I've alluded to this before - when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail.  I was thinking about XML then, but after chatting with an old mate the other day it became clear that it applies to Flash as well...

So a couple of profound rules: - I'm putting the Flash community on notice

1. Don't play music.  I was already listening to something, thanks.  ...and I liked my music better.

2. If you absolutely must redesign the common UI metaphors like Buttons and Check-boxes they must work as well as the ones I am use to.  Dont make me have to 'Learn' how to use my computer again.

3. I'm not a mouse in a wheel and no I am not having fun following & clicking a beeping whatcha-mahoozit just to get what I came to the site for.  Yes, I came for a reason and yes that stuff is standing between me and what I want to see.  And No that dosen't mean you are not still very tallented at making beeping whatcha-mahoozits.

But on a more serious note, there are two issues still outstanding with the Flash community that can be an obstruction to less savvy users:  The Back button is useless and I can't bookmark where I am at.

So imagine I am training someone very new to computers about the web... it's going to go something like this:
yes, this is a web page... you can go Back (think bread-crums analogy) and you can save your spot (bookmarks in a book analogy)... oh except for this page - this is what we call a *Flash* page... no, not flash as in... oh forget it....

The point:  No one should have to care what technology the content is written in.  Not beginners and certainly not me.

What's the silver lining?  When the signal-to-noise ratio in any space takes an injection of background cosmic radiation the real cream of the crop just shines through.  Well implemented Flash is sublime.  The rest, well its just the rest.

I've decided to try the Visual Studio IDE enhancements from Developer Express after hearing some rave reviews.  One nice thing I noticed is that the installer detects the presance of VS2003 and VS2005 and installs into both IDEs if need be.  I like the philosophy of not having to buy the thing again whenever a new Visual Studio is released.

More specifically, these tools are Refactor! and CodeRush.

One way to describe CodeRush is as a template based code generator on a small scale.  It can insert comon language constructs with a shortcut key combination.  For example if you select a block of text and press t, the selection will be put inside a generic Try... Catch... Finally block.

First impression was that this thing was getting under my feet.  I know how line completion in Intellisense works and I like it.  In fact I preempt it.  Now things have changed aargh!  I might have to back-off the speed at which this kicks in, or maybe its a new trick for an old dog?

Refactor! is a different animal.  It provides Refactorings to your code inside the IDE with previews of the changes that look unreal.  All kinds of useful stuff like in one click you can extract an interface from a class's public definition.  Sweet!

Now all I have to do is learn to type properly, or just buy a better keyboard

I don't know what it is, but today I got this in my junk mail:


Dear Sir/Madam,

We have logged your IP-address on more than 30 illegal Websites.

Important:
Please answer our questions!
The list of questions are attached.


Yours faithfully,
Steven Allison


*** Federal Bureau of Investigation -FBI-
*** 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Room 3220
*** Washington, DC 20535
*** phone: (202) 283-4108


I'm insulted.  If you are going to prank me into running your spyware, please put some effort into it.  Not to mention the small matter of jurisdiction...

There's this thing called the Turing Test.  In a nut shell it is can a computer be so clever that you don't realize that it's a computer you are communicating with.   The test must then assume some  benchmark level of human intelegence.  Could a drop in the benchmark of human intelegence be measured by how lame the lure has to be before someone bites?

And a quick post-script to any law enforcement agencies out there:  If you ever get so lazy that you start to question suspects by email...  *rolls eyes*

I saw this post the other day on the IE team's blog while looking at some IE7 stuff...

I was unaware that the SV1 token gets added to your browser User Agent string after XP SP2.  I don't think in this case it matters if SP2 is more secure than RTM XP, I still don't want someone to know my patch level.  Call me paranoid...

As fortune would have it, fiddler has an answer!  Thanks

Oh, with regard to IE7 - apart from all the user experience enhancements like tabs (thanks for coming to the party IE) etc the killer I reckon is in protected mode registry virtualization - I think we will see more of this in future!

So it's been a little while between updates on the blog, sorry about that!

I've been on a bit of an OS roller coaster ride of late.  I tried the latest LonghornI mean Vista beta (beta 2) on a couple of machines.  I didn't do a lot of homework because I have this bad habit with operating systems - I just grab the bootable disc and dive in the deep end.  I did this with Linux in '98 and it took me 6 years to kick the habit!   

The two machines were:

1. Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop, P4 2Ghz, 1Gb RAM, integrated Intel graphics, 80Gb HDD
2. Home-brew PC, P4 Dual Core 3Ghz, 2Gb RAM, 512Mb 6800 graphics, 1.2Tb storage

First thing's first - they both run fine.  The install was painless, the new features and UI are discoverable and I am well impressed with the direction Vista is taking. 

My problem is that the laptop needs to run Visual Studio 2003 to maintain some Web Services projects.  These require Front Page extentions on the local IIS to do debugging when I am on a train or otherwise not close to a server.  So after a week of new-OS glow and fighting uphill against IIS 7.0 (which does not and will not support FPE) I am presently formatting the HDD and putting XP SP2 back.  *sigh*

The desktop box runs a treat with the "Glass" enabled and all.  I am looking forward to running the final release on it. 

As an aside both these machines are running the Office 12 beta too!  They have taken things back to real core usability in this release and I think it's a very good thing.  There are some cool new features, sure- but the killer for me is in its usability improvements. 


After blog mint [?]:  I love Linux to bits and it has come along leaps and bounds in that time - I'm just a Windows guy at the moment.  2003 Server played a bit part in that.  I harbour no ill will to the penguin, it's just not me right now.  that's all.

Again, I'm sure that there is an easy resolution to this and I know I haven't read every page of the administrators guide, or every blog post, but this one is really getting to me.

Just say 2 development teams in the same company each have their own site, tracking issues for their own product.  The rules for the problem:

• They would like to record the client who reported the issue against the issue.
• We all work in the same company, and therefore we all have the same clients.  Each client may have a product from either team, or a products for both teams.
• It is not apropriate for these issues lists to be in one site, because different partners work with different teams on different products.  These need to be kept seperate for reasons of commercial confidentality.
• It must be scalable so that more teams can be brought online with minimal effort.
• Custom development must be kept to a minimum.
  

I want to maintain one client list and one client list only that has views into each teams site.  I can't seem to make this work for me.

Lately I've been receiving spam that seems to have no payload. 

No links to knock-off phallicpharmaceuticals.
No promise of promiscuous foreign brides
Nada!

They just have a dozen lines like:

oziuyebjrukdebrrpzewciungdjfapa 

So yes, they are successful in getting through my heuristic filters, but to what end?  What is in it for the spammer?

Here's my XML Hammer.  Useful for getting some XML into places where instinct might guide you to other choices.

I'm new to Sharepoint, so here I'll start a list of Sharepoint Annoyances :)

#1:   It lets you think you are designing relational data... but you are not!

Some examples:

I have a list of clients, and I have a list of contacts (or individuals) at that client's site.  I am designing a form for entering job details and I want to link in to a job both the client who requested it and the contact at that site. 

I want the user to pick a client and then a contact that is valid for that site, but I can't seem to filter them!

Secondly, there is no validation!

I want to have a form where the user can enter a start date and a finish date.  No problems so far but logic dictates that the finish date cannot be before the start date!  I don't have a way of enforcing that.

I'm sure there are ways around these, but right now they are annoying!

I had mentioned model-view-presenter pattern in passing before, because after I saw it it struck me as a pattern that could be a really good solution to having the most decoupling between the UI and, well, everything below it.

The chance came  up to try it during the week on a small project so I gave it a go.

The View was a windows forms app.
The Model was a .NET Class Library with classes that roughly wrapped a set of SQL Server stored procs.
The Presenter was implemented as a .NET Class Library.  This library also contained the definition of the interface that the UI was to implement.

Some of the key advantages of this pattern:

• The actual logic of the application is self-contained so it can be easily unit-tested.  Code that is easier to unit test is easier to get right.
  
• The data layer is self contained and can be unit tested.
• You can implement a couple of different data layers supporting different back-end data stores.
  
• The only code in the UI is just to display the properties on the interface and raise events in the logic layer from the UI.

The key advantage I see for my kind of stuff is that as far as the Presenter is concerned, there is no UI past the interface that it implements.  It would be trivial to replace the Windows forms app with a ASP.Net app that implemented, or to have it feed a serviced componant over remoting, or....

Is it that time again?  Seems like only... last year???

Oh well, I'm registered - see you at Tech.Ed 2006 in Sydney.



Thanks Frank, for confirming that there is too much to read on the Aussie tech blogosphere.