Jeff Key

It works on my machine

My Job

My stuff

Old stuff

Useful Stuff

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TrackBack said:

Scott Hanselman's Weblog : Scott Hanselman's Weblog
# February 24, 2003 11:57 PM

Royo said:

I'd love to some of the code for that... interested in how this was done..
# February 25, 2003 1:44 AM

Jeff said:

I wrote up a very simple sample..here's the link:

http://www.sliver.com/dotnet/misc/propertyinfosample.zip

-jk
# February 25, 2003 1:44 PM

TrackBack said:

GAC Mapping : Robert McLaws' Blog
# February 25, 2003 11:28 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Frickin cool man. This is really handy :).
# February 25, 2003 11:58 PM

Jeff said:

I'm glad someone else found it useful -- especially so quickly!
# February 26, 2003 1:31 AM

TrackBack said:

.NET RSS Aggregators : Dustin Mihalik's Blog
# March 2, 2003 7:33 PM

David Peckham said:

Jeff,

I wrote Wildgrape NewsDesk for .NET. NewsDesk satisfies all of Dare's functional requirements.

Do you have different requirements, or perhaps you aren't happy with the way NewsDesk and other aggregators work?

I appreciate any feedback,

Dave
# March 4, 2003 12:18 PM

Jeff said:

Hi Dave-

The few that I've looked at just haven't felt right to me. They've been capable, just not a pleasure to use.

I hadn't heard of yours before. I'll give it a go when I get home tonight and let you know how it goes. Looks good!

-jk
# March 4, 2003 1:28 PM

Dejan Jelovic said:

Looks useful. Please post the project.
# March 5, 2003 6:21 AM

David Peckham said:

Well? :)
# March 5, 2003 4:00 PM

Ben Richardson said:

Yeah, I'd like to have a look at that.
# March 23, 2003 7:09 PM

Ramesh said:

Looks great... I would definitely have a look at this. pls. post as soon as you can
# April 11, 2003 7:14 AM

Nox said:

Any TIP...

This forum is presented to those interested in discussing the creation of an Anti-Spam plugin for various e-mail clients, including Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape Communicator, and others.

URL:
http://4peakstech.com/antispam/index.php
# May 3, 2003 8:12 AM

Ben Richardson said:

Hey Jeff, what do you use to make your icons? They look great, in fact, all your UI work looks very slick.
# May 21, 2003 3:17 AM

Jeff said:

Thanks, Ben :) I usually just search for public domain Mac OSX icons..
# May 21, 2003 8:32 PM

William Rohrbach said:

The Enterprise Solution Patterns URL should be http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=3C81C38E-ABFC-484F-A076-CF99B3485754
# June 3, 2003 4:21 PM

anonymous said:

A completed list of all guides/articles from patterns & practices group: http://msdn.microsoft.com/practices/type/CompleteList/default.asp
# June 3, 2003 6:36 PM

TrackBack said:

Robert McLaws
# June 3, 2003 8:52 PM

Andrew Roberts said:

I have had the problem with programs blowing away your Visual Studio instalation. In my case I fixed it by re-registering mscoree.dll with regsvr32.

Hope this helps.


Andrew Roberts
# June 4, 2003 3:21 PM

JimS said:

check out the Aqua Data Studio here:

www.aquafold.com

# June 10, 2003 1:41 PM

Jesse said:

[quote]Of course this will be of no use to anyone doing commercial development on .NET[/quote]

Why should it not be possible to use for a commercial product? Just include the J# redist and this addon with the installer and no one will ever know you installed it. You currently ahve to supply the .net framework too as you can't expect for people to have it installed.

It all compiles to IL, so speed should not be an issue :)
# June 23, 2003 5:06 AM

Jeff said:

Sorry, I should've qualified that statement: It's not supported and very likely will never be. I can't imagine anyone taking the risk of shipping commercial software on an unsupported framework (MSFT's Swing in this case).
# June 23, 2003 10:53 AM

Dave Burke said:

Jeff, I really like your .net stuff index page at silver.com. I definitely want to go back there and spend more time. Thanks!
# June 28, 2003 8:01 PM

Chris Pirillo said:

Dude, that is AWESOME!
# June 28, 2003 11:06 PM

Jeff Key said:

Thanks, guys. Gotta love how you can whip up just about anything these days w/.NET in < 30 mins. Joy!
# June 30, 2003 12:23 AM

Ron Green said:

It is not neccessary to "massage" the OPML any longer. The current beta, 1a, will handle the OPML with or without the head tag.
# June 30, 2003 1:23 AM

Jeff Key said:

Good to know. Thanks, Ron.
# June 30, 2003 1:28 AM

Darshan Singh said:

I've been working on a RSS Feed reader using C# .NET. The project RSSConnect with complete source code is available at http://www.PerfectXML.com/RSSConnect. Some of the unique/salient features include ability to export to database and search (phase 1, improvements coming in next release), XSLT skins, check for new feeds, check for RSSConnect application update, Favorites list, OPML import/export, and many other options.

Be sure to check it out: http://www.PerfectXML.com/RSSConnect .

Any comments/suggestions: Please email me at darshan@PerfectXML.com. Thanks.
# June 30, 2003 4:06 AM

Derek said:

Jesse, the library FAQ specifically states that "the Supplemental UI Library is available for academic and other non-professional use only". Therefore I would imagine that there would be licensing issues involved in using it for commercial purposes.
# July 2, 2003 8:47 AM

Addy Santo said:

Have you found any profilers which support cross-domain profiling? The only one I know of is DevPartners, which I don't get along with that well.

# July 2, 2003 9:59 PM

Jeff Key said:

Unfortunately not, as I'm in the same boat as you.
# July 2, 2003 10:03 PM

Roy Osherove said:

I wrote an article about dynamic plugin loading using this technique:
http://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/story/8048.aspx

You might also be interested in my .Net debugging resources page:
http://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/story/7573.aspx
# July 3, 2003 5:52 AM

SBC said:

Jeff - thanks for the reference.
# July 5, 2003 11:00 AM

sak said:

this is one of excellent knowledge base site.
thanks for this contributuion
# July 11, 2003 5:32 AM

Ron Green said:

A folder name cannot start with a ".".
# July 12, 2003 5:46 PM

sirshannon said:

exactly, that's what the error message should say.
# July 12, 2003 6:34 PM

Dominic Hopton said:

The IE status bar issue isn't quite what you think it is - it's not randomly forgetting it.

Firstly, Under 9x & NT4(With active desktop), IE would by default run InProc with explorer.exe. This mean't that it would save settings only properly when you exited explorer.exe. You could change this by setting an option in tools/Internet Options.

Under 2000, this was the other way by default, and all seemed to be happy unless the last window you closed was a pop-up, which had hidden the status bar - which mean't it got set to off.

Under XP, that problem almost went away - normal ad popops don't screw anything up. But, some pop ups (found on certain forums) do screw it up still. Also, XP has a horrid problem off occsionally (dependant on where the link comes from) from starting IE inproc (back to the 98 problem). Additionally, because of this inprocness, the mix between the status bar showing in IE, and showing in Explorer is linked because of some quatum tunnel.

Needless to say, I understand (from observation) what is going on - I dont lose my status bar - Ever.
# July 13, 2003 8:17 AM

Dominic Hopton said:

Filenames: Filenames & directories CAN start with a . - just create them from a command prompt. It's mearly an explorer "feature" that you can't. I do agree, it's a bit retarded :)
# July 13, 2003 8:19 AM

Jeff Key said:

Dominic: I still consider it a bug; it's a user setting. If I don't turn it off, it shouldn't be saved as such. (Although your status bar history was very informative.)

Ah yes, the command line. It seems like I rarely need to go there for file operations these days. Didn't even think about that. Bravo!
# July 13, 2003 11:09 AM

TrackBack said:

Darrell Norton's Blog
# July 13, 2003 11:31 AM

Richard Tallent said:

Great minds think alike ;), something in the ether made me post last night about another defect/annoyance in My Network Places...

http://www.tallent.us/weblogx/permalink.aspx/ed9bec07-3ca3-4a00-8865-190a570a9b03
# July 13, 2003 1:37 PM

Jerry Dennany said:

Actually, this is a common problem at most retailers. There was recently a radio article here in Atlanta where the investigative journalists went to different major retailers (Target, CVS, etc) and purchased a set list of items. Over half the time they were overcharged on at least one item. At CVS, they were overcharged each and every time they shopped there.
I believe it is more a problem of keeping sales and inventory systems up to date than anything intentional.
# July 13, 2003 3:28 PM

Phil Scott said:

We had two network adapters here at work with the same MACs. They were some pretty generic (i.e. 8 bucks a pop) network cards.

Shut down the whole network somehow. Took a week to figure out. You just don't think "hmmmm, what if two nics have the same MAC address?"
# July 13, 2003 5:17 PM

Phil Scott said:

I worked at Target and I can say that they are pretty concerned about getting the pricing correct. The main thing Target has going for it is image, and price fixing ruins their image. Plus, each department seemingly was moved around weekly, and when that happens new price stickers got put out. Price stickers come from the same computer as what rings up front.

The worst time to shop is on sundays. That's when the ads roll over. So, on saturday night you could very well have a 17 year old kid working chemicals after the store closed flipping all the ads (taking down last weeks, putting up the new ones). That usually gets weeded out by 10am though.

Besides that, I'd say 99.9% of the time someone complaining at our store was trying to rip us off. It was a pain in the ass. People moving clearence stickers was a big problem. We even had some people that would move entire product displays onto a different shelf to make it look like the whole product was mispriced (very sneaky and would work if we didn't have security people).

God I loved working at target :)
# July 13, 2003 5:27 PM

Baby? Bathwater? said:

Of course by reusing only the concept and not the code, you're going to throw out all the little extras that the old codebase had to deal with along the way... gotchas, unknown requirements, bug fixes, etc, etc...
# July 13, 2003 6:23 PM

Jeff Key said:

Good point; however, I've found that the time it takes for someone to sculpt the code into its new context could've been used to write it from scratch. Naturally, this depends on the amount of code. Bug fixes, requirements and the like from the old code may or may not pertain to the code's new home. I've seen this happen too many times. People patch together code from different projects and spend weeks trying to get it to work together because there are so many implementation-specific bits floating around. Of course, YMMV.
# July 13, 2003 6:32 PM

Tim Marman said:

You'd be surprised how often people don't reuse code the way it should be done (ie a class library) and instead copy and paste.

It may save you some up-front development costs, but it sure as hell doesn't help maintenance costs and maintainability in general. In fact, it might even be worse if you have to keep the copy-and-pasted code in sync across different applications.
# July 13, 2003 8:51 PM

Jerry Dennany said:

The IEEE is the governing body for MAC address assignment, just as IANA governs the IP address space. The problem is that some hardware vendors are too cheap (or dumb) to follow the IEEE standard. (I once worked for a vendor that falls into the latter category).
# July 13, 2003 8:53 PM

Jason said:

Nice theory, but I work in the real world. Writing from scratch would be wonderful, but I have clients that pay me to deliver solutions, not continually improve with each and every line of code I right. We make the effort when we can, of course, but sometimes compromises have to be made.

As for general purpose assemblies, my experience is that it's sometimes much more efficient to just copy and paste instead of building "flea market" assemblies containing a raft of often unrelated routines. Again, there are exceptions and when you've got a large number of related routines it of course makes sense to package them up, but code reuse through libraries still has a place as well (esp. when you're talking about javascript or D/HTML snippets). Additionally, I'd suggest you consider that often routines need to be tweaked to fit the situation, and often it's more economical (and easier to maintain) to go to your code library as a starting point instead of generalizing or extending (and regression testing) your assembly routine.
# July 14, 2003 9:33 AM

Jason said:

"right" in my previous post should, of course, be "write". Dammit, it's early here and I destroyed the credibility of a reasonably decent pseudo-rant :(
# July 14, 2003 9:35 AM

John Cavnar-Johnson said:

Dude, It's the major league all-star game. You know, baseball. It's being played in Chicago tonight.
# July 15, 2003 10:01 PM

Jeff Key said:

Ok, so I am working too much. You're right. I'm a hockey guy, and a Wings fan at that. (It's OK since I grew up playing in Michigan.) I liked playing baseball back in the day but am a typical Cubs fan: The only games I watch are at Wrigley.
# July 15, 2003 10:05 PM

Aemca said:

Maybe you should read what Joel has to say about this sort of thing:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com
# July 17, 2003 10:12 AM

clue said:

"Hold down the shift key in the shutdown dialog to change "Stand By" to "Hibernate". "

This is my favourite. Which genius in the UI department at MS thought that this was more intuitive than providing 4 buttons in the shutdown dialog?
# August 2, 2003 6:22 AM

Observer said:

>>I've never completely understood how MSFT benefits from the platform-independent aspect of .NET.<<

Well, at least "more .NET (on Unix/Linux)" is almost equal to "less Java (on Unix/Linux)".
# August 6, 2003 12:33 AM

Fabrice said:

>>I've never completely understood how MSFT benefits from the platform-independent aspect of .NET.<<

To keep Office (and Media Player and...) running on other platforms (such as Mac), and at the same time keep these tools evolving and making benefit of .NET in the future, support for .NET is required on these platforms.

Marketing is even a greater reason: "look people, no lock-in wih .NET".
# August 6, 2003 6:20 AM

Jeff Key said:

Office I could see, but lower-leve stuff like Media Player definitely wouldn't work in this scenario unless there was a multimedia abstraction, and that certainly isn't done yet on any other platforms (AFAIK).

Your Office comment did spark something in my brain. I would be to MSFT's advantage if they could write a purely managed Office that would run on .NET implementations built by others. Interesting concept if they could ever get the WinForms API to work on other platforms; however, from what I've read, this won't happen anytime soon.
# August 6, 2003 11:46 AM

Fabrice said:

I agree with your remarks on Media Player and WinForms.
All this is just assumption, and we are far from seing anything like this soon I guess. But who knows when...
# August 6, 2003 7:14 PM

Michelle said:

Well, my problem is that every 5 times I run my app, one of them my icons doens´t show up at all, ANY icon, in my treevie, toolbar and even property grid.
I dont want to use a manifest cause I would have to do it every time I compile it.
:S
# August 7, 2003 10:21 AM

Jeff Key said:

So that happens _every_ five times? Haven't heard of that one. Ouch. If you can find a way to add a manifest to the bits via the command line, you could create a post-build event to do it.
# August 7, 2003 10:31 AM

HumanCompiler said:

I have a Tablet and love it. Now...could I live without it? Yes...and I think there-in lies the problem...once it gets to the point where people can't live without it (assuming that happens), then you'll see them EVERYWHERE, IMO.
# August 7, 2003 11:55 PM

Mads Nissen said:

Haha! You're right! the only one I've ever seen was in the hands of Microsoft Architect Steve Schwartz at the Architects Tour. I could never used it either, and my palm (even with a keyboard) is extreeemely dusty:)
# August 8, 2003 4:00 AM

Michelle said:

hehe sorry, language problems here.
I was trying to say that this happens a lot, at least _one_ time every five times I run it.
I mean, its very frequent.

And I'm almost giving up EnableVisualStyles. *sigh*
# August 8, 2003 8:15 AM

Rachel Reese said:

I've seen Marcie use hers... does that count? A friend of mine is looking at getting one. He's not a gadget geek like me (he's still on single-finger typing), but wants something easier to cart around than a laptop, where he can quickly write down notes to himself.
# August 8, 2003 12:44 PM

Michelle said:

So I gave up using EnableVisualStyles, and I no longer need to add the manifest after every time I compile cause now I puted the correct name on the manifest. Duh.
:)
# August 12, 2003 8:00 AM

Alex Hoffman said:

Fantastic!
# August 16, 2003 10:04 AM

David Stone said:

Hey that's cool. I hadn't thought about using it like that before. Nice! :)
# August 19, 2003 12:56 PM

Jamie Cansdale said:

I also like the way you can outline an entire assembly. This is a great way to see a summary of the API you're exposing to the world...
# August 19, 2003 1:58 PM

Stephane Rodriguez said:

WinCV.exe does this too. (Wincv.exe is part of the .NET SDK).
But then of course, if a single tool like Ref does this and many other things, I don't see any real objection to favor it.

# August 19, 2003 2:01 PM

Sheldon said:

I get "the application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135). Click on OK to terminate the application." on two different win xp machines.

Any suggestions?

lennoxs_at_lcoinc.com
# August 21, 2003 1:24 AM

G. Andrew Duthie said:

OK, so I'm trying to figure out how you managed to get an hour and a half of video onto a CD-R, when TMPGEnc claims that using VCD, only 70 minutes of video will fit onto a standard CD-R.

Did you modify some of the settings to reduce the amount of data being encoded?
# August 24, 2003 12:02 AM

Jeff Key said:

Oops, should've mentioned that. On the third wizard page in TMPG there is a checkbox labelled "Source Range". Check the box and a new dialog comes up where you can set the range to convert. For the latest .NET Show, which was 1.5 hours, I selected a range of an hour for the first, which happily fit on a CD. The last page in the wizard lets you create another project in which you can have it convert the secon half hour. Once you've done that it'll convert it into the two clips you've specified.
# August 24, 2003 12:06 AM

TrackBack said:

# August 24, 2003 4:27 PM

Scott Galloway said:

Still using the Natural Keyboard pro...it has survived numerous spillages including Battery Acid (don't ask!). Have to agree it is an awesome keyboard - not to everyone's taste, one-fingered typists have a problem with it... You can still find these keyboards on Ebay they're only about $10 there - so buy a couple would be my advice! I use the Wireless Optical Desktop Pro version at work - it is still pretty good, takes about 10 miniutes to get used to the new keyboard layout - try one, you may like it!
# August 24, 2003 6:35 PM

G. Andrew Duthie said:

It figures...I made the effort to get all the software working (the VCDEasy reminded me of why I don't use *nix software, in that it knew what kind of CD burner I had, and knew what driver was necessary for that burner, but required me to manually figure that information out from their web site, and make the setting myself...but I digress), and get a VCD of an episode of the .NET show burned to a CD-R. Great, right? Except for one thing...the XBOX (my DVD player) doesn't play VCDs. Isn't that special?

It was a neat idea, I guess.
# August 24, 2003 8:49 PM

Jeff Key said:

For what it's worth, I have a no-name CD-RW and a Sony DVD player (Sony, of course, is notorious for not supporting much of anything outside of their own standards) and I had zero problems. YMMV.
# August 24, 2003 9:08 PM

Robert A. Wlodarczyk said:

I hear ya... I have had this happen to me before. I now have at home a Natural Keyboard Pro. with all the keys in the right spot, however at work I have one of the new ones. I keep hitting the stupid delete key when i go for the Home or End keys. VERY Annoying. The other thing I hate is the F-Lock. This is annoying. I like Alt-F4. I don't need a single key to close the window (Now the F5 key when not in F-Lock). The other time this had happened to me was back when the second Natural Keyboards came out... the arrow keys were all screwed up. That threw things off for me alot.

Anyway, enough complaining on my part. I'm sure that I'll get used to the new keyboard soon. Maybe indeed it *is* more productive once you're used to it. I'll just have to see for myself...
# August 25, 2003 1:23 AM

Damit said:

I can still say that I've been using my Natural Keyboard (can't remember what model) since 1998. =)
# August 25, 2003 4:32 AM

Nicko said:

Having one of the new MS keyboards (natural multimedia grey) I can say that the F-lock issue is a pain in the ass.

However help is at hand:
http://www.mvps.org/jtsang/flock.html

This has a registry hack that remaps all the 'useful' non F-lock keys back to have their F-lock meanings. Now my F keys are F keys regardless of the F-lock setting!!!

Invaluable.

The new Insert/Home/End block is hard to get used to. I actually prefer not having the Insert key, because I never used it for anything. Moving the End key confused me for a while, but now the old layout confuses me!
# August 26, 2003 9:02 AM

Ben Richardson said:

Good one, any chance of a Framework v1.0 version of this?
# August 27, 2003 12:54 AM

Jeff Key said:

Sorry, only have v1.1 on this machine. I just put the source up, so feel free to grab it and recompile.
# August 27, 2003 1:09 AM

Ben Richardson said:

Thanks Jeff!!
# August 27, 2003 1:14 AM

Jeff Key said:

Not feeling as bad about the inevitable now. Thanks for the feedback!
# August 27, 2003 1:30 AM

Thomas Tomiczek said:

OLD news :-)

This was introduced with VS.NET 2003 if I remember right. I stumbled over it like you one day, when I was just looking around IN an event handler. Till then it was kind of hard to get the event, unless you had a handler and assined it to a variable.

I hope MS puts up more nice things like these.
# August 27, 2003 2:04 PM

TrackBack said:

# August 28, 2003 2:38 AM

Clint said:

That's a great point. I've often had to dig in via Anakrino to find out these answers
# August 28, 2003 3:15 AM

Shannon J Hager said:

Yes, the firewall has been enabled for (I think) every connection I've added since it went gold. It caused me quite a bit of trouble the first few times (until I found a list of ports to open for Messenger file transfers).
I've wondered why everyone says it needs to be enabled by default when it always has for me.
# August 29, 2003 3:19 PM

Phil Scott said:

I've always had it enabled by default here at work too.

Perhaps the MSDN bits have it enabled, and the retail (or more likely the OEM) versions don't?
# August 29, 2003 3:27 PM

Paul said:

Visual Assist maybe??
# August 29, 2003 4:58 PM

Fons Sonnemans said:

I use QuickCode!

http://www.dvxp.com/downloads.aspx
# August 29, 2003 5:20 PM

Dan Bright said:

I think this was added with the "Advanced Networking Pack for Windows XP". It was installed via Windows Updae for me.
# August 29, 2003 5:35 PM

Jeff Key said:

Thanks Fons, I think QuickCode.NET is what I'm looking for!

http://www.dvxp.com/downloads.aspx#QuickCode.NET
# August 29, 2003 6:03 PM

Frans Bouma said:

yeah quickcode is what you need.
# August 29, 2003 6:20 PM

Roy Osherove said:

CodeSmart.Net(axtools.com) does that, plus lots of other things . It's not free though. (I'm planning to write a review about it)
# August 29, 2003 6:22 PM

Dave said:

XP Home.... OEM version on PC bought last October (Dell): nope. No firewall.

XP Home.... Ratail Upgrade version bought last April (upgrading an ME box): nope. No firewall.

XP Pro.... Retail Upgrade bought last January (upgrading a Win2k Pro box): nope. No firewall.

XP Pro.... MSDN Universal subscription version bought last April (upgrading an OEM XP Home box): yes. Firewall defaults.

Seems my experience differs from others. Maybe this is why I've been vocal about this Shannon. All I've asked is for the setup to check for new versions - and ensure this is defaulted. Seems someone in the 55,000 can figure out how to get this done.
# August 29, 2003 9:44 PM

Jeff Key said:

OK, finally making sense. I didn't think it was enabled by default on my home XP Pro box (which I think is retail) when I first got it.
# August 29, 2003 10:07 PM

Shannon J Hager said:

I am still hoping MS will package a XP SR-1 or XP SE or something with the SP1 and other patches rolled in. It is basically impossible for a new user to download and install the needed updates for a freshly installed version of Windows XP if they are on a dial-up. This would solve the problem for all future users, maybe...
For current users, this could be a BIG problem. Adding a firewall for most users is something they won't do so it would have to be done automatically, which means all of a sudden they can't transfer files and other things suddenly stop working. People who can't enable a firewall by themselves certainly can't figure out how to open the ports needed for MSN Messenger file transfers (among other things).
# August 30, 2003 1:43 PM

Jeff Key said:

I agree. The last time I counted I had ~30 hotfixes installed, consisting of who knows how many MB of data. I can't image how long it would take to download on a modem, much less a year from now when who knows how many hotfixes will exist then. The last few days I've read that they're considering pushing up SP2. The beta cycles for SPs are usually pretty long, so if that's the case, they better get on it quickly.

Regarding Messenger, it manages its own ports via UPnP, IIRC. I have no idea how this actually works, but I've been running the XP/Win2k3 firewalls for years and have only had to tweak their settings to let additional stuff like Remote Desktop and FTP through.
# August 30, 2003 1:58 PM

William Bartholomew said:

Also check out http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/hotkee.asp?target=hotkee it does a similar thing but works in all applications.
# August 31, 2003 5:57 PM

TrackBack said:

# September 2, 2003 7:32 PM

Shannon J Hager said:

Messenger never changed any port settings for me. But I have UPnP turned off, of course.

Whenever I add a new connection, I go into the firewall settings and the ports I've added and named are there, I just check them off and everything works again.

Occassionally I get a pop-up that says "C:\Program is trying to change your firewall settings" and I always click "no" but it is almost always due to Media Player 9 (I guess... it never tells me more than "C:\Program", unfortunately).
# September 2, 2003 8:53 PM

Kevin Dente said:

Dexter is another option for you.

http://www.nilgirihouse.com/dexter.htm
# September 3, 2003 1:48 PM

Jeffrey Vanneste said:

<a href="http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/codetemplatenet.asp">Code Template</a> as another option
# September 3, 2003 2:23 PM

Ben Richardson said:

Am I the only one that can't get this work on v1.0 of the Framework? The app loads then disappears straight away, not even an error.
# September 3, 2003 10:51 PM

Jeff Key said:

I posted a config file on the SnippetCompiler page that will force it to use the 1.0 runtime. I don't have a 1.0-only box here or at the office, so I can't test it. (Someone has emailed me that it worked for them.)
# September 4, 2003 8:35 AM

DDD said:

I have the new Blue Natural Multimedia Keyboard. The feel of the keys are great, but the whole concept of remapping the function keys to be shortcuts to tasks that allready have shortcuts already- stupid. Why would I reach all the way up to F2 to undo when I can just hit ctrl-z and not even have to leave home row? We shouldnt have to change a registry setting, it should be a function of intellitype. The lack of the 2 usb ports on the back is also irritating, what would be better is 4 USB 2.0 ports.
# September 4, 2003 8:18 PM

Matevz Gacnik said:

+1!
# September 5, 2003 3:47 AM

Roy Osherove said:

Syntax Highlighting! :)
# September 5, 2003 5:59 AM

Anto said:

Thanks for a good utility application.
Option to set different credentials like the one availabe with NetworkDriveInfo will be very useful.
# September 5, 2003 6:05 AM

Matt Hawley said:

Maybe a little extreme, but intellisense?
# September 5, 2003 8:38 AM

Jason Alexander said:

SnippetCompiler is freaking awesome, first off.

+1 to intellisense, but I know that's brutal.

But, it'd be really nice if you could support a web form. It'd be difficult, but I think you could do it creatively. ;)
# September 5, 2003 9:17 AM

Jeff Key said:

Does anyone know where I could get a free syntax-highlighting textbox? Syncfusion and Actipro have some really nice looking ones, but they're $300. I started working on a syntax highlighted/intellisense textbox last year, but ran out of time. It's a pretty significant undertaking and my time is really limited.
# September 5, 2003 11:22 AM

Scott Watermasysk said:

A webform might not be too bad...just need to integrate cassini :)

http://asp.net/Default.aspx?tabindex=7&tabid=41

Regardless, this just rocks. Great job Jeff!

-Scott
# September 5, 2003 1:42 PM

TrackBack said:

A new version of SnippetCompiler
# September 5, 2003 1:45 PM

Matt Hawley said:

I like the idea of incorporating WebForms (was thinking this too)
# September 5, 2003 2:21 PM

TrackBack said:

Quick and dirty time interval tests
# September 5, 2003 5:08 PM

Jeff Key said:

I've had a few people ask for ASP.NET via email, too, so I'll work on that. Thanks again for the suggestions!
# September 5, 2003 6:41 PM

scott said:

Try syntaxbox here:
http://www.compona.com/WikiEngine/WikiPageViewer.ascx?ID=5
# September 6, 2003 12:34 PM

Jeff Key said:

Thanks, Scott, but that's $155 too expensive. ;)
# September 6, 2003 12:47 PM

Scott Galloway said:

Agree completely, Slashdot is one of the worst offenders in this regard, any comment on anything Microsoft related leads to tirades of idiotic comments (many just based on blind prejudice rather than educated comment). The SCO lawsuit has shaken some of the more vociferous open source advocates of late, some are finally realising that a large company can provide a buffer between the increasingly litigious IT industry and the user.
The Java argument won't go away (remember in the early days of Java, a similar attack came from the Smalltalk community!).
Big companies not using .NET is interesting and somethign that I expect to change in the next year or so - basically many of the large app server vendors locked these companies in to 3 year maintainance contracts - they're due to expire for many large corps pretty soon...
# September 6, 2003 1:20 PM

Dave said:

I agree, but every corner of the web has their faults like this. Consider the weblogs here. I deleted all my subscriptions to individual weblogs and only chose the main feed. Stupid me. I thought that would help weed out the noise. You see, I want the main feed because I'm interested in .NET coding tricks I can use today. Because many here claim that's what weblogs@asp.net is all about. But:

(1) Why does everybody and their sister need to waste my RSS bandwidth on telling me they are posting the "See you at the PDC logo!"?

(2) Why do a dozen bloggers here need to tell me what Matrix character they are, or what Simsons character, or the latest stupid psyche poll they all seem to find at the same time?

(3) Now that they all have a place to blog from, why do these PDC postings continue to be a significant portion of my daily weedout at all?

Get my drift? Every single above item is also lack of content and noise to me. But I decided a while back this is the price to pay to find that one priceless nugget daily. Now, as for misinformation, don't get me started on that - to me, another word for misinformation is hype. Both are similar in content/noise ratio and in my use for it. And especially right now when weblogs@asp.net is so dominated by leaders who are so excited over the PDC and these quality products that are sooooooo far away from RTM.....
# September 6, 2003 6:28 PM

Scott Galloway said:

Have you looked at the SharpDevelop http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/ source code (there's also a book on the development of this product) - it has all the features and is open source (GPL). It's also developed in a very modular way so you should have no problem using the code in your own app (just honour the GPL and it'd be cool)
# September 7, 2003 5:02 PM

Russell Pooley said:

I have looked at syntax highlighting editors and found the following, which after a little investigation worked better than the SyncFusion version here is the link: http://www.actiprosoftware.com/Products/DotNet/SyntaxEditor/Default.aspx

my post also has some comments regarding editors, the post is at : http://weblogs.asp.net/rpooley/posts/26361.aspx
# September 7, 2003 5:31 PM

Jeff Key said:

Thanks. I'm currently re-evaluating SharpDevelop's. Russell, I'm curious why you prefer ActiPro's. I tried their demo and found the editor was a bit awkward. I didn't play with any settings, so the it could be the issues I had were configurable.
# September 7, 2003 5:40 PM

Dan Bright said:

FYI, Ive been using the TextArea from #Develop in Sharpedit for a while, and for some reason the latest version has problems compiling as standalone. The only version that I've found to actually work is the compiled one in my CVS repository.

Feel free to check out my code & grab the DLL here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/sharpedit
# September 7, 2003 7:32 PM

Jeff Key said:

Funny you mention that, Dan; I just spent a bit of time trying to do exactly that. I'll check your stuff out. Thanks!
# September 7, 2003 8:15 PM

Jeff Key said:

I've spent some time integrating the SharpDevelop editor, but am having some problems, particularly that I can't change the font (setting the Font property isn't changing it), and when adding a new snippet, only the first line of the snippet's text is shown. Going to another tab and back fixes this. (I tried Refresh, Invalidate, App.DoEvents, etc. to no avail.) I don't know when I'll get a chance to work on it again, so I posted what I have to the web site (1.16 alpha) since it has the multi-snippet compiling, ASP.NET support, etc. http://www.sliver.com/dotnet/snippetcompiler
# September 7, 2003 11:05 PM

Jeff Key said:

I wound up fixing the text not showing issue and added red sqiggly error lines. Good stuff! Hopefully I can get the Font issue resolved, as it works in #D, but not in my little test app. I'll need to dig into their code and see what they're doing.
# September 8, 2003 12:55 AM

TrackBack said:

# September 8, 2003 4:08 AM

Simon Steele said:

You need Scintilla: http://www.scintilla.org/ with the ScintillaNet bindings. The bindings aren't 100% complete, but make the control quite usable from .NET from what I've heard. Best thing is the price - completely free with source. There's also a mailing list to help you to use it. If SnippetCompiler were open source, I'd have put Scintilla in there already!
# September 8, 2003 4:48 AM

Roy Osherove said:

You can also check out CodeMax and CodeSense: although they are OCX s(COM) they are very good. CodeSense is CodeMax + Intellisense support. Very cool.
# September 8, 2003 9:47 AM

James Avery said:

You might want to drop Syncfusion a line, I bet they would give you a free copy if stuck there name under it or something... or maybe just in the about box. You could get a free control, and they could get some great publicity.

-James
# September 8, 2003 12:01 PM

Neil Weber said:

Your comments don't add anything either and do not address the items in your bullet list. In particular,

.NET/C# is a copy of Java: The Java language was obviously based on C++ as stated by its creator. But, there are huge differences between Java and C++. There are only minor differences between Java and C#. C++, though, has nothing like the Java class libraries. I haven't used Smalltalk or Lisp in years but I don't think they have anything similar to the Java class libraries either. .NET, on the other hand, hugely follows the Java class libraries.

Using Microsoft results in vendor lock-in: You avoid the issue here and inaccurately too. Every Java shop I know of develops on Windows and deploys on Solaris or HP. This is not an academic problem. It works great.
# September 8, 2003 12:02 PM

Jeff Key said:

I was thinking about that, James, until Scott mentioned #D. I still do prefer commercial things over open source simply because _someone_ is accountable. If I find a bug, I can get it fixed rather than having to waste my time trying to fix it or wait on someone else to do it in their free time. I lost several hours yesterday trying to get the #D stuff to work and will need to spend several more going through their code trying to find out why setting the Font property does nothing. Humbug.

Anyway, I'm still going to try to get Syncfusion's. I'll drop them a line in the next few days. Thanks for speaking up..I probably would've dropped it otherwise.
# September 8, 2003 1:38 PM

Jeff Key said:

It's been stated several times by the designers of .NET/C# that it was influenced by Java. No doubt about that. However, COM libraries for MTS/COM+, IIS, file system, etc., etc. have been around for years.

You mention OS vendor lock-in. This is exactly what I'm talking about; sure, you're not locked into an OS, but you're locked into an application server, VMs, etc. I'm not claiming that those of us in the .NET camp aren't locked into MS servers, but the claim that Java's write once, run anywhere is rubbish. Of course, some would claim that our "being locked in" is a benefit..there is no question what we're deploying to now, what we'll be deploying to in the future, and so on. One less thing to worry about, and that's a good thing. I'm not a Java guy, so I could be wrong, but from what I read in the Java rags, this is indeed an issue.

Anyway, my intent was not to start a religious conversation. I think Java's great. My beef is with "journalists" that spout on and on again and again displaying that they do not know what they're talking about. When you're on our side of the fence, it's not a good time. Everyone has a beef with Microsoft in one way or another. I would be much more impressed with these "journalists" if they either addressed these issues or touch on topics that are valid and haven't been beaten to death in every publication for years.
# September 8, 2003 10:27 PM

Dan Bright said:

Great stuff Jeff. This is turning into a tool I can't live without!
# September 9, 2003 3:16 AM

Yosi Taguri said:

same here, great work
# September 9, 2003 4:16 AM

Dylan Greene said:

Is this using Windows XP-only functionality? If so, what happens when this control is used on previous versions of the OS? What would happen if the code was run using Mono/DotGNU? (I'm still evaluating the .net platform so I'm wondering how these sort of features will degrade.)
# September 9, 2003 1:39 PM

Jeff Key said:

It's using PInvoke to call SendMessageA, so it shouldn't work on anything but Windows. IIRC, if it's called on a version of windows < XP, nothing happens. When I use it, I check the Windows version and if it's < 5.2.2600, I show a message box, if not, I show the balloon.
# September 9, 2003 2:19 PM

Jeff Key said:

My first bug! :) Thanks to William Bartholomew for finding a little bug that's since been fixed.
# September 9, 2003 10:20 PM

TrackBack said:

Damn..again :)
# September 9, 2003 10:32 PM

Jeff Key said:

Thanks gents and thanks for everyone's great ideas!
# September 9, 2003 11:27 PM

Richard Tallent said:

Good job... love the VB and ASP.NET support, thanks!
# September 10, 2003 1:32 AM

Daniel Fisher said:

I'm using QuickCode for some time now - it's great.

Look at my CollectionClassTemplate

<a href="http://www.lennybacon.com/2003-09-10T131031.aspx">http://www.lennybacon.com/2003-09-10T131031.aspx</a>
# September 10, 2003 7:10 AM

Daniel Fisher said:

http://www.lennybacon.com/2003-09-10T131031.aspx
# September 10, 2003 7:10 AM

Jeff Key said:

Wow, bravo!
# September 10, 2003 9:31 AM

TrackBack said:

# September 10, 2003 10:54 PM

Jeff Key said:

Just got #2.
# September 10, 2003 11:20 PM

Sam Gentile said:

Nice work! This made into my toolbox yesterday
# September 11, 2003 9:05 AM

ewb said:

Keeps getting better. Appreciate your efforts (and the efforts of all those that have helped).

Ran into an unhandled IO.FileNotFound exception today when I decided to move snippet's directory. The TemplatesPath Registry entry still pointed at the old directory. First tried clearing this Registry entry, but the Settings.get_TemplatesPath then returned a zero-length string (it apparently only checks for the existence of the Registry entry, not whether it actually has anything in it).

In any case, a simple try/catch around the MainForm.LoadFile stream IO would be helpful.

Thanks again!
# September 11, 2003 2:57 PM

Jeff Key said:

You're exactly right: It's checking for the entry and returns a default (the default path) if it doesn't exist. I'll handle this more gracefully. (Someone else ran into this earlier today, too.) Thanks.

Also, Syncfusion emailed me today and they're donating their Edit control. Thank you, Syncfusion! I'm in the process of getting the donations back to those that donated and will start integrating it in the next day or two.
# September 11, 2003 3:02 PM

Pete said:

Firstly, it's a fantastic program. Thanks for making it free(ish).

I've got some requests for you:

1) Ability to open (and therefore compile) vs.net solutions/projects -- there's no other tool out there now to do this without vs (don't even talk to me about nant's plugin).

2) ClearType support -- I'm sure sharpdevelop supports antialiasing, can this not be added? I'm not too sure about the commercial editor, they don't seem to support xp style scrollbars (from the screenshots). Looks are important ;)

3) Columns in the errors tab need to resize with the window. Otherwise going from normal size to full screen is a pain.

Great program, keep up the good work :)

PS this is now my main editor for c# programs
# September 11, 2003 3:53 PM

Pete said:

Oh.. a couple more things: :)

4) Can we have a toolbar for opening/saving please? The best versions of the standard toolbar icons (that I've seen) are included in Genghis, available from gotdotnet or Chris Sells's site.

5) Use of IsolatedStorage instead of registry to store settings.

Thanks
# September 11, 2003 4:07 PM

Jeff Julian said:

Trust in Drew. He did an excellent job with TechEDBloggers on not posting dups.
# September 11, 2003 4:41 PM

Jeff Key said:

Thanks, Pete. (Considering Syncfusion donated the Edit control today, it is officially free again. I'm returning the money to the people that donated.)

1) Interesting idea, I'll take a look at it.
2) The SharpDevelop textbox's antialiased fonts are pretty nasty looking, so I left it off. I also couldn't change the font. Now that we have the Syncfusion textbox, these are no longer issues.
3) Good idea.
4) Another good idea.
5) This is an interesting one. I was thinking about extracting an interface from my RegistrySettings class and making it a generic settings provider interface, then creating an XML settings provider which would be stored in the app's folder. This would allow settings to be easily copied. On the other hand, storing it in isolated storage would work with roaming profiles (IIRC). I guess an argument could be made for either..

Thanks!
# September 11, 2003 4:41 PM

Pete said:

Cool thanks.

I've actually got one more thing for you (I'd hate to think you might run out of stuff to do :) ). The GUI doesn't respond while your (winforms) snippet is running.. even dragging the snippet's form around leaves a trail over SnippetCompiler.
# September 11, 2003 4:52 PM

Drew Robbins said:

Thanks Jeff Julian. Nice quote. :)

Look for a big change in the website this weekend. The list of bloggers will be better organized and we will introduce the categorization scheme and start aggregating content from member blogs.

Organization by track, session, technology and blogger as well as some other fun stuff. Hopefully, tt will start to make sense what we are trying to achieve with PDC Bloggers.

You're feedback is very much appreciated. Let me know if you have any other ideas. Our feature set will be flexible up to and through the PDC so we can provide the absolute most value to both the bloggers and readers.

Carpe diem.

# September 11, 2003 5:33 PM

Robert Scoble said:

Yeah, Drew is the man! Plus, I'll be pointing to cool stuff that you should watch as well. Get your news aggregator and get ready to rumble!
# September 11, 2003 5:33 PM

Pete said:

Just one last issues.. Could you make the tabs case-sensitive (I use caps in my filenames and it appears all lowercase).

That's it (I promise) :)
# September 11, 2003 5:36 PM

Jeff Key said:

Sounds great, Drew! Thanks for the info.

Yow, Scoble in overdrive. I'll have plenty of Gatorade and Red Bull on hand.
# September 11, 2003 6:05 PM

DonXML said:

I'll be mostly covering the new UI stuff in Longhorn, and their relationship to SVG. Plus, I'll cover the parties at the Whilshire.

DonXML
# September 11, 2003 7:49 PM

Jeff Key said:

Update: Syncfusion has donated their excellent textbox, so I'm working on incorporating that at the moment and am not taking any more donations. Thanks to everyone that donated! (If you donated via credit card, I cancelled those transactions this morning and am working on the direct transfers now.)
# September 12, 2003 12:53 AM

Jeff Key said:

Another example, same thing. This time from Path.GetPathRoot:

string path = @"\mydir\";
string fileName = "myfile.ext";
string fullPath = @"C:\mydir\myfile.ext";
string pathRoot;

pathRoot = Path.GetPathRoot(path);
Console.WriteLine("GetPathRoot('{0}') returns '{1}'",
path, pathRoot);

pathRoot = Path.GetPathRoot(fileName);
Console.WriteLine("GetPathRoot('{0}') returns '{1}'",
fileName, pathRoot);

pathRoot = Path.GetPathRoot(fullPath);
Console.WriteLine("GetPathRoot('{0}') returns '{1}'",
fullPath, pathRoot);
# September 12, 2003 3:20 AM

Jeff Key said:

FYI: 1 (projects, not solutions), 2, 3 and the caseing on the tabs are done. Regarding GUI not responding: You're probably redirecting output to the Output tab, so the Snippet Compiler thread is blocked until you shut down the snippet's exe. I can probably start it on another thread to get around this. (I added it to the list.)
# September 12, 2003 4:42 AM

Pete said:

Great, thanks!
# September 12, 2003 5:26 AM

Pete said:

Okay I've been using it for a while and there's a few more things that I've noticed:

2.1) It would be good to have an option to generate the xml docs

2.2) Could we have some indication of whether a file is changed since last save or not on it's tab? Doesn't matter if it's a simple "*" next to the name, or having the name in green/red.. whatever.

2.3) Can we have a save all command, please?

2.4) A close button on each tab, or a button by the tabs to close the current one.

2.5) A file-not-saved warning on program close

2.6) Persisting the location of the code view to error view splitter to isolatedstorage (or wherever -- preferably not the registry)

2.7) Could you make the error tabcontrol optional? Maybe from a view menu or something.. Maybe even automatic (show on errors.. remove if it compiles okay).

Are these suggestions helpful at all? I could send them by email if it's easier.. or not at all if you'd prefer.
# September 12, 2003 9:34 AM

Pete said:

I always seem to press submit, then think of more things:

2.8) Ability to drag and reorder tabs.. there's an example on codeproject (doesn't look at all difficult)

2.9) *Most important* - a "created with SnippetCompiler" graphics for peoples websites ;)
# September 12, 2003 9:43 AM

Jeff Key said:

Pete's a maniac!

1, 2, 3: Good ideas.
4: You can right-click on a tab for a context menu to close it.
5: I was wondering how long before someone asked for that. ;)
6: Good idea.
7: Hm, maybe.
8: Interesting. I'll check out codeproject for inspiration.
9: Haha! If someone makes one, I'll gladly make it available.

Keep the suggestions coming..they're great! Send them however you'd like.
# September 13, 2003 12:08 AM

Jeff Key said:

FYI: I did the tab dragging thing (cool idea!) and optimized the guy's code so they don't flicker like crazy (he was removing all of tab pages, then re-adding them). I added a comment w/the code:

http://www.codeproject.com/cs/miscctrl/draggabletabcontrol.asp?target=drag%7Cdrop%7Ctab%7Ccontrol
# September 13, 2003 3:11 AM

Thomas Lee said:

Fantastic update - way cool!
# September 13, 2003 12:05 PM

Pete said:

Awesome!

Okay just a few points (tell me you weren't expecting that :) ).

- Getting a file not found unhandled exception when I click on Help.

- Is the Syncfusion outlining manual only? It's cool to have manual outlining without the need for regions, but I miss the automatic stuff from the sharpdevelop edit control (never thought I'd be saying that).

I expect I'll have more suggestions if I can get to use it more (damn Star Wars KOTOR eats up my time like you wouldn't believe :) ).
# September 14, 2003 6:23 AM

Jeff Key said:

Thanks!

1. Oops, was using a relative path and the working directory got shifted around. Fixed.
2. Unfortunately yes. I could do it programmatically, but apparently Syncfusion is rewriting the control and that is one of the features.
# September 14, 2003 2:55 PM

Michael Hensen said:

You can count me in..

M.Hensen@bookmark.nl
# September 15, 2003 5:51 AM

Pete said:

Me too. pvidler@gawab.com.
# September 15, 2003 9:43 AM

Ron Green said:

I would love to help.
rgreen3@kc.rr.com
# September 15, 2003 12:32 PM

Pete said:

Hmm.. just looking at what you said about wanting to keep the original intent versus turning towards ide style features.

Why not go with a big change and allow the addition of plugins? If you could allow them to change the interface then the user could have exactly what they want from their specific install of SnippetCompiler.

For example, have a toolbar as a plugin for those that want it. Enabling a plugin system that is flexible enough to create toolbar(s) with will allow other people to extend you app in ways that might suprise you :).

I guess you would need to provide hooks into your existing code for this sort of thing though.. I can't wrap my head around exactly how it could be implemented (I can't seem to express what I'm thinking, either).

I'll probably post something more tomorrow when my brain's working again.
# September 15, 2003 1:34 PM

Jason Mark said:

I'll help.
JM
# September 15, 2003 2:54 PM

Jeff Key said:

I'm all for plugins; check out NetPing. :) The application itself is more or less a container for plugins. Every column but the Address column and every one of the nine context menu options are all plugins (you can see this by removing the sliver.NetPing.Addins.dll from the Addins folder of NetPing).

To create an infrastructure for addins you need to have services to expose to the addins. I'm not sure what exactly I would expose at this point, and I'd love to hear what potential addin writers would like to do. As things progress and the design of the app changes to deal with new requirements, a clearer picture is forming regarding things I may expose as services. I will definitely add plugin support sometime, it's just a matter of when it becomes appropriate.

Regarding IDE-like features, I'm all for them, but keep those features turned off by default. I've thrown in a messagebox on first run to let the user know that SC is pretty configurable and that they should check out the Options.

BTW, the lastest build has a toolbar. ;) http://www.sliver.com/dotnet/snippetcompiler/snippetcompilerbeta.zip

I'm looking forward to more suggestions!
# September 15, 2003 3:13 PM

marko rangel said:

I'll help too. jkeyblog_at_markorangel_dot_com
# September 15, 2003 3:38 PM

TrackBack said:


Paul Edwards
# September 15, 2003 4:43 PM

James Avery said:

I don't want to test it, but I will volunteer to implement the application updater block for you. :)

-James
# September 15, 2003 6:10 PM

Pete said:

Fantastic! Just a few minor points (with the beta): :)

1) Got an unhandled exception once when turning on method information for intellisense. Something about unable to find Intellisense\XmlDocs. Unable to reproduce though.

2) Intellisense for "Console.w" goes straight to "Console.WriteLine" in the popup -- what about "Console.Write"?

3) Start All as WinForms no longer seems to work for an existing project, I get the error: "Invalid target type for /target: must specify 'exe', 'winexe', 'library', or 'module'". Only seems to happen when create xml docs is selected.

4) Not too sure about the way multi-line tabs are displayed. I prefer them to single line with those annoying arrows, but multi-line don't quite display/behave right. Not sure exactly how and I can't seem to find one in normal windows (in it's natural habitat :) ).

4b) I worked out what was bothering me.. when you have a full row of tabs and a single tab on another line, pull the single tab to the front and the full row no longer looks correct. Not sure how it should look normally though.

5) Weird behaviour when dragging tabs across lines when multi-line tabs are used (same situation as in 4b).

6) Could you change the separate run behaviour for console/winforms? Something specified for the project, or maybe autodetect? (just spotted this in the TODO.txt :) )

7) Good call on the commandbar and menubar stuff, looks cool.. but do we really need to be able to drag the menu (or the toolbar for that matter)?

8) Undo/redo are active even when there are no actions peformed. Starting up, default.cs displays, pressing undo clears the buffer. Similarly, save doesn't need to be active when current buffer is unchanged (could use a "save all" on the toolbar, too).

Well that's all I can find for now ;)

I'll probably post some more when I get around to using this thing for longer.
# September 15, 2003 7:27 PM

Pete said:

One more idea.. slightly bigger than the others.

Is it possible to embed the ink stuff (tablet pc support) to allow annotation of code (like in the new office 2003)? Maybe store the locations of all your scribblings in the project xml file, and have the ink stuff serialize to whatever file format it prefers.

You could also provide some way of combining source, ink and project files for easy emailing and distribution.

Just a thought.
# September 15, 2003 7:41 PM

Jeff Key said:

Haha thanks, James. I've added it to my todo list and will get back to you on that. ;)
# September 15, 2003 9:34 PM

Jeff Key said:

I've set up a GotDotNet workspace so people can enter bugs as well as see known issues. I'll also post the test bits there. I'll post the next test build after I get most/all of the bugs/todo up there so you won't waste any of your time reporting things I already know about.

http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/Workspaces/Workspace.aspx?id=35660c7b-61ac-4c27-bda8-71f6aad98dcb

Moving forward I'll send emails via gotdotnet, so be sure to sign up if you'd like to participate.

Thanks for your help!
# September 16, 2003 2:33 AM

Jeff Key said:

As always, thanks for the excellent feedback, Pete!

1) That's since been fixed.
2) That's a known issue. I've reproduced w/the Syncfusion control outside of Snippet Compiler so I submitted a support ticket. (I tell it what to display and it does the dirty work.)
3) Great catch! I forgot to prepend a compiler option with a space. Fixed.
4) I don't like it either. Those are the stock tabs that come w/.NET (which, I think, are wrappers for the Win common controls [I custom draw the tabpage contents, but not the tabs themselves]). If you find a way to make them behave better, let me know.
5) Yup. Haven't looked into that, though, as I figured it was a pretty low priority.
6) I need to think about some project-specific settings and how to implement them so users aren't immediately put into a project situation as they are with VS.NET. Perhaps we could have a "Project Mode" where things like project settings would apply. When the user loads a project, they're put into project mode. If they have some snippets open and want to create a project, they simply save them as a project and they get into project mode. Could also have a simple toggle on a menu somewhere. Or a combination. We'll see...
7) Probably not. ;)
8) That's high up on my todo list (see the GDN workspace link from another blog or the Snippet Compiler page on sliver)
9) Send me a TablePC to test it on and I'll get on it ASAP!
# September 16, 2003 3:45 AM

Jeff Key said:

(Oh, and Save All has been added.)
# September 16, 2003 3:45 AM

Pete said:

You don't need a tablet pc (I don't have one myself). Ink works just fine on ordinary winxp or 2000 (using the mouse), the only advantage in the tablet pc is handwriting recognition.

I was thinking more along the lines of adding the ability to put hand-drawn scribbles along with code.

There are loads of examples on msdn.. here's a few good ones:

http://tinyurl.com/nj49
http://tinyurl.com/nj4f
http://tinyurl.com/nj4k
http://tinyurl.com/nj4p

It would be a great feature -- I've always hated how you have to describe code with text comments.. now I could draw my own pics.

On a side note.. just embedding ordinary pictures would be a cool addition too.. but for that I'd think you'd have to have access to the syncfusion edit internals. With ink I think you just put it on top (an overlay).
# September 16, 2003 9:07 AM

Pete said:

While I'm here I've got one more thing.. correct support for readonly files (i.e. do not allow any editing at all). It would be quite annoying to make mods to a file and then find out that I can't just save it.
# September 16, 2003 9:51 AM

Jeff Key said:

TabletPC stuff: I think it's beyond the scope of the app.

ReadOnly: I just changed it so you can edit read-only files (as you can in VS.NET) but when you attempt to save it offers to remove the read-only attribute and save.
# September 16, 2003 7:35 PM

Pete said:

I've added a bunch of stuff to the bug tracker thing.. should we be setting the "assigned to" thing to our own names, or yours? I've gone with yours for now.

As for the tabletpc, I think you'd be missing out not to add it. It would be very useful to be able to write snippets and add my own diagrams to them for emailing to other people. The example code looks pretty simple too.
# September 17, 2003 8:02 AM

Jeff Key said:

Update: The workspace can't accept any more members at the moment. I've requested more resources, but don't know when they'll be available.
# September 18, 2003 4:45 PM

Phil Scott said:

You are simply the man Jeff.

One suggestion, not sure how well it would work though. What would you think about a background compile kina like VB.NET

The high performance timing templates rock btw.
# September 18, 2003 11:13 PM

Jeff Key said:

Haha thanks, Phil. I've considered that and may implement it in the future after I get the rest of the IntelliSense going. I changed Build|Current and Build|All to compile w/o running or building a binary (which you can still do via Start or Build to File, respectfully), so you can quickly get the error info and squiggles while coding by pressing CTRL+Shift+B (which is the shortcut for Build|Current).
# September 18, 2003 11:22 PM

Eric W. Bachtal said:

You slay me. As much as I dig this tool (and I do, I pop it up a dozen times a day to try something or other), I'd love to read a little about your experience writing it. Are you flat out coding? Couple of over-nighters? Are there some folks helping? How are you building and testing? Discover any interesting things about .NET along the way? Or, if not (and I can imagine you're pretty busy), I'll be content with the product of your efforts. Either way, thanks so much!
# September 18, 2003 11:32 PM

Jeff Key said:

That's definitely a unique request. :) Here are the short answers to your questions:

1) Flat out coding: Not quite sure what you mean, but I am going hardcore if that's what you're asking.
2) Couple of over-nighters: I've been going at it for a couple weeks now and get a few hours in per night usually, sometimes more on the weekends.
3) Folks helping: No one else is coding, but really that's the easy part. A bunch of people are testing and making great suggestions and that helps more than anything. The thing changes so much as different requests come in that it would be impractical if anyone else was involved in writing it.
4) Build/test: I'm just doing a normal VS.NET 2003 build using a post-compilation script to do some cleaning up. The only testing is real-world use. It did get to the point where I was adding enough stuff between releases that I thought it would be best to get more people involved in testing, so I set up a GDN workspace for people that were interested in tolerating beta code and would submit bug reports. The compile code really needs to be refactored, so when I do that I'll add unit tests.
5) Discover anything interesting: Not really. I've been doing .NET development full time (and I mean FULL time!) since the beta, so there isn't much that surprises me these days. I still do stumble upon things every now and again that make me think "they thought of everything!". What's really great is that it's possible to create things like Snippet Compiler so quickly. Programming is fun again.

Happy coding!
# September 19, 2003 12:09 AM

Rory Becker said:

This tool really is GREAT. I'm really impressed. one small( I hope ) thing

Any chance of block completion?
To put in place the closing brace in c#
or the closing For..Next, Sub..End Sub, Function..End Function in VB.Net?

Keep up the 'Very' Good Work.

Rory
# September 19, 2003 5:20 AM

Rory Becker said:

Oh yeah one other thing.

Hows about a checkbox option to show hide c#/vb.net templates and Console/Win/Web templates?

Cheers

Rory
# September 19, 2003 5:22 AM

Rory Becker said:

Sorry About this Jeff. Me again

Any chance of allowing for a Search path for Other DLLs that I might already have that I could then (Import/using)

Rory
# September 19, 2003 5:27 AM

Eric W. Bachtal said:

I'll be sure and check out the GDN site. Thanks again for taking the time!
# September 19, 2003 5:41 AM

TrackBack said:

# September 19, 2003 6:15 AM

Steve said:

Looks really slick having with the new toolbar.
# September 19, 2003 6:38 AM

Jeff Key said:

All good suggestions, Rory. Regarding the search path, I'm going to redo the References such that it will drive not only references, but the files used for IntelliSense, etc.
# September 19, 2003 4:31 PM

achu said:

hi..
i'm a student in the National University of Singapore. We're required to write a user manual for the AllNetic Time Tracker program, as part of our project.
We find it quite confusing due to the absence of a help file. Would you be able to explain how the program is supposed to be used? What is the 'selling' point of this software? And what it is used for by most people..
Thank you very much..

Regards
Achudhan

PS : my email address is : achudhans@yahoo.com
# September 20, 2003 10:37 AM

Ray Jezek said:

You can also rip the icons out of shell32 (or any other dll for that matter) by dragging the dll into VS.NET. When you drag it into VS it pretty much lets you extract any of the embedded resources.

# September 20, 2003 5:05 PM

Jeff Key said:

Oops, I should've mentioned that I was talking about runtime (I've updated the post to reflect that). Good suggestion, regardless. Is there anything VS.NET doesn't do?

FWIW, I use Axialis Icon Workshop for my icon work, including pulling icons from binaries. It's really a fantastic little app.

http://www.axialis.com/axicons/
# September 20, 2003 5:26 PM

Alex said:

Thanks for the tip - I was totally unaware of this too!
# September 21, 2003 10:04 PM

Justin King said:

You Rock!!!

I tried the Tools >> Options route but never quite seemed to work the way I wanted.

Even worse is ASP.NET pages that bring up page designer but can't as you created fully from code.

Thanks
# September 21, 2003 11:04 PM

Lorenzo Barbieri said:

Thanks!!!
# September 22, 2003 3:45 AM

Ray Jezek said:

That's a sweet program. Will definately have to pick that one up.

thanks for the link.
# September 22, 2003 11:18 AM

Jesse Ezell said:

nope. don't worry too much about it.
# September 23, 2003 1:00 AM

Jeff Key said:

I'm not. Although they both got equal space, I was much more "wow, cool" rather than "oh, no". :)
# September 23, 2003 1:07 AM

Pete said:

"Used for evil"??!?
# September 23, 2003 6:11 AM

Pete said:

So win2k3 slows down over just a weekend? Or are you saying you had two sessions open?
# September 23, 2003 6:12 AM

Jeff Key said:

I had the console and one TS session active. Not a huge deal, but I had VS.NET, Outlook and some other stuff in the TS session.
# September 23, 2003 9:29 AM

Jeff Key said:

Tongue-in-cheek.
# September 23, 2003 2:12 PM

The Jeff said:

Have you seen the <A HREF="http://www.go-l.com/monitors/grand_canyon/features/index.htm">Grand Canyon</A>? <DROOOOOOOLLLLL>
# September 25, 2003 12:37 AM

The Jeff said:

Ok, so that didn't work, let's see if this works:

http://www.go-l.com/monitors/grand_canyon/features/index.htm
# September 25, 2003 12:38 AM

Jeff Key said:

Sure did. Did you see the price for the 92"?

$17,499.99

I've never spent that much on anything.
# September 25, 2003 12:41 AM

The Jeff said:

Well, If you want to compare the value, I think that the 92" monitor is worth it compared to the $25,000 I spent on four years of college.
# September 25, 2003 12:51 AM

Pete said:

Am I the only person that thinks you'd strain your neck looking at one of those monitors? How far away from it would you have to be to see it all at once?

The start button is way over at the left -- probably have to turn your head quite far to even see it.

That's my excuse for not buying one and I'm sticking to it :)
# September 25, 2003 6:23 AM

TrackBack said:

# September 25, 2003 8:40 AM

G. Andrew Duthie said:

Did you look at their laptops? Wow!
# September 26, 2003 12:59 AM

rooo said:

cooooooooooooooooooooolllllllllllll
# September 29, 2003 1:36 PM

Tom said:

He doesen't know football either... Ha Ha Ha
# September 30, 2003 12:22 AM

senkwe said:

I'm no expert but I thought VS.NET was pretty pluggable. I guess I'm reading your post as a grudging affirmation that the Java/Open Source crowd is alot more inventive than the .Net/Open Source?? crowd. I know it's easier when you have the source at your disposal, but is it impossible to "plug in" a community brewed tool for code refactoring?
# September 30, 2003 2:07 AM

Jeff Key said:

I love VS.NET. I just wonder why they can't build more useful code tools into the product rather than all of the drag-n-drop stuff.

I'm only aware of one refactoring plugin, and each time I've tried it there were too many bugs to make it a permanent addition to the toolbox.

As for who is more inventive, I wouldn't dare open that can of worms. ;) (I honestly have no opinion on it.) I do think that VS.NET is good enough that any any alternatives aren't yet worthwhile. Anyone trying to compete with VS.NET would certainly have their hands full!
# September 30, 2003 2:18 AM

Marc Brooks said:

Correct on all fronts, but if F12 really bugs you, http://www.wholetomato.com is calling your name... join the Visual Assist .Net dark side.
# September 30, 2003 6:15 PM

Oleg Tkachenko said:

Your title is wrong, GetHashCode()always equals to GetHashCode().
But the point is that if a!=b, below may be true:
a.GetHashCode() == b.GetHashCode()
# October 1, 2003 2:47 AM

bilbo baggins said:

it don't work for me mate :(

I had opera running and it hangs and nothing kills it.. i have to reboot
# October 1, 2003 4:39 AM

Jeff Key said:

I was referring to the GetHashCode()s in the current (1.0, 1.1) frameworks vs the next framework (1.2?). a.GetHashCode() will be return a different value in v.Next than it does now.
# October 1, 2003 8:36 AM

Jeff Key said:

I've had that happen a couple times, too, but it does seem to work 98% of the time. Not sure what puts some apps in a state where they can't be killed. Would be interesting to find out.
# October 1, 2003 8:38 AM

Bernard Vander Beken said:

A similar 'trick' can be used to use VS.NET as a hex editor:

1. Select Menu File > Open > File....
2. Select a file (single-click). Do not open the file yet.
3. Launch the Open With Dialog Box by clicking the arrow next to Open.
4. Select Binary Editor.
5. Select Open.
# October 1, 2003 9:43 AM

Bernard Vander Beken said:

Jeff,

I am happy about the quality of the C# Refactory [1] plugin, a shareware product.

[1] http://www.xtreme-simplicity.net
# October 1, 2003 9:47 AM

Jeff Key said:

I've tried that a couple times, Bernard, and I liked it. Unfortunately, over time I would start getting weird errors and ultimately had to uninstall it. The first time, I had to completely reinstall VS.NET, which was a huge pain. The second time I didn't have to reinstall VS.NET, but was disappointed that the bugs hadn't been fixed.

I just checked the website and it looks like it hasn't been updated in a long time. Do you know if that's the case?
# October 1, 2003 8:40 PM

Jon Galloway said:

You'd better stop there or a Microsoft hit squad may come after you to prevent competition with Visual Studio... Just lay low on the drag and drop databinding and you might last to version 1.3.

Thanks for the coolest tool in my c:\utils!
# October 2, 2003 12:22 AM

The Jeff said:

I booked the Holiday Inn City Center a few days ago, you have to call them though.

www.holiday-inn.com
# October 2, 2003 1:31 AM

Jon Cortez said:

Try the Holiday Inn Downtown
# October 2, 2003 5:00 AM

Dave Bettin said:

Call the PDC Reservation number.. They just confirmed some rooms at the Sheraton Universal. Just think, you can stumble back to your room after the attendee party.
# October 2, 2003 8:49 AM

Ray Jezek said:

Jeff, i posted in my blog about how I got a room in the Westin by calling the reservation help desk number at the bottom of the PDC reservation:

Microsoft PDC 2003 Registration Headquarters
1-800-443-4780 Canada and US only
(636) 827-5096 Worldwide
(636) 827-3658 Fax
E-mail us at: pdc2003@travelhq.com

The registration info said they were all booked on wed night but the lady there is in constant communication with all of the hotels in the area and can swing some things if she is able... they will work to try and help you so it might be worth a shot if you havent called them yet. PLUS if they book it for you they get the conference deal too.
# October 2, 2003 12:38 PM

Tim Sneath said:

Wonderful - just wonderful. I use it for demos and for testing little snippets of code, because it allows you to focus on the important stuff. Keep up the good work!
# October 2, 2003 3:45 PM

Phil Weber said:

Try http://losangeles.conventioncenterhotelsguide.com/
# October 2, 2003 6:07 PM

Jeff Key said:

Thanks!
# October 2, 2003 7:49 PM

Jeff Key said:

I think the forms designer will have to wait for a couple versions. ;) Thanks for the comments!
# October 2, 2003 11:13 PM

Matthew Reynolds said:

I recently bought a years subscription to the service.

It really very, very good.
# October 3, 2003 2:20 AM

Eric W. Bachtal said:

Having recently emailed you, I got to experience SpamArrest for the first time, and I can report that it was fine experience. I got a nice message from SpamArrest, with a personal note from you, indicating why my email needed additional attention. Their message included a link that took me to a simple page where I typed a masked graphic word, and that was it - my email was on the way. I was so impressed with the service, I went back to their site and have decided to sign up myself. A great idea well implemented.

You've probably seen this, but here's another great idea involving spam-thwarting:

http://www.mailinator.com/

Good for those one-off on-line registrations that require an email address.
# October 3, 2003 2:22 AM

julie lerman said:

hmmm... maybe i'll try that one next. Using SpamNet, but for me the problemis that Outlook still has to process all emails, which also means a) Norton has to check them b) my rules has to check them and c) spamnet has to check them. With the recent horrid huge numbers of spam (mostly the fake patch emails), it actually makes my computer hang while downloading emails. So if I can catch them BEFORE -- well that may be what I need. Thanks for the indepth review. I've certainly seen spamarrest a lot (on the receiving end).
# October 3, 2003 8:33 AM

Jeff Gonzalez said:

I find SAProxy to be even better. It is built on Spam Assassin technology. It uses a bayesian filter to weigh each email that comes in, and rewrites the header if the email is over a certain score (5.0 is the default i believe). I have only had a few false positives, mostly being related to newsletters I have signed up for, but had not allowed through yet. Best of all, it is completely free.
http://saproxy.bloomba.com
# October 3, 2003 10:05 AM

Jeff Key said:

Eric: Glad you liked it. I'm still worried that people will be offended or put off by it. Haven't had any backlash yet.

Julie: Yes! That was exactly my problem, too. I don't want that stuff anywhere near my computer.

Jeff: Sounds cool. If SpamArrest ever fails me, I'll check it out.
# October 3, 2003 2:53 PM

Jeff Key said:

Thanks everyone. I scored a room at the Los Angeles Athletic Club through Phil's link. Seemed pretty affordable, too.
# October 3, 2003 4:10 PM

Brisemec said:

It seems that calling Application.DoEvents() after calling Application.EnableVisualStyles() fixes some problems.
# October 6, 2003 11:05 AM

William Bartholomew said:

I've been meaning to write an app that polls URL's and informs you when they've changed, shouldn't be hard just haven't got round to it.
# October 6, 2003 10:52 PM

Jeff Key said:

Same here. ;)

If I ever get the time, I'll write something that does that and works as a POP3 -> RSS server. I subscribe to a bunch of email newsletters that don't have RSS feeds. The idea is that this app would poll the POP account that the newsletters are sent to, then present those emails as RSS feeds (one feed per newsletter). I know I could essentially do the same thing with Outlook rules, but this just seems a little cooler.
# October 6, 2003 11:00 PM

Dylan Greene said:

I wonder if JetBrains is concerned that Eclipse may kill the comercial Java IDE market simply because it's free and extendable.
# October 6, 2003 11:55 PM

William Bartholomew said:

Maybe a generic system that has plug-ins that implement a single interface to retrieve data from third-party sources via a variety of protocols and then republish them as an RSS feed would be the way to go...
# October 7, 2003 1:50 AM

Pete said:

From what I've seen of both products, I doubt JetBrains have anything to worry about. Eclipse is pants compared to IntelliJ.

I'm very disappointed in this news. I was hoping JetBrains would be developing a full IDE of their own for C# straight away, not starting with a plugin.
# October 7, 2003 6:41 AM

Mike said:

Hey Jeff ... in reference to "Maybe it's time to try to figure out how to subscribe to web pages in IE", such a thing already exists on your machine. Right click on your desktop choose ->Display Properties->Desktop->Customize Desktop->Web

You should be able to figure it out from here :-)
# October 7, 2003 8:26 AM

Mark said:

No it doesn't. There is no option for selecting win2003 and the others (winxp,win2k,winnt) don't work. You end up downloading the same file anyhow (so i don't understand why the os selection option is there) and it says it doesn't work with 2003. The latest version i downloaded was 2.22.

So if I'm wrong, please respond. I'd really like to get it working on 2003.
# October 7, 2003 3:58 PM

Jeff Key said:

Well, it worked for me. I'm running v5.00.174.0. Prior to that, nothing would install.

I don't remember if Win2k3 was an option, but if it wasn't, I would've picked WinXP. Maybe the keyboard you picked doesn't support 2003, although I thought the the IT software was the same for all.
# October 7, 2003 4:56 PM

Mark said:

My keyboard is wireless optical desktop (keyboard mouse combo). I wonder which options you selected, and if the software is different, if it would work with my hardware. I'd give it a try if you can remember the options you selected. Thanks.
# October 8, 2003 5:44 AM

Jason said:

Try this little app guys... http://www.markwell.btinternet.co.uk/webmon/
# October 8, 2003 2:57 PM

Jeff Key said:

I have a Natural Keyboard Pro.
# October 8, 2003 9:28 PM

Jeff Key said:

Looks cool, Jason!
# October 8, 2003 9:48 PM

Kenneth LeFebvre said:

Not still, but again. Since I got FrontPage 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services, I've been using them together. They work great together!
# October 13, 2003 11:27 PM

Omar Shahine said:

I just started again after years of not. I find it awesome now. It doesn't touch your code, has nice tools and support for layout etc. I really like it.

Of course if you use WSS (windows sharepoint services) it's a must have tool.
# October 14, 2003 12:16 AM

Jeff Key said:

I'm glad you guys mentioned SharePoint; I'd read about the integration, but subsequently forgot about it. Looking forward to seeing what it can do!
# October 14, 2003 1:24 AM

senkwe chanda said:

hehe, a true diplomat eh? I think it's actually *very* relevant. I'm interested in seeing how those companies do in the long run, but I my gut feel is that they'll be pleasantly surprised.
# October 14, 2003 1:47 AM

Robert McLaws said:

I love Frontpage 2003. It's new layout tools are a must-have for any developer. It does a fabulous job cleaning up HTML, and it's new Find-and-Replace dialog set the standard for other MS Developer tools <cough> **VS.NET**.
# October 14, 2003 7:31 AM

Dumky said:

Maybe this data changes every hour or something, because right now the Netcraft link only shows 1 in the top 6 (the 6th...).

# October 14, 2003 1:48 PM

Jeff Key said:

Good observation, Dumky. Just checked out the chart and not only are you right, it looks like they update it every fifteen minutes.
# October 14, 2003 3:29 PM

Dumky said:

Since it keeps changing, it may not be wise to just look at the top 6.
# October 14, 2003 3:43 PM

Jeff Key said:

Hey, I was just quoting the article. ;)

They did mention the total numbers for the month in the article, so I think the stat is valid, but the page displays realtime rather than aggregate numbers.
# October 14, 2003 6:03 PM

Pete said:

"include a new version of Windows Update, and new memory management code for defeating common buffer overrun attacks"

Woohoo! God I hope that's not just marketing crap. I still remember struggling to remove blaster from my parents machine -- at the time there was no info on it to be found (that soon changed).
# October 15, 2003 3:11 PM

Pete said:

Damn, I've never heard of any of those searches!
# October 17, 2003 7:36 AM

Jason said:

What stuff are you looking for? I thought the same when dealing with Underground Hip-Hop and some of the darker IDM/DnB tracks, but I found 'em.
# October 17, 2003 8:22 AM

Steve said:

One thing I did in the apple version when using the store was to just download a bunch of songs, then burn them to disk. Then, to get them onto the PC, just ripped the disk to MP3. Works great.
# October 17, 2003 9:46 AM

Jeff Key said:

The stuff I searched for was pretty typical indie/post rock. What IDM/DnB did you find? I just did a search for Amon Tobin, Autechre, DJ Spooky, Icebreaker, Mouse on Mars and Squarepusher and got no love...
# October 17, 2003 9:51 AM

Jeff Key said:

Glad to hear it, Steve, I thought of the same thing. My main concern is the clarity since the music is compressed twice, not to mention that it's a lot of work! :) Maybe I'll give it a test run on the new Stereolab.
# October 17, 2003 10:03 AM

Ryan said:

I just think you need to listen to some better music!
# October 18, 2003 2:09 PM

Jeff Key said:

Well, if you consider Barenaked Ladies, Edie Brickell, 2Pac, Miss Elliott, Rod Stewart, Sheryl Crow, Counting Crows and Linkin Park better music, I'll pass. ;) (Those were the selections on the iTunes home page.)
# October 18, 2003 2:13 PM

Ryan said:

Point taken, but show me two different songs from Linkin Park. I think iTunes is giving a service to the masses and since you are not one of those, you really should not bitch about it.
# October 18, 2003 2:25 PM

Jeff Key said:

Where did I complain about anything? I simply stated my experience. I think iTunes is great, but not for me (yet). They (mostly) don't have the music I like and it's in a format my media player and portable player don't support.
# October 18, 2003 2:55 PM

Robert Serafini said:

AAC is NOT proprietary - WMA is. Why do you begin your analysis by accepting WMP as your axiomatic "preferred media player"? Hundreds of Windows users in public forums (ArsTechnica, OSNews, and others) have declared their preference for iTunes over WMP after giving the Apple program a try. So you reach a conclusion that is driven by the door you enter. Unless, of course, you really DO prefer WMP. And given the size of the Windows world, I bet that WMA will be hacked into iTunes in a matter of weeks.
# October 19, 2003 12:17 AM

Jeff Key said:

Thanks for the info, I appreciate your candor. For some reason I was under the impression AAC was proprietary. I apologize for the inaccuracy and I updated my post to reflect it.

If you'll reread my post, you'll note that I'm writing about me, my experiences, my preferences and so on. At the same time, I'm not recommending anything to anyone; simply stating my opinion. Therefore, it would be silly of me to NOT state that WMP is my preferred media player, because it is. I'm sure there are better ones out there for any number of reasons, but WMP does what I want and I've never run into a situation that made me look for something else. I'll bet that I'm in the majority of Windows users, although that's irrelevant.

I ripped several hundred CDs to WMA. (I wish I would've ripped them to MP3 now; I've noticed MP3 at higher bitrates sounds better than WMA.) If I can't play them in iTunes, I'm not going to use iTunes. Likewise, my portable media player plays MP3 and WMA, as most do, I believe. As I understand it, only the iPod plays AAC. That doesn't work for me either.

I'll be the first to admit that I know little about all of the great sound formats, cool media players, and so on. Again, I think I'm in the majority, and my experience probably isn't uncommon. I think iTunes is great and I may use it in the future if they support the more common formats.

It's fantastic that so many Windows users are using iTunes. I've never liked the religious issues surrounding the computer industry. I don't care what OS/media player/browser/etc people use. I care about what I use and if something doesn't work w/my configuration, that's OK, I just won't use it. Makes my life just a bit less stressful (and the last thing I need is more stress).
# October 19, 2003 12:53 AM

Get a clue said:

iTunes DOES support MP3... you can even rip CD's using the MP3 encoder!
# October 19, 2003 2:30 AM

Jeff Key said:

iTunes, the service, does not support MP3. As I've mentioned, this presents a problem to my portable. iPods are great, but I'm not buying one; I have too many albums to keep on them, even the newer ones.

This is all irrelevant anyway due to the fact that there isn't much on the service for me to buy. They simply don't have much in the way of independent labels. I'm sure this will change over time. Maybe then I'll buy an iPod, get a Mac, re-rip all of my CDs, and curse everything Microsoft. In the meantime I'm stuck in my world where it just isn't useful to ME.
# October 19, 2003 2:56 AM

Tony Yaku said:

AAC == Mpeg 4. Mpeg 4 is of greater quality that mp3 of course. If you convert m4a to mp3 you would of couse get something similar to a quality had the file originally been in mp3 to begin with.
# October 19, 2003 4:39 AM

JaseyBaby said:

http://www.apple-x.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=563&mode=thread&order=1&thold=0

You really need to read the third post on the above...

Long live macs and great software
# October 19, 2003 10:21 AM

Jeff Key said:

Jasey: Very cool. It's unfortunate they won't play in my Rio, DVD player or boombox (all of which play MP3/WMA).
# October 19, 2003 10:51 AM

Carlos said:

iTunes, the program, plays MP3 just fine. iTunes Music Store uses MP4/AAC, which has digital rights management built-in to an industry standard.

WMA is a Microsoft proprietary technology, so it's unlikely Apple is going to pay licensing to Microsoft to be able to use it.

Other software like WinAMP and other digital players could play AAC songs if they choose to support QuickTime, I believe.
# October 19, 2003 11:01 AM

ash said:

i think you're actually making it more work than it is worth - i use a ipod and tunes just go on that and, blam u go, u got music... if ur rippin to WMV it aint worth it
# October 19, 2003 12:04 PM

Jeff Key said:

Disclaimer: I'm not partial to WMA. Since ripping most of my CDs to WMA (>40GB), I've noticed MP3 is warmer at the higher bitrates. If I had to do it over again, I'd rip to something beside WMA. I'm your typical Joe User when it comes to stuff like this; WMP did exactly what I wanted, so I used it. You guys need to remember that you're in the minority. Not everyone knows everything about all of the codecs, players, etc. The issues I had may be a result of my ignorance of this topic, but they will be experienced by many, many more people: The "I just want it to work w/o having to futz around with it" crowd.

Carlos: AFAIK, most other media players play WMA. If I didn't have over 40GB of stuff in WMA it wouldn't be an issue. Also, why would other players need to support QuickTime if they chose to play AAC? Isn't AAC a standard?

ash: If it was only that easy! :) The biggest iPod available is 40GB. It's $500.00. I have over 40GB of music. I have a portable player that plays my music. Even if I had < 40GB of music, why in the world would I spend $500 on a player to replace one that already works? Not only that, I would need to re-rip 11,568 tracks off of my CDs. All of this so I could use the iTunes service, which doesn't really have any music that I like anyway. I'll pass. ;)
# October 19, 2003 12:56 PM

Tony Yaku said:

Who on earth would want to lock themselves into using a proprietary file type such as WMA?
# October 19, 2003 2:32 PM

Anonymous said:

Dude, take another look...iTunes supports MP3s from the very beginning. Under Preferences->Importing you'll see some choices as to the encoder you'd like to use when ripping a CD.

If you purchase music through the iTMS, it'll be in AAC format (because of the DRM scheme being used). If you want to convert to MP3, then you''l have to burn to CD and re-rip to WMA. Hint: if you do it that way, make a MP3 CD rather than an audio CD so you'll fit more on the CD; an audio CD will retain higher fidelity, but you'll have to judge that for yourself.)
# October 19, 2003 2:35 PM

Jeff Key said:

Tony: Millions of us already have.

Anon: Dude, I have >40GB of WMA files already. What am I going to do w/those? I don't have the time to re-rip 11,568 files, although I would love to since I prefer higher bitrate MPx files, as I've mentioned previously. Unfortunately, it won't let you burn an MP3 CD with M4P files, nor will it let you convert M4P to MP3.
# October 19, 2003 3:22 PM

cossmo said:

Here is a copy of that explanation of AAC files vs. WMA and mp3 from apple-x:

People need to understand that the AAC files on the iTunes Music Store are not encoded from CD albums themselves. They are "ripped" from the 24 bit audio master--the same master from which CDs are created. So the lossy compression AAC file resulting is usually equal to, or higher in sound quality than what you find on a CD due to the modern compression algorithm being utilized. The music contained on CD albums have been re-sampled to 16-bit audio. In both instances sound information is lost. Too many people think that the iTunes Music Store files are ripped from CDs, thus implying the sound quality is degraded. So statements such as, "Besides, iTMS music files are too[sic] low quality for me." make absolutely no sense whatsoever, except to show that such person has no business providing reviews.

Furthermore, audio on CDs is sampled at 44.1kHz, so ripping songs from one's CD collection into 320kbps 48kHZ (not 48000) goes on to show this person has no understanding of audio and mp3 compression whatsoever. Encoding something with source of 44.1kHz into something else with 48kHz makes absolutely no sense and the result isn't going to be pretty. Furthermore compressing the file to 320kbps using the mp3 algorithm is stupid as you neglect any benefit for which the mp3 compression was intended. Anyway, this goes to further support my claim that reviewers should be limited to those who are knowlegeable about what they are reviewing before making comments to a broad audience, some comments of which may be inaccurate and misleading.
# October 19, 2003 3:47 PM

Jeff Key said:

Tony: As I've said several times before, I could care less about formats and I'm certainly not emotionally tied to WMA. I just can't stomach posts like yours. Here's the poop: WMA at lower bitrates sounds better than MP3 and the files are smaller. WMA is supported by almost every media player, portable, etc. So what if it's proprietary? I can play WMA on my computer, on my Rio, in my DVD player, etc. M4A/P isn't proprietary. I can't play it on my Rio, I can't play it in my DVD player, my boombox, etc. How is that better? I can't find a way to have iTunes talk to my Rio. How is that better? Isn't Apple locking me in by only supporting iPod?

I'm now convinced M4A/P is the way to go. BUT nothing I use, other than computer media players, support it, so I can't go with it yet. Sure, I could re-rip everything to MP3, but what's the point? I can do all that with WMP. I actually like some of the stuff in WMP that iTunes doesn't have, like the AMG info, etc. I really like using iTunes, but it just doesn't work in my current situation.

One simple thing would make me switch: If iTunes supported WMA playback (like everyone else). I could live with copying things to my Rio manually. If iTunes supported my existing library I could much, much more easily transition to using MPA for my private collection and make iTunes my permanent player. I still wouldn't be able to play the things I downloaded on my Rio, DVD player, etc., but considering I have 11,568 other song to choose from, that's not a huge issue.
# October 19, 2003 3:52 PM

Jeff Key said:

Thanks cossmo. Regarding the comments about "reviewers": I blogged my experience, which I think is valid. I'm a typical user. I use the free stuff Microsoft gives out, just like millions of other Windows users. My experience is valid to the majority of my peers.

Anyway, I haven't debated the quality of AAC. I think it's great and I've stated that several times. If my Rio, DVD player, etc. supported it, I'd use it.
# October 19, 2003 3:59 PM

cossmo said:

This issue of WMA versus the higher quality AAC open format reminds me a little (just a very little) about my friend having a huge vinyl collection with his expensive turntable and cartridge needles who moved into CDs kicking and screaming. Not an easy thing for your to do Jeff, since you have 11,000+ songs in WMA. Maybe a suggestion is for you to jump to AAC with any new songs you acquire and slowly convert the ones you listen to into mp3. Nothing says you have to convert everything over, but this seems to be the deliema we all face not just with sound files, but with documents created years ago that most new pieces of equipment can't read. Such is life.

BTW, the article I sent was to explain the differences in the quality, not to flame you. I thought about editing, but decided to just leave it as originally posted on apple-x.
# October 19, 2003 4:09 PM

Jeff Key said:

Sorry if I came off harshly; I've quickly become accustomed to getting flamed. :)

Anyway, I agree completely. If iTunes supported WMA, I could switch over immediately. I wouldn't make sense for me to re-rip things over time to MP3 and still use two players in the process (WMP for WMA and iTunes for everything else). One of the reasons I ripped everything was so I could have an "ultimate shuffle". I'm rediscovering things I haven't listened to in years. Some albums sound fine in WMA, but some are lacking depth. I don't have a problem re-ripping those that require better quality if I'm using a single player.

Regardless of players, formats, etc., the fact that the iTunes service doesn't carry most of the music I listen to makes this whole thread moot. I'll revisit this topic in a few months and see what they offer. If their catalog is more robust I'll certainly reconsider. If I can make most/all of my music purchases through them it would surely alter my position.
# October 19, 2003 4:25 PM

MacBuddy said:

AAC was developed by Dolby. I would think that they know something about sound, no?

The DRM that Apple uses - 'Fairplay' - has LESS restrictions thAn M$s DRM.

iTunes has ALWAYS supported mp3. And STILL does.
# October 19, 2003 5:33 PM

Jeff Key said:

MacBuddy: AAC is great. What's your point?
# October 19, 2003 5:43 PM

Squinty said:

To convert a non-MP3 file to MP3 in iTunes, set MP3 as your Importing format (Preferences > Importing > Import Using), select the song(s) and then pull down the Advanced menu and select "Convert Selection to MP3." No need to double convert or burn any CDs.

If you set AAC as your importing format, the Advanced selection will be "Convert Selection to AAC."
# October 19, 2003 6:14 PM

pixelguru said:

iTunes doesn't support WMA because it is a closed Microsoft format. If your player doesn't support open formats like AAC, maybe you should consider getting a better player before bashing iTunes???

...just a thought
# October 19, 2003 7:53 PM

Jeff Key said:

pixelguru: Have I bashed iTunes? No. Have you read any of my responses? Apparently not. Did you miss "iTunes: Great program" and "..iTunes clearly shines".

Come on guys, I've responded to all this already, several times. This is my last post in this thread. If you're actually reading this and plan on flaming me, please read this whole thread before doing so. I'm not bashing Apple or AAC or anything else, for that matter. I had a bad experience. It happens. Even with Apple stuff. Thanks for your input.

To summarize:
- I think iTunes is great.
- AAC/M4A/M4P are great formats, better than WMA.
- I have 11,568 WMA files. Other formats are better. I realize this. If you want to re-rip hundreds of my CDs for me to M4A, come on over. I don't have time, but I'll pay for beer.
- iTunes doesn't support WMA, therefore it's not a good solution for ME. Now.
- iTunes doesn't carry music I like, therefore there's really not much for me to buy.
- I've used Macs since the early days when you could stuff the little box in a bag. I think they're great.
- I love each and every one of you.
# October 19, 2003 8:14 PM

MacBuddy said:

You've voiced your (current?) preference for WMA, AND your unwillingness to to re-rip your 11k+ songs. Yet you complain that Apple doesn't support WMA.

You 'chose' MS's solution, yet you want Apple to 'fix' it? Had you 'chosen' the 'open' mp3 format - at a decent bitrate - you may not be in this situation today.

BTW, does MS support (Apple's choice of) Dolby's AAC?

Does Chevy support Ford engines ?
# October 19, 2003 9:15 PM

Wet Willie Willy said:

The question that the folks on board should have been asking isnt whether AAC or WMA is superior to one or another, but why the other portable players do not support AAC.

I mean, how difficult is it to support an open standard? The codes are there, the licensing scheme is there, everything under the Huwawa Sun is there.

Rather than bitching at Apple for not supporting WMA, a closed standard, how about bitching about Roxio and the other mofos about not supporting open standard. This goes against the spirit of many platforms that have emerged in the past. . . that being. . an open standard always seems to win out.

Why not have those commodities support dual standards? WMA, AAC, and other linux sampling compressions? Is it difficult? I doubt it.

Either way, why did Roxio and the other mofos committ their souls to WMA? It doesnt make sense, theyre in the business to make money. .so why lock themselves into one single code? On the other hand, with Apple, its understandable. . they want to sell as many iPods as possible, and they encoded the iTunes so it would only play AAC.

The funny thing is. . if Roxio and the other mofos started to support AAC, the advantage of the iPod other than its design, would disappear.

Go figure.
# October 19, 2003 9:17 PM

Charles Gaba said:

"So what if it's proprietary?"

"'m a typical user. I use the free stuff Microsoft gives out, just like millions of other Windows users."

Jeff--

I know you said that you won't be responding anymore to this thread, but I'm hoping that you're still at least *reading* the additional posts, because I think that the two quotes above (from two separate posts of yours in this thread) are at the heart of the issue.

You're right, millions of Windows users, haven't given a rat's ass about Microsoft's closed, proprietary formats for years--whether it's Office formats like .doc, .xls, .ppt or media formats like .wmv and .wma, or even their corrupted version of Java. This is at the heart of the DOJ's failed-even-though-they-won antitrust case against Microsoft: they've abused their frightening position (over 90% market share) in one field by cramming their own versions of "standards" down the throats of everyone else (see the formats above). THIS is what's illegal, immoral and unethical, NOT having the operating system monopoly in the first place.

Here's the way it works in a nutshell:

--an independant group of unbiased experts in a given technology will come up with a particular set of standards for a given format, which every company (except Microsoft) agrees is the highest quality, most customizable, and most consumer-beneficial available.

--Microsoft will come out with it's own format which is usually of lesser quality, less customizable, and less consumer-beneficial than the agreed-upon standard.

--Microsoft will then flood the OS market (which it owns over 90% of) with it's often inferior, usually buggy, always proprietary format. It will offer the "first hit for free" of course, to guarantee that most people use it. It will then proceed to strongarm all of it's vendors/customers into using it's format (and ONLY it's format), under penalty of being destroyed, bought out, or driven out of the marketplace by the mighty Microsoft.

--as a result, you end up having a constant pattern of dueling formats: a high-quality one agreed upon by the general community, and a lesser-quality one crammed down everyone's throat by Microsoft. In most cases, unfortunately, Microsoft wins by brute force.

This time, the battle is between AAC (open, higher-quality) and WMA (closed, lower-quality). AAC has the open standards groups, Apple, the iPod, and the iTMS in it's corner (all of which are there voluntarily). WMA has Microsoft and a plethora of iTMS wannabes in it's corner (some of whom are there only out of fear of being squashed by Microsoft if they don't tow the line).

It will be interesting to see who prevails this time...
# October 19, 2003 10:36 PM

Kristofer Baxter said:

Jeff, I have a simple idea for you, go to download.com and pick up a free copy of dbPower AMP.

This software will convert your proprietary WMAs to mp2,mp3,m4p, using a large set of different encoders. Be sure to download the wma codec plug-in from their page and give iTunes a fair chance with the converted music.

This won't solve the problem with putting music from the Apple Music Store on your mp3 player, but it is a start.
# October 19, 2003 11:38 PM

Kristofer Baxter said:

Furthermore, email me if you need more help with the process.
# October 19, 2003 11:40 PM

MacBuddy said:

BTW, which of these might be a 'cheaper' solution for 'Apple'?

a) You invite some folks over for an all weekend Beer and Pizza, then Beer and ChineseFood, mp3-ripping, sleep-over.

Or...

b) Apple has a team of 4-5 people incorporate the WMA codecs into iTunes & the iPod over a work week and post them on their website, plus have some of their lawyers pound out 'the deal' with TheBomber for licensing.

# October 20, 2003 1:25 AM

David said:

Jeff

There are shareware programs that convert WMA to MP3 format. Having never used them I can't recommend one over another, but it might be worth a try to convert a couple and see how they sound. I find that iTunes sound quality is better than WMP.

Go to http://www.versiontracker.com and search on WMA.
# October 20, 2003 6:08 AM

rickag said:

Some one, I forget who, mentioned that the iPod is the only player that uses AAC. Albeit there aren't as many, yet, they do exist.

Do a google search, it may surprise you.

Some manufacturers I found.
.... Panasonic
.... Creative Labs
.... Samsung
.... Pogo flipster

AAC is realatively new and will only gain in acceptance for compressed music.
# October 20, 2003 9:37 AM

Shane Bauer said:

wow man, 31 comments. Did your blog entry get linked from a Mac fan site like my iPod entry did?
# October 20, 2003 8:32 PM

cossmo said:

Charles Gaba-- I do like your summary of what this monopoly has created. Trouble with situations like this is MS is also in the position to do some "funny stuff". Awhile back, many windows users were getting lots of error messages when using Quicktime, so the majority of them got so frustrated and uninstalled it in favor of WMA or realplayer. In fact there was nothing wrong with QT but it was caused by MS. But your explanation is right on -- this is always the argument I have with my brother's who stays with windows in that doing so perpetuates this kind of illegal activity. There should be much more competition out there to always stimulate higher and higher quality products. We should be open to other formats like Linux and others.

Now that 1 million versions of iTunes and 1 million songs have been sold during the first 3 days, I think music devices will quickly adapt to AAC, making it the defacto standard. I really believe that all of discussion will be moot in a couple of months.
# October 20, 2003 10:47 PM

finn said:

fwiw, Apple is working with the indies to get a broader selection of music online. they started with just the big five labels, but know they need to expand what they have available. for example, if you'd searched a month ago you wouldn't have found pavement or yo la tengo either since matador didn't have their music up yet.
# October 21, 2003 3:23 PM

Brad Wilson said:

By the way, I don't think that Jeff is trying to push Apple to license WMA into the iPod (although the lack of WMA is what's stopping me from buying one). All he wanted, I think, was to have iTunes be able to play WMAs. Given that the WMA playback code is free and freely redistributable on Windows, I don't think it's much of a stretch to ask Apple to support WMA playback on iTunes for Windows.
# October 22, 2003 8:33 AM

Robert Scoble said:

He loves the attention!
# October 22, 2003 11:38 PM

Eric W. Bachtal said:

Gee whiz. The FUD-o-meter just popped its stack. If he really believes all that (and the emphatic tone suggests he does), he's living in a whole different wacky universe from me. Egads,

"dangerous software buried inside"
"dangers of Microsoft Office 2003"
"change anything on your computer at anytime"
"foisted onto computer users"
"forcing consumers to accept"
"limit your ability [and] restrict choices"
"cripple other software"
"you will be forced to use"

and on and on. Then he suggests all of this stems from MS now giving "its users the ability to control who can read and edit certain documents". Whoa, are they insane?!

Wait. You mean they aren't "forcing" users to do it? They aren't "limiting" users' ability not to do it? They aren't stealing first-borns and plundering villages and destroying all that is holy and dear?

Phew. For a minute there I thought I might have to get me a copy of that there super cheapo Lindows and go hunker in my bunker.
# October 23, 2003 12:17 AM

Doug Thews said:

Jeez, and the Linux community thinks that pro-Microsoft people are off the deep end.
# October 23, 2003 12:37 AM

Jeff Key said:

Anti-flame disclaimer (required after my recent iTunes-related beating): I know the spell checker for .Text is a third party util and therefore there really is no irony.
# October 23, 2003 2:54 AM

Shane Bauer said:

It's amazing that people like himself run companies. Anyone want Lindows?
# October 23, 2003 10:34 AM

Eric said:

Jeff,
Believe it or not, someone already has a patent or trademark on the smiley face. I used to have an email message about it, but I cannot find the message.

Later,

Eric
# October 23, 2003 10:10 PM

Jeff Key said:

That's no good. Maybe I'll go for a Good Vibes™ web service.
# October 23, 2003 10:41 PM

Philip Scott said:

My big VB3 app had the rocket ship icon from the Icons folder. I can't believe the same icons from VB3 are still included. I think all they've added are some crappy Win95 toolbar bitmaps for us to "leverage."

And the snippetcompiler definitely put a hop in my step, so the icon is perfect.
# October 23, 2003 11:37 PM

Jeffrey McManus said:

I'm going to need a beer or three after my BOF on Monday night. Come find me and we'll knock some back!
# October 24, 2003 1:24 PM

Tim Marman said:

I'm so jealous.

Make sure you guys find Faisal (http://weblogs.asp.net/fmohamood) and make him drink with you :)
# October 24, 2003 2:37 PM

Rich C said:

Ahh! That is why I got into VMWare this summer. I am going to have to find a way to go without sleep even more now!
# October 24, 2003 5:01 PM

Jeff Key said:

Will do, Jeffrey!
# October 24, 2003 5:57 PM

n4cer said:

Jeff, this suggestion won't be of immediate benefit, but should help in the long run. The main caveat is that it requires more storage space than you may like.

Whenever you get around to re-ripping your audio from the original source material (CD, etc.), rip it to a compressed, but lossless format such as WMA Lossless (or others like Monkey's Audio, etc., whatever your preference).

Keep this lossless media on you harddrive as an archive of the content that is smaller than the original wav audio, but retains the exact same quality.

Then, you can transcode the content from lossless format to whatever lossy format is currently popular for whatever portable device you have at the time. This will save you from ever having to re-rip from the original CD or other source (barring harddrive failure, accidental erasure, etc.).

Also, if you used WMA Lossless, for example, and MS developed Windows Media 10 and was able to improve the compression ratio of the lossless codec, or there was another lossless format that offered better compression, etc., and you wanted to convert your archive to that format for the increased benefits, you could transcode to the new format directly (with available tools) without loss in quality. Or, if necessary, you can convert the WMA Lossless back to wav, then encode in the new lossless format while still retaining original quality.

Microsoft has a commandline tool

Windows Media Audio 9 Lossless to PCM Converter

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/encoder/utilities.aspx

to convert WMA Lossless files back to wav, and, of course, WMP can produce Lossless content from the original source and transcode from the lossless media in your library to a lossy format for your portable.

Monkey's Audio can also be converted back and forth or transcoded.
http://www.monkeysaudio.com/index.html

Also, dbPowerAmp is a good (and free) tool for conversion between a number of formats (including WMA and Monkey's Audio)

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm
# October 26, 2003 12:56 AM

Pete said:

It's been leaked anyway:

http://www.winbeta.org/winbeta/

more specifically:

http://www.winbeta.org/winbeta/forums/index.php?s=8a9a8d757f442e42507d259c65b71a98&showtopic=1036
# October 26, 2003 3:08 PM

Mark belles said:

YES! Application.EnableVisualStyles is the mother of SEHException(s)... I recently stumbled upon the call and quickly did away with my mananifest file, however I also became aware of this strange new feature of my application. It miraculously has decided that after months of coding, it will now kindly throw a SEHException after I use ShowDialog() to show any form over the form passed to Application.Run(). This happens 10/10 times for me. I'm calling EnableVisualStyles(); DoEvent(); in the first lines of my code, well before any controls or windows are created. I'm pretty sure that this is the source of my problems. I'm gonna run and comment that shit out and see what happens. I'll post back with the results, as I've been debugging this for like 6 hours, and have had no damn sleep this is fresh on my mind... grrrrr.
# October 30, 2003 9:38 AM

Mark Belles said:

Yup, commented that code out, and my app runs like the champ i new it was! I'm gonna do some further testing and pinpoint this, will post back with the results.
# October 30, 2003 9:42 AM

Ralph said:

I agree with all...How can we contact Microsoft in regards to this and get these issues straight?!?!?!?
# October 31, 2003 11:13 AM

Kartal Guner said:

would they call it Google.NET?
# October 31, 2003 5:46 PM

The Jeff said:

Sad, very very sad.
# October 31, 2003 7:14 PM

James Avery said:

The funny thing is that Google might make about 25B from an IPO, and Microsoft actually has anough cash to match that.

-James
# October 31, 2003 10:11 PM

julie lerman said:

Here here. The power of two! Great job guys.
# October 31, 2003 11:21 PM

Ingo Rammer said:

So what about the beer? ;-)

-Ingo
# November 1, 2003 1:34 AM

Jeff Key said:

Perhaps that's a better question for Christoph... :)
# November 1, 2003 1:42 AM

Ingo Rammer said:

Hehehe ... let's see if I can find some of the photos of this night ...

-Ingo
# November 1, 2003 2:02 AM

Jeff Key said:

Forgot to mention that I have a 2.4Ghz processor and 1GB of RAM, so the computer isn't exactly a slouch. IIRC, the VPC bits are still early beta, so that's probably the issue.
# November 1, 2003 3:33 AM

Pete said:

Sounds like it only occurs with a very specific device.. probably more of a firmware problem than Apples.

Still a nasty one though, but I've seen worse things happen in windows.
# November 1, 2003 9:47 AM

Tim Marman said:

Longhorn itself installed very quickly for me (like 20 minutes)... it's starting up that seems to take awhile :)

The only problem I've run into so far is that it seems the drivers for my printer aren't compatible, and now I can't run the OS with the printer installed.
# November 1, 2003 1:15 PM

Jeff Key said:

Holy cow! That wasn't in Virtual PC, was it? I installed LH onto a separate partition on my main computer and that took .5 hour or so. Not so bad.

I'm glad I'm not the only one seeing the startup issue. Not only that, once I get to the desktop the processor is pegged at 100% for 10 minutes or so while SLSRV.EXE does something very important. Not that I'm complaining..I'm happy just to have the bits!
# November 1, 2003 3:25 PM

TrackBack said:

# November 1, 2003 10:33 PM

Dan said:

I was at PDC and have "the goods" CD pack. Where is the product key for Virtual PC? I have one for Longhorn from the windowsbeta website, but that one doesn't work for VPC, nor does the one from the MS VPC website.

Thanks for any directions.
# November 2, 2003 12:24 PM

Jeff Key said:

When you insert the DVD with VirtualPC on it, an autorun HTML page should load. The product ID is on that page (in red) near the bottom.
# November 2, 2003 8:00 PM

Dave said:

Interesting. My own experience speaks to the validity of 4 of these so-called myths.

Windows _is_ less scalable than Unix/Linux if you define a major component of scalable to be needing less horsepower to do the same job.

Windows servers have improved greatly since NT4, but still need bouncing the box much more frequently than any other OS out there.

MS refuses to put out a coherant and unobtrusive system of patches (SP2 anybody?) and instead continues to put out several a month - many requiring a (DAMMIT) reboot.

MS has also improved greatly in the last 18 months, but please don't try to convince me that they STILL have a large price to pay to shore up their woeful past of unconcern of security over functionality.

Do these mean you should "bar" Windows from the Enterprise? Absolutely not. But they are not myths nor should they be something to forget when you use Windows in the Enterprise.
# November 3, 2003 6:58 AM

Jason Mark said:

Having not been lucky enough to be at PDC this year, I await my MSDN shipment w/ the previews. I presume that VPC 2004 was distributed at PDC as well? I can only manage to find Connectix 5.2 on the MSDN site unless I'm blind which is always a possibility! :) Anyone?
# November 3, 2003 12:35 PM

Jeff Key said:

Jason: Yes, it was, and I think it's the only way they've distributed it to the public thus far. Don't start worrying about your eyes yet!
# November 3, 2003 12:42 PM

yvision said:

will be interesting to see what format the dell players are going to support when they come to market. my guess is that they support wma mp2 mp3 and m4a but unless msft improves wma dramtically it is still a gonner except as an archive
# November 3, 2003 1:43 PM

John Stites said:

I get so tired of people complaining about microsoft and the security patches they put out. If you announce to the world that you have a puzzle and that you think nobody in the world can solve it, you're going to get a lot of people working on the same problem.

Well microsoft has done just that - they put out an OS and said "this is secure." You're going to get every hack and lunatic trying their damndest to deface and damage the OS that a great majority of the population relies on. (Let's go after the electrical grid while we're at it) With such a large surface area, there's going to be security threats. No this-or-that about it. There will be holes.

But instead of shirking the issue, microsoft instantly writes a patch and includes it in the windows update service so you can easily apply it and continue on your merry way.

Linux is great. Find a security hole there, you have to submit it to open source to fix it. You'll instantly have 57 different implementations to fix the hole from 57 different jacko's out there with too much time on their hands. Sounds great, sign me up.
# November 4, 2003 11:48 AM

Philip Rieck said:

Heh... you found the ExStencil folder (As did I - just today.. in fact was going to write _This_ blog entry, until you beat me to it)

Now what? The only thing I could do was modify the existing file. Adding more seemed to do nothing, and I couldn't figure out where / how to "register" new expansion files. Let me know if you do.
# November 6, 2003 11:22 PM

HumanCompiler said:

It would definitely make sense to be a system wide setting that you could turn on or off. I would think it would necessary for people to be able to turn it off or it would be really intrusive, IMHO.
# November 7, 2003 9:59 AM

Maxim V. Karpov said:

Yea, I saw it. What I gather from all of the PDC posts and articles. It looks like MS is trying to bake into OS a lot of things. At the moment CLR (managed) provides a nice transition for MS from XP OS to LongHorn. Our Apps in managed enviroments should be able to run just fine in new OS, or at least it is a desire. I want to keep the same seperation between OS and Managed Enviroment as it is right now. So, I guess it does matter if LongHorn is being developed in managed enviroment!

My two cents, Maxim
# November 7, 2003 1:03 PM

Sigurdur G. Gunnarsson said:

What I'd like to know is.. does WinFX rely on Win32 and wrap a lot of unmanaged code like the current Framework does, and will there be a time in the future when it won't? :)
# November 7, 2003 1:30 PM

Jay @ Microsoft said:

I'm glad to see our work is being so well received. We're pretty exited about it, too!

You can add new expansions, but you have to get the syntax just right. Try copying an existing one to start with, and making incremental modifications to get the result you want. The only thing that *must* change is the "shortcut" which has to be unique for each expansion.

Remember that all of this can, and probably will, change, vanish, etc. before the final release.
# November 7, 2003 2:15 PM

G. Andrew Duthie said:

Actually, that might be all it would take for me to use IE instead of Firebird...that, and tabbed browsing. :-)
# November 7, 2003 5:45 PM

Jeff Key said:

Tabbed browsing would be excellent. If Longhorn's IE is any indication (since it has popup blocking, download manager, etc), then it won't. Sadness.
# November 7, 2003 6:40 PM

Jason Nadal said:

Actually, from what I've read, it's alpha...If this is alpha, then I really look forward to beta!
# November 7, 2003 11:09 PM

Jeff Key said:

Whew, thank goodness. ;) v1 went through a very long beta and with a realease of v2 in 1H of 2004, I made the assumption based on time. I, too, can't wait to see beta! Hopefully they'll post it on MSDN.
# November 7, 2003 11:17 PM

Jeff Key said:

Thanks, Jay. I finally got one working:

http://weblogs.asp.net/jkey/posts/36500.aspx
# November 8, 2003 2:07 AM

Don Box said:

There is no "unmanaged" Indigo or Avalon underneath the CLR assemblies. I'll defer to ChrisAn wrt Avalon, but Indigo is built in managed code on top of System.Xml, System.IO, and System.Net.

System.Xml is 100% managed.

System.IO and System.Net are a mix of interop + some CLR and BCL magic.

# November 9, 2003 5:57 PM

Markus The said:

Have you ever had a look at QuickCode.NET? It does this without requiring you to edit an XML file...And it *will* stay stable between VS.NET releases! ;-)

(I know, I know, this is a beta of Whidbey)

# November 10, 2003 2:26 AM

Jeff Key said:

I have, Markus. Good stuff! It was lacking one feature I was looking for, I forget what now, so I wrote my own.
# November 10, 2003 5:06 AM

Pete said:

Why not just use Avant Browser? It uses the same engine as ie, but adds popup blocking, tabs, and more. I've been using it for a while and aside from one or two annoyances (more thanks to the ie component than avant) it's been great.
# November 10, 2003 10:43 AM

Markus The said:

I'd really like to know what that feature was, in case you remember. Because we're going to have to stay (at least) one step ahead of Whidbey, won't we?

BTW: I still don't know if I should be flattered or feel threatened by this Stencil feature. Imitation *could* be the sincerest form of flattery (or am I imagining things?). On the other hand it could just be someone breathing down your neck!
# November 10, 2003 4:34 PM

Meghan Perez - VS Core Editor said:

I'm happy to see the positive energy around this feature. We are updating this feature right now quite a bit and I hope you'll be happy with the results.

I'd suggest that you wait until future updates to spend *too* much time writing your own templates. The format has changed, although not drastically, which will force you to recreate these.
# November 11, 2003 2:39 AM

Jeff Key said:

Thanks, Meghan, good to know. :)
# November 11, 2003 8:41 AM

Jeff Key said:

Thanks, Pete, I'll check that out.
# November 11, 2003 8:42 AM

Allen Prescott said:

Oh Meghan stop being a wet blanket! Let everyone party on the extencils guilt free:-)

I think that you should all encourage Meghan to write a converter for the ones that you are writing now...
# November 12, 2003 3:03 AM

damien morton said:

There are some attacks based on causing lots of hashcode collisions. These are called algorithmic complexity attacks.

The defene against them is to "key" the hash function so that between executions, or even between hashtable resizes, the hashcode returned is unpredictable. It will still fullfill the contract that if a == b then a.GetHashCode() == b.GetHashCode().

Basically, relying on other properties of GetHashCode is a mistake. Frankly, the object identity that GetHashCode returns is also a mistake; they could have at least incremented their counter by some big number instead of 1, or multiply their dequence number by a large prime before returning Object.GetHashCode().
# November 14, 2003 5:58 PM

SBC said:

some more stuff on SQL Server -
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1379610,00.asp
# November 14, 2003 11:47 PM

Rico Mariani said:

I love the tutorial, it has excellent examples of usage but also has some information on some things that go wrong and what you see in CLR Profiler when they do. This doc is so good I recommend it even if you never plan to use the tool just for the pictures and insight.
# November 15, 2003 2:44 AM

Adam Kinney said:

Hey thanks for the heads up, looks a good blog to follow.
# November 15, 2003 1:05 PM

Tru said:

Thank you so much for the information about the F Lock issue.
http://www.mvps.org/jtsang/flock.html

Much better.
# November 16, 2003 3:25 PM

TrackBack said:

# November 17, 2003 10:08 PM

xtraa said:

This is what it looks like :D I made it a few weeks ago...

http://www.xyborx.dk/humor/msgoogle.gif

Good laughs and greetz from Hamburg,

xtraa
# November 22, 2003 7:36 PM

Phil Scott said:

How the noise level on that sucker. I was thinking of picking a couple of them up and run them in RAID, but I was afraid the thing would sound like an air plane taking off.
# November 22, 2003 8:08 PM

Jeff Key said:

It's not at all noticeable. Every once in a while I'll hear something, but it's no louder than the 7,200 ATA drive. I can't recommend it enough!
# November 22, 2003 8:14 PM

M. Keith Warren said:

I am striping two WD SATA Raptors; best upgrade I have ever done!
# November 22, 2003 10:18 PM

Michael Campbell said:

Now if we could only get these pigs in laptops! :D Glad to see these numbers... and the best number of all is the 11 minutes for an install of XP (now that's a number I can instantly relate to).
# November 22, 2003 10:55 PM

Avonelle Lovhaug said:

Right on the money!
# November 23, 2003 2:09 AM

Steven Smith said:

I'm with Michael - I want one for my laptop. Although I might want it to be able to run slower when I'm on batteries, since I think it must certainly be a power hog... Arg, the constant conflict between mobility and RAW POWER...
# November 23, 2003 3:13 AM

Jeff Key said:

A guy I work with recently got a 7,200 RPM drive for his ThinkPad. Not too shabby; I didn't know they broke the 5,400 barrier..
# November 23, 2003 3:45 AM

Frans Bouma said:

Don't forget the larger cache (probably 8MB vs the 2MB on your older drive) and 33% higher rotation speed which are likely the cause of the higher overall speed you got with the SATA drive. (and they can handle more throughput, but don't forget: an ATA100 drive can theoretically have a throughput of 100MB/sec, but will average on 30, 33MB / sec max.)
# November 23, 2003 5:59 AM

julie lerman said:

Hey Jeff-
See http://weblogs.asp.net/jlerman/posts/38819.aspx
# November 23, 2003 9:05 AM

julie lerman said:

p.s. - more importantly - the comments of the above post....
# November 23, 2003 9:09 AM

greg said:

I've got s-ata, too. But how to install longhorn onto it? I couldn't succeed. Any tips?
# November 23, 2003 4:17 PM

Jeff Key said:

Thanks, Julie. I agree that it would be great if they could parse out what was indeed text and somehow leave the images in relatively the same place. Considering how amazing the handwriting recognition is, I bet they can do it. ;)
# November 23, 2003 6:02 PM

Jeff Key said:

Greg: Don't know about that one. I've decided to stick with Longhorn in a VPC until the beta, so I haven't tried.
# November 23, 2003 6:03 PM

Justin Rudd said:

How about -

OBJECTPROPERTY(OBJECT_ID(N'mytable'),N'IsUserTable')

Returns 1 if it is a user table, 0 if it is not a user table, and NULL if the object doesn't exist.
# November 23, 2003 10:11 PM

Darrell said:

That's correct, as long as Microsoft follows through with it. The view does provide a layer of abstraction from changes to the sysobjects table, which Microsoft can and does change.
# November 23, 2003 10:32 PM

TrackBack said:

# November 23, 2003 11:16 PM

Garrett Serack said:

Hey Simon :)

ScintillaNET is working quite great actually. You can find a recent build of it at http://sourceforge.net/projects/scide , and our mailing lists are at http://www.scide.net . You may wish to check it out.

It is still undergoing some changes, but is certianly usable.

Garrett
# November 26, 2003 9:48 AM

TrackBack said:

# November 26, 2003 1:58 PM

Jeff Key said:

Forgot to mention I got the link from Gunnersonsan: http://blogs.gotdotnet.com/EricGu/permalink.aspx/ec3e6df8-fddb-4ec1-9766-f7b0f165da55
# November 28, 2003 6:17 PM

brad abrams said:

Thanks for the plug Jeff... Yes, we do spend HOURS everyday discussing these issues... I have recently found it VERY handy to use comments and quotes from folks off from my blog in these discussions... Clearly helping us build a better platform API...
# November 28, 2003 7:51 PM

HumanCompiler said:

I don't think people who have been using VB.NET for a while use them anyway...I know I don't. Didn't know the technical details of it though...thanks for the read :)
# November 28, 2003 9:46 PM

SBC said:

I take a more "English grammarian" approach - basing the properties & methods by classifying the 'adjectives' and 'verbs' of the 'nouns' (objects/classes).. worked so far.. (touch wood)..
# November 29, 2003 7:28 PM

Shahn Hogan said:

I could absolutely use this type of utility. I'm getting ready to purchase a new drive myself. I'm sort of reluctant to do so, mostly because of the drive letter confusion for my wife. If you release it you'd have at least one download.

# November 29, 2003 10:33 PM

Jeff Key said:

Haha oops! I forgot to include the download link to the debug bits. I've since updated the post. Sorry about that!
# November 29, 2003 10:35 PM

Brian Desmond said:

Well, if you've got someplace to back all your stuff up, you can convert the disks to dyanmic disks in Computer Management, and create a RAID0 where all the drives are striped together as one. I forget what the limit is on the max # of GB in a partition, but its a decent size.

The better solution, but more expensive is to get an IDE RAID controller. They're not terribly expensive, and they're also a hell of a lot faster than Windows software RAID.
# November 29, 2003 10:41 PM

Jeff Key said:

Regarding the wife problem, if she sticks with "My Documents" as her file repository, you should be all set. Since My Documents is a logical folder, you can put it anywhere, including the new drive, and she'll never know. (Unless she's playing around in the command prompt, and if that's the case you've plenty of other things to worry about...)
# November 29, 2003 10:45 PM

Brian Grunkemeyer said:

That's a good workaround. However, you should consider using TextWriter.Null instead of writing your own class. We were thinking ahead in V1, providing it for this exact purpose. (Unfortunately it is a static field, not a property. We forgot to fix once properties were supported by our compilers. But you can of course still use it, probably with identical syntax.)

- Brian
CLR Base Class Libraries team
# November 30, 2003 4:55 AM

Jeff Key said:

Wouldn't you know it. I don't have my beloved MSDN docs installed locally for a couple days and look what happens. Glad to know it's there for next next. Thanks!
# November 30, 2003 5:03 AM

AsbjornM said:

Should we post bugs here?

System.IO.PathTooLongException: The path is too long after being fully qualified. Make sure path is less than 260 characters.
at System.IO.Path.nGetFullPathHelper(String path, Char[] invalidPathChars, Char[] whitespaceChars, Char directorySeparator, Char altDirectorySeparator, Char volumeSeparator, Boolean fullCheck, String& newPath)
at System.IO.Path.GetFullPathInternal(String path)
at System.Security.Util.StringExpressionSet.CanonicalizePath(String path, Boolean needFullPath)
at System.Security.Util.StringExpressionSet.AddExpressions(String[] str, Boolean checkForDuplicates, Boolean needFullPath)
at System.Security.Permissions.FileIOPermission.AddPathList(FileIOPermissionAccess access, String[] pathListOrig, Boolean checkForDuplicates, Boolean needFullPath, Boolean copyPathList)
at System.Security.Permissions.FileIOPermission..ctor(FileIOPermissionAccess access, String path)
at System.IO.FileSystemInfo.get_FullName()
at SingleDrive.MainForm.PopulateDirectory(TreeNode node) in D:\Documents and Settings\Jeff\My Documents\Visual Studio Projects\sliver\SingleDrive\_Project\MainForm.cs:line 519
at SingleDrive.MainForm.tv_AfterSelect(Object sender, TreeViewEventArgs e) in D:\Documents and Settings\Jeff\My Documents\Visual Studio Projects\sliver\SingleDrive\_Project\MainForm.cs:line 582
at System.Windows.Forms.TreeView.OnAfterSelect(TreeViewEventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.TreeView.TvnSelected(NMTREEVIEW* nmtv)
at System.Windows.Forms.TreeView.WmNotify(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.TreeView.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)
# November 30, 2003 8:17 AM

Wallym said:

Oracle has a similar problem.

Wally
# November 30, 2003 9:24 AM

Shahn Hogan said:

Jeff,
Yeah I try to keep our stuff in the MyDocuments, but sometimes I move our music around and that doesn't go over to well. :) Thanks for the download, I'll check it out today.
# November 30, 2003 11:02 AM

Tobias Luetke said:

But you do know that windows NT has this functionallity build in on filesystem level?

You can mount hard drives into the file system of your main harddrive in the Disk manager.
# November 30, 2003 11:13 AM

Jeff Key said:

Tobias: AFAIK you can't do that w/mapped drives, and that's what I really needed since more than half of my drives are on my server, not my workstation.
# November 30, 2003 1:08 PM

HumanCompiler said:

Very cool, Jeff! *thumbsup*

Isn't LongHorn doing something like this too eventually?
# November 30, 2003 1:11 PM

Jeff Key said:

Thanks, Eric. Regarding Longhorn: Kind of. WinFS is a layer of abstraction above your logical drives, but doesn't necessarily consist of each entire drive. Currently, only a couple "folders" in Longhorn are backed by WinFS (Documents, etc.). I've read that WinFS supports some pretty cool replication, but I'm not sure if you can transparently include metadata for files or objects that don't exist on your machine.

Disclaimer: I haven't been able to keep up my Longhorn reading lately so I may be completely wrong.
# November 30, 2003 1:40 PM

Dave Dustin said:

Very nice little application.

About the only thing I can think of that is also needed in it is the ability to move files/folders around inside the folders.
# November 30, 2003 3:32 PM

Thomas Williams said:

G'day Jeff, thanks for the utility mate! Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, would it be difficult to add:
- copy/paste
- icon/list views
- "real" right-click menu for each file
The potential for this utility reminds me of an old file manager XTreeGold...
# November 30, 2003 6:32 PM

John Frazier (Borland) said:

You should never install any Java application to a path that has spaces. Whenever one of these paths has to be resolved to the classpath, bad things happen and the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) has problems. Since OptimizeIt is mostly written in Java, it is subject to this same precaution.
# December 1, 2003 5:22 PM

Jeff Key said:

Thanks, John, I had no idea. You may want to enforce that requirement in the installer, as I chose a folder with spaces (assuming the installer was from another era) and it let me proceed.
# December 1, 2003 5:28 PM

Jeff Key said:

Thanks for the comments. Hopefully I'll get some free time over the next week or two to add those things and get the source out.
# December 1, 2003 5:38 PM

Mel Grubb said:

You know you can detach the tool windows, right? SImply Un-pin a tool window like the server explorer for example. Once it's unpinned, you can grab the title bar and drag it around the screen, or if you really want a lot of space, onto a second monitor.
# December 2, 2003 4:28 PM

Ryan Rinaldi said:

Here Here! This counts as my vote for sepereate instances. VS.NET is a wonderful IDE, but I don't need everything under the sun running in it.
# December 2, 2003 4:39 PM

Paschal said:

I vote too for separation and better I vote for separate machines (if youc can)
# December 2, 2003 4:41 PM

Mike Gunderloy said:

Of course, you get more from XMLSPY integration than just avoiding the Alt-Tab. If you're used to XMLSPY, it's nice to double-click an XML file in Solution Explorer and have it open with the editing environment you prefer, rather than the somewhat pathetic tools that VS .NET natively supplies.
# December 2, 2003 4:48 PM

Jeff Key said:

Mel: Yup, I always have the call stack, immediate and debug tool windows on another monitor. Unfortunately, you can't "undock" code/content windows, which most of these things (data windows, for example) use.

Mike: Can't you set VS.NET's "Open With" to open XML Spy instead? I prefer to have the code referencing the doc and the doc itself both visible at the same time, thus my argument. Horizontal tab groups are an option, but not one that I like.
# December 2, 2003 5:20 PM

Paul Wilson said:

I too like separate apps.
# December 2, 2003 9:37 PM

Marc LaFleur said:

It really depends on the product. XML spy makes some sense. Others on the other hand feel shoe-horned into the IDE.
# December 3, 2003 8:16 AM

Dan Bright said:

Actually my friend tells me that Pro won't run on Server 2003, and Diskeeper Server is in the $225-$300 range.
# December 3, 2003 7:32 PM

marko said:

Winternals has some good disk tools. You may also want to check out Sysinternals for free stuff.

http://www.winternals.com/
# December 4, 2003 1:10 AM

Matt Berther said:

My favorite now is Raxco's PerfectDisk...

http://www.perfectdisk.com/
# December 4, 2003 2:19 AM

John McGrath said:

I do not think the issue has anything to do with modernity ("What year is this?"), but rather with compatibility. Optimizeit must run other programs that do not deal well with spaces in file names, and it must pass them the names of files that are within its own directory tree. If it is installed into a directory that contains a space, those programs will not work properly.

Many of those programs were originally written on other operating systems such as *nix, where spaces are often used as delimeters so they do not work well in file names. Windows programs have similar (actually more) restrictions with other characters, such as ":", ";", and "\".
# December 4, 2003 3:13 AM

Lorenzo Barbieri said:

Go to PerfectDisk... it's a lot better!!!
# December 4, 2003 3:34 AM

Frans Bouma said:

Beware, removing signatures from assemblies is easy using ilasm / ildasm. Once the signature is removed, the 'protection' is gone. (also check out sn -Vr, which will make that your assembly's signature will not be checked, so you can tamper the code.

I learned this the hard way, as I used this protection to make all code in my product be used only by one tool and not by other software. However some people took 5 minutes and removed the signatures and with that the protection and then could use the code in any other tool.
# December 4, 2003 4:00 AM

Darrell said:

Yeah, and PerfectDisk costs just as much as diskkeeper (~$45 for workstation, ~$200+ for server). So take your pick, but you won't save any money.
# December 4, 2003 8:07 AM

Chris Frazier said:

Yeah! Way to stick it to the man, you rebel you!

(disclaimer: the writer of this comment means this in jest. Jeff, you're awesome:)
# December 5, 2003 2:21 AM

SBC said:

Does one have a performance improvement (or hit) over the other or are both the same? I think it'll be upto the compiler and what code it generates.. That'd be good to test...
# December 5, 2003 8:03 AM

Phil Weber said:

> "...a list of statement-expressions separated by commas"

Funny, I don't see any commas in your sample code. Who wrote that spec?! ;-)
# December 5, 2003 9:02 AM

Jeff Key said:

No spec. The sample above was done using the XP methodology. I (the customer) needed an example for this post, so I worked on a simple use case with me, pair programmed it with myself and wound up with that. It was beautiful!
# December 5, 2003 9:25 AM

Andrew said:

Eeek, it ain't the man who would get stuck, its the guy a the next desk :P

Im a real stickler for "visually parsed easily" and the {} around the contents of the loop are definitely optimized out.
# December 5, 2003 9:29 AM

Ken Hirsch said:

Either one is a bad idea because the value of i in shares[i] may or may not be incremented. It's undefined by the C standard what the order of evaluation is.
# December 5, 2003 1:28 PM

Scott Cate, kbAlertz.com said:

i use quickcode in VS and I love it. I can't imagine replacing it, even in whidbey. Even if it does the same thing, i love my ALT+Q.

I also LOVE that I can copy/paste others items from the forums on their website.
# December 5, 2003 4:41 PM

Dylan Greene said:

I blog about this too.. http://www.dylangreene.com/blog.asp?blogID=277
# December 6, 2003 3:19 AM

Scott Watermasysk said:

With a good aggreator and commentRSS you should be able to keep up with what's going on...but I agree it should be much much easier :)

On another note, .Text 0.95 will allow you to turn comments off on a post by post basis.

-Scott
# December 6, 2003 9:14 AM

Andrew said:

I've always seen blogs as an unthreaded forum / messageboard with a recent posts page.

This makes it very difficult to have a dicussion, we all just spout what we think.
# December 6, 2003 11:25 AM

Michael Flanakin said:

I can think of two solutions to this...

1. Turn comments off on a post.

2. Turn comments off on a post and add a comments redirection link - a link to the originating blog's comment section.

3. When posting comments (in blog A), allow people to post a URL to their blog post (in blog B) on the same topic. This could also be handled if the blogger (of B) adds a link to his/her post, which would be tracked back in the comments (of blog A). The only reason to do this is if blog B's post was before blog A's post.

I hope this made sense :-) I think all three would be good solutions. Very flexible.
# December 7, 2003 4:10 AM

Michael Earls said:

What about blogs that do not have a comment system?
I feel that the trackback is for this purpose. You should be able to click on the Trackback link of the original entry and track it all the way back to the most distant comment.

I'm not sure that your solution is the best (read only) because it prevents others from exapnding on the thought.

Perhaps we should look more closely at the root problem... we need to be able to read all comments about a specific entry. So, we establish GUID-based Permalinks and we establish that comments should use the trackback link provided by your server. Then, wehn someone uses your trackback link when they post their comments, your server could serve up a special page that contains all the entries that tracked back to yours. Your server can figure it out based on track backs.

But, of course, that requires that the comment creator uses the trackback. I'd venture to guess that you might find more people willing to do that than to not post a comment at all.

After all, they're introducing their little circle of friends/readers to your original post. I don't see any problem with tacking on some editorial. If the readers didn't like it, they wouldn't read it, they would have found out about your original link on their own.

When I link to technical entries, I sometimes add a little background or information before linking off to the original post.

I think we need a better way to track those activities, not do away with them completely.

Again, this is especially important for those weblogs out there that do not provide a commenting system.
# December 8, 2003 7:02 PM

Michael Earls said:

I broke your rule and blogged about you breaking your rule about blogging about another blogging entry.

http://www.cerkit.com/cerkitBlog/Trackback.aspx?guid=965f1f9a-af2e-42cb-9dc8-2cc0c32bef14
# December 8, 2003 7:10 PM

MercuryCrest said:

I've been having a funny little problem. Let me first ask which version of WMP you are using. I've just d/l the latest, and everytime I try to burn a CD in iTunes, WMP pops up and the whole operation freezes. It seems as though there is some sort of conflict between the two. Although the idea of Microsoft and Apple battling it out on my PC is amusing, I don't have the patience for it. Right now I am trying to find something other than iTunes which can read those files and burn a CD, hopefully without complication. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
-MC
# December 9, 2003 1:14 AM

JosephCooney said:

I seem to remember Alan Cooper or Tog or some other "usability expert" shooting down the idea of "expert mode". I can't find a URL but I seem to remember the argument going something like "expert mode" hides an arbitrary set of functionality away from users. Users are often ill equiped to judge if they are expert or not. They may be an expert in a particular domain (like an expert at Excel), so when they open up something unrelated (e.g. SQL Server) they may feel they should turn on "expert mode" and be over-whelmed with options they don't understand. In other words there IS no "Advanced User". Also having an "expert mode" can be bad because in order to change an "expert setting" they have to go to some other place utterly unrelated to what they want to do. They may not even know those settings exist, and thus miss out on features they could benefit from. I wish I could find a link.....
# December 9, 2003 9:18 PM

JosephCooney said:

I just saw this related entry in Raymond Chen's blog
http://blogs.gotdotnet.com/raymondc/permalink.aspx/cc8dd84f-7605-4145-bd4b-26413e507b02
# December 9, 2003 9:24 PM

JosephCooney said:

Doh! That Raymond Chen item is linked in the comments on Scoble's blog....sorry for all the spam.
# December 9, 2003 9:26 PM

SBC said:

one possible solution - http://radio.weblogs.com/0112769/2003/12/09.html#a307
# December 9, 2003 10:33 PM

Darrell said:

I forget who this happened to, but some programmers on slashdot or whatever got the *physical mailing address* for one of the worst spammers, and signed him up for every direct mail catalog in the US. The post office was backing up trucks to deliver junk mail to him every day. And when interviewed, he said that what the programmers did was "illegal." Poetic justice reigns supreme.
# December 9, 2003 11:47 PM

Jon Galloway said:

Scoble is insane (http://weblogs.asp.net/jkey/posts/42381.aspx) and Michael Robertson is a crackhead (http://weblogs.asp.net/jkey/posts/33053.aspx). I'm gonna try to stay off Jeff's "axis of evil" list.

I like this approach to fighting Spam: http://tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/10/12/SpamPlan27. I'm cheap as hell, and I'd still pay a penny an e-mail to stop getting 200 spams a day.
# December 10, 2003 1:27 AM

Jeff Key said:

SBC: Definitely an interesting angle.

Darrell: Are you sure that's not an urban legend? If not, that's darn funny. Too bad they didn't sign him up for tons of manure.

Jon: You can't argue with the facts! :) Scoble's a good guy, he's just an easy target.

Thanks for the link. The thing that worries me about money-based spam deterrents is that I hear it's relatively easy for these guys to get stolen credit card info. Then, not only are the victims (the spammed) getting additional charges, but you wind up with new victims -- those whose cards are illegally being used to pay for the spam.

As for using the existing infrastructure, I actually favor the digital signature method, as it's been in a good number of mail clients for a while (at least MSFT ones), as he mentioned. Add to that a SpamNet-like "vote away spam" button and you're set. SpamNet was pretty effective for me, but it used some unknown technology to fingerprint the emails, which is getting harder and harder to do. With digital signatures, you pay for the _identity_, which is constant. Once you vote a _sender's certificate_ as a spammer, it works like a primary key and there's no question as to whether or not the sender is a spammer. Of course you run the risk of blacklisting legitimate folks like catalogs and whatnot, and that problem exists today with SpamNet. If the process of obtaining a digital ID is hard enough, it may make it ineffective to try to get a new one every time their certificate is banned.

The best solution I've used in the real world so far is SpamArrest. I've been using it for a couple months now and it's stopped over 6,500 spam and not let a single one through. Yes, I need to check what it didn't let through once a day to make sure something legitimate hasn't been stopped. BUT, having to do that is a heck of a lot better than dealing with false positives and false negatives.
# December 10, 2003 8:03 AM

Eric Gunnerson said:

Hmm. I'm not sure that "touching" is really what I was trying for, but I appreciate the link.
# December 10, 2003 2:11 PM

Shahn Hogan said:

Thanks, I'm setting this up for my wife. I appreciate you spending extra time to add some of those feature requests.
# December 11, 2003 8:38 AM

Pete said:

I used to love tape drives. Time for a cup of tea while you wait for it to load.
# December 11, 2003 10:40 AM