Building an app that uses Office documents? Win an Xbox!

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2007 Open XML Logoxbox-360-Elite.jpg

If you're a partner or company developing an application that does stuff with Office documents - saving, loading, storing - whatever, then you might want to consider building it with OpenXML built in.  Why would you do this?  Two reasons really. 

  1. We're running a competition to find the best apps that utilise Open XML.  If we think you've got what it takes, you'll win an Xbox 360 Elite.  We've got 10 of them to give away so if you think your dev teams deserve some wind-down time after they've bee cutting the code and burning the midnight oil - this might be the thing to make you their favourite boss!

    Enter the competition here!
     

  2. Aside from the Xbox there are some great business reasons why you would add this functionality to your app.  In fact, if you've implemented features that use WordML you've done most of the hard work already!  Benefits to using OpenXML include:

- Long term commitment from Microsoft on a open standard so you can make a good bet on training and skills for your developers

-  A document format that interoperates with other vendor products out of the box

- Open XML has been designed to be backward compatible with the content and functionality in billions of existing documents. This enhances archiving capabilities, which is one of the key reasons the U.S. Library of Congress and The British Library participated in Ecma International in the creation of the OpenXML standard.

- Under Microsoft's Open Specification Promise (OSP), any required Microsoft patent rights are freely available to all developers to implement Open XML in either open source software or proprietary software.

- As a truly international standard, Open XML supports multiple languages and scripts.

- Open XML includes robust support for assistive technologies utilized by those with disabilities.

To profile your product or solution that uses Open XML, you need to register it on the 2007 Microsoft Office System Solution Directory at https://www.microsoft.com/office/showcase/solutiondrive/openxml.mspx

For more info on this Open XML thing, I'd recommend reading Darren's commentary and PTS's own Chris Parkes who is the champ for Open XML in our team.