14 DAY TRIAL // Office for Mac 2008 is Microsoft's new lineup of offerings involving its Office system transitioned to the Apple platform. Although it was initially planned for 2007, Microsoft ended up postponing Office for Mac 2008 to? well... 2008. However, the Redmond company has started offering sneak peaks at what the next generation of Office 2008 user experience will bring to Mac OS X Tiger and leopard users in the coming year. In a development strategy similar to the model implemented with the Office 2007 System for Windows, Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit introduced an evolution to the graphical user interface of Office for Mac 2008. This is where Elements Gallery comes in. But the Redmond company has been quick to emphasize that they did not look for a repeat of the Ribbon/Fluent graphical user interface in Office 2007.
"We decided to evolve our UI for Office 2008, while keeping in mind the revolution found in the Ribbon. We came up with what we now call the Elements Gallery. It and the toolbars are embedded into the application window. The decision to not try to replicate the Ribbon made some other decisions quickly fall into place for us. One major decision that came about almost immediately was that, unlike the Ribbon in Windows Office, we would not try to put every feature into our Elements Gallery. In our first design, we only included some of Word's Document Parts (headers, footers, cover letters, bibliographies, etc)," explained Nadyne Mielke, User Experience Researcher, Macintosh Business Unit.
As a consequence of the feedback provided to the team, Elements Gallery evolved in order to deliver a constant user experience across the entire suite of applications in Office for Mac 2008. You will be able to access a video presentation of the Elements Gallery at the Office for Mac 2008 official website. As with the Office 2007 System, Microsoft is leveraging a redesign of the graphical user experience as the basis of the evolution of Office for Mac. However, Microsoft stayed clear of implementing the Ribbon/Fluent GUI from Office 2007 into Office for Mac 2008. The reason for this is that the Mac Business Unit wanted to deliver a complete Mac OS X experience and not simply replicate the look and feel of Office 2007 for Windows.
"Elements Gallery? is a visually rich gallery that allows you to quickly find commonly used, but often times hard-to-create elements. Elements Gallery is intended to unlock the power of Office by making our rich functionality more discoverable and accessible. No longer do you need to search through hierarchical menus and tunnel through dialogs only to find another sea of commands. With the Elements Gallery, you can focus your time on exploring and perusing the collection of professional and attractive designer content. "Great looking Office documents made easy" is an important pillar of Office 2008 and the Elements Gallery is a cornerstone to this effort," commented Han-yi Shaw, User Experience Lead Program Manager Macintosh Business Unit.