ditoinfo in english

I was building my slides for a speak I’ll make on this Sunday when I came to such a disappointment with OpenOffice that I had to scream! And I was searching for the adequade place to do it when I remembered of my blog. So forgive me for any english mistakes, but this post is being written on the heat of emotion (anger, by the way).

Turns out that, if you want to define a custom background for your slide on OpenOffice Impress, you have to create a bitmap fill, then, go to the master slide, and then select the bitmap you created before, and then close the master slide. Can you imagine something less obvious to do? I mean, on PowerPoint, all you have to do is to right-click your slide and select “Change Background” or something like that. On the window that opens you choose for a bitmap, a gradient, a color whatever you want, and even choose if it will apply to all slides or not.

The model chosen by OpenOffice developers is absolutely pathetic. I’m sorry guys, you have made a GREAT software on the overrall, but this is exactly the kind of thing that blocks new users. How on earth would a normal user find out how to place a custom background? “Look on the help files” ? Two things: It’s not there, I looked. And if I, who work with computer and tech support for more than 10 years, looked and could not find, what would you say of the average end user (grand-ma)? Even if it is there, average end users DON’T look on the help files. They don’t know it exists. I’m serious. As I said, I work with tech support and you would be amazed the number of people to whom I’ve shown the help files and say “WOW! If I ever knew there was such a thing!”.

So, I’m not sorry for being angry, because it’s an absolutely ridiculous approach and I need to scream this aloud! MAKE IT SIMPLE FOR GOD’S SAKE! You’ll never beat MS Office working this way.

By the way, here is the procedure:

1) Go to Format / Area (Yes, believe me! We start going to “Format Area” )

2) Choose BITMAPS on the window and click the Import button

3) Name your imported bitmap

4) Go to View / Master / Slide Master (Shouldn’t it be Master Slide?)

5) Right click on a free area of the slide and go to Slide / Page Setup

6) On the background tab, choose bitmaps from the drop-down menu and select your previously created bitmap.

7) Find a way to tell OO developers that it is a terrible way to select a background.