Microsoft Office 95 moves up to true 32-bit native code and delivers improved integration, full OLE 2 support, and binders
Stan Miastkowski
Despite the hype surrounding Windows 95, the application software that people use daily remains the truest measure of the new operating system's relevance. Not surprising, Microsoft is first out of the gate with an upgraded suite of true 32-bit applications tuned to the abilities of Windows 95.
Office 95 is packed with new features, but it is the usability that sets this suite apart from competitors. Microsoft claims to have spent some 14,000 hours testing the new capabilities, observing a wide range of users, sending out specially instrumented versions to selected users, logging support calls, and employing contextual inquiry -- a technique based on social anthropology -
- to research how people work. The results show.
Office 95 is tightly tied to the Windows 95 environment; but overall, it reflects a natural evolution -- not revolution -- from the Office 4.3 suite for Windows 3.1. All Office 95 applications -- Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Schedule+, and Access (in the Professional version) -- are true 32-bit native applications developed using the Win32 API. This makes Office 95 compatible with both Windows 95 and Windows NT. The newest addition to the mix is
the Office Binder
, a format that lets you work with multiple documents and applications from within a single "binder" file.
As developers know, "32-bit" doesn't guarantee better performance, but Microsoft claims it has wrung out some real improvements by taking advantage of the new environment. The company has optimized the most-frequently used code in Office into small segments. A prime example is the Excel recalculation engine, completely rewritten in 32-bit assembler. Common operations go
faster and memory is handled more efficiently. In addition, Office 95 can detect a Pentium and take advantage of its separate instruction and data pipelines, boosting performance.
Tasks and Threads
Performance is a balance of many techniques, including the efficient use of multitasking, multithreading, and shared code. True preemptive multitasking is perhaps the greatest enhancement to Windows 95. Multitasking multiple Office applications is clearly faster and more stable under Windows 95. Office 95 also takes advantage of multithreading, essentially allowing you to execute multiple commands at the same time
within a single application
. Threads are used in the PowerPoint Slide Sorter, for background printing in Word and PowerPoint, and in Access queries. However, Excel recalculation does not use threads; instead, the optimized 32-bit recalc engine is called as a separate task.
Shared code allows Office applications to look and work alike. Office index
ing works across all document types, and the spelling checker is common to all the suite applications. Shared DLLs are prevalent; for example, there's a single container (MSOFC95.DLL) for shared dialog boxes. The Office Binder represents a culmination of a shared environment. You can store multiple documents -- including Word files,
Excel spreadsheets
, and files from any other Office 95-compatible application -- within a single binder. Clicking on any document in the binder exposes the menu structure from the creating application.
Developers, Grab an Object
Office 95 has become a serious development tool. The entire suite is essentially a group of objects
tied together with OLE 2
. Users and developers have access to more than 300 of these objects through Visual BASIC for Applications (VBA), a full-bore programming language incorporated within Excel and Access. (Word still includes the WordBASIC development language.) Using VBA from eithe
r of these programs, you can put together custom software that employs available objects from any Office application. For example, your VBA-developed application can make use of the Access Report Object or the Excel Chart Object. The Bank of Newport (Rhode Island) used VBA and Access's Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) abilities in the Jet Database Engine (another object) to create an Office 95 front end for tellers to access the bank's mainframe computers.
For more-involved projects, especially for third-party developers who want to create products that both look like and work like Office 95, it's worthwhile to join Microsoft's Office Compatible program (for information, phone (800) 765-7768 or send E-mail to offcomp@microsoft.com).
Office Intelligence
The idea behind Microsoft's IntelliSense technology is to streamline tasks by completing them automatically or making suggestions interactively. In Office 95, IntelliSense takes advantage of multitasking, multithreading, an
d shared code. For example, AutoCorrect, the automatic spelling checker in Word that now works across applications, continually checks your spelling as you type. You can immediately right-click on the word to get spelling suggestions or you can keep on typing. In any case, the final check will be much faster since the dictionary look-ups have already been done.
AutoFormat automatically generates bulleted lists and horizontal borders from common entries (for example, making a border from multiple dashed lines). Start typing an entry in an Excel 7.0 worksheet and AutoComplete finishes the entry for you, based on existing cell entries. AutoCalculate lets you quickly sum a few cells by simply highlighting them.
The automatic features of Office 95 can sometimes appear uncanny. If you've accidentally hit your Caps Lock key and type something like "tHIS" to lead off a sentence, AutoCorrect not only changes it to "This," it turns off Caps Lock. If you find some of the automatic features annoying, you can
shut them off. And because Office uses Windows 95 registry files instead of INI files, different users of a PC can each have their own customized Office settings.
Help on the Way
When using Office 4.3, we often found ourselves hunting, sometimes futilely, through longs lists of help topics.
The Answer Wizard
is the solution, and it works surprisingly well across Office 95 applications. The Answer Wizard lets you type in a plain-text query -- like "How do I print this sideways?" -- and up pops a list of related topics. It's not foolproof, but it's pretty accurate. Answer Wizard uses decision theory -- Bayes' Rule specifically -- to parse your query and connect it to help topics by creating a stack of rules based on probability.
Once you've beckoned Answer Wizard to locate the topic you want to explore, the help system uses innovative ways to explain concepts. For example, to demonstrate how to insert columns in your Excel worksheet, the system shows move
ment of screens instead of a series of static images. This approach makes it much easier to learn new tasks.
Big Space Required
Office 95 is large. Very large. A full installation of the standard package (sans Access) requires 89 MB of hard disk space; a typical installation takes 55 MB; a compact installation, 28 MB. And it's hungry, too: 8 MB of RAM is a minimum, and that will allow you to run only two applications concurrently. You'll need 16 MB for decent performance. You'll also want to have a 486/50 or faster processor.
Easy Upgrade
In corporate environments, the question of upgrading from Windows 3.x to Windows 95 is a thorny one, but doing the actual upgrade to Office 95 isn't as much of a problem. File formats for Word 7.0 and Excel 7.0 are identical to earlier versions. PowerPoint has a new format, but the program comes with an import utility for files created with earlier versions. And the cutting-edge help technology will reduce -- if n
ot virtually eliminate -- training costs.
The bottom line is that Office 95 pays for itself in increased productivity.
PRODUCT INFORMATION
Microsoft Office for Windows 95
Standard Edition................................$249
Professional Edition (including Access 95)......$349
Microsoft Corp.
Redmond, WA
(800) 426-9400
(206) 882-8080
fax: (206) 635-6100
http://www.microsoft.com
Data Map
Analyzes data geographically
Imager
Imports and edits images; provides TWAIN scanner support
Query
Accesses data from worksheets or databases
Graphing Tool
Creates, edits, and manipulates graphs
ClipArt Gallery
Provides location for viewing the 1000+ included images
WordArt
Creates special effects with text
Equation Editor
Works with mathematical elements
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File Starter replaces the old File Open. Office 95 presents a central location for opening files, creating documents, or using existing templates.
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The object-oriented technology at the heart of Office 95 allows a new document type called a binder. Binders are single documents that can contain files from different Office applications or from certified Office-compatible applications.
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Excel's Top 10 function is a new feature that displays the 10 largest numbers in a worksheet. In this case, it's used to automatically create a list of the highest sales figures.
Stan Miastkowski is a BYTE consulting editor. He's coauthor of the Windows for Workgroups Bible (Addison-Wesley, 1993). You can reach him on the Internet by sending E-mail to
stanm@bix.com
.
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