An interim report which examines adoption and deployment issues associated with Microsoft's Vista and Office 2007 products.  [via Becta - About Becta - Publications - Microsoft Vista and Office 2007: Interim report with recommendations on adoption and deployment]

The report states:

"Windows XP was developed from an existing operating system whereas Vista is a wholly new operating system."

Now I would have said that was twaddle - Vista has an entirely new kernel? Where do you draw the line between operating systems and applications running on top of that - it looks to me that there is a lot of legacy stuff installed with Vista.

Maybe I am wrong and it is completely new - in which case it is astonishingly stable.

Everything you need to know... fully revised and updated

Buyer's Guide Christmas is a-coming and the consumer electronics industry is out to sell you a brand spanking new HD TV. But is now the right time to buy? In this fully revised and updated report, Reg Hardware guides you past the gotchas...…

 [via The Register]

Seems about right to me. So, the  question is, while 'mainstream' punters are buying this stuff by the shed load (and note again, Freeview wont get HD till 2012 and only then if the BBC gets a ton more money to pay for an Ofcom license) why are the TV platforms and content developers mostly ignoring it and spending all their time, intellect and capital chasing the Internet?

My son won a 32" HD TV, I won a Samsung Q1 - they are glued together with Sky Anytime PC from which I get SD films - why not HD ? I don't even seem to be able to pay for HD films on Sky Anytime so they are chasing the Internet at one end but not really closing the loop.

What is WPF/E really?.  

In a few newsgroup posts on our forums, I’ve seen some confusion about what WPF/E CTP enables and what it doesn’t.  This is probably a result of the snappy codename we’ve chosen, but I’ll attempt to add some clarity.  WPF/E is a subset of WPF, but the subset was chosen in a careful way to enable web scenarios that are not possible with HTML alone.

 

On the team, the way we think of WPF/E is this: WPF/E is a browser plug-in that augments the set of functionality provided by HTML to provide media, animation and vector graphics with the same programming model that the HTML DOM exposes.  This CTP of WPF/E is not a UI technology that replaces HTML, it augments the capabilities.

 

HTML elements can be created, accessed and modified using javascript running on a web page.  WPF/E elements can be created, accessed and modified using javascript running on a web page.  HTML is easy to search since it is sent to the user as plain text.  WPF/E is also sent to the user as plain text.  HTML samples and tricks are shared organically because the page source can be easily viewed.  WPF/E allows for the same thing. 

 

HTML provides flow text layout, text input, tabular and flow layout panels, and a simple set of UI controls.  WPF/E provides media playback, vector graphic drawing and animation support.  The two sets of capabilities compliment one another.

 

This is not to say other parts of WPF will not be incorporated into WPF/E in future CTPs and versions of the product, because we are definitely planning on growing our WPF subset and the overlap with HTML features.  Very important things like text input, layout, resources, data binding and of course, CLR integration are all WPF features that our team is scoping for integration with WFP/E.  I’m just trying to frame the approach we’ve taken with the initial CTP of WPF/E.  Extend the browser and give users the most consistent development model we can. 

 

 [via Mike Harsh's Blog]

Says it all - and IMHO, they have got it, from this description, right. Keyword: augment. Put that lot in a suitable container and its best of both worlds stuff. Interesting to note that Yahoo widgets might well have a problem wrapping it, MS Sidebar etc won't.

Here's an interesting one if you are not in the USA and still using IE 6. In Control Panel, go to Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options and then Regional and Language Options. In the Regional Options tab choose English (United Kingdom), click customize (yeah, note the z) and ensure measurement is metric, now on the Advanced tab set the "Language for non-Unicode programs" to English (United States).

And finally, go to IE, then page setup - note that your margins are wrong. Print preview and they are badly wrong and print and they are badly wrong (essentially it is taking a cm margin as inches, so 2cm margin gives a 2 inch margin). Put the Advanced tab setting to Enlish (United Kingdom) and all will be well.

This problem seems to be fixed in IE7.

[update - fixed a couple of typos <sigh>].

... an entire WPF/E DevCenter

P.S. Regardless of whether humans caused global warming or whether it's part of a natural cycle, it's happening and we're going to have to deal with it. [via Marquee de Sells: Chris's insight outlet]

Hmmm, I change this to "... whether humans caused global climate change  ...". I still have the book on my shelves from the 1970's when the prediction was the next mini-Ice Age by 2050. Quite how "climate is a constant (which we can return to)" has become the orthodoxy between then and now I really don't know. Anyway, however Chris likes to put it - nice to see there are others in the world who think essentially likewise.

And or course, interesting to see whether WPF/E is going to cause a climate change in the world of video playback and adverts (which is after all, all that Flash is used for <g>).

BBC Backstage ran a Widget competition in October 2006 and, hey, something wot I wrote won!

The BBC Radio Live'n'byNet widget 'tunes' into all of the BBC's Live radio streams as provided by the experimental BBC programmes API, essentially BBC Radio 1 thru 7 + the world service and asian. It provides channel listings and setting of 'alarms' on programmes. It relies on the Zeepe web application/widget framework and is free to use.

IE 7 is released and has a load of new features - included in that is what Dave Massy describes as his favourite new feature, enhanced printing support. 

The ScriptX ActiveX control has long provided control over printing in Internet Explorer and this continues with Internet Explorer 7. With each major release of Internet Explorer there has been a new release of ScriptX in order to maintain compatibility and provide additional feaures. This release is no different - ScriptX v6.3 or later is required when working with IE7.

What is unique about this release of ScriptX is it brings the IE 7 print experience to IE 5.5 or later on Windows 98 or later - all for free:

• Scaled printing
• Enhanced print preview.

UK's Biggest Supermarket Challenges Microsoft.  An anonymous reader writes "The UK's equivalent of Walmart is taking on Microsoft in the software game. Tesco is famous for it's cheap 'value' food, but it's now offering 'value' alternatives to Microsoft's biggest products. From the article: 'Now, when you traverse the aisles in search of baked beans, sanitary towels and two-for-one packs of raw mince (hamburger), you can grab yourself a copy of Tesco Office (£20) — an alternative to the almost de-facto standard that is Microsoft Office — or Tesco Antivirus (£10), which is designed to keep your PC free of malware.' Tesco apparently 'takes one in every eight pounds spent in the UK'." [via Slashdot]

I first saw this story on the front page of the Sunday Telegraph (1st October 2006). On Monday I saw the same story on the BBC web site (and tragically, an almost word for word copy of the Telegraph story, so this is off a press release) and over the following days has appeared on various news sites like CNet and ZDNet. Most were basically the same copy with little editing - I think it was the Register who actually put some thought behind it and challenged the headline that consumer sales of Office clones would really challenge Microsoft's bottom line. Finally, the story reaches Slashdot (well not quite finally because now it has legged it to here).

So, where did this story actually start, how did it flow, what were the longest tributaries - in other words, where is the best place to get your story reproduced to get the longest tail? Does a long tale give your story credibility even though it is rubbish?

However, we will not support Visual Studio .NET 2002 or Visual Studio .NET 2003 as development environments on Windows Vista. [via Somasegar's WebLog : Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Beta and Visual Studio support for Vista]

I have recently tried porting a couple of C++ projects to VS 2005. The first solution only consisted of three projects and nothing particularly large; compile to DLLs ~ 500K. Fine and dandy that the code wouldn't compile without mods - I've had to do that on every compiler upgrade I've used since 1981. The trouble was, after a rebuild, close the solution and VS 2005 crashed. Two days later I gave up and went back to VS 2003.

Now I find VS 2003 won't work with Vista.

Mind you, go read the article, VS 2005 won't work with it either:

Visual Studio 2005 SP1 will run on Vista but will likely have a few compatibility issues. We are working with the Vista team to understand those,...

A bit late in the day to be noticing that you have to get an understanding of problems perhaps?

What with Virtual PC won't work with Vista until the 2007 version and this, its looking like Vista is not a viable platform for development for at least another year yet. A new OS that isn't viable for development - that has to be a first for MS. One has to conclude that either Vista is not being developed on Vista or MS do not dog-food their own tools in the way they have claimed in the past they do.

Mark D. Anderson has an interesting experiments page here - ScriptX Test Page