Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog

This morning at the CeBIT conference in Germany, we revealed the new visuals for the Office 2007 user interface. You can see a few screenshots of the new look on the Office 2007 UI Preview Site . If you've got a craving to see even more, I've created...

Today marks the start of February, the " month of love ." In commemoration, I want to ask you a question: What software do you love, and why? Some members of the high-tech illuminati start and end their discussions of design in terms of RAZR phones...

One of the most well-understood and salient principles underlying the ergonomics of graphical user interface design is Fitts' Law . Named for Paul Fitts, a psychologist at Ohio State University, Fitts' Law is a mathematical model of fine motor control...

Today’s the big day--I'm so pleased to announce that as of right now, you can download Office 2007 Beta 2 from the Office preview site at http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/ . Click the button marked “Try it!” and enter a few pieces of information...

One topic that has come up frequently in our private beta newsgroups as well as here in blog comments from time to time is the issue of customization. As with every component of the Office 2007 user interface redesign, we put a lot of thought into...

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...

People have speculated rampantly about how closely Office 2007 Beta 2 will reflect the final product. I've read everything from "nothing will change between now and the final release" all the way to "a lot will likely change between now and general availability...

I couple of months ago I mentioned that we were working on a third color scheme for Office 2007, as well as continuing to tweak the visuals of the so-called "northwest" corner of the apps (the upper-left corner.) I was planning on waiting until we...

For the last year or so, one of the questions I've been asked again and again has been: "Can I use the new Office user interface in my own product?" On one hand, it's an immensely satisfying question to hear, because it means that others in the industry...

This is the sixth part in my weekly series of entries in which I outline some of the reasons we decided to pursue a new user interface for Office 12. You can read the last installments here: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 . Microsoft is tracking...

I mentioned a few days ago that the team has been immersed lately in improving the Office 2007 keyboard model . We got a lot of constructive feedback around the model from Beta 1 and so we're hard at work addressing it for Beta 2. Today, I want to...

Today's Guest Writer: Brad Weed Brad Weed is the Product Design Manager of the Office Design Group. For many of the UI changes we've previewed this month, March really has come in like a lion. And as you watch your favorite team get eliminated in...

Today I present guest writer Brad Weed, Product Design Manager of the Office Design Group. He leads the team of designers responsible for the new Office 2007 skins I introduced yesterday . Today's Guest Writer: Brad Weed Coming off the season finale...

This morning, we announced that starting tomorrow (Thursday, Septemeber 14) you'll be able to download the Beta 2 Technical Refresh build of Office 2007 (build 4407.1005). Note: There's a newer post now with the download link . You can keep reading...

Earlier this week , I somewhat humorously referred to people who close windows on the left side as "Windows 3.1 lovers." What did I mean by that? The now-ubiquitous close button in the upper-right hand corner of windows was only added to the operating...

A couple of months ago, I posted screenshots of the visual appearance of the Office 2007 Beta 1 Technical Refresh . At the time, a number of you asked for pictures of what Office 2007 looks like on Windows Vista with glass enabled. Your wish, my command...

One of the core components of the new user experience is something we call the "Ribbon." The Ribbon is a strip across the top of the window that exposes what the program can do. Here's an example of what a Ribbon looks like: (click to enlarge) ...

We're two days into the public beta 2 of Office 2007, and so far 500,000 people have downloaded the beta. I have to say I'm a bit astounded that we're at a number that high after only two days... it's scary but awesome to think about so many people out...

On Thursday, I wrote about how Office 2003 renders the user interface using a table of several thousand colors . Some of you commented that we're crazy to do so much work. Perhaps, but keep in mind that I'm not just talking about the menus and toolbars;...

We're not just introducing a new UI in Office 12--we're also introducing a new UI font. Windows 95 used "MS Sans Serif" as the UI font in Western locales. It was a straightforward font which looked fairly good, if plain, at small sizes. Office...

One of the many areas in which we've spent time since Beta 2 has been making working with the collapsed Ribbon a more realistic option. Since the very first public build of the new user interface, you've been able to collapse the Ribbon to just the...

One of the efficiency affordances added to Office over a decade ago is the Recent Documents list. At the bottom of the File menu in Office 2003, you'll see your four most recently-opened documents listed; you can click one of them to open the file...

Last month, I introduced Segoe UI , the new user interface font for Office 12 and Windows Vista. Of course, you spend most of your time in Office not looking at the user interface, but working with documents. Times New Roman has been Word's...

Yesterday, I talked about "command loops," in which commands not available at the same time in a modal user interface can cause frustration or reduced efficiency due the mode switch required to access both of them. When we looked closely at the...

The success of a user interface depends on getting the details right. That's not to say that a little bit of fit-and-finish work can save a horrible design, but a good idea won't thrive either unless enough of the little details are right. I know that...