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Office 2007 — Better But a Tough Switch
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Office 2007, coming out Jan. 30, is a 'radical revision,' writes the Wall Street Journal's Walter S. Mossberg. 'The entire user interface, the way you do things in these familiar old programs, has been thrown out and replaced with something new. In Word, Excel and PowerPoint, all of the menus are gone — every one. None of the familiar toolbars have survived, either. In their place is a wide, tabbed band of icons at the top of the screen called the Ribbon. And there is no option to go back to the classic interface.' He adds, 'It has taken a good product and made it better and fresher. But there is a big downside to this gutsy redesign: It requires a steep learning curve that many people might rather avoid.'"
I wonder if this will break all the Excel macros I've written too.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
The entire user interface, the way you do things in these familiar old programs, has been thrown out and replaced with something new.
I'm crossing my fingers in the hope that they replaced the entire user interface with a giant version of Clippy.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
I've seen radical departure in Microsoft's IE7, couldn't completely figure it out.
I've seen a radical departure in Gaim's interface, still scratching my head.
I've seen an amazing myriad of Windows Media Player interfaces. I've completely given up even trying to use that.
I remember a heated discussion once during a design session on a major application we were writing for a "large telcom". The gist of the discussion was we "had to have" a file menu, and it had to be on the top left of the application even though there was no notion of "File" for this application. The rationale? Because that's the way Microsoft did all of their applications.
I give Microsoft credit for taking a chance on a radical departure from what I've always thought was a stilted and stupid "required" interface (menus)... I hold little hope they get (got) it right considering Microsoft carried the old standard into the 21st century.
I find it curious they offer no way to use the old menu system. I'd be inclined not to want the old way, but for the sake of familiarity, it'd seem the more sane thing to do to offer the old menu interface as an option.
I do admit there is a learning curve, but even so, once you get the hang of it, its very fast. I know that in Powerpoint it is very easy to find where the tools you need are, and some are in multiple spots if they need to be. There are a couple different presentation modes, but when you have dual screen set up with extended desktop, your second screen becomes the actual slides, while the first screen displays your notes, along with a bar of upcoming slides. If older versions could do this, I never encountered it.
Word is also better, I like the UI stuff they've done when you highlight and the font menu automatically appears. E-mail editing is tied in well with outlook, which didn't get as much update to the UI as the others, but still looks and works great. Amazingly, even for a beta, I rarely run into stability issues. I crashed it once, but I don't remember what I did, and I really think it wasn't a crash, but something locked it running in the background that just was taking a real long while to run, so I got impatient and set it to the land of Ctrl-alt-del.
-Ed
So you see what had happened was....
People will be using older versions for a while, but i look forward to the coming days when i tell people about openoffice and i can say "you can learn open office or the new ms office- both are different, but only one is free" because right now- i have a hard time getting people to move to open office because they don't want to change at all.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Can you imagine what this would be like for a business with thousands of employees in each building who will need to be retrained to used Word. First there would be the cost of upgrading, them the cost of training, particularly if they need to bring in someone external and then they've lost man hours from all the retraining they've had to give.
Doesn't sound great to me.
Summation 2
Wasn't having to learn a new interface one of their biggest arguements against open source software? I seem to remember report after report after report showing the "costs" to train employees to use non MS software.
But when you have a week when you're not under intense deadlines, give it a chance. I've really learned to like it, and think it does add some clarification to UI that was the definition and punchline of "Bloatware"
Why? It's like getting into a car and finding that the UI you have come to love to hate has changed to something completely different. Gone is the steering wheel as you know it, gone are the foot pedals, and gone are the buttons that operate the comfort controls. In its place you have a foreign interface that will take a few days to get used to for no good reason other than Bill and his head of Office development decided it would be a good idea.
Personally? I hate Office's UI but I'm used to it -- it had a steep learning curve and now that I'm ok with it, I have absolutely no desire to relearn something else so that I'm able to do my job effectively.
If my company decides to upgrade, I will have to stop what I'm doing and relearn something else. The ~7 day loss in productivity will *not* be recouped in enough time by the new UI to make the first work loss worthwhile. I guarantee it.
"It has taken a good product and made it better and fresher. But there is a big downside to this gutsy redesign: It requires a steep learning curve that many people might rather avoid."
It's an office application. I don't need a redesign, I don't care if it's "fresher" - people just need to be able to sit down and type a letter, or put together a spreadsheet.
There shouldn't be a learning curve involved with what amounts to commodity software.
#DeleteChrome
All those people who say they won't try free software because "it means learning a new interface" or "we'd have to convert all our files" or "they teach Office XP in school" or "it would require retraining" or "the TCO of switching is too high" - we now know what they actually mean.
"We want microsoft software at any cost"
Otherwise, all those arguments mean that they cannot use the latest version of Word.
I see the same complaints every time the UI changes on any program that people use a lot: "They changed the UI and now I have to learn a different one!"
You might have a legitimate grievance if the new UI is worse than the old one, but complaining just because it's different is annoying and stupid. Did you think that you'd never have to learn another UI, ever? Get over it.
Driving a car is very different than driving a team of horses, but that doesn't mean I'm upset that we're not riding in horse-drawn carriages. Sometimes different is GOOD.
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
Hear hear! This is exactly why I never upgraded to Windows in the first place. Real professionals use DOS.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
This is one of the few (actually, I can't remember any other one) instances where Microsoft has really innovated something. I guess they will have it all covered with patents.
If it happens to be an improvement, and if it is not patented, maybe some OSS applications will want to use the idea.
Does anyone know if it is patented?
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
A few weeks ago, I watched someone install this program by mistake onto a new computer. It's what the university is now pushing, so they kept it.
It would be hard to describe their frustration, so I won't bother. It took them half an hour to find "save as". As usual, the OS itself hid the extension so you could not tell that it was saving everything in .DOCX, the 6000 page "open XML" successor to the previous M$ "open" format, RTF. I can only imagine the anger and sadness that awaits true Word users who have been using all the painful tools that M$ bloated into the program, drawing tools, flight simulator, whatever.
The upgrade train is roaring on and M$ is really pushing hard this time. It's going to piss a lot of people off and offers great opportunity for free software. You can now say that it's easier to make the move to Open Office for a new system than it is to move to Office 2007.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
The new interface does look nice, but the old menu makes it much easier for the help desks to provide support over the phone. It is easier to tell a user to "Click the File menu, then Save" than it is to say "Do you see the icon that looks like a floppy disk? It is on the first toolbar, third from the left. Yes, beside that yellow thing that looks like a file folder. Click that." Now imagine the help desk person on the phone is on another continent and English is not his/her first language. Getting rid of the menus will make the learning curve just that much steeper and make companies slower to adopt this new Office.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
I have been using Office 2007 since Beta 2 and rolled the RTM out after a 2 weeks testing to just under 100 staff. Each week (in the past 4 that they have had it) we have asked for feedback. To begin with it was about 30% liking it and 70 hating it. A few people dropped out of the testing because they hated it so much and were replaced. Over those 4 weeks the feedback has changed and now the numbers are 90% liking it, 5-6% still not too sure and 4-5% still hating it. What this shows me is that it takes a while to adjust. Most people don't like change and Office 2007 is a big change. Give it some time and I am sure you will find it much nicer to use. Personally I really like it now however I started using it without reading all of the negative comments and so I took a very relaxed approach to its new UI. It took me about 2-3 weeks of daily use but now I wouldn't want to go back.
Openoffice will not be not taken seriously until it has
a)A database program that doesnt suck
b)A presentation program with all the bells and whistles(the current one lacks it)
c)well thought out Desktop publishing
d)web page design tools
I use openoffice and I like it but I couldnt stop using publisher and frontpage
...for no good reason other than Bill and his head of Office development decided it would be a good idea... Can you please send the link to an article that indicates that decisions on office UI are made solely by Bill Gates and the head of Office development? Because I remember, about two years ago, attending a users group where Microsoft presented the findings of their office UI research. They gathered statistics on which options were clicked most often and least often, whether people used the mouse or the keyboard, how many times they did each operation, etc. I was under the mistaken impression that Microsoft used this research in designing the ribbon. I also thought that it went through several stages of multi-million dollar usability testing. Good thing I have a Slashdot troll to make a crazy car analogy to prove my facts are incorrect! I must have never even gone to that conference or watched that presenter. Thanks!Bash office if you wish, I won't defend it. If you have real criticism of the ribbon, post it. But don't make-up stupid insults about a UI you've never seen or used.
My wife did the same thing with her text documents. After lots of fighting with MS Word or OO.o write, she decided all she wanted was words on a page and switched to notepad.
The moral of the story is: It's still black ink on paper, so you don't need to upgrade.
We are the Borg...
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
Personally? I hate Office's UI but I'm used to it -- it had a steep learning curve and now that I'm ok with it, I have absolutely no desire to relearn something else so that I'm able to do my job effectively.
I don't know why I chose your post over the MANY others of you who are bitching and moaning, but here I am.
Your comment above sounds *exactly* like someone who has never seen the interface. I've been using it for months now and would *hate* to go back to the "old" office setup. Everything I've ever looked for (page formatting options, etc) are *exactly* where one would expect them to be.
This is one of the things I hate about the direction the Human Race. "I got used to it this way and, even though the new way is probably FAR more intuitive, I'm going to sit here and complain about how much productivity is going to go down, belly-aching the entire time."
Do some research. Spend TWO MINUTES looking over the NUMEROUS web pages that have lots of screen shots. I know that many of you don't like "software by focus group", but I think MS got it right this time (if they used a focus group for the UI, that is. They probably did...)
bork bork bork!
Frontpage has been dropped as of Office 2007. It has been replaced by two apps - SharePoint Designer and Expression Web - but I have yet to see them, and I'm just a little worried.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy.
For most of your message, I only have one comment. Those that are so resistant to change will eventually be filtered out of the gene pool, having been replaced by those who can look at alternatives to what they are doing, do some research, and make a choice as to which is better. That is what Evolution does. I know the creationists don't like to hear that, but, they too will soon be gone.
;)
Is there an equivaent to this on the ribbon? It seems almost entirely mouse dependent based on the pictures.
This was what I most wanted to touch on. From what few keyboard shortcuts I did know (cut, paste, Italics, Bold, etc), they all have the same shortcut. If, however, you wish to know what shortcut a particular option has, all one has to do is hover the mouse over the "button" that activates the option and some help text will pop up, including the keyboard shortcut (if that option has one).
Thank you for at least asking, instead of bashing it blindly.
bork bork bork!
Ah, but you may be wrong about this!
The gene pool is not supplied by the people who succeed financially, who buy that lovely $1,500,000 house in Woodside or glorious $3,500,000 beach cottage in Newport Beach. People like that have between one and two kids, trending towards one. Or even zero.
They are no match for the deeply conservative, creationist couple in the Midwest that struggles to get by with a $96,000 house, drives a rusty pickup instead of a gleaming Tesla roadster and has six children.
It's the people who have six kids who determine the gene pool. And they are the "resistant to change" types, not the "embrace change" types. In fact, many of the "embrace change" types have embraced the "zero population growth" idea halfway to extinction.
That might have been a bit too deep for this discussion, but I think it's something worth thinking about when you start talking about gene pools. The people you think are winning may in fact be losing. Big-time.
I'll bet a lot more Slashdotters are Tesla Roadster/Woodside house types than five children types. I know I am.
Anyway, on the much more trivial (but on topic) subject of the ribbon, I suspect this will at least somewhat reduce the use of keyboard shortcuts because they are not "in your face". At the same time, I remember that Word version 5.5 had a very easy to use style/formatting system and version 6 made it about double the complexity without any significant benefit. A return to a simpler style sheet system that's less confusing will help virtually everyone using Word.
I just hope they fix the crummy font rendering on the Mac. My favorite font (Optima) looks terrible in Word, glorious on Pages. Guess which word processor I use.
D
Everyone is always moaning about the training costs involved in moving people from Windows to Linux. Both Office 2007 and OpenOffice will require training, but which way will be cheaper?
and in its place is a steering wheel and foot pedals and a streamlined context-sensitive dash-board control with only a few buttons, but only the buttons that you happen to need at the time
A "context-sensitive dashboard"? What a horrible idea! Another poster very insightfully responded with a comparison to iDrive on BMWs and a few other high-end cars. General consensus is that it is total garbage--annoying at best and dangerous at worst. Why is that? Well, in a car the driver is the primary user of the dashboard and the driver is generally looking at the road ahead. The dashboard should NOT be "context-sensitive" or otherwise dynamic in nature. IT SHOULD BE STATIC. The important functions of a dashboard should ALL be visible, in the same place, ALL THE TIME (even better there should be a tactile element as well--buttons, knobs and such should be raised).
Drivers need to be able to use such an interface using quick glances and/or by feel. iDrive's ever-changing, and largely non-tactile user interface is much too distracting to the driver...it was so poorly conceived that Microsoft had to simplify the interface navigation and make the little knob have better tactile feedback in the next revision because as it was in its introduction it was almost totally unusable unless the driver was able to pull over, and users wanted many iDrive functions to be safely accessible while driving. Add to that the software bugs that caused such things as radio to go on and off at whim, trunks to open spontaneously and so on and iDrive has been a disaster.
I haven't yet tried out these "ribbon" things, though I've on a couple of occasions seen live demonstrations of the user interface. While almost anything could be better than the horrid menu system Office has traditionally had such a drastic change is pretty risky--they didn't even leave the wheel and pedals (to carry on the analogy)--it is more like they replaced the wheel with a joystick and the pedals with thumb-and-trigger buttons. Everything is in different places and WORKS differently--it doesn't matter if some study deems that technical advantages exceed disadvantages or that it is easier to learn--the fact is there are a billion people out there who know the old way of driving.
It is true that a desktop isn't a car and that the analogy isn't TOTALLY valid, however there are some universal principals of designing for usability that MS repeatedly insists on violating. The biggest of these is making things too "automatically dynamic". They've been doing this since sometime not long after NT4 came out: First they hide rarely-used start menu items...AUTOMATICALLY...WITHOUT user's input on how or when to do it. THEN they release XP and hide the old menu items under an added layer...and put FREQUENTLY used items out front...again without much control given to the user. I guess at least they threw us a *little* bone and let us "pin" icons and clear them out totally at will, but they re-appear (or don't) on what seems like a total whim.
Now they have this new MS Office with its "ribbons" and context-sensitivity and reorganisation and my first impression is that they KEEP ON HIDING AND MOVING STUFF for us. Much of the new interface is clever and makes navigation much less cumbersome. However, then they go and mess with your head again with these "dynamic" elements (galleries) and obscurity (putting what are basically file management functions in "another start menu" indicated only by a goofy little "office system" logo). I would've preferred a somewhat different approach--one that allowed a bit more user configure-ability. In any case I'll have a more informed opinion once I actually have to use it rather than sitting and watching a demo of it.
Perhaps someone can confirm to me whether or not my concerns is valid--has MS learned anything or are they still pushing the user around by doing too may user-interface alterations automatically?