Categories
.Net Stuff Development General

I finally did it… :(

Today I finally un-installed VS.Net 2005 from my PC.  I keep trying to do things in VS.Net
2005 that just won’t work in Mono, and more recently I had issues with various
application blocks that just didn’t work in .Net 2.0. Apparently there are
work-arounds, but I’m not interested in any of that. I want something that just
works and, despite its many issues, VS.Net 2003 has a much bigger base of tools
that will “just work” for me.


So as I type VS.Net 2003 is installing on my PC and I’m going to have to say
good bye to “built in” support for Master Pages, Refactoring, and a many other
cool features so that I can have “stuff that works”. (Unfortunately for me
“stuff that works” roughly translates to “stuff that works on
.Net and on Mono”) 


Another good reason for the swap is that I need to build a web app at the
moment (needs to be working by January)and, unless they’ve seriously jacked up
their capabilities since .Net 1.0 was released, the likelyhood of any South
African ISP’s supporting .Net 2.0 in the next 6 months is probably not very
high.  So we’ll be far more likely to find a place to host the site if we
use v1.1.

Categories
.Net Stuff Development General

LINQ

Last night’s SA Developer meeting in JHB was on
LINQ.  I unfortunately was about 25 minutes late so I missed some of the
stuff but what I did see was both pretty cool and frustrating.  The new C#
3.0 stuff looks really awesome but the LINQ stuff is “just another teaser that I
won’t be able to use until its released in 2 years time”.  Oddly enough my
previous company had built something similar to the Linq expression trees to
enable you to query our database and return objects.  We had been building
the system for about 3 years (it does a lot of other things besides just
querying a database), so I’m sure they’ll all be kicking themselves about the
fact that in 2 years their cool technology is going to be “replaced” by
microsoft’s LINQ and they’ll be working on “outdated” or “non-standard”
systems.


I guess that’s the way things go… I certainly wish I could use LINQ now, it
would definately make my life a lot easier, and would probably make my boss far
happier with using .Net.  I guess that’s the story of MS products, version
3 is the one that finally gets it right and kicks ass…


Not that version 1, 1.1, or 2.0 don’t kick ass… its just that they just
don’t have all the coolness of 3.0. 


Added to that – I’m having to build a new project in v1.1 instead of 2.0
because we have to use Mono. So I’m a bit frustrated with seeing new
coolness that I can’t use  even though part of the geek in me is
super excited at where things are going and how cool the new coolness of 3.0
will be when we finally get it.

Categories
Development General

Excursions in Mono and Generics…

Shortly after starting at the new company I found out
that a lot of our clients like Mac‘s so we need to find some way to make the new version of our
product work on Mac‘s.  Of course the initial solution was to make it web
based, but that causes some hassles with interactivity… I know Ajax/atlas is cool but for lots of
data entry the web just didn’t seem to quite do it quite as nicely as was
required… so our next option started becoming either Java or Mono.   And since we
don’t have any real java experience here we decided to take a look at Mono.


I was pretty excited when I found out that it does Generics and Nullable
types, and some tests showed that assemblies built in VS.Net 2005 that used
Generics and Nullable types worked quite nicely in Mono.


Unforutnately I’ve had some issues with the UI side of things.  Mono
kinda (98%) supports System.Windows.Forms v1.1 and if I design a UI in
VS.Net 2005 there seems to be no way to make it use .Net v1.1 components. 
So I get a bunch of designer code that isn’t 1.1 compatable, as well as a whole
bunch of controls that aren’t in v1.1.  Apparently Mono has a few of these
controls already in testing, but they’re not planning on supporting System
Windows Forms (SWF) v2.0 until the end of 2006, so its not a good idea for an
application that I need to build now.


So I’ve tried to use VS.Net 2003 and while that builds the UI’s nicely, it
doesn’t recognise the Generics and Nullable types in my v2.0 assemblies.  I
thought I’d try out SharpDevelop v1 and v2 (which isn’t yet released). 
SharpDevelop v1 bombs out when I try to reference a .Net v2.0 based assembly,
and SharpDevelop v2 has two problems:
1. Its not very stable (which is to be
expected from a pre-alpha product)
2. It seems to suffer from the same
problem as VS.Net 2005.


Next I tried out MonoDevelop. I could only get that working on Linux,
which I managed thanks to Ubuntu and Virtual PC, and it doesn’t seem to like SWF
at all – it only seems to build GTK# based interfaces. 


I even tried X-Develop, and didn’t have much joy.


From what I’ve seen there seems to be no IDE that will build a Mono SWF (aka
MWF) UI while using some of the .Net v2.0 features that mono
supports.  So my next plan of action is to dumb down my business logic
so that it only uses .Net v1.1 features so that I can build a UI using either
VS.Net 2003 or SharpDevelop v1.


At this moment I’m super impressed with how Mono performs, I’m just
struggling to find tools and controls (that’s another story/blog post – coming
soon) that will work easily.

Categories
.Net Stuff Development Geek food General

New toolkit released

[IMHO just lost my blog entry – it posted it, but the contents were blank, so here’s a 2nd attempt]
I just read via the Daily Grind that Component Factory have just released the Krypton Toolkit.  Its basically a set of windows forms controls that are written for .Net 2.0 and VS.Net 2005, and best of all they’re free for commercial use.


I’m going to go and download it now and check it out.


[And for the .Net bloggers out there, if you blog about their release you can get a free copy of DotNetMagic – check out the offer here.]

Categories
Geek food General

iMate OS Upgrade

I have an i-mate SP3
– I’ve had it for about 6 months now – and the one thing that’s frustrated
me the most is the fact that it doesn’t have Windows Media Player 10 on it, so
certain cool features of WMP 10 wouldn’t work (like auto synchronising playlists
with the phone)  Anyway, I just checked the i-mate website and lo and
behold, there’s a new version of the OS for my phone and it includes (amongst
other cool things) WMP 10!  It apparently breaks some functionality with
some bluetooth based GPS devices, but since I don’t connect my phone to anything
bluetooth related, I don’t mind at all.


The only problem with this is that I’ll have to re-install all the apps I’ve
put on my phone, kinda like re-installing the OS on a PC… At least I’ll be in
control, unlike the phone OS upgrades I’ve had with previous phones where the
“service centre” just wipes all your data, I’ll be able to back up everything
and make sure I don’t lose any important information.  Its also cool that
it synchs with Outlook so all my contact info will be safe…


I know the last time I upgraded my phone software I had to re-name my phone
because ActiveSync believed it was still partnered with my “pre-upgrade” phone,
and wouldn’t create a new partnership with my “post-upgrade” phone. 
Unfortuantely I can’t remember how I worked around it, or what I should do now
to prevent it from happening this time.  So I’ll make sure I post a blog
entry about it for future reference.

Categories
General

I’m back…

After a while of having
hassles with IMHO not talking to my blog and then IMHO not liking my new
company’s proxy, I finally have it all up and working again.  So hopefully
this is the start of some more regular posts.


For those who noticed, I did say “new company”.  I
moved companies in the begining of October… I’m no longer based in Centurion,
I’m now based in Morningside and I’m loving it.  Far less traffic, far
easier to get to SA Dev meetings, and so many more cool things.  More posts
should soon be following…

Categories
General Internet/Links

Cool online shop!

Wow!  I just placed an order for my wife’s birthday
present from Take2 and I found out something… They’re bloody cheap. 
I checked out prices for some music and some DVD’s (a few boxed sets and a few
individual movies) and they beat Kalahari’s prices (not difficult).  But
what suprised me is that usually if you order more than 3 or 4 DVD’s
you can usually get them way cheaper if you were to use Amazon.com.  In
this case however, Amazon.com had the one set of DVD’s at about R350,
Amazon.co.uk had them at R200, and Take2 had them even cheaper than that. 


I’ve dealt with Take2 before and they’re really cool – a little understaffed
– but their products have arrived on time, and their site is really easy to
use.  Take 2 used to be more expensive than Kalahari, so I’ve used Kalahari
a few times… Their service sucks! Ever tried calling their support line? 
Or even using their revolutionary use of QQ for customer service.  I tried
QQ (yet another irritating IM client) and their customer service people are
NEVER online.  So I’ve always had to call them.  Their IVR system is
silly…  Instead of asking you what language you want to be spoken to up
front, they insist on repeating everything in both english and afrikaans until
the very last question.  I’ve waited for over 15 minutes every time I call
them, and their support people generally seem rather clueless.


Anyway, I just love getting good bargains online.  So next time you shop
for DVDs, CDs, Books, or electronic goods take a look at Take2 – maybe
they’ll suprise you like they did me.

Categories
.Net Stuff Development General

SA Imagine Cup Entrants – Update…

For the latest info, check out Ruari’s blog and his photo gallery.  Sounds like they’re off to a good start!

Categories
.Net Stuff Development Geek food General

SA Team for Imagine Cup

I just read an IT Web article on the SA entrants to the Imagine Cup.  For those who don’t know, Microsoft South Africa has run Project Firefly for a number of years… Its basically a software development competition amongst SA Academic institutions.  The Imagine Cup started after Firefly and is an international “version” of the competition.


I was fortunate to meet the guys from PE who are going to Japan this week for the international competition.  Their system looks amazing!  I had no idea that people at varsity had the ability to write such cool and useful software in .Net.  Their IDS (Intrusion Detection System) is damn awesome in what it does, and they’ve done some amazing work on it.  I know its not from some big name that we can all trust, but after hearing them talk and seeing a demo of some of their project I seriously think they have a winning product.  If I was a system admin I’d seriously want some of their features on any IDS I bought for my company.


Imagine sitting at home on a weekend, and getting a message on your iMate phone or other Pocket PC based phone to tell you that a user’s PC is being used to hack your network.  For most people that would be good enough, but in this case it goes further.  Rather than having to get to a PC or rush into work, you can quickly and easily disable their account, shut down their pc, etc, right from your phone.  Just push a few buttons and get back to watching the game/braai/beer/etc.  No stress, no hassle, network intrusion averted.  This example is just one of the many super cool things that their system does!


Aparently they have only got 15 minutes to present their project in the first round, and 10 minutes in the 2nd round (excluding a 5 minute demo).  I have no idea how they’ll get that right because they could spend hours talking about all the features they have.  Aparently they built most of their UI controls themselves, so their UI is really cool and was made locally!


Needless to say I’m VERY impressed and I hope they get the top spot in the competition!

Categories
General Internet/Links

Another free skype day…

Ok, so I just read that Wednesday (today) is a free skype day.  So hopefully this post won’t end up like my last one.  Now stop reading and go to Skype to get your free minutes!