Frans Bouma writes about problems he has with Windows XP while the whole Microsoft community is overwhelmed with cool Longhorn stuff (Longhorn is the codename for the new Windows version, scheduled for 2005). Personally I never had any of the problem he has had with XP, but that’s not really his point either: “My point is not to enlist a couple of shortcomings in the Windows XP shell. What I want to illustrate is that Microsoft acts too late and wrong when it comes to shortcomings to their own products. Some irritating shell behaviour was already present in NT4, why are we still accepting the fact that we have to deal with them today? I find that weird. Are we tired? Are we convinced that asking for patches (for Windows XP, the next service pack is not released in the near future, we have to wait at least a year) or functionality updates that are really necessary is useless? Why are we forgetting the current problems when we’re talking about Longhorn? I don’t get that hype. Longhorn might be good, better than whatever is on the planet at that date. However till that day, we have to deal with the current problems which are not addressed today nor will be in the near future, if ever.”
Very valid points IMO.
There appears to be this new Google feature: Google Frequent Searchers: ” Do you search with Google a hundred times a day? Do you reach for Google before the phonebook, the dictionary or the newspaper? Do you think, just maybe, you’re a Google frequent searcher?
Now you can know for sure. The Google search counter is accurate, easy to administer and precisely calibrated for your computing environment. It provides clear and instantaneous results showing exactly how often you use Google. For information on how the search counter works, read on. “
But, I don’t see the counter anywhere. Does anybody know why? Does anybody see it?
Ok, I’ve played with Visual Studio 2003 a couple of hours now and it looks good, however I think Eclipse spoiled me. There are some features that Eclipse (for Java development) has and VS does not, but should IMO (especially considering you usually pay like $1300 for it and Eclipse is 100% free).
- Refactoring support, this is a known fact and I heard rumours that this will be included in Whidbey
- Easily override parent methods. If you don’t know the .NET classes very well (as I do) and you know you want to override some method, but you don’t know which exactly, it’s easy to have a wizzard for that, Eclipse has something for this, it allows you to select which methods to override and generates stubs for them (Edit: Ok, this seems to be possible with Intellisense)
- Compilation as you type. VS only tracks down syntactic errors while typing. When I program in Eclipse and use variables that aren’t defined Eclipse tells me this, same goes for types.
- Auto fixing of errors. When I use classes in Eclipse that aren’t imported yet, Eclipse tells me this and allows me to autofix it (it search through the packages until it finds one or more matchin classes and adds it to the imports). Eclipse can also automatically declare undefine variables (either as local variables or as fields).
- How can I easily create regions? I would expect to select the piece of code and click “Create region” somewhere, but I can’t find that option anywhere, do I really have to do it by hand?
- Class overview. VS offers this too, but it doesn’t auto synchronize. In Eclipse when I move my cursor from one class/method to the other, it’s automatically synced with the class overview window. In VS I assigned Ctrl+k Ctrl+s to do this on demand for me, it’s better than nothing.
- Compile on save. When I’d save a file in Eclipse it’d automatically be compiled (for as far this wasn’t done already), so extra compile step is necessary. I understand this is not really possible the way .NET handles files and assemblies etc, but still I liked it.
At first I didn’t find a code reformatter either, but today I found out that Ctrl+k Ctrl+f formats the selection, so Ctrl+a Ctrl+k Ctrl+f does the trick.
Of course, VS has some very neat features too. A drag and drop forms designer, also for ASP.NET and smart devices. Works very nicely. It also nicely integrates servers into the IDE, such as IIS and SQL Server. The help system is very helpful (haha) and region folding is a great idea. I’ve also played with smart devices (Pocket PC in my case) a little and it’s way easier than the Java/VB programming I had to do first. Just drag and drop a few components, write some code, click the run button, choose Run on device, the .NET framework was automatically installed and the application ran. Great, that’s the way it should go.
I’ll post two screenshots for those who don’t know VS 2003 
I always liked Larry Wall’s “Laziness is a programmer’s main virtue” (if I remember correctly), but recently I can add a new one to that, it’s about rewriting software from scratch: “We’ll try to make different mistakes this time” (thanks Arien). Both are so true ;D
Larry Wall is the designer/programmer of Perl by the way.
A huge system like Google has it’s particular needs. One of them is to be quickly transfer files which usually are very large (several gigs), in order to do this fast and secure Google has developed the Google File System.
When looking for the XP version of TweakUI, I found some very cool other power toys for XP. My favourites:
- Tweak UI, This PowerToy gives you access to system settings that are not exposed in the Windows XP default user interface, including mouse settings, Explorer settings, taskbar settings, and more.
Version 2.10 requires Windows XP Service Pack 1 or Windows Server 2003.
- Image Resizer, This PowerToy enables you to resize one or many image files with a right-click.
- Virtual Desktop Manager, Manage up to four desktops from the Windows taskbar with this PowerToy, works great!
