Microsoft makes a Basic mistake with Office 2007

[rollcage]

Microsoft Office isn’t among the apps that will run natively on Intel-based Macs—and it won’t be until the latter half of 2007, according to media reports. But when it does ship, Office will apparently be missing a feature so vital to cross-platform compatibility that I believe it will be the beginning of the end for the Mac version of the productivity suite.

 

Here’s the background. Back in August, Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit updated Mac users on the status of its development efforts for the next version of Office. According to the software giant, things were going well, and we learned that there will be free XML converters for current Office users to read the new Office for Windows’ file formats. (However, we’ve since learned that there will be a three to four month gap between the release of Office for Windows and the availability of the Mac converters. Those could be a few painful months to be a Mac Office user in a Windows environment.) The MacBU also noted that tens of millions of lines of code had been successfully transitioned to Xcode. Amidst all the good news, however, was this little lump of coal, as we reported it then:

 

 

Microsoft also indicates that it is discontinuing support of Visual Basic (VB) scripting in the next version of Office for Mac, but on the flip side, the company said it’s going to increase support for standard Mac scripting methods like AppleScript and Automator.

 

For those who don’t know, Visual Basic scripting (also known as Visual Basic for Applications, or VBA) is the technology behind macros in the Office applications. Basically, VB makes it relatively easy to add automation and customization to Office documents. Macros can be used to help Office’s applications do some pretty amazing things. You can create data entry forms for complex Excel spreadsheets, create your own menu buttons in Word that are tied to specific actions, and even go so far as to create your own menu structure for customized programs used within Excel.

 

Finish reading: MacWorld

[A Nonny Moose]

It will make it dead as an enterprise option. Most home users won't even notice the Virus Creation Tool, er, Visual Basic is gone from Office.

 

In any event, it gives me reason to never upgrade my version of Office.

[Lostgame]

Haha, the irony is that they're trying to make it more "Mac-Like"...

 

The scripting functions will provide the same ideas, but nobody will know how to use them, so it fails.

 

Well, that sucks. I was almost looking forward to it.

[tomozj]

Does anyone see this as a point that Windows users won't switch over because of this small 'dis-ability' ? Like MS want to counter the switchers or something.

 

-tj

[robotskip]

It's kind of a non-issue and inaccurate.

The conclusion is incorrect - if it were accurate, OpenOffice would gain no traction either as it does not support VBA. Yet it has, because in the real world only a documents author really uses macros much and readers almost never do.

 

In fact it's completely backwards - note this part of the statement:

 

"but on the flip side, the company said it’s going to increase support for standard Mac scripting methods like AppleScript and Automator."

 

That will INCREASE use of Office, since finally you'll be able to use Office with Automator. It will make Office a first-class citizen on the Mac in a way it has not been before.

 

As a small side benefit, it makes Macs even less suseptble to viruses than it already was since VBA macro virues will no longer be able to run.

I havn't heard anything that there won't be a simple automated tool for the average person to use. The article mentions losing the Macro Recorder as the major loss. I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to convert the Macro Recorder to use Automator or AppleScript.

 

But then above, he's talking about people using massive VBA custom scripts to auto-populate Excel Documents.

 

You don't do that with the Macro Recorder

 

No, they probably did the numbers and found that the feature wasn't used by enough people to justify the cost of programming it. That's how things work.

I'm not understanding the problem, Microsoft is moving on, past it's older technologies. Visual Basic at its core has been around for 15 years now, now obviously it's not what it used to be by any means but Visual Basic is an old technology, one that MS has been trying to slowly wipe it's hands of for about 8 years now.

 

With the coming of Vista and Longhorn, MS is trying to clean up the cob-webs and force some change into developement, which is always met by resistance from developers. Microsoft has been pushing .NET for 4 years now, with Vista, .NET (or WinFX as they're calling it now) will see it's culmination. They have been pushing for managed code and all the bells and whistles, this is MS's way of getting their way. It's not that you can't use VBA, you shouldn't, at least not anymore.

 

Take for example i worked on a project concerning the redevelopement of heart monitoring software. It was originally written in VBA(old VBA too), the client hired us to recode it in a more modern language (C#), since the program was in bad need of update and maintanence. Programs need to be re-writen, it's not like doing all the things you did in Office 2004 will be impossible in 2007, you'll just have to do them differently, get over it.