posted on: Friday, December 11, 2015 by: jhildeman
Background
First of all, I have been Microsoft person for years. I
generally prefer the Windows/PC approach of customization over
strict convention (i.e. Apple approach - this is the right way and
that's the way it works). It pains me to dump on a tool I
have been using since literally Windows 1.0 (yes I actually did
have a Win 1.0 install on some weird box but never used it
much), mostly Win 3.0, 3.1, 3.11 WFW, Win95, Win98, WinNT,
Win2000, WinXP, Win7, Win8, 8.1, Win10.. I use a Windows
Phone (although my HTC One is really buggy now - will probably go
iPhone next time around). I am a developer so I work with
Windows from the front end to the back end, as a user and as a
developer and admin, as someone who browses the web as well as
someone who builds for the web. That being said, here are my
opinions as submitted to Microsoft.
I use Windows 10 in "tablet mode" on a Dell XPS 12 9q33
64-bit". I also use Windows 10 on an HP Pavilion Elite
HPE.
Specific Issues/Objections
- Every so often, it jumps out of tablet mode and back to that
ugly partial home screen. No specific reason, it just stops
being in tablet mode.
- Workflow: Open Outlook, open email, close email and I end up
back at the home screen instead of in outlook. WTH? Why not
back to Outlook where I started. There are a lot of
little situations like this where the context is lost and workflow
broken.
- List of apps does not show the "snipping tool" - where did it
go? I can just type in it's name and search for it.. Say
what? Then what...can I add it to the apps? No.
Can I "favorite" it? No. I can pin to task bar or pin
to the start screen.
- Start button list - no ability to "favorite" something -
instead I get a stupid "most used" which continually changes and
never seems to be what I actually used most. It cannot be
counted on to find my important tools.
- Microsoft Edge - again this useless "most used" list which
never reflects what I use the most
- Microsoft Edge - again useless "news feed" with very limited
customizability. Let me put my own pages there and stop
pushing things at me. Not a fan.
- Microsoft Edge - no ability to dictate what page opens in a new
tab.
- Snapping to one side or the other used to be very nice, very
simple in Windows 7. Very predictable and simple - half
screen snaps. Now they have incorporated 1/4 screen snaps
that makes it hard to get a simple half screen snap to work.
I don't like that you make me reselect what application I want
snapped opposite. If I keep snapping something to the left, I
have to keep reselecting the same thing on the right side.
Poor.
- I cannot open a .MOV video file with anything. Suddenly
all the HD video from my Canon Powershot SX40HS is
unviewable. Thanks. I know it's an Apple format and I
don't care - neither should you.
- Windows Media center is gone and you gave us NO
REPLACEMENT! Now I have a TV Tuner card in my HP desktop that
is useless. UPDATE: I have currently
trying out Media
Portal. I'll post an update as I
have it.
- The old desktop behavior of clicking on an app on the taskbar
and click it again toggled between minimized and restored...that's
gone.
- Upgrading my Win 8.1 on Dell XPS 13" lost my customizations to
my home screen (all groups gone, my icons gone).
- Home screen live tiles cannot be "renamed" to something "that I
find useful". Example: link to a web page with a big
long ugly SEO title and you get a useless live tile
"shortcut". No rename. No choices.
- No ability to set a live tile icon that might mean something to
me. Seeing the Edge logo on 10 links I use all the time is
not useful.
- The other day my Dell XPS magically reboots as I'm looking at
it and applies updates for the next 1 hour. There was no
advanced warning. There was no ability to delay the reboot
while I saved my work. In addition, it was as I was ready to
leave work -- not very convenient -- hope I didn't have anything
that needed saving.
- UPDATE: there is a setting that prevents
this annoyance. Start/Settings/Updates/Advanced Settings/ and
goto "choose how updates are installed". By default, it is
"automatic", change it to "notify to schedule restart"
- Cortana does not work with my microphone - useless even though
I have a high-end Dell XPS convertible (i.e. not a cheap
machine)
- How are "settings for tablet mode" a "notification"???
- One good thought…OneNote is still awesome in all clients
(Metro, 2013 desktop, phone). When are we bringing Ctrl-dot
(bulleted list) to Outlook??
- Preview pane fails to preview when used in an "insert a file"
modal window
General Thoughts
- Windows 10 strikes me as a poor over-reaction to too many
customer complaints about wanting Win8.1 to be more like Windows
7. You had finally started to head down a "refined design
path" (like Apple) and Windows 10 feels like you just dumped that
and went back to Win7 plus. Windows 10 should really be
called Windows 7.5 if we're being honest. By the way, what
happened to windows 9?
- Microsoft Store: Lookup the TD Ameritrade App (and others
I've used before) say "This App will not work on your
device". Why? How? What next? No
context. No help. Just another "it doesn't work like it
used to".
- It feels as though Microsoft has forgotten that "Software
Applications sell the operating system" and not the other way
around!! The windows 8 and 10 apps are just not that mature
or rich. They are all staying as "desktop apps".
Illustrator. Photoshop. Even the good metro apps
are not well known, publicized or advertised - everything
appears equivalent in the store.
- Why should I buy Windows? How about because of One Note -
you still WAY, WAY under market this golden jewel of an
application. How about marketing your top notch applications,
maybe something like "StaffPad" that demonstrates amazing
stuff with the pen.
- Have you guys read the book "Don't Make Me Think"?
I am sorry if it stings but that is my honest assessment as of
December 11, 2015. Updated 12/30/2015.
posted on: Wednesday, May 29, 2013 by: EngageTeamAdmin
DEV: Can you approve the code changes so we can
include them in the release? We corrected an error that was causing
your transactions not to load. blah, blah, blah... You ran them in
TEST. yada, yada, yada...Here is the output of the testing. You can
review the results in the app in TEST. Is there anything else you
need?
Cust: Can you tell me **exactly** what the code
changes were?
DEV: Well...we changed the type of variable to
match a shared function that had changed since the last release.
Here is the code change.
BEFORE:
Dim AcctID As String = ""
AFTER:
Dim AcctID As Integer = 0
Cust: With my limited IT exposure, I'm afraid
the description you provided doesn't help me that much. I am hoping
you might be able to walk me through what the changes are exactly.
I just want to understand the change a little better and any
potential risk this might include.
DEV: Sigh... {in George Kastanza voice} Chapter
one. In order to manage risk we must first understand risk. How do
you spot risk? How do you avoid risk and what makes it so
risky?
posted on: Friday, August 17, 2012 by: jhildeman
Keynote - Leon Gersing, "YOU"
Monday, August 13th, 9am
Speaker:
Notes:
- Boundaries
- Most people's boundaries are "too loose" or "too rigid"
- Help others understand what you need and "know thyself"
- Be Honest - communicate what you want/need
- Be Flexible and Receptive
- Unhealthy Boundaries
- Walls - put up barriers to keep people out
- Triangulation - two gang up on one
- Control - has to be in charge
- Isolation
- Just go "talk to the person"
- Programmers: "You're not going to die from communicating
with someone"
- Choices
- In most cases, "you've already made your choice, now understand
it"
- Introspection happens outside of you - share what you're
thinking/deciding
- You always have a choice
- You're never as trapped as you think you are
- Own your choices
- Words Matter
- Empathy - seek to understand others you work with, ask what is
it they need?
- Hear - hear why they saying certain things. Is it because
of fear, feeling I'm lost, feeling I don't matter
- Change
- You only have so many heartbeats
- Start doing what you want to do TODAY!
- Change is possible with understanding
- Understand why you make choices
- I make choices because of values and concern over
perceptions
- Failure
- Fail early and fail often!
- Create a culture where people aren't afraid to say "I don't
know that"
- Create an environment where it's OK to fail and learn from
others
- Experts fail too
- Code is a living representation of you, right now. Not a
year from now, but right now.
- "I've yet to meet a developer showing off their code, who
didn't start with an apology." -Awesome quote!
How HTML5 makes Windows suck less
Brandon Satrap
Monday, August 13, 2012
2:38 PM
@Brandonsatrom
Userinexperience.com
brandon@kendoui.com
History
- Text Links Academic --> Yahoo Directory --> jGoogle,
--> eCommerce business Amazon --> outlook web access
-->
- 2008: html 4.01 and css, talking about XHTML which
"gladly died"
HTML5
- Frameworks: KendoUI mobile(try.kendoui.com) - compares with
PhoneGap and Appcellerator
- Any application that can be written in Javascript - no
seriously
- Developers do love complexity, but simplicity always wins
out.
- To do App devleopment for IOS, Android and WP
- Need an API
- Intermediate compile
- Deploy and/or compile/deploy
- Windows 8
- No intermediary
- MS offically supports HTML5 on the platform
- Validator.nu - Windows 8 HTML markup is completely valid
- SVG is resolution independent - resizing doesn't loss
resolution
- CSS3 Grid Layout - like 960 grid
- CSS3 Flexbox -
- ms-flex-direction
- ms-flex-align
- Animations
- CSS3 Animations - #keyframes slize {
from { transform...
- WinJS
- WinJS.Namespace.define("Game", {
- XHR - like jquery $.ajax("")
- WinJS.UI.Animation.fadeIn(originalImg);
- WinJS.UI.Animation.fadeOut(originalImg)
- Adds CSS3 animations behind the scenes for you
- WinJS.UI.Animation.enterPage([main], [source, target])
- WinJS.xhr(call, [promise worked], [promise failed])
Questions:
- Where is the grid-layout implemented? Answer: IE10, FF is
looking at it
Going
mobile with ASP.net mvc 4
- Speaker:
- Adaptive rendering
- @media only screen and (max-width: 850px
- Mobile first Design
- Define the most important content and get that to mobile
devices
- Then, build up to more capable devices
- Media queries in html4 and css2
- Braille, handheld, print, projection, screen, tty, tv
- LESS: CSS compiler with variables
- Graceful degradation - old concept
- Feature detection - new concept
- Adaptive
- Responsive design -
- Responsive frameworks: twitter bootstrap, zurb,
- Simple-talk.com
Open Spaces - mobile tools
- Mono Touch
- One codebase + UI in native tools = native experience
- Edit UI using native tools but store in shared file area within
Visual Studio project directory
- Mono Wraps camera, contacts, geo-location etc
- If it's not in the API, direct native API access is always
available
- "Test flight" is better than Titanium
- Mono Touch Dialog
- Nice solution for tables and forms
- Table layout and hierarchy
- Titanium by AppCelerator
- Need to rebuild each native UI
- Javascript based solution
- Abstraction for contacts etc
- Cloud database
- PhoneGap
- Abstracts away what device you're on
- If it's not in the API, you're out of luck
- Lowest common denominator approac
- Eclipse is really buggy and not a great IDE
- Development Approach
UI Made easy
Speaker:
- Jon VonGiller
- @vongiller
- Blog.nitriq.com
Page One
- "Visual weight should match information relevance!"
- UI Metrics
- Keystrokes
- Mouse travel distance
- Gaze shifts
- Humans scan "top-to-bottom" faster than "left-to-right".
- Mental Delays
- Compound interest that can bankrupt you
- Recall
- "user mental model not developers"
- Tools
- Contrast - black/white - visual difference between two
elements
- Tables - less lines (light grey) and more content (bold
headers)
- Fonts
- Serif - better on long text blocks
- San-Serif - quick to read
- Motion
- Easing should be 200-400ms
- Fade in/out should not change the flow of the page
- References:
- Use a CSS framework: SASS and LESS
- Snook.ca - color contrast checker (bit.ly/E53L)
- Kuler.adobe.com
- Examples
- (Bad) Don't use multiple colors when asking the user to choose
"shape labels"
- (Good) Labels on checkboxes should always be clickable
Page Two
- Whenever possible do things "in parallel" not "serial" (i.e. no
modal)
- Use list boxes over combo boxes (drop down is an extra
step)
- Glow
- Use glow on text to make readable over multi-color
background
- Dark/light background = dark text over light glow
- Gradients - help transfer "gaze"
- Proximity - similar data close, similar functions close
- Immediate Feedback
- Telemetry - what is a user doing?
- Crazy Egg
- Google Analytics
- UI Checklist
- 3 most important pieces of a screen
- 3 most important fields in a section
posted on: Thursday, August 16, 2012 by: jhildeman
I just got back from thatConference.com
2012 and it was excellent.
The daily keynotes were:
- Leon Gersing - YOU
- Scott Hanselman - Scaling Yourself
- Richard Campbell - dotnetrocks.com
Great links
posted on: Monday, August 29, 2011 by: EngageTeamAdmin
Newest blog entry...HERE!
posted on: Wednesday, August 24, 2011 by: jhildeman
Apparently, RFC 592 (I just need to read more) states that we
are not allowed to use underscores (_) in "host names" (what IIS
calls host headers, others call host names, not the same as domain
name rules). In this case, our WMI scripting allowed us to
create a site and slap a host header on it that contained an
underscore. This is where the issue began.
RFC 592
states…
1. A "name" (Net, Host, Gateway, or Domain
name) is a text string up to 24 characters drawn from the alphabet
(A-Z), digits (0-9), minus sign (-), and period (.). Note
that periods are only allowed when they serve to delimit components
of "domain style names".
Bottom Line: Apparently IE expects
standards to be obeyed (imagine that) and does not allow this
invalid "host name" to be written into a cookie (Cookie: mailto:myname@testsite_www.mytestsite.com).
Thus, SiteManager says we successfully logged in (according to
the database logs) but because the cookie never got dropped (even
when I put it in "allowed sites" and lowered my
security). Result: we get bounced right back to the login
page as if nothing happened (but ONLY IN IE).
If you change the name of host to
"testsitewww.mytestsite.com" then everything is fine.
posted on: Thursday, October 7, 2010 by: EngageTeamAdmin
Alright, we have a site that needs upgrading from v3.x to
v4.0.2.1. I've been wanting to look at Courier and see what
it can do so here we go.
First question we'll try to answer is can it take and old
version and move it to a new "empty" version.
Steps:
Backup everything first (both dirs, both dbs)
1) Install courier for Umb 3.x package on v3 site
1a)ISSUE: Install package assumes /Umbraco directory which we don't
have because
of
rebranding which is why we bought the Pro package.
Grrr.
Moved everything under /Umbraco to our rebranded
directory
1b)Looks good. Looks like we have a "transfer to staging"
option in the context menu.
2) Install courier for Umb 4.x package on v4 site
3) Copy .lic file to both /bin directories
4) Right click "[Send to Demosite]" and we get the "Error with
Licensing" page. Checked with support and it turned out that
it was a .lic file that was set only for .local domains. They
will send a new .lic file.
posted on: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 by: EngageTeamAdmin
ERROR TEXT:
Unable to read the project file 'xyz.vbproj'. The
Web Application Project xyzApp is configured to use IIS. To access
local IIS Web sites, you must install all of the following Windows
components: Internet Information Services IIS 6 Metabase and IIS 6
Configuration Compatibility ASP.NET In addition, you must run
Visual Studio in the context of an administrator account. By
default, Windows runs applications in a limited-privilege user
account even when you are logged on to the computer as an
administrator. To run Visual Studio with administrative privileges,
right-click the Visual Studio icon and then click 'Run as
administrator'.
SCREEN SHOT:
BACKGROUND:
After upgrading my machine from WinXP to Windows 7
this .vbproj would not open giving the above error. I realized that
XP=IIS6 and Win7=IIS7 and read the MSDN
article on converting. RESOLUTION: I just wanted to run the app
using the development web server so I just wanted to get rid of the
attempt to use IIS. After digging around, I found some settings in
the .vbproj file. I manually edited my xyz.vbproj file and set:
- "UseIIS" = false
- "IISUrl" to be empty
Success, the project loads and everything is running.