All posts by onlyconnect

internet, software development

Live.com for developers

I attended two sessions today given by Danny Thorpe, formerly of Borland, on the developer API for live.com, Microsoft’s attempt to match Google as a Web 2.0 platform. Even the business model is Google-style: everything is free, supported by advertising with the possibility of revenue sharing for users. Unlike ASP.NET, the Live.com API is cross-platform on both client and server – presumably Live.com itself runs on .NET, but that is not a requirement for users of the various gadgets and services.

It’s strange to hear Thorpe talking about doing clever stuff with JavaScript – quite a change from Delphi’s native code compiler – but he describes it as just another way to write libraries for Microsoft’s platform. He is an enthusiast for doing aggregation (mash-ups) client-side aggregation, explaining that it improves scalability by reducing the amount of processing needed on web servers.

A key theme is how to build social applications that draw on the vast userbase of Hotmail and Windows Messenger, but without compromising privacy.

Interesting stuff, and I don’t doubt Microsoft’s commitment to live.com even though it is not centre-stage here at Tech-Ed. At the same time I am picking up lack of cohesion in the overall platform strategy. Microsoft has endeavoured to create an internal startup culture, and while this is clearly generating some energy it comes at a price. There seem to be a number of different sub-organizations which do not work closely together. The Office Live initiative, which provides web hosting and cloud-based applications aimed at small businesses, is apparently separate from Live.com. The ASP.NET AJAX libraries are different from the Live.com JavaScript libraries, even though there is overlap in the problems they address. Danny Thorpe is aware of these issues and says the company is working on internal collaboration, but it seems to me that fragmentation will be a growing problem as the various groups evolve.

software, software development, windows

More significant than Vista or Office: .NET Framework 3.0 is released

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Microsoft’s .NET Framework is now fully released. There is a handy page of links to the various downloads you might want. Of all Microsoft’s releases in this busy November, this is the most significant.

Why? Here’s what is in .NET Framework 3.0. There are four major pieces. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is an alternative GUI API for Windows, based on a new XML language (XAML) and incorporating the code-behind concept first seen in ASP.NET. Although it is primarily for Windows, Microsoft is promising a cross-platform XAML runtime called Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere. On Windows, WPF apps are rendered using DirectX, giving it impressive multimedia capabilities. Summary: biggest change to the Windows API since its first release.

Windows Communication Foundation is a communication framework based on XML web services. If you are familiar with Windows development, the easiest way to define WCF is by what it replaces: ASP.NET web services, MSMQ (Microsoft Message Queue), COM+ (also known as Transaction Server) and Distributed COM, .NET Remoting.

I won’t say that WCF replaces all of COM, though perhaps it might do eventually. COM has many faces.

Windows Workflow Foundation is less important than WPF or WCF, but still interesting as a framework for workflow applications. It fits well with Sharepoint and Office 2007 as a way to program enterprise portals.

Windows CardSpace is an abstraction layer for identity management and authentication. Unlike Microsoft Passport, CardSpace is not itself an identity provider, but a rather a system that works with multiple identity providers. If widely adopted, it will help the Internet move on from the nightmare of usernames and passwords. IE7 is a CardSpace client.

When Microsoft first announted the above pieces, they were meant to be exclusive to “Longhorn”, now called Windows Vista. The company realised that this would stall adoption, possibly fatally, so it was decided to make it a free download for Windows XP as well as part of Vista. That makes .NET Framework 3.0 a viable development platform now, rather than in five year’s time (or never).

Like any new technology, this one could fall flat on its face. Time will tell whether it is really significant, or turns out to be a backwater in the latter days of Windows. Unlike Vista and Office, it is not an immediate profit centre for Microsoft, but in the longer term it is critically important to the company as an update to the Windows platform.

software development, windows

Gyrating AJAX model excites Tech-Ed

Microsoft’s Eric Rudder kicked off Tech-Ed Europe with a keynote extolling the virtues of Vista, Office 2007 (which has just been released to manufacturing), and Exchange 2007. This Tech-Ed, it appears, won’t be characterised by major new announcements; it is more about long-awaited technology finally getting released.

Rudder presented some interesting stuff around enterprise portals built on Sharepoint and Windows Workflow Foundation, using the fictional Fabrikam clothing company as an example.

An eye-catching feature of Fabrikam’s online store aroused attention: a gyrating AJAX-driven model with drag-and-drop clothing. Boo.com lives again.

A more geeky highlight came at the end of the keynote, when Anders Hejlsberg demonstrated LINQ (Language Integrated Query) in C# 3.0 (not to be confused with .NET Framework 3.0, which is the old stuff). I’m already familiar with LINQ, but one thing I hadn’t seen before is a feature of Orcas, the next Visual Studio. Hejlsberg called it “paste XML as the code with creates that XML”, and that’s exactly what it does. Copy some XML to the clipboard, paste it into your code, and it appears as C# code manipulating XElement and XAttribute to build that XML as output. You can then adapt the code to generate more XML according to the same schema. Neat.

software development, windows

Microsoft urges FoxPro, Delphi developers to move to .NET

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Here at Microsoft’s Tech-Ed in Barcelona two forthcoming sessions caught my eye. Tomorrow afternoon there is a discussion on “Moving from Visual FoxPro to .NET”. From the abstract:

Looking forward to Vista, .NET is a pragmatic necessity for VFP developers. How will you deal with Vista clients? What will you do? How long can you remain in VFP? How can you move to .NET with the least impact?

On Wednesday it’s Delphi developers who get told there is no future in their programming platform, in “Moving from Delphi to .NET”:

Even if you are not considering .NET now, at some point you will have to move to .NET with new code, or to port existing code. Staying with Win32 may be viable in the short term, but not the long term.

By accident or design, the session conflicts with one from the  father of Delphi, Anders Hejlsberg, on C# 3.0, the next generation of Microsoft’s home-grown programming language.

I’d like to attend both events, if only to discover whether there are really a bunch of FoxPro and Delphi pros here at Tech-Ed, puzzling over how to migrate to .NET. Alternatively, maybe some of them could mount a robust defence of these older tools. After all, there’s no sign of Win32 or COM going away any time soon, though .NET refuseniks may have a bit of WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) envy. Then again, look what language is riding high in the Computer Language Shootout Scorecard.

software, windows

Outlook 2007: still famously obscure

I am using Office 2007 on Vista for next week’s Tech-Ed conference. That’s the plan, anyway. Both products are on the verge of being released to manufacturing; but for the moment I’m stuck with Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh, and Vista RC2 (build 5744).

I have a love-hate relationship with Outlook. I like the way it integrates PIM (Personal Information Manager) functions, and I especially like the way it keeps multiple machines in sync with a server-side mailbox. Of course you need Exchange for this to work.

On the other hand, there is plenty to hate. One major complaint is the obscurity of Outlook’s various option dialogs. I often meet people who have missed major pieces of functionality because they could not find them. One recent example was on the verge of purchasing an expensive third-party solution because Outlook cannot make public folders available offline.

It can of course. Non-obvious step one: add public folders you want to use offline into your favorites folder. Non-obvious step two: open Tools – Email Accounts – View or change – select Microsoft Exchange Server and click Change – then More Settings – Advanced – then check Cached Exchange Mode and Download Public Folder Favorites (this last one is not checked by default).

This might be a plot by system administrators to prevent users downloading huge public folders onto their laptops. It is certainly not something you would find by accident.

I’m happy to say (this is irony) that Outlook 2007 continues the tradition of obscurity. Today I was having trouble finding the option to read email in plain text. I know this is a cruel thing to do with beautifully formatted HTML emails, but I regard it as more secure. This option used to be in Tools – Preferences – Email options. No longer.

I looked in Email Options – Advanced Email options. I looked in Options – Mail setup. I looked in Options – Mail format. I looked in Options – Mail Format – Editor Options, though this was desperation: surely even Outlook’s UI designers could not consider reading email an editing function?

Could Microsoft have removed this widely-used preference from the product? Not at all. It is in Tools – Trust Center – Email Security. Silly me.

Here’s my suggestion for Outlook 2009. Throw away all the existing preferences dialogs in Outlook, or hide them in some compatibility mode for those who like a challenge. Then design a new set, with an emphasis on being usable, discoverable, and logical. Please.

 

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software, software development

Patent threat lifted from Mono

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Regular readers of this blog will know of my interest in Mono, the open-source implementation of Microsoft’s .NET Framework.

A common objection to Mono is its fuzzy legal position. Although parts of .NET are ECMA standards open for anyone to implement, other parts (including ASP.NET) are not. Mono implements ASP.NET as well as other non-ECMA class libraries. The worry has been: if Mono gets successful enough to threaten Microsoft, will there be legal problems?

I say “has been”, because it appears that the just-announced agreement with Novell covers Mono. See Miguel de Icaza’s post where he says:

…today we have secured a peace of mind for Novell customers that might have been worried about possible patent infringements open source deployments. This matters in particular for Mono, because for a long time its been the favorite conversation starter for folks that find dates on Slashdot.

This is big news for anyone with an interest in cross-platform .NET. However, note that the agreement refers to Novell’s customers. I am not a lawyer; but it is not clear to me whether this deal provides comfort to Mono users not using Novell’s SUSE Linux. For example, what about those using Mono on the Mac, one of its more interesting applications? I hope to discover more next week at Tech-Ed, where there will be an out-of-hours presentation on Mono.

Update

See the comments below for more. It seems this falls short of a promise not to sue over patent breaches in Mono, if they exist, except in certain defined circumstances (Novell customers or non-commercial). I guess that is not surprising.

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software development, windows

Free final Vista and Office 2007 for UK developers

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Here’s a blog you might want to subscribe to if you are a developer based in the UK. Ian Moulster says you can have a free copy of the final release of both Vista and Office 2007 if you:

take part in our UK developer online launch event on January 19th and 20th (yes, I know the 20th is a Saturday).

No, I don’t know what “take part” means; but there are 1000 freebies on offer so I doubt it is too arduous.

Microsoft still recognizes the key role of developers in technology adoption.

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security, windows

Vista application compatibility: it’s not going to be fun

I remain concerned about application compatibility and Vista’s virtualization. Here’s an example. After setting up a Tablet PC with Vista RC2, I installed one of my favourite time-wasters, a game called Jack Bridge; not a major piece of software, but typical of countless existing Windows applications that users will want to install on Vista. Setup seemed to go OK, though Vista threw up this perplexing and alarming dialog:

 

Trouble is, at this stage I did not know if the installation was successful or not. Nor is it obvious what the consequences of the two options might be, or what Cancel will do. I took the view that I would rather try it as-is for the moment, and clicked “This program installed correctly.” And so it seemed, to begin with. Everything was fine until I used an option in Jack to check for updates from the Web. The update downloaded, but failed to install with this error:

   

To be honest, I was expecting something like this. The application was attempting to download the update to its folder in Program Files, and then to execute it. Neither operation could succeed, since UAC makes Program Files read-only. I can’t explain the Dutch; it looks like the app has imperfect localization. As a further test, I tried logging on as a different user and running Jack. This was really bad. Jack failed to run, warned me of severe errors, and advised that I contact my reseller. The problem here is the virtual store. Vista tries to help applications such as Jack by seeming to allow read-write access to Program Files, but in reality writes the data to a user-specific virtual store. This means each user gets a different view of what should be the same files. It all happens behind the scenes; if it goes wrong the user has no idea what has happened. I mostly approve of UAC, but I fear the virtual store may cause more problems than it solves.

In the case of Jack, I found a good workaround. I uninstalled it, then reinstalled to a location in my user directory. Jack has read-write access without trickery, and everything works, provided I always run as that user. How many other applications out there are going to have problems with UAC? My guess is a lot. Some of the above may improve in the final release – maybe the dialogs will be better worded – but I’m not expecting fundamental changes. Existing applications are going to cause users immense compatibility hassle. In consequence, they may disable UAC, which will greatly reduce Vista’s security; or they may decide Vista itself is more trouble than it is worth.

Let me be clear: disabling UAC is not a good idea. Users running with local admin rights is a large factor in the Windows security problem, and UAC is a reasonable solution. But I’m expecting the  worst. When Vista hits the world at large, will the buzz will be: turn off UAC or nothing will work properly?

Update

I couldn’t help wondering what would have happened if I had let Vista “Reinstall using recommended settings”. I had a struggle fulling uninstalling Jack in order to try this option. Eventually I found the registry key at HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Compatibility Assistant\Persisted, and deleted the reference to install.exe. Reinstalled, and when the dialog appeared chose “Reinstall using recommended settings.” The installation tried to run again, but immediately closed; I guess because the installer considered the application already installed. I removed it through Control Panel and once again reinstalled – my hunch is that the “recommended settings” were automatically applied. If I show properties for the application shortcut, it says “Run this program in compatibility mode for Windows XP (Service Pack 2)”. However it doesn’t seem to help with the specific problems I encounted. Online update still failed, and when I logged on as a different user and tried to run Jack, I got the “please contact your reseller” dialog.

I am not trying to be difficult here. Rather, I’m trying to replicate some typical scenarios when users are confronted with these difficult dialogs.

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windows

Vista on a Tablet

I’ve been trying Vista RC2 on a Toshiba Portege M400. Toshiba describe this as “Vista ready” and provide drivers in various states of beta. Installation was fairly painful, but that’s to be expected at the bleeding edge. I put in a new hard drive for Vista, and immediately hit problems because the installation lacks a suitable SATA driver and could not see the hard drive.

Thanks to Ken Schaefer, who had been there before me, I overcame that one. It was still a struggle, not knowing which of Toshiba’s drivers were better or worse than those which Vista has already installed. I also confronted the worst of Vista’s UAC (User Account Control). What is so frustrating is when you have to tell Vista again and again that yes, you want to install this thing. I lost count of how many times the UAC elevation prompt appeared when installing the Bluetooth stack. Installing Vista on this Tablet PC was far more arduous than when I put the same OS on a desktop computer.

Still, I got a reasonable result. There is just one remaining “unknown device” in device manager, which I believe is a hard drive protection utility and not critical. The machine itself is fine, runs Aero Glass nicely and scores 3 on the Vista performance scale. The Tablet side of things seems to work OK, though the polished screen is prone to building up a static charge as your hand rubs against it, which isn’t ideal; I didn’t get this problem with the Acer Tablet I was using before. But when Toshiba get all the drivers and utilities properly sorted, this looks likely to be an excellent Vista Tablet. More in due course.

 

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apple, drm, itunes, multimedia

Customer complains about iTunes DRM, gets refund

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When Anthony Marrian purchased the comprehensive Bob Dylan “digital box” from Apple’s iTunes music store, which retails for a not insignificant £169.99, he was looking forward to playing it both at home and when out and about with his iRiver H340 music player. He was disappointed to discover that the files were “not recognized” by his player and complained to Apple.

I told them that at no point during the sales process was there any indication that the download would only work on an iPod. They replied that all their sales were non-refundable.

He persisted.

This resulted in “My name is Patrick and I will be assisting you. I understand that you are unhappy about not getting a refund for your Bob Dylan album. I know that can be frustrating”. Patrick then invited me to leave feedback on a web page which states “Comments will be read but not replied to”. After I’d suggested to Patrick that leaving additional feedback was likely to be a waste of time given that he had already replied to the only feedback I wished to leave, I got an email from Sam who said that in this one, exceptional, case s/he was prepared to refund me.

Kudos to Apple for the refund, which surprises me. I doubt it was legally required, since the iTunes small print includes all sorts of restrictions. But Marrian’s experience illustrates the DRM problem: many customers of online music stores have an expectation that they can make full personal use of what they buy, when the reality is different.

Even without the DRM Marrian would have problems, since the iRiver device does not support the AAC codec. He could have burned the tracks to CD and ripped them back as MP3 (with loss of quality); or he could have used unauthorised DRM-stripping software to remove the DRM and then converted them using a utility, again with loss of quality. Apparently Apple’s customer service folk did not propose either solution, and I agree with them: if you spend £169.99 on music you don’t expect to have to jump through hoops to play it.

The situation seems almost hopeless. If Microsoft prosper with Zune, then the world gets yet another lock-in DRM scheme to contend with; yet even that may be better for the consumer than a continuing lack of effective competition for iTunes/iPod.

The irony is that pirates who freely exchange copyright MP3 or even non-lossy Flac music files are getting a better product than the law abiding folk who are willing to buy legal downloads.

The best hope is that either anti-trust regulators like the Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman force Apple and others to give consumers a better deal; or that potential customers like Anthony Marrian simply refuse to buy on the terms currently offered.

I’m also in the latter camp. In fact, the latest iTunes music store appears to be blocked by my firewall; I get this:

I’m in no hurry to get it fixed.

Update

Frank Shaw says  phones will beat the iPod. Maybe. Three things though:

1. We haven’t seen the Apple phone yet.

2. The telecom companies may have the hardware, but have not yet matched the iTunes music store to win download purchases.

3. Integration. Apple does a great job of integrating internet store/PC or Mac/iPod; and is bringing the home TV into the loop as well. Oh yes, and all those iPod docks fitted in cars these days. To win you need to match the whole ecosystem, not just a part.

 

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