[confuzedwizard]

I spent a good portion of last week designing some websites using iWeb. I think it's a great application and i thank apple for creating it.

But the one thing that's driving me crazy is the Inspector. I hate the way it looks. I hate the way it works. It's all just clumped together. Grr.

I would much prefer all those types of controls (including the FONTS inspector) to be at the top of the page (just like it is in Microsoft Word). Better yet, the new version of Word has improved upon the the buttons at the top of the screen. I wish it was more like that.

Is this driving anyone els crazy?

[CaptainHaddock]

I like the inspector. It's not all just clumped together; it groups related functions together. You can have more than one inspector open at a time; I think you option-click one of the top icons to do that.

Having lots of control buttons on a document (the Windows model) is a waste of space and poor UI practice. If I have multiple Pages documents open at once, there's no reason for them to duplicate the same 50 controls and buttons.

[JKT]

The Pages inspector is superior to the Windows toolbar for another reason - it lets you view more of your page vertically even when you activate more inspectors, which is the direct opposite of what happens in word where more of your workspace is removed every time you activate a new toolbar.

Personally, the Pages Inspector is half way between for me. OmniGroup's palettes are even better.

Looking at what they are doing with the next version of Word... I think it is going to be marginally better than the current interface they have (which is dreadful) but it is going to be just as infuriating as the "smart" menus that are present in the current version of Office (Windows version) which supposedly show you only the things you want to see but invariably end up hiding everything you actually did want to use.

[infowarrior]

[QUOTE=confuzedwizard]I spent a good portion of last week designing some websites using iWeb. I think it's a great application and i thank apple for creating it.

But the one thing that's driving me crazy is the Inspector. I hate the way it looks. I hate the way it works. It's all just clumped together. Grr.

No kidding. After over a decade and a half of my hand knowing where to move to do bold/italic/indent/fontsize on the toolbar, I've had a devil of a time adjusting during my forrays into Pages and Keynote.

At least please give us the option of what menu style "fits" us best -- after all, isn't that the spirit of the Mac, to be "user-friendly?"