6 ms·

I still use Word 97 for most of my writing, because it never nags me for anything, it's always ready to go in a split-second, even though it's running inside a

I still use Word 97 for most of my writing, because it never nags me for anything, it's always ready to go in a split-second, even though it's running inside a VM, and it always saves a file with no more than two keypresses, one if it's already been saved before. (Clippy is an optional component I did not install, as much as I miss that face sometimes.)

0df8dkdf 6y ago
word perfect for me!
prvc 6y ago
>Word 97 Is there a FOSS program with a comparable user experience?
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  Not that I have seen. I'm way into FOSS, but I'm compromising on this because nothing even comes close. It was made at a time when Microsoft cared a lot about user experience, poured millions of dollars into user studies, design, and ensuring that every pixel was perfect, every function was keyboard-accessible, and every workflow was smooth. And it shows. Trying to use e.g. LibreOffice or Google Docs, after that, it's like comparing a science fair project made by a kid who just wanted to pass with a C versus an A+ student whose project was also made by their parents, who also happen to be scientists.
  - cout 6y ago
    Even comparing recent versions of Word to the older ones is facepalm-inducing. I still don't understand what the designer was thinking with the ribbon. Compare to the DOS days where every major program (wordperfect, lotus 1-2-3, etc) had a function key template. It was annoying to learn at first, but easily discoverable, and eventually you get muscle memory. Modern apps have lost that, in many ways.
- marcodiego 6y ago
  Abiword.
  - forgotmypw17 6y ago
    Abiword is decent. I open it, and I start typing right away, no dialogs. The startup time is rather fast. However, saving does not provide me with a default filename, so there is friction there. In the status bar, the indicator text runs right up to the border edge, nobody took the time to ensure vertical and horizontal spacing matches up. The menubar does not provide keyboard accelerators until after I press the Alt key -- too late in terms of discoverability. The cursor actually disappears when I use the arrow keys to move around. It's not even blinking, it's just GONE, until I stop using the arrow keys, then reappears after a delay. The spell-checker finds an spelling mistake in both "Abiword" and "abiword". Using only the keyboard, I cannot figure out how to change the font size, except by going through the Format->Font menu. The Font dialog has invisible or nearly-invisible focus rectangles on most controls. I just installed it to write this comment, and I found all this stuff in the first five or so minutes of using it. It's a nice little word processor, and I'd use it in a pinch, but it's no Word 97.
    - boogies 6y ago
      I think some of these things can be fixed in Abiword and other apps with GTK configuration. Eg.: > The menubar does not provide keyboard accelerators until after I press the Alt key -- too late in terms of discoverability. I think this is a GTK theme setting that you can override https://askubuntu.com/questions/329668/always-show-keyboard-shortcuts-in-gnome-take-effect-without-a-restart https://askubuntu.com/questions/329668/always-show-keyboard-...
      - forgotmypw17 6y ago
        thanks
      - forgotmypw17 6y ago
        Thank you. So far, I think that only addresses the menu accelerators issue, and none of the others I listed. I think the fact that it is off by default in the first places illustrates my point quite well. And so does the fact that I have to seek out separate configuration for the toolkit. Not only that, but on the very page you linked, people are complaining that even the setting does not work reliably. I know that when I tried to adjust it in the past for other apps it did not work for me. Perhaps I just needed to reboot? :)
sys_64738 6y ago
No product activation either. Those were the days.
systemvoltage 6y ago
This resonates with many things from 80’s, 90’s and even well into 2000’s. There has been a severe erosion since then. From car dashboards to web design, software apps to online communities - it’s an erosion on all fronts. Fuck everything after 2010. It sucks. Fight me.
- Firehawke 6y ago
  Well, the PS4 is certainly better than the PS3 and I'd say the Nintendo Switch is certainly better than the Wii. Modern ARM chips are certainly better than what we had in 2009 in every respect. There are certainly things that did improve, though I agree a lot of things did regress-- I'm just saying that not EVERYTHING regressed. It's all about perspective.
  - systemvoltage 6y ago
    Hah, it was mostly a tongue in cheek comment with a broad stroke, of course you're 100% right.
  - grishka 6y ago
    > Well, the PS4 is certainly better than the PS3 I don't know about PS3, but the thing that bugs me about PS4 is that it requires installing games. It can't just run a game straight off the disc like PS1 and PS2 did, it has to copy it to its hard drive first. > Modern ARM chips are certainly better than what we had in 2009 in every respect. Modern processors are, generally, great and very fast, regardless of the instruction set. Their greatness is usually compensated with mediocre software that is being constantly rushed to meet imaginary deadlines that no user cares about. The result is that the end user never really realizes how fast and capable modern hardware actually is.
    - danbolt 6y ago
      The PS3 had the same problem, I think. It’s miles behind the Switch, but I’ve found installing on the PS4 to be less of a hassle.
    - 6y ago
qubex 6y ago
Yes, I agree: Office ‘97, 2000, and XP were the high points of that lineage as far as my experience goes. But I stopped using Office when I switched to Mac in 2003 and have used Word and Excel occasionally since then (preferring the iWork suite’s analogues Pages and Numbers respectively).
- bombcar 6y ago
  Microsoft finally did something with the new version of Office that makes it worthwhile - when tied to a Microsoft 365 account with some ungodly behind-the-scenes hack involving Sharepoint you get multiplayer PowerPoint - a gamechanger.
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  Agree on all counts. I chose ME for size and startup time, but 2000 is even better. Truly the peak of Windows, IMO. XP is more compatible, but it also started down the road of candy-coating the native widgets and rejiggling Control Panel. You could opt out of both, but it was the beginning of the decline.
agumonkey 6y ago
When I boot an old box (win95, nt5) I'm surprised at how few things I miss.. and how some things feels better. Go figure ..
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  I use it regularly for compatibility testing. Here are a few things I find myself missing in relatively modern computing, off the top of my head: Accessibility. Everything, every single little nook and cranny is keyboard-accessible. And I mean accessible not in the sense that I can keep pressing the Tab key, and eventually the barely-visible focus rectangle may arrive at the control I want to use. I mean, everything has a visile keyboard shortcut, and the Tab key also works, and the focus rectangle is visible, and it works every time, not just when the application feels like it. Keypresses don't get dropped from the buffer even while the application is thinking. Fast as heck startup time. Fast menus. Fast application startup. Fast, fast, fast. My current daily driver is a 10-year-old laptop with a spinny drive, and Windows 95 is running inside a VM, which is competing for resources with my entire dev environment, so it's not like the hardware is not comparable to what it was designed for. Consistency in look and operation. Everything has the same widgets and dialogs, and they all work about the same way, at least between Microsoft apps. Netscape and other browsers are a different story. Flat, dull, boring interface. Everything is a flat gray, nothing is shiny, nothing is animated. Everything is a frame around the work that I'm doing, and feels like it wants to just help me, assist me with what I'm doing, and then get out of the way. Oh yeah, and I the Save and Open File dialogs are fully-featured file managers with sorting, multi-select, copy, paste, rename, the works. And IE6 is challenging to develop for, but I fucking love using it. It feels just like the Windows UI (Trident, after all), it's snappy, has focus rectangles on everything, and modern enough to have a DOM with all the works like createElement() getElementById(). IE3 has the most beautiful toolbar of any browser I've seen to date, and also has focus rectangles and basic CSS support. I can still use it to post to my blog.
  - agumonkey 6y ago
    yes, yes, and yes. mostly yes. another factor is that computers were limited in presentation and computation, they'd present to you abstracted, dull tables and operations on data. But it did serious jobs. Now we have extremely (extremely, as a CGI fan, I cannot deny that) fancy presentation systems, but the actual data displayed is linear list of paragraphs, a few pictures and data points. Well computer is hypermainstream so obviously it talks to the average user.. but it says something about what computing was and is now.
kcartlidge 6y ago
Similar with me for old non-naggy tech. I'm on an Apple Silicon MacBook Air but still often run WordPerfect 4.2 and DataEase 4.53 under DosBox (also Boxer is good but not tried it on M1 yet). BTW if you're interested in the nuts and bolts of running WordPerfect DOS in emulation, Columbia University (NYC) has a great site at http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/ http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/ which may even help fixing other DOS software issues.
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  For Word 97, I find that a Windows ME install in VirtualBox works better than Wine.
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    I'm surprised Word 97 doesn't work in compatibility mode.
    - forgotmypw17 6y ago
      It probably does, but the native experience is better. I also have the VM set up already for IE, which def does not work right in Wine.
    - fuzzfactor 6y ago
      Office 97 in Windows XP works extremely well. When XP was released, there was intended to be no support for Office other than Office XP. Thousands of questions were raised whether Office 97 would work in Windows XP and it was totally discouraged by Microsoft every time. After about 6 months somebody (like a big company) tried it and since it worked quite well, the news began to filter out. Within another 6 months there was all kinds of support info for Office 97 under XP as if the disinformation campaign had never existed.
    - forgotmypw17 6y ago
      >compatibility mode Do you mean Wine? It's imperfect emulation for large apps, and it's slower than a VM.
dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
Not to mention the price - you can easily buy it for $10, and it's really blazing fast. I wouldn't use it for complex documents though.
ralphc 6y ago
Let's go farther back. I did/do code editing, not WYSIWYG word processing, and a good DOS editor let you do everything you needed without taking your hands off the keyboard. You could zoom through your code.
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  It,s true, when there is no pointer to speak of, you have no choice but to make it keyboard-accessible. I think accommodating DOS users is one of the reasons Windows started off so accessible to the keyboard. Compare that to Mac, which started off with a GUI and mouse, and to this day remains inaccessible to keyboard by default.

0df8dkdf 6y ago

word perfect for me!

prvc 6y ago

>Word 97 Is there a FOSS program with a comparable user experience?

forgotmypw17 6y ago
Not that I have seen. I'm way into FOSS, but I'm compromising on this because nothing even comes close. It was made at a time when Microsoft cared a lot about user experience, poured millions of dollars into user studies, design, and ensuring that every pixel was perfect, every function was keyboard-accessible, and every workflow was smooth. And it shows. Trying to use e.g. LibreOffice or Google Docs, after that, it's like comparing a science fair project made by a kid who just wanted to pass with a C versus an A+ student whose project was also made by their parents, who also happen to be scientists.
- cout 6y ago
  Even comparing recent versions of Word to the older ones is facepalm-inducing. I still don't understand what the designer was thinking with the ribbon. Compare to the DOS days where every major program (wordperfect, lotus 1-2-3, etc) had a function key template. It was annoying to learn at first, but easily discoverable, and eventually you get muscle memory. Modern apps have lost that, in many ways.
marcodiego 6y ago
Abiword.
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  Abiword is decent. I open it, and I start typing right away, no dialogs. The startup time is rather fast. However, saving does not provide me with a default filename, so there is friction there. In the status bar, the indicator text runs right up to the border edge, nobody took the time to ensure vertical and horizontal spacing matches up. The menubar does not provide keyboard accelerators until after I press the Alt key -- too late in terms of discoverability. The cursor actually disappears when I use the arrow keys to move around. It's not even blinking, it's just GONE, until I stop using the arrow keys, then reappears after a delay. The spell-checker finds an spelling mistake in both "Abiword" and "abiword". Using only the keyboard, I cannot figure out how to change the font size, except by going through the Format->Font menu. The Font dialog has invisible or nearly-invisible focus rectangles on most controls. I just installed it to write this comment, and I found all this stuff in the first five or so minutes of using it. It's a nice little word processor, and I'd use it in a pinch, but it's no Word 97.
  - boogies 6y ago
    I think some of these things can be fixed in Abiword and other apps with GTK configuration. Eg.: > The menubar does not provide keyboard accelerators until after I press the Alt key -- too late in terms of discoverability. I think this is a GTK theme setting that you can override https://askubuntu.com/questions/329668/always-show-keyboard-shortcuts-in-gnome-take-effect-without-a-restart https://askubuntu.com/questions/329668/always-show-keyboard-...
    - forgotmypw17 6y ago
      thanks
    - forgotmypw17 6y ago
      Thank you. So far, I think that only addresses the menu accelerators issue, and none of the others I listed. I think the fact that it is off by default in the first places illustrates my point quite well. And so does the fact that I have to seek out separate configuration for the toolkit. Not only that, but on the very page you linked, people are complaining that even the setting does not work reliably. I know that when I tried to adjust it in the past for other apps it did not work for me. Perhaps I just needed to reboot? :)

sys_64738 6y ago

No product activation either. Those were the days.

systemvoltage 6y ago

This resonates with many things from 80’s, 90’s and even well into 2000’s. There has been a severe erosion since then. From car dashboards to web design, software apps to online communities - it’s an erosion on all fronts. Fuck everything after 2010. It sucks. Fight me.

Firehawke 6y ago
Well, the PS4 is certainly better than the PS3 and I'd say the Nintendo Switch is certainly better than the Wii. Modern ARM chips are certainly better than what we had in 2009 in every respect. There are certainly things that did improve, though I agree a lot of things did regress-- I'm just saying that not EVERYTHING regressed. It's all about perspective.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  Hah, it was mostly a tongue in cheek comment with a broad stroke, of course you're 100% right.
- grishka 6y ago
  > Well, the PS4 is certainly better than the PS3 I don't know about PS3, but the thing that bugs me about PS4 is that it requires installing games. It can't just run a game straight off the disc like PS1 and PS2 did, it has to copy it to its hard drive first. > Modern ARM chips are certainly better than what we had in 2009 in every respect. Modern processors are, generally, great and very fast, regardless of the instruction set. Their greatness is usually compensated with mediocre software that is being constantly rushed to meet imaginary deadlines that no user cares about. The result is that the end user never really realizes how fast and capable modern hardware actually is.
  - danbolt 6y ago
    The PS3 had the same problem, I think. It’s miles behind the Switch, but I’ve found installing on the PS4 to be less of a hassle.
  - 6y ago

qubex 6y ago

Yes, I agree: Office ‘97, 2000, and XP were the high points of that lineage as far as my experience goes. But I stopped using Office when I switched to Mac in 2003 and have used Word and Excel occasionally since then (preferring the iWork suite’s analogues Pages and Numbers respectively).

bombcar 6y ago
Microsoft finally did something with the new version of Office that makes it worthwhile - when tied to a Microsoft 365 account with some ungodly behind-the-scenes hack involving Sharepoint you get multiplayer PowerPoint - a gamechanger.
forgotmypw17 6y ago
Agree on all counts. I chose ME for size and startup time, but 2000 is even better. Truly the peak of Windows, IMO. XP is more compatible, but it also started down the road of candy-coating the native widgets and rejiggling Control Panel. You could opt out of both, but it was the beginning of the decline.

agumonkey 6y ago

When I boot an old box (win95, nt5) I'm surprised at how few things I miss.. and how some things feels better. Go figure ..

forgotmypw17 6y ago
I use it regularly for compatibility testing. Here are a few things I find myself missing in relatively modern computing, off the top of my head: Accessibility. Everything, every single little nook and cranny is keyboard-accessible. And I mean accessible not in the sense that I can keep pressing the Tab key, and eventually the barely-visible focus rectangle may arrive at the control I want to use. I mean, everything has a visile keyboard shortcut, and the Tab key also works, and the focus rectangle is visible, and it works every time, not just when the application feels like it. Keypresses don't get dropped from the buffer even while the application is thinking. Fast as heck startup time. Fast menus. Fast application startup. Fast, fast, fast. My current daily driver is a 10-year-old laptop with a spinny drive, and Windows 95 is running inside a VM, which is competing for resources with my entire dev environment, so it's not like the hardware is not comparable to what it was designed for. Consistency in look and operation. Everything has the same widgets and dialogs, and they all work about the same way, at least between Microsoft apps. Netscape and other browsers are a different story. Flat, dull, boring interface. Everything is a flat gray, nothing is shiny, nothing is animated. Everything is a frame around the work that I'm doing, and feels like it wants to just help me, assist me with what I'm doing, and then get out of the way. Oh yeah, and I the Save and Open File dialogs are fully-featured file managers with sorting, multi-select, copy, paste, rename, the works. And IE6 is challenging to develop for, but I fucking love using it. It feels just like the Windows UI (Trident, after all), it's snappy, has focus rectangles on everything, and modern enough to have a DOM with all the works like createElement() getElementById(). IE3 has the most beautiful toolbar of any browser I've seen to date, and also has focus rectangles and basic CSS support. I can still use it to post to my blog.
- agumonkey 6y ago
  yes, yes, and yes. mostly yes. another factor is that computers were limited in presentation and computation, they'd present to you abstracted, dull tables and operations on data. But it did serious jobs. Now we have extremely (extremely, as a CGI fan, I cannot deny that) fancy presentation systems, but the actual data displayed is linear list of paragraphs, a few pictures and data points. Well computer is hypermainstream so obviously it talks to the average user.. but it says something about what computing was and is now.

kcartlidge 6y ago

Similar with me for old non-naggy tech. I'm on an Apple Silicon MacBook Air but still often run WordPerfect 4.2 and DataEase 4.53 under DosBox (also Boxer is good but not tried it on M1 yet). BTW if you're interested in the nuts and bolts of running WordPerfect DOS in emulation, Columbia University (NYC) has a great site at http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/ http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/ which may even help fixing other DOS software issues.

forgotmypw17 6y ago
For Word 97, I find that a Windows ME install in VirtualBox works better than Wine.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  I'm surprised Word 97 doesn't work in compatibility mode.
  - forgotmypw17 6y ago
    It probably does, but the native experience is better. I also have the VM set up already for IE, which def does not work right in Wine.
  - fuzzfactor 6y ago
    Office 97 in Windows XP works extremely well. When XP was released, there was intended to be no support for Office other than Office XP. Thousands of questions were raised whether Office 97 would work in Windows XP and it was totally discouraged by Microsoft every time. After about 6 months somebody (like a big company) tried it and since it worked quite well, the news began to filter out. Within another 6 months there was all kinds of support info for Office 97 under XP as if the disinformation campaign had never existed.
  - forgotmypw17 6y ago
    >compatibility mode Do you mean Wine? It's imperfect emulation for large apps, and it's slower than a VM.

dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago

Not to mention the price - you can easily buy it for $10, and it's really blazing fast. I wouldn't use it for complex documents though.

ralphc 6y ago

Let's go farther back. I did/do code editing, not WYSIWYG word processing, and a good DOS editor let you do everything you needed without taking your hands off the keyboard. You could zoom through your code.

forgotmypw17 6y ago
It,s true, when there is no pointer to speak of, you have no choice but to make it keyboard-accessible. I think accommodating DOS users is one of the reasons Windows started off so accessible to the keyboard. Compare that to Mac, which started off with a GUI and mouse, and to this day remains inaccessible to keyboard by default.