Difference between revisions of "Competitor Analysis"
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| colspan="4" | | | colspan="4" | | ||
The "table grid" insert behavior seems to be the quickest and most comfortable. The Apple behavior in everything else (moving, selecting, etc.) seems to be easiest, most logical, and most comfortable. The differences between Keynote and Numbers have their own reasons and benefits. | The "table grid" insert behavior seems to be the quickest and most comfortable. The Apple behavior in everything else (moving, selecting, etc.) seems to be easiest, most logical, and most comfortable. The differences between Keynote and Numbers have their own reasons and benefits. | ||
+ | |- valign="top" | ||
+ | | '''Transitions''' | ||
+ | | Coming soon... | ||
+ | | | ||
+ | * Added through: | ||
+ | ** A "transitions" tab in the Gallery | ||
+ | ** Slide show > Transitions... | ||
+ | * Managed through an "Options..." button in the Gallery | ||
+ | * Custom: | ||
+ | ** Speed (Slow, medium, and fast) | ||
+ | ** Sound | ||
+ | ** Advance on click or automatically after __ | ||
+ | * Different directions are presented as different transitions | ||
+ | | | ||
+ | * Added and managed through the "Slide" tab in Inspector | ||
+ | * Custom: | ||
+ | ** Duration (precise, in seconds) | ||
+ | ** Direction (for some transitions) | ||
+ | ** Start Transition (on click or automatic) | ||
+ | ** Delay | ||
+ | | | ||
+ | No transitions option. | ||
|} | |} | ||
− | More to come. Or, if anybody wants to add these topics, go ahead: Installation, updating, Help, adding/removing slides, audio/video (setting audio to start/stop on slides, embedding and playing back a video), and downloading and working with language tools (grammar/spell checking). You can also add screenshots (be aware of copyright issues [http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/permissions/default.mspx#E3C] [http://www.apple.com/legal/trademark/copyright.html], as Apple is particularly known for suing people who post unauthorized screenshots), other presentation applications, comments, links, and other things that could be useful. And feel free to correct me if I'm doing this wrong. | + | More to come. Or, if anybody wants to add these topics, go ahead: Installation, updating, Help, adding/removing slides, audio/video (setting audio to start/stop on slides, embedding and playing back a video), inserting images, creating templates, and downloading and working with language tools (grammar/spell checking). |
+ | |||
+ | You can also add screenshots (be aware of copyright issues [http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/permissions/default.mspx#E3C] [http://www.apple.com/legal/trademark/copyright.html], as Apple is particularly known for suing people who post unauthorized screenshots), other presentation applications, comments, links, and other things that could be useful. And feel free to correct me if I'm doing this wrong. |
Revision as of 10:43, 28 June 2009
MS PowerPoint 2007 | MS Powerpoint 2008 (Mac) | Apple Keynote '09 | Google Docs (as of June 2009) | |
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Default UI overview
(the main interface is bolded) |
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Thoughts |
I'd say the ribbon is the best quick-access interface of the pack, as it provides one central place to browse through, provides the most common options right up front (except for the Insert options), but it does suffer a bit from illogical organization and lack of flexibility (no customizability or vertical interface). The inspector palettes in iWork and Mac:Office are good contenders for a useable vertical interface, but both have their share of disadvantages. For example, the fact that they are floating means that they can hide portions of the document. The MS Toolbox is overstuffed with features, as the tools that iWork spreads out nicely in the Inspector are crammed into one tab in the MS Toolbox. Both also suffer from unclear tab icons. | |||
Scrolling | Scrolls through slides, but doesn't show two slides at once | Behaves like its Windows counterpart | Scrolls within the slide only | No scrolling by default (the zoom changes as the window is resized), but, with zoom, one can scroll the slide only |
Thoughts |
None of these behaviors is ideal or consistent with other applications in the suite (no option allows two slides to be shown at once) for no good reason, but the MS PowerPoint behavior is preferrable over the others. | |||
Dragging/editing textboxes |
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Same as its Windows counterpart |
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Thoughts |
Moving items in Keynote is a pleasure, due to the reasons listed above and the fact that the user doesn't have to struggle to select the textbox (it's one click anywhere on the textbox, as, unlike its competitors, double-clicking is required to edit it). This is definitely something OOo should take note of. | |||
Lists |
Coming soon... (although it's probably the same as the Mac counterpart) |
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Thoughts |
None of these behaviors seem to be completely logical or expected. Google Docs at least maintains consistency across its suite's applications, but uses the strange behavior of enter, where, instead of giving new blank lines each time, as it does with non-bulleted indented lists, the indent is decreased. Anyway, instead of repeating the same info over and over again, let me just say what I think we should have, based on logic:
| |||
Customization |
Coming soon... |
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Paste Special | A floating, contextual drop-down button, which presents three choices: "Keep Source Formatting," "Use Destination Theme," and "Keep Text Only" | Same as its Windows counterpart. | Split into two Edit options: "Paste" and "Paste and match style". | No paste special |
Thoughts |
Microsoft's implementation of paste special seems the best, as it allows the user to use the Command/Ctrl+V shortcut and then decide how it is pasted. | |||
Image manipulation | Coming soon... |
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* Unrestricted positioning (but no live preview)
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Thoughts |
The "Metrics" tab in iWork and the "Image adjustments" palette are wonderfully simple and straightforward while retaining a number of features. The best transparency feature seems to be in the planned Office 14 [5], where one can specify by drawing green lines over the places the selection should include and red ones over the places it shouldn't, as it is pretty precise, yet easy to use. | |||
Compatibility checks | Coming soon... |
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Slide show | Coming soon... |
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Collaboration | Coming soon... |
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Thoughts |
It's surprising that nobody really has built-in chat (except Google Docs, when viewing a presentation). I heard this was to change with MS Office 2010, but we'll see. Otherwise, Google Docs is the clear winner in this category, but that's because it's an online service. iWork begins to pave the way toward integration with online services, but ties with only its paid iWork.com and is sure to attract only a very tiny audience. This is also something Microsoft is working on -- they're about to introduce an online version of Office, and it's almost definitely going to integrate with Microsoft Office. We need to work on this if we want to stay a viable competitor. | |||
Tables | Coming soon... |
Inserted through:
Selected, moved, and resized with:
In Word:
|
Inserted through:
Selected, moved, and resized with:
In Numbers:
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No obvious way to insert a table. Cells in tables in uploaded documents are changed to text boxes. |
Thoughts |
The "table grid" insert behavior seems to be the quickest and most comfortable. The Apple behavior in everything else (moving, selecting, etc.) seems to be easiest, most logical, and most comfortable. The differences between Keynote and Numbers have their own reasons and benefits. | |||
Transitions | Coming soon... |
|
|
No transitions option. |
More to come. Or, if anybody wants to add these topics, go ahead: Installation, updating, Help, adding/removing slides, audio/video (setting audio to start/stop on slides, embedding and playing back a video), inserting images, creating templates, and downloading and working with language tools (grammar/spell checking).
You can also add screenshots (be aware of copyright issues [6] [7], as Apple is particularly known for suing people who post unauthorized screenshots), other presentation applications, comments, links, and other things that could be useful. And feel free to correct me if I'm doing this wrong.