John Goldsmith's visLog

Icons and Cursors

 

A few months ago I received free copies of Axialis Software’s IconWorkshop and CursorWorkshop products.  Today they contacted me to ask if I could highlight their ‘Spring Sale’, which I’m quite happy to do as I’ve found them very handy and easy to use tools. 

You might be wondering if this has any relevance for Visio, but they also have some free icon packs including .png and .gif images, which can of course be used in Visio documents as straight shapes, or in data graphics (check out this msdn article: Building Custom Data Graphics for Visio 2007).

Extending Visio’s Save As Web zoom functionality

This post is in response to a newsgroup question about how to extend Visio’s Save As Web zoom limits and also, how to set a custom default zoom level as each page loads…

Save As Web URL Parameters

Ok, hands up – I’ve only recently realised that the URL parameters functionality in Visio Save As Web output work on straight .html pages and not just server based platforms such as ASP.NET. 

I’d tried this some time ago on a local machine (using the file:// URL schema) and had assumed, incorrectly, that as URL parameters weren’t recognised that this would be the same when hosted (via http://).  This is not the case and so I thought I’d try and set the record straight by reviewing how to use this handy part of the Save As Web addon…

Visio, Excel and late binding enumerations

Excel MVP, Mike Alexander, has an interesting video over at DailyDoseOfExcel.com  The video covers how application-specific enumerations aren’t recognized when using late binding.

His answer to the problem is to use a list of ‘manual’ enumerations, which he includes as a download on the above post. 

I emailed Mike earlier today and he very kindly ran his magic code over the Visio help files to produce this set of Visio enumerations.  Perfect if you’re writing code from the other direction.

Save As Web and IE8

I came across an issue recently with Visio’s Save As Web output and IE8.  Basically a JavaScript function, which had worked quite happily in IE6 and 7, now throws an error as the main page loads.

I believe this issue will be addressed in the next Office 2007 SP2, coming soon, but until then and for any legacy sites there’s a fairly quick fix…