I have always been frustrated with software and computer-based services. Office 95, 97, 2000 and even 2003 weren’t particularly good programs. Alta Vista used to find bizarre results back when it was the number one search engine and Internet Explorer versions 1 to 6 were buggy security-nightmares which didn’t draw pages according to the rules.
But we have turned a corner. Over the last few months Microsoft has been making some truly excellent software available in Beta form. Most of Office 2007 is excellent and last night I found some more features of Word 2007 which have blown me away. The Styles along with integrated colour schemes make making a Word document look pretty a matter of choosing options, rather than having an eye for colours (which I don’t). The same is true of Excel’s graphs.
Windows Media Player 11 has all the buttons you need where you need them so that I have not yet had a need to use the old-fashioned File, Edit menus etc. Internet Explorer 7 just works and may well be Internet Explorer 4 to Mozilla’s Netscape.
At the risk of sounding like everyone else associated with the industry, Google is making amazing strides. I read a review of Google Spreadsheets the other day which was not particularly flattering. But I tried it last night and was reasonably impressed. And today I invited a couple of people into an open spreadsheet and integrated Instant Messenging along with the instant update of edited fields makes this spreadsheet program absolutely crucially powerful. No longer will someone say to me “Can you help me with this spreadsheet?” and have to wait for me to walk to their desk, now they can open it in Google Spreadsheets and we can both see the spreadsheet while I help them out.
Instead of pinging around large Excel spreadsheets (so long as they have no macros), I can just open the original file in Google Spreadsheets and invite people to view or edit it. It really is the beginning of a new era.
But the killer feature is Google Spreadsheet’s use of the ribbon bar.
“File”, “Edit” and “Window” are living out the end of their days. They were always more suited to non-graphical systems and now that they’re dead, we can see what imaginative design of software can achieve.
It’s a popular view, but I believe home users and, for selected files, business users will soon be using Google-esque Writely and Google Spreadsheets clones. Google Calendar, Google Mail and whatever else it brings out in the future with typically no fanfare, will be the killer apps of the future. Microsoft will continue to provide for those who need powerful software but that won’t be me, I’m quite sure.
It’s only a matter of time, now, before Google starts targetting Adobe’s suite of products and I, for one, cannot wait!
Finally, I tried Windows Vista but the MD5 for the download was incorrect so I’m trying again now, I’ll let you know how wonderful it is shortly!
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