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Often true, but I think it's only part of it. If you read about the history of Office 97 development, it was a truly remarkable amount of work which went into i
by forgotmypw17 6y ago
Often true, but I think it's only part of it. If you read about the history of Office 97 development, it was a truly remarkable amount of work which went into it.
Every feature, even the tiniest, was user-tested for many hours, testers spent thousands of hours running through every option, usability and accessibility experts pored over every widget to ensure it looked perfect and had a keyboard shortcut, etc.
It also helped that there was no "moving target" release cycle. There was no fixing it once the gold master was approved.
And the result is a very nicely put together suite of applications with pixel-perfect toolbars, icons, dialogs, etc. that just beams quality.
- heenrik 6y agoCan you point me to any sources on the history of Office 97 (or other earlier applications) development?
- fuzzfactor 6y agoI don't know about the sources, but about a decade ago the first generation of ultra-high-performance office administrators, who had made the original transition from typewriters to PC's, reached maxiumum maturity before retirement. Their leadership was consistent that no version of Microsoft Office allowed greater personal productivity than Office 97. They had worked with them all up to that point, always modernizing at the bleeding edge. In hindsight the only reason for newer versions of Office was thought to be occasions where there was an extreme need for features not present in Office 97. Of course it had always been too late for them to do anything about it since they were so modern they were the ones tasked with dropping earlier versions as soon as possible after a new version was released. Naturally that depth of knowledge will never be replaced.