Category Archives: microsoft

adobe, microsoft

Five things right, five things wrong from Microsoft in 2008

Just saw this Network World article on four things Microsoft got right in 2008. It says: Windows 7, Hiring Yahoo talent, Windows Azure and Server 2008.

I partly agree (I am not sure about Azure, or the significance of Yahoo hires). Here’s my own five right moves, with my usual developer bias.

1. Not buying Yahoo at what now seems a ludicrously inflated price.

2. Windows 7 preview. It was kept reasonably well under wraps, smoothly delivered, and looks promising though not revolutionary from a technical perspective.

3. Windows Server 2008. Same kernel as Vista SP1, and broadly a delight to work with. Hyper-V virtualization is great too.

4. Silverlight. It is probably too late for Microsoft to out-flank Adobe’s Flash, particularly as the cross-platform story is confused. Nevertheless, the Silverlight browser plug-in is well done and evolving rapidly. It gives a significant boost to the .NET platform.

5. SQL Server 2008. The last of the big Server 2008 products to ship; and I respect the SQL team for taking its time and delivering a high quality release.

In other ways, Microsoft has stuttered. Here are five Microflops:

1. Online presence. Live Search continues to stutter. As a whole, Microsoft’s web sites are confusing to navigate, inconsistent and slow. There are many broken links. Like many others, I use Google to search Microsoft. See Danny Sullivan’s brilliant post for more analysis.

2. Live Mesh as an application platform. Sorry, the more I think about this, the more I think Microsoft’s strategy is all wrong. See my Reg article for more. I am sorry as I had high hopes for this.

3. Database APIs. Microsoft’s old bugbear. Infinite flavours of LINQ, ADO.NET Data Services, Entity Framework, SQL Data Services, Windows Azure storage service, Mesh data feeds, what have I missed? There is no shortage of good technology and ideas; but there is lack of strategic discipline.

4. Community forums. There are the old MSDN forums; the new MSDN forums; strange escapees like the Silverlight forums; the old TechNet forums; the new TechNet forums; no doubt others too. Is it so difficult to have a single jump-off point for Microsoft forums, or to do smooth migrations that preserve old messages, or to prioritize fast response times above pretty formatting?

5. Windows Mobile. There are a number of things I like about Microsoft’s mobile platform, including the ease of programming with the .NET Framework. Still, Apple’s iPhone and the rise of Netbooks like the Asus Eee PC show separately the extent to which Microsoft’s mobile team has got it wrong. Remember Origami?

.net, internet, microsoft, software development, windows, windows 7

Windows Azure: since PDC, how is it going?

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At the Professional Developers Conference 2008, held at the end of October 2008, Microsoft unveiled Windows Azure, its new cloud platform. I was there, and got the impression that this is a big deal for Microsoft; arguably the future of the company depends on it. It is likely that the industry will reduce its use of on-premise servers in favour of hosted applications, and if Microsoft is to preserve its overall market share it needs a credible cloud platform.

That was nearly two months ago. What’s been the developer reaction, and how is it going with the early tech previews made available at PDC? It’s hard to tell; but there is less public activity than I expected. On the official Azure forums there are just 550 messages at the time of writing; and glancing through them shows that many of them are from people simply having difficulty signing up. One of the problems is that access to the preview is limited by developer tokens of various types, and although Microsoft gave the impression at PDC that all attendees would have these, that has not really been the case. Those who attended hands-on labs at PDC got tokens there; others have had to apply and wait like everyone else. Part of the reason for lack of activity may just be that not many have been able to get in.

There are other issues too. I’ve spent some time trying out Live Framework and building applications for Live Mesh. I’ve written this up separately, in a piece that will be posted shortly. However, I found it harder than I expected to get good information on how to proceed. There is plenty of high-level marketing, but hands-on documentation is lacking. Azure may be different – though I was interested to find another user with similar frustrations (it’s worth reading this thread, as Microsoft’s moderator Yi-Lun Luo gives a handy technical outline of Azure and Live Services).

Still, let’s bear in mind that PDC is where Microsoft shares early technical information about the Windows platform, which is subject to change. Anyone who built applications for the preview Windows Longhorn code doled out at PDC 2003 (Paul Thurrott’s report is a reminder of what it felt like at the time) would have been in for some disappointment – Longhorn was both greatly delayed and much altered for its eventual release as Windows Vista.

It’s possible then that most developers are wisely waiting for the beta of Azure before doing serious experimentation. Alternatively – the bleakest outcome for Microsoft – they are ignoring Azure and presuming that if and when they do migrate applications to the cloud they will use some other platform.

Nevertheless, I’d suggest that Microsoft’s evangelism of Azure has been poor since PDC. There is more buzz about other things presented there – including Windows 7, which in contrast to Azure seems nearly done.

Update

Matt Rogers from Microsoft comments below that the service is not going to change radically between now and general release. He claims that feedback is extensive, but not evident in the online forums because it comes from other sources – he told me on Twitter that “we are getting much of it directly through relationships with customers, local user group meetings and through our evangelists”.

Maarten Balliauw has converted an application to Azure and written up the experience on his blog. He is using Azure TableStorage for data and Live ID for authentication. He says:

Overall, Microsoft is doing a good job with Azure. The platform itself seems reliable and stable, the concept is good.

Unfortunately the app itself does not work at the time of writing.

adobe, microsoft, software development, vista

Vista’s mysterious compatibility settings: what do they do?

I hate this Program compatibility Assistant in Vista. Why?

First, because it applies settings whether you like it or not. There’s no option to say, “I was happy with how it ran, just leave it alone”.

Second, because it does not tell you what it has done. Sure, there is a link that says, What settings are applied? So you click it.

And you get a generic help dialog with six headings. You click the most promising: What changes does it make? It says:

It depends on the problem, but any changes made are related to how Windows runs the program. No changes are made to the program itself. For example, the Program Compatibility Assistant can resolve conflicts with User Account Control, a new security feature in this version of Windows that can help make your computer safer. Or, it can run the program in a mode that simulates earlier versions of Windows. The changes that Program Compatibility Assistant makes are done automatically, so you don’t need to make them.

Vague and uninformative. And that’s it.

So how do you really discover? Well, you could read this article. Then you can fire up RegEdit and look at:

Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers

under both HKEY_CURRENT_USER and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. Here I found an entry for FlexBuilder.exe as follows:

OK, so Flex Builder will now have ELEVATECREATEPROCESS applied. What does that mean? Here’s the scoop:

Here the test program was trying to launch an updater which is required to run as administrator and failed. In this case, PCA will apply the ELEVATECREATEPROCESS compatibility mode, which will enable the program to successfully launch the child exe as administrator the next time. Now when the program is run the next time and while trying to launch the updater, it will not fail and will successfully run as administrator. The user will see the UAC consent UI.

More details on what happens under the covers is explained through Q/A below.

  1. What is the detection logic and how does PCA know that the program failed to launch a child exe which needs to run as administrator?The detection for this scenario is accomplished through instrumentation at the CreateProcess API to detect the cases when a child process launch fails due to the requirement to run as administrator.
  2. Why are there no options in this PCA dialog?Due to the high confidence on the issue detection in this scenario, the solution (ELEVATECREATEPROCESS compatibility mode) is automatically applied and the user is not given any options.

In my case I believe there was some problem with the Flex Builder debugger trying to launch FireFox, which was also trying to update itself.

I believe Adobe could avoid this problem by marking Flex Builder as UAC-aware. Then Windows will leave it alone.

internet, microsoft

Microsoft’s three ways to store stuff online

Windows Live Sync has just been released. This is an update to FolderShare, a file synchronization service which Microsoft acquired from Byte Taxi in 2005. The new version supports up to 20 folders and 20,000 files, supports Unicode, and still works on both Windows and Mac. It has also been migrated to Windows Live ID, breaking existing shared access lists and apparently causing much pain for existing users, especially on Macs, judging by the comments here.

But why does Live Sync exist? Most of what it does is a subset of what is available in Live Mesh, which as I understand it is a strategic product. I prefer Mesh, since synchronized files are also stored on the Internet for browser access. Another flaw in Live Sync is that if you enable remote access to folders on your PC that are not sync folders, the files are transferred without encryption.

Finally, let’s not forget SkyDrive, free online storage of up to 25GB. I use this regularly; it works nicely when you just want to stick some files (especially large ones) on the web without worrying about the complexities of synchronization.

Why doesn’t Microsoft integrate SkyDrive with the Mesh online desktop as an online-only storage area, and scrap Live Sync completely – sorry, “roll its functionality into Live Mesh”, in PR-speak?

facebook, google, internet, microsoft

BBC looking at OpenID for iPlayer social network

At Adobe’s MAX conference in Milan last week I spoke to the BBC’s Anthony Rose, who runs iPlayer at the BBC, and wrote this up for today’s Guardian. One of the things we discussed is social networking planned for iPlayer, where you will be able to see comments, ratings and recommendations from your friends. I asked Rose how user identities will be managed:

“We’ll make sure you never have to log in to use our services. But if you want to post comments and create a profile then you’ll need to log in. We’re going to start by using a BBC one, then we’re going to look at OpenID and see if we can synch to others. OpenID is very cool but is a challenging user experience, and some people will get it, and some will go, why have you made it more difficult?”

Right now there are multiple competing “networks of friends”: Facebook, MySpace, Microsoft Live Messenger, Twitter and so on. Facebook is trying to extend its reach with Facebook Connect; Google is evangelising OpenSocial which “defines a common API for social applications across multiple websites”, along with an implementation called Friend Connect. It will be interesting to see to what extent the BBC creates yet another social network, and to what extent it hooks into existing ones.

.net, adobe, cloud computing, microsoft, silverlight, software development, web authoring

First steps with offline Silverlight and Live Framework

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Yesterday I wrote a simple test application for Silverlight running on Live Mesh. It is an interesting scenario, which enables Silverlight applications to run offline, in the style of Adobe AIR. I wrote a to-do list which stores its data in the cloud; I added some items online, and deleted and added some items offline on another machine, and when it reconnected all the edits synchronized. Cool.

Even so, I’m not finding this particularly easy. Note that this is a limited-access Community Tech Preview, so make big allowance for that. Here are some of the problems I’ve run into to:

Convoluted sign-up and web site navigation.

This is a preview controlled by developer tokens. It’s complicated by the fact that a variety of different types of token control access to different parts of Windows Azure. You get a token, think you are done, then discover you have the wrong kind of token and need to apply for another one.

Even when you have the token, navigation is tricky. I’ve wasted time clicking through from one overview page to another; there are even promising links that seem to go back to the page you are looking at. Tip: when you find a useful page like the Developer Portal, for provisioning Azure and Live Framework apps, bookmark it quick.

Inadequate documentation.

OK, I guess this is to be expected in a preview. But I’m finding an over-abundance of overviews and diagrams, too many videos, and a lack of plain-speaking developer-focused documentation that answers obvious questions. Most of the entries in the .NET reference for the Live Framework client look like this:

That’s right, auto-generated docs with no description of what the class member is for or how to use it. You can expand the plus symbols, but it is not rewarding.

Slow going

Microsoft’s online MSDN documentation and forums work, but I never look forward to visiting them because I know they will be slow to navigate and I’ll be sitting waiting for pages to refresh. I’m not sure that Microsoft understands the importance of this point. It works – so why complain? Well, because the cumulative effect over time is to make me want to go elsewhere. Google and Yahoo, by contrast, usually run much more responsive sites.

Microsoft could improve this quite easily. The key: fast is more important than pretty.

Bugs and outages

I certainly expect bugs and outages in a CTP. Still, they are frustrating. My very simple Mesh app did not work at all on a Mac, even running in the browser. In this scenario, you don’t need the Mesh client; it is just a Silverlight application running in a web page. I asked about this on the forum:

I confirm it from the core team. With quite aggressive timeline for PDC release with the current level of resources and CTP goals, we could only test XP SP3/Vista SP1 and IE7. We will eventually support Mac and Safari but this is not an immediate priority in the near future for CTP QFEs.

Fair enough, thought to me cross-platform is at the heart of why I might want to use this technology.

This morning my Silverlight Mesh application won’t run at all. I get a 404. I guess it’s the bleeding edge.

Online/Offline

I’ve also asked a couple of simple questions on the forum about the online/offline scenario. I’m finding that offline applications don’t run unless you are signed into Windows Live. That is, you can sign in and then go offline, and it works, but if you don’t sign in (for example, because you start up your laptop in an aeroplane), then the app does not start. There must be some way to use cached credentials?

My other question is about synchronization. How do you enforce constraints on a Mesh datafeed, given that it could be edited online and offline simultaneously, bypassing checks in your code? This is not quite the same as a conflict, where the same entry is edited by two different people. My example is how to make sure that duplicate items are not added to a list.

Early days

I expect that this Azure stuff will get much smoother in future updates; and bear in mind that what I’m working with here – Mesh, Silverlight, and the .NET Live Framework client library – is just one small corner of the whole.

I can’t help wondering though if Microsoft is being over-ambitious. Another technology I’ve been looking at recently is Adobe AIR. The scope of this is small relative to Live Mesh. You can describe it in a few words: run a Flash application on the desktop. It has limitations and frustrations, but at least it is easy to understand, and furthermore, it has pretty much worked as advertised from the earliest public previews.

By contrast, Mesh for developers feels like a huge thing that is part of an even huger thing (Azure); it has lots of promise, but it is harder to describe its essence in a few words (that are not marketing fluff).

That said, I like Silverlight itself. This piece at least is easy to grasp and works well, in my experience so far.

Working with Live Framework or Azure? I’d love to know how it is going for you.

.net, adobe, microsoft, silverlight, software development, web authoring

Adobe engineer: we gotta beat Silverlight

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There was an amusing incident in the Flash Player Internals session this morning at Adobe MAX Milan. An attendee asked engineer Jim Corbett about what he said was a long-standing (10 years) Flash bug. Apparently, sprites sometimes tear as they move across the screen.

Corbett said he wasn’t familiar with the problem; but maybe it was a problem with the browser and that was why the bug had not been fixed.

Silverlight doesn’t have this problem, said the questioner.

Then we gotta fix it, said Corbett.

It reminded me how much I have heard Microsoft mentioned hear at Max. The Adobe execs make constant jibes at Microsoft; and are keen to emphasise wins like the BBC switching away from a Microsoft solution (not Silverlight) to Flash and AIR for its iPlayer.

It really is a war; and the winner for the time being is the user, as competition energises the development of these two Rich Internet Application platforms.

adobe, apple, flash, internet, iphone, microsoft, mobile

Why it’s hard to compete with Apple in mobile app development and deployment

One OS – one device – one AppStore – easy over-the-air purchase for end users. Apple’s development and deployment model delivers results, despite mutters about lock-in and Apple helping itself to a generous slice of the revenue.

Here at Adobe MAX Europe we’ve been hearing about the future of Flash on mobile devices and even seen a demo of what many would like to be able to do: simple over-the-air download of both the Flash runtime and Flash applications. Flash is a great runtime for a mobile device. A while back I reviewed the LG Viewty phone, which has a Flash UI, and despite some imperfections it convinced me of the potential of Flash for mobile devices.

Even so, it will be difficult for Adobe to create an application platform that works as well as Apple’s AppStore. Here are some of the problems.

  • Device-specific APIs. I spoke to the folk on the Sony Ericsson stand here at MAX. If you want your Flash application to do things like talking to the GPS, or integrating with the PIM (Personal Information Manager) on the phone, then you have to write a device-specific version of your Flash application. This adds to the development effort and creates friction in the deployment process. Will Adobe wrap device functions in Flash APIs? I asked about this at the press briefing today. The answer from Senior Principal Scientist Mark Anders was yes … maybe. He mentioned that API bloat became a negative for Java. It really is a difficult thing to get right.
  • Operator interference. Apple has bullied the operators it works with into doing things its way, and gets away with it because the device is so desirable. The operators though are reluctant to be no more than data carriers. They lock down devices, run their own application stores or music services, and make it difficult to mount a convincing challenge to Apple’s single store.
  • Diversity of devices. Diversity is good, sure. It’s tough for developers though. Maybe there’s a keyboard, maybe there is a touch screen, maybe there is a joypad, maybe the screen is big or small. Your app has to work well in every scenario, or else limit the number of devices it supports. Much easier with Apple, just one device to target. That will change somewhat as Apple bring out new iPhone variants, but there will always be more consistency from a single vendor.

It was similar factors that caused Microsoft to abandon its third-party vendors and create Zune, in an effort to compete with the iPod. Microsoft was too late. I am sure we will see increasing use of Flash and Flash-based applications on mobile devices; but it will be hard to displace Apple’s iPhone as the foremost mobile platform for downloaded applications.

Flash in the mobile browser is another matter, of course. If Apple continues to exclude Adobe’s runtime – which I guess it does to protect its application business – then it makes a nice selling point for competitors which do support Flash.

.net, adobe, microsoft, software development, visual studio, web authoring

Amethyst from SapphireSteel: Develop Flex in Visual Studio, an alternative to Tofino

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Not long ago I looked at an early preview of Ensemble’s Tofino, an extension to Visual Studio for developing Flex applications that target the Adobe Flash runtime. It was disappointing, though I’ve been assured that an improved build is in preparation. Ensemble had better be quick: I’ve just been informed of an alternative called Amethyst, from SapphireSteel software, creators of the Ruby Visual Studio extension Ruby in Steel. Here’s what I know so far about Amethyst:

  • ActionScript and MXML editing and project management
  • Installs into commercial editions of Visual Studio or the free Visual Studio shell
  • Initial beta of free personal edition available next week
  • Planned for the 2nd quarter of 2009: commercial Professional Edition with drag-and-drop Flex/AIR visual design environment, IntelliSense and graphical debugging tools
  • Can integrate with Ruby In Steel to create a multi-language Visual Studio solution with Flex at the front end and Rails at the back
  • Amethyst Personal will remain completely free

All sounds good; and Ruby in Steel is well-regarded so this is worth watching out for if you have any interest in developing for Flex in Visual Studio.

A high quality Visual Studio design tool for Flex would help Adobe gain adoption for Flex and AIR among Microsoft-platform developers.

.net, google, internet, microsoft, silverlight, software development, web authoring, windows

From the archives: Mark Anders and Scott Guthrie on ASP+

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My editor at The Register asked me if I had any interviews that would be fun to dig out for a retrospective piece. This one is from September 2000, shortly after the announcement of the .NET Framework, where Microsoft’s Mark Anders and Scott Guthrie talk to me about ASP+, the name for ASP.NET when it was in preview.

Listening to the whole interview was a little frustrating, because most of the time I asked questions that were interesting at the time, like the relationship between ASP.NET and COM, but not so much now. I was reminded though that Guthrie gave an impressive demo of what we now call AJAX, where updates to a web page are processed on the client, and described to me how it worked.

The pair also enthused about hosting Windows Forms controls in the browser, one of the .NET ideas that did not really become practical until the release of Silverlight. The full WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) also works well in the browser, but most web developers rule it out because it is Windows only.

As it turned out, AJAX might never have taken off without the work of Google, while Silverlight now looks like a reaction to Flash. I suspect that Microsoft found it difficult to evolve these ideas into full products because it clung to the idea of a Windows-centric Internet, where Windows rather than the browser is the rich client.

Guthrie is now Corporate VP, .NET Developer Division at Microsoft, while Anders is at Adobe where he has been working on a tool for the Flash platform called Catalyst, previously known as Thermo.