Microsoft unveiled its new user interface for Office 12 earlier this week, and they seem to have departed radically from past releases:

…we set about rethinking the UI from the user�s perspective, which is �results-oriented,� rather than from the developer�s perspective, which tends to be �feature-oriented� or �command-oriented�… instead of having to learn how to make something shadowed, or what the aspect ratio is or the percent gray, you just say, “Oh, I like that one,” and you pick it, you click it and get it in your document. It�s more visual.

Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access are due to get the face lift, but Outlook (the one Office application that I use constantly, and which pisses me off the most), will remain largely the same, according to the press release.

(Although oddly enough, xBetas has a couple of screen shots of a similarly engineered Outlook.)

My initial reaction is very wait-and-see… True, it looks like an aqua rip-off, but considering I use the suite every day on my work PC, anything new will peak my interest.