Key bindings in Firefox; edit vs. sidebars!

[Eric Dunbar]

> > I like GNUmeric but OO.org is similar enough to Excel that there's
> > virtually no learning curve (seeing as I've been using Excel since
> > version 3 I don't want to have to re-learn things (yes, in 1989
> > Microsoft had a spread sheet, that, _at the time_, was so far ahead of
> > its time... unfortunately, conceptually it hasn't progressed since
> > version 5.0 (1994)).
> 
> I suppose that is why I prefer gnumeric as I was a Borland QuattroPro
> user who never could adapt to using Excel.  It seemed to take an hour to
> accomplish things I was used to doing in a few minutes.  I suppose it is
> likely that is a matter of habit as I hear Excel users complain how long
> it take to do things in programs other than Excel, but with the death of
> QuattroPro, and before discovering Linux, I tried really hard to like
> Excel, and ended up using a 1996 vintage version 7 of QuattroPro (first
> WP release) instead.

Ooooooo <lament> <sigh> Quattro Pro. Oh where did you go? (Hey, I'm a
poet and I didn't even nowit). Now *that* was a short-lived but
stunning spread sheet. They did many things right that Excel simply
never did properly (most notably a _strong_ graphing component) and
unfortunately also things that weren't quite as good as Excel (like
formulae and scripting).

Oh, as an aside: Excel CAN do standard deviation graphs in scatter
plots. It's more complicated than it should be (it should be an
additional data series) but you can get _real_ stdev by having
"custom" values entered in a format something like this...
={3.2,2.1,8.3} (& if you've ever tried to figure out how to get a
scatterplot in Excel with st. dev. and failed, you'll know exactly
what I'm talking about).

> Again, chocolate and vanilla.

I'd probably still choose chocolate since I'm hooked on VBa

> Another chocolate and vanilla example.  I never liked any release of IE,
> and pre-IE 4, IE was a poser, not a browser.  It had such little
> capability compared to Netscape.  Typical of microsoft, IE 4 introduced
> security disasters in tandem with unnecessary and ill-advised
> functionality.  See my comments above for Excel.

You're showing your Windows-based origins ;-). Security has never been
an issue on Mac (something about not building OS-level scripting into
the browser and e-mail app and not doing something as dumb as tieing
the browser to the OS... Mac viruses had to be hard coded to work in
the OS... no such holes in the browser/e-mailer) and the Mac versions
of IE 4.0, 4.5 and 5.0 were significantly better than Netscrape 4.x (I
remember (with horror) all the headaches that Netscape 4.x caused me
on both Mac and Windows with its crashes). Most Mac Netscrash 4.x fans
I know preferred Netscrash 4.x for its integrated e-mail app, and not
for its (in)stability. (Netscrash didn't lose that derogatory monniker
for me until 7.x came along -- it was the first release that brought
it out of the long dark age from version 4.7 through to 6.2).

> IMO, MS' greatest user app achievement is Word.  I use OOo Writer
> because I work in Linux and don't want to go the Crossover Office route,
> but it has structural flaws such as a poorly designed DOM that leaves it
> far behind Word.  The problem is that OOo wants to compete with Word's
> functionality, but Word's best feature is their document logic and how
> rationally document structure can be manipulated by the user.  As
> someone who uses a word processor more than any other piece of
> productivity software, the features are just fluff as you can do more
> yourself designing simple macros as long as the DOM is understandable
> and rational.  OOo, doesn't seem to be addressing this.

<chuckle> Another Windows-based experience ;-). Us early Mac users (&
Amiga & Atari & Apple GS... can't leave those GUI experiments out of
the mix, 1984-1991, pre-Windows 3.1 era) had so many good word
processors to choose from whilst the DOS world was languishing in
WordPerfect CLUI agony that Word was nothing special. It was good but
there were often better, even in the Windows world when that came
along (anyone remember AbiWord... when I first used it in 1993 it blew
me away as a Window app... so simple, yet so functional. It was as if
they'd designed it for a Mac ;P). I cut my teeth on MacWrite 1.7
(1984). It had a GUI that would STILL be easy to use for the vast
majority of users. Word 1.05a (1984) was more powerful than MacWrite
1.7 (it had more "features"... sound familiar) but it wasn't as well
implemented as MacWrite 1.7... it took Microsoft a few iterations to
kick everyone's butt... I hate to say it but the world can thank Apple
for Microsoft's dominance in the Office market -- they had perfected
Word and Excel on the Mac long before they ported the apps to Windows
(and they messed up with their first port of Word... Word 2.0 for
Windows was a joke).

Anyway, list I'm terribly sorry for this trip down memory lane.
Perhaps it'll stimulate some long forgotten trials and tribulations in
others out there.

Eric.