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

Posted: Jul 25, 2008 at 9:01AM

By: Dan Fernandez

(6)

This Week on Channel 9, Brian and Dan cover:

- The XNA Team discusses the upcoming release Xbox LIVE Community Games where developers can make money selling games through Xbox LIVE community arcade (0 - 1:25)
- Windows Home Server releases Power Pack 1 which includes a number of improvements including fixing the data-loss bug. (1:25 - 2:37)
- Caligari's TrueSpace 3D Modeling tools are now available to download for free. You can even export to DirectX or use a converter to convert the models into XAML 3D for WPF. Check out the training videos for more info. (2:38 - 4:32)
- Last week's call for people to vote up the BabySmash feature resulted in a 588% increase and has made adding an MMO to BabySmash the #1 feature request! (4:32 - 5:15)
- The Popfly team's July update includes lots of new features including game asset pre-loading, a high-score service and more. (5:15 - 7:10)
- Effectize: 25 ASP.NET Performance Tuning Resources via DZone (7:10 - 7:54)
- Visual Studio Middle School Power Toy 1.0 released, found via Greg Duncan (7:54 - 9:10)
- Clint Rutkas's To Do App is featured in Lifehacker (9:10 - 10:12)
- .NetMap Codeplex project adds easy and cool visualizations for social networks into Excel (10:12 - 11:40)
- How to use Microsoft's .NET Framework Cleanup Utility - When uninstalling fails. (11:40 - 12:50)
- 90% of XP users love Windows "Mojave" (which is really just Windows Vista), Steve Clayton shows off a preview of the new ad campaign imagery and mock Folgers crystals campaign by Saturday Night Live (12:50 - 15:05)
- Video clip from Beth Massi with the Visual Basic Design Team talking about their favorite VB features (15:05 - 16:17)
- Give your feedback on new, unreleased Visual Studio 10 features like Call Hierarchy or Searching/Navigating symbols (16:17 - 17:25)
- Brian's Pick of the Week: Video clip of Brian's "High Tech Hiking" video showing Virtual Earth 3D controlled by an Xbox controller (17:25 - 19:50)
- Dan provides some helpful Spanish phrases for Brian's trip to Patagonia (19:50 - 21:18)
- Dan's Pick of the Week: Crayon Cannon a Popfly/Silverlight game built by Adam Nathan (21:18 - 22:56)

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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.

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Bas It finds lightbulbs.

Jul 25, 2008 at 11:19AM

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.
Dan

Jul 25, 2008 at 1:41PM

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
ZippyV Fired Up

Jul 25, 2008 at 3:38PM

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.
wisemx Live it

Jul 25, 2008 at 4:01PM

Very cool stuff.

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

Jul 25, 2008 at 4:49PM

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).
ZippyV Fired Up

Jul 26, 2008 at 7:12AM

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
jjesse

Jul 26, 2008 at 9:05AM

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

Jul 26, 2008 at 5:48PM

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
wisemx Live it

Jul 26, 2008 at 7:06PM

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

Jul 26, 2008 at 9:08PM

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!
Dan

Jul 26, 2008 at 9:16PM

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."
Bas It finds lightbulbs.

Jul 27, 2008 at 3:06AM

I don't know, I lost stuff due to that bug, but I figured I could see the tongue-in-cheekness there.
littleguru <3 Seattle

Jul 27, 2008 at 9:55AM

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.
Dan

Jul 27, 2008 at 4:29PM

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.
littleguru <3 Seattle

Jul 30, 2008 at 8:29AM

Yeah. I'm completely with you...

btw. it seems that the MMO feature for BabySmash has been declined! How could that happend??

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