Dave Massy's Blog

IE8 Released

DMassy — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:36:00 GMT

Congrats to my old team on shipping IE8. Although my IE focused days are behind me it's great to see the team has put out such a great version. The security improvements and commitment to web standards stand out as major achievements along with performance, reliability, dev tools etc. There's always more work to be done but the team knows that and they mention some of that in the team blog post.

I know from experience how much work goes into a major release like this. It's no small achievement. Well done IE team.

Thanks
-Dave

Moving to Embedded Standard

DMassy — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 01:45:00 GMT

One of the people I share an office with (yes I share an office with a couple of others as we have a space crunch but the office does have plenty of windows) - Luca Amapane, has just had a paper published on www.WindowsForDevices.com on Migrating Windows XP Embedded to Windows Embedded Standard 2009
Windows Embedded Standard 2009 is the name for the updated XPe operating system bringing together a number of updates to XP embedded. If you are currently using XP Embedded then you should take a look at moving to WES 2009 and this paper should help.

Moving to Win7

DMassy — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:54:00 GMT

It’s time I started blogging here again on a more regular and frequent basis.

I’m working on Windows Embedded, which is the embedded version of desktop Windows. This is not the same as Windows CE which is targeted at smaller devices of different architectures although the products are part of the same business division here at Microsoft. This page on Microsoft.com helps describe the family of Embedded products. Windows Embedded Standard 2009 is the current product offering from the team I work on and is based on Windows XP.

One site that is interesting to watch is www.windowsfordevices.com which comes up with some fascinating devices that use Windows Embedded. Another useful bog is the team one at http://blogs.msdn.com/embedded/

As announced last November the next version of the product is codenamed Quebec and will be based on the Win7 codebase. There’s a pretty good presentation on Quebec on Channel 9 given by my boss Shabnam at the PDC last year. When I joined the team last year we were working on a Vista based version of the product but quickly moved to base the product on Windows 7 so that we are more aligned with the current offering of desktop Windows on which we are based. I’ve been playing with Win7 and am excited to see this product ship.

If you want to learn about Win7 then the Engineering Windows 7 blog is a great read and if you like online talks the PDC sessions are online. There’s some great stuff there on things such as Direct2D, Power management etc. that are all going to go towards the success of Windows 7.

So what am I doing on this Win7 based embedded product? I’m working on an area called componentization where we are packaging up the parts of the Windows OS into functional chunks that someone might choose to use in their embedded image. One of the challenges with that is that we want to make sure we don’t have so many packages that it is confusing for someone to build an image that is functional but at the same time we want to ensure that the packages aren’t so big that they incorporate functionality that is not necessary in a customer’s image. If the package has unnecessary functionality in it then that may lead to a much larger image and therefore larger hardware requirements than are truly required. It may also lead to larger surface area for attack which from a security perspective is undesirable.

The embedded device area is very broad covering a lot of different device categories. I think that’s only going to continue to grow as people expect more of the devices in their lives to be connected.

Back from Tech-Ed

DMassy — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:21:00 GMT

Tech-Ed continues this week with "IT Week". Last week was "Dev Week". I'm back in redmond now after being at dev week in Orlando. If you are at Tech-Ed this week then drop by the Windows Embedded area, learn more about the products and give the team members there some feedback.

Tech-Ed was fun and it was great to meet some customers. Tech-Ed isn't normally the event to see Windows Embedded though so at times the number of people visiting our booth was a little low. Mike Hall has a good post on last week at Tech Ed on his blog. It's a pretty good summary and highlights the challenges of reaching the right audience with the right content. There's a lot of potential for smart connected devices running Windows Embedded so how do we best reach the customers interested in this area?

Windows Embedded spotted in the wild.
As I was flying back from Orlando through Chicago I was waiting for my flight when I spotted Windows Embedded in use. Each of the gates for United Airlines has a couple of big flat screen monitors in front of them where you can see what position you are on standby for the next flight. Strapped behind each of these screens is a Wyse thin client. It's difficult to be sure that it was running WIndows Embedded but the display looked extremely close to IE (having worked on IE for so long I recognise some of the subtle characteristics) running on Windows Embedded.

Now I'm back in redmond I should get some real work done :)

Windows Embedded at tech-ed

DMassy — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:03:00 GMT

I'm back working at Microsoft. I'm no longer on the IE team but working on Windows Embedded. It's a different area and a lot of fun.

I'm at tech-ed this week in Orlando. If you are there then drop by the Windows Embedded booth in the Technical Learning Center (TLC).

It's good to be back at Microsoft. I'm no longer the "IE guy", a label I wore for many years. That team is doing a great job with IE8 though :)

Windows Embedded Standard is a new area for me powering all sorts of devices such as cash registers, gaming machines, multifunction printers, medical scanners, etc. It's an exciting space with lots of potential.

Thanks
-Dave

Zones, Testing and Dave

DMassy — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 16:57:00 GMT

I just made a post on the IE Team blog regarding Zones and Mark of The Web. It's always a good idea to test with default settings and run pages in the internet zone if that is where they will be deployed so that you experience what users will experience.

As noted on that post I'm leaving Microsoft after eleven years. It has been a difficult decision to leave a place that has been part of my life for so long but some things can't and probably should not last forever. My reasons for leaving are personal as it is time for me to make a few changes in my life. I wish the IE team all the best and I'm looking forward to seeing the next versions of IE.

Thanks to everyone both inside and outside Microsoft for some great times
-Dave

IE Developer Toolbar Beta 3

DMassy — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 03:55:00 GMT

We just released beta 3 of the developer toolbar. Key changes are outlined in this post on the team blog.

There's still lots more work to do in this area we know, but the style tracer functionality is really sweet!

Thanks
-Dave

What's in a name?

DMassy — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 23:22:00 GMT

There's a little debate going on in the WebAPI working group at the W3C about the naming of some methods.

The proposed names in the Selectors API spec include match() and matchAll(). Feedback was given to the WG that this was a too generic and it would be better to have descriptive names such as getElementBySelector/getElementsBySelector that follow the names of existing DOM functions of getElement(s)By*. This was met with initial resistance and there's certainly a good argument for keeping names short. However having consistency of naming and having the name describe the functionality is something we believe is important.
Many tools now offer auto-complete and developers may type "get" and see a drop-down of available methods on the object that start with those letters. Experienced web developers may not use those development techniques but an increasing number of less experienced developers for whom speed of development is essential do use these tools to help them find the functionality they are looking for. Consistent naming helps deliver a better developer experience. We all know that developers rarely look at the API documentation in the same way that I only get around to looking at the instruction manual for a new gadget if I'm completely at a loss for how the thing works.

It looks like public feedback at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapi/2006Dec/ and on Anne's post would agree that a descriptive name is important. Although there are certainly people who want to save themselves a few keystrokes as well and would be happy calling something foo().

Of course as has been pointed out we haven't been super consistent in the past around naming. However the argument that we haven't been consistent or good about names in the past is a poor reason for failing to try to be consistent in the future. There is probably not such thing as the perfect name but we should at least strive for the best we can come up with.

Thanks
-Dave

Strange things Web Sites do!

DMassy — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 19:58:00 GMT

I'm going to start making occasional posts when I find a website that is doing something particularly bizarre although I won't name the specific websites in question.

Yesterday I decided to send some feedback to a local radio station about the lack of decent coverage of the recent storms in the Northwest which meant that many of us were isolated without power, phone, internet etc. So I went to their website which appeared to be quite professional and found a "contact us" page where I clicked on the appropriate email address. Nothing happened. At this point I realised that the email address wasn't text but an image!
The only reason I can think that they went to the trouble of creating images of text is to avoid spam. I guess that's a creative solution to the spam problem but it make it more difficult for people to give them feedback and leaves those using screen readers with no solution for contacting them at all. Accessibility is really important for websites and is something that every web master should consider! I'd expect a radio station of all things to want to be accessible to the visually impaired.
Naturally I typed in the email address and sent them feedback on this as well as the poor news coverage of the storm.

Have you seen something really strange/bad that a website is doing?

-Dave

P.S. The website concerned has promised to fix the problem.

VPC to run IE6 and IE7 on the same machine

DMassy — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 04:01:00 GMT

Great news at http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/11/30/ie6-and-ie7-running-on-a-single-machine.aspx

There is now a Virtual PC image available for XP SP2 with IE6 for free so you can run IE7 and IE6 on the same machine without any need to buy an additional Windows license.

Fabulous!

Thanks
-Dave

Meet more of the team

DMassy — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 22:49:00 GMT

All four of the Channel 9 videos where I take the camera on a tour of the team are now avaialble.

Part 1 - I talk for too long about IE7 adn then we walk the hallways adn met random members of the team.
Part 2 - We chat to Max Stevens on User Experience.
Part 3 - A few of the RSS team discuss the new functionality in IE7 and the RSS platform for Windows.
Part 4 - We discuss networking with Eric Lawrence creator of Fiddler and Katya Sedova. This is a great in depth discussion. In chats with Eric it seems I always learn something new. At the end Pete LePage discusses the forthcomign contest for writing extensions to IE.

We had a lot of fun making this video. You may notice I change my shirt after the first video. That's because the battery on the camera died so Charles had to come back again on another day. It's a nice camera though, all hard disk and no tape.

Thanks
-Dave

IE7 Released. Meet a few of the team!

DMassy — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 02:51:00 GMT

We've released www.microsoft.com/windows/ie

It's a product that all of us are justifiably proud of.

A video of me giving a tour meeting a few of the IE team is live on Channel 9 There are a couple more videos that will be available in the coming days. I talk for far too long at the start of this video but it was great fun to lead Charles around with the Channel 9 camera.

Thanks
-Dave

IE7 - It's Getting Close!

DMassy — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 01:36:00 GMT

As you can see from the post on the IE team blog IE7 is headed for final release shortly. It's fun reading some of the comments on the team blog. Clearly some people didn't actually bother to read the post or follow the links to the resources for more information!

I believe IE7 is going to be a great release. Great for Security, Great for User Experience and a Great step forward for Web Developers. We've had plenty of previews over the last year or so to allow web sites to prepare for the release. In fixing some of the issues with IE6 we have changed in a few areas how pages using the strict doctype render which means that pages relying on the incorrect behavior in IE6 may need to be updated to work in IE7. The changes made under the strict doctype make for a more consistent set of CSS functionality that web developers can rely on.

Not only do you want to make sure your site works in IE7. There are a couple of things you can do to make your site work great with IE7 and give users a better overall experience.

RSS. If you have an RSS feed the make sure you expose an RSS link on your page so that people can discover and subscribe to it from IE7. If you don't expose a feed on your site then think about doing so as it is a great way to bring people back when you publish new content.
Open Search. If your site has a search feature then expose it so the IE7 browser can use it from the browser search box.

Get ready for IE7 now.

Thanks
-Dave

Ajaxian IE Podcast

DMassy — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 18:46:00 GMT

www.Ajaxian.com have just released podcast of an interview that Chris, Laurel and I gave a few months ago.

We've continued to do a lot of work on IE7 since then. I'm listening to the webcast at the moment and so far everything I've heard remains valid. If I notice anything we've said that has changed I'll post it here.

Thanks
-Dave

IE Developer Center Refresh

DMassy — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 20:02:00 GMT

We've just redesigned and refreshed the Developer Center for IE on MSDN. What do you think?

As always all feedback on documentation is appreciated. If you see something that is wrong please let us know so we can fix it.

Thanks
-Dave