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It's easy to think that Word's functionality is what you see on the Ribbon, mentally map that to Google Docs, and think that the latter can replace the former.
by kjellsbells 10mo ago
It's easy to think that Word's functionality is what you see on the Ribbon, mentally map that to Google Docs, and think that the latter can replace the former. But Word is extremely deep. The templating and style sheets allow for a level of fine grained control that doesn't exist in alternatives. There are features that exist purely for the legal market, like Table of Authorities, and customizable line numbering and hyphenation.
Maybe one day there'll be a product to replace Word, but it won't succeed by claiming to be a generalist replacement but only as a niche product that solves a particularly painful problem for lawyers and then expands over time to capture more use cases.
- jpbryan 10mo agoI completely agree. On the Google Docs front — I wrote specifically about its viability as a Word successor in an earlier post, "Why Lawyers Will Never Use Google Docs". https://theredline.versionstory.com/p/why-lawyers-will-never-use-google-edd https://theredline.versionstory.com/p/why-lawyers-will-never...
- cafard 10mo agoWithin the last ten years I have worked with lawyers and legal secretaries who were still using WordPerfect. I have to say that I was surprised to learn this.
- BobaFloutist 10mo agoI swear Google Docs also used to do a better job of replicating Word's ribbon, and has slowly pruned it of a lot of features that are individually niche, but cumulatively very important.
- MoonWalk 10mo agoWord's "ribbon" is a shitshow, and has been since day one. It's depressing to read about Word's entrenchment. This entire once-great application is now an execrable mess, with menus scattered under cryptic buttons (and abridged into dumbed-down menus that require you to expose yet another, collapsed one to access essential, frequently-used functions), a file... thing (not even a dialog, let alone a proper File dialog) that shows you a canned list of locations in a UI that appears to consist only of text... The style-handling is even messed up, once one of Word's great strengths.
- sfRattan 10mo agoI will say in favor of the ribbon: it still fully supports KeyTips (a.k.a tapping Alt and then a series of letters to navigate a software menu). So much Electron-based slop software out there doesn't support any sort of keyboard navigation of the application at all. I do find the ribbon somehow weirdly intuitive for navigating with the keyboard, but it was of course possible to navigate drop-down menus in the exact same way (Alt and a series of underlined letters) for years before that. And still is... When developers bother to write robust software.
- fractallyte 10mo agoTotally agree. On the rare occasions when I'm forced to use Word, I find it an incomprehensible mess. I don't understand why users continue to tolerate it. There is other software: LibreOffice and SoftMaker Office are close enough to be familiar to any casual user, and WordPerfect was always an excellent word processor!
- alsetmusic 10mo ago> On the rare occasions when I'm forced to use Word, I find it an incomprehensible mess. I don't understand why users continue to tolerate it. Some comments above focus on legal docs. I've provided support to practicing lawyers. They don't have time to learn new tools that maybe support the majority of what they need because people on this site know there are alternatives. They're locked into Word so that they can focus on the part of their work for which they are trained and it's not software like you or me.
- IAmBroom 10mo agoOne of the WEIRDEST features of Word is that it (silently) retains keycombos that refer to a menu structure that was replaced many versions ago... simply to avoid irritating customers with trained reflexes. Ctrl-o? Selects the Home menu. Followed by 'e'? Deselects the Home menu, and presents the "Select Case" subwindow... like it did when it was on the Format menu, which no longer exists. Documentation for this? Um, well...
- kamaal 10mo agoI haven't used Microsoft office products in more than a decade. And Windows in more than 15 yrs. Google offers so many things free out of the box. And for serious spreadsheet sort of work, I use numpy. Google pretty much won the Office software war.
- kjellsbells 10mo ago> Google pretty much won the Office software war. That's a "citation needed" if ever there was one.
- bigfatkitten 10mo ago> Google pretty much won the Office software war. Just not in any of the biggest markets for office software, like the legal industry, and government.
- IAmBroom 10mo agoAnd by your logic, Linux won the OS wars. So was 2010 or 2011 the Year of the Linux Desktop?
- kamaal 10mo agoGiven the install base of Linux, yes. It did win the OS wars. >>So was 2010 or 2011 the Year of the Linux Desktop? Desktops are the of the game of the past. Mobile devices is what you need to look at. Windows doesn't even have a presence there. So yes, Linux won!
- phendrenad2 10mo agoEven basic features are missing from Word competitors. Not a single one competently handles spellchecking multiple languages in the same document.