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Show Office 2007 Who's the Boss
jcatcw writes "Microsoft knows how you like your Office Suite. You like Ribbons ... they're a given, right? Well, if not, Computerworld reviews some third-party packages that allow you to customize the software's interface. Classic Menu gives you an Office-2003-like set of menus. It'll help you navigate old menu structures to find favorite commands, but don't expect to use all the familiar keyboard shortcuts. ToolbarToggle lets you customize the menus. However, Classic Menu has two advantages over ToolbarToggle: It's available for PowerPoint today, and it includes Office 2007 commands on its menus, a modification you can't make to ToolbarToggle menus. RibbonCustomizer works within the Ribbon's own constraints to let you change the display of icons and commands on existing tabs or any new ones you create."
in soviet russia, the joke wants you back
Seriously, why do people fear change so much? The new Office design is much better than any previous version, in my opinion. No more hunting around in nested menus trying to find features - everything is right there in plain sight. Sure, there's a learning curve, but is it really so steep?
.*x format, which has tripped my fiancee up more than once in trying to print papers at school after typing them at home), but the design shouldn't be one of them.
I think there are valid complaints about Office 2007 (namely, the new
Although I keep defaulting back to MS Office - Open Office just isn't quite enough and isn't quite interchangable enough with people using Office - I still hate the the damned thing. It's like software designed by Terry Gilliam.
I hate the way it formats stuff whether I want it or not. I hate that it automatically changes URLs and e-mail addresses into links, even though I'm creating print documents. I REALLY hate that copied text from elsewhere is pasted in with whatever format it had elsewhere, not with the format of the text on the page that I'm editing.
And I hate that it is invariably difficult or impossible to turn this crap off.
I sincerely fear every new release of MS Office specifically because I need to beat it into submission to make it behave as if I'm in charge.
I don't even know what a "ribbon" is, but I'm sure that I'll hate that too.
Three Squirrels
Funny how considering that MS have some of the most widely used software in the world, they have never (as far as i'm aware) ever offerd software that allows user customisation. IE7 is getting there but in terms of windows and office, only 3rd party apps have allowed you to give the software the look and feel that YOU, the customer wants. Wether this is because they don't want the hassle of dealing with stupid customers or they are just plain lazy and more concerned with comercial interests, I don't know.
At the risk of being modded... up? Supporting Open Office as opposed to Microsoft Office is not exactly controversial on Slashdot.
...by not buying it or using it, and downloading Open Office instead!
Seriously, if you use Microsoft applications, you are not the boss.
I for one find your public support of Open Office in the face of slashdot's well-known anti-Open Office bias inspiring. You're not just putting your life on the line by boldly supporting software with a great many zealous supporters, but your karma too. You, sir, are an American Hero. A hero sir. Your example of courage will outlive us all.
As the title says -- news for nerds? Or is it? Or, are we talking about different KINDS of nerds? If so, I wasn't aware they came in different flavors...
I'm pretty much cool with having the ribbons set as they are. There a a number of reasons:
Firstly, I seemed to spend ages pulling the whole lot apart and making it just the way I wanted it. Then I'd change it. Then I'd change it again. By the time I'd got it right, I'd made it so different from the standard menus that if I used another PC, I couldn't remember where the heck I'd put anything.
Secondly, this also goes for supporting users. How many times have you told people exactly where to find something in an OS, only to find they've moved it/deleted it/ lost it? Happens all the time with Office. People regularly seem to lose whole toolbars, or end up with a little grey stub.
Thirdly, it's contextual. In older versions, none of the command were contextual at all. The rest of the OS is - right click, drag, etc. but toolbars weren't. Those years of sorting out the new ribbon seem to have pretty much got the whole lot in just the right place. For instance, I absolutely hate PowerPoint, but in 2007 putting a new presentation together was a breeze. It looked pretty good too.
Just my twopenneth. I know a lot of people out there hate the idea of being told where their icons and menus are going, but to be honest, I just don't have a problem with it at all. It's all there, it all makes sense and it's progress as far as I'm concerned.
Personally, I'd just like an Office suite that does simple basic things without any fuss. Currently I use AbiWord for word processing as it does everything I need easily and with no fuss. Unfortunately, if I want to do anything like create a spreadsheet or a presentation, I have to wait ages for OpenOffice to load and then trawl the menus for the command I want (before I switched to Abi, after every piece of work I wrote, I'd spend a couple of minutes trying to remember how to add page numbers...). Any suggestions?
Ubuntu Music Project: OSS for music tech geeks
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Friend, have you lost sleep worrying about whether you'll fail adapt to the stupendous User Interface innovations in the latest Monkeysoft Office?
How many times have you found yourself saying, "I could understand this global warming analysis model better if only I could see it on a Monkeysoft Powerpoint slide with those animated bullets that enter from the left or right of the slide"?
How many times have you found yourself thinking, "I don't even know what an OS is, I only need Monkeysoft Windows to run Monkeysoft Office, otherwise I could be using A Bantu or OS Ecstacy or whatever that piercing-faced kid in IS&T is using these days"?
How many times have you found yourself skipping a few StarCups coffees every week for a few months so you could buy yourself the latest version of Monkeysoft Office?
How many times have you found yourself thinking, "I don't get upset about viruses, they are an inevitable part of life even if they cost billions and are propagated by dimwits using Monkeysoft Office, soytenly not me"?
Don't worry, there's help. Join Slashdot's Monkeysoft Anonymous Forum, where people just like you are helping one another learn to live without Monkeysoft, one precious day at a time.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
office 2007 it's a pretty cool software and the new interface is really good too Microsoft has really improved the ease of use with the ribbon toolbar, IMHO not like vista where they have ruined it, so why return back? i know that more than half of office's user are dumb but sooner or later they will have to learn the new interface otherwise they can simply use paper & pencil
Can there be a "-1, Asinine" moderation?
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Fuck what the software design looks like. The actual function is far more important. One part of that function is consistency across versions.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Microsoft has setup interactive guides on their site that show you where commands are in 2007. You can find them half way down this page. The guides should help you get the ball rolling.
you mean i can have all the functionality of office 2003 in office 2007? finally i can justify the upgrade.
I was gunna say that.. but I think only about you, me, and 1% of the Slashdot population know what the fuck you're talking about.
All the LOL-age have no idea.
Don't mention the A-team.
How we know is more important than what we know.
FFS. No-one needs to be 're-trained' to use an Office suite, whether it's Word 2007, Openoffice, or any other. It's an office suite! You click on the page-like thing and type words. All the major, often-used icons look exactly the same (or at least have the same basic shape and are recognisable) in every office suite I can think of.
Even when you get beyond the icons you still don't need any retraining unless you're a compete idiot. You want to view the ruler? Openoffice: press the view menu, click 'ruler'. Office 2007: press the 'view' tab, click 'ruler'. It's not rocket science.
Anyone advanced enough to be actually seriously affected by the changes is either intelligent enough to be able to learn any differences (in OOo or in O2007) in 30 seconds flat after flicking through the menus / tabs respectively; or else has just memorised all the keyboard shortcuts anyway -- which all work as they've always done in Office 2007, and (though I haven't tried it) I'd be astonished if they didn't in OopenOffice.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Yeah you show them who is the boss by using a second rate ofice sweet
You bet. As a Word user since 1986, who knows the program pretty well, I must agree that the ribbon is a jumbled mess with important stuff deeply hidden. It was a big disappointment. It took me quite a while to find even the undo command. Inserting a footnote now requires a whole series of mouse clicks as far as I can tell. Go try something relatively obscure like turning on line numbering in a document and changing the style of the line numbers. It took me 10 minutes to figure out how to get to that style - it used to be in the default style drop-down. But I still choose to use Office 2007 despite all these frustrations - maybe it's loyalty, maybe it's more interesting. Damned, though, if I can see any really new major features that make it worthwhile. On the other hand, when this stuff gets rolled out to secretaries who have been using Word for years, there will be hell to pay. People get pretty set in their ways.
This is (another) major opportunity for competitors to make inroads. Jeez, OpenOffice is (a lot) less of a leap from Word 2003 than this stuff.
You'll note that he said "at the risk of being modded". Clearly he's afraid of being modded *up*. He's not being heroic, he's being modest, trying to keep his posts down where nobody will make a big deal about them.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Katherine Helmond said awhile back that on the set of "Who's The Boss" they used to put stickers on everything that read, "Tony-Proof" because he was such a klutz.
For most people, going from Office 2003 to OpenOffice is worse than going from Office 2003 to Office 2007. OpenOffice looks just like (an uglier version of) Office but all of the menus and dialogs are just different enough that you waste a lot of time expecting things to behave like they do in Office even though they don't. Yuck.
Although interesting, I don't see how letting your office a television sitcom starring Tony Danza and Judith Light airing for eight seasons on ABC from 1984 to 1992 is useful to anyone.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
BTW, all the old keyboard shortcuts still work exactly as before (including the alt+x+y accelerators)
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
I must admit that I get pretty cranky when software UI gets changed for little more than eye candy reasons and I get even more cranky when the UI is trying to guess what I want and gets it wrong. To most people, myself included, software is a tool. I'm the master, not the tool. Many UI "innovations" (particularly context sensitive stuff like clippy and ribbons) make for an annoying experience rather than an easy flow.
Rather than change the main menu to be context sensitive, it would likely be far better to keep the main menu structure solid so you always have consistency, then add the context sensitive stuff to right-click or something.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
...so we may continhe to complain about it incessantly.
All this thread is is one giant continual flame war. You have people on one side arguing that the new UI is better than before, and offering "reasons" why. You have people who argue that the old UI worked better before. Thing is, nobody is going to actually change anybodies mind. Those who like the old UI will find reasons why it is better, and those who like the new UI will find reasons why it is better. I know Slashdot is about the discussion, but this is nothing more than a blatant attempt set off a flame war. People like me read Slashdot because we look for insightful and interesting opinions and the occasional obscure but highly relevant fact on current tech and related topics. Mod me down, I don't care, I have Karma to burn. Doesn't make the thread suddenly more intelligent or important or insightful or anything other than garbage.
I just write everything as plain HTML.
While the "relearning" comment is a bit of hyperbole it is mostly correct.
... fucking field codes, all a huge investment in learning how to do correctly. They are all still there, somewhere somewhere in the ribbon interface.
I have nearly 15 years invested in the old interface. I read the "Working With Word 4 for Mac" book cover to cover when I got my first Mac in '94. I now use Word 2003. I KNOW the Word interface, and I am damn good at it.
And then MSFT decides to take all that knowledge and throw it out the window for me. Yeah, I can do the same stuff, but now I have to figure out how to do the same stuff. Sections, Styles, bookmarks, merged documents, field codes
If you hit the spacebar 20-30 times to get a line indented properly (which is admittedly most people) the ribbon is great for you. If you know how to use a tab-stop, it is a fucking mess.
Fine, you want the ribbon make it the default. But leave me the ability to work efficiently like I used to. Removing my ability to see the menubar (even it was a RegEdit) is just plain rude. This is just as bad a when we had to switch from WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS to Word[Im]perfect for Windows.
The above also pertains to Excel, et al. But Word is where I spend me time.
Now as for Word changing every version, mostly is stays the same, but the one place it does change EVERY TIME is the menu mnemonics. Every version of Word has a different key mnemonic (that character that is underlined in the menu). And sometimes MSFT likes to change around the CNTRL-? codes too. For those of use that like to keep our hands on the keyboard (efficient [although not always accurate] typists) running to the mouse is a pain.
No, the real boss is Matthew Brock on News Radio when he beat up Bill (RIP). He could mate with whoever he wanted.
It must also be said: The more windows is broken, the more chairs are thrown.
Say hello to my little sig.
Why is Slashdot so rabidly, brainlessly inclined to bash Microsoft? Yes, MS came up with a design which differs from the old one. So what? Isn't change sometimes good?
Also, yes, there are (as the lead poster points out) ways to customize the Office 2007 user interface. So... who build the framework allowing that interface to be customized? OMG... it's the same company being bashed- Microsoft! OMG... MS is allowing choice and customization!!! How horrible!!!
Really, Slashdot needs to get a grip, and ditch the "anti-MS at any cost" frame of thought. MS is, for the most part, single handedly responsible for the tech boom which has put a computer in almost every household, and brought IT to every modernized workplace. That would have never happened had MS not made a single-solution product for the desktop, the server, and network management.
I've never been a fan of the viewpoint that Linux competes with Windows. Linux does what it's good at, and Windows does what it's good at. Linux is good if something needs to be heavily customized at the OS level, but in reality... that's a tiny little niche requirement. If you are looking for the most well-rounded OS out there, Windows wins hands down.
So get a nice slice of cheese to go with your Slashdot whine, chill out, and always remember that what OS you use does not define you as a person (no matter how much one might pray it is so).
yes!
after i spent $270 on upgrading office 2003 pro to office 2007 pro (i have a small dick, you know, i NEED the pro version to feel better about myself) i can finally make office 2007 feel like office 2003 again
I could burn my money as well...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Did Microsoft include the paper clip this time? Or the puppy? Or how about the mad scientist guy? They sure were helpful. =P
Will these third-party packages bring back these lovable characters from my childhood?!
OpenOffice is replacing the menu bar with a riboon. A lot of people have complained about it, but the most recent cvs build doesn't give you the option of using a menu. A fork may be required :/
So it has come down to eye and mouse candy?
Does anyone ever use more than 5% of all the features in the Office Suite?
Oh, and if you've been using Word since 1986, you should know by now that Undo is Ctrl-Z, just like it is in every other Windows, Linux, and Mac application (s/Ctrl/Command/). You shouldn't ever have to use a mouse to undo or redo something.
Next! Inserting a footnote now requires a whole series of mouse clicks as far as I can tell. Press Alt+S, F, and start typing your footnote. It's two mouse extremely obvious clicks (References, Insert Footnote) if you really need to go to your mouse to do it.
Next! Go try something relatively obscure like turning on line numbering in a document and changing the style of the line numbers. It's a lot easier to do line numbering in 2007 than it is in 2003. In 2003, you had to go digging into the File menu -> Page Setup -> Layout tab -> click Line Numbers -> and click the Add Line Numbering checkbox. In Word 2007, you click the Page Layout tab, click Line Numbers, and choose from the drop-down list that appears how you want the line numbers to work. Easy peasy.
As for changing the style of line numbers, it's basically the same in Word 2003 and 2007: Set it up using the style palette. In both versions, by default, the "Line Number" style won't be shown in the palette until you are using line numbers. If you're planning on changing styles, you really ought to know how to use the style palette.
Next! Damned, though, if I can see any really new major features that make it worthwhile. Here's a partial list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_200
One of the less obvious new features that's actually a really huge improvement, is the "Building Blocks" system. You can create and re-use "things"; for example, you can create a specific format, layout, and text content for a presentation of your company's mission statement, or maybe it's just a set of paragraphs you use over and over between a lot of documents. You can get a sense of how this works by going to the Insert menu and playing around with the Text Box and Quick Parts features.
I write user interface design documents as part of my professional work, and this one feature alone has saved me hours of time, and my documents look better to boot. Word 2007 has already paid for itself several times over.
Insert-Footer-Blank is NOT a "footnote". It is a footer.
As for line numbers - It's still easy to insert line numbers. However, What I WROTE was try changing the STYLE (e.g., font) of the line numbers - try it, it ain't that easy.
Alt-E-U doesn't work reliably either. Yes, there are new icons for undo and redo next to the Office button, if you notice them and realize what they are. There are an AWFUL lot of icons up there.
*office, *suite
Moron.
Yes I use Control-Z... But Ctl-Z doesn't tell you what you are about to undo. The little icons next to the Office button do that, but you have to recognize what they are. There are a mass of icons up there. It just wasn't that obvious to me. But you are right, they are there.
Insert footnote is there, as you say, but it is easy to miss, being on the left and below "Insert Endnote." For some reason, the infrequently used "endnote" option ended up getting elevated above the footnote option.
Alt-S-F is a new one on me. Used to be Alt-I-N, which doesn't work anymore. A lot of the old key sequences no longer work.
The Line Number style did NOT show up in the Palette after I added line numbers to the document. I had to change the options to show "All styles" first. Then it at least shows up in the drop-down list off the secondary pop-open menu - but still not on the Style Palette. But after some poking around I was able to change the font.
The Building Blocks feature looks useful. I will try it.
As I said, I am probably sticking with Office 2007, but I don't think these are all BS issues.
I used to use Eudora for about eight years with Pop. Once our office moved to an Imap account, well, Eudora just couldn't handle it very well. I had stayed away from Outlook up until then but for some stupid reason, decided to install Outlook 2007. At first, I was amazed by the ribbon interface. I thought it look pretty cool and was thought out well. But a pretty interface isn't the whole story behind usability. After clicking a message, Outlook would take up to eight seconds to display( on a dual core processor with 2 GB or RAM). Deleting a message took a couple seconds. I can't work like that. I like efficient software. I'm not much of an open source guy but I installed Thunderbird. Holy smokes. I can't believe what I've been missing all these years. Thunderbird was able to handle the same Imap account with ease. I was, and still am, astounded by its performance. It does its job well! Hats off.
References->Insert Footnote (the big icon in the second group)?
As for line numbers - It's still easy to insert line numbers. However, What I WROTE was try changing the STYLE (e.g., font) of the line numbers - try it, it ain't that easy.I didn't even know line numbering was possible -- I've never used that before, nor felt a need for that feature. So, first I had to guess how I could enable them, and my first guess -- the Page Layout tab -- was fine.
Then I saw what you meant: there's no easy way to work on those numbers. But due to my knowledge of styles, I guessed there would be a style named "Line Number" -- and, again, I guessed it right. Maybe I was just lucky to find it in a few seconds; I guess an unexperienced user would never really find it -- but then again, I don't expect an unexperienced user (the kind that doesn't understand indenting, tabulations, margins, styles, etc.) to use automatic line numbers either.
But the way you say it, it seems on older versions it was easier. How would you change the style of line numbers on earlier versions?
Alt-E-U doesn't work reliably either.YMMV, naturally, but I have no idea what you are talking about... it seems to me it works fine. But I never use that shortcut, nor do I know anyone who uses it when there's Ctrl-Z, so I can't really say.
Yes, there are new icons for undo and redo next to the Office button, if you notice them and realize what they are. There are an AWFUL lot of icons up there.Huh? There's just three icons there by default: save, undo and redo/repeat. Any other icon has been placed by you (or by somebody else).
Offering to buy and outright buying are two different things. I offered to buy Adobe a minute ago. No one took it seriously except the voice that told me to.
Wow! Just wow.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
As a developer I think change is a good thing. Adaptation one of the things that distinguishes humans from the rest of the animal kingdom; it's the basis of human progress. The thing I have a problem with is that a lot of UI redesign is being made increasingly mouse-centric. This is great for Mom and Dad, so they can fumble their way through an application that will forever be a mystery to them, but for me it's an aggravation so heinous, I'd rather do everything from command line. After a half-hour of exploring the menu items, the mouse only slows me down. When you redesign your software, throwing out the hotkeys and keyboard shortcuts, you've lost me.
Ask me about my sig!
So, let me get this straight, people don't like the new MS Office because stuff has changed.
Then don't change stuff so quickly. Don't update something once every few years, add little bits and pieces here and there, once every few months. When it comes to a major update, agree on the general style and then the designers of the older system work towards the look of the new one.
Use the updates to 'evolve' the new version by collecting feedback. Put as much eye candy on as you want, but concentrate on the product your customer wants.
Make sure the updates don't conflict with new hardware, or make demands that old hardware can't cope with, at least until the new release.
Make the updates free, and easy to install, but not essesntial, to anyone using the program. Many OSS systems work this way, and it's one of their main "selling" points. I don't use any MS software, but I would pay up if they were significantly better.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
With the ODF puggin you can also show microsoft who's boss. Especially when used with earlier versions of MS-Office.
That sounds wonderful for life-long desk jockeys who make a regular practice of plopping big turds of boilerplate into any document they come near. From the point of view of productive work, though, it sounds like a nightmare for the people who then have to deal with the end document.
Calm down... have some dip
Make SELinux enforcing again!
Yes, but if you had done *all* I told you to do, Adobe would be yours.
emt 377 emt 4
So should the "insert row" function be in the "insert" menu or the "table" menu?
Menus, in my opinion, never worked because inevitably the interface will be changed and a new function will be added. When the new function is added, a choice must be made on which menu it should appear and if a new menu is necessary. Eventually you end up with too many functions that were tacked on and a huge tree of functions burried in menus. That's what happened to office and now I can hardly find anything because the menus contain too many items are are unorganized.
I mean, even take practical restaurant menus: you sit at a table, the waiter hands you a menu and now you sit there staring at the thing for 5 to 10 minutes. Who in their right minds thought that this menu would ever be efficient unless the user studied and memorized the stupid thing. It's like reading a book except in the restuarant, at least you have the flavors and crapiness/goodness of the food to help remind you of what was good and what wasn't. In working with software there's no such experience. Click the button, it didn't do what I want, ctrl+z and the option never even had a shot at my long term memory unless it did something that undo wouldn't fix.
Now I haven't use the ribbon myself, but as I understand, Microsoft hired some big time usability experts and spent an awful lot of time trying to make the new Office 2007 interface usable. Note that usability encompasses many attributes of an interface, and learning curve and consistency (the topics that agrivate people the most) are just a few of the many things that need to be accounted for. The problem Microsoft has, and almost any software, hardware, gadget thingy today has is improving the interface without sacrificing consistency. The issue is, some time in the past, someone made a mistake in designing the interface, but because it was there in the previous version, if you take it away or change it in the next version, people immediately complain even though it is obviously a bad way to do it. Is the user correct? Absolutely, they learned how to do something and now that knowledge is lost and they have to relearn it. Is the vendor or designer correct? Absolutely, the method of doing that operation was stupid and required too much training or effort by the user to perform. But give it up, it was wrong to start, and it's going to take some pain to fix.
Now you say "give me my old interface." But I say to you, "tough luck, learn it over again." Chances are, at least with this version, Microsoft put a whole lot of effort into fixing it and getting it right. Had they left in the old interface, that would accomplish nothing. People would laugh at the ribbon and continue using the "old way" for the sake of avoiding learning something new when they could take the time to learn the new way, find out it is actually much more efficient than the old way, and embrace the change because it is actually helping them.
Why do I say this without even having tried the interface? I'm no MS shill, but I admit that their Office suite is unfortunately the standard among office suites because there is no competitor with a good enough feature set. I've tried open office, but often I run into some feature that was available in microsoft (even an older version) but still isn't in open office. Additionally, I've looked at this screenshot tour of Office 2007's keyboard shortcuts. The basic idea is now every function in Office 2007 can be accessed via keyboard. Furthermore, the interface even labels each function with a key or combination of keys to press in order to execute that function without the mouse. I would think Slashdot of all places would actually love this change; it's like the power of VI (in the sense that
OOo looks much better, IMHO. It actually uses grey well, with plenty of colourful icons so that it doesn't look bleak and boxy.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
What moron modded the parent offtopic?
The article's about the Office 2007 user interface. The parent is about the Office 2007 user interface. Short of talking about the linked articles themselves, that's about as on-topic as it can get.
Those moderators who moderate replies down simply because they disagree with the reply (or think it's stupid or something) are doing everyone in the community a huge disservice. That's true even if the reply in question is demonstrably incorrect. Why, you ask? Simple: it's far more educational for someone's misconception to be visible to others so that the misconception can be corrected via another reply. If the misconception is invisible due to being moderated down then few will see it and thus few will correct it. And thus few will learn anything.
Similarly, if someone is merely voicing an on-topic opinion, as the parent is, then moderating it down simply because you disagree with it is a disservice because the exchange of opinions is one of the primary ways people learn, and by moderating a reply down that way you interfere with that exchange by making the opinion itself less visible. And again, few will learn anything.
To the moderator who modded the parent offtopic: do us a favor and stick with the moderating rules. Your "creativity" here isn't appreciated.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
You really, really shouldn't tell shortcut keys. As a lot of people have said, they have changed. And worse than that, they are extremely inconsistent even with Microsoft applications. One of the most used (by me) is find (usually ctrl-f - but not always) and find-next (f2/ctrl-g/...).. aspx (at the end).
See http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms971323
Well, the situation is can be worse in Linux, but it is definitely no excuse - Linux applications are not done by one company.
I used to try to sell people on GNU/Linux, Openoffice, Abiword, et al, but now I just wait. Every release by Microsoft is worse than the last. More annoying, more confusing, less compatible, and so on. People are starting to switch not necessarily because the alternatives like OSS or OS X are better, but because Microsoft is worse. MS is doing the evangelizing for us.
I had to write 170 pages of notes for an online course and using LaTeX (which I had only been dabbling with for a month or so) was much easier than Word would ever have been. I wrote the whole thing as an outline, and I can only imagine how crazy 170 pages of nested numbered lists would have driven me in MS Word or Openoffice. But \begin{enumerate}...\item{stuff}...\item{stuff}... \end{enumerate} is easy to keep track of visually, especially if you properly indent.
But if you're one of those people whose ground premise is "I will not learn a markup language" then continue enjoying the "help" that the GUI word processors give you. Some things are easier with a word processor (tables, for example) but for any complex or long document I'd prefer to use LaTeX.
Except for Emacs, where the default for undo is Ctrl+Underscore (C-_) or control-shift-dash on most keyboards.
It's u in vi. Also in almost any terminal based app, Ctrl-Z is suspend, not undo.
Why not fork?
It's a personal preference. I don't do any high-level LaTeX but I prefer the text-only approach over the GUI. I have templates I can copy/paste, and I prefer that over configuring the document via menus and pointy-clicky stuff. I tend to forget where stuff is in a menu, but a text file of "put this in the header when you want block paragraphs separated by one line" or "put this in when you want a drop cap" is fairly idiot-proof. I don't KNOW LaTeX, but I can find solutions to copy/paste with modifications from comp.text.tex or wherever. Plain text rocks for formatting. Menus have to be remembered. Text can be mindlessly copied over and over with ctrl-c ctrl-v.
Maybe you should try to look at the tab groups first and decide which one is right for you.
Home
Insert
Page Layout
References
Mailings
Review
View
I'll grant you here a fruitless search in the "Insert" tab.
"Hmm, References..."
Table of Contents
Footnotes
Citations & Bibliography
Captions
Index
Table of Authorities
The "insert footnote" button is the main button in the "footnotes" group and it's much larger than "Insert endnote". So I guess I still don't know what you're complaining about.
I will grant you that the Quick Access Bar (icons in the title area of Word) can be hard to notice at first.
Strangely, Notepad is still my favorite editor. I've tried Edxor, Notetab, and I don't know how many other text editors, but when I'm on Windows that's the main one I use. The only one I've found on Linux that starts up (almost) as quickly is Leafpad. The only killer text-editor function I really lust after is column-selection, and I've only found that in a couple of (non-free) editors anyway. If someone could point me to a Linux editor with column selection I'd be thankful.
NEdit should be just perfect.
It does support column selection (hold down control and select with the mouse). It is very fast and nice for basic text-editing, and it contains a large set of syntax-coloring modes, for programming / HTML editing.
Link: http://www.nedit.org/
So now you need third-party tools to get what was included in the previous version? Seriously, if that isn't a reason not to upgrade, I don't know what is. Well, apart from being the last person on earth running WinWord 2.0 that is :) If Word 2003 or Word XP works for you, keep it. Nobody forces you to upgrade (and companies who force the upgrade through should not be surprised that people need to be "upgraded" as well to work with those new products - or suffer some serious productivity loss. That's the price you pay for those new "features").
Note that I didn't mention anything about how well ribbons work, the new document formats (btw. there is a plugin for open document format that works in both Word 2007 and 2003/XP), Microsoft's inability to listen to their customers or how bugfree their software is on release day... but that isn't what this article is about anyway, right?
(*goes back under his rock*)
have not really used the new versions of the s/w with ribbons, but from images, it seems to take up much real estate of the screen. i can't stand anything beyond the thickness of the 2 toolbars - the standard file menu toolbar and one more (using small icons, no text, or with text beside it).
The second problem is that keyboard shortcuts don't work. Well, they kinda do (same way Ribbon always handled Office2003 shortcuts), but the menus won't open. If you're looking on the screen rather than at the keyboard as you're typing, it just feels wrong.
I never had the oppurtunity to use the super-productive tool of punch cards. Plus the productivity isn't the issue here, its the common shortcuts in applications.
Why not fork?
Sure, the new UI is better organized and much more n00b-friendly. But for people who want to customize anything it is a *disaster*.
A very simple example: I often use strikethrough in Excel, mostly for retaining outdated info in a list. Excel doesn't have strikethrough alongside bold/italic/underline. This is understandable, given that this probably isn't all that common.
As far back as I can remember, you could easily add/remove buttons from the standard toolbars. I would just add strikethrough right where it logically goes. In 2007? Can't be done. My only option is to put it on the ONE "Quick Access Toolbar", dangling by itself with other unrelated functions. Unless, of course, I want to make an entire new ribbon, with XML and C#, or perhaps one of the utilities that makes it for me. Then I have redundant areas of the ribbon.
Office 2007 is great for basic use, and still supports features needed for advanced development of Office-aware applications. However, it's left "power users" in the dust.
WTF?! Couldn't they find a way to hide some advanced features they *already had* such that they wouldn't scare the less sophisticated users?
Actually, this rant says it better than I can: http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=5709
I'll learn to live with it, but I won't learn to love it.
-bitrot42
FIXME: Add a sig here
How is it that criticism of MS=mod up, criticism of !MS=mod troll?
Just tried it; still works fine.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
When everything looks different, suddenly you the computer guy have to explain to people where every stupid little option has moved to. So it's just senseless change so that they can justify selling an expensive new version that makes documents not usable in any of the old versions (so that everyone *else* has to upgrade, too, unless you can get them to save as in the old version formats... hah!).
... which means there's a marketing department out there who deserves a kick in the balls (or equivalent) for that dirty trick.
It's not that bad, it's slightly prettier, but it's still nothing but a pain in the ass. There isn't even one new feature I would dream of paying for, save perhaps "you'll still be able to read the documents people send you when they get the trial version of this on their new computers"
But come on, was it really necessary to turn the File menu into that logo thing? Normally, a logo in the upper left has options like "minimize" in it, not an entire File menu. It took a little while to figure out that that was a menu and not just a decoration. And the tabs, well, why the hell don't they look like tabs? Yeah, I figured it out without too much fuss, but I'm eventually going to have to explain all of this to people who are going to have a lot more trouble than I will with the change. If it takes me 10 seconds to figure out what's up, just how long is it going to take them? Especially when you multiply however long by the number of users, you see why I'm pissed about Microsoft wasting so much of my time so they can make a buck.
Personally, I hope that truly open formats (and for these purposes, MS OOXML is NOT open) gain traction as government requirements, they break the upgrade treadmill, and people no longer are expected to use any particular vendor's products simply to be able to read documents.
catcw writes
"...but don't expect to use all the familiar keyboard shortcuts."
Look, I can understand reshuffling menus in the name of usability, but what's the point of reformatting keyboard shortcuts, which are always pretty arbitrary? Besides driving your users insane, I mean.
Guess that should be expected from company that uses two different keyboard shortcuts for Shutdown for the same OS! Windows-U-U for XP with the graphical log in screen, Windows-U-S or Windows-U-S-S if you use the old style NT log in screen. My bad, that's 3 different shortcuts. You wouldn't think it would be possible to send software development back to the stone age, but you have to give MS credit for trying.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
KWord keeps improving, and its column support is easy to use. Its page layout dialogs are far simpler than Word or OOWriter.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."