As I was humbly surfing during the weekend, my partner mentioned that we will be purchasing Office 2007 for our business. Therefore I thought I should pay a visit to the Microsoft website and find out what the software might cost the business later.
After spotting the price – noticing as well it’s cheaper in Malaysia, I thought why not have a look at the Microsoft main landing page. To my surprise, I stumbled upon a new look to the website. I don’t know about you but I never knew they launched a new homepage. Rather discreetly too. And pssstt..the Microsoft rebranded image is continued inside.
You’ve got to be pretty excited or plain curious to know what did the team at Microsoft come up with this time for their renewed online image. Well, I’m going to treat this like a website review but simpler. I don’t want to be long winded over this issue and of course, not have myself being lugged into court by the company.
So this new image give them a modern look. In what we call it today, a Web 2.0 look or feel to it. In my own words, the Web 2.0 look is basically a layout that is cleaner coupled with large buttons you can’t miss to click. This also gives the new Microsoft website a distinctive look compared to other operating system companies. And their website finally supports Mozilla Firefox to boot. Not to mention it is also web standard compliant.
Funnily though this website outlook has only been made on the US version of the Microsoft website. Which brings us to the weaknesses of their new layout.
It may be just me but even with the Web 2.0 look, I personally still feel their new landing page is messy. The only structured layout is the content area which is the left side. Do you sense a feeling of imbalance looking at the website as a whole with the right sidebar?
The feeling I’m experiencing is like the panels are spread everywhere. Like there is no clear structural layout to the right of the website.
But I think the biggest ‘boo-boo’ or weakness with this new Microsoft branding is I have no idea what image is Microsoft portraying or reinventing itself. Scary but true. Sure, they’re in the entertainment and search but the experience is a little broken on the top. The image with the sushi and the search bar is such a bad way to create a button. I totally mistook it as the website search!
The new Microsoft Web 2.0 website also has a non-efficient use of AJAX – or is just not all friendly with Firefox. I’m saying this because if you clicked the sidebar links, it loads a panel above the content – like Lightbox. However, the loading of content is slow and so is the navigation. This experience of wasting users time on a website is like one of the Top 10 website mistakes to be committed.
Yes, the new Microsoft website looks neat and Web 2.0. But bad implementation and not enough user testing (unlike what they did with Office 2007) has to be the biggest flaw weakness here.
What do you think of the new Microsoft website?
[tags]Web design, Microsoft website, Microsoft Web 2.0, new Microsoft website, Website review[/tags]
Consider openoffice.org
I’m using that at this moment however am finding it a little not user-friendly in certain areas. Not to mention the weird bugs that occur as it is constantly a developing open source option.