Scott Hanselman

Oh, yes, PDC was the shiznit.  We learned about the Pillars of Longhorn:

• Lornhorn - It's ALPHA, but it's real.  Feel free to peruse the SDK. There's 3 years of work into in, and 3 more to go
• Avalon - An even bigger leap forward for the Windows Graphics Subsystem than the introduction of DirectX.  XAML will play a big role not only in WinForms, but look for a XAML to ASP.NET renderer as well.  Here's a link to my Avalon article at .NET Developer Journal.  I'll post a much more in depth article with code samples soon, but here's what Charles Petzold says.  Some folks were expecting SVG to play a larger role and Werner explains why it's not the end of the world.  The library of congress-sized namespaces in .NET Framework 1.0 and 1.1 got nothing on the namespaces coming up.
• Aero - The look and feel catches up to Mac OS X, and introduces some interesting twists, such as Common Dialogs for People. 
• Indigo - To protect your current investment, stick with ASMX and you won't go wrong.  Don Box says Objects are baked.  They're done, you use them, be happy.  Use objects interally in your apps, but start getting your head around the differences between explicitly working with a remote object and sending a messsage.  Messaging doesn't equal RPC. Boundaries between applications are explicit.  Share schema, not type.  Benjamin Mitchell has some great notes from Omri's talk.
  Interesting note, Gudge says DIME is dead, but Soap with Attachments and SOAP/MTOM live on, so don't be sad.
• Generics - Generics aren't exactly templates, just as delegates aren't exactly function pointers.  But, close enough.  Be aware of the differences between syntaxes on C# and VB.NET.
• Serialization - Think about Contracts and Message Passing.  Repeat: Share schema, not type.
• ADO.NET 2.0 - is a lot more “database independant“ and a DBProviderFactory pattern makes it even more clear.
• WinFS - NTFS still has many good years under it (although a better defragmenter couldn't hurt) but WinFS adds a new world of Metadata to Documents and Settings.  WinFS's System.Storage will let us query metadata on our content with SQL, OLEDB, COM, or managed APIs.  It is truly the base of the pyramid.
• Speech - Ya, speech.  We saw parts of this at PDC, but expect speech recognition to play a bigger role when we have 4 and 6 Ghz systems. :)
• Migration - It may be early to plan for deploying Longhorn, but it's not too early to be aware of certain migration strategies.

What's in store for PDC 2004/5? - Don't fool yourself, the next PDC will also be “The Longhorn PDC,“ except you'll see your feedback folded into much improved Beta bits.  Remember, this was a preview, there's still great things being done with .NET 1.0, 1.1 and soon Whidbey (.NET 2.0). 

Monday, back to reality, and I'm back to coding some great .NET Framework 1.1 libraries to support some of the world's largest banks (and interop'ing with some VB6 libraries! Oy, the glamour!) :)

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Yo!  There's a meeting at the Hollywood Grill inside of Universal Studios tonight at 8PM!  Check out the map of Universal.  We'll be meeting at #19 on the map, close to the entrance.  Pass it on! 

Blog and Trackback this post!

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Segway is at the PDC.  They are at the back of the exhibit floor letting people ride them.  Wow.  If I didn't need a Tablet PC...

Here are two videos of me on a Segway...I'm sure watching me ride it will be as thrilling for you as it was for me.  Check out the second one also, I ride with no hands!

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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If you've ever written a complex Windows UI you may have thought about ways to automate testing of these frameworks.  It was easier in the old days, when every control had a Window Handle that you could get ahold of.  Then more and more controls were owner draw, painted or just magic.  Regardless, automated UI testing is a hassle.

In the last few years I've been all over NUnit.  Just as my dentist says “if you don't floss, don't bother brushing,“ I say, “if you don't Unit Test, don't bother coding.“  But the exception is usually UI.

I'm in a talk on Avalon's Automated UI Testing Framework.

The Avalon UI Testing Framework appears to expose the UI components as an Object Model, that they are calling “Control Patterns” that expose the behavior of the controls.

He's brought a Command Prompt up.  He brought up the Windows Device Manager and clicked on it.

The Command Prompt then displays:

[Tree View] [Has Children]
Patterns = I:Selection

then he types “children” and the Device Manager tree expands.

The Command Prompt says:

Patterns - I:Invoke, IHierarchyItem. I:ExpandCollapse. I:SelectionItem

he also checks out a Combo Box and it says

Patterns - I:ExpandCollapse.

This means that rather than exposing the controls directly to the UI Testing code, it exposes the BEHAVIOR.  So, in OOP terms, a ComboBox and a Tree Control both implement “ExpandCollapse.”  But it's not that simplistic.  It's really about behavior.

Think about this:  If you were using a 3rd party control, you'd have to use that library's proprietary APIs to manipulate it.  With the Windows UI Automation framework the publisher of that control will expose behaviors.  If it's a funky Outlook Bar, perhaps it exposes ExpandCollapse also. 

You can query these controls for their behavior, ala “Reflection.”  Makes me think of how cool it was 8 or so years ago when I saw Spy++.  Except rather than presenting a physical “tree” this framework presents a logical, practical tree.  (The guy in front of me works for Infragistics.  I can only guess what awesome UI Controls they are going to build.  They kick much tush.)

The namespaces (alpha) are MSAvalong.Windows.Automation.  This framework supports ALL LEGACY controls, including VB, WinForms, Win32, etc.  There is also a complete Security Model so your testing software can't be used by the powers of darkness like .VBS files.

Along with this Logical Tree, you get all Properties, Events, Control Patterns and all Input (Mouse, Pen, Keyboard, etc).  Plus, it supports filtering, so you don't get messages shouting at you.

Rather than using the Class Name (and there are thousands) to identify a control and switch on how to test it, you think about the essense of the control and it's behavior.  For example, if you're testing software doesn't know what a control is, it asks it and hears “Oh, you're clickable? And expandable?” and you write tests appropriately.

(Awesome, he was just going to start a demo, but the screen saver locked his machine.  He can't remember the password...right now we're looking at a Longhorn security screen as he tries to log in...ouch...I know what this feels like.  He's going to reboot. Oy.)

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Looks like they are getting the .NET Developer's Journal Radio Interviews up here.  My interview is in there, but the link is broken and the topic they list isn't at all what we talked about. :) Other than those small issues, you can certainly listen and enjoy.

On another note, had a lovely evening, here's a pic of me and Scoble.  You can tell by our positioning in the photo that we are very close friends.

Here's Chris Anderson, who I don't IM enough.  He really kicked bootay in the Keynote.  Kudos.

And here's the boys themselves, Early & Adopter.  If you don't know these guys, get to know them now.  They are well known for their now-classic interview with the .NET Framework 1.0 and .NET Framework 1.1.  Also, check out a sample chapter of their Whidbey book at the MSPress Booth.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

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