I really like Opera. When I need to do some browsing, I open Opera. It’s full featured yet not cluttered. Mouse gestures and the render speed make it very fast and efficient to do browse many things at once. However, the gap I find it has in speed and ease of use is closing. I still use Internet Explorer. It is set as my default browser. Opening links from emails or whatever, IE is just far more convenient. It feels lighter for the smaller tasks. And now with IE 8 on Windows 7, pinned web pages and frequently visited have an even lower barrier of entry.

I wanted to know, before I install the beta, does Opera 10 make proper use of Windows 7 Jump Lists. How nice would it be if your Speed Dial was in your Jump List? I don’t know whether it is or not, but my problem is when I searched for it I don’t find what I want, and I find myself reading again the garbage about the Opera CEO complaining that Opera isn’t installed by default on Windows but IE is and users should have none, or all browsers installed for choice. What annoys me about this is that it is the OEMs Opera should be pushing to install their stuff. Prebuilt PCs come with plenty of crapware, it would be a pleasant change if some of it was good. Also, they do not complain about Apple including Safari in OS X, or Ubuntu including Firefox, and do not push them to install Opera. The Google Chrome guys made the point with this video that the end user really does not even know what a browser is (I tried this one on my wife, who I have using Opera, and my Mum, both gave the same kind of answer as the people on the video. I found it fascinating, try it on your friends.). So claiming that the end users are the ones that want more choice seems difficult. Multiple browsers installed as a suggest best solution, is by far not the best solution. The end user only cares if it is simple and works. More choices for most users is just more confusing.

I am probably being too hash on Opera. More competition is certainly good. Firefox’s popularity gave Microsoft a kick to finally get moving again with updating IE from the dated version 6. Personally I don't understand why Opera is not more popular. The guys at Opera are doing awesome work. Simple features like mouse gestures, speed dial, custom searches and Opera Link make using it quicker and simpler than others. Opera 10 has some nice features like inline spell checker and auto update. I'm unsure how Opera Unite will go. The video show the purpose of Opera Unite is really cool. The feature that I find potentially useful at the moment is the file sharing, for access to my home PC from work, but there are other ways to do that. So as with any platform it will succeed if it is embraced by developers with some killer apps. Until then best of luck to Opera.

Recently I had to contact Microsoft support. I stated my issue and gave a copy of my print out relating to the issue, as an XPS. This is convenient to do, as after installing .NET 3.0 Framework, which gives you XPS support, the option to print to XPS is available. The reply I got back however, was

“The file you had sent to us was not in a file type I could bring up. I would advise you to send it back to us in a different format so we can easily view the file."

This knocked me to the floor! How could Microsoft support not open an XPS! Firstly, as stated on fileinfo.net:

“XPS files can be opened with Microsoft's XPS Viewer, included with Windows Vista”

So why is Microsoft support not using Vista? Secondly, when opening an unknown file type, Windows default file type unknown dialog would point them to the the page http://shell.windows.com/fileassoc/0409/xml/redir.asp?EXT=xps, which clearly states what it is and what they need to do.

So I sent an email to the XPS team about my issue, and got very polite replying saying thanks for the interest and feedback, and they are following up the issue with the teams involved. Let’s hope they do. XPS from a .NET developers perspective is just brilliant. Even if the format is not as featured or whatever as PDFs, the ease of creation due to the XAML declaration is just too easy to ignore. Not to mention the Adobe Reader (currently version 9.1 and 41.1MB!) is way too bloated (use Foxit Reader, version 3.0, 3.26MB).

The issue holding XPS up is that is it not in wide enough support yet. I have sent them to family and friends and get the same type of reply from them, as I did from Microsoft support. Hopefully with more applications using .NET 3.0 and Windows Vista & 7 adoption on the increase, this will be resolved soon. Then, as a developer, I can say goodbye to painful PDF creation.

To make sure you have got all you need for XPS, be sure to install the Microsoft XPS Essentials Pack (7.2MB – 9.0MB, after .NET 3.0 Framework, which you should have anyway!). Although you get viewing and creating abilities with just .NET 3.0, the pack also gives you an IFilter for Windows Vista\Desktop Search and IPreviewHandler for Windows Vista Explorer previews, and Outlook 2007 previewer:

On a positive note, Microsoft support was very good. Very fast responses and when I sent the print out as a PDF my issue was very quickly resolved.

Aside: Same issue with internal adoption of Microsoft’s standards. The Inside Windows Live Messenger blog, has flash at the front, instead of Silverlight. I would have thought, since Messenger 9 has sprinkles of WPF, Silverlight would be a no brainer.

Today I have set the TFS Working On beta to release for version 1.1. The code has not changed since the end of November 2008 and I have been using it full time along with 9 more developers at my work. This has provided us with excellent data in TFS, that we are now actively reporting our schedule on. There are many more features that I wanted to get in, but since this release has had such a long testing time, with no significant issues, I thought it worthwhile to cut the release. I can now get on with the new features, without the risk of destabilizing this build. Download the release and try it out. If you find any issues or have any feature requests, please log them. I do also prioritize on votes, so be sure to vote on features you want to see in. Below are the usage instructions:

TFS Working On is a simple system tray utility that makes it easier to record your time spent on TFS Work Items.

Simply specify your server and project, then search for your Work Item and you are tracking your time.

The icon turns green to notify you that you are tracking your time.

This will record your time in the history of the work item whenever you stop working on the item. To stop working on, double click the icon or select stop from the menu, and the work item is updated and the icon turns red.

You can also specify your estimates against a work item so that you can record how you are going.

Access to the work item is available.

With some very simple configuration the estimates can be mapped to the TFS Work Item fields, per work item type, per project. This can be performed by one member of the team, most likely the one responsible for setting up the project, and then stored on the network share for all team members to reference.

Features can be configured here also. Hovering over the help icon will give you details of the settings.

Auto Time Out will automatically stop working on when the computer is idle for the set time, and resume when activity begins again.

Nag will remind you when you are not working on anything.

In December, I spoke at the Queensland VSTS User Group about reporting on TFS using the Analysis Services cube that is included on the data tier. At the end of this post I have included links to my slides and some sample reports in Excel 2007 to get you started.

Reports are only as good as the data. Using TFS Working On to help accurately report the time spent, or at least remaining hours on your work items has been working very well for my development team. Due to this, the next version should be released shortly, and hopefully continually improved quickly as we are all using it in anger.

Before you can use the Excel reports you must change the TFS cube connection:

1. Open the Work Book
2. Select the Data Ribbon
   
3. Select Connections, Properties… and the Definition tab
    
4. Update the Data Source in the Connection String to the Analysis Services instance containing the TFS Cube
5. Click OK, Close

On Friday 5th December 2008 I will be presenting at the Queensland VSTS User Group. The abstract of my talk is below:

Using Business Intelligence to simplify reporting with TFS

We've all seen how TFS can simplify your source control, build automation and work item tracking. The next obvious thing to do is make use of all that data with powerful Business Intelligence reporting that comes with TFS due to the Analysis Services cube. Since reporting is something developers tend not to want to do, I will demonstrate how you as a developer can go about your regular daily development tasks (potentially making use of contest winner TFS Working On) while keeping your project manager happy. And as a project manager, how you can slice and dice the data to identify scheduling issues, build qualities, even the expense break-down of features.