Hi Peter,
MS is, in the end a profit oriented business, and their goal, like many businesses is to enlarge the customer base and increase
sales. Office has a very diverse base and as Yves pointed out in another thread, everyone's "need' for a feature is their important
one
Bells and whistles and polish, sell, else why would so many new cars (that are pretty much shiny new packaging of something
familiar) sold each year. It can't all be 'new users'/drivers <g>
According to MS's financial analyst briefing 120,000,000 licenses for Office have been sold since Office 2007 was launched (they
don't breakout how many were for Office 2007). With the different needs that a base that large takes in I wouldn't expect anyone
to get everything they want or like
(There's always going to be something in the 'what were they thinking' or 'why didn't they
include this'). I doubt that Microsoft made the product design decisions on the basis that they thought people were dumb, just busy
and a lot of field work surprised them in their testing (and still does).
There is nothing in Word 2007 that reduces your ability to create any number of Header formats or from saving them as a building
block, separate document or Autotext entry. The building blocks, of which the Quick Parts gallery is only one of 36
sample/reusable content galleries in Word come with examples to show that a single 'look' for a document can be created then carried
forward throughout cover pages, headers, footers, document content etc.
What a building block for a header does, in this case, is give you the ability to not be concerned with creating and rechecking the
header layout, but to be able, when finishing up the document to pick your gallery choice and to have it put in the look you want.
(i.e. if you create a header layout with a specific set of fonts, spacing and information, then save that header under a name you
choose, one click and it's there to be applied in another document).
A large number of users fall into areas such as (a) 'corporate says' - style and image controlled looks and companies don't want
folks to stray from using their 'look' (b) publishers, schools, etc who insist on specific 'look' of documents and entries. In the
first case, it was often too easy for folks to either (1) not be able to 'figure out' how to get the look right or how to 'get it
back' if something went wrong or (2) have neither the time or inclination to create the look on their own. The building blocks are
a feature to address both needs, to some extent, with 'just click me' answers [I don't have time for...]. (Note the number of folks
who are brought to a standstill in productivity if spell and grammar check isn't functioning, or if a Resume format requires more
than fill in the blanks to land an interview
A header building block will replace an existing header, as that's part of the way to acheive the consistency for the (a) and (b)
group needs above, but you don't have to ever use those features.
The marketing theme Microsoft has for Office 2007 is '21st Century Documents'. The design samples are noticably different from
prior versions to help show (and sell) that feature set and there are times, I'd guess, where some of the designers
(
http://microsoft.com/design) are frustrated with what marketing and even legal review at Microsoft can require in changes to an
approach.
It's not that the designers have 'never read a book', but it's likely safe to say that a very large percentage of Office users have
not and will not read a book on using Office, just let me click and go on...
===================
It looks like what the author of *Windows Vista Annoyances* says goes
for Word also: they aimed for the lowest common denominator -- they
think people are too dumb to handle actually typing (in this case)
three elements into a header, the old way, so they offer a limited
number of "building blocks" in a "gallery" of designs that suggest
their "designers" have never attended a design class or read a book
(either one that's well designed, or one about book design). (And even
if they think most users are making web pages and not print documents,
why shouldn't web pages be well designed too?)
(His first example is why they invented the "glass" look. Apparently
in some "user" trials, the concept of overlapping windows was found to
be challenging. But he notes that those "users" could figure them out
after a few minutes. Nonetheless, they had an excuse for adding a vast
new bell and whistle.) <<
--
Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP
*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*
