One of the special pieces of the Office 2007 user interface is the entry point to the help system. Unlike in Office 2003, in which there is a Help menu, the main entry point to Help is a single, right-aligned "international help" icon under the caption...

Today's Guest Writer: Savraj Dhanjal Savraj is a Program Manager on the Office User Experience team focused on user interface extensibility for Office developers. This week, we'll take a look at the gallery control. It's one of the most important...

At the bottom of Word's vertical scroll bar sit three esoteric buttons: one with a picture of two up arrows on it, one with a picture of two down arrows on it, and one in-between them with a picture on it that looks a little like a planet. Mysterious...

Creating a drawing in Office is different is a few key ways from other features we expose on the Insert tab of the Ribbon. Most notably, individual shapes are usually part of an overall drawing. It's less common that someone intends to draw a solitary...

One of the most startling and consistent pieces of feedback we've received from the early deployments of Office 2007 Beta 1 (and Beta 1 Technical Refresh) has been: "It's great that you added the drawing tools to all of the Office programs! Now I don...

Yesterday, a few of us spent the day until almost 10pm locked in a conference room meticulously reviewing all the tabs in the Ribbon. We've done these all-day marathon sessions a few times during the product cycle, and I find them to be extremely draining...

Today's Guest Writer: Savraj Dhanjal Savraj is a Program Manager on the Office User Experience team focused on user interface extensibility for Office developers. Today we're going to take a break from control types to highlight one of the more...

Last Thursday, I had the opportunity to speak at the April Vancouver User Experience (VanUE) meeting. The venue at a theater in the Vancouver Film School was quite nice--unfortunately there weren't quite enough seats to go around and some people had...

There are many ways we collect feedback about the new UI. I've detailed some of the ongoing usability activities in a previous article . We have so many outlets for feedback: customer visits, instrumentation data, the beta program, this blog, usability...

One of the most discussed aspects of the new Office 2007 UI has been: "Does it take up too much room?" It isn't a straightforward question to answer, above all because to answer it requires a subjective opinion. What seems just right to one person...

On Wednesday , I mentioned that as part of the keyboard work we've done for Beta 2, controls on the customizable Quick Access Toolbar are auto-assigned KeyTips. For example, the first item in the QAT can be accessed by typing ALT+1, the second item...

Today's Guest Writer: Savraj Dhanjal Savraj is a Program Manager on the Office User Experience team focused on user interface extensibility for Office developers. Hey everyone! Another week, another batch of RibbonX controls and attributes. You can...

I mentioned in mid-March that we had been putting a lot of thought and effort into improving the Office 2007 keyboard access model for Beta 2. Getting keyboarding for the new UI model right is a necessity--not only for accessibility but also for efficiency...

This is the eighth part in my eight-part series of entries in which I outline some of the reasons we decided to pursue a new user interface for Office 2007. Over the last two posts, I've discussed the Customer Experience Improvement Program and some...

Tomorrow I'll be reposting the last of Why the UI: Special Edition and on Wednesday I'll be back with original content. Sorry for those of you who have read the series before--my other option was to go dark for a couple of weeks and I thought this was...

This is the seventh part in my eight-part series of entries in which I outline some of the reasons we decided to pursue a new user interface for Office 2007. Last time I issued a challenge: for readers to pick the most-used command in Microsoft Word...

Today's Guest Writer: Savraj Dhanjal Savraj is a Program Manager on the Office User Experience team focused on user interface extensibility for Office developers. This week, we'll look at the different types of buttons you can create with RibbonX...

This is the sixth part in my eight-part series of entries in which I outline some of the reasons we decided to pursue a new user interface for Office 2007. Microsoft is tracking your every move! Soon after you install Office 2003 on your computer...

This is the fifth part in my eight-part series of entries in which I outline some of the reasons we decided to pursue a new user interface for Office 2007. Over the last few articles, we've taken a trip through Ye Olde Museum of Office Past , looking...

This is the fourth part in my eight-part series of entries in which I outline some of the reasons we decided to pursue a new user interface for Office 2007. Last time I discussed the UI mechanisms added to Office 2000 intended to reduce the perception...