New version of OneNote available!

[Oliver Sturm]

.... would be an announcement I'd like to hear! Any ideas when that may
happen? Do we have to wait for Office 12, some time in 2006 or later? I
don't think there are many other apps in the office suite that have so
much unrealised functional potential, so I really hope there'll be an
update earlier than that!


Oliver Sturm

 

[Chris H.]

Microsoft hasn't even announced plans for another version, Oliver. Until
such time as they do that, we don't know anything. I believe you can tell
from reading this newsgroup, there is a lot of interest, but when a move
will be made they haven't said.
--
Chris H.
Microsoft Windows MVP/Tablet PC
Tablet Creations - http://nicecreations.us/
Associate Expert
Expert Zone -

 

[Oliver Sturm]

Microsoft hasn't even announced plans for another version, Oliver. Until
such time as they do that, we don't know anything. I believe you can tell
from reading this newsgroup, there is a lot of interest, but when a move
will be made they haven't said.

That's something I don't like about Microsoft, I must admit. They've
given us a great program here and I'm certainly hopeful they'll continue
in the same direction. They've also extended functionality more than
just a little bit with SP1, but that's how long ago? I don't believe
customers would have to live so long on so little information if this
was a product in the hands of any other, probably smaller, software shop.

Thanks, Chris.



Oliver Sturm

 

[Chris H.]

Oh, we all would like it right now, Oliver. The thing is normal software
cycles are what, a year or more apart? Some are on an 18-month cycle. What
is the current Office version? It is 2003, and there have been service
packs, yes, but nothing else.

I think we would very luck with OneNote and all the improvements the team
chucked into SP1 for it. Normally service packs only fix broken things, not
add no functionality.
--
Chris H.
Microsoft Windows MVP/Tablet PC
Tablet Creations - http://nicecreations.us/
Associate Expert
Expert Zone -

 

[Oliver Sturm]

Oh, we all would like it right now, Oliver. The thing is normal software
cycles are what, a year or more apart? Some are on an 18-month cycle. What
is the current Office version? It is 2003, and there have been service
packs, yes, but nothing else.

I agree on all of this. But MS positions OneNote more like a standalone
application these days, what with the Tablet PC and the recent price
decreases. Looking at it that way, it's just a medium-size tool... there
are many software applications out there which fall in the category of
medium sized tools and many of these are developed differently: instead
of jumping from one huge major release to the next over the course of
three years or more, they are developed continually, with frequent
updates every few months or so. That's certainly much more satisfying to
the users, who can clearly observe the direction the application is
going and who can see that their feedback is not only heard but also
transformed into new or evolving features.

I think we would very luck with OneNote and all the improvements the
team chucked into SP1 for it. Normally service packs only fix broken
things, not add no functionality.

Well, "normal" may refer to MS software here, that's right. Just my point.

Neither of us is going to change anything about the way MS works on this
kind of software. I just find it sad that while they have come a long
way when it comes to listening to their users, they still don't properly
use all that information they gather. I'm not sure what's less
satisfying as a user: Not having a way to directly talk to a software
vendor, or to get the impression that much feedback is lost or at least
deferred to some release two years from now (which is about the same
thing to me).



Oliver Sturm

 

[Chris H.]

I agree on your points, Oliver. However, you'll note that the OneNote team
is definitely active in this newsgroup, and Chris Pratley even has a blog up
which is quite interesting and information. He (and the rest of the team)
do read this newsgroup, and are among the most open teams at Microsoft.
--
Chris H.
Microsoft Windows MVP/Tablet PC
Tablet Creations - http://nicecreations.us/
Associate Expert
Expert Zone -

 

[Oliver Sturm]

I agree on your points, Oliver. However, you'll note that the OneNote team
is definitely active in this newsgroup, and Chris Pratley even has a blog up
which is quite interesting and information. He (and the rest of the team)
do read this newsgroup, and are among the most open teams at Microsoft.

I know Chris Pratley's blog, I hope he'll keep updating it a bit more
frequently now he's off to a good start once again

Kudos to the team for the work they do on OneNote. Now I'd really
appreciate it if they could step up the release cycle a bit, or at least
talk to us users about their reasons why they don't and the plans they
have instead. Why not follow up to this thread?



Oliver Sturm

 

[Chris H.]

Drat! information = informational .

I agree on your points, Oliver. However, you'll note that the OneNote team
is definitely active in this newsgroup, and Chris Pratley even has a blog
up which is quite interesting and information. He (and the rest of the
team) do read this newsgroup, and are among the most open teams at
Microsoft.
--
Chris H.
Microsoft Windows MVP/Tablet PC
Tablet Creations - http://nicecreations.us/
Associate Expert
Expert Zone -

 

[Chris H.]

Since he became a new father a little while back, he's had limited time.

--
Chris H.
Microsoft Windows MVP/Tablet PC
Tablet Creations - http://nicecreations.us/
Associate Expert
Expert Zone -

 

[Chris Pratley (MS)]

We read the newsgroups, but we also have jobs and families so we aren't going
to jump on every thread immediately!

I know it is frustrating that we aren't pumping out new versions evry 6mos
(it is frustrating to us too). But there are some reasons for that:
1. we use a lot of shared code with Office, since we are part of the system.
There's a limit on how much we can do without revving the shared code.
2. We have a big focus on quality - quality not just for the common cases,
but every odd thing somone might do has to work and not cause instability, or
lose your data. Developing robust software takes time. I'll go head to head
with any competitor on quality (not trying to be arrogant, just calling out
our focus!)
3. the kind of features you can spit out every few months are usually small
and not invasive to the code base. Big deep features require more surgery to
the code, and take longer. SP1 was a lot of "easy" stuff (or rather, not too
invasive). The next rel is going to have more architecture updates which
enable more whizzy features.

Chris

 

[John Waller]

The next rel is going to have more architecture updates which

enable more whizzy features.

I'm looking forward to the next release of OneNote even more than Longhorn
or Office

 

[Oliver Sturm]

We read the newsgroups, but we also have jobs and families so we aren't going
to jump on every thread immediately!

No problem

1. we use a lot of shared code with Office, since we are part of the system.
There's a limit on how much we can do without revving the shared code.

So that's to say the next ON version is going to be the one coming with
Office 12?

3. the kind of features you can spit out every few months are usually small
and not invasive to the code base. Big deep features require more surgery to
the code, and take longer. SP1 was a lot of "easy" stuff (or rather, not too
invasive). The next rel is going to have more architecture updates which
enable more whizzy features.

My personal opinion would be that the kind of features that isn't
invasive to the code base may be just as worthy to be released as the
large architecture update type. Anything, I'd say, if it reduces the
update cycle to under a year (or so).

I also think that MS would be much better off if they'd just separate
all those so-called "Office components". Nothing bad in some common
central components basis, but with people criticising every new Office
release for the lack of ground breaking features in Word, those apps
that are really innovative (like OneNote, or InfoPath) would do much
better if they weren't so tightly integrated in the Office plan and
release cycle.

Thanks for commenting on this, Chris.


Oliver Sturm

 

[Chris_Pratley \(MS\)]

We already did a 1 year release that was limited to features that did not
require architecture changes - that was Sp1. It's hard to do that again
since many of the remaining top requests require an architecture change to
do properly or at all.

The same people have to work on architecture who work on features - if we do
all features then we don't do architecture. That's the way it goes. Houses
need foundations.

The office shared code is already separated - that's why we were able to
ship Sp1 - the office shared code used there is still version 11.

We get a lot of value from using the Office shared code (toolbars, dialogs,
task pane, some file I/O code, etc etc.). There are new capabilities that
come from that new code that we need since it frees our small team to do
features in onenote instead.

Cheers,
Chris (MS)