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Office 12 Exposed

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the bread-and-butter dept.

damieng writes "The Programmers Developer Conference (PDC) has unveiled the user interface for Microsoft Office 12. Bearing more than a passing resemblance to Aqua and brushed metal looks from Mac OS X the menus now appear to operate more like a tab popping-out the right toolbar instead of a sub-menu."

7 of 594 comments (clear)

  1. I'm not an expert... by theotherlight · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...but it looks as though they've thrown every bit of GUI common practice and standardization out of the window.

    --
    The cat's in the bag and the bag's in the river.
    1. Re:I'm not an expert... by bedroll · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Don't fault them for trying to better their UI. When you use it and it doesn't work for you, then seek alternatives. If it doesn't work for most people, they'll switch back, but you'll be able to fault them then.

      Do remember that their office suite competes in a market that sees little innovation, because little is needed. This means that in order to maintain dominance they must either provide a technically superior product, provide a better user interface, or lock down file formats. Technical superiority is debatable, they may or may not do that already. Locking down file formats is what we DON'T want them to do. That leaves UI for competition. If they don't change it up enough then products like WordPerfect or OpenOffice.org will catch up with them in the UI and make it so that they have to compete via the other methods. Since technical superiority will probably always be debatable, it leads them back to locking down file formats... and we still don't want that.

      Anyhow, if anyone can rewrite the rules of UI and get away with it, it's the people with most of the market share. They happen to be it.

    2. Re:I'm not an expert... by thatguywhoiam · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Well, we know that there are problems with the way things work now. There are limitations. Apple are constantly being given praise for their "innovations" when their newer OSs have actually done very little more than System 9 in usability terms -- they're actually introduced some new issues, while simply prettifying what was there (and putting it on a far more solid base).

      Oh, come on. I agree that OS X is less consistent than the Classic UI was, but you cannot say that they have been standing still with interface innovations. Off the top of my head:

      - hardware-accelerated compositing and rendering (Quartz/Core Image)

      - Expose/Dashboard
      - previews of vector-based files (PDFs, AIs, etc)
      - system-wide PDF support and printing
      - universal spell-check
      - Finder column view
      - Spotlight searching
      A lot of these are inherited from NeXTStep, but does it matter?... I can point to concrete improvements that affect me every day, and that's important. Photoshop without Expose is unthinkable for me now. I miss my spatial finder, and I hate that they keep fucking around with various 'themes'... but I definitely do not miss having 100+ extensions, 50+ control panel 'applets', a calculator that hadn't been updated since 1988 and a UI that would come to a screeching halt if I clicked a menu. There is progress being made and they deserve credit for things done right.

      About the new Office 12 interface: its stupid that they just borrow elements (i.e.. glossy buttons, brushed metal with middle-lit gradient) because they think Apple made them cool. Microsoft is big and rich enough to come up with something really compelling and new. They just don't. They go with what they think is 'good enough'. Which is pretty bad to you and me.

      --
      If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
  2. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  3. Re:Hole With No Bottom by Rude+Turnip · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "We hit true WYSIWYG and haven't seen a real change since,"

    Not with Word we haven't. I still can't print the exact same Word file on two different printers and get the same pagination. Thank God we're switching to PDF-based prepress systems to sort of eliminate this problem. If I'm in a rush and this problem occurs, I tell the support staff to just fudge the layout (insert carriage returns, screw with margins, whatever) to make it work so I can get something out the door.

    --
    Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
  4. Re:Office Vista? by LLuthor · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Don't they already?
    1. Professional Enterprise Edition
    2. Professional Edition
    3. Small Business Management Edition
    4. Small Business Edition
    5. Student and Teacher Edition
    6. Standard Edition
    7. Basic Edition
    --
    LL
  5. Re:Hole With No Bottom by kfg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    . . .requiring 95% of its user base to relearn everything they already know. . .

    Don't be silly. Everyone knows the reason not to change to OpenOffice is to avoid retraining.

    . . .did I just describe the state of word processors, or the state of enterprise software in general?

    They're starting to run out of chrome and tailfins. Now they're starting to put tits on the squid.

    KFG