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The Final LookFor most of the history of this blog, I have been showing you screenshots produced using “Beta 1” builds of Excel 2007 and making comments along the lines of “not final UI”. Today, the UI became a lot more final. What do I mean? This morning at the CeBIT conference in Germany, Microsoft publicly showcased what will be the final visuals for the Office 2007 user interface. Here is a screenshot of Excel.
(Click to enlarge)
There is another “skin” available too.
There are a number of changes from what you saw in the “Beta 1” build. Some are aesthetic – colours, fills – but there are plenty of others. For example, the “quick access toolbar” is in the title bar, group (nee “chunk”) titles are at the bottom, there is a big round “Office Button”, there is a new View tab that contains view and window management controls, etc.
Jensen Harris’ UI blog has screenshots of other apps, a description of what the Office Button is all about, and other information, so please take a look. He will also be talking about the logic behind some of the designs over the coming weeks, so you might want to check back.
For all you “Beta1” testers out there, the “Beta1 technical refresh”, which is where these shots come from, will soon be available. For folks that want to sign up for the public beta later this spring, please register here.
One more point on all this – there may still be minor tweaks between now and when we ship – an icon changing, a button moving – but for the most part, the UI is close to final. I will be publishing a detailed look at each Excel tab around the timeframe of the public beta.
More Rows and ColumnsSince I have received ~10 emails from blog readers in the past 2 weeks asking if we were increasing the size of the Excel grid this release, I thought I would briefly circle back to where I started and say “yes, we have made the grid bigger … specifically, the Excel 12 grid will be 1,048,576 rows by 16,384 columns. That’s 1,500% more rows and 6,300% more columns than in Excel 2003, and for those of you that are curious, columns now end at XFD instead of IV.” For information on this and lots of other limits we changed, please see this blog post.
One other note to end this post – for readers that have not been following this blog since its inception, I have categorized all the posts (see the “Categories” box on the right-hand side of the page), so you can go back and browse topics that look interesting.
Comments: (16) Collapse
One important thing for me:
will the input field for the formula be expandable? I mean will I be able to drag its corner to make it bigger when I type in something complicated? Will I be able to type multi-line formula to make it easier to understand (without it it is very hard to debug something complicated, for example, nested IFs - even with bracket highlighting)
Since you circled back to past topics, i.e., the number of rows and columns, a question came up in the Excel newsgroups in the past two days that dealt with VLOOKUP when the lookup value and column contain some text values of > 255 characters. In XL10,
=VLOOKUP(REPT("#",254)&"a",LEFT(REPT({"$";"#"},254)&"a",{255,0})&{"","1";"","2"},2,0)
returns 2 while
=VLOOKUP(REPT("#",255)&"a",LEFT(REPT({"$";"#"},255)&"a",{255,0})&{"","1";"","2"},2,0)
returns #VALUE!. Will this restriction on VLOOKUP (and presumably also HLOOKUP and MATCH) be addressed in XL12? BTW, OpenOffice Calc's VLOOKUP handles lookup values > 255 chars.
Hate to rain on your parade, but I hope there is something more pro than these two. I loved how the Beta 1 looked under the XP-Silver theme and just taking a tiny bit of blue out and changing the low res icons out would have made it perfect! It very well matched the Silver theme but without the over the top gradients and looked more professional than either of the above or anything I've previously seen in MS applications.
In the first skin presented the icon backgrounds are almost the color of the gradient background under the icons. Not nearly as pro-looking as the lighter, two color background button icons over the hazy gray-blue that was in Beta 1.
I don't know man... this new UI just isn't catching me. I just hope the UI team did a good job researching this new approach - maybe we just have to see and get used to it. But until now: I just don't really like it.
To the point of this topic, any way to turn off 'skins' completely? Or are we doomed to have Office apps resemble Media Player? For those of us for whom the CURRENT, XL11 & Prior menu is second nature so for whom the New! And! Improved! UI will *REDUCE* our productivity (at least in the short term), will there be an old-style menu? Does XL12 support Toolbars? If so, is there a way to completely hide the Ribbon?
i can't wait to try to explain to someone over the phone that the "chunk" they are looking for is in a different "ribbon" in order to do something that used to be directly on the edit or view menus.
Sorry - I have to agree with the nay sayers - I think the new UI alone is a bad move.
I think MS should provide a 'classic' interface to save all the third party developers creating one. That would allow those of us with 'legacy' skills to remain productive.
cheers
Simon
Is there anyway to used the free space at the top of the UI ? For example, it would be nice if we could have an OPTION to combine the first 2 rows of the RIBBON:
1- The save, undo and redo button could stay at the top left
2- Tabs could move up one row at the right of point 1
3- Application name at the top could be aligned at the complete right
Everyone, thanks for your commments and candid feedback, as always.
Sanja, the formula bar will be expandable. Please see this post for details: blogs.msdn.com/.../482471.aspx
Harlan, no, this restriction has not been changed I am afraid to report.
Marc, Simon, Jean, no off switch. You can collapse the ribbon with two clicks on a tab or a shortcut key. You can customize the toolbar that contains a few buttons in the screenshot, and you can move it if you want more room for buttons.
In general, I don't like ANY GUI. I'd rather see "word commands" versus icons and the cute little pictures.
Icons remind me of video games. I don't play video games!
Bring back DOS.
Dont respond to Biff's trolling please. He should google the word "lexi-visual".
Anyway... Why does it still look ugly?
Re Biff's comments . . .
I agree, bring back DOS. At least you could run it on machines with
"Dont respond to Biff's trolling please. He should google the word "lexi-visual"."
Trolling?
You should google my name and see the "trolling" I'm capable of.
Biff's trolling? Of course it does. It's not even the real Biff, but a puny impostor. Don't feed it and it will go away.
Sorry if this is a bit off-topic but the previous question went unanswered. Will Excel 2007 handle dates prior to 1900 like Acess?
Thanks
Comments: (loading) Collapse