I have written many add-ins for Visio over the years, some for private clients for use in-house, some as products for public release by my clients or by me, and some just to help me with my day-to-day Visio development tasks. The ease of installation is always an issue, and I have been using a digital certificate to guarantee its authenticity in almost all of these scenarios. I have also included licensing code from a third-party for some of my own products, but have been aware that the third-party product I have been using is not ideal because it needs its own registered component on the client machine. So, when a client asked that I use Advanced Installer to create the installation setups so that their licensing system could be used, then I was (and still am) all for it because it could become a better method for myself. However, there are some issues that I am overcoming through this transition ….not least that an apparently correctly assigned digital certificate was actually not valid.
[Read more…] about Using Advanced Installer with Viso VSTO Add-InsArchives for February 2019
Prototyping Visio ShapeSheet Formulas in Excel
I am working on an application where the horizontal axis of the Visio page represents dates from left to right. In fact, the each of the fixed horizontal grids are 1 day, and I need to have shapes that understand the begin date at the left edge of the shape, and the end date at the right edge of the shape. There is, therefore, a number of elapsed days representing by the width of the shape. However, the underlying grid can either represent all days, or it can be changed to only represent weekdays by omitting the weekends. I struggled to find the best formula to calculate the elapsed days or weekdays between two dates in Visio ShapeSheet formulas, so I turned to Excel to provide an inspiration. The Visio ShapeSheet is modelled on the Excel worksheet, and formulas can be entered into the cells in much the same way. However, the available functions differ since Excel is mainly used for arithmetic and statistics, but Visio is used for graphics and data. In this article, I demonstrate how I used C# and Excel to construct and test formulas for use in a Visio shape.
[Read more…] about Prototyping Visio ShapeSheet Formulas in ExcelHandy USB-C Hub for Surface Book 2
I recently wrote about the video connections that I use with my Surface Book 2, and this included the almost impossible connection with my Acer Windows Mixed Reality headset. Well, I now have a neat solution provided by uniAccessories , from whom I have purchased a handy little hub via their kickstarter. This rugged, but small, USB-C 6-in-1 hub allows me to connect the USB 3.0 and HDMI cables to the single USB-C port on my Surface Book 2.
This is actually 6-in-1 hub, so I get even more than my original needs! This is the full spec:
- SD: UHS-1, speed up to 104MB/s
- MicroSD: UHS-1, speed up to 104MB/s
- USB3.0: Data transfer speed up to 5Gbps; Charging up to [email protected]
- USB2.0: Data transfer speed up to 480Mbps; Charging up to [email protected]
- USB-C: Power Delivery, up to 100W(note: data transfer not supported)
- HDMI: Resolution up to 4K@30Hz
This hub is certainly going to be very useful!