Sunday, September 16, 2007

More Microsoft Crazy Making

I've caught a summer cold and am a little slow on my rants and announcements, but I just had to mention this (on the coattails of my rant last week).

I was editing chapter 10. I was going to be done early (yay me) when I was checking the next to last setting on the Application Management page-- the HTML Viewer.

I had written the section, having used the viewer configuration in the past, expecting to really challenge it when I had more time in author review.

Well, this is all the review I was going to get. So I fired up an XP workstation VM and added it to my little Sharepoint VM network to use it to host the HTML Viewer service and Office, so I could set up Sharepoint to point at it.

Then when I had the VM up, I went online to download the HTML Viewer from Microsoft, as you do... and it's not there.

It's not anywhere. Its page has been removed from Microsoft Downloads, all the mirror sites don't have it. Google cache doesn't have it, no one has it.

Troubled, I started searching. HTML Viewer is still supported on the WSS v2 site-- although it points to the dead link for the executable (htmlview.exe). But if you go to the WSS 3 site, or MOSS's for that matter, it is absolutely not mentioned. ANYWHERE.

I then went to the WSS 3.0 Technical Library on Technet's site. It is not mentioned anywhere. It's as is MS doesn't want to admit it ever existed... but the setting page is still right, smack dab on the freaking Application Management page!!

If they didn't want us to use it, if they were going to sneakily just take the necessary component to configure it away, why did they leave the page to configure it still in the interface?!!

Argghh.

So I left the info in the book, changed it to say it was for pre-existing configurations of HTML Viewer, and wrote a sidebar flatly stating that I think the feature has been deprecated, that possibly it is waiting for the Office 2007 HTML Viewer (dare we hope?), and otherwise it was really not meant to be used.

Okay, maybe that was bitter, but by that time I'd lost hours, it was after 2am and I was suffering from a brand new cold.

So now you know.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I lost my day for the same reason....
Wanted to see my .xsl files rendered into html under WSS 3.0
I found it though
http://www.filewatcher.com/m/htmlview.exe.11700288.0.0.html

Shane Morgan said...

Took me bout 20mins to find.

http://am.net/lib/TOOLS/Microsoft/Office/htmlview.exe

Regards,

Shane :)

Callahan said...

Uh Shane,

I'm glad it took you less time than the rest of us, but I am a little reluctant to just download something from a site I've never heard of.

Have you had any issues with files from this location?

Shane Morgan said...

Hey Callahan,

Nah the file is good, i can vouch for that. I've already D/l'd and extracted the contents.

I can't believe Microsoft pulled it. I suppose with the new 2010 SharePoint and Office Web apps there wasn't much point.

Enjoy. :)
Sorry i don't get around to checking this email all that often, hence the slowness of my reply.