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Form Filling Through Office 12
Qa32 writes "For those chomping at the bit for more Office 12 details, Microsoft offered a tiny peek at the upcoming offering, or offerings, due next year. In what he termed the first public viewing of Office 12, Chris Caposella, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Information Worker Product Management Group, showed off a distributed forms capability that would enable customers to fill in and submit XML forms easily via a browser, without having to run Microsoft InfoPath on their PC."
Like you can do with PDFs today (and for the past couple of years)?
Besides the blurb being simply a quote from the beginning of the article, it doesn't provide any of the background information that we need. There are many of us who are curious enough about the story to justify it being on the front page of Slashdot but who don't know enough about the buzzwords and products named in the blurb to figure out how it affects us.
One champs at the bit... not chomps
A multi-billion dollar company places its best people on creating better office software and we get...
A reinvention of HTML Forms?
This is the 21st century! Where are my flying cars? I want flying cars, not "XML Form Things".
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
..would this ability (XML forms thru browser)be limited to Internet Explorer running on Longhorn?
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Gee, I wonder where they got the idea from?
Does this mean the MS Office 12 implements the XForms standard, or that it embraces and extends it in a proprietary way? If so, what's the advantage for users of MS Office 12 over XForms?
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
Yeah, Windows XP has a spyware which reports whatever I do with my computer back to Microsoft ...
Microsoft is using an open and robust format (XML) for their office documents - what's wrong with that? Now projects like OpenOffice have an easier time importing and exporting documents. The entire key is portability. (text also compresses better than .doc files)
I don't use it often, since my job requires more design based software (read: Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign, Dreamweaver, etc..) However every year my work spends quite a lot of money making sure I have the newest version, yet I don't really know what changes.
We primarily use Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, and with small exceptions of where commands are located and the icons "bubbly-ness", I haven't noticed much of a difference between the 95, 2k, XP, and 2k3 versions. In fact the only difference that really pops out at me is what programs are considered as part of "Office Pro".
It used to be that 95 and 2k came with Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook and Access. Then XP came out with those plus Publisher (which IIRC was someone elses product that was purchased by MS) Then 2k3 came out and is the same but with Visio (which I know was someone elses product but bought by MS).
So does each version just add a new software to the bundle or are there really changes? (changes being more than buubly icons and moving the location of th email-merge command)
Ave Molech Setting
... this capability. Yes, PDF forms have allowed this for quite some time. But, like it or lump it, MS is the leader when it comes to productivity apps. This ability expands the Office line further into the general web and closer to the world of open standards. Seems to me like one of the few useful features they have introduced in a long time. Besides, it's not like they have a choice. OpenOffice 2.0 (beta 1.9) is looking sweet and is finally starting to represent an actual threat to the Evil Empire.
Bang Logic - Serious Small Business Services
People will use Microsoft Office.
And it's leverage enabled for system empowerment!
Unless they port to Linux it's nothing special. How about it Bill? When are you and Stevie gonna bite the bullet and let your developers port it?
You want Office on Linux? Here's what you have to do:
Step 1: Create a Distro that captures more than 1% of the market share. (Shameless plug for that part.)
Step 2: Find some way in which Microsoft's anti-competitive practices are hurting your business, then sue.
Step 3: Settle out of court with the requirement that Microsoft produce a version of MS Office for your distro.
Then, voila! MS Office on Linux.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I hope Office 12 has ways to turn off all the auto-fill, auto-format, auto-magically do-what-you-don't-want "features" that turn Office users into sobbing heaps. I've spent many an hour rooting around in Office Prefs (which for some reason you can only do when a document is open despite the fact that the prefs aren't document-specific?!?!?!) and have tried to lobotomize Office, but it keeps finding ways to auto-fsck my documents.
Office's "intelligent" features have a horrible accuracy rate for me, but then maybe I just think different.
I'd also request they fix all the bugs/annoyances that have lingered unfixed in Office 8, 9, 10, and 11 before they try to "enhance" Office any further.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Why not "Use the classic Start menu" option? Its pretty easy to make XP look just like 2000 if you wish.
My other car is a Popemobile
InfoPath works independently from XForms, although the aim is similar, to convert user input to XML. Companies that have deployed Office 2003+ would most likely use InfoPath. Companies that haven't would most likely implement XForms.
MS Office -- stick a fork in it -- it's done.
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
What really made me stop buying Office, and for me it is not a huge expense, was the incompatibilities between versions. Yes, things could be converted. Yes, it mostly worked. But what irked me is that things had to be converted. There did not seem to be any thought that each new release could be a superset, and the old stuff could be just be left alone.
As it is saving from OO.org seems to be more universally reliable than word.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I don't have an XP machine of my own - it's always a user's machine, and I don't want to mess with their settings.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
How is this news? I've been using Office 12 for months already. You can buy it online right here.
...when Microsoft stops talking about what they are going to reinvent next year, and releases something new .
Yawn. Never saw a more boring company.
I am reasonably certain you can already do this in with Acrobat with the addition of a small cgi script. Look here, scroll down to where it talks about the "FDF toolkit" API.
In order to do this of course you must write your own cgi frontend, so you could say this isn't as much as Office would hypothetically give you. However all Office would be hypothetically giving you here is a prepared drop-in CGI script, and I'm relatively certain were there need for such a thing there would be several free prepared drop-in CGI scripts for doing this with Acrobat already; and certainly it would likely be quicker and cheaper for any organization with access to at least one programmer to write such a thing internally than to wait for, then upgrade to, a new version of MS-Office.
I would imagine however that no one would ever really bother with such a thing, however, since, well, pretty much everyone in the world except Microsoft considers a PDF viewer a necessary part of a modern desktop system and web browser, so few people would particularly think of "requires PDF support" as "requiring plugin"...
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Unless they port to Linux it's nothing special to YOU. I don't see this happening because that's a lot of development time spent unnecessarily, when if the customer needs it bad enough, they'll use your platform.
Wow! Online forms that doesn't require anything other than a (presumably) generic web browser (ok, maybe I shouldn't presume this where MS is involved)?
Gee, hasn't Lotus Domino (Notes server) had this for like ten fucking years?!?? Call me when they add a feature that's new for this millenium.
Hundreds of megabytes of installed software costing hundreds of dollars to... fill in XML forms with text fields, buttons, and drop-down selections. And all that even without using InfoPath (?!). Will wonders never cease? I think this truly shows what kind of great technology Microsoft keeps inventing.
They do it, quite simply, because Office does pretty much what it always has. Sure, maybe Excel gets a new graph format or a new function, and maybe Word tells you how many paragraphs per fortnight you write.
None of these are sexy marketing bullets. "New in Office 2006! Sin() 125% faster! Slightly different 3D chart you'll never use! Spell check finally has 80% instead of 75% of English words!" doesn't cut it on the banners and magazine ads.
"Office 2006- streamlined for the way YOU and YOUR business works. So you can get to the important things in life quicker" (insert picture of model playing with model child, both of them laughing. Flowers and ice cream and little puppies optional).
Sound familiar? That's because that is the basis for virtually every "new" Office release marketing blitz in the last decade. Why? Because for much of the business world, if you're sitting there at your desk instead of home with your SO and/or kids, chances are you're staring at a Word, Excel, or Powerpoint document. Translation: you identify with the supposed problem and believe the utter lie- that the new software will boost your productivity.
Also, changing around the interface keeps the training companies busy, and pushes companies to upgrade everyone so "people don't get confused" (same with the myriad of niggling little incompatibilities, especially in Powerpoint, which affect how slides are rendered.)
Please help metamoderate.
Could somebody please summarize what in the hell an "XML Form" is? XML is, quite simply, a way of formatting flat data. Saying "XML Form" is like saying "Comma-delimited Form". What in the hell does this mean?
I don't respond to AC's.
When is Open Office 2 going to be released? I understand that it is still under production and a firm release date is difficult. But at least Mozilla, for example, gave us estimates for each new release of Firefox until 1.0 came out. All Open Office tells us is that it will come out. Not when.
Having used a little XML at work, I was under the impression that the data is text based... yet from the FAQ:
... By creating a new robust, yet compact, structure based on industry standards such as XML and ZIP, the new default file formats speed document creation while reducing the size of (Office) files and improving data recovery in corrupted files.
Q. Why did Microsoft change the file formats for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint?
A.
Do you think this means that they are going to create an XML file that is a bunch of ZIP-compressed binary Objects, or are they creating the file as XML plaintext then compressing it and calling it a new "standard"? Using ZIP checksums could help with error detections in Office files, but if the Office Save functions didn't kludge about so much, shouldn't we expect not to have corrupted saves to begin with? Or by XML-izing the document, do they believe that one part of the save can fail without losing the entire document?
That feature can be disabled by switching to the Windows 2000 style menu.
KDE also has this feature: look at the top of your KDE menu, you'll see a list a recently launched applications. KDE also have a list of recently opened documents. Is that a bad thing? No. You can choose to use these shortcuts if you want to... if you don't, you can still use the regular tree where all the programs are listed.
Omni
I know how to turn it off, but I don't have an XP machine of my own. It's on user's machines, on which I'm always fighting the menu.
I don't mind the KDE version of changing the menu, because it's only one level deep. That is, Windows also hides the little-used items on the main Programs menu until you click the arrow on the menu to expand it.
Don't they know (or shouldn't they expect that) I've already got icons for the most-used stuff on my desktop, and the whole reason I'm in the menu is to find the little-used stuff?
I think a sibling post to yours had it right: it's marketing.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
especially for everyone not using Windows.
Soon, in order to do business, we'll need plugins (or self-contained executables) to deal with PDF forms, XForms and Microsoft We're-Too-Rich-To-Use-Real-XML Forms (r)(c).
How well do you think that last one will work with Linux and Mac browsers?
About well enough that anyone who asks you to fill a Microsoft form out will just say "Requires Windows."
exactly like the office xp to office 2003 upgrade, right? The Open Office team will have their work cut out for them. Cuz more stuff will be broken all over again.
Actually, it might become yet another monstruous security hole, given MS's <sarcarsm> amazing security record </sarcarsm>.
The problem I have with MS is that they're so eager to give power to users -- in a haphazardly way -- that it completely overlooks security. Or corporate IT policy compliance, depending of where you work at.
For an evidence of this behavior, take a look at this comment on MS hiring practices and the respective reply. Basically, they're loaded with marketeers, who grasp some of IT, enough to sell stuff and are, somehow, empowered to make technical decisions at the expense of standards.
At this point, I have to praise Apple. IMHO they make good calls on the question of how to give power to users without seriously compromising security. Heck, I really believe that if Apple became a cell phone operator they could make cell phones and network more secure and more powerful.
... IT'S ABOUT DAMNED TIME!
InfoPath works *great* but since I can't embed it in a browser window, all of my users end up with an additional login box, and lots more buttons on their screen than they need. It's made training people to use my forms driven app more difficult, and they find the extra login box to be irritating.
(Before someone comments about the login prompt: The login box occurs because InfoPath launches in a different process, so the session / auth cookie is no longer present)
I would have loved to use Mozilla XForms, but it's just not ready yet, and InfoPath was when I needed it (last year)...
I think you are wrong. It does do this in Classic mode, in which case it's the old-style menu you're used to. It doesn't do this in the new style, with the most-recently used items in the start menu.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Perhaps Office 12 will support standard typsetting features like ligatures and offer better hyphenation support. Then again, it's probably wishful thinking to hope a word processor can generate properly typset documents.
These are the default settings, right? I'll bet the only reason the settings are that way on most of the machines is because that's how they came. If you had set up their machines with the simpler (classic?) menu, that's probably what you'd find on 95% of your user's machines. And you know what, they'd probably be more productive that way - nobody actually gains productivity because of the flashy little distractkions like animated menus and disappearing menu items.
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
Will still eventually upgrade.. Can only put off the compatibility issue so long.
It creeps up on you slowly. First one vendor upgrades, then another, then you find you cant 'talk' to your customers, and voila.. you upgrade..
Happens to the best of us..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Thank God someone finally implemented this great idea. I'm so sick of having to telnet into servers and type in POST queries by hand to submit forms. Now, at long last, we'll be able to post comments on Slashdot just by typing text in a box and clicking a button!
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Or...
1) Improve one of the Windows emulators to accurately emulate W98 (no longer supported and now a stationary target).
2) ?
3) Profit
As a teeny little bonus, all of those other 95/98 apps that won't run on XP should work fine giving Linux the compatibility crown.
it doesn't "start faster", it starts up half way when you turn the computer on.
We had a flying car way back in 1979! What more can you want than that?
The version of this that i saw did cross browser support (safari, opera, firefox, and IE) you can server infopath forms off of the internet now, using InfoView or for free with a stripped down version from those awesome OSS french guys at the CDep.
"For those chomping at the bit for more Office 12 details" Surely this includes all of MS-loving Slashdot. I know I'm chomping. Chomp chomp chomp...
quite sick of these microsoft sides shows
why don't they just put the product out and be done with it
it's like they are just putting shit out there to see what the reaction will be
Hey, it worked for Apple. More than 200 new features in Tiger! I can hardly contain myself! Now if it only ran on x86.
I wrote a plugin-less runtime for InfoPath forms that runs (only in) MS Internet Explorer 6 last year sometime.
It runs most InfoPath forms okay, even includig scripting.
Unfortunately I haven't had the time to build a Mozilla based version of it, although I'm sure it is possible. Biggest roadblock there is the lack of (the non-standard) contentEditable functionality. If that was available, I'm sure I wouldn't have any problems porting it.
When I read the topic, I thought, cool, Office can actually fill out useful forms. Like 1099s, VAT, 1040s...
I guess I was misled by Microsoft's commercials about being great for small business. Adobe seems ahead of MS here (I believe if you e-file, you generate a PDF and send).
After reading the summary/comments, I think maybe MS's new marketing strategy should be:
Microsoft: "Where do you want to go today? 1999?"
Wouldn't it be great to change the karma point system of Slashdot so you could also have actual "anti-Microsoft karma points"? Then you could get +1 points for bashing Microsoft. You just can't spend them because... well, it's Microsoft after all. Yes, I think Microsoft is iivl, because I just broke a guitar string. Where's my +1?
Are you saying that, somehow, those crazy clever guys at Redmond have, and please, give this the respect it deserves, allowed people to fill out forms in a browser without a plugin! I am sure they must have patented this a million times to secure such a monumental change in the course of computer history.
Now those 2bit hackers on all those open source programs that include their own web front end (shareaza, VNC apps) (i.e. support 'AitchTeeTeePee' Some mythical, some say made-up, protocol that allows people to request document, and GET POST, PUT DELETE and OPTION (although we usually just get and put).
I think someone needs a nobel prize for inventing this!!! Amazing software innovations!
Any open source projects who have been providing this functionality SHOULD STOP because it is not right to hurt Microsofts ability to dupe people into buying Office 12, please be nice to them, goodness, they need ot make this one a success or people will jump ship faster than Vienna.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Most of the answers to the article point to PDF.
Anyone can compare with "Altova Authentic"? (see http://www.altova.com/products_doc.html).
I read the detailed overview about the new Office XML Formats, and it certainly appears to be very useful. You can view a summary here: http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/fileovervi ew.mspx
Key Benefits and Functionality
Compact file format. Documents are automatically compressed--up to 75 percent smaller in some cases.
Improved damaged file recovery. Modular data storage enables files to be opened even if a component within the file is damaged--a chart or table, for example.
Safer documents. Embedded code--for example, OLE objects or Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications code--is stored in a separate section within the file, so it can be easily identified for special processing. IT Administrators can block the documents that contain unwanted macros or controls, making documents safer for users when they are opened.
Easier integration. Developers have direct access to specific contents within the file, like charts, comments, and document metadata.
Transparency and improved information security. Documents can be shared confidentially because personally identifiable information and business sensitive information--user names, comments, tracked changes, file paths--can be easily identified and removed.
Compatibility. By installing a simple update, users of Office 2000, Office XP, and Office 2003 Editions can open, edit, and save documents in one of the Office XML Formats.
Whether it follows some recognized XML standard or not, it will still be very useful, because XML is user extensible, it doesn't much matter.
Here it what it says about the format:
The new Office XML Formats are...An open, royalty-free file format specification...and enables any technology provider to integrate Office documents into their solutions.
Exchanging data between Office applications and enterprise business systems is simplified --alter information inside an Office document or create a document from scratch using standard tools and technologies; access to Office applications is not required.
Office XML Formats are based on industry standard XML and ZIP technologies, support full integration by any technology provider, and are available via a royalty-free license. The Format specification will be published and made available under the same royalty-free license that exists for the Office 2003 Reference Schemas--openly offered and available for broad industry use.
From my understanding, derived from careful reading of the detailed overview, it clearly implies that anyone can write applications to do everything that the new Microsoft Office can do and much more.
My question is: Then how does MS intend to meet the competition? We have an enormous number of very creative software development companies in the world. If anyone at all can produce software that does all the tasks in MS Office and much more, in theory the market will soon be flooded with wonderful applications that would reduce MS's share of the market to a small fraction. However nice the new MS Office suite will be, open competition will quickly produce even nicer apps. This is the way it always is in software. In other words, are we to believe that M$ deliberately is giving up the edge of proprietary data formats? If I am understanding what I read correctly, it is the equivalent of M$ simply giving up domination of the office suite market. That conclusion is, of course, unbelievable. So what's the gimmick??? [This was written in OOo]
The New MS Office 12 -
Packed with all new..xz df@%$(..
WE OWNZ U !!11!!!!!1
- great. just great. more 'innovation' from mycrowissoft,
just when the Norton guys wanted to take their summer vacations...
OpenOffice.org does a very good job at reading / writing MS-Office formats and usually does a better job with the older versions than MS-Office itself. If nothing else, since it costs nothing while MS-Office does and since you wouldn't use either often, it's worth a test.
Oh, and OpenOffice.org can make your PDF files for you, no extra tools needed.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.