Wednesday, January 30, 2008
View XPS Files in Vista
XPS (XML Paper Specification) files are a bit like PDF files, except not as popular or well supported, even in Microsoft's latest and greatest OS Vista for x64.
I was just forced to create an XPS file as a "print out" of a web page (because I hadn't had a chance to install a PDF print driver yet). That was easy enough, but viewing XPS seemed far harder than it needed to be. By default the viewer for .xps files is your default web browser, but that doesn't work if your default web browser is not Internet Explorer.
Even if I started IE by hand and tried to open the file I had a problem ("An error occurred in the application you were using").
The solution is to install the XPS Essentials Pack (nb: there is a special installer for 64-bit Windows), then right click the .xps file, chose "Open with ...", then "Choose default program ..." then "XPS Viewer EP".
