Posted by jpluimers on 2010/05/13
When you want to deploy WPF, it is important to check if you have sufficient hardware acceleration for your apps.
The most important things to check is the RenderCapability.
It gives you the Tier on which graphics is rendered.
The Tier tells something about hardware acceleration support, including a broad estimate of the pixel shader and vertex shader levels and DirectX versions.
Currently, there are 3 tiers: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in .NET, C#, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, Development, Software Development, WPF | 1 Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/05/12
A short while ago, [WayBack] Danny Thorpe posted an answer about multithreading issues on StackOverflow.com [WayBack] which reminded me a lot about a BorCon session he did.
That session is called [WayBack] “Reading Tea Leaves: The Fine Art of Debugging“, it is still very current (a lot of it is not Delphi specific at all: it can be applied to a broad range of platforms), and I was glad to find that [WayBack] Joe White made [WayBack] some great notes and posted them on his blog.
Edit 20100513T0830: (thanks Mario!) Don’t you love 404 :-)
The blog from Joe White seem to be down, and the web archive of his blog didn’t have that particular page, but the google cache has.
–jeroen
PS:
Danny is a great writer; I’m really glad he [WayBack] showed up at StackOverflow.
Here is another very [WayBack] nice answer from him on concurrency in software using read-write, locking, interlocked increment and more.
He found back his slides:
Consolidating a dusty box of ancient DVDRW archive disks this weekend (uploading them to multi-redundant NAS) and looky what I found! I’d given up all hope of ever finding this again. #digitalpackrat ftw!
Hope this brightens your day @jpluimers :) https://t.co/saqq7JA46e
Posted in Debugging, Delphi, Development, Software Development | 3 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/05/11
This Why does this code fail in D2010, but not D7 question on stackoverflow once again shows that SizeOf on character arrays usualy is evil.
My point in this posting is that you should always try to write code that is semantically correct.
By writing semantically correct code, you have a much better chance of surviving a major change like a Unicode port.
The code below is semantically wrong: it worked in Delphi 7 by accident, not by design:
Like many Windows API functions, GetTempPath expects the first parameter (called nBufferLength) number of characters, not the number of bytes. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Delphi, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi 3, Delphi 4, Delphi 5, Delphi 6, Delphi 7, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Development, Encoding, ISO-8859, Software Development, Unicode | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/05/04
Last week, I blogged that we should move away from Flash to HTML5, CSS and JavaScript, commenting on Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Flash post announcing support for HTML5 including video playback of H.264 encoded video.
In the mean time, the Microsoft Internet Explorer team announced that in IE9 they are going to support HTML5 and that H.264 will be the only supported video encoding standard.
There is a truckload of hardware that supports H.264 decoding acceleration.
So the movement is from a plethora of video encoding standards into one broadly accepted H.264 standard.
When you look at the combination of support in HTML5/H.264 for all the major browsers, only FireFox has not announced support. This is probably because H.264 is not a free (as in beer) standard: commercial use requires payment. But – if I read the H.264 article right – content that is free for end users requires no royalties to be paid.
This combined hardware and software support means that there is a pretty strong backing for H.264!
–jeroen
Reference: IEBlog : HTML5 Video.
Posted in CSS, Development, HTML, HTML5, Software Development, Web Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/05/03
I just noticed that WhiteHouse.gov last week released some of their code as Open Source.
In addition to using the Open Source Drupal project, they actually contribute to the Open Source community as well.
–jeroen
Posted in Development, Software Development, Web Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/04/30
Steve Jobs just posted his Thoughts on Flash.
Let me add another thought: I hate flash apps.
Flash should go, and we all should go for HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.
The primary reason I dislike Flash is similar to this quote from Steve Jobs’ post: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in CSS, Development, HTML, HTML5, Software Development, Web Development | 2 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/04/29
After the excitement of .NET 4.0 and all the tools around it, I totally forgot to mention that SQL Server 2008 R2 got to RTM.
If you are an MSDN subscriber you can download it there.
If you are not, you can download the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 RTM – Express with Management Tools.
Brent Ozar wrote a pretty nice FAQ on the new SQL Server 2008 R2 features, much better than the “what’s new” and press release by Microsoft.
Feature conclusion so far:
–jeroen (who just turned 41 today)
Posted in .NET, Database Development, Delphi, Development, Software Development, SQL Server | 2 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/04/28
The Microsoft patterns & practices Developer Center released the Microsoft Enterprise Library 5.0 last week.
This version of the Enterprise Library has a ton of new features, and now has full support for .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010.
Next to using it from C#/VB.NET, I’m looking forward to see how well this can be used from the upcoming Delphi Prism 2011 release (scheduled to be released on May 15th).
Lots of stuff to experiment with :-)
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, C# 4.0, Delphi, Development, Prism, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/04/27
If you have a TechNet or MSDN account, you can download the SharePoint, Office, Visio and Project 2010 RTM builds.
Downloads have become available on April 23rd.
The SharePoint designer is available from the Microsoft Download centre as William Conrwill describes at CodeJedi.NET : SharePoint, Office, Visio and Project 2010 RTM are now available on MSDN.
If you have SA, then as of today (April 27), you can get your volume licenses as well.
William describes more dates in his post Office, SharePoint, Project and Visio 2010 have made RTM!
I’ll be busy playing with all the bits from Delphi and .NET API perspective :-)
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, Delphi, Development, Power User, Prism, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/04/27
Posted in History, Usability | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 