Disclaimer: rant straight ahead
Ok, I'm getting pretty fed up with MSDN Feedback Center, Microsoft's bugreport system. It uses a bugreport form that's unusable in Firefox and also is simply stupid when it comes to uploading files. I really wondered why my attachments weren't attached to the bugreports, while the files were uploaded when I submitted the form (checked that). Turns out, some brilliant 'programmer' cooked up the idea to add a button (I never saw that button, after spending more than 10 years with websites you get blind for these things apparently, but nevertheless, it's completely unlogical why that button is even there) which performs the attachment upload, but it's in the same form! While everyone expects the file to be uploaded when you click submit. And the silly part is: because it's a file upload input element, the file is uploaded anyway when you click submit! So the file is uploaded when submit is called (as it has been since, what, 1995?), but the file is ignored when the form submits. That's what I call Coding for the Customer.
In Firefox, people have to fill in the text in very tiny textboxes. This is just unnecessary, as it's very easy to create a textbox which is of the same size in IE as in Firefox without any browser sniffing. Furthermore, the discussion/feedback area below a report often flickers and keeps resizing in an infinite loop in Firefox. Should I use IE instead? Why? To fill in a webform that has a couple of textboxes and a couple of combo boxes on it? In the case where a site uses a unique Active X plugin... ok, like MSDN download center or Windows Update. But this is insane. The barrier to file bugreports should be as low as possible. It should be easy and straightforward to file bugs, so they get fixed a.s.a.p. and everyone has a better experience with your products, Microsoft. So, move the code from the Add Attachment button event handler to the OnLoad postback handler and all is well.
Vote for the bugreport here.
Today I was doing some small research work with generics in VS.NET 2005 professional RTM and I was just typing normal code when the IDE suddenly locked up, a hardcore hang with 100% CPU usage. After a kill process, I restarted the IDE, loaded the same testproject, went to the same line of code and typed the same text... bam! hangs again!
Now I was a little worried. As this is a little testproject with bogus code, just to try out some generic constructs to see if it all compiles and works out, it's nothing special really so if anything, the IDE should stay up and responsive. Well, not with this killer code apparently.
So, I saved the single code file and re-created a new project (Console, C#) and replaced the generated class' code with the code of my testproject. Completely new project, same code text. Went to the line I wanted to add code, typed in the code, and... you got it, it hangs again.
So, to reproduce, follow the steps outlined in the bugreport, available here. Test code can be retrieved from this link: http://www.xs4all.nl/~perseus/HangUp.cs
Steps to follow:
- Create a new C# Console application
- Copy the code from the above URL, the HangUp.cs code
- Select all code in the generated Class1 class in the console project and paste the copied code into the code window
- Go to the line string Value // ... (almost at the bottom)
- Remove the comment, and type a {
- Wait a second and the IDE hangs
- I can reproduce this every time, in Beta2 this isn't happening (on a box with Beta2, it works fine)