Steve Conover
June 04, 2006
Introduction
While there are a lot of
things I like about the new
Office 2007 Beta 2, I also have a lot of concern. After
a few days of use, I have already have a list.
- It's sloooow.
- It looks great...
- Bill Killed My Menus
- It lets you create great looking documents...
- New file format
It's Slooow
While this isn't completely surprising, I was a bit disappointed in
the performance of Office 2007. Before I go into it, let me first make
two disclaimers:
- This is the Beta, and a lot of Office has been compiled in debug
mode, making it inherently slower than the same release mode code.
- Release for Office is now "sometime in 2007" so the systems will
be significantly better at that time.
Nevertheless, I feel a little bit worried about the performance in
this release. My new 3D, shadowed, anti-aliased slideshow looks great,
but editing it becomes more and more difficult as elements are added.
The new transparent effects used in dragging objects is apparently too
difficult for my 3GHz machine to handle, as is the act of select
multiple objects in Powerpoint.
It could be worse, but the overall impression is one of a sluggish
application just barely making it. This is not something I expected from
a mid-upper range test machine.
It Looks Great...
The new Office 2007 / Aero interface looks impressive. Its blue. It
rumored to match the mythical Vista Operating System that Microsoft
keeps chained up in Redmond. It's all glassy and smooth.
Now, as an interface guy I'm the first to fall in love with new
designs. I'm a sucker for buying it just because it's beautiful.
But since I just finished writing about how slow the Office 2007 suite
performs on my system, I can't help but have a pang of regret that they
chose to overload the environment with enough curves to make Marilyn
Monroe envious.
The final score:
Pretty:
Practical:
 (rounding
up)
Bill Killed My Menus
I really have mixed feelings about this "no more menus" Ribbon thing
that Microsoft has come up with. The idea is to have a big block on the
top of the screen that shows you what can be done. It's a smart block
that adapts to your clicks and changes in the document. In practice, the
Ribbon tends to be a little flaky. Obviously, Office can't always
predict what I want to do, but too often I find myself wanting
things that the Ribbon isn't ready to provide. Usually, a lot of
shuffling about and tab switching ensues and, sooner or later, the
Ribbon will eventually change back to where it--not I--want to be.
Yet, even if the Ribbon worked perfectly, it will be
years until I stop mourning the loss of my "real" menus. With well over
a decade of experience in MS Office, I have come to expect certain
behavior and certain amenities. The obscure features that I use may be
right in front of me, but habit wants to take a different route.
Unfortunately, Office no longer provides the path that I expect to take.
Without the classic menus, we will all be forced to
learn the expected way. Sure, the Ribbon is great and shows me a lot of
useful things, but doing things differently is painful. Take a look at
the following screenshot:
This crude dialog box is the result of trying to do a
custom fill without using the Ribbon. Dozens of such dialogs exist and
each one is identical. The black text on white form are difficult to
navigate and use--they seem to be a sort of punishment for leaving the
safe confines of the Ribbon.
It Lets You Create Great Looking
Documents...
I must admit,
one of the things I like best about Office 2007 is the ability to create
really slick, professional looking graphics in a few clicks.
Nevertheless, I fear that--in conjunction with the
Ribbon--it may be too easy to create things. The danger is that,
more than ever before, all presentations will begin to look so much the
same that people will literally be repulsed by the repeated designs.
You see, the Ribbon offers such a quick way to format
shapes, but there are only so many designs to go around:
As you can see, we only have a few choices:
-
Outlined
-
Solid
-
Gradient with a shadow (3 flavors)
I greatly fear than these will be used to such excess
that professional Powerpoint engineers will be unable to use them within
the year.
The same goes for the awesome-but-trendy "SmartArt" like
the following cycle I created in about 3 clicks:
Warning: this will have your
peers
snickering behind your back a year from now.
New File Format
Finally, Microsoft has introduced a new file format (pptx,
docx, xlsx, etc.) for the beloved Office 2007. I can no longer open,
edit, or view my new files in an older version of Office. While
previous versions provided a level of backwards compatibility,
Microsoft's newest offering puts all that Office 97/2000/2003 stuff
behind us.
With such radical changes in design, I would
almost like to forgive 2007 for shunning his predecessors. It helps that
the application that hurts the most for it, Powerpoint, can still export
to Powerpoint 97-2003 format. All the new graphics will be converted to
images and will be un-editable, but the document will still survive to
be displayed on an older system.
Regardless, the historical result of such a radical
format change is that users will either upgrade or be left behind.
Conclusion
There are a number of things to be concerned about in
Office 2007. It's slow, has on a bit too much makeup, is the beginning
of the end of traditional menus, provides a new level of graphics
for users to brutally misuse and overuse, and ads a new format to sea of
document formats.
To be sure, not everything in Office 2007 is bad. In
face, some things are quite good. Yet these radical changes cause the
balance between good/bad to be uncertain. The cost of learning the
latest Office has spiked suddenly and may open the doorway for any
number
of competitors to come flooding
it.
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