"It's a significant opportunity," he says. "I think the mistake would be to take what we have today on the desktop and somehow make it work in the Windows 8 environment. Over time, we will have to re-engineer the Office products — re-imagine them in new ways."

Hough points out that both OneNote and Lync run in the Windows 8 environment. Eventually the Office team will take what it's learning from those apps and apply it to a new Office suite that's designed from the start for Windows 8 — which he says Microsoft will definitely ship someday."

Does it mean that Microsoft now sees content creation apps going the way of Windows 8 Store apps? I thought people here are saying the desktop isn't going anywhere? Maybe that's true but it sounds like the Microsoft is moving it's desktop apps away from the desktop and on to WinRT. If anything it would be great if this would finally answer what Microsoft's end-game with Windows is. I'd hope that they'd find a way to extend WinRT to the desktop and allow for both full-screen and traditional windows desktop experiences. Full article.

1 hour ago, jinx101 wrote

I mean, the office team has also said that there were things about Office that just don't work with the Modern UI (now).  On a desktop or laptop there's just no way I'm going to be using Office in a Metro app.  The "emmersive" experience irritates me when I want multiple things displayed at the same time (and pinning at this point just doesn't work well for that in a lot of cases).  What doesn't annoy me on a tablet does on a desktop and that's what I use pretty much all day.

That's why I'm hoping they'll extend WinRT to the desktop and allow WinRT app to work in both places. Running on a tablet? Great; stick with the Windows 8 Store App environment. Running on a desktop? stick with the more traditional windowing environment.

I know it's still pretty early on for the OneNote Windows 8 Store App but when you get down to taking notes it's terrible. Don't get me wrong; the UI is great for the tablet but even on the tablet there is no true inking (it's really just drawing), no pen color selection, no audio notes, limited tags,  no Outlook integration, and the damn keyboard keeps popping up when you're trying to take notes with the pen. I wouldn't even call it an alpha at this stage. Yes it's free so at that price it's great for what it is. The radial menus are cool. The workflow is pretty good and it looks nice. My concern is that in moving Office apps to the Windows 8 Store App environment everything will be dumbed down like the Mail app. Is anyone at Microsoft proud of the Mail app? C'mon, really?

11 minutes ago, elmer wrote

Is it just me? Every time I read 're-imagine' my skin crawls.

The sad thing is re-imagining is like dreaming. How often do dreams come true?

1. Copy paste with ctrl+c and ctrl+v.
2. Aero snap for multi-tasking.
3. Not always full screen.
4. Give me my always visible taskbar for proper app switching.

Otherwise, I think it is pretty cool.

8 minutes ago, magicalclick wrote

I don't mind using Metro like Word as long as it solve the following issues,

1. Copy paste with ctrl+c and ctrl+v.
2. Aero snap for multi-tasking.
3. Not always full screen.
4. Give me my always visible taskbar for proper app switching.

Otherwise, I think it is pretty cool.

Sounds pretty much exactly like Office 2013 to me...

4 hours ago, Harlequin wrote

But you're forgetting the ribbon and all the stuff in there and it's hierarchy and organization. I can't see all, or even some of those ribbon tools, in a Modern application. And having a "dumbed down" version of an office application as a Modern app would send a message about complex applications moving to the new UI. You're going to dumb down Word for Windows Store to be a glorified Notepad?

Office - The WordPad Edition ?? LOL

1 hour ago, Harlequin wrote

Well, that would be on the desktop, with extra spaces or something around buttons, and bigger touch-points. The ribbon as we know it doesn't belong in a Windows Store application.

I agree. I think it would be difficult to cram the ribbon into the standard action bar of a Windows 8 Store App. The only ideas my little pea-brain can "re-image" the ribbon as:

1. Layered: like the radial menu in the OneNote Windows 8 Store App you would drill into feature sets.
2. Scroll: as an endless scrolling bar like the start screen.
3. Minimal: like the Mail app throw out all but the most commonly used features and then throw out some more.
4. Combo: Minimal with a radial context menu. Everything they couldn't fin in the action bar would go in the radial menu. This seems to be the approach with the OneNote Windows 8 Store App.

While the UI may be more touch friendly no matter which way you cut it it would be more work to access features for both touch and keyboard + mouse users because they are either buried or scrolled off the screen.

29 minutes ago, Craig_​Matthews wrote

Or .. we can do this revolutionary thing and realize that a person sitting at a desk producing a proposal, sending documents to a printer or two, embedding objects between Excel and Powerpoint, and pulling in live data is a different audience than a guy sitting on a train writing a blog post and needs more than four functional features, thus necessitating a different feature set, and probably different UI options.

++.

I suspect at some point Office will release a bunch of apps targetted at the latter group (remember Microsoft Writer for blog-writing?), or even have a dual mode where you can write basic content into Word whilst on a train, and can then flip back to Desktop mode to finalize it. I don't think there's any chance of them moving to Metro-mode wholesale in the near future.

The suggestion that you'd be fighting excel on a tablet screen in Metro-mode sounds dreadful, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a middle ground where some parts of Office move to Metro, other parts stay in Desktop and some apps (like Outlook) sit somewhere in the middle.

9 hours ago, evildictait​or wrote

*snip*

++.

I suspect at some point Office will release a bunch of apps targetted at the latter group (remember Microsoft Writer for blog-writing?), or even have a dual mode where you can write basic content into Word whilst on a train, and can then flip back to Desktop mode to finalize it. I don't think there's any chance of them moving to Metro-mode wholesale in the near future.

The suggestion that you'd be fighting excel on a tablet screen in Metro-mode sounds dreadful, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a middle ground where some parts of Office move to Metro, other parts stay in Desktop and some apps (like Outlook) sit somewhere in the middle.

#

My WP7 has excel.  I've used it exactly once; long enough to know that it was not a useful tool in that form factor.

I feel kind of sorry for the devs that spent time working on it...

11 hours ago, evildictait​or wrote

*snip*

++.

I suspect at some point Office will release a bunch of apps targetted at the latter group (remember Microsoft Writer for blog-writing?), or even have a dual mode where you can write basic content into Word whilst on a train, and can then flip back to Desktop mode to finalize it. I don't think there's any chance of them moving to Metro-mode wholesale in the near future.

The suggestion that you'd be fighting excel on a tablet screen in Metro-mode sounds dreadful, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a middle ground where some parts of Office move to Metro, other parts stay in Desktop and some apps (like Outlook) sit somewhere in the middle.

The duality approach definitely has some promise but I can't help but think of the Control Panel/PC Settings dilemma. Microsoft doesn't seem to concerned to provide a nice, unified experience. Now with an Office app there wouldn't be so much of a division of features but I would be concerned that the Windows 8 Store App version may get new features and be better maintained than the desktop version. IMO, they really need to stay in parity as much as possible. Similarly I'd be concerned that Microsoft commitment to the desktop version would lesson with the typical "we only have so many resources" excuse. That aside I agree as easy toggle between the two modes (desktop and Windows 8 Store App) would be a big hit. 

I'm willing to bet that they take the same tact as they are presumably doing with Office Mobile for iOS and Android. I base that off of what they've done with OneNote on those platforms to-date but it's still way too early to tell where they are going to land the plane. Hopefully they will provide a much more feature rich and easy to use mobile suite than their existing competitors on iOS and Android. IMO they kicked Google Doc's arse with the Office web edition. Here's hoping for the same on mobile some day.

But there wouldn't be much point when you could just use Office 365 in Metro IE.

But then that raises another question...

6 hours ago, DCMonkey wrote

Given all the hype about writing Metro apps in HTML5/JS, I'm wonder why MS doesn't just port Office 365 over to Metroland?

I think primarily because the Office Web Apps UI is based off the desktop version, and therefore not particularly any better for touch. There's little point to just shoving a web UI into a Metro app.