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Thank God this finally happened. About 8 or 10 years ago, my older daughters insisted that OpenOffice wasn't a "real" word processor, since it didn't look like

Thank God this finally happened. About 8 or 10 years ago, my older daughters insisted that OpenOffice wasn't a "real" word processor, since it didn't look like MS Office on XP, and we were then running Ubuntu at home (since switched to OSX, but whatever...). Then one year, the school got "Vistafied", and the whole UI they were used to got scrambled. At that point, their eyes were opened, and they stopped complaining about the system at home being "different", as well as having to pay attention to using a compatible format, since MS graciously made them painfully aware of all that, anyway. They are now pretty used to doing stuff on the net/cloud, with whatever disposable device/UI is around that year.

Roboprog 9y ago
And my youngest has been using Chromebooks at his school the last 2 or 3 years.
digi_owl 9y ago
And this is why I find the whole FOSS fretting about UI consistency a fool's errand. If anyone has stuck with Windows since the 9x days they will know that UI consistency matters less than rote habits and backwards compatibility.
jpttsn 9y ago
Sure. But the web app UX is clunky; it wouldn't be acceptable to have a desktop word processor with Google Docs' quality. It's a little sad if this is where the bar is set for kids, all in the name of cross-platform.
- analog31 9y ago
  Indeed, what people are willing to give up in terms of UX, in return for other benefits (including cost), is something that continues to surprise the development community. From what I've observed, just watching what the kids do, it seems that function trumps form. What Google Docs does for them is provide access to their documents anywhere, and by anybody within their collaborative group. They don't need a lot of the typesetting features provided by MS Office -- if they can't express something in one way, they find another way to express it. It's only been recently, that we can test whether people are willing to give up UX, because MS Office had the same UX at all of its price tiers. For the same general functionality -- typesetting -- folks weren't willing to put up with the UX of Libre Office, which was clunky in its own way. So I suspect that what Google Docs offers is based on function and not price.

Roboprog 9y ago

And my youngest has been using Chromebooks at his school the last 2 or 3 years.

digi_owl 9y ago

And this is why I find the whole FOSS fretting about UI consistency a fool's errand. If anyone has stuck with Windows since the 9x days they will know that UI consistency matters less than rote habits and backwards compatibility.

jpttsn 9y ago

Sure. But the web app UX is clunky; it wouldn't be acceptable to have a desktop word processor with Google Docs' quality. It's a little sad if this is where the bar is set for kids, all in the name of cross-platform.

analog31 9y ago
Indeed, what people are willing to give up in terms of UX, in return for other benefits (including cost), is something that continues to surprise the development community. From what I've observed, just watching what the kids do, it seems that function trumps form. What Google Docs does for them is provide access to their documents anywhere, and by anybody within their collaborative group. They don't need a lot of the typesetting features provided by MS Office -- if they can't express something in one way, they find another way to express it. It's only been recently, that we can test whether people are willing to give up UX, because MS Office had the same UX at all of its price tiers. For the same general functionality -- typesetting -- folks weren't willing to put up with the UX of Libre Office, which was clunky in its own way. So I suspect that what Google Docs offers is based on function and not price.