Assorted Thoughts on Office 12, Vista, and UI Trends
Some good UI observations and trends about new microsoft products ...
"Microsoft has released initial information and screen shots about Office 12. It is a complete revamp of the user interface, at least in the primary applications Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. The "authoring" components of Outlook (message composition) have also been affected. So now it's time to weigh in with my own thoughts about the whole affair.
Visually, many of the applications remind me of Apple's professional applications like Final Cut Pro or even the iLife apps like iMovie. Many of the new office applications feature a brushed metal interface, similar to those seen in some Mac applications in recent years. But the similarity doesn't end there - Apple's metallic video, photo, and audio tools all do a lot of functionality within the window with sliding drawers, tabbed sections of the interface, contextual toolbars within certain frames, and so on. This is something that seems to work well in these kinds of applications. But Microsoft seems to be experimenting with taking that sort of experience to the office suite. I'm not saying that they're copying Apple (although the brushed metal AND aqua-type tabs are rather interesting). I'm saying that it's a unique time in user interface design." continued ... (Via Griddle Noise)
"Microsoft has released initial information and screen shots about Office 12. It is a complete revamp of the user interface, at least in the primary applications Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. The "authoring" components of Outlook (message composition) have also been affected. So now it's time to weigh in with my own thoughts about the whole affair.
Visually, many of the applications remind me of Apple's professional applications like Final Cut Pro or even the iLife apps like iMovie. Many of the new office applications feature a brushed metal interface, similar to those seen in some Mac applications in recent years. But the similarity doesn't end there - Apple's metallic video, photo, and audio tools all do a lot of functionality within the window with sliding drawers, tabbed sections of the interface, contextual toolbars within certain frames, and so on. This is something that seems to work well in these kinds of applications. But Microsoft seems to be experimenting with taking that sort of experience to the office suite. I'm not saying that they're copying Apple (although the brushed metal AND aqua-type tabs are rather interesting). I'm saying that it's a unique time in user interface design." continued ... (Via Griddle Noise)
Office 12 Outlook Screen.
1 Comments:
Gosh it has taken over a decade, now we are all going to be "Apples" soon.
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