There’s a lot to be said about Microsoft’s Office 12 / 2007 Beta 2 product, but this post will only focus on the graphical interface elements that have changed or been improved from its predecessors. Office 2007 is rich in tools like the new menu-bars, smooth zooming and scrolling, word counts and improved statistics in the tray, a totally new blue theme, a new loading screen and more.

When you first start Office 12 Beta, you get a cool loading screen:

The first thing you’ll want to do is open a document. However, the new menu system puts the File menu on a strange windows shaped button:

The recent documents space is much larger and easy to navigate, and allows you to pin oft-used documents in place for future reference. The “Options” and “Exit” options are also on this massive, and poorly designed menu. You’ll notice it tried to bring a task oriented approach to managing the document with the “Finish,” “Share,” and “Print” commands, but leaves “New,” “Open,” “Upgrade,” and “Save” to languish by themselves instead of under a common “Create” task.