December 2003 - Posts

Welcome to the New Office Bloggers at OZ
31 December 03 09:56 AM | chris | 0 Comments   

OfficeZealot.com has been hosting blogs now for two months and it has been an exciting addition to our website. A few weeks ago we extended an open invitation to the Office community to host free blogs with OfficeZealot.com. The good news is that several Read More...

Office 2003 Lost Opportunities Recap
28 December 03 07:14 PM | chris | 0 Comments   

In the last two weeks I?ve expressed my view regarding some of the shortcomings in the Office 2003 XML offering. These blog entries have not been intended as a slam against Microsoft, however I know they listen to feedback on their products and are likely Read More...

Blogger API Summary???
25 December 03 12:35 PM | chris | 0 Comments   

I?m starting to think about doing some work on rich client blogging, however there seem to be a number of possible API?s used by blog engines. Anyone have a suggestion on where to start? (Which API? Is there a good summary of the API?s out there?) Any Read More...

Gripe 3: Word XML (Issue 4)
23 December 03 10:23 AM | chris | 0 Comments   

This is my final entry on this subject at this time. Thanks for the emails with further suggestions. Issue #4: No notion of embeddable XML It would be useful to embed our own XML data islands into a document. This is semi related to Issue #3. There are Read More...

Gripe 3: Word XML (Issue 3)
20 December 03 12:21 PM | chris | 0 Comments   

Issue #3: No Notion of a Hidden Node Another challenge is that every required node in a schema must be mapped into a document for the document to be valid (XML valid that is). Now this makes sense, we don?t want Word to produce XML that violates the schema. Read More...

Gripe 3: Word XML (Issue 2)
19 December 03 03:21 PM | chris | 0 Comments   

Issue #2: Attributes Not Visible in the UI Another disappointing thing is that you cannot map attributes into a Word document so they are visible to the user. To modify an attribute you have to pull up the attributes dialog box, which is cumbersome for Read More...

Gripe 3: Word XML (Issue 1)
18 December 03 10:20 AM | chris | 0 Comments   

First I have to say I love the new Word XML features and this posting isn?t really meant as a complaint, but a few thoughts on issues I hope MS will rethink in the next version of Word. As a side note, if you haven?t downloaded the new Word XML Toolbox Read More...

Word XML: Dealing with Optional Attributes
12 December 03 07:56 AM | chris | 0 Comments   

I'll get back to my XML Office 2003 issues tomorrow, but for now wanted to share an interesting post from the newsgroups. Cyril posted the following to me in the newgroups a few weeks ago and I thought I'd publish it here. ---------- I have finally found Read More...

Call for Writers & Bloggers
11 December 03 11:39 AM | chris | 0 Comments   

Hey! OfficeZealot.com is looking for contributors in the form of articles and blogging. Check out this article for more details. They are even offering to host a blog for free as long as its related to Office. Read More...

Followup to Gripe 2 (PowerPoint & XML)
10 December 03 09:30 AM | chris | 0 Comments   

Stephane I love your feedback, keep dishing it! :-) (See the comments to my last post to see Stephane's comment). Ok well, I partially agree with you. In the HTML I do see namespaces, pockets of XML and some files that are XML files. So for me to have Read More...

Gripe 2: Office 2003 Lost Opportunities (PowerPoint & XML)
09 December 03 08:26 AM | chris | 0 Comments   

My last post talked about my first gripe, lack of full XML roundtripping support in Excel. Take a look at the comment Stephane Rodriguez made about my first gripe. Thanks Stephane, it was an interesting take. Now onto Gripe #2. Gripe 2: Lack of any XML Read More...

Gripe 1: Office 2003 Lost Opportunities (Excel & XML)
04 December 03 09:40 AM | chris | 0 Comments   

In my last post I mentioned I would talk about a few of the things I don´t like about the XML support in Office 2003. As a result there are lost opportunities for Microsoft and customers that will hopefully be resolved some time in the future (2 or 3 Read More...