In the thick of things, I have about 4 to 8 different applications running on both my monitors and quickly opening various folders and launching applications or command lines is a pain. Using Start | Run has a peculiar problem - you can't enter too many things - the history is limited. And I hate running Start | Run everytime, its too inefficient.

So, today, while working, I quickly cobbled together a quick solution  QuickNuke. I linked to one of the MM keys on the keyboard. It sits in the systray, and does not load automatically on startup. Hit the launch key and you get this window. It's explorer powered. Drag any shortcut (or an item while holding ALT) into this window and it will make a shortcut!

Double-click the shotcut, and you're done. Hit escape to hide the window.

This is very crude at the moment, but I will whip it up into shape soon.

This application is released under the IDGAC (I-dont-give-a-crap) license, so feel free to download it from http://shrinkster.com/gbk. Suggestions and feedback are welcome.

I recently created a website for IEWatch Software LLC. www.iewatch.com - the creators of IEWatch, a cool little addin for IE. As a beta tester, I was offered a copy of the software. Initially I kept thinking, okay, might be useful in SOME situations, but why would I waste a hundred bucks on this app.

And for the first week or two I used it, I seriosly did not think it would ever be useful for me. While I was working on another project (an ecommerce asp.net 2.0 app), I kept running into a problem where the payment processor kept returning blank values. The usual debug features were not helping, and with the 48 hour deadline approaching, I was starting to panic. This is where I finally got to REALLY use IEWatch. The data being posted by the payment processor was encrypted, but IEWatch was able to quickly help me capture the data, see where my code was wrong (Hey, even *I* make mistakes, y'know!) and thankfully made the deadline.

I highly recommend anyone working with web apps to try this baby out. Hop on over to http://www.iewatch.com and try the demo. And no, I was not paid for this endorsement. It is genuine.

Here’s something I always wanted to write about – one of my favorites places in the world! I have always been a nature nut (or as some say, a nut by nature) and I relish any chance to hop on over to Solitude. Now, yesterday at dawn, June 26th, I was kinda stressed out, NukeBall had to be delayed (for the last time) to July 24th, and needed a break. I had been working all night (all through the rain and ten gazillion power failures) and suddenly I noticed it was freakin’ red outside. It was dawn and I hadn’t noticed.

For a very arid desert-like area, you don’t get too much visibility as there’s always sand blowing about. But the rain had cleared the air, and the red and blue sky was amazing! Like I mentioned, I love going to Solitude. It’s a small mountain range about 6 miles from where I live (See map below). Officially, the place has no name. It’s triangular sedimentary rock formation, probably 3 times higher than the town (from sea level), and is a very quiet place, though I’m afraid “civilization” will overrun it in a few years. Sigh. I have been going there practically all my life. I named it Solitude (though it has been called other things as well). Would’ve planted a flag there, but the rocks are too solid.

Anyway, so I’m fighting those little bugs that come out after a good rain and at 70kmph on a 150cc bike on wet roads, you hate them! Soon enough I would find out how deadly these little critters are!!

Here is a shot taken at about 5:30am, and the second at 6:10am:

I rarely go to Solitude in the mornings. Mostly coz I sleep in the mornings. Nature nut that I am, I started chasing after all these birds and small animals I never get to see at any other time. The first was this cute little brown owl. Unfortunately, it was too skittish and the only shots I got were out of focus. For the few hours I was there afterwards, it kept teasing me by calling me out from the cliff floor, and even did a couple of flybys.

While I was trying to find the perfect cam setting in the rapidly changing light, I heard a weird noise behind me. I turned around to find a pair of Mongooses (or is it Mongeese?). Apparently, it was a mating pair and I had intruded. The male was big (easily 2 feet+) and was baring his teeth and growling. I remember doing something similar when someone last interrupted me, so I quickly got away. No pictures of them, unfortunately, but I did get a quick shot of their den.

As I was trying to leave the mongoose territory, a damned bug flew right in my face, and I almost swallowed it. And in that moment I panicked for second, sadly, and stepped onto an unstable ledge right on the edge of the cliff. The ledge broke, and this nature nut almost cracked! I fell about 4 feet, right on the knees, and missed falling off the cliff by hardly 6 or 8 inches. (Note to self: lose some weight). Parts of me are still aching. Nasty fall.

Of course, the day could only get better from there. The photo you see below is of the nesting grounds (or rather small caves) of various birds, including a few small brown owls, a few dozen parrots, and a few exotic looking birds I don’t know the English (or Scientific) names of. This is a very dangerous place. The rock is very brittle, just like the ledge I stepped on. If you fall from this place, you fall on some seriously sharp rocks and cactuses! Of course, there is a still bigger danger. Look at the huge (4”-12” wide) crack in the hill. It goes on for a few hundred meters. It was caused in the 2001 quake, and keeps getting bigger with every subsequent aftershock and now new quakes (4.7 on the Richter scale, 4 days ago). While the thing is solid and stable, you never know when it will suddenly fall off. The sharp rocks I mentioned are the remnants of the adjoining huge ledge that fell in the big quake.

The photo below is of a strange moth-like insect that often likes to hang around on these black rocks. These weird creatures make for great art study.

There is something strange about me (yes, yes, ONE of the things that’s strange about me) – I never really liked mammals. Give me cold blooded animals anytime! I love reptiles and amphibians. I had three pet tortoises growing up (they all live in the wilderness now). One of them was even named Raphael! So, as I moved closer to the avian nesting grounds, I saw this big (8”+) chameleon. Now, these are a different species (or rather sub-species) of the normal chameleon found in rainforests, tropics, etc. These chameleons are more adaptive to the dry area. Usually, these lizards are very shy and run off when you approach them. But this one was amazing. I was able to get within a couple of feet of it and it didn’t move. Heck, it even posed for the camera! Check out the perfect profile shot below. I sat next to it for almost 15 minutes and took many photos. After that it got tired and moved down the cliff wall. It was a great experience! I was "One with the Reptile".

It started getting cloudy after that, and I had to split before the rain started again (digital camera, y’know).

This place is a sanctuary for me. I came here first in 1989, and have been coming here almost 4 times a week since then. It can get dangerous at times. I’ve encountered several spitting cobras (one was a giant 12 foot, red toned cobra!!) that can spray their venom 10 feet away. And they're severely venemous. Wild dogs and wolves are often a problem if you go deep into the hills. But the most fearsome thing I’ve seen here was a panther cub back in 1997 or 98. It was probably adolescent. I was alone. My old SLR had just run out of film. Thankfully it was young enough to be scared of me as much as I was scared of it. I quickly got out of there, and have not ventured that far again. I was later told that a whole pack had moved into the mountain range and were even picking off cattle from a nearby village. Thankfully, haven’t seen them since.

It’s a great place. If you’re in the Bhuj area, just head up on Mundra Road, for about 9 kilometers. Just give me a holler and I’d be glad to show you around.

I know at least one guy who is itching to roam this place again! Right, Parvez?

Now this is a welcome sight! It rained here yesterday! To most people out there this is not a big deal, but when you live in a place where it rains about every 3 (or more) years, it's very important. When it rained a LOT in 2003 and the whole region was green, that was the first time I saw so much grass here in my whole life!

Anyways, this year seems promising. Another cool thing about the rain is that brings out all these insectoids that you usually don't see. For example, I spent 20 minutes chasing this fast little bug. As a student of both nature as well as art, it pays to study these little strange creatures. Just take a look at the beautiful carapace. It is METALLIC! Of course, when I got too close, it opened up from the behind and sprung two wings, came right in my face, sprayed me with what I believe to be insect pee or something, and flew away. But not before I got some cool shots of it!

In a week or two, I'm planning on going one-on-one with some big Crocs at a sanctuary not far from where I live. Now that will be something to remember. Need to get more memory for my cam.

June is going to be big for me. More than a few notable events are just around the corner.

The first being the renaming of my blog from Digital Exile to nAesthetic. I’m going to focus more on aesthetic than clowning around on my blog. A strong purpose in life (blogging life). You, in the RSS aggregator, hop on over to www.naesthetic.com (or the old www.nukeation.net). The blog looks hotter than ever!

The second will be the revamp of Nukeation Studios site for our 8th anniversary. The new site is expected to go live on the 9th of June.

The third, which is kind of unfortunate, is my 23rd birthday on June 17th. I find solace in the fact that while I may grow old, I refuse to grow up. And inversely, as a child prodigy, I have more than two decades of programming experience now. Ah, 128BASIC on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum+ in 1987. Those were the (crappy) days.

The fourth, and perhaps most important, will be the release of NukeBall – the first in a series of products we will be releasing! As soon as NukeBall is out the door, we can focus on the WinFX tools we have been prototyping!

Focusing on client projects and NukeBall has taken up most of my time. Now with NukeBall out of the door soon, and the new nukemeister Parvez joining the gang, I will finally have some time to resume my old blog projects.

First of all I will resume the Exploring WPF series of screencasts. Carl Franklin has given me some tips on how to make it better. Secondly, some of the free dev tools like Mapee and NukeControls and all that. I also need to give a major update to Nukeation Labs’ website. I have so much content just lying around.

As the name suggests, I will be focusing a LOT on aesthetics. The new UX revolution is gonna make aesthetics a LOT more important that they have ever been.

Now this is one guy who should NOT be cloned. Ever. Why? Read on. This is part of an email conversation we had last night (reminded me of the days when IM was not yet born).

For those of joining us late, Andy Eick is a brilliant - albeit idiocyncratic - friend and client. And where the heck have you been?!

Andy, you knew I was gonna blog this. NDA me next time.

---

ANDY:

got my new pen [for tablet pc, tc 1100] today -- the eraser is really cool, adds a bunch
 
i totally give, i can't believe i'm asking for support on a freakin' pen.
 
It came with a small circular band? what the heck is that for?  it looks like a ring but it isn't a full circle.
 
Plus, Is there a trick to getting the button to work?  I have the tick box "use pen button to right click' ticked, but i still have to press and hold...

---

ME:

Ooooooh, I love this. I get to harpoon your ego. :D
 
The band we're talking of should have a slit in the middle with a sort of hole. Now you put your pen's nib in that hole, press the ring from the sides, and PULL. It's for pulling out the nib and replacing it. Took me a whole of 5-10 minutes to figure it out.
 
Normally, I would just assume that there is something wrong with the pen button receiver on your tablet than think you don't know how to use the freakin' right-click button. But after this ring thing, I wonder. Look, open the Tablet PC tutorial that ships by default, and see the animation that shows how to use it.
 
If you can't find the TPC tutorial and the animation, you are no longer worthy of having a tablet. Pack it in nicely and ship it to 380, Aiya Nagar, Bhuj, GUJ 370001 India. :D

---

ANDY:

normally, i'd come back with something smart alecy, but you know, i deserve this one. 
 
(Didn't even occur to me that you'd replace the nibs) -- and the right click thing, you hold the button, then tap the screen -- i was just pressing the button)

---

ME:

Oooooooooooooooooooooh, I KNEW IT! THINK, MAN, THINK! We can't have good, if not great, devs of our time not think of this! Seriously. I even WROTE the whole process in a previous email if you remember. I specifically said "hold button, tap screen while holding button". Sweet mother of God! Dude, c'mon!

---

ANDY:

do you think i got where i'm at today by "thinking" and "reading", puuhh-lease, thinking is for chumps.

---

ANDY:

btw -- let me revise that customer testimonial ---

---

ME:

Threats, Mr. Eick? Really?

---

ANDY:

moi?, never.  I did say this new pen has the eraser on it, no?

---

ME:

Why do I feel like James Bond strapped to a table and a laser beam is coming near my special place?

---

And to think I considered him sort of a mentor to me! Thankfully, I do learn from my mistakes, so after that last email, I changed the subject.

PS. the "real" (ie, less exciting) Andy can be seen at http://www.andyeick.com/professional.aspx

It's a nice evening. The sun is setting, Jeremy Soule's "Glory of Cyrodiil" is playing in the background, and I'm just plain damned excited about the positive turn this year is finally taking.

Too many things have gone not-quite-right this year, but the tide has finally turned! NukeBall is now in Beta and very soon shall be released in all its glory. We have a few more juicy products in the works. I finally got that seed out of my teeth!!! Oh, and of course, a new "Dark Lord" is joining Nukeation in about a month or so!

Parvez Ansari has been a good friend for many years. We always dreamt of working together some day. Well, it's some day now! Parvez moved away a couple of years ago when he became something or the other at CARE (I don't remember the exact title he bore, but he was like 2 inches short of being God at the IT dept in Care). Anyways, he has decided to leave his current divine job and take up the role of being my second-in-command at Nukeation Studios. Imagine that! He either truly loves Nukeation or is totally insane! Either way he's just what we need.

Parvez is a Microsoft Certified Professional, and is an expert when it comes to technology of just about any kind. He has also served as an instructor at a major national technology institute. Now he will be taking up many of my responsibilities as I move on to focus a bit more on WinFX services as well as some of the retail products we are cooking up. You can expect the creative level at Nukeation to go way up as soon as he joins!

At Nukeation, Parvez will be in-charge of planning and executing projects for our clients as well as supervising certain areas of our retail software development. While I will still take part in most of our work, Parvez will be taking over many of my previous responsibilities as I mentioned. This is very cool since I will get to do more graphics, planning, and marketing than coding. I will also be focusing more on our "n" line of products that start with NukeBall (releasing on 27th June).

We will also unveil a special online service in August/September, targetted specifically for Indian literary institutes. Parvez will be spearheading that project (Codenamed "Timberwolf").

I can't wait for him to join. I need a vacation!

The sun has set completely and the mosquitos are now attracted to my Tablet's light, time to head in.

The first big milestone for Nukeation Studios' retail effort.

NukeBall Express Edition Beta 1 is now finally available for the public. While not feature complete, NukeBall's powerful NukeWads feature is fully functional in this release.

Y'know what? I can't talk more. I'm just too damned excited. Just head on over to www.nukeball.com and check it out yourself!

Oh, we would really appreciate any feedback you can provide! Just drop us a line at beta [at] nukeation [dot] com.

I forgot to blog this. We recently did two websites for Jon "AngryCoder" Goodyear (MS RD from Florida).

www.aspsoft.com - his company's site (one of my fave designs ever)

www.email2face.com - a cool little site that lets you find the face of a person from his/her email

This is a small lizard which has taken to hanging around my window at nights. As the only (big) source of light at night in my neighbourhood, the bugs stalking my window feed Grog (that's what I've named him). Dogs may creep me out, but I like reptiles for some reason.

Now this is quite ironic. A mosquito, found up the hole of an electric mosquito repellent device. The device manufacturer is safe tho, since this guy died there.

Yes, as you can guess one becomes weird when working late nights.

For someone who has been certified an incurable obsessive compulsive site revamper, it took me almost a year to update www.digitalexile.net (my art and photography gallery). I had a cool Flash interface ready near the end of last year, but gathering and organizing and sorting my photographs (which I shoot by the dozen every day) and going through all the old paintings was too time consuming.

I was finally able to update the Flash interface with a new theme and add some other cool stuff (like the slide-menu). You can check out the result at http://www.digitalexile.net

Note: I went overboard with the graphics here. A 1024x768 display running on a 32MB AGP is the bare minimum for this baby. I recommend at least 1280x1024 running on a 64MB or 128MB AGP/PCI-E.

My article has finally been published on MSDN. Thanks to the nice people at MS for letting me write this!

...this is crazy!

NukeBall's release has been finalized. A short new feature list and release schedule has been posted at the official site.

We are still looking for beta testers. The final feature-complete internal beta will be shipped in 3 weeks.

We had a 5.5 quake here last night at 11:30. Lasted more than half a minute and came in 3 distinct tremors. This was not like one of those aftershocks. I was actualling rocking back and forth while running down the stairs and out of the house. The house got a few new cracks - superficial thankfully. No damage anywhere has been reported so far and no one has been hurt.

One of my oldest friends, Nikolai, who was at college a few hundred miles away during the first quake in 2001, called me. This was the first "real" quake he had experienced after he moved back here in 2002. He actually had half a mind (like many others) to sleep outside.

I doubt anybody got much sleep last night. There was another tremor at 2am again. A 4.2 tremor was also recorded yesterday evening, about 7 hours before the big one at late night.

After over almost a hundred tremors of various magnitudes, none has unsettled me as much as the one last night. Nasty stuff. I don't know about moving anywhere else, but I sure hope to get the Nukeation office from the 2nd floor to a ground floor office soon!

No, no - not those Flashers! I mean Macromedia Flash users.

I know many a Flashers have been annoyed (and some downright pissed) at me. One of them actually started yelling at me on Skype. I had to block him!

In any case, yes, I totally acknowledge that I am biased towards Microsoft. If not for them, I'd be a 20-something schmuck with two degrees in computing but still prefering to work at a burger joint. On top of that, I'm a Microsoft Partner (well, technically my company is, but I own my company, so shaddup!) so I've sworn my loyalty to them. But even all that aside, Microsoft provides feature-rich tools that no other competing products can stand up against.

But I think I need to re-address some things I wrote in my "Future of..." post. I wrote about the "three waves" that could potentially crush Flash. While part of me still thinks it to be totally possible, I have come to re-assess some things. Partially, this is because of a couple of discussions I had with a couple of Microsofties (I've stopped naming names. I usually get them in trouble. Sorry about last time, "Mr. X").

The more I dive deeper into WPF, the more I realize it is NOT intended to compete with Flash. Maybe it will compete with Flex. Though, I haven't seen that much adoption of Flex-based apps yet. Maybe Adobe will whip it into shape.

Seriously. If you're one of those people calling Sparkle the "Flash Killer", then I think you oughta give it a shot. It's not really "comfortable" for animation and web purposes as Flash is. And I definetely miss the in-timeline scripting facility Flash provides. You can do that in EID/WPF, but its not as simple.

I would also like to add to my previous post's tirade, that WPF/E is but a small part of WPF which is but a part (well, 1/3 at least) of WinFX. And WinFX - WPF in particular (I can imagine Michele Leroux Bustamante rolling her eyes again) - is going to be what will set Windows apart from Linux and MAC and all.

I don't imagine more than 10% of the industry actively using or trying out WPF at the moment. Y'know, for REAL projects. I'd be more than happy to be proved wrong, of course. But only after using WPF for a real project or two (and I'm not talking simple demo apps, I mean something substantial) will people REALLY appreciate WPF. It sounds good in theory, but it is even better in reality!

Btw, if you haven't noticed, this post does not revolve around a specific point. I'm just ranting. Thank you.

But if you REALLY need me to make some points...

• Flash has an enourmous market cornered that Microsoft does not have a good chance of acquiring.
• Microsoft is smart enough to realize that and is not, in fact, competing with Flash.
• WPF/E is more of a competitor for Macromedia Flex.
• WPF/E will run Flex into the ground. Or Flex will only exist like JSP does with ASP.
• Sparkle DOES NOT have enough flexibility and features required to replace Flash (which was never the point, of course).
• WPF/E is but a part of WPF which is but a part of WinFx. Developers and designers who choose to work under the Microsoft flag best focus on WPF. That's where the gold is.
• WPF will have a bigger impact on "Joe Computer User" than WCF and WWF. Which is totally unrelated to the current topic, but I have to get that in whenever I can for all the years I've spent being labelled "inferior" by developers who consider graphics in the computer world to be sub-standard to code.

Alright, Flashers. Go sleep in peace now. You are no longer under threat.

Recieved in email from Andy Eick:

A while back, Carl wrote about adopting uTorrent and throwing away Azureus. uTorrent was installed along with the PwopCatcher Alpha. Jay Franklin (Carl's brother) wrote in that post's comments about how to let uTorrent pick-up unfinished Azureus downloads.

I finally tried that today. I made a backup of my unfinished downloads (I'm a data-loss veteran. I've been through enough data-loss-hell to last me twenty lifetimes!) and let uTorrent pick 'em up. It took a while for it check the downloads, but as soon as it started the downloads, I was amazed at the massive speed it gave me. Azureus is a bonafide memory hog. And on top of that, for some files I've been trying to download for over a month now, it gave me only 2 or 3 kbps. uTorrent suddenly starts popping 'em at ~12k to ~40k.

While I'm not BitTorrent genius, I'm quite impressed with uTorrent. And its a 150k download!!! Go get PwopCatcher Alpha and let it install uTorrent for you!

www.pwopcatcher.com, the official site for Pwop Production's PWOPCATCHER podcast downloader is now live. A barebone alpha is also available.

The look of the site was done by yours truly. It was modelled after the "BORG" skin that will be the default look of PwopCatcher.

Forgot to mention a new blog I designed a little while ago for Marc Holmes, an Architect Evangelist for Microsoft UK.

Go visit Marc's site at www.marcmywords.org - expect to see some cool things there - and not just coz I designed it. ;)

I found some nice information on Mike Henderson's blog about the WPF/E features revealed at MIX06 - worth reading.

I just read Andrew Lucking's blog post about my first video on EID, and it kinda inspired me to give my perspective on Flash vs EID.

Let's recount the basic stuff:

	Flash	EID/WPF
Programming Support	Medium (ActionScript 2.0)	Heavy (.NET 2.0 and XAML)
3D support	Medium (Shockwave 3D or Vectorized 3D output)	Heavy (WPF and DirectX)
Declarative Programming Support	No	Yes
Bitmap Effects Support	Limited	Extensive
Animation Model	Timeline-based: timeline is the ultimate controller; timelines are NOT optional	Trigger-based: timelines control the animation, but the timelines are controlled by triggers; timelines are also OPTIONAL
Cross-Platform support	Extensive	Limited / Currently unavailable (WPF/E details are still sketchy)
Drawing Tools	Heavy	Medium

 

What's EID and WPF potential over Flash? Well, can't say much about WPF/E until I actually use it, but taking WPF as a basic example, here are my thoughts:

NOTE: For the purpose of this post, EID and WPF (or at least the features) are the same. If it is in one, its in the other.

• It all comes back to the timeline. In Flash Timeline is God. In EID, Timeline is just another aspect of an object, and there are more than one timelines and each can be ran parallel to other timelines - even of the same object!! In other words, with Flash we're looking at "time" from a normal layman's perspective; with WPF, it's like looking at "time" from Einstein's perspective.
• In Flash, you have to stop the timeline in order to have a static frame, which makes creating a multi-section Flash website quite difficult. It's not difficult per-se, but difficult when you consider the trigger-only-timelines that EID presents. That would make this much easier.
• Creating 3D content in Flash has always been terribly difficult. Shockwave does add 3D support, but its more like VRML on steroids. If you don't know about VRML, it was a 3D web standard pushed in the late 90s. It was terrible!! With inherent and DirectX support for 3D with shaders and crap is actually fantastic! That alone will land a good blow to Flash.
• There's good DOCUMENT support in WPF. This gives you a document-data presentation component that Flash just can't do! This is one of the chief reasons why the Adobe people are gung-ho on integrating PDF and SWF.
• EID comes from a "component and controls, animate it all" point-of-view, while Flash is "all animation, some component... animate components? uhh, ok, you can try...". The WRAP PANEL and other such controls can seriously kick Flash's ass.

You might say: "Whoa! Hold on. WPF/E does not have all this! It's very puny and limited!"

If you're a Flash or non-Microsoft-stuff user, I'll let you go. If you're a Microsoft-user and you said that give yourself a big kick. Without going into the intricacies of numerology, we all know that this is just version 1. All we have to do is wait 2 more versions. Let me explain:

So I've said all the nice things about WPF and put down Flash. Well, that's not the whole story. WPF is severely limited in many ways that Flash isn't. The user base being not the least of it, of course. Right now, WPF is more close to Macromedia FLEX than Flash.

Branden Hall writes in his post titled "The Flash Killer Cometh":

Well, I can't say I disagree with the first part. For the "mythical Interactive Developer" (I might have to adopt that as my title) comment, well, I disagree there.

Mythical Interactive Developers are not, in fact, mythical. I am one myself, and in the last 7 years have trained 4 such people (10 years and 16 people if you want to count VRML in this). We (ahem) are rare, but not nonexistent. And more shall rise. The gates of Oblivion have opened!! Uhh... sorry, wrong topic.

Anyways, let me get back to my point.

If you are not a Microsofter or are very new to the Microsoft world - the REAL Microsoft World that only devs see - you don't know the power of number 3. As I said, again ignoring numerology, that this WPF 1.0. Microsoft ALWAYS strikes gold with Version 3.

Windows 3(.1) was the most popular in the first generation. Windows 98SE was WAY better than 95 or 98. Windows ME was a fluke, so let's forget that. In the third generation we had Windows 2000 and then XP, now we have Vista which will undoubtedly hit the mark.

Visual Studio 6.0 (#3 of II generation) was way better than anything else. Visual Studio 2005 (#3 of the III generation) is already doing great things!

So step back a bit. Look from a larger perspective. Microsoft is only laying the foundation. Bill Buxton said:

There is a new revolution coming. It will come in THREE waves. Here's my prediction for it:

• First Big Wave: We shift from WinForms to a more Web+Vector like platform. We learn the ropes for the upcoming waves. The Mythical Interactive Developer is born and many Flashers flock to the Microsoft banner - mostly because working with WPF will pay a LOT more than Flash does. Microsoft silently keeps working on the final stuff.
• Second Bigger Wave: After a year or more of having WPF out there, Microsoft will have perfect grasp on what's needed, what the public wants, what the designers+developers need. A 2.0 release gives you more power. More people flock under the Microsoft flag. More users keep adopting this technology - even just as runtime. Microsoft silently keeps working on the final stuff.
• Tsunami: The work is done. Microsoft has the perfect blend ready. Flash is either killed or is kept limping behind.

Branden Hall also writes:

I recommend reading the posts in this category in old-to-new order. But let explain in short:

Microsoft is right. WPF is not being primed (solely) as a Flash-killer. It will definetely be a Mac-killer tho. But my point is this: If you think WPF is only for making things pretty you are WAAAAAAAY off.

WPF is about getting the presentation layer of a software done quickly and flexibly. Things that required superior subclassing skills and knowledge can be done by an amateur now. The declarative model makes things much easier. WPF will be a boon for developers. It will solve a LOT of problems.

For record let me make it clear:

Windows Presentation Foundation or Expression Interactive Designer will not make anything extra-graphical or extra-interactive unless designer/developer goes to some lengths to actually make it so! When you DON'T skin a control, it will look just like a normal Windows control does. WPF will solve problems such as creating composite controls, creating resolution-independent applications, allowing better and economical usage of graphics hardware and vector to lower CPU usage that GDI+ does not, and more. This is not an animation package (yet).

No. WinFX/WPF/EID is the next generation of development platform. Of course, it won't take long for it become what ASP.net is for the web. But it will be like ASP.net in many ways. WPF/E will co-exist with Flash, just as ASP.net does with PHP and JSP. Of course, it goes without saying that ASP.net is better than PHP or JSP, and so will be WPF/e (eventually).

With that, and the sun shining in my face at 7:20 in the morning, I bid thee good night.

Here's a first look at NukeControls. This is just a small piece of the whole thing - only 3 controls.

nPanel - a special "header" control
nProgress - a super cool Vista-style progressbar for .NET 2.0 with animation!
nNavigator - bi-directional navigation control

All these controls have 6 or more themes, and some like the nPanel, can be customized.

Click the image above to download a ZIP (175kb) with a VB.NET 2005 project. If you don't have VB.NET 2005, you can just run the EXE in the BIN folder.

This is an alpha build only. Expect a public beta in the coming week or two. If you run this in the IDE, do note that only a handful of events and properties have been exposed for this demo. Some themes will not function as well.

Comments are appreciated. We are also looking for people to beta test the controls suite. Beta testers get a free copy of this product! Contact us at beta [at] nukeation [dot] com.

"The Human UX" or "The Human User Experience" is an article I wrote back in mid/late-2005 for MSDN. During the release of Visual Studio 2005, the article got delayed indefinetely. In retrospect, I think this was for the better. Some of my comments will hit harder now that people are using WPF and EID. Some of the references such as the Windows Vista UX Guide have been updated as well.

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from Brad McCabe (Content Strategist for the Visual Basic website, as well Program Manager among other things) giving me the go-ahead to update the article (it was written in August 2005 - lots of things became outdated). I got an email from Brad today confirming that the article will soon be published!

For a BIG Microsoft fan (and why not, 60% of my life depends on MS!) there couldn't be a greater honor.

The Human UX serves as an interim-design-guideline - bridging the gap between designing for Windows Forms and designing for Windows Presentation Foundation. It focuses more on theory than on actual code so everything will apply to both technologies. Essentially, this article has "usability" at its heart. I hope for it to be a prelude to an article on WPF Design Do's and Don'ts.

The article was originally thought to be a VB article, then expanded to include C# as well. But my inability to cope with too much C# made it difficult to write it that nicely. And what about the guys who do C++ and J#? So at the end I made it platform-agnostic (to borrow a term from Ted Neward's site). Whether you do .NET or Java, GDI+ or WPF, VB or C#, Dogs or Cats, Batman or Superman, Doom or Half-Li... uhh, you get the idea - this will be good reading for you.

Heh, I loved that taunt from SACRIFICE (a 2001 RTS from Shiny Entertainment). But this Oblivion is of a different kind.

I've managed to order the Collectors Edition of THE ELDER SCROLLS IV: OBLIVION from Take2's official store, and managed to have it shipped outside the US (which was supposedly not possible for the Collector's Edition). My online check just revealed that the package reached Mumbai, India today and was shipped from there at 7pm local time. At most, and barring any unforeseen circustances Akatosh forbid, the package should reach me within the next 24 hours. It's already been delayed many hours because of "adverse weather conditions" in the US.

The irony of the whole situation is that after spending $70 for just shipping on a $55 game, and even (probably) recieving it soon, I won't be able to play the game for a few days. I'm SO swamped with work that I need to keep two alarm, one to wake up, and one to tell me when it's time to go to bed. Sigh. I'm moving to Mars. I wonder if I can borrow Calvin's wagon.

I had an extensive argument with a pro-DotNetNuke (DNN) person, and the only reason we didn't end up giving each other a black eye is that Messenger does not support such actions. He said I didn't mix well with DNN because it was also "nuke" and, I quote, "and you believe that this industry is not big enough for the both of you". That is not the case. After calming him (and myself) down, I promised him a good, lucid explanation instead of just badmouthing his favorite CMS (Content Management System).

I've tried every version of DotNetNuke ever since it was first released. Everytime I install it, I end up uninstalling it in a few days and hope the next version is better.

Carl Franklin had suggested that the .NET ROCKS! site be DNN. But I had such a bad experience with DNN at that time that I ended up creating my own CMS based on Carl's tools he had already created.

For the past few weeks, I've been knee-deep in DNN 4 for a client (will post URL when done). This time there is no other choice than DNN since this site has to be easily editable. And DNN is much better than any other .NET based CMS system I've tried so far. Reminds me of the horrible time I had when creating www.idesign.net for Juval Lowy. I ended up replacing 30% to 50% of the ASP.net Portal Starter Kit (1.1) code with my own, including altering the database structure and sprocs. I half-joked Juval that the code was haunted. So when comparing to that, DNN is quite good.

So what am I ranting about? Well, no offense to Shaun Walker and the others who've worked on DNN - really, I do admire this huge and complex app they've built - but at best, DNN is Kaminoan. That is, it's turning out website clones.

I had told Carl during the aforementioned situation that DNN did NOT give pixel-precision. Carl asked Shaun that same question during the DNR episode about DNN just before 4.0's release. Shaun denied that and said that it is in fact possible. I'm sorry, but I beg to differ. Y'see it's "technically" or "theoretically" possible only. Whether you create your own skin or modify the samples, there will always be that 4-block pattern you won't be able to break. There also spacing and positioning issues that happen when you deal in the "edit" stuff that the modules come with.

I'm not so thick that I'm totally unaware that a lot of times such a solution is more than good enough and is quite helpful for many people. I do appreciate that. Heck, if I hated DNN so much, I'd have said no to the aforementioned client.

If you're a designer who knows how to easily achieve pixel-precision in DNN, not only do I bow to your experise, but I would seriously like to learn how. I can't discount the possibility that maybe it's me who had gotten this all wrong.

I can promise you this: if there's one thing I've learnt in my 8+ years of web design and public-reponse studies, it's that a uniquely designed website will always produce better results than a clone site built on a CMS (not neccessarily DNN - could be any other CMS).

A custom solution also doesn't mean you lose all the editablity and managability you get in a CMS. Check out www.tedneward.com - a good 50% of this site is custom CMS-managed stuff. Ted wanted the site to be editable - but only the stuff that he would update frequently - events, articles, news, etc. I custom designed this CMS in less than 5 hours. Using one of the CMS like DNN would have been overkill, and not to mention I'd have lost control over the design.

And different situations need different CMS solutions (I'm going to punch the person who says "But you can make your own modules in DotNetNuke!"). Back in late December 2004, I took the brilliant SQL back-end that Carl had created for DNR, and I created a special CMS for this particular solution (podcast website). Carl had his own management tool to manipulate the back-end. By mid-January 2005, that site was totally objectified and practically became a Content Engine in its own right. The following sites use the same (or partially modified) version of the engine:

www.dotnetrocks.com, http://mondays.pwop.com, www.hanselminutes.com, www.dnrtv.com ... and others I'm not supposed to mention.

This CMS is so highly specialized for this specific purpose, that to create a new site, all you need to do is script a new copy of the database, copy the .NET 2.0 site, and replace the MasterPage with your new design. DnrTV - the latest offering from this engine, was built in less than 3 hours - including testing and recurring revisions to the design.

Bottom line: after many tries, and the currently ongoing adventure in DNN, I don't consider it practical nor do I think I will soon accept another DNN (or any other prefab CMS) project.

DISCLAIMER: Nukeation Studios consists of more than one person, and any comments I've made here reflect only on me and not on my company. That being said, I still won't personally handle a DNN project ever. I'll just hand it to one of the boys or outsource it completely!