The first instance (emphasis added):

Microsoft is starting this month to send updates to Windows computers in Europe so that when computer users log on, they will see a pop-up screen asking them to pick one or more of 12 free Web browsers to download and install, including Microsoft.

Microsoft is allowing users to choose one of more than 12 free web browsers, because the EU didn’t like Microsoft bundling its own free web browser into Windows. Call me strange, but punishing a company to give something away for free because it blocks out other companies from giving their own products away for free strikes me as odd.

The second instance (emphasis added):

The EU’s executive commission said giving consumers the chance to try an alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser that comes with the widely used Windows operating system would “bring more competition and innovation in this important area.”

Wait, didn’t we just read that there are “more than 12 free web browsers”? That doesn’t sound like lack of competition and innovation to me at all. How many industries offer a choice of over a dozen free items? None that I can think of.

I am aware of Microsoft’s predatory practices in the web browser arena, particularly related to the browser wars between them and Netscape. Microsoft muscled out Netscape by giving away its browser for free, something Netscape didn’t do until early 1998. Isn’t that a good thing for consumers? Further, client software (such as Navigator) was a small portion of Netscape’s revenues, and at the time, “Netscape has successfully shifted its business over the past year toward enterprise software sales and to revenues from its Web site business, and away from standalone client revenues” (source: Mitchell’s Blog). If Netscape was successful in transitioning away from a client product, but ultimately failed in the enterprise marketplace, why is Microsoft being punished?

In the end, Microsoft was penalized for providing a product for free – and forcing the market leader to ultimately transform their business (“successfully”) and offer their own (similar) product for free. The fact is, Microsoft’s efforts were largely responsible for the explosion of free web browser alternatives – yet the EU still feels a need to punish them because there is “[not enough] competition and innovation in this area,” as they say.

Final point: let’s not mention the pain and suffering that novice users will have after installing other browsers, wondering where their bookmarks went, and wondering why they are being prompted to (re-)install Adobe Flash so they can play YouTube videos.

Some things are better left alone. This is one of them.

So true… it deserves its place right next to YAGNI!

                     /"\
                    |\./|
                    |   |
                    |   |
                    |>~<|
                    |   |
                 /'\|   |/'\..
             /~\|   |   |   | \
            |   =[@]=   |   |  \
            |   |   |   |   |   \
            | ~   ~   ~   ~ |`   )
            |                   /
             \                 /
              \               /
               \    _____    /
                |–//”`\–|
                | (( +==)) |
                |–\_|_//–|

In order to illustrate some functionality, I needed to write a simple console application that used the code that these other devs wrote, so I referenced it and tried it… and was given an exception (the computer version of the middle finger):

Unhandled Exception: System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0×80040154): Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {29AB7A12-B531-450E-8F7A-EA94C2F3C05F} failed due to the following error: 80040154.

My first instinct was to search through the registry for the CLSID. Sure enough, it was there, and everything looked right. It has to be — otherwise, the unit tests (which use the exact same code) wouldn’t work.

The next thing I tried was unregistering and re-registering Redemption.dll (using regsvr32). No luck; unit tests work, console app fails.

Reboot? No luck; unit tests work, console app fails.

I did some reading, and apparently MSTest runs as a 32-bit application (though it can be run as 64-bit). I tried forcing Visual Studio to compile in x86? No luck; unit tests work, console app fails. Forcing Visual Studio to compile in x64 didn’t help either.

More reading, and I started to understand more about what the “Any CPU” platform compilation means, and the trials and tribulations of programming for 64-bit Windows. Now I am smarter, but I still can’t get my damn simple console application to work!

Seemingly out of options, I found myself staring at the Debug output directory, and noticed something:

SimplePstExtraction.exe
SimplePstExtraction.vshost.exe

I went ahead and turned off the Visual Studio hosting process, and viola! Everything works fine. I don’t know why, exactly (though I’m sure it’s related to the difference between 32- and 64-bit processes), but it fixed my issue, so if you have the same problem, hopefully it’ll fix yours.

First, let’s look at the problems.

Problem #1: A database error message is my first experience. Granted, the site is probably getting hammered by all the excited young Republicans, but that’s still no excuse for getting the following message on my first request: “Database Error: Unable to connect to your database. Your database appears to be turned off or the database connection settings in your config file are not correct. Please contact your hosting provider if the problem persists.” Come on, is it that hard to write a friendly error message?

Problem #2: Hearing someone talk as soon as the home page opens. Having sound play automatically on your first visit to a web site is bad enough. Having that sound being someone’s voice is worse than that. In this case, it’s RNC Chairman Michael Steele telling us about the new web site. I bet that the majority of visitors who don’t immediately hit the BACK or CLOSE button probably spend more time looking for the MUTE or STOP button than they do paying attention to what Mr. Steele is saying. (I know I did.)

Problem #3: Doesn’t scale to 800 pixels. Sure, 800 pixels is so yesterday, and many developers (myself included) don’t bother supporting it. But this web site is quite clearly aimed at the general public, and roughly 4% of the general public still have monitors that display at 800-pixel wide resolutions. Considering the Republican party needs all the support it can get, it shouldn’t alienate these people by forcing them to scroll horizontally.

Problem #4: Branding a face that has no brand meaning. You can’t miss the “faces” in the GOP logo on the top left of the web page. Each refresh loads a different page. (See A Children’s Treasury Of ‘GOP Faces’ From The Hot New GOP Website.) Why are you focusing so much of the visible screen, and so much of your user’s attention, on faces that have no brand value? Shrink the damn header to no more than 120 pixels high and give people what they need: functionality and information, not a bunch of meaningless faces.

Problem #5: It just doesn’t work. I refreshed the home page, and now all my connection attempts are failing.

I’ll say more if/when I can actually re-connect. Why such a problem? It’s not like launching new web sites is something new.

A little digging identifies the hosting provider for gop.com as Smartech, and they seem like a reasonably sound hosting company. So, is it a hosting issue, or a software architecture issue? I’d bet on the latter.

Hey, finally got back in! I’ll continue the blog post now.

Problem #6: Pretty useless without JavaScript. Disabling JavaScript helped me avoid seeing the nameless faces (Problem #4) and hearing sound (Problem #2), but improve beyond that. Now I can’t click in the SEARCH box in the header, or on the DONATE button. Similar to Problem #3 (scaling to low resolutions), few people have JavaScript disabled, but why blatantly exclude even 2% of your audience? At least handle the lack of JavaScript gracefully.

Sorry, got kicked out of the GOP web site again. I’ll continue this post when I can reconnect…

Ah, back in… sort of…

Problem #7: Republican Faces doesn’t work. Apparently the focal point of the web site (or, at least, the faces described in Problem #4) is “Republican Faces.” Go to that section of the web site for this error:

PHP has encountered an Access Violation at 7C82A38B

Hmpf. Well, until that’s fixed, let’s see what else we can find.

Problem #8: Dropdown menus that are longer than the height of the screen. I’m looking at the site on a relatively mainstream 768-pixel height laptop screen. Due to the excessive height of the header (Problem #4) and the excessive length of some of the drop-down menus (one has 10 items), I can’t see the entire menu without scrolling. One positive: the menu is “sticky” – it doesn’t disappear when it loses focus – which makes such scrolling possible. Still, I wonder how many people will never go to the Research Briefings or Future Leaders pages (among others) as a result.

Sorry, can’t continue: Service Unavailable. Fortunately, while waiting, the Republican Faces site came up.

Have this many people really been able to use the new GOP.com today?
Certainly I wasn’t!

Hey, RNC, if you need to hire a web guy who actually knows how to make web sites work, drop me a line!

Like many people, I use lorem ipsum placeholder text. When I want large, random blocks of ‘lorem ipsum’ text, I use the Lipsum Generator; today, I only needed a few words, so I figured I’d just type it.

As soon as I finished typing the word “Lorem,” Balsamiq sprang into action and populated my text box with the following text: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Now that is an awesome, useful feature. Hats off to whoever thought of adding it!

• You do a Google search for 64 bit applications.
• You go to the first hit: Catalogue of 64-bit Software.
• You look at the search results and see this:

Of course, the lack of 64-bit software is not the fault of the proprietors of this web site (which is, of its own admission, a beta, and from the looks of things, not heavily monitored or maintained), but it is telling of the state of native 64-bit software.

Of course, all is not lost: one of the first programs I install on my computer is 7-zip, and it has a native 64-bit version.

Nice! Looking at the install log was so much more revealing.

[09/14/09,13:33:33] Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5: ***ERRORLOG EVENT*** : Error code 1603 for this component means “Fatal error during installation.”
[09/14/09,13:33:33] Setup.exe: AddGlobalCustomProperty
[09/14/09,13:33:33] Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5: ***ERRORLOG EVENT*** : Setup Failed on component Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5

Odd, why won’t the .Net Framework 3.5 install? Shouldn’t be hard to fix by downloading the .Net 3.5 installer and installing it manually. Or should it? That didn’t work, either. Again from the install log.

[09/14/09,13:42:31] WIC Installer: [2] Error code 1603 for this component means “Fatal error during installation.”
[09/14/09,13:42:31] WIC Installer: [2] Setup Failed on component WIC Installer
[09/14/09,13:42:33] WapUI: [2] DepCheck indicates WIC Installer is not installed.

What does Windows Imaging Component have to do with anything? Probably nothing, but Windows Installer does, so let’s take that route. I download the latest Windows Installer installer (!) and attempt to install (!!) manually. Too bad that didn’t help, either — but at least this time I got an error message seemed to point me in the right direction.

Now we’re getting somewhere. Googling that exact error message brought me to a Microsoft knowledge base article (KB888791) which told me:

Update.exe version 5.4.1.0 and later versions require that the user who installs the software update is an administrator with certain user rights.

A quick look at the policy settings on the server showed me that the Administrators group didn’t have the “Back up files and directories” right, as shown below.

A quick request to IT to grant the Administrators group the missing right, and viola! TFS, and other software, is finally installing.

Apparently, this may have been the root cause issue for software not installing or uninstalling properly a week or so ago, when I put in the original request to have the server rebuilt, which leads me to wonder. If Update.exe knows what rights it requires, why doesn’t it check for them, why doesn’t it provide a clear error message indicating what is missing, and why doesn’t this information bubble up appropriately to MSI installers that use Update.exe?

The world may never know.

Take a sample enum declaration:

public enum Level
{
	Unknown = 0,
	Low,
	Medium,
	High
}

If you want a string representation of an enum, you simply use the ToString() method.

Console.WriteLine(Level.Unknown.ToString());
/* output:
Unknown
*/

If you want the numeric value of an enum, cast it to an int. (By default, an enum is an int, though you can specify other numeric values for them.)

int i = (int)Level.Low;
Console.WriteLine(i);
/* output:
1
*/

If you have a string and want to convert it to an enum, use the Enum.Parse() method. Pass the enum type, the string value to parse, and an optional boolean parameter to note if you want the parsing to be case-insensitive. (By default, parsing is case-sensitive.)

Level lvl;

// case-insensitive parsing
lvl = (Level)Enum.Parse(typeof(Level), "medium", true);
Console.WriteLine(i);
/* output:
Medium
*/

// default, case-sensitive parsing
lvl = (Level)Enum.Parse(typeof(Level), "high");
/* throws an exception:
System.ArgumentException: Requested value 'high' was not found.
*/

If you have a numeric value and want to convert it to an enum, simply typecast the number to the enum type. Remember, an enum is just a number!

int val = 3;
Level lvl = (Level)val;
Console.WriteLine(lvl);
/* output:
High
*/

What about a set of enums that are not mutually exclusive (i.e. a sets of flags)? A “flags” enum can have multiple values, and is decorated with the [Flags] attribute, as shown below. Note that a these enums should have values defined in powers of two (1, 2, 4, 8, etc.). See below for a sporting example.

[Flags]
public enum Bases
{
	Empty = 0,
	First = 1,
	Second = 2,
	Third = 4,
	FirstAndSecond = Bases.First + Bases.Second,
	FirstAndThird = Bases.First + Bases.Third,
	SecondAndThird = Bases.Second + Bases.Third,
	Loaded = Bases.First + Bases.Second + Bases.Third
}

Many of the previously defined operations work on these enums. String output is as you would expect when using ToString():

Console.WriteLine(Bases.Empty.ToString());
Console.WriteLine(Bases.FirstAndSecond.ToString());
/* output:
Empty
FirstAndSecond
*/

Getting the numeric value is the same, too:

int i = (int)Bases.First;
int j = (int)Bases.SecondAndThird;
Console.WriteLine(i);
Console.WriteLine(j);
/* output:
1
6
*/

Parsing — yes, the same.

Bases b1 = (Bases)Enum.Parse(typeof(Bases), "second", true);
Bases b2 = (Bases)Enum.Parse(typeof(Bases), "Loaded");
Console.WriteLine(b1);
Console.WriteLine(b2);
/* output:
Second
Loaded
*/

Numeric values? The same as well.

int val = 5;
Bases bases = (Bases)val;
Console.WriteLine(bases);
/* output:
FirstAndThird
*/

One thing you’d want to do with a flagg enum is to detect if a particular flag is set. It’s easy to do using the AND operator (&).

bool isFirstOnSecondOrThird = (Bases.First & Bases.SecondAndThird) == Bases.First;
bool isFirstOnLoaded = (Bases.First & Bases.Loaded) == Bases.First;

/* output:
False
True
*/

There’s lots more that you can do with enums — check out some of the following links for more info:

• MSDN documentation on the Enum Class
• C# Station Enums tutorial
• enum at C# Online.Net
• C# Enum Tips and Examples

Check out the craigslist posting for more details.

Come on, John, it’s not like PostgrSQL accidentally came up in your spell check… or that you don’t have editors who know the proper spelling of common tech companies. Do you?

What’s next? Will Dvorak lament the failure of the next operating system to come out of MicroSoft?