While this is a little later than most users would like, given that Office will be on store shelves the end of January, the announcement was in response to some alarmist articles suggesting that Mac Office users were being screwed, when these file converters had been promised months ago. Note the coverage on TechMeme, and how hard it is to get out the honest message when everyone is yelling about the sky falling. Joe Wilcox calls this “The Pointless Converter Debate”.

Until the converters do show up, here’s my suggestion: If you are sharing Office 2007 files with a Mac Office colleague, save two copies of each file, one in an older, Office 2003/XP format. Then, since all the Office 2007 files are secretly ZIP files, place the backwards compatible copy in the ZIP of the 2007 copy (by changing the file extension to ZIP, adding the file, and changing it back), and share just the single copy. Just make sure to explain to your Mac buddy how to get his copy. It’s a little extra work, but you did know that being an early adopter comes with a few hoops, right?

Now, if Microsoft made this an option in the Save As dialog, they’d be saving everyone some time and headaches.
(via Todd Bishop)

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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

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Office 2007 features an entirely innovative UI; while it takes cues from some previous ideas, it is hard for anyone to point out any previous software which uses even a similar UI system, and Microsoft could have easilly copyrighted and maybe even patented the entire system, and kept it entirely exclusive for a long time. Even smarter, they could have limited use of it only to Windows applications.

Instead, they decided to free it.

So, anyone can license the UI, and as long as they license it, they don’t get sued. And since licensing is free, that’s a pretty good deal. Of course, since you have to get the free license, that means Microsoft gets to make a few demands in how it is used (which is the whole reason its a license, and not generally hefker*).

The first rule is a doozy: The UI can be used for any software program, except one that competes directly with Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook or Access. Microsoft may be giving away their innovation, but not so you can clone the software. Design whatever the hell you want, but no email clients allowed, or word processors, and so on.

That’s going to be the biggest bone of contention, but it’s exactly the biggest reason Microsoft wrote the license. They worked hard creating this, and through blogs like Jensen Harris’, they are giving away the reasons behind it, reasons that include tons of expensive research and user studies. They didn’t do all this work so someone could clone their software, but they don’t mind if you use the same concepts in the next version of Photoshop.

And it isn’t all bad. The rules allow creation of applications on non-Windows platforms. Microsoft would have been well within its right (and typical late-90s evil) to bar the UI from Macs and Linux, but they didn’t. They figured the non-compete portion is enough. I have no idea how the license protects future Microsoft software that bears the UI, but I guess that’s something Microsoft will just have to deal with.

Other than the non-compete, the licensing requires you comply with certain user experience guidelines, while suggesting others. The reason behind the requirements: The UI guys know which parts of the user experience, if left out, will leave a really crappy application, and sour everyone on the experience of this new type of UI. If you are going to ruin it, the license says, just stay home.

Some examples:

• The Ribbon must change its layout if the windows is resized. This is so windows do not have to be fixed size, or that horrible hacks ensue if the windows gets too small for the full Ribbon. These changes must be in real time. How this is accomplished has several requirements and several optional suggestions.
• There are specific rules for how the Ribbon pages over when the application is too small for even the most minimal Ribbon.
• The Ribbon should, but does not have to, completely dissapear if the application is resized below 300250.
• The title bar does not need to be modified to use UI elements.
• The theme can be in any color scheme desired by the developer, not just Office blue.
• The application must include a Quick Access Toolbar, when usable.

The fully detailed 120 page UI guidelines will be released soon. For now, you can read a preview to get an idea of what to expect, and check out the Office UI development website for updates. Channel 9 also has a video (complete with an appearance by a lawyer!).

Some companies that have partnered with Microsoft over the licensing (some were even involved in drafting the license, making sure it didn’t hamper them too much):

• 90Degree Software
• Attachmate
• Falafel Software, Inc.
• DevComponents LLC
• Developer Express
• ILOG, Inc.
• Infragistics, Inc.
• Syncfusion Inc.
• Telerik Corp.
• Xceed
• Objective Computing
• ABB
• Mindjet
• Serena Software
• Divelements

* – Hefker – literally: ownerless. For more, do a Google search.

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The download is 494.7 megabytes. You can also download much smaller Technical Refresh updates for specific Office products via this page.

It’s funny, but the page says the download is for Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP, yet the file description reads:

This is an update to the Beta 2 version of a 2007 Microsoft Office system product. Beta 2 Technical Refresh updates are compatible with the Microsoft Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 pre-release product.

The Technical Refresh expires on March 31, 2007 (although the license agreement may display the wrong date), a pretty short beta, which may be kind of proof that the release dates rumored for Office 2007 (late January) are pretty on target.

Technical Refresh disables Office’s Save as PDF/XPS capability. You must install the plugin to restore the feature.

Technical Refresh is incompatible with the Norton Antivirus Office plugin, that checks for viruses in macros. If the plugin is running, you will not be able to open files in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Access and Project. Disable the plugin until the issue is fixed.

There are a few other known issues worth checking out.

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These are Flash mockups of the 2003 versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, that let you see where your features have moved.

You can click through menus and toolbars of your familiar Office 2003, and when you find a command you need to use, a tooltip will tell you where that 2003 command has its equivelant in the new Office. Click it, and a mockup of the 2007 interface slides up, and shows you exactly how its done.

Fancy, and unbelievably useful. I bet some users will be keeping these open for the first week using the new system.

(via Jensen Harris)

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To be sure you’ll get in, register right now at the Office preview site. The likely beta system requirements are Windows Vista, XP SP2 or Server 2003, 500 MHz, 256 MB of RAM and 2 gigs of space. If you want to run Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager, better bump that up to 1 GHz and 512 MB of RAM.

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I was just reading my feeds and got to Amanda Murphy, who links over to the Office 2007 Preview site.

You know what’s interesting about reading 800+ blogs on a regular basis? They tell you what the cool stuff is out there.

By the way, Amanda, didn’t you get Steve Gillmor’s memo?

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Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

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I’m running 2007 full-time on my machine, and it can be hard explaining to people what makes the Ribbon so great, and why, “I like doing things my way” can be a lost opportunity.

Jensen Harris, head of the Office User Experience team and frequent Office UI blogger, does most of the talking in the video, and touches on all of my favorite Office 2007 features, including the Mini Toolbar and Live Previews. If he’s listening, here are the three annoyances I’m finding in daily use of Office 2007:

• Normally, when I double-click the icon in the title bar of a program, it tries to close. In Office 2007, the icon is a very large, inviting target, but it doesn’t close anything. It’s the Office Button, and it contains regular File menu commands. Might I suggest giving it some sort of double-click behavior, just to preserve consistency with all other applications?
• The Mini Toolbar doesn’t like being seen, and vanishes the instant you do anything else, including hitting CTRL-U to underline. If a command isn’t on the Mini Toolbar, don’t penalize me for knowing the keyboard shortcut, and don’t make me have to choose between the thing I want to do now, and the thing I want the Mini Toolbar to do in another moment. I suggest having the Mini appear whenever the mouse is near selected text, no matter how many things you just did.
• I like the idea of double-clicking the Ribbon to collapse it, especially in Outlook. I want to have the Ribbon collapsed whenever I read a message (but not when I’m writing one). Problem is, when I open a new message, the Ribbon is open again, no matter how many times I collapse it. Let me hide it when I don’t need anything more than the Quick Access Toolbar.

Anyway, as I’ve said a hundred times, the Office 2007 UI is shaping up to be the best thing since the toolbar, and probably better, since it gets rid of that in the process. If you don’t get Office 2007 when it comes out, you’ll be losing out on something special. If you do user interface development, I would suggest you start thinking about ripping this off now.

UPDATE: There’s also a video on YouTube of the Windows Vista Media Center in action (via Charlie Owen).

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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

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Besides the UI changes and stability improvements, Office 2007 has been updated to work with the Windows Vista February CTP, according to Neowin. If you can afford to, wait a day or two before hittin up betaplace. Its slooooooooooooow!

Oh, and bit torrent is waiting. : )

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