Chris Szurgot's Blog

One Microsoft employee blogged about all the other Microsofties goes to Disney parks. http://blogs.msdn.com/duncanma/archive/2004/03/18/92526.aspx

My wife and I are going to Disneyworld this week for our fifth anniversary. Mabye it's a sign that I should be working at Microsoft as well. <grin>

I'm working with the ListView Control (in Details mode) and I'm frustrated. Functionally, it's a great tool. Fast and missing only one feature for what I'm doing (It doesn't raise an event when the FocusedItem changes which was easy enough to implement) But, it flickers something fierce. If you don't have an icon attached to the row, and you add or change a row, the first item flickers. When you have an icon attached to the row, the entire thing flickers, even if the row being added or updated is off-screen. It's truely enough to give one a headache. A full screen program clearing and redrawing the screen, a few times a second, just to update an icon.

I've tried everything I can to get it to not flicker. Begin/EndUpdate() doesn't work (lergely because it's only supposed to delay redraw while multiple updates are made, not changing the way updates are handled) I've tried DoubleBuffering, but the painting doesn't seem to be handled by the controls PaintMehod, I've even tried other List controls, but they are too slow when dealing with a full screen app.

And I've worked with the status bar, and an Owner Draw Panel to display a progress bar, and *it* flickers.

And Whidbey Technology Preview doesn't fix this.

So my biggest wish for Whidbey (besides all the ones already being implemented) is to fix the flicker issues of the controls. Please! Just to keep my cost of Aspririn down.

(Update: Just to be clear, AddRange doesn't work any better than Begin/EndUpdate() because the adds and updates are supposed to be separate. I've also tried LockWindowUpdate and WM_SETREDRAW. Nothing works because (I think) it's not the timing of the refresh, it's the refresh itself.)

I'm going to add my voice as a Me-too post. MS should find a way to disconnect the release dates for Whidbey & Yukon. I've been using Whidbey for about a week now (since DevDays) in “play” projects, and I want those new features. (I haven't even looked at ASP.NET, just Windows Forms, and I can already see it's a great improvement. The WebBrowser component alone, is good.)

To me, Whidbey (From the Technology Preview) is about the same level of code as Beta 1 of VS.NET was back in 2001. Had some rough edges, but pretty solid. I can only imagine what “Beta 1” will be like.

So Microsoft, find a way to release Whidbey sooner rather than later, and update for the Yukon features. Please.

I've only seen the word obfuscate used outside of the computer field twice. The first time was a license plate that said “Eschew Obfuscation”, which I always thought was a great joke, and the second time was tonight , in Terry Goodkind's Stone of Tears.

I love fantasy novels that help with your vocabulary. <grin> (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant did wonders for mine when I was 14)

I'm working with a system (that I didn't design) that has a good deal of business logic in the database server. While it makes a lot of sense from a performance perspective, it really makes it hard to program. Several functions update different parts of the same table, and now, in order to inject logic into the database, you have to add it to several stored procedures or (in a last ditch effort) update triggers. It really sucks that you can partition stored procedures, or create Objects to manipulate the database. (I know that Yukon will help somewhat by allowing Stored Procedures written in C# or VB, but it still doesn't seem to address the larger disconnect)

How do others handle this problem? Business logic in code? Naming schema?

Ok, so it's a bit of a drive from Virginia Beach, but I went to DevDays up in DC. (3 1/2 hours driving time both ways)

Overall, not a bad event. I chose the Smart Client track, and came away with some new ideas. My only real complaint there was that the deployment session was almost identical to a session I attended at Tech Ed 2001. I thought there would be *something* new in the last 4 years.

As someone said before, the Opening KeyNote was mainly marketing fluff.... How .NET and Windows Server helps, how great InfoPath and Share Point are. Eh, no biggie.

The sessions were really focused on current technologies, so that was good, since a lot of people have been commenting on wanting current stuff, as opposed to “coming” technologies.

The closing keynote was all about Whidbey, which has certainly gotten me excited. Lots of great productivity enhancements and whatnot. As soon as I got home, I started the install so it would be available this morning to mess around with. Looks great.... (Now how do I get onto the Betas so I can submit a bug report about the List View. Why isn't there a FocusedItemChanged event????)

I'll probably go again, but I'm not sure....