Randy Jones

Visual Studio 2008 Multi-Targeting feature

Randy Jones — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 01:58:00 GMT

I remember the switch to VS 2003 and then again to VS2005. With each move there was a wait to have the latest framework approved to go into the IT stack. When you get a taste of the latest improvements in the IDE, you want them now, not 6 months from now. I have been playing with the latest beta for a while now and I see the new features and once again, I want them now. There are a host of new improvements that have nothing to do with the 3.5 framework. The web designer and CSS support are far superior to what we have today. If you've heard of Web Expression, then you know that Microsoft has brought us a world class web designer. It's no surprise that much of that has made its way into VS 2008. We now have split view editing and a CSS style manager. Those of us who love IntelliSense will appreciate the fact that we now have that feature down to the CSS level. If you write JavaScript and miss the rich debugging experience we have with C# and VB.Net then you will love the debugging and IntelliSense improvements. To be able to type . and get full IntelliSense on our own JavaScript objects is a dream come true for many JavaScript developers. We also have AJAX support build right in to the IDE now.

With all of these features, we again could be in the same boat as with previous releases. That does not have to be the case anymore with the Multi-Targeting feature. Everything I mentioned so far has nothing to do with the latest framework but everything to do with IDE enhancements. We can now tell the IDE to target the 2.0 framework, just open an existing project and choose not to migrate it. You can always go back later on and change the target framework. The downside for those who are still on 1.1, this doesn’t go back any further then the 2.0 framework, at least for now.

Having experienced programming in Eclipse and Visual Studio I can tell you the productivity gap is expanding. Hats off to the Visual Studio team!

IE Developer Toolbar

Randy Jones — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 03:54:00 GMT

I realized again today how much I appreciate this tool. I am constantly showing other developers the power in this little gem and I find it a huge time saver debugging rendering issue in IE. (the download is linked below)

Before any of the Firefox zealots comment on FireBug or the Firefox developer toolbar, I know, I know, I know. You had it first, yours is better, blah, blah, blah. I find you almost as annoying as gnats, Mac zealots and Viagra spam; I just don't know which of you are worse yet! In other words, don't waste space with your comments because you see, we just don't care.

Back on topic... I blogged about this over a year ago and I am still using it today. Basically it walks the DOM and creates a tree view so that you can search elements of the DOM. You can also choose to find and element by clicking any area of the page that you are having trouble with. In the far right column you can right click on any style and click "Trace Style" and it will take you right to the line in the CSS file or tell you if it is an inline style.

CSS is one of the worst implementations for UI design ever created. Up until the tools in Firefox and IE, it could take hours to follow inherited styles and styles that bleed into each other. Now it is within a few clicks and you find the offending line of code. One other feature I find nice is that you can view the in memory representations of the DOM. For those of us that have been using DHTML and using InnerHTML to alter code on the client, it is great. I remember copying screens and pasting them in other WYSIWYG editors to see the actual html behind it. Since it was a change to the DOM in memory only, viewing the source was useless.

This is a list pulled from the Microsoft website showing some of the features available.

Explore and modify the document object model (DOM) of a Web page.

Locate and select specific elements on a Web page through a variety of techniques.

Selectively disable Internet Explorer settings.

View HTML object class names, ID's, and details such as link paths, tab index values, and access keys.

Outline tables, table cells, images, or selected tags.

Validate HTML, CSS, WAI, and RSS web feed links.

Display image dimensions, file sizes, path information, and alternate (ALT) text.

Immediately resize the browser window to a new resolution.

Selectively clear the browser cache and saved cookies. Choose from all objects or those associated with a given domain.

Display a fully featured design ruler to help accurately align and measure objects on your pages.

Find the style rules used to set specific style values on an element.

View the formatted and syntax colored source of HTML and CSS.

Here is a link, try it out and comment back with your thoughts. download

P.S. If your a Firefox zealot who was offended, please relax and I am sorry about your little issue. I am sure I can dig up one of those old spam messages to forward your way. ;)

if (RubyOnRails == GettingReal) { ReleaseTheFlyingPigs(); }

Randy Jones — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 04:16:00 GMT

I recently attended an architecture meeting covering "Web 2.0" topics. So I, not having lived under a rock, knew what Ruby on Rails was but I heard about the company "37 Signals". I also heard about their book "Getting Real". When I learned that they tout that 3 people and 30 days is all you need to build an application, I had to laugh.

I have looked around a little and there are more than a few that buy in to this. I see titles like "Why *you* need to learn Ruby on Rails" and I know the syntax is nice on the eyes. Folks, this is not like comparing minor league baseball to major league baseball. In my humble opinion, ROR is the little league (no offense to the little league). Go out and Google "Ruby on Rails + Twitter" and you will see the difference. ROR has a slight issue with scaling, oops.

I am not saying ROR has no place, there are millions of sites that don't need to scale. There is a niche market where adding these skills to your tool belt can help. I for one don't see the type of clients I work with ever giving serious consideration to a platform that can't scale though. I don't see the benefit of adding it to my tool belt for now. If I were just starting out, looking to build my first site, then I probably would give it a try.

Randy

First post, here it goes

Randy Jones — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 06:05:00 GMT

Wow, I feel honored being up here with the likes of Scott Guthrie with my own Blog on asp.net.

Thanks for the hookup Joe, I guess I better make the best of it now.

Most of my posts will be about development and architecture on the .Net platform. Most of my writing will appeal to the "non-semi-colon-challenged programmers" of the world but those of you in the other camp are welcome to chime in as well. ;) I'll try and remain as active and pertinent as possible.