We don't all agree about Visio WAS RE: [Sigia-l] Sitemapping and Macs

[Pradyot Rai]

>>If you are about to buy-in for VISIO. Stop there, and think million
>> times. In all the privious discussions we had here, on this forum,
>> nobody disagreed that VISIO is a difficult tool.
>
> I disagree.

I highly respect your opinion, and starting this discussion again.
However to start with, I disaggree with you on the point that this topic
(of plateform war) is "boring". It wasn't boring then, and I welcome it
again. I have discovered some more convictions about the way we work and
the way we adopt tools (and loyalty), and so would like to counter your
arguements.

> When I say environment that means taking the needs and skills of the
> people you work with into account when you are coming up with a
> toolset. In a designer intensive environment I have no doubt that
> Indesign or Illustrator are better choices.

At very first, I want to break the notion of Designers Vs. development
tool, especially when we are comparing LAYOUT tools. There is nothing as
such. And all these companies, be it Adobe, Macromedia or Microsoft all
have developped tools without any such clasification. It is the
*enviroment* where either we prefer to work with *ease* or with
*unease*. When you attribute VISIO with the development environment, you
are confusing the matter, which is purely "ease of Use". I personally
know places where the Sofware Architects/programmers use tools, which
are supposedly attributed to *Designers*, such as, Apple Computers for
Development, PageMaker/Quark for layout, just to name the few.

Without much deviation let me come to the topic. I am criticising VISIO
'cos -

1. It does not work and behave the way other MicroSoft product do (and
we all know why, 'cos it is not Microsoft product)
2. You have to be geek to do the simple thing such as creating the
'indexing' or page headers and footers.
3. It creates a false impression that it is part of MS Office Suite and
can be worked seemless with other Office tools.
4. Need I say, it is difficult (and not intuitive enough) to learn too
5. It is difficult to use, even after you have mastered it. The "ease of
use" is POOR -- whether it is a matter of flipping the page, comparing
the pages, laying out texts, etc. It is DIFFICULT tool.

> I used to do all my work in Illustrator 7 when I worked at a design
> firm then I had to switch to Visio 2000 because of requests from the
> people in my new team at the development house. Over the past 3 years
> I have learned to love Visio and I am more comfortable in it then any
> other tool. There are some things that are annoying but the product
> has improved greatly over the past few versions, the latest 2003 is
> more like the rest of the office family then ever. If you can use
> PowerPoint you can use Visio.

My use of layout packages dates more than a decade too. When I put VISIO
in front, I compare it with simple layout packages which can allow
me to generate pages, drag 'n' drop objects, etc, with some common sense
features as providing means for Indexing, header/footer, page scrol,
comparing pages,... I have already mentioned why I feel VISIO is
dificult than others, however, I feel that there may still be people who may
choose to *love* it, and this phenomenon is described in "Inmates are
running the Asyllum" as some programmers (geeks) love to do their work
in *difficult* way :)

Hey man, I love Rock climbing too, that's not to say that I feel
uncomfortable driving on the straight roads. Look at your excellent point
of "needs and skills of the people you work with" in a fresh light.

> The real power in Visio is the fact that it is a tool that allows you
> to build tools. We build custom shapes as they are needed and then the
> entire team uses them. Inter-team collaboration I feel will become
> very important in the future and I think that using an Office
> application will only help this.

I don't see this as a limiting factor for any other tools mentioned here
earlier. I can demonstrate that the same thing can be done more
intuitively by any other tool. As far as *collaboration* is concerned, I
am thoroughly confused -- How does VISIO help you collaborate in team
environment?

> I haven’t used Indesign but I still use
> Illustrator often and I just don’t see Symbols being as powerful as
> Stencils. In Visio the shapesheet allows me to define the geometry
> with formulas and then lock them so that people can’t change them.

You just proved my point. You are GEEK. :)=
You love doing work with less *ease*, else you would have found the
similar (and friendlier) means with Illustrator/Freehand too.

Cheers!

Prady