Vlad Hrybok's Tech Notes

In general, I love Microsoft development tools. The reason I never felt compelled to venture far into either Java or LAMP world is because combination of the Visual Studio, .NET Framework runtime, SQL Server and other MS tools has always been an extremely strong development platform, both for the value delivery for end users, and for something as prosaic as having fun programming 8 hours day in and day out. Therefore, it's borderline pathological that Microsoft HTML editing tools have not evolved beyond "D-" grade since their first tool I tried over a decade ago, Front Page 98. Consider this, I am taking a short break (to vent my dissatisfaction) from writing content for a web site because when I edit an HTML file using Visual Studio 2008 SP1, it mangles the HTML by cutting up closing tags, turning "</a>", "</h3>", "</span>" and others into ">". I thought, alright, Expression Web 2 is going to save the day. I open the page in the Expression Web, and what I found is that it doesn't handle keyboard key strokes well, ranging from failing to respond to arrow keys, to Ctrl+V shortcut for Paste simply not working, rendering Expression Web unusable. I use Microsoft keyboard and their drivers. I am a developer, not a designer, but if getting such basic functions as arrow keys in their editor is impossible for MS, what chances do they have with professional designers? And don't get me even started with Expression suite not supporting MS own source controls for two versions. Microsoft's inability to get HTML design tools right for such a long time creates a fear that MS is losing it.

When ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005 came out I hoped that ASP.NET themes will be developed en masse by third parties and sold like those on TemplateMonster.com. Today, tired of ugly GridViews in my apps, I decided to find an ASP.NET theme for at least a GridView, but to my surprise, the only thing I found was this, which is not even a skin. There are millions of sites, books and blogs telling how to make themes in ASP.NET 2.0, but it looks like market for third-party templates has never materialized. Given how fierce the competition in the graphics & UI design world is, I wonder why everyone is missing a chance to take this niche. Microsoft has a few starter themes, but just a few and without live test-drive sites - one has to download and install Visual Studio plug-ins and build the site to see it in action. All this is very strange: it's hard to believe there is no business model in making skinnable themes for ASP.NET applications.

It used to be this way: you commit to a two-year contract with a wireless service and get locked, but deeply discounted or even free phone. With iPhone situation is beyond pale:

• You get what seems to be a full-price, but locked phone (from $300 to $600 depending on the model and the time you bought it);
• You get locked into two-year contract;
• And Apples feels free to brick your iPhone if you have installed 3rd party software or unlocked it.

While all this might be legal, this looks like one big mass-screwing of Apple/AT&T customers. I feel lucky iTunes refused to sync my iPhone with 64 bit Windows and I could return iPhone for the full refund. I was planning on unlocking the phone, but after I learned about modified iPhones turned into "iBricks" after the latest firmware upgrade, iPhone deal looks like one big sucker.

Just read the review of the BMW 335i hard-top convertible in the New York Times. The review was warm - quite typical for the car this good. One thing that the author could not do without, is conforming to the common understanding that BMW's iDrive - the integrated computer control console and navigation system - is horrible. As someone who had Honda Accord with a touch-screen navigation for a few years, I can attest that knob/joystick-based iDrive is completely usable. More so with the string of programmable shortcut buttons, which according to a dealer were added to the dashboard of 3-series in March of 2007. With all the most-frequently-used functionality already accessible through the specialized buttons and knobs on the BMW dashboard, iDrive is a totally adequate user interface conduit. Maybe back in 2002 when the first version of the iDrive was introduced in the 7-series, it was bad - I don't know. I hear it was the only way to control the car and even most basic functions required lots of knob action. If that was the case - it was a really bone-headed design. As someone who designed quite a few user interfaces, including a CAD UI, I have this rule of thumb: put most critical functions at user's fingertips, and organize the rest of commands in a well-structured, easy to navigate menu. Today's iDrive accomplishes that. I got iDrive with my 335i coupe simply because I couldn't imagine living without navigation system, and after reading all the bad reviews I was bracing for supposedly abysmal UI and control abilities of the iDrive. To my surprised I don't really have anything to complain about. It's not touch-screen, but from my point of view touch-screen is a toss compared to joystick: touchscreen is easier to operate when car is not moving, but it is very inconvenient on the go. I am not trying to say that iDrive is perfect - I hear praises to Lexus control console, but these days iDrive is not bad at all as far as functionality and convenience goes. Now, to those who claim that iDrive is hard to figure out, I don't really know what to say. If you were able to figure out how to make enough money to buy a BMW with iDrive, you should have no trouble figuring out iDrive. Otherwise let me know what you are doing for living - I may want to get into it.

Microsoft is showing off its new Acropolis framework for .NET. It seems to be a little more than good old CCmdTarget of late MFC. 

Back in 2001 when I was making a transition from C++/MFC to C#/.NET two things I missed the most were C++ templates and CCmdTarget/Doc/View architecture of MFC-based Windows UI. I could not believe Microsoft didn't port CCmdTarget at the time and naturally wrote my own. But pretty soon it was obvious that with C# and Visual Studio .NET writing ASP.NET web applications was easier than making Windows UI apps, and people wanted web UI more than windows UI.

Combine dwindling demand for Windows UI with inferior development tools and you end up in the situation where software architects don't even debate whether their next enterprise application should have Windows UI or web UI. It's assumed and understood that it will be a web-based application. If you think an application needs to have Windows UI - you will face an uphill battle convincing other project stakeholders it's the right way to go.

Simply put, Windows UI is so out, and web UI is so in that incremental improvements in Windows UI world like WPF and Acropolis is too little and way too late to save the day. We've got AJAX, thank you very much. In my arrogant opinion enterprise apps will not go back into Windows UI world. The last bastion of Windows UI applications is SOHO market, but that is about to change with HttpVPN making it possible to make easily redistributable web applications for consumers and small businesses. Once that happens, Windows UI will become just gaming and other graphics-heavy applications platform.

Think what would happen if Microsoft was giving away Windows for free to everyone, and would also be giving away Visual Studio to developers, but taking %% of every sale of every program ever made for MS Windows. Think of how much more money would they would have made? Could Bill Gates have become  a first trillionaire?

First of all, no worries, I am not a nut who writes another OS. Creating a new operating system is WAY too complicated, costly and most importantly financially risky: OSes are commodity - it's impossible to change the world by creating another OS now.  Instead, I am creating a new platform. What is platform? To give a definition, platform is an operating environment for programs, and a user interface conduit for users. To give a few examples: Internet is platform: back-end web server is an operating environment for programs and browser is a conduit for the UI; every operating system is a platform: Windows, Linux, MacOS – their APIs and drivers form an operating environment and OS desktop and windows is a UI conduit; web browser is a platform too, albeit a limited one – it can run client scripts and therefore it’s an operating environment and a UI conduit at the same time. You get the idea…

Platforms differ in reach and complexity. Operating systems make a somewhat mediocre platform: they have limited reach – contained by the hardware they designed for, by how incredibly expensive it is to make an OS, and by how hard it's to learn to develop applications for a new OS. Adoption threshold for a new OS is very high. Web, on the other hand, is a very good platform: HTTP protocol is insanely simple, web development is relative simple and mastered by ever-growing legions of developers, web is not constrained by hardware, and finally web has a virtually unlimited reach. Curiously, web as a platform is built on top of other platforms - underlying disparate OSes running web server back-end software and user browsers. it’s a platform layered on top of other platforms – OSes.

The drawbacks of the Web as a platform include:

1. Deploying and operating web apps is complex and costly. It is very hard to make an application accessible on the web: all the routers, firewalls, networking, DNS servers, domain names leases, IP addresses -  everything involved in deployment of a web application is much more complex from user’s standpoint compared to regular program with a "pop-in a CD and have it installed" type of deployment;
   
   
2. Web applications are hard to market. From developers’ perspective business models for selling web app is limited to big-ticket sales to businesses who have budget and skills necessary to run web-facing infrastructure.

Now, imagine World Wide Web with above-mentioned problems removed. That is what I am doing: a new web-based platform that has user reach as wide as current Internet, but removes application deployment and marketing hurdles that are limiting web application usage right now. That’s a unique innovation right there. “But hey, there’s more!” Another unique innovation is the business model: I am not going to sell this platform to users, or development tools to developers. All will get it for free. The catch? All software that uses our platform can only be sold and bought using channels belonging and controlled by UltiDev, and like eBay we are going to take %% of every application sale.

You may have some concerns, like will developers find this new platform attractive enough to spend effort learning it and making programs for it? The answer is no, they won’t. Because they won’t need to. The beauty of it is that application developers can take their existing skills and even their already-built applications and simply package them together with our new platform components and ship it to users. Every member of millions-strong army of web developers worldwide is ready to take advantage of this new platform.

You may also wonder how complex is this new platform? Will it take billions of dollars an decades to create it? Well, it’s complex enough to take two years to develop, but the good news is that it’s virtually finished and working pre-alpha releases are deployed. 

Small detail: the platform described above is called HttpVPN™ and some additional technical information is available at http://ultidev.com/Products/httpVPN/.

Just-announced Windows Home Server is a good news for UltiDev LLC even though Windows Home Server currently is not much more than glorified Network Attached Storage and an automatic backup system. Windows Home Server is based on Windows 2003 Server and therefore does not have TV recording functionality for Media Center Edition one would expect from household server. But despite being driven by Windows 2003 Server, Windows Home Server does not seem to have web server and email server on it.

Our HttpVPN and Cassini Web Server products will make MCE attractive for every developer who can make a web-based application. To be truly useful household platform, all software for household servers should web-based and should accessible securely and reliably on Internet as well as and inside the home network. Good news for us is that we do it while Microsoft does not seem to.

I think people will feel much more comfortable when their data is stored on their own servers at home and being accessible everywhere using secure web connection, instead of having data stored on third party servers. Real "web 2.0" (God, I hate this marketing gimmick!) is not only user-generated content, but user-generated content stored on user's own servers and securely accessible from everywhere. This is what we are making happen with HttpVPN, which makes every programmer who can write ASP.NET, JSP, PHP, Perl, Python, ASP, Cold Fusion (or whatever else web development tool he/she is using) a potential winner in the huge but completely untapped market of home server software.

I feel good to be at the right place at the right time. You need to join in.

It appals me beyond any limit every time I see a commodity turned into a product. Like with Mach-150 razors with 1200 blades in it, or printer ink cartridge costing more than a printer, it is a clear-cut scam every single time. Case in point: "high-end" digital A/V cables. One of my colleagues has recently bought 9ft HDMI cable for $100. It was all fancy, gold-plated, silver wrapped cable in a very pretty package. However, although HDMI is a cable used for Audio/Video purposes, it still does exactly the same stuff as your regular 1GB Cat 5 Ethernet cable or USB cable: it moves ones and zeros. Now, even in retail CAT 5 cable costs about $0.40 per foot. Look at all the USB cables around you connecting all sorts of equipment, from digital cameras and external hard drives to keyboards and printers - can you find any of them being gold-plated and costing upward of $40? All those cables are digital yet very inexpensive while moving your files and other data without any distortions.

So if one pays more than $0.40 per foot of ANY digital cable: Ethernet, DVI, HDMI - the person is a certifiable sucker and people who sold it to him/her are shameless snake oil peddlers. Go to eBay or www.AllElectronics.com and buy the cheapest cable you can find and you will be just fine.

You can bring up as many anecdotal evidence as you want about how generic cable sucked, and then monster cable made your TV picture crystal clear, but the fact remains: bits either go through or not regardless where they travel: on commodity Ethernet cable, or on the most exclusive and expensive HDMI cable. If you don't get TV picture all distorted like satellite TV signal during heavy rain, your cheap HDMI cable works perfectly fine and your TV picture CANNOT possibly be made any better by expensive "monster" cables.

I can't wait to see what will happen when all consumer electronic components will start receiving digital A/V feeds over the air using wireless connections. I think all the high-end cable manufacturers need to start diversifying now and get busy with creating gold-plated wireless antennas costing $200 and up.