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It's the little things...

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It's amazing to find a feature that you didn't know existed in a product you use all the time. I have (casually) looked for a way to write in white on black in Microsoft Word for years. Today, I was reformatting a document in Word 2003 and I noticed that the Themes menu item was there on the Format menu. Funny, I've used that item extensively in FrontPage, but I never noticed it in Word before. I thought, wow, I can probably use this to type in white on black. So I tried it by applying the Zero theme to a document and it works.

I don't know what it is about white on black that makes it easier for me to write, but I find the difference amazing. (Probably because I grew up on Wordstar, and character based code editors.) I've tried using the white on blue option in Word, but that was never really what I wanted. This is very exciting in a retro-geek sort of way. I wonder how long its been in the product? Years? I wonder what other features I don't know about.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 04, 2005
    Holy cow! There is a themes menu item! (I don't seem to have a Zero theme though :/)

  • Anonymous
    February 05, 2005
    Wordstar??? Ctrl-K Ctrl-C, baby! I'll have to check out that themes menu, since its advice obviously given by a developer sage.
  • Anonymous
    February 06, 2005
    > (Probably because I grew up on Wordstar,

    You newbie.

    > and character based code editors.)

    Amber on black character cell displays came out before Wordstar, if I recall correctly. Why would you ever want to retro from amber on black to white on black?
  • Anonymous
    February 06, 2005
    Memories... The first dedicated monitor I ever bought was an amber monitor.

    I wasn't using Wordstar then though, I had a Commadore 64 Plus 4 and I used the wordprocessor in the integrated software suite.

    I actually don't miss the amber monitor. It seemed pretty cool and geeky at the same time. I think it cost me $110. If you were really into it, I guess you could create an amber theme to write in though. :)

    Cheers,

    Brian