I tried MS Office 2010 on my dad's W7 laptop when I went to print something on it and I didn't like it. One thing I hate about the recent Office versions is that bloody ribbon toolbar. It took me ages to find the Print button :mad: Last decent version of Office for Windows IMO was 2002 (XP) but 2003 was ok as well as it still had the old-fashioned toolbars. I must have been in a minority but I liked Clippit the paperclip Anyone else remember him?
File -> Print, exactly where it was in Office XP.
The ribbons have improved usability massively, the majority of the hate i see is people who don't like change.
To be slightly on-topic (apologies!), does either LibreOffice or Word provide the option to automatically save the open document every 5 minutes? The key bit being that the last n versions are stored, so that you don't lose more than 5 minutes of work even if you accidentally save a messed-up document or click "don't save" when you close the application (those are about the only occasions that I lose work).
There was also a cat, the Office Logo, a wizard called Merlin, The Dot, a robot and Mother Nature (the globe). In Office 97 there was Clippit, the dog, Shakespeare, a dolphin, Einstein and a couple of others I can't remember. The cat was nice I still have Office XP on my old Windows desktop. Might fire it up for some nostalgia later :cool:
< The ribbons have improved usability massively, the majority of the hate i see is people who don't like change. >
Nope. It is difficult to use (and it is the first Word of which that can be said). You can't do anything useful until you know how to set up styles and templates and the help is poor. Everybody needs a training course, or a book, to explain what one is supposed to do.
The new person starts to type, sees that the font and size and para style is no good, and clicks a few things to try to set them, and nothing happens. It is baffling. Even when it has been explained that they have gone for the 'type first and edit later' approach, it is still very hard to find out for oneself that the most importand things to click on are the extremely small and insigificant looking tiny squares on a header line, not on the ribbon . The 'help' advice to clerks that they have taken an object oriented approach is the most meaningless crap ever put in software.
To people who use a data base program, it needs explaining what normalisation is, but to a typist it is not necessary to know programming and systems jargon.
They have driven Wordperfect and Lotus out of the market and so have a monopoly of quality office software, so now we have to put up with this stuff.
< The ribbons have improved usability massively, the majority of the hate i see is people who don't like change. >
Nope. It is difficult to use (and it is the first Word of which that can be said).
No offence Johnbee*, but you've been a member of this site for over 3 years, and you still don't know how to use the quote button - I'm not surprised you have issues with the ribbon interface!!
No offence Johnbee*, but you've been a member of this site for over 3 years, and you still don't know how to use the quote button - I'm not surprised you have issues with the ribbon interface!!
They have driven Wordperfect and Lotus out of the market and so have a monopoly of quality office software, so now we have to put up with this stuff.
I learned word processing using WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS! I used to use Lotus SmartSuite a lot on my ancient Windows 95 computer (which I got rid of 2 years ago). It was a good office suite and I found it less bloated than Office. Shame it was driven out of the market
They have driven Wordperfect and Lotus out of the market and so have a monopoly of quality office software, so now we have to put up with this stuff.
It's the corporate and small business markets that you need to look at to see why Wordperfect and Lotus have all but disappeared.
The lack of a coherent office suite once Windows started to be the only significant OS found in the business sector was one thing, as was the lower total cost of ownership and support costs of Microsoft Exchange compared to Domino was another.
Small businesses could afford to run an Enterprise class mail system in the form of Exchange thanks to Small Business Server - once you are using Outlook as your mail client, it's a no brainer that you're going to use Word and Excel along with it.
It's the corporate and small business markets that you need to look at to see why Wordperfect and Lotus have all but disappeared.
Not many home users use either these days unless they still have it on an older computer. I haven't used SmartSuite for years but I had it installed on my old Windows 95 PC. The version I have (97) still works on Windows XP.
< The ribbons have improved usability massively, the majority of the hate i see is people who don't like change. >
Nope. It is difficult to use (and it is the first Word of which that can be said).
I disagree, the most common options that most people use are right there in your face, highlight an area of text or an embedded resource and up pops a context menu with a different colour and visible. Not hidden in a right click context menu.
The new person starts to type, sees that the font and size and para style is no good, and clicks a few things to try to set them, and nothing happens. It is baffling. Even when it has been explained that they have gone for the 'type first and edit later' approach, it is still very hard to find out for oneself that the most importand things to click on are the extremely small and insigificant looking tiny squares on a header line, not on the ribbon .
We must be using Word very differently, I set the options that I want and start typing and it works. I have no idea how any of those styles work and I've never messed with them. It just works.
it is still very hard to find out for oneself that the most importand things to click on are the extremely small and insigificant looking tiny squares on a header line, not on the ribbon .
You mean the quick save/quick undo/redo on the title bar? They have equivalent commands in the ribbons. In Office 2010 save is in the FIle menu as before and undo/redo has giant icons on the home ribbon.
. The 'help' advice to clerks that they have taken an object oriented approach is the most meaningless crap ever put in software.
To people who use a data base program, it needs explaining what normalisation is, but to a typist it is not necessary to know programming and systems jargon.
They have driven Wordperfect and Lotus out of the market and so have a monopoly of quality office software, so now we have to put up with this stuff.
I highly doubt the help tells you use an object oriented approach (happy to be shown otherwise, the context would be interesting. ) Apart from that the rest is rambling.
I highly doubt the help tells you [to] use an object oriented approach
To be fair to Johnbee, where did he say that? I suggest you read his post again.
He just said that the average user wouldn't know what object oriented meant anyway, so it was meaningless to put in the Help that Word was written using that approach.
Only because Microsoft pushed it into companies and it have become a standard. Lotus used to be a good little office package in it's day and my sister-in-law still prefer word perfect to MS word.
i don't like the new versions of MS office with the silly ribbon menu system, i now use Libre office, does what I want and I bet it will do what most people want and for free/.
It may be free but it doesn't interact with other peoples word documents very well often gives garbled results.
To be fair to Johnbee, where did he say that? I suggest you read his post again.
He just said that the average user wouldn't know what object oriented meant anyway, so it was meaningless to put in the Help that Word was written using that approach.
TBF I did misread that, I just got lost in how wrong he is.
< No offence Johnbee*, but you've been a member of this site for over 3 years, and you still don't know how to use the quote button - I'm not surprised you have issues with the ribbon interface!! >
I know very well how to use the quote button thanks very much. I did not criticise the ribbon stuff at all. I did nothing to merit your snide post.
What happened was that I saw a thread about a man losing his document in Word, and read the thread and nobody had mentioned that there is a recovery system, which is on by default, so he could recover it that way, and said to look at the help. I tried to help him work his software and told him something good he did not know (nor did anyone else including you or you would have mentioned it.) I am not the thicko round here matey.
If the software was any good he'd have known that and so would you and everyone else. So either try to help or shut up. Don't try to make yourself look cute by slagging off people who do try to help.
I find microsoft's ribbon a mess ... an unwanted complication I am very slowly getting used to on the few work computers I occasionally use ... just isn't intuitive for folk like me that have been using word for around 20 years & beyond basic tasks is extremely confusing .. wasn't broken so why fix it?
& the docx format ... just more pain
< So wait, you're saying a user's own ignorance equates to a bad application? >
Exactly. When word processors first arrived it was very common for journalists to write about how easy it was to lose work. That is still apparently going on. File security is an extremely important part of designing a system and software.
So why is it that a man says that software is shit because he lost his work and several pages of messages go by and nobody except me the idiot, seems to know about the file recovery system being on by default, or even about it at all?
Why is it not visible and known? Does anyone actually know, even if they know it exists, how to get at it and about the roaming directory? It is quite an important thing and it is hidden and non-intuitive to find.
Design-wise, it should not be four deep in a menu system as it is, the options should be at the top level. Actually I don't like it under file/options/save either because save is wrong. One can think of it as autosave, but it isn't - in my mind and I suspect most users, autosave overwrites the user's saved file, and this is not that, it is options/file recovery.
It is wrong to refer to a user not knowing about this sort of thing as ignorance.
It is wrong to refer to a user not knowing about this sort of thing as ignorance.
To expect someone to know the full ins and outs of Microsoft Office is unrealistic. There is a huge amount of documentation and training out there (some people even make a living through running training courses on it) which covers the less-commonly used features if thats what you want, but for day-to-day use I think Microsoft have done a fairly good job at making it simple enough to get the basic tasks done whilst retaining the features needed by power-users. If this wasn't the case then there is no way it would be as popular and established as it is.
To reiterate, I personally find Adobe Photoshop to be difficult to use, and struggle to find my way around the sea of menus and features. That doesn't stop it being widely regarded as probably the best tool for editing photos if you do have the knowledge to use it.
Comments
File -> Print, exactly where it was in Office XP.
The ribbons have improved usability massively, the majority of the hate i see is people who don't like change.
There was also a cat, the Office Logo, a wizard called Merlin, The Dot, a robot and Mother Nature (the globe). In Office 97 there was Clippit, the dog, Shakespeare, a dolphin, Einstein and a couple of others I can't remember. The cat was nice
Still took me a while to find it now. I don't mind change when it serves a purpose, but change just for the sake of it annoys me.
Nope. It is difficult to use (and it is the first Word of which that can be said). You can't do anything useful until you know how to set up styles and templates and the help is poor. Everybody needs a training course, or a book, to explain what one is supposed to do.
The new person starts to type, sees that the font and size and para style is no good, and clicks a few things to try to set them, and nothing happens. It is baffling. Even when it has been explained that they have gone for the 'type first and edit later' approach, it is still very hard to find out for oneself that the most importand things to click on are the extremely small and insigificant looking tiny squares on a header line, not on the ribbon . The 'help' advice to clerks that they have taken an object oriented approach is the most meaningless crap ever put in software.
To people who use a data base program, it needs explaining what normalisation is, but to a typist it is not necessary to know programming and systems jargon.
They have driven Wordperfect and Lotus out of the market and so have a monopoly of quality office software, so now we have to put up with this stuff.
Don't worry, with Office 2013 out now, Office 2013s is scheduled for release next August.
No offence Johnbee*, but you've been a member of this site for over 3 years, and you still don't know how to use the quote button - I'm not surprised you have issues with the ribbon interface!!
(*ok, maybe a little offense)
Lol, quality
I learned word processing using WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS! I used to use Lotus SmartSuite a lot on my ancient Windows 95 computer (which I got rid of 2 years ago). It was a good office suite and I found it less bloated than Office. Shame it was driven out of the market
It's the corporate and small business markets that you need to look at to see why Wordperfect and Lotus have all but disappeared.
The lack of a coherent office suite once Windows started to be the only significant OS found in the business sector was one thing, as was the lower total cost of ownership and support costs of Microsoft Exchange compared to Domino was another.
Small businesses could afford to run an Enterprise class mail system in the form of Exchange thanks to Small Business Server - once you are using Outlook as your mail client, it's a no brainer that you're going to use Word and Excel along with it.
Really?
Not many home users use either these days unless they still have it on an older computer. I haven't used SmartSuite for years but I had it installed on my old Windows 95 PC. The version I have (97) still works on Windows XP.
I disagree, the most common options that most people use are right there in your face, highlight an area of text or an embedded resource and up pops a context menu with a different colour and visible. Not hidden in a right click context menu.
We must be using Word very differently, I set the options that I want and start typing and it works. I have no idea how any of those styles work and I've never messed with them. It just works.
You mean the quick save/quick undo/redo on the title bar? They have equivalent commands in the ribbons. In Office 2010 save is in the FIle menu as before and undo/redo has giant icons on the home ribbon.
I highly doubt the help tells you use an object oriented approach (happy to be shown otherwise, the context would be interesting. ) Apart from that the rest is rambling.
TBH, I'm wondering if you've actually used it.
To be fair to Johnbee, where did he say that? I suggest you read his post again.
He just said that the average user wouldn't know what object oriented meant anyway, so it was meaningless to put in the Help that Word was written using that approach.
It may be free but it doesn't interact with other peoples word documents very well often gives garbled results.
TBF I did misread that, I just got lost in how wrong he is.
I know very well how to use the quote button thanks very much. I did not criticise the ribbon stuff at all. I did nothing to merit your snide post.
What happened was that I saw a thread about a man losing his document in Word, and read the thread and nobody had mentioned that there is a recovery system, which is on by default, so he could recover it that way, and said to look at the help. I tried to help him work his software and told him something good he did not know (nor did anyone else including you or you would have mentioned it.) I am not the thicko round here matey.
If the software was any good he'd have known that and so would you and everyone else. So either try to help or shut up. Don't try to make yourself look cute by slagging off people who do try to help.
So why dont you use it? It helps keep the flow of threads coherent.
& the docx format ... just more pain
I think it's so the person they are replying to don't notice, kind of a conflict avoidance measure.
Exactly. When word processors first arrived it was very common for journalists to write about how easy it was to lose work. That is still apparently going on. File security is an extremely important part of designing a system and software.
So why is it that a man says that software is shit because he lost his work and several pages of messages go by and nobody except me the idiot, seems to know about the file recovery system being on by default, or even about it at all?
Why is it not visible and known? Does anyone actually know, even if they know it exists, how to get at it and about the roaming directory? It is quite an important thing and it is hidden and non-intuitive to find.
Design-wise, it should not be four deep in a menu system as it is, the options should be at the top level. Actually I don't like it under file/options/save either because save is wrong. One can think of it as autosave, but it isn't - in my mind and I suspect most users, autosave overwrites the user's saved file, and this is not that, it is options/file recovery.
It is wrong to refer to a user not knowing about this sort of thing as ignorance.
ignorance - noun
lack of knowledge, information, or education; the state of being ignorant
It's not wrong at all - it's what it is
so in your world ease of use is something to be derided
fail
To reiterate, I personally find Adobe Photoshop to be difficult to use, and struggle to find my way around the sea of menus and features. That doesn't stop it being widely regarded as probably the best tool for editing photos if you do have the knowledge to use it.