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Office 2000: to the Web and back
Office 2000 is the name of what is probably the most widely available version of Microsoft’s popular suite of Office software applications. It comprises Microsoft Word (word processor), the Excel spreadsheet, plus various other tools, depending on the version of Office purchased. When it was finally released in June 1999, the program shipped in five variations.
According to Anne McKeon, Marketing Manager for Desktop Applications at Microsoft Canada, the version known as Office Standard includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint (a desktop presentation package) and the Outlook calendaring, scheduling and email client. Office Small Business is a lower-cost release; it includes Word, Excel, Publisher (a desktop publishing package) outlook and a collection of small business tools: a customer manager, small business financial manager, and small business planner. Office Professional, meanwhile, includes everything in the Small Business release, plus Access (a database) and PowerPoint. This package sells for roughly the same price as the Office 97 version of Office Pro, which lacked Publisher. The Office 2000 "Premium" release includes FrontPage 2000, a web-building tool, and a fairly decent graphics program called PhotoDraw 2000. Finally, a Developer Edition, based on the Premium release, includes additional development tools (for building macros, etc.), targeted at developers.
In each case, Office 2000 also includes Internet Explorer 5.0 (Netscape fans, don't despair -- you don't have to install it) and therein lies one of the most notable design changes in Office 2000: the applications now allow you to save a document as a web page, for posting on the Internet (or an in-house intranet) and then later draw the web page and/or graphic image back into the respective application, with all of its original data and formatting intact – a capability Microsoft calls “round tripping.” For comparison, the Office 97 version of Excel saves charts out as GIF (graphics interchange format) images when a spreadsheet is saved as HTML (hypertext markup language; the code behind a web page) and Office 97 is not smart enough to know which application originally created a web page or graphic.
Some of the Office apps use HTML in very clever ways. PowerPoint 2000, for example, now saves all its page transition animations as Dynamic HTML, providing a new degree of cross-platform compatibility. As well, PowerPoint's HTML format retains the ability to view outlines or present slideshows in full-screen mode, advancing by simply clicking the mouse. A sample presentation is here.
Collaboration features have been significantly enhanced in Office 2000, as well. Comments and replies can be automatically appended as a threaded discussion to a document, slide, database or spreadsheet, facilitating a workgroup approach to a project. Each program also includes a new “Save to Web…” option under their respective File menus. (It should be noted that this, as well as some other workgroup features, requires the use of a set of so-called “Server extensions” – bits of code that may not support your non-Microsoft server.)
FrontPage 2000 has several new features (notably, on-the-fly spell-checking and the ability to convert a web page address to a hyperlink even if it is inside brackets). It also makes heavy use of Server Extensions to provide some advanced capabilities. For us, the on-the-fly spelling checker proved to be the most significant new feature. (Update: Note, however, that the 2002 edition of FrontPage represented another significant step forward, with the addition of a very useful "paste with/without formatting." This release, available separately or as part of the Premium Edition of Office XP, is our recommended version of FrontPage. )
An interesting new feature in Excel 2000 is its capability to publish just a portion of a spreadsheet to a Website. In the Office 97 release, you had to save the whole spreadsheet as HTML when exporting to the Web. Additionally, the new release can add “What if” interactivity to a web-published spreadsheet. Users with a Web browser by you-know-who can even sort rows, columns and cut, copy and paste live spreadsheet data directly from the web-published version – even without having Excel installed on the machine viewing the page. Microsoft says they need to be a licensed Excel user to do this, however. Access database pages, too, can now be embedded "live" into web pages, allowing dynamically updated web pages, or even email messages with "dynamic data." To this end, Microsoft is positioning Access as a front end to its high-end SQL Server 7.0 database system, which further extends this capability.
Microsoft touts the "self-healing" feature of Office 2000 and maintains that it will reduce support requirements and total cost of ownership. Although, we found it fairly easy to break this feature, when it does work, though, it's handy: if you accidentally trash a required component or deleted an executable, Office 2000 will automatically reload and reconfigure a working copy. It's also possible to configure Office 2000 with a "zero footprint" client install (where it runs from a server), or configure it to load the various components on an as-needed basis.
For what is, in essence, a 1.0 release, the feature set of Microsoft PhotoDraw 2000 is stunning. Not only does it include both vector ("drawing") and bitmap image editing ("painting") capabilities, but it includes input drivers for scanners, digital cameras and other capture devices, literally hundreds of useful templates, 3D rendering capabilities, exceptional text handling and a feature we've not seen in any program before: "photo brushes." These are bitmapped images (chains, ivy leaves, ropes, etc.) that follow a vector path (or even the outlines of a font!) -- with often amazing results. Best of all, PhotoDraw is dead simple to use -- its lightweight manual includes a section entitled Design Basics that contains sometimes obvious ("bright colors attract the most attention") but generally useful information. As well, the program has many wizard-driven functions; it is a graphics program clearly intended for non-artists. PhotoDraw 2000 probably won't replace high-end tools such as Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator on professional users' desktops, but for the rest of us, "wow!" It's worth checking out. As mentioned earlier, PhotoDraw 2000 is a component of the Premium edition of Office 2000.
IE 5...and more
A key part of the Office 2000 bundle is Internet Explorer 5.0. Although you don't have to use it, users who eschew this as their web browser will lose one of the most substantial improvement to Office 2000: its "round-trip" Web capability. And so it is that Microsoft drags Netscape fans kicking and screaming into the world of IE5.
The new IE5 release focuses on further simplifying the browser experience, with improvements to the way downloads are handled (now, remote FTP directories look and act just like a local hard drive) and enhancements to the "autocomplete" feature. Instead of the love-it-or-hate-it feature in IE4 that finished typing recently accessed web addresses for you, IE 5 pops up a list of matching URLs and allows you to scroll through it. In beta 2, the History feature (presenting a record of previously viewed URLs) is improved with "smart" sorting -- listings are sorted without the www prefix.
Those who have a tough time finding information on the Net will appreciate the improvements to the Search function in IE5. If you remember part of the address or name of a site, just type it into the Address bar, and you'll get a list of possible sites similar to what you typed. There are other improvements too, including some that may raise a few eyebrows. For example, when you enter a user name for a Web site with IE5, it automatically inserts the passwords. Too scary? Fortunately, this feature can be disabled. URLs entered with bad syntax are corrected automatically. -- a welcome step toward "do what I mean" computing. Also improved is the "Save As..." command on the File menu. This now saves the entire page, graphics and all, so you can view it or edit it later. IE5 is, as previous versions have been, also available separately. Starting March 18th, it is available as a free download from www.microsoft.com/ie or on CD for a nominal cost. An online tour guides you through what's new since version 4.
Testing the Beta
In November, Microsoft greatly expanded its Office 2000 beta program, providing beta 2 to up to 700,000 customers willing to pay US$19.95 to cover the costs of the CDs, shipping, and support. For their money, beta testers received Office 2000 Premium Beta 2, including a high-end suite of Web tools, desktop applications, document management software, and graphic design technology, as well as evaluation materials, support, and ongoing information. Such widespread beta testing is probably a good thing, no matter how you feel about paying money to be a guinea pig for Bill Gates. For example, in our tests, we found that Office 2000 could not properly read Word 6.01 files created on a Mac. Presumably, this will be addressed by the time the release version ships. And why did Microsoft charge people to beta test? Company spokesperson Anne McKeon says the corporate preview program was just designed to recover costs. The beta program ended Jan. 31st.
Microsoft Canada says the final release of Office 2000, once touted for a March release, is now expected in June. McKeon says the premium edition of its popular office suite will retail for US$795 -- a whopping C$1229. The Premium Edition includes FrontPage and PhotoDraw 2000. Upgrades are C$699 retail -- users of Office 97 or previous Office releases will pay the same amount to upgrade.
One of the most controversial “features” of the beta release was the fact that the program would only run 50 times unless you registered it with Microsoft. This is, of course, a way to ensure to that users are legitimate license holders and was apparently a ploy on Microsoft's part to reduce piracy of its software. But by essentially forcing users to register, Microsoft -- already under fire by the U.S. Dept. of Justice, and often accused of being arrogant and self-serving -- garnered a torrent of criticism. Not surprisingly, negative feedback on this feature was so overwhelming that Microsoft now says it has eliminated this limitation from the program's official release. It certainly could have been annoying -- or worse -- to businesses to find that the program wouldn't run during a deadline crunch one day, though.
According to Microsoft, the system requirements haven't changed since Office 97 (but then again, 16MB of RAM wasn't a realistic minimum memory configuration for Office 97, either). Microsoft adds that, for the first 90 days, the program will be bundled with a Microsoft IntelliMouse.
Fun with Office
Finally, for those of you who enjoyed hidden and occasionally goofy features of MS Word's Thesaurus in the past, Office 2000 doesn't disappoint. (What -- you haven't heard of this? Try pasting "unable to follow directions" without the quotes into Microsoft Word 6 or newer, highlight the text and use the program's thesaurus function to look up synonyms).
Type "I'd like to see Pamela Anderson's tattoo" (you may wish to substitute the supermodel, verb and/or body parts of your choice in that sentence) and look up synonyms using the thesaurus. This office conversation maker also has a sinister side. Users in Redmond, Ireland, and elsewhere have been circulating the chilling fact that this thesaurus "feature" also allows lookups of phrases such as "I'd like to see _________ dead" or "I'd like to see _________ shot."
Conclusion
Like many users, we are dismayed by the significantly increased price of Office 2000, compared to its predecessors. The company has raised the price from US$599 for Office 97 to US$799 for Office 2000 Premium -- an amount we think could significantly dampen sales, or at least encourage "in-house piracy" among small companies. Presumably, Microsoft is counting on the "registration required after 50 uses" feature to prevent such theft.
However, we liked the new features, such as the new Clipboard that holds multiple items, and Office 2000's solid support for multiple languages. We also liked the cleaner interface and less intrusive reworking of the "Office Assistants" in this release. But it is Office 2000's stellar support of HTML (and XML, or Extensible Markup Language) that proved to be its greatest improvement. For many users, this will be the "must-have" feature. But, is it enough to justify the hefty price increase? Time will tell....
Sections of this article originally appeared in Investment Executive magazine.
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