MS Office 2007 Redesigned; Potential Self-Inflicted Wound?

weibullguy · 01-04-2007, 12:00 PM

A quote from this article about MS Office 2007's redesign...

Quote:

By contrast, basic composition and editing are aided by the new design either very little or not at all. If you mostly compose plain Word documents, simple presentations and plain spreadsheets, the new design may not be worth the effort to master it, and you might want to stick with an older version of Office.

Or download OpenOffice.org which will provide a familiar interface and save you $399 US over Office 2007 Standard.

pljvaldez · 01-04-2007, 12:19 PM

True it will take some getting used to, but for once I like something Micro$haft has done. The new UI reminds me of the UI a CAD package used about 12 years ago. The tabbed interface was really quite helpful and quick for me. However, the company dumped that UI to conform to M$ standard UI and I thought it really hurt usability.

But you're right, this might be a good thing for OpenOffice.org.

Crito · 01-04-2007, 12:21 PM

"Contextual tabs" are a revolutionary UI change, IMHO. The interface changes to fit the task at hand. CUIs (common user interfaces -- i.e. File..Edit..Help) may help novices get up to speed fast, reducing training costs initially, but they quickly become inefficient for complex applications. Navigating through five levels of menus over and over again, day in and day out, is ultimately a much more time consuming activity. And as the saying goes, time is money.

avallach · 01-08-2007, 10:56 AM

Don't you know why those guys from Redmond created a new interface ? I heard a really interesting opinion today. They've made it because, if company is using M$ OS it will also use the latest M$ Office if all of the employees are using it, they will have it much more difficult to start using OpenOffice with interface similar to the older M$ Offices.

phil.d.g · 01-08-2007, 11:41 AM

Oh, so if an open source group comes up with a new interesting idea its called innovating, but if Microsoft do it its to hurt the competition?

If the ribbon thing proves popular I expect openoffice, and indeed a lot of other projects will copy it to some degree.

hand of fate · 01-08-2007, 12:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by avallach

Don't you know why those guys from Redmond created a new interface ? I heard a really interesting opinion today. They've made it because, if company is using M$ OS it will also use the latest M$ Office if all of the employees are using it, they will have it much more difficult to start using OpenOffice with interface similar to the older M$ Offices.

There's a fatal flaw in that theory:

Any change that makes it difficult to migrate away from the new version will also make it more difficult to migrate to it. In fact, anyone who has recently migrated to it will still find it much easier to migrate to something else after than they did to migrate to it in the first place, since they will already be familiar with standard interfaces.

It will also mean that users of older Office versions will find programs with a standard interface easier to migrate to that the new version of Office. This certainly won't work in MS's favout at all!

avallach · 01-09-2007, 04:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hand of fate

It will also mean that users of older Office versions will find programs with a standard interface easier to migrate to that the new version of Office. This certainly won't work in MS's favout at all!

I hope you are right

shorty943 · 01-09-2007, 08:37 PM

Well now, let me see. HMM. Nope, I just don't care how flashy Bill makes things. Maybe the corporates who are locked to MS do. As a private user, my only use for that OS, is as a game platform for my favourite racing simulator "LIVE FOR SPEED" http://www.liveforspeed.net. For ALL other computing I use Linux.

Respectfully yours,

Shorty943.

registered Linux user 437639
registered Linux machine 77042