The many contradictions surrounding Buzzword.
Today I was reading about Buzzword, yet another Web-based word processor. There is some sort of a Buzzword preview page, but it said the browsers I tried were “unsupported.” At the very least, they could have put up some screenshots of their application on that page, so people like me can see what we’re supposedly missing out on.
Thankfully, the article included a screenshot, so I was able to get some idea what Buzzword is about. But after reading the article, I went back and looked at the screenshot again, and noticed some immediate contradictions.
The article says the following: The slick, Flash-based user interface is Buzzword’s killer feature. Flash allows for some advanced menu behaviors that simply aren’t possible with Ajax. There are no menu bars or palettes to take up room in the app — formatting options and context-sensitive menus slide into view only when you need them.
The first contradiction is in the first sentence. Namely, I don’t really see how the user interface is “slick”. There’s really nothing astounding about it, if you look at the screenshot. It looks like a typical word processor. If anything, I think that “immature” is the best word to describe its appearance and UI.
The third sentence contains a number of contradictions. First, it says quite clearly that there are “no menu bars or palettes”. Looking at the screenshot, I see what I presume to be a menu bar with menus across the top, labelled “Document”, “Edit”, “Insert”, and “Help”. I also see what appears to be a toolbar or palette, right underneath what would appear to be the menu bar. Perhaps somebody who has actually tried Buzzword can address these apparent contradictions.
Furthermore, it sounds like effort was put towards minimizing wasted screen space. This is commendable, except for the fact that there is so much obvious waste depicted in the screenshot! The first major area is along the top, to the right of the menu bar that supposedly doesn’t exist. We clearly see a large, dark area with nothing in it. Right below that, in the toolbar/palette that also supposedly doesn’t exist, we see wasted space between the dropdown with the letter “A” in it, and the button with the paragraph symbol. Beside the document, we see a large grey area that is about 90% the height of the screenshot, and about 20% of the width. Then at the very bottom of the screen, below the document, we see another grey area with nothing in it. It looks like nearly 30% of the total screen area is wasted, showing nothing but useless grey.
Buzzword has not left a good impression on me, nor has the article. It really doesn’t look like Buzzword will offer anything beyond what OpenOffice.org offers. The contradictory nature of the article and screenshot didn’t help either. And their near-useless “Unsupported Browser” page could have at least shown one or two screenshots, as well. All in all, I don’t think I’ll bother giving it a try when it’s finally available as a public beta, as the article says is expected this fall.