Office 2013: Just what on earth has the Office team been doing?
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
"Microsoft switched to Word (from Internet Explorer) as its rendering engine with the introduction of Outlook 2007 and hasn’t looked back (errr, forward?) since. Despite the email community’s efforts and a well-intentioned response from Microsoft, this means that HTML and CSS support in Outlook has remain virtually unchanged between versions 2007, 2010 and now 2013."[1]
Nice.
[1] http://litmus.com/blog/outlook-2013-still-powered-by-word-no...
There are also plenty of nice new features too, like flash-fill in Excel and PDF reading in Word. I really think Office 2013 is a nice, if not critical, update.
And don't think you're getting Office for "free" in there anyway. The hardware specs are almost identical to a $200 Nexus 7. There's little in there, hardware wise, that could justify a $300 increase. So obviously most of the difference is to pay up for the Windows and Office licenses. They are included in the price. they are not "free".
The decision to cut Metro support was made in Q1 2011 and distributed to all Office managers by Kurt himself. The team that was working on Metro (called Modern Office eXperience, MOX) shrunk and merged with OneNote. Hence, why we see OneNote has Metro and no other app does. The reasoning was "the Win8 APIs are not stable enough for us to finish on schedule with the team we have. We either ship 10/11/12 or slip by a year to support Windows 8." They decided to ship (RTM) on 10/11/12. We should see a 'surprise' SP1 that supports Metro and iOS by the end of this year (this is pure speculation from me -- I have no NDA knowledge about plans past 10/11/12).
You are seeing a classical "ship the orgchart" dilema from Microsoft with Office and Windows this season. It's sad, really, but these tensions are why I don't work there.
As an owner of both devices, I don't think that the Surface hardware is really all that comparable to the Nexus 7. Aside from the obvious size difference, the build quality is vastly better on the Surface, it has a rear camera, it has a USB 2 port that can be used to charge other devices or attach a wide variety of peripherals, etc. Whether that's worth what they're charging is another question, of course.
For example, when it comes to meeting minutes, Microsoft Word doesn't stack up well against Evernote.
The changes for so long have felt like they haven't done anything really positive. If i need to write a letter, I just use Google Docs. If I need to tabulate some simple data, I just use Google Docs. I just don't get it.
Powerpoint still feels smooth to me than Keynote, but Keynote looks better in output generally. Pages almost always produces better looking output than Word for me for some reason (although I'd rather just use LaTeX for real document layout). Numbers by Apple is a mess compared to excel and not worth using.
In any case, a lot of people won't be able to do their jobs properly without full-fledged document editors. I do agree that there haven't been any major advancements in word processing; if Google could solve the issue of compatibility and maybe throw in some grammar checking or autocompletion, then I would drop whatever I use now and switch to Docs in a heartbeat.
However, my feeling is that this is a relatively small proportion of the MSOffice market (I'd love to see figures on how many word docs have embedded spreadsheets in, for example). For straightforward business docs, GDocs is almost as good, and has a couple of absolutely killer features. Firstly, collaborative real-time editing (e.g. during a conf call) is fantastic.
Secondly, and most importantly, no files to copy, backup, lose, mis-version, etc - just an URL. This is a totally killer feature: once non-techies grok that they never have to mess around with files, just point their browser at an URL, they (IME) love it, and don't want to go back.
When I say big data sets, I'm normally talking in at least the millions, if not several billion rows.
I've got grad student friends who strain to deal with their 'huge' (10,000 row) datasets for weeks in Excel.
We're simply not the target for Microsoft Word.
But with less and less need to write letters (we've got emails now) and more and more totally free and convenient solutions like Google Docs, the "target" keeps shrinking for Microsoft Word.
The corporate world won't change anytime soon: MS Office is their way of doing business.
But SMEs are fleeing fast: I'm seeing more and more shared Google Docs (both text and spreadsheets) used inside SMEs and even to exchange doc with the outside.
Want an invoice and you're on GMail? OK, I'm sharing the invoice with you so you can print it. Why bother printing it and sending a letter? Why even bother exporting it as a PDF and sending it as an attachment? Shared invoice (read-only) just so that the recipient can print it.
I'm not saying it's "great" from a security point of view to share a Google Doc with a customer / contractor but that's where we're at now: lots of SMEs aren't even bothering with Word and its incompabilities (whether they still exist or not not being the point: they do exist in the users' mind).
MS did a 180 degree with Office 365 because they know it's very real.
I haven't used Word in years. Every workplace of mine has used Google Docs instead. And for the first time, I realize it isn't just because of Google Docs collaboration and use-anywhere -- it's the fact that all the "power" features of Word, particularly formatting and layout, are all geared towards the printed page.
But I literally produce nothing designed to be printed anymore. Everything that used to be printed, is now thrown up the web. Fancy formatting is useless now if it can't be translated into HTML.
(For spreadsheets, there are still big reasons for power usage of those, so I don't see Excel going away anytime soon. But except for producing PDF versions of nicely formatted resumes, it's getting harder and harder to see why Word should even exist. And of course graphic designers need to produce typeset pages, but that's what page layout programs are for.)
In any case - overall I somewhat agree with the article, though I'd be surprised if Microsoft isn't aware of this themselves. I think Office 2013 is a solid upgrade for the desktop - though a solid touch version is indeed lacking. Here's to hoping they have one on the way, hopefully sooner than 3 years from now...
Just log in, edit, save, log out.
And just to be more insulting, the UI has random caps. There's no design or reasoning for the caps. They don't indicate clickable things, they don't seem to indicate anything. I spend a fair amount of time in Outlook and Lync - why would I want to subject my eyes to this?
http://i.minus.com/ibm6UEFR5wXRGJ.png
I personally like the new UI, I find it refreshing.
Of course, my take on this is heavily skewed because I am more of an engineering user of these tools than a typical office worker. And, although I have used it extensively for such things as invoices, purchase orders, financial calculation, presentations and business documents I still think of these tools as part of my engineering tool set.
Examples:
I devoted about three months to write an Excel VBA tool to help automate the creation of components for the EDA package we were using at the time. Creating a component such as a 1000+ pin FPGA went from almost literally days to an hour or two after this tool was in place.
Use Excel and the built-in Solver tool to find solutions for programming a clock synthesizer to output a given set of frequencies.
Use Excel + external voltage, current and temperature sensors to log and analyze test data.
Use Excel to easily produce and maintain lookup-table-driven state machine code in C, including all the callbacks for each state.
Use Excel to produce CNC G-code to run a Haas VF3-SS milling machine to produce patterned holes and threads.
Automate Powerpoint with VBA to simulate the control panel of a piece of equipment, complete with a small dot-matrix LCD display and functioning menu buttons. This was used to for training purposes when the actual piece of equipment was not available.
Use Word and VBA to automate parsing of documents and extraction of data.
Anyhow, just some examples that come to mind.
I had to install '07 when we switched to a Vista 64 to be able to run FEA and other tools that would benefit from that platform. I remember going from being a "power user" to feeling like an utter idiot. The UI change was brutal and I am still not sure that it was an improvement. They also modified automation and put in all of the roadblocks that just made it painful to use.
Office 2013? Nope. Thanks.
Having said that, I've found the 2007 UI to be vastly superior to the older one, for most common tasks. On a reasonable screen (1900+ wide), the main ribbon contains a significant portion of the most used basic functions, reducing the amount of menu navigation and tab-switching. The rest of the tabs are pretty self explanatory (once you unlearn your Office 2003 lessons). E.g. most of the "page layout" functionality used to be hidden in some arb place in the depths of the file menu; it is now one click away.
So yeah, while these types of conceptual breaking changes are irritating, as long as they really are for the better, I'm all for it.
> Of course, my take on this is heavily skewed because I am more of an engineering user of these tools than a typical office worker
Agree to disagree.
Excel 2007 was a radical improvement over it's 2003 counterpart from an engineering standpoint. The row limitation was increased almost 20 fold, from 65k to 1.5 million. Filters and pivot tables both became noticeably more responsive and performant.
> I remember going from being a "power user" to feeling like an utter idiot.
Most of Office 2007's failings were of a UX nature, beginning with the relatively infamous "ribbon". While this is a problem of a subjective nature, IME it wasn't a major sticking point.
Additionally, I'm reminded of the old Dvorak-vs-Qwerty keyboard layout wars that would occasionally flare up on Slashdot. Eventually, most people realized that it was a neat idea that wasn't practical and moved on. I think that's where this is going.
Not with a tablet, but when you've got a touchscreen laptop it feels pretty natural to go between touching controls with your fingers and entering text with the keyboard.
You have Office 365 now, is that not something? You can get a hosted version of SharePoint now with it. Again, is this nothing?
Windows 8 has a new OneNote app available that has a very innovative interface. Again, no recognition on this?
Like I said, I don't know what's going on with the rest of the suite but I do not think this article is warranted.
Building a full featured Office for touch is a waste of time and a waste of opportunity for Microsoft. They could have breathed new life into Office if they built a simpler touch based experience and kept the existing experience for desktops.
Eventually you would probably want those advanced features as touch devices go mainstream and replace desktops, but by designing for everybody (touch and desktop) they've ended up with a shitty experience for both.
That must be why Word is the most widely used word processing a program in the world.
There are so many functions that need to be exposed via the UI that it is always going to be hard to make something that works for everyone.
Making something like word touch friendly while maintaining the right level of functionality is going to be very hard. Pages for iOS has been annoying to use due to the amount of features it lacks.
For me, word processors have gotten progressively stupider and harder to use since WordPerfect, circa 1996.
Excel is pretty good.
I may be biased - I've been using emacs for the last two years and keep finding more ways to use it, and far less for Office or NeoOffice.
Going from nothing to version 1 is huge. At first you don't record EEG, now you see the squiggly lines.
Going from version 1 to version 2 is not so huge. The squiggly lines are still there (a little prettier) and there's a ton of analysis tools. Far, far more work went into version 2, but take a punter's opinion and it'll be 'meh, not much'. Little change in basic UI does not mean little functionality added.
Unless, of course, the issue is in porting the toolkit...
Looks like a service pack release, 'cause it is one.
I wonder if the Libre Office stuff can take advantage of that. I wonder if a group targeting the most resource efficient word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation builder could find success in the burnt out landscape behind the Office juggernaut. Something not 'cloud' based but simple. I'm probably just suffering from nostalgia but sometimes ...
The only reason I can see for the change was marketing.
[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/tags/why+the+new+ui_...
(I know, I know... use R or something but shh)
The current Office on OSX is quite nice, Excel performs really well and in Powerpoint there is this nice 3d layer editor.
Office on Tablets needs to be re-thought. What do you really do on a tablet? Looking at the use cases in the corporate world, it is not about creating complex spreadsheets from scratch. It is about viewing, filtering and data entry.
Hey, please enter your forecast numbers and send back. Hey, these are our numbers, columns B, N and Z are super important, etc.
Excel and Powerpoint are key in corporate. Word is dying, killed by Outlook.
Tablet users need to be able to open an email attachment, browse through it efficiently, maybe correct a bit and then send back.
This points to a separate Office for Tablets. MS had special Office viewer apps in the past. Apple has Keynote, etc on iOS. If it is a separate team at MS working on this, they just might have enough freedom to pull it off.
Though I use Scrivener for most things these days because it has much better modularity and change control.
They could certainly take some design cues from products like those from Apple and Google.
Sure, it's different. It takes getting used to and that's unfortunate (if only they'd gotten it right the first time!). Ultimately, I realize that some people will never like it, and that's reasonable but I hardly think it qualifies as a "train wreck."
Word 2007 worked much better for mathematical documents than 2003 and once you learned the shortcuts (it even allows some tex like functionality) short reports work out much faster than emacs+auctex or lyx while still looking generally good.
Double click a ribbon tab to hide and use the keyboard.
I will say that I actually had word 97 and word 2010 side by side a few months back with toolbars off and its not all that different. Makes me wonder what I've been paying for all these years. Same with the excel versions.
Best advice I've gotten in a long while! It's now gone.
A lot of this information is on our blog: http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-excel/ Twitter account: @MSEXCEL
and if your particularly inclined to data analysis and business intelligence I blast cool features and how tos on my personal account: @doppenhe
should read
"just what on earth has Microsoft been doing for the last 5 years?
I do not expect Office to work well on tablets, and that isn't a reasonable concern for every application to pander to. A rich mouse and keyboard interface does not carry over to a meat-sausage interface without a profound rethink of every aspect of the interface. We've already seen the worst-of-both-worlds approach with metro, and it simply needs to stop.
I get that people want rich apps on their tablets. But they should be different rich apps that start from the ground up built for this entirely different interface medium. Every desktop app should not be diluted to support tablets, and personally I think that has already been a detour on a backroad that Microsoft has found themselves on.
There is no excuse for leaving these vectors uncovered for so long.
Though I'm pretty sure they're caught up in a painful conversion to WinRT right now.
You might still be able to download the free preview version from here http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en
It should work for 60 days after 2013 came out. It should give you a good idea if you like it or not.
The biggest changes in 2013 are SkyDrive integration. If you don't really need SkyDrive you can probably live without it until the next version of Office.
I do find 2013 uses less memory than 2010 and generally performs better which is the reason I have stuck with 2013 more than anything else.
Seriously though, check out the new tracked changes. Much nicer than before.
The advanced embedded stuff scares me a little. I can see people adding huge videos into a word document and emailing it to 100+ people on a DL. I can see it being abused.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/buy-microsoft-office-and-m...