MS Office: The Next Generation? | The Coffeehouse

How is the next generation of Microsoft Office coming along? Maybe you could do some interviews with the Office dev team? That would be interesting!

arthurn

I wonder what new features will there be?

Manip

Clippy 2: Now more annoying

iStation

Oh, yeah!
In the next version, I want an advanced notepad (Emacs-like text editor), a PDF writer, a fast XML database, a paintshop-like image editor and an evolved image office! Smiley

Fritzly

I guess I am one of the few ones who likes clippy; is it because I am old enough to remember Bob?

Manip

iStation wrote:

Oh, yeah!
In the next version, I want an advanced notepad (Emacs-like text editor), a PDF writer, a fast XML database, a paintshop-like image editor and an evolved image office!

I doubt your get a PDF writer because adobe owns all that and if they sell it to MS they will go out of business in a day. A better image editor would be nice.

I asked about a bob release with longhorn, nobody at MS replied

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=6160

arthurn

But there are already third party plugins that can convert doc to pdf for free... and some other Office suites (like Easy Office) have that function built in. I don't think Adobe will go out of business...

arthurn

Manip wrote:

Clippy 2: Now more annoying

Speaking of clippy, when Office XP came out, MS made a big promotional campaign about why clippy was not needed anymore. Imagine my surprise when I found it in XP!!

MS gets it: clippy is annoying, but why do a campaign mocking it then include it in the new product? Beats me...

jamie

iStation

I have a "WYSIWYG" problem in Adobe's PDF writer/distiller for Visio2003's fonts! ;(

So, I hope MS will add a PDF writer in new Office versions and support the quality of PDF outputs. Smiley

arthurn

oh jamie, you make me laugh...

Catatonic

For what it's worth, PDFCreator seems to be working like a charm.
http://sector7g.wurzel6.de/pdfcreator/index_en.htm

lars

So, is this something you could consider for a future video C9 dudes?

Btw; I like Clippy too.

sbc

PDFCreator is a good product - but PDF generation from Office applications without third party software would be good (as the competitors already do this). It only needs to be basic generation - Acrobat would then still be an option for more advanced tasks.

Jaz

but surely MS want their own formats to be the dominant player, not PDF

arthurn

Jaz wrote:

but surely MS want their own formats to be the dominant player, not PDF

Right, so it's very unlikely for Microsoft to include pdf generation in Office.

eagle

I’m expecting the next gen of Office will in managed code, with fewer lines of code.

XML will be everywhere….

Manip

I bet the newer one will be slower than the current ones both in loading times AND operation completion times.

I also think it will add lots of useless features because they still don't understand what it is they are making. Office is an information presentation and organization package but MS don't seem to get that so they just keep on pilling on new useless features instead of investing into RD of new ways to present different types of information. I mean OneNote, what the hell is that?! They had to buy Visio because their RD couldn’t come up with that either…

sbc

Jaz wrote:

but surely MS want their own formats to be the dominant player, not PDF

The only way that will happen if they did a format that was as open as PDF - i.e. viewable/editable on any platform and device (even non-Microsoft ones). Which may be why it is Portable Document Format - there is no portable Microsoft format (you could argue that OpenOffice makes Word documents portable, but not entirely, and it was done without help from Microsoft, via reverse engineering).

The fact they opened up the spec for PDF's probably helped the dominance - if they didn't (i.e. limited to Adobe software to create and edit documents), PDF documents would not be as popular (or may not even exist now).

iStation

eagle wrote:

I’m expecting the next gen of Office will in managed code, with fewer lines of code.

XML will be everywhere….

For the managed MS Office, they need the Visual Studio.NET Team System and Dotfuscator Pro! Smiley

sbc

Office should really be far more modular - only pay for what you use. That way you only have the functionality you need and menus/toolbars become less cluttered. Training users may be harder though.

The extra 'features' in newer versions of Office are not always wanted and many are still happy with Word 97.

Manip

Woot time to release Microsoft Manip’s Office 2005, with .Net being so easy to disassemble it wouldn’t be much of a challenge.

eagle

Send us all a free copy...

jsrfc58

Manip wrote:

They had to buy Visio because their RD couldn’t come up with that either…

No offense to Microsoft, but what, from a programming standpoint, is so complicated about Visio? Maybe I am missing something as far as the product goes, but it seems to be basically a cut-and-paste type-program with symbols/diagrams from various engineering disciplines.

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