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, Feb 19, 2004, 1:48 PM in .NET
What The Heck Is a "Smart Client" Anyway?
In the most recent Microsoft Architecture Update newsletter, David Hill defines just what the heck Microsoft means when the sling around the term "smart client." Worth reading for the Ven diagram alone.
Thursday, Feb 19, 2004, 12:20 PM in .NET
Monkeying For Rory at PADNUG
Rory has graciously allowed me to volunteer as his code/slide monkey at his Portland Area .NET User's Group meeting talk on Thursday, 2/26 at 6:30pm. The topic, in his words: "2/3 'Stuff you can use right now' and 1/3 'When pigs fly (Longhorn)'." I miss monkeying with my DM brethren, so I'm looking forward to this very much.
Thursday, Feb 19, 2004, 2:17 AM in .NET
Anon Delegates and Higher Order Procedures in C#
Steve Maine has written a very nice piece on anonymous delegates and higher order procedures in C# Whidbey. Enjoy. I know I did.
Thursday, Feb 19, 2004, 2:14 AM in .NET
Avalon DataTransformer Sample
Jason Nadal posted a description of the DataTransformer. A DataTransformer is a handy way to transform data-bound data into another format, like a number into a formatted string or a string into a background color. Make sure to download the B sample, which shows things a little more completely.
Thursday, Feb 19, 2004, 1:28 AM in .NET
Ben Charts A Road to Indigo
If you haven't gotten the Indigo bug yet, Benjamin Mitchell lays out a nice, easily digestible Indigo intro on what all the fuss is about. I especially like the picture showing all communications roads leading to Indigo while maintaining the advantages of multiple styles of programming. Looking forward to reading more, Mr. Mitchell.
Thursday, Feb 19, 2004, 1:12 AM in .NET
Longhorn Sample: RSS Aggregator
Adam Kinney is at it again, this time with a sample RSS Aggregator that uses Avalon's adaptive flow layout and some WinFS. Things are starting to get interesting...
Wednesday, Feb 18, 2004, 2:33 PM
Cheap Stan Lippman Knock Off
Here.
In this post, Stan Lippman writes about the syntax for Param Arrays in VC++ Whidbey. And while I don't do much C++ anymore, I'm reading his piece with rapt attention, just like I read all of his writing. However, one throw-away statement in this blog entry spoke to me particularly:
"If I had felt a larger space of available time, I would have motivated the presentation, pointing out the analogy with the existing uses of ellipsis, pointing out alternative designs and the associated problems, and in general leading the reader to an appreciation of what was chosen."
When I write, I'm always striving to motivate, point out analogies, point out the alternatives and the associated problems and lead the reader to an appreciation of what was chosen (although I never could have stated it as clearly as Stan did w/o even trying). Apparently, I've been a Stan Lippman wannabe for years. Who knew? : )
Wednesday, Feb 18, 2004, 9:49 AM in .NET
Karsten Answers Some Indigo Questions
Karsten *Januszewski* has some answers to questions about Indigo as related to ASMX, .NET Remoting, RPC and firewalls.
Tuesday, Feb 17, 2004, 9:55 PM
Competition is Good
Here. Intel decides to follow along after AMD's success in adding 64-bit support to the x86 instruction set that Intel invented. Without AMD, we'd all be paying way more for chips, plus we'd all be buying Itaniums whether we wanted them or not. Thanks AMD. Thanks capitalism.
Tuesday, Feb 17, 2004, 9:47 PM in .NET
WinFS Senario #1: Adding Music to Movies
On his quest to find "non-bad WinFS scenarios" (ironically, because he was called out by another Microsoft employee -- I love it when we fight in public : ), Jeremy Mazner, Longhorn Technical Evangelist, starts with his real life use of Windows Movie Maker and trying to find music to use as a soundtrack. Let Jeremy know what you think.
Tuesday, Feb 17, 2004, 5:45 PM
Top 8 Clues That You Might Be A Geek
In general, I love Eric Sink, so it's a surprise when there's something he's written that I haven't seen. In particular, at the bottom of his Geek Guantlet (which is nice all by itself), there's an addendum called Top Eight List: Clues that You Might be a Geek. My favorite:
"You know at least one person whose computer has less RAM than your video card."
: )
Tuesday, Feb 17, 2004, 1:09 PM
Another Comic from Rory
I have to say that my favorite posts from Rory are his terribly drawn comics. This is made me laugh out loud (wait for the punchline : ).
Tuesday, Feb 17, 2004, 11:55 AM in Tools
The Facts About The Windows Source Code Posting
MS's official word on what happened with the illegal source code posting and what we're doing about it.
Monday, Feb 16, 2004, 5:31 PM in .NET
Basic Principles of Code Access Security
If you don't already know the basics of .NET's Code Access Security model, you shouldn't wait any longer. Not only is CAS key to No-Touch Deployment today, but it's key to ClickOnce deployment in Whidbey, which will also be a huge part of the Longhorn deployment story tomorrow (or maybe the day after tomorrow : ).
Monday, Feb 16, 2004, 12:04 PM in .NET
Exploring Visual Trees in Avalon
Kenny Lim posted an article about Visual Trees in Avalon that was down right inspirational. In fact, I spent all morning building a little app that will dump the <VisualTree> portion of a <Style> so that when you're customizing the visual tree of an existing control, you have some place from which to start. As soon as I figure out how to get property aliasing and data binding info at run-time, I'll post my app for real but the current version is available here for the adventurous.