The Hindu Business Line : Office '07

Regular users of the Office suite might not even recognise the new version. Some of the changes have been fundamental and affect the way in which we use the Office suite applications.

First among the changes is a complete makeover in the user interface: Gone are the countless tools, commands, and options that the power user would access through the myriad toolbars, menu options and dialog boxes.

Enter The Ribbon

The layer upon layer of toolbars is gone: in comes The Ribbon! The ribbon is a horizontal strip that runs through the width of the window under the menu options. The ribbon contains groups of commands and options called tabs that contain tools and styles relevant to the tab selected. The different applications in Office have different ribbons, but the way they work is similar.

The ribbon not only houses tools and commands, but also formatting and styles in the form of galleries. If you select an object, say a table, and try to format it, you will get a gallery of different table formats and as you run your mouse over the gallery style, you can see a live preview of how your table would look if applied with that style. The style is applied only if you click on it, but otherwise is only previewed.

The ribbon has also been made contextual in certain circumstances. For instance, when you are working with a picture in your document, you get a contextual tab of options and commands for working with pictures, like having a frame and controlling the positioning and the word wrap settings around the image.

The one major change that power users will need to adjust to is that the ribbons cannot be customised; you can merely add custom styles to the gallery. However, since the ribbons are controlled through XML files, we can reasonably expect third-party tools that allow us to customise the ribbons.

Users can, however, add buttons to the Office Quick Access (QA) Toolbar, which takes up some space along the title bar by default, and contains common commands such as save, open, undo and redo.

Apart from contextual tabs in the ribbon, the office interface features a `floatie', now formally called a mini toolbar that appears whenever you select something in the document. The floatie contains commands and tools relevant to the selection. For instance, if you select a block of text, the floatie would offer you text formatting commands such as bold, italics, alignment, etc.

In terms of help and assistance, the (in)famous Office Assistant is gone, replaced by a far better help system, but is slightly irritating sometimes in that you get help for all the various applications rather than just the one you are using. However, the tooltips have been upgraded and now contain formatted text and images for better explanations.

For some smart art

Now, for the next major improvement: SmartArt. SmartArt provides you with a way of incorporating charts and graphs like never before. Earlier, if you wanted a good-looking graphic, you'd get someone to rustle up one in one of the professional illustration packages; you no longer have to do that unless you are too particular about them.

In fact, the general level of graphics in terms of presentation, options and colour schemes, with new ways of highlighting relevant data, has improved so much that even a beginner's document is likely to look very good.

A good deal of the power of Office 2007 rests not only in its office suite applications but also in the server components that provide a high degree of networking capabilities, communication functionalities and collaboration. The server components to the system are: SharePoint, Forms, Groove, Project, Project Portfolio, Live communications, and PerformancePoint servers; apart from the Exchange server for e-mail.

One completely new desktop application coming into the family is Groove, a collaboration program that is in the new Office suite because of Microsoft's acquisition of Ray Ozzie's Groove networks close to two years back. One major application from the suite has been left out: FrontPage. It will be replaced by the SharePoint Designer for customers who use SharePoint and by the Expression line of products (especially the Web line) for customers who do not.

Microsoft plans to release the Office 2007 system in eight different bundles/packages, each of which will have any of the following applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Outlook, Access, One Note, Business Contact Manager, InfoPath, Communicator, and Groove. Also available for enterprises: integrated enterprise content management, electronic forms, and advanced information rights management and policy capabilities.

Overall, the new office system does a great job with improving productivity, helping in collaboration and communication, and helping make better presentation through smart and fresh graphics capabilities.

What the system also does is to provide a fairly easy entry to beginners or occasional users while maintaining a high degree of deceptive power for the expert user. Expert users though, will have to unlearn some of their favourite hacks and tricks, and should also get used to the occasional user upstaging them sometimes!

nagaraj@thehindu.co.in