Custom Web Controls

Posted 9:22 AM
[Brad Wilson] : It makes me wonder whether people are designing a bunch of static high-maintenance UIs, or whether their UIs are heavily data-driven. DataGrid helps you out some here, but it's just not capable of being the single tool for data-driving your UI. We do a lot of things that would be very very difficult, if not outright impossible, to do in the visual editors (our wizard and tab frameworks are one example). Custom controls are extremely powerful. Why aren't developers clamoring over them? Is it because people think that UIs are the domain of "one type" of developer, and code is the domain of "another type" of developer?

Totally agree - I'm fully into custom web controls. They let me componentize complex parts of a web UI, and also enable me to package up any {(D)|(X)}HTML and scripting into a reusable package that I can hand off. And the designer support in Visual Studio .NET makes it easy to provide a rich experience to any devs that use my components. I think custom web controls are one of the unsung stories in the framework. I'd love to write a custom web control book, but since MS Press already has one, I don't think it's going to happen ;)

The Pain of a Bad Book

Posted 12:53 PM
I know I complain a lot, but I'm working on it. For instance, I didn't blog about how the Volvo dealer charged me about $500.00 for a replacement key. Ooops. I know I can tend towards being a prima-donna. But I'm working on that, too. But sometimes you just need to fall off the wagon due to an offense so grave it can't be tolerated. For reasons I don't really want to get into, I'm working through a text filled with such wonderful gems as:

"inheritance is the coolest feature you'll never use"

With that quote in mind, it should be no surprise that the author frequently confuses the terms class and object. And the author just makes up terms and names from thin air, e.g. the Windows Forms Engine ...

He also talks about creating an instance of System.Windows.Form, which is probably a nice trick. And just to show how utterly bogus the ratings system at amazon.com is, this book has good reviews! It's difficult to imagine how any book could be worse. I can literally find mistakes of varying degrees every few pages. This book offends me simply by taking up space that could otherwise be occupied by air. When I'm done, I'm not going to throw this book away - it's too bad for that. While decaying, it would probably seriously contaminate all but the most secure landfills. If burned, it would cause the death of untold organisms downwind. If thrown into the ocean, it would disrupt the migration patterns of Gray whales. Instead, I think I'll send my copy of this book to Bertrand so he can get some entertainment out of it. But right now, life is pain.

Threads and the runtime

Posted 12:40 PM
Chris Brumme has the world's geekiest CLR webblog. Today he's got a great posting on blocking threads in the runtime. The last few days I've been reading his blog first, and if you're working with the runtime at an advanced level, I think you should be reading it too.

The Hundred-Year Language

Posted 12:38 PM
Paul Graham, The Hundred-Year Language: Even when there were still plenty of Neanderthals, it must have sucked to be one. The Cro-Magnons would have been constantly coming over and beating you up and stealing your food.

and
Inefficient software isn't gross. What's gross is a language that makes programmers do needless work

A great read if you're interested in programming languages. Even if you're not, reading it helps explain the behavior of those of us that are always looking for different ways to code "Hello World"

Eiffel Envision

Posted 9:59 PM
Eiffel Software has released an update to ENViSioN, their Eiffel plug-in for Visual Studio .NET. Download a copy from the website. Generics, DbC, and all the rest of the Eiffel lifestyle - and it works with the .NET Framework 1.1.

Microsoft(Scoble theScoble) {...} or Scobelize(Microsoft ms) { ... } ?

Posted 9:32 PM
And al-Scoble joins Microsoft as an evangelist. Hey - he's good at it. He turned me on to PressPlay. He also convinced me to buy an NEC tablet. Unfortunately, he should have been selling to my wife...

BradA's looking for CLR geeks

Posted 5:29 PM
Brad Abrams is looking for a PM to own bits of the next version of the BCL. Sounds like a dream job to me - too bad it's in Redmond. Hey, I lived in Sweden for six months, so I'm sure I could handle anything Redmond could throw at me weather-wise, but I've raised a couple of California girls that look on rain/snow with the horror that I reserved for liver and onions. On the other hand - if I worked in Redmond, maybe I'd see the EiffelSoft guys more than I have lately.

SNL Tix

Posted 5:20 PM
Got back from the Grand Canyon to find a message waiting - I got tickets to Saturday Night Live. This is going to be fun - I completely forgot that I signed up for the lottery.

Build, Buy, or Have it Built?

Posted 4:51 PM
Further on building strongly-typed collections, Tomas points out that you can also use the CollectionGen add-in from Chris Sells. Hey, it's a great tool. My philosophy is to buy or reuse when possible. If I can't do that, I'd like to have a tool build for me, and failing all that, I'll take the risk of actually writing code myself ;)