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Word Document | 1996-05-21 | 67KB | 356 lines

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Microsoft® Office
Whitepaper
                                                             for Windows® 95


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Supporting Windows 95

Introduction

Microsoft® Windows® 95, the first update to the powerful Windows operating
system in four years, is a technically advanced and extremely powerful 32-
bit operating system. But all the power in Windows 95 cannot be realized
until there are applications which are designed to exploit its 32-bit
performance capabilities. Microsoft Office for Windows 95 is designed to
exploit these enhancements to create the best, most integrated and easiest
to use office suite.

The challenge faced by developers of Microsoft Office for Windows 95 wasn’t
simply to support Windows 95, it was to support it in a way that met the
needs of our customers in the best possible manner.

The purpose of this document is to explain how Office 95 takes advantage of
these specific Windows 95 enhancements:

ΓÇó A full 32-bit, protected mode operating system.
ΓÇó A new Windows user interface that is significantly easier to use than the
  previous interface.
ΓÇó Robust OLE 2.0 Support
ΓÇó Easier setup and configuration.
ΓÇó Superb network, client, and peer-to-peer functionality.
ΓÇó Integral support for electronic mail and MSNΓäó, the Microsoft Network.


Robust 32-Bit Environment

Windows 95 provides application developers with many enhancements which can
improve application performance. The Microsoft Office development team has
dedicated significant development resources to take advantage of Windows 95
memory management, system resources management, multi-tasking and multi-
threading capabilities.


Protected Mode Operating System

Windows 95 is a 32-bit operating system. Information moves into and out of
its memory 32-bits at a time, as opposed to the 16-bit operations of
Windows 3.x. Because the amount of information that can move into and out
of memory has increased, Windows 95 applications have the potential to
outperform their Windows 3.1 predecessors. However, to exploit this
potential, the programs that run within Windows 95 must be full 32-bit
applications.

Each Office 95 application is designed to take advantage of the 32-bit
Windows architecture. In fact, the Microsoft applications shipping in
Windows 95 are the second generation of 32-bit applications from Microsoft.
Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel for Windows NT( Workstation, both of
which have been shipping for over a year, are 32-bit applications that run
within the Windows NT environment. Microsoft learned a lot from doing those
releases and, as a result, much of the 32-bit code in Office 95 is actually
second-generation 32-bit code ΓÇö the first generation being the Windows NT
versions of our products.


Important   Office 95 is designed to also run on Windows NT Workstation,
version 3.51. Because Office 95 was developed using the Win32® API, which
is common to both Windows 95 and Windows NT, Office 95 runs seamlessly in
both the Windows NT operating system and the Windows 95 operating system.

Since each Windows 95 applications runs in its own protected memory space,
no other application can intrude on it or cause the program to malfunction.
This is possible because Windows 95 uses a special operating condition of
the Intel processor called protected mode, in which the processor itself
sets up discrete memory areas for each program and polices them, stopping
programs from using memory not assigned to them. Protected mode makes
Windows 95 a more stable and safer operating system. Since Office users
tend to frequently run multiple applications at the same time, the more
stable, protected environment provides a significantly safer environment
for Office users.


Performance

The 32-bit Windows environment provides a more robust environment for
Office 95 with better system resource management, memory management, multi-
threading and multi-tasking capabilities. The Office developers have
painstakingly optimized the Office 95 code using 32-bit assembler for
better performance in the Intel 32-bit environment. Office 95 has been
optimized to take advantage of the smaller page memory model offered in the
Windows 32-bit environment. The key opportunities for enhanced performance
in the Windows 32-bit environment include:

ΓÇó Optimized Working Set (RAM)   The Office developers have re-organized the
  most frequently used code for better performance in the most common user
  scenarios. For these common scenarios such as recalculations, file load
  and save, Office 95 prioritizes the frequently used code into smaller
  segments for quicker access. This enables Office 95 applications to keep a
  minimum amount of unused code in memory for faster operation of common
  tasks. The result is increased performance for many of the most common
  user tasks.
ΓÇó Speed   Without the constraints of the Windows 3.x 16-bit environment,
  Microsoft developers were able to optimize Office 95 to take advantage of
  the 386, 486, and Pentium® processors. For example, opening, saving and
  paging through a typical Word document is quicker and scrolling is
  smoother. In addition, the Microsoft Excel Development Team has rewritten
  the Microsoft Excel recalc engine in 32-bit assembler code for
  dramatically faster performance in the 32-bit Windows environment.
  Microsoft Excel has also done extra work to take advantage of the Pentium
  instruction pipeline for dramatically enhanced performance on Pentium
  processor machines. As a result of this performance optimization work,
  Microsoft Excel 95 users can expect a 30 to 50 percent increase in
  recalculation performance on average over Microsoft Excel 5.
• Multi-tasking   Windows 95 features preemptive multi-tasking. This allows
  users to do multiple operations in different applications simultaneously
  with graceful performance degradation. For example, a user can send
  Windows 95 Explorer searching across the network for a particular file,
  minimize it, and keep working in a Microsoft Word document. Similarly,
  users can print in one Office application while working in another
  application without interrupting screen updates and system operation that
  were common while multi-tasking in Windows 3.1.
• Multi-threading   Windows 95 also provides applications with the
  opportunity to write multiple threads within a single application.
  Office 95 has implemented threads where it makes sense for discrete
  background tasks that do not slow application performance. The most
  notable threads are background printing in Word and PowerPoint®, Slide
  Sorter in PowerPoint and queries in Microsoft Access. These threads allow
  users to execute multiple commands simultaneously within the same
  application. For example, a user could print a PowerPoint presentation and
  continue formatting his or her presentation notes pages at the same time.

A New User Interface for Windows

In Windows 3.1 the ΓÇ£shellΓÇ¥ consisted of the utility applications through
which the user operated the Windows environmentΓÇöProgram Manager, File
Manager, and Task Manager. In Windows 95 the shell has been completely
replaced with new, more unified components that significantly enhance the
Windows environment. The Windows 95 shell consists of desktop folders,
Explorer, the Taskbar, and the desktop itself.

The following table looks at the Windows 95 user interface improvements and
how Microsoft Office for Windows 95 supports them.

|Feature       |How Microsoft Office 95 supports it    |
|Right mouse   |Office 4.x pioneered right mouse button|
|button support|support as an integral part of the user|
|              |interface. Windows 95 standardizes the |
|              |use of the right mouse button for the  |
|              |industry. Office 95 places the most    |
|              |common user commands within easy reach |
|              |on right-click menus.                  |
|Windows 95    |Windows 95 allows users to create      |
|shortcuts     |shortcuts to documents, applications,  |
|              |printers, network and                  |
|              |locationsΓÇöbasically anything and       |
|              |everything. Office 95 takes advantage  |
|              |of this by supporting shortcuts in all |
|              |of its document management dialogs.    |
|              |Also, users will be able to drag       |
|              |portions of Office documents onto the  |
|              |desktop, creating a shortcut to this   |
|              |information. For example, users can    |
|              |create a shortcut to specific chapter  |
|              |within a long Word document.           |
|System colors |Office 95 respects the Windows 95      |
|and metrics   |system colors and metrics. Users will  |
|              |be able to change Windows 95           |
|              |settingsΓÇöe.g. change the height or     |
|              |width of a scroll barΓÇöand Office will  |
|              |automatically reflect the changes.     |
|Registry      |All Office settings and information are|
|support       |stored in registry files. The          |
|              |Windows 95 registry supports individual|
|              |user settings, so multiple users will  |
|              |be able to use the same machine with   |
|              |different preferences. The key benefit |
|              |of having all settings in the registry |
|              |is remote administration. Network      |
|              |administrators can easily change       |
|              |Microsoft Office for Windows 95        |
|              |settings remotely using Windows 95.    |
|Long File     |Office 95 supports the Windows 95      |
|Names         |convention for 250 character long file |
|              |names. When sharing files with MS-DOS® |
|              |applications, Office 95 automatically  |
|              |handles the shortening of the long file|
|              |name for those applications. It also   |
|              |automatically restores the long file   |
|              |name for applications that support the |
|              |functionality.                         |
|Document      |Right clicking on any Office document  |
|properties    |from the Windows 95 desktop enables    |
|from shell    |users to view document properties just |
|              |as if they had selected Properties from|
|              |the File menu within an Office         |
|              |application.                           |
|Document      |An Office 95 user will be able to right|
|viewers from  |click on an Office document and select |
|shell         |Preview from the shortcut menu to see a|
|              |preview of the document, without having|
|              |the application resident or having to  |
|              |launch the application.                |
|New document  |From the Windows 95 desktop, a user can|
|creation from |create an empty Microsoft Excel, Word, |
|shell         |or PowerPoint document quickly by right|
|              |clicking on the desktop and selecting  |
|              |New.                                   |


Tighter Integration with Support for OLE

Office 4.x pioneered application support for Object Linking and Embedding
(OLE 2.0) in 1993. With Windows 95 OLE 2.0 becomes a universal part of the
operating system services. Therefore, users can expect an abundance of
Windows 95 applications that support OLE integration. Office 95 provides
second generation support for OLE 2.0 with extensions that build on OLE
technology.

• Drag and Drop with Taskbar   Windows 95 makes it dramatically easier to
  share information between applications with OLE. Since Office 95 supports
  OLE drag and drop, users can easily move Microsoft Excel charts or Word
  paragraphs to another application simply by dragging and dropping the
  object using the Windows 95 Taskbar. When the user hovers over the Taskbar
  button, the destination application will maximize and allow the user to
  drop the object anywhere within the open document or spreadsheet.
• Extensions to OLE   The Office 95 Development team has built extensions
  to OLE to provide users with enhanced integration and file management
  capabilities.
  • Custom OLE Properties   All Office 95 applications allow users to create
    Custom OLE properties in addition to the standard Summary Information
    properties available in the Office 4.x applications. Custom OLE
    Properties can be created to represent text, numbers, Boolean values
    (yes or no) or linked document text(bookmarks in Word) or cell values
    (named cell in Microsoft Excel) within the file. Custom OLE Properties
    enable users to view important file information without opening the
    file. Users of Microsoft Exchange Server will be able to sort entire
    folders of files based on these Custom OLE Properties.
  • DocObjects   Office 95 provides extensions to OLE, called DocObjects,
    which handle entire documents as ΓÇ£objectsΓÇ¥ that can be incorporated into
    other applications. With this technology, Office users can create robust
    compound documents in Office Binders and use WordMail, where Word is
    their email editor.

Easy Setup and Configuration (Plug and Play)

Office 95 supports screen resolution changes from Plug and Play, along with
any system changes that result from someone using Plug and Play (leaving or
returning to a docking station, adding memory, sound cards, hard disks,
etc.).

The following table explains Plug and Play support in Microsoft Office more
fully:

|Plug and Play Feature|How Microsoft Office 95 supports|
|                     |it                              |
|Screen resolution    |When the user changes the screen|
|change               |resolution, Office applications |
|                     |reflect the change immediately. |
|Windows control      |When the Windows 95 controls    |
|re-sizing            |change, Office controls change. |
|                     |This applies to scroll bars,    |
|                     |title bar height, fonts, etc.   |
|Software laptop      |The user may, using a software  |
|undocking            |eject, remove the laptop from a |
|                     |docking station at any time.    |
|                     |Office 95 will correctly shut   |
|                     |down applications for safe      |
|                     |undocking.                      |


Superb Network and Workgroup Support


WordMail

Users can configure Word to operate as their e-mail client for Microsoft
Mail and/or Exchange. This makes the power of Word ΓÇö rich text, outlining,
styles, etc. — available in e-mail. More importantly, it lets Office 95
technology be used not just for the creation of business documents, but in
the activity of doing business as well.


Briefcase support

The Windows 95 Briefcase is a special folder that users employ to “take on
the road.ΓÇ¥ Users copy the files to the Briefcase, take it home on disk,
work on the files, return the next day, and update the files in the
Briefcase to the hard disk or a network location. Microsoft Access provides
additional supports for reconciliation of Access data with server-based
data through the Windows 95 briefcase. Access resolves record-by-record
conflicts that may occur between the Briefcase version of a database and
the one on the desktop PC.


Support for Universal Network Conventions (UNC)

UNC is a standardized way of accessing network volumes and servers. UNC is
designed to let users get to their information no matter which network they
are using — Windows NT, Novell®, Banyan, etc. The standard structure for
UNC is:

\\server_name\share_name\directory_path\filename.ext

The benefit of UNC is that anyone, anywhere, can access information on any
network, as long as they know UNC conventions. (And have security rights to
that network, of course.)

Microsoft Office has supported UNC path names since Office 4.x. Office 95
improves this support to work better with Novell NetWare® and other
networking schemes that offer only partial support of UNC names.


Microsoft Network support

Users of Office 95 will be able to automatically connect to the MSN, the
Microsoft Network, and get the help they need. All of the Office
applications have a Microsoft Network menu item on the Help menu.

Users also have the option of creating Windows 95 shortcuts that go
directly to specific areas on MSN, and adding those shortcuts to any
Office 95 Help menu.


Microsoft Exchange

Microsoft Office for Windows 95 will provide the best integration with
Microsoft Exchange. As a client, it will:

ΓÇó Have direct access to Exchange servers and folders in File Find and File
  Open.
ΓÇó Register all its file formats with Exchange automatically.
ΓÇó Be able to post all files generated in Microsoft Office to Exchange.
• Surface much of the Exchange API to any Visual Basic® or Visual Basic for
  applications solution running under Office 95.


                                  #########
( 1995 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
The information contained in this document represents the current view of
Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the date of
publication. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions,
it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft,
and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented
after the date of publication.
This document is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO
WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS DOCUMENT.
Microsoft, Windows, Windows NT, Win32, PowerPoint, MS-DOS, MSN, the Office
Compatible logo, and Visual Basic are either registered trademarks or
trademarks of Microsoft in the United States and/or other countries.
Pentium is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation.
Novell and NetWare are registered trademarks of Novell. Inc.