Office 2010 Technical Preview Leaked 341
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft was planning on giving out the Office 2010 Technical Preview to select testers in July on an invite-only basis. Office 2010 will be available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions, and both flavors have been leaked to torrent sites and the like. Multiple screenshots of each application are available. '... some applications have changed a lot more than others. The ribbon seems to be on every application now, which is great for consistency's sake. ... The biggest change, in my opinion, is that the no file/orb menu is no longer a menu. When you click the colored office button, you get a screen that is shown in the second screenshot for each application.'"
Re:Not the biggest fan (Score:3, Interesting)
I actually agree with them on the Page Setup thing. You're changing how the document looks and it affects the layout - it should belong near the canvas like everything else that has to do with formatting.
The Ribbon is a good fit for document-based, layout-heavy applications with many commands. It's barely a good fit for all Office applications. It should have stayed in Office, or at least never leaked to applications with much smaller footprints. I'd also like for them to upgrade it with a command search that highlights where to go so that you may learn, not one (like the add-in from Office Live) that just brings you matching commands.
Re:Not the biggest fan (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:One of the early lessons of GUIs (Score:2, Interesting)
This is a good point, but I think Office has these special UI elements for psychological, not technical reasons - they differentiate Office from the rest of the OS (and horizontal competitors like OO.org) in your mind & make you think Office is somehow special/unique/valuable. The earliest example I can think of is Office 2000 (iirc), which had gradients in the title bars before the rest of the OS supported it.
Re:What the f*** is happening to Office? (Score:1, Interesting)
If they keep the look stable and just add refinements it becomes only a matter of time before Open Office and the like completely replicate not only functionality but also the look making them truly interchangeable.
We've got the functionality of office suites pretty much figured out, the only place they can differentiate themselves is in the GUI interface and the shark can't stop moving.
Re:Let me be the first to say: (Score:5, Interesting)
While I agree with you about Excel (I use Excel at work, Calc at home), the difference doesn't tend to be significant. I find life a little smoother with Excel, but there's nothing I fundamentally can't do in Calc relatively easily. Excel has handy features which make day to day jobs easier, but they're all features that exist in a lesser form in Calc. I could live with Calc no problem.
I've never used Vizio, and I prefer OO.o Writer to MS Word. Powerpoint and Impress are near as dammit for what I need, and I rarely have call to use the rest.
Bearing in mind that OpenOffice is free (beer, speech, etc.), I find the comparison very favourable.
Re:Not the biggest fan (Score:5, Interesting)
Right-click on the ribbon|Minimize the Ribbon
That doesn't give you the old menus back. It gives you the ribbon tabs which expand back to the full ribbon when you click on them.
My theory is that MS implemented the ribbon because they seem to have a mistaken belief that their UI should be consistent across platforms (desktop PC/server, table, tablet, handheld). In the end, they have a UI that doesn't work well for any of them. The Start Menu is a terrible paradigm for a handheld device, and the ribbon is a terrible one for desktop PCs.
This is even infecting their design of server-side applications. All of the MMCs for e.g. IIS 7 are more like navigating through Windows Explorer in icon mode than previous versions.
Different device types should have different interfaces that take advantage of the strengths of that platform. Keeping them consistent is less important than making them as user-friendly as possible.
Agree with things being counter intuitive. (Score:3, Interesting)
Need to insert a column or row in Excel? Go to the tab labeled Insert and...
Worse is trying to describe things over the phone. (Score:3, Interesting)
If someone isn't familiar with the terminology for these things it's a pain in the ass. Click the big multi colored button thing. Click the icon that looks like..., no the other one..., no to the left of that.
Menus were a lot easier to describe to people.
Re:Let me be the first to say: (Score:5, Interesting)
The point isn't that we (people writing long documents) *need* it, the point is that having it saves *by far* enough time and effort to make up for the purchase of Microsoft Office.
The entire "it's not there but you don't *need* it" argument completely misses the point. There are a hundred things in my house I don't *need* (plumbing, wall sockets, lighting, cable TV hookup, phone hookup, insulation), but I'd never move into a house that didn't have them. Would you?
Re:What the f*** is happening to Office? (Score:1, Interesting)
Yes, now you can be halfway efficient by only having one hand on the keyboard!
I mean, sheesh, for those of us who don't use the mouse all the time and can actually (*gasp*) touch-type, the menus are not optional, they are required.
When my employer wastes the money on whatever the latest office offering will be and foists it on me, I'll be requesting one of those add-on softwares to restore the menus. If necessary, I'll get the ergonomics department to write me the note.
Re:Can only improve on great from here (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Just what we need (Score:5, Interesting)
It bothers me when the open source community benefits so much from Apple and Microsoft's UI research. I mean OpenOffice's interface *is* Office 97-- the amount of work saved by the OpenOffice team because they had a model to work from is tremendous. Nobody's going to fault you for using other people's good ideas in your own products, but you could at least appreciate it, instead of just slamming Microsoft for it.
Microsoft may be no good at it, but who's better? Adobe's recent UI "innovations" have been criminally-bad. Apple's made some good progress with their iWork suite, but the unfortunate fact is that Pages has a simple UI because it's a simple product without a lot of features.
(And this next new idea you're slamming will undoubtedly make its way into open source products any day now, at which point it will become "innovative" and "brilliant." to the Slashdot hordes.)
Re:Let me be the first to say: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What the f*** is happening to Office? (Score:3, Interesting)
You need to think about people who would perform 80% of a command with keystrokes, and then look to see which menu item they needed to select. Auditing in Excel drove this home for me. Tools|Audit used to get me to the list of things I could do. In 2007 it doesn't work at all, you need to complete the command to have the keystrokes work. It may not be an issue for you, it is for me.