Re: What Are the Main Problems You Have with MS Word?
With any software this powerful, there's lots of figuring out to be done.I agree with you to a certain point. With any new piece of software, you have to allow for a learnng a period.
At the same time, I don't think the problem is power so much as design.
If I compare MS Word with PhotoShop, I have to conclude that MS Word is a kludge, with features added without much thought of overall design philosophy. Even menus aren't very well organized. Why, for example, are tables given a separate menu rather than being put into the Insert menu? Or why are Options and Customize two separate items? (after all these years, I still get them confused when I'm tired)Why do you have to drill down so far to change a style that, when you get to where you want to be, you've forgotten your intent? I could go on and on, but I think I already have. My impression is that features have been added to MS Word over the years with little thought of the common interface or compatibility.It may be true, as Steve Hudson suggests, that the problem is not with the master document feature so much as with MS Word code itself, but, then, why both having the feature at all then? By contrast, PhotoShop was designed with additions in mind. You may take years to learn PhotoShop, but there's a basic consistency to the design.
Moreover, while it's true that you can find workarounds to accomplish many tasks, the very fact that you have to root around for workarounds suggest a problem. By definition, workarounds involve using the software in a way in which it was not originally intended to be used. With other software, workarounds are temporary fixes until a fundamental problem can be addressed. Yet, in MS Word, master documents, for example have been unworkable since well before version 6.0 (I think version 2.0, but I'm not sure). That's over ten years. Yet advanced users merely take for granted that the feature should be avoided, and learn all sorts of load-balancing tricks to keep large documents from crashing.In other words, with MS Word, workarounds are so much part of the daily routine of advanced users that many of us don't no longer think that anything is wrong with them. We accept them as normal rather than as signs of serious problems.
--
Bruce Byfield 604.421.7177 bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com
"They pout, they pose, they curl their lips,
They miss too many meals
With their implants and injections
Only God knows what is real."
-Garnet Rogers, "Where'd You Get That Little Dress?"
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