Microsoft  Office has become a bastion of the PC work environment, with each new release over the years incorporating an extensive array of new features. Over time, however, individual Office applications such as Word have evolved into monstrous hydras with thousands of different functions hiding in what has become, for many users, a bewildering maze.
To cut back on clutter, the software giant has completely redesigned the user interface (UI) for the next iteration of its Office software suite, codenamed Office 12. But the move to a radically different UI is clearly a gamble. At stake is a cash cow that generates billions of dollars each year for Microsoft. And waiting in the wings are new open-source alternatives from OpenOffice.org and Sun Microsystems that hope to capitalize on any missteps Microsoft might make.
"I think it is a move in a positive direction," said research director Jim Murphy at AMR Research in Boston. "There may be some pain and some productivity loss at the outset, but the changes I've seen will affect productivity in positive ways once people get over the initial shock."
Murphy believes there has been a lot of hype about how vulnerable Microsoft is. "On the other hand, there is significant risk for Microsoft if it doesn't move forward," he said. "The present interface has gotten really bulky and hard to deal with, and it is not architected for the future, either."
A Results-Oriented Design
When the revamped suite hits the market in the second half of 2006, Office 12's new UI will present commands from the perspective of users rather than software developers, reported Julie Larson-Green, Microsoft group program manager for the Office User Experience. Microsoft's number-one goal was "to focus on what [users] want to do rather than on how they do it," Larson-Green said in a recent online interview.
The new UI abandons the nested menu format found in past Office suites in favor of a "ribbon" that runs across the top of the window in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and in the sections (calendar, mail, notes, and contacts) of Outlook.
Within this ribbon, commands are limited to those directly relevant to the task at hand. Users will be able to point and click on the ribbon to get the specific features they want. The document-zooming tool also is moving from a drop-down menu to a slider bar that appears at the bottom of each window. (continued...)
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