Microsoft Office '95: The usability war rages on

Microsoft Office '95: The usability war rages on

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): The dust has not really settled yet, but in the
wake of the much-publicized launch of Windows 95 over the past
two weeks or so, we've already seen a lot of activity at software
houses around the world, particularly in North America. The
people at Novell-WordPerfect and Lotus, among others, definitely
have a lot of homework to do. Microsoft Office 95, which was
launched here in Jakarta last Monday at the same time as Windows
95, sets a new standard in usability that they will all have to
strive for.

To take advantage of the new 32-bit operating system, we need
32-bit application software, too. Hence the rush to get 32-bit
versions of popular software programs onto the market as soon as
possible. Programmers at Novell-WordPerfect, for instance, are
working hard to meet the software maker's schedule of releasing
Perfect Office 7.0 -- its 32-bit version -- by the end of this
year. Needless to say, it won't be long until Lotus also launches
its 32-bit version of SmartSuite.

The best office

Courtesy of Microsoft, I was able to test drive Office 95 on
my PC. The box in which the suite came was just half the size of
the box for the previous version of MS Office. I like this
smaller size, as it saves some space on my shelf. There was only
one 600+ page manual in it, as opposed to the five manuals in MS
Office. The manual is very well organized and very useful. The
standard version came in 23 diskettes. Of course, you can, and
had better, buy the CD version. The latter contains other goodies
as well.

All programs in the Office suite now carry 7.0 as their
version number. The standard version consists of Winword 7.0,
Excel 7.0, PowerPoint 7.0 (where were Excel 6.0 and PowerPoint
5.0 and 6.0?), and Schedule+ 7.0.

One of the most significant innovations found in Office 95, in
my opinion, is the Answer Wizard that understands plain English.
While it's still far from being a truly natural language
interface, at least it's a step toward closer human-computer
interaction. A novice user who'd like to find out how to justify
the entire document, for example, can simply type in: How do I
justify text? Answer Wizard will respond by giving her a list
with which she has to stipulate more precisely what she wants to
do. Then Answer Wizard will lead her, step by step, until she has
achieved the desired result. In some cases, Answer Wizard even
does it for her using her own document.

Another neat feature is Office Binder. Like ordinary office
binders, we can put files created in different applications into
the binder, and each of the pages can be given a page number. So,
for instance, we can have a compound document containing five
pages of a Winword document, three pages of Excel worksheets, two
pages of Access reports, and ten pages of PowerPoint presentation
slides, all combined in one Binder. When we copy a binder file,
we'll be copying all the files contained in it.

Meet Mr. Groovy

There's no denying that, when they appeared less than two
years ago, Winword 6.0 and Microsoft Office 4.2 set a new
standard of usability. Among all of the innovative features they
provided, we heartily applauded AutoCorrect and Wizards. Then
WordPerfect came out with its Perfect Office, and suddenly we had
a new pinnacle in usability. Winword 7.0 of Office 95 is
definitely the most usable word processor now on the market --
for the next few months, at least.

To start with, let's see what improvements have been made to
AutoCorrect. First, unlike Winword 6.0, we can type "PCs" without
being corrected by AutoCorrect to "Pcs" automatically.
AutoCorrect can now sense whether two capital letters should be
corrected or left capitalized.

Those of you who have been using PCs long enough will probably
remember one of the popular TSRs from Borland International back
in late 1980s called Turbo Lightning. When activated, this TSR
checked the spelling of everything we typed, and the PC would
beep each time we typed in something it didn't recognize. It was
spell-checking on the fly. I just can't figure out why it is only
now that we have this feature built into our word processor. Yes,
Winword 7.0's spell-checker checks our spelling as we type. When
it finds something that doesn't match anything in its lexicon, it
underlines the word with a wavy red line for us. You can see the
line under the word "difference" in the accompanying picture. If
we place the cursor on that unrecognized word and click the right
button of the mouse, AutoCorrect will give us a list of
alternative words to correct our incorrectly-spelled word. Handy.

Typing common fractions has been another of our problems in
word processing, with the result that we usually resort to using
decimal fractions. Now, with the help of AutoCorrect, we can type
in 1/2 and it will be automatically reformatted into what you can
see in the accompanying illustration. However, the feature does
not work with other fractions, such as 3/5.

Electronic mail can bring unexpected results and can cause
unnecessary hassles because of its terse and straightforward
nature. You joke in your letter, for instance, but the person who
receives your mail fails to understand it and gets offended
instead. To avoid such misunderstandings, you usually add a
sideways happy face : ). In Winword 7.0, when you type a colon
and a close bracket, you'll get the happy face of Mr. Groovy, and
the recipient of your e-mail will know that you're just joking.
This is possible in Winword 7.0 because the program can be used
to edit e-mail letters.

If you like highlighting important parts of a document with a
fluorescent marker, you can do it in Winword 7.0, too. The
program has a marker function, and you can select the color of
your preference -- just like selecting the color of your marker.

Like Mr. Groovy's happy face, (R) and (tm) will automatically
be converted into the standard "Registered" and "Trade Mark"
symbols. More useful perhaps is the new way of entering bullet
lists: We start our list with an asterisk, or with a number "1"
followed by a period. When we hit Enter, Winword 7.0 will
automatically add another bullet or "2". When we reach the end of
our list and Winword 7.0 still gives us another bullet, all we
have to do is hit Backspace once and the program will revert to
normal text.

Other good stuff

The data mapping capability in a spreadsheet program was first
found in Lotus 1-2-3 Release 5.0 for Windows. But now we can also
plot our data geographically in Excel, as long as we have Excel
7.0. Also in Excel 7.0, we can now see the sum, average, maximum,
minimum, etc., of a range of values if we turn on its
AutoCalculate. PowerPoint now comes with snazzy, although
limited, animation capability. We can animate text in our slides
to keep the attention of our audience. To enhance the look of our
slides, we can add textures. PowerPoint 7.0 comes with twelve
textures, and we can create or add more.

Schedule+, a PIM program, can also work with a Sharp Wizard or
Timex watch, so that if you have one of those gadgets you can
transfer appointment schedules, anniversary dates and phone
numbers to it and you'll always have them available when you need
them.

Should you get it?

You shouldn't hesitate to grab Office 95 if you meet the
following requirements: First, you have a 486DX 33-or-better
machine. Second, you have 16 MB of RAM. Third, you've been using
Office 4.2 or Office 4.3. And, fourth, you've already moved to
Windows 95.

Like Perfect Office, Microsoft Office 95 is also more task-
oriented than ever. From the shortcut bar you can start your task
without really paying attention to which application you should
use. This, plus all the enhancements, the ability to run programs
in the background, and much better integration, will justify the
cost of upgrading to Office 95. On top of all that, for the first
time, registered users in Indonesia can now call (021) 572-1060
for technical support every working day between 9 a.m. and 5:30
p.m.

But if your 486 or Pentium PC has only 8 MB of RAM or less,
you should definitely upgrade your system first. All the reports
that I've been reading consistently suggest that, if we have less
than 16 MB RAM on our system, we should just forget about Office
95. Also, with all the toolbars and taskbars, life will be
extremely hard if you're still using a 14" VGA monitor. Even a
15" one leaves you with a crowded workspace. Seventeen- or 20-
inch monitors are definitely more suitable for the new work
environment.

Given the level of automation and the hefty hardware
requirements of Windows 95 and Office 95, I'm beginning to have
doubts whether all these niceties are meaningful to the majority
of us computer users. For sure, power users will love them.
Those who have been using Office 4.2 or Office 4.3 will love them
as well. But the rest of us will perhaps find them too intriguing
and too intimidating to use. Besides, at about Rp 100,000 per MB,
not everybody can afford the necessary RAM. In other bad news,
there's no end in sight to the worldwide shortage of RAM chips,
which means that their price is not going to go down in the
foreseeable future.

Therefore, I believe that, for now, the biggest breakthrough
we all hope for is the one that makes similarly nice features
available on some Windows programs that run smoothly on a 386DX
with only 4 MB of RAM. That's the kind of innovation I truly long
for.