Outlook needs to have a better model to develop plugins

By Adam Cogan in Outlook 0 Comment

The current object model does not make for nice and easy plugin development. Some issues include:

Setting the title of the COM addin in the options page:

Figure: It takes a lot of effort to change the name of the tab in options

Figure: It takes a lot of effort to change the name of the tab in options

To set the title using VSTO you have to have code like this, which is rather unnatural:

[System.Runtime.InteropServices.DispId(-518)]
public string Caption 
{
	get {return "SSW eXtreme Emails";}
}

Throw out backwards compatibility and start a fresh. For example, you should be able to inherit the contacts page and change the way it looks and add extra functionality to it.

Adding “Created By” and “Updated By” fields for contact information

By Adam Cogan in Outlook 0 Comment

I want to know who created this contact and who updated the information for this contact, it should have “Created By” and “Updated By” fields.

Figure: Contact information

Figure: Contact information

Suggestion: Adding “Created By” and “Updated By” fields for contact information, and automatic save the logon user to the fields after a contact information was created or updated.

We have a rule better to interfaces about this, please see Data Entry Forms – The way to develop Data Entry Forms – Created/Last Updated By Fields

Add captions for images

By Adam Cogan in PowerPoint 0 Comment

Microsoft Word currently supports attaching captions to embedded images, as seen in the following screenshot. This cannot be done with embedded images in Microsoft PowerPoint, however. It would be useful if users could add captions to PowerPoint images as well.

 

 

Figure: Microsoft Word's image pop-up menu includes Caption command

Figure: Microsoft Word’s image pop-up menu includes Caption command

Last Saved By

By Adam Cogan in Frontpage 0 Comment

I love editing web pages using FrontPage directly from Internet Explorer. However doing it this way can cause concurrent editing problems, as it doesn’t recognise which user is making the changes. You can see that the the “saved to the server by …” field is blank. You don’t get this problem if you open the file in FrontPage from Windows Explorer directly. Unfortunately there is no work-around to this bug.

Figure: Editing in FrontPage from Internet Explorer potential causes concurrent editing problems

Figure: Editing in FrontPage from Internet Explorer potential causes concurrent editing problems

Add captions for images

By Adam Cogan in Frontpage 0 Comment

Microsoft Word currently supports attaching captions to embedded images, as seen in the following screenshot. This cannot be done with embedded images in Microsoft FrontPage, however. It would be useful if users could add captions to FrontPage images as well.

Figure: Microsoft Word's image pop-up menu includes Caption command

Figure: Microsoft Word’s image pop-up menu includes Caption command