Archive for August, 2005
August 26, 2005 at 1:15 pm · Filed under General
Last night I had one of those problems where I needed to fix a web site, but and there wasn’t an easy way to do it. I was running the web site as a reverse proxy behind an Apache server (which works great.) The problem was that this web site had hard-coded urls for various tags. These will obviously be inconsistent with the url for the proxy that it is behind.
The first thing I tried was to look for some various Apache modules. Most of these were just too complex and wouldn’t handle the simple manipulation required.
Then I remembered everybody talking about Greasemonkey for Firefox. Its a tool that lets you modify a web page via Javascript. So I installed it, and it took a little bit of work to get it going. I couldn’t create a new script easily, I ended up installing an existing helloworld.js script and then editing that. Past that, I quickly got to work on my script and kept an eye on the javascript console. The end result was awesome. The site worked after that!
After I got it working, I felt pleased. That kind of, ‘ahh’, feeling you get after you have another good tool for your toolbox. Yes, its not a tool for the common web user, but I can see this as being the best tool for the job for certain problems I have run into. I can also relate to the feeling that others have when they feel like they can have a little more control over the web that they use every day. It is kind of like having that awesome Python shell, but for the web. Nice.
I haven’t even started to dig into it more and what the community has created. However, to see an example of an awesome Greasemonkey script, look at this GMail Preview Screenshot. Wow.
A few random comments:
The whole script installation thing is good, but the new script creation system is bad. It should be easy to popup a dialog, type in a few fields, edit the file, and move on. I should then be able to edit the window in place or in a sidebar like the awesome web dev toolbar. It should be edit, save, F5/Refresh.
The Mozilla extension system needs a little work. It would be nice to install an extension without having to restart the app if it was doing some simple well defined. Yes, this is still a problem for the Microsoft products as well, but they don’t have the same issues. Both systems should be capable of solving these problems.
August 24, 2005 at 11:50 pm · Filed under General
Last night, like the rest of the geeks out there, I tried out Google Talk. Overall, I don’t think its much to talk about.
Here are my reasons:
You have to have a gmail account to be a buddy or invite anyone. This is a big restriction. It doesn’t matter that it is based on Jabber/XMPP. Nobody I know is on their system and have no reason to switch.
The UI is definitely sparse. I think that their old idea of bucking the trend is a smart one. Whatever. I and a lot of other people like a well done slick interface. Being a windows programmer, I took a quick spy of their UI classes. All are your cut and dry Win32 standard controls. This app could have been written in 3 months with 1 or 2 guys… easily. Especially since the heavy lifting on the audio side was done by another, experienced company.
Their voice capability will not cause me to leave Skype. Yeah, they use the same codecs/tech from Global IP Sound, and it worked well. Who am I going to talk with? Is this a real VOIP app. Nope.
No innovation. They didn’t raise the bar on any feature.
Overall, no big wow factor happened with its release. Gmail and Google Maps really did that, this and other things have not. I’ll stick with Trillian until something interesting happens.
August 23, 2005 at 5:10 pm · Filed under General, Prediction
My quick bet. The Google Talk, that supposedly gets released tomorrow, and that already has a Wikipedia page up, will be an announcement that they have bought Trillian. I think they make the best, free IM app on the planet.
August 22, 2005 at 1:58 pm · Filed under General
As I was looking around at C++ stuff on the net, I ran across this project on Sourceforge called Code::Blocks Studio. I think these guys have a shot at being a decent Open source replacement for visual studio.
They have the right features. Good editor, open source, plugin-system, works with a bunch of compilers, doesn’t require make 
, completion, support for other languages, It looks similar as well.
When I start another C++/Other language project, I’m going to download this and give it a try.
August 22, 2005 at 10:59 am · Filed under General
TheUI and Graphics: They nailed it. It is quite a good improvement over Nextstep and every other OS. No news here, everyone has been copying them for a while. It has the good ole’ NextSTEP style rendering as well… no tearing or flickering. Every App has a good user experience and easy-to-use consistency. Everything is much less busy and a lot bigger. On my XP desktop, all the icons are your standard sizes, small, smaller, or tiny.
Nits: Same old nits. Keyboard shortcuts and window management, is ok. I think these would be easy to fix.
Big Value: The iLife apps and all the other good stuff.
Overall, I see myself getting into OS X in the future, when I have time. Not right now, though. The switching cost is too big. I wouldn’t be productive on that box for 3 weeks.
I had a big talk with one of the Mac guys here at work. Even he agreed that the tools that a programmer needs are just not there yet compared to what I’m used to on the XP box. We both agree that they will come to the platform, but it will just take a while.
August 22, 2005 at 10:56 am · Filed under General
I love this kind of stuff.
_ ___ ___ ____
/ | / _ \ ( _ ) | ___|
| | | (_) | / _ \ |___ \
| | \__, | | (_) | ___) |
|_| /_/ \___/ |____/
Engadget 1985
August 16, 2005 at 10:45 am · Filed under General
Quite an OS, ahead of its time:
http://www.shawcomputing.net/resources/next/software.html
August 15, 2005 at 2:09 pm · Filed under General
I do a lot of Microsoft development. A lot. I use Visual Studio 6.0 to do that development. This is a product that came out on September 3, 1998. It was probably designed in 1995. I’m using a 10 year old product.
Here is the interesting thing. I started researching and getting excited about newer VS products from Microsoft. I even tried out their latest Beta of Whidbey and Visual C++ Express. The newer C++ compilers would be great to use. The debuggers handle STL better. The .Net stuff is very nice. It comes on a DVD full of stuff.
But there is a problem. Just about everyone that I email or talk to or know that REALLY does Win32 development, still uses Visual Studio 6.0. It just gets the job done. It is so solid. It supports MFC better than the newer ones. We need to generate x86 .exes. We’ve been using it for years. The system is well understood and there are still great plugins. Why?
Microsoft has been moving away from C++ for a while (more on this in another post), yet they aren’t using the newer stuff in most of the products they release (Office, Media Player, MSN Search Toolbar, etc.) As they have done this, they have deprecated or broken things in their newer Visual Studio systems that cause people to feel lost. The transition to VS.NET didn’t go well. They left a lot of the MFC, WTL, etc C++ folk in the code. Guess what? 99% of the apps people develop are done with C++/x86, not .NET. (Note, this isn’t a slam on .NET or the CLR, read on). Yet, the new tools are completely focused on the .NET segment of the house.
The benefits of moving to a newer VS are not there for this community. This C++/MFC/WTL community is still very, very large.
So, Microsoft. Rather than kill this product, give the C++ community this 10 year old IDE as Open Source, and let them maintain it. You can then focus on your new technologies and products. You did this with the WTL, and that was a good thing.
P.S.
Actually, please open source Visual Studio 6.1. I work with a guy who used that product at Microsoft, and the debugger actually had the threads window as a dockable view (which makes it super easy to switch to a different thread when debugging).
P.S. Hopefully Scoble, MarkJ, or somebody at Microsoft picks this up.
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