Very nice summary: Developing an app on Microsoft Azure: a few quick reflections….
–jeroen
Archive for August 14th, 2014
Tim Anderson on Developing an app on Microsoft Azure: a few quick reflections…
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/08/14
Posted in .NET, .NET 4.5, C#, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, C# 6 (Roslyn), Cloud Development, Development, Software Development, Visual Studio 2013, Visual Studio 2014, Visual Studio and tools, Windows Azure | Leave a Comment »
Michael Kaplan’s Sorting it All Out blog is back! http:///www.siao2.com (via Tim’s comment)
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/08/14
A while ago, Tim mentioned that [WayBack] Michael Kaplan’s blog “Sorting it All Out” on MSDN was gone.
I amended my original post because of it (see below), and I’m really happy that Tim kept track of his comment, and just posted a new comment:
Michael Kaplan’s Sorting it All Out blog is back! [WayBack] http:///www.siao2.com
Back to the original edit I made as the new blog doesn’t (yet?) has all the content of the old blog:
Edit: Michael’s MSDN blog is officially dead, but there are the nice web archive and web cache virtues:
Michael also appeared on this 30 minute podcast episode: [WayBack] Hanselminutes Technology Podcast – Fresh Air and Fresh Perspectives for Developers – Sorting out Internationalization with Michael Kaplan
Michael Kaplan is a Developer in the Windows International group and the author of the popular ‘Sorting It Out’ blog that is dedicated it all things ‘-ization.’ That means Globalization, Internationalization, and Localization. This show is is brought to you by the CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER A.
Some key points:
- Use these languages for UI testing
- English as it is common and slightly wordy
- German because it is
- more wordy (30-50% more than English) to test for clipping text, and used enough to warrant the energy
- Turkish because of the Turkish i
- Arabic (is right-to-left, cursive and has ligatures) or Hebrew (which is just right-to-left and cursive)
- Thai because it has plenty of word-breaking issues and tests Uniscribe well
- Push UTF-8 all the way through your system and back and avoid question marks and other
After that: time to catch up on Michael’s new blog (:
–jeroen
via: Delphi: a few short notes on LoadString and loading shell resource strings for specific LCIDs
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Posted in Development, internatiolanization (i18n) and localization (l10), Software Development, User Experience (ux) | Leave a Comment »
Why IKEA’s font switch from Futura to Verdana mattered (via: National Post)
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/08/14
The point made by Simson Garfield below reminds me I haven’t been at IKEA for a long long while (:
Verdana was everywhere, and now it was in one more place. It was becoming a non-font that we don’t even register. Which is precisely why it was so effective, and exactly why it was chosen.
--jeroen
via: Why IKEA’s font switch from Futura to Verdana mattered | National Post.
PS: for people that also missed it and want to see the differences:
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Posted in About, Font, IKEA hacks, LifeHacker, Personal, Power User, Typography | Leave a Comment »
Z80: the “User Manual” was already 300+ pages (:
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/08/14
Today yet another post in the series of BitSavers and History articles.
I already wrote a bit on the Z80 processor in XOR swap/exchange: nowadays an almost extinct means to exchange two distinct variables of the same size.
Popular Z80 powered computers were Amstrad CPC, MSX, Exidy Sorcerer, TRS-80, P2000, Sinclair ZX80, ZX81 and ZX Spectrum, Kaypro, Osborne 1 and the Z-80 SoftCard for Apple II.
The Z80 was widely popular in the 1980s as it could do more than the MOS 6502 of that time:
- The 6502 (see 6502.org) had
– only 56 instructions (the 65C02 variations had a few more), and the XOR was called EOR.
– addressing memory was limited (not all instructions understood both zero-page-absolute and absolute addressing)
– only 3 registers (A, X and Y)- The Z80 (see z80.info) had:
– only 68 instructions and XOR was indeed called XOR
– many more addressing modes than the 6502
– a whopping 9 registersStill the XOR swap algorithm was used a lot back then because of register pressure in the Z80.
Compared to current processors you’d think the Z80 was so small that a few pages of documentation would suffice.
Not so: back then they had a truckload of documentation and it would all be on paper (PDF ame in 1993 and it took quite a while to become popular).
Some of the Z80 documentation has found its way to BitSavers.org:
- The Z80 Data Book (which originates in the 1980s) is already 100+ pages
- And more recently (2004! the Z80 is still used a lot in embedded systems today), the Z80 Family CPU User manual is a whopping 300+ page book
–jeroen
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Posted in Assembly Language, BitSavers.org, Development, History, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 