I consider LibreOffice Writer superior to old MS Word versions, and old MS Word versions superior to new MS Word versions.

In my opinion, the quality of MS Word peaked some time in the early 2000s.

So today, given the choice between LibreOffice and MS Word, I would always choose LibreOffice, even if MS Word were free, and despite the fact that LibreOffice Writer has some annoying bugs that have not been fixed for many years, but I find easier to work around those bugs than to cope with the user interface of modern MS Word.

On the other hand, I agree that MS Excel is clearly superior to LibreOffice Calc. Nonetheless, there already are decades since I switched to LibreOffice Calc and I did not need the extra features of MS Excel. For things beyond the capabilities of Calc, I use a real database, though that would probably not be the best solution for a typical office worker.

In the distant past I liked a lot MS Access, but I have no idea whether today it is still useful. I abandoned it many years ago, after I had some problems with the migration of data between different versions of MS Access and even more with the migration of data from MS Access to another database manager.

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maxerickson a day ago | parent | next [-]

It's fairly likely that your (reasonable) complaint is that you don't know where the buttons are anymore. I edit dozens of somewhat complex documents and don't really spend much time thinking about the interface.

A big thing that came with the roll out of OOXML, along with the controversy, is that all of the weird serialization corruption bugs went away.

	▲	adrian_b 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Yes, the problem is that I no longer know where the buttons are. But years ago, when using old versions of MS Word, I also did not know where the buttons were and I also did not bother to read a manual or help. Yet I could find easily any unknown menu or button. And nothing has changed with me. I still start using many programs that I have never used before, and in those I can easily find where the unknown buttons are. That is why I believe that the MS Word UI has become much less intuitive than in its old versions. Moreover, I do not understand why they had to change the UI, because nothing that I have seen in the new versions appears to be an improvement, but just a wild shuffle of the locations of various settings and commands.
	▲	knottn a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> OOXML, along with the controversy, is that all of the weird serialization corruption bugs went away. My mileage varies. Edit: perhaps I’m conflating serialization with synchronization bugs or something.

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halJordan a day ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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dghlsakjg a day ago | parent | next [-]

That's incredibly uncharitable interpretation of what the words in the comment say.

Consider this: Word Processing, and Word Processor UX was a solved problem from his perspective 20 years ago (he is far from alone in this opinion). Quite honestly, I have no idea what Word today is doing for me that the Word I was using 2 decades ago wasn't already doing.

It isn't curmudgeonly to say that a product has reached maturity, and does not need changes. This happens a lot outside of the computing realm; a screwdriver from 50 years ago is basically the same as a modern one. A mechanic using his grandfather's screwdriver isn't "proud of being a curmudgeon" they are just using a perfectly good tool that doesn't need updates.

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eldaisfish a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

not everything new is necessarily better. What i read from your comment is that you take the word "new" to be synonymous with "better".

Would you agree that a "new" TV that requires an internet connection is worse than a ten year old TV that just works?

Would you agree that decades of UI research are discarded by supposedly "new" and "modern" computer interfaces?

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carlosjobim a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Computers are tools used to achieve end results. The end results desired from a document editor are the same today as they were 30 years ago, and 70 years ago.

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tpm a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I can't use the ms office ribbon ui. Guessing by the fact no other modern desktop software I'm using copied it, it's probably not just me.

So perhaps they are not wrong and newer doesn't always mean better.

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legacynl 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's interesting, I thought the Ribbon UI was one of the only improvements I've noticed over the years of using ms office. Luckily LibreOffice asks on first startup which UI you prefer.

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NathanielK a day ago | parent | prev [-]

The two big cad packages Solidworks and Inventor both use ribbon type menus. I think it works ok for this purpose.

	▲	tpm a day ago \| parent [-]
		Might be, but there is probably a reason other desktop ui features got much wider adoption than that. I understand millions of people are able to use ms word. I just can't work with the UI. It even makes me angry and aggressive. And that's not an easy thing to achieve.