the ie team opened a public bug database

looks like it is open to anyone — log your bugs!

Zoe and Mom

i haven't been home much of march due to some conference and customer travel. this weekend was the first in a while i've actually been able to spend some quality time with my family. it made me realize again how important family is and how important mine is to me. my wife and daughter mean the world to me and i hope they know it. so here's a shameless pluf for the fam (even though they don't read this) -- make sure your family knows how important they are to you!

calling mobile developers!!!!  MEDC is right around the corner and the opportunity to get best price for registration is closing quickly!  it (Mobile and Embedded DevCon) will be held May 8–11 in Las Vegas, NV at the Venetian and you can save $200 on registration if done before March 31!!!

If you are looking to keep your development skills current, and get a sneak peak at the latest Windows Mobile devices, then MEDC is the place to be!  MEDC offers the most comprehensive training available on developing mobile applications in Visual Studio 2005 for Windows Mobile 5.0 (including MSFP) using both managed and native code.  In addition, MEDC offers you the opportunity to learn from, network with and be inspired by the Windows Mobile Core Development Team, MVPs, your peers and other technical experts.  NEW: Receive one on one help from members of Windows Mobile, Visual Studio, .NET Compact Framework, and SQL Mobile product and support teams in the Code Porting and Debugging Lab.  Or test your code on the newest devices configured with OEM and operator-specific settings in the NEW Device Testing Lab.  Register Today!

visit http://www.medc2006.com for more info and to register!

Tags: MEDC MEDC2006 mobile

hmm…silently released?

web applicaiton project add-in for visual studio 2005: download web app projects

this is an addin that enables VS2003–like features for VS2005 web projects.

i missed the keynote due to some meetings, but had a chance to have breakfast with josh, who is the author of the PHP ajax library, HTML_AJAX.  i was glad to hear some positive experiences josh is having at the conference.

right now i’m in the ‘building better user experiences” for web applications, with rick spencer and brad abrams.  first, they came out and were very “fluid” — great energy, non-technical “here is my powerpoint bullets, don’t ask any questions” feel to it.  they immediately engaged the audience on some questions to setup their discussion.

rick is talking now — not behind the podium — i like that.

rick referred to two pices of information, usable ajax patterns by michael mahemoff and usability guidelines by thomas beakdal

lessons learned – rick talked about a few principles of interactive development — i couldn’t capture them all, but here are some notes…

1) instant feedback – providing instant feedback on what is happening even if it isn’t happening

2) predict – showing the map dragging — bringing around the surrounding images shows the predictibility of what the user will do next; other sample is email address (yahoo), another sample is flickr slideshow — getting next image as the natural selection is the next image.

3) preserve – don’t forget about what the user has done

4) share – making sure when the user finds something of value it is important to enable the ability to share. demonstrating the permalink f a map view on virtual earth (suggestion for virtual earth — create shrinkster-ish URLs for your site)

overall this wasn’t any new information that i learned personally, but they did show some more atlas behaviors that i’d like to get my hands on…everyone keeps showing them, but nowhere to download just yet. (wish they’d adopt the ‘share’ principle here ;-)).

rick and brad took the time for questions (thanks!!!!!)  rick mentioned that i threw him a fast ball when i inquired about the MILF factor.  no, not that one…the:

Mother
In
Law
Factor

and how it applies to bookmarking ajax-ish sites (where state has changed multiple times but the url hasn’t) and the back button issues.

off to see wpf/e

Tags: MIX06