


For example, Word's confusing Document Elements tab is gone most of what was there can now be found in the more logically-named Insert tab. Not only has the Ribbon been moved but it's been reorganized, which is all to the good. Click the arrow to make the Ribbon come back. The Ribbon goes away and the arrow turns to face downwards. Not everyone is a Ribbon fan, though, and those who wish it were gone, or just want to give themselves a little more screen real estate, can hide it by clicking a small up arrow at the Ribbon's far right.

It's a clever way to bridge the worlds of Office and Mac OS X. The usual Mac menu that sits atop Mac applications is hidden as well, although you can reveal it by moving your cursor to the top of the screen. The Ribbon is far more prominent and now sits close to the top of the screen rather than (as before) beneath a long row of icons for doing things such as opening and closing files, printing and so on. That's largely in part because the Ribbon has been redone, and now looks and works as it does in the Windows version of Office. It's less cluttered, cleaner and sleeker-looking, more logically organized, more colorful and simpler to use. The moment you run any Office application in the preview, you know you've left the aging Office 2011 behind. I found all the applications to be stable, although one time I did have a problem saving a file - Word froze and I had to use a Force Quit to close it. Keep in mind, though, that this is a preview, and so you should be careful about using it for important work.
