Architecture

I reckon, having like three or four blogs was one to many and trying to use all of them made none really eloquent. So, judging the access-numbers I decided to close this blog effective immediately. Whatever I want to tell you about architecture, software and computers in general will appear in my main blog: Carsti's Blog, in German. Maybe I will move one or more entries over for archiving reasons.

Yesterday UPS brought my new computer, a Dell XPS 710, and I set it up with Windows Vista immediately. That was one of the smoothest installations I ever did. Most of the complicated questions and screens of the past are either gone or reduced to a simple click. Vista detected all devices and installed the appropriate drivers correctly. For a free virus-protection I had to rely on Avast! again, as I did in the x64-environment. My formerly favorite vendor Avira was unable to provide Vista capable software yet. I think I install Avast! on my wifes machine, too.

And of from all the glwoing, semi-transparent, younamit features one fascinated me most: "Show all Windows" I saw a preview of that from Jim Allchin last year, but I thought it was more one of his pet projects. Nope, it made it into the product. Cool...

Of course I had to check the Performace Score and was very pleased to see a friendly, high-ranking number on my display. According to the help, I have a pretty neat machine that runs Vista out of the pocket and will be capable of almost anything I possibly can inflict on it. Interesting side-node: 5 ought to be the highest ranking score there was "when Vista came out." Vista came out a week ago, so what did Dell do to archive 5.3? - But then, who cares.

First install then was Offcie 2007, which still confuses me a bit with the new organization of the tools and all. Next will be Visual Studio 2005. And then I'll check out the new system in detail. That'll be one fun-weekend.

Finally, Microsoft Windows Vista is there. Unfortunately, the download from MSDN failed twice at 49%. Thanks to the Online Concierge I was able to fix the issue by exluding the HTTP protocol from the options of the FTM.

Interesting solution. Not really obvious what went wrong there, isn't it? There should be another footnote: "HTTP, not supported by some clients" Anyway: Thanx David! Now I'm waiting for the new machine to arrive, so I can start the install. Looking forward...

A colleague of mine just pointed me to .kkrieger, one hell of an interesting study came out 2004 already: a First Person Shooter in just 96K:

Okay, it's not Quake, but fitting an FPS into 96K is a notable achievement indeed. The screenshot, when taken in 1024x513, needed 264K as a JPEG and even the thumbnail counts for 29K. Let's face it, many websites need more mileage. Most hotfixes are larger.

So, what is it? Great compression? Tiny graphics? Good usage of the capabilities of the GPU? Or a mixture of all the above, spiced up with a lot of enthusiasm and the will to prove something out of the ordinary? I don't know, go ask the developers. And praise them while you're at it. I admire them. And there is trace of envy...

Every now and then you need to explain why you prefer good software, and so I did a evaluation of TaskSwitch XP by ntwind software and the Alt-Tab Replacement from Microsoft's own Power Toys XP.

Downloading the tools is fairly easy and quick and both are available with an included installer. TaskSwitchXP in that deployment is 394KB and Microsoft is serving 534K. Both tools are for free, but only TaskSwitch offers you to download the source code. 1:0 for TaskSwitchXP

Installation and uninstall is a piece of cake in both cases, thanx to the installer. No reboot necessary. On demand, TaskSwitchXP installs an entry in the Start Menu, too. TaskSwitchXP offers language files for well over 30 languages, including German and Japanese. 2:0 for TaskSwitchXP

Configuration seems to be only available for TaskSwitchXP witch offers a wide range of options; some valuable, some rather fancy. If the Power Toy offers configuration, I failed miserable on finding it. And too well hidden options are like no options. 3:0 for TaskSwitchXP

Runtime behavior is almost similar, both react to the Alt-Tab fast and reliable. TaskSwitchXP offers some new capabilities like a sticky task-switch dialog, activated by Win+F11 in the default configuration. TaskSwitch is able to drawn the window's placement correctly on the desktop. And while the Power Toy is snapping up 3552K at runtime, TaskSwitchXP is running at 808K. 4:0 for TaskSwitchXP

Visualization has been tested on my XPSP2 laptop, running the Silver theme. Let's look at the results. This is the At-Tab Replacement from Microsoft itself (red markers added by me of course):

From top to bottom: A rather blurred, small font. The list of processes is again only visualized via Large Icons. The drawing of the Explorer content is incomplete and I'm not sure what should have been displayed in that white rectangle in the lower right corner.

Now the "same" screenshot with TaskSwitchXP:

Find the differences. 5:0 for TaskSwitchXP and I think I don't have spell it out for you, do I? Anyway, feel free to comment, tell me where the options dialog of the Power Toy is that makes this thing worth the download, or tell my of a third tool, that beats the both of them.

So, the KDE is not only looking at Windows, but on Apple directly now? Neat little feature on the new Plasma Desktop:

I'm not entirly sure how Apple is speparating their adjacent message windows--they never stay long enough--but it's a good way to clean up the pile of dialog-boxes a bit. And I like the button that takes you to the most likely application...

A first snapshot of the upcoming KDE4 is available by the name Krash... or is it kRash?

Right after Robert Scoble left Microsoft, we might get a new great "Inside Man," as Mark Russinovich from Sysinternals started blogging right after his arrival at the company.

And for those afraid that the great tools like filemon will be buried, he states that the new licensing will be even more free than before. Let's hope it stays that way. OTOH, I could as well live with the possibility that those tools will become part of the operation system itself.

Just in case you wonder: the time-stamp is right. This is not a garage start-up of the late eighties, this is a server room, property of a rather huge German software company. The outrageous hot weather in Germany in combination with the equally outrageous number of applications that you would have to fill out to get an AC (that then will arrive right in the middle of fall (next year)) leads to the most curious ideas... again. Those who don't learn from history, are doomed to repeat it. And those who are too avaricious to buy an AC, are probaly doomed to buy a new server...

The Workflow is everywhere. Just recently I discovered Issue 7 of Microsoft's The Architecture Journal. Very interesting reading for all those inflicted with IT's buzzword of the year. Right in the foreword, it starts off with the introduction of the famous Dave Green, an architect for the Windows Workflow Foundation, and well known for his article Which Style of Workflow When?"

This issue is titled "Generation Workflow" for a reason: Dave Green talks extensively about on Workflow Platform Applications, and Vignesh Swaminathan models Business Processes to real-life scenarios, while other authors concentrate on simplifying complex workflows and how the human still fits into those concepts. - Another third of the magazine is about SOA.

No need to emphasize that I downloaded the PDF right away. It's available in Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Chinese, Korean and Japanese, too. I subscribed to future issues online and in print and ordered the back-issues as well. Loads of reading for the near future.

An interesting artice on how the SharePoint products employ the Windows Workflow Foundationt appeared on the Office12 section of MSDN: Developer Introduction to Workflows for Windows SharePoint Services V3 and SharePoint Server 2007

A long, but interesting story on what workflows will be supportet out-of-the-box, how the user is guided along those workflows with InfoPath, the pros and cons of developing workflows with the SharePoint Designer vs. VisualStudio 2005, and much, much more. Definately worth the study.

Interesting side-note: In November 2005 I had a talk with the WWF-Team, where they apologized for the typo xoml and promised to correct the issue in Beta 2 of the WWF itself. Now, six month later they haven't fixed it at all. And when you see a sentence like: "The markup file is written in Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML), which has a published schema to which the file must adhere, and given a file extension of .xoml." you can bet on this will stay forever. Proof my wrong anytime...