[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Chad Smith wrote:
But the improvements are awesome! The better look and feel - the cleaned up user interface,
Can you define for me what everyone means when they say cleaned up UI? I don't see a dramatic difference, unless I just wasn't that picky before.
Okay, well the icons have been completely redone - that's a plus. Maybe we'll stop being compared to MSO 97. You might not care about the icons, but many people do. The other day my roommate, who is a college graduate with a bachalor's degree in Business Adminstration, and who works for one of the largest insurance companies in the US, came busting into the apartment saying "WOW! We just upgraded to [MS] Office 2003, and it is *AWESOME*!"
"Really?" I said "What's so great about it?" -- I was expecting him to say "the conference tools are amazing!" or "it's so much faster" or something relating to performance. However, he said...
"The colors are so KEWL! It's very cool looking!"
Part of me died inside.
I've been trying to introduce him to OOo and Linux and the rest of it - but he's the traditional Microsoft consumer. He wants the "best and newest and most professional" - and despite his education and experience, he still thinks that's MS all the way. And the "cool colors" of MSO 2003 made him think that even more.
The new icons are still not as cool as MS's - not even close - but they are much improved over 1.1.4...
Another thing is the removal of the ghastly URL bar. That ugly stupid thing took up way too much space and served absolutely no purpose. Maybe I could have removed it before, but I shouldn't have to. And obviously, the programmers agreed with me about that, and ditched it. It was left hanging there without explaination and without use for a long time, and very few users touched it, much less found it helpful. It should have been removed, and now it is.
The menus are better. The simple addition of the option "WORD COUNT" to the tools menu (where it should have been in OOo 0.0.1) made my day. That is all I've noticed, because after I saw that, I rejoiced so hard I couldn't see straight.
Basically, it looks "better". There are probably a couple dozen things that the designers did to improve the look and feel - things I couldn't list if I had all day to compare side-by-side, but they add up to making it look *better*. I enjoy looking at the new interface a lot more than I did the old one.
But, that being said, MSO '03 really does look very much cooler. Actually MSO 2004 for the Mac is about the coolest looking one I've seen. I like AbiWord's icons, too. StarOffice 7.0's icons are better than OOo 1.x, but it's hard to say between SO 7 and OOo 2... I'd like to see what SO 8 looks like.
the iconic switching between modes (I love that one).
What does this mean?
There is an icon (iconic) that you can click on to switch (switching) between (between) the different interfaces of OOo (modes). In other words, the little deally that lets me go from Writer to Calc to Impress to Writer to Draw to Calc to Draw to Impress to Math to HTML editor to Writer ... all without typing or opening a menu. it's the wavy thing on your toolbar.
the new paste-special shortcut
Yeah, I forgot to mention that one. That thing changed the way I live. I've added that to every word processing program I use. That's the coolest little trick ever!
-Chad Smith
