Things of Beauty

re: Things of Beauty

Centaur — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 17:56:35 GMT

In case of e-mail, adding gratuitous graphics (i. e. pictures that are not actual content of the message) is not exactly the way to look smart. In fact, it is downright rude. A frequent newbie blunder is to attach a background image with an HTML message (which is an annoyance in and of itself, unless the formatting is important).

re: Things of Beauty

John Doe — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 18:04:18 GMT

In the case of e-mail, adding gratuitous HTML is not exactly the way to look smart. In fact, it is downright rude. A frequent newbie blunder is to send an HTML message.

re: Things of Beauty

Daniel — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 19:31:49 GMT

For what it's worth you should know that HTML email is ubiquitous inside to MS. I came to MS from grad school where we were all plain text, pine, mh, etc. Inside MS graphics & html are utterly accepted. I'll guess that there's a lot more conventions than the two (extremes possible) of MS and grad school that I've experienced.

re: Things of Beauty

Tally — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 20:23:25 GMT

How about telling us something we want to know: when is the tech refresh coming?

re: Things of Beauty

Always Interested — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 20:30:54 GMT

I've been reading your blog (RSS'd, of course) for some time now. Thanx for the updates, BTW.

What strikes me most about Office 2007 is how much thought is going into making it. From all that you mentioned, it seems to be the definitive version of Office. Whatever will [the collective] you think of next?!

The reason I'm compelled to visit your actual blog is to ask a simple question: Did previous versions of Office go through such intense thought process? If yes, what were the limitations before that [the collective] you could not deliver Office 2007 back in, say, 2003?

Keep up the good work, Mr. Harris.

AI

re: Things of Beauty

Aaron M. Hall — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 23:35:22 GMT

Jensen,

I agree with AI above me... It is amazing the level of detail that is going into Office 2007. Much of the Office team needs to be cloned and hired to work on the Windows development team, because right now, Vista is in serious need of your collective talents! "Blue" UI with a Black Start menu?! Seriously, what are they thinking?

Anyway, ranting aside, you and the Office crew are doing spectacular work, no matter how resilient to change people are being. It is greatly appreciated that you are all so responsive to user feedback! :)

Regards,
Aaron M. Hall

re: Things of Beauty

Ed W — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 01:28:54 GMT

Agree with AI and others, that the Office 2007 development seems good; although it leaves OneNote and Outlook out in the cold ... shame; these should be central capabilities.

With regards the Beta 2 Tech Refresh, please please tell us when we get it!!

With regards Pictures: can we please be allowed to add our own to the gallery? I like the outside shadow on its own and used it recently in my MSc Thesis: smart, simple, and allowed diagrams to be subtlely but professionally bordered (a look a bit akin to the live.com white and clean look, like a new kitchen, before they dirtied it with gratuitous and horrid blue headings, especially with live messenger).

As others have said; the Office 2007 team needs to get the other teams (live.com and Vista) to visit and learn from you!

re: Things of Beauty

SL — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 04:07:16 GMT

Prior to using the Office 2007 beta, I've always wondered why Office 2003/4 (and before) produced such horrible, horrible charts/tables/images. Office 2007 is vastly improved, and dare I say it, the features are more accessible than Apple's equally good (but less customisable) iWork features. I think Microsoft has a winning feature here -- and this is something that should be advertised and promoted - it is very good.

re: Things of Beauty

Anthony Brien — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 05:36:23 GMT

Neat article. I can't figure out how you created the turtle or whale picture shadow. It looks like the picture's lower right corner is lifted up, but I can't seem to reproduce it in the latest beta.

re: Things of Beauty

PatriotB — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 07:17:18 GMT

Aaron & Ed -- Actually, Windows should now be benefitting from some of Office's experiences and ideas. Steven Sinfosky moved from the Office division to Windows, currently the "senior vice president for the Windows and Windows Live engineering group" (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/ssinofsky/default.mspx)

And, though it wasn't widely publicized, Julie Larson-Green, who ran "the team that did the research that led to the came up with and designed the new Office 12 user interface" (remember her video on Channel 9? http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=114720) has moved to Windows as well. She is now the "corporate vice president of program management for the Windows Experience" (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/julielar/default.mspx).

So hopefully there will be some good things coming Windows' way (post-Vista) with these new changes.

re: Things of Beauty

Johan Bakken — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 12:38:53 GMT

All those styles/effects your showing us here in this post, Mr. Harris, are way too characteristic. Just like most Photoshop filters, they take too much attention and makes the output look very much like the user has been fiddling with effects.

This is very similar to the clip art that we've all grown so attached to with Office over the years. They have too much personality, and therefore makes the users who make use of these look like amateurs. Like they're just learning the software and that they don't know the advantages of limiting the use of effects and filters. There are many companies here in Norway, where I live, that use Office clip art in their logos. Here's a bus-company for instance:
http://www.goebussa.no/

At the same time, I'm sure that this is exactly what most Office-users want. But that doesn't mean that it's what's best for them, their presentations or their output.

My wish for Office 2007 is that you keep the obvious effects and clip art to a minimum.

re: Things of Beauty

Peter Bridger — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 14:57:50 GMT

I've been using this very feature today to create nicer looking images of videos I've added to a Powerpoint presentation, very nice! :)

However I was having big problems getting videos working in Powerpoint. In the end it seemed to be caused by having the videos I embedded having a full path to them that was too long.

I was surprised this limitation would still exist in the newest version of Powerpoint :(

re: Things of Beauty

Thomas Tallyce — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 17:38:49 GMT

Why is it being called "Beta 2 Technical Refresh". What's wrong with "Beta 3"?

I thought the IE team's crazy beta numbering was bad ...

re: Things of Beauty

Stooovie — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 19:24:31 GMT

Styles 6 and 7 are really beautiful in their subtlety. Good work!

re: Things of Beauty

Nick — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 02:12:36 GMT

While I'm looking forward to seeing the final release of Office 2007, I wonder about some of these styles and images. I'm not as vehemently against HTML email as others, but I do find it annoying when useless images are attached to an email.

The other thing that comes to mind is something akin to the Resume Wizard in current versions of Office. When you have millions of people using a product, pretty soon the bundled templates, styles, images, and color schemes get old and annoying. While the images you posted really are great, and might make a nice desktop background, I think they will soon be over-used and quickly come to be seen as old and cliched.

I look forward to new functionality in Office and Vista, and don't care so much about the pretty pictures. I'm sure I'm not alone when I say this, so don't forget about us pragmatic types :)

re: Things of Beauty

Saurabh — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 09:14:44 GMT

Wow... i guess i should start educating the customer about office 2007 now... and do we have any way one can order a free trial cd ..if yes then we can provide tht link to all the customers we get to speak with and that is the way they can try it...

Saurabh..
Microsoft Customer Central

re: Things of Beauty

Adam — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 12:31:58 GMT

Thomas : You forgot to mention Vista's crazy beta numbering which has called "Beta 3" "RC1".

Maybe they just have something against "Beta 3"?

(Maybe there's a jinx on "Beta 3"s like MS has with "version 4"s and they're trying to avoid it. DOS 4 sucked. To ward off the evil spirits, they not only skipped version 4, but also 3 and 5 for Word which went from v2 to v6. NT4 took advantage of this banked karma and broke the jinx temporarily by being good on release, but fell into the trap again with NT4 Service Pack 4 - I guess that was really tempting fate.)

re: Things of Beauty

Michael Gannotti — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 07:13:18 GMT

I have found the new graphic features in PowerPoint to be a tremndous help for saving time while creating visually attractive slides that used to mean lots of time spent using photoshop.
Thanks for the great work

re: Things of Beauty

Bryan — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 10:10:21 GMT

Heh. Style #3 looks like one of those Despair, Inc. posters (http://despair.com/viewall.html).

Title: Journeys
Caption: Sometimes "take a long walk off a short pier" is meant literally.

re: Things of Beauty

Ute Simon — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 21:00:59 GMT

I like those new picture looks! Carefully used, they will improve many presentations.

There's one problem in current Office versions: If you use a big photo as a fill for an AutoShape, it will not be compressed by the built-in compression tool. Can pictures using these new styles be compressed? There are too many people in my office using poster-size photos in PowerPoint slides in cases they only need stamp-size, thus having file size explode.

Ute

re: Things of Beauty

Geir Arne Brevik — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 16:08:54 GMT

follow-up on Johan's comment about Office Clip-art being used as logos in Norway: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/geirarne/237987458/">Here's another one</a>.

Office Beta 2 Technical Refresh available Wednesday!!

GottaBeMobile.com — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 21:47:05 GMT

Office Beta 2 Technical Refresh available Thursday!!

GottaBeMobile.com — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 22:27:45 GMT

Office 2007 Beta 2 TR - Links at Alpesh Nakars’ Blogosphere

Office 2007 Beta 2 TR - Links at Alpesh Nakars’ Blogosphere — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 23:21:43 GMT

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Microsoft Office 2007 Beta Refresh Available for Download » TechFreep

Microsoft Office 2007 Beta Refresh Available for Download » TechFreep — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 02:47:31 GMT

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re: Things of Beauty

Ed W — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 01:45:24 GMT

Any news on whether we're going to be able to add to our Galleries? I now commonly use a centred shadow, rather than bottom-right shadow, in order to bring images out of a document: in particular, with images that were diagrams that I cut and moved using windows-S via OneNote. The result is fantastic, and I've used it recently in my MSc Thesis (yes ... I dared to write my Thesis on Beta Software - and both enjoyed the risk and benefited from the capabilities).

Great for Office 2007 Training

Matt — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 21:29:22 GMT

You can learn so much from this blog, before even using Office 2007.

One note: Access 2007 is VERY different. I definitely didn't expect such a dramatic--overhaul. Was this something that was requested by Access newbies, or Access gurus?

The Office 2007 UI Bible | MS Tech News

The Office 2007 UI Bible | MS Tech News — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 02:01:13 GMT

PingBack from http://mstechnews.info/2008/10/the-office-2007-ui-bible/

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