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| AppleWorks Six review |
By Terry Lawrence, program director
MacWest Computer Society,
Vancouver. British Columbia
Here are my comments on AppleWorks 6.0 and 6.0.3, having spent several weeks working with it. I am running an iMac DV/G3-400 /192 MB/OS 9.0.4 and a Powermac 7200/75/56MB/OS 9.0.4. I use both AppleWorks 5.0.4 and 6.0.3 on both machines. AW 6.0.3 seems to work better on the 7200, although it is glacially slow. I can type three lines before it has displayed the first half dozen words, and I'm not a fast typist! But at least it will print to the Stylewriter 2500 attached to the PPC 7200, and it doesn't crash every time I quit the program or try to save a document. I have used AW 6x a few times on iMacs running OS 8.6, and it seems to work better with OS 8.6 than with OS 9x.
Unfortunately, AW 6.0.3 is not proving to be much better than 6.0 on the iMac DV. It is still pathetically slow, and crashes frequently. The Logitech Wheelmouse scrollwheel still will not scroll in AW 6x, although it works fine in all other programs, including AW 5.0.4. I suspect this may be a USB issue, as there are other problems with the iMac USB keyboard and AW 6x (it crashes when using keyboard shortcuts) that do not occur on the ADB keyboard on the 7200. The return of the current font and size display to the top of the open window in the 6.0.3 upgrade is a welcome fix, but what were they thinking (or not thinking) when they took that out? The 6.0.3 Spellchecker still will not check only selected text, and instead goes through the whole document every time.
Printing
I use an Epson 900 printer with the iMac, and an Apple Color Stylewriter 2500 with the PPC 7200. AW 6 or 6.0.3 prints OK to the CSW 2500, but it will not print properly to the Epson printer. Any attempt to print results in a blank dialogue box with an OK button showing up after about 20 seconds, but nothing to indicate what you are pressing OK to. Pressing OK results in a second, larger, also blank dialogue box. Pressing OK in this produces a blank Epson printer settings dialogue window (eventually). If you click where the "Print" button ought to be in the upper right corner, it will sometimes print, and sometimes just crash AW 6x. See illustration below.
Fig. 1: Showing blank Epson Printer Dialogue Window in AppleWorks 6.0 and 6.0.3
Printing AW 6x documents from AW 5x
The only way I can reliably print from AW 6x on the iMac is to save the AW 6x file as AW 5x, then launch AW 5, open the file from 5, and print from 5. AW 5.0.4 prints just fine on the iMac, and the Epson printer works with every other application program except AW 6 / 6.0.3, so it’s an AppleWorks 6x problem, not an Epson problem. Of course, unless you need to use AW 6x for some reason, it would make more sense to just write the document in AW 5x to begin with.
Quitting and Keyboard Shortcuts
Using Force Quit (Command+Option+ESC) will usually succeed in quitting AW 6x, and this is the only way I can quit the program on the iMac DV. Using the keyboard shortcut Command Q, or choosing Quit from the file menu just crashes the program, again with a blank dialogue box. Force quitting will usually get you out of this crash, but it is sometimes necessary to restart the computer.
Clip Art library
I find opening the clip art library (it took a while to find it, as it is no longer called a library. It has been renamed "clippings"), to be slow as molasses running uphill in January. I have lots of time to go make a coffee, starting with cold water, while it thinks about opening. Having the Starting Points dialogue box launch (very) slowly every single time I close a window is also annoying. I often have several windows open at once, for example, in Draw, Paint, Database, and WP, and closing any of them relaunches Starting Points. Everything goes on hold while you wait for Starting Points to finish launching so you can close it.
Button Bars and Tools
I miss the AW 5x button bar with the ability to select which button set you wanted from your custom sets. What is the point of having scroll arrows on a button bar? If you can't see the buttons, why have them? There seems to be no provision for making up separate sets of button bars for Spreadsheet, WP, Paint, etc. You can customize the button bar and make up custom buttons to play Macro’s, for example, but as far as I can see you can't make multiple custom button bar sets and switch between them as necessary as in AW 5x.
The tool (draw) bar, to the left of the working window, has also been rearranged, again for the worse in my opinion. Where in AW 5x you had the draw and fill tools and pallets available and visible at all times, but still out of the way; in AW 6 you have floating palates more like in Photoshop or Color It. Unless you have a 17 inch or larger monitor, these floating palates are always covering part of your working area. On the iMacs or iBooks that ship with AW 6, they are really in the way.
Improvements in AW 6x.
There are some improvements in AppleWorks 6x, and there are a few nice touches such as having the fonts, styles and sizes accessible from Contextual Menus (Control+click). The various button bar buttons and tool bar icons are much prettier, but they are also bigger and changed in appearance, so they take more display space; and if you are used to the buttons in AW 5x, you will have to relearn the symbols. The Presentation mode has some nice new features for creating slide shows.
I had high hopes that the 6.0.3 release would fix the worst of the problems with AW 6, but except for the return of the Font and Size displays, there seem to be few fixes or improvements. It's still barely a Beta version in my opinion; a pretty face hiding an unfinished structure. If AW 6.0 came installed on your iMac or iBook, download and install the 6.0.3 updater. It does fix some problems.
I can't recommend upgrading to AW 6x at this time for anyone using currently using AW 5x. If you want to spend your time writing instead of rebooting and troubleshooting, I wouldn't waste your money on AW 6x until Apple works the bugs out of it. It’s a Termite mound right now. |
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