Verity Stob’s Web 2.0 app diagram is worth a look.
So is it back to plain old HTML+forms then? That won’t do either; your app will look a decade old, and offline will never work.
This is why the current RIA wars are fascinating – particularly since Apple seems averse to runtimes like Flash, Java or Silverlight on its iPhone.
Which leaves what? JavaScript, hélas.
The team behind the open source SCM (Software Configuration Management) tool Subversion released version 1.50 last month. Karl Fogel, president of the Subversion Corporation, says:
Measuring by new features alone, Subversion 1.5 is our biggest release since version 1.0 became available in February 2004.
I am a contented Subversion user, so took a look at the changes. Top of the list is “merge tracking”, though it is described as “foundational” which means that although the basic support is there, there is performance and feature work which remains to be done. From the user’s perspective, the difference is that branching and merging is just easier than before, as explained by Ben Sussman:
Notice how I never had to type a single revision number in my example: Subversion 1.5 knows when the branch was created, which changes need to be synced from branch to trunk, and which changes need to be merged back into the trunk when I’m done. It’s all magic now. This is how it should have been in the first place.
Other changes include sparse checkouts (when you only want to grab a small part of a repository), and changelists, a client feature which lets you tag a set of files under a changelist name and work on them as a group. There are also improvements aimed at making Subversion better suited to large-scale deployments using multiple servers. Subversion is still a centralized rather than a distributed SCM system, but 1.5 is better suited for use in a distributed manner. No doubt the Subversion team is aware of the increasing interest in Git, a distributed system. There are also numerous bug-fixes and performance tweaks. The changes are described here.
I want to move to Subversion 1.5 but it is not that easy. Compatibility is good, in that older clients work with 1.5 servers and vice versa, the main proviso being that you cannot mix several versions of the Subversion client with the same working copy. That is not likely to be a problem for most users.
The difficulty I encountered is that mainstream Linux distributions still have older versions of Subversion in their stable repositories. Ubuntu, for example, has version 1.4.4. My most-used Subversion repositories are on a Debian server, which also has an old version. I don’t want to switch the server to sid, Debian’s development distribution, and mixing packages is often problematic. I could do a manual installation I guess; but instead I will be patient.
I did install 1.50 on Windows, for an intranet repository. I used the Collabnet download. All I needed to do was to inform the installer of the location of my existing repository, and then copy a few lines from the old Apache 2.0 configuration file to the new Apache 2.2 configuration file. Everything works fine. I also updated TortoiseSVN on the Windows clients.
One of the advantages of Subversion (or any SCM) repositories over synched folders like those in Microsoft’s Live Mesh or Apple’s MobileMe (as I understand it) is that you get version history. I regard this as a key feature. The problem with synchronization is that you might overwrite a good copy with a bad one. It is easy to do; it might be caused by user error, or a bug in your word processor, or a failing hard drive. Automatic synch (un)helpfully replicates the bad copy all over. Versioning means you can just rollback to the good one.
Last month I reconfigured this blog to use WordPress pretty permalinks. I didn’t rush to do this because I don’t mind the default, where the post is identified by a numeric url argument. The new permalinks do look nicer though, and some claim they help search engines, though I haven’t noticed any impact on traffic. The old links still work as well, so nothing got broken.
One advantage of the new arrangement is that awstats does a better job of reporting page views. I can now easily see which posts are the most read. I thought that might be the newer posts, but it is not. The two posts most read last month, by some margin, are both on why Outlook 2007 is slow. The next is one on trouble installing Adobe CS3. Clearly, these are very common frustrations; users hit Google and these posts have a high ranking for these particular subjects.
I value these stats. They tell me (as if I did not already know) that Microsoft has a significant problem with Outlook 2007 performance; and that Adobe needs to work on its installer for Creative Suite. Web 2.0 is great for product feedback.
Microsoft has finally fixed a long-standing irritation with the Xbox 360: the inability to transfer licenses for purchased games from one console to another. The new license transfer tool lets you consolidate all your download purchases to a specific Xbox 360, even if some were downloaded onto a console that no longer works or was sold on.
I’m personally grateful as I ran into exactly this problem and had an argument with support about it.
There’s a wider point here. If I buy virtual property, like software, music or an ebook, it makes sense to record that ownership in the cloud so that there is no need to keep backups and it cannot really be stolen (other than by hacking the online account, I guess).
There is a lot of discussion around Microsoft’s object-relational efforts right now. There are a couple of key issues:
Now a post from MVP Ian Cooper makes the frightening suggestion that Microsoft is ignoring the lessons of Java’s problems with EJB:
The .NET community had a huge amount to gain from this experience. Ports of Hibernate and Spring offered the community the chance to avoid the mistakes of the past. However, seemingly unaware of the lessons of history the EF team embarked on a project to produce a complex framework, of which persistence is just one aspect, reminiscent of the EJB initiative. So the reaction against the EF comes from its failure to learn lessons that another community has struggled with around complexity and ambition.
Microsoft’s success with .NET has been partly enabled by over-complexity in the Java world. Microsoft’s secret sauce is enabling developers to build stuff that works quickly and easily – which, incidentally, is why I am really disappointed that Visual Studio 2008 is still such a mess for quick database applications.
My own knowledge of the Entity Framework is rather thin. I’ve treated it as a layer that you have to generate in order to use ADO.NET Data Services, a REST API that I really like. It has to be said though – Microsoft’s data story is getting confusing. Roger Jennings is doing a great job of tracking developments.
I spoke this morning to Paul Mackinnon and Steve Plank at Microsoft, about Information Cards and CardSpace. CardSpace is part of .NET Framework 3.0 and higher. It enables uses to authenticate on web sites by presenting a virtual card, instead of typing in a username and password.
The CardSpace concepts strike me as sound, but as far as I can tell adoption has been minimal. I expressed my frustration; why is it that 18 months after the 1.0 release even Microsoft is not using it to any noticeable extent? I still see username/password dialogs whenever I need to sign into a Microsoft property like MSDN subscriptions or Live Mesh. Actually there is a beta service which lets you sign in with CardSpace – but I believe my point is still valid – how many people even know about this?
I was told that it is still early days and that we will hear more about the Live ID service when it comes out of beta. Mackinnon also mentioned that Microsoft is working on a native code client for CardSpace. Currently users need at least .NET Framework 3.0 which is a huge download and can be problematic. A native code client will be a small download with few dependencies. There is no firm date for release, though it is at least a year away (maybe previews before then).
Susan Bradley is blogging about a break-in on the server that runs numerous blogs for Microsoft MVPs (Most Valuable Professionals).
She describes spotting a service that turned out to be the W32/Rbot-GOS work with IRC backdoor functionality.
Currently she doesn’t know how it happened, but promises to let us know; it’s also being investigated by Microsoft support.
Kudos to Bradley for being open about this. It’s embarrassing for someone with deep expertise who blogs about security; on the other hand it demonstrates what a tough problem this is. I’ll be watching with interest for the further analysis.
The BBC has an article, prompted by Bill Gates’ retirement from Microsoft, on how the company thrived because of the failings of its competitors.
I find this ironic. What gave Apple its big break in music, and in gaining market share for the Mac? What gave FireFox its big break in web browsers? Maybe even Google’s success is enabled in part by Microsoft’s failure to compete effectively.
The description of the young, nimble Microsoft is quite a contrast with the company today, which takes around a year to get a product from a feature-complete development stage, to actual shipping.
Interesting post from Lisa Underkoffler’s on what’s coming in Buzzword, Adobe’s internet word processor. She mentions named styles, which I would enjoy since I use these all the time in Word; though I was surprised that it is frequently requested; most people seem happy to apply specific formatting and don’t worry about the structure provided it looks right. Maybe this is Adobe’s strong presence in the print and publishing world showing through.
It prompted me to make a quick tour of the competition to see who already has named style support. Nothing I could see in Google Docs.
Zoho Writer doesn’t seem to have them either.* Zoho’s site also seems a bit temperamental this morning. The connection kept failing which meant a long wait while, perhaps, some AJAX operation was not completing. Zoho froze IE completely; I switched to FireFox but it remained slow. I wish the Zoho folk would stop adding features (even named styles) and focus on performance and reliability for a while; perhaps it is better in the USA.
ThinkFree has them, and they seemed to work (more or less) once I had downloaded its gargantuan Java applet. The company seems to be shifting the emphasis to a downloadable application with online storage, perhaps because the applet is too big for casual use on any old computer. I tried the downloaded application as well. Curiously, after I saved and re-opened the document, my named style disappeared from the list of styles. I think something is not quite right here; I also had a few performance issues.
If you are happy to run a desktop application, Word plus Live Mesh makes a decent and familiar alternative. Just save your document to the Mesh, and open it from anywhere. Main snags: no Mac or Linux support yet, no online editing.
I’ve actually fallen into the habit of using Live Writer plus WordPress as a kind of cloud word processor. Writer has a feature called Post Draft to Weblog. Your document is saved to your blog, but not actually published. Usually I do this for posts that will be published later; but sometimes I use it for notes that will never be published. I can open the draft later from another PC using Writer; or use the online editor in WordPress if Writer is not installed. Another option is to save the draft locally, handy if you are offline; Live Writer will synch it with the online version later. Not recommended for confidential documents, but for casual use it is a powerful combination.
No named styles though. Never mind.
*Update: See comment below: Zoho does support CSS. So if you have a CSS stylesheet set up, you could use these styles in your document. Good idea, though I’m not sure how you go about using this if you are not a skilled web developer.
Microsoft’s Richard Florance has a neat set of “easy win” performance tips.