Mac Mojo: The Office for Mac Team Blog

The Art of Office

Blair Neumann — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:07:00 GMT

Artists "Think Different". They see different as well. Where I see a car, an artist might see a canvas. Where I see an empty theater, an artist may find an opportunity to re-conceptualize an endearing memory.

Like many of you, I perceive Office as a suite of tools that help me be more productive, but we've also learned over the years that, through the eyes of an artist, a document, spreadsheet, or presentation can be a medium, and software tools designed to enhance productivity become a palette from which a breathtaking variety of unexpected forms come forth.

Retrospective

Take for example the visual art of David Byrne (also an audio recording artist, perhaps most well known for his work with Talking Heads) whose 2003 book Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information includes artwork composed entirely using PowerPoint. Where some lament the distinctive idiom or style of PowerPoint, Byrne embraces it: "I love not having an unlimited palette. In that sense it's like a pencil. You don't expect to have other typefaces or fonts; you have fun with what's there."

And while David Byrne has fun within the lines of the PowerPoint idiom, still others push the boundaries of that idiom altogether, sometimes leaving the rest of us openly wondering, "That was created in PowerPoint?" Young PowerPoint artists such as Jeremiah Lee (who adopted the apt moniker "Prince-of-PowerPoint") and Han Byul Jang (Zzangdol) consistently demonstrate that only imagination, talent and skill limit the power of the PowerPoint freeform tool. In Hari Evolution, Lee demonstrates his own evolution, while Strolling clearly captures the talent of Han, with the freeform medium.

PowerPoint artists thrive using PowerPoint's idiomatic text, shapes, and freeform tool, while Excel artists have taken their own license with that most salient Excel element, the spreadsheet cell. Artists like Danielle Aubert and Paul Hrusa (aka, rebbel.geek) construct low-resolution pixel graphics in Excel that would make many early personal computers proud, my own Apple IIc included. Rene Hernandez Miranda (aka, "pixelfreak") takes the genre one step further, creating scrollbook-style animations from multiple pages of low-resolution Excel pixel art.

Much like my Apple IIc, there is also a high-resolution mode for pixel art rendered by Excel, though employing a different medium than lower-resolution pixel art. High-resolution pixel graphics in Excel are often generated programmatically by mapping pixels from a source image into an Excel spreadsheet through a scripting language such as AppleScript or VBA.

Composition of text with other visual elements such as pictures and shapes is an artistic domain for which Word is distinctly qualified. Of course, when applied to the business domain where visual communication is paramount, such compositions are a type of art that we call "graphic design" (its practitioners artists that we call "graphic designers"), but in the hands of artists like Mark Mothersbaugh (somewhat like David Byrne, perhaps better known for his musical work with Devo) such compositions of text and visual art become a compelling artistic medium of their own.

Prospective

While earlier versions of Mac Office clearly demonstrated the possibility of art created using Office software, Office 2008 for Mac provides a richer visual toolkit and expanded palettes for artistic minds. We believe (and we think you'll agree) that art created in Office 2008 for Mac is not only more compelling than earlier manifestations, but often also easier to create, helping unleash perhaps even more latent Office artists.

OfficeArt is the appropriately named drawing engine underlying Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in Office 2008 for Mac. OfficeArt objects are rendered in a 3D visual space and offer a sophisticated toolkit of easy to use manipulations, including: reflections; glows and soft edges; inner, outer, and perspective shadows; 3D bevels and rotation; depth and contour; and surface materials and lighting sources. Each of these manipulations are made point and click simple through intelligent collections of preset effect options, but the full power of customizability is always available through the Format Object dialog, just one click away.

When you consider, for example, that every SmartArt graphic and Excel chart (even those embedded in a Word document or PowerPoint presentation) is really a composition of OfficeArt shapes, and therefore inherits that full range of customizability, you start to get a feel for the tremendous power and flexibility inherent in those tools. David Byrne, your idiom just got larger!

Office 2008 for Mac introduces the concept of an Office Theme which aggregates a theme color palette, theme fonts, and theme OfficeArt effect styles to help create a unified look and feel across your Office 2008 for Mac documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. The fully-customizable theme color palette in turn consists of 12 base colors (two shades each of dark and light, six accent colors, and two hyperlink colors) with a range of dark and light variations derived from those bases. Visual artists are able to use such Office Themes to create a consistent mood or character across their artistic creations.

The high-resolution graphics mode of Excel pixel artists was replaced in Excel 2008 for Mac with a new super high-resolution "Big Grid" graphics mode. The old 256 column by 65,536 row spreadsheet maximums are now replaced by 16,384 and 1,048,576 respectively. Excel pixel artists previously had only 16,777,216 pixels to work with; with Excel 2008 for Mac they have 17,179,869,184!

I imagine the cel-shading techniques of today's PowerPoint artists being augmented by OfficeArt 3D, lighting, materials, contour and depth effects; graphic artists more easily composing cohesive visual works in Word; and significantly higher-resolution Excel pixel art created with Office 2008 for Mac. But I'm not a visual artist; I can only imagine (and look forward to seeing) what true visual artists will come up with using Office 2008 for Mac. Notebook Layout View scribble art anyone?

Perspective

The Art of Office website (http://www.artofoffice.com) is a community-driven website created to help individuals share their artistic works created using Microsoft Office. Everybody is welcome to publish their Office-created artistic works on the Art of Office website, and we would like to encourage Mac Office users everywhere to explore their inner artists using Office 2008 for Mac.

Mac|Life is adding a little incentive as well with their Art of Office Challenge. Show the editors of Mac|Life how creative you can be with Word, Excel, or PowerPoint through July 31, 2008 for your chance to win one of five copies of Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition.

Great looking presentations made easy with PowerPoint 2008

Radhika S — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:07:43 GMT

Want to design a professional-looking presentation? The new PowerPoint 2008 puts the control in your hands to create compelling visuals and layout with only few clicks of your mouse. Watch this demo for a quick overview of the different features you can use to create a great-looking presentation, and to see for yourself that you won't have to learn PowerPoint all over again.

PowerPoint Great Features (16MB; 6:15)

Note: This video requires QuickTime.

This video shows how to:

• Quickly give all text, charts, backgrounds, and tables a consistent look.

• Create attractive information graphics and diagrams from text.

• Accurately align everything on your slide.

• Organize and import slides directly from other PowerPoint presentations.

• Save presentations in the best format for your audience.

• Use presenter tools while your audience sees only what you want them to see.

Solver For Excel 2008: Available By Mid-September

Gavin Shearer — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:07:30 GMT

Last month, I posted to Mac Mojo about Solver and Excel 2008, where I explained that the Excel team was working hard to bring Solver functionality back for Office 2008 customers.

Today, I am delighted to announce that Solver is definitely coming back to Excel 2008. This is very, very, very good news for anyone that uses Excel for linear programming or nonlinear optimization problems (Mac-using MBA students, I'm looking at you...).

Here are the three things you should know:

Solver for Excel 2008 will be free.

Solver for Excel 2008 will be available as a download from the Web site of Frontline Systems (www.solver.com/mac).

Solver for Excel 2008 will be available by mid-September (just in time for back to school!).

So how was this accomplished, and how does it work?

Technical Approach

Developing a Solver for Excel 2008 presented some interesting technical challenges. In Excel 2004, Solver relies on Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) to function. Since VBA is not a part of Office 2008, we had to find a way of identifying those areas that needed VBA and replacing them with something equivalent.

Many people don't realize this, but Solver is not actually a Microsoft product. Rather, the Solver code is owned and developed by a Nevada firm called Frontline Systems. Frontline creates and sells a line of industrial-strength Solver products that are used in commercial and government settings. Their basic, free version of Solver has shipped with Excel for many, many years.

Frontline are the most knowledgeable people on the planet when it comes to Solver, and, once MacBU began hearing from customers about Solver's absence, we began working with Frontline to figure out how to solve the problem (pardon the pun).

The final solution was to package up Solver's functionality into its own Mac OS X application, Solver.app, and then use AppleScript to communicate between Solver and Excel. This approach is simple, elegant, uses proven Apple technologies, and results in an experience that is very, very similar to that of using Solver in Excel 2004.

(It's also worth pointing out that this approach required us to 'eat our own dogfood' - Solver was developed using the same AppleScript techniques we recommend for other developers who want to build on top of Office 2008.)

How It Works

We have attempted to make the process of obtaining and using Solver as simple as possible.

Obtaining Solver

The process of downloading Solver is (eerily!) similar to the process for getting any other Mac software off the Internet:

Download Solver for Excel 2008 from the Frontline Web site.

Unpack Solver by double-clicking it.

Move the unpacked Solver.app to your /Applications folder (or to any other folder you like).

If you plan to use Solver a lot, drag the icon to your Dock.

That's it! You're all installed.

Using Solver

Once Solver is on your machine, it's ready to start working with Excel. To use Solver:

Launch Excel 2008.

Build (or load) the workbook with your Solver model.

Click the Solver icon in your Dock (or double-click the Solver icon in your /Applications folder). Solver will open (see Figure 1).

At this point, you use Solver much as always - by selecting cells and ranges in Excel to serve as constraints or targets, setting your options for the model, and then clicking 'Solve'. Solver will attempt to solve the model and will let you know if it finds a solution.

Figure 1 - Solver.app Running On Mac OS X

Next Steps

As mentioned, above, Solver will be available as a free download from Frontline's Web site by mid-September.

We will put up a notice right here on Mac Mojo when the bits are available for download; if you read Mac Mojo through RSS, you'll be notified very quickly (and if you don't get Mojo through RSS, why not? Try Safari or NetNewsWire for a great RSS experience). Frontline will also have an announcement on their Web site.

I'd like to close on a personal note. One of the first things I learned first-hand at Microsoft is that software is a team sport: nothing happens in this business unless a lot of good people, each with their own unique talents, work very hard to make it happen. This project (especially coming together as quickly as it did) was no exception. In addition to the thanks owed to my colleagues in Excel, all of us here at MacBU owe a huge "THANK YOU" to our friends at Frontline Systems, who were above-and-beyond professional, responsive, and just plain wonderful to work with.

So: Solver. Free download. Mid-September. Watch this space for details.