More Visio and the Tablet PC - [7:03 AM]

As I mentioned briefly yesterday Robert Banghart took the time to leave some absolutely wonderful comments for me regarding a post on Visio and the Table PC. I've pasted his comments below and marked them in italics, my answers appear below. Thanks again Robert for the excellent feedback, hopefully the answers will be satisfactory.

1. Why you think Visio is perfect for the tablet - It's a graphics product built on the idea of not only drag-and-drop but gesture. When we were building Visio 1.0 it had only one tool, the Pencil tool. You used it to build all shapes. Base on how you gestured you could create straight lines or arcs and you hooked those together to create more complex shapes. I sent Jeremy Jaech e-mail yesterday to see if he knew where I could find a video he used to show at events prior to Visio's launch. It's what inspired him to create Visio. Hopefully I'll be able to find it some time. Give the pencil tool a try some time, it's very flexible, but that original idea was expanded in the end to make this much easier for the end user. I think the tablet could allow Visio to take the idea of gesturing into new territory, and there were plans to do so, plans I'm not so sure I can talk about in detail.

2. Why you think Visio hasnÂ?t taken advantage of what the tablet gives it - Just think of gesturing what you want and Visio being smart enough to "just do it". That's all I'll say here for now. There were great ideas that were put off for the last release, hopefully the next release of Visio will incorporate at least some of them, but I'm not sure if they will or not.

3. Why you think VisioÂ?s use on a tablet wasnÂ?t a priority when you left Microsoft - It wasn't a priority for the Office team, period, thus my post regarding it and the tablet.

4. When you left Microsoft - I left Microsoft in September 2003. After working for a company like Visio it was actually quite difficult to adjust to the Microsoft way. The cultures were on opposite ends of the spectrum. To be honest I think acquisitions are tough on anyone passionate about where they work, who they work with and what they work on. The people made Visio the great success it became. We had great people, I'd say I worked with some of the greatest Software Engineers the planet has ever seen and when they started leaving and Microsoft started moving in their people it stopped being Visio. When they relocated my position back to Redmond I declined the offer to move. Don't get me wrong, there were still a lot of great folks there, the various small teams that made Visio 2003 such a killer product are all top notch. 90% of the 'old-timers' are now gone.

5. Whether you have written out your ideas on how you think Visio could take greater advantage of the tablet - The ideas are on the table inside the Visio group. They just have to make it a priority.

6. Whether you have contacted Jeff Sinofsky or other members of the Office or Visio Teams directly with your ideas, or if you have, what you learned from your contacts - That's a loaded one. The ideas were there, like I said above, but it was actually not a priority to deliver features for the Tablet. I don't remember who told me Sinofsky didn't like the tablet and didn't want to spend large amounts of time developing for it, but it was surprising, and very disappointing. I was disappointed but can you imagine how disappointed the PM and developers were?

7. Whether you have contacted Mai-Lin who blogs about Visio on MSDN , or submitted information to anyone else at Visio MSDN - Mai-Lin now longer works on the Visio team. I still know quite a few folks on the team that I've shared ideas with over the past couple of years. Nothing regarding the tablet because they've been there for ~four years already. I'm pretty sure they come up with things way beyond what I'm thinking, trust me. The PM that was passionate about the Tablet is a good friend, and he's quite brilliant.

8. Whether you have used either the Newsgroups or Talk to Us features at Visio on MSDN? - No I haven't.

Robert, like I said, I hope those are satisfactory. I'm a fan of the tablet and a HUGE fan of Visio on the tablet. I hope Visio becomes the poster child for the Tablet, it would be a natural. I know very little about the upcoming release so I'm not sure what kind of support, if any, we'll see for the tablet. Heck, I don't even know when it's due to ship.
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