I was going to post this from Word. But I decided that sticking to WordPress and directly posting was safer. I did check the help files on posting to WordPress. It seems to be a bit shaky as categories are not supported for WordPress. So I'll stick to WordPress for now and maybe try it for a later post.
Overall Word is Fantastic. I officially will buy Office 2007 just for Word. Why? One word: User Interface (OK, make that two). The Ribbon toolbar is fantastic. I took it for a test drive last night and found myself doing stuff in seconds that takes me minutes in Word 2003. Everything is so well ordered. Once you know where the header/footer tools are, the style tools, the page layout tools, the bullet points and the all crucial replacement file menu, its like finding the perfect pair of gloves.
No more complicated menus, no more obscure features, no more pulling-your-hair-out -looking-for-features fuss. Everything you need is front and centre. I saw a few features I had no idea Word possessed. There's a Watermark feature in the Page Layout tab that works wonderfully. There's a Page Color feature right next to it that must have just been added that, again, works wonderfully. I love the Styles and Themes one click document tranformation. SmartArt is brilliant, especially as it adheres to the current theme and, of course, because of the wide range of choices. I could go on and on and on.
Review options ( i.e. balloons and comments), are nice and accesible. Despite having seen other people use them in 2003, I could not for the life of me find the appropriate options. This is far better.
Grey background, gone. Nice blue background, here. Its more eye-pleasing and loads easier to look at for hours at a time.
Windows Grey has gone to be replaced by a light blue gradient. Again, much muich easier to work with.
Spell checking is brilliant. Much better than 2003 (or so it seems). The Research pane, despite being 2007 style, looks very much the same as it did in 2003. They seem to have added Highbeam Research to the list of sites to search.
The one place I did find a Word 2003 (maybe even 97) vintage feature is the choice of pictures for the page borders. I'm sure I'll find more. But the UI is, franky, brilliant and intuitive.
Now Marc Orchant has a slightly different perspective on the new UI for Office as a whole ( via TUMW). He says:
That's right… myth. Urban legend. I'm no more concerned about how long it will take for any of the information workers in my company to get productive with the new Office than I am about what I will spend my Nigerian windfall on.
He quotes Jensen Harris, Microsoft's Office UI blogger. Marc dosen't provide a link to Jensens post, so I'll quote Marc quoting Jensen:
He talks about the concept of "first-hour comfort" in his latest post and, almost without exception, I have seen this phenomenon play out in every demo I'm given of the new suite.
"…Our design goal was to require no training at all. From the earliest prototypes, we were trying to design an experience so that people could sit down in front of Office 2007 and be effective right away at getting their work done. One of the reasons we didn't go more radical on the overall design was that we wanted to make the product comfortable to use–after all, at the end of the day, it's still Microsoft Office."
TUMW blogger Ryan Carter (post here) seems to agree with Marc :
All I want is the option to use the new format or that old one. Though I favor the old way (who doesn't) I am starting to see some advantages to the new UI. I may come around.
Now, I installed the Office Beta on the laptop (its out of use till the semester re-starts in September) and I'm considering installing Office 2007 beta on my usual PC (The beta is stable enough to do this, I think). For a beta, these features are amazing, can't wait to see the final product.
I touched on crashing in my first post. Outlook and Word seem freeze just after start up or when you start typing (or reading mail in Outook). I solved this by altering the process priority to Above Normal in the Task Manager. It works perfectly fine after this.
That aside, I'm extremely postive about Office 2007.
I think I'll review Outlook next.
Random Musings 