M$ Office 12 Make Over

Some screen shots:

http://news.com.com/2300-1012_3-5873648-1.html

The UI seems to be cooler,

regards,

zi

Eye candy is great and all....but what about the functionality? Seriously though, I’ve been using Office for years and love using Outlook. However, recent news about Microsoft’s inability and unwillingness to embrace the concept of document standards has left me wondering what the hell Microsoft is thinking. After all, PDF is practically a standard...so why not have an office document standard too? And then there’s the price...Office 12 may look cool and everything, but you won’t think it’s so cool after you see the price! I tell you...once I find a suitable replacement for Outlook, I’m jumping ship for OpenOffice! Take a glance at the 2.0 beta...may not have the fluff Office has, but it’s damn functional in all ways Office is!

In my opinion Access and Outlook is the key piece of software that make Office so hard to replace. Excel and Word can easily replace with OpenOffice if you are not using the VBA and Macro that is!

Powerpoint is also another key piece of software if you are into presentation.

Quote from: chanh at Sep 24, 2005, 01:38 PM

In my opinion Access and Outlook is the key piece of software that make Office so hard to replace. Excel and Word can easily replace with OpenOffice if you are not using the VBA and Macro that is!

Powerpoint is also another key piece of software if you are into presentation.

The main thing about Access is that its more of a small use database solution. Most people use Access mainly for small database applications as well as for development of Jet-based application, which are few and far between these days. There are other solutions out there that can do the same job as Access...not to mention ones that are cheaper.

As far as Excel and Word go...yes, OpenOffice can replace them. Now, as far as VBA and Macro development...well...from my understanding, OpenOffice allows for the use of macro-like development as well as the use of database tools that allow users to use DBASE, MySQL, or any ODBC and JDBC database connections.

Powerpoint can easily be replaced with OpenOffice Impress. It doesn’t have every bell and whistle that Powerpoint has...but it definitely gets the job done!

Outlook is another story. Currently, I’m trying out Thunderbird as a possible Outlook replacement. Although it’s more like an Outlook Express replacement, the e-mail features are great. What’s missing is Calendars and Tasks. I don’t miss Tasks too much since I never really used it too much. Mozilla does have a Calendar add-on for Thunderbird and Firefox. It’s not as snazzy as Outlook...but it does the job. Mozilla is currently developing an application called Sunbird, which will integrate the features of Thunderbird and the calander add-on into more of an Outlook-like application. Definitely looking forward to seeing that!

Now, as far as Office goes, I think it’s just too damn expensive in my opinion. I really can’t afford to plop out $500 for every new version. Besides, the majority of companies out there are primarily using Office XP and 2000 and aren’t likely to upgrade anytime soon...even with the new Microsoft XML Document standard.

Speaking of which, take a look at this Slashdot post (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/23/1822222&tid=109&tid=1). It talks about the declaration of an open document format called (you guessed it!) OpenDocument. The idea is to have a more standardized XML based document format similar to PDF. With it, software vendors can design a variety of applications around it making it easier for end-users to share their documents with each other. Problem is that Microsoft isn’t too keen on the idea. Read on and you’ll see what I mean.

I will say this...if you’re happy with Office and don’t mind the cost...stick with it! It’s still a great application suite. However, if you’re interested in saving some money, take a look at some of the alternatives. It certainly can’t hurt.

You know for home use or individual usage MSOffice can easily be replaced by OpenOffice especially the latest version of OpenOffice and I am really impress with the whole suite. I even use it to repair some unaccessable Excel file that my user manage to corrupt it so badly that they can not open it.

I also have been using Sunbird and it is a great calendar. It even support the iCal standard.

Unfornately in my work place people so use to with MSOffice that it will be impossible to get them to do the switch and beside we have a volune site license so the cost to upgrade will not be an issue for us.

As for personal use I would say go with OpenOffice and Sunbird if you need calendar.

Yeah, I know what you mean by your work using Office. Mine does too! We’re so locked in at the moment that it’s not even funny! Our CRM software has the capability of syncing with Outlook so it would be next to impossible to convince them to use something else. To make matters worse, it looks like Microsoft will not be integrating the OpenDocument standard into Office. Their excuse? Well...there’s quite a few, but the main ones are "not mature enough" and "too expensive". Hmm...and the Microsoft XML Document standard is more mature? Yeah...right... Too expensive? Since when is it really all that expensive to convert existing documents to a different format? Users would have to do that anyways if they play on using the new Microsoft XML Document standard. Sigh! I’m all for standards....but apparently Microsoft isn’t...and there’s a reason for that.

Consider the PDF format. Adobe created it and continues to improve on the format. Even though they created the standard and opened it up for anyone to create software that can read and write PDF’s, they are always one step ahead of the competition because they are the ones responsible for the standard in the first place. Now, consider both the OpenDocument and Microsoft XML Document formats. The OpenDocument format will be a completely royalty-free XML based standard that anyone can use...including Microsoft. Now, the up-and-coming Microsoft XML Document format is a little tricky. It’s not necessarily open-source even though Microsoft will give full details on the structure of the format (which is XML based as well). Will there be royalties wrapped around the use of the format with other software applications that are not approved by Microsoft? Not sure yet! And it’s not clear as to whether or not if Microsoft has to approve of the use of the format with other applications either. In a nutshell, the new Microsoft XML Document format is a crapshoot at the moment....and it’s this very reason why the state of Massachusetts decided to go with the OpenDocument format and OpenOffice, thus replacing Microsoft Office. Microsoft basically pissed the state of Massachusetts off by stating that they will not be supporting the OpenDocument standard in future versions of Office. I think that was an unwise move for Microsoft. Consider this...Adobe is still profitable with Acrobat even though they opened up the PDF format and standardized to a greater degree. Microsoft, on the other hand, probably won’t try to repeat the same success because, let’s face it, there are alot of customers and businesses out there that use Office. And if the formats stay the same, locking in customers to continue using Microsoft products, Microsoft will continue to be profitable. The main reason why Microsoft will not support the OpenDocument standard is due to the fact that they fear the possibility of losing customers to the competition...namely OpenOffice!

It’ll be interesting to see how customers and businesses will react to Office 12 and it’ll be more interesting to see how many businesses adopt something else other than Microsoft Office in the next few years.

One thing I want to say that even though OpenOffcie is very promising from a user perspective but it is not the same from a developer perspective.

I developed a whole application solution using FoxPro and Office suite via the AcitveX control and VBA where my user will see Word, Excel, etc in my custom application and they can do all sort of Office function in my custom application without leaving my application.

I am not sure OpenOffice can be developed in the same way.

Quote from: chanh at Sep 25, 2005, 05:59 PM

One thing I want to say that even though OpenOffcie is very promising from a user perspective but it is not the same from a developer perspective.

I developed a whole application solution using FoxPro and Office suite via the AcitveX control and VBA where my user will see Word, Excel, etc in my custom application and they can do all sort of Office function in my custom application without leaving my application.

I am not sure OpenOffice can be developed in the same way.

You’re quite right! And that’s just one of the ways that makes Microsoft Office so different. Can OpenOffice be used in a similar manner? Don’t see why not. They do have an SDK for OpenOffice and it’s been said to work quite well with Visual FoxPro and others. Macros can be done with either the built-in BASIC-like macro language or you can use JavaScript, Python, or Java. I’m sure there’s other ways to integrate other languages with macros...that’s just what I read on the OpenOffice site.

The thing is, when it comes to development, it only matters when it comes to the platform you’re developing for. If it’s Windows and Office then you use what works best with Windows and Office. If you’re building a custom application and the clients you’re targeting it for all have Microsoft Office then by all means build it with Office in mind.

The point is that there’s more than one solution for any platform out there. For any client or user to feel like their being pidgeon-holed into any one solution is just crazy. I like Office...I’ve used it ever since Office 97 came out. If it weren’t for the price, I’d probably consider to continue using it. But now I’m considering using Mac instead of Windows. Do I still want to use Office? I’m not sure yet. I don’t know if the price justifies the functionality and use I get out of it. As far as other people’s opinions, if you’re happy with it then keep using it. But understand there are other solutions out there. Don’t just keep buying Ford’s just because that’s all you’ve ever owned. At least take a look at what else is out there. You just never know. It’s really that simple.

Just keep in mind the "go to sleep with dogs, wake up with fleas" saying, because if you consistantly work with a proprietary closed system, anyone not using your system will not be able to communicate with you.

Now if the system you are using is that of a certified monopoly convicted of anti-trust violations which has pretty much locked 90% of the computing world into their products, you’ll probably be OK, at least for a while, because everybody else has to use the same system in order to communicate. But as people begin to break out of it, you’ll find yourself in trouble. Same goes for coding Web pages for IE only.

And when your state or country or whatever wants to migrate to a more open, standards-based system, with whom do you think they’re going to be annoyed when your lovely little proprietary app has to be re-written? It’s time to really start thinking about that.

Wow! That’s some interesting things to think about, Sottwell!

I used to be all about Microsoft. Hell, I started off as an ASP developer and you couldn’t tell me otherwise about ASP or Microsoft. It wasn’t untill ASP.NET that things started to break. I had more problems working with ASP.NET than you can shake a stick at. And it wasn’t so much in the programming language itself...that I could get my head around. It had more to do with configuration than anything else. It was an absolute pain getting the .NET framework working the way it should, getting IIS to talk to the framework propery, permissions in both IIS and .NET working properly. It just always seemed like something always went wrong with the configuration everytime I turned around...both on my test server and the hosting provider I was using at the time. So...I gave up! Looked around at whatelse was out there and found PHP! Cool thing about switching to PHP was the fact that hosting for it was practically three times cheaper than ASP.NET with MSSQL servers. And I found everything to be much easier to setup and debug. Hell, I’ve had my LAMP server running non-stop for months now and I’ve only had to dick with the configuration once! Can’t say that about the Microsoft server I was running before! But that’s just my two cents...

Standards are quickly becoming a serious issue for many professionals in the industry...and it’s not just document standards either! That’s just one piece of the pie here. There are other standards to think about. Like Sottwell mentioned, developing just for IE is a big mistake! One of the things that’s been thrown at Microsoft is the fact that Internet Explorer doesn’t adhere to the standards set by the W3C. This includes HTML standards, CSS standards, XML standards, and even Javascript standards to some degree. XML standards is equally important because it doesn’t just effect website development. Sure, the XML format itself is pretty much standardized...but schemas aren’t...at least with Microsoft they aren’t. The thing that scares Microsoft the most about standardization of formats is the fact that they would possibly lose alot of money to the competition simply because customers will go with the cheapest solution that gets the job done. I’m one of those kind of guys.