Microsoft revamps Office: smartphone/tablet compatibility, SkyDrive

[chris888222]

The new Office will take advantage of cloud storage (SkyDrive) and also adding compatibility to mobiles and tablets on Windows 8 platform.

It is also integrated with Skype to let users collaborate on documents via video conferencing.

There is no news whether Office will make its way to Google Android or the iOS platform.

SOURCE: http://sg.news.yahoo.com/microsoft-revamps-office-looks-cloud-194530651--sector.html

Also: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/16/office_2013_preview_release/

 

[Rydian]

Oh, so it's only for Windows RT, not android. Damn.

 

[FAST6191]

MS does actually seem to be upping their game as far as office goes or at least trying something new and a skype integration would be interesting as all the other skype owners have not yet done anything notable with it.

Couple that with their trying to move people from local exchange servers to remote/mainframe/"cloud" email servers and actually making it pretty easy they might actually succeed in still being relevant in a lot of businesses. As it stands several businesses I have dealt with have been shifted to libreoffice with a copy of office the other side of an RDP connection for those occasions when people truly need it and big boy document writing abilities and whatever else office does* taken by programs actually geared towards it. I have not really done much with the likes of google docs yet but I probably should acknowledge that as part of this paragraph.

*excel is quite nice but frankly if you need what it has above other spreadsheet options (those truly invested in their macros aside) you should be using a proper database and that does not mean access either.



The yahoo story is actually surprisingly thorough compared to their usual fare but http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/16/office_2013_preview_release/ has some more as well.

 

[chris888222]

MS does actually seem to be upping their game as far as office goes or at least trying something new and a skype integration would be interesting as all the other skype owners have not yet done anything notable with it.

Couple that with their trying to move people from local exchange servers to remote/mainframe/"cloud" email servers and actually making it pretty easy they might actually succeed in still being relevant in a lot of businesses. As it stands several businesses I have dealt with have been shifted to libreoffice with a copy of office the other side of an RDP connection for those occasions when people truly need it and big boy document writing abilities and whatever else office does* taken by programs actually geared towards it. I have not really done much with the likes of google docs yet but I probably should acknowledge that as part of this paragraph.

*excel is quite nice but frankly if you need what it has above other spreadsheet options (those truly invested in their macros aside) you should be using a proper database and that does not mean access either.



The yahoo story is actually surprisingly thorough compared to their usual fare but http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/16/office_2013_preview_release/ has some more as well.

Added to OP.

 

[ThePowerOutage]

For general stuff, (Word processing, accounts ect) Office is already king.
I mean stuff like OpenOffice and Google Docs are good, but Office just tends to be more usable. (And I don't fancy doing accounts online... makes me feel uneasy)

If they incorperate anything like gDocs online file saving, I'll be happy. Too tired to look at what they actually have added xD.

 

[chris888222]

For general stuff, (Word processing, accounts ect) Office is already king.
I mean stuff like OpenOffice and Google Docs are good, but Office just tends to be more usable. (And I don't fancy doing accounts online... makes me feel uneasy)

If they incorperate anything like gDocs online file saving, I'll be happy. Too tired to look at what they actually have added xD.

I have to agree, especially Word. Word is fabulous. It's easy and fast.

The only thing which I don't really like about Office is PowerPoint. Keynote actually does a way better job, but at least it still gets the work done.

I just hope the price tag isn't too hefty.

 

[BORTZ]

For general stuff, (Word processing, accounts ect) Office is already king.
I mean stuff like OpenOffice and Google Docs are good, but Office just tends to be more usable. (And I don't fancy doing accounts online... makes me feel uneasy)

If they incorperate anything like gDocs online file saving, I'll be happy. Too tired to look at what they actually have added xD.

I have to agree, especially Word. Word is fabulous. It's easy and fast.

The only thing which I don't really like about Office is PowerPoint. Keynote actually does a way better job, but at least it still gets the work done.

I just hope the price tag isn't too hefty.

erg i wish they could make power point... eh i dont know, interesting? Seriously if i have to sit though another dry ass desert pp, im gonna commit sue.

 

[FAST6191]

For general stuff, (Word processing, accounts ect) Office is already king.
I mean stuff like OpenOffice and Google Docs are good, but Office just tends to be more usable. (And I don't fancy doing accounts online... makes me feel uneasy)

If they incorperate anything like gDocs online file saving, I'll be happy. Too tired to look at what they actually have added xD.

I have to agree, especially Word. Word is fabulous. It's easy and fast.

The only thing which I don't really like about Office is PowerPoint. Keynote actually does a way better job, but at least it still gets the work done.

I just hope the price tag isn't too hefty.

Now I would not begrudge anybody MS office and the formats are still fairly ubiquitous but given so very few people need to edit things between companies meaning PDF or HTML works stunningly for most purposes and MS office formats are pretty well reverse engineered the "a system with it on used where necessary via RDP" or even none at all models become more viable. Even the it is what passes for IT education in schools issue took a serious hit when ribbon came along; if you are going to retrain your staff..... I will have to look at keynote some more though but frankly other than powerpoint's dislike of adding any audio format under the sun on some versions and video support being slightly wonky (which I find is more often the fault of windows) anything more than words on a screen (perhaps with a company logo/nice background) is usually a sign of a) watching a presentation somewhere within the education system, b) someone attempting to cover for not knowing the subject, not having done the work or having got someone in or just out of education to do it for them or c) someone trying to sell me something and thus can safely be ignored/ridiculed.

As for easy and fast if you have to knock something together sure but where it might have one day almost competed to be something you could use for publishing or a proper report I would not even consider it or attempt it these days.

Regarding accounts online that does seem to be the way Sage* is heading; already I have seen people shift to it and get burned when it turned out to be tied to a bank account. Likewise I can see it providing a proper audit trail and already VAT in the UK and some states in the US for sales tax like to have things done more than once a year which means such things will probably get some serious incentives and the usual slippery slope before long. Given other than the "my domain server has fallen over" it is usually "my accounting setup has fallen over" that results in a panicked call or indeed my accounting software is getting expensive to update so can you reverse engineer it/get my data out and that the shift of email to a nice remote server has all but eliminated the equivalent there I am slightly OK with that. I can definitely see some nastiness as the result of a security failure which I guess is where the apprehension comes from but that should not be too hard to lessen or mitigate.

*others reading Sage is probably the main paid accounting software in the UK (certainly I have dealt with several businesses that use it exclusively and several accounting firms that all but force it on anyone that wants to use them) and does pretty well elsewhere from what I have seen.

 

[Pleng]

erg i wish they could make power point... eh i dont know, interesting? Seriously if i have to sit though another dry ass desert pp, im gonna commit sue.

I don't think Microsoft is really responsible for the content for which people use their software to make!

 

[Skelletonike]

erg i wish they could make power point... eh i dont know, interesting? Seriously if i have to sit though another dry ass desert pp, im gonna commit sue.

I don't think Microsoft is really responsible for the content for which people use their software to make!

Like he said, I've seen interesting Power Points that were really well done, and then crappy powerpoints that bore the shit out of me and made me fall asleep and everything (blame teachers that can't make interesting powerpoints). z.z

 

[Foxi4]

Want to make a better MS Office? Get rid of the ribbon. It's annoying, confusing and the standard menu bar is so, so, so much better.

 

[Deleted_171835]

Want to make a better MS Office? Get rid of the ribbon. It's annoying, confusing and the standard menu bar is so, so, so much better.

Heeeeeell no. The ribbon is the best thing about Office 2007+. It's a thousand times better than the menu bar and is much easier to navigate through.

 

[Foxi4]

Want to make a better MS Office? Get rid of the ribbon. It's annoying, confusing and the standard menu bar is so, so, so much better.

Heeeeeell no. The ribbon is the best thing about Office 2007+. It's a thousand times better than the menu bar and is much easier to navigate through.

...*looks at you curiously, not sure if you're trolling or not*

No. No it's not. I don't know what makes you so scared of clearly-labeled tabs on a simple bar... but alright.

I find the ribbon to be confusing as not all parts of the ribbon contain the tools that you'd normally expect them to contain and each time I use Office on a new computer, I have to drag additional tools onto it wheras pre-Office 2007 all those tools were in their designated positions. Then again, I mostly use OpenOffice nowadays anyways.

 

[Rydian]

I find the ribbon interface of 2007+ to be much better than the standard interfaces used in 2003/OO.

Things are grouped in more-logical orders. The home tab has the basic font formatting tools, the insert tab has all the stuff you'd insert on a regular basis (types of art, images, tables, etc.), the page layout tab is where the margins and orientation are (so you don't need to dig through submenus to get there), the references tab has quick functions for footnotes and citations, additional tabs show up for context-sensitive functions (managing inserted images, etc.), and more.

Having used Office 2007/2010 for college for for a while, it's a hell of a lot better than the old interface. Just because it's different doesn't mean it's bad. Hell, part of the entire point of it's existence is to be easier for new computer users. I swapped my grandmother over to 2007 from 2003, and she finds it a hell of a lot easier to do the things she needs to.

 

[Shuny]

I find the ribbon interface of 2007+ to be much better than the standard interfaces used in 2003/OO.

Things are grouped in more-logical orders. The home tab has the basic font formatting tools, the insert tab has all the stuff you'd insert on a regular basis (types of art, images, tables, etc.), the page layout tab is where the margins and orientation are (so you don't need to dig through submenus to get there), the references tab has quick functions for footnotes and citations, additional tabs show up for context-sensitive functions (managing inserted images, etc.), and more.

Having used Office 2007/2010 for college for for a while, it's a hell of a lot better than the old interface. Just because it's different doesn't mean it's bad. Hell, part of the entire point of it's existence is to be easier for new computer users. I swapped my grandmother over to 2007 from 2003, and she finds it a hell of a lot easier to do the things she needs to.

This. I like the ribbon interface, it's doing its job efficienly.

 

[Pleng]

Yes I too resisted the ribbon.

Research has shown that new users get to grips with the ribbon much more easily than the menu, but people who have been used to generations of menus take more time to accept the ribbon. It took me about a year of hating it, and about 6 months more of denial before I finally conceded it's better.

It's also far more suited to a tablet UI; which is clearly the direction Microsoft is heading.

 

[chris888222]

I have no hate or love for the ribbon, but when I used it at first it was indeed very confusing.

Microsoft is really pushing into the tablet world. I just hope they know what they're doing. Never try and mess up a computer and a tablet.

 

[Thesolcity]

I didn't like the ribbon crap at first because a lot of stuff moved, then I just got used to it. I'm glad you're working on Skype integration Microsoft, now fix Skype. And I swear to god, if there's any more Metro funny business.....

 

[FAST6191]

I find myself in the "ribbon- very much not all that" crowd and although I can understand the logic MS did themselves no favours by pretty much forcing it (new start menu, folder types, logins and so on and so on can be dropped back to any version they have ever done and most combinations of things in between where ribbon slightly more effort to get rid of). I am not entirely sure I buy it being easier to learn but I imagine most of us in this thread favour either http://xkcd.com/627/ or knowing word processing/office programs/a given field as opposed to learning what every symbol means and where everything is located in a given version of a given vendor's software (do you hire the network engineer or the cisco engineer?) so despite how undesirable the second choice is steps back and being in different shoes might want to be worth attempting.

However I would contend most of what ribbon does people do not need immediately at hand other than changing between serif, sans, monospace according to the style of the document, a few lists, the usual bold/italic/underline, alignment and classifying things.... damn it I have been using LyX too long.

@chris888222 although some have pondered if MS could do well in business tablets world (a market that kind of exists and there is potential for but neither android nor apple nor even the full fat tablets have really done well yet) I would be shocked if they have the clout to take over the market and subsequently lock it down a la the old "embrace, extend, extinguish" model. In fact thinking about it the newer samba versions do well (domain suppport), tablet RDP is quite possible so exchange aside (I have not checked things out but it looks like there are a few android email clients that can do it so I imagine there are others) I doubt MS can really force their way in here either. If nothing else consider that full fat tablets have been around for years (I saw them reasonably mainstream or available to it in 2004 or so), apple pretty much got the market sewn up for a while and now android probably wins in numbers and public perception is probably not far behind (I see ipad as a genericised term for tablets so I do not want to call it just yet).
I probably also want to work in something about methods/UI being common to platforms which if MS' E3 presentation is anything to go by they are going for in a big way and that is something Apple did well but I am not quite sure how to apply it to anything at this point in time.

 

[Foxi4]

I find the ribbon interface of 2007+ to be much better than the standard interfaces used in 2003/OO.

Things are grouped in more-logical orders. The home tab has the basic font formatting tools, the insert tab has all the stuff you'd insert on a regular basis (types of art, images, tables, etc.), the page layout tab is where the margins and orientation are (so you don't need to dig through submenus to get there), the references tab has quick functions for footnotes and citations, additional tabs show up for context-sensitive functions (managing inserted images, etc.), and more.

Having used Office 2007/2010 for college for for a while, it's a hell of a lot better than the old interface. Just because it's different doesn't mean it's bad. Hell, part of the entire point of it's existence is to be easier for new computer users. I swapped my grandmother over to 2007 from 2003, and she finds it a hell of a lot easier to do the things she needs to.

"Basic Functionality" being the keyword - any advanced functions you might want to use are under a rubble of useless point-click-dragging, everything depends on which functions you use I suppose. The 2007's I used didn't even have top/bottom indexing on the ribbon, and that's basic functionality for me.