[gbh]

The reviews of Mac Word 2008 say it will still now allow live window resizing in Excel 2008 (like it did not in Office 2004), although it will in Word. Stupid question- exactly what is live window resizing and what are the implications in using Excel 2008?

[chucker]

Redrawing the window contents while the window is being resized. To see the difference: in iTunes, hold the resize knob, and drag it around. Note how all the contents reflow even without you letting the knob go. Then, do the same thing again, but this time, hold the cmd key as well. You'll see an outline of the window's new size, but none of the contents in it, until you let go.

[rasmits]

Weird, I had no idea iTunes would do that if you hold the cmd key. Why does it do that?

[chucker]

Originally Posted by rasmits Weird, I had no idea iTunes would do that if you hold the cmd key. Why does it do that?

Performance, I assume. Back in the day, resizing iTunes windows was extremely sluggish, so this was a nice little trick to speed it up a lot.

Nowadays, it just doesn't matter any more. The iTunes UI is no less complex, but machines have become significantly faster, and OS X far more optimized.

[gbh]

So what are implications of now having this in working with Excel Mac?

[chucker]

…convenience?

[gbh]

Seriously, though, suppose I open up a new spreadsheet document in Word directly, how does this lack of resizing affect that it at all?

[chucker]

I don't understand what opening documents has to do with this.

This is about what happens when you resize an already-open window. Do you see its contents live, reflowed to fit the new size the very moment you change it (or within fractions of a second), or do you merely see a vague outline?

[Enki]

Originally Posted by gbh So what are implications of now having this in working with Excel Mac?

Not much other than MS finally got away from it's archaically old and crufty custom window rendering code.

Usability wise zero. Who could update anything meaningful in the blank areas of an expanded window before it would have redrawn anyway?

[dfiler]

The advantage of live window resizing is that you don't have to guess if you've made the window large enough to see what you want. No trial-and-error resizing needed.

This is useful when trying to arrange multiple windows on the screen to be visible simultaneously.