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Posted on November 26th, 2009 by Jon Honeyball
Microsoft’s XPS missing in action?
Somebody reminded me about the XPS format from Microsoft. This is the XML Paper Specification thing which Microsoft released to be a spoiler to PDF.
Now, I must confess I find Adobe’s pricing model evil. And the PDF format can operate in weird and wonderful ways. But for most people, most of the time, PDF works very well indeed. There was no need for XPS, when Microsoft announced it. There’s still no need for XPS, and I doubt there ever will be a need for XPS.
It has been around for a while now, so you would think it would have gained traction? Out of sheer naughtiness, I visited Microsoft’s homepage and searched for “XPS”, returning 154,000 hits. Search for PDF: 582,000 hits.
Now hits is not necessarily a measure of utilisation, nor a measure of anything useful other than hits itself. But I confess I am mildly amused that this format appears to be largely ignored. Unless, of course, you know different? Are there any large-scale sites or organisations that have committed to XPS over PDF?
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11 Responses to “ Microsoft’s XPS missing in action? ”
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November 26th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
I came across an XPS file only once in the last 2 to 3 years. Well I was running Windows XP back then and could not be bothered to download the reader for it. Now I have the XPS reader built-in to Windows 7, so it maybe more relevant but I am not holding my breath and frankly I am happy with PDF.
November 26th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
If I saw an XPS file I would not know what to do with it. I thought the format was superfluous from the day it was announced. Good to see that even Microsoft is human and doesn’t get everything right
November 26th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
XPS is used mainly in the new features of Easy Print which in all fairness has worked quite well for printing in a terminal server environment
November 27th, 2009 at 1:16 am
Since office 2007 allows you to save in PDF format, XPS is even less relevent than it was.
On the one occassion I did try to install an XPS reader, it totally screwed up Firefox launching window after window as it tried to read it, I had to reboot to regain control – enough said
November 27th, 2009 at 8:26 am
I find XPS more convenient, as the print driver comes with Windows. This means other Windows users don’t have to download anything to read what I’ve sent them. Also, I hate the Adobe nagging stuff every time there’s a new version.
November 27th, 2009 at 9:21 am
From my experience file sizes in XPS compared to PDF is a lot higher.
So does XPS have any technical advantages over PDF to persuade people to start using it?
November 27th, 2009 at 9:28 am
The XPS reader is pretty poor compared to PDF, so its not going to win over many users. One thing you can do with an XPS file however is apply properties, as you can with Office files, which show up in Windows Explorer. You can’t do the same with PDF which is frustrating.
November 27th, 2009 at 9:33 am
Internally the XPS format is a lot more logical than PDF which suffers greatly from trying to be backwards compatible with all previous versions.
Unfortunately, the XPS viewer built in to Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8 leave quite a lot to be desired. They are not as easy to use or feature-rich as most PDF viewers.
November 27th, 2009 at 9:34 am
XPS is handy to “print” the content of a web page into a file (e.g. your flight confirmation) when you do not have a printer around or when you do not have full Adobe Acrobat installed on your computer to print into PDF.
The main annoyance is that, by default, XPS file opens in your default browser, and if that happens to be something different from IE, it will not work (e.g. Firefox will ask you to “save” it to a file!?!). So you would need to download and install a standalone XPS viewer, which is a hassle, and even after I installed in on Vista, it is still not the deafult application for opening .xps file, but you need to use “Open with” or fiddle with file type settings.
Not ideal, but given Adobe’s awful treatment of paying customers and their diabolical support, I will always consider an alternative to Adobe software – especially when it is free.
November 27th, 2009 at 10:35 am
@Vlada
If you want to download PDFCreator (a free utility), this will give you the ability to print to PDF without the need for full Acrobat.
November 28th, 2009 at 6:30 am
@Vlada
Open IE first, then drag and drop the XPS document into the IE window, the built in XPSViewer.exe then kicks in. Not ideal, but it works.
Anyone know what version of IE introduced support for XPS?