April 2006 - Posts
Topic: Beyond Menus and Toolbars in Microsoft Office
Date: Thursday, April 13th, 2006 — 5:30 to 7:00pm
User Group: The Vancouver User Experience Group (VanUE) (http://www.vanue.com/)
Location: VFS (Vancouver Film School)
RSVPs only: rsvp@vanue.com
The DIY Digital Photo Frame
Turn an old laptop into a digital frame that automatically displays new shots from your Flickr account—then give it to your mother
http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-XMLHttpRequest-20060405/
I find it interesting to see that the very foundation of what we annoying call “Ajax” (XMLHttpRequest) is now a W3C working draft and not a single Microsoft employee is listed as a contributing author.
Microsoft first implemented the XMLHttpRequest object in Internet Explorer 5 for Windows as an ActiveX object. Engineers on the Mozilla project implemented a compatible native version for Mozilla 1.0 (and Netscape 7). Apple has done the same starting with Safari 1.2. (http://developer.apple.com/internet/webcontent/xmlhttpreq.html)
As you can tell I’m really starting to dislike this term Ajax. As you probably already know it is by no means a new technology, just a really annoying nickname for something we in the web world have been doing for a number of years now. From now on, let’s call it like we see it, “XHR”, and avoid the marketing buzzword. If you are somewhat confused why I’m having a negative reaction against the buzzword, consider taking a look at this conference landing page: http://theajaxexperience.com/show_view.jsp?showId=58. At last count it mentioned the buzzword about 135 times in the single page. Is that a joke? No.
Back to the XHR Working Draft…
Has Microsoft simply declined participation or have they even been invited?
It would be interesting to see if MSFT does actually participate with this. It would mean that they would probably have to introduce breaking changes into the API for XHR on all windows systems, effectively breaking all JavaScript XHR source, and any server side functionality which uses this object. I highly doubt MSFT would do this.
So, in my opinion, if it meant MSFT had to change their implementation I would NOT like them participate in the working group. Quite simply, I do not want to have to recode any of my applications because the industry has finally gotten its act in gear and tried to do something for the community.
On that same note, why can’t the working group simply document the MSFT implementation 100% in full, and use it as the standard. Considering the market is completely dominated by the one browser (80%+ is IE) this simply just makes sense. In this case I would love to see MSFT’s participation as purely a reference point.
Just added to http://pinvoke.net
http://pinvoke.net/default.aspx/shell32/ShellExecuteEx.html
Using ShellExecuteEx to show the properties dialog box of a file.
public static void ShowFileProperties(string Filename) {
SHELLEXECUTEINFO info = new SHELLEXECUTEINFO();
info.cbSize = System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.SizeOf(info);
info.lpVerb = "properties";
info.lpFile = Filename;
info.nShow = SW_SHOW;
info.fMask = SEE_MASK_INVOKEIDLIST;
ShellExecuteEx(ref info);
}
private const int SW_SHOW = 5;
private const uint SEE_MASK_INVOKEIDLIST = 12;
[DllImport("shell32.dll")]
static extern bool ShellExecuteEx(ref SHELLEXECUTEINFO lpExecInfo);
[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential, CharSet = CharSet.Auto)]
public struct SHELLEXECUTEINFO
{
public int cbSize;
public uint fMask;
public IntPtr hwnd;
public String lpVerb;
public String lpFile;
public String lpParameters;
public String lpDirectory;
public int nShow;
public int hInstApp;
public int lpIDList;
public String lpClass;
public int hkeyClass;
public uint dwHotKey;
public int hIcon;
public int hProcess;
}
The Press release is here.
Microsoft Speech Home
Join the Beta Invitation ID: MSS-7G3T-8P7V (Full Instructions)
VoIP, SALT, VoiceXML all supported.
It looks hopeful that we will see a new dictation engine...
Speech Recognition Engine:
• Includes Microsoft enterprise-grade Automatic Speech
Recognition (ASR) engines supporting English (U.S.), Spanish (U.S.), and French (Canada) languages
(Source)
Also, according to this article Vista will support dictation.
Continuous speech recognition engines currently support two modes of speech recognition:
- Dictation, in which the user enters data by reading directly to the computer.
- ....
Hopefully we can dump the old 5.1 SDK and use a managed interface.
For you that will be on the Island this weekend, dont forget to stop by at the Victoria Code Camp.
I love do it yourself projects like this one. I just need to find the time and a parts store around town to give it a try.
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