Software

Games of the 2008 Browser Olympiad - Chrome is the new Bronze

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 20:19:30 GMT

During the course of my day job on the OWA team, I've had the opportunity to play with all the new browsers. I thought I'd share my opinions and see what my fellow web developers think. We already know what Walt Mossberg thinks.

Gold - Firefox 3.0

It's pretty fast, it's pretty stable, has more goodies per square inch than the Halloween candy section at Costco, it runs on every desktop OS that matters and most of the world's web sites support it.

Despite my fondness for Firefox, there's still room for improvements. Firebug 1.2 is so slow it's unusable when dealing with large AJAX applications. It's odd because Firefox runs large web apps fine, but Firebug is still suffering some teething pains right now. However, it looks like the forthcoming Firebug 1.3 will ease my pain in the near future.

Aside from my Firebug issues, I don't like how Firefox 3 deals with self-signed certificates (UI is too cumbersome). Seriously, it takes something like 7 mouse clicks to accept a site with self-signed cert what is 1 or 2 click task in IE & Safari. Another thing that grinds my gears, Firefox's contenteditable implementation rather is rough around the edges, (which probably only effects me & 3 other web developers at the moment). However, despite my gripes, I still like Firefox the best. I just hope they fix their contenteditable bugs in their next release.

Silver - Internet Explorer 8

I've been using Beta 2 lately and I'm pleasantly surprised. It's not Firefox fast, but it's noticeably faster than IE 7 was. It's not the most standards compliant browser, but renders 99% of the web perfectly. It doesn't have the heap fragmentation issues or stability issues that Chrome or Safari seem to. The new development tools seem to be competitive with Firebug, even if the plug in support isn't. If the IE team keeps up the good work, they might be able to stop losing market share to Firefox by the time IE 9 ships.

Despite, the marked improvement, I think IE still has 3 major hurdles they need to clear before they can get gold again.

Openness – The IE blog helps, and I know MS is unlikely to make IE open source, but they should do more. How about giving IE an open bug list like Mozilla's Bugzilla or Webkit's? That way the web developer community knows what bugs exist, is more directly involved with the product evolution, and can help Microsoft by providing feedback, bugs & test cases. For example, when is IE going to allow me to call the IDM_AUTOURLDETECT_MODE command via execCommand in Javascript? Having an HTTP or SMTP address turn into an A tag behind my back, in every single rich text editor I run in IE is really annoying.
Trust – Microsoft killed IE for Mac & Unix permanently. Microsoft put IE for Windows on ice for 4+ years and Windows Mobile IE is so bad that Microsoft's mobile carrier partners are shipping Opera with their Windows Mobile phones! That plan of inaction cost Microsoft at least 5 years of developer good will & untold amounts of credibility. Put simply, Microsoft lost their web client mojo. Maybe Bill Gates & Jerry Seinfeld can help web developers forgive MS of its past sins and they'll get it back.
Leadership – During browser war 1.0, IE was hands down the better browser. During war browser 2.0, IE hasn't yet done anything that Firefox or Chrome hasn't done already or is actively working on. It'd be interesting to see IE will become a leader again or just be a fast follower. At any rate, it's good to see the IE team participating in the browser wars again and sending cakes.

Bronze – Google Chrome

This newcomer shows a lot of promise. It's based on the Webkit rendering engine, so that's a good thing. Granted, I still feel Trident & Gecko are still better from an end user app compatibility, developer tool support & plug-in support stand point (despite their comparatively lower ACID scores), but at least they get the benefit of Apple's Safari work to date and WebKit has good standards support. It's one of the fastest browsers I've used. It's lets you use add search engines easily (I've added Live just to mess w/ the Google-ites). The Chrome comic was a cool introduction to Chome's features.

All in all, I'm impressed. It proves that Google knows more about Windows app development than Apple does. The ultimate test will be if they steel Microsoft's or Mozilla's browser market share. I don't think it'll happen in the near future, but this baby has potential.

4^th place – Opera 9.5

It's a nice browser to use and frankly it deserves a larger share than it has. Unfortunately, since the rise of Firefox, the reincarnation of IE, and the birth of Chrome, I can't think of a compelling reason to use it instead of one of the leaders. OK, it is currently the best web browser for Windows Mobile, but Mozilla & Microsoft are working on changing that story. It's developer tool & add-on support has improved in recent releases, but it's still not competitive with the Top 2. Oh well, it's got a bigger following in Europe and it's been around since the first browser war.

5^th place – Apple Safari 3.1.2

On Windows, Safari has all of Chrome's faults and too few of its virtues. The font rendering is fuzzier than a beanie baby. The UI controls stick out like a Pink Tony Romo Cowboys jersey at an NFC East road game. I can't add other search engines to it which sucks rocks (not be confused with sucks-rocks). Google Chrome let's me add Windows Live, but yet can't Apple bundle something like Inquisitor with Safari for Windows so I can't easily search Windows Live, Wikipedia or Amazon (LAME)? Then again, Apple isn't known for their high quality Windows applications.

OK, if you want to test your apps on Safari without buying a Mac dongle or an iPhone, use Safari for Widows. Aside from that, nobody who uses Windows is going to use it as their preferred browser.

Is Flanagan’s “Rhino book”, the Petzold of the web era?

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 07:53:14 GMT

10 or so years ago, when one wanted to write a Windows application, you had a choice to make. Does one take the easy way, or the hard way? Were you a real Windows Software Engineer or a wanna be? Did you use Visual Basic, or did you take the time master all the nuances of HWNDs, HDCs, and SendMessage? Was Charles Petzold's seminal Programming Windows book on your bookshelf or not? Did you enjoy the Get a Mac - Gift Exchange ad in which PC gives Mac a copy of the "C++ GUI Programming Guide"?

Today, it seems the web programming world has a evolved into a similar dicotemy. It seems there are lot of ASP.net programmers who are more like the VB programmers of yore, than the C/C++ programmers of eras past.

There are those who avoid getting their hands dirty with Javascript and really don't understand the full power of the browser's DOM. You know the ones that don't even know what byte bloat ASP.net web forms can create, let alone how or why they should avoid it.

Granted, like old Visual Basic, ASP.net web forms is a great tool for writing applications quickly. But the native tongue of Windows is the C/C++ Win32 API, and the best application developers are fluent in it. Likewise, the native tongue of the Web is the Javascript HTML DOM API, and the best application developers exploit every byte of power the web platform can offer application developers and avoid platform abstractions. Like the Windows developers of yore, the best ASP.net applications are written a little closer to the metal than most people are able or willing to go.

I don't know if I really have a point, other than sometimes large frameworks filled with time saving abstractions get in your way, more than they help. Sometimes, you need to get under the hood and get your hands dirty. Sometimes, I wish more developers had the opprotunity to build fast applications, instead of merely developing applications fast.

Sufferin' Safari

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:46:18 GMT

Do any of my fair readers have any experience or advice on Safari development tools, plug-ins, or debuggers? Most of my day to day surfing & debugging is with Firefox and IE on Windows, and I know where most of the toys for those browsers are hiding.

My knowledge of Safari plug ins & development begins and ends w/ Pimp My Safari, but I have no idea if the plug-ins are Mac only or run on Windows as well? Furthermore, I have no idea if any of them worth downloading? What are the differences between the Windows & Mac versions of Safari? Is the Mac version of Safari better than its Windows cousin (God, I hope so). How does day to day life as a web developer on Safari compare to that on Firefox or IE? In the Windows world, let's just say Safari, has its share of issues, and is unlikely to win any converts on Windows. I will admit that Safari 3.0.4 for Windows beta was an improvement over their previous beta, but it's still uglier than Opera, and buggier than IE.

However, I suspect that Apple writes code, like the Seahawks play football. They are both much better teams at home, so I suspect Mac Safari is pretty good if you use fruit computers on a daily basis. And if the rumors are to be believed, Safari is going to become much faster, which probably means Safari is going to grow its share of the market. Either way, I'm probably looking at larger browser test matrix and a new set of browser bugs to learn about for my applications.

Perhaps, I should just spelunk on Apple's Safari Developer FAQ, until I find the droids I'm looking for?

Return of a Jedi

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 20:55:51 GMT

It was a long, long time ago… It was a time of a great civil war between the Outlook/Office and the Exchange teams… It was a time of great browser wars and much uncertainty... It was an era in which ancient languages such as C++ ruled the galaxy and web browsers weren't considered application development platforms.

It was during this time, I had the opportunity to work on a product that would help redefine web based e-mail and more importantly define what web applications were capable of. I was one of the first developers on the Outlook Web Access team (or as it was known back then, the Exchange Web Client). During 1996-1998, I worked with Bob Gering (R.I.P.) and Jim Van Eaton, where I created the original appointment / meeting request form, the contact form, and the Java date picker. Needless to say, it was the highlight of my professional career at Microsoft.

Unfortunately, during this great civil war, my career ended up following a different path, than that of my good friends, and I joined "the confederacy". During this period, I ended up working on random Office apps in native code, as I meandered around aimlessly from group to group, either working on products I wasn't passionate about or working for managers who were mediocre. After a few years of my career going nowhere, I left Microsoft.

During this time, my friend Qui-Gon Jim (Van Eaton) became the Jedi Master of the Outlook Web Access team, and under his stewardship OWA became the first web application to use the XMLHTTP technology, which is today referred to as AJAX and continued to grow its proud legacy into the great application you know and love today. Unless of course, you use a browser that doesn't suck, in which case you'll never know how good OWA really is, which brings us to the present day.

You see, Microsoft fumbled the ball during the dot com bust. After building a huge market share & mind share lead in the browser wars, Microsoft disbanded the IE team and essentially walked away from improving its client side internet technologies (fortunately, they invented .net during this time, and improved it's server side software, but IE was essentially trapped in a time capsule from 2001-2005). I suppose at the time it seemed like a smart move since AOL purchased Netscape, and neither AOL, Netscape nor the Mozilla foundation were going anywhere. Furthermore, Steve Jobs second coming at Apple was still in its early stages and Google was merely a good search engine and not yet a verb.

Except, at some point during that era, we hit a strategic inflection point. Firefox got invented, kept improving and kept innovating. All while the majority of the former IE team was trapped in the Vista tar pit. In a few short years, IE 6 went from first to worst in mind share, due to the Firefox team playing the tortoise to Microsoft's hare. Even worse, Google took advantage of Microsoft's internet client myopia and made a web e-mail client that worked great on IE and Firefox (and gave away gigabytes of storage space to sweeten the deal). Shortly afterward Apple released Safari, Google released Google Maps, Microsoft released Virtual earth, and the Web was re-born.

Anyway, the OWA team kept innovating during this era of uncertainty, and ended up with a great AJAX client that only worked on IE because when it was designed 1) there were no other browsers that supported AJAX / DHTML except IE and 2) there were no standards to follow because there were no other browsers that had implemented them yet. I suppose myopia played a role as well, but by the time the other browsers gained mind share, the OWA's development plans were already set in Carbonite.

When I was on the OWA team, we supported IE & Netscape equally well (perhaps equally poorly is a better choice of words, because web browsers and web applications were so much simpler & less complex back then). However, during the past 10 years, we've witnessed the rise and fall of Internet Explorer (and possible redemption) and the World Wide Web is once again a chaotic and exciting area of uncertainty and innovation.

So, with that back story, I am now announcing that this epic tale, is taking a new, if small, unexpected twist. Qui-Gon Jim has asked this former Jedi Knight to return to the Rebel Alliance, where we both hope we can defeat Darth Page and Darth Brin of the Google Empire. For the past few years, I've been peacefully living on Tatooine, but Qui-Gon Jim's call to battle was too compelling to resist.

With a lot of hard work, and a little luck, perhaps I shall become a Jedi Master and re-join the Jedi Council. If nothing else, perhaps I'll merely play Han Solo for a few months and pay off Jabba the Hutt.

One thing is for certain, the light saber fights with the Sith are going to be fun to watch and I'm looking forward to seeing something other than IE 6 bugs for next several months. Wish me luck in my old / new job on Microsoft's Outlook Web Access team!

A Blogger’s Test Drive of Word 2007 (Part 3)

Sun, 29 Apr 2007 03:10:09 GMT

Not enough cup holders and too much cheap looking plastic

Despite all the improvements, it’s not quite the ultimate blog posting machine. Word has the advantage of being the market leading word processor for the past 15 years. And for the most part, its considerable text tweaking power converts well as a blog editing tool. Seamlessly integrating with other features of Office, “good enough” blog provider support and the removal of the MSO xml namespaced crap from the final HTML markup score big points in my evaluation.

Although, Word 2007 is a stellar first effort for Microsoft in the blog text editor space, I can’t help wonder if Microsoft Expression Web would've been a better platform for Microsoft’s future blog editing tools. You can’t edit the raw HTML from Word. This is a blessing and curse. However, every once in a while, Word will get confused, add a colspan=2 in your table cell, or not let you remove a post category or do some other stupid thing to your mark-up that requires you to get your hands dirty. After all, Word was designed in the paper age and blogs are a web based medium.

I'm sure it doesn't help that SubText is an "unsupported" blog platform, and IIS is a poor excuse for an FTP server (oh well, it's free and it does rock as a web server). In my limited experience with Word 2007, it does play with WordPress better than it plays with SubText. Your mileage may vary, as they say.

Final Assessment

In short, it has most of the word processing features that you know and love (Spell check, Grammar check, Language Translation, AutoCorrect, Smart Quotes, etc…) and enough shortcomings which prevent it from competing with Expression or Dreamweaver in the HTML editing space. However, Word is not designed to compete with those tools. Just like it is not designed to compete with Microsoft Publisher, Quark Express or Adobe InDesign either.

Although, I have never used Blogjet, I can say if I wasn’t using Word, that would probably be my first choice as a blog post editor. It has more fit and finish touches (such as tagging support, Flickr and YouTube Support, High-Quality Smileys, Blog Autodiscovery, to name the ones I know about) that separate the good from great. Perhaps Mr. Swann can discuss Ecto some time and tell us why it's a great tool for blog writing or Mr. Cronin can chime in about Blogjet.

I think the best way of putting it is Blogjet & Ecto are better for bloggers who write. Word 2007 is better for writers who blog. They both have their strong points.

Regardless, if you like Microsoft Word or not. Microsoft adding blogging support to Word is a BIG deal. It means within 12-24 months there will be tens of millions computers with desktop based blog publishing tools on them waiting to be discovered and used. (Or at least if Office 2007 turns out to be as big a success as early results seem to indicate it will be).

At any rate, this compelling entry into the bloggers tool chest asks as many questions as it answers.

What blogging support will the next version of Word have?
Will Adobe and the other Office suites join the party?
Now that giants are in the neighborhood, what wil happen to BlogJet and Ecto?
How much fuel will this add to the blogging world's fire?

Needless to say, the future of the blogosphere got a LOT more interesting than it already was.

A Blogger’s Test Drive of Word 2007 (Part 2)

Sat, 28 Apr 2007 19:50:38 GMT

Fat Tires & Big Brakes

One of the things I dislike about WordPress is that it doesn't have a table editor like SubText does. Unfortunately, even the mighty SubText can compare to Word 2007 when it comes to table editing. Let's say I'm Ardell and I want to tell the bubble people they are wrong about some random nugget of real estate information. After all, I have the multiple's database at my fingertips, so I know the facts. Let's say I'm trying to point out that Kirkland is the most affordable lakefront community along the I-405 corridor (I'm showing off Word, not trying to prove this assertion. So don't flame me and tell me Renton is a better value.)

So, I create an empty table with a click and drag of my mouse like so….

And then I fill up my table with the facts I want to present. What's cool is that after you're done filling your table with data, you can then select Table Design tab from the ribbon and have word reformat your drab table into something more professional looking. Think of it as staging your blog content by painting the walls and rearranging the furniture. So with a few mouse movements you can convert this old thing…

City	Average	Median
Medina	$ 4,183,723	$ 3,250,000
Mercer Island	$ 3,459,062	$ 1,800,000
Clyde Hill	$ 2,993,133	$ 2,398,000
Kirkland	$ 1,063,496	$ 824,450

Into this

City	Average	Median
Medina	$ 4,183,723	$ 3,250,000
Mercer Island	$ 3,459,062	$ 1,800,000
Clyde Hill	$ 2,993,133	$ 2,398,000
Kirkland	$ 1,063,496	$ 824,450

An Excel-lent Power train

Even cooler is Word 2007's ability to use Excel 2007's charting engine (which like Word, has undergone very significant improvement from last version) from a blog post. So with a few more mouse clicks you can convert one of the above tables into a professional looking chart like so…

Now with your data presented in an attractive, easy to understand chart, you'll be the envy of all your readers. Everybody will think you're the consummate professional that spends hours writing your blog posts (even though you haven't spent more than 5 minutes creating your chart). Word 2007 also has a cool feature that Microsoft calls SmartArt. It's basically an easy way of creating professional looking diagrams, flowcharts, or org-charts. For example, the following illustration shows what makes a good blog post.

(to be continued…)

A Blogger’s Test Drive of Word 2007 (Part 1)

Sat, 28 Apr 2007 16:11:34 GMT

A Bold New Look
The very first thing you notice about the new Word 2007 (and it's fellow Office-mates) is it's bold new look. Like the CTS-V in photo below, it's striking. The old menus and toolbars are gone. It's been replaced by what the 'softies call the ribbon. You may not like it, but you have to admire the collective corporate guts it took to completely redesign a product family that generates over $10 billion / year in revenue.

The designers & engineers at Microsoft did this for several good reasons. The biggest reason is that customers kept asking for features that were already in the product! The Word code base is nearly 20 years old, and apparently, the old menu / toolbar design doesn't scale past 100 commands or so for the majority of computer users. The other reason is that Microsoft felt Office was in danger of becoming commoditized by cheaper competitors. At any rate, Microsoft decided the usability gap between their suite and Open Office had become a little too close for comfort and they decided to widen it again.

The hardest part about using the ribbon is getting over the shock of "Where did my file menu go?". After you discover and master the Office button, you become used to the layout of the commands in pretty short order. The Blog Post ribbon tab contains all the commands that you associate with a modern blog post editor. However, the Insert ribbon tab contains the commands that you associate with a luxury/performance blogging sedan.

Heated Leather Seats

As you can see, there are a few useful features that your typical blog post editors don't have. One of my favorites is the Clip Art command. When you click on it, the Clip art gallery from the office web site appears in a window pane. Then you can search for whatever tickles your fancy and find a decent photo or clip art to complement your post. After you insert the photo, the Picture Tools tab should appear on the ribbon and you'll have ability to crop, resize, recolor, add drop shadows, and do other basic image manipulation tasks. And in minute or two you'll have a professional looking photo in your blog post! No more copy & pasting pictures into image editors. No more saving the file to your desktop and then uploading it to the server your blog is on! No more futzing with limited web based text editors! Even if you hate all things Microsoft, please do yourself a favor and get a decent offline blog post editor (like BlogJet).

(to be continued…)

A Craftsman and His Tools

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 05:47:13 GMT

Mr. Swann recently talked about the tools he uses for his weblogging workflow. Since most craftsman like talking about their tools, I thought I'd let the world know what's on my hard drive these days.

It all begins with the OS, and I just started using Windows Vista. Although I respect Mac OS X a lot and admire Steve Jobs, I've never liked fruit computers since my Atari & Amiga days. I can't bring myself to love a platform with only one mouse button. I've played with Ubuntu, and it's is (by far) my favorite Linux distribution. (I run Windows Server 2003 in the datacenter)

Activity	Tool
Text editing	Visual Slickedit 2007. Ironically, Source Insight is across town and I haven't used their product in ages (I remember it was a life saver in my Outlook days, but code editing wasn't its strength).
Web browsing	Firefox 2.0 & Microsoft IE 7.0
Software development	Microsoft Visual Studio 2005
HTML/CSS hacking	I'm starting to use MS Expression Web, since it rose from the ashes of FrontPage, but I still mostly use Slickedit.
Web debugging	Fiddler, MSIE Developer Toolbar, Firefox JavaScript Debugger, Firebug, and Ethereal
SQL hacking	SQL Server 2005 and Red Gate SQL Comparison Bundle
Bug tracking	Axosoft OnTime
Source Code control	SourceGear Vault
Web development	C# & ASP.net 2.0. I'm currently attempting to master ASP.net AJAX and ComponentArt Web.UI.
FTP / Remove access	FileZilla or MS Terminal Services Client 6.0
RSS feeding	I'm currently flirting with FeedDemon, though I've used SharpReader in the past
Graphic creation/editing	Adobe Photoshop CS1
Document creation/editing	Microsoft Office 2007 – Ultimate Edition
Blog hosting	Subtext
Blog posting	Microsoft Word 2007

BTW, I'm on the verge of upgrading my Adobe software and I don't know if I want Creative Suite 3 Design Premium or Creative Suite 3 Web Premium. They both have the apps I really care about (Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat, Flash, and Dreamweaver), and I suspect I'm more likely to use InDesign than all the web workflow stuff that the CS3 Web Suite has. Ugh, Adobe would have to emulate Microsoft's marketing (which makes upgrading software more confusing than it should be). If anybody has any nice things to say about the filler in Adobe's newest CS3 Web Suite, let me know, it might make my decision easier.

That last one will come as a shock. For blog posting, I agree that Microsoft Word has historically sucked as an HTML editor. In older versions of Word you can avoid most of the MSO XML namespace crud by saving the file as HTML 3.2 (which isn't the default behavior and adds to its' reputation as a lame HTML editor). However, a good craftsman never blames his tools. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Back in the old days (say 6 months ago), I would've used Windows Live Writer or the built-in editor that came with the blog. However, I feel I should mention Word 2007 is a much better tool for blog posting than previous versions. In fact, I'm using it to create this blog posting and it works with Subtext. So Mr. Cronin, there is no gum in my blog's hair, you just need to get some peanut butter.

Too bad peanut butter doesn't go with spam...

My Vista Test Drive

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 00:15:04 GMT

About a year ago, I participated in a Windows Vista Install Fair. A few weeks ago I finally got around to installing my free copy of Windows Vista: Ultimate Edition on my machine. Before I started, I backed up everything and removed my FastTrak TX2000 IDE RAID card from my machine. I had other reasons for removing it besides a desire to avoid Vista driver hell. Namely, my Gigabyte i-RAM Solid State Storage card doesn't like RAID arrays and I think a modern SATA II drive or a WD Raptor is going beat the snot out of any IDE drive RAID array, so it's probably time to retire the IDE drives to external drive duty. Anyway, after wasting my time futzing with IDE drive jumpers, and getting the i-RAM hooked up, I began my quest to install Vista.

The installation was pretty uneventful. I was pleasantly surprised it recognized my 3Com Network card and my on-board NIC (Windows XP also had issues with my onboard NICs). I was disappointed that it didn't recognize my Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card or my on-board sound card. Oh well, I just hooked up a USB sound card from the hardware museum and I'll blame Larry Osterman for the trouble. (just kidding Larry - I'm loving the per app sound controls).

Anyway, the real problem with Vista is that because of internal development issues, Microsoft lost mindshare and momentum to Mac OS X, Ubuntu and other Linux variants. You just expected more after 5+ years in development. It's a nice change, with a lot of under the hood improvements that show great promise. However, without the application, driver & hardware support to take advantage of the new infrastructure, there is no Wow.

I dunno, it feels like getting a new car in which the most exciting new features are heated seats, more cupholders, XM radio, and cool new look. I like it, but it doesn't make the daily commute shorter, it just makes the daily commute more comfortable. Hopefully Sinofsky and crew will bring sexy back for Vienna, because although I like the new sedan, I wanted a fast and stylish convertible.