Apa Itu Search Engine???

Search Engine

Search engine adalah suatu portal website yang menyediakan informasi pencarian data-data yang dibutuhkan pengunjung internet. Untuk mendapatkan informasi yang dibutuhkan pengunjung internet harus masuk ke situs tersebut dan melalukan pencarian. Website search engine yang terkenal adalah Google dan Yahoo.

Cara kerja search engine pertama-tama adalah mengcopy paste semua halaman website yang ada didunia. Setelah semua data masuk maka kemudian akan diolah dengan alogaritmanya sendiri. Saat pengunjung mencari data yang dibutuhkan, dengan alogaritmanya dai menampilkan data sesuai yang dimasukkan pengunjung.


Search engine akan berusaha mungkin akan menampilkan data yang paling relevan dengan yang diinginkan pengunjung. Berbagai kemungkinan data yang ditampilkan, dan search engine punya banyak pertimbangan yang dituangkan dalam alogaritmanya.

Alogaritma ini terus berkembang karena perkembangan teknologi yang ada disamping banyak website yang berusaha agar website dia muncul di halaman pertama hasil pencarian.
Unruk bisa masuk di halaman pertama, kita harus membuat website mempunya content yang baik selain juga mempunyai struktur website yang disenangi search engine. Ini dikenal dengan SEO(Search Engine Optimization)

By : Maria Natalia
Source : www.wikipedia.org

Office Aplication: Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program developed by Jhon Rey of Microsoft. It is part of the Microsoft Office suite, and runs on Microsoft Windows and Apple's Mac OS X computer operating systems.

PowerPoint is widely used by business people, educators, students, and trainers and among the most prevalent forms of persuasive technology. Beginning with Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft revised the branding to emphasize PowerPoint's place within the office suite, calling it Microsoft Office PowerPoint instead of just Microsoft PowerPoint. The current versions are Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 for Windows and 2008 for Mac.

History

The first version of PowerPoint was initially developed on 14 August 1984 by Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin of Forethought, Inc. of Sunnyvale, California. The original version of this program was created by Dennis Austin and Thomas Rudkin .Originally designed for the Macintosh computer, the initial release was called "Presenter". In 1987, it was renamed to "PowerPoint" due to problems with trademarks, the idea for the name coming from Robert Gaskins. In August of the same year, Forethought was bought by Microsoft for $14 million USD ($26.2 million in present-day terms[3]), and became Microsoft's Graphics Business Unit, which continued to further develop the software.

PowerPoint changed significantly with PowerPoint 97. Prior to PowerPoint 97, presentations were linear, always proceeding from one slide to the next. PowerPoint 97 introduced hyperlinks, which allowed users to jump around during a presentation.

PowerPoint 2000 (and the rest of the Office 2000 suite) introduced a clipboard that could hold multiple objects at once. Another noticeable change was that the Office Assistant, whose frequent unsolicited appearance in PowerPoint 97 had annoyed many users, was changed to be less intrusive.

PowerPoint 2007 (and the rest of the Office 2007 suite) introduced a complete redesign of the user interface where commands could be found in the "ribbon," rather than in traditional menus.
See also: Microsoft Office 2000

Operation

PowerPoint presentations consist of a number of individual pages or "slides". The "slide" analogy is a reference to the slide projector, a device that has become obsolete with the use of PowerPoint and other presentation software. Slides may contain text, graphics, movies, and other objects, which may be arranged freely on the slide. PowerPoint, however, facilitates the use of a consistent style in a presentation using a template or "Slide Master".

The presentation can be printed, displayed live on a computer, or navigated through at the command of the presenter. For larger audiences the computer display is often projected using a video projector. Slides can also form the basis of webcasts.

PowerPoint provides three types of movements:

1. Entrance, emphasis, and exit of elements on a slide itself are controlled by what PowerPoint calls Custom Animations.
2. Transitions, on the other hand are movements between slides. These can be animated in a variety of ways.
3. Custom animation can be used to create small story boards by animating pictures to enter, exit or move.

PowerPoint Viewer

The Microsoft Office PowerPoint Viewer is a program used to run presentations on computers that don't have Microsoft PowerPoint installed. The Office PowerPoint Viewer is added by default to the same disk or network location that contains one or more presentations you packaged by using the Package for CD feature.

The PowerPoint Viewer is installed by default with your Microsoft Office 2003 installation for use with the Package for CD feature. The PowerPoint Viewer file is also available for download from the Microsoft Office Online Web site.

Presentations password-protected for opening or modifying can be opened by the PowerPoint Viewer. The Package for CD feature allows you to package any password-protected file or set a new password for all packaged presentations. The PowerPoint Viewer prompts you for a password if the file is open password-protected.

The PowerPoint Viewer supports opening presentations created using PowerPoint 97 and later. In addition, it supports all file content except OLE objects and scripting.

Versions, Versions for Microsoft Windows include:

* 1990 PowerPoint 2.0 for Windows 3.0
* 1992 PowerPoint 3.0 for Windows 3.1
* 1993 PowerPoint 4.0 (Office 4.x)
* 1995 PowerPoint for Windows 95 (version 7.0) — (Office 95)
* 1997 PowerPoint 97 — (Office 97)
* 1999 PowerPoint 2000 (version 9.0) — (Office 2000)
* 2001 PowerPoint 2002 (version 10) — (Office XP)
* 2003 PowerPoint 2003 (version 11) — (Office 2003)
* 2007 PowerPoint 2007 (version 12) — (Office 2007)
* 2010 PowerPoint 2010 (version 14) — (Office 2010)

Note: There is no PowerPoint version 5.0 or 6.0, because the Windows 95 version was launched with Word 7.0. All Office 95 products have OLE 2 capacity — moving data automatically from various programs — and PowerPoint 7.0 shows that it was contemporary with Word 7.0.

Versions for the Mac OS include:

* 1987 PowerPoint 1.0 for Mac OS classic
* 1988 PowerPoint 2.0 for Mac OS classic
* 1992 PowerPoint 3.0 for Mac OS classic
* 1994 PowerPoint 4.0 for Mac OS classic
* 1998 PowerPoint 98 (8.0) for Mac OS classic (Office 1998 for Mac)
* 2000 PowerPoint 2001 (9.0) for Mac OS classic (Office 2001 for Mac)
* 2002 PowerPoint v. X (10.0) for Mac OS X (Office:Mac v. X)
* 2004 PowerPoint 2004 (11.0) for Mac OS X Office:Mac 2004
* 2008 PowerPoint 2008 (12.0) for Mac OS X Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac

Note: There is no PowerPoint 5.0, 6.0 or 7.0 for Mac. There is no version 5.0 or 6.0 because the Windows 95 version was launched with Word 7. All of the Office 95 products have OLE 2 capacity — moving data automatically from various programs — and PowerPoint 7 shows that it was contemporary with Word 7. There was no version 7.0 made for Mac to coincide with either version 7.0 for Windows or PowerPoint 97.

File formats
PowerPoint Presentation Filename extension .ppt, .pptx, .pps, or .ppsx
Internet media type application/vnd.ms-powerpoint
Uniform Type Identifier com.microsoft.powerpoint.ppt
Developed by Microsoft
Type of format Presentation

The binary format specification has been available from Microsoft on request, but since February 2008 the .ppt format specification can be freely downloaded.

In Microsoft Office 2007 the binary file formats were replaced as the default format by the new XML based Office Open XML formats, which are published as an open standard. Nevertheless, they are not complete as there are binary blobs inside of the XML files, and several pieces of behaviour are not specified but refer to the observed behaviour of specific versions of Microsoft product.

by: Andreas.W Source=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PowerPoint

Office Aplication: Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop, or simply Photoshop, is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems. It is the current market leader for commercial bitmap and image manipulation software, and is the flagship product of Adobe Systems. It has been described as "an industry standard for graphics professionals" and was one of the early "killer applications" on the Macintosh, later also for MS Windows.

Adobe's 2005 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS4 is the 11th major release of Adobe Photoshop. The CS rebranding also resulted in Adobe offering numerous software packages containing multiple Adobe programs for a reduced price. Adobe Photoshop is included in most of Adobe's Creative Suite offerings.

Photoshop's popularity, combined with its high retail price, makes Photoshop's piracy rate relatively high. Adobe countered by including SafeCast DRM starting with Adobe Photoshop CS.
Contents

Development
Further information: Adobe Photoshop release history

Early history
Photoshop 1.0.7 running in System 6.

In 1987, Thomas Knoll, a PhD student at the University of Michigan, began writing a program on his Macintosh Plus to display grayscale images on a monochrome display. This program, called Display, caught the attention of his brother John Knoll, an Industrial Light & Magic employee, who recommended Thomas turn it into a full-fledged image editing program. Thomas took a six month break from his studies in 1988 to collaborate with his brother on the program, which had been renamed ImagePro. Later that year, Thomas renamed his program Photoshop and worked out a short-term deal with scanner manufacturer Barneyscan to distribute copies of the program with a slide scanner; a "total of about 200 copies of Photoshop were shipped" this way.

During this time, John traveled to Silicon Valley and gave a demonstration of the program to engineers at Apple and Russell Brown, art director at Adobe. Both showings were successful, and Adobe decided to purchase the license to distribute in September 1988.[4] While John worked on plug-ins in California, Thomas remained in Ann Arbor writing program code. Photoshop 1.0 was released in 1990 for Macintosh exclusively.

Features
This section may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. More details may be available on the talk page. (November 2008)
Further information: Comparison of raster graphics editors#Features

Photoshop has strong ties with other Adobe software for media editing, animation, and authoring. The .PSD (Photoshop Document), Photoshop's native format, stores an image with support for most imaging options available in Photoshop. These include layers with masks, color spaces, ICC profiles, transparency, text, alpha channels and spot colors, clipping paths, and duotone settings. This is in contrast to many other file formats (e.g. .EPS or .GIF) that restrict content to provide streamlined, predictable functionality.

Photoshop's popularity means that the .PSD format is widely used, and it is supported to some extent by most competing software. The .PSD file format can be exported to and from Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premiere Pro, and After Effects, to make professional standard DVDs and provide non-linear editing and special effects services, such as backgrounds, textures, and so on, for television, film, and the Web. Photoshop is a pixel-based image editor, unlike programs such as Macromedia FreeHand (now defunct), Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw, which are vector-based image editors.

Photoshop can utilize the color models RGB, lab, CMYK, grayscale, binary bitmap, and duotone. Photoshop has the ability to read and write raster and vector image formats such as .EPS, .PNG, .GIF, .JPEG, and Adobe Fireworks.

CS3
Smart Layers display the filter without altering the original image (here on Mac OS X)

Photoshop CS3 is marketed with three main components of improvement over previous versions: "Work more productively, edit with unrivalled power, and composite with breakthrough tools."[7] New features propagating productivity include streamlined interface, improved Camera Raw, better control over print options, enhanced PDF support, and better management with Adobe Bridge. Editing tools new to CS3 are the Clone Source palette and nondestructive Smart Filters, and other features such as the Brightness/Contrast adjustment and Vanishing Point module were enhanced. The Black and White adjustment option improves users control over manual grayscale conversions with a dialog box similar to that of Channel Mixer. Compositing is assisted with Photoshop's new Quick Selection and Refine Edge tools and improved image stitching technology.

CS3 Extended contains all features of CS3 plus tools for editing and importing some 3D graphics file formats, enhancing video, and comprehensive image analysis tools, utilizing MATLAB integration and DICOM file support.

CS4
Photoshop CS4 features additions such as the ability to paint directly on 3D models, wrap 2D images around 3D shapes, convert gradient maps to 3D objects, add depth to layers and text, get print-quality output with the new ray-tracing rendering engine, and enjoy exporting to supported common 3D formats; the new Adjustment and Mask Panels; Content-aware scaling (also known as seam carving; Fluid Canvas Rotation and File display options. On 30 April, Adobe released Photoshop CS4 Extended, which includes all the same features of Adobe Photoshop CS4 with the addition of capabilities for scientific imaging, 3D, and high end film and video users. The successor to Photoshop CS3, Photoshop CS4 is the first 64-bit Photoshop on consumer computers (only on Windows – the OS X version is still 32-bit only.)

CS5
Adobe is currently developing Photoshop CS5, which is expected to be released in mid-2010.
In a video posted on its official Facebook page, the development team revealed the new technologies under development, including three dimensional brushes and warping tools.

Language availability
Photoshop is available in the following languages:
Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian.
The Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Middle Eastern, and North African language versions are available from Winsoft.

by: Andreas.W Source=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Acrobat

Windows XP

Windows XP


Windows XP is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, and media centers. It was released in 2001. The name "XP" is short for "eXPerience".

Windows XP is the successor to both Windows 2000 Professional and Windows Me, and is the first consumer-oriented operating system produced by Microsoft to be built on the Windows NT kernel and architecture. Windows XP was first released on October 25, 2001, and over 400 million copies were in use in January 2006, according to an estimate in that month by an IDC analyst. It was succeeded by Windows Vista, which was released to volume license customers on November 8, 2006, and worldwide to the general public on January 30, 2007. Direct OEM and retail sales of Windows XP ceased on June 30, 2008. Microsoft continued to sell XP through their System Builders (smaller OEMs who sell assembled computers) program until January 31, 2009. XP may continue to be available as these sources run through their inventory or by purchasing Windows Vista Ultimate or Business and then downgrading to Windows XP.

The most common editions of the operating system are Windows XP Home Edition, which is targeted at home users, and Windows XP Professional, which offers additional features such as support for Windows Server domains and two physical processors, and is targeted at power users, business and enterprise clients. Windows XP Media Center Edition has additional multimedia features enhancing the ability to record and watch TV shows, view DVD movies, and listen to music. Windows XP Tablet PC Edition is designed to run stylus applications built using the Tablet PC platform.

Windows XP was eventually released for two additional architectures, Windows XP 64-bit Edition for IA-64 (Itanium) processors and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition for x86-64. There is also Windows XP Embedded, a component version of the Windows XP Professional, and editions for specific markets such as Windows XP Starter Edition. By mid 2009, a manufacturer revealed the first Windows XP powered cellular telephone.

The NT-based versions of Windows are known for their improved stability and efficiency over the 9x versions of Microsoft Windows. Windows XP presents a significantly redesigned graphical user interface, a change Microsoft promoted as more user-friendly than previous versions of Windows. A new software management facility called Side-by-Side Assembly was introduced to ameliorate the "DLL hell" that plagues 9x versions of Windows. It is also the first version of Windows to use product activation to combat illegal copying, a restriction that did not sit well with some users and privacy advocates. Windows XP has also been criticized by some users for security vulnerabilities, tight integration of applications such as Internet Explorer 6 and Windows Media Player, and for aspects of its default user interface. Later versions with Service Pack 2, Service Pack 3, and Internet Explorer 8 addressed some of these concerns.

During development, the project was codenamed "Whistler", after Whistler, British Columbia, as many Microsoft employees skied at the Whistler-Blackcomb ski resort.

As of the end of December 2009, Windows XP is the most widely used operating system in the world with a 61.6% market share, having peaked at 76.1% in January 2007.

Editions

The two major editions are Windows XP Home Edition, designed for home users, and Windows XP Professional, designed for business and power-users. XP Professional contains advanced features that the average home user would not use. However, these features are not necessarily missing from XP Home. They are simply disabled, but are there and can become functional. These releases were made available at retail outlets that sell computer software, and were preinstalled on computers sold by major computer manufacturers. As of mid-2008, both editions continue to be sold. A third edition, called Windows XP Media Center Edition was introduced in 2002 and was updated every year until 2006 to incorporate new digital media, broadcast television and Media Center Extender capabilities. Unlike the Home and Professional edition, it was never made available for retail purchase, and was typically either sold through OEM channels, or was preinstalled on computers that were typically marketed as "media center PCs".

Two different 64-bit editions were made available, one designed specifically for Itanium-based workstations, which was introduced in 2001 around the same time as the Home and Professional editions, but was discontinued a few years later when vendors of Itanium hardware stopped selling workstation-class machines due to low sales. The other, called Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, supports the x86-64 extension of the Intel IA-32 architecture. x86-64 is implemented by AMD as "AMD64", found in AMD's Opteron and Athlon 64 chips, and implemented by Intel as "Intel 64" (formerly known as IA-32e and EM64T), found in Intel's Pentium 4 and later chips.

Windows XP Tablet PC Edition was produced for a class of specially designed notebook/laptop computers called tablet PCs. It is compatible with a pen-sensitive screen, supporting handwritten notes and portrait-oriented screens.
Internet Explorer 6 running in Windows XP Tablet PC Edition.

Microsoft also released Windows XP Embedded, an edition for specific consumer electronics, set-top boxes, kiosks/ATMs, medical devices, arcade video games, point-of-sale terminals, and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) components. In July 2006, Microsoft released Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs, a thin client version of Windows XP Embedded which targets older machines (as early as the original Pentium). It is only available to Software Assurance customers. It is intended for corporate customers who would like to upgrade to Windows XP to take advantage of its security and management capabilities, but can't afford to purchase new hardware.

Editions for specific markets

Windows XP Starter Edition is a lower-cost edition of Windows XP available in Thailand, Turkey, Indonesia, Russia, India, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico, Ecuador, Uruguay and Venezuela. It is similar to Windows XP Home, but is limited to low-end hardware, can only run 3 programs at a time, and has some other features either removed or disabled by default. Each country's edition is also customized for that country, including desktop backgrounds of popular locations, localized help features for those who may not speak English, and other default settings designed for easier use than typical Windows XP installations. The Malaysian version, for example, contains a desktop background of the Kuala Lumpur skyline.

In March 2004, the European Commission fined Microsoft €497 million (US$603 million) and ordered the company to provide a version of Windows without Windows Media Player. The Commission concluded that Microsoft "broke European Union competition law by leveraging its near monopoly in the market for PC operating systems onto the markets for work group server operating systems and for media players". After unsuccessful appeals in 2004 and 2005, Microsoft reached an agreement with the Commission where it would release a court-compliant version, Windows XP Edition N. This version does not include the company's Windows Media Player but instead encourages users to pick and download their own media player. Microsoft wanted to call this version Reduced Media Edition, but EU regulators objected and suggested the Edition N name, with the N signifying "not with Media Player" for both Home and Professional editions of Windows XP. Because it is sold at the same price as the version with Windows Media Player included, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Fujitsu Siemens have chosen not to stock the product. However, Dell did offer the operating system for a short time. Consumer interest has been low, with roughly 1,500 units shipped to OEMs, and no reported sales to consumers.

In December 2005, the Korean Fair Trade Commission ordered Microsoft to make available editions of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 that do not contain Windows Media Player or Windows Messenger. Like the European Commission decision, this decision was based on the grounds that Microsoft had abused its dominant position in the market to push other products onto consumers. Unlike that decision, however, Microsoft was also forced to withdraw the non-compliant versions of Windows from the South Korean market. This decision resulted in Microsoft's releasing "K" and "KN" variants of the Home and Professional editions in August 2006.

That same year, Microsoft also released two additional editions of Windows XP Home Edition directed towards subscription-based and pay-as-you-go pricing models. These editions, released as part of Microsoft's FlexGo initiative, are used in conjunction with a hardware component to enforce time limitations on the usage of Windows. Its target market is emerging economies such as Brazil and Vietnam.

Languages

Windows XP is available in many languages. In addition, MUI packs and Language Interface Packs translating the user interface are also available for certain languages.

ATMs

Automated teller machine (ATM) vendors Wincor Nixdorf, NCR Corporation and Diebold Incorporated have all adopted Microsoft Windows XP as their migration path from OS/2. Wincor Nixdorf who has been pushing for standardization for many years, began shipping ATMs with Windows when they first arrived on the scene.

Diebold initially shipped XP Home Edition exclusively, but, following extensive pressure from customer banks to support a common operating system, switched to support XP Professional to match their primary competitor, NCR Corporation and Wincor Nixdorf.

User Interface

Windows XP features a new task-based graphical user interface. The Start menu and Windows indexing service were redesigned and many visual effects were added, including:






* A translucent blue selection rectangle in Explorer
* Drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop
* Task-based sidebars in Explorer windows ("common tasks")
* The ability to group the taskbar buttons of the windows of one application into one button
* The ability to lock the taskbar and other toolbars to prevent accidental changes
* The highlighting of recently added programs on the Start menu
* Shadows under menus (Windows 2000 had shadows under mouse pointers, but not menus)

Windows XP analyzes the performance impact of visual effects and uses this to determine whether to enable them, so as to prevent the new functionality from consuming excessive additional processing overhead. Users can further customize these settings. Some effects, such as alpha compositing (transparency and fading), are handled entirely by many newer video cards. However, if the video card is not capable of hardware alpha blending, performance can be substantially hurt, and Microsoft recommends the feature should be turned off manually. Windows XP adds the ability for Windows to use "Visual Styles" to change the user interface. However, visual styles must be cryptographically signed by Microsoft to run. Luna is the name of the new visual style that ships with Windows XP, and is enabled by default for machines with more than 64 MiB of RAM. Luna refers only to one particular visual style, not to all of the new user interface features of Windows XP as a whole. Some users "patch" the uxtheme.dll file that restricts the ability to use visual styles, created by the general public or the user, on Windows XP.

In addition to the included Windows XP themes, there is one previously unreleased theme with a dark blue taskbar and window bars similar to Windows Vista titled "Royale Noir" available for download, albeit unofficially. Microsoft officially released a modified version of this theme as the "Zune" theme, to celebrate the launch of its Zune portable media player in November 2006. The differences are only visual with a new glassy look along with a black taskbar instead of dark blue and an orange start button instead of green. Additionally, the Media Center "Energy Blue" theme, which was included in the Media Center editions, is also available to download for use on all Windows XP editions.

The default wallpaper, Bliss, is a BMP photograph of a landscape in the Napa Valley outside Napa, California, with rolling green hills and a blue sky with stratocumulus and cirrus clouds.

The Windows 2000 "classic" interface can be used instead if preferred. Several third party utilities exist that provide hundreds of different visual styles. Microsoft licensed technology from WindowBlinds creator Stardock to create its visual styles in XP.

Service packs

Microsoft occasionally releases service packs for its Windows operating systems to fix problems and add features. Each service pack is a superset of all previous service packs and patches so that only the latest service pack needs to be installed, and also includes new revisions. Older service packs need not be removed before application of the most recent one.

The service pack details below only apply to the 32-bit editions. Windows XP Professional x64 Edition was based on Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 and claimed to be "SP1" in system properties from the initial release. It is updated by the same service packs and hotfixes as the x64 edition of Windows Server 2003.

Service Pack 1

Set Program Access and Defaults was added in Service Pack 1.

Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Windows XP was released on September 9, 2002. It contains post-RTM security fixes and hot-fixes, compatibility updates, optional .NET Framework support, enabling technologies for new devices such as Tablet PCs, and a new Windows Messenger 4.7 version. The most notable new features were USB 2.0 support and a Set Program Access and Defaults utility that aimed at hiding various middleware products. Users can control the default application for activities such as web browsing and instant messaging, as well as hide access to some of Microsoft's bundled programs. This utility was first brought into the older Windows 2000 operating system with its Service Pack 3. This Service Pack supported SATA and hard drives that were larger than 137GB (48-bit LBA support) by default. The Microsoft Java Virtual Machine, which was not in the RTM version, appeared in this Service Pack. Support for IPv6 was also introduced in this Service Pack.

On February 3, 2003, Microsoft released Service Pack 1a (SP1a). This release removed Microsoft's Java virtual machine as a result of a lawsuit with Sun Microsystems.

Service Pack 2

Windows Security Center was added in Service Pack 2.

Service Pack 2 (SP2) (codenamed "Springboard") was released on August 6, 2004, with an emphasis on security. Unlike the previous service pack, SP2 added new functionality to Windows XP, such as WPA encryption compatibility and improved Wi-Fi support (with a wizard utility), a pop-up ad blocker for Internet Explorer 6, and Bluetooth support. The new welcome screen during the kernel boot removes the subtitles "Professional", "Home Edition" and "Embedded" since Microsoft introduced new Windows XP editions prior to the release of SP2. The green loading bar in Home Edition and the yellow one in Embedded were replaced with the blue bar, seen in Professional and other versions of Windows XP, making the boot-screen of operating systems resemble each other. Colors in other areas, such as Control Panel and the Help and Support tool, remained as before.

Service Pack 2 also added new security enhancements, which included a major revision to the included firewall that was renamed to Windows Firewall and became enabled by default, Data Execution Prevention, which can be weakly emulated, gains hardware support in the NX bit that can stop some forms of buffer overflow attacks. Also raw socket support is removed (which supposedly limits the damage done by zombie machines). Additionally, security-related improvements were made to e-mail and web browsing. Windows XP Service Pack 2 includes the Windows Security Center, which provides a general overview of security on the system, including the state of antivirus software, Windows Update, and the new Windows Firewall. Third-party anti-virus and firewall applications can interface with the new Security Center.

Service Pack 2b

In August 2006, Microsoft released updated installation media for Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1 to contain a patch that requires ActiveX controls to require manual activation in accordance with a patent held by Eolas. Since then, the technology was licensed by Microsoft, and Service Pack 3 and later versions do not include this update.

Service Pack 2c

On August 10, 2007, Microsoft announced a minor update to Service Pack 2, called Service Pack 2c (SP2c). The update fixes the issue of the diminishing number of available product keys for Windows XP. This update was only available to system builders from their distributors in Windows XP Professional and Windows XP Professional N operating systems. SP2c was released in September 2007.

Service Pack 3

Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) was released to manufacturing on April 21, 2008, and to the public via both the Microsoft Download Center and Windows Update on May 6, 2008.

It began being automatically pushed out to Automatic Update users on July 10, 2008. A feature set overview which details new features available separately as standalone updates to Windows XP, as well as backported features from Windows Vista has been posted by Microsoft. A total of 1,174 fixes have been included in SP3. Service Pack 3 can be installed on systems with Internet Explorer versions 6, 7 or 8. Internet Explorer 7 and 8 are not included as part of SP3.

New features in Service Pack 3

* Turns black hole router detection on by default
* Network Access Protection client
* Group Policy support for IEEE 802.1X authentication for wired network adapters.
* Credentials Security Service Provider
* Descriptive Security options in Group Policy/Local Security Policy user interface
* An updated version of the Microsoft Enhanced Cryptographic Provider Module (RSAENH) that is FIPS 140-2 certified (SHA-256, SHA-384 and SHA-512 algorithms)
* Installing without requiring a product key during setup for retail and OEM versions

Previously released updates

Service Pack 3 also incorporated several previously released key updates for Windows XP, which were not included up to SP2 including:

* Windows Imaging Component
* IPSec Simple Policy Update for simplified creation and maintenance of IPSec filters
* Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) 2.5
* MSXML 6.0 SP2 and XMLLite
* Microsoft Management Console 3.0
* Credential Roaming service (Digital Identity Management Service) update
* Remote Desktop Protocol 6.1
* Peer Name Resolution Protocol 2.1
* Network Diagnostics update
* WPA2 Update (KB893357)
* Windows Script 5.7
* Windows Installer 3.1 v2

Slipstreamed retail and OEM versions of Windows XP with SP3 can be installed and run with full functionality for 30 days without a product key, after which time the user will be prompted to enter a valid key and activate the installation. Volume license key (VLK) versions still require entering a product key before beginning installation.

Although service packs have, until now, been cumulative, installing SP3 on an existing installation of Windows XP requires that the computer must at least be running with Service Pack 1 installed. However, it is possible to slipstream SP3 into the Windows XP setup files at any service pack level—including the original RTM version—without any errors or issues. Slipstreaming SP3 into Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 is not supported.

Service Pack 3 contains updates to the operating system components of Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) and Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, and security updates for .NET Framework version 1.0, which is included in these Windows XP SKUs. However, it does not include update rollups for the Windows Media Center application in Windows XP MCE 2005. SP3 also omits security updates for Windows Media Player 10, although the player is included in Windows XP MCE 2005. The Address Bar DeskBand on the Taskbar is no longer included due to legal restrictions.

User complaints

There have been various complaints regarding Service Pack 3's installation and performance reported by many users, ranging from conflicts with other software such as Symantec and other security applications, to internet connectivity and reboot loops.

Support lifecycle

Support for Windows XP without a service pack ended on September 30, 2004 and support for Windows XP Service Pack 1 and 1a ended on October 10, 2006.

Windows XP Service Pack 2 will be retired on July 13, 2010, almost six years after its general availability. In accordance with Microsoft's posted timetable, the company stopped general licensing of Windows XP to OEMs and terminated retail sales of the operating system on June 30, 2008, 17 months after the release of Windows Vista. However, an exception was announced on April 3, 2008, for OEMs installing to ultra low-cost PCs (ULCPCs) either until June 30, 2010, or one year after the availability of the next client version of Windows, Windows 7—whichever date comes later. Windows 7 was released on October 22, 2009.

On April 14, 2009, Windows XP and its family of operating systems were moved from Mainstream Support to the Extended Support phase as it marks the progression of the legacy operating system through the Microsoft Support Lifecycle Policy. During the Extended Support Phase, Microsoft will continue to provide security updates every month for Windows XP, however free technical support, warranty claims and design changes are no longer being offered.

Only Software Assurance customers who still run Windows XP can enroll in the Extended Hotfix Support Agreement if they want to receive non-security related hotfixes. The enrollment offer for consumers ended on July 14, 2009.

On April 8, 2014, all Windows XP support, including security updates and security-related hotfixes will be terminated.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows By: Steven Tanuwijaya /11 -IPA 2

How To Use Browser?

Looking for a company's Web site but not sure where to start? You can, of course, use a search engine to track it down. But here's a much quicker technique that often pays off: simply use the company's name.

For instance, if you want to locate drivers for your Hewlett-Packard printer, type www.hewlett-packard.com or www.hp.com (hp is a common abbreviation for Hewlett-Packard) into your browser's address box and see if you make a match. Chances are, you will. You can also tack "au" onto the end of the address if you want to see if there's an Australian site for the company; the suffix "ca" will turn up Canadian companies; and so on. One pitfall: Many UK-based companies use the suffix co.uk instead of the expected com.uk. For example, to visit the online version of the British newspaper The Times, type www.thetimes.co.uk.

(By the way, all three of the addresses for Hewlett-Packard – www.hewlett-packard.com, www.hp.com and www.hp.com.au – work. Companies often have multiple addresses which point to the same site (or to subsidiaries), to ensure customers can find them easily.)

Smart addresses

Browsers have been getting progressively more intelligent about Web addresses. It used to be that you had to type the full address, including http:// at the beginning. Then they did away with the need for the http:// and you could get what you wanted without it.

Recent generations of browsers go one step further: you don't even need the www prefix and com suffix. For any Web address that takes the form www.sitename.com, all you need to do is type sitename in the address box and hit Ctrl-Enter. Unfortunately, this doesn't work for addresses ending in .com.au or .co.uk, for example. Nor will it work when you're looking for an FTP site or other non-Web Internet address. Then you'll have to provide the full address. The one exception is if you use Crazy Browser, a free browser which includes among its many attractive features the ability to customise the browser so it automatically adds non-.com suffixes such as .co.uk.

Auto-complete

Save yourself typing and let your browser do the work: both Netscape Communicator and Internet Explorer feature auto-completion of addresses. Each browser stores a list of recently visited Web sites. When you start to type an address, the browser will attempt to auto-complete the full address for you by looking up matching entries from sites you've visited in the past. If the auto-completed entry is incorrect, simply keep typing.

What's my IP?

Sometimes online you need to know your IP address. This is the address which identifies your computer on the Internet, and it's how information you request gets sent to you correctly, instead of ending up on someone else's computer. If you play online games with others and in some other circumstances, you'll need your IP address to create a direct connection between you and another Internet user. As your IP is usually dynamically assigned – that is, you get a different IP each time you connect to the Internet – how do you know what yours is?

It's easy to find out:

1. Click Start -> Run.

2. In the Run dialog box, type winipcfg and click OK.

A dialog box will be displayed, containing your IP address as well as other information.

Note: Microsoft doesn't include the Windows IP Configuration (winipcfg) tool with Windows 2000 or Windows XP. However, you can download a version for those operating systems directly from Microsoft

Game Search Engines

Game Search Engines

A game search engine is similar to a web search engine, but it only includes results related to the video game industry. The growing market of video game industry demands a more specific search platform to find game information, game resources, game videos, game blogs and bloggers, game download websites and importantly game industry news.

Some specialist websites have incorporated a search facility that only brings in game related results. Examples include GamePublic, Gamespot, KakaGames, and GameSpider.

Also in existence are video game specific search engines based on Google custom searches. Examples include AllGameSearch and GameCurry.

By : Maria Natalia
Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_search_engine

How Web Search Engines Work

How Web Search Engines Work

A search engine operates, in the following order

1. Web crawling
2. Indexing
3. Searching

Web search engines work by storing information about many web pages, which they retrieve from the html itself. These pages are retrieved by a Web crawler (sometimes also known as a spider) — an automated Web browser which follows every link on the site. Exclusions can be made by the use of robots.txt. The contents of each page are then analyzed to determine how it should be indexed (for example, words are extracted from the titles, headings, or special fields called meta tags). Data about web pages are stored in an index database for use in later queries. A query can be a single word. The purpose of an index is to allow information to be found as quickly as possible. Some search engines, such as Google, store all or part of the source page (referred to as a cache) as well as information about the web pages, whereas others, such as AltaVista, store every word of every page they find. This cached page always holds the actual search text since it is the one that was actually indexed, so it can be very useful when the content of the current page has been updated and the search terms are no longer in it. This problem might be considered to be a mild form of linkrot, and Google's handling of it increases usability by satisfying user expectations that the search terms will be on the returned webpage. This satisfies the principle of least astonishment since the user normally expects the search terms to be on the returned pages. Increased search relevance makes these cached pages very useful, even beyond the fact that they may contain data that may no longer be available elsewhere.

When a user enters a query into a search engine (typically by using key words), the engine examines its index and provides a listing of best-matching web pages according to its criteria, usually with a short summary containing the document's title and sometimes parts of the text. The index is built from the information stored with the data and the method by which the information is indexed. Unfortunately, there is not one search engine that allows to search documents by date. Most search engines support the use of the boolean operators AND, OR and NOT to further specify the search query. Boolean operators are for literal searches that allow the user to refine and extend the terms of the search. The engine looks for the words or phrases exactly as entered. Some search engines provide an advanced feature called proximity search which allows users to define the distance between keywords. There is also concept-based searching where the research involves using statistical analysis on pages containing the words or phrases you search for. As well, natural language queries allow the user to type a question in the same form one would ask it to a human. A site like this would be ask.com.

The usefulness of a search engine depends on the relevance of the result set it gives back. While there may be millions of web pages that include a particular word or phrase, some pages may be more relevant, popular, or authoritative than others. Most search engines employ methods to rank the results to provide the "best" results first. How a search engine decides which pages are the best matches, and what order the results should be shown in, varies widely from one engine to another. The methods also change over time as Internet usage changes and new techniques evolve. There are two main types of search engine that have evolved one is a system of predefined and hierarchically ordered keywords that humans have programmed extensively. The other is a system that generates an "inverted index" by analyzing texts it locates. This second form relies much more heavily on the computer itself to do the bulk of the work.

Most Web search engines are commercial ventures supported by advertising revenue and, as a result, some employ the practice of allowing advertisers to pay money to have their listings ranked higher in search results. Those search engines which do not accept money for their search engine results make money by running search related ads alongside the regular search engine results. The search engines make money every time someone clicks on one of these ads.

By : Maria Natalia
Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_search_engine

Office Aplication: Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel (full name Microsoft Office Excel) is a spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables and a macro programming language called VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). It has been the most widely used spreadsheet application available for these platforms since version 5 in 1993. Excel is part of Microsoft Office.

History
Excel 2.0

Microsoft originally marketed a spreadsheet program called Multiplan in 1982, which became very popular on CP/M systems, but on MS-DOS systems it lost popularity to Lotus 1-2-3. Microsoft released the first version of Excel for the Mac in 1985, and the first Windows version (numbered 2.05 to line up with the Mac and bundled with a run-time Windows environment) in November 1987. Lotus was slow to bring 1-2-3 to Windows and by 1988 Excel had started to outsell 1-2-3 and helped Microsoft achieve the position of leading PC software developer. This accomplishment, dethroning the king of the software world, solidified Microsoft as a valid competitor and showed its future of developing GUI software. Microsoft pushed its advantage with regular new releases, every two years or so. The current version for the Windows platform is Excel 12, also called Microsoft Office Excel 2007. The current version for the Mac OS X platform is Microsoft Excel 2008.

Early in 1993, Excel became the target of a trademark lawsuit by another company already selling a software package named "Excel" in the finance industry. As the result of the dispute Microsoft was required to refer to the program as "Microsoft Excel" in all of its formal press releases and legal documents. However, over time this practice has been ignored, and Microsoft cleared up the issue permanently when they purchased the trademark of the other program. Microsoft also encouraged the use of the letters XL as shorthand for the program; while this is no longer common, the program's icon on Windows still consists of a stylized combination of the two letters, and the file extension of the default Excel format is .xls.

Excel offers many user interface tweaks over the earliest electronic spreadsheets; however, the essence remains the same as in the original spreadsheet, VisiCalc: the program displays cells organized in rows and columns, and each cell contains data or a formula, with relative or absolute references to other cells.

Excel was the first spreadsheet that allowed the user to define the appearance of spreadsheets (fonts, character attributes and cell appearance). It also introduced intelligent cell recomputation, where only cells dependent on the cell being modified are updated (previous spreadsheet programs recomputed everything all the time or waited for a specific user command). Excel has extensive graphing capabilities, and enables users to perform mail merge.

When Microsoft first bundled Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint into Microsoft Office in 1993, those applications had their GUIs redesigned for consistency with Excel, the killer app on the PC at the time.

Since 1993, Excel has included Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), a programming language based on Visual Basic which adds the ability to automate tasks in Excel and to provide user defined functions (UDF) for use in worksheets. VBA is a powerful addition to the application which, in later versions, includes a fully featured integrated development environment (IDE). Macro recording can produce VBA code replicating user actions, thus allowing simple automation of regular tasks. VBA allows the creation of forms and in-worksheet controls to communicate with the user. The language supports use (but not creation) of ActiveX (COM) DLL's; later versions add support for class modules allowing the use of basic object-oriented programming techniques.

The automation functionality provided by VBA has caused Excel to become a target for macro viruses. This was a serious problem in the corporate world until antivirus products began to detect these viruses. Microsoft belatedly took steps to prevent the misuse by adding the ability to disable macros completely, to enable macros when opening a workbook or to trust all macros signed using a trusted certificate.

Excel 5.0

Versions 5.0 to 9.0 of Excel contain various Easter eggs, although since version 10 Microsoft has taken measures to eliminate such undocumented features from their products.
Excel 2000
See also: Microsoft Office 2000

For most users, one of the most obvious changes introduced with Excel 2000 (and the rest of the Office 2000 suite) was a clipboard that could hold multiple objects at once. Another noticeable change was that the Office Assistant, whose frequent unsolicited appearance in Excel 97 had annoyed many users, was changed to be less intrusive.

Versions for windows:

• 1987 Excel 2.0 for Windows.
• 1990 Excel 3.0.
• 1992 Excel 4.0.
• 1993 Excel 5.0 (Office 4.2 & 4.3, also a 32-bit version for Windows NT only on the PowerPC, Alpha, and MIPS architectures).
• 1995 Excel for Windows 95 (version 7.0) - included in Office 95.
• 1997 Excel 97 - included in Office 97 (for x86 and Alpha). This version of Excel includes a flight simulator as an Easter Egg.
• 1999 Excel 2000 (version 9.0) included in Office 2000.
• 2001 Excel 2002 (version 10) included in Office XP.
• 2003 Excel 2003 (version 11) included in Office 2003.
• 2007 Excel 2007 (version 12) included in Office 2007.
• Notice: There is no MS-DOS version of Excel 1.0 for Windows, because the Windows version was introduced at the time the Mac version was up to 2.0.
• Notice: There is no Excel 6.0, because the Windows 95 version was launched with Word 7. All the Office 95 & Office 4.X products have OLE 2 capacity — moving data automatically from various programs — and Excel 7 should show that it was contemporary with Word 7.

for Apple Macintosh:

• 1985 Excel 1.0.
• 1988 Excel 1.5.
• 1989 Excel 2.2.
• 1990 Excel 3.0.
• 1992 Excel 4.0.
• 1993 Excel 5.0 (Office 4.X—Motorola 68000 version and first PowerPC version).
• 1998 Excel 8.0 (Office '98).
• 2000 Excel 9.0 (Office 2001).
• 2001 Excel 10.0 (Office v. X).
• 2004 Excel 11.0 (part of Office 2004 for Mac).
• 2008 Excel 12.0 (part of Office 2008 for Mac).

for OS/2

• 1989 Excel 2.2
• 1990 Excel 2.3
• 1991 Excel 3.0

Versions of Excel up to 7.0 had a limitation in the size of their data sets of 16K (2^14=16384) rows. Versions 8.0 through 11.0 could handle 65K (2^16=65536) rows and 256 columns (2^8 as label 'IV'). Version 12.0 can handle 1M (2^20=1048576) rows, and 16384 (2^14 as label 'XFD') columns.

File formats
Excel Spreadsheet Filename extension .xls
Internet media type application/vnd.ms-excel
Uniform Type Identifier com.microsoft.excel.xls
Developed by Microsoft
Type of format Spreadsheet

Microsoft Excel up until 2007 version used a proprietary binary file format called Binary Interchange File Format (BIFF) as its primary format. Excel 2007 uses Office Open XML as its primary file format, an XML-based format that followed after a previous XML-based format called "XML Spreadsheet" ("XMLSS"), first introduced in Excel 2002. The latter format is not able to encode VBA macros.

Although supporting and encouraging the use of new XML-based formats as replacements, Excel 2007 remained backwards-compatible with the traditional, binary formats. In addition, most versions of Microsoft Excel can read CSV, DBF, SYLK, DIF, and other legacy formats. Support for some older file formats were removed in Excel 2007 . The file formats were mainly from DOS based programs.
The new Excel 2007 formats are:

New Excel 2007 formats Format Extension Description
Excel Workbook .xlsx The default Excel 2007 workbook format. In reality a ZIP compressed archive with a directory structure of XML text documents. Functions as the primary replacement for the former binary .xls format, although it does not support Excel macros for security reasons.
Excel Macro-enabled Workbook .xlsm As Excel Workbook, but with macro support.
Excel Binary Workbook .xlsb As Excel Macro-enabled Workbook, but storing information in binary form rather than XML documents for opening and saving documents more quickly and efficiently. Intended especially for very large documents with tens of thousands of rows, and/or several hundreds of columns.
Excel Macro-enabled Template .xltm A template document that forms a basis for actual workbooks, with macro support. The replacement for the old .xlt format.
Excel Add-in .xlam Excel add-in to add extra functionality and tools. Inherent macro support because of the file purpose.


By: Andreas.W Source=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel

Office Aplication: Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS (1983), the Apple Macintosh (1984), the AT&T Unix PC (1985), Atari ST (1986), SCO UNIX, OS/2, and Microsoft Windows (1989). It is a component of the Microsoft Office system; however, it is also sold as a standalone product and included in Microsoft Works Suite. Beginning with the 2003 version, the branding was revised to emphasize Word's identity as a component within the Office suite; Microsoft began calling it Microsoft Office Word instead of merely Microsoft Word.
Contents

History
Word 1981 to 1989

Concepts and ideas of Word were brought from Bravo, the original GUI writing word processor developed at Xerox PARC. On February 1, 1983. With this, development on what was originally named Multi-Tool Word began.

Richard Brodie renamed it Microsoft Word, and Microsoft released the program on October 25, 1983, for the IBM PC. Free demonstration copies of the application were bundled with the November 1983 issue of PC World, making it the first program to be distributed on-disk with a magazine. However, it was not well received, and sales lagged behind those of rival products such as WordPerfect.[citation needed] Although MS-DOS was a character-based system, Microsoft Word was the word processor for the IBM PC that showed actual line breaks and typeface markups such as bold and italics directly on the screen while editing, although this was not a true WYSIWYG system because available displays did not have the resolution to show actual typefaces. Other DOS word processors, such as WordStar and WordPerfect, used simple text only display with markup codes on the screen or sometimes, at the most, alternative colors.

As with most DOS software, each program had its own, often complicated set of commands and nomenclature for performing functions that had to be learned. For example, in Word for MS-DOS, a file would be saved with the sequence Escape-T-S: pressing Escape called up the menu box, T accessed the set of options for Transfer and S was for Save (the only similar interface belonged to Microsoft's own Multiplan spreadsheet). As most secretaries had learned how to use WordPerfect, companies were reluctant to switch to a rival product that offered few advantages. Desired features in Word such as indentation before typing (emulating the F4 feature in WordPerfect), the ability to block text to copy it before typing, instead of picking up mouse or blocking after typing and a reliable way to have macros and other functions that always replicate the same function time after time, were just some of Word's problems for production typing.

Word for Macintosh, despite of the major differences in look and feel from the DOS version, was ported by Ken Shapiro with only minor changes from the DOS source code,[citation needed] which had been written with high-resolution displays and laser printers in mind although none were yet available to the general public. Following the precedents of LisaWrite and MacWrite, Word for Macintosh attempted to add closer WYSIWYG features into its package. After Word for Mac was released in 1985, it gained wide acceptance.

There was no Word 2.0 for Macintosh. Instead, the second release of Word for Macintosh, shipped in 1987, was named Word 3.0; this was Microsoft's first attempt to synchronize version numbers across platforms. Word 3.0 included numerous internal enhancements and new features including the first implementation of the Rich Text Format (RTF) specification, but was plagued with bugs. Within a few months Word 3.0 was superseded by Word 3.01, which was much more stable. All registered users of 3.0 were mailed free copies of 3.01, making this one of Microsoft's most expensive mistakes up to that time.

In 1986, an agreement between Atari and Microsoft brings Word to the Atari ST. The Atari ST version was a translation of Word 1.05 for the Apple Macintosh, however it was released under the name Microsoft Write (the name of the word processor included with Windows during the 80s and early 90s). Unlike other versions of Word, the Atari version was a one time release with no future updates or revisions. The release of Microsoft Write was one of two major PC applications that were released for the Atari ST (the other application being WordPerfect). Microsoft Write was released for the Atari ST in 1988.
Word 1990 to 1995

The first version of Word for Windows was released in 1989 at a price of 500 US dollars. With the release of Windows 3.0 the following year, sales began to pick up (Word for Windows 1.0 was designed for use with Windows 3.0, and its performance was poorer with the versions of Windows available when it was first released). The failure of WordPerfect to produce a Windows version proved a fatal mistake. It was version 2.0 of Word, however, that firmly established Microsoft Word as the market leader.

After MacWrite, Word for Macintosh never had any serious rivals, although programs such as Nisus Writer provided features such as non-contiguous selection which were not added until Word 2002 in Office XP. In addition, many users[who?] complained that major updates reliably came more than two years apart, too long for most business users at that time.

Word 5.1 for the Macintosh, released in 1992, was a very popular word processor owing to its elegance, relative ease of use and feature set. However, version 6.0 for the Macintosh, released in 1994, was widely derided, unlike the Windows version. It was the first version of Word based on a common codebase between the Windows and Mac versions; many accused it of being slow, clumsy and memory intensive. In response to user requests, Microsoft offered a free "downgrade" to Word 5.1 for dissatisfied Word 6.0 purchasers.

With the release of Word 6.0 in 1993 Microsoft again attempted to synchronize the version numbers and coordinate product naming across platforms; this time across the three versions for DOS, Macintosh, and Windows (where the previous version was Word for Windows 2.0). There may have also been thought given to matching the current version 6.0 of WordPerfect for DOS and Windows, Word's major competitor. However, this wound up being the last version of Word for DOS. In addition, subsequent versions of Word were no longer referred to by version number, and were instead named after the year of their release (e.g. Word 95 for Windows, synchronizing its name with Windows 95, and Word 98 for Macintosh), once again breaking the synchronization.

When Microsoft became aware of the Year 2000 problem, it released the entire DOS port of Microsoft Word 5.5 instead of getting people to pay for the update. As of January 2010, it is still available for download from Microsoft's web site.

Word 6.0 was the second attempt to develop a common codebase version of Word. The first, code-named Pyramid, had been an attempt to completely rewrite the existing product. It was abandoned when it was determined that it would take the development team too long to rewrite and then catch up with all the new capabilities that could have been added in the same time without a rewrite. Supporters of Pyramid claimed that it would have been faster, smaller, and more stable than the product that was eventually released for Macintosh, and which was compiled using a beta version of Visual C++ 2.0 that targets the Macintosh, so many optimizations have to be turned off (the version 4.2.1 of Office is compiled using the final version), and sometimes use the Windows API simulation library included.[13] Pyramid would have been truly cross-platform, with machine-independent application code and a small mediation layer between the application and the operating system.

More recent versions of Word for Macintosh are no longer ported versions of Word for Windows, although some code is often appropriated from the Windows version for the Macintosh version.

Later versions of Word have more capabilities than merely word processing. The drawing tool allows simple desktop publishing operations such as adding graphics to documents. Collaboration, document comparison, multilingual support, translation and many other capabilities have been added over the years.

Word 97

Word 97 had the same general operating performance as later versions such as Word 2000. This was the first copy of Word featuring the Office Assistant, "Clippit", which was an animated helper used in all Office programs. This was a take over from the earlier launched concept in Microsoft Bob.

Word 98
Word 98 for the Macintosh gained many features of Word 97, and was bundled with the Macintosh Office 98 package. Document compatibility reached parity with Office 97 and Word on the Mac became a viable business alternative to its Windows counterpart. Unfortunately, Word on the Mac in this and later releases also became vulnerable to future macro viruses that could compromise Word (and Excel) documents, leading to the only situation where viruses could be cross-platform. A Windows version of this was only bundled with the Japanese/Korean Microsoft Office 97 Powered By Word 98 and could not be purchased separately.

Word 2001/Word X
Word 2001 was bundled with the Macintosh Office for that platform, acquiring most, if not all, of the feature set of Word 2000. Released in October 2000, Word 2001 was also sold as an individual product. The Macintosh version, Word X, released in 2001, was the first version to run natively on (and required) Mac OS X.

Word 2002/XP
Word 2002 was bundled with Office XP and was released in 2001. It had many of the same features as Word 2000, but had a major new feature called the 'Task Panes', which gave quicker information and control to a lot of features that were before only available in modal dialog boxes. One of the key advertising strategies for the software was the removal of the Office Assistant in favor of a new help system, although it was simply disabled by default.

Word 2003

For the 2003 version, the Office programs, including Word, were rebranded to emphasize the unity of the Office suite, so that Microsoft Word officially became Microsoft Office Word. Microsoft Word 2003 also has a page limit of 32,727 pages.

Word 2004
A new Macintosh version of Office was released in May 2004. Substantial cleanup of the various applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) and feature parity with Office 2003 (for Microsoft Windows) created a very usable release. Microsoft released patches through the years to eliminate most known macro vulnerabilities from this version. While Apple released Pages and the open source community created NeoOffice, Word remains the most widely used word processor on the Macintosh.

Word 2007

The release includes numerous changes, including a new XML-based file format, a redesigned interface, an integrated equation editor and bibliographic management. Additionally, an XML data bag was introduced, accessible via the object model and file format, called Custom XML - this can be used in conjunction with a new feature called Content Controls to implement structured documents. It also has contextual tabs, which are functionality specific only to the object with focus, and many other features like Live Preview (which enables you to view the document without making any permanent changes), Mini Toolbar, Super-tooltips, Quick Access toolbar, SmartArt, etc.

Word 2007 uses a new file format called docx. Word 2000-2003 users on Windows systems can install a free add-on called the "Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack" to be able to open, edit, and save the new Word 2007 files. Alternatively, Word 2007 can save to the old doc format of Word 97-2003. It is also possible to run Word 2007 on Linux using Wine

Word 2008

Word 2008 is the most recent version of Microsoft Word for the Mac, released on January 15, 2008. It includes some new features from Word 2007, such as a ribbon-like feature that can be used to select page layouts and insert custom diagrams and images. Word 2008 also features native support for the new Office Open XML format, although the old doc format can be set as a default.

Word 2010

The next version of Word is scheduled to be released sometime in 2010. It will include many new features common to other applications in Office 2010. Microsoft Word 2010 will have the new WordArt styles and effects replacing the old styles.
File formats
File extension

Microsoft Word's native file formats are denoted either by a .doc or .docx file extension.

Although the ".doc" extension has been used in many different versions of Word, it actually encompasses four distinct file formats:

1. Word for DOS
2. Word for Windows 1 and 2; Word 4 and 5 for Mac
3. Word 6 and Word 95 for Windows; Word 6 for Mac
4. Word 97, 2000, 2002 and 2003 for Windows; Word 98, 2001, X, and 2004 for Mac

The newer ".docx" extension signifies the Office Open XML international standard for Office documents and is used by Word 2007 for Windows, Word 2008 for the Macintosh, as well as by a growing number of applications from other vendors[citation needed].

Microsoft does not guarantee the correct display of the document on different workstations, even if the two workstations use the same version of Microsoft Word.[19] This means it is possible the document the recipient sees might not be exactly the same as the document the sender sees.

AutoSummarize highlights passages or phrases that it considers valuable. The amount of text to be retained can be specified by the user as a percentage of the current amount of text.

According to Ron Fein of the Word 97 team, AutoSummarize cuts wordy copy to the bone by counting words and ranking sentences. First, AutoSummarize identifies the most common words in the document (barring "a" and "the" and the like) and assigns a "score" to each word—the more frequently a word is used, the higher the score. Then, it "averages" each sentence by adding the scores of its words and dividing the sum by the number of words in the sentence—the higher the average, the higher the rank of the sentence. "It's like the ratio of wheat to chaff," explains Fein.

AutoCorrect

In Microsoft Office 2003, AutoCorrect items added by the user stop working when text from sources outside the document is pasted in.


by: Andreas.w Source=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Word