business software
09/18/2007, 2:35pm, EDT
Tuesday, September 18th
Office 2008 for Mac features previewed
A new page has been posted to the Microsoft Mac Business Unit's site demonstrating many of the new features in Office 2008 for the Mac, which is due to be delivered sometime in the first half of 2008. The site previews Elements Gallery, a user interface that gives users quick access to tools and formatting options within applications. There's also Document Elements which automates document tasks, such as adding a table of contents, bibliographies and headers and footers.
Publishing Layout View is a new workspace in Word that allows users to create graphics-rich document layouts. OfficeArt is a graphics engine provides users the ability to apply graphic effects like 3D, reflections and shadows, coupled with SmartArt Graphics, a set of professional-quality images to transform bulleted lists into charts, diagrams, graphs and tables.
There are also new chart templates to create modern charts and modify their look. Finally, My Day is a standalone application that provides an at-a-glance view of daily schedule and tasks.
In August, Microsoft's Mac Business Unit announced that the next Mac version of its industry-standard Microsoft Office suite will be delayed. Saying the decision was purely "quality driven." The company told MacNN that the release of the highly anticipated Office 2008 for Mac suite has been pushed back from its originally projected late 2007 release date to early 2008 -- "hopefully" in time for the annual Macworld Expo Conference, which takes place in early January. As recently as June, the Mac BU said that Office 2008 was "on track" for release in the second half of 2007. In a briefing with the Mac BU's new General Manager (GM), MacNN learned that mitigating factors for an on-time release included issues related to the new Open Office XML file format and problems with transitioning the Office code-base to an Intel-optimized Universal Binary.
Office 2008 was first announced at the Macworld Expo in January.
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If they're going to delay it for "quality issues", I'm hoping those are the two things they decide to make work correctly.
Where is the complete Exchange support? Where is the calendar that doesn't self-destruct in an enterprise environment? Where are archives which are usable? Where is .PST support? Where is password support?
All promised years ago and never delivered!
I hate the Office 2004 Formatting Palette so much, and seeing the earlier screenshots of Office 08 I was very glad. I was hoping that Office 2004 Formatting Palette was just a one off design error.
But now you guys bring it back. Why?? It is a waste of desktop space, coz you cant resize the Word Window Fully. It just stays there. If supposing you do resize the Word Window fully, the Formatting Palette disappears beneath.
Then you goto View and Formatting Palette. Also it is even more inconvenient to Open each drawer and find the option you want. It takes atleast 20 Clicks and squinting to try to figure where the option I want is. Eg: Background Color.
In Office 2007, there are 6-7Tabs and big Icons. I can actually use Office so much faster.
SO Please give an option to choose from a Office 2007 style Ribbon and the traditional Office Palette.
And dont give me a Bullshit answer about Mac UI and what users expect. I respect their POV's and just want you to give an option for both interfaces.
PS: I currently have Office 2003 Installed in Crossover and use that instead of 2004. Dont even get me started on Pages. ARGHHHHHHHHHHHH!
btw, I use TextEdit and iWork 08 now and am very happy.
Does anyone else wish Adobe would make a word processing program?
Doofuses
First off, in PC land there is no menu across the top of the page. So if you did ribbons, what do you do with the menus? I guess you could duplicate everything into the menu as well but that would be a little strange. If you go to their demo site and see it in action it seems like they tried to combine the ribbon into the window at the bottom below the traditional command bar. Look at the smart-art for a good example of that.
That said, I agree, the formatting pallet drives me crazy at times. I come from work on 07 and than at home I sit and fiddle around trying to find some of the simplest commands. Hell, I just hope we get some of the small features from 07 like the minitoolbar, live preview and a few others. That would be nice.
dw9