This thread reminds me that I need to think about perhaps upgrading to a newer version of Excel. Mine came from something then known as “Microsoft Office X” and got hit a couple times with minor updates to version 10.1.5 but it’s essentially a 2001-era app.
This “Office 2008” doesn’t sound so nice. Maybe I’ll check out eBay for something in between. I don’t like lots of toolbars. Just one for the formula, really, will be fine. Everything else should be menu-driven as God intended.
Menu-driven design is quickly going away. Most new apps have fewer and fewer endless menus in favor of nice and easy-to-read toolbars and icons. I’d really suggest trying it yourself before listening to those who refuse to embrace change (even when it really IS better for them). You can read about the “ribbon” here.
When it comes to what really IS better for me, I think I have a lot more authority than you do. However, the challenge above remains. Tell me why I need the elements toolbar at all times to write a novel and I will listen. I can help guide you through this by informing you I have no need at any time for word art, clip art, tables, charts, or pre-formatted templates… which are the only items available on this toolbar. I repeat that while once a year I might use clipart for some side project, literally 99 out of 100 hours I am simply typing and using none of those things. So even if you argue for the usefulness of the bar, that is not an argument for making it impossible to dock the goddamned thing. I am convinced it was either an oversight or usability studies gone awry. They probably discovered in usability studies that people immediately hid it then couldn’t figure out how to bring it back to do their usability tasks. Bingo, an interfaced designed to succeed on their own usability testing instead of actually suiting people’s needs.
I think it takes some kind of arrogance to presume you know what is better for other people when you don’t even know what their needs are. And the first stage in software design is user needs analysis.
As for “giving it a chance,” give it a chance at what? Am I supposed to create a newsletter with a bunch of clip art just to use the elements toolbar? I’m not one to let the software tell me what I want to do. I’m not going to do something else than what I’m paid to do just so I can do what the software is good at. I “gave it a try” at mundane word processing and was so annoyed by the toolbar I couldn’t concentrate.
Okay, so let’s talk about user needs analysis. What percentage of documents created using Word are lengthy novels with minimal formatting? The product team needs to target the product toward the majority of the user base. Now, it could be argued that more resources should be devoted toward making the UI customizable…but what percentage of users have that as a firm requirement? And is it worth devoting those resources to the “UI customization” rather than to some other feature?
It’s a series of tradeoffs which admittedly don’t always meet every customer’s desires.
If you’re genuinely interested only in basic text manipulation, have you looked into getting an actual text editor rather than a word processor? That may be a better fit for your particular needs in this case.
I can’t imagine that “show/hide” on the elements toolbar would have been that difficult to program or that hard for users to figure out. They have it for everything else. It’s a baffling design decision. As it is, I’m going to use Scrivener to write my next novel, but will need to quickly put it through Word before sharing with my crit group, agent, or editor for compatibility. And of course, I will use word on those odd occasions where I do want to make a table or something, and to open documents other people send me. I don’t really mind having Office for Powerpoint and Excel and occasional Word use, I got it cheap and I will use it. I will continue to be annoyed by the simple lack of a toggle button for that one toolbar though. Based on googling, it’s one of the top annoyances among users.
FTR, Word does offer some nice things to authors, like the left navigation pane, style sheets, etc. However, to concentrate I really can’t have weird crap in between me and the formatting stuff. And yeah, I can work in Draft mode and probably will once I’m through a draft or two in Scrivener (which lets you easily switch scenes around), but I’ve gotten used to page preview and like it.
I found this to be fairly obnoxious.
[quote=Word Help: Can I customize the Ribbon?]
The Ribbon, which is part of the Microsoft Office Fluent user interface, is designed to help you quickly find the commands that you need to complete a task. Commands are organized in logical groups that are collected together under tabs. Because each tab relates to a type of activity, such as writing or laying out a page, it is not possible to customize the Ribbon without using XML and programming code.
Things you can’t do:[ul][li]Add to or rearrange the commands on the Ribbon. [/li][li]Change or remove a command or group on the Ribbon. [/li][li]Add tabs to the Ribbon, unless you use XML and programming code. [/li][li]Switch to the toolbars and menus from earlier versions of Microsoft Office. [/li][li]Change the font or font size used on the Ribbon.[/ul][/li]Things you can do:[ul][li]Minimize the Ribbon to make more space available on your screen. [/li][li]Move the Quick Access Toolbar to position it below or above the Ribbon. [/li][li]Customize the Quick Access Toolbar to add buttons that represent the commands that you frequently use. [/li][li]Use XML and programming code to extend the Office Fluent user interface by adding custom tabs, buttons, check boxes, or Dialog Box Launchers. For more information, go to the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN).[/ul] (emphasis added)[/li][/quote]
So… so… you can’t customize the ribbon unless you program it to? And being Microsoft, they had no idea where to find a programmer to add this functionality to the software? I especially love the failure between the antecedent “Because each tab relates to a type of activity” and its consequent “it is not possible to customize the Ribbon without using XML and programming code.”
In these days of larger monitors, I especially like how gracious Microsoft was in allowing me to move the quick access toolbar both above and below the ribbon.
My favorite WTF is the fact that they decided to really change a bunch of stuff…then strip the help files down to the nubs. Best of all, they did it completely randomly. Oh, let’s leave the instructions for this, half the instruction for that, and no mention at all of these three things…
But it has some very powerful features so I continue to use it.
It looks like you’re writing a letter!
Nothing in any keyboard-centric application that I use gets to eat that much of my Desktop real estate.
I only embrace changes that I like. Other changes get beaten over the head with a shovel and their corpses buried out back. Like Apple and their stupid “Dock” thing.
In Excel, I find the “Chart Wizard” button useful because if I am creating a chart I’m in mouse-mode already anyhow. And I like a place to display and edit the formula in a calculation cell. I do not need a picture of a stupid freaking floppy disk to click on to save my document. That’s what ⌘-S is for.
In a word processor I’m going to use (which is not, has not been, and most likely never WILL be Microsoft Word), I want minimalist screen-garbage. Like this (top image) but with the annoying tool palette at left turned off. Or better yet, , this interface
Oh, talking about the eighties … Best text processor ever
Sorry, no… I actually do like WYSIWYG fonts and I like the line to soft-wrap at the edge of the screen and hard-wrap when I hit enter. I want standard keyboard commands, none of this horrid pico or vi stuff.
If they ever put out a word processor version, one that could do formatted text and footnotes and endnotes, I would consider NEdit though. Or BBEdit. 98% of what I want from a word processor is a text editor with fonts, margin control, and footnotes.
Do you have any examples of this? IME, the help system is generally pretty decent, so I’m curious about what issues you were running into.
Have you played around with minimizing the Ribbon? (Yeah, it’s still Word so there may be other issues you don’t care for, but that does free up some screen real estate.)
Now how the heck could I play around with minimizing the ribbon if my most recent version of Excel is Office X (2001) and I don’t have Word at all?
By futzing around on someone else’s machine for a few minutes?
I did that in the continuing education course I took this spring. It’s not just the “ribbon” bar it’s the complete destruction of all the conventional menus such as the File menu and Edit menu, all of this in an application that I do not normally use anyway (Word). Found it totally foreign.
I was running MS Office X until just last year. I bought MS Office 2004 in January 2008 right before Office 2008 came out. (The deal from Amazon was that if I bought Office 2004, I’d get a voucher for a free copy of 2008.)
Anyhoo, MS Office 2008 still sits in its shrinkwrap until I’m forced by the winds of change to upgrade. I should be perfectly happy with 2004 for a while yet. Still menu-driven, no Ribbons.
F1 brings up the help file. It isn’t perfect but if you’re looking for a command you already know about then a quick search should help you.
I had a similar problem when I got on an old version of Excel to print at the library once. Everything was hidden in menus. I didn’t know where the fuck to look.
The Eighties? I remember there was a one-line program that was an excellent word processor for my CoCo3.
By “had” I’m referring to what we were instructed to do. Blaming the Developers for design decisions at MS is rather ludicrous. We’re not PMs.
