Welcome to Word Publishing Layout View

Some Random Notes From The Not-Quite-24 Hours I Just Spent In Toronto

gavinshearer.com — Wed, 07 May 2008 19:38:34 GMT

I'm back in Seattle after a quick jaunt to Toronto for a work event. It was one of those leave-Monday-morning, fly-home-Tuesday-evening kinds of things. I'm dehydrated, sick of plastic-wrapped airport sandwiches, and just plain beat. As usual, the trip

re: Welcome to Word Publishing Layout View

Faramond — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 21:25:52 GMT

I am skeptical about the claim that text will "[n]o longer 'get stuck' or 'jump around' due to the properties of 'inline text.'"

This seems impossible given the constraints of the DOCX format: it is stream-based, not page based. As a consequence, all floating objects, e.g. text boxes, require anchors in the inline text; when the underlying inline text reflows, so, too, do the anchored objects.

I hope you haven't solved this by using an inelegant workaround like hidden inline paragraphs--methinks that would make layouts even more prone to breakage than they currently are, as well as breaking compatibility with the Winword.

re: Welcome to Word Publishing Layout View

Think about the Children — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 04:20:23 GMT

Hi, Andre -

Thanks for the reply. Please understand - again - I respect everything you and your team are pursuing. I'm just expressing my concerns on this as a long time personal Mac user, paid Windows user, and someone who would really love to see Mac usage (and ideally Mac Office) usage grow in the enterprise. It would be a good thing for us given some of the OS supportability problems we've had with wide-scale deployment of Windows (not dinging Windows - just very hard to keep desktops safe these days).

Wanted to follow up with a few points we're hearing from our users. Admittedly, we only have a slim percentage of our global creative firm's ~40,000+ staff using Mac OS for Office type activities (I'm guessing less than 10% - and that's generous). They tend to live in Photoshop, Illustrator, Final Cut, etc. The rest are all pretty much running various Windows flavors (upgrade cycles take a long while). Just trying to give you a sense for what we're about. I don't know - it could be that our area of industry isn't your target market.

"Its simple, experiences on the Mac are different from experiences on Windows. People do not want an exact replica of each other, you need applications that still retains its familiarity with the operating system and applications on that platform."

I'd love to know which users you're talking to on this one. For us, our users need to work as teams and teams need common foundations for communication in order to be productive. They _are_ frustrated with the differences between the distributions of Office. Sure, they mix and match disciplines - creatives tend to use Mac OS while research teams, new business, client service, finance, etc. use Windows, but we've not seen any advantage in having "like" functions (Word/Excel/Powerpoint focused services) have different interfaces and features simply due to the host OS. Really - _they_ have told us that they're frustrated and their productivity impacted. We recently did a trial deployment for some of our users who volunteered to test drive Mac OS to see how it would work out in our enterprise. Those are existing Windows users who live and die by Office. Response: they don't get Office for Mac OS. Nothing was familiar or didn't quite work the same, so they went back to their Windows machines to get "real" work done. Given the cost for increased help desk support, internal user training, and user productivity cost during transition we are a bit stumped - what do we do? The users are frustrated and it costs us a lot of money to entertain.

"As user needs grow, so does the complexity and feature richness of the application suite. Not everybody is using every feature, but there is basically something in there for everyone."

I agree that there's a lot there.

"If you need simplicity, nobody is stopping you from using Text edit in OS X or Notepad on Windows. But we now live in a world of complexity and creating robust content and we need tools like Microsoft Office to move forward."

Well - maybe that's the answer. If we're struggling _against_ Mac Office because it's actually "Mac Office" and not "Office" as we know it, then we might as well totally jump ship and go with an application suite like iWork that has "similar" features, file compatibility, and costs less per seat. OK. Same net training and support costs, really, I guess considering it's effectively a "different" application suite in the eyes of the user pool. Worst case we pursue Parallels or CrossOver given the limited existing pool.

Gotta tell you, though, I'm depressed at that notion. That's the kiss of death on our pursuing wider adoption of Mac OS.

re: Welcome to Word Publishing Layout View

Kevin Nealon — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:48:29 GMT

What about the mini formating toolbar in Word 2007? It hovers above near the cursor and was introduced in Word 2007.

Please incorporate this little feature!

re: Welcome to Word Publishing Layout View

Gavin — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 23:51:59 GMT

Firstly, I love the Blog idea, I still work Office X (saw no reason to upgrade it) however with the Intel Mac it best to be all native, I suppose.

I have to say Office 2008 look interesting and more powerful enough. Would be nice to have the MS Publisher feature. I do a lot of web design with Adobe tools but once in a while I need to design a brochure and can't really justify buying InDesign, so Publisher integration would be a real plus.

Also I agree with what Mike Perry said

"I publish books that others typically write in Word, importing their text into InDesign and sweating blood to get rid of all the unwanted formatting that remains. When writers tell me their text is in Microsoft Word, I groan and plan for hours of tedious, additional labor."

=> So true!

I wonder do you guys uses XCode or something else ... Objective C and how all that Keyvalue coding works... yum. The only Microsoft magic left in my life these days is .NET framework, still using it in Parallells. Hope Office 2008 kicks the pants off Office 2007... Happy coding!

re: Welcome to Word Publishing Layout View

Enterprise Mac User — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 01:40:15 GMT

if people really want a true Mac experience, they would get an Apple or non Microsoft software. I find it funny, the total Mac geeks want to use Microsoft Office for the Mac, but they hate Windows. Microsoft is in the business to sell corporate office software to large enterprises as well as soho markets and shouldn't be in the business to make chic like stuff. I wouldn't be using the mac if Windows didn't have their security and reliability issues and the stupid games windows plays when I just want to plug a USB device to another port. Thats why I choose the mac, though I really wanted to stay with windows. Enough said.

re: Welcome to Word Publishing Layout View

Johnnie — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 01:04:59 GMT

Don't create a separate Publisher:mac . These should be combined into one application. The PC side could take a lesson from the Mac side here. Publisher is just another way to make money. Ever try to open a .pub file and not have Publisher on your PC? If these types of documents could be opened in Word then they would be much more valuable to those who build them and receive them.

re: Welcome to Word Publishing Layout View

ncus — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 12:43:00 GMT

A bit confusing for a newbie like me. Why not using templates system for the notebook view?

And blend the print and publishing view into one system. And viola!! you only have one view system....

I like the UI tho :) it's pretty..

re: Welcome to Word Publishing Layout View

Juan Pablo Pincheira — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 05:34:07 GMT

Guys, my congrats for all your team. You've been doing a really good job.

Thank you, and keep on making this good things!

re: Welcome to Word Publishing Layout View

John — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 01:39:27 GMT

Nice work, guys. I definitely still hate your company, but a little less than before.

If there ever was proof that the DoJ should have separated the Windows division from the Office division, this is it.