Last week, Microsoft hosted the Microsoft Office System Developer conference, the first ever developer conference solely targeted at the Office developer last week. I presented a well-attended session called “Programming the Visio Graphical Platform,” demo-ing the Visio flowchart and treeview applications from the Visio 2003 SDK and talking in more detail about some of the…
Dev Luv: Follow-up on Digital Certificate Question
A blog reader asked if it was possible to get a cheaper digital certificate for a smaller dev shop. I looked into this and unfortunately, there is no special discount for individual software production houses. The real issue when talking certificates is the level of trust a certificate carries. For instance, if you develop some…
Dev Luv: More Info on Digital Signing
I’ve gotten lots of mail from Visio blog readers who are still confused about how digital signing works for any Office solution. Siew-Moi Khor, a Programmer/Writer in the MS Office organization who writes seriously good documentation on complex topics, has written some articles on how digital signing works in the Office world. These three articles…
Free 30-Day Visio 2003 Trial
There is a 30-day trial version of Visio 2003, if you want to check it out. Almost everything I blog about is based on Visio 2003. If you have an earlier version or have never installed Visio, you can check out the trial version of the latest and greatest Visio. Thanks,Mai-lan
Visio Use at Microsoft: New Product User Interface Design for Program Managers
Among other things, Program Managers at Microsoft design the user interface experience for the next generation of product. We work with our graphic designers determine the goals, color, font, and common design elements for screens, but in many groups PMs put together the actual screen design that get pushed through usability tests, design reviews, coding,…
Visio Use at Microsoft: Business Process Management Automation
Visio’s “visualize information” mantra applies to many different customer scenarios. In the next several blog entries, I’m going to focus on several different uses of Visio within Microsoft. I’ll show screen shots where I can (e.g., I don’t have to scrub confidential data). Hold off on questions about how all of this is implemented if you…
Dev Luv: Digital Signatures for Visio Documents
If you are shipping a custom ActiveX control in your Visio solution, it’s important to know that Visio creates a VBA project when you embed an ActiveX control in a Visio document. That means that you need to sign both the custom ActiveX control and the Visio document itself in your solution. For more information…
Dev Luv: Guidelines for Developing Visio Managed COM Add-ins
If you are developing a Visio (or any Office) managed-code COM add-in, these resources will come in handy: 1. This PIA article is the best place to start to learn more about installing and using Office 2003 PIAs. 2. If Microsoft provides an official PIA, always use PIAs. Yes, you can roll your own…
Visio Program Manager Job Opening
In the spirit of networking, can you recommend or refer anyone that you think may be qualified or have an interest in the position below? We are looking for candidates who would like to Join Microsoft’s award-winning Visio Team within Office. Come join the Visio Program Management team to define how our next generation diagrams improve how…
Dev Luv: Determining When a Shape is Copied versus Added
A blog reader recently sent me mail asking how to programmatically determine if a shape has been added to the page through a cut-and-paste operation or by the user dragging and dropping the shape from the stencil. In this case, the reader wanted to call a different routine when the shape is copied. Visio has…