Bit-cycling : Wireless

Surfing through my phone – Windows Vista and Windows Mobile

justsean — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 00:03:18 GMT

A long time ago when I worked on Windows XP, I worked on a project to add Bluetooth PAN support to Windows. At the time (March 2004), I wrote:

We also added Bluetooth Personal Area Networking (PAN) support. PAN is a Bluetooth profile that essentially creates a standard IP network over a Bluetooth connection. PAN support is the first step to enabling rich Bluetooth networking scenarios, which can be secured using the well-tested IP-based security standards (IPSec, 802.1x, etc.). Devices supporting the PAN profile are already on the market, and there should be many more in the coming year (demand it from your vendor!).

Well, it took a while (I didn’t quite demand it from my vendor), but I finally got a phone that supports Bluetooth PAN earlier this year, specifically, the HTC Hermes, or the AT&T 8525, as it’s known. It runs Windows Mobile 6.1 (I think it comes with 6.0, but I upgraded). I like this device because it has a full keyboard, as well as a touch screen, which is handy for use with the Live Search mapping software.

Windows Mobile 6 comes with an application called Internet Sharing, which enables the Internet pass-through. I’ll let you use one of the many instructional sites on the web to do it yourself. Side note: that article I linked to talks about how to use your phone as a “modem”, which is not strictly correct – there are two Bluetooth profiles, one that lets your phone look like a modem and one that makes it look like a network router. This technique sets up your phone to look like a router, which allows the full networking stack to come into play and is ultimately more efficient (plus you don’t need to dial into an ISP – you just use the phone’s Internet connection).

All of the UI I designed in Windows XP is unchanged in Windows Vista, which was nice for me, since I never used it in the real world on XP. It was clearly not an area that was invested in for Windows Vista, in part, I’m sure, due the fact that it was rarely useable at the time, since most people’s phones didn’t support it. As more and more phones start to support Bluetooth network passthrough, I expect it’ll get some cleanup and better integration into the rest of the experience.

I have to admit, I cringe a little when I look at that UI, but given the constraints I was under at the time, I’m not completely embarrassed by it. A lot of what I was doing, as the owner of the user experience, was attempting to build a usable experience on top of a technology that was overwhelmingly technical and complicated. I’m not sure I completely succeeded in this case, but I think it might have been much worse :).

Once connected, the experience using the passthrough is pretty smooth. It’s completely unnoticeable to any of the applications I use and with the AT&T 3G network (unlimited data plan required for this activity :), it’s slow, but very usable. I can surf, have Outlook sync’ing the background, and have a remote desktop connection open to a system at home without any real problems. I tend to use it at the airport or at a coffee shop when I don’t want to pay for Wi-Fi. It can suck battery life from the phone, so I try to keep usage limited unless I know I’m going somewhere where I can charge the phone – but I have gotten at least two hours out of a fully charged phone without fully draining the battery.

XP SP2 pictures (squeaky wheels?)

justsean — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 10:46:00 GMT

Shortly after my previous whining about Paul Thurrott not noticing the new wireless UI, he posted an updated review of the SP2 beta which had some glowing things to say about the wireless experience. Things like that are really great, not just for me, but for the whole team who worked on radically improving the wireless experience.

He also posted updated screenshots from Release Candidate 1 of SP2, in which you can see the new icons I rambled on about a little while back.

Where do icons come from?

justsean — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 01:23:00 GMT

One of the more interesting things I worked on during the past few months was the development of a new “wireless“ icon for Windows. I found it a fascinating process and I thought it would be illuminating to share what we go through. Icons are interesting...(read more)

Windows XP SP2 RC1 Preview

justsean — Sun, 21 Mar 2004 23:10:00 GMT

First, go get it: http://www.microsoft.com/SP2Preview (disclaimer -- this is beta code, don't install it on a production machine)

Now, what do you think? This has been an interesting ride for us. Six or seven months ago, SP2 was just another service pack -- bug fixes mostly, some targeted customer-driven design changes, sure, but mostly following the cardinal rule of a service pack: Thou Shalt Not Add Features. Service Packs are about improvements -- in stability, reliability, security, supportability... generally as many “-ity”'s as possible. Adding a feature as a rule does not help in that way. A new feature is another set of opportunities for reducing -itys. And besides, most of our enterprise customers don't like us to introduce features (unless, of course, its a feature that they specifically want) in a service pack. One of the goals is that a Service Pack should be a no-brainer install -- install it and everything is better. Adding features means that customers they need to evaluate those new features in the context of their deployment, and decide whether nor not they can support them, etc. etc. It's a big deal. So, by avoiding adding features, we help make it easier for a company to decide to deploy the service pack, and take advantage of the ity-improvements.

So, back six or seven months ago, a key decision was made: The built-in firewall was going to be on by default. This was a big deal. Lots of apps and in-box components were not tested with a firewall -- the assumption was “if the app didn't work, turn off the firewall“. Now that assumption could not be made. An amazing amount of end-to-end testing was put into a place in an amazingly short period of time. Key components were changed to be firewall aware, the firewall gained all new more prominent UI, and the game was on.

The on-by-default firewall put an interesting spin on things. SP2 was going to be a scenario-breaker. People were going to have to think very hard about how and when to install it. It was a big step for a service pack. But the state of the world demanded it. But, it was also an opportunity. Many teams had detailed plans for security changes in their components for Longhorn. Across the board, many of those plans were brought forward to Windows XP SP2. You can see the results of that by browsing the “changes to functionality” document.

Since I'm in the Networking UI arena, that's obviously what I care most about. There have been lots of changes, some obvious, some not-so-obvious. The firewall is an obvious one. The Network Experience team (the team I'm part of) was responsible for all of the changes to the firewall user experience and functionality. In other areas, we had a few security-related features that were already in the works to be released as add-ons -- we merged these into the SP2 release.

First, we tackled wireless networking from a security and usability standpoint. There was a complete redesign of the wireless connection UI. The security of the network you're connecting to is now much more prominent, and we do a much better job of ensuring that you can connect to secure networks easily (and that you're warned when you're connecting to non-secure networks). We also added a wizard that will help set up new home wireless networks securely (see the link off of the wireless connection UI). Finally, we added support for Wireless Provisioning Services, a new technology that lets hotspots deploy secure networks (today they're almost all deployed as “open“ networks, which lets anyone with a wireless card sniff your data out of the air).

We also added Bluetooth Personal Area Networking (PAN) support. PAN is a Bluetooth profile that essentially creates a standard IP network over a Bluetooth connection. PAN support is the first step to enabling rich Bluetooth networking scenarios, which can be secured using the well-tested IP-based security standards (IPSec, 802.1x, etc.). Devices supporting the PAN profile are already on the market, and there should be many more in the coming year (demand it from your vendor!).

We also made significant changes to the Network Setup Wizard. This wizard has a little bit of bad reputation. If you didn't pay attention while going through it, it could configure your computer in ways you might not have expected. This has made some web sites recommend avoiding the wizard, which is unfortunate, becaues the wizard is intended to help you to set up your computer to be a good citizen in home network -- for instance, it can enable file sharing (which is off by-default), including setting up the firewall so it actually works. It can set up your computer to be a gateway for other computers or to be a client of a gateway. Anyway, we changed several things to make sure that the default path is benign, and added support for the firewall, among many other things. We're quite proud of the new Network Setup Wizard (I had wanted to add a version number, say “1.5” to let people know things had changed, but we ultimately decided against it).

It's an exciting time for us. SP2 is a big and important release, and we're looking forward to the feedback.

And about that Home Networking guide...

justsean — Wed, 28 Jan 2004 08:40:00 GMT

I'm still looking for some feedback on the Home Networking Guide. As I said below, my team shipped this tool a little while back. It helps users figure out what’s the best home network (hardware, media types, etc) for their environment, helps with purchasing, and installing the hardware.

I’d love to know what people think about it.

Download it here.

Or use it online here.

Some reviews

justsean — Fri, 09 Jan 2004 17:13:00 GMT

I’ll post more later, but for now, here are a couple reviews of Windows XP SP2 Beta, that discuss some of the new Wireless UI that I’ve been working on for the past year. Check them out at Ars Technica and SecurityPipeline.

Oh, and actually, I'm deeply hurt that Paul Thurott didn't notice any of the new wireless UI for his screenshot collection at the Windows Supersite.

Home Networking Guide

justsean — Fri, 09 Jan 2004 13:49:00 GMT

My team shipped an interesting tool a little while back. It helps users figure out what’s the best home network (hardware, media types, etc) for their environment, helps with purchasing, and installing the hardware.

It’s called the Home Networking Guide, and I’d love to know what people think about it:

Download it here.

There’s a web version of it, customized for Microsoft Hardware over here.

And introducing...

justsean — Fri, 09 Jan 2004 13:42:00 GMT

Alright, so I’m blogging. I’m Sean Lyndersay, and I’m a lead Program Manager on the Network Experience team in Windows (at Microsoft). What’s that mean? I don’t know either, but it sounds good, so I’m going to stick with it. Maybe I’ll explain it later. If anyone cares.

Anyway, I’m out here… trying out this blogging thing, seeing if it can be useful to me, and ultimately to you, the end-user. That’s right – I’m trying to get something useful out of this. Most people who blog seem to have something witty and intelligent to say to the world. Not me. I’m just here to see if this is a useful tool for getting in touch with people that it’s otherwise near impossible to have a dialog with.

You see, what I do is simultaneously one of the easiest and hardest (at least, imho, and, considering this is my blog, my opinion’s all that counts :) things to do in the world. I build UI. That’s “user interfaces.” Or, in the current lingo, I design “User Experiences” (short form: UX). Now, as a minor aside, I like the term “experience” because it does a great job of bringing together the intangibles of UI design, but since the release of Windows XP, the proliferation of the term “experience” (and in particular, it’s rarely-seen-outside-of-Microsoft plural form) comes dangerously close to the being another “Active-“, “Intelli-“, “Direct-“ or, more recently, “.Net”.

Back to my point (yes, I had one)… My goal is to build UI that I can be proud of. And that means UI that is “great” to everyone who uses it. Of course, that definition is completely arbitrary (and that is the topic of a completely separate entry). To do that, I need feedback, suggestions, and smacks on the head. I need people to say, “this sucks” or “that doesn’t suck”, or “what in heck is that supposed to mean?” and especially, “what were you thinking?”

So, with this blog, I’m going to try an experiment. A dialog, if you will (and yes, the pun is intended). I’m going to openly discuss the UI (specifically, the Networking UI) of Windows, starting with some new stuff we’ve introduced in the beta of Service Pack 2 for Windows XP.

If you reading this – first, I have no idea why you are, but thanks! – then, this is an opportunity to get involved. I hope this will be a great success and together, we can make sure Windows networking is “great” for you, and millions of other users.

Before I’m finished, since this is a litigious society, I’m going to include a little disclaimer. Come to think of it, I may attach to the page on the whole. I’ve borrowed it from the MS “wish” site, so it gets the point across, I think:

By offering suggestions through this page, you give Microsoft full permission to use them freely. We can't guarantee we will use your suggestions, but we will review them for use in future products. Due to the volume and variety of suggestions, we can't provide compensation or personal responses to each suggestion.

So there.

But seriously, I’m not out here to steal people’s ideas. I’m out here to make Windows better for everyone who uses it. If you have an idea you don’t want me to know about it – don’t post it.

Sean