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englebart wrote: I am holding at Office 2003 at home. My next new computer will probably utilize Open Office.
How about hosted applications like Zoho Writer (http://writer.zoho.com/[^]) and Google Docs (http://docs.google.com/[^])
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar
Personal Homepage
Tech Gossips
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep!
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englebart wrote: 2. The old menu's make it easier to locate functions that you think should exist. Brand new users to Office may never figure out some of the more powerful features.
Actually, according to MS the whole ribbon thing was designed because people kept requesting features that already existed, but they just weren't getting deep enough in the menus to find them. They also admitted that new users actually have an easier time adjusting to the ribbon than office 2003 power users.
englebart wrote: ;
Oh, I guess there is no Undo/Redo feature in this application!</blockquote>
Undo and Redo are above the ribbon, next to the "office button", right next to save.
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Although I downloaded all versions of Windows 7 (and keys) from MSDN, so as to be ready for developing in that environment, I've yet to install it on a machine - and no one I know has installed it (small world of the second kind)
So - I picked ambivalent/No Opionion - when, in fact, the Don't Know/Haven't Tried It option should have been there, too.
C:\> :: - now that's an interface!
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert
"It's a sad state of affairs, indeed, when you start reading my tag lines for some sort of enlightenment. Sadder still, if that's where you need to find it." - Balboos HaGadol
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Well maybe not quite - but close!
It requires users to have to relearn and takes up real estate (not everone has 24" screens) - one user being forced on to Windows 7 and Office 2007 can't I have my old XP and office back - have work to do!
While on the subject of Windows 7, am I the only one who is getting complaints about Windows 7 as being worse than Vista/XP - or is this the 'Kings New cloths' syndrome 
To quote users
Networking doesn’t work anymore
Where has everything moved to
Its slow (networking and copying)
and even one 'I prefer Vista.....' Really!
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not for me, I think its faster, more reliable and less a pain in the a** than Vista
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I think it is a big improvement, let the cry baby's go sit in a corner and sulk. So you have to learn some new tricks, once you have it's so much better than the old system. Compared to win 7 and Vista xp sucks eggs. 
When prediction serves as polemic, it nearly always fails. Our prefrontal lobes can probe the future only when they aren’t leashed by dogma. The worst enemy of agile anticipation is our human propensity for comfy self-delusion. David Brin
Buddha Dave
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<let the="" cry="" baby's="" go="" sit="" in="" a="" corner="" and="" s="">
Yep guess you are the sort of engineer who loves the idea that car makers randomly decide which side of the wheel to place the indicator and wiper controls. To hell with the user, its different!
Engineering progress is not about change for changes sake, but whether it improves the user’s lot!
Have yet to find a user that thinks ribbons are good, although I guess there must be at least one out there - probably the same one that thought Vista was good..... 
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Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointers were considered useless too at one point...
--
Kein Mitleid Für Die Mehrheit
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Yeah, I already had to google for one or two
The fact is that our financial department uses Excel a lot and what I find difficult is to keep up their rithm selecting options from the tool bar or using the key combinations.
This asures me that the office suite must be, if not the most, one of the most productive applications.
Everything looks way too thought and it takes years to take an application to this level.
For me as a basic office user I find difficult to find some more specific buttons but everything else is plain easy to use.
Cheers!
Alex
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Compared to a single line of buttons, each one selected by the user because it is needed, it is a complete waste of time.
I don't want to have to memorise how Microsoft or Steve Jobs like to group their functions; I want to have the functions I use most often instantly available to me -- and taking up as little workspace as possible.
If I want the print button next to the align-left button next to the insert-table button, then that's how I want it*. I don't want to have to search for everything according to someone else's logic, every time I want to use a tool, and I don't want tools that I don't need taking up comparatively vast amounts of my workspace.
* I don't want those buttons in that order, but if I did, I'd want to be able to put them there, and I wouldn't want them removed by the next update.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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The trouble is that a lot of support time was wasted in older Office versions because people had accidentally moved buttons around and lost them, or because one user had moved buttons around how they wanted them and another user then couldn't find the buttons they wanted.
Fine if you're the only user of the PC, but for most offices it's as daft as letting people rearrange the keys on their keyboard.
If they'd never put toolbar customisation in in the first place almost nobody would be asking for it now.
Regards
Nelviticus
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It takes almost zero time to learn how to customise a toolbar, and, once it has been customised, the toolbar requires zero maintenance, and zero "extra clicks" to reach the functions that are on the toolbar.
It takes time every day to use a ribbon that has been "customised" the way someone at Microsoft has decided it should be laid out, and, if anyone dares to make changes to the ribbon, it takes considerable time to put it back the way you want it after an update has reverted it to what the Microsoft employee likes.
How can moving from (almost zero + zero + zero) to (time lost by every employee every day + considerable time to put it back the way you want it) possibly be construed as constituting a productivity benefit?
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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If you really want to use WallaceWord(TM) instead of Microsoft Word then you can very easily build yourself your own ribbon, which appears before all the Microsoft ones and won't get moved/removed with any updates, with the Custom UI Editor[^]. However a) most people never customised their toolbar anyway and b) for new users the ribbon - the layout of which was designed with a lot of thought and study, not just scribbled out on the back of a napkin - is a lot easier to use than the old toolbars/menus.
The point being that for some individuals (me included) who liked to fiddle and heavily customise their toolbars, the ribbon has been a restriction. But for the vast majority of users taking away (easy) customisation has been a significant improvement. I say this as someone who supports Office in a place with a lot of non-technical users - and as someone who, in Office XP, had changed every single button on the two main toolbars. My initial annoyance has faded now I've seen how much of an improvement it is for 99% of users.
Regards
Nelviticus
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Nelviticus wrote: you can very easily build yourself your own ribbon
I did. I built a ribbon that included only the tools (and styles) that I use when writing MSS, and incorporated it into a template that opens automatically for MSS docs.
I kept wondering why it kept disappearing, and why it kept detaching itself from MSS docs. Turns out it was updates kept ****ing it up.
I'm now happily back in Office 2003, where the template and toolbar work as well as they always worked -- i.e. every time, without any glitches, and taking up a lot less screen space than the ribbon.
Nelviticus wrote: as someone who, in Office XP, had changed every single button on the two main toolbars
Hmm. Bad idea. You should have created new toolbars, instead, then attached them to new templates so they could be used or ignored as required. It was quick, easy, and a lot less hassle. And it allowed you to create buttons for things that do not have buttons (e.g. styles), and make them persist. The ribbon has made all that a damned sight harder.
Before, you could have sent a one-pager to all "non-technical" users, showing them how to customise their "user experience", thereby improving their performance.
With the ribbon, you'll have to go to each of their machines to do it yourself -- and then teach them how to back up .dot files, so they can restore them when an update screws them up.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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But that's because toolbar customization, in many applications, was ALWAYS ON, meaning an accidental click or drag would (re)move a button.
Personally, I love the idea that Raymond spends his nights posting bad regexs to mailing lists under the pseudonym of Jane Smith. He'd be like a super hero, only more nerdy and less useful. [Trevel]
| FoldWithUs! | sighist | µLaunch - program launcher for server core and hyper-v server
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I guess each environment has different problems. We've ca. 400 XP Professional boxes here and I've never heard a trouble call because of lost or missing buttons.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert
"It's a sad state of affairs, indeed, when you start reading my tag lines for some sort of enlightenment. Sadder still, if that's where you need to find it." - Balboos HaGadol
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Maybe a 'favourites' ribbon would help ?
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V. wrote: Maybe a 'favourites' ribbon would help ?
Yes! A sub-ribbon, underneath the main ribbon, where you can drag buttons that you use frequently!
Then you could hide the main ribbon itself, leaving just the single row of sub-ribbon buttons!
I'm all in favour! 
V. wrote: Stop smoking so you can: Enjoy longer the money you save.
I'm trying! I'm trying!
Stop bluddy reminding me about those wonderful tubes of smoldering vegetable matter!
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Mark Wallace wrote: A sub-ribbon, underneath the main ribbon
Office 2007 has the Quick Access Toolbar. It isn't drag and drop, but it's fairly close to what you're talking about. It's that small row of buttons next to the main Office button on the top-left.
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The quick access bar takes care of the basics (until it's reset by an update, and you have to build it all over again), but it can't be assigned a group of styles, the way a normal toolbar could, and it doesn't change according to the document template you're using.
I know that this is a dev board, so the more complicated things that should be done with templates (especially before Word is given to non-technical users) aren't a focus -- devs do everything with the Normal template, or maybe with a template that is "complete" by dev standards, but proper documentation systems are a lot more complicated than that.
E.g. if a non-techie user has to write a memo, then there should be only the styles and functions required for writing a memo available -- it's up to sys admin to create and enforce the templates used (the next time you receive a memo that has to contact three separate databases, and is full of graphics that have to update before the document will open fully, you'll think of this).
Worse (and this is one of the biggest problems), if a dev has to write a user document, which will be handed to customers, the look and feel of that document must conform to the standards that are applied to all documents that are handed to customers. But devs tend to have their own ideas about that (or just don't care), so the copy of Word they are given has to be locked down so tight that they cannot possibly do anything that breaks the standards.
Locking it down doesn't make it any harder to produce a document, BTW; it just makes it impossible to do the whole thing in Comic Sans, makes sure that the document structure is correct, prevents pasting of external database or file-system links, and allows the document to be added into a content-management system so that chunks of it can be sourced into other documents very quickly, etc.
It's a nightmare to try to do that since v.2007, and, once you've done the mountain of complicated (and template-destabilising) work, it can all be wiped away by an update to Outlook or PowerPoint.
So, the choice is between:
1. Implememting and maintaining a labour-intensive and slow system with tech writers in the middle, to check and amend every scrap of paper that devs produce (great for team spirit -- NOT!)
2. Looking like complete bleeding amateurs to your customers/prospects.
3. Upgrading back to Word 2003, so none of the extra work and maintenance is necessary.
Unfortunately, too many people are believing all the hype about the ribbon, so they're soldiering on with option 1, or ending up with option 2.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Mark Wallace wrote: a single line of buttons, each one selected by the user because it is needed, it is a complete waste of time.
1. Customize a Quick Access Toolbar which is in upper-left corner by default.
2. Tell it to appear below the ribbon in place of a standard location (there is an option to do it in a customization dialog).
3. Minimize the ribbon (right-click).
Now you have expandable menus+your own toolbar.
Hope this helps ---
Greetings - Jacek
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but, as for office 2007, I need some time to find where the functions are located.....
Regards,
unruledboy_at_gmail_dot_com
http://www.xnlab.com
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