Brennan’s Blog

Internet Explorer 6 was released in August of 2001. Since then Microsoft delayed any new releases after achieving dominance in the browser market which effectively ended the browser wars of the late 90's. In a previous post I suggested the dominance of IE6 and lack of releases over several years was bad, but also good because it offered a "stable" base that we could build on. In the late 90's there were frequent releases of Netscape and Internet Explorer with amazing new features and it was hard to keep up. At least with no releases for the browser with 90% of the market share you could stick with what you had. But now it is time to move forward.

Starting with Google Mail everything changed. Suddenly you could build rich applications than run on web sites. And thanks to the rising popularity of AJAX many more sites jumped forward into what became known at Web 2.0. Now it is common for a site like Facebook to act more like an application than a collection of pages. You have a task bar at the bottom to show notifications and keep active chats going with friends even as you browse to different areas to look at photos and post comments on your friend's walls. In order to run as an application a web site requires more resources, and Internet Explorer 6 is just not capable of providing the experience that people want.

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As I mentioned previously, there is going to be a special event on Wednesday night. We are going to be treated to an event at the Quadracci Pavilion, at the Milwaukee Art Museum. This room is a beautiful space below the Burke Brise Soleil. At 4:15pm there will be two presentations for the Unified Communications User Group. This is the inaugural meeting and everyone is welcome. At 5:45pm everyone is invited to meet up with other developers in the .NET and Microsoft communities. (please spread the word) Come to chat with others in our great user group community which is getting stronger all the time. Please attend the presentations if you are able to make it and then be sure to stick around afterward for some gaming and other fun.

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Planning is currently underway for an event at a great location for area developers. Keep the date free so that you can make it once the announcement goes out. You will not want to miss it.

The Guidance Automation Extensions (GAX) and Guidance Automation Toolkit (GAT) are both going Gold. These packages are critical in creating software factories. These tools provide the base for tools like the Web Service Software Factory: Modeling Edition. I read the news from Tom Hollander. If you are not familiar with GAX/GAT think of these tools as Intellisense at the project level instead of the individual lines of code like normal Intellisense.

I have been experimenting with the software factories over the last year and have been anxious for the Gold release. As Visual Studio 2008 was released a stable version of WCSF for Visual Studio 2005 was released, but it was still built on a CTP release of GAX/GAT. A few weeks later a CTP of WCSF for Visual Studio 2008 was released. Now with a solid base I expect work on the software facotries to accelerate.

There has clearly been a lot of work put into getting these tools ready before the Microsoft launch events for .NET 3.5, Visual Studio 2008 and Windows Server 2008 that are starting at the end of this month. (see Heroes Happen Here for details on launch events) There are many projects on CodePlex for software factories and with a Gold release for GAX/GAT the projects should get a burst of activity.

I still think the UI for these tools need more work and there need to be many more training videos produced to improve adoption of these powerful tools, but the Gold release is the first step toward creating software in a new way.

You can read more details from Grigori Melnik, David Hayden and Jose Escrich. If you are interested in what happens next I suggest you subscribe to their blogs.

In the work I do I have often have to work on large applications that have grown for a few years without effective controls in place to ensure the application remains manageable. Sometimes you just have to start from scratch, perhaps cannibalizing the old application wherever possible, and carefully assemble everything piece by piece while following a disciplined plan to make sure it all meets your current requirements.

As I have watched Microsoft for the past 10 years I have seen the progression from DOS to Windows 3.1 to WinXP and now to Vista. Along the way the OS pulled along a great deal of backward compatibility at the expense of agility. Back in 2001 Apple released MacOS X which was a completely different OS from MacOS 9. Apple bet the house on a fresh start after the popularity of the Internet forced the personal computer to account for new requirements that did not exist before. Meanwhile Microsoft chose to gradually upgrade their flagship product, Windows. Watching the consequences of these two choices unfold has been a good lesson in enterprise software design.

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Be sure to sign up for Heroes Happen Here. For attending you will get a free copy of Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008. I am registered for the Chicago event on March 11.

I am sure it will fill up quickly, so get registered now.

There are many events coming up where you can get a free Visual Studio 2008 installation. These events have filled up quickly, as Dave Bost explains. You can get a 90 day trial for Visual Studio 2008 from MSDN right now but when you get the fully licensed version you will need to uninstall the trial. The special installations for these events, however, do not require the uninstall which is a good reason to get into one of these events. But before you attend one of these "installfest" events you will want to prepare your computer with the following tips.

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I finally took the jump. I have been running Vista inside of Virtual PC 2007 for short periods just to try out various features, such as IIS7. Since Visual Studio 2005 SP1 for Vista was released I have been tempted to make the jump and I finally did.

I am still just running it inside of Virtual PC since I just plan to use it for development. It performs quite well despite living in a VPC and my Inspiron is only a single core processor. Initially the sound device was not recognized but once I installed the VPC Additions the sound automatically started to work. My main concern was how well TortoiseSVN would integrate with Vista. I have not had a single problem with it. I believe I waited long enough for the early adopters to work out the kinks.

Since I mainly use this environment to run Visual Studio I am sure I will not have any problems. And if I choose to move back to WinXP it is only a matter of firing up my other environment which is now sitting in cold storage.

I just came across an ad for Visual Studio which links over to Defy All Challenges. It features videos which seem like a twist of the popular show The Office but the clips are from video games with custom voiceovers. The clips show the characters doing various things that people do in an office. Some of them are pretty funny. They even have an application on the website which allows you to create your own video which others can vote on later.

I think we got a preview of this all when Scott Guthrie did a video about ASP.NET AJAX in a Red vs Blue clip. (requires WPF/e) It makes me wonder how long before they have a Sims theme for The Office if they do not have one in the works already.

It has finally been released. Go and get ASP.NET Ajax 1.0!

To get a jump start on doing Ajax with ASP.NET use the training videos.