July 2003 - Posts
If you're in the Portland, Oregon, area... come on by the .NET user group meeting tonight. See you there!
The cost of an operating system is just a drop in the bucket compared to all the additional costs involved with computing. Just ask ABB....
IBM lands $1.1 billion IT services deal
IBM Global Services will take responsibility for the operation and support of ABB's information systems infrastructure in 14 countries in Europe and North America, representing some 90 percent of ABB's information systems infrastructure.
Yep. That's with a “B“.
Cool! An updated roadmap. Lots more said about what's in Whidbey, but the details about Orcas are still a ways out. Heh, can't divulge too much too soon, now....
A few weeks ago I had one of those days...
I hosed my development environment, so that every time I attempted to create a new ASP.NET web application in VS.NET 2003, I would get the following error message: The Web server reported the following error when attempting to create or open the Web project located at the following URL: 'http://localhost/WebApplication1'. 'HTTP/1.1 403 Access Forbidden'.
I could create a web project in VS.NET 2002 without any problem (on the same machine). Another fun note was that if I created the virtual directory first in IIS manager, and create a project in VS 2003 pointing to that vdir it would work.
I looked through the MSDN docs, through the news groups, etc., but couldn't find a way to resolve the issue.
Turns out that I had somehow set my default web site’s Home Directory > Execute Permissions to None. Once I changed it back to Scripts only, bingo. VS.NET 2003 was happy.
So if you get a 403 Access Forbidden error message when attempting to create an ASP.NET web app in VS 2003, take a look at your execute permissions...
bliz
I ran across the book, "Presenting to Win" by Weissman. It's very well written and should be read by anyone who has to give presentations.
I'm knocking off one of my "todo's": looking at WSE 2.0. but before I do, I'm reviewing WSE 1.0. Here's a well-written overview of WSE 1.0 at the MSDN site.
One of the many cool things about WSE 2.0 is that it supports sending messages over TCP/IP or within a process.
finally. after 9 nights away in new orleans, i'm home. on the flight i played with OneNote 2003. it's part of microsoft office 2003, and it was the first time i'd used it. it's very impressive. after using it for an hour i found so many cool features, and i've barely scratched the surface. i don't have a tablet pc, but it works great with even a 'dumb laptop'.
one disconcerting note: just after i sat down (last leg home) in my seat, the lady across the aisle asked me if there was an airsick bag in the seat pocket in front of me. great. i'm happy to report that she slept most of the time and kept her cookies down. she didn't blow. (thank you for taking dramamine, whoever you were!)
later!
bliz
new book by simon guest: microsoft .net and j2ee interoperability toolkit available in september.
it's possible to do interop through a number of ways, including (but not a complete list)
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interop through remoting (.net program to java through ja.net -- difficult to configure, but it works)
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interop through web services (much simpler to implement than remoting)
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interop through messaging (jms consumed by .net is icky because of all the goo jms puts at the front of the payload; .net consumed through jms isn't too bad -- no goo to consume)
should be a good book.
later!
bliz
oh, yeah: notes to self....
take a look at the capabilities of wse 2.0
take a look at nunit for .net
take a look at nant for .net
take a look at the uip (user interface process) pattern -- better than struts?
Phil Weber presented at the meeting tonight. The topic: UI Design Guidelines.
It was an entertaining talk about bad UI design and what makes for a good UI. He showed some cool demos using VB5, VB6, and VB.NET. Very cool stuff.
A couple of Phil’s references:
Lutz Roeder’s web site for slick .NET class libraries for UI elements and other things.
The “Magic“ user interface library for .NET
Alan Cooper's book: “About Face“ (RSS for Charity feed)
A couple of additional highlights:
The pizza place that was supposed to supply the pizzas for the group had some technical difficulties. As a result we didn’t have any pizza for the meeting. Can you imagine? A room full of developers and no pizza in site? All turned out quite well, though, when Chris (user group president) announced that we would stroll across the street to the Buffalo Gap Saloon for free food & drinks. Cool!
At the pub I had the honor of sitting at a table with Scott Hanselmann, Duncan Macintosh, Rory Blyth, and Richard Propst (thanks Richard!). Rory described his obligatory trip to Europe in which he saw a shop that sold (as the sign outside stated) postcards, tee shirts, groceries, and weapons. Eh? “And weapons”?
if you’re in the boise, idaho, area this thursday evening (7/24), drop by the boise .net user group meeting. they meet the 3rd thursday of every month. rob collins is presenting this month. i'll be presenting next month.
oh, yeh, one more thing. new orleans is flat. really flat. i’m on the 38th floor of my hotel & i can just about see the space needle in seattle from here.
eric gunnerson discusses the intricacies of web services and remoting by way of creating a remote control for a media player, and then applies these principles in putting the application to work on his own pocket pc.
read about it here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dncscol/html/csharp07172003.asp
later!
- bliz
oh, wait... one more thing: i'd forgotten the 'joy' of 56k dial up. but it beats the cruddy 'broadband' connection at my hotel in new orleans. i can't wait to get home!
i took the biztalk server certification exam on monday afternoon as a lark. no studying at all.
heh. can’t believe i passed it. it’s been a couple of years since i did anything significant with bts. on each question i went with the first answer that popped into my head, hoping that it was something that bubbled up from the sludge of my brain from a couple of years ago.
if you asked me how to implement something today (especially tonight (it’s a little after 3am in new Orleans)), i wouldn’t have a clue any longer. just shows how misleading a passing score can be sometimes. also shows how real-world experience can be better than cramming to pass an exam. i used to know that stuff really well. (honest)
i also tried the analyzing requirements exam today, and thought i had done really well on it. but when i pressed the ‘end exam’ button, up flashed this nasty message stating ‘you have failed’. for a second i thought the testing program was telling me that i had ended the test incorrectly, like ‘you have failed to answer a couple of questions, please go back and fix it’. heh. not.
well, the requirements exam is the last one for my .net version of the mcsd cert. i already have the desktop, web, and web services exams under my belt. (again, real-world practice made all the difference (in the world).) (so what does that say about my ability to analyze requirements? uh... it was a tough test. i'd like to have a discussion with the authors.) :)
later!
- bliz
oh, yeh, one more thing: take a look at this cool gdi .net clock. if you change the opacity to 50% it works great in the lower right-hand corner of your desktop, always on top. nice app!
hello. i’m a .net developer evangelist with the microsoft pacific northwest district.
welcome to my blog.
i’m currently in new Orleans at a technical briefing for microsofties. for the most part it’s been very cool (the conference, not the weather). there’s a lot of exciting new stuff in the works (that i can’t talk about today). can't wait to talk to you about it in the future!
tomorrow’s sessions will start in just a few hours, so i’m going to leave you now.
later!
- bliz
oh, yeh, one cool thing that i will mention is “application architecture for .net: designing applications and services” from the microsoft patterns & practices group. it’s an excellent resource. for more good stuff like this, take a look at msdn.com/patterns or msdn.com/practices. (they both take you to the same link.)
p.s. just for the record: these are my thoughts. they do not necessarily represent the opinions or views of my employer. all my blogging is provided as-is, without warranty and does not confer any rights.