Development

MSDN rolls out code search for CodePlex projects

Microsoft unveiled this week, with relatively little fanfare, a new feature on MSDN that lets developers search code samples. Users can go to a dedicated MSDN code search page to enter their queries or click on the “Code Search” button at the general MSDN search page. The new feature doesn’t appear to have any special branding, but its URL http://msdn.krugle.com, seems to at least imply a code name.

Krugle — if that is its real name — can filter source code samples by language, project, filename or where in the code the query is matched (within a class definition, function definition, comments, etc).

The search is listed as beta, and at least one user has already run into difficulties. In a thread on MSDN’s feedback forums, user “dmex” complained that searching for GetProcAddress doesn’t return code from that function’s documentation. When I queried “GetProcAddress” I got 763 matches, and the function’s page wasn’t in the top 15. The pages that were returned all seemed to be from actual code files — .h, .cpp, .vb, etc — for projects on CodePlex, indicating that Krugle queries CodePlex rather than code examples embedded in MSDN documentation.

Windows 7: The new Mojave

Microsoft’s “Mojave Experiment” was an interesting case of managing expectations. Convinced that Vista OS had gotten the short shrift, Microsoft demoed its next OS, Mojave, to a slew of people. Everyone thought it was a great improvement over Vista, and then came the surprise ending: Mojave was Vista. Ta-dah!

If the lesson for Microsoft was that Vista failed largely because it was badly marketed, the solution was simple: launch it again, this time with better marketing. And thus we come to Windows 7, the real-life Mojave.

To be fair, Windows 7 has some significant differences. One of the best new ideas in Vista was UAC, which fixed the fairly big security risk of programs always running with administrator privileges. But Vista’s UAC was poorly designed and annoyed users: Windows 7 should fix that to a large degree, although programmers will also do themselves a service if they elevate privileges correctly.

The biggest new feature in Windows 7 is the new taskbar, a significant if largely cosmetic change. Instead of a program living in up to three places on the taskbar — as a quicklaunch icon, a notification tray icon and a window tab — all its functionality is now consolidated into a single, square icon. You can also reorder icons, which is great for OCD people like me who just have to have their browser on the far left.

Yes, the new taskbar in Windows 7 has design implications for developers, and yes, Windows 7 has better connectivity for peripherals (although I haven’t been able to test it; the laptop I have it running on isn’t connected to any peripherals). But all in all, Windows 7 feels more like a big minor release than a lurch forward in OS technology. Vista took the hits — especially for UAC — and Mojave Windows 7 will reap the rewards. So it goes.

Mono brings C# to the iPhone, Wii

Mono is best known as an open source implementation of .NET, but as we mentioned in our coverage of Mono 2.0, the project actually started with just a C# compiler. The idea was that C# is a nice programming language, and it’d be nice if non-Microsoft programmers could use it — with or without the .NET framework.

A lot of Mono’s recent progress has been on the .NET side, but the pure-play C# compiler is still relevant.  Game programmers have used C# to write an iPhone app, Mono’s lead Miguel de Icaza announced on his blog. He followed that entry with another, more complete list of C# iPhone apps. Mono has also been used to write at least one game for the Wii in C#.

This is exciting news. The Windows world is a great place to develop, but as other platforms keep cropping up, it’s becoming harder and harder to ignore everything that doesn’t come from Redmond. The iPhone has made a splash, and gaming consoles have always been huge. Thanks to Mono, programmers can reuse their existing skills — and code base — as they look for broader audiences.

Ja.NET: A Java compiler for .NET CLR

Early last month I wrote an article about Java application frameworks being ported to .NET. The piece caused a bit of commotion on our sister site TheServerSide.net, and it also brought to my attention a related project.

All of those ports start with the idea that it’d be nice to use established Java frameworks and paradigms in .NET and come up with the natural solution, which is to port the software. But there’s another approach, too: why not just compile those existing frameworks to work with .NET’s CLR?

That’s the idea behind Ja.NET SE, an open source project based on the Apache Harmony compiler for Java. Instead of targeting Java bytecode, Ja.NET compiles to Microsoft’s Common Intermediate Language (CIL), which the .NET runtime then consumes natively.

Continued »

News roundup: Microsoft will not buy Yahoo!, MLB won’t use Silverlight

Here’s the Microsoft news we’ve been seeing around the Web….

Steve Ballmer emphasized on Wednesday that talks of Microsoft buying Yahoo! are “finished” after speculation started bubbling up again following Yang’s resignation from Yahoo!. But the software giant also lured an executive away from the struggling search company. Meanwhile, Microsoft may sell bonds for the first time ever.

Silverlight suffered a blow on Monday when MLB said it would move back to Flash, according to Adobe. That could be especially damaging, since Microsoft’s case for the rich internet application (RIA) framework relies heavily on its video capabilities and adoption by major players like NBC.

Continued »

Yahoo! It’s over!

Microsoft has abandoned its effort to purchase Yahoo for $44.6 billion. Yahoo vigorously rebuffed the offer, first launched in February. In announcing the withdrawn offer, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer disclosed that the company had increased its initial bid.

“Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by roughly $5 billion, Yahoo! has not moved toward accepting our offer. After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo! do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal,” Ballmer said in a statement.

This deal would have moved Microsoft far deeper into a Web Advertising market in which it has trailed both Google and Yahoo. Viewers suggest it well could have shifted the company’s emphasis away from its successful software businesses.

It is not completely certain that the merger machinations are wholly over - as Ballmer’s comments point primarily to pricing as the obstacle to completing the deal. Both Microsoft and Yahoo in the wake of this clumsy dance of courtship.

Some comment from the blogosphere:

According to Stephen Bainbridge. Big shareholders wanted a deal, “but not one that required Microsoft to overpay. In addition, press reports suggest that some of Microsoft’s largest shareholders were pressuring the firm not to overpay.”

Andrew Brust says it’s not over ‘til it’s over. “Microsoft’s withdrawal of its Yahoo acquisition proposal may just be a negotiating tactic.  Or it could in earnest.  Time will tell.”

And, the crack blogger MiniMicrosoft chimes in as well. “With this strategic inflection point, the era of post-BillG Microsoft 2.0 has begun.”

Microsoft LiveMesh Cloud and Yahoo

Microsoft’s recent discussion of mesh computing raises a few questions. For some details on what it is, go to the LiveMesh pages. The company has rattled about a lot of ‘Live” initatives, but this may be the first one with legs. Now, we are going to drop the mesh term immediately, and start to use ‘Cloud’ to describe whatever it is Ray Ozzie has been concocting - it is a more widely used term. Just think of it as a Grid on steroids, or rather a subset of a Grid on steroids.

Now the questions.

Who will the Microsoft Cloud effect? Seems like consumers are the target. It appears for now a way to connect one’s different electronic files and such. It may sneak into the enterprise, of course, just like Lotus 1-2-3 did.

Will it work? The answer there is yes, it will work about as well as most software; meaning, it will work much of the time, but you will come to curse it on occasion. Does IT have higher standards than individuals do on the question ‘does it work?’ - well, that is an open question.

Who is the competition? Basically, it is the nemesis called Google. Google has its own Cloud computing solution a’brewing, and Microsoft will have to meet the Valley Search Wizards of Googledom on that plain of battle because…well, because that’s what they are supposed to do. This is not mano on mano, no. It is geek-o on geek-o.

Of course, a wild card in the Cloud race is Yahoo. As you may recall, Microsoft is courting Yahoo with all the ardor of a CPA romancing a distant society deb. It is hard to guess how that will play out, but there is much about Yahoo that Microsoft will have to come to grips with. Yahoo has its own Cloud computing initiative - it has a lot of computers sitting around down on the farm, you know - which, like a lot of things at Yahoo, does not exactly work the same way as the Microsoft cloud alternative. As Blogster Par Excellance Mary Jo Foley points out, meshing these two platforms could be a real mess. Well put, Foley!

Microsoft Opens to Eclipse?

Microsoft is working to make it easier for Eclipse developers write code for Windows apps. Microsoft will provide engineering support to allow Eclipse Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) to use Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Such support would make it easier to Java developers to write applications that look and feel like Windows Vista. San Ramji, director of the Open Source Software Lab explains in his blog-posting Supernova, “We’re committing to improve this technology with direct support from our engineering teams and the Open Source Software Lab, with the goal of a first-class authoring experience for Java developers.”

LINQ, WPF supported in Visual Studio 2008

Now that VS 2008 is out of the box, so to speak, it appears that a new era in Windows development is upon us. Language-Integrated Query is one of several game-changing technologies now supported in the Microsoft software kit. Although it is still early and there is a lot of learning to do, LINQ is poised as a whole new way of developing with data.

It is fair to say that the first rush of .NET technology was about catching up with Java, although there was much unique about .NET too. With LINQ, for now, it seems Microsoft has stolen a march on the Java opposition.

I spoke recently with Jason Beres, director of product management at Infragistics, which is one of the major third-parties in the Microsoft market. Beres said people will take LINQ very seriously. “I think it going to be the de facto way to do any real data binding or object access moving forward,” he said.

With the new Microsoft tool kit comes Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Is WPF game changing? That is hard to say. When it was first conceived, the ubiquitous Web interface seemed to be overstressed, and ready to be replaced by a new generation of WPF-based Smart Clients that would use something like WPF. But, before WPF made it too market, AJAX came on strong as a means to give new life to Web interfaces.

This means the plate of companies like Infragistics is pretty full. Infragistics has just rolled out NetAdvantage for WPF 2007, which is compatible with Visual Studio 2008. At the same time, according to Beres, the company has been re-tooling its frameworks around ASP.NET AJAX as well.

For Infragistics and others, Silverlight looms as another alternative interface. Watch for Infragistics and others to provide Silverlight components, especially now that Silverlight 2.0 (which, more than its predecessor, rightly bears the mantle of “WPF/Everywhere”) arrives in its first beta form.

LINQ, WPF and VS 2008 have been primary areas-of-interest for the SearchWindowsDevelopment.com site for some time. We invite you to check out our LINQ VS 2008 pages, and to stay tuned.

RELATED INFORMATION:
> VS 2008 and LINQ Topic Page
> Introducing WPF
> Introduction to Silverlight 1.0

Microsoft releases .NET Micro Framework Version 2.5 updates

Microsoft updated the .NET Micro Framework, releasing Version 2.5 with improvements in Web Services and TCP/IP support.

.NET Micro Framework Version 2.5 includes a Web Services on Devices implementation compatible with Windows Vista and supported by the other Microsoft Windows Embedded platforms.

With Web Services on Devices, Micro Framework devices can discover and communicate with other devices on a network without need for user configuration. While some observers initially scoffed at Web services as a ‘real-time’ embedded solution, a growing consensus hold that it is ‘real-time’ enough for a slew of solutions.
 
Also, with Version 2.5, the framework gains native TCP/IP stack support, and, let’s face it, TCP/IP is nothing short of the greatest protocol of all time.

Microsoft also said it has inked a deal with oft-time rival IBM to collaborate on a pre-installed Windows embedded-based point-of-service solution for the retail and hospitality industries.