What an exciting day for MacBU. Today, we’re unveiling our latest efforts to the world: Office for Mac 2011. For over two years, we’ve been hard at work on this latest incarnation of Office for Mac and I’m so pleased to say that it’s coming along really nicely. With the many new exciting feature additions and improvements, Office for Mac 2011 is shaping up to be the best version of Office for Mac yet. So I realize it’s been a while since I last posted, so let me start by reacquainting myself with our MacMojo readership.

I’m Han-yi Shaw, Senior Lead Program Manager responsible for our suite-wide Office User Experience (UX) and Word for Mac. Starting today, I’m kicking off a series of articles that introduce the many highlights of our upcoming product. While today marks the team's first look at Office for Mac 2011, the topic I’ll focus on something that has been near and dear to me for the past two years: the new user interface of Office for Mac 2011.

The most notable introduction to our new Office 2011 user interface is strikingly new, but readily familiar to Mac and PC users alike. It’s called the “Office for Mac ribbon”, or as we refer to it internally, “MacRibbon”. The “Mac” part tells you that it was designed specifically for the Mac, with all of the recognizable attributes that Mac users have come to love; the “Ribbon” part signifies the shared lineage with the ribbon seen in Office 2007 and now Office 2010 for Windows. Given that this new user interface element is appropriately referred to as the Office for Mac ribbon, it represents a new user experience that has not yet dawned on any Mac or PC, and is making its first appearance today as a fusion of the best of both worlds. But why introduce a new user interface, one might ask?

As we looked ahead toward the next decade, we knew it was time to take the venerable Office for Mac user interface to the next level. Our goals were to continue to deliver the best productivity solution possible --- intuitive yet powerful, innovative yet familiar, and above all, Mac-like yet compatible. The Formatting Palette, which was introduced in Office 2001 for Mac, had over the course of a decade been stretched beyond its originally intended purposes. The Elements Gallery, which was introduced in Office for Mac 2008 showed tremendous potential, especially for users who have experienced significantly improved productivity gains after using the ribbon interface from Office 2007 for Windows. However, it was the very same Mac user community who expected a first-class ribbon implementation, who were at the same time crystal clear in their message: deliver a ribbon interface that’s built upon, not at the expensive of, the Mac user interface and native Mac OS X platform technologies. And as we at MacBU are Mac users ourselves, we empathized with this unequivocal request coming from our user community. Hence, the MacRibbon was born. It began from user feedback --- and every step of the way --- we listened, iterated, and listened some more. And after two years of development, we're very excited to unveil it today.

The Office for Mac ribbon is a new user interface that presents commands organized into a set of tabs.  It is designed to compliment --- not replace --- signature Mac user interface elements such as the menu bar and standard toolbar.  The Mac OS X menu bar remains nicely tucked under the top of the screen --- it’s there if you need it, but speaks only when spoken to. The standard toolbar continues to host the most highly used controls --- such as New, Open, Print, Save --- in a familiar and convenient location.  And the Office for Mac ribbon brings together the most popular formatting and creation tools --- previously found in the Formatting Palette and Elements Gallery in Office 2008 -- in a single, unified, and unobtrusive design.   Since the Office for Mac ribbon is nicely anchored inside the window, gone are the days when you had to travel between the Formatting Palette and Elements Gallery, or reposition the Formatting Palette to prevent it from covering your document or falling off the screen. During the many rounds of user studies over the past two years, participants overwhelmingly favored the Office for Mac ribbon over the Formatting Palette.  This can be largely attributed to the fact that the Office for Mac ribbon addressed the common user complaint around “I like the Formatting Palette, but it can really get in the way”.  During these studies, our participants frequently surprised us, saying, “I know this is still in development, but can I take this home now?” We felt apologetic telling them they can’t take Office 2011 home just yet --- but we’re excited to be nearing our final release. 

Together, the menu bar, standard toolbar, and ribbon complement each other seamlessly. When you launch Office 2011, the standard toolbar and ribbon collectively represent the top 80 percent most commonly used features.  Since the Office for Mac ribbon is a tab-based design, instead of showing you all of Office’s depth all at once, you get to choose what you’d like to expose. And with the Standard Toolbar, you can perform any one of the most highly used New, Open, Save, Undo operations with a single mouse-click, without the need to tunnel into a separate location or switch between ribbon tabs. For any of the remaining least used 20 percent of functionality, you can simply access them via the Mac OS X menu bar during that rare occasion when you them.  

And as you’d expect, the Office for Mac ribbon will be available across the suite. In getting ready for the exciting unveiling of Office for Mac 2011, I’ve prepared a series of screenshot of the Office for Mac ribbon for the press, including the following.



So today, I’ve introduced you to the basics of the Office for Mac ribbon and I will follow up with additional posts that give you a more in-depth look at the Office for Mac ribbon, starting with Word 2011, which is the other labor of love for me. There is much to talk about so stay tuned for my Office for Mac ribbon Part II post, available exclusively on our MacMojo site!

Han-yi Shaw