Monthly Archives: April 2008

codegear, delphi, software development

Generics, anonymous methods, Unicode coming to Delphi

Codegear has posted an updated roadmap for Delphi and C++ Builder, its native code development tools for Windows. There is also a .NET Delphi but it is not covered here.

The RAD Studio product includes both Delphi (Object Pascal) and C++ “personalities”. A release code-named Tiburon, set for later this year, will update Delphi to be “completely Unicode-based”, including the runtime library and Visual Component Library (VCL). There is also support for generics and anonymous methods.

What about 64-bit, another obvious shortcoming of the current Delphi product? It’s promised for the release after that, code-named “Commodore”, and set for mid-2009.

All of this is a bit late in the day, but probably soon enough to keep Delphi developers happy. The IDE is stable now and if you want RAD features Delphi is the best choice for native code apps on Windows.

microsoft, software development, windows

Microsoft’s Office UI patent trap: watch out with that MFC update

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I installed the Visual Studio 2008 Feature Pack today – which, by the way, you will not find if you use Check for Updates on the Visual Studio 2008 Help menu – and noticed this paragraph in the setup agreement:

What’s this all about? Microsoft has not said so, but it seems likely to be part of the company’s war against OpenOffice. The efforts of Sun and others to improve OpenOffice, along with all the XML standardization brouhaha, prodded Microsoft into delivering the most significant Office upgrade for many years. One of its intentions was to increase the differentiation between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice. The strategy would not work if some future OpenOffice just copied the feature, hence the license.

The unintended consequences concern me.

Until now, you could pretty much use the out-of-the-box UI components in Visual Studio and not worry about licensing. That has now changed. According to Microsoft if you use any element of the Office user interface, for which the feature update supplies new classes, then you have to agree to a separate license.

Is this a burden? Well, the licensing page is now out of date, because it says “The program does not involve code”, but the feature pack provides what it calls “MFC C++ library source code for the Microsoft Office Fluent User Interface.“ However, Microsoft says that the license is free and covers:

…applications on any platform, except for applications that compete directly with the five Office applications that currently have the new UI (Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Access)

What does it mean, to “compete directly”? It sounds like the sort of thing lawyers could have fun with. Further, if you read the license details and FAQ, it is clear that you take on a further obligation, which is to comply with Microsoft’s Office Design Guidelines, and even to update your application if Microsoft changes them:

Your Licensed UI must comply with the Design Guidelines. If Microsoft notifies you that the Design Guidelines have been updated or that you are not complying with the Design Guidelines, you will make the necessary changes to comply as soon as you reasonably can, but no later than your next product release that is 6 months or more from the date you receive notice.

OK, so let’s say you are developing some software for a customer. You deliver the app; customer pays you. Now Microsoft brings out Office 2009, changes the guidelines, and says you must update the app, even though the customer is happy with it as-is. Who will pay? I guess you would need to agree beforehand; but it is a disincentive to using the fluent UI.

Presuming you do not want to sign up, avoid all the CMFCRibbon* classes. Microsoft has helpfully commented these with a paragraph that says:

License terms to copy, use or distribute the Fluent UI are available separately.

Would any of this stand up in court? I have no idea, but I’d be reluctant to sign up or to use these classes lest I might have to find out.

internet, microsoft, multimedia

Will Microsoft abandon DRM?

Ars Technica quotes an email apparently sent to customers of MSN Music:

As of August 31, 2008, we will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for the songs you purchased from MSN Music or the authorization of additional computers. You will need to obtain a license key for each of your songs downloaded from MSN Music on any new computer, and you must do so before August 31, 2008. If you attempt to transfer your songs to additional computers after August 31, 2008, those songs will not successfully play.

Microsoft may not care about MSN Music any more, but this decision undermines all its DRM content sales and those from its partners.

Or will Microsoft abandon DRM? Seems unlikely; yet when I quizzed Microsoft on this general subject (what happens to DRM content when you switch PCs), the reply from Adam Anderson, Sr. product manager for Windows, included this phrase twice:

Music content providers and online music stores are increasingly moving to DRM-free downloadable tracks

As Anderson noted, this will “diminish user issues regarding rights restoration”. So will Microsoft follow this same principle in some future version of the Zune store, for example?

If it did, it might also do the right thing for its MSN Music customers, which would be to provide a tool to unlock the DRM on their purchased files. I suppose its agreement with the copyright owners does not allow for that; yet as the industry now seems willing to offer music DRM-free, it just might be possible.

Incidentally, I’d love to hear from anyone who has purchased music protected with Microsoft DRM, such as tracks purchased from Napster, CD Wow or HMV.com. Happy? Or if not, what problems have you had? I’m looking for examples for a future article.

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microsoft, windows

Fixing Vista: Microsoft’s third-party problem

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Ed Bott has a post on how he fixed a Sony Vaio running Vista, when the user had dismissed it as an unusable brick. Bott reasoned that it was all to do with drivers, configuration, and unnecessary pre-installed applications. He proved his point, making the machine usable. The owner made a video about what he thought of the reconfigured machine. Key points:

1. He thought it was much improved

2. He’s sticking with the Mac as his primary machine

The problem wasn’t only that Sony originally stuffed the machine with unwanted trialware. Bott’s new install also benefited from Service Pack 1 and a bunch of updated drivers.

Still, it’s a good demonstration of how big manufacturers like Sony have neglected the user experience for the sake of a few pennies of royalty, or a quicker rush to market, and in doing so lost both sales and credibility. The public mood on this has changed, perhaps because both Apple and the Linux folk are offering better alternatives in this respect.

Incidentally, all my Vista installs have been clean installs, so I haven’t personally suffered from death by trialware, though I have seen it frequently on other machines. Consumer products are worse than those aimed at businesses, but both categories are affected.

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google, internet, microsoft, software development, web authoring, windows

Microsoft: Live Mesh or Live Mess? Here’s what to read.

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Here’s what I suggest you read to get to grips with Live Mesh:

Amit Mital’s introduction (he’s the General Manager)

Mike Zintel’s Live Mesh as a Platform (he’s Director of Service Infrastructure)

Mary Jo Foley’s Ten things to know and the helpful stack diagram.

I have a few initial comments. First, it’s the platform that matters, not the Live Desktop which is the first thing Microsoft is delivering and which you will find presented at mesh.com. Microsoft is finally showing us what it means by the “software plus services” thing it has been talking about for so long. It involves a new “Mesh Operating Runtime” which has both cloud pieces and client pieces, a MeshFX API, and an identity system which is Live ID (formerly Passport).

As far as I can tell, Microsoft is delivering an API which we will be able to use to build internet-based data, document and configuration into either desktop or web applications, with synchronization to local storage for offline use. Zintel adds:

… customers will ultimately license applications to their mesh, as opposed to an instantiation of Windows, Mac or a mobile account or a web site.  Such applications will be seamlessly installed and run from their mesh and application settings persisted across their mesh

It sounds good, though the obvious question is whether Microsoft is overstating the importance of the client in an attempt to preserve its core market. Do we need this special client piece? Here’s a paragraph from Zintel’s piece that caught my eye:

A key design goal of the Live Mesh data synchronization platform is to allow customers to retain the ownership of their data that is implicit with local storage while improving on the anywhere access appeal of the web. The evolution of the web as a combined experience and storage platform is increasingly forcing customers to choose between the advantages of local storage (privacy, price, performance and applications) and the browser’s implicit promise of data durability, anywhere access and in many cases, easy sharing.

Can Microsoft improve on the “anywhere access appeal of the web? Zintel says we need to combine it with the advantages of local storage, but the advantages Zintel identifies are not all that convincing. Let’s look at them:

Privacy: maybe, but local data is vulnerable to worms, trojans, viruses; well secured Internet data accessed over SSL is arguably more secure. Data not connected to the Internet is nice and secure, but can’t participate in the Mesh.

Price: I don’t see how Mesh helps here. Yes, local storage is cheap, but as soon as data enters the Mesh it is on the Internet and we are paying for data transfer as well as possibly Internet storage. I realise that Microsoft (among others) offers generous Internet storage for free, but that is just a way of buying market share.

Performance: Granted, some types of application work faster with local storage. Still, there are non-Mesh ways of getting this from web applications in a fairly seamless manner, such as Google Gears or Adobe’s AIR.

Applications: This is perhaps the big one. Many of us are reluctant to do without traditional local applications such as Office. Well, mainly Office. Still, web equivalents get better all the time. One day they will be good enough; and new technology like Silverlight is bringing that day closer. 

What about identity management and permissions? Zintel says:

A side effect of the competition to store customer data in the cloud and display it in a web browser is the fragmentation of that data and subsequent loss of ownership. Individual sites like Spaces, Flickr and Facebook make sharing easy, provided the people you are sharing with also use the same site. It is in fact very difficult to share across sites and equally difficult to work on the same data across the PC, mobile and web tiers.

True; but Mesh currently identifies users by their Live ID. Isn’t that the same as Spaces?

If Microsoft delivers a bunch of useful web services, that’s great. If it tries to somehow replace the web with its Mesh, it will fail.

Mary Jo Foley also asks the question: to what extent is Microsoft extending, and to what extent is it replacing, existing Live services such as Office Live or the excellent Skydrive? Making sense of all this is a challenge.

Now let’s mash all this up with Yahoo! (maybe). Ouch.

internet, multimedia

CDs,DVDs still account for more than 75% of music industry revenue, but shrinking

The RIAA has posted 2007 year-end manufacturers’ unit shipments and value statistics. This covers USA music and music video sales.

Here are my highlights:

  • CD sales down 17.5% in units and 20.5% in value year-on-year. The peak was 2000; value is down around 44% since then (actually a smaller decline that I would have expected).
  • Downloads are up 38.9% in units and 43.2% in value.
  • Mobile (ringtones etc) are amazingly only 30% less by value than other digital download sales, if I’m reading the chart right.
  • Revenue from physical media (mostly CDs) is more than 75% of the total.
  • Overall revenue is down by 11.8% – that’s the figure that hurts the music industry.
  • Finally, vinyl is up by 46% but from a small base; it’s only a tiny niche.

Every time I look another CD shop has shrunk or closed on the high street, so I expect there will more of the same next year.

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software development

How to code better: new book from ThoughtWorks

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Which is more important: the code you write, or the tools you use? Instinctively I would say it is the code which really counts; but vendors tend to focus on tools because that is what they sell. I found myself thinking about this last week, because while I was engaged in puzzling out the new Application Factories feature in CodeGear’s JBuilder 2008 a book arrived on my desk. It is called The ThoughtWorks Anthology, and subtitled “Essays on Software Technology and Innovation.” The title is the worst thing about it, since it sounds like some kind of corporate puffery from ThoughtWorks (and I suppose it is); but it is also a concise, enjoyable and stimulating read. I found it particularly refreshing as a break from JBuilder, since it it concerns stuff that matters: code, testing, project management, as opposed to stuff that might introduce more problems than it solves: the latest wonder tool which promises to speed development but might end up as just another piece of clutter.

I turned first to an entertaining chapter by Jeff Bay, called Object Calisthenics. Bay sets out nine rules; I don’t want to steal all his thunder, but here are three of them:

  • Don’t use the else keyword
  • Use only one dot per line
  • Don’t use any classes with more than two instance variables

Before you scream at him, note that this is an exercise, not a set of rules for live projects, though at the end of the chapter Bay says they can be used as such. It doesn’t matter whether you agree or not; what counts is that it makes you think about how to improve the design of your code.

Martin Fowler writes about how to write a DSL (domain-specific language) in Ruby. Rebecca Parsons describes how to categorize languages. Neal Ford makes the case for polyglot programming. Erik Doernenburg discusses the use of annotations/attributes in Java and .NET for application domain metadata. Julian Simpson has a great chapter on refactoring Ant build files, which can easily become hard to maintain. Two final chapters cover test strategy and performance profiling strategy.

I particularly like the way in which the book itself reflects the coding principles it presents. Each chapter is short, clear and focused. A good read for your next transatlantic flight.

The ThoughtWorks Anthology (Pragmatic Publishing ISBN 10: 1-934356-14-X)

Amazon links:

US: The Thoughtworks Anthology

UK: The Thoughtworks Anthology

google, internet, search

Britannica going more towards free

Towards free, not completely free. This is a fascinating example of old-school vs new school (Wikipedia and Google – I mean Google search, not the Knol thing). Britannica is opening up its content to “online publishers”, including qualifying bloggers – low traffic is OK, but infrequent posting is not. The idea is to encourage these users to post Britannica links on their sites. Such links will bypass the paywall, enabling non-subscribers to read articles that would otherwise require subscription.

We can debate the quality of Britannica’s more scholarly articles versus Wikipedia’s living encapsulation of crowd wisdom. The real question is this: what is Britannica’s business model when something that many people will feel is “good enough” is available for nothing?

Here’s what the FAQ says:

Won’t you lose money giving away all those subscriptions?

We don’t think so. On the contrary, with many Web publishers using our products and sharing them with our readers, we expect to see a lot more people subscribing.

On the other hand, might not existing subscribers feel that the value of their subscriptions is diminished by the giveaway?

I suspect this is an attempt to rebuild its brand and experiment with different business models, such as advertising.

Prediction: in time, Wikipedia will include more attributed and locked content, while Britannica will add user comments, ratings, and even entirely user-generated articles (marked as such, of course). In other words, they will converge. The winner will be the site with the most traffic. If I’m right, Britannica’s new initiative is right, but very late in the day.

As an aside, I thought this part of the FAQ was not very Britannica-like:

I blog regularly, but I don’t have much traffic. Will that disqualify me?

Nope. You need Britannica more than anybody. Start reading it, and your posts will burn with brilliant, scintillating insights; link to Britannica articles, and readers will be eternally grateful. Your traffic will soar.

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adobe, flash, microsoft, multimedia, web authoring

RIA means … not much

Ryan Stewart has a go at nailing what the term Rich Internet Application means.

I think he’s coming at this from the wrong end. It’s better to look at the history.

As far as I’m aware – and based partly on my own recollection, and partly on what Adobe’s Kevin Lynch told the press at last year’s MAX Europe – the story begins around 2001, when WebVertising Inc created an online booking application for the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. It was an HTML application redone in Flash. A PDF describing what was done is still online, and discusses some of the differences between the HTML and Flash approach, though bear in mind this is Flash evangelism.

They created iHotelier, a fully interactive, data-driven reservation application that reduces the entire reservation process down to a single screen. Users looking for information on available rooms for specific dates highlight their preferred dates in a calendar. With one click of the mouse, the Flash application displays the available (and unavailable) rooms, and their cost. (Figure 10) As a result, users do not feel like they’ve wasted a lot of time and effort if their first room choice is not available.

This case study seemed to trigger a new awareness at Macromedia concerning the potential of Flash for complete applications. I don’t mean that it had never been thought of before; after all, it was Macromedia that put powerful scripting capabilities into Flash, and I’m sure there were Flash projects before this that were applications. Nevertheless, it was a landmark example; and it was around then that I started hearing the term Rich Internet Application from Macromedia. Wikipedia claims that this paper [PDF] is the first use; it’s by Jeremy Allaire and dated March 2002. I’m sure Allaire himself could provide more background.

The problem with the term, as you can see from Allaire’s paper, is that Macromedia (now Adobe) tends to define it pretty much as whatever their latest Flash technology happens to be. This shifts around; so if you are at an AIR event, it’s AIR; if you are at a Flash event, it’s Flash; if you are at a Live Cycle event, it’s apps that use Live Cycle.

Microsoft muddied the waters a little. Realising that RIAs were attracting attention, it started using the term to describe its own technology too, though in the spirit of “embrace and extend” it changed it to mean “rich interactive application”. As I recall, Microsoft used it mainly to describe internet-connected desktop client applications such as those built with Windows Forms. Something like iTunes is a great example (even though it is from Apple), since it runs on the client but gets much of its data from the Internet, especially when you are in the iTunes store.

Now it remains a buzzword but honestly has little meaning, other than “something a bit richer than plain HTML”. If you were doing the Broadmoor Hotel app today, you could do it with AJAX and get similar results.

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amazon, internet, java, open source, software development, web authoring

mvn cloudtools:deploy

I love this. Write your Java EE app; then deploy to up to 20 virtual servers like this:

mvn cloudtools:deploy

The servers are Amazon EC2 instances, charged by the hour.

The tool comes from Chris Richardson, author of POJOs in Action. It combines a Groovy framework called EC2Deploy with appropriate Amazon virtual machine images and a Maven plugin. He calls the combination Cloud Tools. More on EC2Deploy here. The Cloud Tools home page is here. Open source under the Apache License 2.0.

Great for testing, could be good for live deployment too, especially now that you can get proper support from Amazon.

See also Jeff Barr’s Amazon Web Services Blog.