Why is there a TV icon in Microsoft Word?
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@Aaron said:
@tdb said:
Vim
ssh connectionRight, well there goes any credibility in the realm of User Experience.
I find it funny how you treat developers and users as two distinct sets.
@Aaron said:Do you understand that most people have never even heard of these things, much less would ever use them? What's good for a developer (or generic Linux geek) is usually patently awful for a normal user.
Do you understand that I, as a developer, am one of those people who write the software other people use? A good way to find bugs and usability problems is to eat your own dogfood, i.e. use your own software for your everyday work. While a complicated program likely won't gain much popularity among casual users, a simplistic one is prone to being bug-ridden because the developers don't want to use it and find out bugs.
I expressed some things I would want from an autosave feature. Do you think that my opinions as a developer are worthless because I have more experience?
Edit: Now that I think of it, a casual user probably won't even have enough experience to really know what he wants - perhaps you just want to force your opinions of a perfect system upon everyone?
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In RPGs, I always just save sequentially. Partly because RPGs have historically been some of the buggiest games, partly because my HD (even the one on my game console) is fruckin' huge, and partly because the idiotic "save slot" system finally went the fuck away. The beauty is that if the game bugs out, or even if I just make a bad decision, I can go back any number of saves and do things right.
I start with saving a game named "1", then "2", etc. I think I got up to 700 or so with Oblivion. (I eventually cleaned out the older 400 or so, as it really bogs down the Xbox to enumerate all of those and it was getting annoying waiting for the save dialog to appear. I didn't re-number, though, heh.)
I've actually started doing this with FPS games, too.
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@Aaron said:
@tdb said:
Vim
ssh connectionRight, well there goes any credibility in the realm of User Experience.
Do you understand that most people have never even heard of these things, much less would ever use them? What's good for a developer (or generic Linux geek) is usually patently awful for a normal user.
From a technical standpoint, the most obvious way to get this working without messing up things like timestamps would be to use forks (or ADS on Windows).
People like you make me want to scream, like the people who say that graphic designers don't give a shit about usability. In The Real World you will find that is bollocks.
The main reason that Linux applications look all nasty and clunky is the evils of Software Patenting. Adobe is a good example - anything even vaguely resembling its GUI and/or toolset is patented, which left GIMP in a difficult position trying to create a free and powerful image editor for the community without getting sued in the process.
There are other things about GIMP that suck, but blame the usability issues in Free Software on the correct source - the corporations who pretty much corner the market by overly broad patenting tricks.
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@blakeyrat said:
I start with saving a game named "1", then "2", etc. I think I got up to 700 or so with Oblivion.
Why? Why not give it a more descriptive title? Something like "I'm going into Oblivion, wish me luck!" The savegames (in all games I've played) are sorted by the timestamp that they were saved, so why do you need the "1," "2," etc?What is annoying is when games don't give you an opportunity to name the savegame, so I end up with a dozen saves named "Welcome to Rapture!" Very helpful, thank you.
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@belgariontheking said:
What is annoying is when games don't give you an opportunity to name the savegame, so I end up with a dozen saves named "Welcome to Rapture!" Very helpful, thank you.
+1
Example:
Nyle, The Wasteland, 12 sept 2009
Nyle, The Wasteland, 10 sept 2009
Nyle, The Wasteland, 5 sept 2009
Nyle, The Wasteland, 1 sept 2009
Nyle, The Wasteland, 30 aug 2009
Nyle, The Wasteland, 15 aug 2009ARG.
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@Nyquist said:
The main reason that Linux applications look all nasty and clunky is the evils of Software Patenting.
Yes, that obviously must be the reason.
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@belgariontheking said:
@blakeyrat said:
I start with saving a game named "1", then "2", etc. I think I got up to 700 or so with Oblivion.
Why? Why not give it a more descriptive title? Something like "I'm going into Oblivion, wish me luck!" The savegames (in all games I've played) are sorted by the timestamp that they were saved, so why do you need the "1," "2," etc?What is annoying is when games don't give you an opportunity to name the savegame, so I end up with a dozen saves named "Welcome to Rapture!" Very helpful, thank you.
Because:
1) About 50+ of the games would be named "I'm going into Oblivion, wish me luck!"
2) It's really hard to type on the Xbox controller, and I'm too cheap to buy the little texting pad you can get for it.
Mostly number 2 there.
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@blakeyrat said:
2) It's really hard to type on the Xbox controller, and I'm too cheap to buy the little texting pad you can get for it.
Mostly number 2 there.
I understand your pain.
I guess it's just me being a format geek, but maybe you could create a shorthand/mnemonic/abbreviation for the savegame title, like "I'm going into Oblivion, wish me luck!" => "2OBV. LUK!".
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Clearly we need to amend that law about threads degenerating into Fallout 3 discussions to include other games based on the same engine.
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@dhromed said:
Nyle, The Wasteland, 12 sept 2009
Why does your character have such a boring name? Name him something more manly like Dickstrong or God-Emperor Hugeballs. Also what are you doing still playing that game? It's months old.
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@Welbog said:
Why does your character have such a boring name?
I was reading a book at the time, and a characte had that name. As I was just fucking about exploring the first steps of the game, I could not be arsed with a good name.
@Welbog said:
Name him something more manly like Dickstrong or God-Emperor Hugeballs.
There are no sliders to adjust the genitals of your character. If there were, I would have created a female character whose locomotion was provided by undulating her gigantic labia.
@Welbog said:
Also what are you doing still playing that game? It's months old.
I play slow*. I'm almost level 15.
*) really slow. This is not a point of concern for me.
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As my next char will be melee- and unarmed-based, perhaps "Fistfucker" or "Doublefister" would make a good name.
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@dhromed said:
There are no sliders to adjust the genitals of your character. If there were, I would have created a female character whose locomotion was provided by undulating her gigantic labia.
That reminds me of a movie I oncestarred inheard about.
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@Nyquist said:
The main reason that Linux applications look all nasty and clunky is the evils of
Software Patentingmimicry. Adobe is a good example - anything even vaguely resembling its GUI and/or toolset ispatentedgoing to suck because Adobe can't design UIs worth a crap either, which left GIMP in a difficult position trying to create a free and powerful image editor for the community withoutgetting sued in the processhaving to be even remotely creative.FTFY.
Linux applications look nasty and clunky because they borrow the same dumbass interface concepts that commercial software uses (minus the pretty icons) instead of figuring out something better. Things like Firefox are a rare exception to this, and part of the reason Firefox gained so much traction is because the people behind it tried to make a better browser instead of just cloning Internet Explorer. Unfortunately Firefox seems to be looking more like a tabbed version IE with every big release, but that's another discussion.
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@Justice said:
Linux applications look nasty and clunky because they borrow the same dumbass interface concepts that commercial software uses (minus the pretty icons) instead of figuring out something better. Things like Firefox are a rare exception to this, and part of the reason Firefox gained so much traction is because the people behind it tried to make a better browser instead of just cloning Internet Explorer.
Firefox's user interface is virtually identical to the original Netscape browser, which is itself only slightly different from the original Mosaic browser. Address bar, stop, reload, home, forward, back... things really haven't changed that much.
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@Zylon said:
@Justice said:
Linux applications look nasty and clunky because they borrow the same dumbass interface concepts that commercial software uses (minus the pretty icons) instead of figuring out something better. Things like Firefox are a rare exception to this, and part of the reason Firefox gained so much traction is because the people behind it tried to make a better browser instead of just cloning Internet Explorer.
Firefox's user interface is virtually identical to the original Netscape browser, which is itself only slightly different from the original Mosaic browser. Address bar, stop, reload, home, forward, back... things really haven't changed that much.
I was thinking more of how they popularized tabbed browsing (they weren't the first, I realize: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetCaptor) and made some fairly significant look-and-feel improvements, but I can see your point that the absolute basics haven't changed.
The main point I was trying to make is that it's counter-productive to blame software patents for the UI troubles of free software, when the very products the community wants to mimic have lousy interfaces in the first place. If they really want to make inroads and gain market share, the UI is a great place to stand out and be something more than a cut-rate clone.
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@Nyquist said:
People like you make me want to scream, like the people who say that graphic designers don't give a shit about usability. In The Real World you will find that is bollocks.
The main reason that Linux applications look all nasty and clunky is the evils of Software Patenting. Adobe is a good example - anything even vaguely resembling its GUI and/or toolset is patented, which left GIMP in a difficult position trying to create a free and powerful image editor for the community without getting sued in the process.
There are other things about GIMP that suck, but blame the usability issues in Free Software on the correct source - the corporations who pretty much corner the market by overly broad patenting tricks.
If the companies have all the good UI designs patented then how do other companies come all the time and create new better UIs?
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@tster said:
If the companies have all the good UI designs patented then how do other companies come all the time and create new better UIs?
The set {good UI design} = {known good UI design}. There exists a superset of UI designs, which cannot be patented because they are unknown and have not been invented yet.
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@Justice said:
The main point I was trying to make is that it's counter-productive to blame software patents for the UI troubles of free software, when the very products the community wants to mimic have lousy interfaces in the first place. If they really want to make inroads and gain market share, the UI is a great place to stand out and be something more than a cut-rate clone.
The UIs for most popular mass-market software are just fine. The last time Microsoft tried to improve things, we ended up with the confused IE6 interface, which scattered the familiar buttons all over the place, and the godawful usability tranwreck of the Office "ribbon" interface.
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@Zylon said:
@Justice said:
The main point I was trying to make is that it's counter-productive to blame software patents for the UI troubles of free software, when the very products the community wants to mimic have lousy interfaces in the first place. If they really want to make inroads and gain market share, the UI is a great place to stand out and be something more than a cut-rate clone.
The UIs for most popular mass-market software are just fine. The last time Microsoft tried to improve things, we ended up with the confused IE6 interface, which scattered the familiar buttons all over the place, and the godawful usability tranwreck of the Office "ribbon" interface.
Different strokes I guess. I don't really mind the ribbon. The "software patent" discussion got started talking about Adobe, and I really don't see Adobe's products (or really any graphics/3D software) as having a particularly good UI. The sense I always got from using Photoshop (Maya is even worse in this respect, lest you think I just have an axe to grind with Adobe) is that the interface was originally designed for use on multiple-display workstations, and then crammed into a small package for use on a single monitor. Whether that's anything close to reality, I don't know, but it always felt rather cramped to me.
As an aside, depending on your perspective, Photoshop might not qualify as mass-market software unless you count piracy.
So here's my thinking on the whole GIMP issue. Maybe the developers can't make it look sharp. So be it. Then instead of bitching about patents, why don't they try to stand out by succeeding where Photoshop doesn't? Maybe good multi-display support is insanely hard; I don't do much UI work so I don't know for sure, but if you can throw the open-source community at a problem, at least give it a shot instead of whining about the evils of software patents.
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@Zylon said:
the confused IE6 interface, which scattered the familiar buttons all over the place
You mean IE7?
@Zylon said:
the godawful usability tranwreck of the Office "ribbon" interface.
It's perfectly fine. The buttons are bigger, and therefore easier to see and click. The onyl crap about it is the priority for collapsing and shrinking buttons as you narrow the window: it seems no thought was given to the buttons that people use the most. The attachment button, for example, is one of the first to shrink, even though it's oft-used.
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@dhromed said:
@Zylon said:
the confused IE6 interface, which scattered the familiar buttons all over the place
You mean IE7?
Whoops, yes, I did mean IE7.
@dhromed said:
@Zylon said:
the godawful usability tranwreck of the Office "ribbon" interface.
It's perfectly fine. The buttons are bigger, and therefore easier to see and click.
If all it did was make the buttons bigger, THAT would have been perfectly fine, but the automatic context-sensitive tab switching is a smegging nightmare. I'm constantly having to manually switch Word back to its Home tab because it "helpfully" decided that I should be looking at some other tab. And god help you if you want to find some functionality that they didn't have room to cram into any of the ribbons... then you have to go digging around in the disorganized trash heap of the Word Options menus.
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@Zylon said:
@dhromed said:
@Zylon said:
the godawful usability tranwreck of the Office "ribbon" interface.
It's perfectly fine. The buttons are bigger, and therefore easier to see and click.
If all it did was make the buttons bigger, THAT would have been perfectly fine, but the automatic context-sensitive tab switching is a smegging nightmare. I'm constantly having to manually switch Word back to its Home tab because it "helpfully" decided that I should be looking at some other tab. And god help you if you want to find some functionality that they didn't have room to cram into any of the ribbons... then you have to go digging around in the disorganized trash heap of the Word Options menus.
Actually, it's worse than that; any time you want a command that you can't see, though it might in fact be crammed into the ribbon somewhere. Also known as "Out of these ribbon tabs, which five would be the most likely places to find the comand that I want?" The first step towards making Office 2007 usable is to add all your frequently used commands to the Quick Access toolbar so you don't lose them every time the context switches to another tab. And using the "Commands not in the ribbon" filter is useless because (a) that's about 95% of all commands anyway and (b) about one time in five the command that you couldn't find in the ribbon is actually there, just somewhere obscure. So you have to start by digging through the list of all commands to find the ones you want to use.
Once you have that set up though, it's not too bad to use. But why on earth, when you choose "New" from the Office button, can you not at least double-click on the smegging template image to indicate that's the one you want instead of selecting it then going all the way to the opposite corner of a freaking HUGE window to click on the "Create" button? Fortunately installing the "New" command to the quick access toolbar makes it just create a default blank document, which is what you actually want in at least 99.9% of cases.
The context switching thing... well, half the time it's handy, the other half it's annoying. Probably tough to do much better, I suppose. Of course it wouldn't be necessary if they hadn't adopted a design where only one related set of commands is available at any time. (There's nothing wrong with having only a small [i]number[/i] of commands available at any one time, if those are the commands that are in actual use. But when you have, say, the Reviewing tab open you lose access to nearly all functionality.) In fact I thought Office 2003 did a reasonable job with this, making it easy to add and remove buttons that would normally be on a given toolbar, sizing the toolbars to the available space and making it quick and easy to display and hide toolbars, yet for the most part only needing two rows of icons to display pretty much everything you'd need.
tl;dr: The Office 2007 ribbon is OK if you install all the commands you need on the Quick Access toolbar and use that for most of your work, ignoring the ribbon itself as much as possible. You get used to the huge waste of screen space eventually.
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@Scarlet Manuka said:
tl;dr: The Office 2007 ribbon is OK if you install all the commands you need on the Quick Access toolbar and use that for most of your work, ignoring the ribbon itself as much as possible. You get used to the huge waste of screen space eventually.
Shouldn't this be on top, since people who won't read the whole thing will probably not read that anyway?
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@Scarlet Manuka said:
tl;dr: The Office 2007 ribbon is OK if you install all the commands you need on the Quick Access toolbar and use that for most of your work, ignoring the ribbon itself as much as possible. You get used to the huge waste of screen space eventually.
This post symbolizes the crux of the general usability problem today. "Experts" who have invested too much time in learning one way of doing something are too lazy and stubborn to learn a new (better) way and will stop at nothing to maintain the status quo. This is how it was with Office until Microsoft got a clue and stopped listening to these people, and this is how it continues to be file systems and document management, at least for now.
I'm used to experiencing this mindset with non-technical, task-oriented people who have been doing the same thing for a long time and effectively follow a routine. I'm always surprised to see it with more technical types and especially programmers. But I guess programmers can get complacent too, if they aren't really in the biz of UI design.
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@Aaron said:
"Experts" who have invested too much time in learning one way of doing something are too lazy and stubborn to learn a new (better) way and will stop at nothing to maintain the status quo.
This is certainly true in general. But why is it true in this case? What major advantages does the new interface have that make it clearly a "better way"?
Note: I'm not saying it's not better — I've never used Office 2007, so I wouldn't venture an opinion on the matter. I'm just asking you to justify your position.
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@Aaron said:
This post symbolizes the crux of the general usability problem today. "Experts" who have invested too much time in learning one way of doing something are too lazy and stubborn to learn a new (better) way and will stop at nothing to maintain the status quo. This is how it was with Office until Microsoft got a clue and stopped listening to these people, and this is how it continues to be file systems and document management, at least for now.
I'm used to experiencing this mindset with non-technical, task-oriented people who have been doing the same thing for a long time and effectively follow a routine. I'm always surprised to see it with more technical types and especially programmers. But I guess programmers can get complacent too, if they aren't really in the biz of UI design.
If this was meant as a troll, it worked...
Your view is completely off base. Office is a TOOL and as such should have a consistent method of using it. Imagine the chaos if some car manufacturer found a "better" way of setting up the controls in a car! Each new generation of automobile would have a different way of controlling it making cars more difficult (and dangerous) to drive. The consistency is worth a little bit of inefficiency.
So, even though MS believes that the Ribbon is a huge improvement (and maybe it is for new users!), they STILL SHOULD NOT HAVE CHANGED IT - or at least continue to provide the old interface as an option. Why should users have to stuggle to relearn to use a tool each time a new version comes out?
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@Auction_God said:
Your view is completely off base. Office is a TOOL and as such should have a consistent method of using it. Imagine the chaos if some car manufacturer found a "better" way of setting up the controls in a car! Each new generation of automobile would have a different way of controlling it making cars more difficult (and dangerous) to drive. The consistency is worth a little bit of inefficiency.
Goddamn straight. Car manufacturers should have stuck with crank-starting, double-clutching manual transmissions, powerless steering, non-anti-lock brakes, AM-only radio and kerosene lanterns for headlights. And what the fuck is this cruise control bullshit? Some of us are used to getting painful cramps in our legs on long drives and it's bullshit they would change the UI on us!
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@morbiuswilters said:
Plus, changing the controls on a car is exactly like changing the UI elements in an office productivity suite. If you can't find that button you need in an emergency, your computer will swerve off of your desk and into a tree, killing three people.@Auction_God said:
Your view is completely off base. Office is a TOOL and as such should have a consistent method of using it. Imagine the chaos if some car manufacturer found a "better" way of setting up the controls in a car! Each new generation of automobile would have a different way of controlling it making cars more difficult (and dangerous) to drive. The consistency is worth a little bit of inefficiency.
Goddamn straight. Car manufacturers should have stuck with crank-starting, double-clutching manual transmissions, powerless steering, non-anti-lock brakes, AM-only radio and kerosene lanterns for headlights. And what the fuck is this cruise control bullshit? Some of us are used to getting painful cramps in our legs on long drives and it's bullshit they would change the UI on us!
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@morbiuswilters said:
Goddamn straight. Car manufacturers should have stuck with crank-starting, double-clutching manual transmissions, powerless steering, non-anti-lock brakes, AM-only radio and kerosene lanterns for headlights. And what the fuck is this cruise control bullshit? Some of us are used to getting painful cramps in our legs on long drives and it's bullshit they would change the UI on us!
@bstorer said:
Plus, changing the controls on a car is exactly like changing the UI elements in an office productivity suite. If you can't find that button you need in an emergency, your computer will swerve off of your desk and into a tree, killing three people.
Hey, mine tried yesterday, but I narrowly avoided the accident...
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
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I eagerly look forward to Microsoft Ribbon For Cars(TM). The steering wheel will disappear when you put on the handbrake! Opening the trunk will black out the windshield! It'll be great!
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@Zylon said:
Opening the trunk will black out the windshield! It'll be great!
They already tried that. It's called the VW Beetle.
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@Auction_God said:
Your view is completely off base. Office is a TOOL and as such should have a consistent method of using it. Imagine the chaos if some car manufacturer found a "better" way of setting up the controls in a car! Each new generation of automobile would have a different way of controlling it making cars more difficult (and dangerous) to drive. The consistency is worth a little bit of inefficiency.
Ah, I love spurious car analogies. Aside from the obvious jokes already contributed by morbius and pstorer, a car has a total of 4 essential interactive controls you need to worry about - gas, brake, shifter, steering wheel. Make that 5 if you include the emergency brake (which is already inconsistent, it could be a hand or foot brake). Oh, make that 6, there's also the ignition, which they changed - I press a button to start my car and I definitely do not miss fumbling around with keys. Point is, Microsoft Word had no fewer than 30 frequently-used functions, many of which are still on the "Home" ribbon. And it had literally thousands of functions in total, many buried deep within menu structures or toolbar sub-menus or even hidden away in some "customize" screen.
Other, nonessential controls in car, like seat adjustments or radio, would actually be located ON the physical object they are intended to control, a luxury that software UI designers rarely have, but which Microsoft actually took a pretty good crack at with the little mini-toolbar that fades in when you move the mouse near highlighted text. But the main point is that with a "document" or "spreadsheet" you simply don't have the option to strew buttons and other controls all over the place, because they'll obscure the document. In a car, or in any other physical space, controls are intrinsically context-sensitive because of their location.
Even so, on parts of a car like the radio, you still have context-sensitive buttons. ">>" might mean seek, scan, next track, or next disc, or maybe something completely different, depending on how you press it and what the radio is doing at the time. This is very similar to how the ribbon behaves, but instead of pressing a different button in the same physical location, you're actually pressing the same button; that's an obvious limitation of a physical control as opposed to a virtual one, but it's really the same concept.
If driving a car involved coordinating more than 100 different activities at various times, only 5-10 of which I used with any regularity, then you're damn right I would want some sort of context-sensitive behaviour. Yes, office is a "tool", but not every "tool" is as simple as a hammer or a screwdriver, and even those simple tools have seen improvements that change the way they are used (such as a power screwdriver). Any tool that's even remotely complex has undergone and will continue to undergo many major changes in usability. Look at touch-tone phones or MP3 players. Look at doors and locks FFS.
If you can take your head out of your ass for long enough to get used to the ribbon, you'll never want to go back to the old way. It's much more than some silly hand-holding for new users.
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@Aaron said:
Ah, I love spurious car analogies. Aside from the obvious jokes already contributed by morbius and pstorer, a car has a total of 4 essential interactive controls you need to worry about
Would those be 'how fast' (brake, accelerator) and 'which direction' (steering wheel, one of the above)?I only see three.
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@PJH said:
@Aaron said:
Do you travel in silence? Obviously he's counting the radio.Ah, I love spurious car analogies. Aside from the obvious jokes already contributed by morbius and pstorer, a car has a total of 4 essential interactive controls you need to worry about
Would those be 'how fast' (brake, accelerator) and 'which direction' (steering wheel, one of the above)?I only see three.
Do you travel in the rain? Windshield wipers
Do you travel at night? Headlights
Do you travel in the winter? Rear Defroster
Do you travel with your wife? Boxing glove
Do you travel with children? The trunk
Do you travel in non-perfect weather? The A/C or heater
Do you travel faster than 5 mph? The seatbelt
Up to 11
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@Aaron said:
If you can take your head out of your ass for long enough to get used to the ribbon, you'll never want to go back to the old way. It's much more than some silly hand-holding for new users.
I have yet to find an operation that's on ribbon for which I don't know the keyboard shortcut. OTOH, I was having problems with stuff they removed from ribbon, which I normally accessed through the menus, and which is now nowhere to be found (unless you add it to the quick access toolbar). I have since switched to OpenOffice.org, and haven't looked back.
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@PJH said:
If only you had read further into that very sentence:@Aaron said:
Ah, I love spurious car analogies. Aside from the obvious jokes already contributed by morbius and pstorer, a car has a total of 4 essential interactive controls you need to worry about
Would those be 'how fast' (brake, accelerator) and 'which direction' (steering wheel, one of the above)?I only see three.
@Aaron said:
Aside from the obvious jokes already contributed by morbius and pstorer, a car has a total of 4 essential interactive controls you need to worry about - gas, brake, shifter, steering wheel.
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@Aaron said:
If you can take your head out of your ass for long enough to get used to the ribbon, you'll never want to go back to the old way. It's much more than some silly hand-holding for new users.
Many common operations take more clicks to accomplish with the Ribbon than with the old interface. Ribbon objectively fails.
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@Zylon said:
Many common operations take more clicks to accomplish with the Ribbon than with the old interface. Ribbon objectively fails.
List these common operations, please.
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@ender said:
I have since switched to OpenOffice.org, and haven't looked back.
Maybe you haven't looked back, but presumably you're looking at something other than your monitor while waiting for that bloatware to load. Hell, even after it's loaded I'd prefer not to look at the ass-ugly UI.
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@dhromed said:
@Zylon said:
Many common operations take more clicks to accomplish with the Ribbon than with the old interface. Ribbon objectively fails.
List these common operations, please.
I'll give you some examples of them:
1) Set or edit Document properties.
2) Turn on or off automatic calculation
3) Protect / unprotect a range
4) Find out the version and Service pack installed
5) List or Edit the add-ins.
6) Autofit to row height
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@Auction_God said:
Most of those are a massive stretch to call "common".@dhromed said:
@Zylon said:
Many common operations take more clicks to accomplish with the Ribbon than with the old interface. Ribbon objectively fails.
List these common operations, please.
I'll give you some examples of them:
1) Set or edit Document properties.
2) Turn on or off automatic calculation
3) Protect / unprotect a range
4) Find out the version and Service pack installed
5) List or Edit the add-ins.
6) Autofit to row height
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@bstorer said:
Most of those are a massive stretch to call "common".
I guess that depends on what you're doing with Excel, doesn't it? I admit that I only rarely use Protect/Unprotect a range. the others are ALL very common operations. I have to make templates for others to use. So I end up setting document properties to describe the template. While editing large templates, I will turn off automatic calculation and only turn it back on for the final save. Often each row has to be set to "autofit" to height, and if someone previously dragged the row height that gets turned off.
Now when someone else tries to use the created template and something doesn't work quite right, I'll have to make sure they have the required add-ins and have the correct version and service pack of Excel.
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@Auction_God said:
Just because you use them frequently doesn't make them common by any metric.@bstorer said:
Most of those are a massive stretch to call "common".
I guess that depends on what you're doing with Excel, doesn't it? I admit that I only rarely use Protect/Unprotect a range. the others are ALL very common operations. I have to make templates for others to use. So I end up setting document properties to describe the template. While editing large templates, I will turn off automatic calculation and only turn it back on for the final save. Often each row has to be set to "autofit" to height, and if someone previously dragged the row height that gets turned off.
Now when someone else tries to use the created template and something doesn't work quite right, I'll have to make sure they have the required add-ins and have the correct version and service pack of Excel.
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@bstorer said:
Just because you use them frequently doesn't make them common by any metric.
Common (adjective): of frequent occurrence; usual; familiar
Hmmmm....Seems to me they have very similar definitions. I think you need to brush up on your english.
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@morbiuswilters said:
Maybe you haven't looked back, but presumably you're looking at something other than your monitor while waiting for that bloatware to load. Hell, even after it's loaded I'd prefer not to look at the ass-ugly UI.
OOo 3.1.1 takes 5 seconds to load, which while it is 3 seconds slower than Excel 2007, it's still fast enough for me. It's not my fault if you're trying to run OOo on a machine from last millennium. Also, unlike Office 2007, OOo at least pretends it's following my Windows colour scheme.
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@Auction_God said:
Are you trying to be pendantic? You aren't the only user of the software. You provide no evidence to suggest your usage is the norm. In fact, I'm willing to go out on a limb and guess that Microsoft did study this to attempt to determine actual common usage, and that this study included more than just calling up one random dumbass.@bstorer said:
Just because you use them frequently doesn't make them common by any metric.
Common (adjective): of frequent occurrence; usual; familiar
Hmmmm....Seems to me they have very similar definitions. I think you need to brush up on your english.
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@bstorer said:
Are you trying to be pendantic? You aren't the only user of the software. You provide no evidence to suggest your usage is the norm. In fact, I'm willing to go out on a limb and guess that Microsoft did study this to attempt to determine actual common usage, and that this study included more than just calling up one random dumbass.
You started it :) You asked for examples, I provided...Then you attacked those examples. I think it's time for you to provide examples of where 2007 is Easier, then I can complain and shoot them down in detail.
OTOH, you provide no evidence that my usage is NOT common. And now you're guessing on how (and why) MS decided to change the interface. I find the 2007 interface much better for some tasks and abysmal for others. At least in 2003 you could build your own toolbars. In 2007, you get one "quick access toolbar" and just about everything you add to it gets a graphic of a green hemisphere - and it is NOT an easy task to change the icon used. As a result my quick access toolbar is a series of green hemispheres, some enabled, some not depending upon the context. I have to remember approximately where each common task is in the toolbar, then rely on flyover help to locate the exact one I need. How is that better?
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@ender said:
OOo 3.1.1 takes 5 seconds to load, which while it is 3 seconds slower than Excel 2007, it's still fast enough for me. It's not my fault if you're trying to run OOo on a machine from last millennium. Also, unlike Office 2007, OOo at least pretends it's following my Windows colour scheme.
It takes about 10 seconds to load for me, which is too fucking slow for a modern piece of software. Abiword loads instantly. It's a fairly good machine (for a laptop): 2.2Ghz Core 2 duo, 4GB RAM.
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@Auction_God said:
You started it :) You asked for examples, I provided...Then you attacked those examples.
No I didn't. I know scrolling up is a difficult and time-consuming venture, but you might want to give it a try. All I did was point out that your examples, while frequent for you, are not necessarily common. You don't even represent a hundredth of a hundredth of a percent of their user base.@Auction_God said:
I think it's time for you to provide examples of where 2007 is Easier, then I can complain and shoot them down in detail.
If I put as little reasoning into my examples as you have, I would hope they'd be shot down.@Auction_God said:
OTOH, you provide no evidence that my usage is NOT common.
No, because I foolishly assumed you would realize this fact. But while we're on the issue, you cannot demand negative proof as a method of asserting your argument. You make the Invisible Pink Unicorn cry.@Auction_God said:
And now you're guessing on how (and why) MS decided to change the interface.
You're right; I'm just guessing. I'm guessing that a multibillion-dollar software corporation does some sort of research before completely overhauling their interface. This is a silly assumption on my part. Allow me to retract it in favor of the far more likely theory that they just changed it arbitrarily to screw with the users.
