Rory Primrose

We just had Shane Morris come to my work to spend some time with us talking about UX. There was a statement he made that really stood out. It was something like: Usability is the natural enemy of functionality. A successful application is usually one with features left out. Hope I'm not misrepresenting him, but I think this is a really important point, especially when UX is normally a developer responsibility. Developers tend to cram in functionality because that is what the business spec ... [More]

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It seems like the blogsphere is getting very busy of late with PC vs Mac (or Mac vs PC, whatever your pleasure) arguments, adverts and mud-slinging. It reminds me of the following video which I originally got via email about three or four years ago. Crash Different Classic.

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As a recent purchase has given me the joys (and some woes) of a JasJam, it is good news to hear that Windows Mobile 6 has just been released (read here and here as well).

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I have been having problems with my router (a Netgear DG834) for the last few months. A few weeks ago, it would drop off the net about once a week, requiring a reboot or hard reset to get it going again. It started to get a lot worse with it falling off the net too many times to count each day. After reading lots of forums, I have invested in a Billion BiPAC 7404VGPM from Clearnet Communications. From first impressions (and contrary to the only two negative forum posts about Billion routers... [More]

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MSDN has a set of articles regarding WCF versioning that are good to cast your eyes over. Service Versioning Data Contract Versioning Best Practices: Data Contract Versioning Collection Types in Data Contracts

Tags: Useful Links, WCF

I have been working on a winforms wizard framework for a while when I get the chance. My aim with this project is to be able to create a reusable framework for wizard style dialogs and pages for the 2.0 .Net framework. The first RC version of my WizardUI has been released on CodePlex. I would appreciate any comments. You can find the release here.

Tags: Wizard Framework

A little while ago, I was playing with DNS entries. I was having a few issues here and there with DNS and mail configuration. After doing some research, I came across DNS Report which was absolutely brilliant for troubleshooting my problems. DNS Report is related to DNS Stuff which has many more tools to test domains, IP's, hostnames and more. On a side note, I have been using DNSExit for my DNS services including backup MX. Their DNS services are great, but the backup MX at $20USD/domain was a ... [More]

Tags: Great Tools, Useful Links

I am really enjoying using WCF and WF in my development. While playing with the new toys can be frustrating at times, it is a whole lot of fun. There are a few gotchas though. The one I want to highlight here is the "Find All References" support in the IDE. Here is a scenario that can bite you. Let's say that I am using PolicyActivities to do pre and post condition validation. I may also be using them to change data in the workflow based on rules. For example, I might need to do some busines... [More]

Tags: WF

I have been building up a project that I need to add workflows to, only I didn't create the project as a workflow project. This means that when I go to add a new item, I get the standard options along with WPF file types and even an option for a WCF service, but no workflow options. After using WinMerge to compare the project file with a workflow project file, these are the actions I took: Add references to System.Workflow.Runtime, System.Workflow.ComponentModel and System.Workflow.Activities.... [More]

Tags: WF

Snap Preview is a really cool add-on that you can use in your site. If you manage your own Community Server build, the easiest way to add this to your site is by adding the script to the Raw Header setting in the Administration -> Site Name & Description area of the control panel.

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