But, if I expect to play Unreal 2006, and it doesn't support Win98 SE anymore, if I want to play the game, I'll have to pony up some money and upgrade!

In other words, if you want to upgrade to Office 2003 you will have to upgrade the OS too. Sorry kids. But hey, guess what? NO ONE ON THIS GREEN EARTH IS FORCING ANYONE ELSE TO UPGRADE TO OFFICE 2003. So, lucky for you, you won't ever have to :)

Thanks for the lesson on Microsoft OS's though... Since you believe I started using computers (by your remarks) only about a year or two ago I better go ahead and believe your anonymous'ness knows everything and then some. I'll start reading up to remind myself of the past 20 years of experience with computers I've had... must've been some acid trip for me to have forgotten.

So, as you see, not reading and comprehending posts you flame actually makes your opinion that of a --> Mindless Jackass!

Re:If I had mod points...

[thx2001r]

Yeah, but they fixed that one about 4 years ago! Run Windows Update.

Re:Numb (please don't call them "Smart Menus!")

[psilotum]

Yes, please leave my menu items in the same place, so I can find them again!

I always turn this option off as quickly as possible.

"Blame planned obsolescence"

[DesScorp]

You just nailed something very important right there. The only reason many people buy new MS software is because they have to, because MS intentionally writes new software to be incompatible with some older apps and OS's. If something will work with NT4 and 98, why couldn't it work with 95? And yet many new apps wont work with anything older than 98SE now. They're written that way, probably under pressure from Microsoft.

MS needs to take a hard look at detroit in the 80's, because planned obsolescence was all the rage with the car companies at that time. Vehicles were designed to wear out after 5 years or so, and then you HAD to buy new ones. What did consumers do? They turned to Japan.

The vast majority of people could easily get by with Office 97. And unless it comes with a new computer, I just don't see people rushing out to buy Office 2003 when it really doesn't give them anything new feature wise.

But are there any samples of the new XML format...

[terraformer]

...around. I think that is more importatant than the interface.

Re:Sad

[sameerd]

Was that the poll that asked whether you are using Windows/linux/unix/Mac/TacoOS? You take that seriously?

Re:cloning - Interaction Design, goals / tasks

[klyX]

People aren't going to be able to pull new features and UI improvements out of their asses, guys.

Oh yes they are. Programmers (designers - one in the same?) have been doing it for decades now. new version coming out - add features! God forbid we look at what never gets used, or serves only to confuse the majority of users (none of whom are /. readers). You will never see a MS release that is simpler than the previous version.

if programmers don't decide that most users are goal driven, and don't care about the beautiful process of obtaining that goal (which are highly refined tasks, wonderful code and the substance of the program, which leads to new and more complex widgets) then the new release will always be more complex, and lead to jading most users, except the programmers who understand the substance of the program.

And this jading will lead to cloning, as people just aren't thinking thats there is a paradigm other than the ultraSuite that is Office.

Screw interface design. Stop designing for the computer and around its rules, which MS has branded into commercial software. most programs suck, and we can't change that until we stop thinking in terms of whats popular.

Re:Clone wars!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's try to work this out.

English usally has a sentence structure in the form SVO, or Subject Verb Object. In this sentence, "The Clone Wars" is the subject, "have" is the verb, and "begun" is the object. Notice that the verb cluster "to begin" has been seperated into verb and object, in the passive voice sentence.

Now, Yodish uses the OSV (Object Subject Verb) construction. So the literal translation from English to Yodish would be "Begun" "The Clone Wars" "Have". This parses nicely into "Begun, the Clone Wars have." quite nicely, as the parent has done.

Soviet Russian uses the OVS (Object Verb Subject) construction. So the transliteration would be "Begun" "Have" "The Clone Wars". Now we take into account some of the unique features of Soviet Russian. First, the definite article "the" is dropped, yielding "Begun have Clone Wars". Also, Soviet Russian only has one tense, the present, giving us "Begin have Clone Wars". Now is the confusing part. Soviet Russian treats the phrase "begin have" as just the verb, dropping the object, yielding "___ begin Clone Wars". However, an implied object is forbidden. When an implied object is present, the subject becomes the object, and the implied subject "you" is added. So we get "Clone Wars begin ___", which leads to "Clone Wars begin you", as shown in the parent.

Now onward to Yodish Soviet Russian. As English becomes Soviet Russian by reversing the sentence order, SVO to OVS, then likewise, Yodish becomes Yodish Soviet Russian by reversing the OSV construction to VSO. So we get a transliteration to "have the Clone Wars begun". We drop the definite article and switch tense to get "have Clone Wars begin". We make the object "begin" into the verb, with the result "begin Clone Wars ___". We then make the subject into the object and add the implied subject "you", getting "Begin you Clone Wars". Now it's just a minor clean-up, with the final result:

In Yodish Soviet Russia, begin YOU, the clone wars do!

Here is Microsoft's old posting about new features

[Soskywalkr]

http://www.microsoft.com/office/developer/preview/

Re:Shareholder profits??

[grub]

I was going to reply to this regarding how they don't and how the value of their stock is overinflated but then I realized you're another lameass AC and I won't bother with you.

I blame MS Word

[jimlintott]

Start Rant
I blame MS Word as being primarily responsible for nearly destroying the quality of printed documents. Lately I have been running into more and more large documents that violate simple rules by using a sans-serif font in the text. My theory is that san-serif looks fine on a computer screen because of the horizontal scan lines provide a guide for the eye. When printed on plain old paper it looks like crap. WYSIWYG just doesn't work. If some of these documents had been prepared using the right tool for the job, ie LyX, then this wouldn't happen. I find that fully justified text in MS Word looks terrible. Looks fine in LyX.

I'm still baffled how MS Word became a document standard when there is no postscript support.
End Rant

Wow!

[Anonvmous Coward]

"Outlook's three-vertical-pane interface is now the default."

Boy am I glad about that! Improper defaults suck ass. Slashdot's the only site I can visit at 640 by 480!

Re:I think you hit the nail on the head yourself..

[iabervon]

Even if there's something seriously wrong with the Office interface, you grow to like it. Or, at least, you get used to it. The mysterious thing is that MicroSoft moves menu options around every few years and people still get used to each interface. Everything on my desktop has been in the same place for almost 7 years now, except when I've decided to move things.

give it time

[simonharvey]

since quite a number or programmers who do OSS do it for admiration from thier peers and personal satification it will come (abet slowly) that having a UI that is compatable with the GNOME HIG will be just as important as clean, clear code.

so after a while the same peer pressure that forces people to write clean, clear code will also force people to have a decent UI.

this attitude is comming through in the GNOME footnotes site (at the discussion under the product release pages). as i have seen several comment on the UI being incompatible with the HIG or inline with it

Microsoft also has horrible UI designers

[jesterzog]

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.

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:

• The screenshots are still full of modal dialogs.
• The interface is still full of toolbars with lots of tiny buttons that violate Fitts Law and Hicks Law, making it more complicated for people to choose a target and click on it.
• The UI still ignores the edges and corners of the screen, which has been well demonstrated to be one of the easiest places for a user to accurately move the mouse to. (I haven't properly used XP but it looks like that from the screenshots. Hopefully someone can confirm this.) Instead there's normally a pixel border or something similar there, causing the user to just miss clicking something that they were probably aiming for, and having to backtrack and fight with the mouse.
• Much of the UI is still customisable-by-accident, allowing elements to be dragged around and placed in unexpected places accidently. This allows for novice users to reconfigure their UI without realising it, and then become lost and confused about what's going on. This is especially true if they close the program down and open up the next day to something different, and I've seen it happen over and over again.
• There are still scrollbars everywhere, both on main windows in list/selection boxes, text edit boxes, and so on. This is despite that it's been well known for at least a decade now that scrollbars are bad for UI navigation.
• Also after at least eight years and probably longer, Microsoft apparently hasn't fixed the font selection dialog box which is full of check-boxes where, by their own UI guidelines, they should be using radio buttons.

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.

Re:Microsoft also has horrible UI designers

[odyrithm]

Much of the UI is still customisable-by-accident, allowing elements to be dragged around and placed in unexpected places accidently. This allows for novice users to reconfigure their UI without realising it, and then become lost and confused about what's going on. This is especially true if they close the program down and open up the next day to something different, and I've seen it happen over and over again.

Im off to bed now so Im going to be quick(sorry). I build a lot of boxs for people outside of work, and when ever they come back for an upgrade.. whats the one thing that you notice? the fucking mess they've made of the desktop(windows)... its crazy.. I really have no idea how they manage to do it.. Ive done some some stupid things while drunk or stoned in the past to windows.. but nothing that even remotly compares to there utter desktop destruction! lol

nn

Re:Microsoft also has horrible UI designers

[serratedviscera]

i mostly agree with your comments *except* '...scrollbars are bad for UI navigation.' i agree MS Windows has quite a few scroll bars, but you're saying scroll bars are bad, period

what would you replace them with? as a way to get to what you *don't* see in a window, scrollbars are
- sometimes faster than direct manipulation
- arguably as easy for users as other UI widgets with immediate feedback
- cheaper than requiring hardware - arrow keys, page up/down keys, etc - which may not be on a PDA, kiosk or other UI-constrained device

Re:security

[greed]

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.

That is all you can do...Cloning

[zungu]

That is what open source community does all the time cloning. Recycling is perhaps a better word. Same 30 year old UNIX garbage.

exactly

[Ender Ryan]

I mean, face it, it's not going to have any new "features" that you need or want. It's nothing more than a solution looking for a problem. All software upgrades are as much. Eventually, there's nothing compelling to be added, so companies plan for obsolescence, bug-fixes, UI disfigurments, etc.

There's no reason for Microsoft to continue coming out with new Office(TM) versions any more frequently than every 5 years or so, perhaps even less. Bug fixes shouldn't be considered upgrades. Bugs that hamper usage should be considered a defect in the product which the company is required to fix, free of charge.

All the money dumped into buying Office would be better spent helping to fund OO.org or another such free software office suite. I think a few billion dollars is more than enough to fund development of something _better_ than Office.

Outlook XP and EXE files...

[ZxCv]

I just dealt with this the other day at the office. I run OS X at home, so I can't exactly double-check right now, but IIRC, you go to Tools->Options->Security and there is an option (that is checked by default) to block files "that may contain a virus" (or wording very similar to that). If memory serves, it is near the top of the Security pane. Unchecking this will allow you to save EXE files and what-not, you just obviously have to be a bit more vigilant about what you open/save.

Re:Outlook XP and EXE files...

[Anonvmous Coward]

I'm not saying you're wrong, nor am I arguing with ya. I can show you, though, why I took the route that I did:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; EN-US;290497

It would have been nice if they had just said "use this feature" because messing with the registry is a pain sometimes. Heh.

Thanks, I saved your info here because it may help me down the road.

The MS Article those screenshots come from..

[Obiwan Kenobi]

.. is right here (on the MSDN network).

It's got a ton of information for future Office 11 Developers, including the explanation of "Shared Workspace," "Smart Documents," bits of code, and more. Interesting stuff there.

Just FYI

registry hack?

[cpeterso]

What exactly is the registry hack to disable the multi-copy clipboard? I hate it. It's like a slap in the face.

KDE looks better (a first!)

[thasmudyan]

Yeah, except that the new KDE look is much better than this. I actually liked the "flat" Office-XP style but, alas, it wasn't meant to last. This new style looks crowded, nervous, and disorienting.
KDE is full of eye candy too, but it looks kind of peaceful and orderly by comparison. Seriously, I always write about how MS is good on UIs, but this one looks like a very bad WindowBlinds skin!

Re:Sad (nitpick)

[etcpasswd]

Actually, "\\." or @"\." :P

Nice one, Cmdr!

[EnglishTim]

Nice to get a head start on what we'll be cloning next year ;)

I quite often seem to criticise Mr. Taco for what he writes in his little comment bits, but that's actually pretty funny :)

MS Anti Virus

[darnok]

> "Doesn't everyone run anti-virus software?"

> In reality shouldn't we expect more from modern
> OSes?

For anyone who can remember back that far, there used to be a MS AntiVirus product back in the DOS 6 days - I think it was MSAV.COM or MSAV.EXE.

Of all the markets MS has ever been in, anti-virus is the only one I can think of where they didn't follow their normal practice:
- big announcement about their new product, which gets people wondering "should I buy the competitive product from another vendor, since the MS version is sure to be better/stronger/faster?"
- introduce a relatively dud product
- bring out a new release fairly quickly, "acquiring" technology from their competitors along the way. This is the release where MS tries to get as many functionality check boxes filled as possible, so corporates can believe the MS product is at least viable
- bring out a 3rd release some time later, which is pretty much on a par with the competition's products
- market the competition out of existence
- once they own the market in that area, stagnate their own product since no further development is required

The MSAV product (it may have still been around in Win95 days - can't be sure) never really got off the ground, and was quietly killed off. When you think about it, if there's one product area where MS should have had a competitive edge, it's anti-virus software - they've had the source code for Windows, Outlook, Exchange etc. all along and (if nothing else) could hire in the necessary experts to track down virus holes, highlight the vulnerabilities in the source and deal with them; they'd even have the power to *fix* holes exploited by viruses by making changes to the Windows or app source.

Norton, McAfee et al have it much harder; they have to reverse engineer things without the benefit of source code, to work out how a virus is doing its stuff, before patching it up. Furthermore, they don't have the option of fixing the vulnerabilities in the OS or application, so they're inevitably going to be hitting the same vulnerabilities over and over again with different viruses and probably have version control challenges as a result.

A sizeable percentage of PCs sold have anti-virus software deployed on them, and McAfee and Norton (and a bunch of others) have been in business for a while now; it seems there's money in the anti-virus business.

Wonder why MS hasn't devoted more attention in the past towards taking over the anti-virus market? Of course, Palladium will render all virii powerless, so the market will be going away soon anyway 8-P

OH... MY... GOD...

[dolson]

Screenshots!!! OF AN OFFICE SUITE!!!! /me wets his pants.

Too Pretty?

[tacocat]

What's the deal here? Are we trying to sell Office 2003 to a bunch of ultra-domesticated fembots here? I'm sorry to sound so un-PC, but it looks a little too cutsie for my tastes. I was checking out some of the pictures and it reminds me of cotton candy.

I don't see that much significantly useful about the interface. Not much different from Word 4.0 as far as what it can do for me.

Maybe it's the screen shots, but it does tend to look a little cluttered. I think we're headed in the wrong direction for GUI's

Might they be a little simpler?

Sorry, but I think we have a lot to learn from WindowMaker. Simple, yet effective.

removing Clippy

[MoreDruid]

Someone give me a patch to remove Clippy, and I'll be satisfied with 2000 forever ... )

There's a folder in the \program files\Office subfolders that's called "Actors" Delete the folder or its contents and you'll never have clippy bugging you - ever.

Re:security

[thx2001r]

Perhaps I was not specific enough in my comments. I was referring to creating software for old operating systems (of which companies can finally refuse to create new software for).

There is nothing at all wrong with running old software on old operating systems. What I was referring to was having new software ported to old operating systems.

For instance, in the Windows world, whether anyone considers Win2k or XP secure, they are, at least much more secure than the older DOS based operating systems such as Win95 / 98 / ME.

Since writing software for WinNT and Win9x is not the same beast (at least, not in a completely 100% compatible sort of way) I am expressing my opinion that new software shouldn't be written for it specifically for it.

It's like writing versions of web sites specifically for 7 year old web browsers! Would you want to allow your customers (if you were creating, say, a modern e-commerce site with the latest encryption and security technology) to access it using technologies that don't take advantage of the latest security technology! Because, yes, it works (to an extent) on the older browser but, if the unsupported older browser is incapable of securing your transaction as all newer ones must, allowing (and by writing a version specifically compatible with older and obsolete security protocols of the older browser) the older browser to complete transactions with your site is placing liability squarely on you if that obsolete security is breached.

Perhaps I was modded a troll because I see the more business side of this. Of course I think if you run an older computer / os / software and it gets the job done for you... GREAT! If it makes you happy to write new software for older operating systems, that is fantastic too! I'm just saying that MS's logic in not supporting their older and all but obsolete operating systems in their applications makes sense from a business point of view.

If seeing something logical that is not explicitly ANTI-MS or ANTI-big business makes me a troll than so be it. I suppose all it takes to be a troll is to have an opinion that doesn't 100% microsoft or big business bash. I'd rather think things through, THEN decide for myself what my opinion is rather than blindly bash everything MS.

Of course, MS is trying to push their newer technologies .NET, etc. through this new version of Office... guess what? NO ONE IS FORCING ANYONE TO UPGRADE TO IT! There's plenty of competition from Corel and even for FREE from OpenOffice now. In the US, money does the talking. If customers don't buy this because they need to keep using their Win98 machines then, you'll see, Microsoft will come out with a "special" version that runs on Win98 rather than see customers switch to Corel or Open Office suites. Don't forget, they're out to make money above all of their other (evil) ambitions.

In other words, don't take offense to my opinion, after all, I didn't say go out and burn your old software!

What are you...

[Ignominious Cow Herd]

A freaking linguistics major?

Here's the secret plan

[PaddyM]

Get the screenshots.
Make a theme.
Add it to Knoppix default install.
RELEASE the BINARY on USENET as WINDOWS LONGHORN OFFICE!!!
As people begin to Pirate LINUX instead of WINDOWS, the monopoly of network effects will crumble.

I think it's a good plan.

Reveal Codes!

[dilute]

Remember WordPerfect, where you could press F3 to "Reveal Codes"? Being an MS Word snob from way back, I used to think that style sheets were much more clever than embedding tags into the document.

So they're going back to tag markup. Probably for the better, and certainly much more open, but it seems ironic that their second screenshot looks a WHOLE LOT like a WordPerfect "Reveal Codes" display.

BTW, I don't think a lot of end users will have ANY concept whatsoever of what an "XML schema" is... Good luck!

so that Bill Lumberg's stock would go up...

[blastedtokyo]

a quarter of a point. Let's make that stock go down. Let's buy MS Office!

PaperClip

[thedji]

: Still like PaperClip on the old 8-bit micros?

Sure... but not as much as I hate the PaperClip on newer OFFICE 97 distros.

Re:Clone wars!

[Jugalator]

Thanks for settling that. :-) I'll try to avoid yodish soviet russian in the future though, just to be safe.