February 2005 - Posts
A collegue of mine who's a graphical designer (or art director, as his card tells us) refered to an article about Ajax. According to the article it's based on HTML, XHTML, CSS, DOM, XML, XSLT, XMLHttpRequest and Javascript binding these technologies together.
I don't care what the writer has to say about the technologies, but I think he has a point when he says that this is going to be the next big thing in the world of the web development. Or at least I hope so. He refers to GMail, Google Suggest and Google Maps. Although non of those websites has an awesome looking design like all Microsoft products have, the user experience certainly rocks my world! I cannot believe how fast GMail and Google Suggest are, how easy it is to work with them.
The article is a good read and it's certainly something companies can benefit from, when adapted. Especially when they adapt early.
MSF for Agile Software Development is a scenario-driven, context-based, agile software development process that utilizes many of the ideas embodied in Team System
If you have ever looked at the RUP manual, you'll see the resemblence in Microsoft's MSF for Agile Software Development. There are probably more manuals (or guidelines) that resemble these documents, but I was pleased with the way Microsoft creates theirs. They're so friendly to look at, a pleasure to read, but I guess I've already mentioned that's the way Microsoft does things. It's in Beta however, and as far as could see in the quick look I took, links to example documents aren't there yet, although (some of) the documents are provided.
But it's very usefull to read and perhaps to point your project leader, business analyst, tester, etc towards this documentation. I can only hope other Microsoft and other companies will provide more of these documents or process guidelines with the same user friendly style this document has.
Although we're not (yet?) in the list of sponsors, LogicaCMG will definitly be there. An not to give away free mints or a nice mousepad, but two Media Centers! It's a shame LogicaCMG employees can't enter the contest.
I'm not yet sure which models they are, but I've heard they were the best of their kind in some test and are only 6cm high. So they fit perfect in your current audioset, and you can move the DVD player to another room, or just give it away.
A small tip, don't forget to bring your mobile phone, as you'll need it to win the Media Center. We'll show you why we're the number one sms provider in the world, with every two out of three sms messages handled by our company.
The website for the European Tech·Ed 2005 is online. It also has an rss feed you can subscribe two. For some reason, I sometimes click on the rss feed to watch it in Internet Explorer or Firefox, to quickly see what it contains and if I should subscribe.
This rss feed has a stylesheet so when you browse to it, you'll get a nice page telling you what rss is and what this feed will bring you. However, probably because of the stylesheet, in RSS Bandit, the info doesn't show at all. Now is this a RSS Bandit error, or is it Microsoft's fault for bypassing the stylesheet functionality!?
update: It seems they updated it! :)
 Just for fun, I created this little image that says I'm going to the (Dutch) DevDays in march.
If you like it, and want to place it on your blog or something, you can use it. Please leave a comment if you do. |
Christian Weyer is glad he can finally talk about Indigo, now that he DSG team covers Indigo at this week's VSLive event.
The link however, brings us to an article on some site called crn, in which we can read the following statements:
- A CTP of Whidbey Beta 2 will be “issued“ by Microsoft at VSLive this week.
No idea if they mean they're gonna talk about it, or hand it out to the visitors. Everyone else however, won't get their hands on Beta 2 until end March.
- The CTP will offer “more team system components“ as well as performance improvements
- Avalon seems to be for Smart clients, so it seems Ernst is right about that one.
Anyway, Avalon, together with Indigo, should be released “very soon“. Think what you will about that statement.
Microsoft will also give details about some ISV partner tools that will be released.
- Versant will debut an OR/M tool. Why would Microsoft tell us about this tool? Has it something to do with the drop of ObjectSpaces? Because I still am clueless as to why that has been dropped together with WinFS, as Microsoft said they were tightly coupled.
- Open Access.NET, some kind of replacement for ADO.NET which should give us developers a lot more speed then with the solutions we can use now. Of course this tool will highly integrate with the still overhyped webservices, so we can all benefit! ;-)
- Eiffel Software is releasing a $1500,- plugin which will give Eiffel developers (in VS2005) multiple-inheritence and, get this, generics.
- Funny thing, said is that Eiffel is based on a simplified version of UML. Funny, because Microsoft has expanded (or replaced) UML, because (especially) the .NET 2.0 specifications go beyond UML.
All announcements that make you wonder how this will fit into our near future development roads. This OR mapper will probably get a lot of attention and will be known by most, where others might already be way ahead as a tool or as experience. I'd also like to see where Open Access.NET could take us. Almost everyone I see, is using DataSets, which sometimes are definitly not the way to go. Main fault is Microsoft self I think, for providing only small pieces of code as example, and everyone presuming that's the best practice.
Maybe some people should start up a site where people can share complete problems and their best practice solutions.
Also funny is in a linked article from the first, where some source says that “Microsoft [is] at a great strategic disadvantage in enterprise development” when it comes to their set of tools called Team System. The Rational tools however, aquired by IBM, has the advantage, according to the source, because with Microsoft tools “there's not a proficient methodological or process base there.”
Very funny I think, because the Rational toolset is nothing more then a set of tools, which might support some documentation within RUP. Team System is nothing more, and the methodology is as far or close as you can get, with both sets of tools. My opinion however, is that this is the first version and if it has it faults, Microsoft will eventually get it right. With the fact that the Rational tools are very user unfriendly, and Microsoft tools are really user friendly, looking great with more gimmicks then Rational could ever think of. Microsoft will 'steal' or 'borrow' a lot of good ideas, but will create such a great toolset, that everyone will eventually drop Rational's tools. Of course except for these people like in this post.
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Wouldn't you be the coolest geek with this t-shirt on?
Maybe I have to wear this at the DevDays 2005!
Go get it here! |