[Aron Peterson]

And has a shiny black interface. Anyone got screenshots?

[monkeybrain]

Where did you hear a beta is out?

[Aron Peterson]

Originally Posted by monkeybrain 

Where did you hear a beta is out?

On macuser.co.uk

Office 2008 for Mac goes beta 12:14PM, Friday 30th March 2007
A beta edition of Microsoft Office 2008 has been released to a select number of testers. It is scheduled for a full retail outing towards the end of this year.
In an interview with APC magazine, Sheridan Jones, the lead marketing manager for Microsoft's Mac Business Unit, confirmed that the company was 'in private betas right now', although he was unable to fix a definite date for the software's completion.

APC reports that the suite features 'a modern black sheen', and elements reminiscent of features in iTunes and other iLife applications.

Microsoft has already announced that Office 2008 for the Mac will be significantly different in appearance to Office 2007 on the PC, released in January of this year, in that it will not feature the ribbon interface Microsoft adopted for the Windows edition.

This is largely because of the different structure of the Mac operating system, in which application menu bars appear at the top of the screen, regardless of the location of the application in focus. Under Windows, menus remain attached to the application at all times.

However, as MacUser reported in January, Office 2008 does share a new graphics engine with Office for Windows. Office Art 2.0 provides users with the ability to add professionally designed graphics with a click of a button.

It also sports a visual gallery used for selecting various document elements and has several Mac-only features, such as ledger sheets in Excel and My Day, a stand-alone scheduling application.

[philcozz]

Screenshots posted here look pretty nice, actually:

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

[onlyone-jc]

If the beta is out, how do we get it? According to Microsoft, it was meant to be public. But, I've yet to find a link to it.

onlyone-jc.

[Aron Peterson]

Originally Posted by philcozz 

Screenshots posted here look pretty nice, actually:

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Not bad. NeoOffice isn't going to last long on my computer. BTW, I'm really into Scrivener these days for word processing.

[philcozz]

Scrivener is outstanding. I've been putting the demo through a pretty tough test (a multi-study research paper) and I think it's going to be my main writing tool, eventually exporting to Word to satisfy journals.

[Aron Peterson]

Originally Posted by philcozz 

Scrivener is outstanding. I've been putting the demo through a pretty tough test (a multi-study research paper) and I think it's going to be my main writing tool, eventually exporting to Word to satisfy journals.

It's pretty good. The fullscreen interface is a thing of beauty. Right now I'm using the free version Scrivener Gold (an earlier but still very good version) that's available on their site, but I'll probably get the most recent Scrivener just for the better fullscreen GUI. I'm writing a full length novel with Scrivener.

There's also Avenir that does the same thing but it's buggy as hell. And then there's Ulysses which is excellent if you don't mind an interface that looks like a scientist's application.

[Peter]

why are they unable to have an OS X interface?

[Aron Peterson]

Originally Posted by Peter 

why are they unable to have an OS X interface?

It does have an Aqua interface. That panel you see above the documents is a template gallery that can be toggled on and off.

[pcryan5]

<>If the beta is out, how do we get it? According to Microsoft, it was meant to be public. But, I've yet to find a link to it.

I'm asking my MS Rep on Monday and will report back. A quick look at MSDN and the MS Premium web site does not show it posted.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by Aron Peterson 

Not bad. NeoOffice isn't going to last long on my computer. BTW, I'm really into Scrivener these days for word processing.

NeoOffice = free; M$ Office = definitely not free. Plus, you're supporting M$ with that purchase. You won't see me switching.

[rickey939]

Originally Posted by Aron Peterson 

And has a shiny black interface. Anyone got screenshots?

Huh? Black interface?

[monkeybrain]

Those screenshots posted above are pretty old now I think, been making the rounds since January. From what I read, it seems it's been changed a lot now.

[Shades of Gray]

This is called a private beta, not public beta. So, if you have not been on MS beta list you won't get a copy yet.

Private Beta

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by philcozz 

Screenshots posted here look pretty nice, actually:

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

That doesn't really look like what's described in the article above.

[Aron Peterson]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

That doesn't really look like what's described in the article above.

That's an even earlier alpha with the ribbon gallery above the documents. The ribbon has been removed in the new alpha. This is the only shot of the new alpha I can find with the new black window elements:

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Aron Peterson 

That's an even earlier alpha with the ribbon gallery above the documents. The ribbon has been removed in the new alpha. This is the only shot of the new alpha I can find with the new black window elements:

Huh? The only black I see in the pic (other than in the slide) is in the HUD panel, which is in TUAW's screenshots and hardly constitutes a whole interface.

[KP*]

I hate to be blasphemous here, but I'm a little concerned to see that they're going more for the Apple design of apps like Pages and Keynote. It's good that they're respecting Apple's UI style, unfortunately I've never found that particular UI to be very easy to use. Those giant icons like Inspector, etc. seem really space-wasting and lead to options that I don't think are very useful. I think the Inspector is one of the worst UI ideas ever (I know, I know -- it must be me using it wrong, but I try and try and can't get myself to like it). I always feel like all the options are hidden and require digging through many layers (whose names don't always make it obvious what controls I'm going to find there). Plus it takes up tons of room, and if I want to see all of what I'm working on I have to close it, at which point it's not there when I need it.

It's the one reason I've never been able to stop using Word. I like having all the little buttons right there wherever I choose to put them, and not waste space with features I don't often use. Of course Word has the formatting palette similar to the Inspector, but it squeezes a lot more options into less space, and it's all on one layer.

Am I crazy? Please help me to know what I'm missing.

[Chuckit]

I'm having trouble grasping how the layout of the inspector in Keynote is more confusing than the formatting palette.

[hldan]

Originally Posted by KP* 

I hate to be blasphemous here, but I'm a little concerned to see that they're going more for the Apple design of apps like Pages and Keynote. It's good that they're respecting Apple's UI style, unfortunately I've never found that particular UI to be very easy to use. Those giant icons like Inspector, etc. seem really space-wasting and lead to options that I don't think are very useful. I think the Inspector is one of the worst UI ideas ever (I know, I know -- it must be me using it wrong, but I try and try and can't get myself to like it). I always feel like all the options are hidden and require digging through many layers (whose names don't always make it obvious what controls I'm going to find there). Plus it takes up tons of room, and if I want to see all of what I'm working on I have to close it, at which point it's not there when I need it.

It's the one reason I've never been able to stop using Word. I like having all the little buttons right there wherever I choose to put them, and not waste space with features I don't often use. Of course Word has the formatting palette similar to the Inspector, but it squeezes a lot more options into less space, and it's all on one layer.

Am I crazy? Please help me to know what I'm missing.

Yeah, I was at Macworld this year and watched Microsoft demo Word 2008. A lot of the design and features of Pages is in Word 2008. It's almost like it was copied like Vista from OSX.

[KP*]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

I'm having trouble grasping how the layout of the inspector in Keynote is more confusing than the formatting palette.

Well I'm speaking more about the inspector in Pages vs. Word (Keynote is a simpler app and I find it pretty self-explanatory). For some reason I'm never confused by the formatting palette. I always know what to click on to get what I want, and never feel like I'm wasting clicks. Also, since it's expandable, you can show all the options you're using in a given document at the same time. If you're working with a table and changing text colors and alignment all the time, you can have all those controls showing at once, one click away. With the inspector you have to keep flipping back and forth between tabs, and tabs-within-tabs.

Maybe it's a matter of nomenclature, and I'm just used to using Word for the last 15 years or so, but in Office 2004 the formatting palette was brand new and I figured it out right away. In Pages, if I want to do something I have to go poking around in every part of the inspector, checking all the tabs and sub-tabs looking for it, then trying the menu bar, then the contextual menu, and hope that it's called what I think it is. Or I'll start by looking for something in a contextual menu because it seems likely to be there, only to discover it's not. And I can't remember which app, but there's some Apple app where I'm always shocked there's no contextual menu at all.

It may be that Apple has just chosen a new way of organizing things that has its own logic but is totally different to whatever logic I normally use to navigate an unfamiliar GUI. I have found in other matters that if you take the time to learn it, the Mac way usually winds up being the easier way, which is why I keep trying to like it. I just find that every time I try I end up giving up because it doesn't feel natural to me, and I always reach a point with Pages where I don't like the way something looks and try every setting I can find and can't make it look the way I want.

To try to explain myself better, I've been trying a simple exercise in Pages, recreating something I know has frustrated me before. I'm trying to make a table, and in a cell I want to type something, and have the cell border be as tight as possible around the word.

I find the cell height control in the table tab of the inspector, and I'm heartened that this must be what I'm looking for. I click the nice aqua down-arrow, and nothing happens. Hmm... Oh, I see, there's a checkbox to adjust cell size automatically. So I uncheck that and click the down-arrow again. Nothing happens. It won't go below .35". So I decide to try typing in a lower number by hand (which should not be necessary!!!) and it accepts .2 as an input. Now the box is smaller than the text, making the text disappear, so I decide I will reduce the font size until it just fits. So I go to the Text tab in the inspector. Which I am shocked to discover has NOTHING related to font in it! Not even a link or something to the font selector. That's a whole different pop-up palette from one of those giant icons on the toolbar. Now I have two huge palettes in my way, which are now too much in the way to be left open, so I will have to open them again the next time I need them. So I set the font to 6pt and it's still too big for the cell apparently. After playing around with every control that looks remotely text-related, I find that moving the Inset Margin slider all the way to the left allows me to get the text to fit in the box properly, but I still need to manually type in the height of the cell to get it down to .13" rather than using the down-arrow, which I guess is just there for show, unless you're making your cells some arbitrary size that Apple has decided is worthy of being able to use the convenient arrow. Here's the thing: what is "inset margin" and what does it have to do with why I couldn't make a simple word in a simple table legible? How was I supposed to know that?

I know that Word has its own share of annoyances, and I'm not trying to rant here or say that Pages sucks, just to help explain the type of thing that makes me go back to Word in frustration. I want to believe that Apple can make a superior app and UI, but it just doesn't do it for me, and I'm wondering if other people feel this way or if everyone else adapted to this UI more easily.

[monkeybrain]

I didn't read all of KP's post (sorry!) but I agree. The inspector in Pages is crap; it uses ambiguous and tiny icons to represent functions along the top which require an extra degree of learning. The Formatting Palette in Word v.X onwards is much better. I suspect Apple deliberately made it very different to the Word inspector because they didn't want to look like they're copying it.

[pcryan5]

My MS account manager has signed us up for the beta. ETA end of summer. You need to complete an online survey form with MS that outlines what you use Mac Office for etc.

[peeb]

You know, I much prefer Pages, but I actually think that Word for Mac should look like Word on the PC. The main purpose of it is to help switchers feel at home, and give compatibility with the Windows world - there are plenty of nice looking alternatives. The purpose of office is to help us talk to the windows world, and remind us why we switched. Keep it the same as the PC version - keep it ugly.

[Peter]

damn, we have about 50 Office 2004 licences, would love to try out the 2008 beta

[Peter]

I also hope they've made it easier to figure out which Office Serial = Which Office Product ID Key

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by peeb 

I actually think that Word for Mac should look like Word on the PC. The main purpose of it is to help switchers feel at home, and give compatibility with the Windows world - there are plenty of nice looking alternatives.

I disagree strongly. The main purpose of Word is not to help switchers feel at home, and there are not plenty of nice-looking alternatives. There are very few legitimate alternatives at all, and most of those look even worse.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by KP* 

Those giant icons like Inspector, etc. seem really space-wasting and lead to options that I don't think are very useful.

You can shrink those icons and remove the text labels, you know.

[nickw311]

Any new news on Office 2008? I am very interested seeing as how word processing is one of the main functions I use my MacBook for and I am going to get my father a MacBook once the new version of Office comes out.

[D'Espice]

Does anyone know whether or not there is going to be a public beta? I remember that the Office 2007 Beta was available for free, any comments on that?

[Sethro]

I agree Microsoft Office should be a public beta, dont see any reason why not. It helped the Windows version into becoming a more stable Office Suite, why not do the same for Mac users.

But I'm pretty sure that the Mac Business Unit is going to keep it a closed beta *sigh*

[pcryan5]

AFAIK the beta is currently restricted to invite only. If you are a Volume/educational or a Premier Support customer you should ask your TAM for an invite. You will get a custom URL and your TAM will alert the beta approval team.

[Sixth Street]

Why is there no Access for the Mac Office suite? I'm sure there's some reason for it, but I selfishly would love for there to be one as it's the only reason I need to run virtual windows on my macbook. Are we pretty much never going to see Access for Mac?

[Shades of Gray]

Yes, that is a good summary of the future of Access on the Mac.

[Peter]

what quantities do Office Bulk Licences come in?

[Shades of Gray]

You would have to check with MS.