Visio Insights : Visio vNext

Visio 2010: Better with Windows 7

Visio Team — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:40:19 GMT

Windows 7 is here, and it makes it easier to find and work with your favorite applications. This post details the work we did in Visio 2010 to take advantage of new Windows 7 features, to make working with Visio documents even easier.

Multiple Documents in Visio 2010 and the new Windows 7 Taskbar

The new Windows 7 taskbar presents a unified interface for launching and switching between applications and documents within them. With Windows 7 and Visio 2010, it is now easier to work with multiple Visio documents at the same time.

We received lots of feedback on the Technical Preview asking for the ability to preview open Visio documents as multiple taskbar items. We listened, and now in the Visio 2010 Beta you can see previews of each Visio document directly from the taskbar, similar to Word and PowerPoint:

By clicking on a thumbnail, you can switch directly to a specific Visio document. If you hover over a thumbnail, Windows shows you a full-size preview of what that window looks like, through a feature called Aero Peek. With Visio 2010 and Windows 7, working with multiple documents at the same time is simple.

For more on the Windows 7 task bar, see this blog post on the Engineering Windows 7 Blog.

Dual Display Support

Another common request we receive is to enable Visio documents to be edited on separate monitors, similar to Word and PowerPoint. While Visio still displays multiple documents in the same application window, there is a workaround to enable dual display support: launch two instances of Visio.

You can do this in Windows 7 by launching Visio, and then right clicking the Visio icon and clicking on the “Microsoft Visio 2010” item. This will launch a second instance of Visio.

Now that you have two instances running, move one instance of Visio to your second monitor. You can then open two separate files in two separate windows. Even though you’re running two instances of Visio, they are both represented by the same icon in the Windows 7 taskbar, so it’s easy to switch between documents.

Multi Touch in Visio 2010

If you have a touch-enabled device, Windows 7 allows you to interact with your PC with your fingers. This feature, called Windows Touch, brings a set of gestures to the operating system that can be used in the OS and several applications.

We’ve integrated support for several Windows Touch gestures in Visio 2010:

Panning: You can use one or two fingers to pan and scroll a document. This makes it easy to navigate Visio diagrams.
Zooming: With two fingers, you can pinch and pull on an area of your Visio document to zoom in on it or zoom out.
Two Finger Tap: If you tap the screen with two fingers, Visio will restore your view by invoking the “Fit page to current window” command.

The above scenarios work directly on the drawing surface, and in full screen mode! Check out the video below to see multi touch in action! (Note: there is no audio).

As seen in the video, we have also integrated the same touch support in the Visio Viewer and in Outlook 2010 preview mode. If you receive a Visio diagram as an attachment, you can use these touch gestures to navigate the diagram directly in Outlook 2010. Click here for more information about Windows Touch

As usual, feel free to drop us a comment on the blog or use the Send a Smile feature in the Visio 2010 Beta to let us know what you think.

SharePoint Conference 2009

Visio Team — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 03:02:38 GMT

The Visio team is anxiously preparing to introduce Visio Services to the world at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009, which runs from October 19th to 22nd, 2009 in Las Vegas.

Visio Services is a new SharePoint feature that allows you to share Visio drawings across your organization in SharePoint. But it does more...

If you're interested in hearing what, register for the conference and come listen to our talks. Don't worry if you can't make it -- in the coming months, we'll be presenting conference highlights on the blog as well as an in depth look at Visio Services features.

Update: Visio 2007 Service Pack 2 and Visio Conference 2008

Visio Team — Tue, 12 May 2009 01:02:00 GMT

A few updates…

XMI Export

We recently reported the availability of Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Visio 2007. We received a few questions about how to use the XMI export feature in UML diagrams. The behavior in SP2 is exactly the same as in previous versions. Integrating it into the UML solution and retiring the separate download should make life easier for everyone, including us! The following VBA example demonstrates the interface:

Application.Addons("UML Background Add-on").Run("/CMD=400 /XMIFILE=""C:\path\file.xmi""")

The XMI export acts on the active document, so be sure to set that if your application session has multiple documents open. If you’re not familiar with VBA, the extra quotation marks in the XMIFILE argument are used to escape the quote character – the value passed in must be wrapped in quotes.

Visio Conference 2008 Videos

Last year, we posted links to videos from the Visio Conference 2008, where we shared a few glimpses into the next version of Visio. The links have changed – replace the visioconference2008 part of the URL with visio2008 to get to the video site. Note that some of the videos are quite large and can take a bit to download.

Visio Conference 2008 videos posted

Visio Team — Wed, 21 May 2008 20:00:00 GMT

For anyone who wasn't able to attend the Visio Conference 2008 this February or has been itching to show everyone else the cool things coming in Visio "vNext", the wait is over! Videos from all the conference sessions are posted on http://www.visiotoolbox.com. Click on the conference link in the bottom-right corner of the page - or follow the links below.

Each session consists of the PowerPoint slide deck, speaker audio and video of the demos. Use the links below to jump to the sessions for each track:

Keynotes - http://www.visiotoolbox.com/visioconference2008/Keynotes/start.htm

General Sessions - http://www.visiotoolbox.com/visioconference2008/GeneralSessions/start.htm

Solutions Track - http://www.visiotoolbox.com/visioconference2008/BusinessSolutions/start.htm

Developer Track - http://www.visiotoolbox.com/visioconference2008/SolutionDevelopment/start.htm

End User Track - http://www.visiotoolbox.com/visioconference2008/EndUser/start.htm

For those specifically interested in Visio "vNext", here are the four sessions where we demonstrated some of the capabilities coming next release:

Visualizing Information Work Today & Tomorrow - Jeff Raikes keynote

The Visio Business Today and Software Development Process - Richard Wolf keynote

Visio Future Investments - Bill Morein

Visio Futures - API Insights - John Haug and Philippe Arida

Troubleshooting

You should be able to click on a link and then click on Play. The videos take a varying amount of time to load - a few minutes in some cases. If you find that the UI frame around the slides / video is missing, try refreshing the web page. This will reload the controls but the session will resume playing where you left off.

CAD Integration Announcement for Visio "vNext"

Visio Team — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 13:00:00 GMT

This morning at Day 2 of Visio Conference 2008, we announced that the next version of Visio will add support for AutoCAD 2007 DWG and DXF file formats. As mentioned in previous blog posts, this was a major request from Visio customers and partners.

General Manager Richard Wolf explained in his keynote address how Visio prioritizes feature investments that improve the entire Visio platform over changes that enhance just a single vertical market. CAD integration is valuable to a broad set of customers spanning the Engineering, Facilities Management and Information Technology markets. Richard then demonstrated an example of inserting an AutoCAD 2007 floorplan of a data center, overlaying Visio server shapes, adding Data Graphics to show cabinet temperatures and then publishing the diagram to Visio Services for display in a web dashboard. Thus, while CAD integration does not fall under the three investment areas described on Day 1, it was high on the team's priority list for Visio "vNext" given the applicability to data visualization scenarios across several diagram types.

Day 2 also featured demonstrations of new capabilities for developers and shape designers:

RibbonX

Visio "vNext" adds support for RibbonX, the API for the Office Fluent user interface. Existing Visio solutions with custom UI will work unmodified in the Ribbon, but solutions can use RibbonX for a much richer integration into the Ribbon.

Structured Diagrams

Visio "vNext" allows solution developers to work with Visio diagrams at a logical level instead of at the physical level. Visio exposes relationships between shapes that can be discovered and traversed to simplify the understanding of the diagram structure. Three common relationships are defined: connectivity, containment and callouts.

Visio Services API

Visio "vNext" provides a JavaScript API for accessing and enhancing diagrams rendered by Visio Services. Web page scripts can extract information about the shapes displayed in the diagram for use in another frame. Scripts can also highlight shapes, place overlays on shapes and manipulate the diagram's viewport for pan and zoom.

The feedback received over the last two days at the Visio Conference has been tremendous. We're happy to see people so enthusiastic about our Visio "vNext" plans. There is still much work to be done, and we hope that the Visio community will continue providing feedback as we disclose more over time.

Visio "vNext"

Visio Team — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Tuesday more than 300 customers, partners and Visio community members gathered for Day 1 of Visio Conference 2008. Attendees were treated to an impressive array of partner solutions, product demonstrations and information-filled sessions. To top it all off, attendees got the first sneak peak at the next version of Microsoft Office Visio.

At this point Visio "vNext" is still in an early stage (pre-Alpha), but we wanted to give everyone a glimpse of the fantastic capabilities of the next version and outline our high-level investments. Keep in mind that plans can and do change as we respond to feedback and continue working toward completion. We are publicly showing just a few of the features planned. Here are the three areas where we are concentrating most of our efforts:

Process Management

Visio "vNext" reinvents the core flowcharting experience in Visio. Flowchart creation is faster and easier than ever. Cross-functional flowcharts in particular are improved. Going beyond a simple drawing canvas, Visio understands the logical structure of the diagram far better. This leads to more advanced process diagramming capabilities that put the user firmly in control over the graphical representation of their processes.

Ease of Use

Visio "vNext" adopts the Office Fluent user interface that you see today in Office 2007 core applications. The Ribbon and Live Preview components in particular take the guesswork out of finding Visio commands and choosing between settings. At the same time Visio improves a wide range of existing features, bringing the results-oriented concepts behind the Fluent UI onto the diagramming surface itself. The Shapes window, layout and AutoConnect are significantly enhanced. Visio is even easier to use and significantly reduces the time needed to create and modify diagrams.

Visio Services

Visio "vNext" introduces server-rendered, data-refreshable diagrams for the first time. Visio Services allows data connected diagrams to be published from Visio to a server and viewed by users directly in their web browser. There are no client bits to install. An API is also provided for creating mashups of diagrams and additional data.

There is far more to talk about with Visio "vNext". In future posts we will begin to provide more details and present screen shots. However, there are also plenty of things to discuss about the current Visio 2007 product. We'll cover both in the coming months. Please stay tuned and be sure to give us your feedback.