I am sure that this has been discussed ad nauseum, but I do think
that the
OS should impose some limits on "creativity" for consistency. To be honest,
I am not thrilled about any of the color schemes in the current beta (I am
sure that the final product would have additional choices).
One additional one actually. MS announced recently that the final
product will ship with three choices. No one knows though at this point
what the third color scheme looks like.
I would have much preferred if MS spent time and effort to make the
applications smarter than they currently are and should steer clear of voice
recognition. My reaction to the current beta is that (a) Word seems to have
been marginally improved (b) Excel is not that much changed and (c)
Powerpoint is unusable because it is exceedingly slow (with hardware
acceleration on or off). The new interface has been a disappointment for me.
I was quite comfortable with the previous one and I just do no see any
benefits from this one at all. If I needed to do something that took too
many keystrokes, I built a macro. I just do not need the huge screen waste
for the current "ribbon". Especially, on widescreen laptops most of what the
users would see on the screen would be the interface!!!
Actually, you have (about) as much space for your document as you did
with 2003. You get a different impression though, because the top part
of the window (with the ribbon) is larger than the top part in 2003
(menu bar plus two toolbars) used to be. However, the bottom part of the
window (status bar stuff) is smaller in 2007 than in 2003. What they
added in space on the top, they saved on the bottom. The effective space
available to your document is nearly identical, but shifted down
compared to 2003.
OK...but they should consider the users and not just the beginners or the
computerphobes. Computers are productivity machines and we do not need
anything that will slow us down. Take Word for instance. It still does not
do outline documents in a clever way...it is just too stupid for them. Even
the current version fails at this. And there is no way of "teaching" the
software. I would throw all the "ribbons" in the waste basket and work on
having software that learns and adopts and fits you like a glove. And give
this message from me to the developers in MS. Very few people have massive
21 inch screens and most people would like to see their document (or as much
of it) and not have the program take over most of the screen real-estate.
See my above comment.
Adaptive software is actually very difficult to develop and often times
end up annoying users a lot because the program thinks it knows what you
want to do/are doing, but then it happens to be that one time when you
want to do something different. Take the personalized menus in 2003
e.g.. They were an attempt in making Office adaptive, but from a
usability point of view managed to only hide features to users. Most
power users turned them off right away anyhow (and in 2007, they are
turned off by default).
Possibly..or it would be a commercial flop and then MS would have to make
changes. And I simply do not like that mentality. The customer should be
the target here of any improvements not the pride of any development division.
Even the people who complain about this right now a lot will eventually
get used to it. Change is always difficult for human beings to handle
and this is just one of those cases. Office 2007 won't be a commercial
flop, just because it is Office. All the OEMs, retailers, etc will
switch to it and so will quite a few big corporations. It will sell
quite a lot and MS really doesn't need to worry that it will be a flop.
If something isn't well received by customers, MS might change it with
Office 14 (#13 is being skipped). Many companies (the biggest Office
customers) usually skip one Office version anyhow, so they might skip
2007 if they don't like it. It won't be because of the way the windows
don't look like Windows XP. It will be for other issues such as lack of
user customization, charting issues, etc.
Patrick Schmid
