Preferences Pane: Word’s new preferences pane is more Mac-like and better organizes Word’s many preference options, making it much easier to customize the program. If you’re accustomed to Word 2004’s automation features, you’re going to be disappointed in Word 2008. Those replacements don’t offer the recording or other features that made it pretty simple to automate and customize Word 2004. In its place, Word 2008 offers limited support for AppleScript and Automator. The biggest downside in what would otherwise be an excellent upgrade: the elimination of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). Like Apple’s Pages, Microsoft Word now allows you to select a distinct editing environment specifically for creating layout-intensive documents. Creating complex, graphics-rich documents requires tools historically found in powerful page layout programs such as Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress. Like Apple, Microsoft has apparently concluded that people use word processing programs for far more than just creating text-based documents. In this new view, arranging text and graphics on the page is far simpler than it was in previous versions of Word.
But the biggest improvement is the addition of a new view option called Publishing Layout. Those changes include a new document format, a simplified toolbar, and a new toolbox that combines palettes for managing formatting, clip art, iPhoto images, research, and bibliographies.
How much more can Microsoft do to tweak its venerable word processor? Surprisingly, Word gets several major enhancements in Office 2008, the first version of Microsoft’s productivity suite to run natively on both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs.
It has been 24 years since Microsoft first released Word, and four years since the program’s last major upgrade.
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