Sorry, Micro$oft, you let me down again. I installed Internet Exploder 9 shortly after it was made available, because it's supposed to be the most modern browser there is, supposed to be faster than Chrome and Firefox, and supposed to be up to speed on all of the latest standards.
I knew from the start that it wouldn't be, but I expected it to be better than what I'm seeing. Still, I gave it the chance, and it proved that it's still just a little behind.
My experience is on my home PC, which is a desktop Dell PowerEdge SC440 with a Pentium D 2.8GHz, 4GB RAM (although Windows only sees 3GB), with a NVIDIA GeForce 6200A 256MB PCI video card. It's not the most powerful or modern machine, but it does pretty well. I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate x86.
Installation was kind of interesting. It didn't require a full reboot, which was surprising, but did require that I specifically close nearly all of my open programs, including Windows Explorer, in order to install. Why it needed access to the files used by TweetDeck, Trillian, KeePass, Thunderbird, or Toad, I don't know, but turning off my anti-virus and especially not turning it back on when completed seems a little sketchy to me.
Immediately the first thing I noticed was that it's just not quite as "peppy" as Chrome or Firefox. Scrolling up and down a page using my mouse wheel is how I spend a significant amount of time on the web. In Chrome or Firefox, it's very smooth and consistent. In IE9, it's just a little jumpy. We're talking milliseconds here, but it's enough for me to notice.
Watching Flash videos on YouTube is clearly worse in IE9. Simply moving my mouse around the page, hovering over links, or hovering over the video causes the video to be choppy, even stop completely. This doesn't happen in Firefox - the videos are smooth and consistent.
Javascript is definitely improved from previous versions, but it is not faster than Chrome in the apps I tried. A good test is dragging and dropping on the Netflix queue page. IE8 and previous were basically unusable on this page, because it just took so long for the browser to understand what you were doing, while Chrome worked reasonably well. IE9 handles this page about as well as Chrome does. However, there are scenarios that just aren't up to speed yet. Using jQueryUI for custom animations works perfectly in Chrome, but on my machine, it's still a little choppy and not a smooth animation - it's performing about the same as Firefox 3.6. The example I'm using is my own homepage, jtenos.com, where I have links that pop up a jQueryUI dialog box.
There's still no "Paste and Go" option when pasting text into the URL bar. Chrome and Opera have this feature (Firefox, still waiting...). When I right-click in the URL bar when I have text in my clipboard, 99.99% of the time I'm going to want to navigate to what I'm about to paste in, so that should be a no brainer.
One of the major HTML5 testing sites, html5test.com, gives IE9 a worse score (130) than Firefox 3.6 (155) and significantly worse than Chrome 10 (288). One of the big IE9 selling points was that it was HTML5-ready, but that was apparently all fluff. There are all kinds of conspiracy theories on why some tests crowned IE king, while others show it failing miserably. Unfortunately, as a developer, I'm not using the new fancy HTML5 stuff myself yet, so I can't really make an unbiased judgment on this. I guess we'll find out soon how the various browsers handle the new and upcoming standards.
Oh, and one more thing - it's not available for Windows XP, so the millions of us who are still using XP (we're still on XP at work) will not benefit from IE9. I guess that makes Firefox 4 that much more appealing.
It's not all bad. Here's what I liked:
The color-coded tabs seemed a little silly at first, but I think it's a decent idea, that at worst, doesn't hurt anything. It gives related windows the same color, so if you have two original tabs, and click various links from each of the originals, you'll have two sets of colored tabs and can see which one came from where. I don't think anyone asked for this feature, and it was completely unnecessary, but it's not bad.
Middle-clicking the last open tab closes the browser completely. I've liked this feature about Chrome, and I'm glad IE has implemented it.
Overall application speed is significantly better than before - it opens and closes as fast as Chrome now, and when you consider how integrated IE has been in the operating system for the past 10 years or so, you really start to wonder what took so long.
Hardware acceleration is noticeable. IE9 does outperform Chrome and Firefox in some graphics-intensive tests. Whether those tests are legitimate or optimized for IE is debatable, but in any case, it proves that Microsoft does care about performance.
IE9 is nowhere near good enough to pull me away from Firefox and Chrome, but it's definitely a major step in the right direction. Personally, I'd rather see Microsoft abandon what it's not good at (browsers, source control, etc.) and let the industry specialists take over, leaving Microsoft to do what it does best (operating system, development tools, etc.). But that's never going to happen, so instead, I'll settle for them following accepted standards and providing a web experience that's satisfactory for casual surfers, serious web users, designers, and developers. If IE9 is a step in that direction, then I'll take it.
"it's not available for Windows XP, so the millions of us who are still using XP (we're still on XP at work)" .. oh dear! You poor bastard, still using XP! o.O I remember when in 1999 people were insane to still be using Windows 95 ..
Date: 2011-03-23 07:04:01
Name:
Joe Enos
It really doesn't bother me. XP is a good operating system, and aside from a few minor things (like the Start Menu searching or Ctrl-Shift-N), it does everything I need of it.
Date: 2011-03-23 10:23:00
Name:
Jason H (via Facebook)
Are you surprised? I'm not.
Date: 2011-03-23 12:40:06
Name:
Joe Enos
I was expecting it to be better - I didn't think it would be great, but I figured it would be better than it was.
Date: 2011-03-23 21:36:00
Name:
Jason H (via Facebook)
I'vee grown to lower my expectations with Microsoft so if it turns out well you can be pleasantly surprised. For example Vista, what I expected. Windows 7, pleasantly surprised.
Seriously, Microsoft? The newest version of the Windows mobile operating system, Windows Phone 7 Series, according to Microsoft sources, will not have clipboard functionality, meaning you will not be able to copy and paste text between applications. So if you need to copy some text from a web page to an email message, or copy an address into an existing contact, or copy a URL into your task list, or any of a hundred other copy/paste uses, you're out of luck, because Microsoft knows what's best for you. Their text-recognition logic is supposed to be an alternative to the clipboard, allowing you to perform standard tasks on phone numbers and email addresses, which they feel is what 80% of users actually think they need copy/paste for. While this may be useful, it's certainly no replacement.
Here's the conversation that must have taken place:
M$ Exec: So, a bunch of people have iPhones. Let's build something like that. Engineer: What features do you want? M$ Exec: I read somewhere that the first series of iPhone didn't have a clipboard. I know we had a clipboard in all previous Windows Mobile versions, but if we want to be successful like Apple, then we need to take the clipboard out. Engineer: Did you also see that lots of people complained, and eventually they put a clipboard in? M$ Exec: No, I can't be bothered to read entire articles. Besides, I already said to leave it out, and I can't change my mind now. That's called leadership. Engineer: (mumbling) What a unbelievable tool. M$ Exec: What was that? Engineer: I said that was an unbelievably cool idea. I guess that's why you get paid the big bucks. M$ Exec: That's right. I could squash you like a bug. Now go fetch me some coffee. Engineer: (mumbling) Cretinous ogre. M$ Exec: What? Engineer: Cream and sugar?
Microsoft has recently gone to great lengths to build quality products, most notably Windows 7. Even Internet Exploder has improved in versions 7 and 8, to the point where IE9 might only kind of suck. Office 2010, .NET 4.0/Visual Studio 2010, Bing, XBox, and a series of other Microsoft products have all improved, adding features that people want and need, with a focus on integrating technologies together to make life more convenient. Taking a core feature like the clipboard out of an entire operating system and office suite just doesn't make any sense. It's a decision that's going to further alienate Microsoft-haters, and piss off people that don't realize there's no copy/paste until they need it.
I've got a new page on my website, Free Software, listing my favorite free applications for software development, data security, and other utilities. Some are open source, some are freeware, and some are free software, but no shareware or trialware.
For the last few months, I've been using ReSharper 4.5 for Visual Studio 2008. Prior to that, I was using version 3 for Visual Studio 2005. Version 4.5 introduces some new features, and improved performance over 3.0. Below are my reactions to the new version, and ReSharper in general - many of these were probably new in 4.0, but since I just from 3.0 to 4.5 directly, I'm not going to try to figure out what was in 4.0 and what's only in 4.5:
ReSharper ReSharper is a plug-in to Visual Studio that provides code analysis, cleanup, refactoring, templates, and IDE helpers in order to provide a better overall coding experience. It's an excellent addition to Visual Studio, and one that I have found to be extremely useful in day-to-day development. Alternatives such as CodeRush exist, but I haven't had any experience with them, so I can't really comment on how well ReSharper compares to them.
New in 4.5 I believe ReSharper 3.0 was limited to C# 2.0, so the new language features in C# 3.0 and 3.5 are all new in ReSharper 4. C# 3.0 and 3.5 introduced quite a few new coding techniques, designed to improve developer productivity and make code cleaner and more powerful, all while still using the 2.0 CLR. ReSharper helps you to take advantage of many of these new features. This is very nice when you have a 2.0 application and upgrade to 3.5. There are a lot of new features, but some of the ones I find most useful are:
Lambda expressions: ReSharper can replace old style anonymous methods with lambda expressions, so code like: myList.Find(delegate(Foo foo) { return (foo.Id < 10); }) can be replaced by: myList.Find(foo => foo < 10) ReSharper suggests this change for you, and automatically refactors it if you accept the suggestion. Of course, like all suggestions/warnings, you can disable this if you like the old-fashioned style.
Auto-Properties Auto-Properties are one of the best things to come out of C# 3.0. They allow standard properties to be be defined without defining the underlying fields that hold the data. This makes coding easier, debugging faster, and makes it just nicer to look at. ReSharper can automatically detect old-fashioned properties and fields that can be converted to auto-properties, and make the change for you, turning: private int _id; public int Id { get { return _id; } set { _id = value; } } into: public int Id { get; set; } It also can find scenarios where you can convert, but it would change the meaning. It will do this for you if you ask, but it won't recommend it, so you don't accidentally change the meaning of your code. Scenarios like: private readonly int _id; public int Id { get { return _id; } } can be modified to an auto-property with a private setter, but it would slightly change the meaning.
Object Initializers C# introduced a feature called object initializers (also collection initializers), that allows you to initialize an object and set public property values, all in the same statement, borrowing some of the concepts from VB's With statement. This helps in two ways, first by keeping such initializations clear to avoid confusion in reading and writing, and second by allowing you to use a new one-time-use object as a parameter without declaring it as a separate variable and set the values one at a time. ReSharper can recognize when you have a new variable immediately followed by assignments to public properties, and replace the code with an object initializer (same for collections, but I don't see that as often in code): Foo foo = new Foo(); foo.Id = 1; foo.Name = "John Doe"; can be automatically converted to: Foo foo = new Foo { Id = 1, Name = "John Doe" };
Naming Conventions Other than the new language features, ReSharper also now can analyze your variable naming convention, and warn you when you've named variables inconsistently. For example, my convention is to name fields with a leading underscore and lowerCamelCase; properties, methods, events, types, and enum values as UpperCamelCase; local variables and parameters as lowerCamelCase; and constants and static readonly fields as UPPER_CASE. ReSharper lets you choose for each of these, defining a prefix, suffix, and casing style; it also allows for multiple possible naming types. So you can have methods as UpperCamelCase, but also define event handlers for GUIs as UpperCamelCase_Click or btnUpperCamelCase_Click, or however your event handlers look based on your conventions.
Solution-wide Analysis ReSharper now can watch your entire solution looking for code errors in real time. So if you modify a class in one assembly that affects another assembly, ReSharper will tell you immediately, instead of having to wait until the next time you build your solution to find out that you screwed something up.
Performance This is one area that ReSharper 4.5 is supposed to be a significant improvement over previous versions. Version 3.0 slowed down my system quite a bit, causing it to lock up for as much as 30 seconds fairly often, and ate up a ton of memory. My primary development machine wasn't really all that powerful, so I blame my hardware as much as ReSharper itself. With 4.5, I've noticed some improvement, but I think my hardware is still holding me back considerably. Sometimes it takes 15-20 seconds just to open an .aspx file, which can be frustrating. But once everything's loaded and in memory, performance is generally fine. Memory consumption is still quite high, especially with the solution-wide analysis running - my 25-project solution fully loaded can take 700-800MB of RAM, even with no pages currently open. While this may not be much in a powerful 64-bit machine with a lot of memory and new processor, the 4-year-old machine I'm using with just 2GB RAM doesn't like this too much. I'd expect ReSharper to perform well in a newer machine.
Conclusion There are also a ton of small features that ReSharper provides, such as showing you your unused variables, using statements, and classes, providing code templates, reformatting your whitespace, and rearranging things like 'if' statements into ? or ?? statements, that just make ReSharper nice to have. There are some features such as integration with NUnit that can make writing test fixtures easier and faster. Many of the abilities of ReSharper are available elsewhere - Visual Studio 2008 added several things from 2005, and from what I've read, VS 2010 will provide a big jump as well (I haven't tried the beta yet, so I can't speak for them personally). FxCop provides many of the same code-analysis features, but it's an external program that doesn't work directly with the code the way ReSharper does.
For such a reasonable price, my opinion is that any development shop should give their developers a ReSharper license. It will keep them happy because they can code more productively and write better code, and will keep the development lead happy by making it easier to follow coding standards and conventions. And keeping developers and their supervisors happy is by far the most important thing for a company to do (from my point of view at least).
Now that Windows 7 is out there, you may be asking yourself whether it's a good idea to go out and buy it. Microsoft's been advertising it like crazy, and every tech blog and publication is telling you how great it is. Very few people have anything bad to say about it. Even Apple's only argument so far is "Vista sucked, so Windows 7 must suck too". With Windows 7 costing $119 for just the home upgrade from Vista, or $319 for the good full version, it's important to know whether it's worth it to buy it directly, or just buy a machine that comes pre-loaded. Fortunately, I attended the kickoff event here in Phoenix, and received my version for free, so I don't have to make this decision.
Let's look at this from various points of view - you probably fall into one of these categories:
Computer illiterate You know nothing about computers, except how to turn them on, fire up "The Internet" (a web browser, probably IE), send/receive emails, fiddle with a Word Processor, and play solitaire (or Minesweeper if you're slightly more advanced). If this describes you, you most likely should never buy or install an operating system at all. You probably buy a computer that has an OS on it out of the box, and you'll use that OS until the computer breaks down or becomes obsolete and is replaced by another. Whatever OS comes with the computer is just fine for you - if it's Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7, or if it's any Mac OS, it doesn't really matter. You can do everything you need to do.
You should not buy Windows 7.
Competent, but not a techie You know what you're doing - you know the difference between "The Internet" and a web browser. You know that "the big blue e" is not "The Internet", and maybe even have installed an alternative browser to use. You defrag your hard disk, and use a virus scanner that you set up yourself. You actually understand that Macs cost a lot more than PCs, and don't really do anything different, so aren't worth the extra money. You could install your own OS, but you're content just using the out-of-the-box OS. You're probably better off just using what you have - after all, your machine does everything you need of it.
You should not buy Windows 7.
Rich, but clueless You have more money than most small countries. You're filthy stinking rich, and you'll buy any damn thing you see on TV or in an electronics store, just so you've got the latest and greatest. You bought a video phone when they first came out, and are the only person you know who owns one. You paid $2000 for a Blu-Ray player when they were brand new, instead of waiting a few months and paying 1/10th of that. You have a color monitor in your refrigerator that tells you what's inside without having to open the door. You have a T1 line in your house. You own laptops, netbooks, smart phones, home servers, media centers, and standard desktops, all of them top of the line, and the most you do on any of them is play internet checkers. But by golly, it's really fast. You have no need to ever install an OS, and you buy machines so often that you'll have an out-of-the-box Windows 7 before you even realize it.
You should not buy Windows 7, but you probably will anyway.
Serious gamer You play computer games 18 hours a day. You're an expert at World of Warcraft, and spend your days boosting up your magic levels or super powers or whatever you guys do. Your diet consists mostly of Hot Pockets and Red Bull. You're afraid of natural light, so you have blackout curtains on your windows. Your water bill is very low, since you don't waste water on unnecessary things like showers. Windows 7 will probably work fine with your games, but that would mean you'd have to take an hour or two away from playing your games to install it. Plus, it means you'd have to dip into your Mountain Dew budget in order to buy it.
You should not buy Windows 7.
Large non-tech business You are responsible for maintaining the computers for a large non-technical company. Your core business is not software engineering or anything else that requires top of the line software. Your employees come to the office every day, do their job, and then go home. You have no need for super-special security measures, high level encryption, or seamless remote access. You're probably better off leaving things as-is for now, then adding new machines with a Windows 7 image as you regularly cycle out your employees' machines.
You should eventually buy Windows 7, but not all at once.
Large technical business You are responsible for maintaining the computers for a large technical company, or one that has significant technical needs. You want to take advantage of some of the new features, like more advanced software installation and deployment policies, advanced virtualization, on-the-go encryption, and built-in remote access. You may develop software that will be distributed to end users or other businesses, and you need to ensure that you have significant testing capabilities on all operating systems.
You should absolutely buy Windows 7. Learn everything about it, and deploy it as soon as possible.
Software developer You work for a software development team, building web or desktop applications that solve business needs. You're not cutting edge, but rather working with stable technologies that you've known well for years. If you want to stay marketable by keeping up with the latest trends, you should probably have some experience with development techniques on Windows 7, but you probably won't actually accomplish anything useful.
You should probably buy Windows 7, but only if you don't already have it at work, and don't have an MSDN subscription, and only if your job is secure enough that you feel comfortable spending a couple hundred dollars on something you really don't need.
Techie You build your own PCs at home, buying parts one at a time from Fry's Electronics, or online at sites like Tiger Direct or Newegg. You set up your own secure home network, run automated backups and maintenance jobs, and are the resident tech support for your family and friends. Since you never buy machines out of the box (except maybe laptops), you do all of your own operating system installation and setup.
You should buy Windows 7, as part of the next machine you build.
FSF member You are a member of the Free Software Foundation. Richard Stallman is your personal hero. You sing along with the Free Software Song (below, or here). You run some flavor of GNU/Linux (making sure that you say "GNU" whenever you say Linux). You hate Microsoft and all it stands for. You despise the free enterprise market (which is ironic, because your entire foundation is built on "freedom".
Let me think...You probably won't be buying Windows 7.
Hacker You're an expert on all things technological. You might be a hacker in the traditional sense, doing illegal things, breaking into where you don't belong, pirating software, attacking networks, etc. In that case, you probably use Backtrack, Openwall, or another specialty Linux distribution. If you're the "good" type of hacker, where you just enjoy learning everything about hardware and software, then you probably use another more mainstream Linux distribution, like Fedora, openSUSE, or Debian, as your primary OS. In either case, as a technology prima donna, you must also be an expert in hacking Windows (either in a good way, or a highly illegal and destructive way).
You should buy Windows 7 (or steal the source code, compile it yourself, and break the activation code - not that I condone that kind of behavior).
Conclusion Windows 7 is expensive. 200-300 damn dollars for an operating system that probably doesn't do anything you need and can't already do. GNU/Linux or similar free operating systems (like FreeBSD or OpenSolaris) are out there. You probably already have Windows XP or Vista. More than likely, you have absolutely no need to pay that kind of money for Windows 7.
With that said, Windows 7 is clearly the best operating system Microsoft has come up with, and I absolutely believe that most people should have it - but unless you have a specific need for the new features, then my opinion is that it would be a waste of money to spend that much right now simply on an operating system. Just wait until your machine takes its last breath and gets replaced, or until you can find a smokin' deal, or until you suddenly have more money than brains.
With the release of Windows 7 to the public, you knew Apple was going to have some fun with it. There's a new "Mac vs. PC" commercial that was just released, poking fun at Microsoft's history of imperfect operating systems:
I've been using Windows 7 as my primary operating system at home for several weeks, after attending the kickoff event and receiving an early copy of Windows 7 Ultimate. Prior to that, I beta-tested Windows, and participated in the Release Candidate program, so I've been using Windows 7 off and on since February, and I have to say that I'm incredibly impressed. Everything runs smoothly, applications are more powerful and useful, and tools are available for improving productivity even more in the coming years, as people start to take advantage of the features Windows now provides.
I'm not going to go into any details of what's new and improved with Windows 7 - you can find those anywhere. I just wanted to give my opinion that it looks like Microsoft finally got it right, out of the box - in other words, 7th time's a charm.
Apple's commercial may prove to be wrong, but still, it's pretty damn funny.
Recently Microsoft released a new decision engine (a.k.a. search engine), known as Bing, which is supposed to be the next big competition to the superpower Google. The most recent so-called Google-killer, Cuil, which was hyped like crazy in the media and blogosphere, was an incredible failure in the market. Bing seems to be strong right out of the gate, and looks like it may succeed where others failed.
What makes Bing different from Google is the advanced decisioning engine, that aims to provide usable information rather than just links to external sites. For example, searching for a vehicle make and model (i.e. Ford Mustang) on Google provides an excellent result, first with the official Mustang page on fordvehicles.com, then the Wikipedia entry, news results, enthusiast sites, books, etc. The same search on Bing starts out with vehicle information, including MSRP, fuel economy, user ratings, and links to local listings for sales and service. Then comes the official Mustang page along with the other top search results, then sub-sections for specs, dealers, parts, recalls, videos, images, and additional information. All of this is of course easily available in Google by clicking one of the "related searches", but it's nice to see all of that one one screen.
Some other nice features of Bing are: - A search history on the search results page, so you can see or repeat what you've recently searched for (Google has this on a separate page). - Previews of each result by simply hovering over the preview button. - One-click conversions from normal web searches to images, videos, shopping, news, maps, etc. This is almost identical to Google - not very original, but it's so useful that I wouldn't want to use a search engine that didn't have it. - Search suggestions as you type - again, not original, but I'd expect it to be there on any search engine that competes with Google. - A unique and simple name. In order to be part of the vernacular, you need something that can be used as a noun or a verb, like Google (have you googled it?), something recognizable and fun (bada-bing!). Bing's predecessor, Live Search, just didn't have the creativity, and others like Cuil, Yahoo, and Ask.com really don't roll off the tongue the way Bing does. - Travel deals when searching for hotels, airfare, etc. - Enhanced video search, allowing multiple search options, and providing small previews of videos without loading the whole thing.
However, all the cool features in the world wouldn't mean anything if the search results were no good. Google has been the most popular because it gives better search results than anyone else - it constantly crawls the web with a ridiculous number of servers, doesn't rely on meta tags, and consistently gives exactly the results you're looking for, in a fast and simple interface. From what I've seen the past few days, Bing's search results are as good as Google's, and with the additional features, and promise of continued growth from Microsoft, the only other software company on Earth on Google's level, I'd say Bing is here to stay.
One particular query that hit home for me - Googling "joe enos" has consistently provided my site as its #1 search result. However, some time recently, I've dropped down to #2, with some joker in California getting the top pick with his business's local Yahoo overview. Bing has me at #1, where I should be.
But don't take my word for it - try it for yourself. If you're using Internet Exploder, select Live Search as your search provider, and it will automatically use Bing, or go here for instructions on using Bing directly. If you're using a real browser like Firefox, you can add Bing to your search providers with the following plug-in: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12205. Google Chrome also has the option for Live Search, but you can select Bing directly by following the instructions found here. Safari on a Mac requires something called Glims, and it doesn't look like you can set it at all on a PC. Opera users can right-click on the search box at bing.com and add a search provider from there. Or of course, anyone can search from http://www.bing.com/.
For articles and blog entries about Bing, just Bing it (or Google it), and you'll find hundreds of people talking about it - some good, some bad, some neutral. Here's a few to get you started:
Recently I've been looking at the Live Messenger API, the programming interface for Microsoft's instant messenger. It's a pretty interesting concept, and I plan on learning more about it in the near future. One of my goals is to display my current personal message on my site - I change it every few days, and always try to come up with something witty or creative (Today's is "Vai kads reali latviešu valodu?" - you can translate it here).
Until then, I've at least incorporated an in-browser messenger client on the left side of my site - it's the button that looks like this:
You can contact me via IM using this link whenever I'm online, even if you do not have a messenger client installed on your machine. Kind of a cool feature - I'm not sure how long it's been around, but it's new to me.
Update: Apparently this technology only works with Firefox and Internet Exploder - I'm having problems with Opera, Chrome, and Safari. One of these days, I'll look into it, and try to determine what went wrong.
It's a straight copy-and-paste from Microsoft, so it's their problem, not mine - but I'll try to fix it anyway.
The newest build of Windows 7 beta comes with the option to disable Internet Explorer 8. Although not confirmed by Microsoft, this is most likely due in part to some legal action in the European Union dealing with antitrust issues.
The whole thing seems kind of silly to me. Windows comes with a calculator, rich text editor, games, networking utilities, disk utilities, email client, media player, instant messenger, file manager, and dozens of other programs that have other third-party alternatives. It's only natural that Windows should come with a web browser. What's so special about a browser, other than it is used by a lot of people? Doesn't really seem like a legal precedent.
If you know me, you know I'm a huge Firefox fan, and a fan of the Linux operating system. I only use IE in very rare cirumstances where web developers were inconsiderate enough to use IE-only standards, that don't follow true web standards - aka "lazy development". However, I have no problem with the fact that IE exists, or that it's part of the Windows OS. Users are free to download whatever browser they want - Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, and other less-popular alternatives are all out there, and there's nothing stopping anyone from using them.
In reality, people mostly buy computers that come pre-loaded with Windows, from their local electronics store, or direct from companies like Dell or Compaq. I find it very unlikely that these pre-loaded machines will have IE excluded. The other group of people are ones that install the operating system themselves, usually slightly more advanced users. These users have two choices: include IE in their installation, or exclude it, and be left without a browser (I doubt the Windows installation disk will include the option for an alternate browser to be installed). Of course, they will choose to install IE8. In either case, anyone who wants to use a different browser will likely download it from the web, which requires a browser. And once IE is installed, there's no reason to remove it - if you don't like it, just don't use it.
I've had a few weeks to look at Windows 7, and I just wanted to share a few newer opinions. In my first post, I listed a few postive comments, but had a generally negative overall opinion. Since it's been out for awhile now, I've had a chance to get used to a few things, and read some articles from some experts, clearing up some of the issues I had.
The best article I've read on the subject was found from a Microsoft director named Tim Sneath, who provided The Bumper List of Windows 7 Secrets. While I don't necessarily agree with all of his comments, I found much of the article very useful.
One of the coolest new features is the Problem Steps Recorder. This is a very easy-to-use application that allows a user to record the steps they took to perform an action, then save it to a file. That file can be given out as training material, given to technical support, or any of a number of uses. An example of the output, after only a few clicks, can be found here (It generates a MHT file, which can be viewed in IE easily - attached is a PDF printout of that MHT file).
Internet Explorer 8 has several new and exciting features, designed to compete with Firefox and other browsers, to maintain dominance in the browser market. There are add-ons like toolbars and extensions, accelerators, and InPrivate browsing. And IE8 provides a more Firefox-like search function, opening up a toolbar for searching instead of a popup window. Up to now, Firefox has managed to stay one step ahead of IE, and there's really no reason to think IE will beat it anytime soon - but IE is definitely improving on itself with each new version.
One of my biggest complaints was the loss of the Quick Launch toolbar. While it's not there by default, there are ways to get it back. But even without it, you can still be as productive as before, just a little differently. I was concerned that once you opened an instance of an app, you couldn't open a second one from the taskbar. I found out that you can open another instance by middle-clicking the icon (or right-clicking and selecting an item in the context menu, but that's one too many clicks for me when I'm in a hurry). Combine this with setting small taskbar icons, and you really don't lose any productivity.
So I'm warming up a little bit to Windows 7. When the final version is released in a year or two, I'd expect it to be very successful, unlike Vista. I don't think it will steal anyone away from the Apple or Linux communities, but I do believe it will finally get people to upgrade from XP.
Yesterday Microsoft released the first public beta of Windows 7, Microsoft's newest operating system. Being a technology fan, I jumped on the bandwagon and downloaded the beta this morning. Apparently the release was so popular that the servers were down most of the afternoon on Friday - they were back up this morning.
Windows 7 does seem to be faster than Vista, which is the one thing above all else that drove me away from Vista. Of course, if you have good up-to-date hardware, Vista runs just fine - but my Pentium D 2.8GHz with 2GB RAM (which runs XP and various Linux distros perfectly) performed miserably. I installed Windows 7 on a virtual machine using VirtualBox, and it seemed to be faster than Vista ran when it was installed full-time on this machine.
My first impressions include:
No Quick Launch Toolbar: In my opinion, this is the absolute worst thing they could have done. I click icons in the Quick Launch bar hundreds of times per day. In my XP desktop at work, I have about 21 icons (in 3 rows), ranging from drive shortcuts, to development applications, to utilities, to shortcuts to folders I need to go to a lot. Apparently there are workarounds to put it back, but nothing in the standard set of options.
Taskbar Pinning: In place of the Quick Launch bar, Windows 7 has the ability to "pin" shortcuts to the taskbar. This pinned icon serves double-duty - it starts out as a shortcut that starts the application. Once the app is started, the icon turns into the representation of the running program on the taskbar. Kind of an interesting concept in theory, but then you realize that the shortcut is gone - meaning you can't run a second instance of the app. In real life, I frequently open multiple instances of my most frequently used applications - things like Visual Studio, calculator, Excel, Notepad, and various Explorer shortcuts. This was an idea that might have been better off on the cutting room floor.
Action Center: The new Action Center feature seems to be a decent improvement. It's a combination of the Security Center with features like troubleshooting and maintenance. It includes pretty good messages to the user when actions are required.
Ridiculous Window Management: They added some totally unnecessary window management features that don't seem to serve any real purpose. For example, if you drag your window to the top of the screen, it will decide that you wanted to maximize the window. As opposed to normal people, who can simply double-click the title bar to maximize windows (or click the old-fashioned maximize button). Also, if you move your window to the left or right side of the screen, it will fill up that side of the screen. I'm sure these behaviors are configurable, so I'll absolutely be disabling them. Sometimes you just want to move windows out of the way, and I believe this new behavior will frustrate more people than it will help.
Tray Customization: The taskbar tray is more customizable that in previous versions of Windows. You can decide how each individual icon behaves, so you have more control over your display. You don't have to choose between showing everything (which can get pretty big and have a lot of unnecessary stuff) and hiding what Windows thinks is important.
Various Quirky Bugs: This is a beta, specifically an early beta, which means they've still got some bugs to work out. So I can forgive some buggy behavior, like Windows Defender refusing to run, and the "Run" command freezing up. I'm sure things like this will be fixed with no problem.
Overall, I'd say that Windows 7 is probably an improvement over Vista, but I'm not expecting it to be Microsoft's savior, the way people have hoped. It contains many changes that are implemented just for the sake of change, something that drives me crazy. In my opinion, Microsoft needs to focus more on performance and security instead of flashiness. New features are fine, but not when they destroy features that people have known and used religiously for years. I'll likely continue to use Windows XP at work, and as my Microsoft development environment at home, and Ubuntu Linux as my personal operating system.
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There are a million and one articles and blog entries out there devoted to .NET 3.0 and/or 3.5. But I'm running out of interesting topics, so I'll put my two cents in. I realize I'm a little late, but I recently started using Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Framework. So far, it's very impressive. I will discuss the features I have personally used and appreciate. Since I jumped directly from 2.0 to 3.5, I am not sure which of these came with 3.0 and which with 3.5.
LINQ Probably the most talked about feature of the new framework is LINQ, Language INtegrated Query. This technology allows you to access data consistently, regardless of the source of that data. That source may be a SQL Server database, Oracle database, text file, XML file, or anything else you can think of. Once the data source is connected, the actual code to retrieve, update, or delete that data is the same. You don't need to write custom SQL statements, stored procedures, or complicated data management routines to access the data - all of that is handled for you.
I began using LINQ in my own applications a few months ago. Originally, my JTodo application used my own personal data management solution, JTDataManagement, which allowed retrieval and update of data in a standardized format. However, it required you to write your own get, save, and update stored procedures in a SQL or Oracle database. It worked very well, and made programming my applications much easier, but it wasn't perfect. I and created a new version of JTDataManagement that works with LINQ, by replacing my stored proc calls with LINQ calls, and replaced my database parameters with lambda expressions.
Anonymous Types The first time I saw the keyword "var" in C#, I was worried that maybe it would be used improperly by lazy programmers who don't want to give variables strong types. That possibility exists, but as long as you use it for good, instead of evil, this technique can be very beneficial. So far, I have used it to generate data for display on a grid - you can create an anonymous type that defines a datarow without having to define a class to represent that object. That can save significant time when you just want to bind simple data.
AutoProperties This is the most time and space saving feature I've seen with these releases. Traditional object-oriented .NET programming uses fields and properties (or methods) to access those fields. For simple objects, such as those that represent data tables, a class may contain a private field and a public property, something like: private int _id; public int Id { get { return _id; } set { _id = value; } }
This is necessary for every field in the class. The technique is common, and is the same as defining a public field - however, proper procedure dictates that fields are never public, so this was the only other way. With AutoProperties, there's a new way: public int Id { get; set; } is now equivalent to the previous code. At compile-time, this code is converted into something similar to the original - a private field and public property are generated, so the end result is the same. In the end, this can save a lot of work and a lot of code.
Type Initializers This is kind of handy. It allows you to set the values of public members of a class at the same time as you create it. I haven't used it much, but it is an interesting concept, and has the potential for saving some time and code.
Person p = new Person() { FirstName = "John", LastName = "Doe" };
Extension Methods This is incredibly cool. It allows you to add new methods to existing classes, even classes inside the Framework. If you need functions added to the String class, you can do it. In the past, you would have to utilize utility classes with static methods that accept these objects as a parameter. I haven't used it yet, but I am definitely looking forward to it.
I'm hoping to stay up to date with new technologies as they come out. I'm currently learning all I can about the ASP.NET AJAX standards, and I'd like to get to know Silverlight better over the next year or so. Hopefully, when the next version of the framework is released, I'll be up to date, and ready to start using it right away. Maybe then, I'll be in the first wave of bloggers.
Date: 2011-03-22 23:38:31
Name: Jon Davis
Website: http://www.jondavis.net/
"it's not available for Windows XP, so the millions of us who are still using XP (we're still on XP at work)" .. oh dear! You poor bastard, still using XP! o.O I remember when in 1999 people were insane to still be using Windows 95 ..
Date: 2011-03-23 07:04:01
Name: Joe Enos
It really doesn't bother me. XP is a good operating system, and aside from a few minor things (like the Start Menu searching or Ctrl-Shift-N), it does everything I need of it.
Date: 2011-03-23 10:23:00
Name: Jason H (via Facebook)
Are you surprised? I'm not.
Date: 2011-03-23 12:40:06
Name: Joe Enos
I was expecting it to be better - I didn't think it would be great, but I figured it would be better than it was.
Date: 2011-03-23 21:36:00
Name: Jason H (via Facebook)
I'vee grown to lower my expectations with Microsoft so if it turns out well you can be pleasantly surprised. For example Vista, what I expected. Windows 7, pleasantly surprised.