About the ribbons themselves, think of them as always-available
tabbed dialog boxes that are just one click away - the menus in
the older version actually got you those very options that you see
in the ribbons - thus most options now are just one click away now
rather than the earlier two clicks. Also, the options don't have
any OK, Apply, or Preview buttons - just select the option and you'll
see it applied on the slide dynamically.
At least two menus still live in the new PowerPoint version. The
File menu is available at the same place you would expect it to
be - and the options are the same too - including the familiar open
and save choices. The View menu has moved to the right of the status
bar along with a slider based view magnification option. Once you
get used to the slider based view magnification, you'll wonder how
you lived without it all these years!
PowerPoint 12's ribbon interface works best with a slightly higher
resolution - although it is usable with a screen resolution of 800
x 600 pixels, I'll say that you won't benefit much with anything
lesser than 1024 x 768 pixels - and the more pixels you can spare,
the ribbons and the intuitiveness work better! I'll consider 1024
x 768 as almost a standard these days - so that's not a great worry.
The file format is going to change too - the file extension will
be called PPTX, and you'll be able to save your presentations to
the PPT format as well. The file format is one of the best new features
in the new version of PowerPoint - it's more robust and expandable,
and Microsoft is opening up the file format so that third party
applications can add more features and programmability to the format
- that certainly is a brave move that promises so much more for
end users.
If you looked at the screenshot above, I'm sure you must have noticed
the great new look on the slides themselves - that's the result
of new graphic improvements in the whole Office suite. The shapes
themselves have bevels and soft shadows - and trust me they look
like some eye candy!
There's so much more, and I'll probably provide more details as
soon as they are available - but the biggest new feature is a direct
PDF export option. All Office applications including PowerPoint
will now be able to export to the PDF format.
