If you are like me and couldn't make it to PDC this year, all of the sessions are going to be made available on Channel 9.  I'm excited for a lot of new features in VSTS 2010.  Windows Azure looks cool too.  It will be interesting to see what and how they price it.

https://sessions.microsoftpdc.com/public/timeline.aspx

Mike

My only complaint about my Sprint HTC Mogul has been the web browser.  I upgraded to Windows Mobile 6.1 and the browser is basically the same.  I saw a blog post a few weeks ago about a new web browser in private beta called Skyfire.  In the post was a link to a video of a phone playing some Silverlight video of the Olympics on it.  I couldn't believe that it was on a smart phone!  I signed up and actually forgot about it.  Tonight I received the text message from them to sign up.  Once I ran it, I was blown away by the clean interface, speed of the rendering of the pages, and navigation options.  I watched some Flash videos and some live video from Fox News.  It was amazing.  It only took me a few minutes to get the hang of the zooming and moving.  I could tell the pages were loading fast but I didn't realize how much faster they load then the other mobile browsers.  Take a look at the head to head review of Safari, Opera, and Skyfire.  The load time of the pages are 1/10th of the other browsers!  Now you can watch YouTube videos, sign in to Exchange Webmail, watch live TV, and basically anything else you can do with your computer's browser.   The only two downsides I have found are not Skyfire's fault.  One the screen is small.  Not much you can do about that on a smart phone.  The other is the battery won't last forever.  Between watching some Sprint TV and this I was able to drain my battery.  My final test was to see how a some 2.5d Silverlight would look.  Microsoft's Mojave Experiment was just redone in Silverlight.  It was funny that it was originally done in Flash.  If you haven't seen it yet, it is a cool looking Silverlight page.  In addition it is a funny concept.  Microsoft told a bunch of Vista haters that they were about to see the new version of Windows.  Then when they turned out to love it, they told them that it was really Vista.  Anyway, back to my test.  I pulled it up on my phone in Skyfire and it worked perfectly.  The animation was smooth.  The videos were crisp and loaded fast.  The only thing I couldn't really do was the forward and backward zooming through the website.  I could click on the zoom button on the page and it worked but not as smooth as the scroll wheel on my mouse.  

Skyfire is not only the best web browser for mobile phones, it is the best application I have seen.  Up until now, I thought Orb was the best.  Signup for the private beta.  Hopefully you won't have to wait as long as I did.

Mike

Next week I get to attend my second ESRI User conference.  I'm really looking forward to this.  This time I will be presenting and we are receiving a Special Achievement in GIS award.   It will be my first opportunity to speak at a national (actually international) event.

Here's our presentation:

Utilizing Image Server/ArcGIS Engine/SDE for Offline/Online Enterprise Appraisal System
http://events.esri.com/uc/2008/infoweb/OnlineAgenda/index.cfm?fa=ofg_details_form&ScheduleID=532

If you attending, stop by the session.  See you in San Diego.

Mike 

Our project team supports a couple large enterprise applications. We often find ourselves spending time troubleshooting production support issues.  These tasks end up taking a significant portion of time away from development.  We often put in a quick fix that satisfies the one particular condition that is causing the error.  More than we would like to admit, we unknowingly break another feature or another condition of that feature. 

Our team is working on a changing the way we fix these bugs.  Instead of fixing the bugs directly in code and then manually testing them, we are creating a test (either unit test or automated GUI test) that represents the failing condition.  This test is intended to initially fail.  Then it is the developer’s job to fix the broken test.  This is helpful for a couple reasons.  One, by being able to create a test that fails, this is good evidence that the real issue has been identified .  This should eliminate times where we "think" we see the problem and end up not fixing anything.  Secondly, the developer (and entire team if using a CI build notification process like Team Deploy) will know exactly when this is fixed.  Lastly, by adding these as tests, this condition will be tested forever, every time the tests run.  This will ensure that other fixes down the road won't break this condition of the feature. 

In addition to the benefits, this supports Agile and Test Driven Development.  Just like TDD, this starts with a broken test that the developer will fix.  The TDD term is "Red, Green, Refactor".
This isn't always an easy process.  Everyone thinks it is a good idea, but when it comes to doing it, it takes longer and the tests are often hard to create.  However, I believe the long term benefits greatly outweigh the challenges.  Let me know if works for you.

Code Smart Not Had

Mike

I have begun to rewrite my website, www.doitconsultants.com (It really needs it as you can see) using CSS.  I found some

examples and was able to start.  Then, I couldn't figure out why the columns were not lining when I realized I needed to know

more than just hack my way around in CSS.  I went to the book store to find a book on CSS.  I didn't need one that explained

web development or assumed I knew nothing.  I was looking for some specifics between two and three column layouts.  I figured

it would be a hard book to find.  I grabbed 3 CSS books from the shelf and started flipping through them.   One was too basic

and another was more like a glossary.  Then, I came across Stylin with CSS by Charles Wyke-Smith.  This book immediately

caught my eye by full color pages and a lot of examples.  The book was more than just eye candy though.  The book had a

chapter of exactly what I was looking for.  He clearly explains multiple layouts, liquid flow, etc.  Like any good

book, you can download all of the examples from his book.  The best part is his examples include a css library he created

that he gives you for free.  Great book, I highly recommend this book for all web developers.

As a design challenged ASP.NET developer, most templates available from websites such as http://www.freecsstemplates.org/ have

great examples we can use, however these require some modifications to work with ASP.NET.  This book refers to Dreamweaver

but doesn't require any specific IDE.  Before I continued with my website design, I wanted to do an exercise to help me understand the examples.  So I decided to create some basic ASP.NET project templates.  I created three templates to reflect the 3 usual layouts.  Each of the templates also include a cool feature I learned from the book to round the corners using Nifty Corners at http://www.html.it/articoli/nifty/index.html.  The also include ASP.NET best practices like Master Pages, Site Maps, and Menu controls.

 1.  Three Column - Rounded Corners with Left Navigation, main center content, and a right promo area.

ThreeColumn.vsi.zip (24.52 KB) (Remove the .zip to install)

 2.  Two Column - Rounded corners with left navigation and main content.

TwoColumn.vsi.zip (23.84 KB) (Remove the .zip to install)

 3.  Two column with Top Navigation - Rounded corners with top navigation, left side links and main content.

TwoColumnTopNav.vsi.zip (24.11 KB) (Remove the .zip to install)

All of the templates come with multiple CSS layouts.

Feel Free to download these and use them for your projects.  Send me any updates or problems.  I tested them in IE7 and Firefox 3.0 and they look good in both.  Not sure about the others. 

Code Smart Not Hard

Mike

Thanks to everyone that attended tonight's Omaha Team System User Group meeting.  I thought it went very well.  It was a good turnout and there were a lot of good questions asked.

Here are the slides from the presentation. 

TFS_Build_Automation.zip (260.07 KB)

Mike

On May 27, 2008 I will be presenting on Build Automation with TFS at the Team System User Group meeting.  This presentation will demonstrate how cool it is to automate the build process and have a little fun along the way by having your automated builds control street lights and lava lamps.  I will cover the creation of automated builds, demonstrate how to create custom build tasks, and go over a Team Deploy custom task project for build automation

This month's meeting will be at:

Farm Credit Services of America
5015 S 118th St
Omaha, NE 68137

Come and check it out!

Please RSVP to Jeff Bramwell if you plan on attending.

I'll post the slides after meeting.

Mike

I don't blog very often about toys but I am a gadget geek.  My Sprint PPC 6700 wouldn't work anymore.  I think it lost too many battle to gravity.  So I upgrated to the new Sprint HTC Mogul phone.  It is really cool phone. 

Here's the coolest features

• EVDOa - In Omaha I am getting 700k to 1Mb per second.  I compared it to the WIFI on it, I was only getting 500k to 700k.  No reason to use WIFI with unlimited data plan!
• Email - This is the main reason for the PDA phone. 
• Built in GPS - I used to have to carry an extra gps on my bat utility belt for this. 
• Voice Dial - Great when driving.
• Keyboard - I guess I'm too old to understand how the kids today can send text messages so fast without a keyboard.  I like my keyboard.
• Camera - Actually works pretty good on this phone.  The 6700 was bad
• HTML Email - I'm sure iPhone users don't think aout this much but the 6700 was just text email. 

If you have a Windows Mobile 6 phone make sure you download these!

• Spb Mobile Shell - Turn your Windows Mobile 6 phone into an iPhone like interface.  It makes it a completely different phone.  Check it out.  Only $30
• MS Live Search - Use GPS, maps, directions, find businesses, etc.   Voice activated too! FREE!
• Orb - Stream any media from your PC to your phone.  You can watch videos, photos, and open documents.  Finally I can watch YouTube videos on my phone.  FREE!

Sprint has also said that it is going to release the Windows Mobile 6.1 update for the Mogul!  This will give us a bunch of little features, but my favorite is a better web browser. 

Gadget Smart Not Hard

Mike

CodeSmith Tools has just published a case study on my work, Farm Credit Services of America.  It talks about how code generation is helping all of our teams.  The cool part is that they quoted me in it.  Check it out and see my 15 bytes of fame :)

http://www.codesmithtools.com/lib/casestudies/Farm-Credit-Services-Of-America.pdf

Code Smart Not Hard

Mike

The latest version of Team Deploy (0.7.0.2) now contains the Device Controller Task.  This task allows your Team Foundation Server builds to call the x10 Firecracker to control lamps.  http://www.x10.com/automation/firecracker.htm

 See the Team Deploy website on CodePlex for all of the details and files.
http://www.codeplex.com/TeamDeploy

Here's the street light we are using for our builds.

Build Smart Not Hard

Mike