Microsoft Office 12

Friday, January 13. 2006

When I first saw screenshots of Office 12, I thought "Wow, they've really thought about it this time." Recently, I discovered this blog, and this transcript of a talk by the blog author (some important Office 12 UI guy).

Now I'm sure Office 12 is going to be impressive. I just hope they haven't done quite so well with Vista, because although I'm (mostly) certain KDE 4 will be well researched, designed and implemented, I think it's hard competing against the amount of money MS and Apple can afford to put into design.

The blog is good. The author is obviously experienced and has led the UI development well. The entries are well written and very interesting! As someone interested predominantly in UI-design, I gained a lot of insight. I was a little thrilled to see ideas in there I'd been thinking on myself, which is also annoying as now people will just assume I copied if I ever implement any of them. And for sure KDE 4 should involve as many new widget-ideas and usage-concepts as possible IMHO.

Posted by Max Howell in mxcl at 20:34 | Comments (7) | Trackbacks (0)

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I'd agree that Office 12 looks good. I think that all versions of office have been highly functional and for the most part a joy to use. My main complaint in standard usage is that the editor was a bit too quick to help me with stuff. I didn't switch to linux and KDE because the MS feature set was not finished/polished/easy.

So, why did I switch? I switched because of things like open formats. What is a ".doc" file to me? It's a magic blob that opens for MS word and very little else. What is a ".dsp" file? It's a convoluted text file and only MS developer studio truly understands. We could go on. My windows file system was full of files that were more-or-less opaque to me the user. That makes general life management a blur of inflexible tools.

Is linux/KDE/koffice/firefox more featureful than the alternatives? Not by much if at all. Do I care? NO NO NO. Long live linux/KDE/koffice/firefox and open standards and user freedom! One of the most precious user freedoms is the unix-style flexibility to have choices for tools to fit in a work-flow. MS absolutely slaughters that freedom and I don't for a second believe that vista and office 12 XML will make a bit of difference in that legacy.

(All that being said, usability is very important. But for some of us, it truly is just a parenthetical comment in the grand scheme of things.)

Thanks for what you do and keep up the great development.

--
Joel

#1 J. Mohler on 2006-01-13 22:27 (Reply)

I also agree (mostly) on Joel. In fact, I often have the feel, that the open source projects are often not that innovative like they should be often. We have a huge way before us, if we want to get a real desktop envroiment. So why did I switch? One point is that open standards are used. This is really important for me because it means independcy. So why do I like an application like amarok, that basically is just handling file formats that are (nearly) standards? It's easy and maybe the big issue, cause I switched two years ago.

I think it is absolutly amazing that developers are users too. They are using their application and (mostly) care what a user is thinking. It's great that I can open a mail client and talk to a developer about something I would handle different. And nearly all time I get a feedback, either a agreement that it would be great or an explanaition why he decide to solve a problem on his way... or maybe even a compromiss between both ideas. This is great! You can influence a project and people hear to what you desiree. There are (nearly) no developers out there, that decide what YOU HAVE to like.

Like Max, i often look at office12 and even more on vista and... everything sounds great. I often ask myself, if Microsoft might make a big jump into the right direction. However, we should keep in mind that microsoft is mainly a company with marketing guys. They are talking, and talking and promissing and promissing and after something is realeased, people are noticing that they doesn't need all this "new cool stuff" and that in fact parts of it have also a "dark side", nobody was telling you about before. I am nearly 100% sure, that it will be the same with vista also. Don't get affraid about that. Just keep listening to the community and their desiree and show them a clear roadmap about where we currently stand and "where we want to be tomorrow".

Then I am pretty sure, that I ll will prefere in the future also to use paypal for projects like amarok or kde, instead of paying a company like microsoft. Keep on the good work! Even as a long-year Xmms/WinAmp fan, I think that Amarok rules absolute! Keep on the good work!

#2 Phobeus (Homepage) on 2006-01-14 04:11 (Reply)

See also the discussion from this thread:
http://lists.kde.org/?l=koffice-devel&m=112746719325605&w=

#3 Ariya on 2006-01-14 10:26 (Reply)

I totally agree with what you're saying. I wish more people felt this way and took the time to express themselves. Keep up the great work.

Matt Miller
http://www.microsoftofficeprofessional2003outcry.com

#3.1 Matt Miller (Homepage) on 2006-01-23 09:37 (Reply)

I agree MS Office 12 looks good but i just think that we should treat apple as a friend instead of a foe. Especially Linux and mac software are intercompatible.

#4 Sultan Khan on 2006-01-14 12:24 (Reply)

I'm always impressed by the marketing of Microsoft. Already months before it comes out everybody speaks about Microsoft Office 12.

It's also impressive how they present things as completely new they obviously have copied from their competitors.

Take for example the "Symbol gallery" Harris describes in his block on January 11. I Remember that Word Perfect had this feature at least in Version 8 from 1997.

Or look at the "Museum of Office Past". It might not be necessary to explain from which programms features have been copied. But formulations as "Invented the task pane" sound as if Microsoft was the first to have this idea. But this feature, too, is copied from WordPerfect.

#5 Stefan Lücking (Homepage) on 2006-01-14 12:49 (Reply)

I'm more impressed by the 1.2 Billion KAction (equivalent) datas they accumulated to determine how to improve the application. And the obvious great deal of thought they applied in determining, for example, if they even wanted to keep the statusbar in the application.

I try to not hate MS etc. as it just gets in the way, but generally I would agree with you. But you have to admit, Office 12 looks like a rare turn around for them, it's innovative (in places) and well designed.

#5.1 mxcl on 2006-01-14 14:27 (Reply)

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