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Microsoft Changes Office 2007 Interface Again
daria42 writes "Microsoft has modified its interface for Office 2007 yet again, after complaints from beta testers that the 'ribbon' system took up too much space on screen. The article discusses the resistance the new interface is likely to prompt in old users of the software, both at a personal and corporate level. From a format perspective, there are other changes to expect as well." From the article: "Hodgson also confirmed that Microsoft is working on tools to help enterprises automatically translate existing documents into new file formats being introduced in Office 2007. 'We've been asked by a lot of customers to provide tools to do mass migrations,' he said. 'There will be tools that will take a million documents and migrate those to the new formats.' One likely incentive for that migration will be reduced storage costs. Microsoft claims that file sizes for the new Office 2007 XML-based formats are up to 75 percent less than existing Office formats."
But you already get more document space than you used to with the ribbon UI!
I like the ribbon.
'There will be tools that will take a million documents and migrate those to the new formats.'
Three words: backup, backup, backup
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Are these new changes happening out of some desire to resemble the old Windows software as little as possible? Is there some kind of necessity to change the interface? Does it need a complete overhaul?
I'm sure lots of people are gonna respond to that with a resounding "YES", but I personally have gotten used to what it is. It took me years to learn the ins and outs of Office after computers stopped coming bundled with MS Word. Even now, I've done away with that side-by-side view in Outlook 2003 and moved everything back to the same way it was in 2000. This goes the same for most other programs which throw in an abundance of menus and graphics to try to make things TOO user friendly. Nine times out of ten, if there is an option for the "traditional view", I'll take it.
I dunno, maybe I'm just living in the past. I still use vi on Linux, I still use Notepad in windows whenever I can, and I don't feel any desire to get used to any "ribbons" flying across my screen.
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Articles about GUI's without images make baby Jesus cry. Google gives these as the old design, hope it helps.
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Presumably to make up for the >33% increase in the size of their new software? :)
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Well there's a bit of junk in the OLE serialisation format but not a lot.
The new formats are zipped by default. The zip files do contain the data as XML rather than a binary format which must be a small loss but it's gained back by zipping them.
Judging from past conversions, you'd better keep the original version close at hand, because when the conversion doesn't look right, you're going to have people wanting the original. So now you're dealing with 25% more storage - the original files as a safety copy, and the new 'improved' conversions. Hmmm.
I'm a little disappointed to read that MS is changing the ribbon system. Maybe it's because I run at 1280x1024 at home and at work, but I absolutely adore the ribbon system. As rarely as I feel that it takes up too much space, I can always double-click the tabbed heading to minimize it until I click a heading again. I found the admittedly oversized ribbon to be welcoming and easy to read and click. I wish all the Office 2007 programs used it, but some (like Outlook, Visio, and Infopath) keep with the pulldown bar.
.DOC will remain the default file format until, I estimate, at least 2010, unless MS makes a .DOCX interpreter for prior iterations.
I've been using Word for about 10 years and have come to know its little foibles and workarounds and sub-sub-sub menus. That being said, the SECOND time I used Word 2007 I was able to teach others how to use it! It's an absolute triumph of GUI design and I'm really enthusiastic about its final release. I'm also dreading the coming of February when my free beta expires and becomes unusable.
And on the topic of mass migration - don't go nuts with that, Microsoft. Even if a company wants to implement Office 2007 among its entire ranks, interoperability with other shops who will be reluctant to upgrade (due to cost of licensing and training) will mean that
Of course the reason they're pushing this document converter to save all this space (who else reckons any savings aren't even gonna approach 70%!) is to get as many documents as possible into Office XML format to gain as much "traction" as possible for said format....although I think "traction" is a word more appropriately used in the context of an enormous slow-moving vehicle mired in mud...maybe not so inappropriate after all.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
<moods>
<!--<happy>-->
<!--<cheerful>-->
<annoying as f***>
</moods>
It goes on like this for quite a while. The most notable thing in the file is the commented out options. If only they had implemented the Clippy options tab.
Lets get rid of that ugly top menu and controls! And replace it with an... ugly top menu... and controls.
And call it a ribbon, so it's a new feature that suddenly compels people to purchase the software?
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
I really hate the UI changes in each version of Office and wish there was a "classic" setting that causes a default skin to be displayed with everything in a standardized spot. Why? Because when my mother/sister/neighbour's cat purchases a new computer it inevitably comes with a new version of Office that has features senselessly 'hidden' in different spots. It causes no end of agony to help these poor users adapt. After all, most people need little more than a glorified typewriter with spell-checking. Microsoft should offer "Office Extrasimple Basic" for folks like these.
Of course, they'd market it in a way that encouraged people to upgrade "just in case they need the ability to do something powerful."
This is what I've always said about people's reluctance to switch to Linux; it's not that software isn't as good for most users, it's that it's simply not what they're used to.
Many people claim to be sick of MS and the intrusiveness and high costs of being legal, but when they try Linux they complain that it's not Microsoft.
Well, now it looks like, with this new Ribbon thing, users will complain because, according to the article, there will be inconsistency between MS applications - some will have the ribbon, some won't.
It's not even whether or not the ribbon is a bad thing, it's that people don't like learning new things.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Now, hold on. As far as I know every Office document contains its undo history by default. Which would be great if you could actually make use of these undos after you've closed and reopened the document, but you can't - it only lets you undo what you've done in the current session. So why's it there at all? That's junk, by my reckoning.
In any given hour of work in Word or Excel, do you know how often I use menus, buttons or anything outside the actual document/worksheet space? Maybe once or twice for Word, maybe only a little more for Excel. The reason? Shortcuts, people, shortcuts.
How office-monkeys can sit in their Dell Hells day after day, doing the same crap over and over again, without learning
a) to touch type and
b) how to do things a bit quicker and easier with the keyboard
is absolutely beyond me.
What do I need from my UI? Leave it as it is. I have exactly two toolbars in either Word or Excel, and use a fraction of each (if I'm that concerned about screen space, I'll customise more carefully). Anything beyond my capabilities with keyboard and the odd button, I will happily use a menu for. Anyone who tells me how much easier and more intuitive Ribbons are to use, I say this: I've tried it, and I found them exactly as useful as the current UI, ie not at all.
No, this is not a "I don't need no stinkin' upgrades" rant. This is a "For God's sake, people, learn to use the tools you have properly and you'll work quicker, easier and not give a damn about this either" tirade.
Meta will eat itself
I would agree with your moderation of my comment if it was directed with a generally Microsoft-bashing slant. But that's not the case. I use Office both in my personal and professional lives, and it's basically one of those software packages I cannot function without due to professional requirements. It does its job very, very well.
What it hasn't done is give anyone any compelling reasons to upgrade. Someone needs to explain precisely how this "ribbon" feature adds value. What does it say about the product as a whole when it's THE most talked-about aspect of the new version? Is the product so stagnant that the only way to get people to eye it as a purchase is to shuffle around the UI a bit?
That's what I was trying to point out, and hopefully spur some discussion about. That's NOT flamebaiting.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Are you kidding? I remember running Office 2000 on my Pentium 166 with 64mb RAM, and it chugged along happily. I even tried installing Office 2003 on it, didn't seem like it was bad. It was too far out of date to be used, but Office 2003 didn't seem to complain.
for those of us who haven't seen the ribbon ui in action
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Back in the day I used Word 2.0 as pretty much my main application for all types of word processing tasks and layout stuff. It mostly worked despite the size of hard disks, RAM and processors back then. However, the time taken to start up your PC and open a document in Word does not feel significantly different now from what it did then (I grant you that feeling is unscientific and subjective).
I don't remember the last time I used Word.
Mostly for creative writing I use Final Draft, for general text stuff I use Notepad and for format important stuff I would use an InDesign/Notepad combination. Likely some of these tasks will now be switched over to Writely since it is but a swift bookmark away.
Privacy concerns aside, Writely is considerably quicker and easier for most general text tasks - I see no reason why Word couldn't be this fast - or in fact faster since it would be local.
I find Word to be too cumbersome for most simple tasks, and too unspecialized for others. What percentage of Word users use more than 30% of its features? A very small number I would guess.
Admittedly I don't work in a corporate environment, but I can't help thinking that perhaps Word is just regarded as the thing to use in most situations, rather than using a faster and more appropriate text tool. I wonder what the accumulative total man hours lost is over a year for the Corporate World for them using recent versions of Word over a slimmer faster product...
Here's what happened: Adoption of previous editions of Office have been slowed by, among other things, objections over the cluttered and confusing interface. Microsoft tried in their own (perhaps misguided) way to improve that over the years, and in doing so, they added bars and panes ad infinitum - a taskbar, a task pane, a help pane, new context menus, etc. - without much fanfare.
Since there was no real set of organizing principles for the evolution of the Office interface, these new toolspaces naturally filled up in a hurry as different internal groups poured their junk into them. This wasn't helping to reduce the clutter any, so they simultaneously tried making the main application menu context-sensitive, further confusing experienced users.
All these parallel but disconnected efforts tended to defeat each other more than anything, so this time around, MS decided to try something different: Take about 200 different interface ideas, test them with focus groups, and may the best one win. After that, make all the UI developers retrofit their stuff into a coordinated workflow based on the new winner, which is where they are today.
Basically, this is a first attempt at escaping the chains of their poor UI legacy, and perhaps a risky one at that. They estimate that only power users will be comfortable picking the new UI up on their own. For average users, they expect that some guided training will be necessary - all combined, probably just shy of a day's worth.
Personally, I think they'd have been better off monitoring clicks & keystrokes of a *vast* test group using previous office editions, after which they could form a core set of the most important interaction elements based on the 20% or so most used actions. Also, it didn't help that keyboard shortcuts were never standardized across the Office suite; power users who expected e.g. Ctrl+Tab to do the same thing in Word as in Excel were quickly alienated, and once alienated, it's not easy to win a user back.
Pi Ran Out
GroupBar: I love this product, especially once I started playing around with some of the options. Why the current Windows taskbar doesn't incorporate all these functions is beyond me. Note: there is no shortcut created anywhere by the installer, go into \program files\microsoft research\groupbar and run from there. Scalable Fabric: I found this is the more interesting approach, however it's a buggy implementation and only good for playing around with. Jonah HEX
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Even if the article is about Microsoft, I'm surprised to find that people here don't like the ribbon idea at all. When I first saw it I thought the design was revolutionary and considerably more intuitive for users new to computers. Functions are better organized toward what the user wants to do as opposed to the vague categories we have in today's menubars that frequently require people to search multiple different menus to find what they want (Edit vs. Tools, View vs. Window). I do however agree with an earlier poster's remark that the design uses precious vertical space even though today's monitors are moving towards increased horizontal space. In Word this is tough to pull off because the primary use (creating an 8 1/2 x 11 document) demands vertical space, but surely there are other non-office applications that could benefit from this new style?
To those noting that DOC is 4 times larger than OpenXML, and are therefore gloating that this proves that DOC is bloated, how about Adobe's PDF?
I've just downloaded the just released ECMA Draft 1.4 OpenXML Specs. They are 5 files, available in both DOCX (the OpenXML version of DOC) and PDF.
The PDF files are 4 to 7 times larger than the DOCX files (except for the "Part 3 - Primer" doc, where the PDF file is only 1.2 times larger than the corresponding DOCX file).
For the main file, "Part 4 - Markup Language Reference", the PDF version is is 42MB and the DOCX version is 10MB.
Just adding some perspective.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
i've been using office 2007 beta 2 for quite some time now. their new ui is actually better and more user friendly than the old one. it is easier to do the functions you need in one click (mostly.) however, i just would want that old menus still be there because there are times when i am at a loss to a previous function in the menu and i can't seem to find it through the ribbons. other improvements (great productivity boost) that i liked is the 'preview' mechanism that displays changes to the text by just pointing to the selection. ex. the text adjust its size and font as you browse through the selection.
i install it in my laptop and when other people see it, they find it cool that they would also like to get a copy of it. but alas, microsoft started charging for the download of the software. i was lucky to have it before (the product key is not transferrable to other computers by the way.)
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