I recently moved from Word 2000 which I have used since it first came out to Word 2007. It was difficult and I struggled to understand the new version. Everything I was used to using had been 'improved'.

I am just about used to the new version now and am enjoying it finally but today I saw somthing that could quickly make all that history.

Check out this new word processor from Adobe. Its called Buzzword and looks really easy to use and doesn't seem to do a bunch of stuff I don't need.

I especially like the price.

They said they were not planning to challenge Microsoft but the headline on the BBC web site says it all.

At MAX today several announcements were made. My favourite is share. A new web site allows you to share documents among a group. It features previews of the documents pages done with a Flash interface.

On the word processor front I have recently be studgloing with Word 2007. Its always been needlessly complicated and overkill for what I need in a word processor. The latest version seems to fight me at every turn. All the features I want are hidden way down in the menu structure or completely removed from the menu altogether.

I was trying to number some paragraphs last week. There seems to be no way in word 2007 to do it easily. In earlier versions I could just set paragraph numbering on. In 2007 you actually have to type the numbers and then Word sort of undertands that you mean number my paragraphs.

Other times it assumes you want to number paragraphs just because the line starts with a number, when you really just want a number ate the start of the sentence.

I would realy like a small lightweight wordprocessor.

In this case AIR is the new name for Apollo. AIR stands for Adobe Integrated Runtime. It is now starting to get good press and this article from InfoWord shows.

AIR is supposed allow programs to run on multiple platforms and it does that by allowing Flex based programs to run using the installed Flash player on the machines in question.

Tomorrow evening I will be speaking at the TVCFUG in Marlow about Apollo. I have had some fun playing with apollo and searching out what can be done with it. Why not join us at 7pm for a get together, with a demo and discussion of this new Adobe technology?

Please email me for directions. kevin [at] objectiveinternet [dot] com