In the world of the web, or any software for that matter, there’s often a fine line between a ‘feature’ and a bug.  While some people find that they can’t do exactly what they want, there’s usually a reason behind it, therefore it’s a feature (usually security) and not a bug.  Last week I ran into a feature that had been working for a long time, and now no longer doesn’t.

In most projects that we work on, there is inevitably some request to export data in a pretty and useful format.  Traditionally we use some cfheader and cfcontent tags to export tables to Excel.  Sometimes we can export to CSV (comma delimited file) but often that doesn’t work for our clients and it’s easiest to just shove it out into the excel format.  It’s also easier to write, we just need one table view template that can be wrapped with either the display template or the excel output template.   Recently we’ve run across a few minor issues, the most annoying of which is the error popping up in Excel 2007.  The message is as follows:

The file you are trying to open, ‘downloadreport.xls’, is in a different format than specified by the file extension.  Verify that the file is not corrupted and is from a trusted source before opening the file.  Do you want to open the file now?

According to all the research I’ve done, this is a Microsoft feature (not a DDA bug).  Apparently in the 2007 version of Office (and perhaps others) a new security feature has been added called Extension Hardening that rejects any web generated files unless it’s got the proper header format (proper mso file).  Of course you can still open the file by clicking yes to the above dialog, but that of course scares most people, as it probably should.  So the race is on to find the proper format (Microsoft says to use the open xml file format) and add that in as an option for future use.  If I ever find the proper formatting, I’ll let everyone know.

The crazy shopping season has begun. The Thanksgiving turkey is nothing more than a memory in our house, and we are just getting started into the Christmas season.  I am not one to give tons of presents; it’s just not the meaning of the season for me, so small gifts are the way I go. And I refuse to put my brain into the Christmas mode, until after Thanksgiving. So  in the the last 2-3 years, I have begun to shop on Black Friday, and I find it to be quite lucrative. I know what I want, out at 6 am and back in bed by 8 am, my hubby never even knows I’ve left, and I am left with the satisfying feeling of accomplishment.

Of course, this is not the end of my shopping, despite being 90% complete. And I may join the thousand of others shopping on cyber Monday. This is a super cyber-sale day that offers tons of specials and lots of free shipping all from the comfort of your home, not having to fight the crowds at the mall. I think I will start at the the great jewelry website that DDA has created, it is great to listen to the custom videos, and see the jewelry photography in beautiful detail, and learn some new facts from the creative copywriting, and then maybe play with the bracelet builder that our amazing programmers have custom designed to let me pick and choose charms, then change my mind over and over again. Well, gotta get going, building some new website pages, and updates so that I can shop till I drop tonight,  that is after I make dinner…

On the days that I travel to the office from my home office, my 4 1/2 year old gives me “homework” after I put him to bed. Last night’s assignment was to draw him a picture of him on a carousel horse in red pen. So, at 11pm,  which is way past my bedtime, as I was dragging myself off the couch after getting sucked into the Stormchasers on Discovery Channel, I remembered my homework assignment! Not wanting to disappoint my son, I sat down with red pen in hand and drew a picture of a carousel horse. Usually the requests are simple like mommy and son holding hands or mommy, daddy and my two boys holding hands, but last night’s carousel horse at 11pm was a bit trickier. Twenty minutes later the drawing was done and on my desk for my 4 1/2 year to find when he woke up.

DDA receives all sorts of projects and assignments of varying degrees of difficulty. Some can be completed with a team of one or two people and some requests like medical CME projects, interactive media and website design and development projects require an entire staff effort utilizing all of our individual degreed skills and talents. We also pride ourselves with high levels of customer service and availability, so if our clients request we take notes in red pen, we can!