When I used FoxPro, it was anything but Object Oriented. I remember when FoxPro came out twenty years ago, and the ads bragged how it was “Object Oriented.” I was studying Object Oriented Programming at the time, using C++ (which was brand new at the time) as well as that godforsaken Ada language. The marketing people in the software industry love buzzwords, especially the kind that get the attention of non-technical mid-level managers. Collaboration: Yet Another Buzzword for a Nearly Useless Feature I’m not sure there’s a clear answer here. And Google Docs also needs to work in browsers such as Internet Explorer and Firefox-again raising the issues of unsolvable bugs thanks to multiple software platforms from multiple vendors trying to operate in sync. Of course, that does depend on groups from both products working closely together, which sometimes doesn’t happen in big corporations. In the case of Google Docs, the problem is potentially mitigated because Google also produces the Chrome browser-at least in theory, the engineers for both platforms can work closely together to ensure that the code in both the browser and the productivity software works as it should. I’ve been in that boat myself more than once: a client needs a fix, and I’m at the mercy of a third-party library or tool that can’t do what I need. The arrow keys simply stopped working, forcing me to resort to the mouse.īig deal, right? But these sorts of bugs are troubling, because they hint at possible issues in the editable blocks in the browser-and that’s a significant problem, because Zoho might not be able to code a JavaScript workaround to the issue. Sometimes I would hold down the arrow key to move my cursor through several paragraphs, only to see the cursor get stuck on a particular line. When it comes to word processing, we’ve all experienced our share of frustrating, system-crashing Microsoft Word bugs.īut some bugs in Zoho Docs really drew my attention. Some of them are minor, while others-such as a failure to properly encrypt password files-are disasters in waiting. They’re an unfortunate fact of life when it comes to software. Bugs That Have Deeper Problemsīugs happen. As long as they remain largely unaware of those needs, those platforms will always lag behind more traditional offerings such as Word. Without it, the software is simply harder to use, particularly with big projects.īut the software developers behind cloud-based platforms such as Google Docs don’t seem to recognize the publishing industry’s need for advanced features like that. Professional writers, especially those in the book-publishing world, use that feature a lot-it streamlines the inclusion of headers, footers, and other elements into a document. Developers Must Know Their Target Audienceīoth Google Docs and Zoho Writer lack a style-sheet feature. In the following essay, I present my problems with Google Docs and Zoho Docs from my perspective as both a professional writer and a software developer. This doesn’t make me particularly happy, because I really want to be able to keep all my documents online, which would allow me to work anywhere I want. Is Microsoft Word actually better than Google Docs and Zoho Docs? For my work, the answer is “yes.” The others simply can’t compete, not by a long shot. Now I use LibreOffice on my desktop, and it works well, but I had to go through long odysseys with Google Docs and Zoho Docs to reach this point. I quickly hit some problems frankly, Google Docs wasn’t as good an option as I’d initially hoped. None of my work is Top Secret (indeed, most of it ends up online anyway), so I wasn’t worried about Google or the government secretly reading it. In a lot of ways, document creation was a lot simpler a couple decades ago.Ībout a year ago, I decided to migrate my documents to Google Docs and start using it for all my professional writing.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |