Hands down, Word is the Office application that has changed the most in this release. Given that it's the most-used application in the suite, that comes as no surprise.

A large portion of the main ribbon in Word is devoted to styles, using preview icons to show the principle characteristics of the style. For instance, the Heading 3 style icon shows a small, plain (that is, not bold) font. These style buttons work in tandem with "what you see is what you get" feature. Select some text (or an entire document) and hover over the Heading 3 style icon, and Word immediately applies the Heading 3 style in a "preview" mode. The text adopts the style characteristics so you can see the effect in your document, but the style isn't applied until you click on the style icon (see Figure 2). If you move away without clicking, the text returns to its original state. It's a great way to do quick, interactive previews.

While Microsoft has made it easier to apply styles, it has done little to make them easier to design or understand. Applying a style from one document to another has been a continual source of user confusion. It remains so in Office 2007.

The preview mode is also available with other icons in the ribbon, such as font and font size, but oddly not for the paragraph-control icons (you can't preview a bulleted list or flush-right alignment, for example). The Font pull-down menu also shows font names in their associated fonts (see Figure 3).

The Insert ribbon has groups for adding Smart Shapes (arrows, connecting lines and so on), pages (cover page, blank page or inserting a page break), tables, illustrations (more on SmartArt in a moment), links, headers and footers, text boxes, Word Art, drop caps, symbols and more. Despite so many options, this and the other ribbons in Office 2007 don't feel cramped.