I recently downloaded a beta version of Microsoft Office 2007. It’s a fairly major upgrade, and so I am going to do a little review about the new version of Word.
First impressions
A screenshot of Word 2007.
The first thing I noticed about Word 2007 is that it’s blue, and rather fancy looking. In fact, it looks completely different to all previous versions of Word.
Word 2002, which looks essentially the same as any version from Word 95 onwards. Compare with 2007.
This overwhelming blueness is the Windows XP theme. You can also change it to the Windows Vista theme, which is the same thing, except black. Once I went past the purely cosmetic colour changes, I noticed that Word 2007 is missing both normal toolbars and a menu bar. These have been replaced by two new components: the Quick Access Toolbar and the Ribbon.
The Quick Access Toolbar and Ribbon.
Quick Access Toolbar
The Quick Access Toolbar is just like a conventional toolbar in older versions of Word. By default, it sits astride the Ribbon, and has buttons for save, undo, repeat, and print. It can be customised to have different buttons, and you can also choose to place it below the Ribbon.
Ribbon
The Ribbon is a far bigger change than the Quick Access Toolbar. Basically, it combines the menu and toolbars from previous versions of Word into a single tabbed palette. The options in the main area of the Ribbon change depending on what tab is. To use the old terms, the toolbars change depending on the menu selected.
Access keys
The access keys (keyboard shortcuts) for the Ribbon are very good, thanks to the excellent KeyTips feature. KeyTips are little tooltips that appear underneath available functions in the program, and they tell you what key to press to active that function. Pressing (and releasing; no more of this holding-down nonsense) the Alt key will display all the KeyTips available in the current view. Press the key that corresponds the function you want, and it will be activated. In some cases—selecting a Ribbon tab, for example—you will be shown some more KeyTips.
Access keys.
For example, I may want to change the size of the margins:
- Press ALT.
- Press P, for the Page Layout tab.
- Press M, for the Margins option.
- Use the keyboard to select the margins option I want.
KeyTips are very intuitive, balancing the need for beginners to access anything without remembering keyboard shortcuts with the ability for more advanced users to quickly select the function they want. My only complaint is that KeyTips are not more common; they’re widely available, but there are still some areas of the program that lack them.
Conclusion
The new interface is going to take quite a bit of getting used to, and I’m still undecided as to whether it’s much better. Never the less, it’s nice to see that Microsoft isn’t resting on its laurels, and is instead making the effort to come up with an interesting new concept.
