In particular it fixes problems with using the installed source code for purchased version of the Suite. Previously the design time experience when using the compiled source code would fail. This has been resolved by having the source code compilation use a strong key and then automatically installing the newly built assemblies into the GAC. So now your projects can always use the GAC assemblies for your projects and the design time experience will be as expected.

Please download using the following direct link…

Download 4.1.6

Major Change
– Installed source code now compiles with strong key
– Installed source code build places assemblies into GAC

Bug fixes
– KryptonRibbon generated code was causing compile errors
– KryptonWorkspace load config was not adding created pages
– KryptonMonthCalendar weeks numbers were incorrect

Until now I have been using Subversion for my source code management. To avoid using the command line tools I also used VisualSVN and TortoiseSVN which provide an easier user interface for usage with Visual Studio and the Windows Explorer respectively.

After using this setup for some time I have decided that it sucks. I often wait a couple of weeks before checking in my latest batch of changes (yes, I know I should probably do this every day). You can bet that checking in will give some weird problem with an error message that is almost useful but not quite. Then you spend what feels like forever trying to work out the reason. And every time it turns out to be something different.

This is before mentioning the vast annoyance that is the overlay icons. The idea of the TortoiseSVN shell extension is that you get nice add/remove/unchanged style icon overlays when looking at your files. So you can easily see what has changed. Do they work? Not really. Most of the time they are correct but sometimes they are just plain wrong. I don’t like looking at the icons and knowing they might be lying to me.

So I’ve dumped Subversion. I know that some of you are going to point out you have used it with success for several years and the problem is the operator. You’re quite right but I am still dumping it and trying out something different.

Mercurial for Windows

The latest fad in source code control is the use of distributed systems such as Git, Mercurial and Bazaar. So I’ve jumped on the bandwagon and opted to give Mercurial a chance. The download at TortoiseHG comes with Mercurial and the TortoiseHG shell extensions in a single installer. I only started using it a few days ago but so far it has been very simple and easy to use. Even the icon overlays have been correct so far.

To get started yourself read this online introduction and download from here.

I have added by profile link on the sidebar of the blog so anyone that is interested in software development and business development should feel to ‘friend’ up.

After my throwback to the Victorian era I rebooted to discover my machine was now considered to be pirated. It would let you login but then it shows a blank desktop with a message saying that your copy of windows is not genuine. I can assure you that Krypton is developed on a fully legal copy of Windows. It only took 20 minutes to get the machine working again by moving to a previous restore point and no data was lost. So I recommend all developers in Australia have a nightly backup of all your important data and ensure you image the machine on a regular basis. Luckily I do both.

So I have just finished updating the site so that most people viewing using Windows will see the “Segoe UI” font. This might seem an odd choice but remember I am selling components to Windows developers and so the vast majority are going to be viewing the site from a Windows machine with that font installed. It falls back to using Tahoma if you do not have that font installed.

Let me know what you think of the latest update. If you could split your comments between the main site, the blog area and the forums area that would be good. Maybe you like some areas but not the others?

The actual content of the site is essentially unchanged at the moment. I intend to create new webcasts and new sets of images in the new few weeks as time allows. Let me know if you spot any teething problems such as broken links.

Billy is a 10 week old Galah (a Cockatoo native to Australia) that has been hand reared and so is completely tame. The Galah is a very good mimic and over time should be able to speak a variety of words. He can also live up to 40 years old and so looks like being a permanent member of the family.

LinkedIn Profile

Priority One
My number one priority is Krypton. My number two and number three priorities are also Krypton. Maybe I should have pointed out that it took about a year to go from playing with Silverlight/WPF to actually having the MetaPanel control up and working as it is today. As you can see, it was very much a low priority background activity. I have been and will continue to dedicate 5 days per week to Krypton. But where possible I will continue to play around and learn Silverlight/WPF and maybe from time to time a useful control will emerge from that effort.

Version 4.0 of Krypton has been a real milestone for me because it completes the initial roadmap I created when I first started Component Factory four years ago. My original goal was to create a docking  system. To create the docking system would require the Workspace component. But to create the Workspace I first needed the Navigator. Hence the order in which I created those components was the order of dependency to build up to the docking system itself.

Krypton 4.1
So what next for Krypton? The current development work is building towards version 4.1 and will include a few smaller changes rather than one big change. Already completed is the new Toolkit control KryptonGroupBox. I will be adding a Windows 7 palette, updating the ribbon so it can display like the Windows 7 ribbon and adding the usual raft of bug fixes. There might be extra changes on top of this depending on the actual timing of the release.

Krypton 4.X
So what is the next major component to be added? Actually I have no idea at the moment. Should it be gauge controls a tree control or maybe something completely new that no other vendor has? This is where your feedback comes into play. Maybe I should email out a survey to find out? Or maybe it should not be a major component but instead I should spend several months just adding another 10 unique palettes? I have no preference and am happy to work on whatever the market indicates is the most needed.

Here is a list of websites of my competition.
   ComponentOne
   DevExpress
   Infragistics

You should feel you can create graphics of the same standard as the competition using the fairly detailed spec that I will provide. The actual page content is of course provided by myself when the actual site pages are built out. Your main skill should be graphic design with some additional knowledge of HTML/CSS creation.

And how much will I pay? I think $2000 (USD) to complete the initial design would be about right. That equates to $40 an hour for 50 hours of work. I think that would definitely cover all the time needed as the initial design is just a single master page. I will then pay for additional pages to be built that vary from the master page. These would have extra graphics or special elements on the page and so need extra design work.

This project would suit a professional that wants to make some extra pocket money on a side project or maybe a freelancer that has some spare hours in the schedule. Just email me directly using the following address to put yourself forward.

phil.wright@componentfactory.com

Luckily for me I had read a blog post by Hanselman indicating that you should uninstall Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 before upgrading to Win7. So I did just that. Then I uninstalled the  C++ 2010 Redistributable which had been installed along with VS2010. Unluckily for me I did not read his post very carefully because it says you should reboot between the first uninstall and the second. Oh well, surely rebooting after uninstalling both would be fine?

I soon discovered the importance of that missed reboot when pretty much every application on my machine stopped working. All of them demanding a DLL that no longer exists. So I tried to reinstall the Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 hoping it would put back the missing file. Sadly this was not going to happen because even the installer refused to run without our now notorious DLL. Oh well, instead of an upgrade I would bite the bullet and just perform a clean install of Win7. Probably for the best anyway.

After several attempts to boot from my Win7 DVD I slapped my large forehead as I suddenly realized my mistake. I had simply copied all the Win7 files onto the DVD and so made it a data disc. I should have burnt the ISO directly to the disk so it was bootable. Oh well, easy enough to correct.

Installing Windows 7 is simple and surprisingly quick. I had my fresh OS up and running in around 30 minutes. My first task was to get connected to the inter-tubes and check for any updates or new drivers etc. But hang on, I cannot see the Internet or indeed my local network either. After much gnashing of teeth it turns out that no matter what I do the OS refuses to accept there is a relevant driver for my ethernet card. I’ve had a separate PCI Ethernet card for some months, ever since a power surge caused the two controllers provided on the motherboard to die. I’m guessing the cheap and cheerful card I am using is so cheap and cheerful that Windows 7 cannot bear to use it.

A quick trip down town and I manage to find a store that actually sells an Ethernet card. I also manage to pick up a nice looking Western Digital 1TB external hard drive. Obviously after all the weekend trauma I had to cheer myself up with a new toy. So I swap over the Ethernet controllers and bish bash bosh, its up and working. Great, now I can play with the new toy instead.

My motherboard comes with an eSata connection and so does the 1TB external drive. Given how slow my existing USB based external drive feels I’m really looking forward to some serious improvement. So I take out the cables that came with the 1TB drive and guess what? Yep, there is no eSata to eSata cable supplied. The drive has an eSata port and the computer has an eSata port but is there a cable that has eSata at both ends? No chance. So until I get a cable I’m still stuck with a slow USB connection between them.

Just when I see light at the end of the tunnel I meet the final obstacle. When installing the various applications I need for building Krypton I meet the dreaded, you must activate this product online, issue. And because my machine configuration has changed since I first installed those apps they refuse to activate. So now I have to email support people in order to get them to let me install the software. To their credit Innovasys were very quick and got my Help Studio 3 and Document X! apps up and running in a couple of hours.

Unfortunately my experience with PreEmptive in order to get Dotfuscator up and working is less impressive. I was awoken at 4am by a call from someone in Europe to ask about the problem. The caller even asked if I liked living in Australia so there is no excuse for not realizing I would be in bed! It is now 24 hours since I emailed their support and still have not been able to get it activated. Luckily I don’t need to build a release at the moment.

How do you enter the serial key?  How do I ensure the latest key is being used? How do I to handle licensing on a build machine? Why am I getting a license the first time my app starts on a new machine? 

Clearly the current mechanism is just not good enough. So I propose changing the licensing system for the next release to make it super easy for customers to enter the key and license their applications. But what system to use? Roll my own from scratch, modify the existing system or buy an commercial solution?

I’m looking for feedback on your experience with licensing systems to see if there is a good one that people would recommend. It must be able to support the following requirements…

• Work with a component library
• Easy customer entry of license keys
• Not validate against machine settings
• Not validate against a server

I get a fair number of questions from people that are confused because of the dependencies that exist. If you buy the Workspace you automatically get the Navigator. With Docking it will get more confusing because it will come with Workspace and Navigator because they are both dependencies of the Docking system. This confusion would be completely removed by having just the Krypton Suite which has everything provided.

Of course I would need to give all existing customers a free upgrade to the full Suite but I am sure those customers would be happy with the change! Any thoughts?

I’ve removed the twitter gadget from the blog sidebar and hope never to use the service again.

Twitter is dead to me.

To celebrate the release of Krypton Suite 3.5 we are offering a 25% sale on all prices for April. Combine this with our 60 day money back guarantee and you would be mad not to give Krypton a try out.

Use Krypton to build WinForms applications with the latest look and feel including the Office 2007 and Windows Media Player themes.

See our 25% off prices…
Prices Page

Download Krypton Suite…
KryptonSuite352.zip

Being from the UK I often read the BBC News website and spotted this graph that really puts it into perspective. It shows a comparison between the current downturn and the recessions in 1980 and 1990. Keep in mind these figures are for the UK only.

We can clearly see that the red line is marching downwards without any sign yet of turning. The recession is already much worse than that of the 1990’s and seems to be matching that of the 1980’s. Obviously no one knows when it will actually turn but lets assume it matches the 1980’s recession. In that case we can expect all of 2009 to consist of negative growth. Starting in 2010 we could see growth return but it would still take another two years for output to reach pre-recession levels.

If however, the red line keeps going past the 1980’s level then we can expect even more than 3 years before the economy is back in reasonably good shape. That means we will be telling our kids about the Great Recession.

But we need to take care before becoming as depressed as the economists. This recession is going to split people into two groups. If you’re laid off then things are going to be pretty rough for quite a long time. But remember that 90% of people will not lose their job. That means 90% of households are paying much lower interest rates of their mortgage and if you need to replace your car then now is the best time of your life. So most people will have the chance to emerge from the downturn in a much better financial position than when they entered it. I hope that that most of us fit into that category.

Download 3.5.2

Download 3.5.1

It seems that everyone is getting into a lather about the newly introduced Intel X25-M SSD. Although still expensive at $400 for 80GB ($800 for 160GB) it does at least solve the slow speed and low capacity complaints. But just how fast is this new bad boy?

Check out this video showing 24 x SSD in Raid 0 to see some pretty awesome desktop performance. On the down side 24 drives would set you back around $9,600. For a more realistic use of these drives Joel Spolsky has a blog entry about his attempt to use them for speeding up compile times on developer machines.

Give it another couple of years and my next development machine is definitely going to have a couple of SSD drives in Raid 0 for holding the OS and applications. Reserve those large terabyte spindles for storing pictures and videos of the family cat.

Take as an example the Ribbon control, a recent innovation that started out in Office 2007. This is a recent control and so there is really no excuse for getting it wrong. So how many implementations of the ribbon would you expect there to be? Let us count them…

1, Office 2007 has the original.
2, Windows 7 has a different implementation.
3, Visual C++ now has a ribbon MFC classes.
4, WPF has a version written in managed code.

No wonder they need 100,000 developers at Microsoft when they duplicate so much work. Although they did cheat with the Visual C++ version as they bought it from a component vendor. Versions 1, 2 and 3 all have different code bases even though they all use C++ for the core implementation. I will cut them some slack on the WPF version as it needs to be written in a managed language and not C++.

Now add into the mix all the different ribbon controls from venders, including myself, for Window Forms, WPF, Silverlight and C++ and you’re talking about a massive level of coding duplication. Still, keeps us all in work I suppose.

Seems like every developer I come across uses it and thinks its wonderful. I have doubts but you don’t know till you try. At this point in time I have a mere 6 people following me so I’m not sure that my tweets are providing much value to the world!

Follow Phil

This version includes date, time and calendar controls so that you can create line of business applications with a professional look and feel. The number of free controls/components in the Toolkit is now an impressive 41.

New features in 3.5 include…

KryptonDateTimePicker
KryptonMonthCalendar
DateTimePicker for KryptonRibbon
MonthCalendar for KryptonContextMenu
Per-KryptonPage ButtonSpecs
Many bug fixes (consult change lists)

Download 3.5

Download IE8

If you have ever moved house then you will know how much time and aggravation it entails. Luckily the process is almost done and the removal company arrives tomorrow to truck our meager possessions to the new place. Internet access will not be supplied at the new house until the middle of next week and so I will be ex-communicated from today until then.

I have started work on the KryptonMonthCalendar control and although the disruption has put me a couple of weeks behind schedule I will be back to full coding speed very soon!

Remember this is the same company that turned down a $47.5bn offer from Microsoft last January. I wonder if Jerry Yang still thinks that offer ‘undervalued the company’. This is where the problem of having the original founder as CEO really causes problems. Is he really thinking about getting the best value for shareholders? I don’t think so and I doubt he would have sold the company to Microsoft for any price. Not only because he hates the mother ship but also because he would lose control of his baby. Yahoo is his creation, his project, his ego trip and so he naturally wants to keep it independent and keep control over it. Once Yahoo is sold off he is no longer ‘the founder’ and ‘the special one’ inside Yahoo. Instead he becomes just another employee and that assumes that he would actually be kept on after a takeover.

His inability to think like a real CEO has cost the shareholders 10’s of billions of dollars. I believe he will keep driving the company to nowhere until the other execs finally push him aside and appoint someone that can bear to sell the company. Although I suspect anyone interested in Yahoo should just wait another year till the bottom of the recession is reached and then pick it up for a fraction of even the current share price.

I bet Steve Ballmer is thanking his lucky stars he managed to dodge this bullet.

“I’ll create a GUI interface using Visual Basic, see if I can track an IP address.”

Check it out for yourself CSI:New York Clip

Download 3.0.8

The theory goes something like this. Everybody in the team knows who the worst programmer is. They usually stand out like a sore thumb and so everyone is carefully watching his work. But because his work is so closely monitored it is also corrected before it impacts the code base. Sure, you end up losing time but you can mitigate the problem because you are aware of it.

Now think about your own team and you will no problems deciding who the worst is. But who is the next worst? Who is the one that nobody is watching but is still checking in poor quality code? Their code spreads like a web throughout the project and so ultimately they limit the quality of the whole teams work. While you are carefully monitoring Mr. Dunce you are blissfully unaware of the time bombs being planted by his prodigy.

So take a look around your office and decide who is wearing the dunce’s hat and then decide who the runner up is. If you come to conclusion that there is no weakest player in your outfit then I have bad news. In poker they have a saying “If you don’t know who the patsy is…” and I hope I don’t need to finish the quote for you.

I know I shouldn’t find it quite so fascinating but for some reason I do. Like watching a beautiful tornado just before it smacks you in the face. Just because you know it’s going to hurt doesn’t stop it looking amazing on the way in.

I’m sure I won’t find it so fascinating as I stand inline at the soup kitchen. But watching the stock market and governments panic is not an everyday sight. If the financial world is sinking like the Titanic then I might as well stand of deck and enjoy the view.

Actually I blame the The Daily Show and the The Colbert Report, they could make the end of days sound funny.

As many of you will already know I am going to be adding some Kryptonized date and calendar controls to the Toolkit for the next major release. I am doubtful that the Toolkit versions will have the same level of customization as the commercial version from VisualHint.

Update: Here is a link you should check out.

Krypton Roadmap
The immediate future for the Krypton Toolkit is to add some date/time related controls. In particular a standalone calendar control and a standalone datetimepicker plus a calendar element that can be used inside the KryptonContextMenu. A docking system will also be added that is provided as a commerical add-on and become part of the Krypton Suite product. I expect all this to be wrapped up as version 3.5 and to be delivered at the end of the year or not long after.

Further out will be version 4.0 and include more Toolkit controls such as a progress bar, track bar and scroll bars. Included will be improvements to the docking and workspace components. The initial release of the workspace and docking windows have a minimal feature set and so this release will build on those and add extra features. For example the Workspace needs a persistence mechanism as well as a maximized mode so users can concentrate on a single cell for a period of time. The due date for this would be around 3 or 4 months after version 4.0.

Release 4.0+ is not currently determined so I am open to feedback for deciding on the direction to take. I will be asking for feedback nearer the time and decide then if I should create a data grid, gauge controls etc. Maybe at this point we will see a Beta version of the next Office and Windows revisions and so that might throw up some requests.

Longer term I expect to keep improving and adding to the Krypton set of components, including the free Toolkit, for as long as there is demand for WinForms components. I expect this to be quite a few years into the future as many companies have invested heavily in WinForm applications and have no big need to switch over to something else. As a small company I can live on the niche position of being an active WinForm developer when other vendors have had to switch away because they have large teams to pay.

WPF Roadmap
There are two factors driving my WPF strategy. First is the current slow adoption of WPF for new projects and the second is the potential redundancy of any new controls that are created. The slow uptake means there is no panic to quickly create something just because your sales have disappeared. In fact my sales have steadily improved right from the first release. This means I can take a more measured approach and watch how the market shapes up before deciding on how to structure any offering.

How long will the WPF market last should it become the de facto standard for client applications? I would estimate that 10-15 years is not unreasonable as GDI has lasted much longer than that. To get the most bang for your buck you want to create components/controls that will be valuable and useful for that entire 10-15 years. Now if you look at all the vendors that have rushed out WPF Ribbon controls you can see that the effort was of little long term value. Microsoft have stated that they are creating a WPF Ribbon that should be released by the end of this year. Now unless the Microsoft version is really bad I imagine most developers would use the Microsoft version rather than pay for one. Given WPF is now the main focus for client apps at the Microsoft it means they will doubtless add additional controls over time.

My current thinking is that I will wait until around the middle of next year before starting any serious coding of WPF components. At that point I will concentrate on components that  provide long lasting value and minimize the chances of them becoming obsolete because of Microsoft. That might sound a hard proposition but I have several ideas for initial components that I think would be very handy for developers and are unlikely to ever come from Microsoft themselves.

Summary
I will be continuing development of Krypton for as long as there is demand for the WinForms components, which I anticipate being several years. Around the middle of next year I will start spending some of my time working on WPF but note that I will still be working on Krypton as well.

Obviously any strategy is subject to change depending on market conditions but this is my current thinking. I would be interesting in hearing your feedback. If you have any better ideas or see fundamental problems with this then don’t be afraid to speak up!

About the only concreate information we have is that Surface like functionality will be added to the OS and some of the standard apps, such as Paint, will have the Fluent UI (a.k.a Office 2007 style Ribbon).

All that is about to change with the upcoming PDC2008 that starts on the 28th October. If you are lucky enough to be attending the PDC then you will get a 160GB external USB hard drive with lots of goodies. One of those is going to be a pre-beta version of Windows 7. Assuming that the new OS does not actually require 160GB of space I assume there are plenty of other interesting bits of software included.

I hope that the PDC follows the same pattern as recent Microsoft conferences such as MIX where the sessions are recorded and then placed online. If not then I can always reply on the Krypton community to post me some screenshots of user interface innovations in the pipeline.

UPDATE:
You can see some Windows 7 screenshots on the web but I have no idea if they are geniune so you have to be careful what you believe.

The magic is making the site addictive by giving people badges and reputation points. It sounds crazy that a community of smart programmers would be energized by getting some badges/points. But it really does seem to work. I know because I find myself becoming drawn to the site several times a day!

The site has been coded by Jeff Atwood, of Coding Horror fame, with support from Joel Spolsky, of Joel on Software fame. With two high profile bloggers behind the site it was guaranteed to generate the one thing that any new community site needs, a decent number of initial visitors. Without a certain minimal level of activity on the site it would have died a long slow death. It will be interesting to watch the site over the next few months and see if it gradually gains traction or if the initial rush fades.

So the next time you need to solve a programming problem and are having a little trouble I recommend you give the site a go. With all those addicts desperate to gain more reputation points you’re bound to get some decent answers within a few minutes. Literally just a few minutes.

Don’t blame me if you become addicted and spend hours pressing refresh in hope of a question appearing that you can answer. I did warn you!

Release Highlights
    Krypton Toolkit
        NEW – KryptonNumericUpDown
        NEW – KryptonBreadCrumb
        FIXED - ComboBox bugs

    Krypton Ribbon
        NEW – NumericUpDown group element

    Krypton Navigator
        NEW - Page Drag and Drop added
        FIXED - Memory leak

    Krypton Workspace
        NEW – Whole new component added

Existing customers should receive update emails during the next couple of hours. Those with a current Krypton Suite subscription will of course enjoy the new Krypton Workspace component that is now a part of the Suite as well as available as a separate purchase.

Website Changes
I have updated several aspects of the website.

You are no longer required to enter an email address in order to get a link to download the latest version of Krypton. This makes it easier for those that have already supplied their email in the past but want the latest link. The download page provides a direct link to get the current version as well as an optional section to subscribe to the email service.

I have expanded the product section so that each product has its own page and set of sub-pages giving screenshots of various features for that product. This should make it easier for new people on the site to get an idea of what the Krypton products are all about.

The free download is now called KryptonSuite rather than the previous KryptonToolkit. I received feedback that it was not obvious to people that the Toolkit download also included the evaluation versions of the commercial products. So calling it the Suite should make it more obvious.

Let me know what you think of the new look site and any ideas you have for further improvements.

Download : Krypton299.zip

This is a Beta release with an internal version number of 2.9.9 in order to distinguish it from the full release when that happens. Highlights for this release include:-

New – KryptonNumericUpDown control
New – KryptonBreadCrumb control
New – KryptonWorkspace control
Many bug fixes including…
   KryptonComboBox auto suggest fixed
   Improved resource disposal to prevent leaks

I will add an extra forum so bugs related to the Beta can be reported. Let me know if you have any problems by reporting them on the forum so everything can see and prevent duplication. Enjoy!

The sample contains a TreeView derived class that has been customized to recognize the user starting to drag a node and then hooks into the Krypton page dragging functionality. So you just need to create a DragManager instance and attach it to the PageDragNotify property of the new control and your ready to roll.

Hook up your Navigator/Workspace instances to the same DragManager and they all work nicely together. The sample also allows you to drag from the Navigator and drop it on the TreeView so the page becomes part of the tree again.

You can apply the same technique to any control and so easily integrate your own list control, button or custom control into the page dragging of Krypton. Just look at the code in the sample and apply it to your favorite control and your up and running.

Power up one of these dinosaurs and your prompt is a flashing cursor ready to take BASIC commands. You can start writing a program straight away and so that’s exactly what you did. At 11 years old I could type in some simple commands and make a computer do my bidding. That was like science fiction in the home. Remember we are taking about a time when your TV didn’t have a remote control and the only time you saw a computer was in the movies. So here you are telling a little machine how to work. No wonder a whole generation of us got hooked at this time.

I can even remember my first program was something along the lines of…

     10 PRINT “Phil is great”

This is about all you expect from an 11 year old. Obviously once I found out about the go to command it become vastly more entertaining. Just add 20 GO TO 10 and you have a whole day of fun. With some experimenting you start to work out what all the commands do. Obviously I could have read the manual but showing real techie potential I never bothered. That would have meant precious time away from the keyboard.

A recent hobby of mine has been to collect some of those retro machines. If you’re from the UK then you will know that Sinclair computers were the dominant home machines of the 1980’s. In America it seems that Commodore was the biggest player selling something like 30 million C64 machines!

The first home machine came from Sinclair in 1980 and was called the ZX80. It had just 1K of memory and used a Z80A processor from Zilog. You could write a BASIC program of around 1.5 pages in length before running out of memory. It also had the disadvantage of being unable to run programs at the same time as updating the screen. So the screen went blank whilst it was running, forcing you to wait for the program to finish before you could see anything printed on the screen as output. Not ideal, but it still managed to sell around 50,000 units some of which went to the USA.

As a collector you need to know that there were three issues of the motherboard. I have an Issue 2 and 3 but finding that elusive Issue 1 is pretty hard. Oddly it’s the white power supply that only came with a small number of the UK machines that is worth far more than the actual machines. I watched one go for $4000 on eBay but you only get around $500 for a good condition actual machine. So if you one of those white power supplies in your loft please post it over to me!

After just a year Sinclair released the ZX81 which is the first machine I actually used as a kid. Really the only difference is a better case and an upgraded ROM. This gave it a few extra BASIC commands and fixed the screen refresh issue. It still has the same 1K of memory but with memory prices now falling you could buy a 16k RAM pack for the machine. Now you could really go to town and write programs that played games! It sold around 1 million unit and was sold in the USA under license as the Timex 1016.

If you had one of these you will remember spending many an afternoon typing in programs from magazines. But all too often there would be some magazine printing error causing it to have a bug. Or just when you spent an hour typing in the program and getting it to work you find the RAM pack wobbled causing the machine to reset! The dreaded RAM pack wobble was the bane of many ZX81 owners.

Next up was the ZX Spectrum which really started the home computer games industry. The ZX80 had a hand full of games and the ZX81 around 500. But over the life of the Speccy it had around 10,000 games released. Sure, many of them were pretty dire but others were very good and pushed the absolute limits of the machine. Something like 3.5 million units were sold over the years and the machine was repackaged several times to try and keep it selling. The original release can be seen here…

It came in 16k or 48k models but with RAM prices constantly falling it was not long before only the 48k was available. Later on it was revamped to improve the keyboard from the funny gray rubber you see above to something approaching a proper full travel keyboard with 128k of memory…

As a collector the ZX81 and ZX Spectrum are very common and you can buy them on eBay from just $50 for a working machine. Only if they are in mint condition with full packaging does the price start to rise to something like $500 or more.

About the only Speccy that is considered rare is the Issue 5. There were many different releases of the motherboard as they improved the reliability and fixed problems but given they sold in the millions you can find examples of each release. Except the Issue 5. They only made 1,000 and then moved straight onto making the Issue 6A. I have no idea why they even bothered making the Issue 5 for such a small run of machines but I suppose it gives us collectors something to dream about finding one day. By the way, if you have one of those pop it in the post to me I’m will give you a free Krypton Suite license. Sound fair :-)

In 1985 Sinclair released this little number, now you can see why they went broke and had to sell out to a rival company called Amstrad.

It seems there are two C# coders for every VB.NET developer. This surprised me as I thought that the actual numbers would be about equal. Certainly no other language was of any significance in the survey. The ‘others’ included VB6, Foxpro, Delphi and Clarion# (whatever that might be). So continuing to provide all samples in C# seems to be the obvious conclusion.

It is now 7 months since the release of Visual Studio 2008 and it has reached parity with Visual Studio 2005. The next release of Krypton will not occur for several months and by then I would anticipate 2008 being the clear winner. So the next Krypton release will provide 2008 project and solutions files as the defaults but will also need to provide 2005 files for backward compatibility.

The ‘others’ included several indicating they used the express versions of Visual Studio and a couple of programmers using Borland C++ Builder. There was even one who claims to use notepad, but I hope that was just a joke!

We have all read the reports about Vista not exactly selling like hot cakes. So it is not surprising that Windows XP is the clear winner over Vista with developers. You have to imagine that developers are early adopters compared to the general public so that actual percentage of consumers using Vista must be lower than the 24% reported here. I wonder how many will skip Vista entirely and just move straight to Windows 7.

I asked this question to get a feel for how many developers were planning on moving away from WinForms and into WPF. With only 9% saying they are currently using WPF we can see that it has not been adopted anywhere nearly as quickly as Microsoft thought it would.

But if you add on the 17% and 14% that claim they will start using it within 6 months and a year then in theory a year from now it should be 40%. That would be major shift. It will be interesting to carry out the same survey next year and see if that shift really does materialise.

The Silverlight numbers are very similar to those for WPF which is not that surprising. Given they are both based on using XAML it would make sense that the same developers could shift to both WPF and Silverlight at the same time by using the same set of skills.

These results did surprise me as I expected the scroll bars to be a clear winner. I guess this is because a date time picker that is not consistent with the rest of the form looks more obvious. The ‘others’ section had a massive 129 individual answers that covered the entire range of possible controls anyone would ever need. I guess the best summary of the requests is they people want every control that comes with WinForms to be Kryptonized.

A grid control is the most requested feature. I did try to make a deal with 10Tec.com to license their grid control so I could Kryptonize it and release it as part of the Krypton Suite. This would have been ideal as it would have only taken a few weeks work but unfortunately 10Tec were not interested. Instead the second placed item, docking windows, is the next commercial component I will create once I get back from my upcoming holiday. The ‘others’ included requests for a wizard control and scheduling components.

No surprises on this one as Internet searching was always going to be the number one choice. I am pleased to see that forums/blogs are making a useful contribution. The only advert I have running is on the website of the popular Scott Hanselman blog. If you know of any other popular .NET blogs then let me know I might try and advertise on them as well.

I wasn’t sure if I should even ask this question. My thinking was that many people would answer ‘Expensive’ because they fear saying anything else would encourage the prices to be increased. Given this kind of bias I was not sure that the results would really reflect people’s opinion. Adding up the first three responses show that 88% believe the prices are fair or better. It shows I am not losing large numbers of sales because it is priced above its appropriate level. Don’t worry I have no plans on increasing the prices.

Option B was using GDI+ and is the current Krypton 2.8.5 implementation for all text drawing. As a visual difference most people would not notice that Krypton is drawing slightly different from Office 2007 applications which use the Option A approach. But some people have sharp eyes and pointed this out as needing to be fixed. This update will be applied in the next release.

Here is a magnified image of Option A on top …

There is a good reason why I didn’t use the Option A right from the outset. GDI drawing can only draw horizontal text in a single color, but Krypton allows you to draw text in a vertical or even upside down orientation. Krypton also allows you to draw using an image or a gradient between two colors.

So when Krypton detects that you are using horizontal text with a single color it uses GDI and in all other scenarios uses the existing GDI+ method. In practice almost all text is drawn horizontal in a single color so you are unlikely to notice inconsistencies.

Once of these images is rendered using the GDI+ Graphics.DrawString method. The other is rendered using the GDI TextRenderer.DrawString method. Can you tell which is which and do you have a preferrence?

Option A

Option B

Tune in tomorrow for the answer and the reason for the testing.

What makes the control so compelling is the combination of small area and ease of use. As soon as you start using the control you just intuitively understand what it does. But websites are not the only place that you have complex hierarchies of choices. Many client applications have the same issue. So the latest addition to the Toolkit is the KryptonBreadCrumb.

Here you can see the control in action…

Each bread crumb entry is presented as a button, with those having more than one child being drop down buttons. Pressing the drop down arrow shows a context menu with all the available child options. Selecting a child item from the menu creates the next bread crumb and places it to the right. At any time you can select the button portion of a bread crumb and have the trail finish at that clicked entry.

Like most Krypton controls you can add ButtonSpec entries to add additional button functionality. Why not add a close button that when pressed moves you back to the root entry…

Or you could add button which presents a context menu with additional options such as shortcuts to common navigation paths.

As part of the associated demo application I added an example of another idea. Combining the KryptonBreadCrumb with a TreeView control. By using the controls selection events I can keep the two controls in sync and allow the user to operate using whichever of the two mechanisms they prefer…

Defining your bread crumb options is very simple. The root is a KryptonBreadCrumbItem that has a child collection that can contain the same type. So just build up a tree hierarchy of options as you would with a traditional TreeView control.

Just before the drop down context menu is shown an event is fired allowing you to customize the displayed menu. So you can easily add extra options or use it to dynamically supply the children at the last moment. 

Download now whilst stocks last…

VB.NET Toolkit Examples
VB.NET Ribbon Examples
VB.NET Navigator Examples

A simple control but a very useful one that is also very similar to others I have already Kryptonized. So here you can see the KryptonNumericUpDown control in action…

…and with the Ribbon style…

…and with a ButtonSpec added…

Now onto another control that I can add fairly quickly.

Microsoft has been in stealth mode ever since they started working on Windows 7. Given the debacle that was Vista this seems a wise move. We all remember the initial Vista (aka Longhorn) promises that were constantly scaled back. This time they seem to have learned from the mistake and are keeping mum about the feature set. That is until now.

For the first time we have a peek at one of the Windows 7 features, multi-touch support. See it in action here.

Windows Rant

It looks very impressive but I am not convinced at this point that it is anything more than a nice toy. This is the equivalent of the Vista toy called speech recognition. Both of these are great technologies and there are definitely some niche applications that will find them invaluable, but in the real world they are just toys.

Don’t believe me? What percentage of Vista users actually use speech recognition once they finish playing with it for fun? Not many. The same will be true for multi-touch support. After a few weeks I bet you’re still using that traditional mouse and keyboard. Sure you show off the cool photos application to your relatives but then you go back to the mouse for playing Crysis and the keyboard for writing a letter.

Now I wouldn’t mind in the slightest if these toys were added on top of a perfectly stable and efficient base operating system. But it seems to me they’re neglecting the basics to add the marketing fluff.

If you use a Mac or Linux then you will take for granted the ability to have multiple desktop spaces that you can quickly switch between. A simple feature that would take Microsoft about 2 days to implement and yet we don’t have it built in. Sure I can use a third party utility to do this but I shouldn’t have to.

How come I have to pay for Windows Defender? I just paid good money for an operating system and then they want me to pay extra to protect myself against vulnerabilities in their own product! Surely nowadays anti-virus and anti-malware software is considered a base feature of the operating system and not a luxury add-on. Instead I have to pay them or Symantec et al a tax for being connected to the internet.

If you think these do not represent the basics of the system then how about something as simple as the shutdown options. Read the excellent Joel post to see what I mean.

What I want is a world class operating system. It should run for 12 months without needing a reboot or producing a blue screen of death. It should be safe to use connected to the internet and efficient in the use of resources. Once I have that you can stick as many toys on top as you like.

Surely this is not too much to ask from a company with a zillion employees and a zillion dollars in the bank. They recruit enough people from Stanford and MIT that at least the shut down options should be done properly. Microsoft, please please please get Windows 7 right for all our sakes.

Rant over I can go back to watching a Channel 9 video I downloaded. Of course I cannot actually watch it using Windows Media Player 11 on my 64bit Vista. The sound playback works but the video picture does not. So instead I am forced into copying each video I want to watch into a 32bit Vista virtual machine that does playback perfectly. Just another joy of Vista moment that actually brought on the rant in the first place.

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At my last permanent job the main objective of the project I worked on was to update the look and feel of the legacy application. The functionality of the software was fine but the user interface was battleship gray and looked very dated. Given that enterprise customers were paying around $500k for the software the potential customers had much higher expectations. For that kind of money the CFO expects it to at least look familiar, they want it to resemble the Excel and Word applications they use all day.

So two of us spent a year updating the front end and created a modern looking professional system with the Office 2007 style appearance. Because we were using a third party control suite the user could even change the themed appearance to some of the other options the vendor provided out of the box. All that was left was to create some new icons that matched modern expectations. The existing ones were 16 color bitmaps created by a programmer many years before. Yes, I really do mean 16 colors and not 16bit color!

You can probably guess what is coming. You won’t believe this but I swear it’s absolutely true. After paying two developers for a year, costing around $160k, my boss would not spend a few thousand getting some professional icons created. Given the functionality of the system it really needed a designer to create custom images, stock icons would not contain the type of specialized icons we needed.

Complete madness. The whole point of the project is to update the front end to compete with competitors that had more modern looking systems. After spending a big chunk of money on development they would not spend a few measly thousand adding the final polish. To this day I imagine some salesman giving a presentation of the app with the Office 2007 Blue color scheme, and there at the top are a row of 16 color bitmaps worthy of a shareware app from 1990. No wonder programmers want to work for themselves.

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You can actually get quite a few free icons if you look around. Here are some links worth investigating…

Mono Factor – 25 Free Vista Icons
Web Appers – Free Web App Icons Set
ZeusBox Studio – Free RSS Feed Icons
VistaIco – Free Vista Style Icons
DryIcons – Free for non-commercial use

Smashing magazine has an article that links to even more resources. Check it out if you want to delve deeper into the free icons scene.

Having never overclocked a PC in my life the first step was to do some research. Just entering overclocking into Google gives plenty of resources for you to read up on the topic. To narrow it down trying entering the name of your processor as well, chances are you will find plenty of people giving reports on how they overclocked your exact processor.

I found several people that had overclocked the QX9650 to around the 4Ghz level without much difficulty. The more serious overclockers have managed 4.5Ghz using just air cooling. While I am not interested in trying to reach such record breaking levels, if there is some free extra processing power available then I might as well grab it.

Overclocking Tools

Getting started means downloading some tools. Start with the excellent CPU-Z utility which gives detailed feedback on your machines setup. Next you need a tool that can be used to stress test the processor and memory to check if your new settings are stable. I used OCCT which was created by a group of French overclockers and is really simple to use. It thrashes all four cores and memory and when it detects a stability problem gives a nice sound effect to alert you.

The bane of all overclockers is the processor temperature, I used SpeedFan to monitor and graph the temp of all four cores. No point in running fast if that expensive silicone is being turned into cheap charcoal.

Baseline

As all good programmers know, measuring performance requires a baseline set of data to use as a point of comparison. Here is the default setup of the hardware via CPU-Z…

To measure the real world performance of the machine I am going to use my build script. There are plenty of synthetic tools to measure the raw performance of memory, processor, graphics and so forth. But as far as I’m concerned I want to see the benefit in real work and not just some theoretical benchmark. Running the build of Krypton game a time slightly over 36 minutes…

Note that I only ran this test just once. To be more accurate I should have run it half a dozen times and taken an average of the different times. But frankly I am not bothered with that level of accuracy and don’t want to spend 3 hours gathering the data.

Updating the BIOS

Doing the actual overclocking is simple. Enter the BIOS at startup and then modify the cpu multiplier. You can see in the CPU-Z picture above that the default multiple of 9 gives a 3GHz speed based on the base 333Mhz speed of the bus. I can increase this in 0.5 increments via te BIOS and so did just that. Adding 0.5 and then running the OCCT stability test for 30 minutes to ensure it was stable and watching SpeedFan to ensure the processor was not cooking.

Repeating this process I managed to get a stable system with a multiple of 10.5 giving a cpu speed of 3.496Ghz with the temp peaking at around 63c. Going above this caused the system to become unstable with regular crashes.

In order to get stable again I increased the voltage to the cpu. Usually this will solve the instability at the cost of running the cpu hotter. Slowly increasing the voltage caused the temp to increase markedly and too much for my liking. Once I was getting 75c I decide to stop as I don’t want to fry a very expensive processor. 

Note that I am using the stock Intel cpu fan that comes with the processor. Switching to an aftermarket cooler/fan would probably have reduced the temperature enough to get a higher stable multiple. I did buy a Zalman fan for my machine but it was far to noisey for me to tolerate listening to all day long, so I switched it out for the stock fan before starting the overclocking.

I now changed tack and tried overclocking the bus speed, giving a boost to the FSB and the processor at the same time. This has the added benefit that you can make small increments in the cpu speed rather than having to jump in large increments.

Starting from the default of 333Mhz I upped the value a little at a time until the system become unstable. Then backing up to the last good setting I managed to achieve 340Mhz. This gives a FSB speed of 1360 and ups the processor to 3.570Ghz. You can see the settings here…

This seems to be about the best I can manage. If the cpu is any faster the temperature goes to high for my liking and making the bus faster results in an unstable system. This is someway short of the 4Ghz that others report but the I am using a stock Intel fan for cooling and bog standard DDR2 memory.

Real world performance

But how does this impact actual real world performance? Running our build script we now get just under 31 minutes…

This represents an improvement of 16% which is very close to the actual processor overclocking of 19%. Given the build process includes a fair amount of reading/writing to disk this is very respectable. I then ran the OCCT stability test for 9 hours overnight and it didn’t crash. So I feel confident in leaving these settings alone and running with them all the time. After all, why turn down a free speedup of 500Mhz!

Intel Observations

It seems strange that Intel are releasing processors that seem to be capable of running so much faster. Why would you sell processors rated at 3Ghz when clearly they can run much faster? Obviously they are going to sell them with a safety margin but the difference between the rating and actual maximum speed seems odd.

I don’t remember previous generations from either AMD or Intel having this level of overclocking ability. Are Intel deliberately holding back because they already have a big performance lead over AMD? If AMD start to catch up would Intel suddenly start selling faster rated processors? I wonder.

Although my main development machine has only recently had its second birthday we all know that computers age even quicker than dogs. Working on a single core machine with XP feels like living with a black and white TV when all your friends have color. So time to send the old boy to the great kennel in the sky and take on a new puppy.

Custom Build

Normally I would just go online to Dell and choose a reasonably high spec machine, but not this time. Instead I’ve been inspired by a Scott Hanselman blog post into building a PC from components instead of just ordering a fully built system. It sounds more fun with the added benefit that you get to build the exact spec you want without compromises.

Dream Development Rig

My first decision is to forget about being sensible and ignore any attempt at creating a value for money machine. If you want value for money just go ahead with Dell/HP/Lenovo etc who work on razor thin margins. No, instead I am going to create my dream development rig. Something that will be a pleasure to use and last for at least a couple of years.

Intel Core 2 Quad Core Extreme QX9650 3GHz

I firmly believe you can never have too much processing power. If two cores are better than one, then using the same logic, I deduce that four cores must be better yet. So lets pick a nice fast four core processor from Intel which is unlocked so we can overclock for even better performance. I’ve have chosen the QX9650 which is only a little below the fastest processor they make. It also has good reviews from overclockers that indicate we should be able to improve on the 3GHz stock rating.

Gigabyte GA-X48-DS5 Motherboard

Looking at the cost of memory it seems that DDR3 is much more expensive than DDR2 even though the performance advantage it provides is currently marginal. So I went with a motherboard that supports DDR2 and has two PCIe x 16 slots with the latest X48 Intel chipset.

Corsair Dominator Memory DDR2 4GB

I am going to install Vista Ultimate 64bit Edition so that I can take advantage of the entire 4GB of memory I will be installing. Although Vista 32bit can in theory access 4GB of memory it does not work that way in practice. Because of the way the operating system reserves some of the address space it means you cannot get much above 3.25GB for use.

Samsung 22′ LCD Widescreen Monitor

Currently I have two 19′ 4:3 monitors. I will add to this by getting a 22′ widescreen that will become the main monitor, placing the existing 19′ displays on each side. I worked out that a 22′ widescreen would give me about the same display height for all three so that dragging windows between them would feel natural.

2 x Galaxy GeForce 8800GT

Having three displays means having two graphics cards to drive them. I opted for a pair of nVidea 8800GT cards from Galaxy which are at the high end of the mid-market. I don’t often play games so going for the latest and greatest seemed a pointless expense. 

Western Digital Raptor 150GB
Seagate Barracuda 500GB

A fast hard drive can really help with overall system performance. So the main drive with be a Raptor 150GB that spins at 10,000RPM. Even the code bloat that is Vista should fit easily within that. Data will be kept on a 500GB second drive running at the traditional 7,2000RPM.

Antec P190 Computer Case

Finally we need to have a case that is worthy of the latest hardware. I just hate those nasty plastic cases you get from Dell. Instead I want something that looks cool and also runs cool. Looking around the Antec P190 fits both counts and comes with high spec power supplies as well.

The Build

All the hardware arrived last week but I needed an extra hand with actually putting it together. With one hand in plaster it meant calling on the services of my brother-in-law. Nick is great with hardware but also a self proclaimed Linux fan boy and so needs watching carefully. It wouldn’t have surprised me to turn my back and find a extra 20GB partition installed running Ubuntu. Needless to say we don’t want to sully a new machine with that kind of virus.

Luckily it went nice and smooth and after about 6 hours we had Vista up and running Crysis. There was only a single gotcha in the whole process. It turns out that the CPU fan is so big it overlaps two of the memory slots. I had ordered 4 x 1GB sticks and so could not install half the memory. So I ordered 2 x 2GB sticks and will use them instead in order to get the 4GB required.

Performance

Looking at the Vista performance numbers I can see that all the settings are rated at 5.9, which is actually the maximum number that Vista will display. As a more real world test I performed a build of Krypton using my custom msbuild script. It took just 35mins when it used to take 1h 15mins on my old machine. My old machine was not slouch either with a Xeon 3GHz processor and 2GB of memory.

Considering none of the applications in the build process are designed to use multiple cores it shows that the new machine is significantly faster even when using mainly just the one core. So far I have not played around with trying to overclock the processor. Once I have some results I will let you know.

Yep that’s right. I fell off a kid’s scooter whilst going downhill and managed to break my hand. But not your average simple break mind you, oh no, instead the right scaphoid is broken into three pieces and requires a quick operation to pin it all back together. And the reaction I get from family and friends?

To be fair this is about the reaction I deserve for trying to race a 9 year old nephew down the street. Still, the end result is 8 weeks of trying to work on a keyboard/mouse left handed when I’m right handed. So forgive the terse responses to forum/email messages. Remember, those two sentence replies actually took me 15 minutes!

If you use Network Solutions to check if a domain is available they immediately go ahead and register it for themselves. They keep it registered for 5 days and during that period if you visit the proposed domain you will see their page offering to sell it to you for $39.95. They claim this is a ’service’ for their customers as it reserves if for them to buy and prevents squatters getting it during those five days.

Obviously this explanation if nonsense. During that 5 days it can be bought by anyone that contacts Networks Solutions and not just the person who made the search. Hence it might not help the searcher at all. Plus during those 5 days you are forced to buy it via Network Solutions at a cost of $39.95 which is much more expensive than other registrars. If you really wanted the domain you would probably go ahead and buy it from them in order to prevent the risk of it being acquired by someone else once the 5 days is up.

UPDATE: Here are news links
DomainNews Story
Wikipedia & Issue
Digg Story
Reddit Comments