Earlier Tim said he thought Microsoft betas were too common and that they were more like unsupported released products.  Some would say that at one time, Microsoft used to release its products with all the bugs and charge customers full price to beta testing them.

The truth is that we need more people to tell us what they think about our products.  We need IT people, business people, customers and more, however the 1st group we need are our partners -if they don't think they can sell, use and build solutions with our product, then we have lost our sales force.  That is not to say that we should not offer assistance here, but the critism and feedback is very welcome.  I commented on the same blog back to Tim, so will not re-cover that ground again.

So, Office and the Ribbon bar - the loss of menus in Word, Excel and PowerPoint has been quite a talking point and the replacement with the Ribbon bar has been refreshing.  Finally, findign the function you want is easier - sometimes you even find things that have been there a little while, but you just never knew how to find them.  However, people want more control and additional features.  I am glad to say that this is coming.

More information on this can be seen at http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/07/20/672345.aspx, which includes some nice videos:

• http://officeblogs.net/UI/MenuTabs.wmv - shows how the ribbon can be set to autohide with just the tabs showing unless clicked on - so acting more like menus
• http://officeblogs.net/UI/MenuTabsHigh.wmv - higher quality video of the same functionality
• http://officeblogs.net/UI/MinimizedKeyboard.wmv - shows how keyboard access is delivered with the ribbon bar

that is it for now on this

ttfn

David