Office 2010 Builds Hit BitTorrent, Features Win 7 Taskbar Integration

@Jay Mueller:

i can't find the ribbon in iWork ;)

gmerin

@Jay Mueller: Resistance is futile??

Goon

@antiism:

because, for example while working in Excel where I'm not doing a rote task, it takes me much longer to find the functions and formulas i need to use while the ribbon is jumping back and forth with every keypress. i have to now memorize keystroke alternatives and try to ignore the ribbon.

gmerin

@resilient: Yeah whats wrong with Black and white tv .. or even sitting around the radio .. or whats wrong with typewriter forget computers .. Whats wrong with 8tracks ? why make anything new ?

jonthomasdesigns

Yep, the Ribbon is here to stay. Accept or be assimilated!

Jay Mueller

@zyberteq: It'll be there eventually, or somebody will make an extension. Just like Glasser on Vista.

Zachary Waldowski

@resilient: Office 2007 is distinctly 3 less than Office 2010. Duh!

hometoast

I wish more applications included superbar functionality.
Like Firefox tabs behaving like the IE8 tabs in W7

zyberteq

@antiism: Mostly because I don't know where everything is. I stay with the 2003 interface because of personal preference.

@resilient:

why? do you think it will run on XP? if not, then corporate planners need to start on the Windows 7 migration now, especially since Vista is a dud. Early previews is a way to hopefully get the corporate market for Windows 7 moving, otherwise the majority of MSoft's largest institutional customers will attempt to remain on XP, or move to a virtual desktop environment.

gmerin

@resilient: Obviously, no taskbar integration. Hell, I know people who are fine with Office 98 or XP. If you want to stick with '07, you'll still be far ahead of the curve.

The ribbon is fantastic. It takes some getting used to, but once I was used to it, I was twice as productive when taking technical notes.

Why is it that you don't like it?

antiism

@cha0tic: You can still hit alt to bring 2003 back. Dunno why you'd want to, ribbon is the future :D
(Just not in bloody paint)

You should give the Ribbon interface a try, I hated it at first, but now I hate going back to Office 2003 took about 3 weeks of hard use

Stephen De Rusett

@resilient:

If you think Back in the Day we used to get Office and Windows releases every 3-4 years

we had office 97, office 2000/OfficeXP, Office 2003, and Office 2007 so an Office 2010 release fits fine,

Stephen De Rusett

It's sad to see that they're still going with the ribbon interface :/ I hope there will be another hack to put it like the 2003 version.

@resilient: It's 3 years old, many companies release new versions of their software, to have new features, and renew sales.

Why do we need all these new releases? What's wrong with Microsoft's Office 2007?

resilient

it's been said that the leaked version expires 30 days after you install it. just so you know if you're thinking about download this.

i tried it the other day, nothing too exciting. it just looked like 2007 in white. i compared the two side by side and a few ribbon buttons were switched around, but a few minutes of playing didn't reveal any new features other than this: the round blue disk menu has been replaced by an irritating full-screen welcome wizard thing. i didn't like that at all. slow and unnecessary...

garbanzo-bean

@zyberteq: WinFox:
[brentf.com]
, I believe that might be what you are looking for (firefox 3 only)

mattk37

@cha0tic: The ribbon is an excellent UI construct. Certainly far better than the antiquated impossible-to-find-anything toolbar-and-menu system that office outgrew ages ago.

planetarian

Seeing how easy and fast it leaked you would have swore that Microsoft did it intentionally. Free BETA testing...doesn't that help te final solution?

I am not switching until the final product is released. Office 2010 is still a BETA in testing. It's unstable and unreliable as it is. However I have heard numerous reports that it is indeed faster.

pvtryan2

Outlook 2010, 13 years after version 97, and the today screen is still that ugly yellow thing...oh god :(

I'm not an apple fanboy, but they would have so cleaned up with the nonsense that Microsoft keep dishing out

I'm sticking with 2007 for now, I'm still getting used to that :)

Fowzie Smith-Tahir

@resilient: Exactly, I mean Office 2007 is just okay.

Khalil Muhammad

Looks like they finally killed Exchange 2003 support in Outlook 2010. That sucks for me.

rootwind

Yep, the ribbon is here for good. Just like Clippy was.

Resistance is only futile when enough people think it is.

LouGrinzo

@cha0tic: Actually I like the Ribbon design, its lot easier to browse thru and select all the functions available, with just mouse scroll and click.

SonaJiblical

ribbons scare me

Beall49

@resilient: That version of Office you bought in 2007 isn't making Microsoft any money in 2009.

fiji.siv

@cha0tic: I found it tons faster to learn the ribbon than it was to learn all the nested menus, and the only people I've ever seen disagree are people who never really tried. The help topics in 2007 also tend to be more on-point and detailed, making learning the ribbon easier still.

Of course, there has to be a reason to bother learning a new interface, and with the ribbon the reason is easy to understand provided you trust people who've had the patience to live with it for a few weeks: Using the ribbon is, in the end, easier and more efficient than not. If you take the time to learn the ribbon, you'll almost certainly be glad you did.

Glad to see that I'm not the only one who like the Office Ribbon. Boy, did my friends looked at me weirdly when I was one of the first ones to embrace the Ribbon UI.

The Ribbon UI has bigger icons, which makes it easier for me to read/see. You just need to play around with the Ribbon for just a few minutes and you'll see that it totally makes sense!!

Verzon Wyrless

@cha0tic: It's sad to see that people are still bitching about the ribbon when they could spend the time they wasted bitching on getting used to it. If they did that they would realize how much better it is.

Mason Wiley

@antiism: I agree. It's a lot better, and easier and faster to work with once you get used to it. I used to hate it, but I got used to it and I dread having to use the old style UI on my school's computers.

Mason Wiley

@resilient: Why don't you run Office 2003 then? Or a 15" screen? You were able to work with it back then, so what's wrong with a small screen? Why use cars and airplanes at all? Our ancestors were able to do without them. I'm sure you're using Windows 3 or something? And a Pentium II?

ssj4Gogeta

@cha0tic: I have been using Office 2010. One feature that I really love is customizable ribbon bar. You can now customize it by adding/removing commands as per your taste.

@planetarian: Might be impossible for you, but I've been using it long enough that I know where pretty much everything is now.

@resilient: Just because there's a new version doesn't mean you have to upgrade.

This thing runs EXTREMELY fast, very impressed actually!Some stuff isn't working for me, like changing themes.

HectorAlpaca

@cha0tic:

Like was said above, if you give it a chance and get past the learning curve it's actually pretty convenient.

Getting used to the ribbon is the main user complaint, but once past that it's not so bad.

Timothy Niles

I'm an 18yo kid and for the first time ever, I feel very old. I remember learning Office 97 as a kid and that is now more than a decade ago!

marksman7328

@falter: Sorry I should have mentioned, this adds an extra tab in the ribbon, which allows you to do a search for any buttons you can't find, so typing 'copy' brings up all the copy commands. The search is quite cool, and brings up all the buttons as you start typing.

falter

@[www.officelabs.com] I installed it for several users who were having the same problem, but now they no longer have to come to me to find the answers!

falter

I want!!

The splash page is animated? Bleh. Sure it looks great but I hate splash screens anyway. It's a fancy way of saying "Sorry our program takes way too long to load." Animating the splash screen just makes it even slower...

Toribor

@gmerin: On what grounds, exactly, was Vista a dud? It works great for me and millions of others...

RedwoodFlyer

@resilient: I agree with your questioning. I really like Office 2007 and I'd like to know which features in 2010 will convince me to spend money on a new license.

anyone found the outlook connector for 2010?

sickstick

@Toribor: It's negligible. That's like complaining that your car making a seat belt beeping noise makes it run slower.

What's different about showing an icon for each app? My Office 07 in Windows 7 shows a new icon on the taskbar for each app.

@LouGrinzo: Clippy was insignificant and not an important UI construct. He was expendable.

planetarian

@cha0tic: i never had too many issues with it, but I'm a power user anyway, and I could still recognize how antiquated and inefficient it was. This issue is made plainly evident when you consider the fact that most of the office feature requests pre-2007 were for features that were already in Office, yet were hidden within office's maze of menus.

planetarian

I hope Outlook will be more bearable. I learned VBA to make a button to move messages to a specific folder. You can't properly redirect emails, nor change the Drafts folder.

ribbon = multiple clicks to get to what i want. also, some features (ones not on the ribbons) are hidden. you really have to search. 2003 toolbar = customizable = all of the things i use (and i use a lot of features) are ONE click and because i get to name them--i know what they do.

AlicePylades

@LetMeSayThisAboutThat: Oops, there's one for Access also:

Access 2003 to Access 2007 interactive command reference guide

[www.microsoft.com]

LetMeSayThisAboutThat

@falter: I always recommend the Office Interactive command reference guides.

There is one for Word, Excel, Outlook, and Powerpoint.

They are Flash animations showing where Office 2003 commands are in the new Office 2007 interface.

Provided by Microsoft, these interactive reference guides work simply:

Open a guide, and you will be shown the old Office 2003 application. Perform the command as you used to within the 2003 version of the App. The animation then transitions to the new 2007 version, and shows you how to do the command from the 2007 ribbon interface.

To Install:

After downloading a guide, double click on the file to 'install'. There is only a single file to extract (the interactive reference guide), you can extract the file to any location, such as your desktop and run it from there.

Excel 2003 to Excel 2007 interactive command reference guide

[www.microsoft.com]

Outlook 2003 to Outlook 2007 Interactive Command Reference Guide

[www.microsoft.com]

PowerPoint 2003 to PowerPoint 2007 interactive command reference guide

[www.microsoft.com]

Word 2003 to Word 2007 interactive command reference guide

[www.microsoft.com]

LetMeSayThisAboutThat