Sanjoy Sarkar's Blog

Silverlight - Top 10 Features

2007-05-04T08:38:00Z

With a compelling list of features and a full breadth of tools, Silverlight offers numerous possibilities that enable truly immersive experiences on the Web. Distinctive features that empower designers and developers include: Compelling Cross-Platform User Experiences Microsoft Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. The Silverlight runtime is a quick, easy download for...(read more)

Differences between Expression Web and Visual Web Developer Express

2007-03-01T20:29:00Z

Summary Expression Web is part of Microsoft's new Expression suite of products that bring a new, rich set of tools targeted at designers. Expression Web was specifically created to address the needs of web designers, unlike Visual Web Develop Express, part of the Visual Studio family, which addresses the needs of web developers. Although Expression Web shares a similar interface to Visual Web Developer express, this new tool offers powerful functionality that a designer desires when creating a web...(read more)

Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Web Development Learning Series

2007-02-05T11:36:00Z

The Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Web Development Learning Series has just been revamped with a new look and even more content. The new site includes the option to choose from over 80 learning modules – including 6 virtual labs, 28 on-demand sessions and 47 live webcasts. It’s a great resource to help Web developers already familiar with other languages, such as PHP, JSP, and ColdFusion, to extend their skill set to include ASP.NET 2.0. The content is not only focused on ASP.NET, but also includes: An opportunity...(read more)

Ordering Chardonnay (with ASP.NET AJAX)

2006-12-04T12:02:00Z

Wine.com has recently leveraged the power of ASP.NET AJAX to improve the user experience for customers visiting their site. One example is that by updating the shopping cart without a full page refresh, the process of adding new items to the cart is made seamless. By implementing this simple solution, the site has improved the overall User eXperience for buyers making online purchases.

A less obvious, subtle change is the description that appears when clicking on the icons associated with each wine (e.g. Professional Ratings). Rather than using an 'obtrusive' new browser window (which popup blockers may intially deny), definitions appear in a popup window directly on the page. If a user were forced to use a new browser window or tab, the focus on the original page could be lost resulting in a less than ideal UX.

ASP.NET AJAX makes it is easy to add these kind of improvments to your site. It would be interesting to analyze how many e-commerce sites incorporate AJAX functionality or are planning to use it in the near future. Out of curiosity, has anyone seen a site implement an address form that does an auto lookup on a zip code and automatically populate the city and state? (I don't recall who mentioned this idea, but I think it would be nice subtle feature:)

New Soccer Field for the Community - $407,000 (TSZ)

2006-09-15T11:25:00Z

One of my close friends from university continues his great work in Tanzania. His latest project involves raising $407,000 Shillings for a new soccer field (with an exchange rate of 1 USD = 1,330.00 TZS; after conversion it works out to just over $300 USD).

In Greg's own word:

"The field on which Miemgeni FC play their daily football scrimmages is, by Canadian standards, and to put it mildly, sub-standard. Dirt covers approximately 90% of the field; the non-dirt areas consist of thick knee-high brush that is more difficult to penetrate than Italy’s defence in the 2006 World Cup; the vegetation’s sharp barbs that painfully fall into shoes have temporarily incapacitated many an attacker; sizeable stones and pebbles litter parts of the field; water run-off during the rainy season has carved an uneven trench across the pitch. Despite these challenging conditions, a shortage of high quality football pitches in the area means that spirited matches take place on this rugged ground on a near-daily basis.

There is one final significant imperfection at the home ground of Miemgeni FC, and that is the lack of proper goals. Currently the team uses straight tree branches stuck into the ground, which are unfortunately an attractive source of firewood to those who lack respect for football: the team’s already substandard goals therefore often disappear. A picture of the football pitch and of the current goals (when the posts have not been taken for firewood) can be seen in the following pictures."

His blog posts are really funny and captures his day-to-day life there candidly- I'm hoping to help him redesign his website soon.

Vista – I like it…

2006-09-13T09:21:00Z

I’ve been using Vista for a couple of weeks and it’s definitely growing on me. I originally tried a build back in June and I found things didn’t work too well. The demos I tried, like extending a web app using sidebar gadgets was really cool, but I didn’t feel compelled to continue using the latest OS.

After RC1 was announced, I installed it again using a network install. The installation process was extremely quick and painless – within 1 hour I had a new system running Vista and Office 2007.

Where did it go?

I’m sure there were many usability studies conducted during the design of the new OS. Unfortunately, this leads to certain functions being difficult to find for someone using Windows XP for so many years.

For example, where did the “Run..” command go from the Start Menu? It took me a while to find it because it’s defaulted not to show. This probably makes sense for the majority of users – I’m sure many users, especially if you’re a new user, wouldn’t care to use that command.

What about “Add/Remove Programs”? I’ve been so conditioned to use Add/Remove Program I didn’t think about a possible name change – simply “Programs”. I tried to uninstall my fingerprint software (Lenovo software didn’t seem to work) when I came across this slight confusion. Taking a step back – this makes sense, but it’ll take some time to adjust when you’re use to looking at something a certain way.

Other than these two small quirks, the experience has been great. It’s a sleek look and a pleasure to use. Before I had a chance to try Vista, I wasn’t sure why someone would consider upgrading from Windows XP Professional to the new OS. After using it, I definitely feel the user experience has been improved significantly and it’s a worthwhile investment.

(It would be great if there was a “Windows XP” UI that could be applied.)

Upcoming Webcast: Building Better Web Applications Faster with ASP.NET 2.0 (Level 100)

2006-08-27T22:05:00Z

I have an upcoming webcast targetted towards a business audience about ASP.NET 2.0 . It'll will provide the general reasons for why you should use ASP.NET by covering the following aspects:

-Investigating developer productivity
-Exploring extensibility, scalability and reliability
-Discovering better user experience

It will take place on Thursday, August 31st, 2006, at 9:00 AM PST.

You can register and find more information for the event here.

Long Time Between Entries

2006-08-11T07:47:00Z

It's been a while since my first initial blog entry and hopefully it will be the last time such a long period of time passes before another one is added.

I've been busy becoming acclimated with my role and continuing to meet various people across different teams. There are many extremely talented individuals that work here and more importantly it’s been great interacting with every one of them. The number of different teams and the broad range of projects truly amaze me.

I’m excited about the work I have in the pipeline and can’t wait to deliver.

Blogging Newbie - First Entry

2006-05-01T23:29:00Z

An average of one new weblog is created every second of every day according to Technorati.com. So I guess during the completion of my first entry to the blogging world there will be another 180...

I'm starting my third week here at Microsoft and creating my first blog ever! I would like to start off by thanking Brian Goldfarb for giving me the opportunity to join the Web Platform and Tools Product Management team. It's interesting to note that I first contacted Brian through a job posting on his blog. I'm really excited about my new position and it looks like I'll be working with some awesome people (at least that's what it seems like so far :).

Previously, I was working in Deloitte's consulting practice located in Toronto, Ontario. It was my first full-time job after graduating from the Systems Engineering program at the University of Waterloo. Although I was not particularly 'academically-inclined', I was fortunate to enjoy a diverse set of co-op placements, including: Nortel in Raleigh, NC, a law firm in the Cayman Islands, and QUALCOMM in San Diego. During my work terms I was working primarily with web technologies and I decided to choose this position at Microsoft in order to return to web-related work.

I'm not exactly sure what I'll write about in future entries, but I definitely plan on making at least a few interesting posts.

Hmmm…I was wrong, according to the metric there were about 300 new weblogs.