Julie Larson-Green - Diving into the new Office 12
- Posted: Sep 13, 2005 at 11:55 AM
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- 80 Comments
At the PDC this morning Microsoft demonstrated Office 12 in public for the first time. The news you'll hear is "they changed the user interface." So, we wanted to talk with the team who came up with this new UI and we wanted to ask them "are you nuts?"
After all, changing how Office works is not done lightly. Julie runs the team that did the research that led to the came up with and designed the new Office 12 user interface. She gives us a great runthrough of what Office 12 does. Hope you enjoy meeting Julie
and your first look at Office 12 the same way I did. You can't see it, but behind the camera I was just amazed at what I was seeing.
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It works just fine on "current" hardware, including tablets and such (which aren't known for being "beefy"). The software that will be handed out is NOT optimized for speed (or stability), though, so ignore anyone who complains about performance and crashing. It's simply not at that point.
But, if you have a system with 256MB or RAM or better, and a better than 1.8GHz processor, you should be fine.
WOW!
You can say that again
Openoffice (or any other competitor) is dead and burried now!
This exceeds every expectation I had.
Just AMAZING.
TIA
Fritzly
Just out curiousity -- Office must be a huge cash cow, only behind Windows. What was the politics like in preparing for such a huge change as O12?
New XML formats, the new UI. This is one stunning release.
Oh yes, you're missing the huge pile of money that will build up in the manager's office because productivity will skyrocket thanks to these tabs
Hey, you're weird
I'm not excited at all by hearing that you can use a flash drive as RAM (actually I think of many reasons to dislike it: will be slower than actual RAM, people just pull it out while being used as RAM (think of the devastating consequences for apps using that memory)). On the contrary, this Office12 is full of VERY exciting new features, it's not ONLY the UI!!!
It would be awesome if the Theme widget/file could somehow be imported into any document I wanted to create so I could have a common theme set across all documents.
00:00 : (crossing arms) I will not be impressed. I have been around the block in IT, seen lots of stuff. I will not be impressed.
06:14 They know what I've been clicking??? I thought the Customer Improvement Program was to improve Customers!!!!
07:30 (crossing arms again)
08:18 Geez, it looks like she's running Windows XP. I thought Office 12 was Vista-only? Maybe you need XP + Avalon + Indigo...?
09:03 Ok, so tabs are the new black. <rolleyes>
09:38 What was that magic incantation...?
10:30 So what, she's hovering over font -- OH. The document is changing as she hovers over each font. Neat.
12:01 Memo to me: check to see if clicknpick.com is taken.
12:20 Ok, that's cool.
14:10 Hmmm. Maybe that should be "chik-n-pick," a restaurant where you choose your chicken entree from... a pull down menu?
16:10 (crosses arms) Ok so it's customizable. <rolleyes>
17:20 Powerpoint is bor. ring.
17:53 Whoa. Not so boring.
18:12 Whoa.
18:21 Whoa!
19:05 Whoa!!!
20:24 Impressive. Oh wait, I wasn't going to be impressed. (crosses arms loosely)
21:58 Ok, that's useful. Wow, and it works in the other apps.
23:33 Nice.
25:30 Nice.
26:32 Well what would any demo be without a bug...
29:30 One less checkbox for using Word as your text editor.
30:08 Was one of those reminders for "Call back Google recruiter"? </joke>
31:11 Er - there was an edit there. Wonder what she said?
34:10 What did she say? "Floaty?"
34:17 Oh this is going to suck so bad. Floaty = Clippy 2005.
34:27 OH! Cool! Ok, not so bad.
36:00 Huh. That is pretty cool. I think.
37:21 (eyes start to fill with tears)
37:33 I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not cry. *sniff* Microsoft is sooooo cool. I [heart] Microsoft. *sniff* (wipes nose on sleeve)
No. None. It's C++ still. I believe.
That said, you should check out Sparkle (we'll have a video tomorrow) or Max. They are completely done in managed code.
We will have more to say about the opportunities for developers and managed code at the PDC and beyond.
--Steven Sinofsky
What the... My posts have been deleted?! Since when are posts deleted?
Steven: thanks for correcting me. Everyone else? Steven is the top executive on the Office team. It's a real honor having him here.
Quick question, will these "themes" be CSS based or what language will we need to learn to be able to create custom office/corp themes?
Sorry, can you clarify "is".
Much of the server side of Office "12" is written in managed code?
Office 12 looks incredibly slick and is definitely going to appeal to users of previous editions of Office and other similiar office productivity applications. I still can't help but feel like it is going to scare new users though and hope Microsoft does work between now and RTM to simplify the interface for new users.
For those worried about any quality issues, we have also done a good deal of work and architected things very robustly. Even in the pre-beta builds I run it is super solid.
Codejock Software's Xtreme Toolkit Pro provides a feature that's able to create your own theme, it 's really a good idea to solve such problem.
here is a demo(source include).
i mean, cmon, brushed metal is soooo 4 years ago....
the light up tabs are very osx..
SHH! or it will be 4 more years of security updates and bug fixes for you!
woo hoo I'm in.
So Excel 12 then...
Is it faster?
My users are starting to get twin 64bit machines. Can Excel take advantage of these? Will you ship a 64bit version of Office?
Does the IV Columns, 65,000 odd rows limit change? Can I get more on a sheet?
Since VB6 has been retired, what are you going to do with VBA? VBA.net?
Are we going to get better intergration with .net? I don't think VSTO for 2005 cuts the mustard for my purposes. It's still very Smart Document centric. I want to expose my .net code via a nice library/contract/interface/whatever right in to a Cell. And that's any cell, in any sheet, when my library is loaded. That's all.
Obscurely, but important to me ... love the zoom feature. Don't need to see pages - just one big sheet. Do need to be able to adjust the zoom for all sheets in a workbook in one go.
Love the Formulas tab, gotta be much easier to find formulas you previously didn't know about. Can I easily intergrate my own libraries in there (+ meta-help-data)?
Great we all hate them in my little firm. Even things like the Office clipboard that remembers the last 24 items you copied to it. It leaps out at you to tell you what it's done, thieving a fifth of the screen real-estate, and generaly annoys the hell out of you. I really appreciate the sentiment, it means well, but god it's bloody annoying. My users constantly find themselves fighting the army of auto-formatting rules as well.
Lastly, and I appreciate not really your fault at all, but please please can you make Excel more reliable when working with Bloomberg AddIn software? Trust me we do whine to B-berg about it , but if MS phoned them up ans said "hello, you appear to be causing a lot of our users pain" it might provide a helping hand.
I haven't seen anything on Access 12 yet. What did I miss, and where can I find it?
Thanks in advance.
David van Leerdam
Not so fast my friend. Things don't tend to work like that. And read "Hardball" by Georg Stalk. I agree with him when he says that if you really want to be competitive, you don't kill the competition, you keep them in a corner and (although it seems contrary to common sense) make sure they have the possibility to get out of there (on, and there is the catch, their own power, not on yours - let them put up a fight). It is vital for a healthy industry. Toyota did it, GM did it, IT should once again become a field of competitors, that's what will get us fast forward.
Having said that, and having seen only bits and pieces of the video so far, I can't wait to get my hands on it. But then again, I love IT, so Openoffice 2.0 beta (1.9 if you will) is running on my machine, and I've Novell SBS 4.5, Suse Linux 9.3, Windows XP, 2003, Easyoffice, Office 2003, Outlook 2003, Thunderbird, Firefox, Visual Studio Express, Perl, MySQL and other beta, trial and stable stuff I can get my hands on that will run on my hardware (it's a cross between a christmas tree and a junkyard, software-wise).
Soooo, when can we muck with it?
Does the 'flowdy' comes with functions most people use or with features I use a lot? Like when I never use I but always use striketrue will the I disapear and the striketrue button come in the menu? But then only the functions that apply to the selected text.
How does the office team thinks about the problem with the people that just press enter all the time, not knowing the difference between enter and shift-enter?
Like:
Hello
Line2
Line3
Line4
(emptyline)
will end up as:
<para>Hello</para>
<para>Line2</para>
<para>Line3</para>
<para>Line4</para>
<para></para>
Instead of what it looks like to the user:
<para>Hello <enter>
Line2
Line3
Line4</para>
I see this kind of mess a lot from teachers and students using word. And I don't wanna know what happends when the autoformating functions start formating that mess.
Again, Thanks for the demo it rocked to see it live, the power of c9
Our editing surface will be the Word, regardless of what's installed. If the Word12 product is installed in additon to Outlook12, the you'll get the full Word editing experience in Outlook email.
If Word12 is not installed, then some functionality won't be available when composing email, but you'll still have more functionality than was available using "trident" in Office2003.
Also, in 12, Word will always be the rendering surface for email you've received, even in the Reading Pane.
The Word team has worked hard to make sure we have high fidelity for rendering and composing. It's been truly amazing to see this great work.
One more nugget: Outlook12 now uses Word as its editor for Outlook Meeting Requests, Appointments, Contacts, etc.
Oops I botched this one. Please see willk's answer below. Sorry.
If not, then when expliots are discovered, it will take forever and a day for Microsoft to patch them.
Is Office 12 going to save to an Open XML document format?
If not then we are still trapped into forever using Office products, which I'm sure Microsoft loves, but not me. I like choices.
fantastic! beautiful! elegant!
..oh - and Office isnt looking too shabby either
i will buy office... i will buy office....
First off, wow. Very impressed with the new interface. I was a bit worried when i heard about no menu and no toolbar, but the result looks amazing, and the in place previews will help no end.
I have one question, that i admit i dont know if its been asked before, but when is this coming out in beta? and how can we get a copy of it??
Shall we feed the trolls?
If you don't like Office, make your own alternative. And when exploits are discovered, we'll see how quickly you get to them...with your 2 friends with other day-jobs. Oh, and maybe if you're lucky, your OSS app will make it out of alpha.
Apparently, you like choices and yet your username is "ihatemicrosoft". I like more choices then...because you've shut out a quite logical one.
Do I expect you to understand? No, because I don't really expect you to stop sacrificing (in more ways than one) at the altar of OSS exclusivity.
Now, talking about all this xml, will it be possible to include onlinestuff? Like inserting a table in the bottom of my document with my latest blog-entries (by rss/xml)?
And how about .pdf-support? does anyone know if one still have to use Adobes products to make/read pdf's? I really miss that OpenOffice feature where you can "save as .pdf"...
It was mentioned that all existing add-ins would work in Office 12, but what about those that made modifications to the menus? Or added buttons to toolbars? Or created entirely new toolbars? Won't there need to be some reprogramming to make this compatible?
I have used every iteration of Office and pre office (Word for DOS back in 83 or 84).
This release looks like one major step forward. Looking forward to being able to give it a test drive.
That's a defining feature to me. An Office suite that has it scores with me big time. While I have MS Office, openoffice and easyoffice because I like to play with just about everything I can get my hands on, for practical reasons I use openoffice most of the time because of the 'save as pdf' feature.
btw at the job its MS from beginning to end, so at home I prefer other and preferrably free stuff, just to see how far you can go with it. And as I left the employer from who I had a home user license I'll have to uninstall it anyway and I can't afford €529 ($630) and I refuse to use software illegally. If a vendor wants me to use its product, it must be affordable for me and otherwise he'll have to find another customer
That also means it's very likely Office 12 and Vista will be on my PC as beta or trial versions only (like with Visual Studio 2005 and all the Windows Server System stuff).
It's a completely new UI alright.
Kinda reminds me of Microsoft Bob!
Now given we only had a small preview of things to come [and the fact that it was mentioned] it seems really odd that Outlook is not getting [more of] the new interface. Yes it shows up when creating a new e-mail but by default you get the 'old' standard menu-bar etc. It seems to me Outlook could be considered 'document' centric. I could see the default interface having a band for creating a new e-mail, appointment, task etc. And then logically once you've chosen a type of document then you get an appropriate interface for the document. For example when creating a new appointment it's not difficult to know what parameters people would want to specify for an appointment (start date, end date, etc.) I could imagine this appearing in the area just under the 'tab' bar, in a similar sense to how the new Word interface works, etc.
Since people 'live' in Outlook I'd like to see it get more attention then it's getting. And for it not to get more of the new look and feel through out seems really odd. Also think about the training in the Office suite for these applications. Scenario: "this is how the menu bar works, but for Outlook it's completely different!" ?
P.S. Outlook should also become much more of a PIM, but that's another topic.
I wonder how keyword help will be integrated, since it seems to have left the top right on the command bar. And this led to a question: hopefully they will integrate in searching documents (speaking mostly to Word) into the ribbon to make that a more fluid operation.
Another person put out a good question: it seems like styles have been deprecated, although they might have become a variation of the templates that she talked about.
Excellent, I like the new UI and I think it can be very helpful to the user. Other than the UI, I think there are three main topics that I would like to see improve in Office 12
1) Word Styles: most people don't know they exist or what they are useful for. Every time my thesis text went for a review, my advisor would create titles using the Normal style and then making it Bold, changing Font Size… I hope it will be very intuitive for the user how to make formatting choices and how to structure a well formatted document. How about including a few tutorials?
2) MathML (and PlotML, ChemML, etc.): more and more people are moving away from LaTeX for scientific publications (although I worked for my thesis project on a Unix machine, I was required to write the thesis in Word because this way it is easier to review the paper without moving from the PDF output to the source code…). However, the Insert Equation command and even the full Equation Editor are not the best choice: it is virtually impossible to search equations and these are treated like images, making it very hard to do a good formatting job. If including all these extensions is not possible, it should be very easy to implement them with plug-ins.
3) More easily customizable cross-references: it took me a long time to find out how to format multiple cross-references (for example "Figure 1 and Figure 2" to show as "Figure 1 and 2") and it took me even longer to actually do it. This should be much more intuitive and easy to do…
4) Better support for inserting figures in vector form. The EPS filter is far from perfect (try making an EPS figure with Illustrator CS and importing it into Word 2003, it will not show up no matter what you do, unless you save the file as an EPS for Illustrator 3). It would be great if one could include native formats from popular graphic applications (Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, etc.).
4) More statistical functions in Excel and a way to save diagrams as figures to be edited in a graphic application, please!
This is simply a list I made from my personal experience and I hope it will be helpful to someone. Thank you for reading it.
Improvement on functionality is one thing, changing the UI like changing your underwear is quite another.
How does the new Office 12 "know" what I need at any particular time? End-users are already tired of having new windows/new bits of info appear or change in front of their eyes based on what I like to call “Microsoft Intuitionism.”
There was a time when I enjoyed new versions of Microsoft products. It was play-time. Now I have grown tired of major changes in UIs. Even if this is all going to be better, I can't help but complain...
MS collected usage info for months in order to determine what users are doing and trying to do. At least they tried. I'm so sick of everyone complaining but not offering any solutions. If MS sat back and didn't change anything, everyone complains. If they change something, everyone complains. Some people just like to complain because it gives them something to do. The rest of us are happy with change. Life changes, so does software. Hence the "soft" in software. It was intended to be changable with less effort than "hard"ware. If it wasn't, it would have been burned into a chip and soldered to the circuit board for all eternity.
Try doing CTRL-C/CTRL-C to copy. This puts it in the persistent, multi-clip Office clipboard. It's then there to paste back - in fact, you can copy multiple things to the Office clipboard using this and paste them as you like, not just in order.
For those who would like to check our revamped application too, it is available here. See the associated blog entries here.
And here is a screen shot:
Pierre
Office 12, This is Amazing! I love the new UI and layout. Its gonna save alot of time creating all those documents and to scale to see huge doc's this is just better.
The design and speed of functionality is freaking amazing, I wanna get my hands on this product pre-Launch.
It has all the features and functions of easy that we've been crying out for years, am stoked about this one.
Bring it on Office 12 Team.
There's one thing I'd like to see specifically addressed, and I hope an insider can chime in with some info. I'm a keyboard user; I go for long periods of time without using the mouse. In many applications, things that pop up automatically and respond to mouse cursor position never go away if the mouse happens to be too close to them. I'm concerned that the Floatie will stay in place if it happens to appear underneath my (unused) mouse cursor. One thing that really steams my pork buns is having to stop what I'm doing to move the mouse cursor so some ill-informed popup goes away.
I'd also like to see a way to pop up and navigate the Floatie from the keyboard, but that's secondary.
What about REAL integration between the office products respective object models (e.g. Outlook and Word integration, ...)?
ramida
What about winmail.dat attachments when you read Outlook email in other mailers on other platforms? Please tell me that entire concept has finally been shot in the head.
How about people who just want to use plain text for 90% of their emails? Will setting that default be easier
What about the inane dialogs and wizards? Will common tasks like rules and delegation be able to be accomplished without 345345 levels of dialogs and mandatory wizards? Maybe the O12 team can talk to the Entourage team for "How to do things without infinite layers of dialog boxes".
Do you know where I can download the office ui and or point me in the right direction. I am trying to build applications using the office ui. I am a beginner. Any help is appreciated.
Thanks
SKI
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