Word 2007 to Feature Built-in Blogging

Vitaly Friedman writes "Microsoft has revealed a surprising new feature for Word 2007: built-in blog publishing. The big surprise is this: the HTML that is generated is actually not that bad. 'Joe Friend, a lead program manager (Microsoft's term for a person who creates the specifications for software that programmers implement) has posted an entry on his blog regarding an interesting new feature being implemented for Word 2007: direct publishing of blogs to the web from within the program.'"

Word blogging = Clippy Returns!

Clippy: I see you're writing something that's critical of a repressive regime. Would you like me to:

( ) Censor your writings prior to ftp upload?
( ) Inform government agents?
( ) Prepare a firing squad?
(*) Do nothing (but fuck up the html)

Word blogging

So when can we expect a direct interface in slashdot for MS word users?

Spelling the cause?

You know... if Microsoft integrated a spell checker that shows squiggly lines in Internet Explorer, the main reason I've seen for wanting to use word to blog goes away.

Gotta love Safari for that, I guess...?

Re:Spelling the cause?

And Firefox 2 will have spell checking

I'm sick of saying this: spell checking is the responsibility of the GUI toolkit not the application. Why does every damn application need to implement its own spell checker? Why does no-one other than Apple and the KDE team seem to realise that this kind of basic functionality should be available in every text box, anywhere in the GUI (but with the option for developers to disable it for fields at design time).

If Firefox 2 has a built in spell checker then it damn well better have an option to disable it and use the standard MacOS spell-checker (the one I already use for every single other application on my system) instead.

Don't even get me started on web-sites that implement a spell checker...

Re:Spell checker in every text box??? No thanks.

I see you've never used Mac OS X. It's not bloatware. It's the lack of bloatware. I get spellcheck in an AIM client, an IRC client, an e-mail client, a text editor, a browser... but it's not five different spell checkers, each one adding bloat. It's just one spell checker, that works where I want it... except in Firefox, my default browser du jour.

Re:Spelling the cause?

Less Internet-literate people (people who don't know HTML, people who are uncomfortable typing in a text editor, etc.) have plenty of reasons to want to use a familiar word processor to blog.

Do we really want blogging to be more accessible to your grandmother? It's bad enough that blogging is accessible to 14 year old girls.

Current Mood: I pee every time I sneeze.

It's Microsoft.

Obviously they would claim the HTML produced is "not bad". What do you expect them to say? "Our program is terrible, don't bother using it."

Your right it IS Microsoft.

You know what, since nobody else seems to want to do it, I'll go out on a limb here and defend M$ this time. I'm impressed they claimed that the HTML isn't bad. I think it's good of them to man up. Because in saying that the new stuff isn't bad, they're admitting the old HTML code in word was.....and they're taking steps to fix the problem. If you actually looked at the source from the article (which was generated using word), it looked clean and readable. Nothing like the HTML we used to see from Word. On /. everytime Word is mentioned you get the same old responces, "I haven't touched a new verison of word since 97", "they haven't added any new features that are worthwhile", and "I don't even use the program, it's M$ they suck". Fair enough. But can you really complain about them not adding new features, then bitch when they obviously start thinking and try to? Do you think the people who post here are Word's targeted consumers? The majority of people don't really understand that much about computers, nor do they want to. They like to check email, surf the web, chat online, write in their blog, and upload their pictures for everyone to see. So the fact that the new Word might have a blog publishing feature is a big deal for most people who use the lastest versions of Word.

Not bad

You know, when people are saying that the quality of the generated data is "actually not that bad", with a surprised and delighted tilt in their voices, you know your customers aren't exactly expecting greatness anymore.

Tiny little prerequsiite

Blogs viewable with only IE7 with Windows Vista Cray Edition installed. :)

Oh, and the ability to upload Word macros directly onto the internets! Wow, that should be infallible!! Right, right?

main effect

The main effect of this will be that we see even more blogs that use Comic Sans. Oh boy, I can hardly wait!

Re:May struggle to take off

Is it W3C compliant?

Nope. [w3.org] And that's after he hand-tweaked some of the output.

What Word 2007 really needs.

1) More fonts. 2) More clip art. 3) Themes. Then it can tap into all that teeny blogging energy. "It looks like you are whining about your life. Would you like me to set your "Now Listening To:" music tag to something appropriate?"

Two Words

Microsoft Frontpage [microsoft.com]

Need I say more?

The beauty of e-mails generated by Word, the strict adherence to HTML standards demonstrated by Frontpage and IE....

And of course the literary values beloved by blogger everywhere...

Wait for the whoops

The first time that someone accidently blogs sensitive company/military information without realising it is going to be hilarious.

I need to see my doctor...

M-x doctor

I am the psychotherapist. Please, describe your problems. Each time
you are finished talking, type RET twice.

I am concerned that Word 2007 will include direct publishing of blogs to the web from within the program.

Why do you say that?

Because Word's HTML output at any time in the past has always been terrible, embedding hundreds of unnecessary manual font changes, eschewing cascading style sheets, and generally producing HTML that makes a typical web developer want to vomit.

Is it because word's html output at any time in the past has always
been terrible embedding hundreds of unnecessary manual font changes
eschewing cascading style sheets and generally producing html that
makes a typical web developer want to vomit that you came to me?

Yes, I am afraid that eventually MS's Word will include more features
than Emacs.

Does it bother you that eventually ms's word will include more features
than emacs?

Well, actually not. Thanks doctor.

Don't mention.

This feature is so 2001...

Most blogging systems have some kind of web service now that allows integration with many editors. On my own site [taskboy.com] I manage updates and deletes [taskboy.com] through emacs (on Windows, no less). I'm curious to see if Word will support Blogger, which is owned by Google.

Just filling out the web form for this comment fills like writing in cuneiform [wikipedia.org]...

This is about Windows Live Spaces

Microsoft wants to compete with Yahoo, MySpace, et. al. as a user-generated content portal. Everyone and his donkey uses Word. If you're already using Word, even though it will support Blogger and other blog sites, I would be surprised if it weren't just a bit easier to use with Windows Live Spaces [wikipedia.org].

I think of this as somewhat analogous to the iPod/iTunes connection. Everyone has an iPod (yes, yes, I know not *everyone* has an iPod, and that a certain percentage of people just love Ogg Vorbis, but think Middle America here), so iTunes is a natural choice for music downloads. Everyone has Word, so blogging on Windows Live Spaces with the handy new "Blog it now!" feature is a natural choice.

Will it work? I doubt it. There are just too many already available tools that make blogging easy. Plus, Microsoft's brand has been so damaged that I'm not sure even Ma and Pa Kettle are going to jump over to Windows Live Spaces in droves.

Even more blogs...

Where is your god now?

If you're surprised, you're not paying attention

Sure, the quality of HTML produced by previous versions of Word has been awful. Most (all?) WYSIWYG HTML editors went through that phase, but Word certainly took a damn sight longer to grow out of it than most.

However, MS tools generating decent HTML isn't new. VS.NET and ASP.NET generate acceptable HTML, and it all works cross-browser too. (Some of the controls degrade gracefully in non-IE browsers, but the basic functionality is still there - treeview controls still work, just less dynamically, for example).

It's nice to see the Office group finally taking a leaf out of the dev tool group's book.

Does anyone RTFA?

Most comments made so far are completely irrelevant.

If you read the blog post it is fairly clear that this means that Word will send what you wrote to a blog through a blog API like Atom.

The means that the HTML that needs to be generated is fairly straightforward as it only needs to mark-up the text on a post and entire page - i.e. all it needs to do is paragraphs, lists, blockquote, headings, <em> and <strong>. It probably will be OK on the details given the the post.

Secondly it means it will not be doing FTP transfers.

Thirdly it means that this can only be used by someone who already has a blog with an API that allows posting with a blogging tool.

It is a perfectly logical step given the MS principle of making a few complex tools rather than lots of simple ones.

It is not a direct threat to Blogger, Moveable Type etc., as people will still need to host their blog somewhere. Of course MS might use the opportunity to point some people towards MSN Spaces - but the far stronger use of IE to point people towards MSN Search as not got them very far, has it?

Re:Needless

How do you know its not wanted? There are a large number of less technical people out there who don't know HTML from a hole in the ground. For them creating their blog from within Word would be perfect. They already know how to create a document in Word so their time to create something would be shorter and as such more rewarding. The key thing to remember is most blogs aren't created for the reader, they are created for the blogger.

Re:Needless

That's a very valid point. Among my friends is an extremely talented technical writer who spends her *entire working day* in Word. Recently, I coded a collaborative blog for me, her and another friend - a place for us to crack jokes, post stupid photos and generally riff off one-another's slanted sense of humor - took me about 3 hours and I used the FCKeditor [fckeditor.net] for composing the blog entries.
 
You wouldn't believe her delight when she found herself able to "post something to the internet". She was all smiles for weeks, thanking me repeatedly for setting it up. She now has a huge sense of empowerment and doesn't have to know jack about any nerdly technologies / markup languages. She just goes to the post page, inserts her pictures, clicks the Post button and bam - she's "on the internet". Take my word for it when I say she is beside herself with joy.

So agreed... this feature will be well appreciated and well used by less technical people.

What's the big fucking deal with anti-blogging?

If you don't like blogs, don't read 'em.

I understand why you wouldn't want to read the "Why I like the color pink" blog, or the "I just took a dump" blog.

But you're bashing on an entire medium. Hell, even television has a lot of good content hidden among the chaff. When you discount blogging out of hand, you're lumping sites like Daring Fireball [daringfireball.net], The Technology Liberation Front [techliberation.com] and IP Democracy [ipdemocracy.com] in with the navel-gazers.

Sure, there are a lot of useless blogs. There are also a lot of useless magazines and books. Personally I prefer a world where there are more mediums of expression, not fewer. Slashdot is an excellent example of this. It could easily be considered a group blog, filled with useless opinions, but it is obviously more than that. Get all your information and all of your opininions from Big Media if you want. I like having more options.