Anders Hejlsberg gave Charles Torre a tour of the
Microsoft Museum, and how his work fits in with the history of the industry. If you've never been on campus, it's quite a sight.
Check it out over on
Channel9.
Lots of people have been complaining at how poor
the design of the Blog Configuration dialog for VisualBlogger 2004 is. For
the record, I hated it too, it was just in there because it was
quick-and-dirty. Well, I just finished the redesign, and posted
a screenshot over on my other blog. I'd love your feedback, tell me what you
think.
I've been using the WMP blogging plugin with the latest technical
beta, and I've uncovered a bug. The temporary registry key that used to be
deleted upon WMP's exit is now not getting deleted. Therefore, if you're using
the plugin and VisualBlogger
2004, it will add the information from the key, even if WMP10 is
closed.
[Now Playing: John Mayer - Room For Squares - Why Georgia (04:31)]
I have a great deal of respect for Sam Ruby and the work he is doing with Atom. But his C# Atom client is convoluted and a pain to work with. David Stewart, a Microsoft empoyee on the Windows Mobile Devices group, came up with a class library that works with Atom in an intelligent way, using web requests instead of Web Service proxies. Best of all, he has the source code and samples as well. If you're working with Atom at all, this is a must have.
Today Microsoft released the Windows
Media Player 10 Technical Beta. I got my first sneek peek at it during the
MVP Summit in April. Jim Allchin was really excited about it. Now I can finally
discuss why. After you install it (link at the bottom of the page) you'll be
asked to restart your computer. When you launch it after restarting, you'll be
greated with this:
First off, they got rid of those retarded buttons down the side. This was
Microsoft's stab at "task-based workflow". It sucked, and was always confusing.
Now, there are a few simple tabs at the top. The new interface is also a really
nice translucent blue, which is very easy on the eyes. The first thing I did was
click on the "Library" tab, because that's where I spend the most time. That
screenshot is below:
Notice the new three-paned layout. Microsoft REALLY likes three paned views.
Almost as much as they like three-letter acronyms. Isn't it ironic that the
acronym for "three-letter acronym" is itself a three-letter acronym? Anyways, in
the leftmost pane, you'll see a new option that says "My TV". That's right.
WMP10 will sync with MCE2005 and the Portable Media Centers to help manage
all your digital media recordings across every device. On the right pane, you
have syncing and burning capabilities right from the library. One click and
you're done.
Another cool thing I thought I should note (dunno if WMP9 had it or not) is
that when you right-click the title bar when it's NOT in normal window mode, and
you get a contect menu with the standard menu items. I thought that was pretty
nifty.
Finally, Microsoft did some work with usability, and noticed that WMP9 was
really crappy when it came to resizing the window. Well, WMP10 resizes smartly,
and as you can see, even resizes to a very compact mode. This isn't a skin, this
is me grabbing the corner resize handle and making it as small as possible. Oh
yeah, and this screenshot is actual size. The only problem is, you can't set it
to be "always on top" in this mode. Bummer. They need to make this a skin then
so that I can do that.
Well, that about does it for my quick tour. Check it
out, it's really cool.
Anyone know how to access the application designer in the May CTP bits? It
seems to have changed since the March bits, and I can't find it at all. I need
to finish a diagram for a client, and I wanted to use it instead of Visio. Any
ideas?