Word 97 could display the page in WYSIWYG style just as the newer version can. In fact, as I recall, that was its default setting. For some reason this person chose to take the comparison screenshot in the non-WYSIWYG mode.
It's not even non-WYSIWYG mode, this isn't like those text mode programs that preceded it where you have Latex-style markers everywhere and only ever see the formatted text in print (preview).
This just hides the page barriers to give you more space to type.
Most of the Word documents I've typed never even made it to paper so the only reason I didn't disable pages all together is that some of my school projects had page count requirements.
