Thursday 14 August 2008

I hate Office/Word 2007/2008 Ribbbon crap

The change to Microsoft's "Office" suite with their new ribbon thingy is plain annoying/frustrating and big time waste. I have used Word for years and been comfortable with it (as far as is possible) I knew where things were - but now in 2007 I haven't clue. I'm not saying they were that logical before but they're no more so now and I imagine just annoy/alienate a vast number of existing users.

The stupidest thing was they didn't include some form of helper system for transition or provide a way to switch back to 'classic' mode. Though it turns out that there is some online info, including a Flash interactive helper to help you to find commands from Word 2003 in 2007. An one can purchase an external plugin, Ribboncustomizer, that provides access a version of the old interface - the free edition has some basic functionality including a 'Classic UI' tab.

There are plenty of other word processors out these days and instead of relearning Word I'm keen to move to something else - Open Office is getting better these days and Apple's Office suite is good too. Also online Office suites are getting very usable now - most notably Google Docs and others.

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