You can't tell me that this isn't brilliant?!

From Gateway comes the "one."

Posted by Aaron at 8:15 PM | Permalink

I just downloaded a file from the web onto my Windows Vista PC. The file extension, TGZ, was unlikely to be opened successfully by any software installed on my PC (no problems of course on OSX or *nix).

I double clicked the file:

OK, what suggestions do you have for TGZ file "Web Service"? I clicked OK.

Great ...

OK, let me enumerate through a few the problems:

• Absolutely no mention anywhere on the page what the "file type" was that brought me here. It's in the URL, but they couldn't bring themselves to actually display it on the page.
• It claims there's actually information about this file type, yet there isn't a single piece of useful information. Better yet, "this page will help you find software..."
• It's a common file type, hardly different from a ZIP file in the computer world, yet no one at Microsoft could be bothered with adding it to this list of File Associations?
• It tells me I can purchase or download software related to this file type, even though they haven't a clue what it is.
• It's formatting leaves something to be desired with everything being the same font size; the labels are emphasized rather than the data.

I just tried PDF:

http://shell.windows.com/fileassoc/0409/xml/redir.asp?EXT=pdf

I didn't realize that the Descriptions were provided by the companies who create the products sometimes:

Invented by Adobe Systems and perfected over 15 years, Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) lets you capture and view robust information — from any application, on any computer system — and share it with anyone around the world.

For .doc:

This document is a Word file.

Short and to the point I suppose.

For .cs (c# files), no results. For .java:

File Type: J# source file

File Extension: .java

Description: J# source file (using Java language syntax)
Software or information available at:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005

Microsoft has information on Java, but not C#! VB is the same as C#.

Here was the first result in the Window's Live Search:

Microsoft might as well just jump to their search product "Live", rather than use their stupid File Association tool.

Clicking purchase gives me one option (which is a free option -- I've never heard of ShellZip, WinZip -- hmmm.. that's familiar for some reason ... :)  ).

Posted by Aaron at 7:52 AM | Permalink

While looking through some older photos ..., this one made me laugh.

Posted by Aaron at 8:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Playing around with Silverlight 1.0 the last week:

(Click image to run demo in a new window). It's fun to watch.

Managing the lines turned out to be slightly tricky and I never came up with a solution I liked a lot. (I didn't spend too much time on it ... there's probably something better). There's no "paint" or draw line command in Silverlight 1.0. So, the code needed to manage all of the lines and properly update them with each frame. Flash makes it easy with a DrawLine function. To reduce flicker, I also wanted to maintain the same line from 'frame' to 'frame' in the Silverlight demo. So, I had to create some arrays and toggle visibility appropriately.

The effect shown is called, "spring." When the distance between 2 particles falls below 100, they begin to act like a spring. That's when the line shows up -- and the intensity (or opacity) of the line indicates the inverse of the distance between the two particles.

For extra fun, press the left mouse button and drag it around. It's a pointless fading airbrush effect.

Since I haven't read anything about how Silverlight manages completed Storyboards and animations, I created a simple 'garbage-collector.' When the number of active animations exceeds 200, I remove the old brush spots and animations.

  animateParticle : function(sender, element)
  {
    var host = sender.getHost();
      
    try
    {        
    var xaml = '<Storyboard Name="' + ++this.dynmID + '">' + 
    '<DoubleAnimation ' +
      'Storyboard.TargetName="' + element.name + '" ' +
      'Storyboard.TargetProperty="Opacity" ' +
      'From="1.0" To="0.0" Duration="0:0:2" />' + 
    '</Storyboard>';

      var e = host.content.createFromXaml(xaml);

      sender.findName("Page").resources.add(e);

      e.begin();

      return e;

     }

     catch(ex)

     {

      alert(ex);

     } 

  },

  

    handleMouseMove: function(sender, eventArgs)

    {

        if (this.isMouseDown == true) {

            var e = this.createEllipse2(sender, eventArgs);

            this.particles.push(e);

            e = this.animateParticle(sender, e);

            this.animparticles.push(e);

          

          if (this.particles.length > 200) { 

            var anim = this.animparticles.shift();

            anim.stop();

            sender.findName("Page").resources.remove(anim);

            var particle = this.particles.shift();

            sender.children.remove(particle);

          }

            

        }

    }

Posted by Aaron at 3:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)