“Businesses will get their hands on web and desktop Office 2010 in just under two weeks. The company’s Office team has released code for Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Visio 2010, and Project 2010 to manufacturing. Customers on Microsoft’s volume licenses – 250 or more PCs – with Software Assurance can download from the Volume Licensing Service Center on April 27. Volume-licensing customers without SA can get the software May 1. Microsoft began accepting pre orders on April 15.”
Well, there’s no way it can be worse than Office 2k7… can it?
About the same, but it is more expensive.
Edited 2010-04-18 10:32 UTC
I actually liked Office 2007. It took a bit of getting used to, but it works well. It’s certainly better than OpenOffice.org (unfortunately).
Not if you’re a keyboard user it isn’t. I take it you’ve never tried to use that cursed ribbon from the keyboard for more than a minute?
I use it all the time from the keyboard. It seems to give pretty good hints as you’re learning the shortcuts and once you know them it works fine.
You misunderstand. I mean navigating the UI from the keyboard, not keyboard shortcuts. Try the ribbon that way, then try the menu-based approach and you’ll get what I mean right away. There’s no logical order to some of the ribbon’s keyboard layout, it actually suffers from a similar keyboard issue as the Windows Vista start menu has, i.e. you don’t always go where you’d expect to go. Of course the keyboard shortcuts work, but there are a lot of items that don’t have those and that ribbon, depending on context and screen, can be erratic at best. I see what they were trying to do, but from the perspective a keyboard navigation it just wasn’t thought out very well.
Unfortunately you have to accept, that you are fading minority who uses keyboard to navigate the UI. The technology companies does not take your use case into account when developing new solutions. Mouse works fine for 95+% of users and thats where the money is. Sorry! You are left behind and you’re on your own!
I believe darknexus can’t choose a non-keyboard means of navigation since he or she relies on the keyboard for accessibility. I don’t know how good or bad the ribbon is as an interface if you’re trying to use it with your eyes closed.
Well, you can always give it a try.
You don’t even need to try it with your eyes closed, just navigate the ribbon with the keyboard for five minutes. Test the boundaries, see what happens. You’ll get it, believe me.
Edited 2010-04-19 11:01 UTC
Whether I’m in the minority or not is irrelevant. My perspective, and thus my opinion, is just as valid as yours or anyone else’s. What really gets me though is that Microsoft *claims* to care about such things and yet, when their products are actually released, they haven’t put any effort into it. What’s even worse is it would actually be pretty easy to fix, always make sure that the arrow key you’re pressing is the direction you go. If you can’t go any further that way, wrap around to the beginning of that axis. Simple logic. Instead, if you go past something on the ribbon it’s anyone’s guess what item you’re actually going to land on, and different groups and tabs seem to act differently. Five minutes of coding in the ribbon’s navigation methods and it would’ve been a complete non-issue. IN this case, a couple of if statements is all it would’ve taken.
I sympathize with re: Ribbon inconsistencies. Cold comfort, but it frustrates people who use the mouse to navigate visually just as much!
Seems Microsoft never learned the GUI principle (Fitts’ law I think) that menu and buttons should have an onscreen position as fixed as possible.
Hence the ribbon (and the menus in Office 2003, which also behave in this push-me-pull-you way!) vary in length/width in a “helpful” context sensitive way! So sometimes print is third from the bottom, and sometimes print preview is third (examples, I do NOT remember what item is actually third from the bottom of the menu/ribbon!)
Maybe if they had HEARD of muscle memory they’d understand: click here (absolute coordinate), get expected reaction. Now that I think about it I suspect the reason the ribbon fails to perform to your satisfaction is precisely that it can’t be counted on to reproduce the same behavior twice, given a “different” context (i.e. different actions preceding expected behavior). This seems to “work” (or not work!) the same for mouse or keyboard! Maybe they’ve never heard of the scientific principle? (reproducible results, factoring out variables, etc.) I’m kidding of course, but they sure don’t act like they have heard of it to me.
On a related, “how can they advertise compliance with ANYTHING when they make such a 3rd rate ‘product’ “? topic:
Begin rant
As a frequent Mac OS user, I have a small additional question for the much praised Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft: (to wit)
Office for Windows has had (real as opposed to advertised but never works right!) Unicode support and right to left support since what Office 2000?
What calendar year will Office for the Macintosh support the Unicode that has been included since Mac OS X 10.0 (actually most of Unicode works with Mac OS 9.1, but let’s be nice and ignore that and say 10.0 so circa 2001 instead of 1998)?
I’ll guess 2025 or so. Hope to be proven wrong, but the OOXML fiasco points to a monolithic Titanic unable to change course.
Microsoft, your critics are waiting…ball’s in your court.
End rant
Two Microsoft Office releases and still poor support for its own Office XML standard or ODF.
Seriouly, how can anyone take them seriously? Implement no more features, do nothing more for the next three years other than fix bugs and implement ODF properly.
Yes Office 2007 SP2 is a step in the right direction, but we have a lot of work left.
About the interface: three years later and 80% of the users at our company hate it and curse at it every day. The only reason we did not move to OpenOffice is because we week receiving docx documents from idiots that don´t know better.
Office 2007 supports ECMA-376 but not strict version of standard. Office 2010 supports ISO/IEC 29500:2008 but again not strict version of standard.
Oh, let’s not even go anywhere near using “Microsoft” and “standard” together.
Even Alex Brown, the very guy who spearheaded the hasty adoption of OOXML through ISO, has now come to realise that Microsoft doesn’t give a damn about standards and they used the whole thing as a ploy to slow down adoption of ODF.
Ever since having OOXML adopted as an ISO “standard”, Microsoft has done NOTHING to actually make it into a usable standard. They did not fix the billion issues still left in the draft, they did not put anything more in the actual Office suits that they release.
http://www.adjb.net/post/Microsoft-Fails-the-Standards-Test.aspx
I’m amazed at people who ever believed Microsoft OOXML would amount to an actual open standard. I’m amazed at myself, for occasionally giving in to the Microsoft hype machine and forgetting to doubt anything they do or say. I should learn once and forever to keep a needle handy and just stab myself whenever I hear about them. Perhaps physical reflex will accomplish what I cannot, intellectually: look only at what Microsoft actually does, not at anything they pretend to do.
Edited 2010-04-19 07:08 UTC
At the risk of sounding a bit silly, why not buy 1 Office 2007 license and tell the intern (or any minimum wage employee?) to convert the docx files for everyone else?
Wouldn’t the savings from multiple Office licenses pay the salary of said employee? Not very pleasant, but theoretically workable.
Though of course I could see obstacles that could prevent that! (first one being a Microsoft enamored boss/head of IT)