Slashdot Mirror
Office 12 Exposed
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."
I wonder if they're going to codename it Office Vista, in keeping with common versioning practices.
thats ugly looking, seriously. Although I'm not found of the OSX interface either.
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
...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.
But this is an interesting trend: Apple has monopolized the headlines recently. ArsTechnica is all about Apple, Slashdot can't seem to get enough of them, and now Microsoft is emulating its Apple product?
What's next, Intel Processors branded with "Apple Outside" stickers on them?
"Diplomacy is something you do until you find a rock." --Richard Pound
This is important because Office is often one of Microsoft's first vehicles for new GUI themes and functionality. It's also influential, many Windows developers will try to emulate the style Microsoft introduces with Office - presumably because it's known to users, and they consider it modern. (Too bad the site is already slashdotted.)
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Why do fancy graphics always get higher priority than usability?
Coming soon: Office Nano - productivity tools for managing post-it notes.
What's the problem with menu bars the way we know them? It's always the same... we get used to something and in the next version there's a brand new way to do the same thing, forcing us to get used again.
It looks like they used Microsoft Access 12 for their server's database.
Here's another site with the images:
y 1015.aspx
http://bink.nu/photos/news_article_images/categor
[)amien
...here.
Yes
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
of making sure that the UI for their #1 application never ever matches that of the OS. I can't understand how anybody can think this is a good idea. But seeing how Apple do the same thing, I guess somebody thinks it is a good idea. Though I don't hear anybody scream at Apple for plagiarising Microsofts ideas.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
Disclaimer: I don't know how to put that link in as some text atm, but whatever.
Will wank off Linus Torvalds for fame.
I'm sure Microsoft put some time and effort into this, but I don't like it.
Its hard to put my finger on it, but its inconsistent (button size, text placement, icon usage, drop-shadows, etc.) and asymetrical.
Just IMHO.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
For a while, we've seen many complaints about MS Office becoming more bloated and increasingly expensive without adding significant value to the customer. Now, MS is coming out with a new version of office that again offers no reason to upgrade, and now they change the interface? This seems to me like change for change's sake--they're grasping at straws to make it look like you need to upgrade.
What they are doing is taking an already extremely complex piece of software, and suddenly changing how to do everything. Suddenly, switching to OpenOffice seems like less of a change than upgrading to the next version of MS Office.
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Office 12 screenshots
Even Less of the screen actually showing my document! Hooray progress!
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Bearing more than a passing resemblance to Aqua and brushed metal looks from Mac OS X
And everyone knows this is the most important part of the new UI *roll-eyes*
Unfortunately I can't comment on anything else because it's been slashdotted. However these tabbed pop-up things sound like they're a change for the sake of a change. That is bad. Making changes to the UI can be good when they improve functionality and ease of use. Making changes to the UI so they can sell yet another copy of your favourite bloatware office program is not good.
Word has a lot of elements of a UI that are good in theory. Now if only they could work on their implementation of these elements.
My first impression: very crowded screens. Screen confusion taken a step further.
I'm not talking about the document format this time but visual standards. Every single major Microsoft product seems to look different nowadays. Seems funny that they actually expect people to use the API et al when they don't use it themselves!
Personally I like having applications be consistant. Even Linux with GTK and QT differences are quite consistant. It seems for Microsoft autohiding the menu or turning it a bright shade of blue wasn't enough. Now Microsoft are throwing out the perfectly good menu system for something that takes literally and it seems constantly a fifth of the screen space. For someone who refuses to use any browser other than Firefox simply because with Firefox I can squish every single button and bar and menu onto one small line, that's deeply offensive for me.
Besides this you need to move the mouse from one end of the screen to the other on the larger dimension every single time in this stupid tabbed interface.
Ah well it's Microsoft, the company responsible for some of the worst interfeces known to man.
"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!!!
Try Greasemonkey with this or this to automagically insert links to mirrors after any link on /. (only works on Firefox as far as I know).
This post cannot be rebroadcast without the express written constent of Major League Baseball.
What happened to all the 'clean lines' of the windows interface?
This is like someone mixed Mac OS X Aqua with LSD!
My bet? This is an optional interface. This is not the standard interface. There are people in my office who *refuse* to use OpenOffice.org. Not because it isn't an MS product, but because it doesn't work *exactly* like Office 2000.
There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that they'll use *that* nastiness.
Doesn't MS realize that the majority of business users will be using the same old Windows 2000 interface? Doesn't MS realize that if they cut that out, the *natural* upgrade path will be something linux XFce w/OpenOffice.org?
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
That interface is completely different.
...
Which means that you can choose to upgrade to Office 12 and retrain or your users.
Or you can sidegrade to OpenOffice which has a much more familiar layout to Office users.
Wonder which one will be cheaper to do?
Looking at the screenshots I see bling being put before usability. Whilst the concept is nice - having a single wide toolbar is like the old Wordstar help pages - how usable will it be? I can see even more mousing will be required...
In many ways it will be better than having multiple toolbars, but I can see instances where you'll be switching between 'Writing' and 'Tables' or whatever all the time, which will be annoying.
Compare to, e.g., Pages' inspector and side panels - whilst Pages isn't functionality the same as Word, the interface is pretty good for the most part. The tabs at the top of the inspector are kinda the same as the tabs in Office 12 I suppose, it just comes down to implementation. Certainly with a single floating inspector that isn't too wide, it is much easier to mouse around it than if it was the width of the screen!
Knowing Microsoft
[Rant] Is it so freaking hard to post the link as a Coral Cache link???
i ew1
You just take the existing url www.test.com/stuff.htm and add ".nyud.net:8090"
www.test.com.nyud.net:8090/stuff.htm
Or for this site:
http://pdc.xbetas.com.nyud.net:8090/?page=o12prev
That's it! It's easy and would let sooo many more people see the article.[/rant]
. . .requiring 95% of its user base to relearn everything they already know. . .
.did I just describe the state of word processors, or the state of enterprise software in general?
Don't be silly. Everyone knows the reason not to change to OpenOffice is to avoid retraining.
. .
They're starting to run out of chrome and tailfins. Now they're starting to put tits on the squid.
KFG
If they can't figure out what goes where while they are rearranging the save dialog, what hope do the end users have of finding things.
version that cures sleep disorders for whole groups at a time. Otherwise known as Power Point.
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
One of the screenshots is that of a signature pad (no, not the digital kind). I wonder, how secure do they intend to market this as? Since it's just an image it'd be trivial to lift it and drop it into another document, or to edit the document after the signature is applied.
The only real feature I want to see is 'Paste Unformatted Text' by default. I can't stress how annoying it is that word keeps the friggin format of the copied text when I try to paste. There may be a way to do this already, if so please I seek your advice. (And yes I know you can go Paste Special -> Unformatted text, but I want it by default when I hit Ctrl-V). Oh if you know how to do this in OpenOffice too I would appreciate that as well.
(With apologies to Poochy)
"Yo! I'm Excel! Yo I'm soooo down with you! I take calculations...TO THE EXTREME!!!!"
I don't think I've ever seen a more in-your-face interface *ever*. Interfaces are supposed to get out of the way and let you get the job done with minimal fuss...this takes it to the complete opposite.
It seems clear to me that Microsoft is really honestly losing it...their two cash cows, which drive the *entire* freaking company, are being pimped. They're being given cheezy makeovers and being pushed in your face in some desperate attempt to stay in the forefront of your mind, because what you're *doing* is not important, it's that you're using WINDOWS and OFFICE that's important.
TO THE XTREEEEEMMMME!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You must be new here. It's always Windows fault.
Wait, when Microsoft apes Apple, it's a "balant ripoff"... so what is it when free Linux apps ape proprietary Windows-only apps like Office, Photoshop, etc.?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
It's just Microsoft marketing...
Windows 95/NT was marketed on the premise that it eliminated all the confusion of having different UI's for every text based application.
Windows XP was marketed on the premise that the user could customize the desktop to their suiting, and developers could provide custom skins for their applications.
Now we have completed a whole cycle, and now every developer provides their own GUI style for their application.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I find that when MS first shows new products, they usually have garish UI as to guage peoples reaction to it, but ultimately, MS usually cleans things up and implements the UI nicely.
After seeing early beta and previews of Visual Studio 2005, I was appalled at how garish and unsavoury the UI was in that application. The menus had this aweful gradient fill on them and looked out of place, and the rest of the interface was ugly and simply crap. Even the new dock window overlays were poorly implemented. A year later, and the current Beta 1 of VS2005 looks very clean and more unified.
Same goes with Longhorn where an eraly beta was just garish.
I think MS actually listens to your bitching and simply offers these previews in order to test the waters and see how people feel about them. If you don't like them, bitch loudly and it will change.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
What makes the existing Office versions (see caveats below) so useful is their extremely high level of hackability, with very little effort. Both from OLE and the internal Visual Basic for Applications (now Visual Studio .Net for Applications or some such nonsense), the entire (almost) document model is addresable in nice easy to bite chunks, and just about any task can be automated.
Aside from providing income to folks such as myself, it permits many of the limitations of the systems to be exceeded.
So, will these new "chunky toolbars" and property panes, and so on, be addressable using the current methods, in other words, does my current VBA/VS.Net code work... and can I leverage the new features?
With Office 2002 (aka 10 or XP), Microsoft introduced "Task Panes". These things include the XML interface, a substitute for WordPerfect's "Reveal Codes" and a number of other useful things. But it is barely accessible to the automation/document model, and not extensible at all (except for the XML stuff, but that's another show). I would love to be able to add custom items to those "Property Screens" and add my own menu-like toolbars, to give my customers features that are (a) more usable (assuming that this stuff is indeed more usable, I'm not sure yet), and (b) looks like the out-of-the-box features (but work better).
Design for Use, not Construction!
Publisher is WYSIWYG, but *definitely* not Word. Not only can you not necessarily print the document with the same formatting on another printer, but Word will do reflows based on what printer driver you have, what you selected, version differences between computers, and all sorts of other things.
WYSIWYG is a terrible way to do documents anyway. You shouldn't be spending time making it look right, you should spend it writing the silly thing. I encourage people to look into things like LaTeX whenever I have the chance. It just works so much better for anything more than a quick note or memo. You get consistent and proper layout every time on better software than Word.
Word processor requirements haven't really changed since WordStar. All most people need to do is write something up quickly, and print it. If you're doing layout in a word processor, you've already screwed up. That is not what they are good at, and that's why publishers use things like PDF, TeX, etc.
Some of you Microsoft apologists will disagree with the above, but you can easily verify this. Try to do a print preview in Word before you set up a printer on the machine. It won't let you! Why? Because they need to know the hardware to know what the hardcopy will look like. True WYSIWYG is device independent, i.e. they print it to match the on-screen look not the other way around as Microsoft does.
Why is this important? Amongst many other reasons, we need to know when we email someone a document that it will print out on the other guy's printer (most probably a different model than ours) exactly as it was meant to. Anything less is pathetic at this point.
AC
Seems to me this interface is different enough it would almost require re-training for many users (I'm guessing the syllabuses are being cranked out by the one-week training class industry right now)? And, considering the retraining, what about the costs? Isn't this exactly the argument MS used against MA's decision to move to Open Documents? Really, looking at this interface, I wouldn't even consider unleashing it on my parents, who are already confused enough by the current Office Suite interface (chevrons in the pulldown menus, etc.)
I'm going to give you credit for this expression, which I like better than "jump the shark." Since it's got the word "tits" in it, it's not going to go TV or NY Times mainstream any time soon.
Yes, device independent because you should CERTAINLY be able to expect that whether you print on a 48" Plotter, a 8.5" X 11" ink jet, or an HP 3X5 picture printer that the output will be EXACTLY the same.
The link below has pictures as well as describes why they make the UI changes.
s ep05/09-13OfficeUI.mspx
Q&A: Microsoft Showcases New User Interface for Office "12" Core Applications:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2005/
This is why OS X's use of a PDF-based graphics model was such a good idea. What you see on screen is how it's going to look when you print it (further solidifying the presence of Macs in the publishing industry). The Windows graphics model in 2005 is just embarrassing.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I guaran-frickin'-tee our IT guy will get at least one call from a peeved user that can't 1) get Windows to recognize their inked signature or 2) get Sharpie off their LCD monitor.
I hereby propose "Strauser's Rule of UI Design":
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
For decades Microsoft has been telling developers what they consider to be best practices: color combinations, window behaviors, button actions, etc. However, they contradict them with their own software. The best example is the file open/save dialog. They tell developers to use the one built into the OS so every app is consistant. Yet with each release of Office they use custom dialogs so they don't match any other.
So should they keep changing the UI? Maybe. But they frustrate users when every app on the same system acts differently. Generally the desktop should determine the UI characteristics and the apps should share them. Upgrade the desktop and the UI for all apps gets updated. The hodge-podge of user interfaces presented by Windows confuses and frustrates users.
The first rule of good user interface design is to be consistant.
Developers: We can use your help.
In all fairness there is more than one application for publishing on Windows. You can use PDF if you like, Post Script, OpenOffice, etc. While I'm assuming you meant MS Office, don't discount the multitude of options. I used to use a Mac, they can be useful, but the user base has far too many zealots (even than *nix) for my taste.
Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
Not even that, but I'm confused by how it says on the one hand "C:\Users\Pat\Documents" (which is nice, I'll admit, and much more straightforward than the Documents and Settings thing they've got now), while on the other hand the files being shown in the window above are listed as in Desktop\Pat\Documents. Umm...?
I understand that life's not fair, just why is it never unfair in my favor?
Just like on Windows XP, Documents is listed on your desktop (try clicking the up arrow on a save dialog enough, you'll get to the dekstop).
On XP, Desktop -> My Documents takes you to C:\Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents\, the user probably doesn't see their username on the desktop, but clicking on Desktop -> Documents probably takes them to "Pat's Documents".
I do agree, \Users\ is a better name for the directory than "Documents and Settings".
Well, I see that if you Google on "tits on a squid" my original use is all that shows up, so I guess it's "mine." I promise not to sue anyone who uses it though, unless they put an "i" or a "G" in front of it. I admit it, I could use 35 mil, and I'd settle for dollars or euros, not pounds.
The NY Times can substitue the politically correct euphemism "Feminine mammilian secondary sexual characteristics superimposed onto a coleoidean companion," or "Fmsscsoacc" for a snappy and easily pronouncable acronym.
It's not really a replacement for "jump the shark" though. It means something a bit different from a differenct point of view.
It refers to adding a powerful attractor to something that isn't otherwise very attractive; and may even be innately repulsive, but whose actual value and usfulness is, ummmm, "questionable."
And to a certain extent it'll work too, especially as displayed on the sales floor the squid is all dressed up in a Wonderbra(tm) and a tight blouse unbuttoned just so. The instinctual response to reach out and fondle will be very strong.
Of course, sooner or later, after you get it home and out of the shrink wrap, you'll start to realize you're getting all hot and bothered by feeling up a squid, at least if you've reached the primate level of evolution. That still leaves the problem with management.
"Jump the shark" is the "consumer" point of view phrase for an attractor having lost its attractiveness.
B.F. Skinner already coined the phrase for this from the marketers point of view. He noted that you could train a pigeon to do extrordinary things, so long as you never broke the task/reward cycle. If you did that the pigeon in question would simply ignore all further attempts to train it to do anything at all.
He called this "losing your pigeon."
How apropos.
KFG
Please don't make stupid points.
If you're printing an 8.5x11 document on a 48" plotter you should expect that either it prints in 8.5x11 and looks identical to a printed page on a standard HP printer (leaving alot of un-used paper around it) or you tinker with the printer's scaling settings and stretch the document out to fit on your 48" plotter.
If you're printing a document on a 3x5 photo printer, then either it should scale down to the size of the printer, or be severely cut-off (3x5 out of 8.5x11).
Printers aren't intended to work like web-browsers, with fluid layouts forcing the font and features of the page to flow around one another without changing sizes. A document is suppost to be constistant in layout and should simply resize or crop to suit the printer.
More to the point, why would anyone by trying to print out a legal contract on either a 48" plotter or a 3x5 photo printer. Please disengage your head from your ass.
7 versions of office might actually work, or perhaps better yet, 7 versions of Clippy, representing different demographic subtypes:
don't forget:
Canadian Clippy: "That's a letter, eh? Why aren't you writing colour correctly? You should center the word centre too, eh?"
French Clippy: "You write with no passion! Why do I bother helping you, you know nothing of how to write! Come back when you learn how to write if you want my help, monsieur!"
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Don't be a fool. I'm talking about printing pages geared towards 8.5x11. The types of printers I'm working with are usually an HP 4000TN, a Laserjet 5 and a Canon Imagerunner 8500.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Duh!
Word is a word processor, not a page layout program. Though it does provide page layout features, it's not Word's primary focus.
It always bugs me when people confuse the basic purpose of programs. If you want page layout, use Publisher, or PageMaker, or InDesign.
Word is designed to make content look good on the printer you're using, not fit a design into the limiations of your printer. Honestly, that's what Microsoft makes Publisher for, because Word isn't designed to do that.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Because Acrobat is designed to solve a different problem than Word is. Word wasn't designed as an electonic means of distributing documents. It was designed to be a word processor, not a page layout program.
I'll probably be market redundant for saying this so many times, but WORD IS NOT A PAGE LAYOUT PROGRAM.
It's designed to make your content look as good as it can on the device you're printing to, not to make the content layout as designed on the printer you're printing to.
A simple example is the difference between legal paper and 8x11. Please don't tell me you expect Word to print on Legal paper the same way Acrobat would for a document designed on 8x11.
That would be stupid.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
WYSIWYG? Hardly. it is more:
WYSIWYP -What you see is why you're Pissed!
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
[Word is] designed to make your content look as good as it can on the device you're printing to, not to make the content layout as designed on the printer you're printing to.
and it even does THAT poorly! have a look at Pages and see what word processing should be like. Your (well... my) content actually does look good, rather than some ho-hum word document. (personal experience)
the same thing goes for Keynote vs PowerPoint, and I'm hoping for an Excel killer... at that point i'd delete office if i didn't have so many incoming... word documents.
Off thread topic, on overall topic... Who beat office with an ugly stick... AGAIN? O_o
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
The thing is, I'm not sure that's true. Word's presentation of the written word is nowhere near the level of a decent DTP program, or something like TeX: things like paragraph justification, kerning and ligatures are naive or missing altogether, and this sort of thing sets quality typography apart from its amateur cousin. Most people wouldn't know that quality if you showed it to them with red rings round the changes, but they would still be affected by it as they read.
As others have noted around here, Word isn't really a page layout program, either. Again, its facilities are far surpassed by even fairly basic DTP packages. Try doing a two-page spread in Word with an image split across the seam.
You'd think a world-class word processor would be good for dealing with long documents, at least, but I was once told in an official Microsoft reply that this wasn't what Word was meant to do. (This was after submitting a bug report about Word repeatedly taking out the whole PC while dealing with a 300 page technical manual with fairly extensive but unexceptional use of numbered lists, section headings, and the like.) Even if it can handle larger documents these days, the cross-referencing, indexing and such are nowhere near the power of a system like TeX, and again I can't think of anything it can do that a decent DTP package couldn't.
Word can produce basic web pages, but without the quality of HTML and site design/structure facilities routinely offered by more specialised web editors.
So it goes on. Word processors today are very much a jack of all trades, yet master of few. About the only thing they have going for them is relative ease of use and customisability. Even for ease of use, similar "hybrid" packages like Apple's Pages are overtaking the more overweight beasts, and I know few places that really use the kind of customisability today that Word is theoretically capable of offering.
Faced with this sort of position, it's hard to see how Microsoft can hold off the challenges against its flagship application from all sides for long based on pretty colours alone. Revamp the layout engine to produce decent typography (particularly the neat touches that require no user intervention), sort out the styles, templates and programming facilities so people can actually make good use of them, fix up the support for formal, structured documents to provide the best indexing, cross-referencing and numbering facilities available, and then we'll be getting somewhere.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.