Comments on: Microsoft’s XPS missing in action?

By: Pdav

Pdav — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 06:21:44 +0000

I’ve found XPS to be a wonderful way to save webpages for future reference. Unfortunately, I’ve not found anyone who has written an XPS viewer for Android phones. I would pay for one.

By: Pinero

Pinero — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 06:30:34 +0000

@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?

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:35:53 +0000

@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.

By: Vlada

Vlada — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 09:34:37 +0000

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.

By: Simon Jones

Simon Jones — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 09:33:53 +0000

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.

By: Alex Woodrow

Alex Woodrow — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 09:28:00 +0000

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.

By: Alan

Alan — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 09:21:40 +0000

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?

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 08:26:10 +0000

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.

By: paul

paul — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:16:22 +0000

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

By: user123

user123 — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:26:59 +0000

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