IE6 Retirement Schedule Is OK by me

There has been some uproar about an article that Microsoft will still support IE6 until 2014 (ref: http://twitter.com/JimHolmes/statuses/3388282884, and RT dozens of times.)

I'm sorry, but I cannot get upset about this news article.  Back in the 90's, we whined and complained that Microsoft (and other vendors) were coming out too fast with software releases, and not supporting releases long enough. Remember that VB 2.0 was only out 6 months before VB 3.0 came out.  And MS Word 98 was replaced by Office 2000 only 8 months after its release.  Microsoft heard and understood, and came out with their Lifecycle Support policy so that we could have some semblance of scheduled lifetime for software releases.

And now we want to whine that Microsoft is following that policy?  I'm sorry, but I'm not going to follow that.  We cannot complain because there wasn't a planned policy, then complain that we don't like the standard policy.  No, Microsoft is OK on this one.

Now, I fully agree that we should not be using IE6.  We need to get users to safer and better platforms, and get them on IE8 whenever possible.  And the sooner the better, especially for relieving our web site development headaches.  The faster the market share for IE6 approaches zero will be good for all of us. 

But as long as there are users using IE6, for whatever reason, I want Microsoft to support it.  I want critical security patches and fixes dealt with and deployed as quickly as possible, and any performance enhancements or rendering fixes continued to be developed. 

And as long there are significant share of our users still using IE6 (20% of total IE population, that I last heard of), we as developers still need to account for those users and make sure our sites don't leave them out.  We develop software for our businesses, and for our business's customers, not for our standards of elegance.  We need to continue to support or users and customers, not ridicule or demean them.

I'm A VB!

 

I'm A VB: Mark Harr

My profile was just accepted on the Microsoft Visual Basic Team's "I'm a VB" campaign. 

Microsoft Tag now can do black and white

Microsoft Tag can now do black and white tags, as well as color.  All the current readers already can handle the b&w.  And you can use both a b&w and color tag for same link.

=

 

Microsoft Tag : Feature: Microsoft Tag Black and white!

A little geek humor at Microsoft

Just discovered a little geek humor at Microsoft. 

I have the unfortunate task of upgrading a VB6 app to run properly under Vista.  No, I could not upgrade the app to .Net, just "fix" the VB app and its installer.  So I'm installing VB6 in a Vista virtual machine (do not want to mess up my host machine), and having a little problem when starting VB, an error that mscomctl.ocx is not registered.  But it is, and I hunt down Dependency Walker (Depends) to make sure.  It's OK, and its components are OK, also. 

So I run profiler from Depends to start up VB6 and see what happens.  Find an error message*, and stop the profiler. That in turn stops the VB6 application, and profiler dutifully logs the exit return code, and helpfully translates the exit code to hex:

Terminating process by user's request.
Exited "VB6.EXE" (process 0xB84) with code 57005 (0xDEAD).

Had to chuckle.  And then went to calc.exe to confirm, decimal 57005 is hex 0xDEAD.

(*for what it's worth, the error is "GetProcAddress(0x75E70000 [KERNEL32.DLL], "IsTNT") called from "MSCOMCTL.OCX" at address 0x27588909 and returned NULL. Error: The specified procedure could not be found (127)."  Now I got to got figure that one out.)

Add Blackberry support to Forms Server 2007 or Sharepoint 2007 - Andru's WebLog

I will be needing this soon....

Add Blackberry support to Forms Server 2007 or Sharepoint 2007 - Andru's WebLog

How to install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 on Vista x64/x86 - The Bamboo Team Blog

 

How to install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 on Vista x64/x86 - The Bamboo Team Blog

I will have to give this a try.  It would make developing for SharePoint much easier than having to install server OS in a VirtualPC instance.

Regular Expression resources

Regular Expression resources

A nice resource of some regualar expression resources, by the author of Expresso, a very good tool for building and testing regexp, even generating VB.Net/C#.Net code. Also a link to Regular Expression Library, a repository of common tested reg exp.

Microsoft DreamSpark

 

Microsoft DreamSpark

Today, Microsoft announced that college students can download Visual Studio, SQL Server, Expression Blend, even Windows Server FOR FREE!

How would you like a free copy of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008? How about the entire Microsoft Expression Studio? Not enough...... how about Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and more?
For once, something that sounds too good to be true really is this good and really is true. Starting today (or soon in some areas), students worldwide will be able to download our professional development and design tools for free! It's called DreamSpark and it is upon us.

Wow.  Why?  From PressPass:

PressPass: What is the thinking behind Microsoft DreamSpark? And how did you come up with the name?

Wilson: Microsoft DreamSpark is a community-based program to provide students with free access to Microsoft’s industry-leading software development, gaming and design tools. Working with schools, governments, partners and student organizations worldwide, we will be making this available starting today in Belgium, China, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Other countries will come online over the next year, as well as expanding the program to include high school students. The program is open to all students at education institutions worldwide, though those studying science, technology, engineering and math disciplines (STEM-D) are expected to be the first to jump on it. All eligible students need is access to a computer with an internet connection to download the products, as well as free access keys at http://channel8.msdn.com.

We call it DreamSpark because every great technology breakthrough starts life as someone’s dream or idea. We want to make sure that students have the tools to spark their own dreams plus the power to turn them into reality.

PressPass: Why is Microsoft doing this?

Wilson: We believe students can do amazing things with technology if given access to the right tools. This is a way to make sure that they have what they need to test the boundaries of what today’s technology can do and also prepare for a great career at the same time. The added benefit to industry is that we’re addressing one of the toughest challenges confronting employers today: attracting and developing qualified IT professionals. We’re trying to help close this gap by giving students globally the opportunity to get the tools they’ll need after they graduate and jump-start their careers to land that first job.

Making sure there is a strong pipeline of technically skilled students is key to the future of the global economy. The ability to create new software and services will be an essential part of the skill set of the next generation of workers. Technology is one of the chief drivers pushing worldwide economic development and job creation. As well as giving students important exposure to the tools they can expect to use in the workplace, DreamSpark is about putting professional-level tools in the hands of students to amplify the impact of their studies and fire up their imaginations about the power of technology.

MS Ajax Library Cheatsheets

Handy PDFs for MS Ajax library

Swimming in the Global Talent Pool

Link to Article

Interesting article on the evolving IT job marketplace. Could be subtitled "or, How to Get a Job Anywhere in the World".

"Thriving in today's ... market requires ...'relevance.' "

"If you're 45 and plan to work until you're 65, you're going to be forced to embrace this."

"I'll talk to an IT guy with 15 years of experience who knows three or four different programming languages and has really good system experience. Then I start talking about phishing or blogs or PHP, and they look at me like, 'Huh?'. I don?t expect you to do that stuff, but at least you should have heard of it."

Some Vista/Visual Studio Stuff

SSW Rules to Better Windows Vista Deployments

Taking Advantage of Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 for Developing and Maintaining .NET 1.1 and 2.0 Applications in Microsoft Windows Vista (whitepaper)

SSW Rules to Better Virtual PCs

These are couple of articles on how to do VS development with Vista development.

VPC For IE6 testing

IEBlog: IE6 and IE7 Running on a Single Machine

IE Team has released a VPC image for running IE6 on XP for application testing purposes. The XP is time-bombed for April 1, 2007, but they say they will have periodically updated versions.

Updated: 4/4/2007: IE6 VPC Refresh Now Available

MSDN Wiki Home Page

MSDN Wiki Home Page

Quietly, MS has been working on major enhancement to MSDN online. Not more or better documentation from MS, but adding Wiki site to the docs.

Soon, you will not only be able to look at a function's definition (for instance) and perhaps some sample code, but other developers will add their comments, discussions, samples, warnings, alternatives to the page. This is likely going to make our searches much more productive, instead of googling for blogs, postings, etc.

DLL Help Database

Microsoft DLL Help Database

Microsoft doesn't seem to link to this from Technet or MSDN sites anymore. Just putting this here to have a quick link to find it.