Scott Stanfield

"Everything I Know about Atlas at this Point" presentation

scott — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 00:53:00 GMT

AKA, "How I learned Atlas by learning AJAX first".

It's been nearly a year since I did my first Atlas presentation for the PDC Underground in Los Angeles at the 2005 PDC. I updated my presentation for a talk in Irvine on 9/23/06 for an all-SoCal User Group shindig (on a Saturday!) at the airport Hilton.

You can download the "presentation" which is funny since it was mostly code. I added a default.htm that walks through the order in which the pages were created, live, for the talk.

It helps to have Fiddler handy to watch what's going on behind the scenes. Due to a problem/bug with IE7 and the inability to proxy localhost requests, you have to use Fiddler with Firefox if you're using Cassini (the local web server that comes with Web Developer Express). Not a big deal, really.

I'd post a screen shot of the atlas demo, but it's such a pain to do images with Community Server that I'm going to punt this time. In fact, we're going to switch to SharePoint 2007 any day partly for the ability to easily add images to your blog posts!

Ajax / Atlas Presentation details coming soon

scott — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 16:58:00 GMT

I delivered an Ajax/Atlas presentation in Irvine on 9/23. I'm working on posting the details and code but ran into a problem. As I was cleaning up the bits, I accidently deleted one of the key files! So I'm set back a bit. The file will be reconstructed and all posted by the EOD. Sorry SoCal! You guys were a fantastic audience!

Lenovo Thinkpad T60 and Vista RC1

scott — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 16:18:00 GMT

I just installed Vista RC1 on my Thinkpad T60 (1951-48U) and, for the first time over all the previous beta releases, Glass works! Out-of-the-box actually. And no hiccups on the install either. Apparently the WEI score was high enough to make it to Glass. Previously, I was getting a 1.0 for graphics!

I think the culprit was the onboard Intel 945GM express chipset. It's integrated video controller (950?) has the ability to dynamically allocate up to 250MB or so for video RAM.

Now a few things aren't working out the gates. External audio through speakers for example. The XP drivers from Lenovo solved this problem with pre-RC1, so I'm guessing it'll work.

Also, two drivers were recognized post-boot as part of Auto Updates: ThinkPad PM Device and UPEK biometric TouchChip. Haven't used them yet.

Windows Marketplace Launches Today!

scott — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 16:32:00 GMT

In early 2004, Vertigo kicked off a project with a group of folks from Windows Client Marketing to significantly improve what was then called the Windows Catalog. They hoped to make it significantly easier for Windows users to find, buy, and download thousands of software products that work with Windows. Today, I’m proud to announce the result of that effort with the launch of the new Windows Marketplace, designed and built right here at Vertigo.

The new Windows Marketplace features the Digital Locker, a major new channel for electronic software distribution on the web. Customers can:

try and buy thousands of products online,
purchase software from multiple retailers in a single transaction,
and store all their licenses in one convenient place.

You can get support, receipts, and returns, and reviews for your software as well. The Digital Locker Assistant, shipping in Windows Vista and also available for Windows XP, helps you download your software securely, install it, and make backup CDs on your PC.

We’re especially excited about the titles available for Digital Locker. Direct2Drive is selling hundreds of great games (including World of Warcraft), twelve thousand mobile titles are available from Handango, and thousands more from Digital River, eSellerate, and Kagi. These retailers make it extremely easy for small ISVs to get a product into Windows Marketplace and available via Digital Locker.

Beyond the Digital Locker, the Windows Marketplace itself is brand new today as well, featuring a Windows Vista-inspired UI, improved search, and lots of great editorial content. It’s also the new home for the Internet Explorer addons website. We’re especially proud of the site from the technical side: the site’s entirely CSS-based UI can be completely redesigned by the editors without help from developers, and its content management system helps them keep the information current and fresh.

This project has been a major effort for Vertigo over the past two years—we’re excited to see it ship and hope you take a moment to check it out. Also, look for our feature on the home page this week at Microsoft.com and the Marketplace team’s interview on Channel 9, currently the lead video.

Leaving Los Angeles

scott — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 20:14:00 GMT

Yesterday I drove 450 miles from San Francisco to Irvine to deliver my "Everything ASP.NET" presentation to 100 VB.NET and C# programmers. It was a joint meeting between OCCUG and a local VB.NET UG. I just arrived back to the office this morning to post links from my talk.

My presentation was a "live" version of one of the 9 videos I did for Microsoft. You can currently find them all under the "How Do I" column at http://www.asp.net/learn/videos.

Look for "Create a Full-Featured Customer Login Portal". Terrible name. Wished I had pushed for something better. It's really a grand-tour of everything new in ASP.NET (except for the new portal features).

And although the drive was made better by the Discovery Channel Radio on Sirius, the Valentine One radar detector, and AMG, driving in LA commute traffic is truly hell. Took 1.5 hours to travel 30 miles on I-5; I was nearly late to the meeting.

After the presentation, a group of us, with laptops, hit Denny's (!). Over a rare Sam Adams, Dave (local C# guy with a nice bike) kindly shared some insider tips on choice routes.

N 55
E 91
N 57
W 210
N 5

That's how I got from Costa Mesa (Irvine) to the Grapevine in only two hours. It could have been much worse. Notice the spartan direction list. No "go 2 lights past the Costco and turn left at the McDonalds.". No, this is straight-forward, consice left-brain directions. Worked great Dave, thanks!

I hope to return on Sept. 23rd 2006 for a big SoCal joint users-group meeting in Costa Mesa.

Foiled Again!

scott — Wed, 24 May 2006 00:17:00 GMT

Steve Nyholm, one of Vertigo's software engineers, returns tomorrow from a three-week European Vacation. We missed him so much, we got him a present. Foil. Lots of foil. 480 square feet of aluminum foil.

Lots of guilty parties, starting with Alex and Jim. Pictured are Crystalina, Alex and Jeff. We do plan on recycling all this.

Developer-class Laptops for Vista

scott — Thu, 04 May 2006 21:22:00 GMT

After weeks of agonizing over selecting a new batch of laptops for our programmers, we selected the Lenovo Thinkpad T60

There's about 100 permutations of T60s. The one we chose, the 2623-D7U had the right mix of features for us:

512MB with an extra 512MB for free. Devs need 1GB for proper development
14.1" screen. We found the 15" screen didn't fit most backpacks, like the awesome Tumi backpack
Aero-ready video card (see below)
100GB 5400RPM drive. Would have liked the 7200RPM, but they didn't have it in this mix
9-cell battery, cause it's better than 6-cells. Apparently 50% longer life, but it sticks out more in the back.

We've always used Thinkpads. They've got the best tactile keyboards of any laptop I've used, with the correct size and key position: backspace, enter, inverted-T. But for some reason, IBM never liked the Windows key. Finally, on the T60s, now that Lenovo owns the brand, they slapped the Windows key on.

Since we've got a 2 year lease on these guys, we want to make sure the laptops will run Vista. And when I mean "run Vista", I really mean "run Aero". Well.

Turns out, Vista assigns your computer a rank, a number from 1 to 5, that determines if the cool, glasss or Aero features show up. A lot of weight is given to a video card performance.

We bought a single evaluation laptop with integrated Intel GMA950 graphics. Although Vista installed just fine, I couldn't get Aero to turn on. This, despite the somewhat misleading claims on the Intel site:

Updated Intel® Graphics WDDM drivers supporting the Intel® 945G Express Chipset are included in the Windows Vista* February CTP build (build 5308).

Sure, Vista supports the chipset (after doing a Windows update), but you don't get Aero. Not acceptable for a modern, new laptop. Maybe by the time Vista retails, it'll support it fine, but I couldn't make that bet--we got the T60s that included the ATI Radeon X1300, which supports Aero (first thing we checked!)

We buy a lot of hardware from CDW. Our sales agent was able to find a document (T60.PDF "Personal Systems Reference") that has 10 pages of detailed specs. Much easier to use than the Lenovo website.

Behind the Scenes: ASP.NET 2 How Do I Videos

scott — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 20:00:00 GMT

2.5 hours of new ASP.NET 2.0

Over the course of the past few months, my team and I worked to develop and film 2.5 hours worth of content on ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Web Developer. The idea was to build a series of short, ~12 min. videos, to introduce ASP.NET 1.x developers and people new to the platform, to the power and new features of ASP.NET 2.0. Internally, we called this the Hilo project, as we name all our projects after U.S. cities.

They are currently the featured news at www.asp.net. The permanent home looks like http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/learning/learn/newtodevelopment/default.aspx under the ASP.NET HOW DO I banner. It doesn't look like the source code has been posted, so I'll add it here in another blog entry (once I figure out how).

A few questions were asked on ScottGu's blog http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/02/26/439088.aspx. I'll consolidate the answers that I can give at my blog.

What Did We Use For Production and Filming?

We used Microsoft Virtual PC to host a clean dev environment with nothing but Visual Web Developer and SQL Express installed. For one video that used SqlCommand caching, we had to use SQL Server 2005 developer on a different box. If the star of the video is Virtual PC, Camstasia is the cinematographer, with both running simulatneously on a dual-core AMD 64-bit 4GB RAM box with 1900x1200 real estate. This lets me crop exactly a 1024x768 image of Virtual PC, with plenty of room for notes and Camtasia.

We use two approaches for the audio. Sometimes we record with a high-quality Plantronics USB head-set mic, properly placed, for a clean digital signal.

Or we use a Neumann KM 184 cardioid microphone on a shock mount, fed to a Mackie mixer for pre-amp and outboard compression in our dedicated audio room. All depends on my mood.

We do some pre-processing on the Audio using Sony WaveHammer to remove pops and clicks. Then we bring in the audio / video tracks into Sony Vegas 6, in my opinion, the best NLE for the money out there. Plus it's written in .NET and uses its own private instance of SQL Server, which is karmic goodness.

Once we finish editing in Vegas, we render out for WMV 9 Screen (~300kbps) and Audio 9 (fairly high resolution--audio is an extremely important part of the experience). I could post the exact details in another blog if I get comments.

Why Tables instead of DIV/CSS for Layout?

Only a small portion of the development and design world has clued into using tables and 1x1 pixel clear GIFs is a bad idea for layout. Once you master a few hacks to work around browser compatibility (See some of my CSS links at http://del.icio.us/seesharp), building a really clean masterpage with DIV tags is straight-forward. And fun too--swapping in different themes based on CSS is trivial. And the code looks really really clean.

My Introducing video takes the DIV/CSS approach. I was very happy with the results. The Masterpages video (and maybe a few others) uses the Table approach. We had to cover the new Table dialog (not bad) and some of the interactive table design features. Just learn how to use both then drop tables in favor of float:left!

Reference Materials

I only used 3 reference materials myself for these videos:

The first is Scott Guthrie's incredible 1.5 hour one-take video tour of everything. I shameless stole some ideas and even did my own high-level transcription of the video. If you're looking for more than the 2.5 hours that I did, check out his video. I have no idea where it is.
Homer, Sussman and Howard's ASP.NET 2.0 (Beta) book. It's the best I had at the time. I'd love to see their final copy.
The ASP.NET team released some visual templates. The templates are pretty good, but the readme file that comes with them is awesome. I learned some good tricks in there. Very worthwhile reading--something you'd probably pass up (who reads README.html anymore?)

Microsoft Rock the Launch 2005 Materials

scott — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 18:47:00 GMT

At the "world premiere" launch of Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk 2006, attendees received complimentary copies of the first two products (not a trial!) and a coupon for BizTalk. Check out the clever packaging, a double-album (the old LP kind) that looks like the kind you see hung on walls in music studios.

Close up of the grooves. I wonder if there's a hidden subliminal message in there?

More booty (resouce CD, badget and the outside of the album)