Just exactly how fancy is the new Office 2010? With Miscrosoft proclaiming it as the best thing since sliced bread, debuting the new Office Web Apps, the ribbon interface in Outlook and the Office-wide backstage view, we here at Softwareload thought it’d be a good idea to have a closer look at what users can look forward to on its release later this year.

So what are the big changes in the 2010 edition? In this running blog you’ll be able to follow a feature-by-feature breakdown of changes, extras, tweaks, and general usage tips. Feature #1 – The Office ribbon.

The introduction of the new ribbon format in the 2007 edition caused for a healthy amount of controversy; basically, either you loved it or you hated it! What opened up a ‘brave new world’ of document styling and editing for some, left others, used to the structured regiment of the drop-down menu bar, perplexed and up the proverbial without a paddle in the myriad of new pictures and ‘horizontal thinking’.

Microsoft’s response to this in the 2010 release: The best of both worlds. Although perhaps to the disappointment of those hoping the new layout would be completely abolished, Microsoft has opted for letting the user pick and choose which elements should be included in a personlised tabbed ribbon. This means effectively that you can have separate ribbons according to your preferences, e.g. work and home ribbons, as well as most used functions as ribbon tabs in Word or Excel, saving having to constantly use shortcuts or repeatedly clicking through the drop down menu per action. The customised ribbon allows you to put as much, or as little as you want at your disposal.

Visit Microsoft direct for a Beta version of the office suite, and make sure you look out for our next blog, looking at Office 2010’s Backstage View.