A short video which brings up some interesting points in the early development history of Microsoft Office, some might surprise you.
Microsoft Office started as separately sold products (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook) and only gradually did they become an integrated package with shared components, consistent interface and some interconnections.
- The original Microsoft Office (4) bundle was very much a marketing construct of separate apps sold under a single label.
- The development teams for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook not only operated separately, but there was also a little team rivalry.
- Shared components were developed separately then offered to each program team for inclusion.
- Office 95 was the first Office bundle to have a shared component, the File Open/Save/Save As dialog. Made by a tiny team of just six people.
- That File Open dialog shared component was HUGE, bigger than the whole Word winword.exe file (1.3MB)! Aka “The Dialog from Hell”.
- For Office 97 the shared components team was about 25 people compared to the 70-ish folks on each on the separate application teams.
See the whole video on Twitter/X
https://x.com/h0x0d/status/1838242108844757270
Source: Walking Cat @h0x0d
