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Word 2007 to Feature Built-in Blogging
Vitaly Friedman writes "Microsoft has revealed a surprising new feature for Word 2007: built-in blog publishing. The big surprise is this: the HTML that is generated is actually not that bad. 'Joe Friend, a lead program manager (Microsoft's term for a person who creates the specifications for software that programmers implement) has posted an entry on his blog regarding an interesting new feature being implemented for Word 2007: direct publishing of blogs to the web from within the program.'"
You know, when people are saying that the quality of the generated data is "actually not that bad", with a surprised and delighted tilt in their voices, you know your customers aren't exactly expecting greatness anymore.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
You know what, since nobody else seems to want to do it, I'll go out on a limb here and defend M$ this time. I'm impressed they claimed that the HTML isn't bad. I think it's good of them to man up. Because in saying that the new stuff isn't bad, they're admitting the old HTML code in word was.....and they're taking steps to fix the problem. If you actually looked at the source from the article (which was generated using word), it looked clean and readable. Nothing like the HTML we used to see from Word. On /. everytime Word is mentioned you get the same old responces, "I haven't touched a new verison of word since 97", "they haven't added any new features that are worthwhile", and "I don't even use the program, it's M$ they suck". Fair enough. But can you really complain about them not adding new features, then bitch when they obviously start thinking and try to? Do you think the people who post here are Word's targeted consumers? The majority of people don't really understand that much about computers, nor do they want to. They like to check email, surf the web, chat online, write in their blog, and upload their pictures for everyone to see. So the fact that the new Word might have a blog publishing feature is a big deal for most people who use the lastest versions of Word.
And Firefox 2 will have spell checking
I'm sick of saying this: spell checking is the responsibility of the GUI toolkit not the application. Why does every damn application need to implement its own spell checker? Why does no-one other than Apple and the KDE team seem to realise that this kind of basic functionality should be available in every text box, anywhere in the GUI (but with the option for developers to disable it for fields at design time).
If Firefox 2 has a built in spell checker then it damn well better have an option to disable it and use the standard MacOS spell-checker (the one I already use for every single other application on my system) instead.
Don't even get me started on web-sites that implement a spell checker...