February 2007 - Posts

posted Tuesday, February 27, 2007 7:22 AM by martin :: 1 Comments

Microsoft Office 2007 File Formats - Part 2

As I mentioned in the previous post, any new Office file (docx, xlsx, pptx, or their macro-enabled equivalents) contains a crucial element called [Content_Types].xml.  In this post I want to delve into the contents of this particular xml file.  Read More
posted Tuesday, February 27, 2007 4:25 AM by martin :: 2 Comments

Microsoft Office 2007 File Formats - Part 1

In the 2007 versions, Microsoft has radically improved the default file formats for Word, Excel and PowerPoint.  The first thing you'll notice is that .doc files become .docx (or .docm for macro-enabled documents).  Likewise we have .xlsx Read More
posted Monday, February 26, 2007 1:33 AM by martin :: (Comments Off)

Virtual Earth "Bird's Eye View"

You may not have realized, but the Windows Live Virtual Earth service has a feature that other well-known online mapping services don't (at least, not to my knowledge).  Sure it has road maps, and aerial imagery in the form of direct top-down photographs, Read More
posted Saturday, February 24, 2007 1:23 PM by martin :: (Comments Off)

Office 2007 Document Information Panels - Part 4

If you've worked through my previous posts here, here, and here, you'll now have an InfoPath form template that you've signed and published, and you'll have imported the signing certificate into the Trusted Publishers store on at least one machine. To Read More
posted Saturday, February 24, 2007 10:59 AM by martin :: 1 Comments

Office 2007 Document Information Panels - Part 3

In my previous post I talked about how a custom Document Information Panel (DIP) is actually an InfoPath form.  I said that, in order to use it as a DIP, the InfoPath form template must be published to a network location, and it must be digitally Read More
posted Saturday, February 24, 2007 10:47 AM by martin :: 2 Comments

Office 2007 Document Information Panels - Part 2

In my previous post I talked about the standard Document Information Panel.  Now I want to start talking about designing your own.  First - why would you want to...? Document properties have always been about capturing some non-content values Read More
posted Saturday, February 24, 2007 10:17 AM by martin :: 3 Comments

Office 2007 Document Information Panels - Part 1

In the 2007 versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint we have a new feature called the Document Information Panel (or DIP).  The standard panel is a new way to present the document properties that were there in previous version.  Even this is a Read More
posted Friday, February 23, 2007 6:17 AM by martin :: (Comments Off)

Virtual Earth on RightMove.co.uk

If you live in the UK you've probably heard of this website - it's pretty useful if you're looking to buy a house.  They recently updated their site to offer interactive maps, using the Windows Live Virtual Earth map control. They've done a nice Read More
posted Thursday, February 22, 2007 6:42 AM by martin :: (Comments Off)

Insert Windows Live Maps in Blog Posts

If you use Windows Live Writer to publish your blog posts, you'll be interested to know about the "Insert Windows Live Map" feature that's in the Insert menu.  I've used it here to illustrate the location of the Glasgow venue, coming next in our Read More
posted Thursday, February 22, 2007 5:59 AM by martin :: (Comments Off)

Windows Live Embraces non-Microsoft Server Platforms

Tags: Windows Live I just wanted to reiterate a very important fact that seemed to interest a few audience members when I spoke about Windows Live as part of the MSDN Roadshow. The Windows Live services that are hosted by Microsoft are intended to play Read More
posted Thursday, February 22, 2007 1:04 AM by martin :: 1 Comments

MSDN Roadshow 2007 Demos

Many thanks to the audience at Nottingham yesterday, for our first Roadshow event of 2007.  I had a number of requests for my Virtual Earth demos, so I've posted them on my site and the links are here... Demo 1 (map and pushpins) Demo 2 (map with Read More
posted Friday, February 16, 2007 7:41 AM by martin :: (Comments Off)

Architect Insight Conference

The time's drawing near for this year's Architect Insight Conference.  It's on the 5th and 6th of March at the Celtic Manor Resort, Newport, Wales. It's aimed at senior enterprise, solutions and infrastructure architects, CTOs and senior IT decision Read More
posted Friday, February 16, 2007 5:12 AM by martin :: 1 Comments

New Office Development Nuggets

I've just published 5 new MSDN Nuggets, all relating to developing with the Office 2007 applications.  If you don't know what nuggets are: - They're short screencast videos (5 to 15 mins in length) targeted at very specific pieces of developer technology. Read More
posted Friday, February 16, 2007 4:39 AM by martin :: (Comments Off)

Windows CardSpace will support OpenID

When I heard that Bill Gates made this announcement at the recent RSA Conference my first thought was "what's OpenID?"  So I went and took a look at http://openid.net. I should say that I've not looked in sufficient detail to fully understand its Read More
posted Thursday, February 15, 2007 2:55 AM by martin :: 2 Comments

UK MSDN Roadshow - "Developing for Windows Live" Session Resources

This is a list of online resources that are related to the session I'm delivering for the UK MSDN Roadshow. Web Sites http://dev.live.com http://www.live.com Windows Live on MSDN http://MicrosoftGadgets.com Virtual Earth Interactive SDK Akonix Read More
posted Friday, February 02, 2007 12:38 PM by martin :: (Comments Off)

Developing a Live Gadget using IE7

Windows Live Gadgets represent a way to offer up little chunks of web functionality and presentation that can be rendered inside pages at www.live.com or spaces.live.com.  You can find out all about them, as well as other aspects of development for Read More