This Old Code

Are user web site provided spell checkers obsolete?  With the advent of Google tool bar and the built in spell check for FireFox do we need to provide our own custom spell check for our website controls?  The only case where I can think of this still being relevant is when dealing with a very special set of vocabulary such as finance.  But even in this case if the user customizes the FireFox spell check to their diction across the board my site spell check is mostly irrelevant and frankly less useable then the web Browser spell check

I have been listening to the vc++ sessions from PDC and while  vs 10 sounds like it will finally function.  Having Intellesens that does not take your system down,  will a refreshing change of pace.  Yet essentially the core of new MFC improvements revolve around some tossed in eye candy.  Eye candy that will allow us to deceive our customers into believing we don’t suck and that we are a modern application, because we look cool.  The simple fact is we the MFC community doesn’t need UI eye candy.  If we care about UI there are third parties libraries(companies have been designing cutting edge UI with MFC long before .net was a glimmer in MS eye).  The UI is not the framework and the MFC framework pales in comparison to what .net(winforms/WPF) provides to its developers. So where are our performance gains?  Designing forms and dialogs is still a scene out of the early 90s.  Database support is pain, webservices and databinding are nightmares.  Sure we have document view architecture but what if I want something else? Then you end up fighting MFC at every turn.  This framework is like Frankenstein with what seems to be little thought put into design and usability.  It seems to me that the future is not MFC and its depressing that Microsoft is now ignoring c++ cli. 

In conclusion Vs 10 probably is the new 6, not because of the productivity 6 brought us.  But because this team still has their head in the sand and is developing crap for new applications which do nothing to help the MFC in the trench developers.  MS call me back when you bring back VC 6 class wizard.

PC26 Microsoft Visual Studio_ Building Applications with MFC

TL13 Microsoft Visual C++_ 10 Is the New 6

Recently I have decided that I have a typing problem(not because of Steve Yegge’s rant.).  Sure I can touch type at a fair rate in word a outlook but when it came to code I will hit my keys of despair, I suck with the number row.  A fact I blame on an over reliance of my keyboards 10.  In order to solve this problem I have committed to spending half an hour a night at http://sense-lang.org/typing/ practicing a self made number row drill. 

Like riding a bike, I found that after my first night of drills I could once again remember which finger belonged to which key.  Now I am mostly struggling with the fact I drilled on a none ergonomic keyboard at home, but use a split key ergonomic keyboard at work.  It seems that in order to be truly proficient one needs to drill on the same keyboard use day in and day out.  Its almost amazing how the slight arrangement differences can really slow you down.

Of All the PDC announcements a couple small announcements from the BCL team have excited me.

.NET 4.0 will have BigInteger, support for Memory Mapped Files and best of all File System enumerations.

With file system enumerations we will no longer have to iterate an unknown sized array.  we can now iterate over an IEnumerable.  This will mean less memory consumption and faster data access since we no longer need to load all the directory info into a single array.

I have spent the past couple of days verifying my web application on windows 2008.  One issue that has plagued me is gif files were not served.  At first I thought this might be an access right issue since my program is installed under program files.  But after adding every imaginable access right to this vpc still no gif would be served. Next I thought it might be caching so I disabled that, but still no image would be served.  Finally  it turns out that when I installed iis I did not install the static content option.  which prevents my .js javascript files and images from being served.

Just remember if you run into a control that does not support ToolTipService(). ToolTip you can always create a invisible boarder around the control.  And you can use that border to display your tool tip.

From the channel nine screen cast Silverlight - Handling HTML Events in .NET Code by Mike Taulty

Void OnLoaded (object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    HtmlElement element =
        HtmlPage.Document.GetElementById("MyButton");
    element.AttachEvent("onclick", (EventHandler)MyHandler);
}
void MyHandler( object sender, EventArgs args)
{
    //Do something.
}

After installing silverlight tools for  visual studio

I receive the following error message in visual studio 2008 Preview

Derived method 'OnApplyTemplate' in type 'System.Windows.Controls.GridSplitter' from assembly 'System.Windows.Controls.Extended, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' cannot reduce access.

I have a solution that when compiled under the IDE all of the projects build with no issue.  However when compiled with msbuild, I receive the following error message “error BC30201: Expression expected. ” on line 506 and 238 of a vb.net project.

line 505 If Counter => e.NumberOfItems Then
line 238 If Counter => e.NumberOfItems Then

I made a typo with => it should be >=.   But why does it compile under the IDE?  If I format the the document then the IDE corrects the typo.  So this looks like another example of vb not compiling the code I wrote.