And my observation that as this is a powerful product widely used, and we dont see users flocking to other products, perhaps its because its not as easy as a user may think to fix or do some of those things we might like.

Or it could be network effects. It sucks, but not enough to drive people to a minority product.

Saying “you don’t get it” is poor product design. At least with Office 2007 they’ve actually tried to work out users want to deal with the software. They’ve admitted that the user was right and they were wrong. The customer isn’t always right because a few customers are nitwits, but if a lot of customers complain, something has gone wrong.

When I have spoken to CLP members I have recommended to them that they adopt the mantra that voters make the right decision. If they were swept out of office, it is because the voters correctly chose Labor over the CLP. Any other attitude is a sure recipe for defeat.

Nope – but then again, my point was not advocacy of a product (beyond noting that Word is a powerful program). As I said above, there are many things I would like it to do differently, or more easily.

But this conversation started with Nicholas’s lament that he couldn’t quickly figure out how to do something in Word…and that this is one more demonstration that MS is a terrible organisation (which they maybe – but it’s not because a user was doing something without fully understanding what they were doing).

And my observation that as this is a powerful product widely used, and we don’t see users flocking to other products, perhaps it’s because it’s not as easy as a user may think to ‘fix’ or ‘do’ some of those things we might like.

cheers,
Christopher

> or is it that Word actually has many features that are
> better than the competition?

Can you name me one, because I can’t think of any.

I know about Exchange – but that’s a principal-agent problem isn’t it?

The question is why is it that those outside of a corporate environment (like Nicholas) use outlook as their client? These are not small markets and if it were ‘simple’ where are the firms offering up these products?

Which is where the conversation started – this application is frustrating because it is just not doing what is ‘obvious’ – and (my contention that) perhaps that if it doesn’t do it, it might not be either simple or obvious.

Being able to do your own programming doesn’t count (yes, we can do it, but that’s never going to be mainstream is it?) – you want apps for which you can seamlessly pass documents between by users. And ‘more or less capable’ is not seamless – or is it that Word actually has many features that are better than the competition?

Excel – the recruiter never played with large datasets did they? I can make excel do things many say can’t be done, but there are times you gotta step up to serious data handling apps (in OSs design for data manipulation).

Outside of a corporate environment (or off the shelf utilities), I don’t ever see Access as a big self use tool for your average user. Excel will do what they want for mostly less hassle. Do you think it’s reasonable that an average (or even better, above average, numerate) user be designing a database structure?

One might ask are we well off topic now?

But doesn’t this bring us full circle – Can applications be powerful (flexible, wide ranging and customisable), yet simple for your average user? And when is it justifiable to grumble about something ‘not working’ and when should one think ‘am I the only one using it this way?’

cheers,
Christopher

My reason for using outlook has nothing to do with exchange – which I don’t understand. I use it because it’s a well integrated email and calendar package.

Are any others as good. I’d be reasonably happy to use separate ones. But I need certain features – like a preview view of emails (much better for scanning spam for the odd false positive). And any calendar needs pop ups. I tried Thunderbird but found it worse than Outlook Express. Perhaps a plug in could have given me the preview view – perhaps it’s in there already but I couldn’t find it and couldn’t figure out plug ins – though I use lots on Firefox.

I spose these things seem small – I guess they are – which means I might bite the bullet in the not too distant.

it will be relatively straightforward for other applications to now read Office 2007 documents (and possibly write them)

I’ve written code to crack open XLSX and DOCX files. It is not easy. The documentation is comprehensive but there is still a LOT of undocumented behaviour, design assumptions etc etc.

Whats proprietary about Outlook? Why do we use it in preference to other current email clients?

gilmae correctly fingers Exchange Server.

I once had a recruiter tell me that I and every other programmer should be redundant because everything worthwhile doing could be done in Excel.

Yes and no. Excel is a pretty good environment in some ways, but far too many people try to use them as databases because they didn’t understand Access. Too many Access users never get referential integrity, which is a whole ‘nother nightmare.

can anyone point me to an Apple word processor

Yes, I can.

As for what is proprietary about Outlook, the ability to talk natively with Exchange servers is certainly proprietary. As far as I know only Evolution and Outlook can communicate with Exchange, and Evolution is really using the Outlook Web interface; its suboptimal at best. Once your business uses Exchange – just about everyone on MS server machines – you’re basically stuck with Outlook. If someone ever made Sendmail administrable by a windows monkey, Exchange would be toast and in turn Outlook.

re: Programmability – I once had a recruiter tell me that I and every other programmer should be redundant because everything worthwhile doing could be done in Excel. Seven years later and I’m *still* not sure if he was just trying to wind me up to see how I reacted.

I appreciated the power of word and excel many years ago. But I only came to really appreciate the programming side when I began to distribute and maintain utilities I’d written (coz I never had many problems when I was the only user!)

As for the animosity – I think that comes from both:

1) the fact that when your’s is the only app worth using and it doesn’t work the way ‘it should’ and you’re facing a deadline, who else are you going to blame?

2) that MS exploits their dominance – so it’s easy to dislike.

And yes, 2007 is an incremental improvement, and we all wish for more – made worse by not fixing things that are clearly broken and their told (even MVPs have limited influence here apparently) :-(

cheers,
Christopher

I think Office 2007 is a major disappointment and I suspect it could be the beginning of a considerable decline – but we’ll see. Still – as I think I’ve said above – Outlook is a good idea (not that well implemented) – and it’s amazing that there’s nothing around to challenge it. But that day will come, I’m hoping in the not too distant.

But my point wasn’t too say that Microsoft was blameless (or even ideal!).

But that both what seems simple to a user, usually isn’t at the programing end and that it’s about learning to use the tools.

I’ve spent countless hours inside microsoft help files – and generally, compared to much other documentation, they’re well above average. But it’s like everything else – they’re only good for you after you’ve learnt how to use them effectively.

If my search’s don’t turn up a result in the top handful of links – I’ve learnt it’s because I’m using terms that are not the ‘correct’ definitions. And I need to rethink what I’m searching for. Much like the dictionary analogy I was trying to make. (I was going to cheekily ask you before..so what is a ‘column break’ :-)

On the user interface side, I know microsoft spends substantial amounts on user design and testing (at the same time crippling somethings so as to keep their dominance). And I know it’s hard work to do right (can anyone point me to an Apple word processor – or tell me how to change the url for a podcast in iTunes for example?).

But perhaps the question at the heart of your message – ‘as soon as someone else gives me something better..I’m outa here’ is the key. Why isn’t there something else?

Sure, the network effects of the proprietary file structure in the pre 2007 Office suite provide dominance that makes it hard for competition to flourish. But perhaps, an alternative hypothesis is that actually designing, building and maintaining these programs ain’t really all that easy.

The move to exposed xml file structure will be the test of that hypothesis – it will be relatively straightforward for other applications to now read Office 2007 documents (and possibly write them). If it’s ‘easy’ to do build these type of applications, this will be the key to having that happen – because you can now pass documents between different applications. But I’m not holding my breath.

Or perhaps their market dominance comes from something else that they haven’t given up.

Email provides a nice counter doesn’t it? What’s proprietary about Outlook? Why do we use it in preference to other current email clients?

One can dislike MS for many things – but not for the quality of documents a user can produce with (general ease with) the Office suite.

cheers,
Christopher (who never noticed the bug…ABARE’s standard style is Amercian english, and my exclude file is full of english spellings!)

And on second thoughts Christopher, what do you think of my postscript? Do you really think it’s OK to leave a bug in software for ten years of upgrades a bug so prevalent that a MSM geek reprints the bug fix every year or so? C’mon man, it’s pathetic. I can’t get MS’s Aust dictionary to work without defaulting to the US dictionary. I couldn’t in Office 97. I couldn’t in Office 2003 and I can’t in Office 2007. Give me a break!

one of its strengths should be user-friendliness

Arguably, user-friendliness is Microsoft’s great weakness. They either ignore it – “Mac has issued you a salutation” isn’t all *that* exaggerated – or they allow other concerns to trump it – like upgrading your hardware too much invalidating your windows license – or they try really hard to do user friendliness and they fumble it so badly they end up a laughing stock. I’m so looking at you, Clippy.

one of its strengths should be user-friendliness

This has never been Microsoft’s strength. To be honest their best UI and features work is poured into their development kits.

But yes, we’ve come a long way. It seems a bit churlish to complain I agree, but Microsoft really could be vastly better. Like Apple and Google and Yahoo are.

Word is a powerful and sophisticated program – with that power comes complexity and difficulty in mastering it fully. With power comes tradeoffs in setting up the defaults so that it works ‘out of the box’ for everybody.

Personally, I’m amazed that a mere 25 years after the technology was first developed that it’s possible to do joint work with people in other countries who use other dictionaries or character sets, or that I can achieve about 97% professional layout quality, or that I can easily manipulate documents and structures.

There are many things I wish it would do differently/easier etc, but as I also know how difficult it is to maintain an effective code base (for only a small community of economists, let alone millions of international users). When combined with the difficulties users present in the myriad individual approaches to using computers, I’m never surprised when the documentation challenges my perceptions of the way ‘things should be done’.

cheers,
Christopher

Plus, with the new docx. extension,and stupid new fonts (Calibri? wtf?! Why did we ever stop using Helvetica, I don’t know. It’s free, and aside from about .3 of a pixel serifs, exactly the same) they’re far more portable also.

Excel, alas, is still far and away the best spreadsheet program I have used, so I suspect it will be around for a while longer, at least untill Google Spreadsheets gets a little more powerful.