Office 2003 Beta 2 Screen Shots 693
frooyo writes "ActiveWin is displaying screenshots of Office 2003 Beta 2 including pictures of Outlook, Excel, Word etc. As seen by the screenshot - the task based interface is much more prominent. Also - Outlook's three-vertical-pane interface is now the default." Nice to get a head start on what we'll be cloning next year ;)
First Look! (Score:5, Funny)
but (Score:5, Interesting)
Although, as an active directory admin with a few Office 97 clients left in an office XP environment, Office 97 shoots right through my GPO lockdowns.... god knows why, it just bypasses all the security... so if this helps bring a unified base, then I'm all for it....
Re: but (Score:5, Funny)
> It's just a shame that they're remooving support for the legacy operating systems.
I'm sure they'll be happy to make you a deal on a new operating system.
Re: but (Score:4, Interesting)
If you need to to have those aging PCs there, you might give them a new lease on life with Linux. Just a thought...
-B
Re:but (Score:5, Funny)
Re:but (Score:5, Funny)
Mmmmm... port wine...
Re:but (Score:4, Insightful)
lol. Ever wonder why you find yourself saying this to yourself every year?
Slashdot made me cynical... (Score:4, Funny)
Sad, isn't it?
graspee
Re:but (Score:5, Insightful)
Administering a Windows 98 machine on a 2K network is horrible. The methods for implementing everything are mixed up, you can't specify a home directory, the netlogon scripts don't even run (they run, but do nothing), and so on.
Microsoft's problem has always been keeping backwards compatibility until it shot them in the foot. DOS compatibility screwed up Windows 95, Windows 3.1 compatibility screwed up Windows 95, but of course they had to have it. The extra code, the extra junk, the more support, the ifs, the whiches, the switch/cases to make it all work on OSes that just aren't reasonably modern, it's a joke. If you can run Office 2k3, you can run Windows 2k. Upgrade. Seriously.
Kudos to Microsoft for leaving the stragglers behind so they can make a better product (god knows they need it often enough).
--Dan
Re:but (Score:3, Interesting)
Excuse me, but did you think that this was 'accidental'.
> Microsoft's problem has always been keeping backwards compatibility until it shot them in the foot.
MS's _actual_ problem is that the older OS's, '98, 'NT, and 2000 and Office '97, '2000 have been 'good enough' for most users. These users stopped throwing money at MS, which is a real problem.
The solution, of course, is for MS to make software that fails to work with older versions and force users to 'keep up' and provide MS with adequate revenue.
The next step along will be DRM documents. When someone sends a Word Document or EMail and you can't read it because of DRM the 'solution' is to buy the latest Windows, Office and get a passport account and MSN subscription and _then_ you will be able to activate the enclosed virus.
> so they can make a better product
It isn't about making new products better, it is about making old products worse.
Re:security (Score:5, Insightful)
If the Claris Works 3 that came with my 7-year-old Mac does what I need, I don't need to upgrade. No security issues, nothing. Legacy systems don't _have_ modern security issues because they don't have the "integration" with "duh internet". Heck, if it isn't on the net, what security issues are there? (Besides, Macs didn't used to have listening ports by default.)
Still like PaperClip on the old 8-bit micros? What possible security issues could there be? You're not going to get 0wn3d through a 300 bps originate-only modem.
I know Office is a whole other problem security-wise, but I take offense at the blanket statement that ALL old software should just die.
Re:Unknown TLA (Score:4, Informative)
The replacement for System Policy in Windows 2000 Active Directory implementations. HTH :p
reply (Score:4, Funny)
Well that is all good and swell but am I still going to get a virus everytime I use it?
Re:reply (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:reply (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:reply (Score:4, Informative)
Heh, heh...have you asked your friends lately about that? I'm getting this mental image of them saying, "Damn, Tom keeps sending me that 'I Love You' message."
Because opening attachments from friends is JUST as risky as opening ones from strangers. And an email that uses HTML only and opens in a preview pane is at risk of the next Nimba that comes along.
Re:reply (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd like to see MSFT fix *that.*
You can download virus.exe all day on Linux, and it won't run until it's chmod +x. Windows already thinks it's executable, by virtue of the ".exe" (and
Re:reply (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is all well and good until you have scripts embedded in document formats, at which point you're going to get exposed anyway. But when this was brought up to people "in the know" on Advogato, they all hid behind the chmod +x defense. Pretty pathetic.
Re:reply (Score:3, Informative)
However, ".exe" is a system-wide problem that doesn't go away just because there are or are not scripts embedded in document files.
Re:reply (Score:4, Interesting)
You mean like this [microsoft.com] (it prevents Outlook users from being able to access executable content)? To circumvent this the executables must be sent as compressed files which have to be then uncompressed and then execute: It's no different than chmod +x. The attributes on the file are hardly that different from the extension of the file, and indeed many compression utilities store the attributes of the file.
In any case it's interesting that what you're talking about is something that Microsoft is making great strides in "fixing", to the consternation of many Slashdotters. A heavily debated feature of Paladium is the fact that executable files have to be signed by a trusted authority (configurable by domain. For instance your corporate IT department) to be executable. There have been third party utilities that only allow configured executables to run as well via an executable database.
Re:reply (Score:3, Insightful)
That's specific to outlook. It doesn't fix the brokenness in the operating system.
In any case it's interesting that what you're talking about is something that Microsoft is making great strides in "fixing", to the consternation of many Slashdotters. A heavily debated feature of Paladium is the fact that executable files have to be signed by a trusted authority (configurable by domain. For instance your corporate IT department) to be executable. There have been third party utilities that only allow configured executables to run as well via an executable database.
Palladium isn't about fixing this problem. "stpooing viruses" is, at best, a side effect. Palladium is about control -- control by Microsoft. It conveniently kills open development for Windows, including free software and shareware.
Re:reply (Score:3, Informative)
No it's not, outlook used to execute JavaScript when you PREVIEWED documents.
I got my first virus by attempting to delete message that looked like a virus, and when i previewed it, the JavaScript ran the executable. No stupidty on my part, I couldn't stop it. Nor could you have.
You've just been lucky, not clever, that basic advice anyone knows, that's why recent viruses don't give a damn if you bother opening them. Previewing is sufficient.
Re:reply (Score:4, Informative)
That is just bullshit, pure and simple. Outlook Express does that, Outlook does not.
Re:reply (Score:3, Informative)
Re:reply (Score:4, Informative)
Emphasis mine.
Perhaps you should spend more time learning your tools, before waxing lyrical about problems in them that don't exist.
Tools->Options...->Read->Read All Messages In Plain Text.
Re:reply (Score:5, Insightful)
"Doesn't everyone run anti-virus software?"
In reality shouldn't we expect more from modern OSes? Shouldn't the code be more solid than requiring monthly patches. Souldn't e-mailed executables be run in a sandbox? Its a pity we HAVE to have virus software and even its not good enough, you have to constantly update it.
Basically I'm just saying that our expectations on software quality are so abysmally low that we are willing to put up with this crap. Imagine if the manufacturer of your car said - Airbags are your responsibility, you should install those on your own. Then people could say "Doesn't everyone install airbags in their car?". Its ridiculous, software should be better.
Re:reply (Score:4, Insightful)
In reality shouldn't we expect more from modern OSes? Shouldn't the code be more solid than requiring monthly patches. Souldn't e-mailed executables be run in a sandbox? Its a pity we HAVE to have virus software and even its not good enough, you have to constantly update it.
Nice argument. Funny.
And yet, people like you (not flamebait, I'm just trying to generalize here) will be complaining once Microsoft adds anti-virus features into the OS about program feature bloat and monopolistic anti-competitive practices.
I'm not a Microsoft apologizer, I like some things they've done and very much dislike others, but we can't have it every which way.
Re:reply (Score:4, Interesting)
Who says it's necessarily the quality of the code? The real problem here is that new features get added, and gee surprise surprise, people find creative ways of being annoying with them. Take the saran wrap on the toilet seat example. Toilet seats have a flawed design when it comes to recognizing a well placed piece of plastic intended to give you a pressed fruit bowl. Is the toilet badly designed? Are we accpeting horrible quality?
Lock down a computer to where all that stuff is 'safe', and where are you then? You've got a computer that is rather inflexible.
Re:reply (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice troll!
Not.
Before the internet was popular we used to exchange viruses with our friends using floppy disks with infected
graspee
cloning (Score:5, Insightful)
on a more serious note is cloning the way to win? doubtful - how about innovating making it better rather than just cloning
Re:cloning (Score:5, Funny)
The cloning thing worked for MS...
Re:cloning (Score:5, Funny)
No, remember, this is Slashdot. If Linux does it it's "cloning"; if MS does it it's "stealing".
Re:cloning (Score:5, Insightful)
If it is cloning improvements: yes, certainly. It's not like MS would not clone features of the X11 desktop environment. For example the Longhorn previews showed CDE/KDE/Gnome-features like virtual desktops and panel applets.
Virtual Desktops (Score:3, Funny)
Ah, the good old days when everyone used there own window manager, everybody's unix desktop looked totally different and you actually had to know something to have a desktop that was cool.
Re:cloning (Score:3, Insightful)
*Very* few things in today's desktop systems are revolutionary. Most are just features from experimental systems in the past or copied from 3rd party products.
Re:cloning (Score:3)
Re:cloning (Score:5, Insightful)
I just don't get it. Sometimes, in order to make something usable for most people, there is no such thing as "innovating" to the extent of making it vastly different. Some people just want to have a similar, comfortable interface to work on their spreadsheets and reports.
People WANT to pay (Score:3, Insightful)
It's strange, but if people don't sacrifice for something, money, time, energy, they just don't feel like there is any value in it. Some people love free stuff, but the majority want to feel some sort of ownership.
i.e. In Best Buy, ATTBroadband offers an empty box for sale. $10 is the listed price, and all it contains is information on how to sign up for the service and receive your $10 back. But, they are selling nonetheless. Best Buy offered them for free previously, but there was no take up. Place a sticker on it, and the question is... Ooooh! Broadband for $10? I'm sold!
Go figure!
Another upgrade (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Another upgrade (Score:5, Insightful)
So, if you don't upgrade you're going to get a
Do you see a problem with this scenario or were you just asking rhetorically?
Re:Another upgrade (Score:5, Interesting)
Simple: Microsoft shareholders.
Microsoft doesn't make money for them if people use "old" versions of their software. They have to make a newer version, with incompatible formats, to ensure as many people upgrade as possible. It's software extortion.
Re:Another upgrade (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll need it to thread DRM support in your documents and view other similar such documents
Heaven forbid that I suggest someone install the free OpenOffice software so they can read my documents, yet it is oh so natural for people to ask me to use Microsoft Office on my home desktop. Hypocrites, slaves to the borg.
Re:Another upgrade (Score:5, Informative)
Word XP can do non-consecutive text selections (you have _no_ idea how nice this is until you have it). 2000 introduced a multiple-item clibboard, and it doubled in size in XP--in addition to an overhaul of the word mail-merge wizard, and numerous other small improvements (like the HTML export being almost standard).
Not sure of these are $100 upgrades, but they ARE improvements.
Re:Another upgrade (Score:4, Interesting)
Holy crap! (Score:3, Funny)
I didn't know Word XP can do non-consecutive text selections. I have been wanting that for years. Now I have a reason to upgrade...
Re:Another upgrade (Score:3, Insightful)
I do know how nice it is, because I did have it. In Microsoft Word 4.0 for the Macintosh, in about 1988 or so. I'd forgotten all about it; in truth I didn't use it too much at the time.
I guess everything old really is new again.
Re:Another upgrade (Score:5, Funny)
And I friggin hate that multiple clipboard thing. No matter how many times I've tried to get used to it, I'm always less efficient with it getting in my way.
I'd *love* to be able to turn it off. But each time I copy something, realize I didn't get the period in the selection, grab the period, and copy again, it pops up. The stupid paperclip I repeatedly ask to go away then comes up and says "Would you like me to turn this feature off?" To which, of course, I reply, "yes," which he pretends to do until the next time I miss a period. Then I right click on him and hide him. He asks if I'd like to disable him. I say, "yes," and he goes away until the next time he thinks I might actually want him back again.
A feature in Office that I'd pay for is the ability to disable new features, for good and truly, to never be bothered by them again unless I completed some mystic Zennish quest to reenable the feature, wherein I need to become one with my software, and utter the mantra, "clippy, clippy, clippy."
imitation (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, i like the office interface, but perhaps that's just because i'm so familiar with it.
Re:imitation (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you just answered your own question.
I think you hit the nail on the head yourself... (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless there's something seriously *wrong* with the Office interface, you grow to like it. Kinda like how I "like" Windows, because there I know where everything is. Just moving a menu option to somewhere else will make me spend more time until I get used to it, no matter how "smart" it is. And unlike us, some corporate users just won't find the new location without retraining (no, I'm not kidding). Personally, I'll stick with webmail/eudora/pine though, as long as I'm in windows. Evolution looked pretty good on my linux machine, but I'm not quite ready to make that my desktop yet.
Kjella
We all hate Microsoft, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Or it might just be that "there is nothing to see there, now move along". Nothing useful ever came to Office since Office2k anyway :)
You know it's a reputable site... (Score:5, Funny)
The difference? (Score:2, Insightful)
Could anyone tell me the difference what Office look like? Ofcourse it's nice if the interface is good etc, but I can do everything I need with my Office 2000. I could even managage with Office 95 for sure. I see no reason why to buy a new Office. What we really need is stability.
Cloning... (Score:3, Insightful)
What's sad is it is all too true. Instead of innovating, a lot of OSS projects that are supposed to be like MS apps usually just mimick, rather than truly innovate.
Re:Cloning... (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps because most of the time "truly innovating" is a waste of time.
People sure do love to hate MS because they are huge and because of that push people around.
But when it comes to UI design - both they and Apple have the money to do a lot of research into actual usability.
Something that becomes obvious when you use "truly innovative" software - when someone tries to do something new just because it seems right to them.
More often then not, it looks cool, but proves useless for day to day use. (a few of MS's "features" are much like this - fading menus and such, but some people love them. Apple too has much fluff, or dare I say cruft? but for the most part, they have a very strongly researched base of design methods, hence why they are mimicked)
Obviously there are exceptions - but for the most part, MS is oft imitated because they have already invested literally millions of dollars and tons of time in research into making products that people can sit down and use.
(I'm sure someone will chime in and say that vi is far more usable for themselves and that an luser that can't see that is an idiot.
But the obvious point should be that when designing for the massees - there are certain techniques that will be seen over and over - because they work.
All that could be summed up in "why reinvent the wheel?"
One diff between Linux and Win/Mac... (Score:4, Insightful)
True, OSS doesn't have the money to put into UI research, and while RedHat and the other commercial distros have tried to help out to some extent, it's still a game of catchup with Microsoft most of the time, which is why we seem to be always playing catch up with MS and Apple. Should this be an area to advance Linux in? Maybe; I do think that with the right minds, new, non-WIMP GUIs could be developed that could be more intuitive for certain functions.
But Linux is trying to gain acceptance by all computer users, and to migrate people from Win or Mac to Linux requires familar surroundings, otherwise, your Linux support person will be running non-stop trying to answer every question under the sun from those that 'just don't get it'. So the 3-paned mail client, the Word- and Excel-lookalikes, and even media players that mimic their Mac or Win equivalent are better poised to help Linux gain market share than some abstract UI that may look good and is more efficient, but otherwise quite different from any standard UI elements.
The other problem is that developers generally make poor UI developers, particularly if the same developer works on the code and the UI. That developer will know exactly how a program is to work and thus may lay out UI elements that make sense to him, but not to the average lay person. Even if a different developer was doing the UI, there's a different mentality that computer programmers have over average computer users that would typically end with the layout being programming reasonably but low on usability. It may behoove OSS developers to get people with graphic art or usability skills on board some projects to help plan out better UI interfaces.
Basically, we need to copy, if we want Linux and OSS to be accepted, but there should be a challenge to more creative developers to build new, unique UIs.
Will they never learn? (Score:2, Interesting)
But of course, that would make too much sense, right?
Re:Will they never learn? (Score:3, Interesting)
Good thing Taco is an editor (Score:5, Interesting)
That comment about what will be cloned next year, if in a comment, would be labeled as flamebait or a troll. I find it refreshing that at least the editors realize certain realities.
One of the main ones is that, yes the linux desktop borrows heavily from MS, and not the other way around, which a lot of people like to proclaim.
Actually, it goes both ways. (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously, nothing should be 'taken' to the point of intellectual property violation, but I think if *more* of this so-called 'theft' happened in software development, it'd result in much better software in general. Take what the other people did, fix the problems in it, make it better. Then maybe they'll take what you did, fix it even more, make it better.
And in the end you've got products on all sides that're more useable, more stable, and so on and so forth. I don't know how anyone can say there's something wrong with that. Building a better mousetrap doesn't necessarily mean you have to build it completely unlike every mousetrap ever made in the past.
screenshots HERE! (Score:5, Informative)
HERE! [216.239.39.120]
god I'm such a karma whore.Re:screenshots HERE! (Score:3, Funny)
Great... (Score:5, Insightful)
Another $600 word processor from Microsoft. Even when I'm at a job where they use Office, nobody ever uses anything but Word to type some useless bullet points, or Excel to make a pointless chart. Tasks? Never used. I had a PHB who tried to assign me tasks once. He couldn't hotsync for a week after that.
Re:Microsoft Works (Score:4, Informative)
Whatever comes with Works is most certainly not Word, and it doesn't talk to the .doc format either.
Sorry to disappoint you but Works does come with Word and Word obviously "talks" to the .doc format. See http://www.microsoft.com/products/works/ [microsoft.com] for proof.
Check out your own proof. (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft Works Suite comes with Word.
Microsoft Works does not.
And I also know from experience that the Works wordprocessor default format is not readable by Word.
Re:Informative? (Score:3, Insightful)
Then he shouldn't call Office a "word processor". Just because some people buy more than what they need doesn't make Office any less useful.
There is a ton of extremely useful functionality through the entire Office suite. Just because people don't or don't know how to use it, doesn't mean it's not there. It's not Micrsoft's fault if people make unwise purchasing decisions. They give people the option to only purchase Word.
27 posts (Score:3, Funny)
mmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
that points out a very specific problem with the open/free source movements... plenty of hardcore coders but a serious lack of good ui designers.
Re:mmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't debate how accurate that point is, but I have noticed, having recently read through the gnome interface guidelines, that most of the "not like this" examples are the myriads of various gnome apps. It'd probably go a long way if the developers that *do* write UI code (regardless of how "good" they are at "designing" said UI) actually follow UI guidelines.
Also, I wonder how well respected someone who mainly does "UI" design/layout things would be respected by the core development team of some project that actually has to code up the critical working guts.
Re:mmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll go you one further.
I'm a UI designer. I have designed a new OS UI. It's quite radical, and new. I've solicited opinions on it from slashdot (here [slashdot.org])as well as from a few friends.
Basically, I'm sitting on the thing right now, for two reasons: 1.) the core group of people its designed for - techies, early-adopters - are incredibly resistant to changes of this type and 2.) its nearly impossible to solicit useful feedback from said group, for the reasons you outlined in your post.
It can be summarized in one of the responses to the above-linked post; I asked if anyone was willing to undergo (possible) major learning pains to learn a more productive system. I got the only one-word response I've ever seen on /., "No."
Everyone, absolutely everyone has an almost unshakable opinion of what they like, visually, and behaviourally. Witness the near-revolt of Classic Mac OS users trying OS X, versus the newbies and Unix/Win coverts who think it's the cat's ass (er, that means 'great'). You cannot underestimate this. In 10 years of graphic design, it still boggles me. Graphic design and particularly UI design in general get 'no respect', because its simply something that people don't respect educated opinions on. Put another way, if your code works, only another programmer is going to criticise you for sloppy coding. A user doesn't care as long as it works. But if I show a UI design to a room with 15 people, you will have 15 angrily opinionated asshats barking off about how this and that should work, with no thought whatsoever to how one arrives at those conclusions.
And the kicker: you must listen to every asshat in that room, because in a way they are all right.
Anyways. My point is this: I'm the guy you're talking about, and I find it really hard to 'break in' to this group. I don't even know where to start, actually. Hell, I get dissed just because I built the UI demo in Flash.
Microsoft also has horrible UI designers (Score:5, Insightful)
Open source could do just as well as Microsoft by employing graphic artists -- expert UI designeers need not apply. Apple seems to at least be trying, but sometimes I wonder if Microsoft's even employing user interface experts at all. If they do have them then they're not taking any serious notice of them. It seems more like they're aiming to make the interface look pretty and attractive, but no more useful than before.
A lot of what's being shown off in the screenshots are feature enhancements, but the basic problems of the UI with Windows and Office haven't changed at all. It's as if Microsoft is just throwing in any idea the programmers or feature-developers come up with, without properly testing it or verifying that it's actually useful and not going to create more problems for the user than it solves. For example:
Assuming that these screenshots are genuine, then Microsoft might have made minor presentation tweaks here and there, but it still hasn't fixed any of the real UI problems. Every one of these issues has been documented for years by experts who've spent a lot of effort researching them. Most of the issues have suggested solutions, but Microsoft's done absolutely nothing about it that's reached the consumer.
If open source developers want to mimic windows to attract users that way then I guess they can. But this doesn't mean it's a good interface. It's the opposite. Personally I'm hoping that the various independent-from-Microsoft open source UI projects come through and win the race with some good UI's, but I don't know what the chance of that is.
The only thing that needs cloning (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing that needs cloning out of Office is simply the compatibility aspect of it's documents.
No need to clone the rest of the package: the bloat, the security holes, etc. ;-)
Cloning...yuck (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cloning...yuck (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cloning...yuck (Score:5, Insightful)
And what has it led to?
A filesystem browser squashed together with a web browser (done for political reasons).
The Start menu (this has been torn to pieces on the Interface Hall of Shame).
WMP 9.
Outlook's custom widget (with the mailbox name).
Each version of Office using completely different widgets than all other apps in Windows.
All with poor UIs.
Most of the rest of what Microsoft's done has been heavily based on Apple's ideas, or HCI driven by technical flaws. There was the dual filename system because they made the poor choice to use 8.3 filenames. Then the Start Menu, because Windows developers used masses of completely unidentifiable data file names slapped in the same directory as the executable. MDI, which was produced for Windows 3.1 because the VM system sucked and MDI reduced load on it.
Occasionally they take ideas from OSS (did I read elsewhere in this thread about virtual desktops and taskbar applets?)
I *wish* they'd take the idea of virtual desktops. One of the biggest things Windows needs.
are more than happy to build interfaces based on the results of their millions of dollars worth of research and linux is all the better for it.
Is a combined web browser/file browser really that crucial or useful, or just included to help out ex-Windows users?
another site (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.wininsider.com/news/comments.aspx?mid=
http://users.pandora.be/AMDtje/Office11_2.htm [pandora.be]
http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/ol11.htm [slipstick.com]
Suhit
Numb (Score:4, Insightful)
This will likewise fail it.
Re:Numb (Score:5, Informative)
In all that, you're right on the money for 98/ME; ME never should have been, and if not for RAMBUS it wouldn't have been. But as for the rest: MS has got lots of small improvements in each iteration of office. Blame planned obsolescence.
* Office 97 was the first package with reasonable HTML built-in. Yes, it's bloated HTML with all of the Office metadata, and yes, they'd have been better if they copied Acrobat's Word-UI. But that's neither here nor there.
* Office 2000 introduced a whole heck of new features--most notably for most of us, those auto-hiding menus, multiple windows in the taskbar, and a built-in clipboard that can hold twelve "cuts."
* Office XP doubled the size of the clipboard, gave word discontinuous selection ability, and introduced that somewhat-useful task pane.
* Windows XP, over 2000, has a major improvement just in explorer.exe. You can customize your start menu to your heart's content, the system tray auto-hide (or mannualy hide) icons, and the gooy GUI is, if nothing else, "new." (And being able to turn off all of the above is rather nice, too.)
Re:Numb (Score:5, Insightful)
I've always hated those menus. I know where menu items are. But, by hiding the menu items, their position changes, and I can't find the menu choice I need.
Wow... (Score:3, Funny)
Summary for those who didn't see (Score:3, Insightful)
- More zany XP balloon like menu bars. In addition, even more light blue and Aqua-like design rip offs.
- Like Office XP, and Office 2000, you definitely won't rush to buy this release, however the minute you, or your friend warezes it on IRC, you will most likely install it -- just because.
- You will be further annoyed by the traditionally bland Windows GUI design. Recent attempts in XP to spruce it up only look like JeffK [somethingawful.com] was hired as a designer at Microsoft.
- If you are an owner of a Mac you fold your hands together, thankful for OS X, and its great design. If you are Linux or BSD user, you are likewise happy that you have a beautiful design. If you are a Windows user, you are most likely reading this from your corporate headquarters, feeling constrained by the tie around your neck, and uncomfortable dress shoes. However, you are refreshed knowing that through your extreme conformity, and love of mediocrity, you will make much more than your neighbor yearly, and are anxiously awaiting to moment you can upgrade all of your machines to this marvelous new piece of Microsoft engineering -- but you still don't know why. Now if only you could find time for sexual relations within your 9 AM to 10 PM daily work schedule . . .
Saw this at the Tablet PC Expo/Unified Interface (Score:3, Interesting)
Also they are releasing a new program with all of this... OneNote link here [microsoft.com]
This brings up my next rant... Why can't we have a unified interface for everything I need to do?! Its like.. All of these updates are nice and all.. but I don't see any real innovations. Word Excel Powerpoint Access Outlook all in different programs is still a clumsy way to operate. Alt Tabbing or dual monitors isn't cool enough anymore.. I need it all in one program. Is there any project that is actually working on something like this?
Re:Saw this at the Tablet PC Expo/Unified Interfac (Score:3, Funny)
Not Outlook (Score:3, Interesting)
Cloning or not ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, Office has a lot of Big Complicated Features which may be interesting and useful to you if your office / job has evolved to rely on them. I don't use office-suite progams much, and when I do I don't usually have anything too exotic in the way of combining features. I do find that I can paste in sections of spreadsheet, graphics and such into OpenOffice pretty well though.
OpenOffice does have a big problem to me, though, which is that fonts are usually ugly, reminds me or the way Word (3? 4? whatver version is was) looked on my old toaster Mac. This is not, strictly speaking , OO.org's fault, since ugly fonts are the result of complicated interactions among a lot of things in the system
It has some other problems too (annoying default behavior wrt to autocompletion of words, lists, etc), but these are in Word and most other Word Processors, too. On the whole, I'd much rather write a letter in OpenOffice, and have
Upshot: these screenshots don't inspire envy the way I thought they might when I opened them.
timothy
Nothing to mod (Score:4, Funny)
Well, I've been wandering around with a handful of mod points looking for some posts about the actual new Office UI/features to mod up, but there aren't any because everyone was trolled by the cloning bit in the original item!
Ah well, it wouldn't be slashdot otherwise
ha ha, you seek an empty set. (Score:3, Funny)
What, you can't find another fanboy crowing about how wonderful the new features are? Where are the IE trolls when you need them? I wonder why you are having such a hard time.
Wait a minute, those idiots never did mention anything specific now did they? They always say silly general things about "lots of features" "great user interface" and what not that means nothing.
Perhaps you can do something useful and NAME A USEFUL FEATURE anyone might find on M$. In two years of slaving as an engineer in a M$ "partner" I never saw anything impressive. Most of the newer features, such as autolist and auto spell change were anoyances. The older features, like drawing tools were inferior to those available in free or no cost drawing packages such as the GIMP or Paint Shop Pro. Synching my visor to Outlook was nice, but Outlook was vastly inferior to the applications that came with the Visor itself. Outlook lacked the ability to tack notes into appointments and the notes it did have did not fit enough information to be useful. So, tell me a nice story of innovation instead of bitching about your fellow troll and fanboy posts not meeting your expectations.
Who's going to buy it? (Score:5, Insightful)
But a new version of Office with pretty new buttons and a three panel view like Outlook? A new version that's intentionally incompatible with everything else in the world, including Microsoft's own products? That's precious.
link to Screenshots W/out article (Score:4, Informative)
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 1 [microsoft.com]
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 2 [microsoft.com]
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 3 [microsoft.com]
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 4 [microsoft.com]
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 5 [microsoft.com]
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 6 [microsoft.com]
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 7 [microsoft.com]
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 8 [microsoft.com]
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 9 [microsoft.com]
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 10 [microsoft.com]
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 11 [microsoft.com]
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 12 [microsoft.com]
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 13 [microsoft.com]
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 14 [microsoft.com]
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 15 [microsoft.com]
Screenshot Of Office 2003 Pic 16 [microsoft.com]
These screenshots aren't in any particular order, and there's a few shots of what appears to be the next version of Visual Studio, although, I could be mistaken.
And here's a shot of Office 12 (Score:5, Funny)
Or at least it could be considering how pre-schoolish UI's are getting these days.
It isn't Office that we have to use - it's Outlook (Score:3, Interesting)
I dont like apps that does everything. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the best approach would be better adherance to standars in the open source community. We should develop and adopt standards for every format of documents avaliable and tout them harder than ever. The MS format lockin must be broken from within MS own user base and that can be possible if every other company and entityoutside MS supports an open standard.
Did they decide on the new logo yet? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm thinking about a picture of Joe Average Computer User in shackles and menacles, with the caption, "Palladium Inside".
I give up... the GUI will never really evolve... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sad (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Sad (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Sad (Score:3, Insightful)
It's nice to know beforehand what will be eating up all my free time and making me crazy later this year.
Re:4 Minutes On front page (Score:3, Interesting)
The only reason I've had to buy any MS Office products since maybe 95/97 is that I've got to be able to open the occasional document produced with the "latest and greatest" version. But I'm getting to the point where I'll just start telling people to send it in a different format - if it's really important that I see it, they can take a couple of minutes to convert it.
Funny how the only reason to upgrade is simply because everyone else has upgraded, not because of some new "must have" feature or big batch of bug fixes. Honestly, have there been so many innovations and advances in word processing, spreadsheets and presentations that I need to upgrade every 18 months? I don't like paying money for things I don't need.
I have been using Open Office for a while now, and I love it. There's even some areas where I think it kicks MS Office's ass, like the formula editor. I do all my math and engineering homework in Open Office whenever possible. :)
Re:Clone wars! (Score:5, Funny)
Yodish: Begun, the Clone Wars have.
Soviet Russia: In Soviet Russia, Clone Wars begin you!
Yodish Soviet Russia: You, in Soviet Russia the Clone Wars begin... Umm, no wait... Arrgh!
Re:Clone wars! (Score:5, Funny)
English usally has a sentence structure in the form SVO, or Subject Verb Object. In this sentence, "The Clone Wars" is the subject, "have" is the verb, and "begun" is the object. Notice that the verb cluster "to begin" has been seperated into verb and object, in the passive voice sentence.
Now, Yodish uses the OSV (Object Subject Verb) construction. So the literal translation from English to Yodish would be "Begun" "The Clone Wars" "Have". This parses nicely into "Begun, the Clone Wars have." quite nicely, as the parent has done.
Soviet Russian uses the OVS (Object Verb Subject) construction. So the transliteration would be "Begun" "Have" "The Clone Wars". Now we take into account some of the unique features of Soviet Russian. First, the definite article "the" is dropped, yielding "Begun have Clone Wars". Also, Soviet Russian only has one tense, the present, giving us "Begin have Clone Wars". Now is the confusing part. Soviet Russian treats the phrase "begin have" as just the verb, dropping the object, yielding "___ begin Clone Wars". However, an implied object is forbidden. When an implied object is present, the subject becomes the object, and the implied subject "you" is added. So we get "Clone Wars begin ___", which leads to "Clone Wars begin you", as shown in the parent.
Now onward to Yodish Soviet Russian. As English becomes Soviet Russian by reversing the sentence order, SVO to OVS, then likewise, Yodish becomes Yodish Soviet Russian by reversing the OSV construction to VSO. So we get a transliteration to "have the Clone Wars begun". We drop the definite article and switch tense to get "have Clone Wars begin". We make the object "begin" into the verb, with the result "begin Clone Wars ___". We then make the subject into the object and add the implied subject "you", getting "Begin you Clone Wars". Now it's just a minor clean-up, with the final result:
In Yodish Soviet Russia, begin YOU, the clone wars do!