markhealey.org » microsoft

Do you want to allow this?

Mark Healey — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 14:37:50 +0000

I’m at my neighbor’s house helping her fix her recently-busted Dell Dimension running Vista Business. My neighbor is a sweet woman, who is particularly computer savvy for her near-senior age. While I’m busy trying to figure out how Vista knows I’m connected to the Internet when it’s not actually receiving a single data packet from Comcast, my neighbor asked me if Vista came with solitaire. I quickly replied, sure, it’s in Programs > Accessories > Games… just like every previous version of Windows. In fact, it’s not.

Solitaire isn’t even installed by default on the new Microsoft OS. Here’s what I just had to do:

Start > Control Panel.
Windows Needs Your Permission. Do you want to allow that? Yes.
Turn On/Off Windows Features.
Windows Needs Your Permission. Do you want to allow that? Yes.
Turn on solitaire.
Windows Needs Your Permission. Do you want to allow that? Yes.
Please wait, this could take a few minutes. (It took four.)
Restart now.

Mark Needs Your Permission. Do you want to allow laughter? Yes.

Like Marty McFly, Outlook 2007 going back in time

Mark Healey — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 13:28:22 +0000

I was having a pretty good Wednesday. The normal cooler winter weather had rolled into Charleston with a large high pressure system affecting much of the east coast, and I had just picked up a cup of coffee. It was then I received a chat from the fabulous Jackson Latka with simply a URL to SitePoint’s WebTech blog. Pretty good Wednesday no more.

SitePoint contributor Kevin Yank authored a post titled, “Microsoft Breaks HTML Email Rendering in Outlook 2007.” I didn’t even get past the opening paragraph before I started having heart palpitations. You may recall an article I penned last November on the topic of formatting XHTML emails for today’s myriad mail clients.

If support for web standards in browsers is improving slowly, then support in email clients is moving at a glacial pace.

Microsoft has officially decided to drop the IE-based rendering support from Office Outlook 2007 in favor of… you guessed it, Word. Great Scott!

I wouldn’t categorize myself as a Microsoft hater, but this decision ranks up there on the Top 10 Most Moronic Moves Ever Made While Trying to Win Over Web Developers list. For the first time in years, Microsoft releases an update to their highly used web browsing client which is significantly more supporting of web standards than previous versions. Yet, Redmond opted to use Word’s far superior web page rendering engine in Outlook. I am, of course, being as sarcastic as I’ve ever been.

The news, as bad as it is, is not the end of HTML emails in Outlook. We’ll have to redesign them to be thinner, with less emphasis on appearance and more on getting back to plain-and-simple content.

Unless Microsoft does the old switchero, with the impending release of the consumer version of the Office 2007 System, expect to redesign your HTML email templates in favor a much less instead of what IE7 offers — much more.

Today’s the day: to Zune or not to Zune

Mark Healey — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:32:30 +0000

I’m scrambling to tie off loose ends before heading to a land far, far away early tomorrow morning, and while skimming over some headlines at lunch I saw this article at CNN Money on Microsoft’s new Zune. The damn thing looks like it’s got some promise! Who would’ve thought?

Despite some early excitement on my part, the author of the article said it best: if I didn’t already have an iPod in which a lot of time and money has been invested, why switch? It’s too bad Microsoft didn’t make it iTunes-friendly.

See you on the other side.

PowerPoint: PPT vs PPS

Mark Healey — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 18:26:15 +0000

The main difference between PPT and PPS is how PowerPoint treats the files when they are initially opened.

In my day-to-day work I see on average one hundred million PowerPoint presentations. Okay, maybe not that many, but a lot. After all it is the Navy. And as with everything government-related, if it is not in a PowerPoint, it cannot be done. A developer in my team came to me with a question today: what is the difference between a PPT and a PPS? I immediately replied that PPS was an antiquated file extension from Office 97 or something. It turns out I was dead wrong. (Have you seen that Office PowerPoint 2007 will be naming files .pptx?)

Thanks to Indezine, here’s the deal:

By default, PPT files open in edit mode within PowerPoint allowing you to use all the menus and commands.
By default, PPS files open in slideshow (play) mode and you see no PowerPoint interface. When the presentation finishes (or you manually exit), PowerPoint also quits.

So there you have it. The next time you’re whipping up a fancy-pants PowerPoint, remember to use “Save As…”.