Add-in Express
Encyclopedia
Add-in Express is the product line and trademark of Add-in Express Ltd. is a privately held company located in Homel, Belarus
. Established in 1998, Add-in Express is the pioneer of tools and solutions in the Microsoft Office
integration industry. It provides a number of programming toolkits for Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer
and Outlook Express
developers
that allow extending the above mentioned applications with custom
functionality.
The distinctive feature of all Add-in Express products is a component-centric programming model and a set of visual designers and components that enable developers to create all types of customizations (COM
add-ins, smart tags, Excel
real-time data
servers (RTD servers), Excel Automation Add-ins and Excel user defined functions (UDFs)
in a RAD
way without coding their graphical user interface (GUI)
, in that way lessening programming efforts in automation
of MS Office objects
and handling their events as well as in research
, prototyping, and debugging
.
Add-in Express Ltd. is Microsoft Visual Studio Industry Partner
and CodeGear Technology Partner.
library for creating COM add-ins in Delphi. It hid all straits of low-level programming
by implementing
the IDTExtensibility2 interface
and provided GUI management including the creation of command bars and command bar controls
. At that time Add-in Express supported COM add-ins for five main Microsoft Office applications, namely Outlook, Word
, Excel, PowerPoint
and Access
. Later Add-in Express started supporting FrontPage
and Project
. After Office XP
had been published, the Smart Tags and Excel Real-Time Data servers technologies were added to Add-in Express.
In 2004 Add-in Express was redesigned, and its second major version, Add-in Express 2.0, provided the RAD way for creating COM add-ins, smart tags and RTD servers. Also, one more technology, Excel Automation Add-ins, was added as well as the support of MapPoint, Visio and Publisher
. Then Add-in Express was ported to .NET. In July, 2006 the VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office) edition of Add-in Express was released and Add-in Express became available in three editions: .NET, VSTO, and VCL.
The next generation of Add-in Express, Add-in Express 2007 was released in December, 2006. Add-in Express 2007 completely supported Microsoft Office 2007
, including the customization of the Ribbon
user interface (UI), the Quick Access Toolbar and the Office Menu. Around the same time, the Add-in Express Extensions for Microsoft Outlook was released. This plug-in included in the Add-in Express for Office packages allows customizing Microsoft Outlook forms and folder views in all Outlook versions from 2000 to 2007, later on it was renamed into Advanced Form and View Regions for Outlook. In November, 2007 the Advanced Task Panes for Microsoft Excel were implemented.
At the beginning of 2008 two more Add-in Express products appeared on the development components market: Add-in Express for Internet Explorer designed for creating Internet Explorer add-ons; and Add-in Express for Outlook Express purposed for developing Outlook Express extensions.
The next generation of the Add-in Express tools, generation 2009 was released in May, 2009. The most prominent features of that release were: Advanced Task Panes for Microsoft Word, Advanced Task Panes for Microsoft PowerPoint, and support for Delphi Prism 2009.
In January 2010, the first tool of Generation 2010 was released. This is Add-in Express 2010 for Internet Explorer, which completely supports Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
, add-ons for IE 7 and IE8 (32-bit and 64-bit).
Add-in Express for Microsoft Office and .net is the comprehensive toolkit for developing any types of Microsoft Office extensibility projects. Using its visual designers, wizards and components developers can create version-neutral, secure, isolated, deployable and automatically updatable Microsoft Office 2000–2010 extensions with their own toolbar
s, menus
and ribbons. Add-in Express integrates applied code with all applications from the Microsoft Office family including Outlook, Word, Excel, Visio, Access, PowerPoint, MapPoint, FrontPage, InfoPath, Project and Publisher.
Add-in Express for Microsoft Office and .net works on the most popular IDEs available for .NET Framework
1.1 and higher, including Visual Studio 2005, 2008 and 2010. It directly supports Visual Basic.NET
, Visual C#, Visual C++ and Delphi Prism
2011. All Office versions, from 2000 to Office 2010 32-bit and 64-bit, and all Office suites, from Student to Enterprise, are supported transparently.
Add-in Express for Microsoft Office and VCL
Add-in Express for Microsoft Office and VCL allows creating Office COM add-ins, smart tags, real-time data servers and user-defined functions in Delphi 5 – 2010 with minimal coding. Add-in Express for VCL gives developers components to integrate their applied code with all applications from the Microsoft Office family including Outlook, Word, Excel, Visio, Access, PowerPoint, MapPoint, FrontPage, InfoPath, Project and Publisher.
All available Office versions, from 2000 to 2007 (plus Office 2010 32-bit), and Office suites, from Student to Enterprise, are supported. Add-in Express VCL is developed in Delphi and directly supports Delphi 5 - XE as well as Turbo Delphi Professional.
Add-in Express for Internet Explorer and Microsoft .net
Add-in Express for Internet Explorer and Microsoft .net is the visual tool for developing Internet Explorer add-ons, customizing its GUI and accessing IE objects and events. With Add-in Express for Internet Explorer programmers can create thread-safe, secure, isolated, deployable and context-sensitive add-ons for Internet Explorer 6, IE 7 (32- and 64 bit) and IE 8 (32- and 64 bit). Add-in Express completely supports the Internet Explorer extensibility API and integrates all IE extensibility features in one solution with a strong architecture and a clear interaction model with Internet Explorer objects.
Add-in Express is written in C#, and directly supports Visual Studio 2005, 2008 and 2010; VB.NET, C#, C++ and Delphi Prism 2009 - XE.
Outlook Security Manager
Outlook Security Manager
(full name Security Manager for Microsoft Outlook) is a one-line programming tool to disable Microsoft Outlook Security pop-up warnings in add-ins and applications that automate Microsoft Outlook.
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
. Established in 1998, Add-in Express is the pioneer of tools and solutions in the Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...
integration industry. It provides a number of programming toolkits for Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
and Outlook Express
Outlook Express
Outlook Express is an email and news client that is included with Internet Explorer versions 4.0 through 6.0. As such, it is also bundled with several versions of Microsoft Windows, from Windows 98 to Windows Server 2003, and is available for Windows 3.x, Windows NT 3.51, Windows 95 and Mac OS 9...
developers
Software developer
A software developer is a person concerned with facets of the software development process. Their work includes researching, designing, developing, and testing software. A software developer may take part in design, computer programming, or software project management...
that allow extending the above mentioned applications with custom
Custom software
Custom software is software that is specially developed for some specific organization or other user. As such, it can be contrasted with the use of software packages developed for the mass market, such as commercial off-the-shelf software, or existing free software.Custom software can be...
functionality.
The distinctive feature of all Add-in Express products is a component-centric programming model and a set of visual designers and components that enable developers to create all types of customizations (COM
Component Object Model
Component Object Model is a binary-interface standard for software componentry introduced by Microsoft in 1993. It is used to enable interprocess communication and dynamic object creation in a large range of programming languages...
add-ins, smart tags, Excel
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel is a proprietary commercial 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 Visual Basic for Applications...
real-time data
Real-time data
Real-time data denotes information that is delivered immediately after collection. There is no delay in the timeliness of the information provided. Real-time data is often used for navigation or tracking....
servers (RTD servers), Excel Automation Add-ins and Excel user defined functions (UDFs)
User Defined Function
A User-Defined Function, or UDF, is a function provided by the user of a program or environment, in a context where the usual assumption is that functions are built into the program or environment.-BASIC language:...
in a RAD
Rapid application development
Rapid application development is a software development methodology that uses minimal planning in favor of rapid prototyping. The "planning" of software developed using RAD is interleaved with writing the software itself...
way without coding their graphical user interface (GUI)
Gui
Gui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...
, in that way lessening programming efforts in automation
OLE Automation
In Microsoft Windows applications programming, OLE Automation , is an inter-process communication mechanism based on Component Object Model that was intended for use by scripting languages – originally Visual Basic – but now are used by languages run on Windows...
of MS Office objects
Object (computer science)
In computer science, an object is any entity that can be manipulated by the commands of a programming language, such as a value, variable, function, or data structure...
and handling their events as well as in research
Research
Research can be defined as the scientific search for knowledge, or as any systematic investigation, to establish novel facts, solve new or existing problems, prove new ideas, or develop new theories, usually using a scientific method...
, prototyping, and debugging
Debugging
Debugging is a methodical process of finding and reducing the number of bugs, or defects, in a computer program or a piece of electronic hardware, thus making it behave as expected. Debugging tends to be harder when various subsystems are tightly coupled, as changes in one may cause bugs to emerge...
.
Add-in Express Ltd. is Microsoft Visual Studio Industry Partner
VSIP
The Visual Studio Industry Partner Program allows third-party developers and software vendors to develop tools, components and languages for use in the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET IDE...
and CodeGear Technology Partner.
History
Add-in Express was first released in 2002 as a VCLVisual Component Library
VCL is a visual component-based object-oriented framework for developing Microsoft Windows applications. It was developed by Borland for use in, and tightly integrated with, its Delphi and C++Builder RAD tools...
library for creating COM add-ins in Delphi. It hid all straits of low-level programming
Low-level programming language
In computer science, a low-level programming language is a programming language that provides little or no abstraction from a computer's instruction set architecture. Generally this refers to either machine code or assembly language...
by implementing
Implementation
Implementation is the realization of an application, or execution of a plan, idea, model, design, specification, standard, algorithm, or policy.-Computer Science:...
the IDTExtensibility2 interface
Interface (computer science)
In the field of computer science, an interface is a tool and concept that refers to a point of interaction between components, and is applicable at the level of both hardware and software...
and provided GUI management including the creation of command bars and command bar controls
Widget (computing)
In computer programming, a widget is an element of a graphical user interface that displays an information arrangement changeable by the user, such as a window or a text box. The defining characteristic of a widget is to provide a single interaction point for the direct manipulation of a given...
. At that time Add-in Express supported COM add-ins for five main Microsoft Office applications, namely Outlook, Word
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 , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...
, Excel, PowerPoint
Microsoft PowerPoint
Microsoft PowerPoint, usually just called PowerPoint, is a non-free commercial presentation program developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Microsoft Office suite, and runs on Microsoft Windows and Apple's Mac OS X operating system...
and Access
Microsoft Access
Microsoft Office Access, previously known as Microsoft Access, is a relational database management system from Microsoft that combines the relational Microsoft Jet Database Engine with a graphical user interface and software-development tools. It is a member of the Microsoft Office suite of...
. Later Add-in Express started supporting FrontPage
Microsoft FrontPage
Microsoft FrontPage was a WYSIWYG HTML editor and web site administration tool from Microsoft for the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems. It was branded as part of the Microsoft Office suite from 1997 to 2003...
and Project
Microsoft Project
Microsoft Project is a project management software program, developed and sold by Microsoft, which is designed to assist a project manager in developing a plan, assigning resources to tasks, tracking progress, managing the budget, and analyzing workloads.The application creates critical path...
. After Office XP
Microsoft Office XP
Microsoft Office XP is a productivity suite written and distributed by Microsoft for their Windows operating system. Released on March 5, 2001, it is the successor to Office 2000 and the predecessor to Office 2003, and was known as Office 10 in the early stages of its development cycle...
had been published, the Smart Tags and Excel Real-Time Data servers technologies were added to Add-in Express.
In 2004 Add-in Express was redesigned, and its second major version, Add-in Express 2.0, provided the RAD way for creating COM add-ins, smart tags and RTD servers. Also, one more technology, Excel Automation Add-ins, was added as well as the support of MapPoint, Visio and Publisher
Microsoft Publisher
Microsoft Publisher is a desktop publishing application from Microsoft. It is an entry-level application, differing from Microsoft Word in that the emphasis is placed on page layout and design rather than text composition and proofing...
. Then Add-in Express was ported to .NET. In July, 2006 the VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office) edition of Add-in Express was released and Add-in Express became available in three editions: .NET, VSTO, and VCL.
The next generation of Add-in Express, Add-in Express 2007 was released in December, 2006. Add-in Express 2007 completely supported Microsoft Office 2007
Microsoft Office 2007
Microsoft Office 2007 is a Windows version of the Microsoft Office System, Microsoft's productivity suite. Formerly known as Office 12 in the initial stages of its beta cycle, it was released to volume license customers on November 30, 2006 and made available to retail customers on January 30, 2007...
, including the customization of the Ribbon
Ribbon (computing)
In GUI-based application software, a ribbon is an interface where a set of toolbars are placed on tabs in a tab bar. Recent releases of some Microsoft applications have embraced this form with a modular ribbon as their main interface. The Ribbon is a contextual interface that offers functionality...
user interface (UI), the Quick Access Toolbar and the Office Menu. Around the same time, the Add-in Express Extensions for Microsoft Outlook was released. This plug-in included in the Add-in Express for Office packages allows customizing Microsoft Outlook forms and folder views in all Outlook versions from 2000 to 2007, later on it was renamed into Advanced Form and View Regions for Outlook. In November, 2007 the Advanced Task Panes for Microsoft Excel were implemented.
At the beginning of 2008 two more Add-in Express products appeared on the development components market: Add-in Express for Internet Explorer designed for creating Internet Explorer add-ons; and Add-in Express for Outlook Express purposed for developing Outlook Express extensions.
The next generation of the Add-in Express tools, generation 2009 was released in May, 2009. The most prominent features of that release were: Advanced Task Panes for Microsoft Word, Advanced Task Panes for Microsoft PowerPoint, and support for Delphi Prism 2009.
In January 2010, the first tool of Generation 2010 was released. This is Add-in Express 2010 for Internet Explorer, which completely supports Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
Microsoft Visual Studio
Microsoft Visual Studio is an integrated development environment from Microsoft. It is used to develop console and graphical user interface applications along with Windows Forms applications, web sites, web applications, and web services in both native code together with managed code for all...
, add-ons for IE 7 and IE8 (32-bit and 64-bit).
Supported extension types
- Application-level COM add-ins (Component Object Model add-ins) for all main applications from the Microsoft Office family: Outlook, Excel, Word, Access, PowerPoint, Project, MapPoint, Publisher, Visio, FrontPage and InfoPath
- Smart tags for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook (with Word as a default e-mail editor)
- Excel Real-Time Data servers
- Excel Used-Defined Functions (XLL and Automation add-ins)
- Internet Explorer add-ons
- Outlook Express plug-ins
Add-in Express product line
Add-in Express for Microsoft Office and .netAdd-in Express for Microsoft Office and .net is the comprehensive toolkit for developing any types of Microsoft Office extensibility projects. Using its visual designers, wizards and components developers can create version-neutral, secure, isolated, deployable and automatically updatable Microsoft Office 2000–2010 extensions with their own toolbar
Toolbar
In a graphical user interface, on a computer monitor, a toolbar is a GUI widget on which on-screen buttons, icons, menus, or other input or output elements are placed. Toolbars are seen in office suites, graphics editors, and web browsers...
s, menus
Menu (computing)
In computing and telecommunications, a menu is a list of commands presented to an operator by a computer or communications system. A menu is used in contrast to a command-line interface, where instructions to the computer are given in the form of commands .Choices given from a menu may be selected...
and ribbons. Add-in Express integrates applied code with all applications from the Microsoft Office family including Outlook, Word, Excel, Visio, Access, PowerPoint, MapPoint, FrontPage, InfoPath, Project and Publisher.
Add-in Express for Microsoft Office and .net works on the most popular IDEs available for .NET Framework
.NET Framework
The .NET Framework is a software framework that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large library and supports several programming languages which allows language interoperability...
1.1 and higher, including Visual Studio 2005, 2008 and 2010. It directly supports Visual Basic.NET
Visual Basic
Visual Basic is the third-generation event-driven programming language and integrated development environment from Microsoft for its COM programming model...
, Visual C#, Visual C++ and Delphi Prism
Delphi Prism
Delphi Prism is a rapid application development tool for the Microsoft .NET Framework and Mono, developed by RemObjects Software and distributed by Embarcadero Technologies....
2011. All Office versions, from 2000 to Office 2010 32-bit and 64-bit, and all Office suites, from Student to Enterprise, are supported transparently.
Add-in Express for Microsoft Office and VCL
Add-in Express for Microsoft Office and VCL allows creating Office COM add-ins, smart tags, real-time data servers and user-defined functions in Delphi 5 – 2010 with minimal coding. Add-in Express for VCL gives developers components to integrate their applied code with all applications from the Microsoft Office family including Outlook, Word, Excel, Visio, Access, PowerPoint, MapPoint, FrontPage, InfoPath, Project and Publisher.
All available Office versions, from 2000 to 2007 (plus Office 2010 32-bit), and Office suites, from Student to Enterprise, are supported. Add-in Express VCL is developed in Delphi and directly supports Delphi 5 - XE as well as Turbo Delphi Professional.
Add-in Express for Internet Explorer and Microsoft .net
Add-in Express for Internet Explorer and Microsoft .net is the visual tool for developing Internet Explorer add-ons, customizing its GUI and accessing IE objects and events. With Add-in Express for Internet Explorer programmers can create thread-safe, secure, isolated, deployable and context-sensitive add-ons for Internet Explorer 6, IE 7 (32- and 64 bit) and IE 8 (32- and 64 bit). Add-in Express completely supports the Internet Explorer extensibility API and integrates all IE extensibility features in one solution with a strong architecture and a clear interaction model with Internet Explorer objects.
Add-in Express is written in C#, and directly supports Visual Studio 2005, 2008 and 2010; VB.NET, C#, C++ and Delphi Prism 2009 - XE.
Outlook Security Manager
Outlook Security Manager
Outlook Security Manager
Outlook Security Manager is a programming tool to disable Microsoft Outlook Security pop-up warnings in add-ins and applications that automate Microsoft Outlook. It is developed and supported by MAPILab Ltd...
(full name Security Manager for Microsoft Outlook) is a one-line programming tool to disable Microsoft Outlook Security pop-up warnings in add-ins and applications that automate Microsoft Outlook.