Author: Jan Van Belle

Belgian E-ID on mac

I finally got a new Belgian identity card. I immediately tried to get it to work on my Mac. This is what I needed to do:

– download the drivers for my smartcard reader (ACS – http://www.acs.com.hk/en/products/4/acr38-smart-card-reader)

– download the middleware for MacOs from the Belgian E-ID site. You don’t need it if you just want to use the e-id with Safari and Keychain, but it has a nice app that allows you to read the info on your card, and even change your pin.

I am able to view the data on my E-ID, but unfortunately, logging in to websites with the card does not work; on Taxonweb I get the message that Safari is not supported, logging in to Certipost just does not work. There is still some work to do…

It works with Windows Vista though … :–(

Vmware Fusion rocks!

I have been quite busy the last two weeks with the preparation of our Clients’ Day. My colleagues have built a great infrastructure in Vmware, representing a “Virtual Company” with more than 40 servers, virtual desktop infrastructure, Office Communication Server… Really cool stuff.
Thanks to them, I was able to test Vmware Fusion, the virtualization tool for Mac. I now have the fastest Windows XP ever… on my iMac! Fusion has a sort of “quick install mode” for Windows: you specify your logon name, enter the license key, hit OK, turn around, and… it’s installed!

Content Types – end user experience

I tried to figure out on our portal how the Content Types and their corresponding templates behave, when using Office 2003 and Office 2007. There are 2 main factors that determine the behaviour when a user selects a content type from the “New” button in a document library: the file format of the template and the version of the Office client:

  File format: 2003 File format: 2007
Client: Office 2003 – client app opens with document based on template– user saves the document– user needs to select the correct content type– user needs to fill in the correct metadata – not supported
Client: Office 2007 – client app opens new document based on template– user saves the document– user needs to select the correct content type– user needs to fill in the correct metadata via the document information panel, if metadata is required. Otherwise: NO metadata!(*) – client app opens new document based on template– document information pannel shows metadata immediately after opening the document– user can fill in metadata in dip and save the doc in one move

contenttypes.png

(*) You can optimise this via the document information panel settings of the content type: check Always show Document Information Panel on document open and initial save for this content type.

Conclusion is that the user experience is only optimal when using Office 2007 with templates in the Office 2007 format (or what did you expect…)

 Note: Interesting to know that the “Content type” is stored IN the properties of a document template file. If you use a document template file with such information as a template for an OTHER content type, things get very confusing, as MOSS will still prompt you for the metadata attached to the OLD content type!