Put the knife down and take a green herb, dude. (c) Ruffin Bailey 2001-2021

Welp, to belabor yesterday's point, I was right! I was right!!!

Got an prompt email reply from Donny Mack this morning and sure enough, DotNetJunkies is using a third party ASP.NET server control to create their dynamic menus. It's apparently made (and sold) by Coalesys. Mr. Mack was kind enough to forward my email explaining the problem to Coalesys.

This is exactly the kind of thing that drives me crazy. These guys [Coalesys] are making money selling what amounts to proprietary widgets that make html code. Are they checking the code out with Mozilla? If so, they don't care about the results. The craziest part is that they've already written the code. The Netscape 6+ page should work, as written, in the current build of Mozilla. The NS 6 version doesn't have the cool fade-out (and it could if they'd code it), but it's quite a bit better than the fallback page Moz is given.

Are Coalesys' end-users checking in various browsers to see if the widgets work as they should? If DotNetJunkies is our representative sample (and if anything, I'd say they're quite a ways ahead of the curve), probably not.

And how does someone fix the code of their recently purchased, third-party, ASP.NET control if it's pumping out bad html like this widget? Well, they can't. [UPDATE: Okay, now that I look back you can by extending the object and overriding what it does for Moz, but this sorta defeats the purpose of having the object in the first place] They have to alert the orginal author. As compiled bytecode makes its way to ASP.NET applications, people will notice they're not just abstracted from code, they're forcably separated from it.

Not sure if I'm arguing against ASP.NET (I don't think so, as a whole) or arguing for open source code (Could be -- the web's been primarily open source since it came online (that's a little circular in the reasoning department) and this is starting to break the status quo). I am arguing against blindly expecting ASP.NET controls to absolve you of your responsibilties as a web programmer of rigourously testing your code on all intended platforms.

And what happens will one person's widget has global variables in the generated client-side javascript that are the same as yet another control? Sheesh.

It's a whole new can o' worms, folks.

(As some exposition -- You might be wondering why I care about the 1% or so of the people who are using Moz reading an ASP.NET site. Even if they're madmen who've removed IE from their Windows box (I don't think I recommend this, btw), certainly they could at least install Netscape, right?

Issues about building Moz for the specific platform of your choice and other open source advantages behind, the point here is that ASP.NET gives MS a chance to subtly keep the screws on browsers which they don't want to see gaining market share. Does this make sense? Things will be designed *for* Internet Explorer on Windows and *tweaked* for "secondary platforms". This is not a good thing from my point of view. Enough already. Rant over for this morning.)

Okay, this entry's going to be rough on modem users that aren't using links. Which reminds me -- I was thinking today how neat it'd be to pick up a cheap Powerbook 170 on ebay and put NetBSD for Motorola 68k processors on it with links and friends. Talkin' bout geeky.

Anyhow, for the digression and to modem users sans links, and even those with, since images are central to today's story, sorry.

There's a site that's specifically about ASP.NET called DotNetJunkies. It's run by two guys that used to work at Microsoft, and now work for themselves writing decent (but not great) books (I have this decent but not great one -- good example code, bad on concept and organization) and offering training, etc. I saw them for the first time on "MSDN TV" or some such, talking up ASP.NET. Surprising, eh? :^)

I think the DotNetJunkies site is a good measuring stick for what typical .NET programmers are going to produce. These guys are Microsoft sell-outs (and I don't mean that in a bad way, believe it or not), and they're quite likely to jump on most any MS bandwagon when it comes to the web. Here's an example of what I think's coming (and what I warned was coming), told by three decent sized images.

Image one: DotNetJunkies viewed in IE, highlighting the dynamic menu on the left which expands when you mouse over certain links.

nice looking dynamic menu in IE expanded to three levels

nice looking dynamic menu in IE expanded to three levels

Neat, huh? Now here's Image Two showing one frame of the menu "fading out" when your mouse wanders away from the link. Very professional, though my presentation of these images leaves a little to be desired.

wow, look, the menu even fades out when the mouse is moved off of the link.

wow, look, the menu even fades out when the mouse is moved off of the link.

Now here's Image 3, dotnetjunkies viewed through Mozilla on Windows.

In Mozilla we think, 'Dynamic menu? What dynamic menu?

There's no dynamic menu. Heck, even the row of options under their logo looks crappy (the "Home, Tutorials, How To's" line of links).

This is crap. Mozilla can most certainly handle dynamic menus and nicely formatted links, but DotNetJunkies just chooses not to bother. I don't know if this is a case of using Microsoft ASP.NET controls where Mozilla is seen as a "downlevel browser" (even though by the definition found at that link it's not) or possibly a case of testing in IE mainly (if not only) and figuring the look in Moz is good enough. Heck, the guys at DotNetJunkies didn't even remove the little arrows suggesting that there should be a dynamic menu, even here in Mozilla, which is what got me started wondering if this was a case of Mozilla being slighted in the first place. And yes, I'm pretty sure I recall reading it's all written in ASP.NET.

If this is the way .NET is going to change the Internet, it's bad news. Abstracting "web" programmers from html is not a good idea. And if you've worked with VS.NET you'll know the defaults (at the very least) start to hide you from other browsers altogether. Hit "F5" in VS.NET just like you're in the VB 6.0 IDE and your ASP.NET Web Form app "compiles and runs", popping open with IE as a wrapper. The IDE helps make your workflow exclude other browsers. It's just bad news. Text editor, alt-tab to browser, Ctrl-R is the only way to spot check.

Now don't get me wrong. If you're trying to reach IE-using Windows clients, these guys do great work. It's truly a sharp site from that perspective. It just rubs me wrong. Don't be lazy; reach everyone.

I'm trying to help a llittle, fwiw, with my upcoming "series" of articles at devArticles.com (warning: the site is crazy slow loading right now, and I don't think it's b/c I've been slashdotted). In my first article I'm trying to meet this bias head-on by showing (albeit very slowly in this first article) how to build a replacement DataGrid for ASP.NET. Don't let Microsoft do what you already know how to do.

Enough ranting for now. You probably get the picture. The web's moving even more in the direction of IE (if that's possible), and now it's moving because of biases inherent in Microsoft's implementation of .NET.

title: Put the knife down and take a green herb, dude.	descrip: One feller's views on the state of everyday computer science & its application (and now, OTHER STUFF) who isn't rich enough to shell out for www.myfreakinfirst-andlast-name.com Using 89% of the same design the blog had in 2001.
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Friday, March 29, 2002
Names changed to protect the author. Quoted from some crazy .NET list at 15 seconds Subject: RE: Two DataGrid Questions From: Friday Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 07:43:51 -0600 X-Message-Number: 2 Sorry I guess I should have been a little more specific, I'm using VB.NET, AutoGenerateColumns is false, and I am already manipulating the grid in the "ItemDataBound" event. Thanks Friday -----Original Message----- From: Friday I know this should be easy but I cannot figure out how to do two things with the datagrid. 1) How do you insert a blank line in a data grid, I have a stored procedure that returns a dataset with "rollup" how do I insert a blank line after a sub total column? 2) How do I insert a row above the header column and get it to do a column span I don't really have to explain why I posted that, do I? Man., what a mess [from a web programmer's pov]. The question boils down to is MS polluting the web or simply making it more accessible to programmers? The answer is, "FIVE!!! This amounts to neither a Nixonian scandal nor Elenor jaywalking! BYE-BYE!!!" posted by ruffin at 3/29/2002 09:53:00 AM

Thursday, March 28, 2002
From the Apple Java-Development list: >>> Oops. I mistook your posting for a request for help, not a troll. >> >> C'mon. That was quite a funny reply (I laughed), and you have to >> admit that you were sort of asking for it with the response you gave him. > > No smiley led me to think his posting was completely serious. More evidence that Americans need smilies. Notice that this in no way suggests that Germans do or do not love David Hasselhoff. Triumph, the comic dog, on the other hand ... posted by ruffin at 3/28/2002 10:59:00 AM

Windows 2000 Professional comes with "Internet Information Server 5.0" (aka IIS 5.0), which is Microsoft's web server o' choice and the "N" in .NET (okay, I made that up). Why would you want the much more expensive Win2k Server if you already have IIS on the "hundreds less" Win2k Pro? Lemme tell ya! With Win2k Pro, you're only allowed one client at a time hitting your site. That's okay by me -- still good for testing and development and for sharing files over your intranet. But get this -- if you have a frameset with more than one .asp(x) page in it, 2k Pro's IIS will notice that two pages are being pulled down at once and balk with an "HTTP 403.9 - Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected" error. Goodness. Not incredibly informative, but yet another mini-rant that helps one think about the benefits of Apache. :^) posted by ruffin at 3/28/2002 09:38:00 AM

Wednesday, March 27, 2002
From Sun CEO Scott McNealy at JavaOne: ... beware the appeal of the latest software development kit from Microsoft--the conduit through which Microsoft spreads its software standards. "The first hit of heroin is free," McNealy said. I have wondered about this a little. Right now the ASP.NET platform is a free download as is the .NET SDK (also on that page, among other places). I think it's great that they've done this, as it allows anyone with XP and Win2k to get cracking without buying, say, VS.NET. But if they were to pull this free SDK and the ASP.NET platform after people got awful used to using 'em... well that could be bad news. I don't see MS doing something quite that stupid; let's face it, applications sell systems -- in this case systems locked to Windows which means more potential buyers of Office. I've always felt developers should be an OS company's best friend. Giving them free heroin is a good idea if you want others to keep buying from your corner. Hrm, the metaphor doesn't extend very gracefully when used like that, but you get the picture. posted by ruffin at 3/27/2002 08:32:00 AM

Apple introduces iTunes, Microsoft follows (see the "Enjoy Music" section). USB, CD-R, and now flat screen, Apple has done a decent job innovating, even if they remain a niche player. Mozilla is no different. Moz was the first browser I knew of that has a preference checkbox that allows you to stop unwanted pop-up windows, and Microsoft finally follows. Good job, Moz. Imitation, flattery, etc etc. :^) posted by ruffin at 3/27/2002 08:07:00 AM

Tuesday, March 26, 2002
Crimminy. $499 for a one-processor server license. Curiously the "Purchase" link doesn't work in NS 6.2.2. Probably a good hint that if you use NS... All that aside, do take a look at this "new datagrid's" designer (but only if you have IE on Windows, it seems -- other browsers get routed elsewhere). Fairly well done app on the web. I think earlier rants on html might have to tone down, at least in certain situtations. If you're pitching to an internal audience that has Windows and IE, ASP.NET has some real advantages over a physical deployment of an exe (including C# and VB.NET apps). This particular form (the designer) looks pretty good. More thought needed... ;) posted by ruffin at 3/26/2002 10:44:00 AM

Monday, March 25, 2002
Not sure what all this means, other than three freakin' blog posts in an hour, but it looks like the apps you install on your machine could potentially record your browsing habits in Windows (even w/in your local drives, grabbing file names?!!) if you use Active Desktop. Again, it might not mean that at all -- I have no idea what exactly it does, but check out the link. I'll try to find time to make more sense of it later. Since this has been around since version 4.0, it's an interesting topic, for sure. Morpheus reportedly uses it. (where "it" = "Microsoft's Browser Helper Objects") posted by ruffin at 3/25/2002 10:44:00 AM

Heh. Eric Costello wrote that css layout article I linked in the previous post, so naturally I stopped back by the site when I was grabbing the URL. Here's an even more interesting URL: 19 ways to leave your css. Select a number from the dropdown next to the "switch style" button and cut loose. Some of 'em stink to high heaven, but each one renders the same front page content with changes that come from changing just the stylesheet. posted by ruffin at 3/25/2002 10:25:00 AM

This is what I've been ranting about. Why should someone have to learn the object model of a datagrid to insert text boxes in html table column headers? Sheesh the sheesh. In other news, devArticles hacked out quite a bit of my article, including the point that using "th" (column header tags in an html table) makes your html code more accessible for visually impaired users who surf with a screen reader. I'm not sure how you'd help the visually impaired understand you're presenting a table of data with css layout by itself. posted by ruffin at 3/25/2002 10:19:00 AM

Friday, March 22, 2002
"WebMenu for ASP.NET is literally the coolest control we have seen so far.", said Doug Seven, dotnetjunkies.com co-founder and author. "It really helped us clean up and organize our main menu. As a matter of fact, we got raving praise within 2 hours of putting it online." dated March 22nd, no less ARE YOU KIDDING? posted by ruffin at 3/22/2002 10:16:00 AM

There's a guy at work I call the "pit bull". No matter how off-center his point is, he won't let it drop. This usually happens when we're having an "All Hands" meeting where he's literally wasting days of times, it seems. I'm going to do that now with this point. The ASP.NET dynamic menu control at Coalesys costs $299. Use it wherever and whenever you want. Let's see, my time's worth... carry the one... that's several hours of time. The crazy thing with the Menu is that it's freakin buggy on their on site -- in IE!!! Check this out. They use that trick to color the scroll bars on the side, and that's bleeding into the first set of options on this menu. Sheesh, fellers. myfreakinrant.blogspot.com posted by ruffin at 3/22/2002 08:52:00 AM

Welp, to belabor yesterday's point, I was right! I was right!!! Got an prompt email reply from Donny Mack this morning and sure enough, DotNetJunkies is using a third party ASP.NET server control to create their dynamic menus. It's apparently made (and sold) by Coalesys. Mr. Mack was kind enough to forward my email explaining the problem to Coalesys. This is exactly the kind of thing that drives me crazy. These guys [Coalesys] are making money selling what amounts to proprietary widgets that make html code. Are they checking the code out with Mozilla? If so, they don't care about the results. The craziest part is that they've already written the code. The Netscape 6+ page should work, as written, in the current build of Mozilla. The NS 6 version doesn't have the cool fade-out (and it could if they'd code it), but it's quite a bit better than the fallback page Moz is given. Are Coalesys' end-users checking in various browsers to see if the widgets work as they should? If DotNetJunkies is our representative sample (and if anything, I'd say they're quite a ways ahead of the curve), probably not. And how does someone fix the code of their recently purchased, third-party, ASP.NET control if it's pumping out bad html like this widget? Well, they can't. [UPDATE: Okay, now that I look back you can by extending the object and overriding what it does for Moz, but this sorta defeats the purpose of having the object in the first place] They have to alert the orginal author. As compiled bytecode makes its way to ASP.NET applications, people will notice they're not just abstracted from code, they're forcably separated from it. Not sure if I'm arguing against ASP.NET (I don't think so, as a whole) or arguing for open source code (Could be -- the web's been primarily open source since it came online (that's a little circular in the reasoning department) and this is starting to break the status quo). I am arguing against blindly expecting ASP.NET controls to absolve you of your responsibilties as a web programmer of rigourously testing your code on all intended platforms. And what happens will one person's widget has global variables in the generated client-side javascript that are the same as yet another control? Sheesh. It's a whole new can o' worms, folks. (As some exposition -- You might be wondering why I care about the 1% or so of the people who are using Moz reading an ASP.NET site. Even if they're madmen who've removed IE from their Windows box (I don't think I recommend this, btw), certainly they could at least install Netscape, right? Issues about building Moz for the specific platform of your choice and other open source advantages behind, the point here is that ASP.NET gives MS a chance to subtly keep the screws on browsers which they don't want to see gaining market share. Does this make sense? Things will be designed for Internet Explorer on Windows and tweaked for "secondary platforms". This is not a good thing from my point of view. Enough already. Rant over for this morning.) posted by ruffin at 3/22/2002 08:22:00 AM

Thursday, March 21, 2002
Matt's made me look at the code gasp of the DotNetJunkies site. Here's the javascript check for browser type. if(csUserAgent.indexOf("Opera") > -1) return 0; else if(csUserAgent.indexOf("MSIE 4") > -1 && csPlatform != "MacPPC") return 1; else if(csUserAgent.indexOf("MSIE 5") > -1) return 2; else if(csUserAgent.indexOf("MSIE 6") > -1) return 5; else if(csAppName == "Netscape") { if(csVendor == "Netscape6") return 4; else if(parseFloat(csAppVer) >= 4 && parseFloat(csAppVer) < 5) return 3; else return 0; } else return 0; The bottom line is that they're checking UserAgent, not object model, and don't bother with Mozilla. Moz pumps out a zero, and that translates to... if(csBrowserType == 0) document.write(csIncludeDir + "/" + csFallBackFile); when what Moz "deserves" is... else if(csBrowserType == 4) document.write(csIncludeDir + "/" + csNN6File); [update: And now for the final test -- I've emailed them; let's see if they make a change!] posted by ruffin at 3/21/2002 04:43:00 PM

Okay, this entry's going to be rough on modem users that aren't using links. Which reminds me -- I was thinking today how neat it'd be to pick up a cheap Powerbook 170 on ebay and put NetBSD for Motorola 68k processors on it with links and friends. Talkin' bout geeky. Anyhow, for the digression and to modem users sans links, and even those with, since images are central to today's story, sorry. There's a site that's specifically about ASP.NET called DotNetJunkies. It's run by two guys that used to work at Microsoft, and now work for themselves writing decent (but not great) books (I have this decent but not great one -- good example code, bad on concept and organization) and offering training, etc. I saw them for the first time on "MSDN TV" or some such, talking up ASP.NET. Surprising, eh? :^) I think the DotNetJunkies site is a good measuring stick for what typical .NET programmers are going to produce. These guys are Microsoft sell-outs (and I don't mean that in a bad way, believe it or not), and they're quite likely to jump on most any MS bandwagon when it comes to the web. Here's an example of what I think's coming (and what I warned was coming), told by three decent sized images. Image one: DotNetJunkies viewed in IE, highlighting the dynamic menu on the left which expands when you mouse over certain links. Neat, huh? Now here's Image Two showing one frame of the menu "fading out" when your mouse wanders away from the link. Very professional, though my presentation of these images leaves a little to be desired. Now here's Image 3, dotnetjunkies viewed through Mozilla on Windows. There's no dynamic menu. Heck, even the row of options under their logo looks crappy (the "Home, Tutorials, How To's" line of links). This is crap. Mozilla can most certainly handle dynamic menus and nicely formatted links, but DotNetJunkies just chooses not to bother. I don't know if this is a case of using Microsoft ASP.NET controls where Mozilla is seen as a "downlevel browser" (even though by the definition found at that link it's not) or possibly a case of testing in IE mainly (if not only) and figuring the look in Moz is good enough. Heck, the guys at DotNetJunkies didn't even remove the little arrows suggesting that there should be a dynamic menu, even here in Mozilla, which is what got me started wondering if this was a case of Mozilla being slighted in the first place. And yes, I'm pretty sure I recall reading it's all written in ASP.NET. If this is the way .NET is going to change the Internet, it's bad news. Abstracting "web" programmers from html is not a good idea. And if you've worked with VS.NET you'll know the defaults (at the very least) start to hide you from other browsers altogether. Hit "F5" in VS.NET just like you're in the VB 6.0 IDE and your ASP.NET Web Form app "compiles and runs", popping open with IE as a wrapper. The IDE helps make your workflow exclude other browsers. It's just bad news. Text editor, alt-tab to browser, Ctrl-R is the only way to spot check. Now don't get me wrong. If you're trying to reach IE-using Windows clients, these guys do great work. It's truly a sharp site from that perspective. It just rubs me wrong. Don't be lazy; reach everyone. I'm trying to help a llittle, fwiw, with my upcoming "series" of articles at devArticles.com (warning: the site is crazy slow loading right now, and I don't think it's b/c I've been slashdotted). In my first article I'm trying to meet this bias head-on by showing (albeit very slowly in this first article) how to build a replacement DataGrid for ASP.NET. Don't let Microsoft do what you already know how to do. Enough ranting for now. You probably get the picture. The web's moving even more in the direction of IE (if that's possible), and now it's moving because of biases inherent in Microsoft's implementation of .NET. posted by ruffin at 3/21/2002 03:53:00 PM

Wednesday, March 20, 2002
How important is the mono project to Linux? Absolutely critical. I'm of the mindset that the new economics of open source will eventually allow Linux, say, to become more friendly even on the desktop than Windows or Macintosh. The question is not if but when. I don't think many will argue that Mozilla, GNOME, KDE, AbiWord, even something like Gaim, hasn't be gaining on their Windows equivalents since their inceptions. There are no companies to go under, no employees to flee to the next great paying job and leave everyone in a lurch... Open source turns the software development world on its head. But Mono has a lot to say when it comes to the "when" of Linux's ascension. People prototype in Visual Basic first and might plan to come back to C++ or even Java later and sometimes it just doesn't happen. Companies might plan to reach that final 2% later, but something shiner comes by before they get the chance. And consumers hardly want yesterday's papers. It's a lot harder to sell a three-year old game to Mac users than it is to sell one concurrently. If Mono can finally provide a "write once, run equally well on WIndows and Linux [forget anywhere]", I think you'll see Linux gain ground somewhat akin to when the girl trips and Frankenstein, seemingly miles behind in the last scene, is suddenly right behind her. posted by ruffin at 3/20/2002 02:52:00 PM

Monday, March 18, 2002
Crimminy, folks, you don't need WinZip to unzip zip files. There are many free alternatives, like Stuffit Expander. Heck, if you've got a Java programmer anywhere, there's a whole "namespace" full of zip utilities, java.util.zip.*. If you don't have to worry about macbinaries and the like, it'll take you about a second to write a zipper (and unzipper, of course) util. Sorry; I just get tired seeing all the free commercials for WinZip. Not to mention that all these referrals wouldn't happen if WinZip wasn't true shareware [that never does anything more than nag (in other words, people only recommend it b/c it's "free as far as they're concerned")]. Phew. Rantish. Sorry again. posted by ruffin at 3/18/2002 12:49:00 PM

Saturday, March 16, 2002
Been studying my ASP.NET with a little more gusto lately, and ran across a fairly important article and an interesting new sort of URL. If you're into ASP.NET and haven't quite gotten what Inherits vs. Src vs. CodeBehind means in the "@ Page directive", head on over to this article at dotnetjunkies. Somebody didn't bother with spellcheck (not that I do here in the blog, but come on! This is a site with commercials that benefit the author! :^D), but this article begins to clear up the differences with the three attributes. Didn't hold my hand enough to show me how to use compiled source from ASP.NET, but I think that's a google or two away. The weird URL comes from the recommendation from the article that I actually look at the .NET documentation. Here's the link... ms-help://MS.NETFrameworkSDK/cpgenref/html/cpconpage.htm That's a little strange, eh? MS really is making a play for the net here, it seems. In aspx code created by VS.NET, you'll get things like body tags with MS_POSITIONING="GridLayout" meta tags with name="vs_targetSchema" content="http://schemas.microsoft.com/intellisense/ie5" in them. I think MS is going a little too far, and wouldn't be surprised to see ms-help:// turn into ms-http:// in the not too distant future. I hope to finish up an article this weekend that talks about this MS branded html at devArticles.com soon -- specifically regarding the overly popular use of the .NET DataGrid to create html to display information from a database. Look under the under, people! Anyhow, guess what happened when I clicked the ms-help:// link in the article while viewing in Mozilla? That's right, after a few seconds IE popped up outta nowhere with the content I wanted -- content that could very easily have been represented in plain jane html. It's starting again, folks. posted by ruffin at 3/16/2002 07:55:00 PM

Friday, March 15, 2002
.NET is trying to do a few things. Make it so that the language doesn't matter. It's all the same to the ".NET virtual machine" if you using VB.NET, C#, C++, or any of the other dark horse programming langs. There's no more, at least in theory, reason to use VB for one set of tasks and VC++ for another. Each language can get to the same widgets and wreck the same havoc. Bring the good in VB together with the good in VC++ In case you hadn't noticed, the good in VB is the ease with which you can create an application, specifically a form. It takes literally seconds to create fully featured GUI'd applications in VB, and the event model is horribly easy to understand and possibly even too straightforward. I haven't used VC++ enough to really know, but when I tried it out in Visual Studio 6 it wasn't as easy to make a form with event handling. And I know Swing (Java's preferred GUI toolset) isn't nearly so straightforward and has a much steeper learning curve (depending on your axes). What you get with VS.NET, whether you're using C# (my current preference) or VB.NET, is VB 6's forms combined with the same toolsets (namespaces) MS is planning for any one to need. And what I get with .NET, coming from a Java perspective, is a lang close enough to Java to be mistaken [by those not real familiar] for its twin with a windowing toolkit that actually makes sense. Bottom line -- With VB 6, you're somewhat limited by the VB runtime and with VC++ 6 you're somewhat limited by a more complex event model (or else you'd've prototyped in VC++, not VB). With VS.NET, you've got the best of both. There was a third thing, but I lost it on the way back from the water cooler. ;^) And now that I think about it, the second point is really just a refining of the "how" that they used in the first point, but I think that's kinda what a blog's all about. Crappy writing, and nobody cares. posted by ruffin at 3/15/2002 08:45:00 AM

Thursday, March 14, 2002
The best kind of open source is GoogleSource (yes, I'm trying to coin a term, I'm afraid, though someone's probably beaten me to it). What kind of source is that? Simply what you get when you say, "Now how the heck am I going to do that?" and you point Moz to groups.google.com and start searching away. More than once I've found exactly what I needed, already written out for me, ready for the cut & paste. In my latest VB project (almost to the point the exe is half a floppy in size! Not that impressive, necessarily, but pretty big considering we threw out XML), I must have 3 or 4 comments that have groups.google in the comments citing the source of the source. Found a really basic syntax highlighting routine, how to use that crazy directory selection tool using WinAPIs, how to autosize MS FlexGrids, and how to clear a treeview with an API call. Overall, not too shabby at all. Goodness knows, I hope everyone who submitted these bits of code realized they were putting it into the public domain. Did I say I used the code, copy & paste? I meant to say I'd learned from the code. Yeah, yeah, that's the ticket. Anyhow, that's some open source for ya, and one heck of an example of how the Net has made programming much much easier. posted by ruffin at 3/14/2002 12:11:00 PM

Wednesday, March 13, 2002
Another episode of Randmo AIMing, only slightly edited... randmo AIMer1: the mozilla love-in continues unabated randmo AIMer2: I think the question about free software being a good thing b/c it's the only competition MS experiences in some markets comes back to mind. I mean, has MS "won the game of capitalism" to the point that the only way to beat it is to completely change the economics of software development? Isn't that pretty much as close to the embodiment of a monopoly as you can get? The only way to compete is to pull some Kirkian "I'll reprogram the simulation" move? randmo AIMer1: that's what they call "disruptive technology" i think randmo AIMer2: Fun to read an article like this again. Been a while. And at the same time, discourse on the horrible lot47 "Flash-enabled" commercial found on that page, again slightly edited [this time for our younger viewers]: randmo AIMer2: [FN-smack], what kinda commercial is that? randmo AIMer1: sorry. i saw that too. was not that when i read it late last night :^\ randmo AIMer2: They're having [an active sleep-over], for heaven's sake. And I think I see body innards. randmo AIMer1: i think the message is clear, though: use mozilla, become a SEXY VAMPIRE randmo AIMer2: It's on both pages cringe she's [FN] bloody. ICK randmo AIMer1: sorry i think this is part of salon's plan to get us to subscribe^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hnever go to their site again, except via google's cache posted by ruffin at 3/13/2002 12:53:00 PM

I'd been installing Mozilla at work with the "browser only" option, continuing to use Netscape 4.7 (the only "officially supported" email client by the admin guys) b/c Mozilla 0.7 or therebouts didn't import my local folders from NS. Well, I tried the full install of Moz 0.9.9 today on a lark and it's all fixed. I've been using Moz at home on Windows for email for a while, and it looks like it's finally ready for the big time. My shortcuts to NS 4.7 are gone. But the "almost blog-worthy" part is this -- I probably won't be viewing nearly as many sites in NS 4.7 anymore. Used to be I'd get a link in an email and at least try 4.7 b/c it saved a few alt-tabs. Now that I've moved on to Moz .9.9 myself, I'm rethinking the whole "should my web pages support NS 4.7 issue" again. [update 3/18/02 -- Not so fast. Moz 0.9.9 has a pretty serious address book bug, and lost two local subfolders. I've since updated to a semi-random, post 0.9.9 nightly, which seems to be working a bit better. Still not quite "enterprise-ready", but certainly good enough for me to use daily.] posted by ruffin at 3/13/2002 11:05:00 AM

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