I’m writing this post in the brand-new-ish Microsoft Word 2008. But just barely.
The good news is Microsoft really kicked some ass with Office 2008, and made it better (mostly), sleeker, and “Mac”-ier. And most of the reviews out there say essentially that.
The only problem is that Word (the only program of the bunch I use every day) doesn’t work with Mac’s “Spaces” (a feature I use every minute).
It’s so bad it essentially renders Word 2008 unusable.
When you switch Spaces, you “take” a part of Word with you into the other Spaces; be it the main window, the formatting palette, or the menu bar. And when you click on any of these, you get zoomed back to another space, with another piece. And try-as-you-might, you can’t seem to get them back together again.
Like Humpty-Dumpty.
This is too bad, because almost everything else about Office 2008 is hat’s-off to M$oft. And 6th sense about these things tells me that the ball is in their court on this one.
Achem?
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July 1, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Ishir Bhan
Agreed. It’s a total disaster and is a huge time waster. I believe Microsoft is responsible for this because I don’t see this behavior in any other app. Anyone that can come up with a decent Word replacement that is compatible with all the track changes functionality is going to have a winner on their hands.
July 20, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Brian Miles
I agree that Word 2008 and Spaces makes for a total disaster. I disagree that any ass kicking is associated with Word 2008. I don’t find the UI sleek. I find it slow and clunky and only marginally faster than the emulated, on an Intel Mac, 2004 versions. Just a total disaster.
I hope the Mac group folks retool it for efficiency, à la Snow Leopard, and release an Office 2010.
August 19, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Apple’s Dirty Little Secret: Leopard’s ‘Spaces’ Sucks Ass. « Opinionopolis
[...] the major 3rd party apps Adobe’s CS3, and Microsoft’s Office 2008 (which I already addressed, here) simply don’t “play” well with Spaces. Nor do many [...]