Office 2007

[johnridley]

Why yes, I DID just get a new machine on my desk, and they DID force Office 2007 onto it (small favors; at least they let me run XP instead of Vista).

Why is it, that if any other company did what Microsoft did to their interface with Office 2007, they would never have gotten the Windows logo approval, but when Microsoft does it, it's the zenith of innovation?

It wouldn't be so bad if there were some way to turn it off and go back. And it might not even be so bad if it changed EVERYTHING to work like that. No, the problem is that now Office works DIFFERENTLY than every other application on my machine. One of the whole points of Windows was that everything worked the same. Over the years, the only apps that I've actively hated were ones that broke the GUI standards. Office now moves from "just a tool" to "hated evil thing that I must tolerate to get my job done."

Luckily I only HAVE to use Outlook; for everything else there's OpenOffice. I guess it's time to try out Evolution for Windows.

If Microsoft is going to start breaking GUI compatibility every time they feel like they've smoked enough to believe that they've got a better idea, one of my major reasons not to be running Linux just went away.

Uh, the IT guys are digging in their heels and won't unblock Evolution, so I can't get out of Outlook that way. I guess there's always webmail. Dunno if that has any access to scheduling though, I've never used it much.

Comments

[billroper]

Try turning off the display of the ribbon -- then it won't appear until you click on it. That'll help.

I think there are also some 3rd party apps that will drop the previous Office menu structure back in place, but I've never used them.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

I did that, but I really want the menu back. I actually have a solution; I think I'm going to put the old computer back in place. As long as the new machine is sitting here, they'll stop bothering me to replace it for a few years. I didn't need a new machine anyway, as when I allowed them to put a 2nd monitor on my desk, I just did it so they'd stop pestering me every few months.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Done. Single core 2.6 GHz, 2GB RAM 4 year old XP box back on desk, dual core 3.5 GHz 4GB RAM box sitting on floor, not plugged in. All is well again.

[nicegeek.livejournal.com]

I have some semi-conspiratorial hunches about why they're pushing the "Fluent UI" (their name for the Ribbon) so hard.

Mostly, they stem from how they're licensing it to developers. They added classes to support a Ribbon UI to MFC in the first VS2008 service pack, and they've got a lot of tutorials and other tie-ins to encourage developers to start using them. But to actually distribute an application using the Ribbon UI, they say that you need to get a license from them. The wording is very specific that you're licensing a right to the UI itself (as opposed to the classes they supply to implement that UI).

MS makes a big deal about the license being "free" (as in beer), but it places two requirements on the licensee. First, they agree to adhere to Microsoft's UI guidelines. Second, they agree that their application will not compete with any of Microsoft's own product offerings.

I find this devious is several ways:

1) It would be very easy for a developer to develop an application using the Ribbon UI classes without being aware of the additional licensing requirements, and then have Microsoft threaten them after the fact, after they've sunk a lot of money into the project.

2) Microsoft can change the UI guidelines, and (after a grace period) demand that Windows app developers redesign their UI. Don't have time? Tough; you can't release a new version until you comply.

3) For the first time, users of Microsoft's development suite are being limited in their ability to use it to develop competing products. It's one step on the way to saying that Visual Studio itself can't be used to develop products that compete with Microsoft.

4) It's not even clear what rights Microsoft is claiming. They specifically say they're not licensing code, so it's not a copyright issue. The language implies a patent without actually saying so, and a lawyer involved mentioned something about a patent pending, but that's a far cry from an actual tested patent. In my opinion, there's a good chance that Microsoft doesn't actually have anything to license here, but finding out would require someone brave enough to call that bluff.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

+5 interesting.

Thanks. That's highly informative.

[dek9.livejournal.com]

I will say this - I was highly annoyed by the interface when I started using it.

Now I prefer it.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Preferring isn't really the issue, the problem is it's DIFFERENT than any other app. That'd be OK if I used Office all day long, but it's a small part of what I do.

I would have been totally fine with it if they had given an option, so that people who liked it could stay with it (a lot would just because most people never change any settings) and those of us that want all our apps to work the same could switch it. It's not like it would have been hard for them to do that.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

I've found an even better solution. It turns out that the webmail interface on exchange is pretty much identical to running Office 2003. I originally tried it with Firefox, and it was horrible; slow, ugly, just very bad. Then a friend said "yeah, try it under I.E. - they've gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that it sucks if you're not running IE."

So I'm now running the webmail interface on the new machine under IE, and I think I'll just stick with this.