News
Office 12 to Sport a New UI
- By Scott Bekker
- 09/13/2005
Microsoft showed off Office 12 publicly for the first time on Tuesday, featuring user interface changes that the company describes as the "biggest, most visible change to the way the core Office applications work since the introduction of the toolbar in 1997."
The demo came during Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates opening keynote at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2005 in Los Angeles.
The overhaul, which Microsoft calls a "results-oriented" UI, will initially cover Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint and some elements of Outlook.
During the demo, Microsoft corporate vice president Chris Capossela said Microsoft
needed to rebuild the UI because customers are overwhelmed by the functions
-- Word 2003, for example, has 1,500 commands. Nine times out of 10 when customers
make feature requests, Capossela said, the feature is already in Office.
To that end, Microsoft rearranged some features in terms of "galleries." For
example, instead of having to figure out how to shadow a graphic, users are
now presented with several visual options in a gallery and can pick one that
they like.
Microsoft is also streamlining the UI to give users more room to work. Microsoft
is trying to make fewer boxes and toolbars pop over areas where users are trying
to work, and will do less automatic formatting.
Menus and options are supposed to be exposed only when they're needed, rather
than all the time. "Only the more relevant features are visible, which also
makes it easier for the user to understand what the product's capabilities are,"
Julie Larson-Green, group program manager for the Office User Experience, said
in a Q&A on Microsoft's site.
In addition to galleries, high-profile new features include "Super Tooltips,"
a revamped Help feature; and a "Quick Launch Toolbar," that lets users customize
the UI by adding the commands they use most often.
About the Author
Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.