You've reached the internet home of Chris Sells, who has a long history as a contributing member of the Windows developer community. He enjoys long walks on the beach and various computer technologies.
Thursday, Nov 14, 2002, 4:56 PM in .NET
WinForms Data Validation
Here. A little essay on the WinForms Validating event.
Thursday, Nov 14, 2002, 4:49 PM in .NET
WinForms Auto-Scaling
Here. That cool auto-scaling that WinForms does when moving between system font settings baffled me 'til I sat down to really understand it.
Thursday, Nov 14, 2002, 3:57 PM in .NET
Increasing Permissions for WinForms Smart Clients
Here. "Chris Sells discusses permissions in .NET and how you can adapt the object model to protect smart clients while allowing well-known assemblies or sites to have additional permissions to provide users with additional services."
Thursday, Nov 14, 2002, 3:11 PM in Tools
VBTV Episode 2: DO NOT WATCH THIS SHOW!
Here. Actually, I think you probably should watch it. I find VBTV very amusing. : )
Thursday, Nov 14, 2002, 11:15 AM in .NET
Runtime code generation in JVM and CLR
Here. From Hun Boon Teo: "The Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and the Common Language Runtime (CLR) are bytecode-based abstract stack machines. Since modern implementations include highly optimizing just-in-time (JIT) compilers, these machines are excellent targets for runtime code generation: the generation of new program code just prior to its execution."
Thursday, Nov 14, 2002, 11:03 AM in .NET
C# and Java: The Smart Distinctions
Here. From Hun Boon Teo: Article by Dominik Gruntz from Journal of Object Technology (Nov-Dec 2002 Issue), this article shows some of the subtle difference between C# and Java.
Thursday, Nov 14, 2002, 1:34 AM
From the angle bracket department ...
Here. From cn: The W3C's updated a whole bunch of specs lately: - XPointer: Proposed Recommendation - XForms: Candidate Recommendation - RDF Primer, Schema, Abstract Syntax, and more An XForms tech preview is available from Novell/SilverStream (of all places).
Wednesday, Nov 13, 2002, 3:18 AM in .NET
New C# features: whitepaper now available
Here. From Andrew Webb: The whitepaper (a Word file) is now available. And the Demo Files link, previously dead, now works.
Monday, Nov 11, 2002, 3:59 PM in .NET
The Everett Visual C++.NET features
Here. Sam Gentile's got the scoop on the Everett release updates to VC++, which he lists as: -98% ANSI/ISO Compliance -Forms Designer for Managed C++ -Security Features -Optimizer Improvements particuarly in floating point He's got the details. Check it out.
Monday, Nov 11, 2002, 12:00 AM in The Spout
Hierarchy Doesn't Scale
Sun, November 11, 2002
I was just chatting with a friend of mine and he said that he really wanted to write a namespace extension so that he could expose a hierarchy of data in the shell. Back when namespace extensions were introduced with Win95, I thought that everything could be integrated into the shell, making the shell the last application. Sometime in the last seven years, I've come to hate that idea. As a hardcore computer geek, I've embraced the hierarchy organizational styles in three major applications:
- Email folders (I keep things filed in a multi-level hierarchy and use my Inbox as a to do list)
- The file system (I keep things filed in a multi-level hierarchy and use my Desktop as a to do list)
- Free-form outline program (I keep things filed in a multi-level hierarchy and use a file called todo.txt as a to do list)
As anal as I am about arranging and categorizing things into their various hierarchies (and as many places as I've spread my to do list to, apparently), the hierarchy only helps me about 50% of the time. I spend just as much time searching for things as I do going right to where it "should" be.
The hierarchy used to be lots more helpful, but as the data I keep around grows over the years, it becomes less and less possible to remember where something really "belongs" and to find it there. In fact, I've come to believe that a hierarchy is a terrible way to keep data organized at all. A hierarchy is really just a way to associate key words (called "folder" names) with hunks of data (called "files") and then only showing them in a very limited way. Searching is a possibility, but it either takes a long time (because file indexing is turned off) or it misses files (because file indexing is turned on -- what's with that, anyway?). Searching creates an ad hoc logical folder, but there's no way in the shell to create a permanent logical folder with custom content.
The basic hierarchy structure is easy to understand, but things become much more powerful if I can keep one hunk of data in multiple locations. Some versions of the Windows file system support this , but the shell doesn't (although it can be simulated with shortcuts). Also, the same kind of "pivot table" capability that Excel provides, mixed with a much faster, more flexibly searching capability of a database, is much closer to what I'm after. Hopefully Longhorn will provide something like this.
Also, being able to search all three of my hierarchical data sources at the same time would be pretty damn useful, but one thing at a time...
Saturday, Nov 9, 2002, 12:33 AM
Microsoft PowerToys for Tablet PCs
Here. Just fun stuff like Pool and Tic Tac Toe, but it makes me pine for a TablePC all the more...
Saturday, Nov 9, 2002, 12:14 AM in .NET
New C# Language Features (someday)
Here. "On November 7th, at the OOPSLA Conference in Seattle, WA, C# creator Anders Hejlsberg unveiled several potential language features for the next major release of Visual C# .NET. The four primary features Anders spoke about were: -Generics, a form of C++ templates that makes reusing existing code easier -Iterators, a construct that makes traversing collections of data significantly faster and easier -Anonymous methods, an easier way to perform simple tasks using delegates -Partial types, a means for programmers to split code across multiple files" All of these features sound really cool (not just generics), but unfortunately the presentation included no mention of when they'd actually ship...
Friday, Nov 8, 2002, 12:39 PM in .NET
Pragmatic ADO.NET in stock!
Here. Shawn Wildermuth's new book, Pragmatic ADO.NET: Data Access for the Internet World, is awailable now. Shawn's a long-time friend of mine and I wrote the forward to the book, so I'm hardly unbiased, but it rocks! Enjoy.
Friday, Nov 8, 2002, 10:39 AM in .NET
Visual C++ and C# Updates In Everette
Here. From Jesse Ezell: That release of Visual C# will include four new features: support for "generics," which is a form of a C++ template that can help C# developers build software more quickly; support for "iterators," which help developers create new code; anonymous methods, which ease development of what’s known as "event-driven" code; and support for "partial types," which make it easier to use C# for building large projects.
Thursday, Nov 7, 2002, 12:27 AM in Tools
Regular Expressions in .NET
Here. Michael Weinhardt and Chris Sells plumb the depths of .NET's regular expression engine.