Developer News

WPF in the eyes of a beginner As a programmer

WPF in the eyes of a beginner
As a programmer who until very quite recently chose C#.NET as his main language, WPF was thrust upon me like an anvil in your favorite 90s cartoon. There was no avoiding it… And for that, I’m glad — mostly. The Windows Presentation Foundation is a UI subsystem of the Microsoft .NET 3.0, (and 3.5 as of two days before this post). Using it, an application’s user interface may designed completely in a special markup language called XAML. For me, XAML was certainly comparable to HTML (a bonus since I have some experience with HTML and CSS, being an interim web developer at my workplace)….

Microsoft vs TestDriven.NET - 31 May 2007

I have just received another courier delivered letter from Microsoft’s lawyers. That makes a total of 3 letters in 4 working days! I can see how these things can get expensive very quickly.

I’d like to highlight a couple of things in the letter.

They say that I have been in correspondence with Microsoft about these issues for many months. What they don’t take into account is that in over a year of correspondence - Microsoft consistently refused to tell me which license I was allegedly in violation of.

For example on Feb 26, 2007 Jason Weber said:

Jamie, for the reasons we discussed at great length, we believe your various extensions to the Visual Studio Express products necessarily violated the relevant license terms. We don't think it's productive to rehash those discussions.

We may have discussed this at great length, but I was never told what that the “relevant license terms” actually were! I only re-enabled Express support when Microsoft yet again failed to tell me where I was in violation. A straight answer with something I could tell my users would have resolved this.

I’m not sure where on my website this was suggested. It’s possible that they’re referring  to one of the comments on the last post. They do however bring up an interesting point. The license attached to their first letter was the one for “Visual Studio 2005 Standard and Academic Editions”. It didn’t matter that the license wasn’t the Express SKU license because the wording is the same. What if it turns out that the reason I can’t add buttons to Express SKU also applies to Visual Studio 2005? I would then be forced to take down TestDriven.NET entirely. What if it also means I can’t use PopFly Explorer for Visual Studio Express?

Update: In the comments I’ve been asked to post my reply to Microsoft’s lawyers.
Update: I have just authorized all comments after being offline for the weekend (a wedding in Scotland). Comment moderation is on to prevent spam. I do not censor comments as has been suggested.

Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method - Banishing Writer’s Block By Gerald M Weinberg
In his new book, acclaimed consultant, teacher, and author Jerry Weinberg introduces his approach to writing called The Fieldstone Method. This is not a book about grammar or style, but about *getting things written*–and cutting yourself some slack in the process. In today’s world of blogging and “agile publishing,” Weinberg’s evolutionary, non-linear method is especially welcome. This excerpt explains how Fieldstoning can break the cycle of writer’s block.
Click here for the full article.

Mozilla Corp board member leaks the truth about Firefox memory loss
Firefox ticks many boxes, but the one big cross it has had to bear over the years is the memory leakage problem that many users have experienced. Here’s how it works: user has Firefox browser open and visits websites, Firefox slurps up some system resources, user continues to keep Firefox running, Firefox continues to slurp up ever increasing amounts of precious system resources. Well, that has been the allegation at least, and one which Mozilla has been long at pains to deny. Whenever the subject has cropped up, the official response has always been that there is simply no significant memory…