Most Popular
| Top Stories | Commented | Featured |
Weekend Open Forum: Have you upgraded to Windows 7 yet? What is there to like/not? featured
Tech Tip of The Week: Turn Off your Display Using a Windows Shortcut and More featured
Netflix PS3 streaming arrives tomorrow
Dell's ultra-thin Adamo XPS to ship soon for $1,799
Windows 7 crushed Vista in early launch sales
Nvidia Tegra 2 to double performance, arrive next year?
TS Community
| User Gallery | Recent Discussion |
 techspot1 by fredoliver |  TechSpot at CES 2007 by Julio |
 CIMG0336 by darkman3d |  Targu-Mures City Panorama by eazy_duz_em |
TechSpot RSSSoftware
Microsoft announces numerous improvements to OOXML
Microsoft is looking to make its own open-document format, OOXML, seem more appealing to the world. They have recently announced a series of enhancements to the standard that seek to increase compatibility between other documents, particularly with documents created under the competing ODF standard.
This week, the company introduced a plug-in for Firefox that allows OOXML documents to be viewed within the browser, removing the need to first download a file. They've also introduced a new SDK for Java development, more “translator” tools that include new templates for creating ODF-compatible documents and better compatibility with ODF in general.
You can easily see where critics will lead with this. Microsoft in the past has been accused of “Extending” a standard, only to make their now unofficial standard de-facto and leave other companies who actually conform the original standard in the dust. Whether or not that is a tactic they plan to use with OOXML remains to be seen, though as it stands right now ODF has a better adoption rate than OOXML does.
This week, the company introduced a plug-in for Firefox that allows OOXML documents to be viewed within the browser, removing the need to first download a file. They've also introduced a new SDK for Java development, more “translator” tools that include new templates for creating ODF-compatible documents and better compatibility with ODF in general.
You can easily see where critics will lead with this. Microsoft in the past has been accused of “Extending” a standard, only to make their now unofficial standard de-facto and leave other companies who actually conform the original standard in the dust. Whether or not that is a tactic they plan to use with OOXML remains to be seen, though as it stands right now ODF has a better adoption rate than OOXML does.
Related Stories
