One of the potentially most important topics to emerge from Microsoft Research recently ... at least in my opinion ... is Xen, described in a paper by Eric Meijer, Wolfram Schulte and Gavin Bierman, Programming with Circles, Triangles and Rectangles . The fundamental idea behind Xen is that object-orientated programming (circles), relational data (rectangles) and XML data (triangles) are, for want of a better term, different shapes. The idea behind Xen is to remove (some of the?) problems arising from that basic reality.
Robyn Peterson has written an article on Xen, Microsoft Expands .Net With Xen , giving one viewpoint on what Xen might become.
I am less sure that Xen is necessarily suited only as an extension to C#. I don't see any obvious reason why Xen can't also be applied to, for example, VB.Net.
My guess is that Xen, if it moves out of the research lab, will appear in the Visual Studio "Orcas" generation of products. Xen, or something like it, is one to watch for the future, in my opinion.
Xen is a successor to the mysterious X# language about which rumours circulated a year or two ago.
At this precise moment my most pressing wish for Internet Explorer is the facility to turn off the animation of animated GIFs. I have been trying to read some of the really interesting articles on SQL Server Yukon in MSDN Magazine e.g. XML in Yukon - New Version Showcases Native XML Type and Advanced Data Handling but the animated GIF trying to sell a CD for past issues of MSDN Magazine is pitched at such a frequency of animation and positioned in such an intrusive place that I abandoned attempts at reading in Internet Explorer and switched to Mozilla 1.6.
Mozilla has that heavenly functionality, when you are trying to seriously read articles, of being able to turn off animation in GIFs, while still allowing other informational images to be downloaded. Many brownie points to Mozilla developers for that design decision.
Firebird 0.7 is far behind on that point, in my view. The only option is to turn off all images from that server or accept them all and allow them to animate. I don't want to lose the information-carrying images. So Mozilla is better for serious reading of illustrated technical material.
But, in Internet Explorer, I am bombarded by an ad which I have seen dozens of times before and which is trying to sell me something I don't want to buy.
So item 1. on my Internet Explorer wish list is the ability to stop animated GIFs animating.
Version 1.6 of the Mozilla browser is now available from Mozilla.org .
I think I will move to it meantime, since Firebird 0.7 has been hanging occasionally when put under really heavy use. I am a pretty heavy user of browsers, since the tabbed browsing facility in Firebird and Mozilla allows me to have literally dozens of tabs open at the same time. I think my record is well over 40 open at once.
Internet Explorer is something I use primarily to access selected sites, including Microsoft.com, where the HTML not infrequently breaks on other browsers. It's also the only browser I can use to access Microsoft webcasts at the moment.
I have, this morning, performed one of my periodic clean-up rituals - I have completely removed the Macromedia Flash player from my computer.
Ah bliss!! ... It's amazing how much "quieter" browsing becomes without the intrusion of incessant Flash animations in various locations around the screen on what seems like every page of some Web sites. I often wonder why browser manufacturers don't provide a configuration setting to turn Flash off and then allow selective access to Flash animations - for the occasional one that is really useful.
Macromedia provides a free utility to remove the Flash player. Visit How to uninstall the Macromedia Flash Player plug-in and ActiveX control to download a utility suitable for your platform.
Robert Scoble has been soliciting feedback on Internet Explorer for the IE team, most recently The IE Conversation . The various IE blog items resulted in many dozens of comments and suggestions.
It seems to me that if the IE team are serious about soliciting feedback and suggestions then some more structured and more interactive approach is needed than dozens of linear comments on Scoble's weblog.
It strikes me as a good idea, assuming the IE team are serious, to have an IE Suggestions Wiki, which is structured by topic so that parties interested in different aspects of IE can put forward points of view in fora that give some basic structure to the conversation.
Interesting story about the adventures of 17 year old Mike Rowe who created a domain MikeRowesoft.com . For obvious reasons, you may not find it easy to connect to MikeRoweSoft.com first time.
I guess the Microsoft lawyer's letter that he received didn't make Mike Rowe have warm cuddly feelings about his soundalike software company.
I have a love / frustration relationship with Microsoft Webcasts. On the whole my fight is not with the content. Most are either useful or great. Inevitably a few are a little like scratching chalk across a blackboard to produce that penetrating screeching noise. But that's ok. I can exit watching them.
My moan is with the reliability and accessibility of the Webcasts.
For the last 24 hours or so I have been unable to connect to any Microsoft Webcasts. According to the Windows Media Player it cannot find the files. I assume that that means that some aspect of the Webcast system is broken. A server down somewhere?
Web services are great. Web non-services are deeply frustrating.
Don't let my moans discourage you from exploring Microsoft Webcasts. The best of them are superb educational / training material. Particularly if you like exploring the cutting edge there is some really good stuff there.
Did I remember to say where? Visit Microsoft USA Webcasts . "On demand" webcasts are past events, by the way.
I think a lot of users are finding the Office 2003 Help a disappointment. I know that I am.
The primary reason for many peoples' disappointment is that the Office 2003 Help is often excruciatingly slow. I haven't done any tests on differences in performance of individual Office 2003 products but for OneNote and InfoPath, two Office 2003 products which I am using daily and consult Help most often, a typical time to load the Help Table of Contents is up to 15 seconds. Similar delays occur when navigating into Help folders.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, Office 2003 Help Malfunctioning , performance was particularly bad after the Office 2003 product was released to the public. I hoped at that time that the performance would improve over time, but in practice it is still very slow ... far too slow.
The idea of having Help files that are frequently updated is a good one - in theory. My suspicious mind has had the unworthy thought that Microsoft are pushing customers towards "software as service" whether or not it makes sense for the customer in terms of improved customer experience.
The implementation of delivery of Help files that are up-to-the-second is, for the last several months at least, poor.
I suggest several ways to improve the user experience. And it does need to be improved, in my opinion.
First, add a user-configurable option that allows, at user option, all Help files to be downloaded in the background. A "Check for new Help files at startup" check box might do the necessary. Presumably it would make most sense to only download changed Help files, so minimising load on the Help servers.
Then, again possibly user configurable, the user gets instant access to the Help files on his/her own hard disc. If there isn't enough information there, let the user have the option to go to the Help servers to get the very latest Help file on that topic. I suspect that only a tiny percentage would choose the option.
Another aspect of the situation that would need to be configurable is that only regular Help files would be automatically downloaded. Help material such as video, audio, Flash presentations etc would only be opened at specific user request due to bandwidth considerations and Help server load.
Oh, and a final point or two, while I am on the topic. It makes sense to me to split the Help task pane into two. One for searching and the other general fluff on the current front page of the Help task pane. Another for the Help Table of Contents - and, as a bonus, add a Search box to that latter task pane too. It is common to look at a topic and wonder if there is more on a particular topic mentioned there. Why does the user have to switch to the front page of the Help task pane to search on that topic? It just seems inefficient to me.
Improved speed and improved usability should result. And, hopefully, improved customer satisfaction.
What happens to Microsoft and to Microsoft customers if Al Qaeda explode a "small" nuclear bomb in Redmond?
A couple of things came together to lead to this pretty scary but pretty fundamental question.
I had read some English translation extracts from a recent Bin Laden or colleague broadcast (most of the media assume that the key issue is whether it's him or not. It seems to me that we should also know what he is saying to those who are listening to him) and writing a post to a Microsoft newsgroup describing the excruciating slowness of Office 2003 Help (often 15 seconds to be able to load the TOC). The subsidiary question in my mind was the location of those Help servers.
Part of the Bin Laden message (as I hazily recall it) is that something bigger than 911 is intended. Having had peripheral contact with disaster planning in a past life, the question that arose in my mind was what would happen to Microsoft if a small nuclear device went off in Redmond? The answer to that question is probably straightforward, if very grim, as far as Microsoft employees at that location are concerned.
But the follow up question of what would happen to Microsoft customers if such an attack happened also occurred to me.
OK, morbid, I admit. But what would be the consequences for Microsoft customers and, by implication, the US economy (and other Western economies) if Al Qaeda were successful in exploding such a bomb in Redmond.
How centralized are Microsoft's processes? What would be the effect on product activation? On the Office 2003 online Help? On newsgroups? On future product development?
Does Microsoft have a disaster recovery plan for the kind of scenario that I mention?
No, I don't expect Microsoft to come on this blog and give me all the details. But if they haven't already thought this through, they should. And if the US Government hasn't insisted on some distributed backup plan they too are missing a potentially important risk to the US economy, I think.
Another site for those interested in Longhorn is the Longhorn Developer Center .
I wonder if my brain is sufficiently elastic to take all this stuff in!
The Launch of SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services is only about three weeks away. The Launch Webcast is on 27th January.
I see Reporting Services as one of the basic tools that all SQL Server-based businesses will use as a routine. Businesses need to understand their information. SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services is an important tool to help them achieve that.
I assume that most people visiting tfosorciM.org will be aware of the Longhorn SDK site on MSDN. But if not, it's there.
The Microsoft Watch article
What's in Store for 2004?
has an interesting paragraph about international marketing, quoted here:
"9. Microsoft will devise yet another licensing option to help combat open source in other countries. Microsoft's been rolling out all kinds of shared-source licensing options in the past year. But a growing number of international government bodies are unconvinced that Microsoft is the low-price leader it claims to be. The Thai government managed to negotiate a sweeter than sweet Microsoft deal for itself. Israel, Germany, China and others understandably want to do the same. Don't be surprised to see Microsoft codify some kind of a "we will not be undersold" licensing scheme for its international government customers in 2004."
If accurate, this confirms my thoughts on the downward pressures on Microsoft pricing in non-first world countries.
As Microsoft Watch rightly comments other governments will want lower pricing too.
So, and here is where I see the long-term danger for Microsoft, what happens when customers in the US, UK and other "first world" countries realise that they are in effect subsidising their business competitors in non-first world countries?
Time is still at a premium and will be all this month. So posts will likely be simple links to potentially interesting articles.
Hopefully February will give a little more time for serious thinking.
There is an interesting article How to Misunderstand Sun's Linux Desktop Strategy on Sun's desktop strategy for Linux and how it might impact Microsoft.
Microsoft Watch has published its 2004 predictions for upcoming Microsoft products.