I would say the Microsoft Office software has definitely gotten better over the years. This applies to the user interface, but also usability and performance. I think they did a great job over the last 25 years improving the software, without making it complicated. annoying or sluggish.
MS loves to redesign their UI, but does it half-heartedly. There are dialogs that have had things moved to the ribbon or sidebar or property panel, but only some fields, so the sidebar contents are incomplete and you still have to find where they "hid your cheese."
For simple tasks like writing a memo, it's fine.
But as soon as the task is non-trivial (like changing default styles in word, or making a scatter plot line graph with column a as the y axis), office is a terrible user experience for new users, and guaranteed frustration from previously-proficient prior users. It's click-something-shit-not-that-undo whack-a-mole.
Although I don't use Microsoft software much these days, one thing I can say about their UI is that keyboard commands usually remain consistent. (This is the main reason I was not completely lost at it when needing to use it on someone else's computer.)
I don't think this is the case at all! To me Excel, for example, peaked at 2003 version, which I still use, and after that it followed the same pattern the topic started described - worse and worse and worse.
Same with Google Chrome (I am using v43 whenever possible) and pretty much all the software.
Comments
I would say the Microsoft Office software has definitely gotten better over the years. This applies to the user interface, but also usability and performance. I think they did a great job over the last 25 years improving the software, without making it complicated. annoying or sluggish.
Wholly disagree.
MS loves to redesign their UI, but does it half-heartedly. There are dialogs that have had things moved to the ribbon or sidebar or property panel, but only some fields, so the sidebar contents are incomplete and you still have to find where they "hid your cheese."
For simple tasks like writing a memo, it's fine.
But as soon as the task is non-trivial (like changing default styles in word, or making a scatter plot line graph with column a as the y axis), office is a terrible user experience for new users, and guaranteed frustration from previously-proficient prior users. It's click-something-shit-not-that-undo whack-a-mole.
Although I don't use Microsoft software much these days, one thing I can say about their UI is that keyboard commands usually remain consistent. (This is the main reason I was not completely lost at it when needing to use it on someone else's computer.)
I don't think this is the case at all! To me Excel, for example, peaked at 2003 version, which I still use, and after that it followed the same pattern the topic started described - worse and worse and worse.
Same with Google Chrome (I am using v43 whenever possible) and pretty much all the software.
Can you explain why Excel 2003 is better, or as good, as the latest Excel ?