On 12/14/05, Jeff Causey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi Chad and and Hans,
Hello Jeff, Are you saying that Writer has a lot of features that beginners might > get confused with or OO as a suite? Could you expand upon that and > provide some info on what features you think would be confusing to a > beginner? Let me start by saying, I'm at work, and I don't have OOo 2.0 at work (since I'm on a Mac, and I don't want to put a program that is in testing on my boss's machine - so I have NeoOffice 1.1, which is based on 1.1.4) - so some things have changed in 2.0 which may have improved the look and feel of OOo. For one thing, just looking at Open Office when you first open it - there are about 57 buttons and drop-down menus visible on the screen. On AbiWord, there are only 44 buttons and menus. And when you open those menus, the options are a lot shorter on AbiWord than Open Office. The Navigator and Stylist are 2 features that come to mind, as well as the old URL bar (which has been removed from 2.0, thankfully). Other terms like "Exchange Database" "XML Filter Settings" and "Hangul/Hanja Conversion" can be downright scary. Go to Tools > Options and then click each of the little + signs next to the words on the left. When I did it, I had to scroll down for nearly three full "pages" of options. And the fact that there is a choice called "Options" and another called "Configure" - that's confusing as well. I'm not at all trying to tear down Open Office. I'm just pointing out a few of the things, on a quick glance, that could be frightening to beginners. (And to those who may flag my emails - I'm responding to a direct question.) I understand that Open Office is a full sized suite of programs that can do a lot of powerful stuff, and the more features a program gets, the more confusing it gets to navigate through. But for someone who just wants to type up a report for class and has never used a computer before, AbiWord is much more simple and inviting. -- - Chad Smith http://www.gimpshop.net/ Because everyone loves free software!
