Yes, the Mac has some nice features, and there is no denying the allure of some of their hardware, although some of it is a little on the industrial side of “industrial design” for my tastes… yes I’m talking about you Mac Pro! But to say OSX is better than Windows (even Vista) is just crap.

I work in an office where more people use Macs than PCs… and yet more people use Windows than OSX. Sure, we’re a software development company and a Microsoft (.net) one at that but it’s still a telling fact that a large portion of of the Mac loving crowd simply can’t do what they need to do with a MAC alone… for this you only have to look at how popular products like Parallels, VMWare Fusion and BootCamp are. How many Windows users on the other hand run OSX for this reason? None? surely this can’t be!

I use Windows… I have used it since the days of Windows 95, having started out on a Mac, and while like ALL operating systems there are things I don’t like, I enjoy using Windows, especially Windows 7 which I have been using without issue since the early betas. The “Macs are better than PCs”articles are really startin’ to piss me off as they are so completely one eyed and completely ignore any negatives on the Mac side even going so far in some cases to raise the cost of upgrade as a negative for Windows! Seriously?!?!  How many times have Apple cut there users off at the knees in the last 10 years?

Window’s Vista had problems yes… most, after the first few months, were perception based however, helped and guided lovingly by Apple of course. Windows 7 is at a minimum the equal of anything in the OSX world and in my opinion a far superior OS. It’s stable, easy to use and has great features… Apple can try in their advertising to tie Windows 7 to the mis-guided perception issues that plagued Vista but it’s an argument they will ultimatly lose. They’ll have a much harder time convincing anybody to “Switch” when the OS they are already running is this good.

So it’s great to see articles like this occasionally that put some of the BS arguments used into some proper perspective.

One of the great things about living at the bottom of the world here in New Zealand, is our time zone. We’re ahead of pretty much everybody else, with the exception of a few small pacific islands, so while it’s 7.30am on Tuesday October 22nd here it’s 7.30pm on Monday in the UK and 11.30am Monday in California!

So with that said, and today being October 22nd (well here at least) it’s Windows 7 release day! This actually doesn’t mean much to me as I’ve been running Windows 7 on all three of my machines since the first beta’s (and it’s been incredibly stable).

I’ve read both good and bad reviews in the mainstream non-tech media over the past couple of weeks but I can tell you right here, right now: Window’s 7 is quite simply the best Windows yet… and, unlike so many it seems, I never had a problem with Vista! (don’t even get me started on all the Vista FUD BS).

Windows 7 is more of an evolution over Vista than a completely new OS. To most users it will look and feel very familier but there are heaps of small and not so small changes to both the user experience and under the hood that make this a BIG evolution.

Things I’m lovin’ about Windows 7:

• Desktop Slideshows
  7 has native support for desktop background slide shows. Great when you have kids and you just can’t decide which picture of your favourite little person(s) to plaster all over your computer desktop.
• Window Snapping
  Simply drag your windows to the left or right of the screen to create perfectly tiled windows, or to the top of the screen to maximise. You can also use the Windows key and the arrow keys to cycle through the snapped positions for the active window.
• Taskbar Pinning
  Rather than the QuickLaunch toolbar from XP/Vista (that is still available if you want it) 7 uses taskbar pinning. Every application that is running will show up on the new taskbar but you can selectivle “Pin” applications so they remain available in the taskbar when not running. Applications can be pinned from anywhere, Start menu, Windows Explorer etc. and draged around to order on the taskbar itself. Active applications are highlighted and, depending on your settings will expand to show the applications label/name.
• Taskbar Jump Lists
  Right click an icon on the taskbar, running or not, and you are presented with a list of actions/recent files etc. that relate to that application.
• Start Menu Search
  When you open the start menu simply start typing the name of the application you want to run and the list filters and shows only what your after, then hit enter and it launches.
• Windows Explorer
  A heavily improved local search system and new “Libraries” make for far simpler organisation and finding everything is a breeze.

Of course I can’t possibly do all the new or improved features in Windows 7 justice, so if you have the time and fancy an in depth read on what’s hot and what’s not with Windows 7 rock on over to the Win Super Site and read Paul Thurott’s 12 part Windows 7 Review… without spoiling the suprise he sums it up perfectly in part 12:

“Windows 7 is so good, in fact, that users are clamoring for it. Individuals want it at home, and they are asking for it at work. And after a half decade of putting the brakes on OS upgrades, businesses seem to be rallying around Windows 7 as well…”

“…Microsoft has an OS in Windows 7 that is simply better than anything Apple offers. And a more relevant (and true) correlation between the Mac and Windows worlds is that the vast majority of Mac users also run Windows, either in dual boot or virtualized. And the percentage of Mac users who do run Windows–already north of 80 percent–will only increase with Windows 7.”

“Wrapping up, it looks to me like the future just got a whole lot brighter. Rejoice, PC users. Windows 7 is here.”

So I’m loving Windows 7 and you should too!

So as you can imagine, I was so frikin’ happy when I stumbled upon CTRL+Shift “N” in Windows 7! I’ve been using the RC since it’s release, and the Beta prior to that and while I cannot speak highly enough of the OS generally this is, by far, the single best feature in my mind.

Another features in I’m loving is window snapping. The ability to snap windows to various parts of the screen, eg. left and right  halves for file copying. You can also cycle through all available positions via keyboard shortcuts (Windows key + arrow keys).

While some may consider Vista to have been an abject failure, Windows 7 is in my mind the polar opposite, a well thought out, fast, stable and get this “Mature” operating system…  arguably the most compelling upgrade in Windows almost 25 year history.

Provoke Solutions, where I work, won the premier ‘Partner Solution of the Year’ award last Thursday at the 2007 New Zealand Microsoft Partner Awards. We also took out the “Business Productivity Solution” award and were narrowly edged by IGA Systems in the ‘Microsoft Technology Advocates’ award.

Congratulations to everyone that worked on the projects and behind the scenes to make this possible. It’s stuff like this that makes me proud to be a Provoker!

Congratulations also to Rod and the team over at Xero who took out the ‘Small Business Partner Solution’ of the Year and ‘Software Solution of the Year’. It’s great to see another Drury start-up doing so well so quickly having been involved in one myself.

The issue seems to occur because the html comments in the xsl template, along with their contents, are not rendered to the browser.

The answer is to structure the conditional comment using xsl comment tags, which translate into html comments when the page is rendered, as follows:

After installing the required dotnet framework 3.0, the installation process for all three applications was painless. Expression Web’s installer is more polished that that of the others but that is to be expected as, of the three, it is the only finished release (Design and Blend both being CTP’s). I was slightly perplexed at being given the choice of “Regular”, “Custom” and “Complete” installs as the custom install gave no configuration options just the option of installing the whole product. I would imagine that when Design and Blend reach there 1.0 releases that they will share the same slick install process that Web currently sports and installation configuration will no doubt be possible.

The fist time you start any of the applications you are prompted for a serial key and led through the required product activation. Once the activation is completed you are met by a rather different User Experience than you might have expected from a Microsoft application.

I have to say while I like the dark UI, which I presume is designed to fit better with the overall Vista look and feel than that of XP, I did find it a little hard to read on my laptop’s WSXGA+ display. The dark theme is very cool but perhaps could benefit from slightly higher contrast white on dark as opposed to grey on dark.

Overall, a very sexy looking application suite though and I’ll be very interested to see how they perform.

So here's my problem (and the reason Visual studio sucks…). It's a tool for developers, and I mean ONLY developers! Microsoft in there infinate FrontPage induced wisdom decided to include a "Design" view… erm, no… design view it ain't! Now I understand it would be harder to market if they called it what it was… a "useless misrepresentitive F$#@ up your code" view but that's exactly what it is! I mean seriously…

First let me make it clear, I'm a web developer, so we're talking ASP.NET here… Visual studio may do an admirable job with Windows forms (note I say "may") but I don't care, it does a piss poor job with ASP.NET so why try? So far, and I'm damn sure there's more, Visual Studio's "Design" view has reformatted/rewritten large chunks of my standards compliant code, changed lower case tags to upper case and get this… removed closing tags! WTF!!! The result? It actually breaks things!

Problem is, and I have looked, I can't seem to find any kind of configuration setting that will prevent it from doing all of this. I know I know… don't use design view… well I don't! but other developers who occationally work with my code DO! And that's not the point… if it doesn't work it shouldn't be there!

Having come from a graphic/web design background I have used Macromedia Dreamweaver, since about version 2 and although it has been an offender itself in the past it has matured into a very capable editor that has some real smarts and know's when to leave your code alone! It's handy to have a design view that works… including the ability to include live dynamic data in pages during editing and view fully representative CSS layout. That said, I rarely use the WYSIWYG design view, preferring to write my own code but at least I know it won't destroy hours of my work at the press of a button!

Having looked into the problem a little however, it seems there is no easy way to work in any other application so long as the primary development environment is Visual Studio so for now I guess I'm stuck with it. So if anyone can shed any light on this or offer up viable solutions please feel free to comment.

Roll on Visual Studio 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0… and Microsoft… PLEASE get it right this time!