So as I promised earlier, I'm going to give you a sneak peek at Word 2007's new UI and what my personal impressions of it are.
I must say that when I first opened Word up, I thought, "damn... another horribly skinned user interface. Oh goodie." I really was surprised by the drastic UI changes that Microsoft had made. But, I was also determined to give it a shot and see how it worked for my needs. After having used it a fair amount over the last few days, I must admit that I rather much like the new version of Word.
Before I go any further -- my apologies to Lis. Her resumé was the handy document I found, so that's the file you see in all of my screen shots. If anyone wants to give Lis a high-paying job, or get her into graduate school, please contact either of us. :-)
So here's your first look at Word 2007. As with almost any screen shot I take, you can click on it to see a larger view.
Pretty different, eh?
I've circled the major differences you will see and interact with, and want to take some time to discuss them a bit further.
The most useful user interface change in Word is what's called the "ribbon" control. It's essentially an amalgamation of a tab bar and toolbar control. On the top, you see a list of tab buttons which allow you to select the major functional categories. Under that, you see a toolbar of various functions which you can perform. In essence, what Microsoft has done is created a better menu bar. The tabs are like the top-level menu items and the toolbar items are a much more descriptive version of the old menu items. This user interface is much more explorable, and easier to learn. Yet it doesn't ake up an obnoxious amount of user interface. The ribbon is easily the best user interface innovation I've come across in Word. I love it as much as I do because I'm not a regular Word user. Since I don't use the product on a daily basis, I'm not very interested in learning the ins-and-outs of the tool. I just want to get a job done. The beauty of this new UI is that it's a lot easier for me to learn how to accomplish something.
For instance, let's say I want to edit the table that I've placed the cursor on. In this case, there's a new set of tabs clearly labelled "Table Tools" which give me a very visual representation of what I can accomplish. You can see what I mean in this screen shot:
Another major change is that the traditional menu bar has been entirely removed from Word and replaced with a set of icons representing the menu and its most common operations. The largest icon on the menu is the one which displays the main menu items. The other icons provide you with the ability to save, undo, redo and print. I was a bit surprised to see that Open did not make it onto that bar, but I like how sparse it is. It's very difficult to get overwhelmed by the number of options provided. The UI is clean, and it's intuitive as the big office button affords pushing nicely. When you do push it, this is the view you get:
And before you keyboard enthusiasts get too scared, there are still keyboard mnemonics associated with everything. Microsoft even when one step better -- they're much more noticeable now, as seen in this screen shot.
I think that the removal of the menu bar and replacement with the ribbon is an excellent decision by Microsoft, which really improves the user experience. Some of the changes are purely cosmetic and may seem like useless eye-candy at first blush. However, the changes are truly meant for usability purposes. I've used almost every version of MS Word from 95 on up, and this has been the first time I've had a truly good user experience in a long time. I'm really looking forward to seeing this product released (it's only in beta form currently -- though I ran into no issues with it while using it).
If you like your new Word documents, you may want to share them with friends. Why not try a pdf converter to get the file size down. Converting Word to pdf is easy to do and saves space and time. On the other end, try to convert pdf to word so you can edit it again.
I dunno. I'm still not sold on the UI changes. I know our Office power users here will have a hard time learning where everything moved to.
My personal opinion is that the ribbon uses too much real estate on the screen. I preferred the previous version that weren't toolbar driven. My understanding is (and correct me if I'm wrong) that you HAVE to have the ribbon. It's not like the older version where I can disable all the toolbars. Also, unlike the old toolbars you can undock the ribbon or move it to dock to the bottom of the window. If I can choose whether to use the new ribbon or the old toolbar/menu UI, then I'd probably be more of a fan of the new version.
Since this is still only a beta, my guess is that the ability to turn the Ribbon off is only temporarily disabled for testing purposes. I was unable to find a place to turn it off, so you're right, you are stuck with it. But I'd imagine that changing by release.
That being said, I think the ribbon is actually a faster way for even experienced people to work. The keyboard shortcuts are all still the same. But the difference is that the ribbon can show you the most used options immediately -- so if you do use your mouse for some reason, everything is at most two clicks away, but quite possibly only one.
I looked over the office betas last week. Like you, my first impression was "I dont't like it"...but after a few minutes it felt much better. You have instilled in my brain the concept of staying with the platform's standard user interface. Is the ribbon bar something we will start seeing in *all* windows software? And you know the next question. Will we have the ability to create ribbons bars for RB Apps in the future? (i know, disclaimers...can't talk about future stuff, yada, yada :). I guess we can just roll our own, but it would seem like a nice (although platform specific) built-in control.
@Brandon -- you bring up an interesting question as to whether I think the ribbon should be a platform UI standard or not. I'm going to have to give that some more thought and get back to you (probably as another blog entry).
@Brandon -- You should see a blog posting tomorrow answering your first question. As for your second question, I think that's something better left to the user to design. For starters, it's not a standard UI control AFAICT. So REALbasic would have to come up with something custom. But chances are, it'd end up being too limiting.
The UI should be pretty straight-forward to implement. A custom tab/toolbar really shouldn't be too hard to do. The custom menu would be the most difficult part since REALbasic doesn't make it easy for you to do custom-drawn menus.
Very interesting. I've been hearing a lot about the "ribbon". From what I've heard, after about a week, people prefer the new interface to the old menu bar system.
It certainly is innovative! It looks like an interesting idea, and should definitely work.
It's nice to see Microsoft really pursuing something that is truly innovative interface-wise. The ribbon diverges pretty far from the classic menu model, and so it will be interesting to see if Windows and Macintosh diverge further in the future. Perhaps we're living in the last age when the interfaces will resemble each other!
Aaron, after posting I took another look at Word 2007 and I agree. The ribbon is something best left to the user to design. I was reading (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms406046.aspx#office12customizingribbonuifordevelopers_customizingtheribbonui) about how you can create custom ribbons using xml. Maybe a smart developer will create a visual ribbon designer in Rb that can generate XML for custom ribbons for Office applications. And, create a plugin for RB that would generate a ribbon for RB apps from an XML file. Hmmm... Interesting. I'll check out the blog tomorrow to see your response to question 1.
I like the new UI and the ribbon - it seems a lot easier to use.
@Scott P: Check http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms406052.aspx
It says (below fig.4) "Advanced users can collapse the Ribbon to a single line that takes up no more space than the menu bar does in previous releases."
@Brandon: For Windows, CodeJock Software already provides an ActiveX that includes also the new Office Ribbon bar controls:
http://www.codejock.com/products/commandbars/
I didn't test it with RB but I think it should work fine.
Lis doesn't mind that all of her personal info has been aired for the world to see? My girl would kill me for posting her phone number on the Web... :/
I agree with Will. It's scary to put that much info out there. I would blur the personal info.
I never realized Lis had so many would-be stalkers. ;-) But thanks for your concern. I've blurred out the personal contact information.
Hey! I never even thought about that! I can't believe you put my contact info on the web. I knew I was annoyed about posting my cv for a reason. At least it's blurred now.
Gee, thanks guys, now I'm in the dog house..
The least you could do now is search your rolodexes for any contacts you have at the U of M, preferrably in the biology department... ;-)
@Carlos: Collapsing is a nice start. But it would be really nice if you could choose a "classic" ui vs the "ribbon" ui. Ah well... beggers can't be choosers :P
@Aaron: While I agree the ribbon is a very innovative idea, I'd prefer Microsoft give me a choice in how I use there applications. Kind of how in Windows XP I can choose to use the new themes and Explorer layout, or go to the "classic Windows 2000" look. But I do agree that the ribbon will help those who are new to Office or who rarely use the suite to get to what they are after quicker. But again, we end up with a UI that is inconsistent from the rest of the OS and other applications (at least for now). The tricky part will be that I can see the ribbon becoming common in many applications where it doesn't really make sense (like a calculator or other simple application) just because the developer wanted the eye candy.
@Aaron: Actually... I was wondering.. Did Microsoft include the options for exporting to XPS (XML Paper Specification, their answer to PDFs) and to PDF as they had mentioned at one time?
@Scott P -- I think the customization stuff will come after the beta period is over. Remember, this isn't a release. I'm sure they want to work out the kinks with the ribbon before they go back to the "standard" from before. I'd be a bit surprised if there were no plans for an option to use the old UI.
As for XPS and PDF, yes, you can do it from the save menu.
Sweet :) Do they render accurately compared to what it would look like printed?
Since it sounds like Office 2007 was rewritten from scratch, I wouldn't be surprised it they decide not to bring back the old UI. After all, a lot of development time went into the current UI. And with Office 2007 already having been pushed back a few times from their original planned release, I can see them not wanting to add any more time to development. Guess we'll see either way.
@Scott P -- looks identical to what I see in Word itself. I don't have a printer hooked up, so I can't tell you about printed quality. And that's true about the UI thing... however, if there are enough people who take issue with it, they may consider it. I just can't imagine there being enough of a hue and cry though, personally.