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Office 2007 Delayed Again
Tyler Too writes "Ars Technica reports that Microsoft Office 2007 has been delayed again, this time into early 2007. 'Based on internal testing and the beta 2 feedback around product performance, we are revising our development schedule to deliver the 2007 system release by the end of year 2006, with broad general availability in early 2007.' Tough bit of timing after this week's online preview of Office 2007."
... if this could be related to re-thinking that radical user-interface change that they've attached to Word. (I use a CAD program that adopted this kind of thing a few releases back and I still detest this, just like anyone with tendonitis would detest pointless extra mouse clicks.)
Beta preview is right the time that all their big corporate accounts would feedback "for the love of God, we're not retraining every person in the darn organization just to use Word. Now CHANGE IT BACK!"
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
work....
I very much enjoy using the ribbon. I think its a huge improvement in usability. If I wasn't using it in Parallels mostly and there was a Mac version, I'd use it definitely. I always liked Entourage, but I won't use it due to Rosetta (I only use PPC apps when I have no choice - with email I have a choice).
So while I love Outlook 2007 and Word 2007, I don't enjoy the speed. Its definitely slower. So I hope they work on that more.
Except Office 2003 is Office v11, take a look in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11, the standard install path. Just like Windows XP is NT 5.1, and Server 2003 is NT 5.2. Marketing calls it what they want, the engineers keep things sane.
So Maybe by late next year I will be running Office v12 on NT 6.0 (or will it be 5.3? Who has the Vista beta installed?)
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
The parent poster would probably change his mind if he were to watch any of the presentations made by Jensen Harris, the man in charge of the new Office UI.
I am a Windows 2000/Office 97 user who does not upgrade just because Microsoft decides they need to make a few extra billions with a bump in version number and some new eye candy. I assumed (without any evidence) that the new Office would be more of the same. But then I found Jensen Harris' presentation at BayCHI last December to be so interesting that now I am excited about trying the new Office UI.
Essentially, the new UI gets rid of the menu bars, button bars, side panels, clippy agents, personal menus and other cruft that slowly accumulated over the successive revisions of Microsoft Office. His argument is that a complex product needs a clear interface. And that's what the ribbon is: Everything is there, and its choices are always context sensitive.
My own personal opinion is that the new interface is pure brilliance, and it won't be long before other companies start poorly(*) imitating its task-based approach over the traditional feature-based approach.
Download the BayCHI slides and video. If you develop software, the new UI is definitely something to behold.
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(*) The imitations will be done poorly because most other software firms do not have the huge sample of user reports automatically created in the current version of Office. The Office UI team was able to determine the frequency of commands so that even their arrangement on the ribbon will be from most-used to least.
If you don't have anything original to say, then don't say anything at all.
I was quite impressed with the Office 2007 beta and was surpised to learn that performance was an issue. One of the features I really like is the ability to do real-time previews of different style sets, which performed quickly. The UI is also quite streamlined and its obvious Microsoft is trying something new with UI design that no other OS can attest to.
I just am amazed that when there is an article that talks about how slow Microsoft's product development is taking, people complain about how long it is taking. But when Microsoft was turning out Office and OS updates with only a year or two between them, people were complaining about how fast an unecesary it was for MS to come out with something new so quickly.
The bottom line is, people don't got anything new, or original to say about Microsoft, and it gets pretty tired. I don't know if people think they are being witty or smart when they post another "insert common misperception here" comment.
The saddest part is, how may people are using MS products every day. I mean 90% of the desktop market uses Windows, so you kind of have to wonder if Slashdot is only read and commented on by 10% of the computer market.