Microsoft Office 2010 Screenshots

jimbo45 said:

To me doesn't look nice at all.
My Favorite is actually Offfice 2003 which you can customize a lot to look exactly how you wanted.

I may be the only one, but to be frank I hate the "ribbon UI" and would love to have back the old menu-format.

Hi all
I think a previous poster in this thread alluded to much of the problems I have with "Program Updates".

He said MS Office 2007 has way more options and features than 2003 -- this may be true but apart from EXCEL where I'm normally considered as a "Power User" I don't NEED MORE features.

Bog standard OFFICE 2003 has MORE than enough functionality for me -- if I need the equation editor and mathematical symbols and the possibilty to enter complex fractions in a Word document I'll just use the simple (free) add in.

Once you bloat a product with so much extra functionality it becomes rather difficult to use in any case.

A good example is in the really great book by the master of EXCEL ("Mr EXCEL") Learn Excel 97 Through EXCEL 2007 from Mr EXCEL.

In it he states (with justification) that EXCEL 2003 was the best version ever -- whilst a lot of quick stuff can also be done in 2007 it's a lot more work in most cases and there's very little in EXCEL 2007 that isn't in 2003 -- just the Office interface has changed.

OT but in a related vein -- I used to use NERO as my "Burning Program" - but after about version 6 there was so much bloat and totally unnecessary multi-media stuff in it it's now a 100% waste of time.

The useful stuff like mounting an ISO as a "Virtual DVD / CD hasn't been functional since VISTA and the built in backup failed to work as early as XP SP2. Meanwhile the amount of crapware built in to the product just goes on -- so that's another app that's gone from my system.

Tip to any of you designing Software who might be reading this thread.

Get the CORE functionality really good and don't suffer from that disease "Featureitis". If the the base product is fine and needs a small enhancement consider adding these via simple "plugins" or "add ons". They'll keep the core functionality for most users and supply the extra stuff for "Power users".

Easier to maintain and develop as well.

Cheers
jimbo

Well the Ribbon is easier for NEW users to learn. Those of you that don't like it likely were already comfortable with the old menus. And I am pretty sure you can still access those old menus completely.

Office 2007 isn't about tons of new features, it is about making it so people can find and use the features that have been there for many versions that nobody uses because the menus were overwhelming to new users. This is where 2007 excels. (no pun intended).

And regarding speed... Office 2007 starts up slower yes, but barely. Saving a document???? How do you even notice how long that takes. Are you running Office 2007 on a Pentium II? I have never seen any sort of progress bar or hourglass or spinning circle or anything indicating it wasn't finished the second I released the mouse button.

All I can say is THANK YOU MICROSOFT for FINALLY giving us the Ribbon on Outlook, which needs it more than any other program ever did. AND PLEASE include it on the next MapPoint as well, 2009 is a nasty looking thing (but it does work great!)

This is where 2007 excels. (no pun intended).

Intended or not, that was still funny :)

I liked Office 2k the best. Simple interface, clean and I loved the gray toolbars. And it took up less than 200 MB of space, and does everything Office 2007 does. I don't know, however I use 2007 now; I guess I just like jumping on the bandwagon.

One thing about 2007 that I HATE, and for which 2003 was better: 2007 doesn't have the highlight text feature in Word.

Win7User512 said:

One thing about 2007 that I HATE, and for which 2003 was better: 2007 doesn't have the highlight text feature in Word.

It does. I remember highlighting text on accident just a few days ago while writing a paper. In fact, it is right on the Ribbon.

Deathsink said:

It does. I remember highlighting text on accident just a few days ago while writing a paper. In fact, it is right on the Ribbon.

Oops, my mistake. It's Powerpoint. I specifically remember now having sat in a college lecture wanting to highlight text in the professor's ppt and seeing in the Help that the feature was removed from ppt.

You could just change the font color