Overcoming the Office Ribbon - Part 2
8:56 AM PDT, July 25, 2007
I'm still working with the Ribbon at this point. Earlier I had mentioned that I didn't find the Ribbon particularly useful and I stand by that statement from a personal perspective. In fact, many power users will find the Ribbon lowers their productivity. However, rather than view the glass as half empty, I chose to view it as half full. Over the last several months I've tried out every solution currently available for overcoming the problems of using the Ribbon and I present those solutions in RibbonX for Dummies. Some of these solutions require third party products such as RibbonCustomizer, while others rely on simple techniques you can use to make the transition simpler. The point is that you may have to upgrade to Office 2007, but you don't necessarily have to change the way you do things if you're a power user. Using the techniques in my book, you'll find that you can actually improve your productivity over the toolbar and menu system by adding the Ribbon to your list of tools.
The real advantage to working with the Ribbon though isn't in performing unique tasks (something I normally do, which is why I initially missed the point), but in performing the same task more than once. For example, writing a company letter or filling out a form is a repetitive task, even though the content varies with each iteration. You can use the Ribbon to create a work flow that makes performing repetitive tasks simpler, faster, and relatively error free. For example, I wrote a custom letter writing application for a company and tested the results over a period of months. By the end of the test, the users were creating letters three times faster and with few errors. Training time was also substantially reduced. I show you how to build this application in RibbonX for Dummies. In fact, you'll find a number of applications that I built for real business use in the book and not just for Word. You'll also find examples for Access, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint. Actually, now that I've worked with the Ribbon for a while, it's kind of exciting to see what it can do for users. Rather than spend my time watching them fiddle about with menus and getting lost, I can see them getting useful work done without really paying much attention to the interface at all. That's right; a properly designed Ribbon tab can make the interface almost disappear from the user's perspective so they can spend more time getting useful work done and less time worrying about how to get to the next interface element. Work flows really make a significant difference in the way that people work. More importantly, they have the potential to significantly reduce your support and training costs. Of course, most people have a lot of existing code to deal with. I currently have somewhere around 35 Word templates. It took a very long time to create them and I wasn't too thrilled about having to recreate them. Fortunately, I don't have to recreate them from scratch. Using a few simple techniques I've already converted 16 of my templates in my spare time to Office 2007. I've also had to convert several Access databases and a host of Excel spreadsheets. The point is that I've spent a lot of time working through the very same problems you'll encounter and I have good news; it's probably not going to be nearly as hard as you might think it will be to make the move. RibbonX for Dummies details my experiences in making old applications work with the new Ribbon. Where are you at with the Ribbon? Have you decided to call it a lost cause? If so, you might be avoiding a potentially great productivity enhancer for your organization. I'd like to hear about your experiences at JPMAmazon@yahoo.com. Where in the World is John?
9:38 AM PDT, March 17, 2007
Well, it's been a very long time since I posted last and for good reason. I'm constantly learning new things and like to write about them. In this case, I learned something about home safety. My wife stabbed herself with a meat fork and nearly ended up in the hospital, so I've been caring for her. (You'd be amazed at how fast an infection can spread from such a seemingly small wound.) Don't worry, everything has turned out well and I'm back in the office writing again. However, I did learn a new and important safety lesson--never put meat forks in the water. Now the meat forks stay outside of the water, along with those knives that have always stayed to the side until we're ready to wash them.
OK, so why should you care about this (other than the fact that someone was hurt)? It's important to keep track of your household safety rules. We have an actual book of them and review them from time-to-time. The review part is important, especially if you have kids, because everyone tends to forget and forgetting often means repeating the mistake. So, the rule of thumb is to figure out what went wrong, write it down when you do figure it out (both cause and effect), and then review it from time-to-time so you don't forget in the future. I'll certainly never forget this particular lesson and I hope that you learn something from it too. No one is ever going to prevent every accident, but with a little forethought, you can prevent a lot of them. Let me know about your most recent life and death situation at JPMAmazon@yahoo.com. Odd ASP.NET Error Messages
7:55 AM PST, November 15, 2006
This is an amazing business. It's not hard to find horror stories of all shapes and sizes when it comes to application development. Things that should work, often don't. I can truthfully say that I learn something new every day. In 20 years of writing books, I have never had a day where some new fact didn't slap me in the face. These new facts are part of the reason I've stayed in this business so long; there is always something interesting to learn, something new to discover.
One of the problems that I recently encountered was in helping someone move code from my machine to their machine. It seems like it should be an easy task. Simply pack up the code and move it to the other machine; right? Actually, no. Visual Studio .NET doesn't make things that easy. The first problem that you'll encounter is that Visual Studio .NET embeds the relative and absolute paths to just about everything in the source code files. Unfortunately, you won't find this information in just one file; the embedded paths appear in the SLN and CONFIG files as a minimum, but you might find them elsewhere as well. The second problem is that even when you fix the paths in the files, you also have this little problem with references. They don't work and sometimes refreshing the reference doesn't help. Generally speaking, you need to recreate all of the references to ensure that they work properly. Otherwise, you get really strange errors such as one where Visual Studio no longer recognizes things like the Int32 data type. A third problem occurs when the testing environment varies between two machines. I normally do all of my testing on the local machine, which means that I check the source code out of the server, do any updates, test, and then check the code back into the server. I normally check the result with a browser afterward so I can see the user-view of things. Problems arise when the person who receives the code tries to do everything on the server. For example, you might encounter a problem where a UNC share isn't supported on Windows XP (see Knowledge Base article 810886 for details). Testing locally is always the best idea unless you really do want to set up a remote testing environment. So, what problems have you run into moving code from one machine to another? Let me know at JPMAmazon@yahoo.com. Overcoming the Office Ribbon
9:03 AM PDT, October 18, 2006, updated at 9:40 AM PDT, October 18, 2006
I've been working for quite some time now with the new Ribbon in Office and I think that I must have missed the purpose behind the change. The Ribbon doesn't appear to make Office any easier to use. In fact, I find that I'm less productive when I use it because I have to click a lot more to get anything done. The Ribbon also breaks macros and places any customized toolbars you created in previous versions of Office in an Add-ins tab where they become nearly inaccessible because nothing is labeled correctly. The final blow comes from the fact that the Ribbon consumes a lot of space. If you collapse the Ribbon to get your desktop real estate back, it becomes even more of a pain to use. In short, I haven't found anything to like about the Ribbon.
I would imagine that many administrators are now trying to figure out how they're going to retrain everyone to use the Ribbon. Thankfully, I don't have to consider that particular issue myself. However, I'd love to hear from some administrators who do have to face this problem to learn how they plan to deal with it. (Contact me at JPMAmazon@yahoo.com.) I thought about the issue for a while and talked with other people about the new Ribbon. I've talked with a lot of people over the last few months and haven't found a soul that really likes the new Ribbon. Did I miss you? What I'd really like to do is find someone who has used Office for a while and really likes the new Ribbon. I'm betting that the people who like the Ribbon are going to be far outnumbered by those who wonder what Microsoft is thinking, but I could be wrong. In the lastest edition of VBA for Dummies, 5th Edition (coming soon to a store near you), I discuss my observations about the Ribbon in depth and provide some helpful information on overcoming it. My basic observation is that anyone who has a pile of macros and custom templates is going to have a problem with the Ribbon; hopefully the tips I provide will help, but I'd really like to hear from you on the issue. Do you like the new Ribbon or do you see it as an impediment to performing useful work? Creating a Productive Programming Environment for C#
9:15 AM PDT, September 13, 2006
When Microsoft releases a new version of Visual Studio, I spend several hours playing with the IDE. Now the idea of playing around with something just for the sake of learning something new is a little foreign to some people because the result is more likely a good time than anything productive. However, playing around with the IDE really can net some significant results when working with Visual Studio.
I've shared a number of these hints and tips in my books. I figure that anything I've learned about the IDE might be helpful to you as well. For example, I always create my own custom messages because somehow, TODO: and HACK: just don't do it for me. I even go so far as to create custom messages for a particular project. A client might have a style change in mind and I'll go through and mark all of the required changes before I actually make them (making it less likely that I'll miss the one thing that turns out to be very obvious during my next client meeting). Creating a workable environment not only makes coding a lot more fun, but it can net significant gains in productivity as well. Even though I might not become more productive as I play with the IDE, I'll almost certainly benefit when I need it most, during a tight deadline. If you find that you like the tips and hints in my book, you might want to review the additional material I've provided on DevSource recently. You'll find eight new tips that can save you a significant amount of time and frustration. So, what's your favorite IDE change? Let me know at JPMAmazon@yahoo.com. Finding Those User Folders in Vista
2:07 PM PDT, August 11, 2006
Microsoft has decided to make life interesting for anyone using Vista by moving the user folders around. Sure, they've creating links for the old folder locations and these links normally work fine, but the fact of the matter is that they sometimes don't with older applications and that can cause problems when you don't know how to handle the situation.
Hard coding folder locations in an application has always been bad practice and this recent move by Microsoft shows just how bad it can be. Personally, I feel the new folder setup has a number of advantages, not the least of which is that the names make a lot more sense and are easy to include in scripts. The new names don't really affect me one way or the other, but I"m sure that Microsoft's goal is to make the folder names easier for people to understand. You can read more about my new view of Vista folders on DevSource. Of course, I'd like to get your feelings on the matter too. If you're using Vista today, check out the article and then check out your hard drive. You may not have even seen the change until I just mentioned it, which means that the change is a non-issue for you. However, if you have run across problems, let me know about them at JPMAmazon@yahoo.com. Using Visual Studio to Create Firefox Extensions
4:08 PM PDT, August 2, 2006
Sometimes it's interesting to see what you can accomplish with a given tool. Now, I'm all for expanding legtimate uses of a tool, but if I try something out and find it cumbersome, I certainly don't keep trying to perform the task with that tool. For example, I know people who might try to use a spreadsheet as a word processor. Sure, you can do it, but I know far less painful ways of typing a letter. That's why I thought it was so interesting that I was able to devise a method for creating Firefox extensions using Visual Studio.
Visual Studio is an excellent project organization tool, even when you don't use the predefined Microsoft templates. The editor provides all of the color coding you need to create a Firefox extension and you can even reasonably expect the IDE to help you write the code (as odd as that might sound). You can read more about my Firefox extension coding experience on DevSource. What other uses of Visual Studio have you tried? Contact me at JPMAmazon@yahoo.com with your experiences. Looking for the Unusual Disk Fix
7:15 AM PDT, July 26, 2006
A client had a problem the other day where their system wouldn't boot. The machine kept displaying a message about the boot manager being compressed and that the user should press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart the machine. That's about all of the information the user had to go on and it wasn't enough.
It turns out that the user had checked what seemed like a very simple option on the General tab of the drive's Properties dialog box; Compress Drive to Save Disk Space. The option worked as intended; the user did save disk space, but something went wrong. The system somehow managed to also compress the disk manager file, causing the system boot to fail. Fixing this problem isn't as easy or as obvious as it sounds. It turns out that the automatic methods for restoring the disk didn't work since there was actually nothing wrong with the drive. Here's the steps I used to fix the problem.
At this point, the system booted because the boot manager was no longer compressed. A knowledge of command line utilities is essential when you need to make repairs of this sort. You can find a general assortment of command line utilities, along with a wealth of tuning tips, in Windows XP Power Optimization. If you need hard core command line information, then you'll want to check out Windows Administration at the Command Line. Have you got a horror story to share? Write me at JPMAmazon@yahoo.com. Working with Low Level Code - Part 2
4:02 PM PDT, July 17, 2006
Working with low level code can be tiring, but it's also a thrill to see it work. My .NET Framework Solutions: In Search of the Lost Win32 API book was a good start, but I've worked with low level code quite often since I completed that book. I promised to let you know when the last of my series of articles about working with Windows messages was published. You can now see the entire series on DevSource. Here's the complete article list:
These four articles provide quite a bit of information about Windows messages that you might not know from a .NET perspective. Using these techniques can save you considerable time, especially when you need to interact with other applications. In fact, the final article reveals secrets you can use to interact with applications when you don't have the source code; a significant problem for most developers. Database Coverage in my Books
3:32 PM PDT, June 21, 2006
A lot of people write to ask me about database coverage in my books. It's an important question because every business I know of uses multiple databases for various tasks; everything from tracking clients to maintaining a list of sales. Databases are potentially the most important common software element for any business. Consequently, I normally include some type of database coverage in my books.
However, the question is what kind of database coverage I provide. It depends on the book and the audience I'm writing for, but generally I don't provide the same level of detail as a book that is dedicated to working with databases. After all, the author writing a database management book has more pages to devote to the topic. So, I concentrate on the essentials for the product that I'm discussing. When writing for a particular product, I try to cover all of the databases that the product will support. For Microsoft products, this means that my older books discusses Access and SQL Server. My newer books include XML databases and even discuss Excel to an extent in at least one case. I usually provide one chapter for each database and show you how to create a basic single table example. In some cases, I included examples that rely on multiple tables. My newer books also include examples that show how to use stored procedures and views. I usually rely on the easiest method for accomplishing a task, rather than the most flexible method. Sometimes I include more advanced examples. For example, Mastering Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition and Mastering Web Development with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 include a shopping cart application and I demonstrate how to perform tasks such as indexing your Web site. The goal of my examples is to demonstrate how the product in question interacts with the database, not necessarily to make you a database management professional. Web services present a different challenge. All three of my Web service books concentrate on working with the Web service using a database application and I don't provide any training on the database application itself. You'll find examples for Access, SQL Server, and MySQL in these books. Each major language has at least one database example showing one method you can use to store data from the Web service. Why don't I provide more details about the DBMS? I'm assuming that most readers are focusing on the Web service and already know how to work with the DBMS. Of course, I'm constantly trying to improve my books. If you have one of my books and find the database coverage less than thrilling, please let me know. I always want to hear your ideas; I want to make sure my books answer all of your questions. Feel free to contact me at JPMAmazon@yahoo.com.
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Bio
John Mueller is a freelance author and technical editor. He has writing in his blood, having produced 73 books and over 300 articles to date. The topics range from networking to artificial intelligence and from database management to heads down programming. His most recent book is "VBA for Dummies, 5th Edition" (Wiley, ISBN: 978-0-470-04650-0). His technical editing skills have helped over 52 authors refine the content of their manuscripts. You can reach John on the Internet at JMueller@mwt.net and his Web site at: http://www.mwt.net/~jmueller/.
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