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Visual Tour of Office 2007 Beta 2
feminazi writes "Computerworld has a review and visual tour of the newest installment of Office. No more toolbars & menus; those have been replace with 'ribbons.' Of the various products in the suite, Word is the most changed. Styles are easier to invoke, but no easier to create or understand. A couple of the redeeming characteristics is the ability to save as PDF and XPS and an improved Track Changes. Bigger spreadsheets are available in Excel -- over 1 million rows and over 16,000 columns per worksheet -- and new and better visualization abilities. Lots new in Outlook including multiple calendars and direct support for RSS feeds. And the apps all work together better than before. From the article: 'The major change in Beta 2 was the introduction of Office SharePoint Server.' This means that Sharepoint Server is required, but it also means more & better collaboration and advanced search abilities are supported."
I believe the summary is misleading - Office 2007 will not require Sharepoint server (i.e. for an individual/independant user), though it will be needed to take advantage of it's collaborative features.
Here's a laundry list, but I don't think the stains will come out:
This is an extension of the abstration of the chevron menus... alter the user's environment based on usage. It doesn't work. I've used environments like this and it takes getting used to. You think it was confusing trying to show people how to use Microsoft products when the pulldown menus changed seemingly randomly? Wait until their "ribbons" change based on cursor position.
Hover mode for tooltips, maybe. But this will confuse users. I think it's clever, but I don't need clever. Also: ..., The preview mode is also available with other
icons in the ribbon, such as font and font size, but oddly not
for the paragraph-control icons.... So, a potentially
confusing behavior (feature) of the new WORD is inconsistent.
So, for those who recognize and like the style "preview" can be
confused by the styles not given preview stature for their icons.
WTF? If I've got anyone in IT putting 1,000,000 rows in a spreadsheet, I'm seriously considering demoting them. If you're going to have a million rows, get a database.
Microsoft trots this out every new release. It's never turned out to be true, it won't be true this time. Microsoft does however get the added benefit of requiring yet another additional piece of software (SharePoint Server) tying customers more tightly with the Microsoft leash.
NOTE: do not confuse greater interaction functionality with work together better. This is an important distinction.
Go read the seven page article. It describes an ugly mess of a new suite of products. When customers ask for simpler, noone listens, at least not Microsoft. For example, you want simplicity? You now must choose from one of seven bundling options (sounds like the new Vista): Basic; Home and Student; Standard; Small Business; Professional; Professional Plus; and Enterprise.
The listed prices range from $149 (student) to $499 (Professional Plus) with no price listed for the required SharePoint Server (volume licensing only). Oh, subtract $170 or so for the upgrade version.
If you or your company considers this, get ready for more incompatiblities with previous generations, and retro installation of plugins. That's okay within a company (to some), but think carefully about the impedance mismatch with the rest of the world.
Really.
if your data set is a million rows, you probably want to consider using something other than spreadsheets. I'm fond of the current limit on excel, it forces analysts to think about their tool selection sometimes.
UI looks like MSN Messenger!
Is it just me, or do these new "ribbons" look alot like Apple Works? I RTFA, and it didn't seem to justify upgrading for the average user - which although a geek, I include myself (I still prefer my text editor!). Office 2007 appears to be Office 2000 (98 too) with a tighter leash to M$, with a few bells and whistles most people won't use.
So Word 2007 introduces yeat another obscure acronym?
What the hell is XPS?
Google says X-Ray Photoemission Spectroscopy. That is it's ony result, and it is taken from the place I would have gone next: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XPS.
I assume OO.o won't be "copying" any of them, correct?
Having developed a number of Swing-based applications used internally at an insurance company (by people in various departments), the main complaint was not about the look or feel of Swing. Instead, most users complained how long it took to start up the apps, and how slow unresponsive the GUIs would be.
In short, most of the complains were those that are leveled against Java in general. I'm well aware that a decent Java VM with a JIT compiler can outperform C++ in some cases, and that fairly fast Swing interfaces can be created with much care and effort. However, in the real world we don't have weeks to fine-tune and optimize our Swing UIs.
It is good that Microsoft is willing to experiment with this new UI approach. They do have the resources to do so. If it turns out to be beneficial, then similar work can be done on OpenOffice. If it turns out to be a major hassle for most people, then OpenOffice is already ahead. Either way, it will be a useful experiment, for both Microsoft and the open source community.
There hasn't been GUI hegemony within the Windows community for ages. At least with Windows 3.1 it was mostly the Common Controls and OWL. But since Windows 95 we have had some GTK+ apps, Java-based apps, WinForms apps, iTunes, WinAmp, RealPlayer, and a host of others with their own GUIs. There hasn't been a consistent GUI on Windows for over a decade.
I'm sure there will be lots of interesting commentary here on Office 2007, and I'm sure a lot of it will be along the lines of "New interface is goofy/sucks/bad for users/too different/etc." and/or "OpenOffice rules, why go MS?" and so on.
Which is all fine and good. Really. But the changes in Office aren't targeted at power users. In fact, it probably is true that the new UI will frustrate power users. So, why did MS bother?
Because for every power user, there are 100s of regular users. They want to do more with Word, Excel, etc, but have a hard time finding the features they want. So, this is the first step in this direction. It won't be perfect, but what does do is break from tradition in some interesting ways.
Believe me that MS has been sticking this in front of users and doing usability studies. And I'm willing to bet that enough regular users think that the new UI isn't so bad, that it's pretty cool after you get used to it, and it's easier to find features and play around with them.
All the live preview featues and ribbon bars and so on are to make it easier to regular users to goof around with changes without making them permanent. Also, remember that this is Beta2, so it isn't clear that all the live preview features are in yet, so it could very well be that paragrpah sytle previews will be in the final product.
Finally, I think it is important to note something about the ribbons. The ribbons don't change. This is not the custom menu idea, where menus "adapted to users" whihc just translated to stuff moved on the menus, and you don't know why. You choose a ribbon, you get the tools for that ribbon period. They don't move around.
Will it work? Hard to say. But I like the idea that the idea of Office applications is being looked at in a fresh way.
That's fine, as long as you realize you're using a hack...you are absolutely NOT using the 'correct' tool for the job here.
It may work, and it may be done a lot, but there are actual tools for doing this sort of thing.
Part of the problem though is that a lot of people believe that every tool available for use on a computer is to be found in MS Office, somewhere. It's not.
To prove this, here's a thought excercise for you: Given the raw data you're crunching in excel briefly...describe how you would come to the same end result WITHOUT A COMPUTER. Would you pull out a ledger? Didn't think so. It's the wrong tool for the job.
Now, what people should keep in mind though, is it isn't _always_ wrong to use the wrong tool for the job. Sometimes the wrong tool works good enough or the right tool is too expensive or complicated or limited in it's availability for use. It's just usually wise to know when this is the case however and not start believing you are using the 'right' tool when you aren't.
The problem is, MS knows this very VERY well. Thus, MS Office products are chock full of every conceivable 'feature', hoping that you'll find a way to do what you need to do somewhere in there without going to someone elses software...damned if it's the right tool or not.
No Comment.
me: "Why can't we use Macs or other word processors at least?"
IT: "training costs. Costs too much to show people how to use different software. that's why we're all Office and all microsoft."
"training costs" excuse.... we hardly knew thee...
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Eh, not really. Excel is quick and it handles unformatted data quite well without having to write a script. Hell, sometimes I use Excel to "tame" a dataset before moving to another program. If I want to do a quick plot without dealing with importing lots of data, Excel is often the easiest option. If I'm dealing with a whole lot of data I'll set up a workflow with sigma or IDL and handle everything that way. Not everything is as black and white as you might think. I don't care about the 'elegant' solution, I care about the best solution, which for me means the fastest one that will get the job done right.
I used spreadsheets to process loads of data samples, hundreds of thousands of points and frankly excel or any spreadsheet is ideal for preliminary data processing, as long as it handles the data. The grandparent should get his prejudices out of the way the fewer arbitrary limits any software has the better, what it's actually used for is irrelevant and up to the users.
Deleted
A spatial interface like the ribbon will require serious retraining whenever that spatial interface changes. Microsoft may change it for non-productive reasons like adding more eye candy to boost sales or for more significant reasons like adding (and removing) functionality. Whatever the reason, the interface will change in the future and any motor memory you have built will be lost (or worse cause you to select unintended options).
Most of the user interface studies Microsoft quotes describe how easy it is to adapt to the interface from a menu based system. But that's as shortsighted an argument as judging 'file format' compatability based only on whether a new verison of Word can easily convert your old documents. While that is an issue, compatability judgement should consider the future and how much has to be thrown away when future changes come around. No doubt the 'ribbon' has two dozen patents on it so only Microsoft will be able to provide true forward compatability, but with something like a Word processor I don't think MS will have the patience, restraint, and concern to make sure future interface changes are as motor-friendly and compatible with older interface users.
While I'm sure it's fun to play with for a few days, the Office 'ribbon' is not a tool that I'd want to get hooked on. To my knowledge, the ribbon tech is unique to Microsoft Office. Will we be seeing ribbons in Print Shop Pro and Mathmatica using standard OS services? Will the ribbon organization be consistent across applications? Why would Microsoft want to chuck and undermine the standard GUI on their OS product with a horribly non-standard, incompatible interface like the one in Office? Because it will become like an addiction. Users will be unable to get along without it and unable to give it up for something else.
Perhaps we'll need to start a twelve step program like Office Anonymous to get people onto a forward compatible product.
Microsoft has complained for years that most users request features that Office already has but can't find them according to their usability labs.
FIrst ms tried to hide the complexities with menu's that delete uncommon features unless you put the cursor over the arrows in the menu. That failed.
So MS is redoing the UI. Also even for non novices like you and I its a pain to do things like custom graphics for presentations and documentation in word.
http://saveie6.com/
rosewood: "Also, multiple calendars have been available in Outlook for ages. Multiple calendar viewing has been available since 2003 as well. Not the best summary in the world."
Yah. I also noticed this:
TFA: "Among the more significant new features: Excel 2007's new ways of visualizing data. For example, you can use conditional formatting to color the background of cells based on their value..."
That's present at least in Excel 2003, and I think maybe as far back as 2000.
How can someone review Office 2007 for what's new if they don't even know what's in the older versions?
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
You know that Microsoft does usability tests, right? They don't just randomly place things (well, they did in Office for a long time, which is why they're fixing that now), and they don't just rip-off other programs like open source projects to. You can bet your ass that if Microsoft is making a change for usability reasons, they have documented, repeatable, scientific evidence that the new version is better.
What you're griping is basically, "but I don't like to learn new things!," which is the opposite of how most Slashdotters seem to be... for instance, a lot of Slashdotters recommend starting with Gentoo when switching to Linux you can see how Linux works, or learning the CLI even if you're already experienced at a GUI interface.
Of course, with Microsoft involved, you know that 80% of these comments are saying it'll be a crappy product without even having tried it.
Comment of the year
You forgot something. it's a Microsoft product :-). Anything coming from Microsoft is de facto bad on slashdot.
I'm glad they are trying to improve the UI. Things are too complex for the average Joe.
The only problems for me are :
The price (first version at $149 is way too expensive)
The number of versions. Student, standard, pro, pro+ and enterprise (?).
When you see 5 different versions for the same product with different limitations set by the marketing department. There is clearly a problem.
Do you remember the difference between XP pro and XP home? Sincerily I don't. They will select just one version in the retail shop. They won't waste their time trying to explain limitations to a lambda user.
The price is the biggest problem for me . I will stick to open office with thunderbird. It's free and I don't think that the new Ms office features are worth $200 (I'm not a student). Tell me $75 and I may consider it.
Making features easier to find/discover is [apparently] one of the biggest benefits. Word has a zillion features, and most people use about 10.
Anyway, I'd recommend the blog as an interesting read for those people interested in user interface design for a product with hunderds of millions of users.
I do not believe that most people posting here have any idea of what makes up a good UI design. Microsoft has made a vast improvement over previous version of Office with this new UI. The interface is very intuitive and displays functions that can be used in well laid out way. There is great feedback from this user interface with most actions. They have almost eliminated difficulties that arise when using the mouse. Do you know what most users have a problem with when using a computer? I will give you a hint, it rhymes with "house". Why do you think that the mac OS places their menus at the top of the screen? It is so that a user can move the mouse all the way to the top of the screen and only have to worry about moving the mouse horizontally when selecting a menu (makes it a lot easier to select a menu this way). Back on topic, no more selecting menus and trying to position the mouse in the correct place to expand other sub menus. Functions are now quick and easy to select. When scrolling through areas such as fonts, the document is updated in real time. However, I do think the file stuff could be improved. The equation editor stuff is a good add to Word. How can you not like being able to quickly insert a integral symbol or many specific functions such as a Taylor Expansion? I believe that this new UI will be easy for all to use and will leave the user happy. Come on people, give some credit where some credit is due!!!!!!! Also, for those who are complaining about the Excel spreadsheets having too large of a capacity and that users should be using a database should do some homework before they post. Have you ever heard of Excel Lists? Guess what, you can make a Excel spreadsheet into a database. Plus, you should never place constraints on a user unless there is a good reason for it.
This comes up again and again.
As an SQL Server developer, an Excel 'power' user and someone who manages about 20GB of statistical and performance data, I reckon I've got a clue here.
Show me a sample piece of SQL for calculating a cumulative average, without linking a table to itself, creating a new table or other weirdness. It's pretty hard.
What about a running total for certain criteria? Or percentile calculations, or means, standard deviations and so on?
SQL is just not good at statistics, even simple stats. It just can't do it without a *lot* of effort.
SQL-based databases are ideal for filtering and simple calculations, but terrible at doing real work with numbers. Sometimes Excel is a far superior solution to the best and brightest database.
A few pages in any direction? You've clearly never seen corporate spreadsheets or looked at numerical quality methodologies (such as Six Sigma)!