It has been 24 years on account that Microsoft first launched Word, and 4 years because the program’s final predominant upgrade. How a whole lot greater can Microsoft do to tweak its venerable phrase processor? Surprisingly, Word receives numerous predominant upgrades in Office 2008, the primary model of Microsoft’s productiveness suite to run natively on each PowerPC- and Intel-primarily based totally Macs. Those modifications consist of a brand new report layout, a simplified toolbar, and a brand new toolbox that mixes palettes for handling formatting, clip art, iPhoto images, research, and bibliographies. But the largest development is the addition of a brand new view alternative known as Publishing Layout.
In this new view, arranging textual content and portraits at the web page is some distance less complicated than it changed into in preceding variations of Word. Like Apple, Microsoft has reputedly concluded that humans use phrase processing packages for some distance greater than simply developing textual content-primarily based totally files. Creating complex, portraits-wealthy files calls for equipment traditionally discovered in effective web page format packages together with Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress. Like Apple’s Pages, Microsoft Word now permits you to pick out awesome enhancing surroundings particularly for developing format-in depth files. That surroundings is Publishing Layout.
The largest disadvantage in what might in any other case be an brilliant upgrade: the removal of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). In its place, Word 2008 gives confined aid for AppleScript and Automator. Those replacements don’t provide the recording or different capabilities that made it quite easy to automate and customise Word 2004. If you’re conversant in Word 2004’s automation capabilities, you’re going to be upset in Word 2008.
Preferences Pane: Word’s new choices pane is greater Mac-like and higher organizes Word’s many choice alternatives, making it a whole lot simpler to customise the program.
Fresh look
Like the opposite Office 2008 apps, Word has a brand new person interface that makes it simpler to manipulate choices, consolidates maximum of Word’s formatting equipment, and places key report elements—along with cowl pages, headers, footers, and bibliographies—a unmarried click on away.
The first and maximum apparent interface alternate is the brand new toolbar. It sits on the pinnacle of your report window, in preference to being tied to the menu bar. In preceding variations, Word’s toolbars may want to replenish maximum of the pinnacle of your screen. They had been too clean to by chance rearrange and contained manner greater buttons than maximum humans used. Word 2008’s less complicated toolbar consists of all of what you want to efficiently open, create, and shop files, undo and redo modifications, and upload tables and columns. If there’s a button you don’t need or one which you suppose is missing, it’s clean to alternate the toolbar. Unfortunately, Word nevertheless doesn’t use the standard Mac toolbar customization sheet; Microsoft says the ones sheets couldn’t manipulate all of the alternatives Microsoft desired to provide.
Just underneath Word’s toolbar is the Elements Gallery, a fixed of 5 new buttons from which you may quick upload report elements, tables, charts, SmartArt portraits, and WordArt to files. The Document Elements button, for example, helps you to quick upload or regulate cowl pages, headers and footers, or a desk of contents. Some customers may also locate it stressful that they can’t get rid of this Gallery; I suppose greater can be thankful for its presence.
Elements Gallery: You can’t cast off the toolbar that now seems on the pinnacle of each report, however it does come up with short get right of entry to to all types of portraits and different report alternatives.
Word 2008’s new Toolbox combines a gaggle of various palettes in a single floating tool. From it, you may quick get right of entry to formatting alternatives, insertable symbols, clip art, your iPhoto library, reference equipment, and Office’s Scrapbook and Project Center. In preceding variations, the ones equipment had been scattered amongst menus, toolbars, and floating palettes; they’re now multi functional place.
Aside from the formatting equipment, I in particular favored the Toolbox’s Citations panel, which permits you to quick and sincerely create a database of reference works. By including articles, Web sites, books, and different substances to this database, you may without difficulty upload them in your report. Word will then mechanically create a bibliography or quotation web page (in APA, Chicago, MLA, or Turabian layout). Previous versions of Word had confined variations of this feature, however it changed into now no longer this apparent or clean to use.
Still, the Toolbox lacks the simplicity of Pages’ floating palettes. For example, relying on what changed into decided on in my report and which disclosure triangles had been opened, the Formatting palette every now and then outgrew my screen—even if I changed into running on a 20-inch iMac. Closing the ones disclosure triangles took care of this problem, however it’d be satisfactory if Word labored greater like Pages, which makes use of a tabbed layout for report alternatives and which permits you to open a couple of floating palette at a time. I changed into additionally pissed off through the reality that my scroll wheel didn’t paintings on scrollbars withinside the formatting palette however did paintings on different scrollbars withinside the Toolbox.
