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.
Wednesday, Jun 30, 2004, 5:08 PM in The Spout
#1 Windows Forms Book
Here. The one where I toot my own horn much less subtly than usual (and I'm not known for subtlety : ).
Wednesday, Jun 30, 2004, 12:00 AM in The Spout
#1 Windows Forms Book
Wednesday, June 30th, 2004
I just got word from my publisher that, according to the industry-wide metrics they use, Windows Forms Programming in C# is the #1 seller in it's category week-to-week by a wide margin over everyone but Petzold (who I'm still beating, but by a smaller margin). And while Petzold has sold more copies overall, he had a 2-year head start on me and I'm gaining. Further, earlier today, Amazon.com had the book listed as the #5 best selling computer book (although it's at #10 right now with a sales rank of 459 and a ranking of 5 out of 5 with 52 reviews).
I normally try to toot my own horn a little more subtly than this, but the idea that I could learn Windows programming from the best-selling Windows book author of all time and then, 10 years later, beat his sales numbers makes me damn proud. Thanks to all the reviewers and folks that gave me feedback on the materials in my articles, to Shawn Wildermuth and Mike Weinhardt, who actually contributed material to the book and to Addison-Wesley for printing it (and then re-printing it, and then re-printing it... : ).
Tuesday, Jun 29, 2004, 1:39 AM in Tools
Lots of Fun Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 Stuff
MSDN shipped their part of Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 at about 12:30am on Tuesday morning. Sara has a nice summary of the new MSDN Product Feedback Center that I think folks will find particularly satisfying:
"At the MSDN Product Feedback Center, you can submit bugs and suggestions. You can search through other people’s submitted bugs and suggestions. You can vote for your favorites. You can share workarounds. And, you can see feedback and details directly from folks on our product teams. Oh, and you can get notified when the status of an issue you’re interested in changes."
In other words, developer feedback to the product teams for the supported products is no longer just an email or a post, but an entry in a database that the product team and you can track. I can't wait to get this for Longhorn.
Also, Kent has announced the new Visual Studio 2005 Developer Center, complete with next-gen personalization features that we're testing on this content before we push them out site-wide. My favorite part of the site is the bit where the product teams that contribute to .NET 2.0 point out what's new (and the Windows Forms team even tell you how they're progressing on the features they're implementing).
Kent also points out the site for the new Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition, the beta of a slim and trim VS05 for students, hobbyists, etc. that you can download immediately. There's even a contest for Express users where the prizes include an XBox and a copy of Halo 2.
Duncan also has a post where he addresses our current philosophy on coverage of shipping vs. future content on MSDN and why TechEd is going to throw it "out of whack" for a while (except me, of course, who's going to be out of whack for a good long time : ).
NOTE: Beta 1 of Visual Studio 2005 will not install on Longhorn. Hopefully the next community drop of Longhorn will include a matching drop of VS05, but as of today, they remain incompatible.
Tuesday, Jun 29, 2004, 1:20 AM in .NET
The XAML Clone Wars Heat Up
There are two companies vying to be your XAML vendor today to help you get read for Longhorn tomorrow. Mobiform released an updated XAML viewer today that can convert from SVG to XAML and show XAML on your existing .NET machines. Xamlon has been on a hiring spree, today bringing on Ben Cantlon. I don't know Ben, but he's asking for suggestions on what his company can do today to move you to XAML that works on .NET today and Longhorn tomorrow.
Monday, Jun 28, 2004, 3:26 PM in .NET
Avalon 3D Hit Testing Demo
The benefit of 3D support in Avalon is not the 3D support itself (we've had various ways to do 3D stuff in Windows apps for a while now, including both OpenGL and DirectX). The benefit is the tight integration we get between 3D and 2D elements in Avalon (and we'll get even closer integration as we move closer to the Longhorn release).
For example, in his Avalon 3D Hit Testing Demo, Daniel Lehenbauer shows how hit testing can move into a ViewPort3D element (the representation of a 3D scene in an Avalon display) into the specific element being clicked. In other words, you can have a Button right next to a ViewPort3D showing a teapot and your app can easily tell which one was clicked. Handling a teapot click is slightly harder than handling a Button click simple because the Button does it's own hit testing, but the Avalon 3D hit testing supports advanced features like clicking through the handle of the teapot w/o that being classified as a "hit," all of which Daniel explains nicely in his sample.
Monday, Jun 28, 2004, 3:12 PM in .NET
Using Permutations in .NET
I know this is almost a year old, but the permutations algorithm was my favorite from STL and I've had occassion to miss it since moving to .NET, so it was nice to find Dr. James McCaffrey's Using Permutations in .NET for Improved Systems Security on msdn.com. The security implications are interesting, I suppose, but permutations are useful than that (like if you're trying to crush librarians...).
Monday, Jun 28, 2004, 11:17 AM
BillG on Microsoft's Anti-Spam Efforts
It's pretty cool for to see industry competitors, Microsoft, AOL, Earthlink, etc, to work together against a common foe: spammers. This gives me hope that warring nations will be able to band together when the alien invasion comes. : )
Sunday, Jun 27, 2004, 11:16 AM in Fun
Feature Leaked From VS05 Beta 1
Apparently someone has an early copy of Visual Studio 2005 and has stumbled onto the big feature we've been saving for an important keynote.
Saturday, Jun 26, 2004, 3:01 AM in Tools
The Good Bits of STL in .NET 2.0
I look at Krzysztof Cwalina's post on delegated-based APIs in combination with generics and I think of the best parts of STL-like template-based programming without all the STL or templates causing the blinding pain just behind your eyes.
Saturday, Jun 26, 2004, 2:06 AM in Fun
A Man, A Plan, A Canal, A Librarian!
Here.
The one where I write two computer programs, neither of which do as well as the two librarians they're up against (damn librarians...).
Saturday, Jun 26, 2004, 1:21 AM in Fun
The Right Level Of Community Involvement
Earlier this week, BradA asked the community for feedback on the guys that work for him (it's review season again at Microsoft). Adam had this to say in response:
"I'm waiting for the first blogger to suggest that we should let the development community choose when we go to the bathroom. Is there no internal process that doesn't benefit from 'community involvement'?"
When folks complain about too much community involvement, I judge we're at just the right level. : )
Saturday, Jun 26, 2004, 12:59 AM in The Spout
My Experiments In Social Video
Here. The one where I try a couple of experiments in social video to bring me closure to my friends and get half-way there.
Saturday, Jun 26, 2004, 12:00 AM in The Spout
A Man, A Plan, A Canal, A Librarian!
Saturday, June 26th, 2004
Can't come up with a better palindrome than "a man, a plan, a canal, Panama!"? Write a program and come up with one that's 17,000+ words. I love computers and what people do with them.
The most extreme thing I ever did along these lines is when my airplane was circling an airport for some unknown reason and the United flight attendant announced a contest to keep our minds off the dwindling fuel and the terrorists on the ground (oh, wait, that's Die Hard...). Anyway, she offered a free bag of peanuts (or something of equal value) to the person that could come up with the most words of 3 or more letters from the letters in the word "united" (Always Be Closing...).
Did I put my Tim Ewald-expanded vocabulary to work? Did I scratch words onto a cocktail napkin as fast as I could think of them?
No. In the limited time I had, I wrote a program that would come up with random combinations of letters in brute force fashion, then dumped the unique ones to a file so that I could use Word's spell checker to find the real words. I came up with 32. Did I win?
No. A librarian, using her own expanded vocabulary beat me with 34 (I had been running the program to generate 1000 possibilities to speed testing but forgot to flip it back to 10,000 when it came time to run it for real).
Did I stop there? Did I accept defeat gracefully, especially since it's pretty clear I had cheated in the first place?
No. I went home and learned the STL permutation algorithm and wrote a program that compared against a dictionary from the web to find the 72 words of 3 or more letters in "united" (including asynchronous updates to the UI as possibilities are checked [it takes a little longer, but it's worth it...]).
Now I carry that program on my laptop wherever I go, just in case I run into that damn librarian again...
P.S. I did get to use my program one more time against my mother playing Scrabble. I got my all-time high Scrabble score ever on that day. She still beat me. Did I mention she's got a bachelor's degree in library science? Damn librarians...
Friday, Jun 25, 2004, 6:44 PM in The Spout
My Day With Edward Tufte
Here. The one where I enjoy a day with Edward Tufte even if he unfairly blames PowerPoint for sloppy thinking.
Friday, Jun 25, 2004, 3:27 PM in .NET
Longhorn Foghorn: Crazy About Avalon Data Binding
Over the last few weeks, I've fallen in love with the power and simplicity of Avalon data binding. In this month's column, I start a 2 article series by focusing on the basics of data binding in Avalon and tease you with a screen shot of my Longhorn Solitaire application rebuilt using data binding and styles, the details of which I'll cover in the 2nd part of the series.