[Muntasser]

i for one am finally excited about an office product, since Office 97 - and oh what a long time ago that was.

[Muntasser]

i for one am finally excited about an office product, since Office 97 - and oh what a long time ago that was.

[Perry Reed]

Originally Posted by tthiel

Taking risks? Hardly. Microsoft is copying Apple...again. Shameless.

How is Microsoft copying Apple? Apple has nothing remotely like this. Other than pretty icons, there is simply no comparison. For the most part, Apple UI still depends on a menu at the top of the screen. They're not big on toolbars and they're certainly not big on context-sensitive menus that Microsoft has had for a long time.

This sort of task-based interface is something that Microsoft has been driving for a long time now and Apple simply has not.

Personally, I like it a lot. New users will find it much easier to get up to speed with Office applications and I expect that existing users, who already know the tasks they want to perform, will find the new mechanism for finding and performing them to be pretty intuitive.

[thanos255]

Originally Posted by tthiel

Taking risks? Hardly. Microsoft is copying Apple...again. Shameless.

Gosh can we not get into this microsoft/apple thing. It is an old and useless argument that neither side wins. I don't think apple is doing badly now...so kind of useless to discuss anyway.

Are you still upset about Gore losing in Florida also? :roll:

[Ed Hansberry]

Originally Posted by aerin44

I am reasonably certain they will include an option to use it in "legacy" format. There are too many people that would not want to learn to use the new one.

{raises hand} Me.. me! MeMeMeMeMeMeMeMeMeMeMe!

[jhennig]

Evolution is a good thing... or would you rather be using DOS still? :mrgreen:

[zybler]

Looks bad for poor little guys who's still 1024x768 resolution (or worse!). Those huge icons take up too much space.

Personally, I don't like it either. I'm a power user and usually what I do is I minimized the toolbar and menu space and maximized my content space as I want to see more of the documents. Since I can get access to all the features I need very quickly (using menus or keyboard shortcuts) so it doesn't bother me all that much. I don't think the new design will benefits power user or geeks like us all that much.

Just my 2 cents. :wink:

[Perry Reed]

Originally Posted by zybler

Looks bad for poor little guys who's still 1024x768 resolution (or worse!). Those huge icons take up too much space.

Personally, I don't like it either. I'm a power user and usually what I do is I minimized the toolbar and menu space and maximized my content space as I want to see more of the documents. Since I can get access to all the features I need very quickly (using menus or keyboard shortcuts) so it doesn't bother me all that much. I don't think the new design will benefits power user or geeks like us all that much.

Just my 2 cents. :wink:

Actually, if you watch the video you'll see that you can indeed shut off the ribbon and maximize the workspace and the keyboard shortcuts are actually even better now in Office 12 than they were before (although you can still use the ones you know now, exactly as you do now).

[d-roC]

Seems like MS has been listening to all the UI comlpaints over the years. Especially in Office, the UI is horrible. And yes, for users who just want to type a doc and print it, the UI is fine. But if you told them they could shoot off 'x' resumes right from Word, and then proceeded to go thru the menus to show them, they would be happy, then run quickly the other direction.

Change is good in this case. The UI looks simple, but good enough. I think it could be even better, but hey, I dont get paid to do UI for Office, but to do websites with a good UI that are used in an office.

Other comment:
I personally wont be updating to O12. I am going open source with all docs and due to my techie influencing nature, I'll be taking other folks with me. Now, if the OO.org folks can do a better UI than O12 (think PalmOS simple, with Outlook03 funcationality, and Keynote pretty) then I'll be even happier. Until then, I'll deal with it, and continue to change what I can (withuot skinning) and respond to the surveys MS and others ask.