I have been rather quiet this month, mainly because I have kept myself busy with other things:

1. A new version of RibbonCustomizer, V0.9, is due out soon. It features quite a few changes (including the end of activation). You can read more about the upcoming changes and discuss them in my announcement post in my forums.
2. I’ve started a company. My company is called “pschmid.net Limited” and is a British private company limited by shares with registered office in London, but residence in Germany. Or in other words, this is a German company using a British corporate structure (possible due to the European Union). The company is so brand-new that I haven’t even received the certificate of incorporation yet (due in the mail tomorrow though). Once I get my documents, I’ll get started on all the formal German requirements for setting up a corporation (you can expect a future post about how start-up hostile Germany is….).
3. I have been working on a few upcoming RibbonX-related posts. There should be a lot of those in January.
4. And not to forget, I am on Christmas vacation and taking it slower

As announced last week, the Starter Edition of RibbonCustomizer is now available for download. A 14 days free trial of RibbonCustomizer Professional is also available.

The download for all three (Starter Edition, Professional Trial and Professional) is the same. That means with any download of the Starter Edition, you get a 14 days free trial of the Professional one. In addition, should you choose to purchase RibbonCustomizer Professional, you can convert your Starter Edition/Trial into the Professional one by entering your activation key. Following is a quick overview of the three things you get with one download.

Starter Edition

The Starter Edition can be downloaded, installed and shared as you feel like. It provides the following features:

• Use up to three pre-defined customizations in the form of .RIBX packages per Ribbon
• Quickly switch multiple customizations on and off
• Reset tabs to the Microsoft default

For a more thorough overview and comparison to the Professional Edition, please look at the Starter Edition page.

14 days free trial of Professional Edition

You can try out RibbonCustomizer for 14 days once on any computer. The trial version is fully functional! After the trial has expired and should you choose not to purchase the Professional version, it will revert itself back to the Starter Edition.

Customizing groups, e.g. adding individual buttons to the Ribbon, is not yet included in the current release of RibbonCustomizer. The next major release of it, scheduled for early 2007, though, will include this feature. If you are mostly interested in that kind of customization, then you might be tempted to use your one free trial on your computer for that release. However, you don’t have to! You can try out RibbonCustomizer Professional now for 14 days, and for another 14 days after the next major release!

If you discover that RibbonCustomizer Professional meets some of your customizations needs already today, then you should purchase it now for $29.99. The next major release with the group customization feature will cost $39.99.

Professional

If you like the Starter Edition and loved the trial, then purchase my Professional edition and receive an automatic free upgrade to the next major release. You can upgrade your Starter Edition or trial to the full Professional one simply by entering your purchased activation key.

• Starter Edition Overview
• Download Starter Edition & Trial
• Purchase Professional
• Support for RibbonCustomizer

You downloaded and installed your trial version of Office 2007 and now you want to get the Save As PDF/XPS add-in to test the PDF/XPS output of Office 2007. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to due to a “feature” called “Office Genuine Advantage” (OGA). One idea behind OGA is the same as behind its sibling “Windows Genuine Advantage” (WGA): You are only supposed to be able to download things that extend or enhance your copy of Windows or Office, if its genuine, meaning you bought a bona fide license (let’s overlook the controversy and issues surrounding WGA and OGA in general for this post).

The problem that OGA throws your way is that you cannot get enhancements or extensions for an Office 2007 TRIAL version. You can get critical and security updates, but any other kind of downloads (that are protected by OGA) are not possible. That this affects the PDF/XPS output is especially sad, because until the fallout with Adobe, this was fully integrated into Office 2007.

What can you do? Once the Office 2007 trial is installed on your machine, you will not be able to get it. That means, you need to either download the add-in before installing the trial, or use a different computer that does not have the trial installed. A genuine installation of Office 2003 e.g. will pass OGA and let you download the add-in. Or, if you have Office 2007 B2TR installed, download the add-in before removing the beta. A computer with no Office installed will not pass OGA.

Get the add-in: PDF & XPS, PDF or XPS

We can only hope that Microsoft realizes how bad the decision was to block downloading of the PDF/XPS add-ins for trial users of Office 2007, especially considering the fact that there are a lot of users among them who would buy a copy right now, if they could!

Note: Any request to post the add-in files on my website, any request for a link to a non MS-download link for them or any posting of such a link will be deleted without comment. Such activities would be violations of the license agreement.

I just launched a completely overhauled website design. It was time for a redesign. The old design had become a mess to maintain, and was hard to navigate. The new design takes into account that the site has grown substantially since I launched it earlier this year. If you find any broken links, errors, not so great looking items, please post a comment so that I can fix them!

So what’s new? The new navigation bar directly under the page title gives you direct access to the main components of the site:

• Home: The new main page does not count my blog posts in full anymore. Instead, I only show excerpts of each blog post. This should make the page faster to load and easier to take in. On the left hand side, you can quickly get to my most popular blog posts and subscribe to my blog.
• Blog: My blog is the most popular item on my page. The new design features better blog navigation via the left bar.
• Forums: The second interactive component of my page are my forums. When you click on the forums link, you’ll be sent to the same forums page as before. Integrating the new design into the forums will happen in the near future.
• Office 2007: The most changes happened in the Office 2007 section. Navigating the Office 2007 section should now be vastly improved, and I hope the new organization of the content will make this section popular.
• Customize: Customizing Office 2007’s Ribbon User Interface is the primary topic of my site. The Customize section will give you an overview as to how and what can be customized.
• RibbonX:My site now features a RibbonX Portal! I would like to make this the top location to go to for everything RibbonX. If you have any content that you would like to have integrated/linked to from my RibbonX Portal, please post it in the RibbonX Portal forum. Over the next few weeks, I’ll add a lot of content of my own to it.
• OneNote: As a OneNote MVP, I need a section dedicated to OneNote. Content-wise, nothing is really different there. I don’t expect to add much to it in the coming weeks, as I will be focusing on my RibbonCustomizer add-in and the RibbonX Portal.
• Eng. 1: If you are a student in my Engineering 1 class, this is where you should go.
• Research: A quick overview of my published papers. When I have time, I’ll update it with more content.

In addition to all of this, my site now has a Google search box on almost every page. So if you are looking for something on my page, but are not sure where it is, give the search box a try.

Go check out my new site and post your comments about it!

The saga of the Office UI Bible continues (read part 3).

The blog “Life On The Wicked Stage: Act 2” by TabletPC MVP Warner Crocker gave me a “2006 Life On the Wicked Stage Inkblot Award” for “Best I Love Jensen Harris’s Blogging But I Just Have To Create A Table Of Contents So I Can Find What I Want”. Warner is one of the TabletPC MVPs behind GottaBeMobile.com.