Lots of things have happened in the past week. Instead of me blogging about every single one, I’ll just do a weekly review post.

Released products

• Internet Explorer 7
• Firefox 2
• Windows Desktop Search 3 (not recommended with Office 2007 B2TR)
• Windows Defender
• Fedora Core 6

RibbonCustomizer Update

I have spent quite some time on my RibbonCustomizer add-in. It now works with Access, Excel, PowerPoint and Word B2TR. I am still working on adding Outlook support. One of the questions I am struggling with right now is what to include in the Freeware version of my add-in, and for what features I should charge something. If you have an opinion on this, read the overview of my add-in and post a comment here. Thanks!

Noteworthy things

• If you are developing a .NET add-in for Office 2007, and want to test it under Vista, you have to use Vista RC1 (build 5600). Office 2007 B2TR is only supported with RC1 and any .NET add-in will simply not load if you use a later build (like I did for several frustrating hours). I haven’t tried this, but you might alternatively able to install Visual Studio in a later Vista build and compile the add-in with it. That might make it work with a later Vista build as well.
• Office 2007 does not install the .NET framework. If you are developing a .NET-based add-in for Office 2007 that has to run under Windows XP, keep in mind that your users might have to install the framework to even be able to use it.
• Jensen Harris has returned to blogging the Office UI Bible. In his latest post, he posted the final RibbonX schema.
• Microsoft released a Junk Email reporting tool for Outlook 2003 and 2007. If you want to report email that the Junk Email filter of Outlook does not classify as spam to Microsoft so that it can be included in future updates to the Outlook Junk Email filter, download and install the tool today. If you use the tool for a spam message, you receive the following email from Frontbridge (an MS affiliate). I don’t think I really like the idea of receiving one email every 24 hrs (can’t this just happen quietly without me getting another message to delete?). Also, it’s not clear from the email how this will affect the Outlook Junk Email filter, as it talks about the “Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services”:
  “This is an automated reply from the Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services, Spam Analysis Department – no additional correspondence will be sent to you.
  We appreciate your spam submission. You will receive this auto-reply message only once per day if you submit multiple emails for evaluation in a 24 hour period. Some additional information is as follows:
  * Spam submissions are processed seven days per week and blocks for new spam become effective on the following day.
  * The best way to report spam is to send the offending message as an attachment along with the full original Internet headers.
  Thank you for assisting us in controlling unwanted email.
  

  Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services”