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Office 2003 Beta 2 Screen Shots

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the future-of-desktop-applications? dept.

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 ;)

127 of 693 comments (clear)

  1. First Look! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    at Open Office 2013!

  2. but by REBloomfield · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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....

    1. Re: but by Black+Parrot · · Score: 5, Funny


      > 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.

      --
      Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
    2. Re: but by REBloomfield · · Score: 2, Interesting

      ;) 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 :)

    3. Re:but by Ed+Avis · · Score: 5, Funny

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

      --
      -- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
    4. Re:but by wobblie · · Score: 3, Insightful
      ... 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?

    5. Re: but by REBloomfield · · Score: 2, Interesting
      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?

    6. Re: but by Wee · · Score: 3, Interesting
      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

      --

      Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.

    7. Re:but by Sentry21 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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

    8. Re:but by poot_rootbeer · · Score: 4, Funny


      Mmmmm... port wine...

    9. Re:but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      > 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.

    10. Re:but by bloxnet · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

    11. Re:but by York+the+Mysterious · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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

      --

      Tim Smith - Ramblings from Nerd Land
  3. reply by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    "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?

    1. Re:reply by anotherone · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

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    2. Re:reply by Tony-A · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

    3. Re:reply by penguin_dance · · Score: 4, Informative
      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.

      --
      If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
    4. Re:reply by yatest5 · · Score: 4, Informative
      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.

      --
      • Mod parent up! [a] by Anonymous Coward (Score:5) Thurs, June 31, @13:37
    5. Re:reply by 1010011010 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.).

      --
      Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
    6. Re:reply by Zigg · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

    7. Re:reply by 1010011010 · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

      --
      Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
    8. Re:reply by ergo98 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    9. Re:reply by 1010011010 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
    10. Re:reply by AppyPappy · · Score: 2, Funny

      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.

      --

      If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem

    11. Re:reply by JWW · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    12. Re:reply by Graspee_Leemoor · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "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

    13. Re:reply by dmayle · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    14. Re:reply by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      "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.

    15. Re:reply by patter · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

      --
      -- If at first you do succeed, try to hide your astonishment. -- Harry F. Banks
    16. Re:reply by jez9999 · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

      --
      == Jez ==
      Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
    17. Re:reply by spectecjr · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      Coming soon - pyrogyra
  4. cloning by oooooops · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

    1. Re:cloning by Space+Coyote · · Score: 4, Funny

      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...

      --
      ___
      Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
    2. Re:cloning by tjansen · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:cloning by govtcheez · · Score: 5, Funny

      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".

    4. Re:cloning by 13Echo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    5. Re:cloning by tjansen · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    6. Re:cloning by Sabalon · · Score: 2

      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.

  5. Another upgrade by mike_c999 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Can someone kindly explain why I should pay more money to upgrade from 2000 to 2003 when 2000 does more that i need and i can get Open office which also does more than i need for free.

    --
    Ctrl-Z
    1. Re:Another upgrade by 91degrees · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Another upgrade by richie2000 · · Score: 2, Funny

      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.

      --
      Money for nothing, pix for free
    3. Re:Another upgrade by Planesdragon · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    4. Re:Another upgrade by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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?

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    5. Re:Another upgrade by anotherone · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Username taken, please choose another one.
    6. Re:Another upgrade by grub · · Score: 4, Interesting


      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.

      --
      Trolling is a art,
    7. Re:Another upgrade by Tyreth · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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)

    8. Re:Another upgrade by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

      --

      I write in my journal
    9. Re:Another upgrade by StressedEd · · Score: 2, Insightful

      ...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.

      --
      Be nice to people on the way up. You will meet them again on your way down!
    10. Re:Another upgrade by rowanxmas · · Score: 2, Funny

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

    11. Re:Another upgrade by nahdude812 · · Score: 4, Funny

      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."

      --
      Slay a dragon... over lunch!
  6. imitation by eric6 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.

    --

    --
    fight global cooling

    1. Re:imitation by redfenix · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

      I think you just answered your own question.

      --
      "It's a very tangled subsystem." --Windows kernel guru
  7. We all hate Microsoft, but... by trezor · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...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 :)

    --
    Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
  8. You know it's a reputable site... by Jonboy+X · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    --

    "In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
  9. The difference? by Fulkkari · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    --
    I demand the Cone of Silence!
    1. Re:The difference? by yatest5 · · Score: 2, Funny
      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.

      --
      • Mod parent up! [a] by Anonymous Coward (Score:5) Thurs, June 31, @13:37
  10. Cloning... by flewp · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

    What's sad is it is all too true. Instead of innovating, a lot of OSS projects that are supposed to be like MS apps usually just mimick, rather than truly innovate.

    --
    WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
    1. Re:Cloning... by AssFace · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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?"

      --

      There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
  11. Will they never learn? by LT4Ryan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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? :)

    --
    Macs as a fetish property
    1. Re:Will they never learn? by olethrosdc · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

      --

      I miss my rubber keyboard.(Homepage)

  12. Good thing Taco is an editor by ACNiel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  13. screenshots HERE! by dogas · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.
    --
    'When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.' -HST
    1. Re:screenshots HERE! by richie2000 · · Score: 2, Funny

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

      --
      Money for nothing, pix for free
  14. 4 Minutes On front page by secondsun · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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?

    --
    There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
    1. Re:4 Minutes On front page by NewbieProgrammerMan · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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. :)

      --
      [b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
  15. Re:Sad by FooBarWidget · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

  16. Great... by maxbang · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Another $600 word processor from Microsoft. Even when I'm at a job where they use Office, nobody ever uses anything but Word to type some useless bullet points, or Excel to make a pointless chart. Tasks? Never used. I had a PHB who tried to assign me tasks once. He couldn't hotsync for a week after that.

    --
    I also reply below your current threshold.
  17. 27 posts by twinstead · · Score: 3, Funny

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

  18. mmmm by odyrithm · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    that points out a very specific problem with the open/free source movements... plenty of hardcore coders but a serious lack of good ui designers.

    --
    moo
    1. Re:mmmm by slide-rule · · Score: 4, Interesting

      ... 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.

    2. Re:mmmm by root+66 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

      --
      -- I love the smell of Blue Screens in the morning.
    3. Re:mmmm by thatguywhoiam · · Score: 4, Interesting
      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.

      --
      If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
  19. The only thing that needs cloning by penguin_dance · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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. ;-)

    --
    If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
  20. Cloning...yuck by 0x0d0a · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I can't wait until MS finally loses its dominant desktop position, and the onus of cloning their interfaces to make it acceptable to Windows users is gone, and the OSS world can strike out on its own.

    --
    May we never see th
    1. Re:Cloning...yuck by Some+Bitch · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Cloning...yuck by 0x0d0a · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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?

      --
      May we never see th
  21. another site by suhit · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

  22. Numb by mao+che+minh · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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.

    1. Re:Numb by Planesdragon · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.)

    2. Re:Numb by angle_slam · · Score: 4, Insightful
      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.

  23. Wow... by Jon+Abbott · · Score: 2, Funny

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

    --
    Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
  24. Re:Sad by CleverNickedName · · Score: 4, Funny

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

    --


    Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
  25. I hope the interface is theme-able ! by mgpeter · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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 !

  26. This is wrong ... by DJ+FirBee · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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 !!

  27. Actually, it goes both ways. by Corvaith · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  28. Re:Sad by Trav42 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  29. Re:Unknown TLA by REBloomfield · · Score: 4, Informative
    Group Policy Object

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

  30. Summary for those who didn't see by bedouin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    - 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 . . .

  31. I think you hit the nail on the head yourself... by Kjella · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

    Unless there's something seriously *wrong* with the Office interface, you grow to like it. Kinda like how I "like" Windows, because there I know where everything is. Just moving a menu option to somewhere else will make me spend more time until I get used to it, no matter how "smart" it is. And unlike us, some corporate users just won't find the new location without retraining (no, I'm not kidding). Personally, I'll stick with webmail/eudora/pine though, as long as I'm in windows. Evolution looked pretty good on my linux machine, but I'm not quite ready to make that my desktop yet.

    Kjella

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  32. Saw this at the Tablet PC Expo/Unified Interface by mattyohe · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

    --
    - what is the definition of simultanagnosia?! I've been meaning to look it up!
  33. Not Outlook by mbbac · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

    --

    mbbac

  34. Cloning or not ... by timothy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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

    --
    jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
  35. Windows XP UI widgets? by Captain+Rotundo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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 ?

  36. Nothing to mod by kahei · · Score: 3, Funny


    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 :)

    --
    Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
  37. Re:Microsoft Works by Speed+Racer · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    --
    Free Mac Mini. Yes, I'm
  38. Virtual Desktops by ShaggyZet · · Score: 3, Funny
    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.

  39. Who's going to buy it? by wfrp01 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You like MS Office, you say? Who's going to buy this for you? Are you going to buck up for your own copy at home? Or, like most people, are you expecting your company to buy it for you? That way, it's kind of like it doesn't really cost anything, right? Except it does cost something. It's money your company could have paid you directly. It's money your company could have used to improve their market penetration. It's money your company could have used to improve their facilities. It's money that could have been used to increase the R&D budget. It's money that could have been used to hire additional staff. And on and on.

    But a new version of Office with pretty new buttons and a three panel view like Outlook? A new version that's intentionally incompatible with everything else in the world, including Microsoft's own products? That's precious.

    --

    --Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
  40. One diff between Linux and Win/Mac... by Masem · · Score: 3, Insightful
    ...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.

    --
    "Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
    "I can see my house from here!" - ST:
  41. link to Screenshots W/out article by Tha_Big_Guy23 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --
    If you're looking here for something insightful or thought provoking, you're probably looking in the wrong place.
  42. And here's a shot of Office 12 by shadwwulf · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  43. Re:Who has the money to buy it? by October_30th · · Score: 2, Informative
    (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.

    --
    The owls are not what they seem
  44. all very pretty? but.... by oliverthered · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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)

    --
    thank God the internet isn't a human right.
    1. Re:all very pretty? but.... by thebatlab · · Score: 2, Informative

      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

  45. The UI is too small by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  46. Re:Clone wars! by Jugalator · · Score: 5, Funny

    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!

    --
    Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
  47. Re:Sad by Sgs-Cruz · · Score: 2, Interesting
    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.

    --

    Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).

  48. Holy crap! by M.C.+Hampster · · Score: 2, Funny

    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...

    --
    Forget the whales - save the babies.
  49. People WANT to pay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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!

  50. Anybody Catch This? by The+Angry+Mick · · Score: 2, Insightful
    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?

    --

    I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.

  51. Check out your own proof. by Kwil · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --

    That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze

  52. Slashdot made me cynical... by Graspee_Leemoor · · Score: 4, Funny

    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

  53. It isn't Office that we have to use - it's Outlook by dgrgich · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  54. Re:/.'ed by xanadu-xtroot.com · · Score: 2, Funny

    Windows suX0rZ!! Yeah!!

    It was a joke, Watson.

    --
    I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
    I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
  55. Re:Saw this at the Tablet PC Expo/Unified Interfac by Sunnan · · Score: 2, Funny

    Emacs?

  56. MS Office is still quite good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    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.

  57. I dont like apps that does everything. by miffo.swe · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    --
    HTTP/1.1 400
  58. Re:Sad by johnkoer · · Score: 2, Funny

    Statistics are meaningless.... 78% of all people know that.

    --
    Johnkoerner.com
  59. Did they decide on the new logo yet? by symbolic · · Score: 4, Funny


    I'm thinking about a picture of Joe Average Computer User in shackles and menacles, with the caption, "Palladium Inside".

  60. I give up... the GUI will never really evolve... by gmezero · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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!

  61. (slightly OT) Re:Another upgrade by CoolVibe · · Score: 2, Insightful
    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.

  62. ha ha, you seek an empty set. by twitter · · Score: 2, Funny
    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.

    --

    Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.

  63. HTML viruses by marga · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    --
    Margarita Manterola.
  64. Re:Informative? by M.C.+Hampster · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Forget the whales - save the babies.
  65. Re:Clone wars! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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!

  66. Microsoft also has horrible UI designers by jesterzog · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  67. Re:security by greed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  68. MS Anti Virus by darnok · · Score: 2, Interesting

    > "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