“Today we are able to share details on a number of new and improved features in each of the core applications for Office 15, thanks to several people with access to the early Technical Preview code. From Touch and Reading Mode to a Weather Bar feature in Outlook 15, we have exclusive details on Microsoft’s plans.” Looking good. Not fully Metro though. Bummer.
Apparently they’re finally going to support their own “standard”.
https://blogs.msdn.com/b/dmahugh/archive/2010/04/06/office-s-support…
Not that I’m going to hold my breath. The sooner other suites can work effectively in docx the sooner people will stop using/paying for it.
You do know that Word isn’t the only app in Office, right? Oh, and there are free alternatives to Windows, and you really don’t see people flocking to that. Being free and working well aren’t enough for most people, strangely enough.
The major apps in office are word and excel and outlook hands down. The rest is filler for 90% of users.
My point is that you can’t even apply for a job without it needing to be in doc/docx format. Most places don’t take PDF, ODF/ODT, etc etc.
Australia has an ingrained MS Office culture that makes using Libre Office pretty pointless unless it can provide effective Open XML conversion.
Which it doesn’t. https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40900
So the reason no one bothers with alternatives is because everyone else uses Office and Office works best with Office documents. Changing to an alternative is impossible if you want to interact with pretty much any other business in the country.
PowerPoint too ? I would never have thought…
Well, what most people do with Powerpoint shouldn’t be done with Powerpoint anyway.
But yes, it is used a lot.
Same can be said about Excel. If there’s any application that is used with reckless abandon for every and all tasks it’s Excel.
Don’t know… I have seen many people using powerpoint as a virtual equivalent of the transparent slide of the old days, which seems fine to me.
Though I have also seen some horrible aberrations on my side too… Like using PowerPoint as a DTP software, UGH !
What I am saying is that no really bothers with the alternatives anyway, even though they work well. There are several real usable office suites that work as well as Office, but not one of them has Office’s reputation among end users.
The other thing is do you really think an excel or word power user is going to give up their finely crafted vba macros and years of experience to learn a whole new way of doing things? Power users hate change. Hate it.
My only concern is will they improve MS Office 15’s compatibility with LibreOffice and Google Docs? I know that when they make a MAC version of this my assistant will try to use it instead of LibreOffice. I, unfortunately, am sure all the math equations I type into Writer will not display correctly for her and she’ll be disappointed that she will have to go back to using that free cross platform office suite.
Honestly though, I m glad that the ribbon looks much more subtle in the screenshots (excluding the screenshot of OneNote). I am glad to see MS improve their UI on this product.
If they keep true with their attitude in previous releases, it will be even more incompatible.
So what happened to MS Access?
Good question. Maybe it’s going the way of Visual Fox Pro. Access is a handy tool and it would be a shame to see it thrown to the wayside. Who knows though, hard to tell what Microsoft is trying to accomplish these days other than avoid having to maintain multiple user interfaces by merging the tablet and desktop experience which deep down we all know we don’t want.
It would be a shame the only bit of MS Office that I need is Access. The rest Libre Office is just about good enough
As you say, it’s not fully metro, but it hints at how metro-fied desktop will look. Clean, crisp, clear, and with ribbons minimised by default. Can’t wait to see the whole desktop done in this style… it’s almost inconcievable at this point that they would keep the old Vista theme.
In those windows, especially word. I find it annoying that Word 2010 does not open at exactly the width of the document. But I guess the metro paradigm is one application per screen, and this reflects that. One reason i won’t be using Metro on the desktop.
Coming up in Office 16: Minimized ribbon streamlined to be even less modal and content organized as lists with tiny icons, since those big ones were just as useless.