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Features

Unwrapping the Ribbon

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DQI Bureau
New Update

What can you add to an application that, apart from being the
most popular one on desktop computers, is so heavy with features that users don't
use most of them?

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Simplicity, said the users, and Microsoft says it's heard
them. With Redmond releasing Office 2007 this month, it's tried to correct
that. And ergo, a radical change in the interface, in the look and feel of
Microsoft Office as we know it.

With over 400 mn users, Microsoft Office is a winner all the way
to the bank. So what is novel about Microsoft Office 2007? Here is a brief
rundown of what you can expect when you get your hands on it.

The biggest change has been in the UI, gone are the ever-so
familiar menus and the toolbars, replaced by something known as 'Ribbon'.
Basically, it is a collection of different tabs having a set of commands each.
With the Ribbon, Microsoft expects to make the features of the application more
discoverable and accessible. The Ribbon is made out to be intuitive in a sense,
as some tabs, called Contextual Tabs, appear only when certain objects are
selected. These Contextual Tabs reveal functionality specific only to the
selected object. For instance when one selects a picture, it brings up the
Pictures tab, which presents options for dealing with the picture.

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Unarguably, the UI shift is the most significant change in the
new Office and even the guys at Microsoft are aware of this. "The Ribbon is
fantastic for end users, it changes the way you work with Office and how users
can create beautiful looking documents as it is much, much easier. We are really
very excited and it's a risky thing for us to do," says Chris Capossela,
corporate VP, Business Division Product Management Group, Microsoft.

"Consider this, around 450 mn people use Office everyday,
it is a tough call asking them to change the way they do things. So, with the
Ribbon, I say we have made the biggest bet on as a business and we are excited
about it," he adds.

Ribbon is integrated into core Office applications, namely,
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and Outlook's mail editor. These applications
have been selected as they center around document authoring and the present
multitude of options that users are often unaware of.

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The second big element is the open file format, OpenXML to be
used as a default file format. It is based on XML and uses the ZIP file
container. According to Microsoft, this file format is compressed and up to 75%
smaller than the current Microsoft Office file formats. Initially, Microsoft had
announced that it would provide in-built export to PDF function, but it backed
out after litigation threats from Adobe Systems.

"It's a risky thing
for us as well"

A lot has changed in the
past three years or so, when Microsoft released Office 2003. For one, the
users seem more open for a change. In this topsy-turvy environment,
Microsoft is releasing Office 2007; its most famous suite of applications
intended to work with Vista. The giant at Redmond is laying a big bet on
the future with Office 2007. And its bet hangs by a Ribbon.

Chris Capossela, corporate
vice president, Business Division, Product Management Group, Microsoft is
evangelizing Vista and Office 2007 currently. In an extended interaction
with Prasanto Kumar Roy and Urvashi Kaul he talks about how
revolutionary the Ribbon is and how the company is hedging its bet on it.
Excerpts.

What would you term as
the most significant thing about Office 2007?



Certainly we think of Office 2007 as very different from just a desktop
suite. We moved away from it being just about the applications bunched
together. The most exciting thing that a user is going to notice and like
is the new user interface-the thing that everyone is going to recognize
and understand is what we refer to as the Ribbon and it is a big, big deal
for us. We are really very excited and it's a risky thing for us as
well. The current Office suite has around 450 million people and one
cannot expect them to change overnight. And this the biggest risk as far
as I know.

What is the big deal
about Ribbon?

To be fair, quite a lot. It is one of those things that you use for two
hours and you sort of say: wow! We remove the clutter that existed. Hence,
the UI is much cleaner and has a more task-based approach. For instance,
when you insert a table in a Word document in Office 2007, you get to view
all the options that hitherto were quite undiscoverable. You can also view
a rich gallery of tables and images and you just pick the one you want. In
this manner, you are executing hundreds of commands at a single click. So,
it really gets you away from this bold, italic, underline...you don't
have to know what individual commands are.

How are you going to get
people to upgrade to Office 2007?

It is a big challenge for our business. Our business model is so unusual
that you buy our products and you can use it perpetually. It is not like a
cup of coffee. The trick is to build an incredibly compelling product, so
it does not matter what sort of marketing effort you do. Thus, an
innovative and exciting product is the bottom line. We are pretty excited
about what we got, the ribbon is going to be really interesting. So I feel
kind of blessed to have this product and tell the world about it.

The new Office 2007 also includes Groove, a new application that
brings collaborative features to a peer-to-peer paradigm. With Groove, users can
host documents created in Office 2007 application in a shared workspace, where
different users can edit them. It seems quite familiar to Microsoft Visual
Source Safe, an enterprise level application that allows collaborative sharing
of documents. For all those, who were loathe to the prospect of searching a mail
in Outlook Inbox, there is good news. Also, there is good news on the Outlook
front, as searching for information is going to be much faster. Outlook now
indexes messages and attachments, as well as calendar, contact and task
information. RSS also makes an appearance in Outlook. There is a reader for RSS
feeds, thus you can subscribe for news alerts and they will be delivered
directly in the mailbox.

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Excel has been left more or less untouched barring few cosmetic
changes like conditional formatting of cells. SmartArt promises to improve
visual appeal of a presentation, Word document or an Excel sheet. Microsoft is
also laying an emphasis on integration among the applications. Thus, if you
insert an Excel sheet in the Word file, any data changes in the original Excel
sheet will be updated in the Word file as well. There are a lot of small things
as well like Live Preview and others.

The big question is; are these changes sufficient to merit a
change? A change of not only an application suite, but also the way we do
things. For one, there would be a whole cycle of learning and unlearning with
the new Office 2007. Will enterprises be willing to spend huge sums just to
teach their employees a new suite, is certainly a fear that must be plaguing the
minds of Microsoft head honchos.

The biggest rival of Office 2007 is Office 2003, Microsoft has
an uphill task on its hand, trying to convince users to make a change, ring in
the new. The cheapest pack is Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, priced at
approximately $149. Also the catch, if I have to learn all over, why not give it
a shot with something that is free and getting kind of popular? Something that
goes by the name of OpenOffice.org! With over 40 mn users, it could turn out to
be a viable option. Office was first introduced in 1987, and it has been over
four years since the last (Office 2003) was introduced. With such radical
change, Office 2007 could very well be Microsoft's greatest gamble. Here's
wishing luck to the giant at Redmond.

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Shashwat Chaturvedi/CyberMedia
News with inputs from Urvashi Kaul


maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in

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