Office 15 and Zune: Separated at Birth?

I was looking at Office 15 on a normal desktop computer with a large screen, and two things stand out that weren't obvious on a tablet. One, the Office 15 applications look an awful lot like the Zune PC software. Are they based on the same technologies? Or is this is just a "Metro-like" look and feel thing?

Consider this screenshot to see what I mean:

zune_v_office15

Second, and perhaps more oddly, the Office 15 apps dispense with a shadow when in windowed mode. But they have a weird color-code halo instead, as you can see below. This is only present when the Office application is the foreground applications. I find it distracting.

zune_v_office15b

(For some reason, the OneNote ribbon doesn't appear on the tablet. But it shows up on the desktop PC. Clearly, more testing is in order here.)


Discuss this Article 6

dguillaume
on Mar 15, 2012
It's just a shame the windows 8 explorer doesn't look more like this
dguillaume
on Mar 15, 2012
It's just a shame windows 8 explorer doesn't look like this, right down to the touch button
nim81
on Mar 16, 2012
Obviously early days but I really don't like the look Microsoft are taking with some of their software. That looks really unelegant, especially the capital letters. Yuck.
thundr51
on Mar 16, 2012
It's not terrible and looks fine with the zune/media software (does anybody use zune anymore) but I'm not too fond of this in office. Kinda reminds me of google docs and i'm not a fan of their art styles.
ingenuity
on Mar 16, 2012
I'm surprised it took you this long to realize that all of "metro" was birthed in the Zune canal. Other than the tiles WP7 is a ZuneHD. And all Win8 metro apps look like the Zune app. It's funny considering the Zune product line was so under rated. It's also funny because the Zune app has proven that metro apps have been around since WPF 1.0.
LemonSaucy
on Mar 19, 2012
It's all lovely stuff. I will only see it because I keep a Technet subscription! People can complain one way or another, but Office 97 through Office 2000, Office XP, Office 2003, Office 2007, Office 2010, and this Office 15 all work with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, so choose the version you like and don't worry about the others!

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