Just code - Tamir Khason : Windows Live

New year – new blog or how to migrate Community Server to any other engine, supports XML-RPC

Tamir Khason — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 02:33:04 GMT

Please update your bookmarks, because the new url of this blog is http://khason.net/ (you have not update RSS feeds, it will be done automatically). Why I did it? Why I decided to go to “stand-alone”… Well. there are some reasons. Generally, I do not want to explain all those here, but trust me, there are some. The main reason is, that there is no responsible person in charge for this blog platform in Microsoft Israel. This why, if your blog is popular and you have a respect to your blog visitors, you cannot host it here… Take a look into new comments notifications in my inbox. Would you answer your readers with such “small amount” of SPAM and capcha, that cannot be fixed already for three years in this platform? This how my inbox looks like for last three years. So now, you should not ask me, why I not answered your email or comments. Aren’t you? :)

Currently, all comments in this blog are disabled, so if you want to comment, please use new url of posts (this will appear shortly in the beginning of each post). Also, this post will not be syndicated in RSS.

So, this post is the last. I loved this platform, and loved people started it. But, unfortunately, it seemed, that bloggers community is not important enough for new platform managers.

Also, If you want to learn how to use C# and XML-RCP to migrate from CS2007, used in this platform, visit my new home :)

Have a great year and, as always, be good people. This post marked with all possible tags automatically. Sorry.

Arabic and Hebrew languages bidirectional support for Silverlight 2.0 beta 2

Tamir Khason — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:27:00 GMT

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Those days, I’m, together with guys from Microsoft Egypt and Santeon, finishing development of bidirectional input and output support for Silverlight. I want you to take part in alpha testing of this solution. Please see the test form here and try it.

&lt;noframes&gt;Visit &lt;a href="http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/tamir/archive/2008/07/17/arabic-and-hebrew-languages-bidirectional-support-for-silverlight-2-0-beta-2.aspx"&gt;original article&lt;/a&gt; to test&lt;/noframes&gt;

Also, you can download latest development build or compiled binary version with debug symbols and try it yourself. Please, if you’re in any issue, report it, by using issue tracker in CodePlex.

In order to use it, all you have to do is to use custom namespace within your project and then, you’ll be able to get almost all controls, you know, but with Arabic and Hebrew RTL and LTR support. You have to set one property: FlowDirection to change the rendering method (exactly as in WPF). Here an example of usage.

<UserControl x:Class="BidiTest2.Page"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    xmlns:l="clr-namespace:System.Windows.BidiControls;assembly=BidiControls">
…
<l:TextBlock FlowDirection="LeftToRight" Text="שלום עולם"/>

<l:TextBox FlowDirection="RightToLeft" Text="{Binding Text, Mode=TwoWay}"/>

That’s all. Thank you for your cooperation.

Action required: Smart client users group

Tamir Khason — Fri, 23 May 2008 01:44:00 GMT

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Recently I browsed INETA to seek for some group and was really surprising. There is no Smart Client user group registered there. Maybe there is a reason? Let’s understand what Smart Client is?

According wikipedia, the term "Smart Client" is meant to refer to simultaneously capturing the benefits of a "thin client" (zero-install, auto-update) and a "fat client" (high performance, high productivity). However, I think, that this term is much wider. It is not only thin-fat client application, it’s also most of applications we’re using today.

Thick Client

We always want to provide our users with best experience and increase their performance. However we are (as developers) want to avoid complicated development and deployment. This why we should know as much as possible about user’s system, when users do not want to have real footprint in their systems. That’s dilemma. Is it possible to solve it? Let’s look deeper…

Are we really need installation? Most of old software installations put things in registry. It because you were never sure what client has in his system and were our application can put files or temporary data. Today, when we have local application or user isolated storage, so we not really need to use registry. Maybe only for our own ego – this is cool to have something like “HKLM/Software/MYNAME” in 1,000,000 user’s computers…

No installation is good, but what to me with maintenance. We want our system connected…

Thin Client

Could you imagine your user to visit product site twice a week to see what’s going on? I can not. However I know, that if I’ll ask him first about automatic updates and he’ll agree to forget about application maintenance, his experience will be much better.

So,we are connected. What now? I want to make time reporting system. Web service? Maybe some kind of distributed application. Maybe, even Twitter? This way we can be sure, that our data is safe and if user reinstall whole system, he do not really need to care about backups.

But users not always have internet access. Sometimes they are offline. How to solve the problem of occasionally connected users? I do not want him every lunch want for two minutes, until I realize, that there is no internet connection and will not even give him a chance to use the application?

So, we also want our system to be useful offline. But what’s up with Web 10.0? We want millions. We want very broad reach for our application. Also we want to be able to manage application updates remotely?

Let’s take a look into other pan of application development. Do you like JavaScript? I do not! I think it’s too complicated to develop things for web. We should invest into at least 50% of coverage and integration tests, while giving customers pretty poor user experience. What is we want to provide the same look and feel everywhere? In web, desktop, mobile and other devices? Our customers want the application everywhere?

Summary

This is exactly what Smart client designed for. Technologies such as .NET, WPF, Silverlight from Microsoft, Flex, Thermo from Adobe and others tries to make you to be there with your application. But how to do it? How to answer all those hard questions, I asked?

I want to announce new (currently virtual) user group, dedicated to Smart Client development. I do not want to restrict this group geographically, due to fact, that current infrastructures allows us to forget about distances and be together. Join today “Smart Client development” user group.

In order to join, just send me an email to tamir [at] khason.biz with information about you. I put the request to create this user group in INETA. Once it will be opened, I’ll send everyone email to register and connect them selves to this group.

Be in touch.

OpenUp Sidebar gadget

Tamir Khason — Wed, 21 May 2008 00:52:26 GMT

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OpenUp competition is on the air? Authors of contributed projects are stressed and want to know what’s going on with their pet project on CodePlex.

What can they do about stress? To get it under control and download new gadget, I built to help them to relieve stress. Just look on your side bar and see three top rated projects (by CodePlex)

Click on it or drag it out of SideBar to see all submitted projects and it’s rating

Take it easy and return to work. You should continue development of your projects.

Download OpenUp gadget >>

Note: this is very first version with number of bugs. Those days I have no time to fix them, so you can either use it “as-is” or fix bugs and resubmit.

Gas Price Windows Vista SideBar gadget – new version is available for download

Tamir Khason — Sat, 17 May 2008 00:56:00 GMT

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This post is dedicated to some people in Microsoft and it’s subsidiaries. It begun about year ago, when I developed Gas Price information gadget (do not download it there). Before I started, I sent some personal email to those in MSN, who maintains it’s Auto section. I wait two days and got no response, so wrote this post about HTML scrapping and then I finished the gadget, that uses this technology.

Couple of weeks later, Senior Channel Manager of MSN Marketplace replayed to me. He asked whether I want to convert this gadget to “legal” one by gifting all rights to Microsoft. I asked about my benefits of doing it (my time costs money) and the conversation ended – he even did not responded. I was waiting for “YES” or “NO”, but got only silent.

Year after he mailed me again with warning, that they going to “protect” Auto section in order to prevent unauthorized content grabbing. He asked again about possibility to “legalize” the gadget – I told, that they can do with this gadget whatever they want, so handed it off to MSN team. Nothing happened. No one took care on this.

A month later, I asked again by proposing to allow Windows Vista SideBar referrer too aside with affiliate sites for MSN Auto images, thus the gadget can continue to work and MSN remains protected from other “grabbers”. But he demand to completely remove any reference to MSN from the gadget. The same time I got some proposals of using another data for this very popular gadget and populize other resources instead of very unpopular crappy MSN.

I decided to build new version of the gadget (here you can download) and did it today (my spare time – not work [this is for my manager]). This version even better, then previous one. It contains more information, that updates more frequently. I also includes distance from station and gas stations in Canada. So, this how it looks today

As you can see this one is much better and uses Automotive.com information. So what I have to do? Submit it instead of old one, right? This the response, I got from automatic system upon submission.

“Your item appears to be either missing a valid signature or a valid certificate. You may also want to check the signature to make sure that it includes the date”

Just to make things clear, I signed the code with private signature. They want me to sign it with Trusted Authority. This is very smart request, however I do not want to pay $200-$400 to make their sidebar better! There is neither ROI, nor benefit for me to pay money for something, I’m giving for free to anyone.

Just in case, signing code with certificate, trusted by authority even do not removes regular live gallery end-user warning.

“Unverified submission.

Only install applications from developers you trust. This is a third-party application, and it could access your computer's files, show you objectionable content, or change its behavior at any time.”

So why me to pay? Only because I want to be nice to Microsoft and replace my old gadget by new one to serve dozen thousands of people, who using Windows Vista with SideBar and my gadget?

NO WAY! I will not submit it there. I will never contribute anything for free to Windows Vista Live Gallery. They want me (and million of other developers) to submit it to Google or Yahoo? I’ll do it! I’ll force my customers to use 3rd party addons and visit 3rd party websites to get the information they want to get without paying anyone. At least their marketing guys know how to make developer not to suffer from his own good wish.

Thank you and good buy! You want to win web? You just impossible to do it.

Download Gas Price gadget for Windows Vista SideBar >> (it signed with personal certificate, so do it for your own risk :) )

P.S. Next week, I have a meeting with Steve Ballmer and I’m going to ask him all those questions. If you have any questions and want me to ask him, please send it to me or leave a comment.

UPD (18-May): Some issues were fixed (zips starting with 0, negative prices, sorting). You can download new version of the gadget from the same url and update your local version. Great thank to all, who reported issues.

Deep Zoom composer for download

Tamir Khason — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:21:00 GMT

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One of best technologies, presented at Mix'08 was HardRock Memorabilia. It uses technology, previously named Seadragon to adapt image resolution and size to what you're currently viewing. It montages number of images in different resolutions and then dispatches them upon your request. Take a look into Silverlight 2.0 poster, created by Joe Stegman

Now, the million dollar question, how to use it in my application? Simple just download and use it :)

Download Deep Zoom Composer for Silverlight>>

Some new post-mix downloads

Tamir Khason — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:01:44 GMT

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Today is download day at MSDN. There are some very interesting things published.

New release of Windows SDK (new classes for WPF 3.5, bugs fixes, and enhanced support for Windows Server 2008, including speech, error reporting and UAC). Download it here. For more information, visit SDK blog
Windows XP SP3 RC2 (it's not final release), but if you want to try it (not in production environment) download it here. As well as if you are ready to harm your system. Give a try to Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for XP (or for Vista/Home Server 2008, or Windows Server 2003 SP2).
There are some fixes for Microsoft XNA Game Studio 2.0 (make sure, that you know what is it. If not, come to see my TechEd session). Also, you can download Games for Windows - LIVE redistributable .
If you are lucky Zune owner, you can download PC software 2.3 for it
If you Virtual Earth fun, add realistic 3D capabilities to use online Live Search Maps.
If you still have no Silverlight Tools for VS2008, be sure to download it (this is not chained installer, tools only)

Enough for this morning. Warm up your download machines and start downloading.

Tafiti goes open source (well, actually, shared source under MS-PL)

Tamir Khason — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 13:37:00 GMT

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All those, how want to implement data visualization in Silverlight (as Tafiti does), can look into this CodePlex project and use it for your own. Notice, you can download, modify and, even, resell this code, due to fact, that it's under MS-PL shared source licence. Well done, Live team.

A couple of updates - mega update post

Tamir Khason — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:37:55 GMT

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Today, only updates

Yahoo finally releases Yahoo! Messenger for Vista - this was one of very first prototypes, shown in Mix last year. I did not install it, however, here a couple of review Erik Burke, Tim Sneath and Ryan Stewart. As for me, they lost "wow effect" last year

Microsoft Expression Blend 2 - December Preview. What's new? VS2008 integration, inheritance, no SL2.0 support (strange, maybe, because of breaking changes toward near beta)

Vista SP1 RC1 available for MSDN subscribers (via Nick Whites). Nothing special, 40 minutes of installation, profile information loss and performance fixes

Office 2007 SP1 is expected to ship 10-December week. This time it is not RC or Beta, but final product (via Mary Jo Foley). Great work.

Windows XP SP3 is very close to RC1, but nothing about public beta yet.

Starting today, you can configure Messenger presence. Some cool features become available (via Angus Logan). Here is how.

PDC 2008 (canceled last year) will be on October 27-30 in LA (hello, Peter). It promised to be great event about the company's emerging services platform efforts, .NET, Windows and Mobile technologies.

A little about mobile devices, while waiting for my new mega-device (more information soon): Dell is about to enter mobile phone industry in 2008, Opera compiled their browser for Brew platform (hello, Pelephone), while Google create their mobile version for IPhone. Windows Mobile 6.1 is going to be cool. Here screenshorts. Meanwhile, you can update your Mobile Office to version 6.1 for free or your Nokia (N-series) with Internet Radio application. As for me, 8 hours speak time and 30 days standby, quad-band. Those are features, that you need from your handy.

Well, that's it for now. Have a nice weekend.

Now I have a question for you. What do you think, about such format of posts? Should ?I go on with it or continue to write post-per-event?

Thank you

Your potential, their T-shirts

Tamir Khason — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 00:48:00 GMT

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Back to the Live event yesterday, I recalled old joke, prepared by me for Lior (Microsoft MARCOM) after Blogference, but never sent him. Today, using Microsoft Live Services, I can collaborate this image with him, while wearing Microsoft's T-shirt with slogan "The Jewish people are Live".

I'll probably, print this slogan (about T-shirts, not about Jewish people) one day on white T-shirt for my own...

I even prepaired images suitable for printing on material (TIFF, 300 dpi, black and white background). Download it, if you want to print such T-shirt for your own (or for me :) )

Visual Studio Windows Live Tools - November CTP

Tamir Khason — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 13:47:02 GMT

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For all those, who want to incorporate Windows Live into their applications, new Windows Live Tools from Visual Studio will be great place to begin. Download November CTP on Microsoft Connect.

via LiveSide

Windows Live Messenger Web API

Tamir Khason — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 15:41:00 GMT

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A couple of hours after Windows Live has been announced, you can chat with me directly from my (or your) blog. Enter and see the left side for Windows Live Messenger Web Control.

Want too? That's simple. First, allow others to see your presence. Then choose the control to use. Now (for those, who are using CS) add it into News section or other place in your blog (Spaces for sure).

New branded YourName@live.com is available

Tamir Khason — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 06:27:47 GMT

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After a long wait, Microsoft Live is officially available. So, if you are in USA, you already can register new @LIVE.COM email address and have a new fresh start

Release dates: Visual Studio 2008, .NET framework 3.5 and Microsoft Sync Framework

Tamir Khason — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 00:25:00 GMT

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Great news: VS2008 RTM and the final version of .NET framework 3.5 will be available by the end of this month (November). That's what was committed by Soma today at TectEd in Barcelona. This is really cool and means, that RC version is almost similar to RTM.

The other great news, is that there is new product "Microsoft Sync Framework" - a synchronization platform, that works with Live services and Popfly will be available aside this package. \

So what is "Sync Framework"?

· The first CTP of the Microsoft Sync Framework demonstrates Microsoft’s ongoing investments in synchronization and builds on the synchronization functionality available in Visual Studio 20008. With Visual Studio 2008 developers can rapidly take advantage of offline synchronization capabilities to sync-enable applications and services easily with rich designer support.

· The Microsoft Sync Framework extends the support featured in Visual Studio 2008 to also include offline and peer-to-peer collaboration using any protocol for any data type, and any data store.

· This is part of Microsoft’s long term commitment to providing synchronization for partners and ISVs who can embed the Sync Framework into their applications easily to create rich sync-enabled ecosystems that allow any type of data to follow their customers wherever they go.

What is Popfly Explorer?

· Web developers and Popfly users need an easy way to add Silverlight gadgets built in Popfly to their Web pages, as well as publish HTML Web pages directly to Popfly

· To enable this kind of easy customization, Microsoft today announced that Popfly Explorer will provide deeper integration into Visual Web Developer Express. Now developers can now design Web pages using HTML, CSS, JavaScript and publish those pages directly to Popfly (server-side code is not supported)

· The Visual Studio/Visual Web Developer 2008 integration makes it easy to add Popfly mashups built in Silverlight to your Web page. Making your personal Web site look cool just got a lot easier

Have a nice day and be good people.

Windows Live Gallery wave 2 update (commercial)

Tamir Khason — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:17:00 GMT

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Cool new update come today to Windows Live Gallery. Now you, as developers can sell your gadgets and as customers to buy them. Money tree? Not exactly. Purchasing or selling might be done by using Microsoft Points (those of XBox). Cool feature, that, probably, will increase the amount of available gadgets, by motivating developers to build and sell them. Meanwhile all my gadgets are fee :)