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Changes in code behind and deployment for ASP.NET 2.0
File upload improvements in ASP.NET 2.0
For compatibility with 1.1 ASP.NET projects, Microsoft released a preview of a new Visual Studio 2005 project model for web application which mirrors the functionality in Visual Studio 2003. With this, web projects include only files specifically listed in your project (not all files in the directory), and all code is compiled to a single assembly.
I see that the IE team announced that the SELECT element (dropdown) will finally be rendered as a native MSHTML control rather than being a Windowed control after all these years in the next version of IE (7). That means it will finally respect z-index for example. It's taken long enough.
General rule of thumb:
If you're going to print a warning on a product, have multiple people carefully proofread the text.
The following text was found on a treadmill that I was using while in the Netherlands recently.
I haven't encountered too many uses of Google maps in other web pages. If you're interested in where cell towers in your area are, here's an interesting site that has that data and shows it visually using Google Maps.
The coverage and dead spots portions of the web site don't see all that useful as they rely on user comments (I couldn't see that there was a good filtering search system that worked very well). Some of the comments included: "I didn't get any reception on the second story of my office building" and "my city has terrible coverage with no end in sight ... I'm finally going to switch carriers after five years." Yeah, that helps.
UPDATE (January 2007):
As of the released version of WPF/.NET 3.0, this functionality no longer works at all if you want the control to actually be enabled -- and appears to be intentional/as expected. Several Microsoft employees have stated as much in forum posts.
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=389348&SiteID=1
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=716043&SiteID=1 (look for a post by Prajakta Joshi)
I'm disappointed to say the least that this wasn't included in the final V1 release, as it's something the company I work for would absolutely have used. I hope it returns in V2.
Someone wrote me yesterday asking how I'd gotten a combo box to be embedded successfully in a RichTextBox in WinFX. Since I last discussed this, several WinFX CTPs have come and gone, so I thought I'd post a slightly updated sample. The only real difference is that I changed the FlowDocument IsEnabled property to "True."
Oddly, even though this works on my system just fine, it doesn't work on his. Does it work on yours?
xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Grid
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/avalon/2005"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/xaml/2005"
xmlns:c="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/markup-compatibility/2005"
Background="#FFFFFFFF"
x:Name="DocumentRoot"
Width="640" Height="480">
<ColumnDefinition/>
<RowDefinition/>
<RichTextBox x:Name="myRichTextBox" Margin="88,98,210,126" Width="Auto" Height="Auto" RenderTransformOrigin="0.5,0.5">
<FlowDocument AllowDrop="True" IsEnabled="True" IsHyphenationEnabled="False">
<Paragraph>
<Run>This is so cool. A combo box floating in the text region of the rich text control.Run>
<InlineUIContainer>
<ComboBox
IsSynchronizedWithCurrentItem="True"
x:Name="embeddedCombo"
RenderTransformOrigin="0.5,0.5"
Width="150" Height="23" IsEnabled="True" />
InlineUIContainer>
Paragraph>
FlowDocument>
RichTextBox>
Grid>
Brief article on MSNBC about how web sites are judged in a blink of an eye (.05 seconds!). Link heavy, cluttery, quick judgements as to the expectation of a experience/quality of a website, just like I was mentioning yesterday.
When is having too many links a bad thing? I'd argue anytime the number of links exceeds the abilities of the user to quickly find their way through your web site or application. There's no magical number. However, if two or more confident clicks are needed rather than one confused and delayed click, I bet you'll have a happier user.
I needed to hit GoDaddy tonight (my web registrar) to check some settings quickly. This web page welcomed me (click for larger version):
# of links: more than 150
Amount of time searching page for "Login": too long
Time taken before realizing "My Account" was the same as "Login": too long 
These are the types of web sites that I usually avoid as they're so link heavy, I'd rather try somewhere else first that feels less cluttered and easier to get through. After a certain number of links, I also associate it with a search-engine-link site of some sort and move on as non-trustworthy. If I hadn't already used GoDaddy, I definitely wouldn't be welcomed by their home page and wouldn't come back.
From BetaNews, a report that Microsoft is testing a software add-on to the Media Center to allow streaming of programming to mobile devices and laptops.
If it can watch copy protected material -- that would rock. Otherwise, this is marginally better than the file share technique I use now from other PCs in the house. I don't have a mobile phone which would play any content like this (nor any time to play it), so that feature isn't useful for me. I'm sure other people might find that useful ....
Interested in making your web site look like a lot of other web sites? Here are some new templates provided for ASP.NET by Microsoft.
Seriously -- if you're planning on using one of these, try to adjsut some colors, etc., to personalize the template. Although these templates look nicer than typical templates, you'll still want to make them your own - unless you don't care that 'everyone' else has the same look and feel as you.
It's been quite a while since I last used an instant messaging application of any sort. I installed Google Talk, but I didn't know anyone using it so I haven't tried it.
I'm trying out Windows Live Messenger now. It's quite a dramatic change from previous versions of MSN Messenger (and others). More clean lines than in the past, with fewer distractions. Large 'bold' advertisements which don't fit well with the style of the application.
An option for a 'video carousel'
You can see how the videos match with my interests. Not.
There's a file syncronization option that I gather is new -- allowing users to share files/folders with other users and keep them synchronized automatically. I haven't had a chance to try it and can't think of any reason for me to use it normally.
Although I like the style of the application, it lacks personality, something older versions of the software had too much of. The color at the top of the application is configurable:
I've got a limited number of invities to the program if you're interested. Contact me using e-mail in About if you're interested. No promises.
More information about Windows Live Messenger on the team's blog.
Please no comments requesting invites. I'll ignore/delete those.
I've been looking around the newly available Windows Vista build, 5270, some this morning. It's starting to come together clearly, but I'm concerned about the lack of style of the operating system. Because I run in VMware, I cannot enable the glass effect so some of the UI flashiness is not there. However, there's more to an operating system than special effects.
I understand Microsoft has a lot of users to keep happy, and I'm one of many hundreds of millions of users, so my opinion may be in the minority.
What the current build lacks is style. What shocks me the most is that for the past 2-3 years, Microsoft Longhorn and Vista evangelists have talked about the styling of the system and how important that would be, not only to Microsoft, but to third party ISVs. Finally, the operating system could really be styled by graphic designers in the way they wanted using tools built for designers, not developers. No more hand-offs of bitmaps to developers who would do their best to emulate what the bitmap and functional or graphical specification asked for.
I'm sure Microsoft developers and designers are working feverishly to come up with a long lasting pleasent user interface. Right now though, all I have to go on is the recent December CTP build of Vista (5270).
Here's what looks like the new start menu for example. Except for Apple's OS X, it is nearly universal that the "Start Menu" equivalent in most operating systems is located in the lower left corner of the main screen. Most Linux distributions have copied it.
Maybe it looks better with a high end system and graphics card.
It's falling prey to a common style trend of reflective glossy buttons though that Apple started (or at least made popular). Why not try to innovate something new? Although I've seen no documented proof of this, I'd bet that Microsoft is working on other colorized versions of the menu. For now though - black makes me think "designer", not consumer or professional office user. OS X has a pleasent welcoming feeling, whereas this design is more brooding and depressing. I've seen that there supposedly is some way to configure the specific color (like black here) used in the system. However, it's only available on higher end video cards (found in Appearance and Personalization > Personalization > Change your color scheme):
More dark ...
As you can see, even more black when the Start button is clicked. (In the screen shot above, Vista is the machine name I believe). Nothing really too innovative about this new Start menu. I've clicked the "Power" button in the lower right corner expecting power options such as shutdown/stand-by/hibernate many times -- I bet I'm not the only one. Those options have moved:
They'd make more sense under the power button (with a similar style button).
On a positive note, I do like the non-cascading menu "All Programs" behavior now. For example. If I click on the "All Programs" option above Start Search, this is what is shown:
Clicking on "Accessories"...
Instead of menus and menus with pop-up menus ... it's in place. Actually, it behaves like a tree:
Clean. Simple.
One thing that hasn't changed in far too many years:
Still modeled exactly after a basic calculator, not taking advantage of any WinFX features or moderization that could be possible. It's not sizable, nor are the buttons labeled more clearly (M+? MS? MR? Why did they spell out Backspace fully though?). Maybe it will change. (Please!)
There are trends to make the system easier to use. The most obvious is the right click options on the desktop:
"Choose Desktop Background". Halleluiah! Finally a more obvious method for changing the desktop background! (I knew how to do it the other way of course, but it just wasn't obvious).
Here are just a few simple things that Microsoft should do:
Add some new pictures for assocating with an account! It's the little things like this that can make people smile and make the experience better.
In the date/time applet that shows up by clicking in the clock, it's great that I can look at the calendar without actually making changes to the actual system clock. Why not though make this sizable so I can see multiple months or allow a bigger view? All that effor to make a clock that I don't care about (why would I click on the time to show this to see an analog clock?). It's also so gray. Make it so the text is more readable.
In the Control Panel > Performance and Maintenance > Performance Center > Rate and Improve ...
If I had any misconceptions about the speed of Vista in a VMware instance, this clarifies the issue nicely:
In any case, I hope this isn't it. I realize Vista isn't done yet, but it's got to be better than this when it releases from a visual perspective. It's an improvement from XP, but nothing earth-shattering or even ground breaking. Just iterative improvement. Apple's OS X still looks better out the of box as an OS.
In an somewhat unusal coincidence, I had earlier read this blog post about Adobe Acrobat Reader crashing on FurryGoat. It's about how people are taking interest in FoxIt Reader because of the instability of Adobe Acrobat Reader. About 5 minutes ago, Reader crashed on me trying to open a technical document from Intel. I had looked at the FoxIt Reader product briefly (before the crash) and am not interested -- even after the crash. For one thing, it's not free for commercial users. That's a big deal for me as I would be using it at work as well as home ($39).
After the crash, the Microsoft Crash Analysis page popped up with this:
Solution found: install the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader / Adobe Reader
Thank you for submitting an error report.
Problem description
The error was likely caused by:
Adobe Acrobat Reader / Adobe Reader
Solution
Adobe Acrobat Reader / Adobe Reader was created by Adobe Systems Incorporated. We have detected that you are running an older version of Adobe Acrobat Reader / Adobe Reader. To prevent this problem from recurring, follow these steps:
Remove the old version of Adobe Acrobat Reader / Adobe Reader using the Add/Remove Programs feature in the Control Panel.
Go to the Adobe Systems Incorporated website at Adobe Systems Incorporated and install the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader / Adobe Reader.
Note: Installing the latest version over the older version will not solve the problem; you must perform remove the older version before you install the newer version. If the problem persists, please contact Adobe Systems Incorporated and alert them of the problem.
Interesting. Just upgrading won't fix the issue. As a bonus, the text also includes a gramatical mistake: "you must perform remove the older version...." Eh?
As a side note, how many times have you waited for a PDF file to load, wondering why it's so slow, to find buried a "Update found" or "Check for updates?" dialog box buried somewhere on your desktop? Arrgh.
Anyway -- uninstalling, downloading the new version, and trying the exact same PDF now works fine. 
