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Previous: Unnecessary lawsuit over glass door | Main | Next: Coffee shop sign
July 28, 2004 12:01 AM
Broken: Microsoft Word "New..." command
Dave Collins writes from London:
In Microsoft Word, clicking the New... command does not give me a new document. It opens a dialog box containing a list of items (the first being existing documents - not new ones).
This gives me a mental double-take every single time, followed by a growl, followed by closing it, and then clicking the little blank document icon because that will get me what I asked for.
Why a whole dialog box just to give me a new doc? Because Word is not just for documents anymore - No! I might want a new webpage or email message. Word inserts these extra steps for the 99.9% of my tasks, in order to make the 0.1% (well, 0%) easier. Bloatware at its finest.
The same with Ctrl-N... but that's not the point. The command should do the same thing whether you select it from the menu, an icon, or a keyboard shortcut. Microsoft has put in inconsistencies in their attempt to dumb-down the product.
Yeah, he mentioned that in the article
"... followed by closing it, and then clicking the little blank document icon ..."
Sorry to be so snarky, but why are you surprised that Microsoft is bad at interface design?
(Yes, I've decided to make snarky a word)
I think it makes much sense to me. If I go to the trouble of File and then New then that dialog is good (for me). And I aint a PHB ;).
YMMV.
About Microsft breaking their own UI rules:
The menu system shows items as a simple entry, or an entry with "..." following it. The "..." indicates that there is a subsequent dialog box. In this example, the entry is "New..." so it is correct UI behaviour to show a dialog box (or in this case, a side panel)
But this side panel for "New..." doesn't just show new things. In fact, the very first section is devoted to old things -- existing documents that you can open. These are the very same things that one would expect to see in the "Open..." dialog which is the menu entry immediately below "New...".
The menu system includes keyboard equivalents listed in the menu so that as you use them menus, you see the keybaord equivalents and can use them instead of going throught the menu selection process. Pressing Ctrl+N should get you "New...". But it doesn't. It gives you a new blank document instead of the side panel. So in fact, the keyboard shortcut is not an equivalent to the menu item for which it is identified.
Now Microsoft may have realized that 99.999% of the time, just really want a new blank document and thus chose to deliberately do this. But if this is the case, why would there not be a menu item to get a new blank document to satisfy the common request?
Instead, one must go through the contortions of customizing Word to add the "New Blank Document" menu itme, which surprisingly has the keyboard equivalent as Ctrl+N
I actually preferred when Office used a real dialog box rather than that weird side-panel thing. The dialog box never confused me because it came up right in the middle of things, but the side panel always makes me do a double-take.
In my ideal design, "New" would just create a blank document, and there would be a separate option to create a new document from a template.
Yeah, it's kind of broken, but you can fix it.
Go to Tools -> Customize
Click the "Commands" tab
Click the "File" category
Drag the "New Blank Document" command to your file menu in the appropriate place.
Now you can select "New Blank Document"
If the "New..." really bugs you, while you have the Customize dialog open, click on the file menu, then right click on that evil little "New..." and choose "Delete"
Make sure you've added "New Blank Document" first, though, or you'll double-break Word.
Whether or not a user should have to bother with this exercise in the first place is left as an exercise for the reader.
The source of the problem is of course Microsoft's need to create "new features" to justify the purchase of periodic upgrades.
The last usable version of Word was 4 (four), released, as I recall 'round 1989 or so. Since then Microsoft has bolted countless over-designed "features," almost of them more-or-less ridiculously unusable, on to the Office suite of programs. The nightmare of un-usability that is the source of this thread is but one manifestation of same.
Ask yourself this: If Microsoft offered a less expensive replacement for today's most current of Word that contained only the features available in version 4 of the product, would you buy and use it? I think most of us, even most I.T. managers, would...
Word is so obviously the work of programmers who have as much in common as Oprah Winfrey and Jeffery Dahlmer. When I learn software, I learn the way the programmer thinks, more than the s/w itself. Word, to me, is what Cybil would write, if she were a programmer! It's a horrible program at best. It doesn't even have the same shortcuts as other windows apps. I develop acute torretts syndrome every time I open word...
First of all, I believe "torretts syndrome" is spelled with a "te;" second, microsoft word is fine if you use it for its original purpose: WORD PROCESSING. Think about that.
When i open up microsoft word 2000 it doesn't give me a totally blank document. What i mean is that when i open up a new "Blank Document" theres already words written on it. It's still called a blank document, but theres something already written on there. how do you fix that?
For Khan, you can get rid of the words in your "blank document" by opening up "Normal.dot" and deleting the words. You can normally find Normal.dot in C:\Documents and Settings\userid\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates. You can also just delete normal.dot (while Word is closed) to start out fresh.
Also, for the guy mentioning Word 4, I assume you mean for the Macintosh. There is/was no Word 4 for the PC. Just a useless bit of trivia...
Why do you need a New option on the menu when it is so much easier just to click the white page button?
Criticising individual instances of brokenness in Word is like pointing at a rubbish dump and saying "hey, that old washing machine is dented".
Honestly, I DESPAIR each time I use Word, at its hopelessly broken behaviour. THE WHOLE FUCKING THING IS TOTALLY AND UTTERLY FUCKED.
(okay, time to calm down now, EXCEPT I CANT - I AM FORCED TO USE THIS BROKEN PILE OF SHITE)
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Previous: Unnecessary lawsuit over glass door | Main | Next: Coffee shop sign
All you need to create a new doc without the dialog is to click the new document icon in the toolbar.
Posted by: Anand at July 28, 2004 01:32 AM