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so agree 
'change for the sake of change' is so inane.
Hi
+1
and welcome back Anne-ology! 
On the other hand it's nice to see a competitor getting sucked into changes that it's not going to be able to keep up with. Nice to see they offer the option so that we don't have to 
Regards from
Tom
so agree
'change for the sake of change' is so inane.
how can you kids be all for 'if it works, don't fix it' and then praise improvements?
shouldn't your motto be, "if it will work better, fix it"?
F.
so agree
'change for the sake of change' is so inane.
how can you kids be all for 'if it works, don't fix it' and then praise
improvements?shouldn't your motto be, "if it will work better, fix it"?
F.
/snip/
Kracked_P_P---webmaster wrote:
<snip>I was talking to a professor a few days ago. He does not like the
newer
versions due in part to "the way they keep changing the interface
and how
to do things".
/snip/
You won't find me waiting for hours outside an Apple
store
to buy the latest iPhone. If it works, don't "fix" it is my motto.
Girvin Herr
The problem for us who are happy with certain things and just wish they'd fix the bugs, is that all the programmers who write code for
the apps would shortly be out of business! So would a lot of advertisers. I am not a fan of LO, and I believe that some other
programs, both free and not, serve me better, but, frinstance,
I was happy with WordPerfect as it existed 15 years ago, and the
only real change I see is that it now reads and writes a lot more
competing formats--because, not being MSWord, it has to. And if they
had only fixed the bugs in Windows 98, and converted it to 32, then
64, bits, leaving the interface alone, I would be much happier with
Windows than I am. But then MS programmers would all have been out on the street 10 years ago or more.
Somehow, since the scientific revolution, starting around 1800,
progress has given birth to a byproduct called "change for the sake of change." Or maybe it started with Gutenberg. But it's certainly with
us now!
And Linux? A lot of the distros are written by paid programmers, and
what isn't is done by hobbyists who would be bored if they couldn't
find something to tweak and bend and, it must be said, break!
Rant over--doug
This has been fascinating reading all of the opinions about user interfaces and the dreaded ribbon. I've not found *anyone* who actually likes the ribbon. I agree with several of you who have observed that the ribbon makes using styles much harder. And, since it's harder to use styles, it only makes it that much harder for me to teach styles to my students and effectively persuade them to use styles.
It makes me wonder if MS did any type of focus group testing before foisting it upon us. And, if they did do such testing, who did they get in the focus groups?
Like many of you, I have used computers for many, many years. (I go back to the PC-Write for DOS days), and I can honestly say that, over the decades, I have found very few UI changes that have actually made a difference in helping me be more productive.
I've been playing recently with WriteMonkey, a markdown text editor, and I must confess, I like the UI with absolutely no toolbars or ribbons; just keystroke combinations and some basic menus. Works for me.
Virgil
This has been fascinating reading all of the opinions about user
interfaces and the dreaded ribbon.
/snip/
I've been playing recently with WriteMonkey, a markdown text editor, and
I must confess, I like the UI with absolutely no toolbars or ribbons;
just keystroke combinations and some basic menus. Works for me.Virgil
Sounds like you should find a copy of WordStar!
--doug
"Virgil Arrington":
This has been fascinating reading all of the opinions about user interfaces and the dreaded ribbon. I've not found *anyone* who actually likes the ribbon. I agree with several of you who have observed that the ribbon makes using styles much harder. And, since it's harder to use styles, it only makes it that much harder for me to teach styles to my students and effectively persuade them to use styles.
Actually, Ribbon is making using styles even better, as the Styles sidebar does no longer conflict with document panes.
Hi
To some extent, yes. IF it does work better. That is the crucial bit. What other people are talking about is change that ends up breaking things without improving anything.
The ancient phrase is "If it aint broke, don't fix it".
There are plenty of innovations possible without rehashing stuff that does work. Plenty of bugs and plenty of smoothing out to do too.
We do have to experiment and play around with things because maybe it will lead to magically curing a ton of stuff unexpectedly but imo those should be choices that people can choose to indulge in rather than forcing people to use them just because the dev's manager prefers it that way. Once enough people have played around and sufficient bugs have been fixed then it's time to make it the default choice but still why not give people the choice of revering to what they are most familiar with?
Regards from
Tom
I never tried Kingsoft Office myself, but I read a little about it
recently when I finally abandoned my old Nokia 3510 phone for an
Android phone. I found though, that Kingsoft Office doesn't support
ODF, and almost 100% of what I have is ODF so Kingsoft Office is
obviously not for me, and I never installed it.
I use Apache OpenOffice on my desktop (actually a laptop, but I use it
as a desktop) since I found LibreOffice way too buggy, but I installed
LibreOffice 4.0 for testing purposes. So far I didn't find something
for my spreadsheets for my phone. I know there are ODF viewers out
there, but I need to edit my files. So what I do right now, is that I
enter new stuff in a Google Docs spreadsheet, and when I come home, I
just copy and paste into the ”real” spreadsheet in Apache OpenOffice.
It works, but isn't very convenient…
Johnny Rosenberg
Jay provided a great response to this thread, but it appears as if he fell into the trap of hitting "reply" instead of "reply all," so only I got the benefit of his response. I'm copying it below.
Jay wrote:
My understanding of the original XEROX research is that is for desktop GUI
there is a narrow range of options and criteria to implement a good
interface. What I always understood is that because the why humans
interact with the surroundings and basic physiology of arms, shoulders,
hands, etc. the WIMP based GUIs with menus, icons, windows, and a mouse
are the most practical interfaces. The XEROX conclusions, IMHO, are still
valid today. So the GUI (app or OS) should be very similar. Learning any
"XEROX" style GUI is fairly easy for most users because it feels right.
MS seemed to ignore the XEROX research with the Ribbon and the criticism
of W8 indicates they ignored the research again. I read MS was concerned
with the complexity of the menus in MSO and the fact that most users only
used a fraction of the available commands. Two logic flaws: complex
software will cause complex menus and most users probably only need to use
a fraction of commands. However different users will use a different
combination of commands.
Hi
That point keeps coming up but it best said the other way around
80% of MSO almost never gets used.
Then split the remaining 20% up between different sorts of users. Most people only use the Save button, Bold, Centre, Underline, copy&paste errr that's about it. Oh, receive email and reply. More advanced users insert pictures or graphics or go the other way into using spreadsheets and/or maybe know how to start a fresh new email. So even of that 20% there is a lot of stuff that people don't use or even know about. It's just that within that 20% some people use some and others use different bits. That still leaves 80% almost untouched by anyone.
The way this is generally talked about is that everyone uses different things and so if you take enough people you find that there is an even spread of all parts being used by a roughly equal percentage of people. However that is NOT what we are seeing. Think about it this way instead, how many people do you know of that don't know how to make something bold? Almost everyone knows that, right? They might manage to fluff it badly but at least they can manage that much. Now, how many can switch from left to right or fully justified? Not so many. Quite a lot of people don't even know what you are talking about or think it looks too strange or 'different' (or cool). How many people know how to mail-merge? Not as many as know how to use bold!!
Regards from
Tom
Hi
That point keeps coming up but it best said the other way around
80% of MSO almost never gets used.Then split the remaining 20% up between different sorts of users. Most people only use the Save button, Bold, Centre, Underline, copy&paste errr that's about it. Oh, receive email and reply. More advanced users insert pictures or graphics or go the other way into using spreadsheets and/or maybe know how to start a fresh new email. So even of that 20% there is a lot of stuff that people don't use or even know about. It's just that within that 20% some people use some and others use different bits. That still leaves 80% almost untouched by anyone.
The way this is generally talked about is that everyone uses different things and so if you take enough people you find that there is an even spread of all parts being used by a roughly equal percentage of people. However that is NOT what we are seeing. Think about it this way instead, how many people do you know of that don't know how to make something bold? Almost everyone knows that, right? They might manage to fluff it badly but at least they can manage that much. Now, how many can switch from left to right or fully justified? Not so many. Quite a lot of people don't even know what you are talking about or think it looks too strange or 'different' (or cool). How many people know how to mail-merge? Not as many as know how to use bold!!Regards from
Tom
IMHO the percentage of features used by 95% of users on LO or MSO is probably about 50 to 60% of those available - no research just navel gazing. I was talking to a colleague on another list about this point. MS has had a history of adding "features" to MSO that most users either would never use it or have no idea the feature is there (and probably would never use it). Part of the problem, particularly for commercial software, is the true core features of an office suite have been implemented years ago and only need refining. Tom's example of mail merge has been around for at least 20 years - I used it with WordPerfect in the mid 90's and it was not a new feature then. So to entice buyers/users MS and others must add "features" that sound nice but very few people will ever use.
A related problem is that most users are users. They want to get something do but do not want to spend a lot of time learning the software beyond a minimum to do their jobs. So if you asked them to do a mail-merge with LO, AOO, MSO, etc. you would get a blank stare. They do not know it can be do and are amazed you can do it.
Hi
That point keeps coming up but it best said the other way around
80% of MSO almost never gets used.Then split the remaining 20% up between different sorts of users. Most people only use the Save button, Bold, Centre, Underline, copy&paste errr that's about it. Oh, receive email and reply. More advanced users insert pictures or graphics or go the other way into using spreadsheets and/or maybe know how to start a fresh new email. So even of that 20% there is a lot of stuff that people don't use or even know about. It's just that within that 20% some people use some and others use different bits. That still leaves 80% almost untouched by anyone.
The way this is generally talked about is that everyone uses different things and so if you take enough people you find that there is an even spread of all parts being used by a roughly equal percentage of people. However that is NOT what we are seeing. Think about it this way instead, how many people do you know of that don't know how to make something bold? Almost everyone knows that, right? They might manage to fluff it badly but at least they can manage that much. Now, how many can switch from left to right or fully justified? Not so many. Quite a lot of people don't even know what you are talking about or think it looks too strange or 'different' (or cool). How many people know how to mail-merge? Not as many as know how to use bold!!Regards from
TomIMHO the percentage of features used by 95% of users on LO or MSO is probably about 50 to 60% of those available - no research just navel gazing. I was talking to a colleague on another list about this point. MS has had a history of adding "features" to MSO that most users either would never use it or have no idea the feature is there (and probably would never use it). Part of the problem, particularly for commercial software, is the true core features of an office suite have been implemented years ago and only need refining. Tom's example of mail merge has been around for at least 20 years - I used it with WordPerfect in the mid 90's and it was not a new feature then. So to entice buyers/users MS and others must add "features" that sound nice but very few people will ever use.
The last time I heard of a MSO figure, it was:
95% of the MSO users uses less than 5% of the features. That was mostly for Word and Excel users.
I have heard other figures like 90% uses 10%, but the highest figure was the 15% of the features of Word and Excel combined.
All of the rest are for the "power users" and need a good and detailed book to teach you - step by step - how to use these "complex power user" features and options.
For all of the people I have dealt with, none would be called a power user by any means.
I remember seeing a magazine advertisement for MSO, from several years ago, that stated that they "added over 1,000 new and improved feature" over the previous version. That may have been for the MSO 2003 version. MSO-2003 was the last one I bought, with the first being MSO-97 I believe. How many people would want to learn 1,000 features for their office package? I may use 100 +/- features of LO and that is more than enough to do what I need to do.
A related problem is that most users are users. They want to get something do but do not want to spend a lot of time learning the software beyond a minimum to do their jobs. So if you asked them to do a mail-merge with LO, AOO, MSO, etc. you would get a blank stare. They do not know it can be do and are amazed you can do it.
I use to deal with mail-merging lists with a form document, but I have not done that for a long time.
Hi
That point keeps coming up but it best said the other way around
80% of MSO almost never gets used.Then split the remaining 20% up between different sorts of users. Most people only use the Save button, Bold, Centre, Underline, copy&paste errr that's about it. Oh, receive email and reply. More advanced users insert pictures or graphics or go the other way into using spreadsheets and/or maybe know how to start a fresh new email. So even of that 20% there is a lot of stuff that people don't use or even know about. It's just that within that 20% some people use some and others use different bits. That still leaves 80% almost untouched by anyone.
The way this is generally talked about is that everyone uses different things and so if you take enough people you find that there is an even spread of all parts being used by a roughly equal percentage of people. However that is NOT what we are seeing. Think about it this way instead, how many people do you know of that don't know how to make something bold? Almost everyone knows that, right? They might manage to fluff it badly but at least they can manage that much. Now, how many can switch from left to right or fully justified? Not so many. Quite a lot of people don't even know what you are talking about or think it looks too strange or 'different' (or cool). How many people know how to mail-merge? Not as many as know how to use bold!!Regards from
TomIMHO the percentage of features used by 95% of users on LO or MSO is probably about 50 to 60% of those available - no research just navel gazing. I was talking to a colleague on another list about this point. MS has had a history of adding "features" to MSO that most users either would never use it or have no idea the feature is there (and probably would never use it). Part of the problem, particularly for commercial software, is the true core features of an office suite have been implemented years ago and only need refining. Tom's example of mail merge has been around for at least 20 years - I used it with WordPerfect in the mid 90's and it was not a new feature then. So to entice buyers/users MS and others must add "features" that sound nice but very few people will ever use.
The last time I heard of a MSO figure, it was:
95% of the MSO users uses less than 5% of the features. That was mostly for Word and Excel users.
I have heard other figures like 90% uses 10%, but the highest figure was the 15% of the features of Word and Excel combined.All of the rest are for the "power users" and need a good and detailed book to teach you - step by step - how to use these "complex power user" features and options.
For all of the people I have dealt with, none would be called a power user by any means.
I remember seeing a magazine advertisement for MSO, from several years ago, that stated that they "added over 1,000 new and improved feature" over the previous version. That may have been for the MSO 2003 version. MSO-2003 was the last one I bought, with the first being MSO-97 I believe. How many people would want to learn 1,000 features for their office package? I may use 100 +/- features of LO and that is more than enough to do what I need to do.
I think there is a basic agreement that at least 25% of the features in MSO could be eliminated and no one would notice. I would not be surprised if LO and AOO could eliminate about 20% of the features without anyone noticing. I am suggesting any features be eliminated just that all office suites could probably go on a feature diet and actually improve their products. Just that some need a more rigorous diet than others.
I think what happens is someone thinks something would be a nice feature. They ask a focus group (or survey) about it and the group says it sounds good. But what is never asked is would you do actually miss the feature or use the feature if it was present. So the feature gets added.
The sense I get from the list is that feature set of MSO 2000 or XP hits the sweet spot for almost all users. The later MSO versions do not really add features the vast majority of users need, care about, or truly want. Or the feature can easily be implemented by other methods external to the suite. For example file sharing and collaboration with remote users can be done using a variety tools external to MSO or LO. I suspect that most if asked would say it is a good feature to include. But if you ask would they ever use it, the answer is no. In fact it can be fairly easily use external tools.
Hi,
jumping in the bandwaggon..
I think there is a basic agreement that at least 25% of the features in
MSO could be eliminated and no one would notice. I would not be
surprised if LO and AOO could eliminate about 20% of the features
without anyone noticing. I am suggesting any features be eliminated just
that all office suites could probably go on a feature diet and actually
improve their products. Just that some need a more rigorous diet than
others.
An idea I've been having for 20+ years now is: how about an office automation tool (wordprocessor, spreadsheet, whatever) that would come with the bare minimal features (define: bare minimal) and could be "enhanced" by adding features through a plugin system à la LibreOffice extensions?
This way, anyone could tailor the software to their exact needs and the tools devs would focus on dedicated areas to add features.
Ok, sorry. Did it again. Replied privately, that is. Here's to the list:
I can see a few problems with that, but I still agree it could be a good idea.
I'm also not sure how easy it would be for the developers to achieve this.
It should be easy to find and install the plug-ins without leaving the
program, I think.
Johnny Rosenberg
seems to me this is what Borland tried to do with Sprint.....
for most purposes I would probably be satisfied with wordstar - much
bloat is attached to go going from simple word processing to what passed
for desktop publishing 20 years ago
I like the concept that are core features combined with extensions/plugins to add little used features. Also, extensions/plugins would allow the dev team to focus on the core code and not run done every minor feature that is wanted. And the extenstions/plugins could be developed and maintained by others who are not part of the dev team.
This requires determining what are truly core features and have a robust API/SDK to make extension development more robust.
Hi
Isn't it called Abiword?
Regards from
Tom