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Among Microsoft Office Labs' first wares are Search Command and Community Clips

For anyone that has used Microsoft Office for a number of years, one of the biggest changes to occur interface wise was the new ribbon interface in Office 2007. Many realized finding the commands they were used to seeing in one place on older versions of Office was a bit more difficult in the new ribbon interface.

To combat this problem, Microsoft has announced Office Labs, a new service that consists of a small cadre of developers headed up by Chris Pratley. Office Labs plans to test new products and ideas for Microsoft Office that may eventually make it into an Office product or may simply turn out to be a bad idea.

The idea behind Microsoft Office Labs is very similar to Google Labs in that small pieces of code are offered up to users with the caveat that Office Labs offerings are available for the sole purpose of gathering feedback on an idea. To gather feedback, Office Labs will track how the code it offers is used and the code is beta and offered for use at your own risk.

The Office Labs site spells things out clearly, the software being offered may have bugs and it doesn’t promise to fix these bugs. Chris Pratley said in his blog post, “You might be wondering why this site isn't located on microsoft.com. One reason is simple: we didn't want to give anyone the impression that these projects are full blown Microsoft products. This site itself is also a concept test. Over time we'll be modifying it to experiment with ways to engage with you, our community.”

Despite the multiple warnings that software code from Office Labs is use at your own risk, many Office users will end up checking out its wares. Two of the first offerings are interesting and one of them is something many users will wonder why it wasn’t included in Office 2007 to begin with -- Search Commands. Search Commands will probably be one of the most popular items offered by Office Labs.

This code allows users of Office 2007 Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to find commands, options, wizards and galleries by simply typing what you are looking for into a box. The Search Commands feature also includes a Guided Help that walks users through specific tasks.

The other initial offering is called Community Clips, which allows users to make how-to videos about Microsoft Office products sort of like an Office specific YouTube. Community Clips also includes a client application for recording screen views and voice. Listed as other interesting projects are InkSeine which allows the use of a tablet PC with an interface tailored for pen input for sketches, and writing. Task Market is an online marketplace that allows business to connect with and hire freelancers in graphic design, writing and editing.

Microsoft also announced that it was considering new business models for its Office application last week including a possible subscription based distribution and a free ad-supported version.

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Riboon Menu
By Homerboy on 4/28/2008 12:38:10 PM , Rating: 5
personally I enjoy he new Ribbon Menus. Admittedly at first they were "harder" to understand and find things I wanted, but I think that was solely based on the fact that I knew where they were in the traditional menus.

I think that for a new Office user, the Ribbon menus are WAY easier than the old drop-downs. Its just us that have been using Office for X years that had a bad, first impression. Now that I am used to them its tremendously easier to find things.




RE: Riboon Menu
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 4/28/2008 12:43:14 PM , Rating: 2
Agree 100%.


RE: Riboon Menu
By rudy on 4/28/2008 5:45:47 PM , Rating: 2
Me too, it is ridiculous that they would make such a claim in this article. Office labs should basically release an overlay system where all the tasks are both in drop downs and in the ribbon and it basically coaches you through learning the new places by suggesting them till you decide you a fluent in the new suite. I see this with every piece of software and especially games where people make bogus claims based on not spending a day or so finding the new locations for item.


RE: Riboon Menu
By arazok on 4/28/2008 12:50:58 PM , Rating: 2
It took me a week to realize that the big orange office logo in the top left was a menu button. I was like, why is it so hard to save a frigin file?!

Now that I realize I'm just an idiot, I've come to love the new ribbon as well.


RE: Riboon Menu
By Mitch101 on 4/28/2008 4:17:27 PM , Rating: 3
LOL. Glad I'm not the only one.

I love that when you hover over a font style it gives you a preview of you text if its highlighted.


RE: Riboon Menu
By WxGuy192 on 4/28/2008 12:53:17 PM , Rating: 2
I agree as well. The ribbon is extremely easy to use, and it only took me a session or two to get over the old drop-down menu system. For the most part, too, all of the options/tasks are intuitively organized/grouped. The ability to customize (i.e. add tasks to) the ribbon is nice too. Microsoft did Office 2007 right, IMO.

Re: speed... I've found Office 07 to be faster than OOo suite.


RE: Riboon Menu
By Radeon117X on 4/28/2008 1:34:34 PM , Rating: 2
Ditto. The ribbon is a very awesome tool. It's rediculously easy to find what you need whenever you need it, and since it acts like a static toolbar and not a dropdown menu, anything i frequently use in a certain drop down menu that i did in past office suites, I can easily keep using without navigating through the same menu every single time. Plus, that orange orb compliments Vista's blue orb very well. However, be careful not to double click it!


RE: Riboon Menu
By FITCamaro on 4/28/2008 1:43:34 PM , Rating: 2
I've got Office 2007 at home and while I admit I find the ribbon harder, its because I don't use Office at home much and just haven't gotten used to it yet.


RE: Riboon Menu
By itlnstln on 4/28/2008 2:17:21 PM , Rating: 3
On top of the efficiency that the ribbon yields, more mundane tasks are much faster as well. In 2007, adding a new tab in Excel, changing font sizes for entire documents (where you may have varying font sizes), etc. are all much easier and faster, not to mention better context menus and the change preview feature.


Office menu users were stomped into the ground
By dyeager on 4/28/2008 1:43:20 PM , Rating: 2
If you liked MS-DOS and the original Word Perfect or developed macros then Office 2007 is fine and you can operate like before. If you like graphical icons then Office 2007 is ideal.

If you despise secret handshakes and like your options spelled out in words, then Office 2007 could make you feel as if you were burned, raped, branded, sold into slavery, and kept in a concentration camp. This is despite your past mastery of Microsoft Office products. You need to lookup every f#$king command from saving a file, undo, to aligning pictures inside tables. You feel further insulted by companies selling the menus that should have been retained in some form with Office 2007.

Despite your love of Vista 64-bit (ordered on many new computers over the last year), you feel compelled to warn users of the steep learning curve for Office 2007 thus many defer new purchases or you talk them into Open Office/Ubuntu.

The new file structure is not a big issue with the compatibility patches for the prior versions.




By KTLA on 4/28/2008 2:06:04 PM , Rating: 2
"You need to lookup every f#$king command from saving a file, undo..."

Really, is that so? Undo seems to be prominently featured in a button right up in the upper left, as it used to be. They even kept the same curved arrow icon for it. The CTRL+Z shortcut is also the same.

Exactly what about Undo was so difficult that you had to look it up?


By TomZ on 4/28/2008 4:08:41 PM , Rating: 3
I call bullsh!t. It's more like the transition to a new keyboard. A couple of days of slow awardness, but then once you get used to where everything it, it's no problem. In addition, I agree with the others that the new organization of the commands makes more sense than the old menus. No doubt about that. I can find even the more obscure features more easily - things I never even realized were present in older versions.

I also like to "live preview" aspect of most of the commands on the ribbon bar. No more opening dialog boxes, applying a setting over and over again.


Ok... but,
By 67STANG on 4/28/2008 12:45:38 PM , Rating: 1
how about focusing on the only thing I dislike about Office 2k7... speed. The programs take a good bit longer to load than 2003-- especially Outlook.




RE: Ok... but,
By FITCamaro on 4/28/2008 1:45:07 PM , Rating: 2
I didn't see a difference in speed between the two. Granted I have a fast machine. I open Word and its up and running in a few seconds.


RE: Ok... but,
By rudy on 4/28/2008 5:47:56 PM , Rating: 2
I find opening it takes longer but once it is in memory it is just as fast if not faster.


RE: Ok... but,
By sweetsauce on 4/28/2008 2:36:51 PM , Rating: 1
Do you people realize how stupid comments like this are? Newsflash, newer software usually requires more of your system, not less. People don't upgrade for less features.


No REAL competition...
By sixth on 4/28/2008 9:31:13 PM , Rating: 2
In my eyes..we DESPERATELY need competition for Outlook....i think it is a HOG...poor performance and will someone PLEASE develop some better than a PST for email archiving...come on MS.!!

Yes i know there is thunderbird...but thunderbird is not compatible enough for enterprise use (public folders...PST's..exchange server...OST's...calendaring..scheduling etc)...they have the market...and we need some competition...




RE: No REAL competition...
By Belard on 4/29/2008 4:22:22 AM , Rating: 2
Well... there was, kind of. Before there was MS/Windows Mail or Outlook or Outlook Express...

There was Eudora. Recently stopped development. It didn't have Outlooks PIM functions, but as an email client, it was more powerful and safer than OE/OL. It was a tad bit hard to use with having more buttons, but IT NEVER EVER had a stupid PST file. Each folder had its own file. So if one got corrupted, your entire mail didn't go south. And ALL attachments were simply transfered to a download folder - yet still accessed from the email itself... and you could drag it from the email to your desktop. Not stupid OE/Ol with the user having 2 copies of the file.. 1 in a database PST file, the other one converted out to another location.

Eudora is still available at the eudora website. 100% free now that QUALCOMM made it into OpenSource. Try it out.

For Office Outlook functionality on Linux & Windows, there is Evolution. (Windows version still under development) But Lightning & Sunbird are coming (0.8) and you can start to use them today. But still, AFAIK - there isn't some sort of simple "Exchange server" offered as a replacement. If they can get these up... then they'll do some serious damage to microsoft.

BTW: Try Opera as a browser... its sweet. Its Find Text & Zoom functions blows away the rest.


Office is a Love, Hate Relationship
By Tim Thorpe on 4/28/2008 6:35:53 PM , Rating: 1
Office is and always has been a love hate relationship. There are things I love about Word and things I absolutely hate. Simple documents are a breeze which is great, most everything I need is a mouse click or key combination away. When it gets in to formatting complex documents or editing styles or building and automatic TOC word is a bitch to use. WordPerfect has Word beat in that regard. Perfect has the view code option which for me is the perfect environment to finalize and markup my document. No such luck in Word. That being said, Word 2008 is probably the most fun I've had with a word processor in a while. The only thing that really grinds my gears about it is the font preview is non existent.




By Spivonious on 4/29/2008 9:28:20 AM , Rating: 2
What do you mean by view code? There's a button on the toolbar in 2003 with a paragraph symbol on it that will show formatting codes. That feature has been in Word since at least version 6.

Since you mention 2008, I'm assuming you're running this on a Mac? Word 2007 does have font preview.


Office is still too complex.
By Systemwizard on 4/29/2008 1:45:19 AM , Rating: 1
Office 2007 is still too complex for everyday use. Adding the ribbon bar after forced to take Office 2003 classes has caused further confusion when creating documents. Has anyone considered making Office more intuitive, or is this just not possible?




RE: Office is still too complex.
By Spivonious on 4/29/2008 9:29:19 AM , Rating: 2
The ribbon is much more intuitive than the old menu system. Sure there's a learning curve but once learned it's much more efficient.