October 11, 2005

Changing the way you use software

Two major software companies have recently unveiledupcoming "improvements" to their main offerings.

Microsoft is changing the paradigm used in its Office suite, by changing the workflow from WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) to WYGIWYS (What You Get Is What You See).

I think Austin is right on the money with his post at Il Filosofo.

Meanwhile, Quark--one of the giants of the print media production software--is also rethinking the work flow. A key change to QuarkXPress will be called "composition zones," which will allow multiple users to design the same page (such as for newspaper layout).

Rich Boudet at SportsDesigner.com has a rundown of the new Quark feature at his blog.

Marc Horne, Quark strategic marketing manager/desktop, tells Mark Fitzgerald of Editor & Publisher:

"... The one-file-equals-one-page model has really been a bottleneck for the newspaper industry."

Ever tried to use the same file as someone else on a network? Or worse yet, run software off of one computer on another via the network? Neither works well.

It'll be interesting to see how Quark makes that work. I have more faith in their potential than in Microsoft's.

Posted by JRC at October 11, 2005 09:28 PM | TrackBack