Erik Arvidsson, the DHTML guru behind WebBoard and WebFX, revealed what he had been working on since last year: Bindows.  Bindows is a DHTML framework that emulates Swing/WinForms UI, similar to what Convea and Oddpost.  I am not sure yet, but Bindows seems to use XML to define its GUI.  It seems pretty slow though.  I suspect that most, but not all, of the slow speed is due to the server-side misdesigns. [Don Park's Daily Habit]

Not slow here, and in combination with Zeepe 7 to do the grunge UI bits like menus and toolbars (and hence reduce the download size) and provide a properly controllable framewindow would make a very powerful toolkit. (Interesting that their web service support is MS webserver.htc with the same limitation - i.e. must call back to the origin server).

ping

How to Consume the Amazon.com Web Service. The online retailer allows other Web sites to access its product inventory listings (and therefore to help sell its products) by exposing that information as a Web service. This article explains how to access the Web service using SOAP. By (Thiru Thangarathinum) editorial@devx.com. [DevX: Latest Published Articles]

If you wanna do this, contains all the links you'll need.

Just noticed ".. one of the key architects on .NET (and hence, on the next version of Windows)...." [The Scobleizer Weblog]

and hence Windows. You make changes to the way the CLR works, you make changes to the way Windows works. I'm not sure this is true down to the bottom (is it?!) but it certainly indicates a mind-set.

Chris Brumme is one of the key architects on .NET (and hence, on the next version of Windows). Today he released a really long weblog post on .NET startup/shutdown and other matterswhich is really more like a book chapter than a weblog post. His stuff is super technical. [The Scobleizer Weblog]

It is well worth a read in toto, if you are of a very technical mind. Scoble emphasises the section at the end. It was interesting but in some part worrying....

For the greatest part of Microsoft’s history, the development teams have been focused on enabling as many scenarios as possible for their customers. It’s only been for the last few years that we’ve all realized that many scenarios should never be enabled. And many of the remainder should be disabled by default and require an explicit action to opt in.

Looking forwards, a couple of points are clear:

1) We need to focus harder on the goal that managed applications are secure, right out of the box. This means aggressively chasing the weaknesses of our present system, like the fact that locally installed assemblies by default run with FullTrust throughout their execution. It also means static and dynamic tools to check for security holes.

Now I may be wrong, but the implication seems to me is that locally installed code no longer runs with full trust throughout their execution. Couple of questions then; does locally installed code ever execute with full trust (and under what circumstances) and presumably some code must be running with full trust or nothing can ever happen (when is that code running with full trust, and whose is it?).

It is getting darn hard to get code on people's machines - corporates run their machines "locked down to within an inch of their lives" as one customer told us. Code may be signed, from a trusted source, verified as works etc etc but code (currently) needs to do things like access the local machine as an administrator just to get installed. There's got to be a balance between enabling every scenario under the sun and not being able to do anything because you weren't written by MS and shipped with the OS.

DotNetEdit--Edit .Net Content. Add a professional HTML editor on your IbuySpy Portal, ASP.NET forums. DotNetEdit is a a high-end browser-based online WYSIWYG html editor, which allows users to create and edit your HTML pages without any knowledge of HTML. [123aspx Newest ASP.NET Resources]

And it would look so much better (conform to underlying OS) in Zeepe 7 for Windows users.

Surf the Net With Kids has a new RSS 0.91 feed. It's a "guide to the hidden educational gems of the Web, written for kids, parents and teachers by syndicated columnist Barbara J Feldman." More here. [Scripting News]

Hmmm, guide to the hidden educational gems of the Web is it - within 5 minutes I had been battered with adverts to win £1000s at a casino, offered a credit card and a spoof window claiming I was the 1000000 visitor to a site and had won a holiday. I eventually got through to 'Coloring in' to be contiually presented with one of those jiggling ads for "Alert - Your machine is not safe, click here".

Nothing good here, move along. Just 'cos its got an RSS news feed doesn't make it good.

Kid's Software.

Education is a under-developed country in the software world. 

Do the research, you will find there is, relatively speaking, very very little (monetary) reward for writing educational software either here in the UK or in the US.

Although education can benefit greatly from correct application of technology, all we do is shove more hardware at them instead of coming up with better software and interfaces that widens the teaching opportunities.

Take for example, GameBoys.  There are millions of these things and kids are absolutely attached to them, yet there are very few educational software for GameBoys.  Even a simple software like electronic flash cards could do wonders to kids.  To do this, all one needs is a GameBoy cartridge capable of running Java (i.e. JemBlazer) and a means of communication with a nearby PC like USB, Bluetooth, or even Wi-Fi. [Don Park's Daily Habit]

Oh for a pound (or dollar) for every time someone comes up with this idea. All we have to do is write education software to run on the grames machines, the games industry earns billions, all we've got to do is convince them to make it more educational. To a kid there is no value proposition here. Age of Empires is educational, but it doesn't look like it in any way at all - put any sort of "and this is educational kids" and sales would drop. IMHO, most kids don't like being "educated" - they go to school (because they have to) for that.

There has been, continues to be, a massive amount of innovation in education software by large numbers of very talented people - the rewards are poor and they go unrecognised.

"Blaster Worm" Jeff Sandquist wrote this up: "how to fix your mom's machine after she got the Blaster Worm."

Step 3 – Turn on Auto update

Your mother got the Virus because her machine was not properly patched. Turn on automatic download and installation of updates by completing the following steps:... Now your mother’s machine will automatically check each night if there are any new patches and install them for you.

[The Scobleizer Weblog]

Assuming Mum is running Windows XP then that requires (according to my understanding of the XP Help system) that Mother is logged on as administrator (indeed the instructions as given only work if you are an admin).

I didn't think Mum should be logged on as Administrator.

I still don't think MS have thought through this user accounts/administrator accounts business for machines that are essentially 'single user' machines. There needs to be some easily understood mechanism (aka a UI) to allow non-admin users to do a set of important admin functions while not logged on as an admin all the time, e.g. Windows Update, installation of programs. It still drives me nuts that for the kids to play Age of Empires on my portable I have to log 'em in on an admin account - not at all what I want 'em to be logged in as.

Perhaps I've got this wrong and not read enough docs and there is a really easy way to do it.

PDC: Show me the Bits. I was just looking over the material we have on the public website about the PDC: http://msdn.microsoft.com/events/pdc/ . ... I wanted to give you our current plans (always subject to change) on what bits will be giving to everyone that attends the PDC.

1. Longhorn!  You have seen screen shots from leaked versions, now get your own copy!  Not only will you get to see *some* of the new look and feel stuff we are doing, but you will also get and SDK and tools support for programming to the huge new managed APIs that longhorn offers.  (more on that in a later post).
2. Whidbey .NET Framework and VS Whidbey. See the work we have done in the platform AND the tools that target that platform. 
3. Yukon For you data heads, you will love this: Stored procs written in C#\VB, way cool.

Oh and, BTW, be sure to bring a DVD drive to the event! [Brad Abrams]

So, not getting all of Longorn (shall it be dubbed ShortHorn?) but installable as itself and details on the new API surface.

 

Way, way, way back got into this game with Windows NT and Windows 95. These previews tend to be very distracting a) they don't work reliably (not surprisingly) and b) a lot changes occur before release. So, it is difficult to know at what point you start developing - you hit a problem what do you do, code round it or stop and wait for the next drop that fixes it. However, for those seeking legacy app compatibility confirmation, every drop provides the opportunity to scream - hey you broke it guys (and then prey like heck they'll fix it in the next drop).

Not seen this elsewhere (yet), but from Autralia - MS Kills Outlook Express

Today is Left-handers' Day. Site of the Day Nothing too sinister... [The Register]

Hooray to us left-handed persons.

Web service to help you configure ClearType  [Scoble]

Interesting little thing - I think its made the text easier to read on my old fashioned CRT. (Warning, the above asks to install a required ActiveX control).

Webloggers deal Harvard blog-bores a black eye. "Who is Dave Winer?" Pay $500 and find out... [The Register]

Its a long time since I read something on The Register that made me laugh (it making me laugh being one of the reasons I started reading it), but this did:

... Imagine how tedious newspapers would be if every other story proclaimed "We use INK!!!" The writers don't care, and the readers don't care, how this message was delivered: but readers do care about quality.

Somehow I missed this, but joining the Visual Studio.NET integration program seems to have become free.

Switching Source Code Control Providers. Anyone who needs to switch between Source Code Providers can not be with OUT Harry's latest utility: SccSwitch. VSS to GotDotNet to Vault ...and so on and so on. Very handy. [ScottW's ASP.NET WebLog]

Just fixing the link here: SccSwitch

ASP.NET Server Control Licensing. Examine the licensing requirements for ASP.NET server controls and see how to create an ASP.NET control licensing implementation that can be used with versions 1.0 and 1.1 of the .NET Framework. The implementation can be extended to create custom server-side licensing schemes. [MSDN Just Published]

Using the TreeView IE Web Control. Learn how to use the TreeView Web Control to create rich hierarchical user interfaces for your Web Applications. [MSDN Just Published]

Blog Code - Come and get it.. Ah well, all of the disclaimers in the world won't help me now. The first official public download of .Text is now up and can be freely downloaded over on GotDotNet. [ScottW's ASP.NET WebLog]