MovGP0

eddwo wrote:

Maurits wrote: eddwo wrote:IMHO it should be like the IE back and forward buttons. Speaking of which... where are they???

Thats a Longhorn style window, so the back-forward buttons are no longer part of the toolbar and are now more like part of the window chrome.

In Longhorn Shell Windows + IE7 + WinFX Navigation Applications will share a common style of back-forward button in to top left corner of the chrome.

Well,
but are they allowing going multiple steps backward by a kind of drop-down menu. It doesn't interrest me if common users don't uses them -  I have a very heavy use of it. Does the current model allow that? I can't see that from these screenshots.

The users who don't understand (I dont say "need" because that's not the truth) this behavior, are currently just ignoring that behavior. So I don't see the need - and discourage -  to remove the drop-down menu functionality.

moofish wrote:

Using nano electronics or something a future mouce could change its shape and size, from big US hands to tiny Jap ones[/qoute]
What has nano-electronic to do with? You would need an mechanical solution - a kind of formable wax ie.
[qoute]what about a mouse that changes colour to match the theme of the PC, not just solid plastic colour, like the wallpaper of the future will

OLEDs would be able to do this. But there are just kind of research today.

moofish wrote:

finger scanner on mouse, with encryption so wireless is possible

Hmm... - don't understand what the one has to do with the other; finger scanner, encryption and wireless are three different and independend Technologies; You can only combine them into a singular product.

moofish wrote:

force feedback, buttons that give feedback when clicking, say a sandy texture or liquid like feel - i remember reading something about this for computer screens

I remember there where some tries to do so. But the force coppling didn't worked well. So there is a solution using an kind of little force-feedback-joystick with an Mouse on it.
(but I don't know who the vendor is/was - sry volks!)

moofish wrote:

theres was a story about a mousemat that can chanrge devices (not just mice) that lye on top of it, what about working toward a standard like that - I think it was in the new scientist or on zdnet

Throught electro-magnetic field. But it has also some drawbacks:

• Cant use mouse without it - at least for a longer time.
• The Field has influence to other devices like CRTs.

moofish wrote:

fuel cell mice?

Fuel cells are for high energy for a short time. When needing low energy for a long time a modern accumulator is much better.

moofish wrote:

i would also like to have my (wireless) keyboard have its keys light up. I dont care if its supposed to be in a well lit room, sometimes when I watch a dvd with the lights off i just need to see the keys properly. What about a sensor on the keyboard that would raise the light levels of the keys to suit the darkness. Or like in the film Hackers 1993 (yea i know) this laptop had a keyboard with funny keys, they had pictures on or something, for those that want to each key should be a super cheap screen which could show the keyboard characters in the font that the PC is themed too, or a picture like a smiley. This would be good for shortcuts, also the (wireless) keyboard keys should light up at a clap or voice command, even have the lights fade in from left to right etc...

Such keyboards are existing too - except I'm not sure about the dimmer-function.
Personally I know my keyboard very well and don't need this function because I can handle it witout looking at it. But that's just a 2 cent meaning...

I think the best Keyboard would be a Maltron one. There are real innovative. The biggest drawbacks are the awful looking design (personally I hate the color at most) and the users who don't want to learn a new layout.

The Multimedia keys are one of that things I've never needed - instead I've learnt the most important Shortcuts of my Programs.

As my personal mouse I prefer a simple optical Locitec OEM-Mouse (in white) with cord (I dont like the drawbacks of the wireless technology). The microsoft-mices are nice, but aren't fitting well into my hands - much to heigth.

And for CAD/CAM there is nothing better than an additional good SpaceMouse.

The lack of native Math-Support by Word and Scientific-Diagramtypes like  Smith-Diagrams (Gummel-Plots; similar to Polar-Diagrams), Ternary-Diagrams (something like 3D-Point-Diagrams but drawn in 2D by forming an triangle with the XYZ-Axes), Vector-Diagrams, Stock-exchange-Diagrams (Points or Lines with the ammount of statistical error), and the like by Excel; is one of the biggest Problem when trying to use Word for scientific documents.

In Fact, this was the purpose to waste Word for my main use - even there are lot of good but expensive Programs witch do that work really good.
(I'm currently writing Scientific-Documents in HTML and/or T_EX)

Maurits wrote:

freney wrote:Excellent, I lke XML. But does this mean that MathML will/could be natively supported in Word or other apps?

Equation Editor was one of my favorite Word extras.  IIRC it was actually developed by a third party (not Microsoft) who still sells a pro version?  Is that true?

The "Equation Editor" is the small version of MathType witch is a typesetting-only version of Mathematica. But because it is just an OLE Plugin and not natively Word it has many Drawbacks:

• Fonts are looking horrible when resizing
• Terrible (meaning "no") vertical line-Align

Also the "Equation Editor" has a lack of Keyboard and Font Support. Even it is based on T_EX. Personally I'm using MathCAD because of the better Keyboard Support and the more flexible Rendering (Graphs, better looking Fonts when resizing, etc.). But if u want to write technical Articles you are better at learning T_EX and using Publicon (but you are better using T_EX on Linux - then you can choose between more programs).

The idea I've described above would allow to insert MathML directly into WordML and let the MathML-Program do the translation from MathML (to SVG) to Avalon witch would be rendered by Word. So if Word has mot MathML Support and you have a program like a Avalon based Version of Equation Editor witch can work as Plugin for Word (you need special interfaces witch aren't existing today) you wold have proper vertical align, and no resizing artefacts, and proper font-style choosing and rendering by applying the Word-Document-Style also to the Avalon-Code generated from the MathML-Code.

The only problem that keeps is the lack of Shortcut-Support of the "Equation Editor".

But currently tis is just an idea of mine - not a product of the near future like Office 12.

eddwo wrote:

If you have a Word document, and you embed part of a spreadsheet from Excel, while Word is running that sheet is an embedded Ole object.

What happens when you save the document as docx? Does the excel object become a binary ole file inside the zip container, or does the object become an Excel xml referenced from the word xml file?
How does Word know which embedded objects can be persisted as xml files rather than binary ole objects?

Interesting Question. The ideal case would be the later.
The Answer is do not using OLE but .Net and XML where possible. When you have the ability to see  Office as a single Program and Word, Excel, etc. are only Plugins it should not be a real Rocket Science (but even a lot of work).
-- Ok, I truly have no idea how the next office will implement this.

But I think there is a lack of innovation because some of the Ideas from OLE arent realized until today.

In an ideal case u have only one program (Windows) and file-format (XML). Accordingly to the unix idea everything-is-a-file there should be an everything-is-a-XML-element mentology. And so u can begin make the whole filesystem as an (virtual) single XML-File. Instead of filetypes there could be used the XML-Namespace.
-- I think something like this is the idea behind WinFS.

If the "Main Program" Windows opens an File (XML-Section with an special file-namespace in the Analogy) it should look in the registry with program is registered for the given Filetype (namespace). The Program is then started with is then responsible for loading and handling the file (section).

When the program (ie. Word) is up and the file (ie. .docx) contains a namespace the program can't handle by itself (ie. a .xlsx subsection) the program witch is registered is loaded and used for handling it.
-- Instead of inline-XML-data there could also be a XLink and/or XInclude

The presentation and handling of the section works mostly like OLE in the current aproach.

A more advanced approach would be to use a common rendering objects/environment - something like Avalon. Instead of returning a rectangular-bitmap-representation of the subsection, the handling program could return a Stream of Avalon-Objects.

In the example as given above Word could host the whole file and Excel handels the Excel-Subsection. The Data of the Excel Subsection is handeled by Excel and gets transformed to Avalon-Objects with are sended back to Word. Word itself transformes the Word-part of the file also into Avalon objects and then integrates the result from Excel. The Graphics Subsystem of Avalon is then presenting the Data to the user and gets input actions based on triggers (I think of a kind of dynamic created EventHandlers) embeded in the Avalon-Data.

Given so if the user now is editing the text of the word-part, the mouse and keyboard events are handeled by Word. But if the user clicks on an cell of the Excel-Table (given that the subsection described above is a table), the events are calling Excel-Methods.

Because this works transparent for user it may seem that word has the same possibilities than Excel - Excel appears as an kind of Ad-Hoc-Plugin for Word. Because the common interface is Avalon, the same works also in the other direction, when embedding an Word-Document into an Excel Sheet. Also the use of Avalon would give the possibility to draw the data in non-rectangular and auto-linebreaking bounds and possibly even over the content of the host-document.

-- a bit radical thinking so far, and I'm not a professional writer - but I hope you can understand what I mean. But please correct me.