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Microsoft Visio Viewer 2002 Release Notes

August 2002

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© Microsoft Corporation, 2002. All rights reserved.

 

These release notes provide the most current information about Microsoft Visio Viewer installation, features, sample files, documentation, and any known issues and limitations.

1.      Introduction

2.      Installation and Use

3.      Features

4.      Sample Files

5.      Documentation and Support

6.      Known Issues and Limitations

 

The Microsoft Visio Viewer is an ActiveX component that will enable you to view Microsoft Visio drawings (.VSD, .VSS, .VST, .VDX, .VSX, .VTX formats) in the Internet Explorer Web browser.  It provides near full-fidelity rendering for files created with Visio 5.0, Microsoft Visio 2000, and Microsoft Visio 2002.

 

2.1 Software Requirements

The Microsoft Visio Viewer requires the following software:

·   Internet Explorer 5.0 or later

2.2 Recommended Hardware

The Microsoft Visio Viewer requires the following minimum hardware:

·   PC with Intel Pentium or AMD Athlon-class processor running at 200 MHz or higher.

·   Microsoft Windows 98, Second Edition, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows NT 4.0 with service pack 6 or later, Windows 2000 Professional Service Pack 2, or Windows XP Professional

·   For Windows 98 Second Edition: 24 MB of RAM for the operating system, plus an additional 48 MB of RAM for the Microsoft Visio Viewer.

·   For Windows Me, NT Workstation 4.0, or Windows NT Server 4.0: 32 MB of RAM for the operating system, plus an additional 48 MB of RAM for the Microsoft Visio Viewer.

·   For Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP Professional: 64 MB of RAM for the operating system, plus an additional 48 MB of RAM for the Microsoft Viewer.

·   10 MB of available hard disk space.

·   VGA (640 x 480) or higher resolution graphics card and monitor with 256 colors.  Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher is recommended.

·   Microsoft Mouse, Microsoft IntelliMouse, or compatible pointing device.

2.3 Installing the Microsoft Visio Viewer on a single computer

You may want to print this page to use as a reference.

1.      Download the installation file from the Office Download Center at
http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/2002/vviewer.aspx 

2.      To copy the download to your computer for installation, select "Save this Program to Disk."

3.      Locate the file you downloaded in the previous step, and then double-click it.

4.      Follow the installation instructions.

Note The preceding instructions must be completed by someone with privileges to write files into the "Program Files" directory. People who have restricted access to this folder should contact their system administrator for assistance.

2.4 Installing the Microsoft Visio Viewer on many computers (Corporate Deployment)

Instructions for installing the Microsoft Visio Viewer on many computers connected to a company network can be found on the Microsoft TechNet web site at the following link: Microsoft Visio Viewer Corporate Deployment.

2.5 Removing the Microsoft Visio Viewer

You can remove the Microsoft Visio Viewer by using the “Add or Remove Programs” option in the Windows Control Panel.

2.6 Using the Microsoft Visio Viewer

There are at least three ways to view a drawing with the Microsoft Visio Viewer:

1.      From the File Explorer, double-click on a Microsoft Visio Drawing (.VSD, .VSS, .VST, .VDX, .VSX, .VTX extension). A Microsoft Internet Explorer window will open and the Microsoft Visio Viewer will load and render the drawing in the browser window.

2.      From the Internet Explorer File menu, click Open. In the Open dialog box, select a Microsoft Visio Drawing (.VSD, .VSS, .VST, .VDX, .VSX, .VTX extension). The Internet Explorer will load the Microsoft Visio Viewer and render the drawing in the browser window.

3.      If a Microsoft Internet Explorer window is already open, you can drag and drop a Microsoft Visio Drawing (.VSD, .VSS, .VST, .VDX, .VSX, .VTX extension) file into the Internet Explorer window.  The Internet Explorer will load the Microsoft Visio Viewer and render the drawing in the browser window.

3.1 Viewing Microsoft Visio Drawings

Viewing Microsoft Visio drawings is as simple as double-clicking a Microsoft Visio drawing (.VSD, .VSS, .VST, .VDX, .VSX, .VTX extension) in Windows File Explorer. Internet Explorer will open, and the Microsoft Visio Viewer will render the drawing in the browser window.

You can then pan and zoom in the drawing window by using toolbar buttons, keyboard shortcuts, or menu items in the right-click menu.

You can see properties on any top-level shape by opening the “Properties and Settings” dialog box and then selecting a shape.

Some rendering and display settings are also available in the “Display Settings” tab of the “Properties and Settings” dialog box.

3.2 Printing Microsoft Visio Drawings

In this release, support for printing Microsoft Visio drawings is limited to printing the portion of the drawing that is viewed in the Internet Explorer window.  To print what is displayed in the Viewer window, click in the drawing window and click Print from the File menu.

 

The Microsoft Visio Viewer includes sample files so you can confirm installation. The default location for these files is the installation directory for Microsoft Visio Viewer:

<disk drive letter> :\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Visio Viewer

The files include:

File	Description
sample.vsd	Sample Microsoft Visio process flow diagram in VSD format.
sample1.vdx	Sample Microsoft Visio process flow diagram in VDX format.
sample.htm	Sample HTML page that embeds the Microsoft Visio Viewer control with a reference to a Microsoft Visio drawing (sample1.vdx in this case). This sample demonstrates how to build Web pages that include Microsoft Visio drawings.  It also exercises several load parameters which provide some control over how the drawing is rendered.  Finally, it includes instructions for auto-loading the Viewer (if not already installed) when a user navigates to this web page in Internet Explorer.

 

 

5.1 Documentation included with the Microsoft Visio Viewer

The Microsoft Visio Viewer includes standard Windows Help and all dialog boxes include Help links.  To access Help, right-click the drawing and then click Help.

5.2 Support

Support is provided under existing support agreements from Microsoft Product Support Services.  For users without existing support agreements, Pay-Per-Incident support is also available.

5.3 Online documentation

Instructions for corporate deployment and management of the Microsoft Visio Viewer on many computers connected to a company network can be found on the Microsoft TechNet web site at the following link: Microsoft Visio Viewer Corporate Deployment.

 

6.1 Unsupported Microsoft Visio Features

The following user interface elements, normally associated with the Microsoft Visio drawing environment, are not included in the Microsoft Visio Viewer user interface because they are irrelevant in a view-only context:

·   Stencils

·   Rulers

·   Guides

·   Guide points

6.2 Limitations Relative to Microsoft Visio

Rendering

The following elements will render differently in the Microsoft Visio Viewer than they do in Microsoft Visio.  Known differences are as follows:

Drawing element	Rendering differences in Microsoft Visio Viewer (relative to Microsoft Visio 2002)
Custom line styles	Rendered as solid lines.
Custom fill styles	Rendered with the default fill.
Some line ends	Are approximated, within the limits of GDI+.
Some text	Does not render exactly as it would in Microsoft Visio.
Rotated pages	Are not supported in this release. Pages are rendered un-rotated.
Embedded DGN files	Are not rendered in this release.

Shape Properties

The following shape property types behave differently in this release of Microsoft Visio Viewer than in Microsoft Visio.  Known differences are as follows:

Shape Property Type	Differences in Microsoft Visio Viewer (relative to Microsoft Visio 2002)
Fields	Some fields are not re-evaluated, but use the Last Valid Computed Value (LVCV) computed during the last Microsoft Visio session.
Formulas	Properties defined as formulas will not be re-calculated, but will use the Last Valid Computed Value (LVCV) computed during the last Microsoft Visio session.
Shape comments	Display of shape comments (when hovering over a shape) is not supported.

Selection

This release of Microsoft Visio Viewer has the following limitations with regard to selecting elements in the drawing:

·   Sub-shape selection is not supported. Only top-level elements or groups can be selected. Additionally, properties displayed in the Shape Properties dialog are properties on the top level shape or group only.  Properties of sub-shapes will not be displayed.

Drawing Page

This release of Microsoft Visio Viewer has the following limitations with regard to the drawing page:

·   Hyperlinks associated with the page are not supported, although they are supported for shapes.

·   Pages cannot be selected; therefore, page properties cannot be viewed.

Viewing or Printing some images in Windows XP

If you are running the Microsoft Visio Viewer on Windows XP, you may need to install a Windows XP Patch as described in the following PSS article: Problems Viewing, Editing, or Printing Some Images in Windows XP (Q318966).  This article addresses problems in viewing some drawings on the Gold release of Windows XP.  Specifically, these are problems in viewing drawings that contain the following character sets: Hebrew characters, Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS) characters, or characters that use an End User Defined Character (EUDC) font.

6.3 Installing Both Microsoft Visio and the Microsoft Visio Viewer on Your Computer

If you install both Microsoft Visio and the Microsoft Visio Viewer on your computer, you need to be aware of the following information:

Installing both Microsoft Visio and the Microsoft Visio Viewer

If Microsoft Visio is already installed on a machine, Visio file types will already be associated with Microsoft Visio.  These files types are .VSD, .VSS and .VST for all versions of Microsoft Visio plus .VDX, .VSX, .VTX for Microsoft Visio 2002.  If the Microsoft Visio Viewer is installed on such a machine, setup will give the user the option to associate these file types with the Viewer instead of Microsoft Visio. 

If you have associated Visio file types with the Microsoft Visio Viewer and want to change their association back to Microsoft Visio, you should go to Control Panel, then ‘Add/Remove Programs,’ select 'Microsoft Visio,' select 'Change,' and then select the 'Repair' option in the first dialog.  Note that when these file types are associated with Microsoft Visio, the only way the Microsoft Visio Viewer will be invoked is by a web page that includes a reference to the Microsoft Visio Viewer component directly.  Additionally, whenever these file types are associated with Microsoft Visio and you open such a file in Internet Explorer, Microsoft Visio will be loaded for in-place handling of the embedded drawing; not the Microsoft Visio Viewer.  Microsoft Visio is also the handler for all Visio drawings contained in other documents as embedded OLE objects.

Conversely, if these file associations are left with Microsoft Visio and you want to change their association to the Microsoft Visio Viewer at some point after installation, you should go to Control Panel, then ‘Add/Remove Programs,’ select 'Microsoft Visio Viewer,'  select 'Change,' and then select the 'Repair' option in the first dialog.  You will be given the same dialog for associating these file types with the Microsoft Visio Viewer as was displayed during installation.

If Microsoft Visio Was Removed

If both Microsoft Visio and the Microsoft Visio Viewer are installed on a computer, and Microsoft Visio is subsequently uninstalled, file associations (in the Windows Explorer) and MIME associations (in Internet Explorer) will be orphaned. To remedy this situation, you should go to Control Panel, then ‘Add/Remove Programs,’ select 'Microsoft Visio Viewer,'  select 'Change,' and then select the 'Repair' option in the first dialog.  This will enable you to associate these file types so that they are displayed by the Microsoft Visio Viewer subsequently.

6.4 Unsupported Containers

This release of the Microsoft Visio Viewer does not support embedding the Viewer control using the following Microsoft Office family applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio.

6.5 Unsupported Internet Explorer features

The following commands from the Internet Explorer menus do not have access to the Microsoft Visio Viewer data and therefore do not work for that data:

·   From the Edit menu, the Find option: strings cannot be located in the Visio drawing. Microsoft Visio Viewer does not support search for strings in this release.

·   Help: Microsoft Visio Viewer Help topics are not accessible from Internet Explorer Help. Instead, Microsoft Visio Viewer Help is provided and is accessible from both the toolbar and the right-click menu.

6.6 Registering Microsoft Visio Viewer on Web Servers

By default, when you open a VDX drawing file from a Web server (for example, http://MyCorporateServer/Drawings/MyDrawingFile.vdx), the XML data will be displayed instead of the drawing. This is the default behavior in Internet Explorer when opening any XML data file from a Web server unless a special MIME type handler has been registered. To resolve this, network administrators should register the XML for Visio file extensions (.VDX, .VSX, and .VTX) to the proper content type (application/vnd.ms-visio.viewer) using the server administration settings. 

Instructions for registering .VDX and .VSD formats on Microsoft Windows Internet Information Services (IIS) version 5:

6.7 Use on Chinese versions of Microsoft Windows

On some Chinese versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system, the CNTRL+SHIFT key combination will switch the OS into IME mode.  The Microsoft Visio Viewer normally uses these as shortcut keys for Zooming in and out of the drawing window.  Therefore, the alternative combination of ALT+SHIFT is also supported.  Specifically, ALT+SHIFT will provide exactly the same functionality as the zoom behaviors documented in the product Help for CNTRL+SHIFT.

Did you find this information useful? Please give us your suggestions and comments about the documentation at: Microsoft Product Support Services.