Just check out these familiarly-themed Office 2007 screenshots. I wonder how much screen real estate will be left on 1024x768 displays to actually do some work.. http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/uioverview.mspx The Office button looks interesting, though.
Paging Apple Management: I think now is a good time to release your supposed Excel-killer. (I'm actually excited to see it)
I've tried the beta release of Office 2007 on a PC and all I can say that this version is amazing. There are no more drop-down menus! No longer are functions and commands hidden in language that you have to learn - every click on a menu button (now called Command Tabs) displays a different set of graphically represented commands which are very intuitive. Most of the complaints with previous versions of Office involve not being able to use all the commands at your disposal unless you learn it from a book. With Office12, all commands are there for you to SEE and not merely READ. You'll be using old commands that you never used before! The beta version I'm using does not yet have the "Office" button itself, but the functionality is there. Also, there's no wallpaper background image like the one in the Word12 screenshot above (or maybe I haven't figured out how to display it). I can't wait for the Mac version to come out.
Additional Word 12 Features: 1. Insert Image Options - image editing - shadows, 3D rotation, glow effect, soft edges, reflection 2. IGX Graphic (process/relational illustration) insertion & editing 3. Page layout theme colors 4. Footnote/endnote/caption insert buttons 5. Reviewing panes and balloon annotations 6. On-screen plugin manager 7. Document finishing (permissions/signatures/read-only finalization) 8. Quick text format styles 9. Footer/header themes 10. Cover page themes 11. Page background watermarks Additional Excel12 Features: 1. Quick formatting - cell styles - table styles - conditional (field relationships, field emphasis, icon sets & gradient bars!) 2. Insert ready-made and editable emphasis shapes (you have to see all the new shapes) 3. Spreadsheet themes 4. Function library (financial, logical, math/trig, etc.) 5. Get external data button (sql server, xml, ms query, sharepoint, msn money, etc) 6. Data Tools - text-to-columns - remove duplicate rows - what-if analysis Best of all, popup balloons are displayed when the cursor hovers above buttons that explain what the button does - and even gives examples! They went crazy with this one.
