04/02/2007, 11:30am, EDT
Monday, April 2nd
Office 2008 for Mac slips into beta
The Office 2008 user interface retains the traditional menus and toolbars, as well as the philosophy behind the Office 2007 for Windows ribbon with several changes to expose some of the more obscure features, making them more visible and accessible to users.
"Part of our mission with Office 2008 is to expose all the things that are already there and make the product easier to use" said Microsoft's Mac Business Unit lead marketing manager Sheridan Jones. "We wanted to make it more discoverable, to bubble up the features that people didn't always find. We also have an opportunity to have a simple UI and a more intuitive interface."
"We got a lot of customer feedback (on the UI), we've kept the menus and embedded toolbars, but I can hide rid of embedded toolbars to have a really streamlined interface."
The new Office software inherits the "Escher" graphics engine from its Windows cousin to improve art and charting capabilities, enabling all of the Office 2008 for Mac applications to produce graphics with elegant visuals -- including 3D effects, glass effects, glowing, mirroring, and shadows, according to APC Magazine.
Filed under: software
Other story tags: business software
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Bring on iWork '08 please so we can all drop this for the newly included spreadsheet functionality and better design.
Other than folks who will benefit by using Entourage on Exchange servers, I can't see a reason for anyone to bother upgrading. There will be better and less-expensive options that provide similar functionality.