Archive for the 'i-think IT' Category

Vista’s point of maturity

Published
by
Rhys
on November 30, 2008
in i-think IT
. 0 Comments

There’s been a lot of bad press about Windows Vista. Some of it warranted, but a lot of it seems to be just jumping on the Anti-Vista bandwagon. Let’s face it, there is a large (or perhaps just vocal) community out there that automatically dislikes anything coming out of Microsoft. Within this community it is “cool”.

I admit that I’ve been drawn to Linux in the past and I believe Linux does indeed have its place, but in the current form (and all the directions I’ve seen) I would never recommend it for general use by the community (both technical and non-technical) and would absolutely recommend against it in an enterprise environment (unless of course there were some very specific needs that Linux met better).

Working with the .NET Framework over the past 12 months I have been amazed by its richness and power. I love .NET’s generics implementation, a feature whose need becomes evident very quickly. But most importantly I have been impressed with the tools. Visual Studio 2008, IntelliSense and the MSDN library help bring joy to the activity of development. Perhaps even more importantly, they provide the opportunity to expand knowledge rapidly.

Best of all is that Microsoft is not standing still. They are rapidly advancing the .NET framework and working on new exciting developer and testing tools that will be part of Visual Studio 2010.

Microsoft has recognised its mistakes with Internet Explorer and has done incredible work with Internet Explorer 8. Bringing standards compliance to the Internet’s most dominant web browser is no mean feat and to achieve it with minimal disruption will be an outstanding achievement. I am confident that Microsoft will be able to do this and we will see more innovation in the web browser industry.

Two weeks ago I bought an Xbox 360 of my very own and have been absolutely thrilled with the console, the games and the recent improvements to the Xbox dashboard (including the ability for me to finally run my Xbox at my monitor’s native 1680 x 1050 resolution). The Xbox 360 controller is a huge improvement on the original and far friendlier on the hands than its Playstation counterpart.

Microsoft’s mice are among the most comfortable that I’ve used. Sure, they’ve had a few that don’t quite meet the mark, but I’ve been generally impressed with Microsoft’s mice for over ten years.

Then there is Microsoft Office. The 2007 release was a risky endeavour with the new ribbon UI. An interface that I feel has worked to improve most regular operations. Still, I accept that such a massive shift can be frightening for users, although not having to trawl through menu screens may provide some compensation. The ribbon UI was the most prominent new feature of Office 2007 which unfortunately overshadowed some of the great improvements to the templates which finally made it easy to create great looking documents.

And finally back to Windows Vista. Drivers were always going to be an issue, but by now this has been addressed and those manufacturer’s that haven’t updated their drivers are probably not worth dealing with (ignoring legacy hardware). User Account Control (UAC) is arguably not as big a problem as is suggested. Sure, IT professional’s are constantly tinkering with the innards of Windows, but an extra warning when I install software is perfectly acceptable. Indeed once a computer has been set up, these prompts are rare to non-existant unless you find yourself downloading software often (which is arguably a high level action anyway).

All up I’m quite happy with Windows Vista and have realised that sometime in the past six months I have shifted from being hesitant to recommend it to being confident in making the recommendation. I’m not suggesting that everyone should rush out an upgrade (most people that should probably have), but if you are buying a new computer, go with Windows Vista.

And while we’re on the subject, make sure your new system is ready for Windows 7. I can’t wait.

Ads in search results

Published
by
Rhys
on November 21, 2008
in i-think IT
. 0 Comments

Am I the only one sick of overly wide ad terms when conducting searches? Searching for “Windows 7″ produced an ad suggesting I was able to buy “Windows 8″ online today. This is just poor.

I know eBay is pretty bad with them on Google, so it isn’t a problem limited to Live search.

Adding WPF Windows to an existing Windows Form Project

Published
by
Rhys
on August 5, 2008
in i-think IT
. 1 Comment

I’ve been recently reading Essential Windows Presentation Foundation (Chris Anderson) and I have been really looking forward to being able to create some funky WPF apps. I’ve almost finished (except for the sudden scope creep) a utility that I’ve been writing using Windows Forms. Like most good utilities it sits in the system tray just waiting to be used.

While using this tool yesterday I realised that I was being driven crazy by its need for interaction by the mouse. So I decided to create a global shortcut key and that would open a little navigation window to help you select the item you wanted (this is just some of the aforementioned scope creep).

I knew straight away that this was a job perfectly suited for WPF. So, I opened up the Add New Item dialog in Visual Studio 2008, selected WPF and was greeted with one solitary option:
Add New Item (WPF)

Unfortunately when you have a Windows Form project, User Control (WPF) is the only choice you are given. Fortunately, there is a workaround, but let’s first look at some reasons why mixing WPF into a windows form application might not be the best idea:

  • Consistent appearance is the first reason that comes to mind. WPF windows look just a little different to Windows Forms (with default settings) and even more different if you apply all the fancy styling options. Of course, if you are looking to create a window with a distinct look, this doesn’t apply
  • Maintainable code is another reason. Supporting multiple types of windowing increases the complexity of your project

There may be others and hopefully someone will point them out in the comments.

But now back to adding a WPF window into your Windows Forms project. Without the Window option, begrudgingly select User Control (WPF). Visual Studio then adds all the necessary references to your project and create a new XAML file and a corresponding CS file (or VB if you are that way inclined).

It turns out that User controls and Windows are very similar, so in your XAML file, change the “UserControl” tag to “Window” (remember to also update the closing tag). Your XAML should now look something like this:

Finally update your code file to remove the UserControl inheritance. (It’s already defined in your XAML anyway).

/// 
/// Interaction logic for UserControl1.xaml
/// 
public partial class UserControl1
{
    public UserControl1()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
    }
}

Then you can play with the WPF window as you would expect.

MobileMe is making me angry

Published
by
Rhys
on July 27, 2008
in i-think IT
. 0 Comments
MobileMe: Another computer is syncing message window

MobileMe: Another computer is syncing

I’ve seen this dialog far too many times today. The only saving grace of this error message is that it doesn’t seem to steal my focus. However it is so huge and in the middle of the screen it is quite probable that it is covering up whatever text I happen to be working on at the time. The fact it needs to remind me of this fact (it just did it again then) so often is just crazy.

But why is it even necessary? Will my world come to a grinding halt if I don’t know that my contacts couldn’t be synced in the background right now? Really? Who cares? Can I do anything about it? No. Clearly MobileMe just wants to point out its inadequacies.

Violet iDisk icon

Violet iDisk icon

Talking about inadequacies, who chose the colour for the background of the iDisk icon. Violet? Seriously? It’s as if they kept the “transparent colour” and forgot to substitute the real one. Come on Apple, you are all about design, but someone screwed the pooch on this one.

And the way MobileMe was installed, as part of iTunes, now that seems a bit unintuitive to me. (Why would a program that plays music have anything to do with keeping my calendar and contacts synchronised).

Of course, when MobileMe is working it seems to live up to some of the “cloud” hype. I finally have my contacts integrated into Outlook (plus the calendar), which is a big plus, or it would be if I put things in my calendar or opened outlook more frequently than once a week (but that’s my problem (or not)).

So hopefully Apple will fix this stupid error message (I’m happy to have a little notify icon flash or something if it really wants to get my attention). Less importantly I hope they change the background colour of the iDisk icon.

And once that’s done maybe we can focus on real problems.

Using Wordpress to track bugs

Published
by
Rhys
on May 23, 2008
in i-think IT
. 1 Comment

Over the years I’ve had to make programs do what they were never designed to, like using Excel as a database or using Access as a database. I’ve been working on a little project (not an Excel or Access database) that I want to be able to publicly track bugs on. I don’t really want to set up a whole new web app, and I would like to integrate it with my blog (where I will eventually be putting aforementioned project).

After unsuccessfully trying to find a plugin that might do the whole thing I wondered if I was making it too complex. While waiting for my bus this morning I had a thought. Why not just use wordpress as it is?

This led me to think about what I wanted from my bug tracking. Basically I wanted the ability to:

  • Create bugs. How about a post being a bug?
  • Comment on bugs. Posts can have comments!
  • Mark a bug for a certain version and product. Posts can have categories
  • Show that a bug is active, complete, won’t fix, etc. Posts can have tags

To get bugs from other people, I could have a dedicated “triage” page that takes comments and I manually create bug posts from them (I’m looking for a plugin that will let me take a comment and turn it into a post).

Of course I don’t want the bugs littering my front page, or main feed, but I have been able to find a plugin that should deal with that issue. I am worried about polluting my tag cloud with bug related tags, but that is a compromise I’m willing to make.

Of course, I probably should focus on finishing that other project first so there is something to raise bugs about.