Home > Office > Screenshots of Office 12

Screenshots of Office 12

Office 126 Comments

Screenshots of Office 12 have been published. You’ll be amazed (for better or worse, your call). “As you can see, Microsoft is trying to do away with the ‘legacy’ menu bar. In newer Vista builds the menu bar is turned off by default (although it can be reactivated temporarily by pressing alt). In Office 12, the menus have been replaced with tab-like buttons. The only ‘legacy’ menu item that remains is the file menu, but it has completely been redesigned. The file menu now looks like the Windows XP start menu and can be customized as well.” You can find more information and shots on Microsoft’s website.

About The Author

Thom Holwerda

Follow me on Mastodon @[email protected]

126 Comments

  1. 2005-09-13 5:23 pm
    Anonymous

    If you want to use Microsoft Office 12 or later, you will have to learn a new menu system. If you are fine with the current system, use OpenOffice.org.

    For businesses, upgrading to Office 12 or later means expensive training! Downtime! More calls to tech support! Higher TCO!

    • 2005-09-13 5:48 pm
      Anonymous

      Looks like there’s no way around learning something new. Be it FOSS or be it MS’s new platform.

    • 2005-09-13 6:05 pm
      paul.michael.bauer

      Since there is a learning curve, why not go with the best product/interface?

      The Office 12 interface is a whole generation beyond anything Microsoft or OO.org currently offers.

      • 2005-09-13 6:40 pm
        unoengborg

        Yes, I totally agree.

        With that you can probably write a whole new generation of salesletters, invoices and such. Oh, wait a minut…

      • 2005-09-13 11:25 pm
        ma_d

        How’s that? You assume, without knowing much at all about it, that this new interface is a good idea.

    • 2005-09-13 11:30 pm
      aliquis

      Yeah, better upgrade to Office 12 immediately, why did openoffice stuck to the crappy interface of Office to begin with? They all look like shit to me.

  2. 2005-09-13 5:24 pm
    Anonymous

    About the word screenshot (word12.png)…. sure it’s much more aestetically pleasing than xp… but the menu bar is… is… is? what is that mess? The File menu has a down arrow, then there are two icons (save redo-undo) then a menu item without arrow but with a glass background, a few more menu items and then tabletools. In orange, with a tab overlapping the title bar. If this is an indication of windows VISTA interface guidelines… we’re doomed.

    • 2005-09-13 5:30 pm
      JustinF

      The File menu has a down arrow, then there are two icons (save redo-undo) then a menu item without arrow but with a glass background, a few more menu items and then tabletools. In orange, with a tab overlapping the title bar.

      Yes, I agree…hopefully it’ll go through a couple more refinements before it hits the streets.

      I think I like the idea of having panels of similar “actions”, though. It’ll take some getting used to, but in the end, this seems like it could be a little more productive.

    • 2005-09-13 7:28 pm
      Anonymous

      It looks like we’ll ahve to get ready for the day Microsoft wants to plant borg implants in our head so we can control the computer with thoughts (grin)

  3. 2005-09-13 5:25 pm
    Anonymous

    What’s up with the “Metal” rip-off ? And good god, tabs ? I have a feeling that won’t go too well.

    • 2005-09-13 6:01 pm
      Anonymous

      > What’s up with the “Metal” rip-off ?

      Viewing the shots in Safari it was not immediately obvious where Safari ended and the Office shot began.

  • 2005-09-14 4:32 am
    japail

    Despite the introduction of the Active Desktop, I cannot say that I’ve ever had to deal with anyone that had their desktop altered with any sort of embedded widget. Because of the way technologically-challenged people often use Windows (maximizing every program) the desktop is probably a mediocre place to display ads. Now all sorts of window-spawning junk, that’s pretty common.

  • 2005-09-13 5:25 pm
    Anonymous

    Some of these changes are cool, but it shows a lot of inconsistency between Windows, Office, and 3rd party programs in terms of methods of use, aesthetic style, etc. Users will be confused.

  • 2005-09-13 5:28 pm
    Anonymous

    That MS is risking alienating too many people… Some changes seem to be very nice while others… seems to be gratuitous.

    • 2005-09-13 6:09 pm
      paul.michael.bauer

      When Apple scraps an industry-leading product for something new (mini for nano) it is “bold” and “innovative”.

      When Microsoft scraps an industry-leading product for something new (Office11 for Office12) it “risks alienating too many people”.

      Please!

      • 2005-09-13 6:14 pm
        andrewg

        The interface for Nano appears identical to the other ipods, and the ipod is a relatively simple appliance with limited functionality. Office is a big complicated application.

      • 2005-09-13 9:49 pm
        StephenBeDoper

        That’s a really poor analogy.

    • 2005-09-13 7:30 pm
      Anonymous

      Yeh… no office 12 for me anytime soon.

    • 2005-09-14 12:28 am
      rayiner

      I agree. Are these changes motivated by hard UI studies showing that they are better (both theoretically, and in practice), or because the marketing department wanted more “product differentiation”?

  • 2005-09-13 5:30 pm
    Anonymous

    While the guys from openoffice have ripped off the Office 2003 GUI in openoffice 2 (which hasn’t even been released yet), Miucrosoft go 5 steps ahead with this sleek gui.

    • 2005-09-13 6:05 pm
      unoengborg

      Given that most users are at least 5 years behind,

      3 years behind may turn out to be the right thing to be.

      Looking at the screen shots, I conclude that it will require a lot less training to upgrade to OOo 2.0 than to MS-Office 12 if you run some older version of windows. I also doubt that MS-Office 12 will run on older versions of windows. That too will be beneficial to the adoptation of OOo.

      If Microsoft havn’t been able to get their customers to upgrade to their current MS-Office 2003 (today it have only 15% of the market), they are not likely to go for MS-Office 12.

      This doesn’t look good for Microsoft.

      • 2005-09-13 7:39 pm
        Anonymous

        The only thing that stops me from adopting oo is the lack of accessibility with adaptive technologies (I’m visually impaired). If they work on better accessibility, and get it to a usable point, I’ll consider switching permanently.

        • 2005-09-13 8:59 pm
          butters

          You’re better off waiting for a resurgence of the GNOME Office project. GTK with Cairo at least allows the kind of vector scaling necessary for proper magnification technology. XUL is… well, it’s not crap, but I can’t think of a better word right now.

          • 2005-09-14 12:38 pm
            mrroach

            OOo has nothing to do with XUL, it has its own cross-platform toolkit: VCL. Additionally, OOo does have at least some accessibility features: http://ui.openoffice.org/accessibility/at.html I don’t know much about the subject myself, but I would be surprised if Sun had not put a lot of effort into accessibility. They certainly did with Gnome.

            -Mark

          • 2005-09-14 8:07 pm
            Anonymous

            No doubt they have put work into accessibility, and I certainly can appreciate that. But, it still needs some work. I will get better and more polished over time, and I’m confident that in a few more years I’ll finally be able to get rid of ms-office forever.

          • 2005-09-14 8:18 pm
            Anonymous

            Corrected post:

            No doubt they have put work into accessibility, and I certainly can appreciate that. But, it still needs some work. it will get better and more polished

            over time, and I’m confident that in a few more years I’ll finally be able to get rid of ms-office forever.

  • 2005-09-13 5:32 pm
    cadtag

    if you really want to do any work. It appears that only about 48% of the window is actual document – the remainder consists of UI elements. Whether it’s developers or marketers, it’s pretty apparent that the people putting this program together care a lot more about their screen appearance than about the user’s document, or his ability to see and work with it

    • 2005-09-14 2:46 am
      ma_d

      Microsoft Word is a document preperation utility, not a text editor. What do you expect? The program is designed to format text, and making it as a secondary ability.

      Why don’t you do what people used to, and still should, do: Write your documents in a standard editor. Save them. Copy and paste them into Word when you finish, and format them all at once.

      You’ll never waste an hour playing with formats and then changing it again later (because you only format at the end, when you know all the text is there) and if you want to send it to people internally you can attach the most compatible file format: Plaintext.

      • 2005-09-14 4:38 am
        japail

        You waste several hundred dollars on an office suite so that you can use Word to waste an arbitrary amount of time reformatting a document after you’ve written it in a more primitive tool? Ok, that makes a lot of sense.

      • 2005-09-14 8:24 am
        Anonymous

        “Why don’t you do what people used to, and still should, do: Write your documents in a standard editor. Save them”

        Yes, this is my own reaction, but with a slight difference. It seems that the page layout aspects of word processing software is really taking over and imposing terrific overhead. But, to do good page layout, you really do not need Word (or even OO). Lyx is probably the answer, if people could take the time to learn it.

        KWriter might be a second, though it doesn’t keep you away from the page layout as well. Easier to learn, though.

  • 2005-09-13 5:32 pm
    cujo

    I think the new approach could be a good thing for MS. For one, it differentiates itself from openoffice visually. So far all the posts have knocked the new look as “confusing” or “messy”, but give it a chance. I think it looks much cleaner than the current incarnation of office.

    To be frank, I was tired of the toolbars everywhere. If you’ve used office on 1024×768 or less, you know that you quickly run out of real estate for all the toolbars when you need them.

    It will be interesting. Any word on how delayed the mac version will be?

    • 2005-09-13 5:44 pm
      Anonymous

      I don’t know. Tabs have been used elsewhere and in no case they substituted the menu bar. If they plan to kill the menubar, that’s good, but the alternative should be valid and working. Not just a proof of concept. WHat is most worrying though is that most of windows VISTA (as far as we know) still rely on menubars, therefore having the MAJOR microsoft app ignoring completely the OS guidelines is not good at all. Not only that, we still have the file menu and makes the users wonder “why the hell it’s no tab like the others?” And the icons too? all in one place? I tend to agree with others: too much space wasted onto the interface, not much document to work on. But at least this seem the only guideline followed, which is common to the whole VISTA family of products. More shiny, more gigantic icons, more effects. If we can add some functionality over that, good. Otherwise it would be “just fine”.

  • 2005-09-13 5:36 pm
    Tyr.

    Not only have they made it ugly and more complicated than it has to be by adding tabs (“Hey everyone seems to love these tab things let’s use them in each product we make”) but now Openoffice actually looks more than the classic office suite than MS Office does.

    Think about it : would you rather retrain all your users to use this thing, or would you rather give them OpenOffice that works/looks more like what their used to and is free to boot ?

    • 2005-09-13 6:20 pm
      unoengborg

      “Think about it : would you rather retrain all your users to use this thing, or would you rather give them OpenOffice that works/looks more like what their used to and is free to boot ?”

      And not to mention have a standardized, well documented and free for all to use xml based document format. That is easy to integrate into in house projects without any extra hazzle with licences from other parties, and an office suite that doesn’t require you to upgrade old versions of windows.

      That choise is really a nobrainer.

      • 2005-09-13 7:02 pm
        Anonymous

        And not to mention have a standardized, well documented and free for all to use xml based document format. That is easy to integrate into in house projects without any extra hazzle with licences from other parties, and an office suite that doesn’t require you to upgrade old versions of windows.

        Sorry, you are completely missinformed. Read a little bit more on the subject. Google with the keywords: OASIS, Massachussetts, “office 12 xml format”, OpenDocument (and not OpenDoc) as starting points.

      • 2005-09-14 5:10 am
        unoengborg

        And not to mention have a standardized, well documented and free for all to use xml based document format. That is easy to integrate into in house projects without any extra hazzle with licences from other parties, and an office suite that doesn’t require you to upgrade old versions of windows.

        Sorry, you are completely missinformed. Read a little bit more on the subject. Google with the keywords: OASIS, Massachussetts, “office 12 xml format”, OpenDocument (and not OpenDoc) as

        Could you give me some clue on whats supposed to be missinformed? Googling doesn’t seam to help.

        OpenOffice.org is licenced under LGPL, thus open for all, XML is easy to integrate into other appls, there are lots and lots of libraries in various languages that handles XML. OpenOffice doesn’t require the latest version of windows. So, is there some problem using the OASIS standard? or what?

        • 2005-09-14 6:17 pm
          Anonymous

          “Could you give me some clue on whats supposed to be missinformed? Googling doesn’t seam to help.”

          English is not my native language. That’s why this reply will be short.

          Strange, you did not find any info on the subject. I really spend a whole evening surfing on this – very intersting. I may suggest this link as a starting point:

          http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/why-opendocument-won.html

          Two tips you should be aware, when reading on the subject. Pay attention to the words xml, Opendocument, and OpenOffice.

          Microsoft is speaking about XML, when you should read Office 12 XML format. Microsoft does also make the confusion between OpenOffice file format and OpenDocument.

          Have a pleasant reading.

          • 2005-09-14 7:59 pm
            unoengborg

            [i]

            RE[4]: Good move MS

            By Anonymous (IP: 81.62.43.—) on 2005-09-14 18:17:05 UTC in reply to “RE[3]: Good move MS”

            “Could you give me some clue on whats supposed to be missinformed? Googling doesn’t seam to help.”

            English is not my native language. That’s why this reply will be short.

            Strange, you did not find any info on the subject. I really spend a whole evening surfing on this – very intersting. I may suggest this link as a starting point:

            http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/why-opendocument-won.html

            Two tips you should be aware, when reading on the subject. Pay attention to the words xml, Opendocument, and OpenOffice.

            Microsoft is speaking about XML, when you should read Office 12 XML format. Microsoft does also make the confusion between OpenOffice file format and OpenDocument.

            Have a pleasant reading.

            [i]

            Still can’t see the problem using OpenOffice.org

            Your own link states that OpenOffice.org is an implementation of OpenDocument (they are of course refering to version OpenOffice.ort 2.0 or 1.1.5 or later).

            Your link also states that OpenDocument was based on the fileformat of OpenOffice predating version 1.1.5.

            The link also mentions licencing problems of the Microsoft XML format (presumably that of Office 12)

            Finally looking at the screenshots of OpenOffice 2.0 an d those of Office 12, I would guess that Office 12 will be the one office suit that requres the most training before it can be used by users of current Microsoft office suits.

  • 2005-09-13 5:36 pm
    Thom Holwerda

    I really like this new approach by Microsoft– it shows that they’re really putting work into Office/Vista, which is a good thing no matter what. I’m still not sure though fi I were to like this new interface over Office:Mac’s incredible slick and easy-to-use UI, but it sure does come close.

    Disclaimer: I use Office:Mac, but obviously haven’t used Office12– we’ll have to wait and see how this UI turns out behaviourally.

    • 2005-09-13 5:48 pm
      Tyr.

      I really like this new approach by Microsoft– it shows that they’re really putting work into Office/Vista, which is a good thing no matter what.

      Yeah because changing a working interface (that everybody and their dog knows how to use) for no apparent reason is always a good thing. Hey at least they changed some code.

    • 2005-09-14 10:26 am
      kaiwai

      I really like this new approach by Microsoft– it shows that they’re really putting work into Office/Vista, which is a good thing no matter what. I’m still not sure though fi I were to like this new interface over Office:Mac’s incredible slick and easy-to-use UI, but it sure does come close.

      Disclaimer: I use Office:Mac, but obviously haven’t used Office12– we’ll have to wait and see how this UI turns out behaviourally.

      Office:Mac, IMHO, is a great interface; they’ve done heaps of work, and believe me, if it weren’t for the lack of Access or decenting marketing by 4D (which IMHO beats Access hands down), and a Project like piece of software, every man and his dog, in regards to the IT department would move to Apple Macs.

      What SUN need to do, in regards to OpenOffice.org (yeah, I know, incredibly off topic) – is heaps of work on the API as to allow ISVs and developers to build value added services and products ontop of the OpenOffice.org infrastructure; a better documented Macro language would be a step in the right direction, free retraining for Microsoft Certified Engineers – hell, give them some free books after the course; get the masses of developers out there educated so that the cost of customising, installing and maintaining OpenOffice.org is lower than Office – then you’ll see people moving.

  • 2005-09-13 5:41 pm
    Eugenia Loli

    I like the new toolbar/menu paradigm a lot. Good move.

    • 2005-09-13 5:50 pm
      Anonymous

      Eugenia come one, that’s not a paradigm, that’s a complete mess! Tabs might be a good idea, toolbars too. But it doesn’t mean that mixing them together produces good results. To me: IF (a bif IF) the interface stays that way, it’s substantially broken. Nice ideas, fut for a demo maybe, not for a finished product. I generally agree that the usual menubar paradigm is definitely getting old, but this is not the way to go. Or at least is half-way through.

    • 2005-09-13 5:55 pm
      Tyr.

      I like the new toolbar/menu paradigm a lot. Good move.

      Let’s see : tabbar that doesn’t immediately make clear that it are tabs (only active tab looks somewhat like tab). Menu that doesn’t look like a menu but a drop down list. Menu on the same level as the tabbar to further obscure its meaning. Oversized icon space wasters on the toolbar. Big empty grey space on the right.

      Looks like classic interface hall of shame to me.

  • 2005-09-13 5:48 pm
    Anonymous

    Ok, the effect looks nice but it’s going to look VERY out of place on the XP UI. To me it looks like a mish mash of UI all thrown together, and seems they are following Apple on the look.

    Yet again Microsoft breaking UI, Gnome, KDE, Mac-OSX have never been so ahead in UI simplicity and now even more.

  • 2005-09-13 5:51 pm
    Anonymous

    If you look at the screenshots, you will notice that the menus are not eliminated, they are only moved to the toolbars.

    for example, in Word, on the insert tab, the Pages, table, picture, links ….. are all menus. Granted they are probably short menus, but this might mean, that using Office 12 will involve a lot of clicking.

    It would be nicer if they were dockable tabs as in Photoshop, so that several sets of them could be displayed at a time. Perhaps they might do that in the final version.

  • 2005-09-13 5:58 pm
    Wrawrat

    The interface isn’t bad, but it doesn’t look that great either. It doesn’t look usable with lower resolutions like 800×600, especially with actions and properties panes. Many people are still working with low resolutions, especially those with bad vision. However, the major issue is familiarity. A complete overhaul of the interface inevitably means that most users will have to relearn the interface, lowering their productivity for a while. Was it really necessary?

    It does look very usable for a new user, but I fear old timers will have an hard time. Of course, we will know once it’s out, but I will probably stay with Office 2003/OOo 2/LaTeX…

  • 2005-09-13 6:01 pm
    smileaf

    any one notice anything weird about that save dialog?

    in particular the file type and save path at the bottom? ;)

    over all the save dialog doesn’t _look_ that bad.

    But definitely as someone already pointed out. the consistency.. um… wait.. what consistency? sorry.. my bad.

  • 2005-09-13 6:02 pm
    Anonymous

    Though I’ll never know whether or not this UI convention will work (unless they port it to Office:Mac…. then again, Pages has been great for my needs) it does appear to be…. oh, wait…. What about Dreamweaver’s tool bar?

    http://www.cylinder4.com/dwtools.png

    I was about to give them kudos for coming up with something new… but it seems to be directly “influenced” by the functionality shown in the above image.

    In any case, I do like DW’s toolbar – though it is much cleaner than what MS is showing….

  • 2005-09-13 6:03 pm
    Smartpatrol

    Ultimately though when you think about it what can this version do better then say office 2000 when it come to writing documents? not much. The only portion of office i would be interested in seeing is Outlook.

  • 2005-09-13 6:03 pm
    Anonymous

    I’m pretty certain Microsoft will have a “Classic” interface people can switch to. They have done this many times before. I personally always accept the new interfaces very hesitantly but in the long run, I always find myself moving to the new interfaces because they are better.

    • 2005-09-13 7:28 pm
      rightWingNutJob

      If you read the interview, the developer (or product manager, or whatever) states that there will not be a “classic” interface.

  • 2005-09-13 6:05 pm
    historyb

    ugly, gawdy.

  • 2005-09-13 6:15 pm
    Adurbe

    Obviously I cannot judge until I have used it,

    but to me it looks like a nice interface that will take longer to load and use effectivly… Its turning word into a wysiwig program instead of a word processor, I would not be suprised if it started to handle images in the same way as Pages does (Pages is Apple’s WP)

  • 2005-09-13 6:17 pm
    Anonymous

    Just admit it, you people hate everything Microsoft does. You’d bitch if it was too similar to the old version, you’d bitch if they only changed it a little, and you’re bitching now that they’ve changed it up a lot.

    Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll be able to find all of the commands and options after about 10 minutes of using it for the first time.

    I’m no Microsoft worshiper, but it looks pretty neato to me. I look forward to trying it out.

  • 2005-09-13 6:23 pm
    Anonymous

    It will suck for everybody here until KDE rip it off, then it will be “Kool”.

    I like it.

  • 2005-09-13 6:29 pm
    Anonymous

    “Oh lord : ” Desktop Gadgets can developed using Windows Presentation Foundation, DHTML/Atlas, and even ActiveX controls.” ”

    now I know where the “Plasma idea” came. nothing but another Windows rip off.

  • 2005-09-13 6:32 pm
    Anonymous

    I find the new GUI beautiful and relaxing. I think it beats the pants out of any Office product I’ve used.

  • 2005-09-13 6:35 pm
    Anonymous

    Great, as Windows gets older it looks more and more childish, anyone heard of ‘less is more.’

    I used to think it was a shame that Microsoft never hired professional designers but just let developers use ‘paint’ to create icons.

    Not any longer, now every app is designed in photoshop.

    • 2005-09-14 8:26 am
      Anonymous

      i think its a shame. but i no longer care, cause i dont use windows anymore. I use linux and design my own os.

  • 2005-09-13 6:37 pm
    Anonymous

    That looks stunningly beautiful. The new statusbar is finally functional! The Side pane on Access with all your objects does away with the stupid database window. The colour grouping of tools on Excel and Powerpoint are an excellent user feature.

    The toolbar does need work, but having it tabbed will do away with me having to turn off six unecesary toolbars on every machine I go to because users don’t know how to drag, nor switch off the toolbars themselves.

  • 2005-09-13 6:53 pm
    Anonymous

    Its an office product. You are supposed to work with it… not relax to it or admire its beauty, unless it aids in functionality,, which I doubt..

    2 people used it? So I guess I know where you 2 work.

    Fake grass comes to mind.

    I agree with the other poster… MS is just embracing and extending other products.. Dreamweaver(UI), Karamba/Gdesklets/what ever apple’s is. As for Plasma.. Im willing to bet neither KDE nor MS came up with that first.

    Next theyll patent this crap to lock people (read everyone but MS) out.

    But anyway,, its nice to see something lit a fire under MS’s collective ass. To little to late in my opinion though.

    All the eyecandy in the world cant overshadow the fact that all your computer are belong to them.. Look at the shiny UI,, dont look at the DRM or information being sent out about you, or that we stripped functionality out for money and to appease the entertainment industry.

    You all forget we are the customers, tell them what you want.. dont just except it like sheeple. All I see here are idiots looking at the shiny new nickel they stuck in front of you.

    Have fun falling off the cliff.

  • 2005-09-13 6:54 pm
    corentin

    They should completely remove this annoying, space-wasting document below the Enterprise’s dashboard, so they can have more room for blinkenlights, knobs and eye-candy bullshit.

    After all, you are not writing a document, you are using Office (it is more fun anyway).

  • 2005-09-13 7:23 pm
    thabrain

    The screenshots look very nice.

    What kind of impact is this going to have on system resources? Office already taxes existing versions of Windows. My users already have problems running existing versions of Office on their PC’s.

    I can’t really endorse this until I see it run.

  • 2005-09-13 7:24 pm
    Buck

    My god. MS Gadgets. Absolute shameless MacOSX UI ripoff for office. You do admit it’s shameless, don’t you? Well, why not make the WHOLE Windows UI look like Tiger then…

  • 2005-09-13 7:32 pm
    aseigo

    > now I know where the “Plasma idea” came.

    evidently you don’t =)

    this is the first i’ve seen of “microsoft gadgets” and, more importantly, plasma is more than “desktop gadgets” ala dashboard or what the website showed.

    i appreciate your awareness of the plasma project, despite the scepticism. =)

    • 2005-09-13 8:54 pm
      butters

      Now that the barrage of MS PDC articles is hitting OSNews, I can’t believe how many people demonstrate a tragically flawed understanding of the goals of KDE’s Plamsa project. This from readers of the same website that posted an informative interview on the subject less than a month ago:

      http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=11617

      I don’t know, Aaron, maybe you need to take more time away from your busy schedule to educate the OSNews community about what makes Plasma vastly different from Dashboard, Konfabulator, and now Sidebar Widgets… wait… no, they’re hopeless.

  • 2005-09-13 7:46 pm
    Anonymous

    Sorry Windows folks, but Open Office has become the new standard. Wake up!

    • 2005-09-13 8:18 pm
      unoengborg

      “Sorry Windows folks, but Open Office has become the new standard. Wake up!”

      Not yet, today it have about the same market share as MS-Office 2003, but give it five years…

      What Sun is doing with OpenOffice.org/StarOffice is essetially what Microsoft did with internet explorer. At the time, nobody believed IE would replace Netscape as the leading web browser. But it did.

      Free, is very hard to beat. Free and good is even harder.

  • 2005-09-13 7:46 pm
    Anonymous

    Good:

    1) Grouping similar actions.

    2) I do like that think line of icons on the left of the screen. Its kind of like the mozilla status bar. IE:

    http://pdc.xbetas.com.nyud.net:8090/images/word12-2.png

    3) At least it looks like there is a classic mode:

    http://pdc.xbetas.com.nyud.net:8090/images/oldfrontpage12-2.png

    Bad:

    1) Horrible waste of space. Where is in the heck is my documnet?

    2) Get ride of that side bar; it takes up too much real estate. Yes, it can be closed but in previous versions of office it has a tendance to open up.

    3) No consistancy; can we get everything on screen the same size?

    4) MS really has to rethink this lay out:

    http://pdc.xbetas.com.nyud.net:8090/images/savedialog.jpg

    I don’t know where to begin!!!!!!!!1

    5) Why would someone put two saves in the menu:

    http://pdc.xbetas.com.nyud.net:8090/images/filemenu.png

    Save and Save as. How about one box with the save options with nesting.

    6) Ok, the brushed metal looks a lot like Apple, do something else. Jeeze

    • 2005-09-13 11:16 pm
      Anonymous

      Responding to a few of your questions/comments…

      RE Good:

      3) There is no classic mode unless you’re a developer who has built a custom application on Office. Julie says this in her interview (url in the body of this post).

      RE Bad:

      1) The ribbon is as tall as menu + 3 toolbars, which is what most people have today, so no space lost. Also, you can collapse it away simply by clicking the open tab.

      2) We’ve worked hard to stop opening task panes on you without you explicitly asking for them this version.

      5) SaveAs is not the same as save. Save As gives you the choice of a different file type. The idea here is to reduce the number of mouse clicks necessary to get to the highly used ‘save’ button.

  • 2005-09-13 7:49 pm
    Anonymous

    yeah!! bring’em on!!! microsoft gadgets!!! when I first had a look at the page, I thought it was some joke or something. pffff… Incredible. “Have you ever wondered how new technologies get developed in Microsoft? Wonder how a cool idea goes from incubation to release?” Now I know. They’re copied from somebody else or bought just in case they’re copyrighted. I guess the guys from Konfabulator are just laughing all day long (or crying that is, if they lack sense of humor ;) ) As for all the “microsoft bashing” theory:

    1) Microsoft has NEVER given proof that they have any idea of what the terms “consistency” “guidelines” and generally “design” actually mean. Sure their products are widespread and some are actually quite good, but as far as the interface is concerned, Microsoft has never got the lesson right.

    2) You can kill something that works (even if it is as bad as current office 2003 interface) if you substitute it with something that works better. Having a nice new idea is not enough. With all recent work produced inside microsoft the main problem is that these guys lack direction. They’re trying, searching for good ideas in order to innovate their product line. But there’s no project behind. So they add features, stuff, effects, then they remove it. This is not “polishing a product” it’s trial and error.

  • 2005-09-13 8:03 pm
    Anonymous

    This is some of the most confusing, ugly, messed up GUI layout I’ve ever seen.

    Badly designed skinned apps and badly designed AND programmed VB programs PALE in comparison.

    Really, I can’t look at the toolbar without being utterly confused.

    And I am a programmer, sysadmin, and power user. Oh, and I’ve done my share of user support and well… the average Joe-Office-User can’t find the “work offline” menu in Office2003 (outlook) as it is NOW.

    Think the same Joe with this… this… abomination on his PC… they’ll call the helpdesk to Open and Save files, trust me.

    • 2005-09-13 11:18 pm
      Anonymous

      Belive it or not, Office does a lot of testing how “Joe the Office user” will respond. So far, the feedback has been very positive.

      • 2005-09-14 7:54 am
        Anonymous

        Belive it or not, Office does a lot of testing how “Joe the Office user” will respond. So far, the feedback has been very positive.

        I don’t believe it, actually.

        If they did, they’d know that the average office user can’t figure out Office NOW (and it has been like that since… well, since the beginning).

        I worked for tech support for a sales force of 700+ people (largest “mobile salesforce” in italy, if you listen to their managers). They all have Panasonic Toughbooks with Office preloaded.

        They never figured OfficeXP, and the transition to 2003 was very painful and confusing.

        They are not dumb (not all of them, at least): they simply are chocolate sellers (literally) that were forced to use a PC to do their work. They do not CARE for the PC, and they receive very little training. And this profile suits 90% of the office pc users (in italy, at least): people that are forced to use a tool that they do not understand nor they were trained to use.

        To me 700+ people looks like a sizeable statistic base; throw in 200+ people in a hospital from a former client.

        I probably “tested” and “studied” more user experiences than Microsoft, otherwise they’d know that people don’t grasp TODAY’s interfaces.

        Tomorrow’s interface looks like icons scattered at random, ant that’s not gonna help, is it?

    • 2005-09-14 12:39 am
      historyb

      I agree, I get questions like these from users about office 2003 now. This is going to confuse people more. Thanks Bill

  • 2005-09-13 8:22 pm
    Anonymous

    “this is the first i’ve seen of “microsoft gadgets” and, more importantly, plasma is more than “desktop gadgets” ala dashboard or what the website showed. ”

    And what’s the difference?

    I see both the same, widgets on the desktop that can atached and deatached to the panel.

  • 2005-09-13 8:35 pm
    Anonymous

    Looks like they are trying to copy the OS X interface, only failing miserably.

    It looks entirely too busy, Apple manages to keep the interface simple because most things go into the panel, this is simply a mess though.

    I believe this is the worst interface I have ever seen, and I hope I never have to actually learn it!

    Microsoft is running out of idea’s it seem’s, not that they have ever been famous for thinking of things for themselves.

  • 2005-09-13 8:36 pm
    Anonymous

    My first thought was “What the Fuck!”

    My second “Is this the Mac version? No, it can’t be.”

    My third “They can’t be serous about this!”

    Over all, this “new and improved” system reminds me why I stay away from food in the supermarket that label on it. I don’t know if want to laugh or puke. It’s an unpleasant feeling somewhere in-between not unlike dread.

  • 2005-09-13 9:04 pm
    Anonymous

    “I don’t know, Aaron, maybe you need to take more time away from your busy schedule to educate the OSNews community about what makes Plasma vastly different from Dashboard, Konfabulator, and now Sidebar Widgets… wait… no, they’re hopeless.”

    I’ll tell you what, plasma is nothing but a bunch of concepts, sketches and ideas but nothing concrete till now, its just vaporware compared to the other projects that already exist and do something, that’s the difference, Plasma is the most overrated vaporware till now, it doesn’t exists yet you troll talk about it like if exists and is usable, the one that should be educated is you.

    • 2005-09-13 9:46 pm
      butters

      “plasma is nothing but a bunch of concepts, sketches and ideas but nothing concrete till now, its just vaporware compared to the other projects that already exist and do something”

      correct, except it’s not vaporware until there’s reason to believe it won’t happen.

      “it doesn’t exists yet you troll talk about it like if exists and is usable, the one that should be educated is you.”

      From my post:

      “I can’t believe how many people demonstrate a tragically flawed understanding of the goals of KDE’s Plamsa project.”

      I’m not talking about Plasma the software product that exists and it usable. I’m talking about the “goals” of the Plasma “project.” Both of those things exist and have been acted upon.

      When did it become trolling to talk about an open source project before it is released? Since when have we been a community that does not encourage discussion about pre-release software?

      I resent the fact that you call me a troll. You should see some of my other posts related to KDE. I dish out the pain and acclaim across the board in the name of a free exchange of ideas… which you seem to want to quash.

  • 2005-09-13 9:10 pm
    Anonymous

    Plasma is just as much as a released product as Vista or Office 12.

    Thanks for clapping, but I’d prefer if you threw money.

  • 2005-09-13 9:13 pm
    Anonymous

    >Just admit it, you people hate everything Microsoft does.

    I can’t speak for everyone, but I hate Microsoft the company. They are evil, brutal, disingenuous monopolists which have been convicted of their crimes in North America but never had to pay for them appropriately. That has not changed, and never will.

  • 2005-09-13 9:14 pm
    Anonymous

    “Plasma is just as much as a released product as Vista or Office 12.”

    No is not, While thwse 2 projects are betas plasma is not even on cvs, thanks, come again.

    And if don’t showme the link where i can see plasma in action, uh i forgot, it doesn’t even exists yet.

    Here, take some money.

  • 2005-09-13 9:24 pm
    butters

    Maybe this is a good idea. The designers are probably patting themselves on the back right now. They made a lot of advancements in context-sensitive menus, grouping menus, and stuff like that. If I had taken the time to really inspect the screenshots very closely, I probably could have made some sense out of it.

    However, if this interface causes an experienced and self-motivated computer user some amount of confusion and disorientation, imagine what will happen to normal users? It doesn’t matter whether you like the idea/paradigm behind the interface or not. It’s busy and distracting and unfamiliar. Users will feel intimidated and lost. They will call the help desk.

    I don’t understand why anyone here is trying to draw comparisons to other platforms or applications in the name of calling Microsoft a copycat. This doesn’t pass for proper interface design, and there is no parallel that I know of.

    I have to say that the bits and pieces that make up Vista feature an interesting variety of interface ideas. I doubt many users will be impressed.

  • 2005-09-13 9:31 pm
    Anonymous

    Ok, so the “legacy” menu bar has been turned off by default, instead we have tabs in order to group various items by functionality…

    … which was what the “legacy” menu bar was meant for in the first place.

  • 2005-09-13 9:44 pm
    pauls101

    Assuming they add one more row of buttons for Office 13, it will take a 20″ monitor just to see your document. We’ll be back to one line displays, just like the old dedicated word processors.

    Nice to know the File menu will look like the XP Start menu. That atrocity is the single thing I hate most about the XP UI (fortunately it can be switched to Usable (Classic) Mode pretty easily.) If Office 12 is as usable and intuitive as previous versions, it will probably take 15 minutes wading through Options dialogs and tabs to find the checkbox.)

  • 2005-09-13 9:54 pm
    Anonymous

    Every comment so far seems to be nothing but peoples own jaded opinions taking every opportunity to complain at *something*.

    You complain day and night that OfficeXP is no more better than 2000 and there’s no need to upgrade – and here’s microsoft actually rethinking the pardagim and you’re *still* complaining.

    No, we don’t have a “classic mode.” We surveyed customers to find out what would help people transition, and they told us they really wanted us to help them move forward, rather than doing any kind of classic mode.

    I say we all put down our “it’s not good enough for me” geek attitudes and take a look at who this actually affects – office workers. Anybody who has worked in an office, or as a support tech *knows* that these people are not “trained” on office. there is no time, and those who use word, know so from using at home and the experience they’ve gained from continual use at work.

    However, these users don’t really like to use the menus, there’s several million of them, accidently clicking the wrong one involves a call to tech support and the leading embarrasement in front of your colleagues.

    Doing away with the entire File | Edit | View | Insert | Format | Tools | Table | Window | Help list was the best thing Microsoft did. Now the users have tabs, something that just by looking at they can see that clicking each of the tabs will not “make things go wrong”. And simiarly every function is now in a memorable place, and given plenty of floor space so that user is much more comfortable at finding and using new functions.

    A user is more likely to click through each of the tabs looking for what they want than 9 Mile-long tabs.

    The new single “File” menu is also a stroke of genius. Anybody hissyfitting because it’s not your tea, go suck a lemon. For office Jane this is perfect. One click and you have large sensible list of options.

    Anybody who assumes that the default set of toolbars is all that office jane ever sees and thus is better than the new set, is gravely not in the position to be staking such a claim. On every machine I go past in the office, people have no less than 6 toolbars, some of which have turned themselves on due to a button left in an excel sheet that shouldn’t have been there, or when someone put comments in a document and the bar appears and then never goes away. The users do not know how to remove toolbars, or even position them.

    Having 41 buttons with no labels is hardly something they are going to explore and understand. The new UI gives the user the ability to find out the functionality that’s hidden in office and become more productive.

    Everybody has said it, Office is 80% functions that nobody ever uses, and yet, as if blind to ones previous sentance, everybody also complains they don’t add functions.

    Well guess what, Microsoft are listening to office Joe and office Jane and are actually improving it in a way that matters to them, and matters to businesses who want to lower costs on wasted tech support and training.

    If you don’t like it, go get open office and stop nitpicking at everything MS does as a way to swell your own control-freak egos.

    [/rant]

    • 2005-09-13 10:38 pm
      sappyvcv

      That was beautiful. I’d mod you up if I didn’t run out of votes ;)

      Simply put, Microsoft can not win in some peoples eyes. They can not do anything right, save open-sourcing all their products (a joke).

  • 2005-09-13 9:54 pm
    Anonymous

    “its just vaporware compared to the other projects that already exist and do something”

    Vaporware compared to, can’t you read?

    “I can’t believe how many people demonstrate a tragically flawed understanding of the goals of KDE’s Plamsa project.”

    Understand what? that it wont be nothing but more ayecandy and have the same function that windows gadgets? I think I understand is goal, it won’t be nothing new to other thinks that already exists, but of course some people like to pver hype these thinks, the goals of plasma is not lauch a rocket to the space but do the same other already had done but with one ore two differente features.

    “When did it become trolling to talk about an open source project before it is released? Since when have we been a community that does not encourage discussion about pre-release software? ”

    When you called OSNEWS reader uneducated.

    “I resent the fact that you call me a troll. ”

    Oh poor you, im crying.

  • 2005-09-13 9:57 pm
    Esaltato

    Yes, I only use GNU/Linux, but I gotta say it’s good to have a bit of innovation, on whatever side it is.

    Yes, it makes you angry to see something good by MS, but I think some new in usability is good anyway.

    This is not that kind of innovation Apple brings, but the same fact that _MS_ is doing this is good, cause everyone takes MS as a reference, so the rest of the world got to do it better to be considered, and all of this is good.

    I’ll never use office on my PC though.

  • 2005-09-13 10:42 pm
    Anonymous

    Still does not seem anywhere near as user friendly as Lotus Smartsuite was back in 1997.

    Hopefully, though, this will push OpenOffice.org to start thinking about their HIG for release 3.0

  • 2005-09-13 11:16 pm
    Anonymous

    >Simply put, Microsoft can not win in some peoples eyes.

    “I can’t speak for everyone, but I hate Microsoft the company. They are evil, brutal, disingenuous monopolists which have been convicted of their crimes in North America but never had to pay for them appropriately. That has not changed, and never will.”

    You’re right. They can’t win in my eyes. Their stifling and stunting of the marketplace has done FAR more harm than most people can understand.

    • 2005-09-14 1:41 am
      Anonymous

      Agreed. I actually like this new Office; as a technology, MS have finally done something mildly innovative and begun the process of rethinking the GUI for their Office suite. However, all of this should have occurred at least six years ago, if not longer.

      Due to their impediment of other technologies, through stifling monopolistic practices, we are years behind where we should be. Word is still playing catch-up to Lotus Wordpro.

      Morally, I will never again install a Microsoft product on my computer, due to their unethical business practices.

    • 2005-09-14 2:18 am
      sappyvcv

      Well thanks for admitting that nothing that Microsoft does will satisfy you. You just admitted to being an idiot.

      • 2005-09-14 3:48 am
        Anonymous

        How does taking a moral stance make one an idiot?

        • 2005-09-14 4:09 am
          sappyvcv

          It’s that he admits Microsoft can do nothing right in his eyes. That makes you a moron. It’s like the idiots that think Dems or Republicans can do nothing right. They are close-minded and bitter.

          You don’t have to agree with their business practices or even like them, but you simply can’t say anything they do is bad no matter what it is.

          • 2005-09-14 4:45 am
            japail

            Saying “Microsoft can never make up for the harm it has done” is different than saying “Whatever Microsoft makes is bad because it’s made by Microsoft.”

          • 2005-09-14 7:57 am
            sappyvcv

            He said both though.

  • 2005-09-13 11:29 pm
    aliquis

    Well done microsoft, this looks like a Word-version I could have used, the old bloated design with 100+ buttons wasn’t that great ;)

  • 2005-09-13 11:56 pm
    Esaltato

    [quote]

    You’re right. They can’t win in my eyes. Their stifling and stunting of the marketplace has done FAR more harm than most people can understand.

    [/quote]

    I’m an ex-BeOS user, so I think I got what you’re saying.

    But, to say that something is done in a better direction is not giving them any money. Don’t you see that the restyling MEANS THEY ACCUSED THE OOo’s BLOW? Finally some competition at Redmond, I think MS programmers are having a good time doing some really new stuff.

  • 2005-09-14 12:27 am
    rayiner

    Microsoft is slowly realizing that a menubar is completely out of place in an application window. Who knows, maybe by Vista XP, they’ll have taken the innovative leap of putting the menubar at the top of the screen, where it belongs…

  • 2005-09-14 2:50 am
    Anonymous

    Since Office wasn’t bloated enough, now it can be even more bloated and consume even more disk space and memory. This is much better than adding obscure features that few people know about or even need.

    • 2005-09-14 3:25 am
      sappyvcv

      So what features is Office missing that are needed? And how is simplifying the interface making it more bloated…?

      • 2005-09-14 4:36 am
        Anonymous

        You pretty much miss the whole point of my post.

  • 2005-09-14 4:13 am
    morganth

    I’ll be an echo chamber for a moment and say, tabbed toolbars: my god!

    The only other program I know that has so many toolbars is Maya 6 Unlimited. Which is a 3D modeler. That is, a tool that people spend <em>years</em> learning how to use.

    This is a word processor. A _WORD PROCESSOR_. Does KISS just not enter into Microsoft’s philosophy?

    For all the whiz-bang features of office, I still can’t typeset the LaTeX logo properly in it, or get decent text justification, or have tables that don’t suck, or generate table of contents and index sections automatically and easily, or keep track of footnotes without going mentally insane, or, or…

    Hey, I am a Word USER, and I know how bad it has gotten. I have been sticking to Office 2000 since from there it has just been getting worse along the same path. (Go ahead, install Office 2000 on one of you 2 or 3Ghz machines. See how much faster it is than 2003).

  • 2005-09-14 4:36 am
    Anonymous

    There has been some anonymous comments from Microsoft employees. I suspected by the way how they implied that there was some research done among Office users and that these changes were done to reflect its results. After that, I checked the IP range 131.107.0.— of the posters and it indeed belongs to Microsoft.

    Its good to see that there are some following here on this site. Having said that, I would like to say that the new looks of Office12 (and Windows Vista, as a matter of fact) seems a little bit “heavy”. Heavy in a sense of a skinnable application like Winamp with a really bad skin.

    There is too much contrasting colors (as opposed to an harmonic color scheme), widgets of diferent sizes, elements on toolbars with Photoshop effects that will make them harder to see (specially for visually impaired people), too much panels leaving too little screen space to the actual document, as some people already pointed out. How all of this help on the overall consistency? Is this really what the average office worker requested during the research that you guys conducted?

    I´d would say that you would be better looking at some good office suites that came in the past, like GoBe Productive or Corel Office, for starters.

    Regards,

    DeadFish Man

    • 2005-09-14 6:02 am
      Anonymous

      > Heavy in a sense of a skinnable application like Winamp with a really bad skin.

      Well put.

      Maybe it is time for new interface styles with less useless transparencies and bloat. The new iTunes Theme seems to be a step in the right direction (older apple apps tend to look too heavy for my taste too).

  • 2005-09-14 5:29 am
    Anonymous

    For cloning what Lotyus Wordpro had TEN YEARS AGO!!!

  • 2005-09-14 6:42 am
    jessta

    Microsoft has lots of money. They do lots of research in to user interfaces. So, It’s quite likely that this interface will be more comfortable for many users.

    Myself, I generally hate all word processors and prefer to do all my layouts with html and css.

    I like to be able to see what formating has been applied.

    Word is always hiding secret formating.

  • 2005-09-14 7:29 am
    Anonymous

    I think MS should be proud of the upgrade – as long as there isn’t a maze of sub-menus to traverse to do simple things like inserting a picture (!), I’ll be happy.

    The look is an obvious OSX rip-off, but why should we have to put up with utilitarian designs, when we can have the pseudo-mac experience? If MS can emulate the design quality and performance (highly unlikely), they’ll have a good result on their hands.

    Personally, I think I might convert to something else rather than go down the DRM, dumbed-down, CPU/RAM-hog that is Vista. God, if only there was an alternative (I’m a gamer)…

  • 2005-09-14 7:34 am
    Anonymous

    the new interface ideas look interesting, i’m sure they will be refined before it ships anyway. at least they are trying something new. seems like the influence of the web is being felt on the desktop now.

  • 2005-09-14 11:16 am
    vasko_dinkov

    One thing is for sure- the new interface is completely different from anything we’ve seen. The most interesting question is how usable it will be.

    And this time everyone should agree that MS is trying to innovate. ;)

    • 2005-09-14 10:46 pm
      Anonymous

      QUOTE: “The new interface is completely different from anything we’ve seen…”

      No, actually it is rather like Lotus WordPro. It too had a series of tabs, grouping like funciton together. The only difference was that it supplied them in a floating palette, not at the top of the screen. MS is not innovating; this interface has been available since the mid-to-late 1990s.

  • 2005-09-14 1:56 pm
    Anonymous

    Since when did Xzibit move to Redmond? Do the VISTA and Office12 boxes have diamond trim and feature kick-ass cabs? Come on, since when did the “PIMP” generation drive software development? Eye candy is one thing, but this!?

    Surely MS should sell the features of their software more? Never mind what it looks like, what does it do? if they think applying a nice theme to their software will sell it, then they’re in for a shock. I like the look of some of the icons in these screenshots and the crystal-graphs in excel, but it’s hardly ground breaking stuff!

    I’ll stick to Gnome/KDE because changing the theme on those systems doesn’t lead to a consistancy ‘mare!

    oOo and KOffice just look better and better! ;)

    • 2005-09-15 1:04 pm
      Anonymous

      Surely MS should sell the features of their software more? Never mind what it looks like, what does it do? if they think applying a nice theme to their software will sell it, then they’re in for a shock. I like the look of some of the icons in these screenshots and the crystal-graphs in excel, but it’s hardly ground breaking stuff!

      hahaha

      ..

      hahahahhaha hahahahaha haha

      ..

      HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH HAHA etc.

      …

      You. Absolute. Moron.

      Are you in marketing? Do you actually sell things? Making it shiny is EXACTLY what will get the mindless masses to buy this. It’s pretty, and people like that.

      Have you actually done a side-by-side comparison of your default Office installation (as in, not what it looks like after you customize the toolbars) and these screenshots? In which case is it easier to find stuff? In which case will you find that not-often used, yet now and then neccessary feature. Digging through menus, or hitting tabs and looking at big buttons?

      My personal opinion is that users will be relieved to see all those features readily available. It will also be easier for new users to discover features on the toolbar, rather than deeply nested in a menu.

      And remember: most users are dumber than you. A candy-like inteface puts them at much greater ease than the minimalist interface that you’re used to.

      -dragontron3k

  • 2005-09-14 5:27 pm
    Anonymous

    >It’s that he admits Microsoft can do nothing right

    >in his eyes. That makes you a moron. It’s like the

    >idiots that think Dems or Republicans can do nothing

    >right. They are close-minded and bitter.

    >

    >You don’t have to agree with their business

    >practices or even like them, but you simply can’t

    >say anything they do is bad no matter what it is.

    It makes him anything BUT a moron. He does not want to support a criminal business which also happens to be a monopoly. He does not want to support this criminal business in any way – which includes recommending the company or acknowledging its better software except to suggest alternatives.

    It’s not moronic, it’s a well-considered plan of not allowing Microsoft (the evil, convicted criminal monopolistic company in question) to snare anyone else in its goals to control computing and media world-wide as a result of his or her recommendation or reluctance to speak out against this criminal organization.

    And before anyone chastises me for strong wording about criminal activity on the part of Microsoft – they’ve been repeatedly convicted. It’s just that they haven’t been appropriately punished in North America because it would be politically bad in a country that has a very high unemployment rate (and a huge population of have-nots).

    # cat complaints >/dev/null

    • 2005-09-14 5:32 pm
      sappyvcv

      NO WHERE did I say he has to support Microsoft. He said they can DO NOTHING RIGHT, no matter what it is.

      You CAN think a company is doing one thing right without supporting or even liking them.

      If you can’t understand this fundamental difference, then I am sorry. I’m not going to sit here and give you a lesson on reading comprehension.

      • 2005-09-14 8:14 pm
        Anonymous

        @sappyvcv:

        Stop trolling

        • 2005-09-15 3:51 am
          sappyvcv

          The truth is not trolling, thank you.

  • 2005-09-14 7:15 pm
    Anonymous

    >NO WHERE did I say he has to support Microsoft. He

    >said they can DO NOTHING RIGHT, no matter what it

    >is.

    If acknowledging an accomplishment of theirs is wrong, given what MS stands for, then they can do nothing right. Seems quite reasonable.

    • 2005-09-14 7:38 pm
      sappyvcv

      No, actually, that’s one of the most retarded things I’ve ever heard. I’m going to just assume your reading comprehension is non-existant and bow out now.

  • 2005-09-14 10:56 pm
    Anonymous

    Until OASIS XML is the default file format, without proprietary strings attached, MS Office will not have my vote.