My coworker needed to edit some copy from a pdf, so I copied/pasted the text into Word 2008 on the Mac. Since she uses Word 2007, the latest version available for Windows, I simply saved my document as docx. I know that older versions of the software don’t read docx, but since we are both using the most recent versions, I didn’t see any issues.
Here’s what the doc looked like on my machine:
Here’s what the SAME DOC looked like on her machine:
What the hell happened to all the spaces? No, it’s not just tight kerning, but the space characters are actually gone. Gone! Now, I’m using the 2008 version and she is using the “older” 2007 version, so although they are both the most recent version of the program available, mine technically came out later.
One of the big selling features of Office 2008 was its extensive compatibility with Windows versions of the apps…unless you used spaces in your Word doc.
Now, I feel for the Mac dev team at Microsoft. They have a really hard job because they are basically working for the enemy and they really do try very hard to make the best Mac software they can…but when the product still sucks, I don’t feel that bad. (Although most of the limitations probably come from some manager above the top of the Mac Business Unit.)
I read this article featuring an interview with the architect (mastermind) behind MS Internet Explorer. This is one architect I wouldn’t hire to build my front porch…out of fear that my porch will need critical updates every week to keep my neighbors out, or to keep it from crumbling my house for no good reason.
Things of note: the interview started with Windows crashing. I’d comment on that, but it’s just too easy.
IE6 didn’t display semi-transparent PNG files correctly. He admits to the problem “we have certainly some problems with PNG files in the past” but then goes on to say that the problem was confined to “narrow cases”. Narrow cases? If you consider the main advantage to using PNG format “narrow” then that’s true.
He then defends the uber-tight integration to Windows, which is what it is. Doesn’t really matter. Apple does the same thing with Safari and WebKit. The problem comes when the security of the browser is so shitty that you can remotely catch the computer on fire. Not good.
Why is the IE7 download over twice the size of Firefox? He claims “backward compatibility”. Huh?
The big challenge for us is we don’t run on just one version of Windows. We can’t rely on things that are just in Windows Vista.
A lot of the things that make IE larger are really that it’s delivered as a set of system services that are essentially atoms for Windows. You can use just parts of the browser. It’s componentised very specifically so you can do that.
So his answer to backward compatibility is just to ship extra parts of Windows with IE7? That seems a bit strange. FF doesn’t need to ship extra parts of Windows.
Here’s the best part. When asked about why, after 10+ years, IE still doesn’t support the W3C standard he says this gem:
I’ve spent a lot of my career working on developing standards with the W3C, and unfortunately they’re not that well-defined the first time out.
Oh, so the reason IE sucks is because the standard sucks. Got it. And the reason IE doesn’t follow the sucky standard is because the standard sucks. Yup. This sounds exactly like an error message I might find in just about any corner of Windows.
We may have done something that wasn’t really clearly specified in the specification. We need to change that in a browser release, but the behaviour we used to do is already out there. Once we do that in a new browser, we break a lot of content if we’re not very careful.
In other words: “We did our own thing and made a shitty product in spite of the spec and people made shitty sites. So now if we make a good product, the shitty sites, which are our fault, will break. It’s very important that sites not break because of IE.” What a fucktard.
Why no plugin architecture for IE? Cuz it’s too hard:
Firefox has a really great user community. Microsoft wouldn’t do that, though, because it would make troubleshooting so hard.
I do a lot of PowerPoint presentation clean-up at my job. Since I’m on a Mac, I use Keynote which is about twenty times easier to deal with than PowerPoint. But the end product needs to function in PowerPoint in Windows.
Keynote has lots of super-slick effects and transitions which always wows the audience. Unfortunately, these tend not to translate well when exporting to PP. But I’ve done enough of these that I’m aware of what exports well and what doesn’t, so I don’t use the fancy stuff if it’s going to end up on a PC.
Or so I thought.
The project this morning was easy: gradient backdrop, a low-opacity image, and some type on top. No transitions, no wacky formatting…very straight ahead. Like this:
Step 2: Export to PP. Done.
Step 3: View with PP on Mac. Looks the same. Good.
Step 4: View with PP on Windows. WTF?
I’ve seen semi-transparent things in PP before…why isn’t this working? After about a half hour of banging my head on the wall, I found that if you go to Format > Picture and choose the “Picture” tab (seriously?) and then under “Image control” you choose the dropdown menu named “Color” (you’re kidding right?) and choose “Washout” you get what, under the right circumstances, might look like it’s semi-transparent, but actual transparency isn’t supported. Is this seriously the best they could do in PowerPoint, one of the most-used pieces of software in the world?
Turns out that you can only use transparency on shape objects and not on images like you’d expect.
And what’s up with it looking right on the Mac PowerPoint? Shouldn’t PowerPoint be PowerPoint and render stuff the same? Don’t these people have meetings? Apple figured this out – as strange as it is, Safari on Windows really does render the same as Safari on Mac…just like you’d expect it to. I really need to just keep my expectations low and then I’ll never be surprised that MS software doesn’t do what I expect it to.
Chris Wilson…IE Mastermind
