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ProcessBridge.comBusiness Process Efficiency Software for Managers 7/26/2007 In a tribute to 'Le Tour De France', this blog is now 'finit' (sort of)Hmm, I always wondered how on earth those riders rode a push bike up a mountain, I guess they just kind of floated up there? (Okay, okay; huge generalisation - I know it's only one or two and I feel nothing but awe for the athletes that do it clean - just amazing really).
Anyway, this blog has now been ejected from the great tour of MicroISV land as it's basically been rebranded as this one...
(*Pisp*, whisper etc: if any of the content seems faintly familiar, er, that's cause I've just ripped it off from here (can one plagerise oneself???)
Over and out.
5/5/2007 D'oh: SQL Server 2005 Express ISN'T Vista Certified!!!Hmm.
AWellKnownTestCompany: "We can't run the Certified on Vista pre-certification tests on your application as it requires Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express edition."
Me: "Er... Excuse me?"
AWellKnownTestCompany: "2005 Express hasn't been Certified on Vista yet so we can't certify your application"
Me: "D'oh! I had not thought of that..."
Hmm; one wonders if one may have inadvertently stumbled onto the Bleeding Edge.
Still never mind: One quick re-write later and hey presto - it doesn't use Microsoft SQL Server for it's database anymore!! (Yay!)
I'm assuming the .net 3.0 Framework is Certified for Vista, no? :o)
Stuart
4/18/2007 Certified for Windows Vista free offer extended (phew!)Excellent - Microsoft have just announced that the free offer (up to $1000) for Certified for Windows Vista testing has just been extended until the end of June (instead of the end of April).
That is a huge relief, as although my first ISV app is already in pre-certification testing, at least now I don't have to rush it through full testing before the end of the month.
Phew!!! 3/28/2007 MSDN Roadshow summary from a micro-ISV viewpoint.My biased/skewed/technically dubious/naive/ridiculously biased summary of the MSDN Roadshow event yesterday in Reading, from my view-point as a Micro ISV...
LINQ - Yes the Orcas language enhancements are good, yes LINQ will save lines of code (and thus maintenance), yes I could probably live without it. For a little while.
BARF* = 60%
AJAX - Yes it's good, yes the controls are extremely well thought out and useful, yes I can see that it would require a minimal amount of time to modify an existing site to use it, yes I can see how it can give just that little bit of UX polish on say a product marketing site to keep the user there slightly longer so hopefully the message will get through that your business product is actually genuinely trying to help make their life easier.
BARF = 80%.
BARF *as now* = 60%, purely as most of my business customers are still on XP Pro and won't like the idea of installing .net framework 3.0 just yet, so there is a bit of a natural sales barrier there at the moment.
BARF *next year when everyone is on Vista* = 100%. I just can't see anyone seriously starting new development using grey windows and rectangular controls.
"WPF/E" - Looks like a serious contenter to Flash, but I don't quite see the advantages over AJAX plus it needs a download to run (and yes I know that Flash does/did too...)
BARF=Don't know
Windows Live - Hmm, really not sure about this one. Are business people really going to use live.com as their main homepage, and what are the business uses of Live Gadgets? I *get* Virtual Earth for companies that have GIS data, and I can see how you could create a customer support Bots in Messenger and have an activity that opens a relevant support knowledge base page, but I'm just not sure about the live.com homepage mash-ups. I think that's because the content isn't quite there yet and to be fair, I lack enough imagination to see how it's going to be of benefit in a business environment.
BARF *as is* = 20% maybe?
BARF *if I can think of a sensible way to lever the enormous marketing potential that it has* = 100%++
Now, Office Live I really like...
Regards
Stuart
P.S. Yes, yes, I know okay! - I'm aware of the irony that technically this blog sits within live.com. (Ahem, coughhipocrite cough cough).
:o)
* = 'Business Application Relevance Factor'
WPF and real-world business applicationsYes, yes, yes! I'd not seen a demo of Windows Presentation Foundation that really sold it to me in terms of actually selling packaged software to real, live business people. Until yesterday at the MSDN Roadshow, Reading.
Previously I've always tried hard to make the imaginative jump across the void from the current grey WinForms (or heaven forbid - WinForms running on XP with an applied USER CREATED CUSTOM THEME applied (aurghhh..)), to something, well, a bit more interesting and dare I say, "Wizzy".
Trouble is I've never been able to imagine what the other side of the UI chasm would look like, apart from some of those far out Macrodobe Flash offerings one stumbles across via sites like www.internettinyawards.com. All very 'cool' and all, but I can't really see a be-suited business manager in a UK standard SME really being all that impressed ('yes I'm sure this is all very nice but how is this going to save me money? And what do we do when we loose our internet connection again? And we can't have our commercial data hosted outside of the company so can we just have this as a desktop application?')
Anyway, Mark Johnston did a really sharp demo of how to create a web service based photo album app using both Expression Blend and Visual Studio which was *so good* that even my business brain got partially excited.
The missing piece of the .net 3.0 for desktop application development on Vista for me was : Expression Blend. It almost makes me want to become a designer, except I don't have enough hair for a pony-tail and I'll never *really* enjoy French art films (I'm refering to a specific individual here, so please don't imply an extrapolated generalisation here!).
It's amazing how simple it is (or rather 'is going to be' as Expression Blend is in RC phase so not quite live, and also sadly not on MSDN Subscription yet either I note, but I'm not going to open that particular can of worms here as I'm guessing about a million other people have got that one covered. :o)
NOW I GET IT!!
Now I can write my usual vb.net desktop apps in VS2005 with SQL Server 2005 Express databases attached and maybe a sprinkling of Crystal Reports, but give it a nice user experience that won't look too out of place in a business environment but will actually be quicker, easier and more intuitive for a standard untrained office worker to use - Now that I can sell!!
Stuart
3/27/2007 Another day out at Microsoft UKAlways a guilty pleasure (from an indulgent geeking point of view)... MSDN Roadshow and "SWF"It's 12:42 and I'm sat in my car at Microsoft UK, Reading, digesting another Microsoft lunch bag and the brain-overload that is the MSDN Roadshow. With these developer events I always try to temper the 'cool' factor with my own real-world business-based view point, which I like to call my 'So What Filter' (SWF). Nearly all the content has made it through so far... So far I'm impressed : LINQ does seem to offer advantages in minimising the size of the code you have to write when accessing data (and object collections, which is definitely 'cool') which has the obvious benefit of reduced coding effort and also future maintenance. Didn't learn much in the AJAX session but I already knew how important it is for user web experiences. ttfn Stuart 3/21/2007 Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 and Vista testingHave just installed the new Virtual PC 2007 system from Microsoft. We are going to use it for our initial 'Certified for Vista' testing, so just building the test instance now... 3/20/2007 Vista and Verisign Authenticode CertificatesOh Lordy. Did you know that the Verisign Authenticode Certificates that they are specifically promoting for signing Windows Vista applications, cannot be installed from the Verisign site onto Windows Vista (Doh!)...
or on IE7 (double Doh!!).
Strangely their web system is perfectly happy to accept your order from a Vista/IE7 box; you just can't install the darn thing.
Verisign told me that they, ahem, 'have a bug' but are confident they are going to have it fixed for an April 2007 release.
Luckily I found a work around:- All I had to do was uninstall Vista an install a new copy of XP, go through the process of asking for the certificate to be re-issued, wait a day for the certificate to be re-issued, install the new certificate from the Verisign site, copy the public and private key files onto a dvd, re-install Vista, download and install OneCare, Visual Studio, SQL Server 2005, all the various updates and service packs, then finally install the certificate on the 'new' box!
Well, that's what I would have had to do if I didn't happen to have more than one pc, but you get the point!?
Hmm, might have been nice for Verisign to have perhaps mentioned that upfront maybe? Didn't dare asking them in case they told me "It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign outside the door saying "Beware of the Leopard."
Oh well; such is life...
The trials of life : Using a Verisign certificate to sign a ClickOnce manifestIt's never easy is it? Just spent the best part of an hour trying to figure out why I can't use the new Verisign certificate to digitally sign the main ProcessBridge app's ClickOnce manifest.
I've got both a MyCredentials.spc file and a MyPrivateKey.pvk file, but Visual Studio wants a .pfx file. No idea what that was. No clue from Verisign even though the certificate is specifically marketed as a Microsoft Authenticode certificate.
Eventually stumbled across this page in MSDN for a Visual Studio tool called pvk2pfx which, funny old thing, exports a pvk file to a pfx file.
We are back in business... 3/19/2007 Verisign Authenticode certificate
Our new Verisign code-signing certificate has arrived (horray!). 3/18/2007 Blog publishing via PocketPCHi. If you are reading this then I guess that means blog publishing from a mobile phone really is a reality! I'm using an O2 Xda Orbit (which I can highly recommend), for this particular post. Let's hope this has worked okay!! Stuart Screen capture softwareJust a quick note to say I'm trying out what looks like a good screen capture and annotation application called SnagIt from techsmith.com.
I'm intending to use it for static screen shots of our software on our site processbridge.com.
I'll let you know what I think soon!
Regards
Stuart 3/17/2007 Community forum for ProcessBridge.comWell, I've been looking at a number of forum options for running our product community forum, and I think we are going to go with the excellent Telligent Systems forum software.
The main reasons are that I've used them before and was very happy with their level of customer service (although that was a couple of years ago now - hopefully they haven't changed much since!). Also, they handle my favorite geeking forum on the asp.net site at forums.asp.net which from a style point of view has the nice, clear qualities that I think make a genuinely usable forum.
I note that Telligent are now offering a hosted version at www.communityserver.org (click on the 'Instant Community' link if you are interested), which is what I think I'll use for the time being at least, as quite frankly having someone else hosting stuff like this will reduce the time taken to maintain the forum (which obviously means more time for developing higher quality software!)
Stuart 3/16/2007 Welcome!Well, a warm welcome to the new ProcessBridge.com blog!
The intention of this blog is to...
We will also be setting up a support forum for the system shortly, the details of which we will post here soon.
Regards
Stuart |
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