Microsoft Office is going the way of HTML editor FrontPage and dissolving into disaster. FrontPage, before being bought by Microsoft, was one of the most powerful of WYSIWYG Web design tools. Slowly but surely, Microsoft made the product clumsy and unusable until it simply had to abandon the project. Microsoft is gradually doing this to Office, too.

I'm going to target Microsoft Word as the prime example. The decline began with Office 2007 and the so-called ribbon interface, a block of symbols across the top. The problems are best described in a Wikipedia entry on ribbon computing:

When Microsoft implemented ribbons, it was met with mixed reactions. Redmondmag.com reported that power users feel the ribbons take "too much time and patience to learn." Richard Ericson from Computerworld noted that experienced users might find difficulties adapting to the new interface, and that some tasks take more key-presses or clicks to activate. Though the ribbon can be hidden by double-clicking on the open tab, PC World wrote that the ribbons crowds the Office work area, especially for notebook users; the customization options available in the original version didn't allow users to rearrange or remove the predefined commands, although it can be minimized. Others have called its large icons distracting. An online survey conducted by ExcelUser reports that a majority of respondents had a negative opinion of the change, with advanced users being "somewhat more negative" than intermediate users; the self-estimated reduction in productivity was an average of about 20%, and "about 35%" for people with a negative opinion.

My wife has these power user issues and refuses to go beyond Office 2003. I also detest the newer versions. I use the products occasionally but prefer the older versions and resort to OpenOffice. Unfortunately for users like my wife, the alternative programs do not have usable mark-up capability for co-editing, so she just demands Office 2003.

Microsoft knows that most people will use Word and it added the little ".docx" kink as the default file extension to mess with people using OpenOffice or older versions of Word. This is not going to fix the problems as outlined above.

I have used Word since it ran on DOS and there is something viscerally wrong with the most recent versions. I'm constantly trying to figure out how to do the simplest of tasks and constantly fall back to OpenOffice because it sticks to the Word 2003 interface and is less time-consuming.

The entire Ribbon interface is annoying and it's no coincidence that I also find the Windows 8 tiled interface annoying; it was Microsoft development chief Julie Larson-Green who managed to push both of these ill-advised initiatives through the chain of command. She is apparently adamant about this direction no matter what the users think. With this approach, she has since been promoted.

I mean, just think of some of the silly commands. If you want to Find or Find and Replace, what control key would you naturally hit to bring up a dialog box? I dunno, maybe Ctrl+F? No! Ctrl+F is for navigation, which you'd think should be Ctrl+N.

It's as if Larson-Green hates the users. She's probably off somewhere laughing to herself. Oh, and if you do want Find and Replace, use Ctrl+H. Yeah, genius! It's a mystery how this sort of nuttiness got past the Microsoft quality control team or past Steve Ballmer.

To me, Microsoft is driving off the cliff with these sorts of products. Some analysts think that experienced users may not like this approach, but that the amateurs and people who normally do not like computers will love it. This is bullcrap. It reminds me of the word processor some years back specifically designed for people who did not like word processors. It was a dumb idea because it was for a market that wasn't going to buy anything! Sales? Zero.

Of course Microsoft now has a fix for all the complainers. It released a free quick start guide to show users how easy it can all be. Hold your breath and click here.

There is no way my carping is going to change anything, but it seems to me that opportunity is knocking like crazy for some company to kill Microsoft's entire product line. At least the weak links like Word and PowerPoint seem vulnerable. These could be multibillion-dollar companies overnight.

I already have the product name for you: Replacement Office 2013.

You can Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter @therealdvorak.

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