Archives

2006

• Files from Web Design World Boston are (finally) up : OK, I’ve finally uploaded the sample files and presentations from Web Design World Boston. See you all at Web Design World San Francisco in March!
  
  Jan 22 , 2007
• Visual Studio Extensibility Contest Winners: We’ve announced the winners of our Visual Studio Extensibility Contest! Congratulations to Don Demsak and Dave Donaldson, for winnning the Package and Add-In categories, respectively. They will be coming with us to TechEd Barcelona as part of their prize package. If you’re going to be in Barcelona for TechEd, be sure to stop by and say hi!
  
  Permalink Oct 20, 2006
• Working on a new Lynda.com Release: Now that we’ve released Beta 1 of Expression Web, I’m recording my next training video for Lynda.com for the product. Look for the video to be released sometime next year.
  
  Oct 16 , 2006
• TechEd Barcelona Session : I’m going to be presenting a session on Visual Studio extensibility and the VSIP (Visual Studio Industry Partners Program) at TechEd Barcelona on November 7, 2006 at 2:15 PM. If you’re there, please stop on by and learn about all the things we’ve got going on for the coming year for VS Extensibility and how to join and get the most out of VSIP!
  
  Sep 20, 2006
• Web Design World Seattle Files Posted: I’ve posted my Seattle WDW session files and presentations to the Downloads section of the site. Enjoy!
  
  July 21, 2006
• New XML DVD Released via Lynda.com: My latest publication, XML Essential Training, has been released by Lynda.com. It contains almost 6 hours of XML instruction, from the basic syntax rules to real world examples. If you’re a member of their Online Training Library then you just get it as part of your subscription, otherwise it’s US$99.95. You can, of course, view the first several movies free of charge.
  
  Jun 16, 2006
• Visual Studio Extensibility Contest : We recently kicked off the Visual Studio Extensibility Contest, hosted by devx. The Top Prize for the winning Package integration is $5000, for Add-ins it’s $1000. It’s not too late to get started – if you have an idea that you always wanted to see get implemented in Visual Studio, why not do it yourself and make a few bucks while you’re at it?
  
  [Correction]: Actually, it’s $5000 and a trip to TechEd in Spain, along with an interview in VisualStudio magazine. Yowza!
  
  Jun 6, 2006
• New Position at Microsoft : I’m really excited to be moving to a new position here at Microsoft, taking on the role of Group Product Manager for the VSIP (Visual Studio Industry Partners) program. I’m really looking forward to applying my years of experience building great developer platforms to this new role, and taking the VSIP program in new directions and expanding its reach. If you’re a VSIP partner or would like to become one, or are otherwise interested in how you can extend Visual Studio, then please feel free to contact me. We’ve got great things planned for this program, so stay tuned…
  
  Apr 8, 2006
• Web Design World 2006 Files have been uploaded: My Web Design World San Francisco 2006 files are now up in the Downloads section.
  
  Feb 8 , 2006

2005

• Developing AJAX Applications Presentation Uploaded: My Introduction to Developing AJAX Applications presentation from the Boston Web Design World show is now up in the Downloads section.
  
  Dec 12, 2005
• Rules of Internet Debating: I’ve been a BIG Scott Adams fan for as long as I can remember, and his "Rules for Internet Debating" are as funny as they are true. Having been on the receiving end of many of these rules during my often futile attempts to have reasonable discourse with folks about such apparently incendiary topics as software and Microsoft, I can honestly say that I read these rules with a certain sense of having been there, been flamed by that. My personal favorite is Rule #3: Turn factual statements into implied equivalents. That one seems to get a LOT of play these days.
  
  Dec 4, 2005
• OK, so it’s been a while since I’ve posted: Sorry about that. My wife and I just recently had twins, and it’s been pretty busy around the Marini household lately. I’ll have some new material to put up soon.
  
  Dec 3, 2005
• Microsoft launches Virtual Earth: And, of course, provides a developer kit to go along with it. You can see the Virtual Earth site here, and then check out Via VirtualEarth to see how you can include interactive maps on your page. Dr. Neil Roodyn has a couple of great articles on how to easily add the Virtual Earth control to your pages using some JavaScript code – and it works across all modern browsers.
  
  Permalink Jul 27, 2005
• Combining vectors with pixels : Great example of what can be done when you combine vector-based art with pixel capabilities of a modern drawing program. This example was created with Microsoft’s drawing tool code-named Acrylic.
  
  Permalink Jul 25, 2005
• Some people have a LOT of time on their hands : This one via Chris Anderson – Lemmings, a game I spent a lot of time on in the early 90s, has been rewritten entirely in JavaScript for the Web. This is actually really cool!
  
  Permalink Jun 24, 2005
• Is Free Trade All it’s Cracked Up to Be? Maybe not: This story on Marketwatch’s site by John Dvorak got my attention: it turns out that Paul Samuelson, 89-year-old Nobel Prize winner for economics, says that free trade isn’t necessarily a great idea when it comes to things like offshoring work to places like India. As you might expect, this opinion didn’t go unnoticed over in Delhi.
  
  Permalink Jun 24, 2005
• Mobiform Releases Aurora Beta : Mobiform has released version 4.7 of their XAML design tool, Aurora.
  
  More information about Aurora is located on this page of Mobiform’s site.
  
  Permalink Jun 17 , 2005
• What Do You Mean, My Mac is Vulnerable?: A few days ago Symantec released a report indicating that yes, Virginia, there are security issues with Macintoshes. Of course, anybody who knows anything about security could have told you this, and many of them did. For some time now, in fact.
  
  Permalink Mar 31 , 2005
• Web Design World Sessions Uploaded : Session materials from Web Design World have been uploaded to the Downloads section. You can find all the materials from my sessions here, along with the code examples.
  
  Permalink Mar 29 , 2005
• XAML Samples Updated : Well, it took long enough, but I’ve updated my samples showing DataBound UI, XAML Property Triggers, Data Styling, and of course the Blog Reader to work with the November CTP Build of the Avalon system. If you’ve been having difficulties getting these samples to run, then download the newest versions.
  
  Permalink Feb 15 , 2005
• The US Patent Office Has Lost its Mind: Apparently, Google has been awarded a patent for – get this – highlighting search terms in a result page. No, I am not kidding you. Here’s the actual link: System and Methods for highlighting search results. Not that I expect too many people to complain – I mean, this is, after all, Google, and not Microsoft.
  
  Permalink Jan 26 , 2005
• Honey, Does This Website Make Me Look Fat? I have to start being more serious about watching what I eat. Want to know how I know this? I was perusing Fawcette’s site the other day and came across a video of one of my presentations. Take a look at the screenshot of me, and my half-dozen or so chins. Yikes.
  
  Permalink Jan 25 , 2005
• New Tutorial – XAML Interactivity: I’ve posted a new tutorial showing how to achieve some basic interactivity in XAML applications using PropertyTriggers. These are markup constructs contained within styles that define how an object responds to property changes. This example, like the others before it, requires no script code.
  
  Permalink Jan 25 , 2005
• One for the Street Smart Gang: Am I the only one not surprised that the High School grads beat the College Grads on the first Apprentice task? After all, they had a huge advantage: they were all probably working in fast food not too long ago.
  
  Permalink Jan 22 , 2005
• Xamlon releases Compact Edition: Xamlon has released a version of their XAML programming environment for mobile devices, such as PocketPCs and Smartphones.
  
  Permalink Jan 14 , 2005

2004

• Presentations from Web Design World Boston are posted: As promised, I’ve posted my presentations from Web Design World to the Downloads section of the site.
  
  Permalink Dec 13, 2004

• Web Design World Boston: I just got back from Web Design World Boston, and I’m in the process of packaging up my presentations, notes, and sample code. It’s taken a bit longer than I anticipated, so please check back Monday Dec 13 for the link. I should have everything up by then. Dec 10, 2004

• When Secrets Make Sense: Tim Bray finally got around to responding to my earlier essay on his desire to open up everything. However, he actually ends up making my point for me…
  
  Permalink Dec 3, 2004

• Happy Holidays, Microsoft Shareholders!: Today is the day – Microsoft pays its special dividend of US$3.00 per common share, about US$33 billion total. Dec 2, 2004

• New Computer Senses Gunfire: Wired News is reporting that a new computer system now being tested by some U.S. cities can detect the sound of a gunshot and determine which direction it came from, helping police to respond faster to potential crimes.
  
  Permalink Dec 2, 2004

• When Bad Code Attacks: If you happen to be someone who writes code for a living and you’ve somehow never visited TheDailyWTF (I’ll leave it up to your imagination what the initials WTF stand for), then you really owe it to yourself. It’s a hall-of-shame type site that lists some of the more, uh, … unique ways that some programmers have elected to solve certain problems.
  
  Permalink Dec 1, 2004

• Microsoft Makes Big Gains in NAS Storage Market: Computerworld is running a story on Microsoft’s recent gains in the Network-Attached Storage (NAS) market. Seems that companies like EMC and Dell are building Windows Server 2003-based systems for small-to-midsize corporations, which now account for more than 50% of the market.
  
  Permalink Dec 1, 2004

• And Speaking of alphaWorks… I probably should have given some column space to this sooner, but if you’ve never poked around IBM’s alphaWorks site, it’s worth a look. Plenty of interesting ideas and cool technologies get their first peek of the light of day there. Here are some that caught my attention…
  
  Permalink Nov 29 , 2004

• IDE for Laszlo : IBM’s alphaWorks site has posted an IDE for Laszlo Systems’ rich presentation server. The IDE is based on the Eclipse environment, and allows developers to create Flash-based applications with Laszlo’s LZX declarative markup language.
  
  Permalink Nov 24 , 2004

• Some Things are Meant to be Secret: Tim Bray says he wants to open everything. Not so fast, Tim.
  
  Permalink Nov 21 , 2004

• Avalon CTP Available: Microsoft has posted a new Community Technology Preview build of Avalon for MSDN subscribers, only this time, it runs on WindowsXP.
  
  Permalink Nov 21 , 2004

• SharePoint Update: Wow, looks like I hit a nerve with my previous item on SharePoint market share and usage, so I went back and did the same experiment with a number of different job sites. Here are the results as of today…
  
  Permalink Nov 18 , 2004

• First Comcast, Now SBC : Microsoft is finally beginning to have some success signing up cable and phone companies to use its TV Foundation technology. Nov 17 , 2004

• SharePoint to be US$400M Product for Microsoft: Joel Spolsky says that nobody has SharePoint. Au contraire, mon ami. According to public comments made by Steve Ballmer, SharePoint is on track to be a $400M product for Microsoft, and one of the fastest products ever to get to that point for the company. Here’s a fun experiment to try: Go to your favorite jobs site (mine is Monster) and do a search on the term "SharePoint". Then do the same thing with "WebLogic Portal", and then "Plumtree" (two other major portal software developers). See how many jobs come back looking for skills in each.
  
  When I did this yesterday, SharePoint resulted in 448 hits. WebLogic Portal got 227, and Plumtree got 130. Now, which product should you be honing your skills on?
  
  Permalink Nov 15 , 2004

• Xamlon 1.0 is available: Congratulations to Paul Colton and the gang at Xamlon on shipping Xamlon 1.0. This brings XAML to Windows versions 98 through XP. Oct 5, 2004

• Web Design World Boston is approaching: December 6-8 this year. The conference is also returning to its roots somewhat, focusing on web-related design, a departure from previous years when it was called "Digital Design World." I’ll be presenting several seminars on usability, XML, and Web design tools. Oct 1, 2004

• The facts are beginning to sink in: It’s happening sooner than I thought it would: companies are beginning to migrate from Linux to Windows. Oct 1, 2004

• Here’s some truth for ya, Tim: Tim Bray takes Microsoft to task for producing an "egregiously misleading ad campaign." Now, OK, I agree that comparing modern PC architecture to old mainframes isn’t exactly fair, but here’s some truth for ya, Tim: Linux is actually helping Microsoft close OS deals. Boo-yah!
  
  Permalink Sep 2, 2004

• Why I Love XAML – Interview I recently gave to MSDN’s Channel 9 folks where I explain what it is I love about XAML. Aug 25, 2004

• Eric Sink is the man: Kudos to Eric for his insightful rebuttal to Paul Graham’s essay on what makes great hackers. Eric correctly nails the point that "great hackers" aren’t necessarily the kind of people that you want working for your company, especially if your company is focused on customers instead of technology for the sake of technology. I also take issue with some of Paul’s comments, especially how "great hackers" are determined by what language and platform they use, and how he "knew that a startup company was doomed" because it was going to build its product on top of NT. I used to be exactly this kind of geek a long time ago before I grew up and realized that there was a lot more to software development than what language you work in, although I bet that Paul’s essay found a welcome audience over at Slashdot.
  
  Permalink Aug 6, 2004

• Great video on Microsoft’s Channel9: If you haven’t seen this video of the Channel9 staff laying out their vision and talking about what they hope to accomplish, then you really should take a look. Go watch the video, then come back here and tell me that Microsoft is some faceless company that doesn’t care about its customers or partners. I wish more companies would do things like this, and I wonder why Microsoft doesn’t get more credit when they do things like this. Aug 5, 2004

• New Article: Data Bound User Interfaces in XAML, an all-XAML application that demonstrates how to build UIs that interact with an underlying data model without having to write a lot of event-handling code. Requires the new WinHEC version of Longhorn to run.
  
  Permalink July 18, 2004

• Revisionist History? – I’m always amused at the various rumors, half-truths, and outright lies that float around this industry, but one that particularly caught my attention was this little statement by MacNet Journal. Rob, of course, leaves out the fact that we’d also still be stuck in ProDOS hell were it not for Xerox PARC showing Apple "how to do things right all those decades ago." June 28, 2004

• XAMLBlogs is now online – visit xamlblogs.com for XAML information and samples. Good recent post shows how to build an image viewer application. May 14, 2004

• MyXAML Updated – Version 0.95 of MyXAML has been posted to myxaml.com. May 12, 2004

• Longhorn Build 4074 – better known as the WinHEC build – is officially available. MSDN Subscribers can download it for free. May 6, 2004

• New Article: Amazon WishWatch, an all-XAML application that displays the content of an Amazon wish list. Demonstrates Avalon’s Data Styling feature of Longhorn. Requires the new WinHEC version of Longhorn to run.
  
  Permalink May 5, 2004

• I’ll be speaking at the Seattle Digital Design World Show this July 21-23. April 30 , 2004

• Looks like MyXAML has been ported to Linux. Nice piece of work. April 30 , 2004

• New Article: Using PHP, the Simple API for XML (SAX), and XML to display a list of categorized links on a web page.
  
  Permalink April 23 , 2004

• Marc Clifton over at MyXaml.com has released a technology preview of the MyXaml Designer. Looks really interesting – this XAML thing looks like it might have some legs to it. April 14 , 2004

• The W3C has released Level 3 of the Document Object Model. Notable improvements include Load and Save support for documents, support for Namespaces, and support for Validation. April 7 , 2004

• New Article: Bloghorn: a Blog Reader Built in XAML has been posted. This article shows how to use XAML, Microsoft’s forthcoming application markup language for Longhorn, to build a simple application that can read an XML-based blog feed and display the contents.
  
  Permalink March 30, 2004

• The "Useful Links" section that you see over there on the lower right part of this page is now being auto-driven using an XML file. The XML data contains sets of categories, each containing tags that define the link URL along with a description. I’ll have a tutorial up on this shortly. February 24, 2004

• I’m working on a new project, the xamlzone, which will focus on Microsoft’s upcoming XAML technology to be released in the next version of Longhorn. Currently the domain is just a placeholder for the site, but it will be live and running within the next several weeks. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the XAML and Avalon technologies in Longhorn then you really should — it’s going to be a significantly leap in how Windows applications are created and distributed. February 23, 2004

• Digital Design World just went by, and this year’s event was really informative. Unlike the old Web Design World format, there were three separate tracks covering Photoshop, Web design, and Workflow issues. My slides and presentation materials are now up on the site. February 22, 2004

• Digital Design World in San Francisco is coming up. I’ll be doing three sessions this time around. January 16, 2004

2003

• Just got back from WebDesignWorld in Seattle. Give me a little bit to unwind and I’ll make sure that my conference presentations are posted to the Downloads area. In the meantime, please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have. July 31, 2003

• MXNorth is in the history books. If you missed this year’s conference, then you missed a really good one – a lot of great developers and speakers made it this year. But don’t worry – we’re gonna do it all over again in Las Vegas. March 18, 2003

• FlashBang! is now available. This replacement for Dreamweaver’s Flash buttons feature developed by Joe Lowery and Edoardo Zubler is available from the Project VII website. This extension makes it extremely easy for Dreamweaver users to include Flash on their web pages. You can learn more about it from the official FlashBang site. March 10, 2003

• ASP.NET/DW Book – Dreamweaver MX: ASP.NET Web Development. If you’ve ever wanted to explore the basics of the ASP.NET server-side technology, this book is the one for you. Using Dreamweaver MX as your tool, you’ll discover how to create fully functional dynamic ASP.NET applications. March 1, 2003

2002

• Tutorial Use PHP to verify a user’s email domain has been posted to the Tutorials section. This tutorial will show you how to use PHP to verify that a user’s email domain is real before trying to send mail to it. November 24 , 2002

• The Document Object Model is available now, and is currently the only book dedicated to the DOM. If you are building applications with XML, HTML, JavaScript, and the latest web browsers or one of the popular parsers like Microsoft’s MSXML or Apache Xerces, you’ll want to check out this book. August 31, 2002

• Tutorial Determining if a browser window is already open has been posted to the Tutorials section. This tutorial will show you how to use JavaScript to see if a browser window is already open before you try to open it again. August 15 , 2002