Mac Office 2008!

Software January 16, 2008

Apple announced yesterday at MacWorld the Microsoft's Office 2008 for Mac is now available. I've just installed it and it's worlds better!

Why?

For one, everything is contained within one window - unlike the 2004 version which put everything into separate ribbons. Word, Powerpoint and Excel are formatted the same way now - the one main window and a separate formatting palette much like Apple's Pages and Keynote.

Additionally, the new version of office comes with with a Mac version of their Fluent interface, allowing all sorts of actions to be completed without searching through a series of drop-down menus. Rather, this version is icon-based.

Word also includes the ability to drag and drop images around (a la Pages or InDesign style) and create image effects like a frame and drop shadow (a la Keynote). It also includes a series of design templates so that you can design more graphically-pleasing Word documents.

Excel includes 3D charts and a more intuitive menu to select them. Additionally, they've made it easier to add graphics and word art through the same Fluent interface.

Powerpoint looks a lot more like Keynote now (yay) and allows users to quickly add elements to their slides. I still think it's a bad idea to start with a completely blank slide when the program is opened. Keynote forces users to pick from a list of templates. Most people are lazy and so having a blank template to start will probably mean that most people won't change it to something more creative. Oh well - at least there are a lot more options to design their slides now.

Their transitions could still use more work - not just in the actual transition, but the interface to show their preview doesn't work as smoothly as Keynote's. Nevertheless, it's certainly an improvement. They even have a 3D cube and Page Fall (although they have icons for each kind of cube rotation rather than just one with a drop-down menu to choose direction like Keynote - superfluous?).

Yay! Time to go out and make some cool presentations and Word documents. I'll be scrutinizing to compare Keynote to PowerPoint now that they're more on the same level. Maybe I'll have more comments in the future.

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