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Microsoft Office 12 Beta 1 Is Out
lastberserker writes "The first official beta of the next MS Office is out. PC Magazine already has review with screenshots. Check these blogs for more details on new UI, new file format, and the killer app; plus much more in your friendly neighborhood Wikipedia." From the PC Mag review: "Instead of the cluttered, hard-to-navigate interface that sprouted up haphazardly over the past 20 years, Office 12 introduces a new interface based on tabs that organize sets of functions under headings such as 'Write,' 'Page Layout,' and 'Review,' plus a combination toolbar-and-menu called the ribbon, which displays a different set of icons and menu items depending on the tab selected, and displays different sets of icons depending on whether you're working with text, graphics, tables, or other kinds of data."
to trying out the new interface, if only I could ever get accepted into an MS Beta program
- My question is: Can Slashdot be Slashdotted? -
FTFA: "Word and Excel still perform automated changes that you may not want or expect, and you still have to learn their sometimes-obscure inner logic before you can master them." It still thinks it can create my document better than I can. No thanks. doc
Am I the only one who noticed that this was leaked to the internet weeks ago?
Maybe it wasn't beta 1...
I didn't realize Office 12 was coming out for OS X. Good on Microsoft for keeping consistent with Apple's brushed-metal/aqua UI. ;)
It's great Microsoft is introducing all those features. I mean look at Vista, by the time it comes out it will looks exactly like XP with some new graphics (a blue menu bar!). The same thing will probably happen to Office, they will chicken out and release a graphically upgraded version. I'm sure the businessosauruses that still use windows 98 will not upgrade, nor anyone else who has a large employee base. Good Luck Redmond.
I have not found many useful thing added to MS office since Office 95. I highly doubt this will be any different.
go with open office
it is cross platform and standards compliant.
the training issue looks like it will get thrown out because you will have to send joe/jane user to training. so might as well send them to open office training and get out of the upgrade cycle.
Someone want to post a torrent? ;-)
The new interface has nothing to do with being better. They have a competitor which looks just like it... Coincidence huh? Bollocks it is. The new interface is to break that link. Car manufacturers do exactly the same.
Deleted
Its about time Microsoft did something with the Office UI. I think this is the first "innovation" from them since they went to 32bit code for office. Who did they steal it from?
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
Aren't ALL their releases beta until Service Pack 2?
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
One thing I will give MS credit for, is the ability to make their GUIs look like their old GUIs (so my XP machine looks a lot like Windows 98 to the casual observer). Maybe there is a "look like that crappy old version of Word that you're used to" option. That would be ok.
* Please don't suggest I switch programs and use something like Quark, InDesign, or a free and better WP program. I am forced by the tyranny of standards to use Word.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
This is one of the first things that Microsoft has done to innovate the UI since the original wysiwyg style interface. This type of interface is known as a wygiwys (What you get is what you see) the reverse of what you see is what you get. Basically the stuff you write gets morphed into the options you choose giving you a better feel for the end result check this link out http://www.useit.com/alertbox/wysiwyg.html Sounds good.
Let this be a lesson to the openOffice people. Many people, including myself, have said time and again that openOffice should not be copying Microsoft Office, but instead try to be original and just be a great office suite. By copying MS Office, you are just letting Microsoft define the rules of the game, and you'll always be playing catch-up.
Now office 12 is out, and they've completely redesigned the interface. openOffice have three options:
1) Keep their current interface, and risk looking very outdated in a few years.
2) Put masses of effort and wasted time into copying the new interface, and let MS keep defining the rules of the game.
3) Start to be original and concentrate on making a great and original product.
All the above applies to file formats as well. So much of the effort but into being compatible with MS's horrible formats could have been better spent elsewhere.
Firefox did not become a great browser by copying IE, it did so by being a well designed product and adding original, easy-to-use features.
From the sound of it, this shiny new UI adds some long-awaited convenience for users.
/. ?) have been annoyed for many years at all the subtle but irritating changes from version to version of Word & Co. Yes, there are compatibility switches, but they only lighten the pain, they don't relieve it completely.
On the other hand, it also means that OO.org, which has been playing catch-up on the GUI front, will want to go back to the drawing board yet again.
Also, users will once again need to learn new gestures and procedures. Some people, such as my girlfriend (oops - what am I doing on
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
I'm not certain whether these interface changes will be for the better or not, but it is nice to see Microsoft trying to use design improvements and (dare I use the "i" word?) innovation to sell their new Office suite, rather than simply breaking their document formats yet again, which forces everybody to update in order to keep up with any customer who might have recently bought a new computer.
Not that I care much. I like Excel for my spreadsheets, but for everything else I prefer other tools. It would take an awful lot to get be to switch back to Word, Access, PowerPoint or Outlook at this point.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
This is great to have every 20 years a new, fresh, cluttered, hard-to-navigate interface.
DISCLAIMER: I haven't tested it so I don't know if it is new and fresh.
Million Dollar Screenshot
[QUOTE]
New File Format - This as you know is the area that is most near and dear to my heart. We are finally fully opening up our file formats in Office. Word, PowerPoint, and Excel will all three use new XML formats as their default formats. These formats will be fully documented and anyone can leverage them to build solutions, or even to build a competitive application. If you're interested in this topic, just keep reading my blog (and look through all my previous entries.
[/QUOTE]
This infuriates me. They act as if they were the ones who came up with the idea of a new open format for office applications, and then talk about how near and dear to their heart it is. This sounds more like a hallmark commercial than a msdn blog
Really it looks like they have attempted to improve the interface, bringing common tasks that where hidden several menus down to the top.
On the other hand the interface looks so alien to the old one I can see this being a support nightmare for large companies where some users have not mastered using the left mouse button yet, let alone understand anything other than picking the menus they where shown long ago and repeating..
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
FTFA: "Word and Excel still perform automated changes that you may not want or expect, and you still have to learn their sometimes-obscure inner logic before you can master them."
The developers tried to take it out but every time they tried the intellisense in Visual Studio "corrected" the "mistaken" alterations.
Word is that Office 13 (codename "Daisy") will finally have the rogue intelligence pulled.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What are the training costs and migrations costs with this new Office suite? If you just are about to spend some retraining costs you might as well spend it on a free alternative with no vendor lockin, especially since youre changing document format. Why lock oneself in again.
Most of my users know Office by their picture memory, they never read what the toolbars say. The change for Office 12 will be bigger than the change to OpenOffice. I suspect thats the case for most users. Its going to be fun watching Microsoft talk about costs for switching to OpenOffice and at the same time tout the virtue of migrating to Office 12, without mentioning the very same costs.
HTTP/1.1 400
yeah, the functionality of that is blindingly obvious !
Can anyone tell me ?
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
ROFL. It seems that we have brought the giant to it's knees!
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
Frankly, I think it looks good. It seems the new interface may finally solve some of the horrible problems with interacting with the user that past versions have had. I'll have to try it first, but I must say that those screenshots make OO.o look like poop on a stick.
-d
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
4) Keep their current interface, and attract all the previous Office users who cannot stand the new interface with all this "ribbon" baloney.
The ribbon is a huge mistake that flies in the face of almost every UI design principle. The fact that all the menus change depending on both the tab you are currently on *and* the document you are writing, means that all gains you get from your motor memory is lost, you will have to *constantly* be reading the menu and taking double takes to make sure you are doing what you think you are doing.
I think one of three things will happen:
Despite the history of option 3, I think the fact that this UI is such a piece of crap that we may have a real chance at 1 or 2 this time.
I have used Groove which is part of Office
12 & I really love it.
Groove is a document sharing system. Microsoft acquired Groove in April 2005.
On a more serious note, I really hope it does run on Linux! On my 1GHz system, I find OOo Writer slow and AbiWord (although runs much faster) lacking in drawing support. I'm looking forward to the day when I could emerge msoffice on my Gentoo box. :-)
w00t
But I'm still using Office 2000 and still havn't seen a single reason to upgrade. And as an IT manager I've kept our office running Office 2K and I've yet to see a single reason to continually update.
I'm not saying O2K is perfect, but to justify any cost to upgrade has to be significant, and I'm just not seeing it.....
don't wine
(pun intented)
[Burn karma burn!]
ERR 411[Max number of witty sigs reached]
As a seldom user of Word Processors (both Word and OpenOffice) I have to say that I hate how much digging I have to do to find things on the menus. Where do I look to add footnotes? where do I change the Footers? How do I turn this into columns again? At least if there was some sense to where these tools were buried, I might be able to find them. The changes to the Word menus is enough to make me consider using MS-Office again. (for the 1 document a month that I produce).
is there a reason they took out or renamed the file, edit etc menus?
i agree that some of them can be a bit innaaaacuraaately naaamed, and eeeeverybooody knows it! but getting rid of the menus that our secretaries and data entry drones have come to know by heart sounds like a great way to lose a few weeks training your staff over again.
-- lol pwned
Now I have to learn an entirely new twisted form of "simplified" WORD to get things to look right?
You don't have to do jack. You can still use Office 95 if you want. Unless maybe Al Qaida has you tied up with a gun to your head forcing you to buy every software release from Microsoft.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
I'm impressed by the UI -- I think they've made some really good improvements here. They've innovated in the past in this area and I think it's one of MS's stronger skills.
Now, how long until the FOSS community copies their work? It's funny to me because people claim that MS copies the ideas/UIs from FOSS projects but I've largely witnessed the opposite.
First - I love Microsoft Office. I have been a Microsoft Office lover since Excel was released on Mac. I also love Open Source, but still prefer my Microsoft Office 2004 for MacOS X.
Secondly - Office 12 is suicide. Ordinary users hate GUI changes. It doesn't matter if the new GUI is good or not. There are probably tens of thousands of users here on Slashdot that agree on the problem of persuading people to make even a small jump from Windows 2000 to XP - or even worse the impossible switch to Linux or Mac.
Microsoft fumbling with Vista and Office 12 is to become the worst business miscalculation ever made, and our grandchildren will read about it in Economics 101.
I know this is supposed to be a joke but that interface is nothing like OS X except for its shinyness. It breaks every possible UI convention. Mac users revolted over Word 6 and they are going to drop the whole suite now just because of the interface. It's a monstrosity.
I'm still using office two thousand on my little network of 10 machines. I don't wan't to upgrade, but ever since made sure every single patch was applied, Outlook does not behave properly all of the time. Sometimes it needs to be closed through the task manager, or it will have multiple instances open - leading to multiple copies of the same mesages. This is an annoyance, at best, to me - but my users keep calling with the same problem. It seems M$ is trying to force yet another upgrade
...If the new interface catches on. The reviews of it sound positive so far but it remains to be seen if average users will accept it or not. I was speaking to a friend who works in a large corp. They spend a lot of time training non-techies to use Office (and other apps) and a wholesale change in the UI is going to be difficult to roll out. It will require retraining everyone. If the new UI is indeed more intuitive, perhaps that isn't as big an issue but it is still going to require a lot of training. ...What this does to competitors like OpenOffice. Right now they are chasing the tail lights of office. They look and act a lot like it. If Office changes radically as it appears to, that seems to move the goalposts. It will be interesting to see how they respond. Do they clone this new interface paradigm or do they continue with the old, cluttered one?
In an effort to make http://www.openoffice.org/ 2.0 more MS Office compatible, the beloved office assistant "Clippy" has been included in the open source software. It's thought that Clippy's comforting and helpful questions will ease users into the harsh and different world of Open Office.
Instead of Clippy asking:
"It looks like you're writing a letter, would you like help?"
He'll be asking:
"It looks like you're writing a letter, would you like to release it under the LGPL or BSD license?"
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I will stick with OpenOffice thank you very much. It already has XML document functionality, its free, and it doesn't look like it was designed for a 12 year old.
I know most people don't care, but Word still can't properly typeset a document. Type an "fi", and you'll see what I mean (they should change into a single glyph). Even OS X's TextEdit (similar to Notepad on windows) does it. Hyphenation in Word is totally jacked. Just try to full justify a document - all the spacing is incorrrect because it doesn't properly hyphenate words. Maybe I'm all wrong, and they'll have fixed this in Office 12. I guess I shouldn't prejudge, right?
Have the user choose at the first start up of OpenOffice.org
-Office 2000/2003 style (default)
-Office 2006 ribbon style
There are enough different layouts out there.
OOo should not create a third!
Besides OOo already is different but in a good way like putting the Page settings in the Format menu intead of the File menu.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Last corporation I worked for used Office97 and it was just fine. Some oddities opening newer Office formats but far fewer problems with all of the new "features" added to later Office versions. The few documents I did have problems with were handled well by OpenOffice.org
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
But... I'm still waiting for MS Bob.....
Is it just me, or does every Microsoft application use a different widget set these days? Office 2003 looks different to Office 2000; Visual Studio 2005 gives you an approximation of the Luna interface even if you have themeing turned off; and don't get me started on the abomination that is Microsoft Anti-Spyware. Some apps have the white, flat-style menus, and some have the older, grey, 3D-effect ones. Now we have Office 12, looking more like a MacOS X app than a Windows app.
Windows' GUI may have many things going for it, but visual consistency is not one of them. On my Linux box, at least all my GTK+ apps look the same.
-Stephen
A new interface!? (gasp!)
Think of all the money that's going to go into have to retrain users how to use office apps all over again.
Now that Star/OpenOffice look more like Word than the Office 12, maybe it's more cost effective to skip Office 12 and jump right to Star/OpenOffice route!
Seriously though, I find it interesting that there is talk of the training cost when switching to Star/Openoffice, while each version of office moves everything all around so I can find things...all in the name of earnings - opps I mean productiviity improvement.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
We're big enough that we have a heterogeneous environment (Windows / Macs / Linux / and Unix workstations) - and want to standardize on a office suite (or at least formats) that can run on all of them.
Gotta agree with this. I work in a very small office and we recently upgraded our machines for the first time in 5 years (really nice healthcare deal from Dell). When I was specing the new machines, one of my cow-orkers who really likes shiny/new things really wanted us to upgrade to Office 2003 (I could never get an exact reason why we should other than "Well, it's newer. Don't we need it?"). That idea was shelved only when I showed the boss that adding Office 2003 nearly doubled the cost of the machines.
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
may i suggest vi /i keed i keed
What you want is what you get, a la LyX.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
the "killer app" is something i was doing in COM + coldfusion 5 years ago..
but OneNote just does things better.
Yes, but do you do if you have more than one note?
I don't need a signature.
The irony is that everyone is acting like they will need to spend tons of money retraining their staff. Did nobody think that maybe the new UI was built to avoid having to retrain people? Those "huge" icons are all labeled with their functionality. The article explicitly mentions the change was to avoid cumbersome menu digging to find a hidden command. Ribbon eliminates that.
~Cone
I haven't been following Groove that much. It seems like it would overlap Sharepoint in many ways. Is MS releasing competing products here?
Technology Consulting & Free Downloads
Not to whin(g)e, but tweaking modelines in XF86Config(-4) is straightforward.
Learning where Microsoft stashed the things you need to click on/off *this time* is not.
Microsoft Products are the girl nobody wants to date (for a good reason). She thinks that all she needs is some more makeup, the *right* designer handbag, and some extra-pointy shoes, and then the guys will like her. She goes out in public. Some guy (who can't tell the difference between a plastic-queen and a real woman) sees her and approaches. She passes the pointy-shoe, hangbag, and makeup test.
These judgements are all rendered as "crotch-jerk" reactions at 50 feet/meters.
After three months of unraveling the faux surfaces, it becomes clear that there are serious mental and behavioural deficits that explain the need for excessive coverup, putty, and denial.
I've been using MS Office since the first version came out and I'm still waiting some basic features. For example there's still no news reader in Outlook?!?!?! Sure, Outlook Express has a built-in news reader but it doesn't have a calendar. I must be a lousy user, because I can't name a single thing that would've improved my Office usability since Office'97 was released.
Microsoft Word - A very good WYSIWYG word processor, but what's the difference between 1997 version and 2006 version? Please Do Not say Clippy. I can do everything I need with the WinWord'97. I know that the latest version consumes about ten times more disk space, memory and processor power.. well that's a feature, right?
Microsoft Excel - A very good spreadsheet program. I bet there are zillion new macro based features added since 1997, but I also bet that 99% of users never use them.
Microsoft Access - Ok, what the hell is this? I've seen lots of Access 'applications' and ALL OF THEM had to be rewritten in real programming language. Access is like a bad imitation of a database, which lures semi-coder-guys to write cash register programs with it. Then, after Access 'database' hits something like 20 000 entries, it just crashes. It either gets so slow you can barely open it or it doesn't work at all. I hate to say this, but Access is a curse. A hint to all small businesses: DO NOT MESS WITH ACCESS, NO MATTER HOW EASY AND NICE IT SEEMS. IT WILL EAT YOU ALIVE EVENTUALLY.
MicroSoft PowerPoint - Well this is something. You can draw up different shapes of objects and write text in them!!! Wow!!! Have you seen Apple's Keynote? If not, let me tell you.. it's like Powerpoint plus ten years of development.. oh wait.. Powerpoint hasn't changed a bit in last ten years!
Microsoft Frontpage - If you want to design a web page, Frontpage is NOT the program for it. I don't know to whom it's meant for, but I wouldn't recommend it to a beginner and I've never heard of a professional that uses Frontpage.
Couldn't we just get a Office lite and M$ can feed the bloated crap to those who don't actually use their programs, but like to click different buttons and see how they throw errors boxes at your face.
I'm sorry if my comment sounds a bit sarcastic, but I'm sick and tired of installing new Office, that requires double amount processing power, only because I can't read files from customers without it.
The new UI and killer features is an attempt to rectify the situation... with totally new ui, users feel like they could get left behind if they don't upgrade.
I find myself wondering, would Office have a new and improved interface if OpenOffice didn't exist? What incentive would Microsoft have to make their product better without the competition there? Whether OpenOffice gains any significant market share, it sets the bar a bit higher for Microsoft. OpenOffice will continue to improve and nip at the heels of MS. If they don't give people a reason to pay the big bucks, eventually they'll stop doing so.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
"New File Format - This as you know is the area that is most near and dear to my heart. We are finally fully opening up our file formats in Office. Word, PowerPoint, and Excel will all three use new XML formats as their default formats. These formats will be fully documented and anyone can leverage them to build solutions, or even to build a competitive application. If you're interested in this topic, just keep reading my blog (and look through all my previous entries)."
Fully documented my ass. There are binary headers that are not documented. Without understanding these headers 3rd party vendors cannot leverage squat.
This is the reason that Massachusetts decided not to list Microsoft's XML format as acceptable. It's not really open at all.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
If Microsoft will completely support all of the features of OpenType -- a font format that THEY HELPED TO INVENT -- then you may see ligatures in Word very soon.
----------
Cheese it! It's the FEDS!
You're wrong. This is OPEN SOURCE we're talking about. The Clippy would say:
"Don't know how to turn off automatic bulleting? FCKING N003, RTFM. Luzer!"
I haven't been following Groove that much. It seems like it would overlap Sharepoint in many ways. Is MS releasing competing products here?
Have used Sharepoint far less than Groove, but this is my opinion.
Sharepoint is web-based, whereas Groove isn't.
I think MS maybe planning to integrate both in later versions.
But, IMHO, Groove is far better than Sharepoint.
As an engineer, calc sucks. If youre doing anything more than tracking your budget at home, chances are Calc isn't going to cut it.
-everphilski-
Have you tried koffice? It's lacking some things, but nothing I've noticed, and it performs far better than OOo even in another DE.
I am trolling
This item is a great example of how not only office, but Longwait will be hailed despite the products probable weaknesses and continued wholesale theft of consumer priviledges. Sadly, millions of consumer will gladly overpay for the priveledge of having the control of their computers handed over to another corporation.
-What's the software license like? Hmm, probably more restrictive than the scary license on SP3.
-How much does that feature cost? Am I authorized to use it for one year or more? Can I redistribute it?
-Open document format? Hmmm me thinks it lacks interoperability. Wait, don't tell me the interop problem isn't Microsoft's right?
-And it's OO.org's problem THEY aren't innovative enough.
-Overpromising more features that will be fixed "the next service pack."
The good news is I'm guaranteed software maintenance employment as long as Microsoft continues to make these crappy products. Sadly though, it's sure to become the equivalent of a janitor in terms of salary, ubiquity and priviledge.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I'm a sharepoint admin, and having never used Groove, I'll tell you that it most likely is better. MS did pretty nicely with Sharepoint, then ripped out any useful features leaving them for 3rd party vendors to reinvent. Look for them to neuter Groove sooner rather than later.
Technology Consulting & Free Downloads
People elsewhere commenting on this story are complaining that Word changes what they type. Now you're asking Word to make typographic changes to automatically create this typographic ligature for you. If you're using a Unicode font, it has hex value FB01, or in HTML, fi (dunno if /. will show it: "")
Yeah, great. Another new interface to learn. Of course it will also make working with both the "old" and "new" versions a true royal pain in the posterior.
I think it's all yet another trick to urge (force) everyone to update, and I am so very tired of playing this game.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Run Excel as a client/server app.
Is my crack habit out of control, or is that 40-year old technology that was replaced a couple of decades ago by n-tier solutions?
The chutzpah involved in pushing this as some kind of new technology, itself, is some kind of Killer App, where the victim is the market.
Patents to all t3h h0meez, for this startling, innovative, heretofore unseen wonder!
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
A lot of the typesetting is dependent on the OS' text/font engine. According to Microsoft, Avalon will have an upgraded font rasterizer and text services, so Office 12 should be able to use those when running on Vista. I'll believe it when all of the stupid Zapfino tricks work consistently on Mac OS X and Vista.
This sig intentionally left blank.
As far as I know Redmond has not documented the binary header nor relinquished it's patent encumbrances. This format is not yet truly open.
It would be a welcome change if Microsoft would allow 3rd parties to compete on a level playing field but I don't see it happening in our lifetimes.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Will it include a Don't be stupid mode? Something you can engage when forging political documents that turns off automatic superscripting and proportional spacing, and limits your font selection to what was available on a Selectric[tm] typewriter circa 1969. There are a few Democrats in Texas, and television producers in New York City, looking for this one.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
They launch the new office suite with a total different UI , that way their costumers only when fully adapt to the new UI will understand that they were once again screwed by M$ , and that the only things new in MS office are formats that are non-open copys of open formats , and new ways to crash the office suite.
def greetings(x): return {'friend': 'Howdy', 'enemy': 'Dye [sic]'}.get(x, 'g0 4w4y, l4m0r')
You don't tweak your XFree86/X.org config to disable an option in a OO.org, which is a completely separate program! Idiots! >:(
While I agree with the sentiment, it seems they've missed an opportunity here. If they were going to redesign Word so dramatically, why stop at eye candy?
They could have put in decent typography, matched up with the OpenType support that's coming through in new versions of Windows, and made everyone's documents look better.
They could have switched the emphasis from ad-hoc formatting to styles and templates, and made everyone's documents look better (not to mention faster to produce).
They could have invested R&D resources in a grammar checker that worked.
They could have revamped some of the horrible formatting tools (bullets and numbering springs to mind), or added the features necessary to get professional-looking indices and tables.
Anyone can do eye candy, at least anyone with even a small fraction of Microsoft's resources. At the end of the day, UI code takes a lot of time to write, but that writing is easy to do once you've decided what you want. Give me something that genuinely makes it easier to work with my documents, or produces higher quality output, and I'll be a lot more impressed.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Or maybe people will just start referring to this version and it's hall of UI horrors as Office 13.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Y'know, you can turn that stuff off! It requires a bit of poking around, but if you're capable of tweaking the modelines in XF86Config, you're probably able to find the settings to turn off automatic bulletting.
When I first read this, I wondered why it wasn't modded "funny". I'll admit, I don't use MS Office and I rarely use MS Windows, but what in the world does the XF86Config file have to do with anything MS makes? For that matter, what could it possibly have to do with automatic bulleting in an application, X or otherwise?
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Given that most users at present can't do much beyond open, edit, save and print anyway, I'd be surprised. I've never seen any business provide any formal training in how to use Office to any member of staff. I imagine MS knows this; they may be many things, but contrary to popular opinion, they aren't completely stupid when it comes to running a profitable business.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
But Office remains at v2000 and there hasn't even been a mention of if, when, or why we would upgrade or change.
Sometimes a tool, even with its shortcomings, gets the job done. So far, Office 2000 meets that requirement.
Yeah, that's really going to help the average user.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Or maybe they should try a fourth option:
4) All of the above
This kind of goes to both products (Office 12 and Open Office) but why can't they support all sorts of different configurations? Open Office should strive to be the best office productivity suite it can by while offering any number of UI configurations. Open Office shouldn't strive to copy MS products. Instead they should strive to be more agile and flexible than MS.
Excel excels
My eyes are still burning.
qz
A few years ago, a salesteam came into the company where I worked and brought their presentation on the new Office-2000. Since none of the "old" versions of office on our in-plant computers could read the new format, they were not able to show or print anything and lost a day's time along with the cost of a group of three people making a long trip.
Moral of this story? Just stick with Open Office, reagardless of how well MS is able to re-define their same old programs with a new GUI.
No, no, letters would be Creative Commons.
My favorite Clippy quote along these lines is, "It looks like you're writing a love letter. Can I read it?"
What I say does not represent the views of my employers, my friends, my cats, or myself.
so the girl nobody wants to date except for the vast majority if every human being that has every dated (continuing with your analogy)? you seem to have an odd definition of nobody. Or are you implying that only those people who use linux/macs can tell the difference between a good computer program and a bad one? Or maybe that those companies which specialize in office apps(especially the big banks) don't know what they are doing sticking with office?
of course, I think windows holds par with linux for all my every day tasks but I know it doesn't for many tasks. so they are equivalent to me but not everyone. But ms office is generally head and shoulders above its competition(as a complete office suite). and of course, two minutes of work and you can turn off any feature you don't like.
of course my experience with office might be unique or limited in some way. I mean, the last 4 years of having to do everything imaginable in it might still have its limits in some esoteric way.
Don't forget that the Vikings found America first
I assume you mean the Vikings were the first to find America from the East in the 2nd millenia. Other history (even old latin history) might suggest they were following the trail of Irish monks who did it in the 6th century in a boat with no keel.
See: Navigatio Santi Brendani Abat (or The Voyage of St. Brendan the Abbot, ca. 9th century). Vikings had 200 years to translate and learn from the ducument.
Offtopic but I find www.visual-paradigm.com to be an excellent UML tool. While I haven't used many others besides pseidon (or whatever it is) and Rose, I must say if you learn the specifics of its workflow (including mouse gestures) you'll get more done in an amazing amount of time. The only UML tool I'll use unless forced to use another. The newest release (5.1) is excellent.
Thanks,
Leabre
Depends on what you are doing... I do 6DOF analysis and you get this list of tabular data... gee, makes sense to analyze it in a program laid out to handle tabular data, huh? Now the in depth stuff... we use some in-house tools you can't get your hands on, but for the simple stuff, Excel does quite a bit; you'd be suprised.
But try this sometime with Calc: Load a comma seperated value file. Calculate the root-mean-squared of a few values. Now export the comma seperated value file. Heres a hint: with 1.9 you can't export CSV files.
-everphilski-
What's the big deal? We should all just forget about Word Processors! We have LaTeX!!11oneone
VP is a leading candidate as is Enterprise Architect. Cost matters so Rose and XDE are low on the list but still under eval.
We are licensed users of Altova's XMLSpy. I was very high on their introducing an XML tool at a fair price. Then I discovered it didn't support sequence diagrams. I was shocked. For me, that's the single most useful diagram in the UML suite. What a waste.
Speaking of Office 2000 and UML, I currently do my UML diagrams with Visio 2000. Since there's no Java import, everything must be hand built. In a weird way, it has the positive side effect that the diagrams are very lightweight. I don't stick every attribute or method in there, only the ones necessary to tell the story. Plus copying those simple diagrams into my Word 2000 functional specs is a piece of cake.
What You Get Ain't What You Expect ;)
After seeing the different screen shot of this new UI i've got only one thing to say. I don't even think I'll see any text on a 1280x1024 resolution. I just hope it will be possible to get those icon smaller than this. Some menu take nearly half the screen...
.
We're on Office XP. We have an excellent reason NOT to upgrade to Office 2003 - Outlook's IMAP support seems to be broken in 2003.
So why would I suggest an upgrade again? Hmm.... Good question. Nope, can't think of a reason.
Some say it will speed adoption of OOo because OOo will sport the old, familiar UI. But if that happens (or even if relatively few customers upgrade to Office 12 due to trepidation over the new UI) you'd better believe Office 13 will have a new, "Classic Mode" that emulates the old UI, just like Corel did with WordPerfect.
Penny - plain text accounting
but we need more ways to quickly identify idiots around here.
I've always found that the "Anonymous Coward" UID marker works pretty well in that regard.
Hey look! There's the quote again below!
I'm afraid that an anonymous users fevered dislike of my quote is hardly motivation to change it, in fact really more of an attraction to keep it. Especially if the most constructive critism they can give is "Bullshit". I don't think you'd make it long as a movie reviewer or art critic (well, possibly an art critic).
Ah, the delight in AC enraging quotes.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I thought it was long gone. I have a copy somewhere that reviews the top CGA monitors and cards. An ad for a 10mhz PC-XT clone with a 20 meg drive for only $1200. Should I bust out 2 large for an AT 8mhz clone with a 40 meg drive and CGA? And that was less than 20 years ago. That mag has been around the block.
For those keeping track, an 8 mhz AT booted faster than my kids' 2400mhz machine. Of course, all you saw was
C:\>
If MS makes Office more "flexible", I will scream. People around here are already confused because they have too many choices.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
said it aint so, they have actually inc the size of the office toolbar! It's in all the screen shots! Why have they done this? Is it not possible to just make intuitive menus or keyboard shortcuts to popup windows? The MS Office for OS X people did a nice job with an expandable/colapsable tooltray that floats so you can see the page you are working on.
This version is too much fluff, not enough practicality.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
What Word Wants Is What You Get
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
One should think a company that supports a product (Office) on multiple platforms would release a beta of the product for all supported platforms at the same time? Kinda be proud to show it off?
Oh, that platform!!?! OS X....
The future is in beta
Then there's evidence of a Roman shipwreck off the coast of Massachusetts, the Phonecian coins found in Tennessee....
I am doing a diagram right now in OO "Draw" - not quite the same as Visio in terms of features but then it's not trying to outguess me either at every turn. Frankly I far prefer Draw to Visio for most diagramming work.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "No integration" either, since OO can read/write MS documents and also integrates quite nicley within the OO suite of products.
And Microsoft having more UI designers than OO does developers? I'd sweep that fact under the rug given what they've produced thus far. Not to mention that if you bother to read "The Mythical Man Month" (or just work as a software developer for more than a few months) you quickly realize that someone with a lot fewer UI designers is going to be a lot more effective in the long run.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I use Neooffice J myself, even though I could use the X version I do prefer NeoOffice.
The good news is that OO 2.0 is working on a native Aqua port. The bad news is it might be a little while before we see it as that announcement was pretty recent. I think Neooffice had sais they were not going to do a 2.0 version because the Aqua port was being worked on.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have found reading the comments on this thread extremely funny. What I thought to myself reading the article is that the Slashdot crowd with either...
a.) Heckle the new interface as looking stupid/being ignorant/taking up too much space on the screen
b.) Talk about how the interface change will be an opportunity for OpenOffice
I am not surprised to be proved correct. Here is what is really going to happen with the new Office. First, they will have an option in there to make it look like Office XP/2003 for those that want it. I watched a video with an interface designer from MS who said as much and it makes sense - they have always provided a way to make newer software look/behave like it's previous versions (2000->XP interface for example). Second, as they have incorporated more and more new features to Office over the years the menus and toolbars has gotten very cluttered. I find it makes perfect sense to me for Office to step back and reasses/reorganize the interface and how people use it to make getting to these options a little more intutitive as well as take advantage of the increased screen realestate that many newer monitors/flatpanels provide. I have an LCD where, at my resolution, the toolbar icons are almost too small these days. I would also like the idea of Office tailoring it's interface to the task I am trying to accomplish and helping me see what options are most common and really relevant and useful for my current what I am trying to do. This is, by many accounts, the peak of Office and it's userbase so if there is ever a time that they could leverage that to have people learn a better and more impressive interface it is now.
I like the new interface and I am going to buy the $150 Student/Teacher version when it comes out. I think that, unlike the differnce between 97, 2000, XP and 2003 where the feature differences are about office and document collaboration and other rather unsexy little sorts of things many users did not need/use, this version is about a nice looking new interface and capabilities to more easily create nicer looking new documents, charts and presentations with more eye candy. I think that you are all wrong - they changed this in a way that will get people excited about Office again and that they can easily tell the difference between it and the old versions in such a way that will have some word-of-mouth advertising between friends and coworkers who will show it off to others and talk about it. For those IT people who posted - I expect there will be a demand for the first time in years from your users and managers will be asking for it and about it.
Instead of rejoicing abuot their coming fall you should realize that this is what MS needed to do to really address OpenOffice and further differentiate themselves and their new version. I really think it will be a large sales success in ways that XP and 2003 was not and a new standard for the other suites to follow. And, most ironically, it will be it for the exact reasons that you all think it will fail.
People elsewhere commenting on this story are complaining that Word changes what they type. Now you're asking Word to make typographic changes to automatically create this typographic ligature for you. If you're using a Unicode font, it has hex value FB01, or in HTML, (dunno if /. will show it: "")
The difference is that ligatures are a (dare I say) expected typographic convention. The letters "f" and "i" aren't replace by a single Unicode character, but are simply rendered as a single glyph. Type "fi", hit backspace once, and only the "i" is deleted. The word can still be hyphenated between the "f" and the "i" (if legal), since it's still two letters. One can search for the string "fi", not some 16-bit Unicode character. If one really wants the non-ligature display, then a zero-width space is probably wanted between the two letters. If the user doesn't know what that means, he probably isn't in a position to care about ligatures one way or the other.
Read About Face 1.0 (page 284) or 2.0 by Alan Cooper and you'll understand where they got the idea to change the menus within Office. Alan specifically explains how Office could benefit from getting rid of the "standard" menu items. I love how many reviewers on the Web have been gushing about this change and it really isn't a MS innovation. But at least they take sound advice -- even if it is a little late.
Yet another interface change?
......hey.
......stop it.
......Stop it.
...okay. ...okay? ...okay. ...alright.
Geez. If I were there with the dev team, I'd teach them.
------
Me: Hey!
Me: Hey.
Me: hey.
Me:
Me:
Me:
Dev:
Me:
Dev:
Me:
Sheesh. The increasing and overwhelming emphasis on graphical styles and fancy templates and all the rest of the eye candy is really incredible. Fairly soon, all office workers can be replaced by Microsoft intelligent agent modules, who will endlessly send highly graphical memos, written in auto-generated corporate-speak, back and forth, conducting business without the intervention of human intelligence (aside from what little human intelligence designed all this shit!).
Makes me yearn for the good old days of Word 5.0 in DOS. Now there was a useful word processor. You could actually see the words! (/OldGuyRant)
I have read a lot of posts complaining about how this new GUI is terrible, how there is no consistency, and how people are just going to stick with something familiar. So we are bashing MS for innovating, yet we also bash MS for not innovating enough. Granted they may have gotten the idea to revamp their GUI from someone else, but they did overhaul the interface significantly. We joke and laugh at how MS seems to always be playing catch-up to Yahoo! and Google, how they always take someone else's idea and rehash it with a few tweaks. But now, when they really do something bold and independent, something innovative, we bash them some more for doing exactly what we made fun of them for not doing. Is this just the Linux-Man, MS-haters Club, or can we recognize that MS might have actually improved their product? On a different note, did anyone else notice that the Powerpoint is saved as a .pptx? Looks like we know the code for the new format.
Funtime Candy Wow! - my plan for eventually conquering Japan.
All Microsoft would have to do if they had no competition was just keep pushing upgrades that provide only subtle changes but create incompatibilities for older versions. A certain portion of their sales would be because of people who get automatically upgraded because of software assurance. The rest would be dragged along because of a need to maintain compatibility.
That strategy is ultimately more profitable because it requires less investment in real devleopment effort.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Thanks for keeping us back for more than five years and denying us all the features that have been added to the software in the last two released versions. Like how Outlook will fill in the people you are sending emails to or the customers that send us files that are in a later format that we have to crawl back and ask them to send the file again saved in an old format. Eat shit and die.
-Your company.
P.S: Get your pink slip on your way out today.
...how expensive it is to change the system because our users then need to learn the new UI ??
They seriously need to fix the options dialog boxes so they are consistent across all of the Office apps. For example...
Setting the default save directory is simple enough right... Not with office.
In the Excel 2003 Options there are 13 tabs. Now if I were going to guess under which tab the default open/save location option was I would pick "Save" but I would be wrong. It is actually under General. Ok fine, not where I expected it but it's changed so on to PowerPoint.
PowerPoint 2003 has 7 tabs in the options box. My chances are better at getting this right on the first try. Now if I was logical I would say choose the "General" tab. After all that is where I set the default location in Excel. Again I would be wrong. This time the default file location is under "Save" That makes more sense but it is not consistent with Excel? Oh well on to Word
Word has a 11 tabs and 3 rows. Word also has a "General" tab and a "Save" Tab. Great I have a 50% chance of getting this one right. Wrong. In Word 2003 I have to choose the "File Locations" Tab. Now to make things even more interesting the method used to set the file location does not resemble the method used in Excel and Powerpoint. One I kludge my way through this dialog it's on to Publisher.
When I open Publisher I can pull down the Tools Menu and I can see options but it is grayed out and I can't select it. What gives? I have to first select what kind of project I want then I have to open a project. Now I can set the default file location. Fortunately Publisher only has 7 tabs. If I was logical I would select the "Save" tab but since I know better I choose the "General" tab. Finally I am right. Damn! I have to set this the same stupid way I did in Word!
But the package said seamless integration and easy to use? I haven't even started to create my document. This can't be good.
I wish there was a SDK for clippy, the fun I could have by making a tweak here, and a nodge there... Muhahahahahah
Finding how to format something in Word (or Excel, or PPT for that matter) is the least of my problems. What I want is for the features to WORK!
Still, after after 20 (TWENTY!) years of development of Word, I have Office 2003, and:
- Auto numbering: still a bugfest
- Document linking: bugfest leading to file corruption
- Chapter/section management: bugfest leading to other bugs
- Styles: horrendous implementation compounded by the above bugs
- The clipboard: AAAARGH!!
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
I see what the poster actually meant: if you can handle modelines in an XF86Config file, then you can handle the obscure Office menu settings needed to turn off auto-bullets.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
I actually tried Dia first (using Red Hat) - I'm generally doing system diagrams, with a quite a bit of explanitory text. The problem I had with Dia is that after brief exprimentation I could not find a way to draw boxes and then easily type text that would "Live" inside the box. I could make independant text and group it but it would really slow things down.
If you know of ways to make working with text-based objects easier in Dia, I'd be hppy to try it again as I did like the interface.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is a very nice product, and Microsoft has proven once again why they dominate all the Offices around the world, but for some reason half the posts on this board are bashing this new product?
If OO came out with a version even comparable to Office 12 I am certain the posts would mainly be praise about how good it looked.
Myself I cant wait to try it, for a few months I was using OO, but then one day I tried to open 3 documents at once...Now I renamed my Office Writer shortcut to 'Export to PDF'.. mainly cause thats all its good for. Once Office 12 is released I can finally uninstall OO :)
Oh boy! I'm sure the new package is revolutionary enough to warrant another upgrade!
Otter is being sarcastic when he mentions "tweaking the modelines in XF86Config" - this is funny, not necessarily insightful! Microsoft Word should offer less-hidden settings if it is truly a "user-friendly" application.
The problem is that Microsoft Word (and the whole Office suite, but I only know Word well - I switched to OpenOffice) is both unfriendly to the user and unempowering.
A Word user needs to learn to watch the screen when they hit the enter key because their formatting might drastically change. I don't know about anybody else, but I got fed up with hitting enter, then backspace twice in order to remove the bullet/number/indent.
Fitzghon
A distinction well made.
More than mere navel gazing.
Do they at least give Clippy a makeover or something? A 3D talking Clippy that dances to your music.. Come on Microsoft, find a way to make your software take up more processing power and system resources. That's what you're good at.
Nah, I'm a Gnome fanboy. Will try it someday... Thanks.
w00t
With all this talk of the new features etc in Office a quick thought...
How many of you use 90% of all the features in Office 97/2000?
Not many I'd guess... Looking at some notes I've got from previous studies into feature use most people only use between 20 and 60% of the feature set in current versions. MS would be better making sure the 60% that people use work well, do not cause any unwanted side effects, and make those the quickest and easiest to access.
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
Continuing OT once more...
.NET developer (who's gradually gravitating towards Java for some unexplicable reason). I have not heard of Enterprise Architect. I'll have to look at it.
I gave up on Visio about two years ago when I discovered visual-paradigm. Our company uses Visio and so must I, but I do my modeling in VP and export to Visio and leave it at that. I can copy-paste directly into word from VP, also. Besides, the diagrams look pretty in VP.
I'm with you, the sequence diagram is the most useful feature of UML and as such, is the one I most commonly use (I also use the Textual Analysis feature of VP and Activity Diagrams).
The workflow paradigm is wonderful. I like just hovering the object and then click-dragging the context-actions (whatever their called) and voila... and the mouse gestures are splendid. Too bad they don't allow you to define your own mouse gestures.
Anyway... for a few extra bucks VP will rount-trip Java for you. But that's not important to me as I'm a
Thanks,
Leabre