This Week on C9: Free 3D tools, "Mojave", Cool Visualizations, and VS 10

The Discussion

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  So, wait. Was that Mojave thing just vanilla Vista, or did it have some sort of interface tweaks? Basically I guess that's just a nicer way of asking if the perceived problems with Vista are remedied with some GUI changes, or if the test subjects were just incredibly dense.

• 

  I'm not sure I would classify potential customers as "incredibly dense", but it was just regular Vista. Maybe they changed it to using a new wallpaper with a build number in the corner

• 

  For VS10 they better make a decent Installation/patch project that uses the Windows Installer technology to it's fullest. Maybe by improving Wix/Votive and integrating it.
  

• 

  Very cool stuff.
  
  Please, pretty please with sugar on it, give VS better local to remote FTP features.
  

• 

  Amen, couldn't agree more, Wix is good if you have the time to learn it, but so many shops are instead using paying for installers (Wise, Installshield, etc)
  
  I'd push the aspiration a bit further and say we should have xcopy installation for Visual Studio (see Eclipse).
  
  I'd also add that if we can add xcopy installation for VS, let's build out the technology/framework/tools so that *anyone* can build xcopy applications (see Apple). 
  
  I'd also throw in that we need a much more flexible way to update software (see Firefox updater).

• 

  Windows Installer has some great features over a xcopy deployment: distribution via Active Directory, patching, self healing and the custom selection of which features you want to install. If the Windows Installer team would bother to add an auto update function this would be a major plus for the next version of Windows. Bring all your applications up to date when checking for updates in the control panel.
  
  On the other hand, there are a lot of stupidities and complexities going on inside an msi package that makes it impossible to create a quick installation package.
  
  Submitted 4 years ago: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=114408

• 

  The laptops being so visible is distracting in this episode.  can we place the laptops some place they don't distract from the crew?

• 

  I know these shows are meant to be freeform, but "people lost data, waaa"?
  
  Microsoft has a tough job, making a product that works right for millions, but people's data is their baby pictures, email, finances,etc.
  Something that should be treated with respect.
  
  -dp

• 

  dp is right Dan, it would be best to keep away from comments like that.
  el Lobo malo

• 

  I didn't mean to offend, I was trying to be humorous about the absurdity of blowing off an important bug. As someone who did lose data personally from Windows Home Server, I know how bad it is!

• 

  If an application is xcopyable, you can distribute it through Active Directory as well. I agree with you that application updates are key too, I want xcopy deployment and auto-updates. I want to be able to copy all my apps onto a USB drive and paste them onto a new PC and have everything "just work."
  
  
  

• 

  I don't know, I lost stuff due to that bug, but I figured I could see the tongue-in-cheekness there.

• 

  This probably won't happen with all the COM stuff that needs to be registered when you install Visual Studio... Must be a HUGE amount of work to rewrite the whole VS to make it not rely on COM.

• 

  I agree with you that it's work, but I'd like the work to not be on porting VS, but rather enabling Reg-free, Xcopy-able COM. No re-writes, no degradation in features (per user settings still work), etc
  
  I'm not saying I know how it should be built(clearly some general purpose abstraction layer for COM and the registry though), but rather that we do need it and every Windows application could benefit by making it "just work."
  
  What I get frustrated by is that we attempt to instead make incremental improvements versus making big bets to completely overhaul something that is painful to all Windows developers. Worse yet, there are plenty of examples (Apple, Firefox, etc) where we could dramatically overhaul our installer technology.

• 

  Yeah. I'm completely with you...
  
  btw. it seems that the MMO feature for BabySmash has been declined! How could that happend??