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Wide screens and Ribbons
Dave Ziffer left a comment in my post asking ‘Do you like the Ribbon?’ with a link to a piece he wrote about it called The Computer Industry’s Usability Catastrophe. There’s some good stuff there, so I thought I’d create a new post rather than leave a comment.
In many ways I agree with Dave that the combination of widescreen notebooks and the Ribbon is not a good one. Vertical space on screen is now more valuable than ever and there’s no way to move the Ribbon. At least Toolbars in Office 2003 could be docked on the side of the screen or left floating as shown on the right.
I also miss the ability to customise the Ribbon as I have my own toolbar in Word 2003 with only the tools I need that fits comfortably on one line. That will be partially fixed in Office 2010 as some customisation will be possible in that version.
Having said that, I think that some of the Ribbon criticisms are a little harsh. The Ribbon can be hidden with a quick double click on one of the tabs and it then acts much like the old menus. And all the old keyboard shortcuts still work although there’s no visual feedback until the command is completed. For more information see the Microsoft Office Keyboard shortcuts in the 2007 Office system training page.
Folder Shortcuts and Office
I don’t know how you organise your files, but I keep a folder called ‘Current Work’ for everything I’m working on. It’s been on the Desktop, in My Documents and even the Dropbox folder but it’s become an essential part of my work process.
One disadvantage is that it is always a folder I have to find when opening files from within a program. So I wondered if it is possible to add it to the folder shortcuts on the left of the the Open dialogue box.
The first few suggestions included editing the Registry, which isn’t really a satisfactory solution, and certainly not one I’m happy to suggest to readers. The potential for mistakes just isn’t worth the effort.
As is often the case, the friendly alternative to editing the Registry is to use TweakUI for XP. It provides an accessible interface for these helpful changes.
The change is very simple to make. Once TweakUI is installed and started click on the small plus next to Common Dialogs and then on Places Bar. Select the option ‘Custom places bar’. There are several places already set up that can be selected by clicking on the drop down menu arrows, or you can simply click in the and enter and address by hand. If you’re confident doing this, find the folder in Windows Explorer and copy and paste the contents of the address bar. Click on Apply to save the changes and then OK to close the window.
But Office?
The reason for including Office in the title of this post is that the open dialogues in Office 2003 and the beta of Office 2010, don’t use these settings. As most of my work is in Word, you can imagine my disappointment.
If anyone knows of a fix, I’d be very grateful to hear it.
Extending conditional formatting in Excel 2003
Excel 2003 is limited to three conditions for Conditional Formatting but it is possible to add more by using a macro instead. It’s a little harder than Excel 2007 but it is still possible.
The macro must be set to run every time the spreadsheet is updated so you can’t use the recorder. Our example uses a score sheet for the BBC Weekly Quiz.
Before we start writing any macros, though, we need to decide on the colours for the winner cell because the macro will refer to the colour by its number not the name. A list of the colours can be found at at mvps.org. I printed out the spreadsheet and wrote the numbers down as I found them.
Click on the Tools menu, Macro and then Visual Basic Editor. Alternatively you could press Alt and F11 as the keyboard shortcut to launch the Visual Basic Editor.
Double click on Sheet1(Sheet1) in the section VBAProject (7 days quiz.xls), where the text within the brackets is the name of the spreadsheet. Click on the drop down menu at the top of the right hand section of the window that says (General) and select Worksheet. Next select Change from the drop down menu on the right. Left-click in the gap above the first text [code]End Sub[/code].
Type [code]Dim winner As Range[/code], press Enter and then type [code]Set winner = Range(“E4”), where E4 is the cell with the winners name in. Press Enter and type [code] Dim winnerColor As Integer[/code], press enter twice, type [code]Select Case winner.Value[/code] and press enter.
The following section is where you enter the name of each entrant their colour. For example type [Case “Nick”[/code], press Enter, type [code]winnerColor = 3[/code] and press Enter. Repeat this for as many people are in the quiz.
When all the names are in the list, type [code]End Select[/code], press Enter and type [code]winner.Interior.ColorIndex = winnerColor[/code].
The completed code should look the screenshot on the right.
Click on the save icon in the toolbar at the top of the Visual Basic Editor to save the changes. Click on the Excel icon to the left of the Save icon to return to the spreadsheet. Try changing the scores to test that the correct colours are used.
Apart from having to use the Visual Basic Editor to add or change the entrants to the quiz, the only drawback with this solution is that Excel Macro Security must be set to Medium to allow the macro to run.
Be a Ribbon Hero!
As the comments on this blog have shown, the Office Ribbon has not met with universal approval. In a move to get people to explore the Ribbon the Office Labs has developed the Ribbon Hero
It appears in the Ribbon in Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007 and 2010 and shows your current score out of a total of 420. With just 48 points I’ve still got some way to go. The scores don’t carry across the different programs so there’s plenty to learn.
Points are given for completing version tasks in three categories: Working with Text, Page Design and Layout and Getting Artistic. Up to 44 points are awarded for basic tasks when using the Ribbon.
It’s aware of some of the new tools in Office 2010 like Text Effects and screen shots. Challenges for all versions of Office include working with SmartArt, Charts, watermarks and line numbers.
Once the tasks have been completed you can share you score using Facebook.
Even if you’re not interested in proving your prowess with Office, the Ribbon Hero is a useful learning tool.
Office 2010 preview
I had a meeting with Microsoft to have a look at Office 2010 and some of the changes that are being made.
Sorry to disappoint those who don’t like the Ribbon, but it’s staying. Some consolation might be found in the fact that it can now be customised.
One change that had immediately caught my eye in the Technical Preview of Office 2010 is that the Office button has had a makeover. It’s no longer in the top left corner of the screen; instead it is slightly below with an old style program icon above. I still think that this is something of a step backwards in terms of User Interface design; corners are considered infinite in size (you can’t miss them) and the new one is also smaller.
Chris explained that the user feedback had shown that some people hadn’t even realised that it was a button and had contacted technical support asking how to print from documents. It’s a reasonable justification, but I still preferred the button from 2007.
There are some small changes to the file format but this shouldn’t give any problems to anyone using Office 2007. Chris followed up by saying “The compatibility pack for Office 2003 will be updated to support the version of Open XML supported by Office 2010. Office 2007 users should also update their installation with the latest updates to ensure their version is aware of the new formats in Office 2010. The delivery method of these updates has not yet been decided.”
Office Starter
Most of the computers we see arrive in the office have a trial copy of Office that lasts for 60 days, sometimes with a copy of Microsoft Works. Works is being retired in favour of Office Starter, limited versions of Word and Excel that should be enough to get by if someone sends you a docx or xlsx file. There’s a separate PowerPoint Viewer.
Microsoft has also made some effort to make getting started easier. Instead of having separate icons for the different Office programs in the Start menu when a new computer arrives, there is a single Office icon. Selecting this displays a window with the option of entering or buying an activation key for the full versions of Office or using the Starter versions.
I might have happy(ish) memories of using Works at university, but I think that this simplification is a great help.
Backstage
As well as changing the Office button the menu that appears has changed as well. Menu is selling it short slightly as it takes up the whole screen. Called Backstage it takes care of all the publishing tasks such as printing, saving or posting to blogs.
Multimedia
There are more tools for making presentations more exciting in PowerPoint with some basic video editing possible without having to use a separate program. These can be used to crop videos and are non-destructive for the most part so you can go back to the video later.
Given that this can lead to so fairly large presentations there are also tools for preparing the presentation for emailing. Depending on how aggressive you want to be, this can discard cropped sections of videos.
YouTube videos can be embedded into presentations but they’re not saved within them, so an internet connection is essential during the presentation. I wasn’t able to insert an flv file from my computer into a presentation in Powerpoint 2010 Beta.
Custom Ribbon
One of my frustrations with the Ribbon was that the layout in Office 2007 is completely fixed. I’d just created my own taskbar in Word 03 the week before I heard about the Ribbon so it felt like a step backwards. It is now possible create a tab in the Ribbon with your own selection of icons, along with macros.
Working together
Office Live is going to improved to make it easier for several people to work on a document at the same time. The ideal is to use the normal Office programs, and I found that they will open automatically when trying to edit a document online if available. The online versions won’t have all the functionality of their desktop equivalents. If there’s is a section of a document that cannot be changed with the online editor it will be left alone.
Microsoft has also acquired office.com so there’s no need to use office.microsoft.com.
Versions
More good news is in the simplification of the different versions of Office:
Office Home and Student: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote
Home and Business: All of the above with Outlook
Professional: All of the above with Access and Publisher
I predict some controversy over the end of upgrade versions although this may depend on the pricing of the full versions.
Overall
Office 2010 looks like it has some genuinely useful improvements on 2007, especially if you want to work on documents with other people and don’t have access to an Exchange server.
Clever idea for using a smartphone with a landline
Last year I took a look at the Fritzbox router. It’s expensive, but an incredibly versatile piece of kit and great for making calls over the internet using ordinary phones, either plugged into the back or wirelessly using DECT.
Now it looks like the final kind of phone in the home, the mobile, is going to be added to the Fritzbox fold. AVM has announced the Fritz!App (scroll down to the bottom), which will be available for iPhone and Android. It will allow the smartphone to connect to the router and then use the landline or access the built in answer phones. Incoming calls can also be routed to the smartphone.
All sounds quite impressive so I’m hoping that this will be available for current models like the 7270 and not just the new ones announced at Cebit.
Punched out font
Here’s a clever idea. A font that is designed to be printed, cut out and then glued into 3D shapes.
Not something for a website or essay obviously but may prove useful for various creative products.
Download the font from dfont.com here.
Keeping files in step across different computers
Hopefully I’m not too far from normal with the challenge of working on documents across several computers, not to mention different versions of Windows and Ubuntu.
USB keys are one solution provided you remember to put them back in your pocket and online office suites like Zoho and Google Docs are best used when you’re, well, online.
Enter Dropbox. It’s an online service that offers 2GB of storage at no cost (or 50GB and 100GB for $10 or $20 a month respectively) with a clever program that updates files automatically. It’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Folders can also be marked for sharing with other Dropbox users, which should come in handy when working on projects with several people.
Dropbox isn’t the only online storage service. I’m also using the paid for version of Humyo for backing up my work, but it’s handy to have a separate account just for working from and sharing with friends.
Fonts video
Fonts can be a contentious subject. Is there any place for Comic Sans in the Post Modern Age and are the Calibri and Cambria fonts with Office 2007 and Vista good enough?
FontShop has an interesting interview with Simon Daniels from Microsoft about fonts and the various standards that are competing online.
20 free fonts found by Smashing Magazine
If you’re planning to write the family newsletter soon and want it to stand out from the crowd, why not use a different font to the usual Arial and Times New Roman (please don’t even think about Comic Sans). Smashing magazine has a collection of 20 fonts that can be installed and used at no cost.
There’s a good variety covering fonts for the main text in a letter, such as the Nilland font above, and other fonts better used in headlines like Amadeus to the right.
