Working for a large corporation for the first time I am just beginning to understand some of the challenges corporate design and development teams are faced with. I don't have to like the fact that we don't always go with the best choice. I am learning tolerance of teams and individuals are really are doing the best they can even if I can't see it or understand their choices some of the time. The good news is, I don't have to understand it, approve it or try and fix it.
My mentor has said over and over again, "Focus on your projects. Get them done on time." That really then is the best thing for us all to do. And even in life, that's a pretty good rule. Focus on what's important and get it done. Results are what you will be measured by.
Now about Microsoft and Word…
For me, it goes back to Word 1.0 and Excel 1.0 on the Mac. There was no such thing as Office. And actually Apple had a killer writing application called MacWrite. I was casually attending the University of Texas (Austin) when the Mac was launched with the stunning , perhaps misguided 1984 commercial directed by Ridley Scott. Within one month I was negotiating with my father about selling him my Kaypro so that I could buy a Mac. He couldn't see why his office needed a computer. After several months I figured out how to justify the purchase, and I got to keep the Kaypro as an example of the second portable computer ever made. (The Kaypro II was burying the Osborne by that time.)
So here's how the Mac vs. Windows story goes, as far as I know it.
MacWrite was simple. And Word was for writing professionals. Excel had no equal and was a killer app from the first launch. So Word kept getting more and more complex. We didn't call it bloat back then we called it innovation and marveled at the new feature sets. But Word was never as easy to use as MacWrite. Unfortunately we know how that story unfolded. Until Claris was launched in 1999, MS Word killed every other word processor in it's path.
And then comes Windows 3.1. And Windows 95. And by this time the ad agency I was working for is doing a lot of work for Dell. (Some of it on Macs, more on that later.) Now, don't get me wrong, Windows 95 was a HUGE improvement over 3.11. But unless you had been given an opportunity to work on an Apple at that point you would think Gates and company had invented a new user interface. There were still a ton of folks who said Windows was a waste of time and processing power. There were some that said Windows 95 sucked. And there are still folks who prefer the command-line interface and who dabble in UNIX rather than Linux.
Then the inevitable happens. Apple sues MS for copying the Mac. Fast forward to today and the same story is going on. Now however the courts have sided with evolution of interfaces rather than protection and Vista is free to go on "innovating" things like a widgets and desktop search. But then, even MS has admitted that Vista was a little half-baked. And Dell, who I work for now, has strong armed MS into allowing them to continue selling XP. Of course it'll cost ya an additional $80, and MS will count the sale as a Vista sale, but MSD and company did not blink when Balmer and friends decided XP would not be sold beyond July 2008. And I am proud to say, XP is here to stay on my… eh… on my company provided Latitude 630 with Core Duo 2, 2.2.
Okay, sorry for that history lesson. Now he's where things keep going wrong for us users of MS products. From the beginning of the "innovation" of Windows, MS and designers tried to be sneaky in changing things around "just enough" to keep the lawyers at bay.
Example: On the mac, where the extended keyboard command was invented (PeeCees had f-keys) Apple used the "command key" and gave it a cool little cloverleaf icon and later added an apple icon as well. And in the Mac world what became known as the Apple-key was born. So now on the mac in 1986 we get things like Command-S for save the document.
So when this shows up in Windows 95, it's called the "command key" as well, but guess what, MS had to move the command key, so it wouldn't be too "just-like-a-mac," and they decided to put it on the outside left side of the keyboard. Now that sounds okay, but it's an ergonomic disaster. On the mac you can easily select the Apple-Command Key with your left hand without moving your fingers from their normal typing position; on Windows you have to learn to use your pinky to slide off the normal touch-typing keys to poke the Windows-Command Key for extended commands. Using both platforms all day, I can tell you the MS version is a real pain in my wrist.
Flash forward to July 2008 and MS Word. Again the flagship of word processing programs, this time on both Windows and OS X. (But not Unix or Linux… hmmmm?) And there are a ton of things that are just f-d up with the user interface. And this time, it has nothing to do with copying Apple or lawyers. It's just bad decisions and approvals within a massive corporate system. [update: see this expose of Songsmith another cluster....]
Here is a screen shot that I took today (on a Mac) as I was writing some poetry interrupted by an attack of bad interface. [Again, poetry is not a Word strong point, in fact this html editor does a better job at not "smart formatting" your words.]
Now, I will go into the finer details later, but for now check out the navigation controls at the top left of the screen shot. (Again, this is the Mac version. I will compare the Windows Editing-Ribbon disaster in a future post in a later post. Here are several things that are wrong. Not, JMac says it's wrong, but plain wrong from a logic and user interface perspective.
1. The left and right arrows. The label says back/forward. Okay, so imagine you have just opened the spell check options and you are on this screen. Where does the "back" button go? Does it take you back to the application, as in closing the modal window and returning you to productivity. No it doesn't. Now look at the "forward" button. Where does that go? Really! If you know the answer play along and let the others suffer through this absurd exercise. Where does the "forward" arrow go when you have just opened a modal window?
Okay, and for a bonus question, where did this "interface" concept first appear. If you think it's web browsers you're a bit late to the game. A huge company (looking more like a monopoly every day) began using these kind of navigation buttons on their "modal" preferences windows back in 1997.
2. The show all button. Okay, this style is found in the Browser Preferences window in FF and the System Preferences in Mac OS, but why here? Now, since we are all so familiar with this type of control interface we may look at this one and see nothing wrong. But here is the question I really want the UI folks to answer. "Show All of what?"
And I wonder what the nice Caution-over-Clipboard icon called "feedback" does. Do the folks at Microsoft figure that we would be reporting a bug or something? Guess I'll have to click that one and see what really happens.
More interface UI dissections to come.
NOTE: Free WikiSocial.org t-shirts will be awarded to the first 10 people who correctly answer the following questions.
Setup: You have just opened the modal preferences window in Microsoft Word 2008 for the Mac (as shown in screen shot above).
- What does clicking the "Back" button do?
- Where does the "Forward" button take you?
- And does clicking the "Show All" button do anything?
- And exactly what does the "Feedback" button do?
- BONUS QUESTION: What company and program used this type of modal preferences system back in 1997?
@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/ms-word
[Please add your answers to the comments if you want to converse, or email them to me at john.mcelhenney@gmail.com]
