Under the Hood of Office 12 348
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet has posted an FAQ on Office 12, plus a quick preview of Office 12 pre-Beta 1. From the review: Microsoft Office 12.0 pre-Beta 1 drastically revamps the interface layouts of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access. More than a year before the final product will hit the shelves, a pre-beta version of Microsoft Office 12.0 is revealing radical interface changes and user paradigm shifts that recall the overly ambitious Microsoft Office 97 update of the past."
Where is office 11 ? (Score:2, Interesting)
There's good news but, Clippy is dead !!. But a ghost of the demon remains
What's new in Office 12
* Tabbed browsing
* Missing menus
* Clippy replaced with a Ghost
* Shortcuts change for no reason
* Task oriented design
Translated as :
* Ripoff off Firefox
* Bye bye familiarity
* Transparency showoffs
* Alt keys are teh suck
* All users are idiots
Some people might switch to OO.org just to keep the old macros alive but still read the new
yawn (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why exactly is it called Office 12? (Score:5, Interesting)
From my blog dated a month ago:
"
Microsoft have been using internal numbers for their major Office release for some time:
Office 9 = Microsoft Office 2000
Office 10 = Microsoft Office XP
Office 11 = Microsoft Office 2003
And right now they are in pre-beta with Office 12... yet to be assigned a product name (or yet to be announced depending on whether you believe what you hear).
A curiosity though, I've just been conversing with a product manager in the globalisation team over a feature that the company I work for would dearly like, during this conversation she mentioned that the feature in question would not be in Office 12, but some part of it will be considered for Office 14.
Office 14? So what happened to Office 13?
Could it be that Microsoft are superstitious enough to not want to number a feature version of Office as Office 13?
Or am I reading too much into this, and did they just use Excel to do the numbering?
Maybe someone should point out to them that missing 13 doesn't make it any less Office 13.
"
How much is relevant? (Score:3, Interesting)
An open, documented format - and I mean 100% open, not like the 65% shared source initiative from MS that means zilch to devleopers.
MS has to realise that the data in the document which I put in is much more valuable than the format in which it's stored. If I'm forced to use only MS tools to manipulate data in Office docs, it's not too exciting.
Recently, I searched for ways to update a VSS store from a remote location using a web interface. I learnt that the small 3rd party app needed to achieve this was ridiculously expensive, and crucially MS didn't have this component for it's own software. I'm now looking to change from VSS rather than getting a plug-in. More enterprise users would move away from Office if it sticks to proprietary patented stuff in the new version.
Re:Competition driving innovation (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed. I used to work for an extremely large company in Australia - they are still standardised on Office 97 on Windows NT.
They see no business motive to change - and frankly, I think they're taking the right approach. If they wait long enough, they will be able to "jump sideways" as it were to a completely open solution, with no loss in functionality and vastly improved management.
Did they actually fix the bugs? (Score:4, Interesting)
Is Office 12 just a UI rearrangement of the same defective code?
Re:Nothing beats Office 97 (Score:3, Interesting)
Sadly my reason for upgrading was a microsoft trick, somehow a computer prebundled with office 2000 absolutly REFUSED to install 97 (tried and tried some more). In retrospect I shoulda reinstalled computer from scratch, but the upgrade was good anyways.
More Info... (Score:4, Interesting)
Link directly to video http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/5/b/65b0
Re:Awesome new feature!! (Score:4, Interesting)
radical interface changes?! (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, if Office 12 has "radical interface changes" it appears to me that if it's going to require re-training, businesses might as well switch to an alternative now and save a fortune.
Undo past save? (Score:5, Interesting)
Does anybody know if they finally have undo past savepoints.
Because of my experience with MSO (been using since Excel 4.0) is that it is best to save the document ALL the time else the app will crash and you will loose hours of work. BUT when you save, you loose the undo history
MSO up to now has never had this feature (bad programmers BAD).
BTW - OOo has this feature in 2.0
God I love open source
JsD
OPEN OFFICE 2.x (Score:4, Interesting)
Where are those people today? The same ones that argued that it was not cost effective to retrain, will be arguing this is an incremental change or significant but worth the effort. I can hardly wait for Laura DiDio's "How Office 12 will make your company 12 times more productive" press release disguised as a "research paper."
As several prior posters have said, if you are going to take the upgrade hit, why not take it to open office? It will certainly be less expensive in both licensing and training. And it will support OpenDocument formats, something MS has said they will not do.
At least until the MS PR machine starts rolling.
Open Office Home page [openoffice.org]
Technology is Fucked Up (Score:4, Interesting)
Two years from now, whoever is in charge in Office will stand up at some flashy Microsoft presentation and explain how they "ignored users" and "goofed" by changing too much in Office 12. He'll talk about "lessons learned" and how "grateful Microsoft is to the user community for their active support of Microsoft Office."
And then he'll push a couple buttons, curtains will raise, and some huge screen will blast "Office 13" and show videos about how all these new innovations have been replaced by the stuff that users wanted -- namely, a return to the regular menu.
I don't know -- after ten, fifteen years of Microsoft, I'm extremely, extremely weary of all this technological hullabaloo. It's a lot of noise about nothing except money -- big money -- and users -- myself included -- fall for it time and time again.
And yes, I've gradually moved over to Linux solutions. They're fine -- sometimes more complesxs than I'd like -- but I've come to understand that Microsoft -- and perhaps Google, too, but I don't know yet -- really don't understand technology. They understand technology, yeah, but they don't understand the fundamental fact that more and more people have an antagonistic response to technology. We like technology, sure, but goddammit make technology that makes things easier -- not complex in a different way.
I wish someone at these companies would begin to acknowledge the odd technological antagonism that more technology breeds. Just because you *can* do something doesn't mean you *should* -- create a new version of Word, implement X or Y, etc. etc.
I dunno. Whatever. It doesn't matter.
LyX (Score:2, Interesting)
But it's still a bit too technical for the average user. If somebody took the concept and turned it into a polished, commercial, end-user product, it might be a good alternative even for non-techies.
Macros / VBA (Score:2, Interesting)
I work at a shop that does a lot of transcription. We have been able to keep our VBA macros (which are quite extensive) working between all versions of Word from 97 on without too much difficulty.
Has anybody heard if the object model has changed significantly (i.e. Application / Document / Range / etc.)? If Microsoft revamps the back-end macros in Word the way they are revamping the front-end, it would certainly be an impetus for companies to look at other office solutions
Re:Where is the innovation? (Score:2, Interesting)
Honestly, open formats aren't even a twinkle in the eye of the two CIO's I've worked under in two very large organizations.
User Interfaces (Score:3, Interesting)
The key breakthrough that dropdown menus provided when they were introduced was simply that all the available functions (or function categories, at least) are visible, or at lease findable, you don't need to remember any text command (like a command line) or wierd control key combinations. It greatly simplifies things, but a GUI dropdown menu is no more effective in that way than the original Lotus 1-2-3 text interface - a '/' would bring up a top screen menu, which you could select in a similar fashion with keyboard only, no mouse. In fact, it had some advantages until Microsoft added the ALT-key method for accessing GUI menus.
The fundamental problem is that when menus get too complex, the options are no longer easily visible. You now have to remember where to activate a particular function - and you're back to memorizing things instead of having them in front of you, so you're back to the idea of commands. Only the command is a series of menu clicks, instead of keystrokes or words.
The problem isn't the use of menus, but the over use of them. The entire reason for the existance of GUIs is to allow direct manipulation of objects. The opportunity for ease of use from this is still only touched upon in many ways - especially by those who don't see any farther than stuffing menus full of functionality (similarly, if you've ever looked at the configuration options of a complex open-source project like NetBeans or KDE or Gnome, you'll see huge trees of incomprehensible options, often in a uniform structure that gives you no clue as to where to find the one you're looking for - you have to read, explore, read, explore until you stumble across the one you want). That functionality should go into direct manipulation of visible objects, not menus.
For example, in a word processor, mini icons representing paragraphs could be displayed in a margin. To change properties like interparagraph spacing, indent, style or following style, you'd click on the icon to open a control panel - instead of cursor somewhere into the text, then up to the menu bar and click on Format / Paragraph / Indents and Spacing. Another icon or option lets you select the paragraph style, or edit the style (some of this is already done, with a ruler control up top, with drag-and-drop tabs - good idea). The manipulation now takes place at the paragraph you're interested in itself, not far away in some abstraft menu tree.
Direct manipulation is the most overlooked, but by far the most powerful ease-of-use tool. The Macintosh and applications that run on it, go furthest by a wide margin in using direct manipulation, which is why users consider it so vastly easier to use, yet without loss of power. This is the real magic of GUIs and key to ease of use - it's not in "simplifying options", but providing those options in an absolutely direct and intuitive fashion.
Re:Competition driving innovation (Score:5, Interesting)
Only tried it for 5 minutes? That does not seem like long enough for a good evaluation.
I'm an author (nothing good on TV, so might as well write
Yes, I do own Office licences for Windows and OS X, but I find that OOo just stays out of my way so I can get my work done.
I also very much like the drawing program for technical figures.
Give it another try
-Mark
Re:Competition driving innovation (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Competition driving innovation (Score:2, Interesting)