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  • Comparing two Objects which implement the same interface for equality / equivalence - Design help

    - by gav
    Hi All, I have an interface and two objects implementing that interface, massively simplied; public interface MyInterface { public int getId(); public int getName(); ... } public class A implements MyInterface { ... } public class B implements MyInterface { ... } We are migrating from using one implementation to the other but I need to check that the objects of type B that are generated are equivalent to those of type A. Specifically I mean that for all of the interface methods an object of Type A and Type B will return the same value (I'm just checking my code for generating this objects is correct). How would you go about this? Map<String, MyInterface> oldGeneratedObjects = getOldGeneratedObjects(); Map<String, MyInterface> newGeneratedObjects = getNewGeneratedObjects(); // TODO: Establish that for each Key the Values in the two maps return equivalent values. I'm looking for good coding practices and style here. I appreciate that I could just iterate through one key set pulling out both objects which should be equivalent and then just call all the methods and compare, I'm just thinking there may be a cleaner, more extensible way and I'm interested to learn what options there might be. Would it be appropriate / possible / advised to override equals or implement Comparable? Thanks in advance, Gavin

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  • Using the XElement.Elements method, can I find elements with wildcard namespace but the same name?

    - by gav
    Hi All, Trying to do a simple parse of an XML document. What's the easiest way to pull out the two PropertyGroups below? <Project ToolsVersion="4.0" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003"> <PropertyGroup xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003"> 1 </PropertyGroup> <PropertyGroup xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003"> 2 </PropertyGroup> </Project> I have been trying to use XElement.Elements(XName) but to do so I need to prefix PropertyGroup with the xmlns. The issue is that I don't care about the name space and if it changes in future I would still like all PropertyGroups to be retrieved. var xml = XElement.Load(fileNameWithPath); var nameSpace = xml.GetDefaultNamespace(); var propertyGroups= xml.Elements(nameSpace + "PropertyGroup"); Can you improve on this code such that I don't need to prepend with nameSpace? I know I can essentially just reimplement the Elements method but I was hoping there was some way to pass a wildcard namespace? Thanks, Gavin

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  • Prevent coersion to a single type in unlist() or c(); passing arguments to wrapper functions

    - by Leo Alekseyev
    Is there a simple way to flatten a list while retaining the original types of list constituents?.. Is there a way to programmatically construct a heterogeneous list?.. For instance, I want to create a simple wrapper for functions like png(filename,width,height) that would take device name, file name, and a list of options. The naive approach would be something like my.wrapper <- function(dev,name,opts) { do.call(dev,c(filename=name,opts)) } or similar code with unlist(list(...)). This doesn't work because opts gets coerced to character, and the resulting call is e.g. png(filename,width="500",height="500"). If there's no straightforward way to create heterogeneous lists like that, is there a standard idiomatic way to splice arguments into functions without naming them explicitly (e.g. do.call(dev,list(filename=name,width=opts["width"]))? -- Edit -- Gavin Simpson answered both questions below in his discussion about constructing wrapper functions. Let me give a summary of the answer to the title question: It is possible to construct a heterogeneous list with c() provided the arguments to c() are lists. To wit: > foo <- c("a","b"); bar <- 1:3 > c(foo,bar) [1] "a" "b" "1" "2" "3" > c(list(foo),list(bar)) [[1]] [1] "a" "b" [[2]] [1] 1 2 3 > c(as.list(foo),as.list(bar)) ## this creates a flattened heterogeneous list [[1]] [1] "a" [[2]] [1] "b" [[3]] [1] 1 [[4]] [1] 2 [[5]] [1] 3

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  • Last week I was presented with a Microsoft MVP award in Virtual Machines – time to thank all who hel

    - by Liam Westley
    MVP in Virtual Machines Last week, on 1st April, I received an e-mail from Microsoft letting me know that I had been presented with a 2010 Microsoft® MVP Award for outstanding contributions in Virtual Machine technical communities during the past year.   It was an honour to be nominated, and is a great reflection on the vibrancy of the UK user group community which made this possible. Virtualisation for developers, not just IT Pros I consider it a special honour as my expertise in virtualisation is as a software developer utilising virtual machines to aid my software development, rather than an IT Pro who manages data centre and network infrastructure.  I’ve been on a minor mission over the past few years to enthuse developers in a topic usually seen as only for network admins, but which can make their life a whole lot easier once understood properly. Continuous learning is fun In 1676, the scientist Isaac Newton, in a letter to Robert Hooke used the phrase (http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/268025.html) ‘If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants’ I’m a nuclear physicist by education, so I am more than comfortable that any knowledge I have is based on the work of others.  Although far from a science, software development and IT is equally built upon the work of others. It’s one of the reasons I despise software patents. So in that sense this MVP award is a result of all the great minds that have provided virtualisation solutions for me to talk about.  I hope that I have always acknowledged those whose work I have used when blogging or giving presentations, and that I have executed my responsibility to share any knowledge gained as widely as possible. Thanks to all those who helped – a big thanks to the UK user group community I reckon this journey started in 2003 when I started attending a user group called the London .Net Users Group (http://www.dnug.org.uk) started by a nice chap called Ian Cooper. The great thing about Ian was that he always encouraged non professional speakers to take the stage at the user group, and my first ever presentation was on 30th September 2003; SQL Server CE 2.0 and the.NET Compact Framework. In 2005 Ian Cooper was on the committee for the first DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper! day, the free community conference held at Microsoft’s UK HQ in Thames Valley park in Reading.  He encouraged me to take part and so on 14th May 2005 I presented a talk previously given to the London .Net User Group on Simplifying access to multiple DB providers in .NET.  From that point on I definitely had the bug; presenting at DDD2, DDD3, groking at DDD4 and SQLBits I and after a break, DDD7, DDD Scotland and DDD8.  What definitely made me keen was the encouragement and infectious enthusiasm of some of the other DDD organisers; Craig Murphy, Barry Dorrans, Phil Winstanley and Colin Mackay. During the first few DDD events I met the Dave McMahon and Richard Costall from NxtGenUG who made it easy to start presenting at their user groups.  Along the way I’ve met a load of great user group organisers; Guy Smith-Ferrier of the .Net Developer Network, Jimmy Skowronski of GL.Net and the double act of Ray Booysen and Gavin Osborn behind what was Vista Squad and is now Edge UG. Final thanks to those who suggested virtualisation as a topic ... Final thanks have to go the people who inspired me to create my Virtualisation for Developers talk.  Toby Henderson (@holytshirt) ensured I took notice of Sun’s VirtualBox, Peter Ibbotson for being a fine sounding board at the Kew Railway over quite a few Adnam’s Broadside and to Guy Smith-Ferrier for allowing his user group to be the guinea pigs for the talk before it was seen at DDD7.  Thanks to all of you I now know much more about virtualisation than I would have thought possible and it continues to be great fun. Conclusion If this was an academy award acceptance speech I would have been cut off after the first few paragraphs, so well done if you made it this far.  I’ll be doing my best to do justice to the MVP award and the UK community.  I’m fortunate in having a new employer who considers presenting at user groups as a good thing, so don’t expect me to stop any time soon. If you’ve never seen me in action, then you can view the original DDD7 Virtualisation for Developers presentation (filmed by the Microsoft Channel 9 team) as part of the full DDD7 video list here, http://www.craigmurphy.com/blog/?p=1591.  Also thanks to Craig Murphy’s fine video work you can also view my latest DDD8 presentation on Commercial Software Development, here, http://vimeo.com/9216563 P.S. If I’ve missed anyone out, do feel free to lambast me in comments, it’s your duty.

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  • Answers to “What source control system do you use?” (and some winners)

    - by jamiet
    About a month ago I posed a question here on my blog SQL Server devs–what source control system do you use, if any? (answer and maybe win free stuff) in which I asked SQL Server developers to answer the following questions: Are you putting your SQL Server code into a source control system? If so, what source control server software (e.g. TFS, Git, SVN, Mercurial, SourceSafe, Perforce) are you using? What source control client software are you using (e.g. TFS Team Explorer, Tortoise, Red Gate SQL Source Control, Red Gate SQL Connect, Git Bash, etc…)? Why did you make those particular software choices? Any interesting anecdotes to share in regard to your use of source control and SQL Server? I had some really great responses (I highly recommend going and reading them). I promised that the five best, most thought-provoking, responses (as determined by me) would win one of five pairs of licenses for Red Gate SQL Source Control and Red Gate SQL Connect; here are the five that I chose (note that if you responded but did not leave a means of getting in touch then you weren’t considered for one of the prizes – sorry): In general, I don't think the management overhead and licensing cost associated with TFS is worthwhile if all you're doing is using source control. To get value from TFS, at a minimum you need to be using team build, and possibly other stuff as well, such as the sharepoint integration. If that's all you need, then svn with Tortoise would be my first choice. If you want to add build automation later, you can do this with cruisecontrol (is it still called that?), JetBrains, etc. For a long time I thought that Redgate's claims about "bridging the SSMS-VS divide" were a load of hot air, since in my experience anyone who knew what they were doing was using Visual Studio, in particular SSDT and its predecessors. However, on a recent client I was putting in source control for the first time, and I discovered that the "divide" really does exist. That client has ended up using svn with Redgate SQL Source Control, with no build automation, but with scope to add it in the future. Gavin Campbell I think putting the DB under source control is a great idea.  I have issues with the earlier versions of SQL Source Control in that it provides little help in versioning the DB. I think the latest version merges SQL Compare and SQL Source Control together.  Which is how it should have been all along. Sure I have the DB scripts in SVN, but I can't automate DB builds and changes without more tools.  Frankly I'm surprised databases don't have some sort of versioning built into them. Nick Portelli Source control has been immensely useful and saved me from a lot of rework on more than one occasion.  I have learned that you have to be extremely careful checking in data.  Our system is internal only so during the system production run once a week, if there is a problem that I can fix easily(for example, a control table points to a file in the wrong environment), I'll do it directly in production so the run can continue as soon as possible since we have a specified time window.  We do full test runs to minimize this but it has come up once or twice.  We use Red-Gate source control to "push" from the test environment to the production environment.  There have been a couple of occasions where the test environment with the wrong setting was pushed back over the production environment because the change was made only in production.  Gotta keep an eye on that. Alan Dykes Goodness is it manual.  And can be extremely painful at times.  Not only are we running thin, we are constrained on the tools we can get ($$ must mean free).  Certainly no excuse, and a great opportunity to improve my skills by learning new things.  But...  Getting buy in a on a proven process or methodology is hard, takes time, and diverts us from development.  If SQL Source Control is easy to use and proven oh boy could you get some serious fans around here!  Seriously though, as the "accidental dba" of this shop any new ideas / easy to implement tools can make a world of difference in productivity and most importantly accuracy.  Manual = bad. :) John Hennesey (who left his email address) The one thing I would love to know more about is the unique challenges of working with databases as source code - you can store scripts, but are they written as deployment scripts with all the logic about how to apply them to an existing DB? Where is that baseline DB? Where's the data? How does a team share the data and the code? It's a real challenge. Merrill Aldrich Congratulations to the five of you. Red Gate will be in touch with you soon about your free licenses. Thank you to all those that responded. And again, go and check out all the responses – those above are only small proportion from what is a very interesting comment thread. @Jamiet

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  • Silverlight Firestarter thoughts, and thanks to one and all!

    - by Dave Campbell
    A few metrics that of course got out of hand, but some may find interesting:   1/2 My share of the MVP of the Year award in February of 2009 with Laurent Bugnion 2 Number of degrees I hold: B.S., M.S. Electrical Engineering 3 Number of years in the U.S. Army 3.5 Number of years SilverlighCream has been posted 4 Number of times awarded MVP 6 Number of professional positions I've worked: Antenna Rigger, Boilermaker, Musician, Electronic Technician, Hardware Engineer, Software Engineer 16 Number of companies I've worked for during my career as an Engineer 19 Age at which I turned my first line of code 28 Age at which I hit the workforce as an Engineer 33 Number of years working as an Engineer 43 Number of years writing code 62 Number of years since instantiation 116 Number of tags to search SilverlightCream with 645 Number of blogs I view to find articles (at this moment) 664 Number of articles tagged wp7dev at SilverlightCream right now 700 Number of Twitter followers for WynApse 981 Number of individual bloggers in the SilverlightCream database 1002 Number of SilverlightCream blogposts 1100 Number of people live in Redmond for the Firestarter (I think) 1428 Number of total blogposts at GeeksWithBlogs (not counting this one) 4200 Number of Feedburner subscribers (approximately) 6500 Number of Twitter followers for SilverlightNews (approximately) 7087 Number of posts tagged and aggregated at SilverlightCream right now 13000 Number of people registered to watch the Firestarter online (I think) The overwhelming feeling I have returning from the Silverlight Firestarter: Priceless There is absolutely no way that I could personally thank everyone that over the last few years has held their hand out and offered me a step up to get to the point that Scott Guthrie called me out in his keynote. So I'm just going to hit the highlights here... Scott Guthrie Thanks for not only being the level you are at Microsoft, but for being so approachable, easy to talk to, willing to help everyone, and above all knowledgable. My first level manager at my last position asked if Visual Studio was a graphics program... and you step up to a laptop at a conference and type "File->New Program" ... 'nuff said... oh yeah, thanks for the shoutout! John Papa Thanks for being a good friend, ramroding the Firestarter, being a great guy to be around, and for the poster... holy crap is that cool. Tim Heuer Thanks for all you did as a great DE in Phoenix, and for helping out so many of us, of course being a great guy, and for the poster as well... I think you and John shared that task. In no order at all my buddy Michael Washington, Laurent Bugnion (the other half of the first Silverlight MVP of the Year) Tim Sneath, Mike Harsh, Chad Campbell and Bryant Likes (from back in the day), Adam Kinney, Jesse Liberty, Jeff Paries, Pete Brown, András Velvárt, David Kelly, Michael Palermo, Scott Cate, Erik Mork, and on and on... don't feel bad if your name didn't appear, I have simply too many supporters to name. Silverlight Firestarter Indeed All the people mentioned here, and all the MVPs knew Silverlight was NOT dead, but because of a very unfortunate circumstance, the popular media opinion became that. Consequently the Firestarter exploded from a laid-back event to a global conference. People worked their ass off getting bits ready and presentations using those bits. All to stem the flow of misinformation. All involved please accept my personal thanks for an absolutely awesome job. I had the priviledge of watching the 'prep' on Wednesday afternoon, and was blown away the first time I saw the 3D demo... and have been blown away every time I've seen it since. Not to mention all the other goodness in Silverlight 5. Yes I hit 1000 on my blog, but more importantly, all of you are blogging and using Silverlight, and Microsoft hit one completely out of the park... no... they knocked it out of the neighborhood with the Firestarter. It was amazing to be there for it, and it will be awesome to use the new bits as we get them. Keep reading, there's tons more to come with Silverlight and SilverlightCream following along behind. As usual, this old hacker is humbled to be allowed to play with all the cool kids... Thanks one and all for everything, and Stay in the 'Light

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  • surviveFocusChange=true

    - by Geertjan
    Here's a very cool thing that I keep forgetting about but that Jesse reminded me of in the recent blog entries on Undo/Redo: "surviveFocusChange=true". Look at the screenshot below. You see two windows with a toolbar button. The toolbar button is enabled whenever an object named "Bla" is in the Lookup. The "Demo" window has a "Bla" object in its Lookup and hence the toolbar button is enabled when the focus is in the "Demo" window, as shown below: Now the focus is in the "Output" window, which does not have a "Bla" object in its Lookup and hence the button is disabled: However, there are scenarios where you might like the button to remain enabled even when the focus changes. (One such scenario is the Undo/Redo scenario in this blog a few days ago, i.e., even when the Properties window has the focus the Undo/Redo buttons should be enabled.) Here you can see that the button is enabled even though the focus has switched to the "Output" window: How to achieve this? Well, you need to register your Action to have "surviveFocusChange" set to "true". It is, by default, set to "false": import java.awt.event.ActionEvent; import java.awt.event.ActionListener; import org.openide.awt.ActionID; import org.openide.awt.ActionReference; import org.openide.awt.ActionReferences; import org.openide.awt.ActionRegistration; import org.openide.util.NbBundle.Messages; @ActionID(category = "File", id = "org.mymodule.BlaAction") @ActionRegistration(surviveFocusChange=true, iconBase = "org/mymodule/Datasource.gif", displayName = "#CTL_BlaAction") @ActionReferences({     @ActionReference(path = "Toolbars/Bla", position = 0) }) @Messages("CTL_BlaAction=Bla") public final class BlaAction implements ActionListener {     private final Bla context;     public BlaAction(Bla context) {         this.context = context;     }     @Override     public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ev) {         // TODO use context     } } That's all. Now folders and files will be created in the NetBeans Platform filesystem from the annotations above when the module is compiled such that the NetBeans Platform will automatically keep the button enabled even when the user switches focus to a window that does not contain a "Bla" object in its Lookup. Hence, the same "Bla" object will remain available when switching from one window to another, until a new "Bla" object will be made available in the Lookup.

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  • Opinions on Unladen Swallow?

    - by vartec
    What are your opinions and expectations on Google's Unladen Swallow? From their project plan: We want to make Python faster, but we also want to make it easy for large, well-established applications to switch to Unladen Swallow. Produce a version of Python at least 5x faster than CPython. Python application performance should be stable. Maintain source-level compatibility with CPython applications. Maintain source-level compatibility with CPython extension modules. We do not want to maintain a Python implementation forever; we view our work as a branch, not a fork. And even sweeter: In addition, we intend to remove the GIL and fix the state of multithreading in Python. We believe this is possible through the implementation of a more sophisticated GC It almost looks too good to be true, like the best of PyPy and Stackless combined. More info: Jesse Noller: "Pycon: Unladen-Swallow" ArsTechnica: "Google searches for holy grail of Python performance" Update: as DNS pointed out, there was related question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/695370/what-is-llvm-and-how-is-replacing-python-vm-with-llvm-increasing-speeds-5x

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  • How do I DRY up my CouchDB views?

    - by James A. Rosen
    What can I do to share code among views in CouchDB? Example 1 -- utility methods Jesse Hallett has some good utility methods, including function dot(attr) { return function(obj) { return obj[attr]; } } Array.prototype.map = function(func) { var i, r = [], for (i = 0; i < this.length; i += 1) { r[i] = func(this[i]); } return r; }; ... Where can I put this code so every view can access it? Example 2 -- constants Similarly for constants I use in my application. Where do I put MyApp = { A_CONSTANT = "..."; ANOTHER_CONSTANT = "..."; }; Example 3 -- filter of a filter: What if I want a one view that filters by "is this a rich person?": function(doc) { if (doc.type == 'person' && doc.net_worth > 1000000) { emit(doc.id, doc); } } and another that indexes by last name: function(doc) { if (doc.last_name) { emit(doc.last_name, doc); } } How can I combine them into a "rich people by last name" view? I sort of want the equivalent of the Ruby my_array.select { |x| x.person? }.select { |x| x.net_worth > 1,000,000 }.map { |x| [x.last_name, x] } How can I be DRYer?

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  • SharePoint Saturday Michigan 2010 Recap, Slides, and Photos

    - by Brian Jackett
    This past weekend I attended SharePoint Saturday Michigan (SPSMI) in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  For those unfamiliar, SharePoint Saturday is a community driven event where various speakers gather to present at a FREE conference on all topics related to SharePoint.  This made my third SharePoint Saturday attended and second I’ve spoken at.  I believe today it was announced that about 210 people total attended the event.  I was very happy with the turnout, especially the ratio of male to female attendees.  Typically with computer related conferences the ratio leans towards more males attending, but both Peter Serzo (one of conference organizers) and I both commented to each other that at the end of the day it appeared to be close to 40% women in the crowd.  So here’s my recap of the weekend. Arrival     Friday afternoon I drove up from Columbus, OH to Ann Arbor, MI and arrived around 4pm.  I was attempting to avoid the rush hour traffic and construction backups.  Turned out to be a good idea because other speakers coming up Friday got stuck on a highway which literally closed down in both directions due to a bad accident.  I was talking my friend Sean McDonough through the highway closing and this was the first time I had seen a solid black traffic line on Google Maps.  Most of us are familiar with Green, Yellow, and Red, but this line was black if that tells you how bad it got. Speaker “Dinner”     Fast forward a few hours and it was time for the speaker “dinner.”  I put “dinner” in quotes because with this night alone SPSMI set a new bar for nicest and most extravagant speaker appreciation events for SharePoint Saturday.  By tapping into some very influential contacts, the conference organizers were able to provide a truck limo (yep you heard right) with refreshments, access to an underground suite at the Palace of Auburn Hills, and courtside tickets to see the Detroit Pistons play that night.  Being a Michigan native I have to say that I was absolutely floored by this experience and very thankful to our conference organizers Peter, Sebastian, and Jesse along with Trillium Teamologies. Sessions     The actual conference started Saturday morning at 9am with the keynote by Rob Collie who is the Microsoft program manager for PowerPivot.  The day continued and I attended the following sessions: Mike Watson (@mikewat) – “SharePoint 2010 Fight Night: Devs vs. Admins” Karl Swedeberg (@kswedberg) – “A Walk on the Client Side with jQuery“ [my session] Brian Jackett (@briantjackett) - “Real World Deployment of SharePoint 2007 Solutions” Jeff Willinger (@jwillie) - “Social Computing and Collaboration Inside and Outside the 4 Walls” Paul Schaeflein (@paulschaeflein) – “PowerShell for the SharePoint Developer” My Presentation     I had a great time presenting my session on Deploying SharePoint 2007 Solutions, but it wasn’t without its fair share of technical issues.  As my session was right after lunch I came in to my room 10 mins early to set up my laptop, slides, and demos.  As a quick background note, a few months ago I got an upgraded laptop from my company Sogeti and have been dual booting it between XP (factory installed) and Windows Server 2008 R2 w/ Hyper-V.  As such I had prepared all of my demo virtual machines to run under Hyper-V.  About 3 minutes before my session was scheduled to start though it became apparent that I did not have the correct display drivers to connect Windows Server 2008 R2 to the projector…     As you can imagine this was a slight cause for concern as I was potentially going to be unable to give my presentation.  Luckily for me I usually prepare for such unforeseen issues and had my presentation and some spare VMs that would run on XP on my external hard drive.  Knowing this I rebooted my machine into XP and began my presentation without slides until about 5 mins into the session when everything was up and running on XP.  Despite this being the first time I gave this presentation I have to say it was one of my favorites I’ve given so far.  The audience was very engaged in the session and I received some great, positive feedback afterwards.  Thanks to all who attended my session, I appreciate it very much. Link to Presentation Files     For those of you who attended my session and would like my slides or demo PowerShell scripts they can be found on my SkyDrive at the link below.  Also, if you have a few minutes and wouldn’t mind rating my session I have this session posted on SpeakerRate.  As speakers we always appreciate any and all feedback attendees offer, so thank you if you are able to provide any. SkyDrive folder with session files Rate my SharePoint 2007 Solutions session   Picture Albums     For everyone else, here are my pictures from the weekend.  The first link is to my FaceBook album which will have tagging (recommend this one.)  The second is to my Live album if you care for higher resolution images. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2154482&id=21905041&l=a3fb72ee8c View Full Album Conclusion     A big thank you goes out to all of the organizers, speakers, sponsors, and attendees of SPSMI.  As I’ve said so many times, without each and every one of you these events wouldn’t be possible.  I thoroughly enjoyed this trip back to my home state and presenting a new session.  For those interested in my upcoming schedule I will be giving two sessions on PowerShell at SharePoint Saturday Charlotte in April, helping plan Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition in May, and I’m submitting sessions to Day of .Net Ann Arbor in May as well.  Beyond that I haven’t planned out any travels.  Thanks for reading my recap.  Look forward to more technical posts now that I have a short break in conferences.         -Frog Out   links: Michigan image

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  • Add Widget via Action in Toolbar

    - by Geertjan
    The question of the day comes from Vadim, who asks on the NetBeans Platform mailing list: "Looking for example showing how to add Widget to Scene, e.g. by toolbar button click." Well, the solution is very similar to this blog entry, where you see a solution provided by Jesse Glick for VisiTrend in Boston: https://blogs.oracle.com/geertjan/entry/zoom_capability Other relevant articles to read are as follows: http://netbeans.dzone.com/news/which-netbeans-platform-action http://netbeans.dzone.com/how-to-make-context-sensitive-actions Let's go through it step by step, with this result in the end, a solution involving 4 classes split (optionally, since a central feature of the NetBeans Platform is modularity) across multiple modules: The Customer object has a "name" String and the Droppable capability has a method "doDrop" which takes a Customer object: public interface Droppable {    void doDrop(Customer c);} In the TopComponent, we use "TopComponent.associateLookup" to publish an instance of "Droppable", which creates a new LabelWidget and adds it to the Scene in the TopComponent. Here's the TopComponent constructor: public CustomerCanvasTopComponent() {    initComponents();    setName(Bundle.CTL_CustomerCanvasTopComponent());    setToolTipText(Bundle.HINT_CustomerCanvasTopComponent());    final Scene scene = new Scene();    final LayerWidget layerWidget = new LayerWidget(scene);    Droppable d = new Droppable(){        @Override        public void doDrop(Customer c) {            LabelWidget customerWidget = new LabelWidget(scene, c.getTitle());            customerWidget.getActions().addAction(ActionFactory.createMoveAction());            layerWidget.addChild(customerWidget);            scene.validate();        }    };    scene.addChild(layerWidget);    jScrollPane1.setViewportView(scene.createView());    associateLookup(Lookups.singleton(d));} The Action is displayed in the toolbar and is enabled only if a Droppable is currently in the Lookup: @ActionID(        category = "Tools",        id = "org.customer.controler.AddCustomerAction")@ActionRegistration(        iconBase = "org/customer/controler/icon.png",        displayName = "#AddCustomerAction")@ActionReferences({    @ActionReference(path = "Toolbars/File", position = 300)})@NbBundle.Messages("AddCustomerAction=Add Customer")public final class AddCustomerAction implements ActionListener {    private final Droppable context;    public AddCustomerAction(Droppable droppable) {        this.context = droppable;    }    @Override    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ev) {        NotifyDescriptor.InputLine inputLine = new NotifyDescriptor.InputLine("Name:", "Data Entry");        Object result = DialogDisplayer.getDefault().notify(inputLine);        if (result == NotifyDescriptor.OK_OPTION) {            Customer customer = new Customer(inputLine.getInputText());            context.doDrop(customer);        }    }} Therefore, when the Properties window, for example, is selected, the Action will be disabled. (See the Zoomable example referred to in the link above for another example of this.) As you can see above, when the Action is invoked, a Droppable must be available (otherwise the Action would not have been enabled). The Droppable is obtained in the Action and a new Customer object is passed to its "doDrop" method. The above in pictures, take note of the enablement of the toolbar button with the red dot, on the extreme left of the toolbar in the screenshots below: The above shows the JButton is only enabled if the relevant TopComponent is active and, when the Action is invoked, the user can enter a name, after which a new LabelWidget is created in the Scene. The source code of the above is here: http://java.net/projects/nb-api-samples/sources/api-samples/show/versions/7.3/misc/WidgetCreationFromAction Note: Showing this as an MVC example is slightly misleading because, depending on which model object ("Customer" and "Droppable") you're looking at, the V and the C are different. From the point of view of "Customer", the TopComponent is the View, while the Action is the Controler, since it determines when the M is displayed. However, from the point of view of "Droppable", the TopComponent is the Controler, since it determines when the Action, i.e., which is in this case the View, displays the presence of the M.

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  • Navigation in a #WP7 application with MVVM Light

    - by Laurent Bugnion
    In MVVM applications, it can be a bit of a challenge to send instructions to the view (for example a page) from a viewmodel. Thankfully, we have good tools at our disposal to help with that. In his excellent series “MVVM Light Toolkit soup to nuts”, Jesse Liberty proposes one approach using the MVVM Light messaging infrastructure. While this works fine, I would like to show here another approach using what I call a “view service”, i.e. an abstracted service that is invoked from the viewmodel, and implemented on the view. Multiple kinds of view services In fact, I use view services quite often, and even started standardizing them for the Windows Phone 7 applications I work on. If there is interest, I will be happy to show other such view services, for example Animation services, responsible to start/stop animations on the view. Dialog service, in charge of displaying messages to the user and gathering feedback. Navigation service, in charge of navigating to a given page directly from the viewmodel. In this article, I will concentrate on the navigation service. The INavigationService interface In most WP7 apps, the navigation service is used in quite a straightforward way. We want to: Navigate to a given URI. Go back. Be notified when a navigation is taking place, and be able to cancel. The INavigationService interface is quite simple indeed: public interface INavigationService { event NavigatingCancelEventHandler Navigating; void NavigateTo(Uri pageUri); void GoBack(); } Obviously, this interface can be extended if necessary, but in most of the apps I worked on, I found that this covers my needs. The NavigationService class It is possible to nicely pack the navigation service into its own class. To do this, we need to remember that all the PhoneApplicationPage instances use the same instance of the navigation service, exposed through their NavigationService property. In fact, in a WP7 application, it is the main frame (RootFrame, of type PhoneApplicationFrame) that is responsible for this task. So, our implementation of the NavigationService class can leverage this. First the class will grab the PhoneApplicationFrame and store a reference to it. Also, it registers a handler for the Navigating event, and forwards the event to the listening viewmodels (if any). Then, the NavigateTo and the GoBack methods are implemented. They are quite simple, because they are in fact just a gateway to the PhoneApplicationFrame. The whole class is as follows: public class NavigationService : INavigationService { private PhoneApplicationFrame _mainFrame; public event NavigatingCancelEventHandler Navigating; public void NavigateTo(Uri pageUri) { if (EnsureMainFrame()) { _mainFrame.Navigate(pageUri); } } public void GoBack() { if (EnsureMainFrame() && _mainFrame.CanGoBack) { _mainFrame.GoBack(); } } private bool EnsureMainFrame() { if (_mainFrame != null) { return true; } _mainFrame = Application.Current.RootVisual as PhoneApplicationFrame; if (_mainFrame != null) { // Could be null if the app runs inside a design tool _mainFrame.Navigating += (s, e) => { if (Navigating != null) { Navigating(s, e); } }; return true; } return false; } } Exposing URIs I find that it is a good practice to expose each page’s URI as a constant. In MVVM Light applications, a good place to do that is the ViewModelLocator, which already acts like a central point of setup for the views and their viewmodels. Note that in some cases, it is necessary to expose the URL as a string, for instance when a query string needs to be passed to the view. So for example we could have: public static readonly Uri MainPageUri = new Uri("/MainPage.xaml", UriKind.Relative); public const string AnotherPageUrl = "/AnotherPage.xaml?param1={0}&param2={1}"; Creating and using the NavigationService Normally, we only need one instance of the NavigationService class. In cases where you use an IOC container, it is easy to simply register a singleton instance. For example, I am using a modified version of a super simple IOC container, and so I can register the navigation service as follows: SimpleIoc.Register<INavigationService, NavigationService>(); Then, it can be resolved where needed with: SimpleIoc.Resolve<INavigationService>(); Or (more frequently), I simply declare a parameter on the viewmodel constructor of type INavigationService and let the IOC container do its magic and inject the instance of the NavigationService when the viewmodel is created. On supported platforms (for example Silverlight 4), it is also possible to use MEF. Or, of course, we can simply instantiate the NavigationService in the ViewModelLocator, and pass this instance as a parameter of the viewmodels’ constructor, injected as a property, etc… Once the instance has been passed to the viewmodel, it can be used, for example with: NavigationService.NavigateTo(ViewModelLocator.ComparisonPageUri); Testing Thanks to the INavigationService interface, navigation can be mocked and tested when the viewmodel is put under unit test. Simply implement and inject a mock class, and assert that the methods are called as they should by the viewmodel. Conclusion As usual, there are multiple ways to code a solution answering your needs. I find that view services are a really neat way to delegate view-specific responsibilities such as animation, dialogs and of course navigation to other classes through an abstracted interface. In some cases, such as the NavigationService class exposed here, it is even possible to standardize the implementation and pack it in a class library for reuse. I hope that this sample is useful! Happy coding. Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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  • Placing Varibles into an external Sheet

    - by Leslie Peer
    Trying to Build an Online D&d program which stores the character info into Tables my problem is the game works just fine while your playing but as soon as you exit game all varibles are lost which means you have to restart from scratch the next time you log on... So this is a Two Fold Question What is the Best type of External Sheet to save it on... and two How to access sheet for saving and Loading Below are Varibles <SCRIPT> Name1="Tabor Bloomfield"; Name2="Sam Wrightfield"; Name3="Gavin Hartfild"; Name4="Gail Quickfoot"; Name5="Robert Gragorian"; Name6="Peter Shain"; Class1="MagicUser"; Class2="Fighter"; Class3="Fighter"; Class4="Thief"; Class5="Cleric"; Class6="Fighter"; Level1=23; Level2=1; Level3=1; Level4=2; Level5=2; Level6=1; Hpts1=145; Hpts2=14; Hpts3=13; Hpts4=8; Hpts5=12; Hpts6=15; Armor1="Robe of Protection +5"; Armor2="Splinted Armor"; Armor3="Chain Armor"; Armor4="Leather Armor"; Armor5="Chain Armor"; Armor6="Splinted Armor"; Ac1a=5; Ac2a=3; Ac3a=3; Ac4a=4; Ac5a=2; Ac6a=3; Armor1b="Ring of Protection +5"; Armor2b="Small Shield"; Armor3b="Small Shield"; Armor4b="Wooden Shield"; Armor5b="Large Shield"; Armor6b="Small Shield"; Ac1b=5; Ac2b=1; Ac3b=1; Ac4b=1; Ac5b=1; Ac6b=1; Str1=21; Str2=16; Str3=14; Str4=13; Str5=14; Str6=13; Int1=19; Int2=11; Int3=12; Int4=13; Int5=14; Int6=13; Wis1=18; Wis2=12; Wis3=14; Wis4=13; Wis5=14; Wis6=12; Dex1=19; Dex2=14; Dex3=13; Dex4=15; Dex5=14; Dex6=12; Con1=19; Con2=15; Con3=16; Con4=13; Con5=12; Con6=10; Chr1=21; Chr2=14; Chr3=13; Chr4=12; Chr5=14; Chr6=13; </SCRIPT> File name ="gamestats" Path="trellian Webpage/droves E and F/gamestats have tryed html Page,Javascript,Creating a serperate table page and putting the varibles into cells...But at a lost on how to arrive at a solution

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  • How to measure a canvas that has auto height and with

    - by Wymmeroo
    Hi Folks, I'm a beginner in silverlight so i hope i can get an answer that brings me some more light in the measure process of silverlight. I found an interessting flap out control from silverlight slide control and now I try to use it in my project. So that the slide out is working proper, I have to place the user control on a canvas. The user control then uses for itself the height of its content. I just wanna change that behavior so that the height is set to the available space from the parent canvas. You see the uxBorder where the height is set. How can I measure the actual height and set it to the border? I tried it with Height={Binding ElementName=notificationCanvas, Path=ActualHeight} but this dependency property has no callback, so the actualHeight is never set. What I want to achieve is a usercontrol like the tweetboard per example on Jesse Liberty's blog Sorry for my English writing, I hope you understand my question. <Canvas x:Name="notificationCanvas" Background="Red"> <SlideEffectEx:SimpleSlideControl GripWidth="20" GripTitle="Task" GripHeight="100"> <Border x:Name="uxBorder" BorderThickness="2" CornerRadius="5" BorderBrush="DarkGray" Background="DarkGray" Padding="5" Width="300" Height="700" > <StackPanel> <TextBlock Text="Tasks"></TextBlock> <Button x:Name="btn1" Margin="5" Content="{Binding ElementName=MainBorder, Path=Height}"></Button> <Button x:Name="btn2" Margin="5" Content="Second Button"></Button> <Button x:Name="btn3" Margin="5" Content="Third Button"></Button> <Button x:Name="btn1_Copy" Margin="5" Content="First Button"/> <Button x:Name="btn1_Copy1" Margin="5" Content="First Button"/> <Button x:Name="btn1_Copy2" Margin="5" Content="First Button"/> <Button x:Name="btn1_Copy3" Margin="5" Content="First Button"/> <Button x:Name="btn1_Copy4" Margin="5" Content="First Button"/> <Button x:Name="btn1_Copy5" Margin="5" Content="First Button"/> <Button x:Name="btn1_Copy6" Margin="5" Content="First Button"/> </StackPanel> </Border> </SlideEffectEx:SimpleSlideControl>

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  • How to measure a canvas that has auto height and width

    - by Wymmeroo
    Hi Folks, I'm a beginner in silverlight so i hope i can get an answer that brings me some more light in the measure process of silverlight. I found an interessting flap out control from silverlight slide control and now I try to use it in my project. So that the slide out is working proper, I have to place the user control on a canvas. The user control then uses for itself the height of its content. I just wanna change that behavior so that the height is set to the available space from the parent canvas. You see the uxBorder where the height is set. How can I measure the actual height and set it to the border? I tried it with Height={Binding ElementName=notificationCanvas, Path=ActualHeight} but this dependency property has no callback, so the actualHeight is never set. What I want to achieve is a usercontrol like the tweetboard per example on Jesse Liberty's blog Sorry for my English writing, I hope you understand my question. <Canvas x:Name="notificationCanvas" Background="Red"> <SlideEffectEx:SimpleSlideControl GripWidth="20" GripTitle="Task" GripHeight="100"> <Border x:Name="uxBorder" BorderThickness="2" CornerRadius="5" BorderBrush="DarkGray" Background="DarkGray" Padding="5" Width="300" Height="700" > <StackPanel> <TextBlock Text="Tasks"></TextBlock> <Button x:Name="btn1" Margin="5" Content="{Binding ElementName=MainBorder, Path=Height}"></Button> <Button x:Name="btn2" Margin="5" Content="Second Button"></Button> <Button x:Name="btn3" Margin="5" Content="Third Button"></Button> <Button x:Name="btn1_Copy" Margin="5" Content="First Button"/> <Button x:Name="btn1_Copy1" Margin="5" Content="First Button"/> <Button x:Name="btn1_Copy2" Margin="5" Content="First Button"/> <Button x:Name="btn1_Copy3" Margin="5" Content="First Button"/> <Button x:Name="btn1_Copy4" Margin="5" Content="First Button"/> <Button x:Name="btn1_Copy5" Margin="5" Content="First Button"/> <Button x:Name="btn1_Copy6" Margin="5" Content="First Button"/> </StackPanel> </Border> </SlideEffectEx:SimpleSlideControl>

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  • Giving an Error Object Expected Line 48 Char 1

    - by Leslie Peer
    Giving an Error Object Expected Line 48 Char 1------What did I do wrong??? *Note Line # are for reference only not on Original Web page****** <HTML><HEAD><TITLE></TITLE> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <META content="Leslie Peer" name=author> <META content="Created with Trellian WebPage" name=description> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.6000.16809" name=GENERATOR> <META content=Index name=keywords> <STYLE type=text/css>BODY { COLOR: #000000; BACKGROUND-REPEAT: repeat; FONT-FAMILY: Accent SF, Arial, Arial Black, Arial Narrow, Century Gothic, Comic Sans MS, Courier, Courier New, Georgia, Microsoft Sans Serif, Monotype Corsiva, Symbol, Tahoma, Times New Roman; BACKGROUND-COLOR: #666666 } A { FONT-SIZE: 14px; FONT-FAMILY: Arial Black, Bookman Old Style, DnD4Attack, Lucida Console, MS Serif, MS Outlook, MS Sans Serif, Rockwell Extra Bold, Roman, Star Time JL, Tahoma, Terminal, Times New Roman, Verdana, Wingdings 2, Wingdings 3, Wingdings } A:link { COLOR: #9966cc; TEXT-DECORATION: underline } A:visited { COLOR: #66ff66; TEXT-DECORATION: underline } A:hover { COLOR: #ffff00; TEXT-DECORATION: underline } A:active { COLOR: #ff0033; TEXT-DECORATION: underline } H1 { FONT-SIZE: 25px; COLOR: #9966cc; FONT-FAMILY: Century Gothic } H2 { FONT-SIZE: 20px; COLOR: #ff33cc; FONT-FAMILY: Century Gothic } H3 { FONT-SIZE: 18px; COLOR: #6666cc; FONT-FAMILY: Century Gothic } H4 { FONT-SIZE: 15px; COLOR: #00cc33; FONT-FAMILY: Century Gothic } H5 { FONT-SIZE: 10px; COLOR: #ffff33; FONT-FAMILY: Century Gothic } H6 { FONT-SIZE: 5px; COLOR: #996666; FONT-FAMILY: Century Gothic } </STYLE> line 46-<SCRIPT> line 47- CharNum=6; line 48-var Character=newArray();Character[0]="Larry Lightfoot";Character[1]="Sam Wrightfield";Character[2]="Gavin Hartfild";Character[3]="Gail Quickfoot";Character[4]="Robert Gragorian";Character[5]="Peter Shain"; line 49-var ExChar=newArray();ExChar[0]="Tabor Bloomfield"; line 50-var Class=newArray();Class[0]="MagicUser";Class[1]="Fighter";Class[2]="Fighter";Class[3]="Thief";Class[4]="Cleric";Class[5]="Fighter"; line 51-line 47var ExClass=newArray();ExClass[0]="MagicUser"; line 52-var Level=newArray();Level[0]="2";Level[1]="1";Level[2]="1";Level[3]="2";Level[4]="2";Level[5]="1"; line 53-var ExLevel=newArray();ExLevel[0]="23"; line 54-var Hpts=newArray();Hpts[0]="6";Hpts[1]="14";Hpts[2]="13";Hpts[3]="8";Hpts[4]="12";Hpts[5]="15"; line 55-var ExHpts=newArray();ExHpts[0]="145"; line 56-var Armor=newArray();Armor[0]="Cloak";Armor[1]="Splinted Armor";Armor[2]="Chain Armor";Armor[3]="Leather Armor";Armor[4]="Chain Armor";Armor[5]="Splinted Armor"; line 57-var ExArmor=newArray();ExArmor[0]="Robe of Protection +5"; line 58-var Ac1=newArray();Ac1[0]="0";Ac1[1]="3";Ac1[2]="3";Ac1[3]="4";Ac1[4]="2";Ac1[5]="3"; line 59-var ExAc=newArray();ExAc[0]="5"; line 60-var Armor1b=newArray();Armor1b[0]="Ring of Protection +1";Armor1b[1]="Small Shield";Armor1b[2]="Small Shield";Armor1b[3]="Wooden Shield";Armor1b[4]="Large Shield";Armor1b[5]="Small Shield"; line 61-var ExArmor1b=newArray();ExArmor1b[0]="Ring of Protection +5"; line 62-var Ac2=newArray();Ac2[0]="1";Ac2[1]="1";Ac2[2]="1";Ac2[3]="1";Ac2[4]="1";Ac2[5]="1"; line 63-var ExAc1b=newArray();ExAc1b[0]="5" line 64-var Str=newArray();Str[0]="15";Str[1]="16";Str[2]="14";Str[3]="13";Str[4]="14";Str[5]="13"; line 65-var ExStr=newArray();ExStr[0]=21; line 66-var Int=newArray();Int[0]="17";Int[1]="11";Int[2]="12";Int[3]="13";Int[4]="14";Int[5]="13"; line 67-var ExInt=newArray();ExInt[0]="19"; line 68-var Wis=newArray();Wis[0]="17";Wis[1]="12";Wis[2]="14";Wis[3]="13";Wis[4]="14";Wis[5]="12"; line 69-var ExWis=newArray();ExWis[0]="18"; line 70-var Dex=newArray();Dex[0]="15";Dex[1]="14";Dex[2]="13";Dex[3]="15";Dex[4]="14";Dex[5]="12"; line 71-var ExDex=newArray();ExDex[0]="19"; line 72-var Con=newArray();Con[0]="16";Con[1]="15";Con[2]="16";Con[3]="13";Con[4]="12";Con[5]="10"; line 73-var ExCon=newArray();ExCon[0]="19"; line 74-var Chr=newArray();Chr[0]="16";Chr[1]="14";Chr[2]="13";Chr[3]="12";Chr[4]="14";Chr[5]="13"; line 75-var ExChr=newArray();ExChr[0]="21"; line 76-var Expt=newArray();Expt[0]="45";Expt[1]="21";Expt[2]="16";Expt[3]="18";Expt[4]="22";Expt[5]="34"; line 77-var ExExpt=newArray();ExExpt[0]="245678"; line 78-var ExBp=newArray();ExBp[0]="Unknown";ExBp[1]="Extrademensional Plane World of Amborsia";ExBp[2]="Evil Wizard Banished for Mass Geniocodes"; line 79-</SCRIPT> line 80-</HEAD> line 81-<BODY> Giving an Error Object Expected Line 48 Char 1------What did I do wrong??? *Note Line # are for reference only not on Original Web page******

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  • Does HTML 5 &ldquo;Rich vs. Reach&rdquo; a False Choice?

    - by andrewbrust
    The competition between the Web and proprietary rich platforms, including Windows, Mac OS, iPhone/iPad, Adobe’s Flash/AIR and Microsoft’s Silverlight, is not new. But with the emergence of HTML 5 and imminent support for it in the next release of the major Web browsers, the battle is heating up. And with the announcements made Wednesday at Google's I/O conference, it's getting kicked up yet another notch. The impact of this platform battle on companies in the media and advertising world, and the developers who serve them, is significant. The most prominent question is whether video and rich media online will shift towards pure HTML and away from plug-ins like Flash and Silverlight. In fact, certain features in HTML 5 make it suitable for development for line of business applications as well, further threatening those plug-in technologies. So what's the deal? Is this real or hype? To answer that question, I've done my own research into HTML 5's features and talked to several media-focused, New York area developers to get their opinions. I present my findings to you in this post. Before bearing down into HTML 5 specifics and practitioners’ quotes, let's set the context. To understand what HTML 5 can do, take a look at this video of Sports Illustrated’s HTML 5 prototype. This should start to get you bought into the idea that HTML 5 could be a game-changer. Next, if you happen to have installed the beta version of Google's Chrome 5 browser, take a look at the page linked to below, and in that page, click on any of the game thumbnails to see what's possible, without a plug-in, in this brave new world. (Note, although the instructions for each game tell you to press the A key to start, press the Z key instead.). Here's the link: http://www.kesiev.com/akihabara As an adjunct to what's enabled by HTML 5, consider the various transforms that are part of CSS 3. If you're running Safari as your browser, the following link will showcase this live; if not, you'll see a bitmap that will give you an idea of what's possible: http://webkit.org/blog/386/3d-transforms Are you starting to get the picture (literally)? What has up until now required browser plug-ins and other patches to HTML, most typically Flash, will soon be renderable, natively, in all major browsers. Moreover, it's looking likely that developers will be able to deliver such content and experiences in these browsers using one base of markup and script code (using straight JavaScript and/or jQuery), without resorting to browser-specific code and workarounds. If you're skeptical of this, I wouldn't blame you, especially with respect to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. However, i can tell you with confidence that even Microsoft is dedicated to full-on HTML 5 support in version 9 of that browser, which is currently under development. So what’s new in HTML 5, specifically, that makes sites like this possible?  The specification documents go into deep detail, and there’s no sense in rehashing them here, but a summary is probably in order.   Here is a non-authoritative, but useful, list of the major new feature areas in HTML 5: 2D drawing capabilities and 3D transforms. 2D drawing instructions can be embedded statically into a Web page; application interactivity and animation can be achieved through script.  As mentioned above, 3D transforms are technically part of version 3 of the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) spec, rather than HTML 5, but they can nonetheless be thought of as part of the bundle.  They allow for rendering of 3D images and animations that, together with 2D drawing, make HTML-based games much more feasible than they are presently, as the links above demonstrate. Embedded audio and video. A media player can appear directly in a rendered Web page, using HTML markup and no plug-ins. Alternately, player controls can be hidden and the content can play automatically. Major enhancements to form-based input. This includes such things as specification of required fields, embedding of text “hints” into a control, limiting valid input on a field to dates, email addresses or a list of values.  There’s more to this, but the gist is that line-of-business applications, with complicated input and data validation, are supported directly Offline caching, local storage and client-side SQL database. These facilities allow Web applications to function more like native apps, even if no internet connection is available. User-defined data. Data (or metadata – data about data) can easily be embedded statically and/or retrieved and updated with Javascript code. This avoids having to embed that data in a separate file, or within script code. Taken together, these features position HTML to compete with, and perhaps overtake, Adobe’s Flash/AIR (and Microsoft’s Silverlight) as a viable Web platform for media, RIAs (rich internet applications – apps that function more like desktop software than Web sites) and interactive Web content, including games. What do players in the media world think about this?  From the embedded video above, we know what Sports Illustrated (and, therefore, Time Warner) think.  Hulu, the major Internet site for broadcast TV content, is on record as saying HTML5 video does not pass muster with them, at least not yet.  YouTube, on the other hand, already has an experimental HTML 5-based version of their site.  TechCrunch has reported that NetFlix is flirting with HTML 5 too, especially as it pertains to embedded browsers in TV-based devices.  And the New York Times’ Web site now embeds some video clips without resorting to Flash.  They have to – otherwise iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users couldn’t see them in the Mobile Safari browser. What do media-focused developers think about all this?  I talked to several to get their opinions. Michael Pinto is CEO and Founder of Very Memorable Design whose primary focus has been to help marketing directors get traction online.  The firm’s client roster includes the likes Time, Inc., Scholastic and PBS.  Pinto predicts that “More and more microsites that were done entirely in Flash will be done more and more using jQuery. I can also see slideshows and video now being done without Flash. However if you needed to create a game or highly interactive activity Flash would still be the way to go for the web.” A dissenting view comes from Jesse Erlbaum, CEO of The Erlbaum Group, LLC, which serves numerous clients in the magazine publishing sector.  When I asked Erlbaum whether he thought HTML 5 and jQuery/JavaScript would steal significant market share from Flash, he responded “Not at all!  In particular, not for media and advertising customers!  These sectors are not generally in the business of making highly functional applications, which is the one place where HTML5/jQuery/etc really shines.” Ironically, Pinto’s firm is a heavy user of Flash for its projects and Erlbaum’s develops atop the “LAMP” (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl) stack.  For whatever reason, each firm seems to see the other’s toolset as a more viable choice.  But both agree that the developer tool story around HTML 5 is deficient.  Pinto explains “What’s lost with [HTML 5 and Javascript] techniques is that there isn’t a single widely favored easy-to-use tool of choice for authoring. So with Flash you can get up and running right away and not worry about what is different from one browser to the next.“  Erlbaum agrees, saying: “HTML5/Javascript lacks a sophisticated integrated development environment (IDE) which is an essential part of Flash.  If what someone is trying to make is primarily animation, it's a waste of time…to do this in Javascript.  It can be done much more easily in Flash, and with greater cross-browser compatibility and consistency due to the ubiquity of Flash.” Adobe (maker of Flash since its 2005 acquisition of Macromedia) likely agrees.  And for better or worse, they’ve decided to address this shortcoming of HTML 5, even at risk of diminishing their Flash platfrom. Yesterday Adobe announced that their hugely popular Deamweaver Web design authoring tool would directly support HTML 5 and CSS 3 development.  In fact, the Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 HTML5 Pack is downloadable now from Adobe Labs. Maybe Adobe is bowing to pressure from ardent Web professionals like Scott Kellum, Lead Designer at Channel V Media,  a digital and offline branding firm, serving the media and marketing sectors, among others.  Kellum told me that HTML 5 “…will definitely move people away from Flash. It has many of the same functionalities with faster load times and better accessibility. HTML5 will help Flash as well: with the new caching methods you can now even run Flash apps offline.” Although all three Web developers I interviewed would agree that Flash is still required for more sophisticated applications, Kellum seems to have put his finger on why HTML 5 may nonetheless dominate.  In his view, much of the Web development out there has little need for high-end capabilities: “Most people want to add a little punch to a navigation bar or some video and now you can get the biggest bang for your buck with HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript.” I’ve already mentioned that Google’s ongoing I/O conference, at the Moscone West center in San Francisco, is driving the HTML 5 news cycle, big time.  And Google made many announcements of their own, including the open sourcing of their VP8 video codec, new enterprise-oriented capabilities for its App Engine cloud offering, and the creation of the Chrome Web Store, which the company says will make it easier to find and “install” Web applications, in a fashion similar to  the way users procure native apps on various mobile platforms. HTML 5 looks to be disruptive, especially to the media world.  And even if the technology ends up disappointing, the chatter around it alone is causing big changes in the technology world.  If the richness it promises delivers, then magazine publishers and non-text digital advertisers may indeed have a platform for creating compelling content that loads quickly, is standards-based and will render identically in (the newest versions of) all major Web browsers.  Can this development in the digital arena save the titans of the print world?  I can’t predict, but it’s going to be fun to watch, and the competitive innovation from all players in both industries will likely be immense.

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  • VS 2012 Code Review &ndash; Before Check In OR After Check In?

    - by Tarun Arora
    “Is Code Review Important and Effective?” There is a consensus across the industry that code review is an effective and practical way to collar code inconsistency and possible defects early in the software development life cycle. Among others some of the advantages of code reviews are, Bugs are found faster Forces developers to write readable code (code that can be read without explanation or introduction!) Optimization methods/tricks/productive programs spread faster Programmers as specialists "evolve" faster It's fun “Code review is systematic examination (often known as peer review) of computer source code. It is intended to find and fix mistakes overlooked in the initial development phase, improving both the overall quality of software and the developers' skills. Reviews are done in various forms such as pair programming, informal walkthroughs, and formal inspections.” Wikipedia No where does the definition mention whether its better to review code before the code has been committed to version control or after the commit has been performed. No matter which side you favour, Visual Studio 2012 allows you to request for a code review both before check in and also request for a review after check in. Let’s weigh the pros and cons of the approaches independently. Code Review Before Check In or Code Review After Check In? Approach 1 – Code Review before Check in Developer completes the code and feels the code quality is appropriate for check in to TFS. The developer raises a code review request to have a second pair of eyes validate if the code abides to the recommended best practices, will not result in any defects due to common coding mistakes and whether any optimizations can be made to improve the code quality.                                             Image 1 – code review before check in Pros Everything that gets committed to source control is reviewed. Minimizes the chances of smelly code making its way into the code base. Decreases the cost of fixing bugs, remember, the earlier you find them, the lesser the pain in fixing them. Cons Development Code Freeze – Since the changes aren’t in the source control yet. Further development can only be done off-line. The changes have not been through a CI build, hard to say whether the code abides to all build quality standards. Inconsistent! Cumbersome to track the actual code review process.  Not every change to the code base is worth reviewing, a lot of effort is invested for very little gain. Approach 2 – Code Review after Check in Developer checks in, random code reviews are performed on the checked in code.                                                      Image 2 – Code review after check in Pros The code has already passed the CI build and run through any code analysis plug ins you may have running on the build server. Instruct the developer to ensure ZERO fx cop, style cop and static code analysis before check in. Code is cleaner and smell free even before the code review. No Offline development, developers can continue to develop against the source control. Cons Bad code can easily make its way into the code base. Since the review take place much later in the cycle, the cost of fixing issues can prove to be much higher. Approach 3 – Hybrid Approach The community advocates a more hybrid approach, a blend of tooling and human accountability quotient.                                                               Image 3 – Hybrid Approach 1. Code review high impact check ins. It is not possible to review everything, by setting up code review check in policies you can end up slowing your team. More over, the code that you are reviewing before check in hasn't even been through a green CI build either. 2. Tooling. Let the tooling work for you. By running static analysis, fx cop, style cop and other plug ins on the build agent, you can identify the real issues that in my opinion can't possibly be identified using human reviews. Configure the tooling to report back top 10 issues every day. Mandate the manual code review of individuals who keep making it to this list of shame more often. 3. During Merge. I would prefer eliminating some of the other code issues during merge from Main branch to the release branch. In a scrum project this is still easier because cheery picking the merges is a possibility and the size of code being reviewed is still limited. Let the tooling work for you, if some one breaks the CI build often, put them on a gated check in build course until you see improvement. If some one appears on the top 10 list of shame generated via the build then ensure that all their code is reviewed till you see improvement. At the end of the day, the goal is to ensure that the code being delivered is top quality. By enforcing a code review before any check in, you force the developer to work offline or stay put till the review is complete. What do the experts say? So I asked a few expects what they thought of “Code Review quality gate before Checking in code?" Terje Sandstrom | Microsoft ALM MVP You mean a review quality gate BEFORE checking in code????? That would mean a lot of code staying either local or in shelvesets, and not even been through a CI build, and a green CI build being the main criteria for going further, f.e. to the review state. I would not like code laying around with no checkin’s. Having a requirement that code is checked in small pieces, 4-8 hours work max, and AT LEAST daily checkins, a manual code review comes second down the lane. I would expect review quality gates to happen before merging back to main, or before merging to release.  But that would all be on checked-in code.  Branching is absolutely one way to ease the pain.   Another way we are using is automatic quality builds, running metrics, coverage, static code analysis.  Unfortunately it takes some time, would be great to be on CI’s – but…., so it’s done scheduled every night. Based on this we get, among other stuff,  top 10 lists of suspicious code, which is then subjected to reviews.  If a person seems to be very popular on these top 10 lists, we subject every check in from that person to a review for a period. That normally helps.   None of the clients I have can afford to have every checkin reviewed, so we need to find ways around it. I don’t disagree with the nicety of having all the code reviewed, but I find it hard to find those resources in today’s enterprises. David V. Corbin | Visual Studio ALM Ranger I tend to agree with both sides. I hate having code that is not checked in, but at the same time hate having “bad” code in the repository. I have found that branching is one approach to solving this dilemma. Code is checked into the private/feature branch before the review, but is not merged over to the “official” branch until after the review. I advocate both, depending on circumstance (especially team dynamics)   - The “pre-checkin” is usually for elements that may impact the project as a whole. Think of it as another “gate” along with passing unit tests. - The “post-checkin” may very well not be at the changeset level, but correlates to a review at the “user story” level.   Again, this depends on team dynamics in play…. Robert MacLean | Microsoft ALM MVP I do not think there is no right answer for the industry as a whole. In short the question is why do you do reviews? Your question implies risk mitigation, so in low risk areas you can get away with it after check in while in high risk you need to do it before check in. An example is those new to a team or juniors need it much earlier (maybe that is before checkin, maybe that is soon after) than seniors who have shipped twenty sprints on the team. Abhimanyu Singhal | Visual Studio ALM Ranger Depends on per scenario basis. We recommend post check-in reviews when: 1. We don't want to block other checks and processes on manual code reviews. Manual reviews take time, and some pieces may not require manual reviews at all. 2. We need to trace all changes and track history. 3. We have a code promotion strategy/process in place. For risk mitigation, post checkin code can be promoted to Accepted branches. Or can be rejected. Pre Checkin Reviews are used when 1. There is a high risk factor associated 2. Reviewers are generally (most of times) have immediate availability. 3. Team does not have strict tracking needs. Simply speaking, no single process fits all scenarios. You need to select what works best for your team/project. Thomas Schissler | Visual Studio ALM Ranger This is an interesting discussion, I’m right now discussing details about executing code reviews with my teams. I see and understand the aspects you brought in, but there is another side as well, I’d like to point out. 1.) If you do reviews per check in this is not very practical as a hard rule because this will disturb the flow of the team very often or it will lead to reduce the checkin frequency of the devs which I would not accept. 2.) If you do later reviews, for example if you review PBIs, it is not easy to find out which code you should review. Either you review all changesets associate with the PBI, but then you might review code which has been changed with a later checkin and the dev maybe has already fixed the issue. Or you review the diff of the latest changeset of the PBI with the first but then you might also review changes of other PBIs. Jakob Leander | Sr. Director, Avanade In my experience, manual code review: 1. Does not get done and at the very least does not get redone after changes (regardless of intentions at start of project) 2. When a project actually do it, they often do not do it right away = errors pile up 3. Requires a lot of time discussing/defining the standard and for the team to learn it However code review is very important since e.g. even small memory leaks in a high volume web solution have big consequences In the last years I have advocated following approach for code review - Architects up front do “at least one best practice example” of each type of component and tell the team. Copy from this one. This should include error handling, logging, security etc. - Dev lead on project continuously browse code to validate that the best practices are used. Especially that patterns etc. are not broken. You can do this formally after each sprint/iteration if you want. Once this is validated it is unlikely to “go bad” even during later code changes Agree with customer to rely on static code analysis from Visual Studio as the one and only coding standard. This has HUUGE benefits - You can easily tweak to reach the level you desire together with customer - It is easy to measure for both developers/management - It is 100% consistent across code base - It gets validated all the time so you never end up getting hammered by a customer review in the end - It is easy to tell the developer that you do not want code back unless it has zero errors = minimize communication You need to track this at least during nightly builds and make sure team sees total # issues. Do not allow #issues it to grow uncontrolled. On the project I run I require code analysis to have run on code before checkin (checkin rule). This means -  You have to have clean compile (or CA wont run) so this is extra benefit = very few broken builds - You can change a few of the rules to compile as errors instead of warnings. I often do this for “missing dispose” issues which you REALLY do not want in your app Tip: Place your custom CA rules files as part of solution. That  way it works when you do branching etc. (path to CA file is relative in VS) Some may argue that CA is not as good as manual inspection. But since manual inspection in reality suffers from the 3 issues in start it is IMO a MUCH better (and much cheaper) approach from helicopter perspective Tirthankar Dutta | Director, Avanade I think code review should be run both before and after check ins. There are some code metrics that are meant to be run on the entire codebase … Also, especially on multi-site projects, one should strive to architect in a way that lets men manage the framework while boys write the repetitive code… scales very well with the need to review less by containment and imposing architectural restrictions to emphasise the design. Bruno Capuano | Microsoft ALM MVP For code reviews (means peer reviews) in distributed team I use http://www.vsanywhere.com/default.aspx  David Jobling | Global Sr. Director, Avanade Peer review is the only way to scale and its a great practice for all in the team to learn to perform and accept. In my experience you soon learn who's code to watch more than others and tune the attention. Mikkel Toudal Kristiansen | Manager, Avanade If you have several branches in your code base, you will need to merge often. This requires manual merging, when a file has been changed in both branches. It offers a good opportunity to actually review to changed code. So my advice is: Merging between branches should be done as often as possible, it should be done by a senior developer, and he/she should perform a full code review of the code being merged. As for detecting architectural smells and code smells creeping into the code base, one really good third party tools exist: Ndepend (http://www.ndepend.com/, for static code analysis of the current state of the code base). You could also consider adding StyleCop to the solution. Jesse Houwing | Visual Studio ALM Ranger I gave a presentation on this subject on the TechDays conference in NL last year. See my presentation and slides here (talk in Dutch, but English presentation): http://blog.jessehouwing.nl/2012/03/did-you-miss-my-techdaysnl-talk-on-code.html  I’d like to add a few more points: - Before/After checking is mostly a trust issue. If you have a team that does diligent peer reviews and regularly talk/sit together or peer review, there’s no need to enforce a before-checkin policy. The peer peer-programming and regular feedback during development can take care of most of the review requirements as long as the team isn’t under stress. - Under stress, enforce pre-checkin reviews, it might sound strange, if you’re already under time or budgetary constraints, but it is under such conditions most real issues start to be created or pile up. - Use tools to catch most common errors, Code Analysis/FxCop was already mentioned. HP Fortify, Resharper, Coderush etc can help you there. There are also a lot of 3rd party rules you can add to Code Analysis. I’ve written a few myself (http://fccopcontrib.codeplex.com) and various teams from Microsoft have added their own rules (MSOCAF for SharePoint, WSSF for WCF). For common errors that keep cropping up, see if you can define a rule. It’s much easier. But more importantly make sure you have a good help page explaining *WHY* it's wrong. If you have small feature or developer branches/shelvesets, you might want to review pre-merge. It’s still better to do peer reviews and peer programming, but the most important thing is that bad quality code doesn’t make it into the important branch. So my philosophy: - Use tooling as much as possible. - Make sure the team understands the tooling and the importance of the things it flags. It’s too easy to just click suppress all to ignore the warnings. - Under stress, tighten process, it’s under stress that the problems of late reviews will really surface - Most importantly if you do reviews do them as early as possible, but never later than needed. In other words, pre-checkin/post checking doesn’t really matter, as long as the review is done before the code is released. It’ll just be much more expensive to fix any review outcomes the later you find them. --- I would love to hear what you think!

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