So, I'm ramping up on XAML. In the smart client version of CMS, we'll allow the users to modify the content metadata on a two-column display (description on the left, text/check/combo box on the right). If the value is changed, a tooltip will show the...

Well, it's been a few months. I haven't forgotten you guys! Just been busy. Here's a recap: August Mark and I spent the end of August wrapping up work on CMS v2 (the internal Content Management System that coordinates everything that goes into the...

I made my way over to Gamefest was this week, a conference geared to game industry professionals (developers/testers/marketers). I was rather hoping that my manager would agree to cover it as a training expense, but that was a no-go. Fortunately, I was...

Every year, Microsoft schedules a weekend or the company picnic. I've never remembered to go before this year, so it was my first time there. Several dozen busses showed up at the campus, and ferried everyone to a huge field an hour away. They handed...

Just before I went on vacation, I picked up the Motorola Q , which runs Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone. Microsoft is working with Verizon Mobile to offer a pretty hefty employee discount, both on the hardware as well as the service plans. I downloaded...

Wow, it's been a month. Sorry for not posting recently, I was on vacation in Oregon for part of the time. There's a lot I want to blog about. So I'll be taking some time out today to compose several posts and schedule them to go out. Work/Life balance...

Today I went over to the conference center and watched a presentation put on by Dale Dougherty , Editor and Publisher of Make, and Phillip Torrone , Associate Editor of Make Magazine . It was a pretty interesting show. They had shirts and free magazines...

Yet another perk to working at Microsoft. :) I can't go into details, but I can say that I was "invited to a Beta of an upcoming System Update, the same one disclosed in Gamerscoreblog.com and other sites. The beta is not open to more participants...

Last week I attended a two-day course on performance engineering. It was really high-level, and covered a lot of common-sense items, but it was still rather interesting. It looks like the "free ride" of processor speed improvements is coming to an end...

I forgot to mention it last month, but the group I'm in now has a blog: the Microsoft Windows SDK Team Blog . It's giving the PMs the opportunity to chat with you guys, as well as point out efforts such as the Vista Developer Story , which details the...

The website that I coded has been holding up well; I'm still waiting for people to review the latest changes before I can roll them out. In the interim I've added a few feature requests, and spent most of my time studying. It's very nice to have the time...

Last week I was also invited to an Xbox roundtable, in which we got to ask the really tough questions to a bunch of Xbox 'softies ( Major Nelson , elle , and others). Now, none of us can talk about the answers, or even the questions asked (this is hush...

We won! It was a Swiss-style championship, 12 teams facing off with another team with a similar record for seven rounds. We started out with five wins in a row... the last two got tough. The sixth game was a tie with a very good team (neutral bomb assault...

Well, I had some personal problems to take care of late last week, and the PM told me to go home, not worry about our internal release dates, and to take care of them (again, awesome company to work for--work/life balance isn't just a slogan. For most...

Oy. It's been a crazy few weeks. First there was the big push to get everything done while the manager was out, and ready for an internal preview release. The website was fully functional, and had been for a week or so. I was planning to spend the...

Wow, it pains me to see this blog languishing. We're in crunch mode this week to release the first beta to our internal team to bash on. I'm having to work late for the first time since joining this team a few months ago (which is probably unusual here...

Hmmm, looks like a post disappeared earlier this month. Sorry! This week I've worked on the search page for the tool, which went pretty fast, as well as a lot of cleanup (such detection and resolution suggestions if ActiveX controls are not loaded...

One of the requirements of the submission application is to accept a list of steps that the user must do to either compile or run the tool or sample. Now, the old website supported this by presenting a series of single-line text boxes, with a button to...

I should be posting once a week at a minimum. Looks like I was away a bit longer than that, but I've been working on some fun stuff. :) Client Callbacks Last week I worked on the website quite a bit, wrapping it up so that it does database submissions...

Wow. You guys just may not like tooltips... Monday's post was the lowest read blog posting since I started 2+ weeks ago. Personally, I love tooltips. They provide a means of helping the user out with more detailed information, but don't use up valuable...

Today was fairly productive. I spent most of it bringing the data entry form up-to-speed with the input specification. I still have a lot to do tomorrow, but a lot of foundation has been set. I've fixed that bug in my tooltip code, so now I can share...

One of my most productive days yet! The file input window is finished, properly storing valid files in sessions, and I've started moving the main data entry form away from server-side MultiViews and autoPostback controls and back to old-school client...

Well, I came in expecting to work on the file-transfer code. Maaaybe tomorrow. First, I receeved an email from Melinda letting me know that a number of data entry fields were missing from my targeted specification. I verified this (I didn't realize...

I thought about not posting today, as I didn't come across any major problems in coding. I'll be getting to the code that does file transfer and unzipping soon, which may be interesting. I did send off the new specification that has just the data entry...

I decided to put the OpenFileNames wrapper on the back burner, and get actual progress done today. I fleshed out a bunch of javascript that allows users to type in multiple file names, or paste them from excel (column & row delimited parsed correctly...