the case against .NET

New Dell web design broken

Mike Dillamore — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:15:03 +0000

Dell’s website has had an overhaul. Initial impressions are of a much crisper, less cluttered design - good.

However, it simply does not work! At least not for me. The main graphical element of the page is a Flash movie which shows different products in turn. Above this is a pulldown menu, which pulls down behind the Flash movie. Site navigation is therefore impossible. This image just shows the tiny part of the menu which is visible above the graphic.

They must have tested this on some systems! I’m running Ubuntu 8.04, and the site is broken in both Firefox 3 and Opera. Could it be that the Linux market isn’t quite so important to Dell after all?

Merry Andrew at last

Mike Dillamore — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:13:57 +0000

The first taste of a new beer is usually a special moment, particularly when the beer in question is (soon to be) brewed in your home town.

When I read on the Adur Brewery Blog that the final bottles from the prototype batch of Merry Andrew had been delivered to the local off license, I quickly phoned my wife who kindly agreed to make a special trip. I’d missed out on all previous opportunities to sample, but am finally enjoying my first bottle. It’s a strong beer with a good complex flavour, though it could perhaps do with a touch more length. Went down well with the wife too (”good liquorice flavour”). We’ll gladly enjoy many more of these.

Gar(b)age Hedgehog

Mike Dillamore — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 22:39:17 +0000

This hedgehog was found in a black bin liner (garbage sack) in our garage yesterday morning. We’re not too sure how/when it got in there, though it probably climbed in sometime during the previous couple of days. My wife was alerted by a rustling from inside the bag, which she had thought contained only garden rubbish.

Following advice found on the web, we bought some cat food, and gave it a little moistened muesli and some water. Apparently revived, it was released at a safe spot nearby after dark. It wandered away, and has not been seen since.

WordPress upgraded on this blog

Mike Dillamore — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:00:14 +0000

thecaseagainst.net has, at last, been upgraded to WordPress 2.5, having previously languished on the 2.0 branch for far too long. Thanks to a great short guide from Word Press this was a quick and easy process. Let me know if you spot any problems.

Now I need to find a new theme to freshen it up a bit…

Update: I finally settled on the Cutline theme from Chris Pearson.

Google search for product reviews - it now works!

Mike Dillamore — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 22:38:52 +0000

I’m sure this has been blogged numerous times already (and I didn’t notice), but the biggest problem with Google, for me, has been that searching for product reviews has never worked. The top 20 or so results would always include one or two real reviews, and a pile of shopping sites which offered customers a chance to comment on products - only there were never any customer comments.

Well, at some point in the last few weeks this was fixed - properly. I’ve been trying it with various classes of product - by searching for the product name along with the word “review” - and it just works! The first couple of pages of results are consistently filled with the most respected reviews of the product. I’m sure this was a non-trivial problem for Google to solve, but I’m equally sure it’s a big win.

Silverlight: .NET done right

Mike Dillamore — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 08:41:09 +0000

Tim Anderson has been blogging from Tech.Ed. In a useful post about convergence between Silverlight and WPF, he makes the comment

in many ways Silverlight is .NET done right, from a client perspective; it delivers just what is necessary for a rich client

This echoes my previous remark that Silverlight 2 suggests a route to a more manageable and lightweight deployment model.

This make increasing sense. .NET has not succeeded on the client platform, largely because of the multiple monoliths of the .NET framework. Silverlight introduces a model whereby elements of .NET may be distributed in a granular fashion - surely it won’t be long before Microsoft enables this facility for installable rich clients also.

What I love about .NET

Mike Dillamore — Thu, 22 May 2008 12:53:50 +0000

I can understand why people sometimes get the impression that I’m a .NET hater. Most recently, this includes my former colleague David Arno. So, time for me to clarify my position (again).

Firstly, what really concerns me is when people can’t be bothered to think for themselves. They blindly accept whatever someone tells them, without engaging their considerable intellect. In software development today, the main problem is developers who don’t ever question what Microsoft hands down. They don’t seem to know that there’s a world outside of .NET, and therefore .NET must be the solution to every problem. (David is not such a person, by the way.)

I actually believe there is much that is good in .NET, and in the .NET ecosystem. Things that spring immediately to mind include LINQ, Silverlight 2, advances in TDD… In particular, it includes a very comprehensive set of server-side technologies - here, of course, deployment is largely not an issue. As a technophile, I’ve really enjoyed seeing the pace of software innovation ramp up because of the interplay of ideas between Microsoft’s .NET and the open source community.

Where .NET remains a disaster is in the area of deployment to client machines. There are too many variants of the .NET framework, and each of them is much too big. Sure you can bundle the framework into your installer (as long as the target version of Windows is new enough), but this severely limits the scope for web-based deployment.

The point was pushed home for me when I recently moved from Azureus to µTorrent as my Windows BitTorrent client. If you’re not a µTorrent user, you should know that it’s a really elegant, full-featured, intuitive application. In short, it’s a dream to use. The stunner is that the download is only 214 kB, and it runs on everything from Windows 95 up. This is the kind of thing that wins users - not MB of bloat for a basic utility.

In the battle for hearts and minds, Microsoft has a big problem here. Maybe Silverlight 2 suggests a route to a more manageable and lightweight deployment model - it’ll be interesting to see how this unfolds.

New web for Worthing

Mike Dillamore — Thu, 22 May 2008 09:45:53 +0000

As someone who works in Worthing (and a former resident) it’s exciting to see the town take a lead in innovative use of the web for presenting its portfolio of services - and promoting the area. Worthing Borough Council has a great new web site, complete with draggable gadgets, multiple RSS feeds, a lovely design, and all the obligatory Web 2.0 paraphernalia.

Congratulations to Victoria J.K. Lamburn for a fine piece of work - with more to come, apparently.

Scary software installs

Mike Dillamore — Wed, 21 May 2008 13:15:24 +0000

I understand that Microsoft’s new WorldWide Telescope is an impressive piece of software.

However, Nick Bradbury has highlighted the horrendous installation procedure, which apparently involves up to 12 steps. Nick has this to say: -

Those of us who believe that desktop software is still relevant in a
browser-based world should be up in arms about how hard it is to
install software (on Windows, at least - it’s easier on the Mac).

Surely, though, it’s not Windows that’s the problem. The issue here is the dependency on .NET. Software deployment increasingly uses the Internet rather than physical media, yet .NET is entirely inappropriate in such cases.

Microsoft’s focus on .NET will be at their own expense, with Apple and Linux being the chief beneficiaries, along (I hope) with CodeGear - makers of the best Win32 developer tools.

“the single greatest design error in Vista”?

Mike Dillamore — Wed, 21 May 2008 12:09:49 +0000

Via Jeff Duntemann: -

Several people online, in an almost offhand fashion, have indicated that Vista’s knucklehead UAC feature is training people to click “Allow” automatically, no matter what it’s asking about. That may be the single greatest design error in Vista, and could over time render Vista as insecure as anything that came before it, and certainly less secure than just working in an LUA under XP.

He’s absolutely right of course, and it’s pretty scary.

I’ve been using Vista as my main work OS for the best part of a year, with mixed results. UAC has remained on because, as a developer, I know that’s how it will be for most of my users. In other respects, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by performance, but dismayed by robustness (compared to either XP or Linux).

I’ve remained uncomfortable with UAC throughout, especially compared to the more rational alternatives found elsewhere (see, e.g., Ubuntu). Jeff’s post has crystallized why it’s such a bad idea.