Smart tags are pieces of information in the drop down menu that appears when a user performs an action and promptly recorded if one is proposed for these smart tags that tell you what you can do next time, such as copy and paste or type of data in an Excel cell. From a programming point of view, smart tag is a a COM (Component Object Model) component which has two interfaces, the first Recognizer (ISmartTagRecognizer) that recognizes the smart tag itself and the second Action (ISmartTagAction) that implements methods to display the menu and subsequent actions by the user.
The first information when you start an MS Office program that is loaded by the Recognizer are Name, Desc and ProgId. Immediately after recognizing the component in the system log SmartTagCount method are invoked, and SmartTagName, SmartTagDownLoadURL which respectively give the number of smart tags that are implemented in the library, the smart tag for each namespace where to enter search terms and finally to any URL download the code. Each time the MS Office needs to know the smart tags in the text and find an appropriate scheme, launches the Recognize method that fits through the smart tag recognizers of CommitSmartTag appropriate.
After you realized that you need to display the smart tag is launched the second interface, the Action will carry out the operations after the user clicks and more precisely how the Recognizer picks Name, Desc ProgId for information on the register interface, then SmartTagCount methods are invoked. After this stage, there’s information to see SmartTagCaption, VerbCount, VerbID, VerbCaptionFromID, VerbNameFromID. First provides the header of the menu, the second is the number of commands to expose, the third is identification of a single command, the voice of the fourth command in the menu. When the user clicks one of the menu items is called DoVerb method that will perform all the operations we want, for example, when writing “software” in the text of a cell in Excel could bring up a smart tag that when clicked would bring the ‘explorer to a user with a web page, for example one of our site.
Smart tags can be very powerful, because they are a clear sign to add new and increasingly complex methods to aid in the interaction between software and user.