Dev - .net

Mono and Mozilla - Powerful Duo

Issam Elbaytam — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 20:26:00 GMT

Zac Bowling has a post about JavaScript 2.0 [ http://zacbowling.com/blog/2006/02/13/just-cuz/ ] In it he makes a powerful comment "Embedding mono into mozilla might be a solution worth looking into." I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately and I think it is something that both the mozilla and mono teams should pursue immediately. Mozilla has created a great multi-platform infrastructure that's taking the web by storm. However, the low level programming is not main-stream because it's C++ and the high-level XUL+JScript is not powerful enough. Adding mono into the mix would give XUL a set of compiled languages, multi-platform runtime and a huge set of usable class libraries. This mix would be a great answer to XAML. This would be the ultimate solution for true multiplatform applications that use the web infrastructure (NOT THE BROWSER) sensibly and deliver fast and rich client experience. I am not a huge fan of using the browser for web applications, i see the whole ASP.NET Atlas and AJAX in general as patches that try to make the browser into something it was never meant to do. XUL was a step in the right direction but it needs a lot more support from professional programming languages and environments.

ActiveReports usage on the web

Issam Elbaytam — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 05:17:00 GMT

ActiveReports report documents have a default title of “ActiveReports Document”. Many users do not change that default value and it ends up part of HTML and PDF exports. I used this bit of information to see how our customers use ActiveReports on the web. A simple google search for the string yielded 10 pages of results. In those results, some cool reports that are available on the web as example uses of our popular product. Cool.

Update and VS2k5 Installed

Issam Elbaytam — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 09:41:00 GMT

wow! it's a been such a long time since I blogged. Part of it is beging extremely busy and the other being extremely lazy :)

Anyway, I just finished downloading RTM images of VS2k5 and SS2k5. In preparation for this I had upgraded my laptop (Toshiba Portege M200) to 2GB RAM and 120GB Hard drive. I scrubbed it clean, installed WinXP Pro, the bare essentials (Edit Plus, Total Commander, Process Explorer, Zoom+, NetCaptor, FeedDemon). Then I installed VMWare Workstation. I allocated 60GB partition for Virtual Machines. I created a base VM with WinXP pro and the latest windows updates, I had it set up with 1GB RAM and 30GB virtual hard disk. Then I started spawning new VMs from this. I created a clone called junk: stays clean and is used for experiments and testing install scripts on a clean machine. I created another for Office2k3 and VS2k3, this is my main dev VM. I cloned that one too, for junk expriments. Now that I downloaded VS2k5 i cloned the base and installed O2k3 + VS2k5 + SS2k5 to create my new 2k5 dev VM. Everything went very smoothly and the VMs are fast enough for development.

I have a common HD partition called Stuff where I keep all my data files (outlook, OneNote, ...) all VMs have access to this partition through shared folders. So whichever VM i am using i can access my email, notes and files. In addition, i used TweakUI to redirect the Shell Folders from the OS VM hard drive to this common partition so anything i save to “My Documents“ ends up shared for all VMs.

Now I have 10 VMs for a variety of purposes. Demo VMs (VS6, VS2k3 and VS2k5). Dev VMs (same), Junk (same) and base. This will hopefully keep things clean and organized. I hate running different versions of VS / SS on the same machine, this allows me to completely isolate everything without having to reboot my machine to switch partitions. I can also play around with new software without impacting my main dev VMs.

Why not use Virtual PC instead? No reason really, i just like VMWare and have been using it for a while. Everyone else at the office uses Virtual PC and they like it. The same process can be followed with either of these products.

ActiveReports Trouble - We're here to help

Issam Elbaytam — Sun, 12 Jun 2005 15:50:00 GMT

MJC cannot figure out how to merge multiple reports, so he's frustrated it with it. It's actually simple, run the individual reports, then merge their page collections into a single report.

rpt1.Run();

rpt2.Run();

foreach(Page pg in rpt2.Document.Pages)

{

rpt1.Document.Pages.Insert(pg);

}

// now rpt1 is a merged report of rpt1 and rpt2.

Heading to TechEd tomorrow

Issam Elbaytam — Sun, 05 Jun 2005 00:19:00 GMT

Laptop is ready and loaded with demos.
Empty duffel bag, to collect junk :)
Have a nice dinner invitation from the VSM crew at Christini's which is an awesome Italian Restaurant, highly recommended.
Monday we have to get up early to set up the booth. It will be a very long and exciting day.

Stop by at Data Dynamics' booth if you're attending.

ActiveReports has a new fan :)

Issam Elbaytam — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 06:31:00 GMT

“the Drebin” likes ActiveReports 2.0 however, he has a couple of pet peeves

1. Licensing: i saw the email go through the internal list today and hopefully our excellent support crew will help him resolve the licensing issue. Many of the these licensing issues have to do with how the licenses file works in VS. I find the most helpful hint is to add a new report to the project and that helps recreate the licenses file with the new registered key and the rest of the reports get registered.

2. Control Copy/Paste: As far as pasting a control, we followed what MSAccess does, when pasting using the keyboard we default to 0,0 because keeping the original coords would put the control on top of its original copy confusuing users. However, pasting using the mouse (context menu) places the new control at the mouse coordinates.

3. re: the .Text property, part of this has to do with the property grid in VS, we had a feature in 2.0 list to add a simple multi-line string type editor for the text property, I'll have to check and see what happened with that.

Anyway, I am glad “the Derbin” likes ActiveReports, i get asked a lot, why should one buy ActiveReports when CR is or RS is “free”. And my answer is always, first, they are not free, second, give it a try and be the judge, download the eval and try a couple of reports and make sure it works for you before you commit to anything. ActiveReports is a report designer by developers for developers.

WinFX SDK for VS Beta 2 Released

Issam Elbaytam — Sun, 22 May 2005 15:08:00 GMT

I just downloaded the new WinFX SDK for VS Beta 2. I will install it tonight and start reviewing the changes. I've been spending quite some time with WinFX lately and it is exciting and daunting at the same time. It is remarkable the amount of work that went into it. However, IMHO they've exposed quite a bit of useless stuff (from a business apps point of view) The whole animation namespace and the 3D stuff is nice and everything but applies to select few graphics specialists. I honestly don't see how businesses will benefit from these two features. The good thing is that they also did an awesome job on the text formatting and document namespaces, I've always thought that's an area where WinSDK was very lacking.

Anyway, I'll be digging in over the next couple of months trying to wrap my head around all this stuff.

Crystal Reports bug bites Chris Wallace

Issam Elbaytam — Fri, 20 May 2005 13:37:00 GMT

Another Reason Crystal Reports Sucks

That's one thing that we avoid doing in ActiveReports. We leave database handling to the developer and simply pass the connection string and sql to the provider. We trust that our users know what they're doing and can talk to their database however they want.

ActiveReports for .NET 2.0 and SharpGraph 1.0

Issam Elbaytam — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 06:53:00 GMT

I've been silent lately because I am swamped with two major releases and starting two new projects. I cannot say anything about the new project except that they are VERY exciting :), so I'll mention the new releases..

Tomorrow (Friday April 15th) we release a major upgrade to ActiveReports for .NET and add a new product to our line. Both products have been long in development, qa and documentation. We've put a lot of effort to correct many issues with ActiveReports, this version is the most tested version we ever had. And we added a Chart control, made pdf vector image quality much better with EMF support and added IList data binding - a frequently requested feature-.

SharpGraph is a new product that will prove very competitive with existing charts on the market. I have big plans for this one :) This initial release is just to get us started, it supported all the popular chart types and has extensive styling options to make charts look awesome.

Make sure you download your evaluation copies from our web site - www.datadynamics.com

Debug vs Release Builds? How about both

Issam Elbaytam — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 03:18:00 GMT

Scott Hanselman provides a great tip on making use of debug symbols in a release build and still running applications at full speed.