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.