Don’t get me wrong. I’m looking forward to having spark/spike lines out of the box. In fact, I even asked for it!(See 3rd comment), and I think MS have done a bang up job (from what I’ve seen).
But this is what’s playing on my mind. How many Excel users even know what sparklines are? I would say with some confidence that it’s less than 0.5%.
How then does this fit with the idea of the Ribbon UI, which is designed for the (apparent) 90% of Excel users that can’t read and click a lists of words! – (menus). I know this arguments flaky, but I hope you can see my point, I know that the UI team is from a different part of MS than the Excel guys. But in my head it doesn’t stack up. Has the charting engine been fixed?
I’ve not actually touched 2010, but I just feel that after the relative disaster of 2007, it would not have been the first thing I’d have started working on. I hope they’ve ironed out all the over issues, they’ve had 13 years to work on 3D charts!
BTW, sparklines for Excel are not new, there are a number of addins that can make backwards compatible spike lines, relatively easily.
Free ;-)
http://www.spreadsheetml.com/products.html [bit pants]
http://www.bloggpro.com/nanocharts-milestone-release-v051/ [my fav]
http://sparklines-excel.blogspot.com/ [most comprehensive]
Paid
Ross,
Click on the PageLayout Tab.
There is a Group called “Arrange”, It has buttons like Send Backward /Forward , Rotate etc.
Once you accept the fact that the UI Astronuts at MS felt that Page Layout Tab is the Logical place for putting something to do with shapes(incidently when you select a shape you also get the Arrage options on the “Contextual Tab”) …you will stop asking WHY….and accept the fact that a company with 95% of the office Market share can do what it feels like…
Hi Sam,
Good news about the arrange tab, but what’s it got to do with Sparklines?!
I don’t really think that Office 2007 was a disaster. It took many correct steps to make it a better tool to present information (New charting engine, Way Better Conditional Formatting, improved color palette). Following that trend Sparklines are a normal evolution.
I’m not fan of the whole Web Office and taking in account that today we have many excellent sparklines addins (some of which are free) I don’t think Ill be doing an upgrade to office 2010.
MS needs to focus on the analysis part of Excel for future versions. Solver interface needs to be improved, Pivot Tables could use some work, and easy to use tools to do serious statistical analysis (Datamining, Anova, DOE) could be better implemented.
The Ribbon…well…I can’t say anything good about it. It sucked in 2007 and keeps sucking on 2010.
Hi Oliver,
>>I don’t really think that Office 2007 was a disaster.
No nore do I, that’s why i said “relative disaster of 2007″. Relative to what it should have been, relative to what users wanted and relative to what MS wanted.
>>..many correct steps to make it a better tool to present information (New charting engine, Way Better Conditional Formatting, improved color palette).
There are a lot of people who would dissagree. The new charting “engine” is poor, really poor. Conditional formating I can take or leave, and improved colurs. – maybe.
Does the solver IU need inmoproving, or just the power of it? I think solver is easy to use, but clearly it needs to work with bigger number sets, see this: solving-hard-problems
Agree stats needs work, this has always been a weekness with Excel.
Thanks for the comments
Ross
Best Sparklines addin: http://sparklines-excel.blogspot.com/
I already linked to this!!! It is the most comprehensive addin, if there is on thing I dislike about it it’s the formula implmetion, but any amazing bit of work.
Disagree entirely with Oliver on CF in 2007. The only thing better about it is unlimited conditions. The UI is a car crash, the icons are childish, the implementations are weak, and they have failed to extend it properly.
Quite honestly, the 2003 CF with unlimited conditions, and more attributes to change would have been a great first step, instead they blew it.
@ Ross.
Thanks for the good words about Sparklines For Excel (SFE).
I agree with you that the Nanochart’s or Bonavista’s “step by step” creation UI is very usefull when you first discover the add-in. In the approach I took, only 1 or 2 parameters are mandatory in the SFE formula. Once you have this clear, I really think it is much faster to input formulas 5and copy/paste)directly or through the XL native Function Wizard.
The weak points of SFE is the code itself. I cannot but admit that I am learning VBA through this project, so the code is certainly not the cleanest or most stable around. On the other hand, as SFE has been implemented by and “end user” and not a pure “coder”, I think it brings key features that the Microsoft team completely missed (reference lines or normality zones, possibility to highlight one point, scales…). MSF should have first checked the existing sparklines products around … maybe next time ? ;-)
@ Oliver… gracias por tu apoyo !
Hi Fabrice,
SFE is an excellent tool, I’m sure folks all over the world are thankful for it. Maybe a GUI for building them in the next release?!?!? ;-)
Brilliant work, well done.
Fabrice,
I’m so sorry to contact you this way, but.. trying to download your wonderful Sparklines xla (which I’ve used in the past), but.. unable to find it on the net (sourceforge gives no files, and can’t access your blog as it’s “for invites” only).
What to do?
“Disagree entirely with Oliver on CF in 2007. The only thing better about it is unlimited conditions. The UI is a car crash, the icons are childish, the implementations are weak, and they have failed to extend it properly.”
‘Zactly. The good things in ’07 didn’t need the new encrypted interface.