Microsoft enthusiast and blogger Stephen Chapman sends word that he has discovered an early concept Office 14 screenshot from a PowerPoint presentation hosted on Microsoft.com.The screenshot itself appears to be from a slide deck detailing Grava's intergration into Office 14. Grava is a set of tools developed for the needs of those creating educational content. Stephen says he "noticed that instead of the Office logo in the orb, there's a 'G' to obviously signify Grava, so does this mean we're looking at a standalone Grava application or a conceptual idea for how the interface of Office might change to signify the user is currently using Grava? If nothing else, we can see the ribbon influence in yet another application and further indication that the ribbon is certainly not going away in Office 14."
You can see from the screenshot that the ribbon UI is slightly refined and image controls have been placed into the taskbar. Microsoft has kept quiet on Office 14 plans and many have speculated that development has been delayed for a 2010 release.
In 2007 you can change the colors, would hope they keep this option, as I like the Black theme better.
The ribbon is gui genius; it's beautiful both in function and aesthetic.
For you maybe, not so much for me. Looks aside, the ribbon did break quite a few keyboard shortcuts. If all the keyboard shortcuts had been left alone, I wouldn't have cared what the UI looked like as I wouldn't have to use it for navigation.
Indeed, the hidden tabs are named with placeholders. It's probably only an early non functional UI concept.
Microsoft need better UI everywhere.
To me it just looks like change for the sake of change. Office 2007 performs great for me and I don't use half the features already - I can't think of anything they could add that would make me want to upgrade. If they're just going to play around with the interface then I have no interest, particularly when it looks worse imo.
To me it just looks like change for the sake of change. Office 2007 performs great for me and I don't use half the features already - I can't think of anything they could add that would make me want to upgrade. If they're just going to play around with the interface then I have no interest, particularly when it looks worse imo.
The wasted space is from the image not being zoomed on a high resolution display.
Also you do realize you can 'minimize' the ribbon even in Office 2007, so you get a very minimalist interface without losing the ribbon or any features.
What are you talking about? I was referring to the curved border they've added at each side of the ribbon, which adds about 15-20px to the ribbon for no reason. Also, because they've merged the top (where the document name used to be) it now looks incredible empty - it's wasted space. It's nothing major but it's certainly not an improvement in my eyes.
And yes, I'm well aware you can minimise the ribbon - unfortunately I find it more annoying than helpful.
It's rumored to be released this year...
From the article:
A lot can change within a few months.
What are you talking about? Ribbon UI pwns!
The GUI though, isn't really clean nor polished. It looks like a draft or something at some places...
The guy used the verb "looks" worse, so I bet he was talking about the GUI.
The ribbon in 7...I like the new style and the new toolbar color (much better than vista), but the icon for the file menu in Paint and Notepad is aweful. That should be the application's icon and should be placed like Office's.
The one above is awful.
Uh . . . there's 12 months in a year.
But say hello to Steve for me the next time you and Apple's Board do lunch. Glad someone around here has the inside track . . .
How is that even something you could try to offer as reality?
Apple has yet to abandon the dated concepts of Menus even. A GUI design idea from the 70s that was thrown into GUI concepts because they had no way to easily convey all the 'list of command' in a Graphical way.
On Vista, Win7, and Office 2007 you don't have Menus, you have a progression to a modern GUI without the need for a 'List of Words'. And in theory a 'List of Word/Menu' is not a Graphical UI concept, it is a pre-GUI concept added to the top of your GUI application.
This is scary that people still think MS is ripping off Apple or that Apple has a better understand of UI or GUI design when they can't even move past something as dated as 'Word Lists - i.e. Menus'
I WAS kidding, yes. But you never know with me anymore.
Apple has yet to abandon the dated concepts of Menus even. A GUI design idea from the 70s that was thrown into GUI concepts because they had no way to easily convey all the 'list of command' in a Graphical way.
On Vista, Win7, and Office 2007 you don't have Menus, you have a progression to a modern GUI without the need for a 'List of Words'. And in theory a 'List of Word/Menu' is not a Graphical UI concept, it is a pre-GUI concept added to the top of your GUI application.
This is scary that people still think MS is ripping off Apple or that Apple has a better understand of UI or GUI design when they can't even move past something as dated as 'Word Lists - i.e. Menus'
LOL, do you actually believe that????
It's not so easy to wade through a ribbon in order to find familiar commands.
easily convey all the 'list of command' in a Graphical way
Which isn't really the best way to go from a usability perspective. 90% of the tiny icons in the inscrutable ribbon mean nothing to the average user. There is certainly a place for clear, logical menus.
And absolutely no one does a GUI quite like Apple.
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/mi...media/vista.png
Last edited by LTD on 12 Jan 2009 - 01:03
I was used to the keyboard shortcuts from previous versions and when the ribbon was introduced it broke a good majority of those shortcuts. I never had to navigate the menu structure to find what I needed.
Lucky for me I received O2K7 through a promotion Microsoft sponsored so I didn't have to waste any money when I went back to O2K3.
I'm not an Apple person, but the OSX UI is quite sexy.
As for me, I'm pretty used to Word 2007 now and I'm astounded to see how MS failed to deliver its version of Office 2008 for the Mac. They included a ribbon that was no longer necessary (with the line they decided to take with the app I mean). You can't have menus, a ribbon, and a huge inspector on the right, come on!!! One of the three maybe, the ribbon is my favorite.
This is one of the reasons I don't really like Pages in Apple's iWork. It has an inspector with small icons and everything. A pain to use.
So I guess I would have to disagree with you LTD. However, a streamlined, unified, and sexy interface in every single application in an OS is necessary. Vista scores in the negatives on this one I guess. Windows 7 has a couple of things right, but it's still not what it needs completely.
And for everyone's information:
LTD is a known Apple worshipper, please bear with his fanboy flamebaits.
Oh, BTW LTD, Apple will sooner or later abandon menus, too, and try to copy Microsoft. Say hi to Steve for us!
and never looked backed .
it is quite good ,very logical design.
i hope they kept it at that pace or even better !
OS X screenshots don't look like badly designed knockoffs.
OS X screenshots don't look like badly designed knockoffs.
But it IS an OS X screenshot!
What? No it isn't.
Yes, it is missing the blue jelly sliders and "everyone think the same" childish design cues. 8P
the ribbon is a common UI now that any programmer can use, its free from microsoft
You dont see any of the normal commands word has..
The logo of each company goes in the round button also called a "perl" or "orb" in this case its something like a faint C...
If I was to search I would find this program..
(EDIT) I realized that this is supposedly POWERPOINT. I dont have it loaded now, so it might be it a hiddeous mock up indeed
Last edited by computerboom on 11 Jan 2009 - 21:45
My posts and comments always get screwed up by the time I post them, sorry, uhm, I hope you get my point. I left the computer for 2 hours to go bowling, bottom line is it obviously is a concept, a bad concept, and if this is accurate, they will need to change the ribbon UI entirely to be consistent. I already dislike the style of the ribbon, I like the Ribbon UI, just not the roll-over style with the sharp square filled in with orange, it makes it look like XP or Gnome. If they made the ribbon UI more like Windows, then it would be sweet. But right now the Ribbon UI is not consistent with Aero Glass and I expected Microsoft to port the Ribbon UI to other apps with Windows in mind, but they didn't and now it looks like Office 2007 all over Windows...
NEway, I disagree with your other suggestion - blue is a much more pleasant colour than green. There's a good reason that blue is used so often. You also have to look at the psychology behind colour: http://www.squidoo.com/colorexpert
There you see that blue is the most common favourite colour and is seen as trustworthy, invokes rest and is the most gender neutral colour. Green, on the otherhand, is reminiscent of nature, something not really suited to computing, and can also be connected with illness.
Personally I use the black skin with Office 2007 as neither blue nor silver really appeal to me.
I'm not convinced. It's way too much of a step backwards from 2007, the whole look to it screams amateur.. doesn't look like Microsoft.
Oh, and why is it called Office 14? If I remember correctly, Office 2007 was dubbed Office 12 before it was released. I guess Microsoft is superstitious about the number 13.
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