Submitted by “When Office 12 arrives sometime in the second half of 2006, you may stop hating Microsoft Office. We looked at an early, private beta version of the suite and found a lot of improvements. Although the interface is radically changed, a lot of the underlying features and commands remain the same. We won’t promise using Office 12 will be trouble-free, but so far it looks like a big step forward.” Another look at beta 1 can be found here.
“…you may stop hating Microsoft Office”
I doubt it. It will still be bloated. It will still be WAY over priced. It will still be buggy and not well written. It will still try to make me do things its way and not my way.
I don’t want to confuse the issue into thinking I want free software. I feel that people and companies that make software should be paid for it. That is far less of an issue than with the way that MS products work in general which I don’t like at all.
So … there will be little chance I will think about let alone look at their next bloated, buggy, over priced software.
I doubt it. It will still be bloated. It will still be WAY over priced. It will still be buggy and not well written. It will still try to make me do things its way and not my way.
As bloated as OOo? not very likely… Overpriced maybe, but for hardcore users it’s well worth the money. I mean if you wanna go budget, simply chose MS Works or OOo… what is the problem? I don’t mind paying for all those powerful features in Excel for instance.
Your problem is simply not related to the quality of Office I’m sure but related to Microsoft as a company. Sad people have such a hard time being enthusiastic about what is done good and then be critic to what is done bad….
Just how bloated do you think OOo is? Hmm, let’s see . . .
The way it seems is that MS is going for a look n feel similar to that of Photoshop and Indesign. What I mean is more small windows with tabs where you can do settings.
This is indeed a step forward it seems. I’m very enthusiastic about this. didn’t really get what they meant about renaming a file to zip and viewing it’s contents??? Would that mean each docx consists of many small files? Like if I add an image to a document I’ll see it as a separate file when renaming the document to .zip????
Interesting interesting…
Yes.
But the interface is already inconsistent. One app looks like the current 2003 [Project, Outlook] and others have the new ribbon, and GUI [Word]. Not to mention the dopey naming scheme. Office 12, which is supposed to be released as 2007 [same for Exchange 12]. I won’t even get into the Vista debate…
The more MS does these things, the more I may move to Linux on AMD or a MAC…
The whole thing with the new UI is, only the core apps get the new UI. The other ones, honestly, don’t really need a new UI. Though, it may be a little bit wierd with that inconsistancy.
What is dopey about the naming shceme?
So, Microsoft’s naming logic is what is pushing you to Linux? I’ve heard a huge number of reasons that people are switching to Linux, but this is the first time I’ve ever heard that the naming scheme is just soooo bad that they are switching.
Office 12 is not the marketing name, it’s the codename.
Office 2003 doesn’t handle .doc files from Office 2000 very well in my experience. OO.o does a much better job. I hope this improves with Office 12.
“Office 2003 doesn’t handle .doc files from Office 2000 very well in my experience. OO.o does a much better job. I hope this improves with Office 12.”
Can you provide a reproducable scenario, or an example document? I was wondering about that in the ODF discussions.
Sure. Give me your e-mail address, and I’ll send you an example of a lecture ppt file I made. My email is [email protected].
Good that Microsoft is finally supporting the new OpenDocument standard and recognizes the ISO which is expected to endorse it.
Hmmm…see Groklaw for arguments counter to your ‘supporting’ assertion.
It’s about time they took notes from more professional typesetting paradigms.
Document data and structure are inherantly different things and only the final print job can make them truly indestinguishable. Until them you need to be aware of how things are happening, to some extent, so that you can better manipulate it.
Maybe now I won’t see so many Word knockoffs and people will finally try for a good GUI typesetting program (I’m talking about FOSS stuff, I imagine Adobe probably makes multiple high quality programs for this).
The new graphics are very impressive, as are the headers, footers and title page and content page templates.
..support ODF files?
If not, what’s the use of bothering
It won’t be a competition on features then anyway.
..support ODF files?
If not, what’s the use of bothering
It won’t be a competition on features then anyway.
Another interesting question that has just occured to me after reading David Berlind’s bog on PWDs (People With Disabilities) and ODF:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2163
is the question will Office 12 break compatability with proprietary addons to Office for PWD’s. This is very relevant to the debate of ODF vs MS Office in Massachusetts.
I’d really like to sit here and be armchair UI expert, but I’m not going to. I don’t have the software in front of me, and as far as I can tell, neither do any of you. Until I get a chance to see how good (or bad) the UI is, how functional or beautiful it is I’ll refrain from damning or praising it.
A few possibly old screenshots don’t give us much of an inclination of what the final product will be like, and if enough Real World beta testers give MS feedback on how they like the experience the final product might just be better.
Unfortunately for us, the UI FAQs at the Office 12 website is just marketing gibberish and gives us no clue as to any functionality.
Then again, what do I know?
One interesting thing I did find is this little question on the FAQ page:
Q. Should developers use the new Microsoft Office UI as a model for designing the UI to their applications?
A. The new Microsoft Office UI was designed very specifically for Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Access. Although it is not intended to be a model UI for all other applications, UI designers may find that some of the principles that went into designing the new Office UI apply to their own UI design challenges.
So, they’re inviting people to use their (likely to be patented) ideas? Hmmm…
Edited 2005-11-18 00:02
They alredy did that with Office 2000 (I think 2000 was the first that did that) and later with 2003. Office is Microsoft’s way of showing off some cool UI stuff. Never mind what that FAQ says, this look wil be in gazillion other (third party) apps as well and that’s not even a good thing, because I know a lot of programmers will put it in even though it will render the UI useless. I run over an app that uses Office 2003 style menus almost every day, even when it is completely unnecessary.
So, I think it is really important for Microosft to get this menu right, because there will be a lot of other aps using the (basically) same thing.
…so I don’t have to ‘stop hating’ it.
This site is really going down hill.
Awful, just awful editorial commentary.
Why is “this site” going downhill? All this site really does is quote excerpts from news and editorials and then link to them. In what way does that cause this site to “go downhill?”
I really liked it when Anonymous comments were disabled, it really cut crap like this out.
Looks like Microsoft is starting to do something now! Nothing happened with MS-Office after Office97.
Why? Why bother? They didn`t have any competition anyway. The same with Windows. They have to work now! Why? Open Source gives them preasure.
There are some nice ideas, but Windows needs and overhaul in the UI department (as well as the lower levels, but thas a different department altogether) along with Office and all their major products; they need ONE grand unified standard; nothing wrong with different look and feels; what is the problem is whe way that each different application of Office behaves differently.
For example, I used Office and found for example, that my local would be set to New Zealand, the dictionary would be automatically either set to Australian or American English – both are ABSOLUTELY wrong – the default dictionary SHOULD be British English; Australian English has some Americana spellings, NZ still retains the standard British English.
When this dictionary has been changed for example, in Word, those values should not only be saved and used in word for EVERY new documented in the future but used by the other components of Office; everytime those Office components load, they should refer back to ONE source of configuration; the dictionary I have setup in Word should be used on Excel, PowerPoint etc. etc.
Microsoft CAN’T control what third parties do with their software, but they CAN control how their interfaces are developed; if they keep a unified interface model for all their software, then atleast a first time user, once they’ve learned the necessary navigation information, it should be simply a matter of transfering those navigation skills to the new application, learn those new terms and you’re away.
People may give apple a hard time with their patch work of different UI looks (Finder vs. iTunes vs. Mail), but they have still maintained the same navigation user interface guidelines of being able to navigate the software just as they would with every other Mac application.
…one of the first pages show fake small caps, and the rest of the text seems of so low typographic quality, yet I still see shitloads of features, but what I’d really want: a tool which allowed me create easy readable documents.
So I just stick with LaTeX for docs, gnuplot for charts, and real programming lanuages for data.
… for the new version of MS Office. I use open office at home but at work I use MS Office. I write market reports for a living and frankly OOo doesn’t have the features all of the features that I need. I often have to share my documents with other contributors and editors and I find MS Office to be much more accomodating to this , allowing me to keep track of everyones contribution to the project. Anyway, I think the new office looks promosing.
I know some people think that OOo is a viable alternative to MS Office. I think it is the smart choice for your average home user; but for people that do an intensive amount of writing and editing, MS Office is a much better choice (even if you have to put up with bugs).
#6 “Good that Microsoft is finally supporting the new OpenDocument standard and recognizes the ISO which is expected to endorse it.”
Nope – what Microsoft does is introducing their own closed open document formats.
Some call it their alternative to the ODF – except that ODF is true open formats.