Under the Hood of Office 12

An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet has posted an FAQ on Office 12, plus a quick preview of Office 12 pre-Beta 1. From the review: Microsoft Office 12.0 pre-Beta 1 drastically revamps the interface layouts of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access. More than a year before the final product will hit the shelves, a pre-beta version of Microsoft Office 12.0 is revealing radical interface changes and user paradigm shifts that recall the overly ambitious Microsoft Office 97 update of the past."

Comments

Competition driving innovation

[TripMaster Monkey]

...or the appearance of innovation, anyway.

Interesting tightrope Microsoft is being forced to walk here...if they don't change things enough, they still have OpenOffice and StarOffice nipping at their heels, but if they change too much, they risk alienating their established user base.

The real question is: Just how much can you improve an office suite, before it's 'good enough'? Many Office users (my employers included) feel Office 2003 is just fine, and have no plans whatsoever for Office 12. Other offices I've seen have standardized on Offive XP, or even Office 2000, and steadfastly refuse to upgrade. When these holdouts finally do upgrade, it's only because they are having issues with using documents from other facilities that are in the new format (non-backward-compatible by design...thank you so much, Bill), and when they do, they commonly skip at least one release.

The bottom line is that the strategy of staying out ahead of competitors like OpenOffice and StarOffice is becoming increasing untenable as the office suite becomes more and more complex and capable, and closer and closer to the ideal of 'good enough' for the average user.

Re:Competition driving innovation

[jav1231]

I think you're right. Moreover, now is a good time for users to consider OOo because there is going to be these interface changes to Office 12. As long as you're learning something new it might as well be something that isn't costing you an arm and a leg, no? Add to that the fact that it's open and there's a huge opportunity for OOo.

Re:Competition driving innovation

[Zemplar]

"The real question is: Just how much can you improve an office suite, before it's 'good enough'? Many Office users (my employers included) feel Office 2003 is just fine"

I can tell you that there is great room to improve Excel, good as it is. Many statistical functions in Excel need work in addition to addressing the poor memory limits - and I don't mean a marginal bump as is common with most Excel upgrades. Someday I'd also like to be able to address more than 65,536 rows and 256 columns.

Threading in Excel is poor! Admittedly this is not an issue for your average user.

So basically Microsoft will only marginally update Office for power users needing an extra speed or function fix and totally rework the GUI for the newbies to gawk at. Unfortunately this is a good business move if your business is to simply make as much money as possible from upgrades.

Re:Competition driving innovation

[at_slashdot]

Oh, but it's really easy to make people upgrade. You break the files compatibility just a tiny bit, nobody will notice, except for the companies that want EVERYTHING to work (pretty much everybody) so they will have to upgrade since they cannot have a mix of versions. Bill you are a genious! We need the latest Word because of its features -- bullshit! We need it to be compatible with other people's Word. That's why Massachussetts did a smart thing by switching to an open format.

Nothing beats Office 97

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing will ever top Office 97 for what it brought the table when it came out. They made it too good - several versions later and most people probably can't tell the difference, except for Outlook, which has changed more than the other apps in the suite. Is it possible that we don't need new versions of Office coming out every couple years anymore?

This will call for extra training

[bogaboga]

The radical change that M$ is introducing in Office 12 will call for training. I vividly remember what effect Office 95 had on our users.

The trouble here is that more of technology pundits will not see this requirement as an additional cost burden at all! So when it comes to comparing Office 12 to StarOffice/OpenOffice.org, assumptions will be made that those using M$ products already have the training.

StarOffice/OpenOffice.org programmers could capitalize on this, save companies the trouble or burden of training. This is not to mention licensing costs not forgetting closed and changing formats.

Past good enough for most users.

[LWATCDR]

Office really is way past good enough for most users. My office uses Office 2000 and really doesn't see a big need to jump to Office XP or 2003. Office 12? Big harry deal. I wonder if Microsoft will have to start droping the price.

What I really wonder is why no big PC companies like Dell, IBM, or Gateway are including OpenOffice with their PCs?
Seems like a brain dead way to give your customers a free office suit. I guess the answer is they are all hoping to sell you MS Office.
Maybe Gateway/Emachine should think about it.

Re:Where is office 11 ?

[coolGuyZak]

Paraphrasing/compiling the parent:

New feature -> Translated as:

1. Tabbed browsing -> Ripoff off Firefox
2. Missing menus -> Bye bye familiarity
3. Clippy replaced with a Ghost -> Transparency showoffs
4. Shortcuts change for no reason -> Alt keys are teh suck
5. Task oriented design -> All users are idiots

And now appraoched in turn:

1. A couple things about this one:
   • Firefox was not the first application to feature tabbed browsing.
   • User interfaces are "ripped off" all the time. When someone comes out with a good idea, others copy it. This is a good thing, as it allows evolutionary development. Say the first person to come out with the button had patented (and enforced) it. We'd all be screwed.
2. Sometimes familarity has to be sacrificed for the sake of advancement. This will irritate more than a few users though.
3. Mostly, yeh. But I can see if having its uses. Personally, I'd rather have smart tags similar to the ones in VS2005. They're hot.
4. True, but when I lose mouse support, it would be nice if my computer is still usable :)
5. Even if all users are idiots, that doesn't mean that they are second-class computer citizens. As a matter of fact, since "All users are idiots" it would make sense to tailor the interface to them.
   A mental exercise: Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that "not all users are idiots". Changing from a "functionality based" system to a "task based" system still has benefits:
   • Users can learn the interface faster, as it makes more sense to them.
   • Users can access the interface faster, because all of the tools they need for a particular task are grouped together.
   • The interface has the potential to becomes less cluttered, as only tools pertinent to your task are displayed.

Before anyone tries to "call me out", I am not a MS shill or apologist. (May be a KDE apologist, though).

Office 97 is still good enough for me...

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

I still install Office 97 on every Windows computer I own. There are no license key or registration "phone home" issues to deal with and it's a pretty lean word processor compared to the others out there today. Honestly, I can't tell you what features have been added to Office in the last 8 years that would be of any use to me.