Foo Theory

August 2007 - Posts

• Do I Still Need Twitter? What About the Others?

  So I've been using Twitter lately not only as a public instant messaging tool but because it also updates my Facebook feeds: do I still need Twitter?  I could simply use Facebook Notes and not be limited to hyper-micro content.  And Facebook can be posted to using my windows mobile phone (via browser and/or text message) just as with Twitter.  One thing keeping me from going Facebook exclusively, though, is the inability to post notes publicly.  Notes is Facebook's Twitter-like application.  Not that I have a significant number of Twitter followers, I don't, but that's not the point.  I publish on Twitter for myself as an online journal, for friends (which is why I wired it to Facebook) and in many cases to communicate ideas, places and experiences for public consumption.  If someone were to search the internet and find my micro-content interesting or helpful - good.  If I meet interesting people at the same time - cool.  The question's further complicated by the fact that you're limited to 140 characters with Twitter.  I couldn't, for instance, publish this post using Twitter – I could, however, using Facebook Notes.  I know, I know - that's the point of micro-ya-da-ya-da versus blogging (I totally get it!) and I've embraced it like many other Twitter users.  Consider, though, that this post started as a Facebook note communicating a quick idea (only the first paragraph) as an experiment in FB Notes versus Twitter.  I reconsidered because it would only be seen by friends and only then it grew into this paragraph and beyond.  Hmm - walled garden you say?  Sure - but not all bad at the same time.  In fact, I like that I can configure content privacy in Facebook. At the same time I'd like the ability to make some of it public too.  In my mind this should be one of Facebook's highest priorities.  What about the others?  So, why do I like Facebook over other such sites?  It, at least for me and my friends, hasn't been a look-at-how-many-people-I'm-connected-with or a creepy-feeling singles portal like MySpace.  As for LinkedIn: I seem to have more LinkedIn friends than Facebook, at least to now.  I do use it though - even recently.  It's just not social networking (its professional networking) so perhaps it's not fare to compare.  Live Spaces - well it is just way late and, though, the Live team seem to be rushing to compete (and with good ideas) they need to deliver. Cohesion. Perhaps, an acquisition .  I'm still holding out hope here.  I've held my comments on Plaxo as I consider it an area of special consideration.  I've got a lot of colleagues and friends that use it but many of us are allowing our data to get stale after a number of years of good service.  I'll share a long-time pet peeve with you: I absolutely abhor that Microsoft still hasn't nailed synergy, as they have with most other offerings, between the premier Outlook client and Live Messenger contacts, in particular.  Plaxo went half way there in the past: it offered a way to have each of us update our own contact information as we move from gig to gig - when our friends synchronize Outlook and Plaxo they get the updates automagically.  This is a wonderful tool for those of us transient types (consultants and IT professionals).  Enter Live Contacts, a step in the right direction - but where's the Outlook integration?  Argh...  This being said I really see Live Contacts (the API included) and CardSpace as real opportunities.  In particular, among disparate tools like Facebook, Live and others like Community Server.  Based on some of Dare Obasnajo's recent comments and provided they stay the course we may see some good stuff here out of the Live group.  And I too hope that Facebook opens up and considers an open id like initiative (CardSpace(?) - even better!): though, I for one won't be holding my breath.  Some closing thoughts I'm gonna stick with Twitter and I certainly won't be giving up Facebook anytime soon.  I'm waiting for Facebook on the other hand to deliver on a couple of critical areas: 1) the APIs need to be expanded upon.  They're extremely limited at this point but a good foundation has been laid.  And 2) keep up the walls but provide users with doors that they can keep open. Now if I can get more of my friends, family members and colleagues who've grown callused from those other experiences to try Facebook the semi-occasional email, phone calls and absolutely rare get togethers won't be all we have.  Technorati tags: Facebook, Social Networking, Twitter, Walled Gardens Posted Aug 22 2007, 11:11 PM by Matt Ortiz with no comments Filed under: Social Networking

• Orcas Multi-targeting - Feature Complete

  I intended to post about this a couple of months ago and am finally getting around to it.  Good news though - my un-posted solution was already in the pipeline, it seems, and multi-targeting is now feature complete.   Supported multi targeting in VS 2008 (Orcas) is no small thing: it's huge to customers with a mature or large codebase.  Some History Jomo Fisher's post was out there as early as Widbey Beta 1.  Though others provided additional insight over time we've been using a modified version of Jomo's targets file since Widbey Beta 2 at a long-term client to target the .NET Framework 1.1: yes - unsupported multi-targeting in Widbey.  Since, we've leveraged the targets file at a number of other clients: in particular where Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 is used as callouts and workflow components (CRM business logic extensions) are required to be built to the .NET Framework 1.1.  There were certainly gaps with the approach like ASP.NET yuck but for middle tier components it worked fine in most cases.  Widbey "multi-targeting" allowed this particular client to uptake VS 2K5 tools and the .NET Framework 2.0 early but to cross-compile down to the .NET 1.1 when needed.  This was significant - we had a large development team: MCS consultants (including Statera resources), body shop contractors and FTEs.  We implemented TFS in earnest (at Widbey Beta 2 as well) including continuous integration (product, unit test and package and deployment team builds).  It allowed us to almost entirely eliminate VS 2003 projects from regular team builds as we had little or no need for 1.1 except for "thin" (ahem) callout and workflow components that ultimately called 2.0 services. So Scott Guthrie answers the next question in a post from June (like it or not - it's reasonable): What about .NET 1.0 and 1.1? Unfortunately the VS 2008 multi-targeting support only works with .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0 and .NET 3.5 - and not against older versions of the framework.  The reason for this is that there were significant CLR engine changes between .NET 1.x and 2.x that make debugging very difficult to support.  In the end the costing of the work to support that was so large and impacted so many parts of Visual Studio that we weren't able to add 1.1 support in this release.  VS 2008 does run side-by-side, though, with VS 2005, VS 2003, and VS 2002.  So it is definitely possible to continue targeting .NET 1.1 projects using VS 2003 on the same machine as VS 2008. I'd add one other consideration here and it may be tough to swallow: VS 2003 is not supported (but has been reported to work) on Vista.  Ouch!  Bottom line - get your clients to move along.  Beta 2 - "Multi-targeting is Feature Complete" So as I now have Beta 2 up and running I intended to follow-up on this post and get it out there.  I, again, opened the Community Server 2007 SDK solution to see if there was any change (my unpublished draft is below for context).  Hey - the conversion was different: it obviously upgraded the solution and project files but it didn't change the target framework as it did with Beta 1.  I like it - this'll work!  Our clients will now be able to use the new toolset and features and be assured that existing projects won't incur unexpected test burden as a result.  In addition, they'll be able to use the tool to upgrade their existing projects and target netfx3.x as they get approval, as needed and when they have bandwidth (phased not forced).  Solid!  Below is my original draft (couple months old): So to test multi-targeting I attempted to open the Community Server 2007 SDK solution (Beta 1).  I 'd assert that multi-targeting would be most often used when opening and maintaining existing solutions (created w/ VS 2K5).  I mean if you're using Orcas to create new projects you're likely to target the latest .NET framework - right(?).  I know - I know: this won't always be the case, but come on - 80-20 or 50-50 at least.  As consultants we're almost always using new (even Beta) technologies and need all the help we can get to "grease the wheels" for adoption.  When the conversion wizard completed I had a considerable effort ahead to get things back to working - it not only upgraded the solution and projects but each of the projects target framework - hmm.  Ultimately, I was forced to make a decision to either make it all work with a new netfx version or go into each project and re-target 2.0.  The later approach requires changes to references and undoing the code changes (backups - you say). As this was an academic endeavor - fine.  However, clients would, and certainly have, delayed uptake as a result of forced test burden on larger projects.  Proposed Solution Simple - during the conversion wizard prompt the user to keep the same target or to upgrade.   Technorati tags: .NET Framework, Beta Review, Community Server, Tools, Visual Studio Posted Aug 09 2007, 10:15 PM by Matt Ortiz with no comments Filed under: Visual Studio, Beta Review, .NET Framework, Community Server, Tools

• Upgrading to Orcas Beta 2 on Vista with VS 2K5 Side-by-Side

  First, I want to welcome Shane Bishop the newest Foo Theory blogger!  Shane is one of those band members that worked at ********* with us back in the day but I didn't actually meet him until he came on at Statera: you know - different clients - we get busy...  He's a good guy, he knows his stuff and we look forward to his involvement.  Take a look at his Foo Theory blog here.  So most of the people reading this blog are likely to have come across issues with prior Beta product upgrades.  In particular, when upgrading previous Visual Studio betas you would seriously consider re-imaging your machine.  In this post I'll share my experience of upgrading my Vista laptop which side-by-sides VS 2005 and Visual Studio Orcas Beta 1 to VS 2005 and VS Orcas (2008) Beta 2.  I'll point out that I, like many other, have a considerable amount of VS 2K5 extensions installed that I still rely on.  The Beta 1 readme indicated that you should be able to install later Beta versions but will require a repair to VS 2K5 after uninstalling Beta 1.  This indicated to me that the DivDev folks expected for the upgrade to be a reasonable undertaking and that they had some confidence that it would work.  In general I'm less exposed than some as I didn't install a whole lot of add-ins like Orcas Silverlight tools and Orcas ASP.NET Futures.  I'd think this pretty typical, though, as there's a lot to digest in the Orcas line-up already.  I did, however, install (or configure) ReSharper (R#) for Orcas but I was familiar with the needs here as the JetBrains folks have been pretty helpful.  In this post I'll track my upgrade experience start to finish: good, bad and ugly.  So let's get started:  An initial lay-of-the-land looks something like the following (Programs and Features sorted by date).  Hmm - don't remember installing all that!  Ok, Ok - yes, it took me a week and a half to pull down and install it.  Cut me some slack: I have a life too!   .. So .. 1)   Uninstall MSDN Library for Visual Studio Codename Orcas 2)   Uninstall Microsoft Visual Studio Codename Orcas Team Suite - ENU Take a look at the installation/Uninstall components below.  Hey those look familiar.  Below are the result of step 2, again, showing Programs and Features.  Hold on: one thing stands out and it was installed on 5/12 the day I installed Orcas Beta 1 - Microsoft Visual Studio Web Authoring Component.  As I don't remember installing any VS 2005 or Orcas components that day (a few months ago) I did a Google search.  I found a post by Rick Strahl pointing out that he'd had a problem with the installation of Beta 2 as a result, ultimately, of not uninstalling this component.  Thanks Rick for providing a heads-up on this...  3)   Uninstall Microsoft Visual Studio Web Authoring Component As a note: Scott Guthrie's (ScottGu) blog confirms the Orcas Beta 1 release notes: you should run a repair on VS 2005 after uninstalling Beta 1.  4)   Repair the VS 2005 installation  The VS 2K5 repair ran without incident though it did take quite a long while to complete.  Make sure you don't need your machine for a while when you kick it off.  I'm one of those anal types that don't like to have a bunch of stuff running during critical installations.  Admittedly, though, I had Outlook up at times.  Testing after the repair revealed that all of the VS 2005 extensions installed previously were working as expected including ASP.NET AJAX, Guidance Automation Extensions/Guidance Automation Toolkit, Enterprise Library and Service Factory.  There were two exceptions but not a big deal as I can re-install them later: ReSharper (as mentioned above) and Regionerate.  I'll provide an update if I find other issues after I publish this post.  5)   Install Visual Studio Orcas Beta 2 (or 2008 Beta 2) - I chose to do a Full Install During the installation Microsoft .NET Framework v3.5 required a restart of the machine.  In addition, the following warning was generated.  After researching the above warning the only relevant information I could find was in the Orcas Beta 1 Readme where it mentions the following (at section 1.1.15): "Installing Orcas on Vista may prompt to close running applications such as Machine Debug Manager."  The resolution in the readme is to select Ignore and continue with the installation.  BTW: the Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 readme does not mention this explicitly but does suggest killing all applications in the warning list.  My suggestion: review them both and "choose wisely".  So after killing 1088 and Ignoring MDM - I march on. In the end the install was a long one but seemed shorter than the VS 2K5 repair: actually fell asleep during the repair last night.  So the installation went as expected from here and resulted in a successful install.  Almost there.  Almost there.  Stay on target ...  Oh @$%! - did I just nerd out in public?  Pull it together - Matt.  ... So ... You'd be crazy to not install integrated MSDN documentation IMO.  As there's a lot to uptake with Orcas, .NET 3.0 and 3.5 new designers, ya-da-ya-da: MSDN documentation will be a launching point. 6)   Install Product Documentation - optional (MSDN) Finally, there are some follow-up tasks.  Scott Guthrie provides additional context on these steps in his VS 2008 Beta 2 post (in the section "Important Installation Notes - PLEASE READ!"): 7)   If you have existing projects using ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 and built using VS 2K5 extract and install the script described in step 3 of the Beta 2 installation instructions.  More information on the script can be found here.  Note: the script must be run as administrator.  8)   If you've installed previous version of VS Orcas/2008 (CTP/Beta 1) reset VS settings by executing "devenv /resetsettings" from the VS 2008 command prompt.  That's it: you're ready to roll!  So I've been using Orcas now for a few months almost exclusively for EDD and POC development.  I'll be posting over the next bit on my experiences - good and bad.  Heck - good and wish list.  All-in-all it was a smooth beta upgrade that most should be able to live with: thanks VS team (DevDiv) for taking the time.  Have fun! And hope this helps... Technorati tags: Beta Review, Orcas, Visual Studio, Windows Vista Posted Aug 08 2007, 12:03 AM by Matt Ortiz with no comments Filed under: Windows Vista, Visual Studio, Beta Review, .NET Framework