Not Gone
It's been a while since I last wrote in this space.
Many of you have been kind enough to send me e-mail sometime in the last few months, making sure that I was OK and wondering if I was planning to write here anymore. Was I abducted by aliens? Put into witness protection? Muzzled for something I said?
Nah. The truth is less interesting than any of the theories.
A couple of things, both work-related and personal, have conspired to monopolize my time over the last few months and leave me little time for blogging.
First of all, we shipped Office 2007. A great milestone for the team, but I spent a lot late 2006 and early 2007 talking to people about the UI and the story of how it was created: journalists, customers, marketing folks, etc. This is fun stuff, but time-consuming.
Second, we never rest at Microsoft, and when we finish a product, we're immediately on to the next thing. I stepped up to a new role within the Office User Experience team, and we've been hard at work for the last six months planning the next release of Office. The early stages of a release are both exhausting and exhilarating--going from "anything's possible" to "exactly what code should be written." This is an intensive period of brainstorming and designing, and it has taken time away from the blog. After all, if we don't design a compelling product now, there's not going to be much for me to write about in the future...
That said, I do plan to write (albeit less frequently) between now and the time down the road when we start talking publicly about the next release of Office. I'm going to make good on my promise to show early prototypes of the Office 2007 UI, and I'll continue to write about usability and interaction design as well.
Whether it will be interesting or not, that remains to be seen... but I'm officially Not Gone.
Comments
Anonymous
April 23, 2007
Good! Hear you again. Since you went away some people have tried to pollute your new UI with the old one. It would be much interesting if you give a word about this type of tries. Now there are four tries on the road: “Classic Menu for Office 2007”, “Active Teach Ribbon”, “ToolbarToogle”, and “Classic UI tabs with RibbonCustomizer”.Anonymous
April 23, 2007
Hey, glad to hear from you again! Glad this popped right to the top of my RSS reader, too. :) I figure you deserve a break from blogging after that last brutal session. I hope life is treating you well, and look forward to when you have (somewhat) regular content to bring us again.Anonymous
April 23, 2007
David, That's a good topic suggestion. People are certainly using Ribbon extensibility to build all kinds of things.Anonymous
April 23, 2007
Great to hear you're back. :) Has explaining the UI thousand times over to different members of the press taken its toll at all? Also, is it just my mind doing some wishful thinking or did I hear that some of the Office UI team will be helping out the Windows team with future improvements to the shell following their success with the Ribbon?Anonymous
April 23, 2007
Welcome back! >I'll continue to write about usability and interaction design Looking forward to this!Anonymous
April 24, 2007
Jensenh, > That's a good topic suggestion… Thanks. My special curiosity is that I always thought that Microsoft did not advise with this until I saw “Classic Menu for Office 2007” in Office Marketplace. Maybe I missed something or Microsoft changed its ideas about.Anonymous
April 25, 2007
I'm working hard to understand 2007 to explain the benefits to my customers. This is hard work that needs support, which I hope you understand... For us the next release is far away!Anonymous
April 25, 2007
I agree with Rickard - for customers the next release is quite far away! They have a hard time implementing Office 2007. So what customers need now is support and bug fixes for the current release. I know about a dozen annoying issues that really should be adressed but aren't even documented yet in the MS Knowledge Base.Anonymous
April 25, 2007
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April 26, 2007
Agreed with Keeron. I would have loved an interface similar to GNOME Deskbar or Mac OS X Quicksilver where you can press a single button on the keyboard (are any of the F keys still free? ;-) ) type the command, view a list of possibilities, and press enter to accept the first one.Anonymous
April 27, 2007
Btw, if anyone didn't know about the "Search Scout", it's an awesome tool written by MSFT (internal usage/test I gather)... http://www.istartedsomething.com/20070203/saving-scout/Anonymous
April 27, 2007
That "Search Scout" looks like some very useful improvement for every GUI to me. MS should even implement something like this appearing automatically in every menu of ALL application running in Windows. And of course pay fees to me for the idea to enrich the GUI standard in Windows with it :-)Anonymous
May 01, 2007
Aaaaaah! Found you again. Your tips and updates from MS have been most enjoyable. Your Readers all appreciate the time gulped by doing so, but be assured, the effort is enjoyed and appreciated. Hope you find further time slots to keep us in touch. Meantime, hope the job move meant more $$$s and the personal problems were happily resolved. My favourites, by the way, are undocumented shortcuts. Regards GeraldAnonymous
May 19, 2007
I find selling the new Office is easy, a quick demo of the picture/photo editing (e.g. adding drop shadows, reflections) the ability to change font and schemes (yes it even changes the colour of some pictures!) and the automatic bibliography generator sells it to most students.Anonymous
May 20, 2007
I am looking for a way to embed photos in Excel 2007 to help navigate data and provide context to sheets and books. Think of a 'front navigation page' that almost directs you like a web page to the sheet/section that you need to see or change. Ideally I'd like to paste a screen capture or even cell phone photo to a cell and link. Thank you for any suggestions. Cheers, Nick nick@scenario2.comAnonymous
June 03, 2007
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June 06, 2007
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June 07, 2007
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June 07, 2007
here is the link: http://www.blog.xmodx.com/security-update-office-2007-kb934062Anonymous
June 20, 2007
Yes I know how things can get on top of you. I just hope my mum understands when I "get obducted by aliens" for 3 months. I think I'm becoming a serial abductee !!