User Interface Visuals for Office 2007

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/03/09/547281.aspx' target='_blank'>http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archi.../09/547281.aspx</a><br /><br /></div><i>"...at the CeBIT conference in Germany, we revealed the new visuals for the Office 2007 user interface. You can see a few screenshots of the new look on the Office 2007 UI Preview Site. If you've got a craving to see even more, I've created a mini-gallery of full-size screenshots from a recent build of the product below. Tomorrow, I'll be posting a guest article written by my colleague Brad Weed, head of the Office Design Group. He's penned an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the new visuals from his perspective as a designer."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/word2007.jpg" /><br /><br />As Windows Mobile users we're pretty much intrinsically tied to Microsoft Office, or at the very least Outlook, so I'm always interested in where Office is headed. The new user interface for 2007 is radically different than anything we've seen from the Office team before, and I for one welcome it. Office has looked the same for too long - time for some much-needed change. Most people don't like change, even if it's good for them.

[Patrick Y.]

These are some nice changes. I do hope that such eye candies won't slow down standard computers.

[biglouis]

Exactly why is change necessary? Or good? This has much less to do with benefitting the consumer and much more to do with increasing Microsoft's wealth by forcing companies to upgrade their software.

Changes to Office 2003 were often the result of geek-fantasy than actual consumer need. Are the Office products any better integrated than they were back in Office 95? Arguably not.

Perhaps Microsoft should try a new marketing strategy? Announce that there will be no changes to their software for the next 10 years.

LouisB

[Darius Wey]

Exactly why is change necessary? Or good? This has much less to do with benefitting the consumer and much more to do with increasing Microsoft's wealth by forcing companies to upgrade their software.

There's more to Office 2007 than UI changes. You'll also notice improved functionality, improved usability and improved integration (for example, the new, XML-based file formats).

Going back to the UI, you might argue that a fancy and pretty UI does nothing, but look at Apple. They're bent on making every product of theirs look good, and suffice to say, it's been successful. Customers like flashy-looking products, and so do the developers.

[odaniel]

Actually the UI changes were done specifically with the user in mind. The tabbed ribbon changes as you select a particular feature or edit certain objects. So if you click on an image, the image functions appear in the ribbon. The idea was to make the UI more context sensitive so that functions you wouldn't be aware of were exposed at the time they would serve you best.

It's a nice concept, let's just hope that people can adjust to the new design. Change can be hard for people to accept at times.

[adamz]

There's more to Office 2007 than UI changes. You'll also notice improved functionality, improved usability and improved integration (for example, the new, XML-based file formats).


Improved usability is yet to be seen, especially if you already know how to use Office efficiently. Commands that took only one keyboard shortcut in previous versions now take a whole long series of keyboard commands to activate. You'll also have to upgrade or reprogram all the custom toolbars and functions that you may have in previous Office versions. I'm open to change, but there's going to be a big learning curve with this. Furthermore, it looks like not all Office applications are going to get this new ribbon interface. Some will still have the normal File menu that everything else has always had (including Apple software). That's not what I call improved integration. Also, it's GUI no longer uses the system theme... again, that's the opposite of integration.

[SteveHoward999]

Going back to the UI, you might argue that a fancy and pretty UI does nothing, but look at Apple. They're bent on making every product of theirs look good, and suffice to say, it's been successful. Customers like flashy-looking products, and so do the developers.


Oh yeah - Apple. That's the machines hardly anyone buys, right?

OK they look great. But there's more to life than looks.

Personally I hope there's a way to change the new toolbars so that they don't take up the top third of the screen like that ... especially if I have to use someone else's machine stuck in 1024x768 or worse (!) 800x600 mode!!!!

If the new tool bars are more usable, then that's fine, but since most of us use less than 10% of the features and functionality that Office give us I'm betting that uptake will not be all that high.

[NeilE]

If you want to know more about the whys of ribbons (the new strip across the top of the screen in Office apps), check out the many blog entries (http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/reference/infrastructure/wdp/default.aspx) by Jensen Harris. He writes about many of the issues raised in this thread, including whether ribbons scale down (http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/18/482233.aspx).

As a heavy keyboard user I have nothing but praise for the new ribbons. They're simply awesome. Yeah, it takes you about 5 minutes to get the hang of it, but it's so much easier to make gorgeous using documents with them.

Neil

[SteveHoward999]

Makes it look lik eit works exactly how I would NOT want it to work - i.e. hogs huge gobs of window unless the window is minute. I hope it works better than the movie suggests...

[pocketpcadmirer]

Oh yeah - Apple. That's the machines hardly anyone buys, right?

OK they look great. But there's more to life than looks.

I fully agree with you.

And yes, I'm one of those that the office software of MS is at peek now. They should give some time to polish the WM instead, IMHO. WM has great potential.

Sunny

[Foo Fighter]

It's really a shame that people are so quick to dismiss the new UI as just "eye candy" when in fact it goes so far beyond that. With this UI Microsoft is trying to achieve a lofty goal; make a complex application easy to use. I for one applaud this move, and based on what I am seeing the researchers at Microsoft are doing a fantastic job. The Ribbon toolbar is a clever and innovative approach to contextual feature design. It potentially solves a long standing problem that is plaguing many applications today; feature bloat. As a pro user (l'm a L33T haX0r w1th kRazy mAd Skilz) I have no problems using MS Office. But for most users working with this software, it can be downright impossible to get the most productivity out these so called productivity apps because the features contained therein are either buried away in sub menus or are not clearly defined. My sister is constantly sending me emails almost on a weekly basis asking me how to insert something in her PowerPoint presentation or how to do something in Word. This new UI approach may not completely solve that dilemma, but it is a dramatic step forward in easing the problem. Good on you, Microsoft!

Naturally I'm seeing comments, in other forums, from the "free 4 me" Open Office zealots slamming the new the new look, and calling it more bloatware. They say that now, but let's see how long it takes for Open Office to rip off Microsoft's UI. :roll:

[SteveHoward999]

It's really a shame that people are so quick to dismiss the new UI as just "eye candy" when in fact it goes so far beyond that. With this UI Microsoft is trying to achieve a lofty goal; make a complex application easy to use.

I never found it hard to use.

Anyway- I'm complaining about how it takes up a massive amount of screen space. It looks pretty, and I have little doubt it is functional, but I do not like to give so much of a development and design screen to the interface.

Mostly, I'm still trying to see what I was meant to be so excited about over Office XP, never mind any later versions ... so I look forward to being convinced that I actually need all the fancy schmancy updates. If the best argument is "look, we have xml-based document formats" and "look at the the pretty interface" then it's a no-brainer. I stick with Office XP until the end of the decade :-)


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[NeilE]

I'm complaining about how it takes up a massive amount of screen space.

The thing is it actually doesn't. It takes up about the same amount of space as the menu + two toolbars in Office 2003. In Office 2003 it wasn't unusual at all to have a nasty layered cake of 3-4 toolbars. This never happens in Office 2007: You have the ribbon. That's it.

They're also smart about shrinking it as windows get narrower, and hiding it all together at certain sizes. You can also hide it yourself at any time simply by double-clicking on a tab, or pressing ctrl+F1. More info is available at Jensen's blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/19/482631.aspx). You can also read more about their investigations (http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/18/482233.aspx) into display sizes and how it affected the decision on the size of the ribbon.

The key thing for me about the ribbon is how much functionality in the products its exposed to me. I'm absolutely a power user, and yet there's huge swaths of Word and Excel I've never used. The ribbons, combined with a ton of other work in Office 2007, have radically changed the visual quality of document/presentation/spreadsheet that I can produce.

What about the content, you ask? Well, that's another story, and all my doing *grin*.

Neil

[bbarker]

According to this Microsoft page (http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/suites.mspx), Outlook won't be included in the Home and Student version of Office 2007. I can't believe this.

[SteveHoward999]

I'm complaining about how it takes up a massive amount of screen space.

The thing is it actually doesn't.

The thing is, I can see how much space it takes up in the screen shots, and it actually *does* take up a massive amount of space compared to how much I am prepared to let the menus have. You are apparently happy with what I see is a problem. You can keep telling me till you are blue in the face that it's not taking up a massive amount of space ... and yet it will actually still take up a massive amount of space.

[dlauri]

The thing is it actually doesn't. It takes up about the same amount of space as the menu + two toolbars in Office 2003. In Office 2003 it wasn't unusual at all to have a nasty layered cake of 3-4 toolbars.

My Inspiron's screen is 1440x900, but I still don't allow my Office apps to use more than a single customized menu/toolbar (menus on the left, some icons I commonly use to their right). If I can customize the ribbons similarly in the new Office, that'll be fine.

I use Photoshop similarly most of the time, no toolbars visible at all, just the document I'm working on. Of course &lt;TAB> makes it simple to toggle toolbars. So if the new Office lets us easily toggle ribbons on and off, cool.