I caught the new looks of Microsoft Office on Nicke’s blog (and through that, at Jensen Harris’). Nicke wrote about the release of Microsoft’s Origami –essentially a smaller Tablet PC, or a larger PDA, whichever way you wanted to look at it (and i too want one) — a few days ago but i was too busy to comment on that then… but that’s another story. Now to this one.

The new look of Office 2007 –and consequently Windows Vista– is really refreshing. Especially when compared to the gummy-candy look of Windows XP. MS Office also sports skins. Yup. Leet. The black Office 2007 skin seems to have borrowed quite heavily from Yahoo! Widgets. I’m a KDE user myself, so i’ve gotten used to aesthetics that surpasses the current Micrsoft niveau (ooh, flame bait!). I hope the skins thing happens in all of Windows Vista, and that it is user-hackable. Otherwise, there’ll still be Window Blinds. Or Linux.

Viewing Power Point slides used to be a cure for insomnia (or induce nausea). The new visual candy in Excel and Power Point should help. HTML also seems tastefully utilized in Outlook messages (now let’s see if they can applyborrow the tags model from GMail for sorting mail).

The most important change as i see it is The Strip. This is an area underneath the menu bar, much like the always-visible (”modal”, in usability-lingo) button-filled toolbar today available on any application. The radically different thing this time is that The Strip is contextual and task-oriented. Which, translated to normal-speak means that you see only what you need for the job you are going to perform. The model seems familiar fromthe main menu/sub menu navigation thingy (”pattern”, in usabilitese) on many web sites.
A worthy adaption, in my opinion.

MS tried to do something in this vein with the contextual bar or whatever it was with the previous Office. It was an okay addition but seemed more often to get in the way, or just not Do The Right Thing and in the long run at least i didn’t use it for much more than displaying formatting styles. This evolutionary step is one which seems to be in the right direction.

(Oh, and while i’m at it, the File menu is not gone, though it might seem so at first sight. It’s been labelled “The Office Button” — presumably a path MS will take with its other significant desktop applications… which-uh-ever they , erm, are. And while you’re at it, be sure to check out the seriously drool-inducing “fuzzy glass” effect on the Vista “Start menu”… somehow it seems like MS hired the right graphic artists this time. Not to mention the right sound designer)

I can only think that a little healthy competition from Cupertino and the Open Source front has had an influence in the evolvement. That’s always good. A healthy competition will keep everybody on their sharper edge. Wake up, Open Office