I hate sodding Windows XP and I hate PCs
in [UK Mac]
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From: Bruce Horrocks on 24 May 2010 08:35 On 24/05/2010 11:06, zoara wrote: >> Yeah, it's one of those things that just didn't need fixing, IMHO. >> > > So you've never had to go hunting through Office's sprawling menus just > to find the feature or setting you were after? But at least the obscure commands are actually in a menu or toolbar somewhere. In Word 2007 there are many commands that are simply not in the ribbon, anywhere. The only way to access those commands is to add them to the Quick Access Toolbar. So for example, autoformat. I don't use it very often but it can save a lot of time. On old Office I just chose to view the relevant toolbar, used the commands, and hid the toolbar until next time. With the ribbon, I have to go through a a complicated dialog, find the command and add it to the QAT. Which, of course, presupposes you know that such a command actually exists - fine for me but hardly newbie friendly. Only after adding the command to the QAT can it be used. And when I am done, then what? Leave it in the QAT taking up precious space since that is now the only customisable toolbar? Or delete it and go through the whole rigamarole the next time. Word used to be bad for newbies - because things were hard to find; bad for advanced users because so many advanced things either aren't supported or done badly; but okay-ish for the very large numbers of middling users. Now the ribbon has made it marginally better for newbies; but significantly worse for middling users and no change for advanced users. -- Bruce Horrocks Surrey England (bruce at scorecrow dot com)
From: James Jolley on 24 May 2010 08:35 On 2010-05-24 11:16:31 +0100, Tim Streater <timstreater(a)waitrose.com> said: > In article > <1236188082296388189.728132me18-privacy.net(a)news.individual.net>, > zoara <me18(a)privacy.net> wrote: > >> Chris Ridd <chrisridd(a)mac.com> wrote: >> >>> I'm baffled that people need toolbar buttons to do things like >>> copy/paste, or even save/print. The keyboard shortcuts for these have >>> been pretty standard for 20 or so years, haven't they? >> >> I'd argue that the people who memorise and use keyboard shortcuts (even >> just copy and paste) are outnumbered many times over by those who aren't >> even aware such shortcuts exist. Interesting theory. MY partner does everything with the mouse, i've given up teaching her any keyboard shortcuts. She's a one-finger typist anyway. >> >> Hell, they may even be outnumbered by people who aren't aware of the >> clipboard, full stop. Would you really say that? Never thought about it in that way. > > You're forgetting klods like me who can remember some small number of > absolutely standard shortcuts (-Q, -W, -P, -X, -C, -V) because they will > be useful in the future in any app, but refuse to learn more obscure > ones as a waste of braincells. Think how many I have to use daily. VoiceOver's full of them. > > If I'm using a particular app for a period for some task I'm likely to > learn more shortcuts to assist that task, but they're soon erased. That's fair enough. Depends on how much you need them. > > I agree about spending time looking for things in Word's menus but > that's because Word does too much, some of it poorly. But I'm not sure > that I see the ribbon, at least as implemented in Word 2007, as the > solution. The one time I was obliged to use it (to do a quick - ha, ha - > mail merge) I found it was very inconsistent in what you got when > clicking on something in the ribbon. It might be a modal window, a > panel, a drop-down, ... Fair enough. I did get chance to look at the Office for Windows and hated it. The ribbon always seemed like it wanted to be ahead of what you needed to do. I'd always prefer a good shortcut key for a function first. > > Not to say there's not room for a new paradigm, but it needs to be > *simple*, like menus are (in principle). Agreed. > > Of course Word (any version) is a mild offender compared to Visio. Never used it.
From: zoara on 24 May 2010 10:58 Bruce Horrocks <07.013(a)scorecrow.com> wrote: > On 24/05/2010 11:06, zoara wrote: > >> Yeah, it's one of those things that just didn't need fixing, IMHO. > >> > > > > So you've never had to go hunting through Office's sprawling menus > > just > > to find the feature or setting you were after? > > But at least the obscure commands are actually in a menu or toolbar > somewhere. In Word 2007 there are many commands that are simply not in > the ribbon, anywhere. The only way to access those commands is to add > them to the Quick Access Toolbar. > > So for example, autoformat. I don't use it very often but it can save > a lot of time. On old Office I just chose to view the relevant > toolbar, used the commands, and hid the toolbar until next time. With > the ribbon, I have to go through a a complicated dialog, find the > command and add it to the QAT. Which, of course, presupposes you know > that such a command actually exists - fine for me but hardly newbie > friendly. Only after adding the command to the QAT can it be used. > > And when I am done, then what? Leave it in the QAT taking up precious > space since that is now the only customisable toolbar? Or delete it > and go through the whole rigamarole the next time. > > Word used to be bad for newbies - because things were hard to find; > bad for advanced users because so many advanced things either aren't > supported or done badly; but okay-ish for the very large numbers of > middling users. Now the ribbon has made it marginally better for > newbies; but significantly worse for middling users and no change for > advanced users. > Yep, I agree with all this. I can't think of a better solution to the standard menus and toolbars, but at least Microsoft recognised that there *was* a problem with them and made an attempt to fix it. Problem is (as touched upon by your first sentence) Office is so complicated and stuffed full of features that any system that allows access to those features is *bound* to be complicated. You can't cut features as everyone has a different set of "must have" features. The only real solution is to start over and heavy-handedly apply the 80/20 rule; but then you get a new product like Pages. it doesn't have nearly as many features but it's easier to use. That works on an Apple OS where users are less entrenched in Office, but would an "Office Lite" succeed on Windows? I doubt it. I'm speaking in generalities as I don't use either Pages or the Office ribbon. -z- -- email: nettid1 at fastmail dot fm
From: Pd on 24 May 2010 11:57 zoara <me18(a)privacy.net> wrote: > I can't think of a better solution to the standard menus and toolbars, but > at least Microsoft recognised that there *was* a problem with them and > made an attempt to fix it. Problem is (as touched upon by your first > sentence) Office is so complicated and stuffed full of features that any > system that allows access to those features is *bound* to be complicated. I think a Spotlight-style command finding field could work, if it was fast enough that as you typed letters, the list of matching commands (or command descriptions) shrank. If commands were suitably named, once you knew what the command name was, only a few keystrokes would be needed to call it up. I used to love the Lotus 123 menus, where the shortcut was the same as the menu access so once you'd navigated the menus once to find the command, you'd already discovered the fast menu access. -- Pd
From: Andy Hewitt on 24 May 2010 12:23
zoara <me18(a)privacy.net> wrote: > Bruce Horrocks <07.013(a)scorecrow.com> wrote: > > On 24/05/2010 11:06, zoara wrote: > The only real solution is to start over and heavy-handedly apply the 80/20 > rule; but then you get a new product like Pages. it doesn't have nearly as > many features but it's easier to use. That works on an Apple OS where > users are less entrenched in Office, but would an "Office Lite" succeed on > Windows? I doubt it. > > I'm speaking in generalities as I don't use either Pages or the Office > ribbon. It certainly could succeed, why not? It works well enough for Adobe with Elements for one. The problem comes with choosing the feature set you're going to include. However, for me at least, Pages would be a good benchmark for that. It works well enough for me to produce our church's magazine every month, which is about the most complex document I use it for - such things as object boxes for images and text, the alignment of those, and some quite powerful text editing tools (such as ligatures, leading and kerning). I guess what MS need to do really is turn MS Works into an MS Office Lite. At least abandon the Works document format, and use MS Office files as standard. They could then abandon the cut price MS Office stuff, and flog MS Works for the home user. -- Andy Hewitt <http://web.me.com/andrewhewitt1/> |