Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog : Silver Bullet

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Silver Bullet » Wagalulu - Microsoft » » Silver Bullet said:

PingBack from http://microsoft.wagalulu.com/2006/07/17/silver-bullet/

# July 17, 2006 10:13 AM

netfreak said:

Jensen,

Great, as it always is. So will this theme be available in Beta2TR and when will we be able to use it.

You have also said, that the theme can be changed in every Office program, does this mean that now I can have word in Blue, Outlook in Silver and Excel in Black or is it one theme for all the office applications?

Doing a great work. Can't get enough of the Office 2007

# July 17, 2006 10:15 AM

Orion Adrian said:

Seriously I like the old NW corner that was different than the rest. I think people would have come around to it. I think it's best not to make artistic decisions based on committee or based on what the general public wants -- functional yes, artistic no.

Remember this is also a very limited subset of the audience of people who will be using this product and, as you've said, not representative of the greater public. Trust the artists: they know what they're doing.

# July 17, 2006 11:03 AM

Ben R. said:

Beautiful. I love neutral, subtle designs like that.

And I'm glad the Quick Access Toolbar looks more like a toolbar. When I showed Word 2007 to someone, he didn't even realize the QAT was part of the program--he assumed for the first few minutes that it was some sort of floating shareware app at the top of the screen.

I would, however, like to see EVEN MORE of a visual indication that the Office Button is an actual button and not just the product logo. Maybe make the "well" in which it sits even deeper? Not sure if I'm explaining myself well here, but this is one potential stumbling block in the new design: will people realize that's where you go to create a new document, choose Save As... etc.

# July 17, 2006 11:28 AM

Ben R. said:

One more question: Jensen, why did the team decide to put the Office logo on the button in the NW corner and not each individual app's logo?

Putting the individual app's logo might help make it more immediately obvious to the user which Office app he or she is looking at when rapidly flipping between different programs (a pretty common thing for me to do, and probably for others).

# July 17, 2006 11:32 AM

The Insider by Sidebar Geek said:

Jensen Harris talks about some tweaking they've done with the Office 2007 UI - in particular the upper

# July 17, 2006 11:51 AM

Cryo said:

Ooh!

I never was quite a fan of the black style after trying it in practice, but silver is looking really nice!

I like the new look of the NW corner, but I hope you'll come up with a better transition betwheen the window border and the inside.

The way it is right now looks very unnatural and WIP.

# July 17, 2006 11:51 AM

James Hancock said:

Now if it was obvious that the big round thing in the top left corner was actually a menu that did something and wasn't just pretty it would be great.

Once you know it's there and what it does, it's fine, but it's about as discoverable as Word 1.0... you guys really need to make it obvious that it's a button otherwise people are going to go "where the hell did save as go?"

# July 17, 2006 11:57 AM

Cryo said:

That is, referring to the space around the Office button. Sorry for double posting. ;)

# July 17, 2006 11:57 AM

Andrew Shebanow said:

On XP, all the changes are quite nice, but I agree with Cryo that the new NW corner looks terrible in Aero: the transition between the glass and non-glass areas is way too jarring and ugly.

# July 17, 2006 12:08 PM

J-K said:

I love the silver theme, well done!

But I am too curious about the discoverability of the NW Office Button. How did users react to it in the usability lab? Did it take long before they found it? I sneak-installed the latest Office beta on my wife's laptop and she was a little confused about the Office button. Her first reaction when she opened Word was that she wondered how to print. I told her to click the Office-logo, and she replied: "Can I click that?". I definitely think it should have some more click-me-for-functionality affordance. Like I said, I'm very interested in hearing how your test-subjects did.

Cheers!
Jan-Kristian

# July 17, 2006 12:11 PM

SWB said:

Very nice; thank you! If I can't have an Office UI that follows my system theme or the ability to customize colors at will, you're at least headed in the right direction with the new silver theme.

However, as shown in your screenshot, the silver theme still has an overall blue tint. It's subtle, but quite noticable. I would really prefer that the silver theme be truly neutral. Here's an illustration of what I'm talking about:

http://www.smugmug.com/photos/82242182-O.png

The center screenshot is the current silver theme. On the left, I've bumped the saturation to make the overall blue tint more obvious. On the right is the silver theme I'd like to see: the grays are totally neutral, not bluish gray.

See also the comment I made to a previous blog posting regarding the trouble with non-neutral UIs in a design environment:

http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/03/13/550407.aspx#556694

# July 17, 2006 12:23 PM

Dan Dautrich said:

So an improved version of the Beta 1 color scheme emerges, but we lose the distinctive curve near the Office button--we can't have everything, I guess. I'm at least happy to have my favorite color scheme back, and that's more important than a few transparent pixels! =)

# July 17, 2006 12:34 PM

John Topley said:

So how do you bring up the system menu? Double-click the Office Button?

# July 17, 2006 12:51 PM

Mark Mitchell said:

That's a button? I thought it was just some sort of decoration, like in the top righthand corner of IE. Well, now that I know I will probably get used to it.

Maybe you need to put in a flying banner like the Win95 team did: Fresh installs had a flying banner that said "Click here" pointing at the Start menu. That way people realised where to go.

# July 17, 2006 1:14 PM

Francis said:

I am delighted to see that swoopy gradient in the page background gone. The design looks much cleaner and more professional now!

Three points:
1. SWB is right. Please make gray gray. Your "Fabrikam Journal" is a case in point why a bluish gray is bad. The title LOOKS gray in the context of the screen shot but actually would print somewhere between slate blue and zaffre.
2. The Office button is a good idea--large, visible, and easy to click (being located in the corner of the screen.) However, I think that the word "File" or, as Ben says, the application/document icon is clearer than the Office logo (which resembles a stunted Apple key symbol.)
3. The Recent Documents section of the Office menu could be improved. Files that are open should be marked as such, either by color/text/an icon or by adding a second list under the heading "Open Documents" (which would come after "Recent Documents".) Then users will know they can toggle to that window without muddling through View->Switch Windows.

You could also mark files that are unsaved, as well as unsaved and unnamed files (e.g. Document2) under the heading "Open Documents." For keyboard shortcuts, you could use 09..01 (as in QAT buttons above 9.) There is plenty of space on the menu for this.

# July 17, 2006 1:34 PM

Francis said:

To wit: http://www.francispickering.com/menu.png

(file names and tooltips not updated)

# July 17, 2006 1:57 PM

JeffFisher said:

Excellent, but I would also like to see some more contrast in the colors used. Perhaps a 4th theme, or can these be added after release of the product? Is there a theme editor anywhere? Maybe it's time for a Power Tool??

Jensen: kudos to you and the entire Office team - not only for the fantastic upcoming release but also for the new standard of communication thru blogs and RSS.

I've been an enthusiast user of Office 2007 since last October - having converted every one of my systems to it (and fauthfully submitted bugs). I'm looking forward to the next beta, TR, or CTP. A lot speeedier statup of Outlook and I promise I'll be happy until the winter~!

# July 17, 2006 2:20 PM

New Office 2007 Beta theme - Tech[dot]Blog - All about Computers, Smartphones and The Internet said:

PingBack from http://thinkabdul.com/2006/07/18/new-office-2007-beta-theme/

# July 17, 2006 2:58 PM

Geeking Microsoft said:

Some screen shots have been posted of tweaks made to the UI of Office 2007 as well as the addition of...

# July 17, 2006 3:26 PM

Andre said:

Instead of using a predefined set of color themes it should be possible to apply filters to the graphics used to make up the UI.

And by default it should then use the system settings to adopt to the user settings.

Also the Vista screenshot looks like the Ribbon has been painted with Paint.

# July 17, 2006 3:37 PM

John said:

In a Vista the Office button makes sense as it is. As it is like the Start Button, circle with logo. Though Start is distict in colour, while the office button blends in with the rest, except for the black theme.
In XP, the user is not use to clicking on a circle with logo, but rather a button that has a little logo and the Word start, and so it may not be as ovious to the XP user, espically in the defualt theme for xp, where the button blends into the rest of the UI.
So I would recomend making the button "pop out" from the rest of the UI a bit more in the silver and blue themes, and at least in XP have a "tool tip" pop up when rolled over that says "Hey I'm the Office Button, I'm like the button down there on the taskbar with the word Start, except I am for office" or "Hey you, click on me I'm the start and end of your documents!
Or maybe something simpiler like "Start and Finish Button"

# July 17, 2006 4:01 PM

TechZap » Office 2007 Gets Themes, UI Tweaks said:

PingBack from http://techzap.net/2006/07/17/office-2007-gets-themes-ui-tweaks/

# July 17, 2006 4:05 PM

Office 2007 Gets Themes, UI Tweaks! at Bit Sticks said:

PingBack from http://kujis.com/bitsticks/?p=147

# July 17, 2006 4:29 PM

beta @ amanzi » New silver theme for Office 2007 said:

PingBack from http://beta.amanzi.co.nz/2006/07/18/new-silver-theme-for-office-2007/

# July 17, 2006 4:59 PM

Tim said:

Looking at the screenshots I much prefer the silver over the current somewhat-cyan blue, or black options. But it does look a little like it has been generated by simply desaturating the blue theme a little. It would be nice if the user could control saturation and hue actually - I remember a previous version of Media Player allowed something like that. Kind of ironic given that it is much more important when creating documents that are to be printed than listening to music.
As for the round corner - I guess it is too hard to make it square when maximized and round when not?

# July 17, 2006 7:03 PM

Michael Fuller said:

Orion Adrian wrote:
> I think it's best not to make
> artistic decisions based on committee
> or based on what the general public
> wants -- functional yes, artistic no.

Yes, but this is not an artistic decision. The choice of color schemes, contrasts, visual characteristics all have a direct impact on users' ability to use the product.

> Trust the artists: they know what
> they're doing.

Hmmm. In my experience, most artists and graphic designers have little idea what they are doing when it comes to web design and HCI issues. I would default to NOT trusting the artists: most of them should stick to doing art, where they can do no harm. :-/

# July 17, 2006 9:12 PM

Andrew Domaracki said:

The Silver theme looks very professional.
Personally, I really like it.

Since we're on the subject of changes to the product since Beta 2 - are beta testers going to receive an updated or interim build to test?

# July 17, 2006 9:37 PM

Fred said:

Hi Jensen,

Having a neutral background is a big help with screen shots or recordings (such as Live Meeting webcast rebroadcasts, which tend to degrade from the original <g>).

I may have missed it but I don't recall that you have addressed in your blog 3 questions that have come up from time to time.

1. On both Office 2003 and Office 2007 the reasons for not supporting Office apps inheriting a complete, selected Windows desktop color scheme?

(except by choosing one [such as 'Wheat'] via Accessibility's High Contrast mode in the Control Panel.

I would suspect that there have been a few folks having spent some time trying to get that to work, thinking it should ) :)

2. The Office 2007 'Large Icon' choices (for dialogs other than the ribbon (i.e. in Help, etc) don't seem to have been updated/smoothed, but for many older folks they're important.
For this same audience the ability to have a larger size QAT setting and/or to use the Windows Desktop Appearance icon sizing might be helpful. The question is similar to the first, is it a technical or ???? reason for the Office apps to divorce themselves from the Windows settings and/or to not update the larger icons?

3. There has been mention of a beta 'refresh'? Is that something that will also be a public download, an update or ????

Thank you for several hours of interesting reading over the past few months.

3.

# July 17, 2006 10:22 PM

LIGC said:

I like the new silver scheme, and the integration with Vista Aero is nice. I personally liked the rounded edges, but I can get used to the rectangular ones. I suppose integration with Vista Standard will look just like the integration with XP?

# July 17, 2006 11:21 PM

Andre Da Costa said:

Jensen, I love it, the Office Team really listened when it comes to the canvas. Less focus on the background canvas and more emphasis on the document page.

But Office 2007 is so mistmatched, non ribbon based apps such as Publisher, Visio, InfoPath don't share these themes, they are all black although the shadows on the drop down menus are awesome. Please update these apps so they have the Option under Tools to also utilize the the different colour schemes.

# July 17, 2006 11:39 PM

marlon said:

I want to add my agreement to SWB. Go with a true silver theme rather than silver with the blue theme.

# July 18, 2006 12:20 AM

marlon said:

Sorry...meant to say, 'true silver theme rather than silver with a blue tint

# July 18, 2006 12:22 AM

ramesh said:

Hopefully there will be a scheme that has a smaller/narrower ribbon. I don't think I am the only one who finds the current schemes too large and intrusive.

# July 18, 2006 3:12 AM

miki said:

I love the silver theme, like everyone else! It really does put the document first, then flashy nice-looking stravaganza buttons later :)

Anyway, I was thinking, every new office version had a logo change. What is happening here? Is Office 2007 going to have the same marketing, same logos and everything else like the Office 2003? Looks like well have to wait and see.

# July 18, 2006 6:10 AM

Richard Gadsden said:

Will the NW corner button respond to clicks in the very NW corner, even though the curve is a bit away. It would be great if it did, because then on a maximised window, the logo button would be a mile high and a mile wide - it would be in the very NW corner of the screen.

# July 18, 2006 7:40 AM

Don said:

Smaller ribbon is a must - waaaay too much screen real estate is wasted for serious business writers/users. It's even worse in Excel. Even in ultra high res, the bars are intrusive and irritating. I always run with ONE line of menu and ONE line of icons, carefully chosen. Everything else is just a waste of space and a drain on the eye.

While I like the approach you've taken, both the space and the retraiing of my users is an issue I will put off for a long time. Office 2K3 ain't broken, so we'll stick there; the cost of retraining is simply too high.

# July 18, 2006 8:55 AM

tino said:

Thank you for sharing this with us. I think the problem with the Quick Access Toolbar is the position and not the design. The Titlebar must be for the title.
The new silver color theme looks great!

# July 18, 2006 9:54 AM

Jack said:

Don: just double-click to make the ribbon disappear. I use keyboard shortcuts so I don't even see the ribbon most of the time. This way the Word 2007 UI hogs barely more screen area than Notepad.

# July 18, 2006 9:55 AM

Paul M. Parks said:

Don: "Smaller ribbon is a must - waaaay too much screen real estate is wasted for serious business writers/users."

I agree, it's way too big. I'm not impressed by the justification that it's roughly the size of all the default toolbars, since I close all the toolbars on my Office apps.

I did find, quite by accident, that if you CTRL-double-click on the text at the top of the ribbon, it will collapse. That frees up a significant amount of space.

# July 18, 2006 10:01 AM

Paul M. Parks said:

Ah, so it's just a double-click to shrink the ribbon. Apologies.

# July 18, 2006 10:02 AM

Kishan said:

I LOVE the silver cilor scheme. Great work.

# July 18, 2006 10:03 AM

Eric said:

new color scheme looks great! pics do not show up in the post though:(

# July 18, 2006 11:40 AM

praveen said:

You guys seem to be doing some amazing work there. I really loved the themes.

# July 18, 2006 12:40 PM

Ronald said:

The UI would look more stunning if the bottom status bar of the window is blended into the glass window frame similar to Windows Media Player in Windows Vista.

# July 18, 2006 4:49 PM

Willis said:

Jensen, will you talk about the new application icons at some point?

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/design/office.html

# July 18, 2006 9:06 PM

Shane Perran’s SharePoint Customization Blog » Blog Archive » Office 2007, Jensen Harris showing off some visuals said:

PingBack from http://www.graphicalwonder.com/?p=497

# July 19, 2006 7:39 AM

Office 2007 Silver on Windows XP Silver » Wagalulu - Microsoft » » Office 2007 Silver on Windows XP Silver said:

PingBack from http://microsoft.wagalulu.com/2006/07/19/office-2007-silver-on-windows-xp-silver/

# July 19, 2006 10:05 AM

The Mit's Blog said:

Une nouvelle qui suit un peu la future mise à disposition d'un nouveau théme pour Vista sans aéro.
Bien,...

# July 19, 2006 10:55 AM

Life is grand » Silver Bullet said:

PingBack from http://paulmwatson.com/journal/2006/07/19/silver-bullet/

# July 19, 2006 12:38 PM

Patrick Baumgartner said:

Will there be any way to figure out what color scheme is being used through the Office object model?

How do you support people who are building Office add-in that want to have the same look and feel as Office (instead of windows - for which the theme colors are currently available)

# July 19, 2006 4:01 PM

Robert Hunter said:

Geez, does the word CLUTTER mean anything to Microsoft? GUI design as a form of torture?

# July 19, 2006 5:25 PM

Sharing my thoughts… » Blog Archive » New theme for Office 2007 said:

PingBack from http://sarathc.wordpress.com/2006/07/20/new-theme-for-office-2007/

# July 19, 2006 11:47 PM

osen said:

owesome...

# July 20, 2006 12:32 AM

Jan Kucera said:

I think the office logo in the NW corner is much better than the individual application logo, because that will look like the NW icon with system menu / close button.

I have no troubles discovering that it is a button - because it get coloured on hover.

I like the new QAT desing, especially in the black theme. And I have nothing against rounded corner, as well as I think that the new design, in black theme, have the office button much more smoothly integrated into the window design thatn we can se in the Beta 2.

As far as the silver theme is mentioned, I see the blue tint in both the black and silver themes. I think that if people wanted silver theme, they wanted really neutral theme. If they are looking for blue tint, they have a blue theme for them. That way you could implement the custom color as a Live Messenger or Media Player has... but I think this three themes are enough and will be good, if the silver would loss the tint.

# July 20, 2006 4:33 AM

A.T. said:

I notice the floppy and undo/redo icons on the QAT are very different from the icons on the ribbon buttons. The ribbon icons look more sophisticated because of restrained use of color.

I actually don't like the QAT at all. It would have been better to incorporate the undo/redo and save buttons to the ribbon. Like someone said, the QAT looks like it was added on by a third-party utility or shareware.

# July 20, 2006 11:46 PM

Chris C. said:

[quote]
I think it's best not to make artistic decisions based on... what the general public wants
... Trust the artists: they know what they're doing.
[/quote]

What an elitist pile of crap that opinion is.

Where did "trust the artists" get Xerox? Right out of the computer business, that's where. If Steve Jobs hadn't been allowed to visit we would all still be using pencils and 3270's.

Glad you went back to the square NW corner.

-Chris C.
P.S. Just to be clear:
It is a worthy effort to "give some reign to people with artistic abilities" (especially in the UI area) - but after a short period you have to stop and evaluate what they've produced.

To me, self proclaimed "artists" include those who fill a jar with urine, drop something in the urine, and then call it art. (and the bastard got my tax money for it too)
Heck I could do that, and what little artistic abilities I had, have atrophied :-)

# July 21, 2006 10:01 AM

Michael Plasmeier said:

No Green???? I love my olive green on XP, I am even using the Outlook 2003 theme for Firefox. https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/892/
I am sad that there isn't going to be a similar theme for Vista/Office 2007.

Michael Plasmeier
http://theplaz.com

# July 21, 2006 11:06 AM

Matt said:

My comments

* I had no idea that the office logo was clickable (and is the access to the main menu??) until I read the comments in this post. That sounds really really nasty, it needs to be more obvious. The save/undo/redo icons up there are quite bizarre. You even state yourself in another article that people expect that sort of functionality to be *in the ribbon*, not in some weird place like the title bar where people just aren't used to finding application specific tools.

* Make the neutral themes neutral! Why go to the trouble of making neutral themes if they're not, it's bizarre.

* What's with the bright cyan highlight around the right and bottom edges of the silver theme screenshot? It looks totally ugly, like some kind of bug.

PS. Although I don't use Office that much, I do admire the effort and work that you're doing to improve its usability. For all this current version's foibles, I think it's definitely an improvement on what I saw in Office last time I used it.

# July 21, 2006 9:56 PM

Bill’s Baby: Office 2007 Silver Scheme said:

PingBack from http://billsbaby.com/index.php/2006/07/22/office-2007-silver-scheme/

# July 22, 2006 4:17 AM

Ute Simon said:

In my opinion, the Silver Theme is too pale, I think, I will not choose it for daily use. But I think it's great for screenshots, because it's light-colored and neutral.
Regarding the Office button: I think it is an illusion, that software can be used without any training (well, I am a trainer ...). Office 2007 is way more intuitive than the previous versions. But business users will get and need some training, and there will be someone who tells them within the first five minutes, that they can click on the Office logo to open and save files. (And for those private users who don't have an admin installing it for them: Print it on the box.) And for the next years, it will be clear for them to click the NW corner to get the "File" menu. I don't see the need for lengthy discussions.

# July 23, 2006 9:59 AM

The Alistair Speirs blog said:

What has happened in the&nbsp;MOSS-land while I was away?
I chuckled a bit when I saw that the third...

# July 24, 2006 8:20 AM

LDR said:

Silver looks pretty good. Not ideal, but definitely a vast improvement over blue and black.

I second Francis suggestion that the recent documents have a visual indication that the document is open and whether it is saved or not.

# July 25, 2006 10:48 AM

Ian Sinke said:

What's the big deal with the Office button? Since the beginning of Windows the File menu has always been in the NW corner. I got the beta and figured it out first thing.

Ian

# July 25, 2006 10:57 AM

The Insider by Sidebar Geek said:

Jensen Harris confirmed on his blog today that the before-mentioned icons from the Microsoft Design website

# July 26, 2006 10:44 AM

Peter Cooper said:

I love the new Office, but that NW button totally killed me the first time I used the beta too. I share the concerns of other commenters above.

I thought.. "cool, no menus, obviously you open documents from Explorer / Desktop only like I do on OS X" and wrote off the existance of any File menu whatsoever.

I happily went about my business until I found I really needed something from there (possibly New) and even then it took me a few tries to work out where it was (after going through the help!)

It's really not that obvious. Even if I'm 1 in 100 who found it hard to figure out, when you have 100 million people using Office...

# July 26, 2006 12:11 PM

Joe Coplen said:

1) I liked the old NW corner better. I don't know if the Office Button shrunk, but it seems smaller. I liked the way the Quick Access Toolbar looked before. With it being the same background as the titlebar, it's kind of lost. The Office Button itself isn't immediately discoverable. I'm not trained to look for things like that in the corner where previously only the system menu appeared. I can't tell you how much time I wasted in Excel looking for a way to print that wasn't "quick print".

2) It took me several minutes of staring at the Office Button menu before I could find "Editor Options" to change the color scheme. The only reason I kept looking is because someone assured me it was there. Why isn't this an option in the menu on the left? What makes it so special that it deserves to be a button off by itself in a corner where there is otherwise nothing? It would be nicer if we stuck to 1 style and put those button commands in the menu.

# August 10, 2006 5:13 PM

Vic said:

I have a version of Office 2007 which does not have the Silver theme. Whic version is this. Also, this downloaded version says that it will expire at the end of October. Will I get a warning? And, will I have an alternative to purchase other one, to continue using Office 2007?

# August 20, 2006 4:06 AM