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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.'"
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 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.
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.
...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.
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!