On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 9:34 AM, John Weller<[email protected]> wrote: > > M$ hasn't broken your code - if it worked with Office 2003 then it still > will! If the client decides to upgrade then that is what has broken your > code. >
My experience with this is that when the client upgrades his Office install, or brings in new machines that have a newer Office on them, and your app stops working, the customer concludes it's your fault for developing such poorly-crafted software, not his for staying up-to-date, nor Microsoft's for shipping incompatible software. and it's that perception that matters. I had exactly this experience with Office a few versions ago, and the downtime my client experienced cost them a lot of money, and despite all of my explanations to the contrary, they were left with the impression that my software was undependable. The lesson I took away from that was that building your solution upon components that could be switched out from under you without your control, and from a vendor who didn't regard backward compatibility as important, was a foolhardy way to provide reliable software to clients. I made that mistake a couple of times (MS Office, HTML Help, MS Graph, ActiveX) before deciding that there had to be a better way. -- Ted Roche Ted Roche & Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[email protected] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
