Filed under: Windows, Office, Microsoft, Commercial
Office 2007 interface preview video
by Jordan Running Mar 28th 2006 at 5:50PM
By now you've probably seen a few screenshots of the new "ribbon" interface that will replace the menubar and toolbars in Microsoft Office 2007. It doesn't seem so mysterious to me, but then I'm not really Office's average use case. If you want a better idea of what using Office's new interface is really like, I recommend this streaming preview video (direct link to WMV stream) that Microsoft has put together. It's a 13-minute marketing piece so be prepared for some awkward scripted dialogue from Real Microsoft Employees (Dear Product Manager Julie Larson-Green: The camera is over here. Please look at it.), and unless you're a corporate executive you'll probably get the gist of it in the first five minutes. Personally I'm excited about the new interface, but then I only use Office a couple times a month and am used to picking up new interfaces at the drop of a hat. For the average cube-dweller, I'm not yet convinced that it wouldn't cost companies a bundle in time spent relearning.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
EdZ said 6:45PM on 3-28-2006
After using this interface for a while (nudge-nudge-wink-wink-say-no-more) I've found it to be incredibly difficult to get anything done. It looks pretty, but functionality has gone right down the pan. I'll stick with OpenOffice. At least I can actually FIND the button I'm looking for.
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Fabulo said 7:14PM on 3-28-2006
"The ribon contains different tabs which contain features organized based on specific scenarios"
Translation: your menu items are now graphical. They will always use some real estate on your screen because we ditched the "menus" and replaced them with a ribbon.
Also we shuffled things around.
We've suffered 15 years of the Windows-have-menus idea. I'm not sure if this is uch a revolution (cough-gimmick-cough)
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Michel said 8:30PM on 3-28-2006
More eye candy. It's no longer about productivity, but how pretty it looks (or not).
There is a reason good web sites, books, newspapers etc avoid all the eye candy. It takes away from the message and delivers ZERO value.
Looks like Microsoft has again forgoten that small fact.
KEEP IT SIMPLE
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duke said 10:42PM on 3-28-2006
i dont find any difference between office 2000 in comparism to office xp, which in comparism to office 2003 is also not much different, a little bit eye candy here and there. what makes microsoft think consumer needs to upgrade or purchase their newest, latest office suite, when we can get pretty much work done with just office 2000?
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shadekh said 5:22AM on 3-29-2006
Hmm, i find the new interface of the office beta rather refreshing. Though it takes more screen space, i always have on my hans the tools i need to use, and live preview itself is an excellent tool. It does have eye candy, but also enables non-power users to easily and simply create snazzy documents.
The main benefit of this version, imho, is to normal office users, not us techies. Sure, its kind of restrictive to us, but then, to normal users, this adds a LOt of functionality, exposing a lot of options that many people didnt even know about (for exaple, adding captions to images etc).
This release of office concentrates on ease of use. naturally it means some obscure options may be harder to find, but a lot more will be easier.
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eSeamus said 8:59AM on 3-29-2006
I'm just curious how large a footprint this is going to have thanks to all the "gallery" previews. Also, where would one go in this new Office to find settings for the software itself, not the document? I feel that, if I don't like a feature, I should be able to turn it off.
Do we really need "style" in Excel? If it's all about "number-crunching," shouldn't more focus be on making sure that the formulae are there that people need? For instance, create automatic formulae for tax calculation for businesses. Or, perhaps, automatic sales analysis. Do we really need shiny new visual enhancements?
And, wouldn't it be nice if Microsoft actually used PowerPoint for their presentations, instead of a high-paid visual arts department? Just a thought.
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EdZ said 10:16AM on 3-29-2006
I'd like to provide an example of how this interface can cause problems:
I have a project I've been working on for school, involving the use of macros in excel. I wanted to view the raw macros to edit them. There is no 'macros' buton or menu item to be found anywhere in the 'ribbon' or in right-click context menus. And even worse, the help provides no clue WHATSOEVER about where to find this simple and very important option. I was forced to install an older version of office or use OpenOffice to simply get to code that is already there. It's inconcievable that the ability to get to your macros has been removed fom Excel, so this is purely down to bad interface design.
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