ALM Rangers

Rangers Treasure Map v2.1: Snap re-invented

Submitted by Robert MacLean on Wed, 10/09/2013 - 11:54

ScreenGrab (1)As part of my work on the Microsoft ALM Rangers Treasure Map, I want to share about how we changed snap for the 2.1 release.

Why?

The first question, is why do we need to change snap for 2.1? The requirement is that 2.1 is primarily focused on supporting Windows 8.1 & Windows 8.1 does snap a little differently to how Windows 8 handled snap. In short, in Windows 8 you had snap (fixed width), a full screen and third “middle” state – however Windows 8.1, has full screen and then any value between that down to a minimum width.

ScreenGrab (2)Microsoft has written a great document covering what is new at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh465371.aspx

Planning

Step one in doing this was to investigate what we had – so I just took the app and ran it on Windows 8.1 and played with the new snap experience. From that I took screenshots, made annotations etc… for us to decide on an approach. You can see these images along the side/bottom of this post.

Decisions

ScreenGrab (3)Since this is a minor release for us, the decision to not invest too much into this release was made. So we decided not to try and build something brand new but rather make sure everything works as it does currently.

To this we chose a minimum of 320 pixels (the default in 8.1 is 500) since that matched what we had in Windows  8.

Code

One of the choices we made in version 1, was to NOT use the out of the box state manager way to change the UI. You can find out more about how we implemented that in a video I did for Channel 9ScreenGrab (4):

ScreenGrab (5)

So what did the code changes look like for with our model? In the image below you can see that rather than ask what state we are in (line 142 on the left) we rather just check the screen width and based on that we load the correct namespace.

This tiny change was all that was needed, and this was made successful because we decoupled the views from the start rather than trying to have one view that does everything using the visual state manager.

image

Everything in software development is a TOOL & NOTHING is a rule or a religion

Submitted by Robert MacLean on Mon, 07/01/2013 - 10:37

For the Rangers Treasure Map, we had an amazing development focused sprint where we all just dug in and got stuff done. The sprint after that became minor feature work but mostly just work on bug fixes & UX improvements. This meant that for each item we needed to identify the fix and apply it – the problem is that some of those fixes couldn’t easily be applied with our existing “tools”.

Tools in this case, refers not to Visual Studio or TFS – in this case it refers to our design pattern (MVVM) & the Microsoft guidelines. Let’s look at three examples of where we came up against those:

Keyboard support

The first issue was the keyboard support was bad for our app – you would not be able to navigate easily through MANY of the levels because of it. Windows is normally thought of mouse & touch – but there is a lot of keyboard support & keyboard guidance, so for us, it was vital to give an amazing experience with this too.

The core problem was our way of using SelectedItem on our lists for navigation, which works great for mouse/touch but doesn’t work for keyboard. So, with the VERY limited time left, what do we do? We had three options:

  1. Leave in bad keyboard support.
  2. Develop a ton of additional code to allow the view to work with this model or change the view some how – basically allowing us to keep PURE MVVM.
  3. Break the MVVM pattern to solve this.

Option one, wasn’t even an option for us – so that left options two & three. Since we had limited time & other issues, if we did two, we would’ve had to drop other parts or leave other issues unfixed. The choice really was to break the pattern & have the code behind for the View handle the calling the View Model for the navigation.

This isn’t really my a smart idea, it comes from people like Sam Guckenheimer wrote in his book, this is the standard tetrahedon for software development:  time, money, features & quality. Since time & money for us are not movable – we have to chose quality or features.

At the end of the day, focusing on what is important, making sure what we ship is awesome for the user, even if the code base has a few ugly spots in it – meant we broke MVVM. You know what is awesome here though? Windows development allows it, because not every scenario is a perfect fit for a pattern every time.

Aside: I do hope in our v3 release we will get a whole sprint, or two, to do refactoring's, which will include moving this to the point two solution & making it better to unit test!

Right click – show appbar

Another example is that if you right clicked a list item, the appbar would not show (because item grabbed the event & the page never got it). Here the solution is once again, to go to the code behind. However, I do not personally feel this breaks MVVM. I acknowledge we could’ve found a MVVM way to do it, but this sort of experience is PURELY View related & so the code behind for the view is the right place to do this.

I know a lot of MVVM people believe all code behind is evil, but really, there is no evil here – these are just tools to make our lives easier & ship better software. We should use them, but not believe in them.

Alt+Left

The final example is a bug with pressing Alt+Left, which the Windows guidelines state, should take you back a page. However it breaks if you and Alt+Tab to get to the app (the Alt key is seen as stuck then, and just pressing left will make it go back). For us, the solution here is to not implement this guideline.

The experience of our users MUST triumph all guidelines, even those from Microsoft.

References

TechEd Africa 2013: Windows Store Apps - Tips & Tricks

Submitted by Robert MacLean on Sun, 04/21/2013 - 17:13

On Thursday I presented at TechEd Africa 2013 the third & final of my talks which was very personal in nature as I spent a lot of time talking about what I did wrong & what I wish I knew when I started building Windows Store apps. The title of the talk was Windows Store Apps – Tips & Tricks! If you click more (below) you will be able to grab the slides, demos & my demo script if you are wanting to see what I was doing.

Rangers Treasure Map v2: Transparency & my first design notes

Submitted by Robert MacLean on Thu, 04/11/2013 - 11:02

Overview

I am a proud ALM Ranger and one of the projects I am in is the ALM Rangers Treasure map – we have just started work on version two of it and part of that is an effort to increase the transparency of the project. To facilitate this, each team member will be blogging about their experiences and thoughts on what they are doing for all to see. None of these should be seen as statement of fact or official Microsoft views – rather these are personal views of people working on a project. You can find a table of contents for ALL posts on Willy-Peter’s blog.

Lastly these notes are written with those involved in mind, so I am not going to explain everything – that said if you would like to know more about something, just post a comment and I will go into a lot more detail on it for you.

My first set of design notes

With the overview done, I’ll start off with my first set of design notes which look at how we could fulfil the following Epic: As Alex, the technology consultant, I would like to view my progress through the guidance on the live tile without launching the application.

This epic is broken into two features which I will break down further below.


Feature: Enable users to track their progress through the guidance, sync to the cloud, track on live tile.

The first thing I like to do with designs like this is get a simplified list of goals, really should be no more than three or four items that I can then dig into more detail. So for this feature understanding of the distilled list of goals on this would be:

  1. We need cloud sync
  2. We need live tile - I do not see this as cloud push live tile (for example sports app), rather app generated live tile (for example photo app)
  3. We need to do chart rendering to image for the live tile.
We need cloud sync

Windows RT already supports this and it is a fairly simple thing to do. I am proposing a small wrapper layer around the built in aspects to give us a consistent way to work with this data. There is some overlap here with the features of another Epic (As Alex, the technology consultant, I would like to be able to mark treasure items as complete within the ALM guidance, see the same progress on all my devices where the application is installed, and be able to show/hide completed items) so this may be a feature that is moved out of here and into the other one.

Technically the two API's for cloud sync in Windows RT are:

  • Windows.Storage.ApplicationData.Current.RoamingSettings : Gives a key/value store. Each key/value can be up to 8K with max of 64K
  • Windows.Storage.ApplicationData.Current.RoamingFolder : Gives a blob storage. Storage has a quota that can be obtained via code.

My idea around the wrapper is to give a simple API that allows us to say something like ToggleStatus(Status.Done, <item id>);

This would store it in either a small XML file in roaming folder or in roaming settings as a key/value. I propose this style so we could extend it to work for favourites too. From the discussion already, the key/value store may be the easiest way to do this.

This API also needs to be able to assist for the map pages where they can ask, how many of items of group X are done (maybe something like GetStatusCount(<group id>, Status.Done) [return int] and also GetItems(<group id>, Status.Done) [returns IEnumerable of the items].

Impact on code: All new code. A new API for our app and then sprinkling the ToggleStatus around the app in the right places.

We need live tile

Easy enough to do again – really what we need the design of what it should look like. We need both a design for small & wide. Live tiles can take image or text, so if we planning on chart - it will mean rendering an image (see below). My thinking here is on app start up & potentially every time ToggleStatus is called we update the tile in a separate Thread/Task. API here is simply the TileUpdateManager.CreateTileUpdaterForApplication().Update(??);

Impact on code: All new code. New bit to the app start and then integration to the above ToggleStatus

Note: We could push this via a service, however that means an external dependency and we are really trying to avoid that. So having it all in app makes me feel a lot happier.

We need to do chart rendering to image for the live tile

This is going to be tough - we have some drawing primitive support in the runtime, but really we will need to rely on third party code here most importantly http://writeablebitmapex.codeplex.com/ (MS-PL license). Once that is done we can look at trying to figure out a nice (intentional usage of a word that could mean different things to different people, since how nice it is will be a factor of how much work we put in) way to generate a chart.

While this is possible, maybe a chart should be a stretch goal on this because anytime we take on an external dependency, it also needs to meet the quality gates from Microsoft & also needs to meet legal requirements for Microsoft. This can add a load of additional time onto a project. So shifting the chart to a stretch goal (i.e. if all comes together we do it) or pushing it out to vNext maybe better.

This may not be the only option – so we need to check with internal contacts at MS for advice on this.

Impact on code: New dependency on Writeablebitmapex + all new code. No impact outside the above items.


Feature: Add ALM blog tracking / news to the app + live tile.

My understanding of a distilled list of goals on this:

  1. Grab Rangers RSS feed into app
  2. Show RSS feed in app
  3. Show RSS feed on live tile
Grab Rangers RSS feed into app

This is pretty simple, we have a pre-configured list of URL's (can be placed in the XML file) that we then parse on start up (in a separate thread/task) with the SyndicationClient API in Windows RT. My feeling is this is just temp data so we can just store in memory but I would love some feedback on that?

Impact on code: New API that wraps this. Changes to XML file & it's API. Some additional start up stuff.

Show RSS feed in app

This is really just a listview with items being shown. Minor impact.

Needs a design though.

Show RSS feed on live tile

This is easy, grab x items from feeds (above) and send to the live tile immediately. We need to plan this with the stats display since we only really have 5 tiles to rotate through. So maybe 1 or 2 for stats and rest for top news article from feeds? I am thinking simple text here will be best.

Question I have here, is what happens when I tap that item. We can detect what tile was shown so do we just go to the general feed view (easy & low impact) or do we try and find the exact item (more tricky since we need to persist some data to match it all together). This is more UX design issue than a dev feature.

Code impact (general feed) - none, it will just be part of the above.

Code impact (matching item) - to existing is none, but the scope for the first item is bigger since we should persist some info on the feed locally so we can quickly launch to the item and show something.

MVP's @ TechEd Africa 2013

Submitted by Robert MacLean on Fri, 04/05/2013 - 14:15

Microsoft_MVP_logoWith TechEd fast approaching, I have been asked a few times who are interesting presenters to see. That is always a tough problem to answer since it depends on what you like. One group of people who are always great are Microsoft MVPs, although I maybe biased, and there are a few presenting at TechEd.

(Click the names – they take you to their TechEd profiles which has, links to blogs etc… & a list of their talks)

There is also a couple of ex-MVP’s I spotted presenting too:

MVP Award Time Again

Submitted by Robert MacLean on Wed, 01/02/2013 - 08:38

5_mvp_logo_microsoftJanuary first - most people celebrate the ability of gravity working for another year and other physics related awesomeness at midnight however for 943 people they get a special celebration at about 5pm (SAST) when they are told they are MVPs.

For the forth time I have been honoured to be placed into that special group by being award a MVP for ALM.

Thank you to everyone who has been a part of helping me gain this award for the work I did in 2012!

Why the harder you work to prove to Microsoft you know better, the less chance it will ever happen

Submitted by Robert MacLean on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 16:12

Disclaimer: I do not work for Microsoft and these are my views based on discussions with multiple people at Microsoft which I have stitched together – maybe I misunderstood everyone and this is all wrong too. All examples I use are my own. I am no lawyer – check with a lawyer for legal & license advice.

tl;dr: Microsoft is really worried about being sued and thus is risk adverse to “stuff from the internet”. It is better to tell Microsoft what you dislike, not how to fix it. Learn about licensing content.

Paper Work

A few years ago I went on an amazing trip to work with Microsoft but before I could do that I needed to sign not only a NDA, but also waivers for the work I would do – which makes sense. I did it for free and Microsoft didn’t want me to sue them for money later for my work. Not only that I had to sign them, my employer had to do the exact same thing. Once again because I work for someone else who could claim money from Microsoft and Microsoft lawyers had deemed that a risk and needed to be protected.

This involved a lot of time and money, it is VERY expensive to have lawyers review documents from other lawyers and the DHL the originals half way round the world, but it is far cheaper than being sued.

I know that neither myself of BBD would sue Microsoft for the work I did, but that doesn’t still the hearts of those lawyers who live in a world of ugly mean liars that will cheat the system if it was easy and good. I wish it wasn’t this way but some wishes don’t happen.

The Users Voice

A while back Microsoft started spinning up loads of uservoice.com (UV) sites to collect feedback and I believe they are successful in getting some things changed. There is an odd issue I see on UV especially with how Microsoft deals with it, that being as technology advanced users & developers we are taught to give the most detail as possible – really there is nothing like too much detail… however in UV, it seems that Microsoft ignores them and favours those who do and give very little. A great example of this, is in Visual Studio land where we can compare the current top two ideas: this short idea which is “under review”

image

versus to this guy who has pages of details and even as taking the design and proving a lot of it could work – for all his hard work, nothing.

image

WTF?! Microsoft doesn’t listen to me

If you read both suggestions they seem to say the same thing except the lazy guys one got the reward, right? No – it is more fundamental than that. The first one is really just discussing the what & why the VS colour change that is an issue, the second piece of feedback though is discussing how to fix it. The problem for Microsoft is if they take the second guys stuff, a person who hasn’t signed a waiver, the how guy has a legal ability to sue Microsoft for the money they owe him for work/royalties etc… And Microsoft legal won’t allow that to happen because that is their job, to protect Microsoft legal issues.

This is not a complaint about legal, I am sure they are nice people that are just doing their job and it is annoying their job and my wishes do not align...

The thing about taking the what feedback is Microsoft is pretty safe in taking and improving VS in anyway they see fit and that is why the what & why is under review and not the how.

Licensing & Public Domain

The next that will be brought up is that this is work in the public domain and thus “free”… wrong. Public domain work is more a legal trap than anything, and there is so many steps that you need to jump through to get access to using that “free” work that often it is easier to redo it yourself. This is why ANYTHING you do should have a license, even if you want to just give it away and never see it again or if you want someone like Microsoft to be able to use it.

For software check out a good open source license, such as BSD 3-clause which basically says do what you like with my work and I promise I won't sue you except if you use me as an endorsement for your product which contains my work. For non-code items,  like art, music or blog posts have a look at the creative commons licenses.

Microsoft can fix this too

Microsoft could reach out to people with good ideas and get them to sign waivers (WAY too much work and also maybe risky after the work is provided), but better would be to adopt an approach like StackExchange (SE) does. SE states if you provide feedback on their sites it is creative commons.

Microsoft could do the same and even put in a waiver clause on UV, I don’t know if UV allows for this, but Microsoft is big enough to get it done. It doesn’t solve great ideas that are posted elsewhere, those still required YOU to take the time to learn a little about licensing, public domain and so on and take the right steps so we can ALL benefit… not just the lawyers who get paid to say no.

Presentation Dump - End 2011: Azure, Windows 8, Lightswitch, Visual Studio Tools, TFS & Roslyn

Submitted by Robert MacLean on Wed, 01/04/2012 - 08:54

With 2011 finally done and dusted it is time for the bi-annual presentation dump, where I upload most of the slides I have done in the last six months to share with you! I say most, as some presentations are NDA and those, unfortunately, I can’t share out – but where I can upload slides I do!

In this presentation dump we have:

  • Windows Azure Platform Overview: This is a talk I gave at the ImagineCup to faculty members about what Microsoft Azure can offer!
  • Windows 8: A brief introduction shortly after the //Build conference to help share what information we had on Windows 8
  • Lightswitch: The latest iteration of my Lightswitch talk contains a structure overview before the demo and then goes into detail on the themes and extension model in the product.
  • Developer Productivity Tools: A session that looks at FIVE FREE tools for Visual Studio that will assist in the productivity of any Microsoft .NET developer in Visual Studio. Tools covered are fxCop, StyleCop, Pro Power Tools, CodeRush Xpress & Nuget.
  • An Introduction to TFS: The target audience for this is someone or company who is using another source control (like VSS) and is thinking about moving to TFS but isn’t sure where to start. This BRIEF introduction tries to provide a high level view that TFS is not just source control it is a LOT of more and thus has a lot more power. It also mentions migration from VSS and provides guidance for success.
  • Roslyn: This is an early look at Roslyn

It is definitely a quieter period than most, in terms of number of unique slide shows and I think a lot of that comes out of the information black out from Microsoft prior to //Build, but it was still a very period with me presenting Lightswitch NUMEROUS times and also Tech·Ed Africa where I did four presentations!

You can get all the slides and details by clicking “read more” below!

Windows Azure Platform Overview

Windows 8

Lightswitch

Developer Productivity Tools

An Introduction To TFS

Roslyn

Community night in August

Submitted by Robert MacLean on Tue, 07/26/2011 - 15:35

Important Notice for August 2011

Community night is normally the second Tuesday of the month, however since that is a public holiday it has been moved to Monday the 15th of August!

What is community night?

For those who do not know this is a FREE event that happens monthly where a variety of user groups get together at Microsoft's offices. User groups are not influenced by Microsoft, they just use the facilities. User groups that are there on a regular basis:

  • Information Worker: Technical focused SharePoint & Office
  • Business User Workshops: User group that looks at the issues that face power users in enterprises. This month the understanding where a portal ends and CRM begins.
  • Game Dev: One of the biggest with plenty of game developers & artists getting together.
  • JavaScript: For all you JS fixes
  • Mobi: My good friend Rudi Grobler hosts this group focused on mobile (iPhone, Android, Symbian and Windows Phone)
  • UX: For those who understand there is more than 16 colours
  • Architecture: For architects of any IT systems!
  • Languages: For developers who are interested in learning the pros & cons of other languages.
  • SQL: The fantastic Gail Shaw runs the best SQL user group anywhere!

There is also FREE beer, cool drinks & pizza!

Where is Microsoft’s offices?

Microsoft Bryanston Office
3012 William Nicol Drive
Bryanston
2191 Johannesburg
South Africa

Click here for map and more details.

Times?

Various user groups starts at different times. I think the first UG kicks off at 16:00 and it can run to 21:00.
However depends if you attend multiple UG, stay for passage conversation, etc…

So up to you, I have nights where I arrived after 17:30 and other times left at 18:00, no pressure!

DevDays - The event for Microsoft Developers

Submitted by Robert MacLean on Thu, 04/07/2011 - 17:13

imageIt’s that time of year again, it is DevDays time again which is the premier conference from Microsoft for developers! This year it is a very different beast from previous years:

  • Cost: For the second year, you’ll need to pay. This year it is R350 and that is excellent value for the event.
  • Cape Town first: It kicks off in Cape Town this year on May 24th and then moves to Johannesburg after that on may 26th!
  • Johannesburg new venue: We are at Gallagher Estate this year! Very excited about the venue!
  • No Durban Sad smile 
  • Hash tag from day one! See complaining to Cliff on Twitter does work so now we can all hash with #DevDaysSA!
  • No SharePoint – I can’t remember a DevDays without SharePoint, but we have so many other awesome SharePoint options now (Information Worker, SharePoint Saturdays etc…) it is good to have some balance.

There is three tracks so you may want to brush up on how to pick good sessions (short answer, mine Winking smile) plus their is special slots for student & community sessions which really excites me to see new presenters getting big stage time!

I am also very glad that BBD Software (previously known as BB&D) is a major sponsor this year!

You can signup, get more details and engage on the official site at: http://www.microsoft.com/southafrica/devdays/

Agenda:

  • End-to-end software testing with Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio
    • Level: 200
      Speakers: Ahmed Salijee & Colin Dembovsky
      Visual Studio 2010 offers a wide range of software testing capabilities: manual testing, automated UI testing, database testing, low-level unit testing and even performance testing tools capable of simulating thousands of active users. It also provides support for test case management, defect tracking as well as configuring and running your tests in virtual and physical environments. But how do you know which tools to choose for your project? This session will, via a demo scenario, walk you through the various testing capabilities to assist you with the most effective use of Visual Studio 2010's testing capabilities. This session will be useful to developers as well as various tester roles including functional, performance and automation.
  • An end-to-end experience of Windows Phone 7 development
    • Level: 200
      Speaker: Rudi Grobler
      An end-to-end walk through for developing Windows Phone 7 applications using Silverlight
  • Blend: Wiring it all together
    • Level: 400
      Speaker: Shane Morris
  • A lap around Internet Explorer 9 for web developers
    • Level: 200
      Speaker: Simon Wilkinson
      Internet Explorer 9 adds new support for HTML5, CSS3 and many other new web standards, and this is the place to find out all about them. Not only will we learn about those, but we'll take a dive into the work the engineering team has done to make the browser faster through it's new JavaScript engine, the work they've done to ensure that the same mark-up works across all browsers and how hardware acceleration will make your site run faster, without any changes to your code!
  • Azure: Development from scratch
    • Level: 200
      Speaker: Gareth Jane
      The Windows Azure platform is a flexible cloud-computing platform which allows developers to rapidly create highly scalable software applications. This session will introduce developers to the various services and components of the Windows Azure Platform. We will create a very simple application on this platform, especially focusing on the areas which distinguish development on Azure from traditional application development
  • ASP.NET web development with MVC
    • Level: 400
      Speaker: Brent Samodien
      Join us in this session and discover the new features in ASP.NET MVC3 and what scenarios you can target with it. Learn more about the improved HTML Helpers and the new updates to Controller/Action/Method that make your code cleaner. Also, explore the richer URL routing and URL route mapping. We will also show how you can use alternative View Engines, including Razor.
  • A website's life: From sketch to publishing
    • Level: 200
      Speaker: Simon Wilkinson
      WebMatrix is a new, free, fully featured, easy to install web development tool that helps you build ASP.NET and PHP websites and perform validation, SEO optimization and one-click publishing. My favourite feature however is a new script syntax for ASP.NET called Razor, which will help you create dynamic websites incredibly easily. We will spend some time sketching/wireframing our website, doing visual design work in Expression Design and then experiencing the rich development toolset in WebMatrix.
  • Let's get ready for the cloud: Building your applications so they
    are cloud ready
    • Level: 400
      Speaker: Robert MacLean
      In a world where you hear people talking about the cloud, here are some guidelines on how to start building and structuring applications that will be easy to migrate to the Azure platform.
  • Code First in entity framework
    • Level: 200
      Speaker: Brent Samodien
      Code First has been a great success with customers, and in this talk, we'll take a deep dive into how it works and talk about its upcoming RTM (Q1 2011). You'll see how Code First uses convention over configuration to improve developer productivity. Its flexibility allows for either automatic database provisioning or the ability to work with an existing database. We'll be demoing features beyond the initial RTM, such as Migrations support, and we'll also talk about the roadmap for Code First going forward
  • Silverlight 5: The Future
    • Level: 200
      Speaker: Shane Morris
  • Exploring Windows Azure storage
    • Level: 400
      Speaker: Gary Hope
      Examine each of the foundation storage capabilities of Windows Azure, Blobs, Tables and Queues. Discover how to create storage accounts; upload and retrieve blobs and blob metadata; create, update and query tables; and create a simple service that uses a message queue for communication
  • LightSwitch basics: Building your first LightSwitch application
    • Level: 200
      Speaker: Robert MacLean
      Visual Studio LightSwitch is the simplest way to build business applications for the desktop and cloud. LightSwitch simplifies the development process by letting you concentrate on the business logic, while LightSwitch handles the common tasks for you. In this demo-heavy session, you will see, end to end, how to build and deploy a data-centric business application using LightSwitch. After that you will discover what is under the hood to better understand the architecture of a LightSwitch application. Finally you will learn how you can use Visual Studio 2010 Professional and Expression Blend 4 to customize and extend its UI and Data layers for when the application's requirements grow beyond what is supported by default
  • Kung Fu Silverlight: Tips and architectural patterns and practices
    • Level: 400
      Speaker: Dave Russell
      Learn about the rewards of using RIA Services together with development patterns, such as the Service Providers, Single Responsibility pattern, Commanding, user Interactions, Messaging, ChildWindows, Design Time Data, Testing, and developing using Model-View/View- Model (MVVM) pattern, to build Silverlight and Windows Phone apps. Hear the top tips you need to know for building data driven Silverlight apps that solve real world problems.