Figuratively speaking... (Microsoft Visio 2002 Professional)

Member Name: lemonadepoet

Product:	Microsoft Visio 2002 Professional
Date:	22/11/03 (1232 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to use, Adds a little spice to your life! (oh, and your documents), Extremely versatile

Disadvantages: It's Microsoft now ;) but at least our old friend Clippit isn't on by default!

"I had walked through the desert for many days now with little water, a sandblasted face and only a copy of Office XP for company. I knew that I was lost but Clippit the paperclip had spent the last 40 days convincing me otherwise. It was then that I discovered Visio. At first I thought it must be some kind of mirage. In truth it turned out to be my saviour. I had delluded myself - all this time I hadn't needed a length of talking curled wire but something a whole lot more versatile."

Fine. A slightly unusual metaphor. But there is a comparison to be drawn between it and the situation I found myself in when I tried Visio for the first time. It was along the lines of "My God, why didn't I know about this before? What have I been missing out on all this time?" It?s got everything to do with one word - ignorance. Most of us sit at a computer to write up a document or newsletter and assume the only application that is fit for the job is that copy of Office which cam preinstalled on the computer when they bought it. For anyone who has ever tried to draw simple line drawings or schematics using the measly drawing tools in Microsoft Word, only to spend 15 minutes or more attempting to create a T-junction between two lines may now have lost all confidence in the ability of a computer to perform such seemingly simple tasks. The same applies to users of other Office applications such as PowerPoint where constructing a flowchart which looks how YOU want it and not how Mr. Gates or that annoying Clippit thingy wants it is nigh on impossible. Before I first laid eyes on Visio I knew there was something awry, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it but now it?s all too clear!

WHAT'S THAT THEN? (A BREIF HISTORY OF DIAGRAM-KIND)
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Visio was actually first developed by Visio Corporation in the late 90's, intending to be an all powerful diagramming solution for industr

y specialists such as electrical engineers and the kind of people who spend all day working with visual schematics. While the software was successful, the computer press seemed to spend more time writing about the unique philosophy this company had towards the design of their software, with many developers looking up to Visio Corp's radical new way of fine-tuning its software to match exactly the needs of its customers. That's exactly what it succeeded in doing. Like all good things, though, it inevitably came to an end (see my article on BeOS). Not literally of course but it was unknowingly doomed to the halls of software obscurity when Microsoft decided to 'inherit' it after realising how good it actually was, continuing to market it as strictly a specialist product. Two versions on and we have the current release: Visio 2002.

Officially, Visio is part of the Office suite of products but it cannot be bought bundled with other parts of the suite and so few mainstream users know about it (since users of Office usually become familiar with a program after finding a mysterious icon in their start menu and so investigating). This is a great shame since thanks mainly to the wonderful efforts of Visio Corporation in the early days; its strengths actually far outreach the specialist market for which it was first designed.

WHY VISIO IS IDEAL FOR YOU
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Visio empowers you with the ability to do things you didn't even know you wanted to do before - or at least things that your subconscious warned you against due to the appalling abilities of other Microsoft Office applications when it comes to diagramming. Adding a simple block diagram to a Word Document will no longer drive you insane and cause you to loose all of your hair at an early age and it is a well researched and proven fact that effective diagrams are an important part of any communication through paper. Anyone who uses Visio to add diagram
s to
their documents will have an inherent advantage over those who don't because diagrams drawn in Visio always give written material an edge - a bit like writing word documents in Times New Roman as opposed to Comic Sans MS the professional look proper diagrams give to a document is substantial. I'm still completely amazed that some form of diagramming solution such as Visio hasn't made it into the mainstream software market for use by the average user - It's possible to throw up a flow chart or mind-map in seconds to bring immediate visual impact to your boring Office files and because Visio is so versatile it's possible to do anything in it from the specialist diagrams it was first designed to construct to the obscure and the wacky.

THE VISIO WAY - JUST DRAG AND DROP
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Aside from general diagramming which is catered for perfectly with a well structured and powerful set of connectors and basic geometric shape tools work in Visio is based on an easy to use object repository or 'library' which contains reusable objects for more specific types of drawing. Using Visio is really just as easy as simply dragging several of these objects onto the virtual page and then connecting them up using the connector tool. That's all it takes to both create complex specialist drawings (or just throw up a quick block diagram for that report due in tomorrow). All the objects and drawing tools act intelligently and behave in exactly the way you'd expect them for the type of drawing you're currently constructing and everything is based on an underlying philosophy of simplicity - which is certainly not true of almost all other Microsoft Office components! All the same, a more powerful and versatile piece of software would be hard to find. Yes, it may be marketed as specialist but it will be far more than simply an expensive toy in anyone's toolbox - it is genuinely useful in almost any si
tuation.
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INTERFACE
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Since Microsoft took over the development of Visio they have made relatively few changes to the way the program works (which is probably a good thing since much of what made it great in the first place remains.) Their main additions have been to add some groovy Internet tools which, lets face it, is sod all use to the average user (although admittedly it is soooooo ice-cool) and update the interface so it more closely resembles that of Office XP. It looked fairly like Office before Microsoft hijacked it so this isn't much of a change but certainly will mean users of other Office applications will almost immediately feel at home. A nice new feature is the floating toolboxes that collapse to a thin strip when not being used to save screen-space and increase working area - this is a nice touch, making the interface pretty faultless and extremely easy to get the hang of and use. I was up and running creating really complex diagrams within at most a day after installing it for the first time!

INSTALLATION
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Well. There are two ways to look at this aspect of the software. Because it uses the same installation technology as Microsoft Office XP (Windows Installer) it is both immediately familiar and does its best to ensure installation is as painless as possible BUT...if you encounter a problem and have to use the detect and repair feature or (horror of horrors) do a reinstall God help you!

PRICE
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As with everything Microsoft (bless them) Visio is stupidly overpriced which may be the only thing keeping it out of the reach of the casual users grasp. Of course they have their excuses - this supposedly being a specialist piece of software and all - but £200 for the standard edition and £400 for the professional is ridiculous whichever way you look at it. Then again, it's almost worth it for the nice buzz I get whenever I launch it. Ahhhhh. Visio is my friend. (A
ll I want is a little
background easy-listening as a feature in the next release and we'd be lovers. Hang on a sec. I take that back. Snap out of it!!!) For most users the standard edition is the best choice since the professional edition only adds a lot of high-end features such as interactions with databases and a whole host of new object-repository templates and the fact you can actually create your own reusable objects for use within the repository must be taken into consideration. They're both expensive, granted, but if you can afford it I have no other advice to give than to GET IT NOW! You'll not understand the difference a quick Visio diagram can make until you've experienced it for yourself. It certainly is the Land Rover to the poor guy lost in the desert of modern computing - the hidden jewel - and Microsoft has taken the liberty of turning that annoying, satanic paperclip off by default too. I think that calls for celebration - cheers Bill!

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