OCDProgrammer.com

Something you probably shouldn’t notice, but this site is now running under .NET 4.0. 

If you notice anything odd, please notify me. 

Last week I came into the office to find my box was completely hosed.  I kept getting a compile error that the webengine.dll could not be found. 

I tried many different uninstalls and reinstalls of .NET but it wouldn’t fix the problem.  However I notice that even though .NET was uninstalled, it wasn’t.  I went looking for a tool to completely uninstall .NET and found this website.

After using that process to uninstall .NET and then rebooting, I reinstalled .NET and was good to go.

Was one of the most frustrating work days I have had in some time, have never been so close to being beaten by a technical problem like this.

In a prior post I asked for some help on browser stats on certain sites.  The goal being, to answer the question if IE 6 is dead.  The answer really is, it depends.

Lets first show some of the numbers:

Now as you can see only two of these sites are over 10%, these two site are two of my largest visited sites in these stats.  Where 10% means millions of visitors.    Two key things to note is that with many of these sites had two to three times the IE 6 traffic just one year ago and I did remove a few sites who had stats well outside the norm.  One clear fact is that IE 6 usage has plummeted this year. 

Site 1 was the third highest IE 6 usage, this was not unexpected for me as this site has a older age bracket that uses it.  But the fact that it was as low as it was shocked me.  Just six months ago, the IE 6 usage was 25%. 

Now for the sites that showed the lowest IE 6 usage, is also fairly explainable.  Sites 7, 6 and 2 are not WELL traveled sites and their usage would likely be younger.  Younger people will own newer computers and IE 6 is Eight years old. 

So is IE 6 dead?

It depends on three things. 

1. The size of the project you are on.  If you are working on a site that may be hit by millions of people, then no it is not dead.  If your site is a fairly minimal site, then I’d not support IE 6. 

2. Is IE 6 capable? IE 6 is 8 years old and it will have limitations.  If those limitations are deal breakers, then you either have to change the plan for your project or you have to drop support for IE 6.

3. Is the time needed to work with IE 6 in the budget? In the last project I was in, it took us four weeks to work out all of the IE 6 issues.  That is not free time and if the customer isn’t willing to pay for this time, then IE 6 should be dropped.

I will not support IE 6 on any personal projects moving forward.  7% and declining is not worth the hassle.

One of the biggest reasons this conversation needs to start ramping up is the simple fact that large sites and services, even Microsoft, are starting to drop support for IE 6.

Microsoft Office Web Applications
YouTube
Microsoft Sharepoint 2010
Apple’s MobileMe

That is a fairly important list for my quick search online.  Plus the two sites that had the most IE 6 usage in my list above, will be dropping official support for IE 6 in 2010!  Why then?  Because their corporate computers are being upgraded to Windows 7, so there isn’t as much political need to have IE 6.

On this site, I actually display a warning if you visit with IE 6.  I have for some time, and I think at some point soon I am be ornery and block IE 6 users.  I want that browser to die and whatever that takes, I’m going to support it.

I have been an ASP.NET developer since I joined the team at Cintech in 2006.  I’ve been in the web form world and all the wonders of the PostBack page model since then. 

Then around the end of 2008 I remember hearing some noise about an ASP.NET MVC project released by Microsoft that got some bad reaction.  Talking about how it wasn’t a good start to MVC.  I never took the time to look deeper as I had other things going on in life, and was happy with my PostBack world.  Turns out this was a project called “Oxite” that is hosted over on CodePlex.

Then July of this year I took a job with a long time friend at Epsilon.  My friend is a Java developer, and through our conversations he kept telling me about this “MVC" way of doing web development.  About how it is so different than how he was being forced to develop on the .NET project we were working on together. 

The more he talked the more I got interested in learning about this new ASP.NET MVC that Microsoft had released.  Around this time CINNUG hosted a firestarter event going over ASP.NET MVC.  I took a Saturday to attend the event and learn some more.

In general I’m eager to learn more and put some of this in action.  This is when I went looking for that project that Microsoft put out.  Upon finding Oxite I see that it was basically a dead project.  The only thing I could find was a post on Erik Porters blog stating this in the comments:

October 08, 2009
Jeff, there is news coming about Oxite, but unfortunately I can't share anything until some other news happens. :( It's looking right now like that news is still a month and a half out. Really sorry! :(

Now this is on top of the fact that Oxite had not moved much since July.  Check ins, yes.  But nothing worth writing home about.  Then in the comments there was some guessing that Oxite was going to become “Orchard”, which was discussed as being a full featured CMS backed by Microsoft, though still being open source. 

Now I had high hopes for Orchard.  Since Oxite had been dead for months, I figured this new Orchard product would be ready to go when released.  I was stoked and waiting for it to be released.  I was all set to move this site to use the Orchard codebase.  When it got officially released I downloaded it, compiled it.. then ran it locally.  Wow, was I ever disappointed.  Orchard is months away from being usable, so here we are in the community with nothing to use.  From what my brief research shows me, at least a year after the release of ASP.NET MVC we have made very little progress in expanding this for people to actually use. 

As harsh as this may sound, I blame Microsoft and I blame the Oxite team. A person named Adam created a discussion on CodePlex stating the following:

October 12, 2009
Guys,

At the moment, I feel that Oxite is hindering developers from creating new ASP.NET MVC blog engines because Oxite is already there, on the other hand, the current official release of Oxite is missing load of features and cannot be compared to other popular engines.

If you are not planning to release soon or you are very busy, just declare this project as no longer supported to open the chance for other developers to start their own engines...

Regards,

Adam

I totally agree.  People don't want to waste their time recreating the wheel when there is a project already out there.  But here we are, over a year has passed and we have very little ‘real’ stuff to show.

Microsoft needs to get its act together.  Many great developers are abandoning the .NET platform for platforms like Ruby, and if you lose developers you lose the market.  Customers don’t care what platform people use, they just want their problems solved.  If those problems are solved and the developer chooses a non-Microsoft technology, then Microsoft loses.

Maybe Orchard is the answer.  Maybe six months from now this blog post looks like the most foolish blog post on the web.  For now, however, I’m still looking for the next big thing.  What comes after .NET for me professionally?  .NET won’t be around forever and being a fairly young man, I have to look toward the future to keep myself professionally relevant. 

Any developer knows the fun that IE 6 causes us.

Things will work on EVERY other browser, but once that is opened up in IE 6… you are hosed!

In my Google Reader, I saw the following post telling everybody to ‘Grow up already and throw IE6 Away!”.  Couldn’t agree more so I clicked on the link, read the article which led me to this solution.

So now my websites will show a warning for all IE 6 users. 

If you own a website, why don’t you join me?

Ran across this post a while a go, figured I’d share.  It is 11 Tips for Visual Studio.  Take a moment and go over to Stephen Walther’s site for an explanation of them.  I really like number 1 and 4.  I already knew 6, 7, and 11.

Tip #1 – You don’t need to select a line to copy or delete it

Tip #2 – You can add a namespace automatically by pressing CTRL-.

Tip #3 – Never create properties by hand

Tip #4 – You can remove and sort unnecessary using statements

Tip #5 – Use CTRL-k+c to comment out code

Tip #6 – You can close all documents except the current one

Tip #7 – You can open a database by double-clicking the database file in App_Data

Tip #8 – You can copy a file or folder into a project by dragging and dropping

Tip #9 – Use CTRL-SPACE to perform statement completion

Tip #10 – Add new items by pressing CTRL-N or CTRL-SHIFT+A

Tip #11 – You don’t need to type file extensions when adding a file

So during some down times I will open up Netflix and watch a movie or documentary that they allow for watching online.

Opened up IE as it never supported Firefox, hit play then got this error:

Microsoft DRM software error
Your Microsoft Digital Rights Management software is not working properly and needs to be reset.

What?  I’ve done this how many times?

So I did a search and found this guy having the same error, with no real fix.  So I called up Netflix and was told that I was on the old Windows Media Player, player and that I needed to upgrade to their Silverlight player.  They gave me these steps to follow.

1.       Go to the opt-in page (http://www.netflix.com/silver)
2.       Read hardware requirements and conditions and click the "Get the new player" button
3.       Browse to the Watch Instantly tab, select a movie title, and click the play button
4.       Click Install Now to install the Silverlight plug-in (if you have not already installed)
5.       Congratulations and enjoy your movie!

After doing this, I thought about it… Silverlight can play in Firefox, so why can’t I now watch this in Firefox? Turns out I can!

So if you are on Netflix, make sure you have the latest player by going to the link above.

For a while now there has been a program to tweak Windows XP.  It allows you to change a few hidden settings in the operating system. 

Now that I am on Vista, I went on to find the same program for Vista and found it.

So if you are on Windows, download the appropriate version and give it a once over.  It is lightweight and very powerful.

Ultimate Windows Tweaker for Vista

Tweak UI for XP (its along the right column)

So I finally took the plunge and grabbed Windows Live Writer 2009’s Release candidate.

I tested it with my blog engine and found a bug where the publish date wasn’t being honored.  Found the issue in the code and submitted the fix to the DNBE team. The other bug I found while writing this post is that only the last image border set is honored, covered that here, so if you stick to one image border per post you won’t have issue.

So now I want to give an overview of the product itself.

It is ripe with great features.

First it gets you away from the lame website based rich text editors.

All the generics of this make, making a post kind of difficult.  Adding a picture is what I always found most difficult.  With Windows Live Writer you can add a picture one of two ways.

1. Just paste the image from your clipboard to your post.
2. Insert an image via their menus (or drag and drop).

Now here is where Windows Live Writer 2009 separates itself from anything else, the ability to manipulate images.  Windows Live Writer 2008 was good, but 2009 takes it to another level.

What the various ways I can post an image, without having to open up an image editor at all.

View Full Album

All of those options without opening an image editor. Also as you can see I am able to post to an album on the fly as well.  Windows Live Writer defaults to a Window’s provided album, but there are many plug-ins available for other online albums.

There are really a limitless number of things a person can do with Windows Live Writer 2009, all readily available from the UI.

One of the things alluded to in one of my pictures above was the ability to use plug ins.  Currently there are 111 plug-ins available.

There really is no reason to not use Windows Live Writer.

Though I will offer one caveat, the version they are pushing on their site is a release candidate.  Not official, so there could be a few issues with it.  I have found one, just working on this post.

UI Options:

I run two blogs, and if you've ever run a blog you know that one of the biggest headaches is using the built in HTML editor to make a post. 

In comes probably the best software Microsoft has ever released, Windows Live Writer.  gives you advanced controls so you can make a nice looking blog post with ease.  It works with many blog platforms, including the one this blog is built on (DotNetBlogEngine.Net).

I am actually posting this with their new version, Windows Live Writer 2009 – Release Candidate, but there is at least one issue with DotNetBlogEngine.net.  I have submitted the bug to both the WLW team and the DNBE team.  However their old version is perfectly functional, so when you visit the site go to the right side bar and download the stable version, or be ready to uninstall their current version in favor of their stable version. I know a lot of techies are weary of Microsoft Products, but trust me on this one... its an incredible piece of software and worth the risk.