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Microsoft Says New Office Software Easier to Use

Posted on: Saturday, 17 September 2005, 12:00 CDT

LOS ANGELES -- The next version of Microsoft Corp.'s Office software will feature simpler graphics and try to anticipate users' tasks as the company hopes to make the product easier to use, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said Tuesday.

Microsoft hopes the new features will entice users who have found it unwieldy to wade through the dozens of tool menus and other features packed into Office, the software suite that includes Word, PowerPoint, Outlook and Excel.

The stakes are high because Office is a cash cow for Microsoft, even as it ventures further into areas such as Internet search and video games.

For Microsoft's fiscal year ended June 30, the unit that includes Office had operating income of nearly $8 billion, on revenue of $11 billion. The company's overall revenue was $40 billion.

The previews of Windows and Office focused on their use of graphics to give consumers more ways to manage information on the computer screen.

That's a growing issue as software applications become more complex. For instance, the first version of Word had 100 commands. The 2003 version has more than 1,500 commands and 35 tool bars.

"We need to make it easier for people to visualize information that comes from different directions," Gates said.

The Office redesign is meant to make it easier on the eyes, with the myriad of menu boxes fading in and out of view depending on what tools are being used.

Microsoft designers developed the system by tracking -- with permission -- every keystroke of some Office users, Charles Fitzgerald, general manager of Microsoft's Platform Strategy Group, said in an interview.

The idea is part of an industrywide trend toward personalizing technology based on user habits. For example, Microsoft rival Google Inc. recently updated its desktop search capability to present relevant information based on a user's Web surfing habits.

With Office 12, Microsoft also plans to focus more on how companies can use the software instead of servers.

A new function could route a document to three successive people, allowing each person to automatically receive the most recently edited version when the last person was finished.

Microsoft's last major operating system redesign -- Windows XP -- was plagued by security problems, forcing the company to issue numerous software updates to plug holes in the code that made users vulnerable to hackers.

Source: Tulsa World

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