Office 2013 First Impression: OUCH! MY EYES...

I have been using Word since it ran on DOS. It was my favourite wordprocessor (and I used a few back then) for a very long time. And I've only ever had one small issue with the upgrades, that was, until Office 2007. I just hated it. And the most common shout out the office had was "Where is the option that used to do...".

Now there are people out there who love the ribbon. Fair enough. I'm not saying it was a bad idea. What I'm saying was the fact that it was forced on us and that we couldn't choose not to use it, or even customise it back the way it was without resorting to pretty drastic effort.

Office 2010 was a little better thankfully but not as much as I would have liked.

And now we get Office 2013 and your litterally blinded by the glare when it opens.

All the information and details on the page are lost to the noise being produced by the nothingness.

Apparently this was the most common complaint with the preview, so they decided to add a light grey and dark grey option as alternatives to the white, but the result is inconsitent. Word for example is almost OK with dark grey but Access seems to get worse because while the rest of the page is still glaring white, you get this dark sidebar that just emphasies the issue.

And this was "by design"?

I think the problem is that the current design team want to write for Apple and Android users, and are quite willing to do so at the damnation of their existing user base, or at least their experiences and expectations.

If this has been the same design team for the last 3 versions then Microsoft, please fire your design team. If this has been different design teams each time then please fire the person hiring the design teams.

Here is my big question for the design team responsible. "Under Windows 7, why didn't you use the system colours?" Why then are all the arguments Microsoft had in the past invalid because you think you know better? If you had used system colours and somone wanted a glaring white theme they could have done this by changing their system colours and have all my applications look that way.
Alternatively, if I have a visual impairment such that certain background colours or combinations are easier for me to see by, I can again change system colours and thus improve all my programs, except apparently Office 2013.

And for the everyone who was whining about how battleship grey is so boring (mostly this seems to be Mircosoft people who want something differnt) just change your system colours to something you feel is more exciting and stop complaining.

I guess I'm going to have to add Office 2013 to that list of things not to do or I'll go blind, and maybe give this Open Office thing a go.