Edward Ferron's WebLog

Is there a new guideline when designing Ux for 800x600?

2008-10-15T05:39:00Z

We really need to review this guideline, or did I already miss the wave of folks who think the guideline for designing for 800x600 resolution is getting a bit outdated? More on my new blog at accelare.com - http://blogs.accelare.com/eferron

Thoughts?

New Blog - Accelare.com

2008-08-07T20:37:00Z

It has been forever since I posted a new blog post. Primarily because I have swtich jobs (left Microsoft). Microsoft is a GREAT place to work with great people, however I had another really good opportunity, that I did not want to let pass by. Always a tough choice when you have two really great paths to pick from; so I have been on to my new adventure, we will see what the future holds.

Never the less I am posting over on my new blog at http://blogs.accelare.com/eferron now my thoughts on cloud computing and other interesting technology trends and challenges. I will miss posting on community server, because I think it is a really good platform, so I am going to give WordPress a try.

What have a I been up to the past few months? Helping my new company with getting their infrastructure updated and new infrastructure deployed including HyperV and Windows Server 2008 and rebranding and building the new www.accelare.com web site using Windows SharePoint Services. Deploying WordPress was also a fun expreience because it gave me my first introduction to installing and configuring a MySQL instance (not rocket science, but fun never the less). In addition I deploying and configured the FastCGI support for IIS and deploying Wordpress to host our new blog site.

In addition to internal infrastructure I help make sure the bills are paid by helping a few customers set strategy, architecture and deploy some custom applications, enterprise search, and intranet sites on top of the MOSS platform, so while SUPER busy it is fun balancing out the technical direction, strategy work with some implementation work again.

Until next time, take care of yourself!

ADOBE - Illustrator, Fireworks and Photoshop

2007-10-31T15:26:00Z

Can someone give me a brief explanation of the differences between these 3 programs and when I would want to use one over the other (maybe of an example of when I would use Fireworks versus Illustrator or Photoshop). I see the master collection contains all 3 image editing applications.

Fireworks was once a part of Macromedia correct? Will these programs ever merge?

Thanks,

Spiderman3 + A 6 year old boy = Bluray DVD the clear winner

2007-10-31T04:21:00Z

I finally selected a winner for my for my first HD DVD format. However the first generation Sony Player is terrible from a consumer experience.

I get home with the Blu-ray player underneath my arm from BestBuy and the Spider-man 3 title in hand, tonight all ready to get started. Plug in the power and remove the HDMI DVD player already hooked up, insert the video, wait a very long time (maybe 90 seconds, before anything happens) and the move won’t play. About 30 minutes of scratching my head with an impatient kid behind me and a bowl of popcorn getting colder, I search the web with little help, I blindly stumble across a firmware update. <groan>. I mean come on the Sony BluRay generation DVD is a terrible consumer experience.

I have to have burnable DVD, I scramble to find one download the update, insert it into my DVD player (nothing on the screen just some very cryptic messages flashing across the LCD display). A very long wait when you don’t know what to expect at least 7-9 minutes before it completed (maybe a little longer). Then it powered down. L I turned it back on waited at least another 2 minutes for anything to happen, I am very patient. Finally the thing says loading…. (good grief)

About another full minute and the title appears. It looks great, my kid is on the couch behind me as I sigh in relief because finally after a little of an hour of just trying to play a DVD, I look back and my kid is sound asleep, and here I am telling you the Blu-ray is the way to go just because of Spiderman and my boy. Well it looks like this will be a Thursday night movie, you know Wednesday night is Bible study night.

The games we play…. L

Good night all.

(side note: I will be taking back the Sony BDP-S1 model back tommorrow for a updated model of the Sony Player)

Is your company still trying to figure out Collaboration?

2007-09-21T16:12:17Z

I hear this a lot from IT organizations these days, companies trying to figure out a collaboration strategy. In many cases companies are reacting to a community who has latched on to a set of tools that enable them to share information, and communicate effectively, outside of IT. The worst offender in this space by far is Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), Notes databases.

Governance is a big problem in most organizations, due to the fact that governance by definition means the exercise of authority or control. This is a sure fire way for your collaboration strategy to fail, and you will send your user base running to the next tool, in most cases it will be one you didn't provide or approve in the organization.

People do not need or want to be told how to form and maintain relationships and no two relationships are the same. How to did I jump from collaboration to relationships? When two or more people collaborate they are forming a relationship on how to best work with each other, that essentially what collaboration is all about, the tools are just another form of communication and sharing information in the relationship. Who wants corporate IT controlling all of your work and team relationships? This is why the approach of governance for collaboration is flawed, yes even tool governance. I understand we need to protect information, and make sure that it is easy to find, manage and report, however controlling how people interact and exchange information will almost guarantee failure or a lot of work put into a document that will be stored somewhere on your corporate network that does not get effectively enforced.

So for purposes of this blog entry we are redefining governance in order to help you be successful. However keep in mind the golden rule, "Governance does not equal control". Governance here will refer to a set of policies consisting of the following principals.

1) Automation - "Workflow/Approval are things to which I see benefit as an end user" I have two words, "self-service". My team and I know exactly who is in the chain of command and when things needed to be approved and reviewed. I have no desire to wait for 2 days (or even 2 minutes) to communicate that to the workflow guru outside of my team and wait for a workflow to setup. If this looks like a solution you have in place today, then you will understand one of the many reasons, e-mail is being used a your primary workflow tool today. Users will avoid you, your policy and solution you put in place if I do not have the ability to do it myself. Allow your users to provision workflow, and team sites. You have the ability to automate monitoring reporting solutions, to alert you when things are out of compliance.

2) Transparency - "Policy should not get in the way of me communicating with my team or the people I work with". Implementing new tools, rules, and extra steps in which I do not see any benefit will cause your policy to fail. Implementing just two additional steps and latency into my stream of communication, like launching another application, filling out a special form and waiting for more than 2 minutes will send your users running the other way. If I cannot upload my document to an area that automatically encrypts the document, or tag it with certain metadata for the search engine and reporting tools, then no need in asking me to do it.

3) Education - "Informed people are happy people" Helping people to understand why certain information must be protected and stored in certain places and the importance to the company, will yield incredible benefits to people working together as a community. Communities want to make sure the environment is safe and in compliance, however If I do not understand why a particular policy is so important I am not likely to help enforce it. Education has to be ongoing, create a 20 minute video, place it on your intranet and require employees to view it as part some yearly training, just to remind people of the important of certain policies and how they can participate in helping to keep company and customer information safe and secure.

4) Operations - "A good operations plan allows IT to shine" Now we are back in our element as IT professionals, when it comes to operations. Here is where you are deemed the hero, savings time, money and hours of frustration. Implementing a great backup and recovery plan, an approachable solution that allows for self-service, good reporting, monitoring and an enterprise search strategy, is where all it all comes together. As much as we, "the industry", preach about meta-data repositories and organization information, today we have a mess on our hands. Information is everywhere, structured and unstructured data. Having a solid enterprise strategy in place so people can navigate the sea of information out there is vital to your collaboration strategy. It is important not only to enable relationships (collaborations), but also for me to find new relationships as well as information. I could have given enterprise search it's own line item, but it is really part of the operations story because the community has no visible role in building enterprise search, it should be transparent.

No of course we have guidance on when to use a file share versus a team site or the enterprise content management solution. Create a nice diagram or cartoon that illustrates this to your users and have them appear in the top corner of your intranet front page (users love non-technical illustrations), or make it part of the productivity tips in your monthly newsletter that goes out over e-mail. You are not alone, bring in the tool vendors and have them host lunch and learn, tips and tricks sessions. Your vendor has seen many implementations of the tools at organizations trying to solve the same problems you are.

In conclusion don't forget the golden rule.

Live.com, Silverlight and PopFly are top notch!

2007-05-22T17:52:00Z

Google seems to continue to have the a clear advantage in advertising over Microsoft and the Live.com initiative. However have you ever used Live.com to search for images? Our image search functionality makes Google image search just look silly. The scratch ability and smart views are amazing features and very useful for people like me always looking for images to reuse.

Go and view the video for Popfly and creating mashups, this one of the most amazing technologies I have seen to date for creating mashups. Sorry Yahoo, I like your stuff but Popfly is just over the top simple, powerful and useful right away. Don't get me wrong I am not just drinkning the kool aid, but you have to credit where it is due. Now if we (Microsoft) can turn all of this great technology into market share it would be great. Oh yes, I almost forgot I am very bullish on Silverlight as well. The interactive nature combined with XAML I think will be game changing, as more tools start to use XAML, I think the future of actionscript may be in question.

As always your thoughts and comments are welcome, but before you start a flame war take a few minutes and go try live.com image search and play with a few features.

View the intro video to Popfly here (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=91175).

Why is the BlackBerry better than Windows Mobile?

2007-04-25T14:09:00Z

This is a serious question, not a product war. I am not a Blackberry (BB) user so I really don't know. For enterprise customers with Exchange, why would you pick a BB as your corporate standard over Exchange? In addition for enterprise customers, why do consumers seem to flock to the BB as well? I am really interested in your thoughts as to why the BB is better than Windows Mobile.

Thanks,

Vista Haters?

2007-04-20T03:02:00Z

OK, I have to admit my least favorite thing to do ever is upgrade to a new OS. Especially given the guidance of never do an upgrade instead for you to do a clean install. Getting my machine just the way I want it which often takes months. Most people aquire software over time (lots of time) and getting things configured just the way you want including finding the right antivirus solution I have been thru all the major players from Mcafee, Symantec, CA, ZoneAlarm and yes even OneCare (which I happen to like because it seems to stay out of the way), I just hate the ideas of having to start from scratch with my system to do an upgrade because you are never sure what bad software will be left behind.

I have been running Vista at work on my laptops since beta 2 and the experience varied, however I also own an iMac which I primarily have run Windows XP Service Pack 2 with Office 2007 and a ton of development and other productivity tools from Adobe Creative Suite to Visual Studio. I just did not want to take the plunge of wiping my iMac to install Vista, XP was working like a charm. I did start to miss some of the features I got from Vista at work. So I said to myself let's try the upgrade (yes the Upgrade, not a clean wipe). I booted in OS X, downloaded bootcamp 1.2 updated my firmware really easy and painless. Booted back in XP stuck in my Vista Ultimate CD and selected upgrade. A few hours (a little over 2hrs), the machine came up, I ran thru tested a ton of stuff from Adobe Flash 8, Swish Max, Visual Studio (required a service pack) and Office 2007 a few programs asked me to re-register like Flash and SwishMax (very painless). It has been 4 days now and under heavy usage, and coding stress and everything just works.

I just went to print a document and noticed my HP Wireless printer was missing. I was thinking I would have to go out to HP download the drivers and configure it because it is connected to my wireless network like I did in XP, but nope. I selected "Find Wireless Printer" and less than 30 seconds later my document was printing.

Why is this worth a blog posting? One, I did an upgrade and kept pretty much all my old applications and configuration! I know I should expect this stuff to work, but to be honest I was fully expecting to be forced to wipe my HDD clean followed by the nightmare of device driver hunter, and troubleshooting for next two weeks. Then start the long process of reinstalling applications, tools and utlities.

It just works! Very nice!

Now why am I running an iMac? 24' monitor no tower to run wires from, dual core, 64 bit kick butt piece of hardware! And Yes, Vista kicks butt on my iMac, and yes, I use OS X, but I must say I prefer Vista any day. Now my iPod is a different story iTunes rocks, I just wish they could get more of my favorite TV shows like Family Guy, House and Boston Legal.

** Oh yea I had to update iTunes (no biggie life still goes on). I want to see the next version of Apple's OS, but it seems like the are busy getting the iPhone out (not interested), Windows Mobile 5/6 is a killer OS.

Will Microsoft scale or perform for my line of business app or my mission critical app?

2006-11-24T18:50:00Z

I hear this question still today a lot from several customers, when looking at using Microsoft technologies like SQL Server, IIS or Windows Server for building their line of business application and some applications that are really mission critical. Let's look at question from a few angles.

It would seem like every application being developed today is mission critical according to the ones who are developing the application. When teams talk about mission critical they often times suggest the application is also big and complex. Mission critical does not equal complex or hard. Just because the application is important (or mission critical), this does mean that the applications workload is large, the business logic comples, or the application is CPU or IO intensive.

Most of us who have evaluated or worked with Microsoft server technologies are used to working with 32 bit code, where even then most of the apps you are building scale just fine. Keep in mind today's world and the next generation is all about multi-core, and 64 bit code and the product teams are fully exploiting this capability in products like SQL Server, Windows Server, Exchange and other related server products. This means your code gains a tremendous boost in performance for both concurrent users, memory and cpu intensive workloads.

In general unless you are developing an application that is designed to handle hundreds of thousands of users and some serious memory and/or cpu intensive scenarios, then this question is a waste of your time. If your organization allows you to use Microsoft server technologies and it makes sense for your project from a cost, and supportability point of view, focus on more important things like actual project requirements, then worrying about if 64 bit SQL Server in a dual core multi CPU server is scalable (trust me you are worried about the wrong thing in most cases). The question is more about how you are going architect your deployment versus can the server technology handle your workload.

Someone may attempt to make the following argument; I am creating a public facing web site with millions of users can Windows Server technologies scale to meet my public facing web site requirements. One response for that question (microsoft.com; msdn.com; live.com; msn.com; msnbc.com; to name a few). If you are building a bigger more complex site than anyone of these then maybe the question is worth your time, otherwise let's work together to figure out the approriate deployment of Microsoft server technologies.

Happy Coding..

How to manage Windows SharePoint Services 2003 (WSS)

2006-10-18T14:18:00Z

The number one question I get from IT departments is, how do I manage all the WSS sites popping up in my organization?

There seems to be a lot of frustration because many customers have not been in able to get a ahead of the WSS team site sprawl and manage the solution correctly. At best most IT shops throw some SAN storage and backup solutions behind it so the business does not hammer them for not being able to manage the size, and capacity or so they do not lose business critical documents. You and I both know this only a reaction to the problem and not a long standing solution.

The answer to the question, how do I manage this is really three fold:

Install SharePoint Portal server - No, this does not mean replace your current intranet or portal unless you want to do so. I can't express this point enough (keep reading for thoughts on the "portal" part of SharePoint in your organization).
Implement a management pack for monitoring like MOM's management pack (yes, I understand everyone is not running MOM, and customers may be running other vendor solutions for monitoring the enterprise; however in this scenario we are not talking about monitoring the enterprise, we are talking about about monitoring your WSS/SharePoint environment). Unless you have the knowledge to create a management pack in your vendors solution to properly monitor an enterprise deployment of WSS, then I would make the argument the cost of your time creating a custom solution is not worth the cost of just using the MOM management pack. This however is completely up to you.
Implement a process to integrate teaming sites in your organization (notice I did not say WSS sites, but teaming sites), by forming a group in your organization designed to address the subject of collaboration (not portals, instant messaging and document management, these are different topics by themselves). Collaboration crosses the boundaries of enterprise search, sharing information (such as documents), and connecting people with other people and resources in the organization. It is important to keep in mind this is about connecting people with the right resources, not just a variety of tools to manage documents or portals to display company annoucements and find phone numbers out of the directory).

The challenge with installing SharePoint for most companies is that the Microsoft team generally tries to sell it as "the corporate portal" and some customers are pushing back allowing WSS but not SharePoint because most of you already have an intranet or corporate portal that lacks the ability to create effective teaming sites (key words "effective teaming sites", I understand other tools have the ability to create team sites and they have had them for years). SharePoint does not have to be your company portal but it is a vital component in managing the ability to find information and for managing the WSS taxonomy.

Keep in a mind a teaming site needs to be as easy to create and manage as creating a spreadsheet or else your customers will not accept it (even if you train them). This is one of the things that makes WSS so popular among your users. I tell my customers all the time, don't fight against WSS because there is a demand but work with your customers to manage it before it gets out of control.

Comments are welcome.

Good luck,

Ed Ferron, ATS

Microsoft

Move over news.com engadget is the new cool.

2006-07-12T01:53:00Z

Yes, I already no engadget has been around for a long time now, and by no means should it be considered new. However they are a breath of fresh air from sites like C|Net's news.com who has held been one of the pillars of tech news (reviews and other related information) for so long time now.

I have to admit C|Net has improved by publishing content more often during the day now instead of acting like a newspaper when they just used to publish once a day. Also mobile.news.com is nice for viewing info on my PocketPC Phone.

Engadget does a little more than provide "standard" news, they keep a fresh look at trends to come. If you have never surfed engadget give em a look www.engadget.com. I think with a little new site lipstick engadget will become the news.com killer.

Focus Microsoft! Focus!

2006-07-07T15:57:00Z

I know Microsoft is large and has a lot of resources; I am pleading that we as a company can focus on something that would have more impact than creating another MP3 player. I am referring to our new strategy to take on the iPod (again) outlined on news.com. This just seems like a another distraction when we could be focusing more energy on competiting with companies who have a home and enterprise presence like Google. What does another MP3 player get us in the end? No need in telling me how Microsoft wants to be running the Windows OS everywhere. I would rather see us be more focused on being the next great service provider (** ahem ** think live.com services here). Services that span across lots of devices and appliacations running a diverse set of operating systems. We can have a greater impact on both the home computing and enterprise markets versus chasing the iPod.

My parents and most of my friends could really care less about buying a Windows powered MP3 player. It is kind of like really caring if your old walkman was from Sony or not.

It is time for Microsoft as a company to move on from focusing only on Windows and Office dominance to the next big thing, what ever the next big thing happens to be and stay focused on being the best in the business.

Note: Advertising is not the next big thing it is the current thing.

Where did Pat Helland go?

2006-07-07T03:06:00Z

Pat Helland where are you?

Ok Pat you kept audiences entertained and captivated for years with your songs and views on architecture and building big systems. Unless I have missed something we have not heard you weigh in on SOA, ESB's, AJAX, or any of the other industry buzz going on over the past few years.

It has been a long time since we heard anything from you. It is time for you to reclaim the pathelland.com domain and get it updated, with the work you have been doing since your days at Amazon (or where ever you are at these days). The world is interested to see how you have applied some of the concepts you talked about since you were at Microsoft.

If InfoPath is so great why isn’t everyone doing it?

2006-02-21T23:44:00Z

Perception is king, too bad it is often misled! If we take a minute to really examine the large majority of line of business applications that we spend time creating, deploying, and monitoring. Many of these applications are designed around the same core requirements which include providing your customer with the ability to capture, retrieve, edit and submit, data to an API, service or storage repository (i.e. a database or content management system). Think about the amount time, money and energy creating the most basic of applications, using technologies like .NET, Java, PowerBuilder VB6, etc.

This where I have spent a far amount of time recommending InfoPath to our customers, only to meet the same objections time and time again. InfoPath is just another technology I have deploy, and support on the client.

So, if InfoPath is so great, then why isn’t everyone using and deploying InfoPath solutions? The most common customer objection to using InfoPath is the requirement to deploy the InfoPath client. In order to fill out an offline form you have to install something on the client. The form requires a container, in other vendor solutions and even your custom solution to provide the common functionality we listed earlier (capture, retrieve, edit, submit). Let’s take a look at a few alternatives and discuss how InfoPath helps to solve the problem of the ever increasing number of applications your call center and IT teams need to support. Consider the following customer scenarios:

Customer “I need an offline solution for people to be able to fill out forms, validate user input and submit when they are back online.”

Response: “InfoPath would be a good solution for you to quickly deploy forms that can be submitted to a web service, database repository or SharePoint form library”

Customer “We are not going to use InfoPath it requires us to install a client on all of the workstations”

Response: “Let’s examine the other options”

Word/Excel:

· You have to deploy Word/Excel

· The data is not structured and form support in Word/Excel is very limited this is not the best solution for forms.

Build a "quick" app using a technology we already support (.NET/J2EE/PowerBuilder/VB6/Other):

· You have to deploy the app to the client

· You have to build your own shell (again)

· You have to come up with the format for exchanging data and write all the code to submit the data (again)

Purchase another solution like Macromedia or ADOBE eforms:

· You have the deploy the client (and make sure the version of the client installed is the one you intend to target

· You probably already own Office (at least in many corporate scenarios)

· .NET development are on par with Java development (we can argue but what’s the point)

· Integrating the data with other Office applications can be a challenge; InfoPath is part of Office so integration from the suite is very prescriptive

- and no everyone does not have the ADOBE reader (or even the same version already deployed).

We will just use the browser:

· Planning on doing any custom business rules you need to deploy the business rules.

· Planning on supporting anything besides Internet Explorer? You have to deploy the client.

· Scripting is a maintenance nightmare and provides poor support for debugging (especially remote debugging). How many offline browser applications exist today? I agree this is a great solution for online forms but offline forms have a number of challenges when hosted inside a browser for editing.

What about Groove?

· We think Groove is a great solution for offline forms just like we believe InfoPath is a great solution; however there are two challenges today before you determine Groove is the right answer for you:

· Today Groove uses its own form technology that existed before Microsoft acquired Groove Networks. This is yet another programming model you will need to support and it is not the strategic direction for the next release of Groove (2007). The next release of Groove will use the InfoPath form engine.

· You need to deploy the Groove client

The end point here is you are probably deploying to a Windows client, and in many scenarios there is a good chance you are running some version of Office on the client; especially for applications targeting internal users in the enterprise. I have not seen many good offline solutions that do not require at least a one time deployment of a client, to provides a rich management, deployment and a great end user experience for the enterprise. Keep in mind the alternative is to custom develop a solution, which often times lack many enterprise features for management, deployment debugging and security.

Using eForms in offline and online scenarios where I can leverage the capabilities of the client workstation, a tested shell that provides for a great out of the box user experience, XML file formats helps me to deliver value faster to my customers, while lowering the cost for development, deployment and maintenance.

For more information about InfoPath click here.

Additional Resources

FAQ’s for InfoPath

The "I wanna..." trap

2006-02-18T17:00:00Z

Here a few ommon "I wanna..." and "we need a..." statements I hear customers make in requesting a solution from IT or a vendor:

"We need a...Portal" - This does not mean they want SharePoint (or Oracle Portal or IBM Websphere portal).
"I wanna...Blackberry" - This does not mean they want a Blackberry!
"I wanna...iPod" - OK this may actual mean the buyer wants an iPod, but that is not the point I am trying to make here.

I used to live in a city where you would say I need a Coke, to communicate the fact you are thirsty. In most cases this had nothing to do with wanting a Coca-Cola, it was just another way of saying I want a soda.

Far too often I hear our customer make a request for portal and we (at MS) respond with SharePoint (v2) implementation, only to later find out the customer really wanted an enterprise search solution, simple web site or a content management solution. The other example is I would like to have a Blackberry, when all your customer wants is e-mail and calendar over the air, this could easily be a Windows Mobile device or another solution. Point being here is listen to all of what your customer is saying. When my wife says she wants to Google something that does not mean she wants Google, she just wants to find something on the web. Wow, the power of good branding, so wonder the marketing people get all the money.

Far too often we have not delivered the right solution because we do not take the time to listen before forming the answer we just deliver the brand. I know this is a bit of a rant but I think several people will agree it is true we fall into this trap far too often. Let's make sure we are delivering the right solution despite which company did the best job at marketing their brand (including Microsoft).