Kevin Boske - VSTA : VSTA

My Last Post

KevinBoske — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:36:00 GMT

Friends, this is my last post. I've enjoyed being a part of the Office developer community for the past 4 years and meeting everyone over the past 10 years from the Microsoft side of the fence. My next part of the journey will be from the other side of the fence as a Senior Program Manager for SmartDesktop.

I'm really excited about the future plans for VSTA and VSTO, and some of the other tricks the team has up its sleeve. :) I've been in touch with the folks working on the OpenXML SDK and I'm seeing some great work and ideas. Keep watching all the Office developer blogs, I know I will.

A lot of folks here at Microsoft refer to leaving MS as "retiring" even though they are simply moving to another job. I like to think of it as "Graduating". Who knows, maybe I'll be back for some post-graduate work someday.

- Kevin J. Boske

Program Manager, Visual Studio Tools for Applications.

OpenXML Package Editor RTW with VSTO Powertools!

KevinBoske — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:21:00 GMT

Back when we were working heavily on the OpenXML file format developer tools, many of us were using zip and Notepad to edit the OpenXML files. Tom Underhill from the Office graphics team made all our lives easier with a VS package for editing OpenXML files. I used it quite a bit during the OpenXML code snippet development (you might have even seen a quick glipse of it in a demo somewhere). There are other Package file editors available, (like Wouter's), but I like this one mainly because its integrated in VS. (Where I spend much of my time these days).

Andrew Whitechapel and the VSTO folks got a shipping vehicle for Tom's OpenXML Package Editor. Along with a number of other VSTO and VSTA Powertools, the VS-integrated Package editor is available here.

Here's a list of features you'll find in the VSTO Powertool Package Editor:

Ability to open any package file via Visual Studio 2008
Navigate package and Relationship structure
Get properties on Parts and Relationships
Read and write XML within parts
Add and delete Parts and Relationships

Andrew has all the details on his blog.

VSTA Webcast - How to Integrate VSTA 2.0

KevinBoske — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:04:00 GMT

Gary Depue from Summit Software presented a webcast last Wednesday on How to Integrate VSTA 2.0. I'm still getting up to speed here in the new team, so I missed it, but I'll be sure to go back and watch in the next couple of days.

It's tough being new to the project, and having not a lot of expertise in the area. I'm told their are some significant improvements to the process of integrating 2.0 over 1.0. It's snowing here in Seattle, so rather than fight the commute, I think I'll head down to the coffee shop and watch.

VBA and Office 14

KevinBoske — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 05:04:00 GMT

There's been some discussion on this thread on Slashdot, (updated) which started from this article in The Register UK.

To be clear, Microsoft is not replacing VBA with VSTA or VSTO in Office for Windows. (though VSTA and VSTO are still important developer tools for Office 14)

~~VBA is here to stay, as was announced some time back by Steven Sinofsky.~~

(Correction: Steven emailed me and corrected me that his previous statement. I didn't want to misquote. The words "to stay" might imply "forever", and that wasn't the intent. I have no idea how long VBA will be supported in Office, beyond Office 14.)

The Excel and Access Blogs both have posts covering this from the Office perspective.

The only constant at Microsoft

KevinBoske — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 20:13:00 GMT

Change.

It's really the only constant here at MS. I've made a change. I'm no longer working in the Office Team, I've moved on to the Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA) team. Anyone who has met me professionally knows that I'm a big fan of .NET, and big fan of enabling non-pro developers to build the solutions they need to get their jobs done.

As we say around here, I super-excited about this opportunity. I don't have much to discuss currently, the Visual Studio Team just shipped Orcas, so its a new cycle and a great time to start. Over the next few months, I'll start to provide more information about current VSTA, and about some of the ideas (*as we make them public) we have for future versions.

Cheers,

Kevin