ActiveX + Preview + Office + Web

• Introduction
• Installation & Requirements
• Screenshots

• To-Do List
• Known Issues
• History

• Translation Tips

The plugin will hook other programs and viewers into Opus, depending on which compatible software you have installed.

It is designed to work with the following:

• Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.)
• The standalone MS Office Viewers (free)
• Internet Explorer (for HTML, MHT, XML, etc.)
• Adobe Reader (PDF)
• Fox-It Reader (PDF)
• Shockwave Flash (SWF)
• Vista and Office 2007 Preview Handlers (E-mails, Contacts, Fonts, etc.)
• Microsoft XPS documents
• Windows Media Player (but the Opus Movie plugin is better for movie playback)
• Zip file contents
• And more...

The plugin includes the ability for 64-bit versions of Opus to use both 32-bit and 64-bit ActiveX viewers. For example, this enables 64-bit users to view PDF and Flash files within the Opus viewer pane, even though Adobe have not produced 64-bit versions of their components.

The ActiveX plugin is packaged as part of Directory Opus itself so there is nothing extra to download or install.

If you have Opus 8 or 9 then you already have the ActiveX plugin.

Version 3 of the plugin comes with, and requires, Directory Opus 9.1.0.4 and above.

Version 2 of the plugin came with earlier versions of Directory Opus 8 and 9.

Version 1 of the plugin was never released.

• Documentation:
  • Manual page needs re-writing for version 3 of the plugin.
  • Button in config dialog should be added to link to the manual page once it's written.
  • Mention in Help that if Adobe Reader stops working, or opens documents in a separate window, then people should go to Adobe Reader's Preferences dialog, then select Internet, then toggle the "Display PDF in Browser" option off (OK the dialog), and then on again (OK the dialog again).
• Preview Handlers:
  • Printing.
  • Handler names may not always be localised.
• Microsoft Office (when not used via Preview Handlers):
  • Printing.
  • Whenever the top-level window is activated the focus goes to the viewer whether or not it was there when the window was last deactivated.
• Internet Explorer:
  • Printing.
  • Simple navigation toolbar so you can go back/forward, see what you are clicking on, etc. Also a "view source" button to toggle between HTML source and rendered pages.

Many of these issues seem to be bugs or deficiencies in the components mentioned, rather than in the ActiveX plugin itself. I've tried everything I can think of to work around the problems and have given up for now. In the case of the Media Player and QuickTime issues, the Opus Movie plugin does a far better job than the ActiveX plugin, provided you have the required splitters/codecs, so it doesn't seem worth spending more time on them.

• Internet Explorer:
  • If you use Dragon NaturallySpeaking you may need to turn off its option called "Enable commands in HTML windows", else it could cause Opus to lock-up when viewing HTML files.
  • HTML pages flicker like crazy when you resize them.
  • If you are using IE6 or below you cannot zoom in and out. Before IE7, IE only supported changing the font size and not proper zooming, and changing the font size results in a mess in the registry. Because of this, and the fact that zooming web pages isn't that important, added to the fact that IE6 needs terminating with extreme prejudice due to not supporting PNG alpha channels, there are no plans to support zooming on IE6. :-)
  • If you're on 64-bit Windows and the plugin is configured to use 32-bit IE (the default), using Ctrl-F to find text will usually result in an error message. Switching the HTML, MHT, etc. extensions to the 64-bit version of IE will resolve this if it bothers you.
• Windows Media Player:
  • WMP Resizing oddities. On XP videos do not maintain their aspect when resized. On Vista videos do maintain their aspect but the zoom level resets to 100% sometimes.
  • WMP's volume slider only repositions itself if the window is resized vertically (or diagonally) when it obviously should reposition itself on horizontal (or diagonal) moves.
  • WMP flickers like crazy when you resize it.
  • WMP on XP may not work in USB mode since it requires a registry setting to enable the viewer to load the right version of WMP. This does not seem to affect Windows 2000 or Vista.
• QuickTime:
  • The QuickTime control does not set the mouse cursor when the mouse is over it.
  • The QuickTime control will sometimes display an error message as the viewer closes.

Version 3.1.0.3 (23rd April 2008):

• Included as part of the Directory Opus 9.1.0.4 installer.
• Support for Office document Zooming (Word/Excel/PowerPoint) and Fit-to-Page (Word/PowerPoint).
• Support for HTML document Zooming. (IE7 only. Older versions of IE do not support zooming.)
• IE is now run in-process again whenever possible. (It's still out-of-process when 32-bit IE is used inside of 64-bit Opus.) This isn't really a feature but it means the next thing now works:
• Ctrl-F (Find) when viewing HTML via IE works reliably again on 32-bit platforms. On 64-bit platforms you will still see error messages when using Ctrl-F if the plugin is configured to use 32-bit IE (the default) but you can change to 64-bit IE if this annoys you.
• Increased timeout which may resolve problem of Office documents not always opening (or opening and then closing immediately) on 64-bit Windows.
• The plugin is now localised into the same languages as Opus itself.

Version 3.1.0.0 (10th March 2008):

• Fixed USB export.
• The 64-bit plugin can now use 32-bit ActiveX controls. This means 64-bit users can view PDF and Flash files and use 32-bit Windows Media Player codecs.
• The 64-bit plugin's configuration dialog allows you assign extensions to 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Internet Explorer and Generic ActiveX controls. The default configuration assigns everything to 32-bit as many controls do not yet have 64-bit versions and this is what the OS itself does with IE and WMP.
• The plugin now runs all of its viewers in separate processes in order to isolate Opus itself from crashes.
• Windows Media Player crashes after full-screen mode seem to be fixed as a result of the process isolation.
• Moved text into StringTable resource to allow for localisation.
• Configuration dialog uses system Message Box font. (e.g. Segoe UI 9 on Vista.)
• Default configuration changes:
  • Added .zip to default Internet Explorer extensions. Shows you the contents of the selected zip file.
  • Disabled Microsoft XPS Rich preview handler by default as the Internet Explorer plugin is better overall.
  • Disabled Windows Media Player preview handler by default as the Generic ActiveX control is generally better.
  • Disabled Windows Mail HTML preview handler by default as using Internet Explorer gives fuller results (e.g. images).

Version 3.0.0.5 (24th February 2008):

• First 64-bit version.

Version 3.0.0.3 (21st February 2008):

• Fixed, or at least reduced, problems when multiple Office viewers were open at once.
• Fixed Excel not taking the focus after the file display was clicked and then Excel clicked.
• Fixed focus being lost when the viewer has focus and is closed. (Fix required change to Opus as well as plugin, so won't be seen until the next Opus version is also released and installed.)
• The plugin now attempts to restore focus back to the lister after documents are loaded.
• The plugin tries to forward mousewheel messages to the viewer even when it is not active. This only works with some ActiveX controls.

Version 3.0.0.2 (13th February 2008):

• Fixed Windows 2000 compatibility.
• Fixed Office 2000 resizing.
• Fixed Excel 2000 incorrectly displaying partial Web toolbar.
• Fixed viewer window lock-up if viewer set to handle HTML files when double-clicked, and the HTML document was then scrolled to the bottom.
• Fixed problems with Windows MAPI Preview Handler sometimes not responding, or causing the next file you view to be unresponsive. (e.g. When changing between .msg and .eml files a few times.)
• Fixed bits of the ActiveX control sometimes being left over the Opus window after resizing rapidly.
• Fixed loading Flash files with non-ASCII filenames via the Internet Explorer method. (Workaround for bug in Flash ActiveX control.)
• Fixed problems caused by clicking links in Flash files when viewed via the Generic ActiveX method. These used to cause the viewer to exit and are now ignored completely (for security reasons). The Internet Explorer method, which is the default for Flash files, does not have this limitation.
• Tested against standalone Office viewers without problems.

Version 3.0.0.0 (9th February 2008):

• Version 3 of the ActiveX Plugin was a complete re-write.
• Support for Preview Handlers within Directory Opus. Preview Handlers are a new type of lightweight viewer used by Windows Vista's Explorer and Microsoft Office 2007. Vista & Office 2007 ship with several useful Preview Handlers for formats including Word, RTF, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, fonts, contacts, web pages, saved e-mails, various video formats, and more. Additional Preview Handlers are available on the net and some work on XP as well as Vista.
• As before, support for Microsoft Office documents if you have Office or the standalone Office ActiveX viewers installed. The default configuration has also been updated to include the new Office 2007 file extensions.
• Zooming support. Word documents are now zoomed to fit the window width by default. IE7, Word, Excel and PowerPoint can all be zoomed in and out.
• Improved support for web documents. In addition to the old HTML support the plugin can now view MHT, URL and XML files.
• New support for QuickTime .MOV files. Opus's Movie plugin is still the better choice for MOV playback if you have the required DirectShow filters installed, but now the ActiveX plugin provides a decent fallback for those who don't.
• The ability for 64-bit versions of Opus to display files using 32-bit versions of Internet Explorer, Adobe Reader, and other ActiveX controls (as well as the 64-bit versions of them, if any).
• Generally improved compatibility. Several ActiveX controls which did not work in the past now work with this version.
• Support for Opus's USB mode, meaning the plugin works when Opus is running from a portable device.

Version 2.0.0.10 (22nd August 2004):

• Initial public release.
• Comes with Directory Opus 8.

If you are translating Directory Opus into another language then this will help you understand where the ActiveX plugin's strings are used:

• ActiveX Plugin Translation Tips