Re: Cannot activate "Track Changes" on Word 2004 for Mac

Tony wrote:
Daiya,

Obviously when we know something, that becomes easy for us. Chinese is easy for Chinese people, for instance. What I meant is that people who never used MacWrite Pro could use its advanced Find features without making mistakes.

Once they found them by clicking on a mysterious key....

On the contrary, most people that do not "learn how it works" make mistakes when using the advanced Find features of Word.

I'm really not believing you here, because I have pointed a lot of average users on the newsgroups at that dialog, and pretty much they post back saying "wow, thanks, great, worked perfectly!" not, "huh, what do I do?" or "after some trial and error I finally figured it out".

<snip>
Now, when you consider that MacWrite Pro was updated for the last time on 1994, that becomes even more amazing.

Actually, that makes it less amazing--programs last updated in 1994 offered many fewer features. Consider that cars, VCRs, microwaves, etc, have also all become much more confusing than 1994.

So what do I want? I want an interface that does not force me to learn things

*EVERY* interface forces you to know things in advance. Intuitive is a question of how specialized that necessary knowledge is.

but that is so obvious that it is a matter of seen [seeing?] what is displayed and make the choice...

As I said, if Word put everything you could do in Find and Replace right into the dialog as MacWrite Pro did, it would be completely unusable. This is a silly thing to want. The dialog is set up so that people can make the right guesses about where to go.

to repeat--My summary--what you hold up as excellent is 1) itself flawed, requiring some non-obvious guesses or learned experience 2) less powerful and therefore not faced with trying to pack the same number of features into a dialog box.

I'm not claiming Word is intuitive, because it isn't. I just think that the standards of "intuitive" that you are applying are flawed, and that the example you picked to prove "unintuitive" isn't very good proof.

Daiya

Without having to read manuals, as much as possible, of course.

BTW, back in the old days some people said that DOS was as intuitive as the Mac. Then with Windows 1.0 until Vista now. So you see, not everybody thinks alike. But some things are obvious for the people that want to see them.

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On 2007-04-11 18:06:23 +0200, Daiya Mitchell <daiyaNOSPAM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:

Hi Tony--

Okay, I did some editing and re-ordering on your post to collate your comments and pictures for an efficient reply, I hope I didn't mess anything up.

For instance, I am sure there is a Macro to delete all bookmarks at once as you indicate. Yet, why do not include a button --just a button-- with a confirmation prompt )do you really want to...) to delete ALL bookmarks at right the place where it should be that is the "Insert/Bookmark" window? That is an intuitive interface and that is the Mac way.
You see, programmers --good programmers; Mac-like programmers-- should see ahead, so foretelling what users will want to do when they see or open a particular window.

Well...."foretelling what users will want to do" and "an intuitive interface" are not actually the exact same thing. An "intuitive interface" is about presenting buttons such that inexperienced users will make the right guess about which button will do what they want. Foretelling what users need/want to do is about designing the features that are available. Word does not offer a Delete All Bookmarks feature--that is a big design flaw/bug in the program, not in the interface. To make this an example of an unintuitive interface, Word would need to have a Delete All Bookmarks feature that was hidden instead of accessible in the logical Bookmarks dialog (and Word certainly has plenty of examples of pretty much that). Do you see the difference there?

You may be interested in my previous rant on "intuitive" as a descriptor for software, #35 in Google's count, on this thread:
<http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.mac.office.word/browse_frm/thread/35dbbe6820a2f112/96aa2854fc974f1c>


OK,

I could not do it in my Mactel because Classic is not supported, but I managed to install and run MacWritePro1.5v3 on a PowerPC Mac. Here are the requested screen shots (I hope you see them; otherwise, please let me know).

Wow, thanks for going to all that trouble! Really appreciated.

The first one (01-Find.pdf) shows after Command F:
Figure 1: http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/2894/01findsf4.jpg

Okay, that's fine as is. Yep, it's handy to have those things right up there. It'd be a bit crowded, not so user-friendly, if Word had the equivalent--since Word has five/six options that work like that, not two/three.

The second one (02-Find-UseAtributes.pdf) shows after clicking the key of "Use Attributes):
Figure 2: http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/6740/02finduseatributeskw7.jpg

You are not seriously trying to claim that that little teeny weeny key is "intuitive". A key? That's practically invisible? It may have seemed intuitive back whenever, when the only people that used computers could be relied upon to randomly click everything to see what happened, but it's not intuitive today.

You know what is intuitive? The "More" button that Word had in the F&R dialog in Word 98 and Word 2001, until Apple's *crackhead* self said "hey, buttons that mean 'More Options Available' should be this obscure triangle that no one understands" and the MacBU trying to be "Mac-like" picked it up. This is why I think "Mac-like" is a nonsense concept, abused even more than "intuitive" when discussing software.

But, okay--once the dialog has been expanded, sure the formatting options are right there. I'm pretty sure, however, that a button that says "Format" is no less intuitive for the user who expands the Word dialog and says "okay, now how do I search for bold text? oh, let me try the Format button". An extra step, sure. I guess you do have to know that Bold is a formatting options--but in MacWrite Pro, you have to know that the "use attributes" button will search for bold (right? I can't imagine what else "attributes" would mean), and I kinda think Format makes more sense than Attributes to most people.

Okay, once you click on Format it's a bit complicated in Word--on the other hand, it uses things that are used throughout Word, so if you know what you want to do, you should be able to make the right guesses. For instance, Format | Paragraph works exactly the same in the menu or from the F&R dialog, so it makes a pretty safe guess if you want to find all double-spaced text and change it to single-spaced (feature maybe offered by MWP? not sure what that 0 means). Ditto for Format | Font. In fact, for many features, you can click on the toolbar as you always do to make that setting in the Find dialog, bypassing those dialogs entirely--the user makes a guess and sees that it works.

Word could move the most common options directly into the F&R dialog--they tried that in a different dialog (Modify Style in Word 2003/2004), and the result has been that some people, seeing the most common options right before their faces, think those are the ONLY options, and overlook the extension buttons in all the clutter.

I'll give you that "Special" in Word is a bit obscure--on the other hand--for someone looking in F&R, unsure if they can do things like format all cross-reference fields at once (feature not offered by MWP), Special is a pretty good way to communicate "hey, click on me, I might offer funky weird options you didn't know Word had".

But I'm not seeing any way to F&R a paragraph mark with a line break, which is something I do often I've got an icon on my toolbar for it. Or any way to F&R styles. Admittedly, the dependence on styles and paragraph-oriented formatting is something that is inherent to Word's paradigm and may not apply to MacWrite Pro, but the use of styles and paragraphs is part of what makes Word so powerful.

As you can see, it is utterly intuitive and simple, yet extremely powerful. THAT IS A NEAT EXAMPLE OF THE ESSENCE OF THE MAC WAY. I wish Office could be like that as well.

My summary--what you hold up as excellent is 1) itself flawed, requiring some non-obvious guesses or learned experience 2) less powerful and therefore not faced with trying to pack the same features into a dialog box.

If Word took the MWP route of putting all the possible options right there in the dialog, it would be utterly and completely unusable.

Daiya


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