COLLECTIVE SELF-ABSORPTION: The worst fault of many sports announcers is the belief (or actions consistent with the belief) that the audience wants to hear them instead of the game they're calling. Actors fail when their work focuses on actorly performance instead of service of the story. Journalists cannot stop themselves from writing stories about how journalists write stories (I read a story on ESPN a week or two ago about how Albert Pujols refused to apologize for not making himself available for interviews -- if journalists were not the only people who noticed that Pujols didn't make himself available to say nothing insightful, surely they were the only ones who thought he should apologize for it), and authors who are journalists or college professors or lawyers can't help but write fiction about clever or heroic journalists or college professors or lawyers (or authors).
I mention this only because I upgraded (more accurately, I was upgraded, and most accurately, I was switched) to Word 2010 in my office today. I may someday see the wisdom or utility in taking everything that was there before and putting it somewhere else, like some insane professional organizer came into your house and moved literally everything without telling you where it went -- it may make sense for people starting anew, but shouldn't the 20 years we've spent learning Word count for something? But even accepting, without liking, that aspect of Word 2010, I must ask this: who at Microsoft was responsible for thinking that what people needed was more space devoted to What Microsoft Word Does (a chaotic jumble of what used to reside in the pull-down menus) and correspondingly less space for that other thing, what's it called, oh, yeah, your document?
Try working as support in a roomful of computers, half of which run "old" Word and half that run "new" Word. I'm ok with tweaks, but moving practically everything is a problem. As is automatically saving to a filetype (.docx) that can't automatically be read by the older version at, you know, the computer two tables away.
ReplyDeleteI have some serious issues with Word 2010 (the "ribbon" interface, while well intentioned, makes it much harder to find many things), but I am hugely looking forward to the upgrade at my office for two reasons:
ReplyDelete1. Most firms and businesses have made the jump, so I'm having to reformat stuff that comes in so it's readable, and sometimes lose changes.
2. We're also moving from Windows XP to Windows 7, which is much needed, and has been delayed endlessly for reasons I fail to understand.
And since most computer monitors are wider than they are tall, why doesn't the ribbon use any of that space instead of eating precious window space from your document?
ReplyDeleteAgreed!
ReplyDeleteThis round of upgraded Office apps seems to have been optimized for people who have never used them, at the expense of those who use them well and often. And the "ribbon" and the amount of screenspace it takes is incredibly aggravating. As are the autoformatting defaults in Word. You'll be cruising along, typing away, and all's well, but if you hit the tab key, suddenly Word decides you must have meant to be making a numbered list, or that you wanted to indent every paragraph you've typed so-far.
My office went through this earlier this year, with the changes in Excel being the most painful. I've adapted, and tried to do so somewhat cheerfully (I didn't want to be that cranky office worker who wouldn't move to the new technology). But there are things that I used to do in seconds in the old verson that now take minutes for me to hunt down in the ribbon. And some capabilities are just gone - though it takes time wrestling with the ribbon and then weeding through online forums/Microsoft support to figure that out. Every once in a while, our CEO asks me, again, how to do that certain thing with pivot tables that he used to do all the time. And I have to tell him, again, that for some arbitrary Microsoft reason, Excel doesn't do that anymore.
If New Standard were clearly better than Old Standard it would be a close call whether it would make sense to make such radical changes. There's a lot of lost productivity in learning a new, even better thing, and adherence to old standards is why we still use English measurement and Qwerty. Metric and Dvorak are both better (because they make more sense) and worse (because nobody can use them) than our standards, but if you add up all the future time that would be saved by adopting them forever into the future, it by definition would outweigh the present loss of productivity.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm not convinced the new organization is any kind of improvement over the old. Is there something intuitively valuable about the new organization? I lost a good half hour today looking for how to turn off the ordinal-numbers-to-superscript auto-format, figuring out how to change the format of auto-numbering in a table, looking for how to format styles without starting from scratch, etc. If those things were not intuitive before, they're not now either. And while some people might prefer pictures of functions, who wants to learn what pictures some graphic designer thinks conveys the act of paragraph formatting? And even if one wants to learn that, why learn it if the picture is just going to hover right around the word itself? Words and pictures are not better than words or pictures (or, for that matter, than words). And why eliminate the ingenious interface of a disappearing menu? One either is hunting within the menu, in which case it makes sense to have it get reasonably large, or not hunting within the menu, in which case it makes sense to have it go away entirely. The ribbon never goes away, which means that it is permanently wasted space, but it also never gets large enough to use properly. Is there any point, for example, to the default style bar, which shows you a dozen different potential styles at once?
This is a word processing program written for people who spend all of their time thinking about word processing programs and none of their time word processing.
As someone who is about to buy a new home computer for the first time in seven years, and thus upgrade from Windows XP/Word 2003 to Windows 7/Word 20?? (at work we use 2007, so I was debating between that and 2010), this discussion could not be more timely. Or, so far, more lopsided.
ReplyDeleteOh, I can answer that: Vista sucked, so wise IT people have been holding back and stick with XP until they were sure Windows 7 was usable.
ReplyDeleteReally well said, Mr. Spaceman. I couldn't agree with you more.
ReplyDeleteIMHO, Microsoft Word peaked with version 4.0 for the Mac (early 1990s). Since then, I've only "upgraded" because I've been forced to.
Really well said, Mr. Spaceman. I couldn't agree with you more.
ReplyDeleteIMHO, Microsoft Word peaked with version 4.0 for the Mac (early 1990s). Since then, I've only "upgraded" because I've been forced to.
Really well said, Mr. Spaceman. I couldn't agree with you more.
ReplyDeleteIMHO, Microsoft Word peaked with version 4.0 for the Mac (early 1990s). Since then, I've only "upgraded" because I've been forced to.
I've been using the new Word for a while now, and about the best thing I can say for it is that you'll get used to it. You won't like it, and it won't get any better, but eventually, you'll resign yourself to it and adjust everything back to defaults you prefer and figure out work-arounds and it will be somewhat less annoying. Somewhat.
ReplyDeleteIn what way is Windows 7 superior to XP? (I got switched last week and haven't noticed what the benefit is, but I assume there is one.)
ReplyDeleteDitto. You get used to it.
ReplyDeleteWhat I really wish they would build in is a "Classic" option that would let you hide the ribbon and use the old menu system. Quite a lot of the core functions are the same (though I know some of the old stuff is missing).
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ReplyDeleteThere's a caret in the top right hand corner of the Word window. Click it, and the ribbon disappears.
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I yell at Word 2010 to get off of my lawn all the time. And on my company's OS, it now takes eons to load not only each program in Office 2010, but to start up the computer in the morning. When I asked if it was the computer or Office 2010 causing the new delays I was told, "Oh, that's just how things are now. It will be slower, but the features are much better." I dare someone to find me improved features, because then maybe I'd be content waiting around for a minute and a half to get to my documents.
ReplyDeleteOne of the reasons I'm happy I'm using Office 2011 on a Mac. You can turn the Ribbon off entirely since there's still a real menu bar. Did that and haven't looked back.
ReplyDeleteMy real problem is that the Ribbon takes up too much vertical space, which is a RPitA on a smaller, widescreen display. No space to view the document.
Could argue the problem was not aggressively moving to the new version to avoid that. (Though, there's a MS-supported converter for .docx for older versions of Word.)
ReplyDeleteFinn, that's exactly what they're doing here. I have one of the second oldest computers in the building, so I'm still on XP. But the people with the oldest ones, their new machines will have 7.
ReplyDeleteJust when I thought I couldn't possibly hate MS Word any more ... there they go again. O the hate! It burrrrrnnnnns!
ReplyDeleteI have Office 2003 [sic] on my laptop and 2010 on my destop, and think I could learn to prefer either if the differences didn't make me angry at both. No, a 2010 license for the laptop is not in the budget. (And, for what it's worth Isaac, I was able to peel Word 2010 down to an interface that's mostly document and fairly facile once I reacclimate to the interface.)
ReplyDeleteAlso, since there was a mention of sportscasters, it's probably as good a time as any to observe that most Monday Night Football broadcasts would, at this point, be 100% better with about 30% less John Gruden. It's not that Gruden isn't a net positive, just that he needs to edit himself more aggressively. Jaws seemingly noticed late last season that Gruden had started filling any available silence with contentless garbage, and began jumping in with his own drippings from the drivel bucket just to justify his paycheck. Things haven't reached Theisman/Kornheiser levels yet, but it's still totally unnecessary. Shut up, guys. Just a little bit. We'll all be better off.
This is how I felt when my old firm switched from Word Perfect to Word.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that I use some of the stuff on the ribbon -- the format painter, the highlight bar, the bullets/numbering/justify buttons. But cutting it down to the bare essentials for me leaves me with fully half of the ribbon (horizontally) empty. So I have half a ribbon stacked a full inch high and another half a ribbon with nothing on it at all. Ideally, I would have a full ribbon stacked half an inch high, but that does not appear to be an option Word wants to give me.
ReplyDeleteWord may be a program written by people who think they know better than their customers, but Word Perfect is a program written by people who do not like their customers.
ReplyDeleteFor what's it's worth, I ended up making the jump from xp/Office 2003 directly to Windows7/2010, and I didn't find the changes to be as annoying as people who went through Vista/2007. I use Excel/PowerPoint more than Word, which probably also figures inl. I think Windows 7 is noticeably better than Vista, and it seems to be more stable.
ReplyDeleteI'm the cranky office worker. I told IT guy 'A' that 'B' had upgraded me, and 'B' that 'A' had. For the last year I've been happily using Office 2003, and I'll say this for Microsoft, the backwards compatability of '07 and '10 are pretty impressive. I've only had two files that didn't convert well.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I can't dodge IT forever, and I'm teriffied of the change. I'm an 20 year Excel power user who does most actions with keystrokes, and every time I have to sit at coworkers computer to perform some Excel wizardy, I feel like I'm having to work in a foreign language. I HATE IT! Whew, thanks, I feel better.
Right click - that is the ultimate move in all 2010 apps. They have included all of the most used options in right click. Almost everything I use can be found there. I completely ignore the ribbon for the most part. I used to work at a corporation that was a partner with MS. When we switched to 2010, MS came in to train us. Their explanation is that this new format actually makes more sense. Which I guess is true but does nothing for those of us who have been using the applications for years and already know where things were located.
ReplyDeleteXP/Vista/Win7 - Win7 is basically built on the XP platform because Vista was so unstable.
It took me a while but I really like the 2010 apps now... You can also create your own quick keys so you can turn off the ribbon. Handy dandy.
You are my hero.
ReplyDeleteAnd this is why I'm sticking to Word 2007 on my personal computer.
ReplyDelete<p><span>Lucky you! Hold out as long as you can :-)</span>
ReplyDelete</p><p><span><span> </span></span>
</p><p><span><span>I agree with you about the backwards compatibility.<span> </span>I’ve been able to move files back and forth between home and work with little problem.<span> </span></span></span>
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<span>It is kind of funny, though, that Microsoft went to the trouble of implementing a compatibility checker, which ‘helpfully’ offers that 10 or 15 or whatever number of cells in your worksheet are going to lose data or formatting if you save to be compatible with an old version.<span> </span>It would be truly helpful if it went one step further and told you which cells were the problem cells so you could actually fix them before saving.<span> </span>(Sometimes it does, but usually it doesn’t and I can’t quite figure out why.)</span></p>
<p><span>Well that’s handy!</span>
ReplyDelete</p><p><span><span> </span></span>
</p><p><span>Any idea about how to get rid of that weird little style/formatting box that often follows the cursor around the page when you’re editing/cutting/pasting?<span> </span>It inevitably winds up blocking whatever I need to see on the page. </span></p>
this is reason #1 why not to let engineers mess with UI design.
ReplyDeletesee also: google reader revamp.
the new word is why I NEVER use my home laptop for anything work related anymore. I modified the shitty ribbon thing as much as possible and created a custom toolbar to mimic the look (based on screenshots of my old machine--I trust no one and highly customize toolbars) of the old version as much as possible.
my brother the computer guy suggested installing open office, which is less horrible but also less functional.