What an office suite should look like

Hello all,

On a fast track to productivity - my most serious article debating the pros and cons of existing office suite programs and suggesting improvements in design and usability, including tabbed interface, media integration, drag and drop for graphs and data, mandatory styling, and more. If you thought office suites like a car accident, then you ought to take a look here.

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/office-looks.html


Cheers,
Mrk

 

Indeed, the ribbon interface of Office 2007 really was a pain in the neck!! Fortunately, version 2010 introduced back usability! At least, IMO.

Microsoft could release a patch for Office 2007 to apply the same usability as we see it in version 2010.

 

Great post!
I try to only work with text editors, html and pdf and skip the whole Office suite thing. What a mess.

Performance and features of Office 2010, layout from 2003, with a LaTeX backend and built-in source editor?
Pretty please, we cheap Linux folks would even pay for that

 

I know some guys would pick on me for this but I sort of like the Ribbon Interface. I'm not singing praises for it but it made a small change in usability for me...

I don't typically work with Office suites much but I must admit that the GUI present in the older MS Office version really ~ Snipped as per TOS ~ (to madness) when I was learning it during primary/secondary school days. I HATED it so much that 95% of the time, I just ignored what I was taught, literally following through the class waiting for each second to pass and finally sigh such a relief when it's over. And you know what - as much as I hate to admit it, I ended up being an Office noob.

The Ribbon 'came' and for once, I was made to believe that it look less cluttered - call it an illusion, a successful trap for office noobs, whatever you want but finally I saw a glimpse of hope. I can access menus/options more 'easily' by just moving the cursor around, clicking away at whatever options available - heck, even ones that are not familiar to me (maybe I've learnt of them but how would I know, right? I've never put them into practice although I still have my chunk of notes somewhere)

However, I no longer have MS Office installed on my machine and mostly do writing in Notepad, Wordpad and whatever other "mini" tools I've got in hand. If need be, I open up Google Docs and use that instead (e.g. when I need an alternative to PowerPoint) I still have not decided if it's worthy of a re-install on my machine for my basic needs. I'll see how things go...

I've tried OpenOffice, the forks and a few others but all just doesn't cut it for me GUI-wise. I get a huge headache looking at them....I'm still waiting to see what LibreOffice brings onto the table....hoping that the UI is revamped to much less clutter. In this case "Less is more" for me. I couldn't care less as to all the other geeky advanced and juicy details that most of you guys here probably crave for. All I want is simplicity. And some modern GUI to it - I don't wish to consume paracetamol just for this....

 

That looks really really similar to Office 2003, so i guess it's been there, done taht

Anyways, It's all about getting used to it i guess.

 

Hi Mrk:

I wanted to get your take on this one within MS Office 2010.
The suggestion I got was NO can't be done send pdf files.

 

Escalader,
Repeat after me: DRM does not work. In his case it's called IRM:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/e...2007-microsoft-office-system-HA010102918.aspx
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/o...cted-permission-by-using-irm-HA010247804.aspx

If it can be read by the recipient it can be forwarded by the recipient.

The best you can do is to add a scary sounding legal disclaimer or IMO much better, politely explain the problem to your correspondents.
Talking about problems beats coercion and force anytime

 

You are Not the only one...

 

PS:
If you don't like the Ribbon, you might have a look at the RibbonCustomizer:
http://pschmid.net/office2007/ribboncustomizer/index.php

 

OR use UBitMenu for Office

 

Thanks for the statement on DMR/IRM.


When you indicate it doesn't work how do you know this?

Testing or other sources? I'm not saying you are wrong but as I'm in MS Office 2010 not 2007 I'm still hoping IRM will work.

I tend to agree with you about force vs explanation but what happens in my world is I have to email with some unethical/political people. No amount of persuasion would work in fact my attempt would be used against me. I know I sound paranoid and maybe I am but the experience I have with some of them is negative.

Comments?

 

Why DRM doesn't work:
http://superuser.com/questions/14224/how-can-i-explain-why-drm-cannot-work

From the links above:

(they didn't mention it but OCR is a great invention...)

As I said, you can make it more difficult but not impossible. But maybe that's all it takes to stop it from happening.

 

Thanks Mr.PC !!

I didn't know about that one.

 

Why do we keep saying DMR and then the links sat IRM?

Is this a typo?


What is OCR ? another MS Office thingy?

I'm confused!

 

IRM is also called "E-DRM", "Enterprise Digital Rights Management" and is a form of DRM or in other words, it uses the same technology.

OCR stands for "Optical Character Recognition" and can be used to circumvent all kinds of text based DRM.

 

You know now...

 

Ahhh I see! Thks.

So on the OCR please describe (for thread) what a user would be attempting to do by circumventing all kinds of text based DRM. In other words why are they doing that?

 

Text DRM in ebooks, pdfs and documents usually prevents the user from copying or editing the text. To circumvent that one could take a screenshot or even print it out and then feed that to a OCR which translates the (scanned) "image" into editable text again.

 

Thank you again. You have described how to circumvent but in telling us that the motivation of such actions is clearer.

In my case those who forward or edit my documents would have to go to a lot of trouble and effort. They also would need the skills and tools do do this manipulation.

I estimate that 99% of them either are too lazy or unskilled to do this work.

So I will now proceed to try out DRM etc within MS Office 2010.

Thanks for your patience.