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Microsoft is redesigning Office to simplify the user experience


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A new ribbon, zero query search and more

 

In context: Microsoft knows that change can be disruptive. With a staggered rollout, Redmond can acclimate customers to the changes and better control any potential pushback. It's a cautious approach but with more than a billion monthly users, it's a safe play.

Microsoft on Wednesday announced a series of changes in store for its Office suite of productivity applications. Inspired by a new culture of work, the changes are designed to meet the demands of customers who tell Microsoft they love the power that Office apps deliver but would prefer a simplified user experience.

To ensure they get it right, Microsoft developed three guiding principles to “use as a north star” that’ll include direct customer feedback, understanding the context you’re working in and controlling the experience.

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It starts with a simplified ribbon that’s meant to help users focus on their work and collaborate naturally with others. With the redesign, the traditional three-line ribbon has been shrunk down to a single line with more pops of color to help command icons better stand out.

Speaking of colors, users will also start to notice new colors and icons across Office apps that are built as scalable graphics meant to both modernize the experience and make it more accessible.

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Microsoft wants search to be a much more important element of the user experience. As such, simply placing your cursor in the search box will trigger a “zero query search” with recommendations power by AI and the Microsoft Graph.

The changes won’t happen all at once, but will instead be deployed over the coming months to select customers in stages so Microsoft can gauge user feedback and adjust accordingly. Features will only become generally available once they’ve successfully navigated rigorous rounds of validation and refinement, says Jared Spataro, corporate vice preside for Office and Windows marketing.

The refined ribbon and new colors / icons will first appear in the web version of Word for Office.com. The changes will spill over to select Insiders later this month and into July and August while commercial users can see the new search functions in select products from today.

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BimBamSmash

I am not a serious Office user to know the difference but the images above sort of gives this feeling that they are of heading back to the pre-ribbon era of Office 2003 and earlier in some ways. Reinventing the wheel again, are we?

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1 hour ago, BimBamSmash said:

I am not a serious Office user to know the difference but the images above sort of gives this feeling that they are of heading back to the pre-ribbon era of Office 2003 and earlier in some ways. Reinventing the wheel again, are we?

Back to the future.  The ribbon is a mess IMO.  Generations of Office workers were trained and fast and it added nothing to productivity, just another whole GUI to learn.  And that doesn't come easy for millions and millions of trained clerks doing just fine the way things were.  For me personally, it's harder to un/re-learn these GUIs than it is to learn it the first time as I hunt-n-peck and search Google for how to make a graph or something that used to take just a second.   My 2 cents.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Please, Microsoft: don't redesign anything! Office was converted by Microsoft in a better mousetrap. Probably the best! I feel that with Office 2010 they've reached the best possible application. Everything else, since then, is bloatware, to justify "updates" with further income for the monster. As for the ribbon menu, I cordially hate it and since it appeared the first time, in 2007, I've been using the "classic" menu patch, much more functional. To be fair, the combination of both works great for me!

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It becomes your personal choice whether you want to be strapped to MICROSOFT's harness?

Do you trust their handling of you personal data? 

 

Let them move to the subsription model wherein you don't own your software.. You rent it from them..

Use it for a month (pay a month), Use it for a year (pay a year)..  Use it once o 2x a year, screw it, move to libreoffice..

Hasn't the era of  bulletproof software  there yet? If it detects WINDOWS code changed It crashes with an error  it self scans itself  and verifies your subcsiption via biometrics.. 

Trying to bypass OS authentication routines.. Access Denied... 

Not on the database.. Access Denied... Not updated payment on  the database.. Access Denied... 

Installer package does not match installer checksum .. Access Denied

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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what defines US is is not what software we use to jot our ideas.. rather what are ideas are about..

 

 

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