[access-uk] Re: Article on Office 2007
- From: "Ray's Home" <rays-home@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 10:34:37 +0100
I haven't read the article you forwarded as yet, but Apparantly Katherine it
seems Word 2007, and I guess the rest of Office 2007, looks as if accessability
will be good. Take a listen to Main Menu for the past two-three weeks to hear
Window-Eyes and JFW focused editions which mention 2007 in some detail.
Window-Eyes 6 is going to work with it well, and JFW users will have to upgrade
to version 8 I believe.
Seems the new UI automation promised in Vista won't be there at its release so
we''l have to waite for general improvements in Windows OS access a bit longer.
Ray
Personal emails: Email me at
mailto:ray-48@xxxxxxxx
----- Original Message -----
From: "Catherine Turner" <catherineturner2000@xxxxxxxxxxx>
: Hi all,
:
: Thought people might be interested in this, am pasting below. I wonder what
: the UI changes will mean in terms of accessibility. It came from
: http://www.windowsitpro.com/articles/print.cfm?articleid=49948
:
: Office 2007: First Look
: A Web Exclusive from Windows Scripting Solutions
: April 11, 2006
: Michael Otey
: Sidebar
: InstantDoc #49948
: Windows Scripting Solutions
:
: Microsoft Office is the most widely used application of all time, ubiquitous
: in the workplace as well as at home and it's popular for a good reason:
: Office
: lets you quickly and efficiently do the tasks you need to do. However,
: Office has also been one of Microsoft's most unchanging applications,
: carrying the
: same look and feel for at least the past decade. Depending on your point of
: view, Office 2007 either promises or threatens big changes to your favorite
: applications.
:
: I'd heard that Office 2007 had had a facelift, but I was taken aback when I
: got my first look at the beta. Figure 1 shows the beta1 version of Microsoft
: Word. As you can see, the familiar Office File, Edit, and Tools menus are
: all gone. In their place is a new tabbed interface and what Microsoft calls
: "the
: ribbon" (a big section that contains all the tool buttons at the top of the
: screen), the contents of which change depending on the selected tab. I don't
: find the tabbed menu and ribbon either intuitive or useful, and I don't like
: the way the ribbon consumes excessive screen real estate. Plus, all the
: Office
: components (e.g., Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, Microsoft
: PowerPoint) are saturated with a dreary blue look. Granted, Office 2007 is
: still in
: beta, so some things could change. However, one thing is painfully clear: If
: the UI in the current beta persists, a significant degree of user retraining
: will be required for organizations to successfully adopt this product. This
: learning curve was never the case in any of the preceding versions of
: Office.
:
: In addition to the interface, the other big new feature in Office 2007 that
: interests me is the new support for XML files. First, as you would hope,
: Office
: 2007 is completely compatible with earlier Office-document formats. In
: addition, Microsoft has introduced a new default Office XML format,
: identified by
: the addition of an x to the end of the old extensions (e.g., .docx). The new
: format is incompatible with previous versions and isn't human readable
: either
: because the contents of XML files are compressed. This compression results
: in little disk-space savings for text-only documents, but it does make a big
: difference for documents that contain lots of embedded images. In addition,
: Office 2007 includes an option for saving to standard XML, which works as I
: expected, producing a human-readable xml document.
:
: To get a better feel for the product, I jumped in headfirst, used it for
: several days, and found that the product has many good features. First, I
: found
: the performance to be quite good, especially for a beta product. For most
: tasks, Office 2007 is on a par with Office 2003. Next, I discovered I could
: be
: productive by mostly ignoring the UI changes and instead using the familiar
: Office 2003 keyboard shortcuts and right-click context menus, all of which
: continue to work. I also soon grew to like the new transparent context menu,
: which appears when you select some text, then changes to fully visible if
: you move the mouse over the transparent menu. Other cool features I found
: are Word's new ability to save to PDF format. (Unfortunately Word still can't
: open PDFs.) I also liked the ability use watermarks, the word-count tally in
: the status bar, and the big UI buttons, which make it easier to see when you
: have change tracking on. Excel has a significantly improved data-import
: capability that automatically formats and adds filters to imported data.
: Access
: features several prebuilt database templates and built-in options that let
: you upsize your databases to SQL Server or SharePoint. I think the new UI
: and
: ribbon benefit PowerPoint the most of all the products because they make
: many PowerPoint features, such as animations, more accessible. Various
: SharePoint
: options for enabling group data collaboration and synchronization are
: prevalent throughout the products in the Office 2007 suite.
:
: I'm typically one of the first people to adopt new technologies. However,
it's
: going to be a while before Office 2007 replaces Office 2003 on my desktop.
: Although I found the product usable, I'm still looking for lots of other
: once-common functions-such as Word's Convert text to table and external
: Access
: database projects-that are probably there even though I can't find them. If
: Microsoft wants to see this product succeed, my advice is to add the ability
: to make it look like Office 2003, just as Windows XP has the ability to
: adopt a classic Windows 2000 look and feel. In the meantime, businesses
: should
: keep tabs on this product's development and plan to include user training
: with any projected Office 2007 rollouts.
:
:
: **
: Skype: darkitude
: MSN: catherineturner2000@xxxxxxxxxxx
:
:
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