Comments on: Microsoft Office 2010 screenshots

By: Darkhairedlord

Darkhairedlord — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:52:15 +0000

Simon,
maybe your lsd is better than mine but it simply isn’t true!
I recently submitted a paper to a journal that looked great in 2007 and total sh…crap in *.doc format. text was blurry and unreadable.

but then again, at least half a dozen blogg posts extoling the virtues of one office suite tells its own story!

By: Simon Jones

Simon Jones — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:34:53 +0000

specious
PCX file format is ancient and there are far better formats nowadays.
Word 2010 can import pictures in 14 different image formats.

Animated Text was very little used, made reading the text difficult and could cause problems for some people with epilepsy. It was rightly withdrawn.

By: Simon Jones

Simon Jones — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:26:01 +0000

Darkhairedlord
I have to disagree. SmartArt works great when viewed in earlier versions of Office. You see it exactly as it left the originator. It has to be a static picture in previous versions because they don’t have the features necessary to edit it. But it round-trips without any problems becomming editable once again when you open it in Office 2007 or 2010.

By: specious

specious — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:36:33 +0000

Will it have native support for importing .pcx files?
Will it bring back animated text.
Without these there seems little point.

By: Darkhairedlord

Darkhairedlord — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:27:49 +0000

Yet more fluff added to office. Most of this won’t get used because it doesn’t convert well to office 97-2003 *.doc format. Look at the smart art rubbish! beautiful in orifice 2007 but unfortunately like a badly scanned pile of crap once converted to *.doc format.

By: Simon Jones

Simon Jones — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:08:16 +0000

Jeff & Eion
You’ll both be pleased to know that Office 2010 allows you to customise the Ribbon without the need to buy or install a third party tool (of which several were available for Office 2007 – some are even free).
Thus you will be able to hide those tools you don’t think you need but please remember not to complain to Microsoft when you can’t find a tool you want but have hidden.

One of the reasons the Ribbon was invented was that 75% of feature requests received by Microsoft were for features that were already available in Office but users couldn’t find them.

By: eion macdonald

eion macdonald — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:04:40 +0000

I concur! I concur!
November 19th, 2009 at 3:54 pm

” whilst hiding things I need to use daily beneath layers of dross. It slows down my usage and requires MORE clicks to achieve what I want to do. I hate it passionately.”

By: Jeff

Jeff — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:54:06 +0000

There’s nothing that makes me want to go back to Office 2003 more than that 2007 Ribbon. It presents me with thousands of options I will never, ever want to use whilst hiding things I need to use daily beneath layers of dross. It slows down my usage and requires MORE clicks to achieve what I want to do. I hate it passionately.

By: Craig

Craig — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:52:37 +0000

@Simon

“If the ribbon is such a great idea why are we not given a choice?”

Because it is such a great idea… You rather answered your own question there.

As for enforcing it, how else were they to keep adding new features? The menus were old, outdatded and what they contained had simply outgrown them as a method of displaying it.

Think about tabbed browsers for a moment. 5 or 6 years ago we used the web a lot less, we were not as connected and so we maybe only had a couple of pages open at anyone time. Now in these more connected times where everyone is using multiple sites all the time tabs make sense. Myself I have the best part of 70 tabs spread over 4 or 5 windows at any one time, I can’t imagine using single windows for this, it simple wouldn’t not be possible.

By: Simon Jones

Simon Jones — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:35:49 +0000

The compatibility pack has been arround since Office 2007 was released three years ago. This lets Office 2000, XP (2002) and 2003 users open and save the new file formats.

Less than 5% of users have versions of Office prior to 2000 so there is little reason to stick to the old binary file formats and lots of reasons (size, robustness, new features such as Smart Art) to switch to the new formats.