I expect it will remain shrowded in secrecy
As people try, in vain, to do what was easy ten years ago.
Mr B: People do not want their office software transformed. We just want to use it.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is widely expected to announce details of the next version of the Microsoft Office productivity suite on Monday USA Today reports, giving the public its first glimpse of a product that has so far remained shrouded in secrecy. Microsoft has been calling the new version "Office 15," but come Monday we …
No, clearly people want another new format (because OpenOffice can now open the previous one) and people have also been demanding a flashy UI that is virtually unusable and frustrates the hell out of people who then can't find things without extensive retraining that apparently Microsoft believes businesses actually provide.
Next target will be the keyboard shortcuts because residual productivity is retained between versions by knowing them.
Well said! I know theres no chance of the ribbon going until it's replaced by something more ridiculous. I understand and respect some people find the ribbon easier, but would it have killed them to leave menus as an option you could switch between? I haven't upgraded office in years (getting on for decades soon) and they're making it less attractive as they go.
New is not better by default.
"As people try, in vain, to do what was easy ten years ago."
You find moving each letter in Word with your finger (or mouse if you're old fashioned) difficult? The new MetroWord LetterTile UI is so much more intuitive. We gave our focus group a scrabble set and they could still Tweet, so what's the problem?
They'll get rid of the Save button, as they've noticed their sample of power-users prefer to press Ctrl-S, and their younger demographic doesn't understand the significance of the floppy disc symbol.
I would use the Joke Alert icon, but a nagging part of me thinks this might actually happen
Yes, no more keyboard input, they have created an interface that utilises webcams, kinect style, and each letter has its own YMCA style pose (you'd probably get quite fit writing a report!). All functions require you to memorise a ten digit touch gesture, if you don't have a touch screen you are stuffed.
All you people nagging about ribbon should just cool it cause in any way you look at it you are plainly wrong.
The bottom line of what you are proposing is to stop evolution. I understand that learning an old dog new tricks is hard, but does that mean we should stop coming up with new tricks even for the young dogs? This is just the price of age. Ribbon IS better but it is probably not the best fit for you. At some point in order to go forward a radical change is needed because the old method can't be evolved any more. It's reached its peak. Look at Win 3.11 as opposed to DOS, KDE 4 and KDE 3, Unity and Gnome, and the list goes on and on and on...
Just get over yourselves and realize that it is not MS that has the problem but you... New kids that never learned the menu system, work better with ribbon. Kids that learned the-not-so-old ribbon, are not too old to transit to another totally different model. That's the way it is and that's the way it should be.
You don't like it? Stick to Win XP and stop nagging or go buy a book and adapt.
PS: I am a hardcore Linux user since its veeeery early years so I have no liking to MS whatsoever and I wont be upgrading any of my non-MS boxes.
Nice troll Crashtest. Perhaps you would care to support your argument with reason rather than just appealing to the notion that any change must be for the good.
The way evolution works is to move towards an optimum for a particular environment. <car analogy>Cars evolved to having steering wheels (from tillers) that made the car go right when turned clockwise by about 1900 and stayed that way since. You are going to tell us that in your car you have reversed the steering wheel direction or replaced it by buttons let and right in the roof that you hit with your head, because to be different must be better? </car analogy>
Actually, there have been quite a few comments that in many ways Windows 8 looks like a reversion to Windows v3.1, not an evolution.
What exactly is your proof that ribbon is not better other than you yourself not being able to adapt?
My proof, as I wrote in my first post also, is comparing how easy it is for young students to learn each version. Ribbon is far more intuitive unless you are trying to make it be what it is not... the menu system. That conclusion is derived from personal experience, teaching for years to people of all ages as a side-job.
Not all change is better of course, but following your car analogy try and read about the early ages. How the pedals and the steering were not standardized and so many different designs came out. You like it or not, we are still in the early ages of computing (especially when talking about UI design); electronics have a history of less than a century, while mechanics (including cars, starting from carriages) go back thousands of years.
In any way, I don't have to convince you, just find anyone who has really learned ribbon and compete.
By the way, I'm having a real hard time with it too. That's why I always keep libreoffice even on windows boxes that come with office. That doesn't mean that I wont recognize that it's my inability to adapt that is at fault and not the interface itself.
In the end don't mind me, I'd been a KDE2 and then KDE3 user that was positively amazed by KDE4; that was KDE v4.1. So according to popular opinions on these boards, something is seriously wrong with me.
I'm sorry, but any microsoft software is doomed for me. The better it is, the less I want to be tied into it. I cant see any way back for them, just a steady decline now. Maybe a rapid one if PC business goes the way RIM and nokia did. Perhaps android could grow into a desktop linux in the next 5 years. Imagine the terror at redmond?
Apple annoys me at times, but they havent got me looking for the exit yet.
>> I'm sorry, but any microsoft software is doomed for me. The better it is, the less I want to be tied into it.
That logic would doom any alternative software product or service to the category of second-rate.
Because as soon as it became competitive, to chose it would mean that you would locked in just as tight.
Microsoft sells solutions for clerical work that scale to an enterprise of any size.
Small gains in productivity in the office --- which are damn hard to come by --- can add up to real savings down the road.
> OK, show us the small gains ... and we'll be pleased yo add them up.
Oh, I don't know. Here are a few productivity boosters I've come across...
^t to transpose the last two letters (if you've types teh instead of the, for instance). Alt t does the same for words and ^x t does it for lines.
^x n n to narrow to a region so all your global (ish) search and replace and reformatting is restricted to just where you want it (^x n w to "widen" again after)
alt / to autocomplete (cycles through all previous words with the same prefix; also works after a word)
abbrev-mode to save typing on common expressions (like fwiw, atm, otoh, etc.). Put in common misspellings that you make to have them corrected (teh, embarrased, whatevar)
^x r m to mark a bookmark at the current point and file, ^x r b to jump to a saved bookmark
^x 2 to split screen into two horizontal panes, ^x 3 to split vertically, ^x 1 to go back to single pane view
^x o to jump to the other (next) pane in a multi-pane display (a good one to assign a keystroke like keypad-enter to)
^ space to set a mark (one end of a region) ^x x to jump back to it (previous point then becomes the mark)
Alt c capitalise word at point (or the region, if set); alt -c capitalises last word (also u and l for all upper and all lower case)
alt $ spellcheck current word
alt a, alt e jump to start/end of this/next logical section (paragraph)
^x (, ^x ) define a keyboard macro, ^x e to execute it (or alt number ^x e to do it that many times)
^x tab indent region by default amount (or prefix with alt number for a particular delta)
I don't know about you, but all these features are great time-savers for me. I'm sure I could go on, but I think you get the point.
Name one, and be specific complete with cost versus benefit analysis that includes a summation by year of avoided costs and a payback period.
The problem you're going to have, one of them, is quite often new products are introduced before any calculated payback period completes. Small gains you see .... small gains.
Such as those created by changing your entire UI (learned by your entire customer base over many years) for something completely different?
Then claiming your new "ribbon" is somehow better?
Perhaps you could explain to those of us still trying to find functions on the ribbon how it makes us more efficient compared to using the old menu system we knew and loved. At least tell us how to say "no, thanks" and continue using the old menu system...
Due to a change in job, I've had to go back to using Office 2003. Finding anything in there is a complete nightmare, I can't even begin to imagine how I used to manage it. By comparision, finding anything in the Ribbon UI is relatively simple and, in the most pathalogical worst case, requires clicking through about ten tabs. I can't even begin to count the number of menus, sub-menus, dialogs, task panes and toolbars where things are just buried in Office 2K3.
It takes a little getting used to at first, but once you do there really is no going back.
"It takes a little getting used to at first, but once you do there really is no going back."
I can go back and forth and I have no issues, you must be one of those people who dislikes change (sarcasm)
Mine is the copy of LibreOffice which is getting better by the minute.
For anyone who just has basic requirements, I strongly suggest not shelling out and trying the freebie version they are now giving away. I have full paid for Office on my Mac, but the PC that sits next to it has the freebie ad supported version that Dell pre-installed. I don't even notice the advertising!
Or you could try Open Office, but since I had MS Office on the Mac anyway it made sense to at least try the bundled free version on the Windows 7 box. Works just fine for my basic requirements!
Personally I think Microsoft should consider the possibility that large-scale 'transformational' updates are bad. Yes, progress is good, but progress in small chunks can be much better. There's less risk of compatibility problems, problems that do occur should be small and relatively easy to fix, users only have to adapt to these small changes each update so no huge "oh my god everything's changed" moments, and best of all - new features/changes can be rolled out quickly. Look at how long it takes for something that Microsoft puts into IE to actually be usable (when they actually get anything right, I've been playing with postMessage recently and it seems they've managed to completely screw THAT up too)
"less risk of compatibility problems, problems that do occur should be small and relatively easy to fix, users only have to adapt to these small changes each update so no huge "oh my god everything's changed" moments,"
That would be pointless. Where would the profit opportunities be for the Certified Microsoft Dependent ecosystem which is a significant part of what keeps MS going? No need for Microsoft Certified Trainers to show where everything moved to, no need for IT to hire an army of contractors and consultants to update various essential business processes, no need for IT to throw away vast quantities of perfectly workable desktop hardware, no market opportunity for "Office 2013 for Dimwits", and so on.
Change is good. Change brings revenue. Revenue brings profit (for the middlemen).
End users? Business benefits? Who gives a fork about them?
What's wrong with the idiot ribbon that takes up 30% of the screen space just to show you stupid shit all the time, that you almost never ever want, need or have to use...
Dammit I had a perfectly good custom word.DOT template sorted out that had everything I needed via Alt-(letter) in one teeny menu bar..... across the top of the screen.... printer, scanner, zoom page height or width, OCR, as well as the other regular menus....
But Noooooooo thanks to the dumb arseholes in Microsoft - Office 2007 came along, and wasted 30% of the valuable screen area on STUPID shit I did not need to be looking at, instead of the document contents that I did need to be looking at, with NO way to regain the plain menu system - Well I threw those Office 2007 CD's in the bin....
After Office 2003 - the stupidity and bullshit rendered their software intractably unusable.....
Still - no more sales ever again to Microsoft = no skin off my nose....
"Ribbon is much more intuitive and much faster compared to looking through the file Menu"
Here's how you insert a field:
"Click where you want to insert a field."
"On the Insert tab, in the Text group, click Quick Parts, and then click Field."
Very intuitive once you know you know that fields are hidden inside Quck Parts. I could go on. And on.
"Very intuitive once you know you know that fields are hidden inside Quck Parts."
Yeah, exactly "once you know". So therefore not intuitive to new users at all then when compared to Ribbon. My point wasn't that it's not easy once you know what you're doing, I already conceded that. My point is that Ribbon is better for new and irregular users, and your post just highlights that fact further.
Correct, and if you don't want to see it all the time, just right-click and select 'Minimize the Ribbon' (you've now got more screen real estate than you did under the old menu system). Plus, you have the 'Quick Access Toolbar' for one-click access to all your commonly used functions.
Moan about MS as much as you like (I certainly do), but they spend millions every year on usability research. When they introduce a new feature, such as the ribbon, it's the result of hundreds of hours of testing and monitoring the reactions of both new and experienced users to the revised interface.
I agree, they do expend a lot of effort on usability testing - for which I upvoted you.
I just wish the outcome of their testing would match my expectations of the software interface.
Perhaps I should have ticked yes to supply Office feedback data, and told MS that I didn't like the optins they left under the right-click - in which case I have also to blame myself I guess.
>>Moan about MS as much as you like (I certainly do), but they spend millions every year on usability research. When they introduce a new feature, such as the ribbon, it's the result of hundreds of hours of testing and monitoring the reactions of both new and experienced users to the revised interface.
Of course that's a nice thing for the company to be able to claim, but do we really have much insight into the function of usability testing at Microsoft? At what stages of the design are they involved and how much influence do they really have? It could be that the Ribbon was some VP's baby and any usability testing that was done on it just resulted in minor tweaks to prevent it from being completely unusable...
I'm an intermittent user. It baffles the crap out of me. I had no problem with Word 2. It's only acquaintances who use it a lot who seem to like it.
One thing I have noticed is that it degrades disgracefully by hiding things behind arrows. Full screen 1600 x to half-screen (for document next to document comparison). Dreadful.
"Sucks if you're already proficient and know where every function is located under the File Menu"
Like, oh I dunno, maybe 95% of their user-base, and almost certainly over 99% of their target market for *upgrades*. Remember, if you are the monopoly player, you already have a product that would do for shipping with new PCs. The only way to justify the development costs of a second version is *upgrade* sales.
"Like, oh I dunno, maybe 95% of their user-base"
Yup, I never disputed that. My only point was that I do think if you look at it objectively then Ribbon is actually better than most people are giving it credit for. As is always the case whenever Microsoft makes some sort of UI changes, the resentment just stems from the fact people are being forced to change habits, rather than the actual merits of the changes themselves (which as someone else pointed out are usually well researched and thought out). I don't have a problem with people complaining about this, but rarely are the people whining actually honest (maybe even with themselves) about their reasons for hostility to the change and instead insist the new UI is inherently inferior, when it's not.
I had to work with the ribbon thing for the first (and hopefully last) time two weeks ago. Took me 10 minutes to find how to print the document -- essentially by random clicking on everything, hoping that something useful will happen, until I found that the strange decoration in the top left corner is also a kind of menu. Talk about intuitive...
Given that Microsoft Office owns a market share from 70 up to 80 percent in many countries, it begs the question why the company would even want to take this risk. They were able to climb to the top thanks to the software's wide-spread use in offices all around the world and they should do their best not to lose that advantage (over Open- or LibreOffice). It is vital to all these users that they can work with a piece of software or at least get something recognizable from an update.
Even today, more than five years after the ribbon interface has been introduced with Office 2007, I still know more companies that use prior versions because it is both an easier and cheaper solution. The reason is simple: administrators don't want an expensive revolution of any tool they were happy with, because it doesn't end with buying the software licenses. They also need to expensively re-train a whole lot of people if they don't want to see a drop in efficiency.
I'm not saying that one bad release would automatically end the dominance of Microsoft Office, but its momentum has certainly lessened in recent years. Every company that keeps using earlier versions of the software suite - until a couple of years ago, the 2003 version remained the most popular with over 50 percent of user share - is a possible lost sale for Microsoft.
Having written all that, I'm truly concerned now.
From the point of view of a private home user, I don't care a lot if the 2013 suite has been redesigned to fit the new metro surface and may even look forward to an office suite which allows for productive use on a tablet. It's a whole different ballgame in commercial use and I can't see this transformation being successful.
<Mr Grumpy comes to El Reg attr=ON>
They'll play hide the feature again, using MS Word (MS Office) is like trying to play wack-a-mole these days.
Oh! and just to make it interesting they'll rename all the terms of reference for functions and commands and then, in the offline (un)Help(ful) file, not tell you what they have done. Try and find the term Grid Settings in Word 2010, I spent 30 minutes looking for that function first time round, as far as I'm concerned, I can't even RTFM, is that progress?
I 'got' Word 2003 and earlier, not my favourite document creation tool; Ventura (Xerox or Corel V8+ variants) was the one true way, however I persevered and never fought it, disabled the free format bar, created structured, style driven templates with automatic cross references and seldom had a problem. I became the go to person to sort out other people's free formatted, 100 plus page, 500 plus styles, unstable disasters. I can strip such a document back to plain text and using the original as rough style guide, construct a working template, outline numbered, and re-apply it in an afternoon.
I eat automated table of contents and indexes for breakfast. Two different numbering styles required to four hierarchical levels in the same document? no problem. The use of extra carriage returns, tabs and spaces to make something fit or line up causes me physical discomfort.
Now I can't even find things like Grid Settings.
I have tried for 18 months to get anywhere near as speedy and productive with the Ribbon interface but am now reduced to the same level as everyone else as the interface cannot be tailored to how I like to work.
I learn new stuff all the time in my job, I relish it, but every time I see a ribbon interface I just get angry and want to punch the screen. Is it me or is it not possible to set up the visible interface in Word to show which style is applied to the current paragraph your cursor is on? (I know you can show the equivalent of a styles pane but you sometimes have to scroll this to see what style is selected) To be honest I haven't tried that hard to do it.
I have no choice but to use Office 2010 when it is rolled out eventually at work, it is still the lingua franca, but I will curse Microsoft from then until retirement (if I ever get to it) and become a bad will ambassador for Microsoft products to anyone that will listen, because of it.
Am I a Grumpy Old Man? you better @!*%ing believe it.
'....I think this is the most transformational release...' my arse!
</Mr Grumpy comes to El Reg attr=OFF>
I have recently bought Quickoffice for my (version 1) Samsung phone thingy, and I am delighted how well it works.
Oh no, I don't work for anyone connected to said software or Samsung in any capacity.
I have recently bought a bluetooth keyboard that connects to it, I just wish it had some sort of docking station that would allow me to have a decent sized screen and mouse as well. PC in my pocket and all that. Still, I love my PC for developing web stuff and all that.
Office has seen several transformations over the past 15 years, some of which have cost individuals and businesses lots of re-training. Yet, the last time I as an engineer felt that I got new features that made my tasks more efficient was with Office-97. As a result I'm not upgrading Office until MS stops supporting the version I'm currently using.
Office is their one product that people seem to like well, so they ought to have all other products suround it. Instead of "Windows 8", It should be "Office OS". Instead of "Windows Phone", how about "Office Phone". And "X-Office" sounds a lot spicer the "X-Box".
Are you listening MS
Coming sooner than you think. Look at Microsoft's Lync product. There's a serious amount of moolah to be made in that market if Microsoft don't screw it up. Now that they have Skype in their arsenal I would not be surprised to see them take on the business telephony market and crush the competition.
I'm not a big MS fan, and I still miss WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, but every so often they do have good ideas, and occasionally some of them even see the light of day.
> Now that they have Skype in their arsenal I would not be surprised to see them take on the business telephony market and crush the competition.
You need to go have a look at the effect MS's acquisition of Skype has had on the network operators' willingness to sell Windows Phone at all. MS is busy learning the hard way.
So now I can shell out hundreds and hundreds of dollars more for this bloated moving target called "MS Office." I guess they've got nothing more to add in terms of "word processing" and "spreadsheets" so the only innovation they can come up with is mangling the file format even more and trashing the UI with more junk one of their cowboy developers cooked up over a night of cheese slices and coke.
For the life of me I do not understand why people have such a death grip on this past-it's-prime office suite. Gosh, I remember when there were multiple office suites floating around out there...the world didn't end with a little competition, but it sure did once the boss-types decided MS Office was gospel.
Or for the denizens of the weird ecosystem, "please, hit me again, and harder; my 'experience' is beginning to leave me unexcited."
How nice for Microsoft that they own a bunch of compliant Sims and can toy with them at will. How sad for the Sims.
How wonderful it is that pencil and paper are pretty much safe from megalomaniacs bent on repeated transformation.
"Office 365 Fully Packaged Product (FPP)"
Here in the US we can buy something yellow and waxy and slightly pungent, sold as "cheese"; look at the label closely and the actual proper name is "cheese food substitute."
Microsoft software product substitute. Yummy!
The main reason for switching to a more modern version like Office 2003 is that it comes on CD, and is often bundled with a new PC.
After five years, I'm coming round to the idea that the Ribbon is better than toolbars, but if they're honest dumping the menus was about nixing the competition.
My Office 2000 is on a CD, and, if I was still a Windows user, would be all that I, and most other far more demanding users than me, would ever need for clerical work. More than enough.
Penguin, but I wish that I could claim that Libre/Free/Whatever was better. It isn't. It is close enough to Microsoft to make it just as bad, but double frustrating because it is not quite the same. Parts of it are sub-microsoft in their do-it-my-way-or-not-at-all programming.
Which points to my problem with the ribbon. Yes the ribbon is a reasonable replacement for the toolbar (actually its much like the tabbed toolbar concept which has been occasionally seen long before office tried it).
However the toolbar wasn't the only pre-ribbon component of the UI - there was a menu too. Its the menu which the ribbon is a poor substitute for.
I don't so much want the ribbon gone, what I want is the menu back. In (non-ms) programs which allow it ribbon+menu is indeed a viable alternative to toolbar+menu. Its ribbon without a menu I don't like.
The Office menus were awful though. Just look at the "tools" menu in Office 2003 and it's the most ridiculous collection of unrelated features ever cobbled together. Not to mention that there are a whole raft of features that are entirely unnaccessible from the menus simply because there was no longer room to put them there.
Menus have there place and still do in relatively non-complex user interfaces but Office had long since outgrown them.
Exactly. Microsoft have already stated on record that the Office menus were rapidly becoming massively unwieldy. In fact, a huge percentage of requests for new features were for features that were already in Office - and this was before 2007. Fact is the menu system needed ditching.
I jumped ship from MS Office years ago. Word 2000 started the trend of micromanaging your document, and things just went downhill from there. Papyrus Office is a damn sight simpler than either OpenOffice or MS, though they have yet to catch up with docx - which my uni insists on sending files in. So much for open standards...
Hope to hell they transform it back to Office 97 with added Open Document support. Bloody loathe the ribbon in Office 10 that I'm forced to use at work. It interferes with getting my document writing done. A lot of the time I bring my laptop and use LibreOffice or Office 97, then copy the result to my work PC. Bring back customisable toolbars & menus! Much more efficient use of space.
And while I'm on the subject: What is it with these HD format glossy screens that have taken over the world? Is it 'Idiot Consumer Syndrome'? "Oooh....Shiny! And my movie fits the screen exactly". Never mind space to show the player's controls too. I really had to hunt to find a WUXGA matte screen when I replaced my laptop this year. As it was, I had to buy a 2nd hand Lenovo to do it. Damned if I wanted to move to a *reduced* vertical resolution on a replacement laptop - especially since I work on documents. Last time I checked, most documents aren't formatted in landscape orientation. Keep it up and we'll be holding our laptops sideways** to use them to develop any substantive document.
** I think a light bulb just went on. Now I know why M$ have rammed that bloody Metro UI down our throats - it's orientation agnostic!
"most documents aren't formatted in landscape orientation"
Only because you're not doing enough spreadsheets and Powerpoint. If the answer is anything other than Excel or Powerpoint, you've asked the wrong question.
Unless of course you're doing engineering design documentation for (say) software (which in this context includes FPGAs) or electronics. Then inches and inches thickness of hand-generated Word is exactly what you want, obviously it's the best tool on the market for stuff where at least half of it could readily be autogenerated for simplicity and readability and consistency (/sarcasm).
Good point about the screen ratio. I love 16:9 for most thinks, but I'm tempted to rotate my 2nd screen for Word documents into portrait mode.
I'm also a ribbon fan. Most people only use one or two features they know. I found it easy to scroll the ribbon with centre-mouse wheel.
I still know ^KD to save a file in WordStar
;^)
It's the nonsense bullshit marketing justification that comes from MS that's most annoying....
I sat through a presentation where MS "justified" the new ribbon interface by enabling every toolbar possible in MS Word 2003 and compared this with the new ribbon interface. They weren't impressed when it was pointed out that only a fecking retard would enable every toolbar simultaneously and some of the toolbars would normally only appear when required.
There are some good things about the ribbon interface - as in the functionality is usually better grouped than the often irrational placing of menus in the old MS Office (menus that were compounded by the idiotic default of hiding everything that isn't used twice a day). What Open Office did for the menus was to keep them largely the same but rationalise the placement of some items - the effect was an interface easy to use and familiar but with improvements - i.e. evolutionary. Bringing in the ribbon interface at such a size was a bad move though as it takes up so much vertical screen real estate on a lower resolution screen that it severely impacted usability - and if the horizontal space wasn't great either than many functions were lost in a 3x3 pixel drop down that was far too easy to miss (Office 2010 improved on this with some smarter collapsing).
Usually though, with the entire Office suite, the only thing that changes is the front user interface. Frequently exactly the same unfixed bugs are present and many of the settings popups are identical. While there is some merit in not fixing what isn't broken, when these screens are the setup windows of Microsoft Outlook, this really doesn't apply.
Given how pathetic the Metro interface is and that MS Office 2013 is bound to ape it's look and "usability", it's no wonder that MS have been hiding the new version. MS Office is their big cash cow, breaking it is not something to be done likely but if a homicidal user-interface is being championed at the upper level of idiots then, especially at a company that runs internally like MS, this is what is going to happen and nobody will dare to speak out about it.
Word jumped the shark after 2.0. Excel jumped the shark after 5.0, or 4.0 if you don't use pivot tables. 99% of users won't use any functionality that can be added after 20 years' development of a perfectly adequate office suite.
On the other hand, I suppose you get some new clipart to replace "Duck Smashing Computer".