After I read this interesting blog entry by Brian Jones, I got inspired to play around with the new equation tool and more! I'll post my findings here.

First, some interesting trivia about math support in Office 2007:

• Microsoft investigated using MathML in Office 2007 but found out that it doesn't achieve all the required scenarios.
• Murray Sargent, who is one of the key persons behind math support in Office 2007, has also worked on the MathML 2.0 targets body. This has helped with interoperability and it shows.

I started playing around with the new equation tool which is cool by itself. Here are some tests:

Copying equation as text

First I tried doing some basic equation and picked a ready-made quadratic formula from the list.

Then I copy/pasted it into Notepad and it changed automatically into linear form:
x=(-b±√(b^2-4ac))/2a! How cool is that?

Easier to ask help from someone via e-mail, for example: "Please, can you help me with this equation: e^x=1+x/1!+x^2/2!+x^3/3!+⋯,-∞<x<∞"

Copying MathML

Brian's blog mentioned that you can copy and paste MathML and it gets translated automatically.

I found a site MathML Central and there was a page that allows generating sample MathML.

For example, if you copy the following MathML to the Word 2007 (beta2):

<math xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML'>
<mrow>
<mi>sin</mi>
<mo>&#8289;</mo>
<mo>(</mo>
<msup>
<mi>x</mi>
<mn>2</mn>
</msup>
<mo>)</mo>
</mrow>
</math>

 It's automatically translated to: sin (x^2)

Of course, that was quite simple example, but most other tests worked fine, too. Some matrix didn't seem to translate, though.

I don't really need equations that often if ever. Anyway, the new math support is just one example of the enthusiasm and attention to the detail that the Office team has put into the next version.

Office 2007 has very powerful tools for creating and editing graphics. They are powerful enough for doing visually appealing graphics for web pages!

Even though I prefer simple web pages with minimum amount of graphics, I admit that they often make the web page visually more appealing and often also more usable, if used carefully. As I’m not so visual person, my skills with tools like Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop and Paint.NET are limited.

When playing around with the Office 2007 I thought, why wouldn’t I use it for doing the graphics? It can save you a lot of time to get Web 2.0-ish effects like gradients and glass table effects (reflection) that are a trend these days. Just take a look at atlas.asp.net, for example.

The process goes like this:

1. Start some Office 2007 –program, like PowerPoint.
2. Go to the Insert-tab of the ribbon.
3. Insert some shape and adjust its properties like size and text.
4. Select the shape and go to the Drawing Tools / Format-tab
5. Choose effects for the shape and/or text. You can combine as many as you like.
6. When satisfied with the result, right-click on the shape and save it as an image file like PNG.

Here are some examples that I did with the PowerPoint 2007 Beta 2 in a few minutes.

Disclaimer: Examples were done quickly just to show how easy they are to make. They are not supposed to be prime examples of web graphics ;)

There is a really interesting blog entry in Brian Jones’s blog about competing document standards. Now that Microsoft’s formats are based on XML, there are lots of comparisons and discussions about the ODF and Open XML -formats. Basically for the ODF-side thinks that Microsoft should ditch the Open XML for ODF or at least add support for the latter. Like Brian Jones mentions in the quote below, the arguments are mostly political:

“Almost every site I visit to find more information focuses almost completely on the marketing or political side of ODF. There are discussions around conformance, logo compliance, getting governments to support it, etc. etc. etc. I'm having a really hard time finding any good blogs or sites that discuss how to actually use it.”

The article in questions goes into detail about technical differences between the formats/specifications and rises an issue about numbering formats. While it may seem like a little issue, localization etc makes things more complicated.

There is also a nice set of comments. Check especially this one by M. David Petterson Quote:

“What I have a hard time understanding is that I often hear people suggest that because Microsoft is a monopoly share holder of the desktop, it has caused them to become less innovative, less feature focused, and instead attempting to lull the users into accepting mediocrity with a smile. What's odd is that it seems to be the same folks who make statements such as this also believe that working together to create one document format is the right thing to do. So on one hand, the lack of competition due to the monopoly is a bad thing because it allows Microsoft the "luxury" of being less innovative, because there's nothing pushing them to do more.  On the other hand, there seems to be a belief that, in fact, lack of competition isn't a bad thing after all, and in fact a better world will result if we could all just focus on being less competitive in the office document space rather than more.”

Elsewhere there are also heated conversations about ZDNet.com article where “Microsoft claims that the OpenDocument Format (ODF) is too slow for easy use.”

I think that while a common file format for office documents would be a nice idea in the perfect world, it is still quite impossible to achieve in the real world. There would always be different implementations, bugs etc by each maker. Just look at where we are with supporting of the (X)HTML/CSS standards and browsers. While many latest browsers support them quite well (excluding IE6), there are still lots of minor differences while the specs are much simpler than those of Word, for example.

Fortunately, due to the nature of the XML and open specifications, interoperability between office suites will be much easier to implement in the future.

Finally installed the latest beta of the Office on my home computer… work laptop to follow soon! I must say that this beta 2 has much better feel to it than the last refresh did.

Of course, this post was made with Word 2007’s blogging feature. :D

Now that the writing of the blog entries is much more convenient, I hope to write more often. I just need to think of some interesting subjects (meaning: posts unlike this one).