Tag: essentially

Office Labs Offers Search Commands

April 29, 2008 by Jason

Microsoft is hard at work searching for ways to improve its Office System. This is why the company has introduced a quasi-independent effort dubbed Office Labs. Designed to be a sandbox set up to streamline the experimenting, building and testing of new ideas, Microsoft Office Labs will offer the first taste of new products and features while still in the most early stages of development, even as prototypes. An illustrative example in this regard is Search Commands for the Office 2007 System.

“Search Commands helps you find commands, options, wizards, and galleries in Microsoft Office 2007 Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Just type what you’re looking for in your own words and click the command you need. Search Commands also includes Guided Help, which acts as a tour guide for specific tasks,” reveals the product’s description. Read More»

Fix Vista’s Safely Remove Hardware Mechanism

September 05, 2007 by Jason

The Safely Remove Hardware mechanism is by no means something new to Windows Vista. In fact the feature has only survived into Vista with little to no enhancements. Essentially, Safely Remove Hardware is an integer part of the Vista model for managing Plug and Play devices, designed to notify the operating system that a certain item will be removed. The feature will make sure that there is no more interaction between Windows Vista and the Plug and Play hardware attached in order to streamline the removal of specific devices without having to shut down the operating system and without leading to loss of data.

“Some Plug and Play devices can be installed or removed while the system is running. For example, USB, IEEE 1394, and PC Card devices can be added to and removed from a fully powered system. When such hardware is added or removed, Read More»

Download Ajax View to Monitor JavaScript in IE7

August 31, 2007 by Jason

The Ajax View JavaScript Instrumentation Proxy is the end result of the work from Microsoft Research. Essentially the tool is designed to act as a HTTP proxy focused on monitoring the performance and behavior of JavaScript applications within Internet Explorer 7, although Ajax View is not limited to just Microsoft’s browser. The Redmond company only recently delivered a public version of Ajax View under an academic and non-commercial use license.

“Ajax View is an HTTP proxy that instruments JavaScript as it’s served to the client based on a set of rules defined by plug-ins. The download includes a plug-in that contains a commented sample instrumentation policy. This design has a couple important effects. [First off] you can customize Ajax View to monitor exactly the JavaScript behavior you’re looking for, whether it’s about performance, or how people navigate through your site. And using Ajax View does not require modification of either the page source or the browser,” explained John Hrvatin, Program Manager, Internet Explorer. Read More»