David and Company Blog

Longmont, Colorado – I learned something recently about the .docx file format that may be of help to you, though I have to admit, I haven’t totally figured out all the ways this may be of use. So for what it’s worth, here goes.

I work on a Mac, but as many of you will understand, most of my clients use a PC running some form of Windows software. With the latest version of Office, the extension on Word documents has changed from .doc to .docx. To my chagrin, my older version of Word was not able to open these files, so I looked for a solution. One that I tried was a translator that would turn the .docx file into an HTML file, which I could then copy and paste as needed. Unfortunately, formatting was not always correct and so errors were introduced. Of course, another solution is to go back to your client and ask them to save the file back to the older .doc file format, which they were generally glad to do. But knowing this was going to continue to be a problem, I needed another solution. Ultimately, the solution was going to be to upgrade my version of Word, and thereby, solve the problem. I wasn’t ready at that point to do so, but eventually did and now the problem is solved. So what did I learn that I haven’t yet shared?

In my search for a solution, I also came across what I like to call a “gee whiz”, or something that kind of takes you by surprise. I read one day, that .docx is nothing more than a .zip file and that, if you wanted to open it to see what’s inside, all you had to do was change the extension from .docx to .zip and then unzip the file. Naturally, I had to try it and it worked. The most useful outcome of this so far, is that you get access to the original embedded graphics files. The rest of the files, of which there may be many, are xml files and I’ve yet to determine if they’re useful or not. Clearly they are useful in constructing the Word file and since I’ve now updated my Word application, I may never go into this farther, but I thought you or someone may find this of interest, so I posted it.

Foot massage? Sorry. It’s probably your website. I say probably because it does vary from company to company due to unique characteristics, but increasingly, it’s your website. So what!, you may be wondering. Well, if your number one method of being seen is your website, then it really should be kept up to date. Of course, that means the content on your site should be up to date, but it also means that your site should be technologically current as well. Why? Keeping it up to date tells your prospective and current clientelle many things about you, like that it’s important to you how you present yourself to the world. Or that since the content of your site may be important to them, you care enough about their time and experience to keep your site up to date and therefore give them the best experience possible of what you have to offer.

So why am I making such a big point of this? Because a lot has changed in the recent past that effects how your site functions, especially compared to how sites are built and functioning today. Chances are that your site was built during the first wave of “must have a web presence”, which would make it years old and therefore not compliant with today’s standards and bottom line, not functioning for you and your clients as well as it should. The good news is that if you get your site updated now, it will be much easier and less expensive to keep it up to date, even to the extent of giving it a whole new look, due to the fundamental changes that have been adopted in today’s web standards.