Raible Designs

Round Squares with CSS

Want to create squares with rounded corners - and only use CSS? If so, you might want to checkout the CSS Rounded Box Generator. Source: CSS Beauty.

David Geary won't learn Tapestry, but he'll write a book about Rails

Sorry David, but I have to call you out on this one. Yesterday, you wrote a long post about how you won't use Tapestry b/c you have bills to pay.

Do I use Tapestry? Heck no. I have a mortgage to pay. Besides, I'm so comfortable with JSF that I don't know if it'd be worth the investment for me to switch to Tapestry. Also, JSF already enjoys more industry support and that gap will widen considerably over the next couple years as Tapestry maintains a small but rabid group of followers in a niche market, whereas JSF will dethrone Struts as the reigning king of Java-based WAFs. JSF will eventually have support for HTML views and custom components devoid of Java code, in addition to many other cool features such as built-in AJAX support and client-side validation.

Today we find that you're writing a book on Rails. So rather than spending the time to learn Tapestry b/c it doesn't pay the bills - you're going to learn Rails? What makes you think it will pay the bills better than Tapestry? Is Shale still the next big thing for you - or do you just like writing books?

Color Scheme Generator and Fade Anything Technique

I don't know where I learned about these, but they're pretty good.

• Color Schemes Generator - a nice tool for developing sites and matching colors. I've also used Color Schemer in the past. The nice thing about Color Schemer is it has a desktop client version available.
• Fade Anything Technique - a cool technique for showing recent changes in a web page.

Tapestry is the best Java framework available today

David Geary:

So what's the best Java-based framework available today? It's a very close call, IMO, but I'd have to give the nod to Tapestry at the moment. I really like Tapestry's pure separation of HTML and components and the ability to create custom components without any Java code. That gives it an edge on JSF, which, like Tapestry is one of what I refer to as 3rd generation WAFs, that support components and a server-side event model.

He goes on to say that he'll likely continue to use JSF (with Shale) because it pays the bills and will dethrone Struts as the most popular - which will obviously lead to more gigs. I especially like this part of his post:

After I get client-side validation and file uploads added to Shale I want to turn my attention to Tiles integration, AJAX support and exploring Tapestry-like views that strictly separate HTML and component definitions. For me, those are the most exciting areas of Shale.

I agree that JSF definitely needs Tapestry-like HTML Templates. Shale definitely sounds cool, but I find it funny that it takes yet another framework to make JSF usable. Hopefully Shale will prove a lot of ideas worthwhile and end up as features in JSF 2.0.

[Microsoft] Pictures from the Trip

Click on any of the images below to see a bunch of pictures I took at the Microsoft Junket this week.

It's good to be home. Abbie, Jack and I had a good time watching DU beat CC tonight. Go DU!

Free wi-fi at PDX

Looks like Portland Airport has some pretty good free wireless.

Free wireless internet access available on the main level of PDX

Time to order a beer from the Portland Brewery!

XMLHttpRequest & Ajax Working Examples

From the AppFuse mailing list, I learned about XMLHttpRequest & Ajax Working Examples, a site that has "code snippets and proof of concepts". Subscribed.

[Microsoft] Day 2 Morning

Looks like I'm going to miss the good stuff today. There's a Company Store visit this afternoon at 5:00 - and they're giving us $120 in credit. Damn, apparently the games are pretty cheap there. They've also arranged for a Longhorn Demo during the company store visit. I did manage to get internet access with my phone and Ben's charger - so I should be able to do some real-time updating this morning.

I think one of the coolest things about this conversation is we're learning about how software is developed on a huge scale. These guys develop more software than anyone else and they do it on a very large scale. Can you imagine developing software for 90% of the computer users out there?! That would be nuts.

Oh boy - now we have an audience member ragging on the guy for Windows. He thinks it should be open source because OSes are going to be commodities soon. Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with having a closed-source Windows. But I also don't see a problem with closed-source Java. What's wrong with companies making money? The main reason I'm in this industry is to make money - so what's wrong with the corporations doing the same thing?

.NET CLR Architecture

Started work on the Component Object Runtime (COR) back in '97. It was a small incubation project in the MTS group round metadata and compiler integration. Several API's still use the "Cor" prefix and engine DLLs are named MSCOR???.DLL. Apparently, this was all announced at the '98 PDC in Denver. Lots of code/marketecture names to follow: COM3, COM+ Runtime, NGWS Runtime, Universal Runtime (URT) and finally the Common Language Runtime. The big unveiling of CLR was at PDC 2000 in Orlando.

CLR Design Goals: Simplify development and deployment for classic Win32 programmers. Unify programming models, provide managed environment and support multiple languages.

The CRL is Language Neutral and has a commons set of features (i.e. Generics) guaranteed to be in all languages. Supports strongly typed languages, dynamic languages and functional languages. Because compilers are always targeting MSIL and the metadata, you get for free: shared object layouts and cross-language inheritance, exception handling, reflection, remoting and integrated tools for debugging and profiling. MS is very excited about having Jim Hugunin and IronPython on board and they expect to add even more killer features for dynamic language authors in the future. I wouldn't be suprised to see an IronRuby implementation in the next year or two.

CRL Version 2.0: More class libraries: collection classes, serial port, etc. Generics, 64-bit support (IA64, x64). RAD support: Edit and Continue, Just My Code, single-click deployments. SQL Server: fiber mode, integrated security, loading. Avalon, Indigo and Windows Longhorn.

Is this a boring session? Yes, but I'm sitting in the front row today, so it's a bit easier to pay attention and take notes. I'm doing AppFuse development for the most part and taking notes while AppGen tests are running in the background.

The CLR will be hostable in numerous environments: ASP.NET, VSTO for Office, DB/2 Stinger, Oracle 11g and SQL Server 2005. Oracle and DB2 are out-of-process with v1.1, SQL Server will be in-process with v2.0.

ASP.NET 2.0 by Scott Gu

• ASP.NET 2.0 Application Services APIs: Membership, Role Manager, Personalization, Site Navigation (XML and CMS-based), Database Caching, Health Monitoring. These are all based on a new "Provider Model Design Pattern" that seems to be a set of interfaces that you can easily switch or implement yourself. Out of the box providers: Windows, SQL Server, Access (ha!).
• ASP.NET 2.0 "Page Framework" Features: Master Pages (like Tiles, moreso than SiteMesh), Themes/Skins, Localization, Client-Scripting (using XMLHttpRequest). Holy shit - the guy said that they're testing their controls, particularly the scripting ones on IE, Safari and Firefox! That's pretty surprising to me.

VS 2005 has a new feature - where you don't need to have a web server installed, it'll work off the file-system. A new project doesn't have any files in its directory - which is definitely an improvement. VS definitely looks pretty slick - you can switch the "compliance-mode" of your page from IE6 to XHTML Transitional. When you switch modes, it changes the code completion attributes - so you'll get much more options for IE6 than you will for XHTML. It also has full code-completion for JavaScript - and the options are based on your mode of operation. Accessibility checking is also included - you'll actually get underlines for elements that don't have all the required attributes. Java needs an IDE like this soooo bad it's not even funny. Can you imagine having full page/HTML validation and code-completion based on doctype?!

Scott did a master/detail screen with VS and made it look damn easy. Most of the audience oohed and aawed. It's cool and all, but the code in the .aspx pages is a lot like JSF - there's hardly any HTML in the pages! It does seem to have much better support for skins and themes - you can easily change the look and feel right in the IDE and there's a whole bunch of built-in themes. The one thing I really like is the page-backing classes have a pre-init() method that can use to initialize properties. JSF really needs something like this. It's a shame that frameworks like Shale have to provide this and it's not a part of the core JSF framework.

ASP 2.0 Beta 2 will ship in the next month. Heh, Scott just gave a demo adding security and authentication in about 20 seconds - complete with Remember Me. There's actually a "Login" control that doesn't everything for you, including validation. The membership system (database) will actually get generated on-the-fly. He follows it up by creating a signup page that creates new accounts in under a minute. I can't really bash on this, writing authentication for Java webapps is definitely harder than it needs to be. Of course, if you use AppFuse, you don't have to write it at all.

Time to run and catch up with my sister - have a good weekend y'all!

[Microsoft] Day 1 Evening

This evening, as we were riding the bus towntown in the rain and massive traffic, I realized what's missing from this conference. I'd be a lot more interested in the technology if they were showing demos and/or code. We didn't see a single demo or code sample all day. I'm a sucker when it comes to eye candy (I own a Mac don't I?), so I'd probably be pretty enthusiastic over a new Windows UI. I told a Microsoftee at dinner, and he's going to try to hook some stuff up for tomorrow. They also claim that they'll have internet access in the room tomorrow.

The evening was spent at Teatro ZinZanni, which is a dinner-theater/circus/comedy-act. It was highly entertaining and I was truly impressed by the Rubber Band Woman and the best Juggler I've ever seen. We arrived home on the bus at 11:00 tonight. Back on the bus at 6:45 tomorrow morning. I'll be there for the .NET CLR Architecture and ASP.NET 2.0 talks, then it's off to celebrating my sister's birthday in Portland. Happy St. Patties Day folks! Happy Birthday Kalin and Holly!

[Microsoft] Day 1 Afternoon

At lunch, I got to meet Scoble, which was pretty cool. He was wearing a blue Firefox shirt for those that are interested. During lunch, he and his co-worker talked about Channel 9 and what they're doing with it. Channel 9 is named "Channel 9" because this is the channel that United (the airline) uses to allow passengers to listen in on the pilot's conversations. It's supposed to be an avenue for folks to listen in on what's going on at Microsoft.

Now we're sitting in a talk titled Developer Community Outreach Efforts. The speaker is named Sanjay. He's the VP of Worldwide Developer Evangelists, of which there are around 1000. Sanjay believes that MSDN is way too large. It does have a lots of interop and migration content for those that are interested.

Sanjay's trying to get ideas from us on what they can do better. The general feeling from the room seems to be "why should we help you", "what's in it for us" and "why do you care now, but not before". It's a tough room for sure. I don't seem much point in this whole talk. A lot of folks are telling this guy what he (and Microsoft) can do to become better to be better citizens to the programmer community at large. A lot of the conversation is centered on accepting open-source and providing a clearer message about the platform (should be inclusive, not exclusive).

SQL 2005 and the Developer

Now we have a guy (missed his name) that's talking about how SQL Server 2005 will allow you to expose web services directly from your database, without IIS involved. Apparently, it exposes queries and stored procedures as web services using a native Windows DLL.

Ben asked about benchmarks for SQL 2005, specifically against MySQL and PostgreSQL. The MS guy says that these vendors will need to do the "standard" TCP benchmarks, and do the comparisons there. We all know that SQL Server would get their asses kicked, and that's why they don't do any direct comparisons. While we're on the subject of SQL Server, why are most SQL Server databases so screwed up? In my experience, SQL Server DBAs tend to be over-optimization freaks that are stored-procedure happy and don't know much about making a database application-friendly. Maybe it's because all you need is a SQL Server DBA Certification to get the job - and your knowledge is based on a book, not experience.

Next topic: Access. Access is not going away. "SQL Express" is supposedly the target replacement for Access. It's throttled to prevent users from using it for a full-blown database. "You can never write a bad query for SQL Server." This is a direct quote, and the guy's reasoning is because the optimizer will change the query to be performant. Sounds like a bunch of hoo-ey to me.

Today, you can write extended stored procedures in C++ with SQL Server. This code is not sandboxed, and can pretty much to whatever it wants. In SQL 2005, you can do this with C# and use VS.NET to write the code and debug it. Apparently, they have a whitepaper on SQL CLR vs. ADO.NET and when to use one over the other.

Product Development Process with Iain McDonald (Director, Windows Server)

Iain is from Australia, which naturally makes him fun to listen to, just because of his accent. The purpose of this talk is to explain how they do things. Cross-org at Microsoft means that that development is spread across 7 businesses, each organized under own leadership with individuals p&ls.

• Business Solutions
• Home & Entertainment
• Information Worker
• Mobile & Embedded Devices
• MSN
• Server & Tools
• Windows Client

Each group has a lifecycle model that they try to follow. Microsoft has thee different stages: Product Definition, Product Development and then Product Servicing. I'm willing to bet their product development cycle follows the waterfall approach (confirmed: "How agile are we? We suck."). Actually, this brings up something I heard last night from one of the Microsoft Evengelists. Apparently, each developer has two QA folks that write tests (read: code) against their code.

Suite of Project Tools

• Feature Inventory Tool: an inventory of features and their dependencies, tracks when the features will merge into the main branch.
• Checkpoint Express: tracks all compliance throughout the project, requires sign-off prior to product being shipped.
• Basics: list of fundamentals that product is expected/required to meet, examples include performance and manageability.
• Change Management: uses an infopath form with links to the feature inventory tool and bug tracking database (product studio).

Iain admits that security in 2000 was an afterthought and the security guys were seen as some mangy dogs over in the corner. Bad RAM causes 20% of Windows crashes - who knew?! Bad RAM on OS X has certainly affected me in the past. I couldn't upgrade to Panther b/c I had 3rd party RAM in my PowerBook.

Microsoft is in a competitive battle against other companies, not the free world. No corporation in their right mind is going to download and install a free version of Linux - most are going to buy a distribution from companies like Red Hat or Novell. Iain claims that there's no way you can install Linux (at a corporation) for less money than Windows Server. It sounds to me like MSFT is willing to give you some discounts on Windows Server if you're thinking of buying Linux.

Break time. I'm definitely bored, but happy to have some time to work on AppFuse. Some guy asked me in the hall why I haven't asked more questions. I told him because I don't develop for Windows. For the most part, none of this stuff matters to me.

Windows Architecture

Now we're listening to two guys talk about Windows and how it's developed. Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server are two separate code bases. It's a nightmare to maintain b/c they have to patch one code base and the other one as well. Longhorn is componentized, so it should be easier to build client, embedded and server products. Someone asked about legal vs. technical reasons behind the componentization. Apparently, it's all for technical reasons, and they have to separate Windows Media Player for the EU, but that's about it. 40% of blue screens are from device drivers, and Longhorn has done a lot to handle this and reduce crashes.

This talk centered on XAML, WinFX and Longhorn - what they are, what they do and when they're scheduled for release. <Yawn/> While it has been a boring day (for me) technically, I do have to admit that the speakers have been great. They're dynamic and enthusiastic, which is more important IMO than good technical content. They also seem to be very open (as a whole) to ideas and criticisms. I think I'm just a bad audience member.

OK - here's something that's interesting. We're talking about IE 7 and its features. The top priorities are to stop spyware, fishing and any other security issues. #2 is tabs and #3 is CSS compliance. These priorities are based on user feedback and sound like good choices to me.