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As we reported back in March, Microsoft’s next-gen productivity suite, Office 2007, will sport what they are calling the ribbon.  The ribbon is their attempt to change the menu bar as we know it, and to more logically place the functionality that is already built in.  Ever since people started playing with the beta version, there have been complaints of how the ribbon is far too big.  Now, Microsoft has officially stated that they will add an auto-hide feature to it so it’s less obtrusive and you can fit more content on the screen.

They’re also working on tools to help companies more easily migrate to the new Office file-formats.  Microsoft’s John Hodgson explains the demand for such a tool.

“We’ve been asked by a lot of customers to provide tools to do mass migrations,” he said. “There will be tools that will take a million documents and migrate those to the new formats.”

Via [Download Squad]
Read [ZDNet]

After Microsoft reported over 2.5 million downloads of the Office 2007 beta, it looks like they may delay the productivity suite once again.  The most recent date given by the company is October 2006, however when Vista was delayed recently, they began talks of pushing Office further into the future as well.

Ars Technica: “Based on internal testing and the beta 2 feedback around product performance, we are revising our development schedule to deliver the 2007 system release by the end of year 2006, with broad general availability in early 2007.”

The coming release of an entirely new operating system and suite is frightening customer companies because the need for retraining employees.  Maybe the ”Ribbon” wasn’t such a good idea after-all.

Read [Ars Technica]

Even though more than 2.5 million people have downloaded the beta version of Microsoft Office 2007 (according to Microsoft), that has not put the newly designed software in front of enough eyes or garner enough mouse clicks. MS has posted a version of the next-gen office suite online for you to play with.

The real-time test drive does not require product installation or download—it’s the fastest way to try out 2007 Microsoft Office system programs. In just minutes you can start exploring Microsoft Office through your Web browser on your own, or follow the step-by-step tutorials to experience all of its useful features.

I would stick around to tell you more, but the next tab in Firefox is calling me to preview the software. Go check it out!

Check it out for yourself [Microsoft Office 2007]

Microsoft, last week, released the first public beta of MS Office 2007. Overall the companies goal was to issue a makeover that refreshed the look and feel of the programs while making it easier to use. Thus far it seems that they succeeded in the makeover, essentially “Apple-fying” the products, but the new feel has a learning curve of its own (after 10 years of the standard office apps) that makes the easy and most popular features and harder to find.

Ribbon - Microsoft rebuilt Office from the ground up, and most features are located in different places than in versions 2003 and earlier. Gone are what Microsoft considers too much of a good thing: the buried location of more than 1,000 features within top-down menus. Now you can access functions front and center within a tabbed Ribbon across the top of the interfaces of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. We expect this new look to challenge longtime users with a steep learning curve. The intent is to make the apps more intuitive, but the opposite is true for certain features if you want to fall back on old habits. For example, Insert Comment is no longer found within the Insert menu but within the Ribbon’s Review tab. While we had problems initially getting oriented, we found our bearings for most of the major functions within a couple of days.

Dynamic - We have mixed feelings about the Ribbon’s ability to surface and hide features according to your task at hand. Though designed to make it easier to find tools, the Contextual Tabs sometimes left us befuddled. For instance, to view the full gamut of changes you can make to an image within Word, you must first select the image. What if, say, you’re working in Word and wish that you could insert an image, rotate it, and wrap the text around it to make a newsletter? If you haven’t already inserted and clicked on a picture, then the Format tab will be out of sight, and you’d never know those image-tweaking features existed.

System requirements for Office 2007 aren’t finalized yet, but so far Microsoft says that you must run Windows XP SP2 on a 500MHz PC with a 2GB hard drive and 256MB of RAM (512MB for Outlook with Business Contact Manager). Microsoft has reduced the number of suites for the Office 2007 System to seven, ranging from Basic to Enterprise. Most consumers will opt for Basic (containing Excel, Outlook, Word) or Standard, which throws in PowerPoint. The Small Business package adds Publisher as well as the Business Contact Manager version of Outlook.

Read [Cnet]

If you’ve been wanting to try out Office 2007 but can’t get your hands on it, this video comes in a close second.  Microsoft has finally decided to give us a little more info about the long awaited productivity suite with the release of a promo.  The video discusses galleries, the ribbon interface, the Office menu, live preview, and contextual tabs to be included in the software.  The Microsoft employees in the video shared that with this release of Office, the company is trying to make it so even non-power-users can become skilled at it.  Overall, I am very impressed with the simplicity of it all. 

In the video, they show Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and how they have redesigned the menu structure into what they are calling “the ribbon.” The ribbon seems to be much more logically organized than previous versions of Office.  The Live Preview feature looks rather impressive as well.  When you’re searching for the proper way to format your document, spreadsheet or presentation, you can hover over the option to get a preview of how it will look after selected.  This works for everything from selecting a font to text-wrapping a picture.  What do you think of Office 2007 and its ribbon?

Check out the video.

Via [arstechnica]