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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."
Clippy? What have they done to you, Clippy? Clippy? Clippy? CLIPPY! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!
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.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
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 has got to be the most innovative thing to come out of Microsoft in years.
As long as the new version of Office allows you to use that cool "Whoooshing" noise between slides in Powerpoint I'll be happy.
Not that I ever use Powerpoint, honest...
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.
Personally I don't want clippy to RIP.
I want it to suffer eternal torment in the fires of silicon hell, where daemons will flay it continally until the end of time.
"It looks like you're trying to inflict agonies beyond belief on me, would you like so.... aaargh, no, no, stop with the poker! Anything but the poker, pleeeaase!"
But that's just me.
Internal numbering... major number goes up for each suite release.
From my blog dated a month ago:
"
Microsoft have been using internal numbers for their major Office release for some time:
Office 9 = Microsoft Office 2000
Office 10 = Microsoft Office XP
Office 11 = Microsoft Office 2003
And right now they are in pre-beta with Office 12... yet to be assigned a product name (or yet to be announced depending on whether you believe what you hear).
A curiosity though, I've just been conversing with a product manager in the globalisation team over a feature that the company I work for would dearly like, during this conversation she mentioned that the feature in question would not be in Office 12, but some part of it will be considered for Office 14.
Office 14? So what happened to Office 13?
Could it be that Microsoft are superstitious enough to not want to number a feature version of Office as Office 13?
Or am I reading too much into this, and did they just use Excel to do the numbering?
Maybe someone should point out to them that missing 13 doesn't make it any less Office 13.
"
Definitely, check out these screenshots, I mean I haven't tried it but this ribbon thingy doesn't strike me as intuitive as the menu paradigm we're used to.
Microsoft's Screenshot
Zdnet series of screenshots
Plus it takes loads of screen real-estate.
"When a ball dreams, it dreams it's a frisbee"
Old versions of Office have entire books devoted to their bugs. When we moved from Office 98 to Office 2004, we noticed that most of the bugs were still in the program even though it was 3 versions later.
Is Office 12 just a UI rearrangement of the same defective code?
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Link to Channel9 coverage http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=1147 20
5 191-a526-44bc-80e5-3f5399aeb162/new_julie_larson_g reen_office12_ui_2005.wmv
Link directly to video http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/5/b/65b0
My Tech Posts on Twitter
Maybe someone should point out to them that missing 13 doesn't make it any less Office 13.
Obligatory Mitch Hedburg:
"My hotel doesn't have a 13th floor because of superstition. But people on the 14th floor, you know what floor you're really on.!"
"If 13 is an unlucky number, then 12 and 14 are guilty by association."
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.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
What will it cost?
Microsoft hasn't yet specified.
Translation: prepared to be raked over the coals for failing to upgrade from Office 97 for all these years. You don't think those dinosaur ads pay for themselves do you?
actually, office 98 and 2004 are for mac. 98 is about the same as office 97 for windows, and office 2004 is the equal to office 2003.
Windows has detected a program running perfectly: (C)rash program (B)SOD (P)ower off unexpectedly
New feature -> Translated as:
And now appraoched in turn:
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:
Before anyone tries to "call me out", I am not a MS shill or apologist. (May be a KDE apologist, though).
I personally will not install any Beta microsoft product so I cannot verify.
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Does anybody know if they finally have undo past savepoints.
Because of my experience with MSO (been using since Excel 4.0) is that it is best to save the document ALL the time else the app will crash and you will loose hours of work. BUT when you save, you loose the undo history
MSO up to now has never had this feature (bad programmers BAD).
BTW - OOo has this feature in 2.0
God I love open source
JsD
For years, I have heard that the differences between MS Office and Open Office were so significant that the cost of retraining was not worth transitioning.
Where are those people today? The same ones that argued that it was not cost effective to retrain, will be arguing this is an incremental change or significant but worth the effort. I can hardly wait for Laura DiDio's "How Office 12 will make your company 12 times more productive" press release disguised as a "research paper."
As several prior posters have said, if you are going to take the upgrade hit, why not take it to open office? It will certainly be less expensive in both licensing and training. And it will support OpenDocument formats, something MS has said they will not do.
At least until the MS PR machine starts rolling.
Open Office Home page
Office 12's innovations paves the way for Office 13's "return to the Office design that users have to love."
Two years from now, whoever is in charge in Office will stand up at some flashy Microsoft presentation and explain how they "ignored users" and "goofed" by changing too much in Office 12. He'll talk about "lessons learned" and how "grateful Microsoft is to the user community for their active support of Microsoft Office."
And then he'll push a couple buttons, curtains will raise, and some huge screen will blast "Office 13" and show videos about how all these new innovations have been replaced by the stuff that users wanted -- namely, a return to the regular menu.
I don't know -- after ten, fifteen years of Microsoft, I'm extremely, extremely weary of all this technological hullabaloo. It's a lot of noise about nothing except money -- big money -- and users -- myself included -- fall for it time and time again.
And yes, I've gradually moved over to Linux solutions. They're fine -- sometimes more complesxs than I'd like -- but I've come to understand that Microsoft -- and perhaps Google, too, but I don't know yet -- really don't understand technology. They understand technology, yeah, but they don't understand the fundamental fact that more and more people have an antagonistic response to technology. We like technology, sure, but goddammit make technology that makes things easier -- not complex in a different way.
I wish someone at these companies would begin to acknowledge the odd technological antagonism that more technology breeds. Just because you *can* do something doesn't mean you *should* -- create a new version of Word, implement X or Y, etc. etc.
I dunno. Whatever. It doesn't matter.
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.
With the new plugin architecture, you could create a tab who's only purpose is to show a flash movie of clippy burning in hell, being sodomized be devils, ect... Isn't office 12 great?