Office Newswire: Visual Studio 11 lineup announced – 5.23.2012

Attention! Today’s newswire is brought to you by the recent Facebook billionaire… Paul Hewson… aka Bono. I’m listening to Achtung Baby as I type the newswire this morning. I think this album just gets better with age… like a fine wine… etc.

Isn’t it about time for a new U2 album? C’mon guys, it’s approaching 5 years since the last one! Okay it’s been 3… but it seems longer than that. Before I continue I must pause to grab more coffee. I’m worked up already and I’ve only written a few sentences. When I return, we’ll dig right in…

Office news & editorials!

• Free yourself from the tyranny of SharePoint :: For your intranet needs, should you use WordPress instead of SharePoint? I don’t know… maybe. Definitely not WordPress out-of-the-box. It is lighter weight than SharePoint and the price is great. How about I keep using both? I like them both very much but for different reasons. I love the article title btw.
• Visual Studio Live! Keynote addresses ‘Developer of the Future’ :: In the future there will be robots… but for now, let us ponder and discuss the future role of developers. The author of this article states “[Developers need to] find an area of expertise but leave room for working knowledge of a broad set of adjacent technologies, languages and frameworks.” That’s right, become a software development generalist and create, create, create!
• How Microsoft lost the future :: The author takes his time and gives lots of facts. In the end he lays the blame on S___ B___. All the cool hipsters do it.
• Doug’s Mailbag: Ballmer bashing justified? :: Probably. He’s no Bill Gates and one can coast only so long. But to be fair, Mr. Ballmer’s tenure as CEO has been quite successful. You can’t call him a failure and keep your credibility.
• Open source suites go beyond Microsoft Office :: Any of you out there use these open source office suites? Every now and then I install one of them, try to create a document with them, curse a lot, uninstall it, and return Microsoft Office. It’s been so long since I did this I just might need to go through the cycle again. Maybe I’ll try LibreOffice but I’ll know how it will end.

Office tips, tricks & tools

• A quick Word trick for typing text into a scanned document :: This is a nice trick. I think I’ll try next time I am expected to sign a PDF.
• Create SharePoint Decision meeting workspace from Outlook :: It takes a bit of Ribbon customizing combined with know-how. But you can do it! This article explains how.
• Giving iPad PowerPoint presentations just got a lot better :: I gave a presentation last week that covered our Ribbon Designer for SharePoint product (which is awesome btw – you should check it). When presenting, I always struggle with how best to move back and forth between my presentation and my code. I’ve toyed with the idea of using an old laptop for PowerPoint and my current laptop for the code. I’m still working through ideas. This article has sent into further thought. If ever I figure it out, you’ll be the first to know. That’s incorrect. I’ll bore my wife with it first… then I’ll tell you. You’ll be the second to know.
• How malicious code can run in Office documents :: Ummm. VBA. Also by embedding Flash. I didn’t know that one. Always good to know how things can go very wrong.
• Download: Microsoft Office for Mac 2011: Training tutorials and videos :: Believe it or not, I use Office for Mac 2011 every week. It’s similar but different. I prefer to make PowerPoint presentations with it because of the Reorder Objects feature. I sure hope Office 15 incorporates this feature. If you are new to Office for Mac… these videos are for you.
• Microsoft Word shortcut keys for bloggers and writers :: A tip just for the budding writers out there. The serious and experienced writers already know these shortcut keys. That said, I learned at least 3 new good ones.

News for all Microsoft developer types

Bonus section today due to the abundance of good, all-around, developer stuff.

• .NET Rocks! Podcast: Beth Massi builds apps with LightSwitch in Studio 11 :: A good friend of the Office developer community, Beth Massi, shows up at the .NET Rocks studios to discuss Lightswitch. LightSwitch is gaining steam and looks to have a bright feature. If you need to build apps that consume data (and who doesn’t these days right?), this is worth a listen. Plus, Beth is super cool and knows her stuff.
• Final Visual Studio 11 Edition Lineup announced :: The suspension is over. There will be 4 editions… 5 if you count the Express edition.
• Hands-on: GitHub for Windows takes the pain out of using git :: This was needed. I use Git off and on. This tool might just make me consider it as my source code repository of choice.

Office Developer items of note

• CAML Designer receives an update :: CAML is the query language of SharePoint but few really know it well… or want to know it well. For those who prefer tools over knowledge, this update to the CAML Designer comes as good news.
• Embedded Excel services on your website :: Why would you want to do this? Well, because you can! Plus, it can prove quite useful to your site’s visitors. The author does a great job of casting some vision and providing instruction on how to pull it off.
• SharePoint 2010 Client Object Model (Part 1 :: Part 2) :: A two part series with code samples!
• How to set duplex printing for Microsoft Word Automation clients in C#, VB.Net :: After reading this item you will want to purchase a duplex-capable printer just to try it out.

Cutting room floor

• Windows keyboards let you write in Russian
• Why I hate unit testing
• Windows Phone has quietly picked up 7% of the Chinese market