this.Reflect(); - Donn's Weblog : Productivity

GMail = Dog Slow

donnfelker — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 18:00:42 GMT

I've been using GMail since it first came out. I remember getting it and having TWO invites to send to friends. This is back when Gmail invites were going for $100.00 a pop.

Through the years its been a great service and I've love every single second of it. Its truly the best at keeping track of conversations, and this works wonders for insanely active groups like ALT.NET.

Over the last couple of months its seemed that Gmail has gotten progressively slower and slower. Through using Fiddler I was able to determine that larger chunks of JavaScript was coming down the wire. The amount of AJAX and DHTML going on behind the scenes brings Gmail to a crawl.

How to overcome it?

On the top right hand side of your page, click "Older Version".

This will load the UI without all the bells and whistles and its about 5 times as fast in regards to response times.

Unfortunately there is not an option in the preferences to make this stick. As soon as I log in, I immediately click "Older Version". Alternatively you can also switch to "Standard HTML View" at the bottom. But with this, you don't get any smooth AJAX. Its regular HTML page post backs.

PhotoShop Express vs. Paint.NET

donnfelker — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:58:03 GMT

Almost daily, I use some sort of digital editing program. Over the years my top 5 tools for digital editing have been Paint.NET and Photoshop. I use both programs daily for editing screen shots, creating educational material/training manuals, and blog posts. I love Paint.NET simply for the fact that its VERY quick to load and performs easy tasks quite quickly. On my machine Paint.NET is up and running in under 5 seconds. Paint.NET helped get the easy tasks done, but when I wanted to perform true graphics manipulation and do some hardcore stuff, I'd fire up Photoshop. The one thing that always crossed my mind was why Adobe did not offer a "Photoshop Lite" type of program. Paint.NET has always been my "Photoshop Lite" since it was released. But, I still wondered why Adobe was missing out on this market.

Well, the other day Adobe released Photoshop Express. With my previous pondering finally answered, I HAD TO check out this product from Adobe. Could this be the "Photoshop Lite" I was hoping for?

My First False Assumption

My first initial impression upon reading the product SKU name "Photoshop Express" was that it was going to be a slimmed down version of Photoshop similar to Paint.NET that was installable. Having worked with Visual Studio for a very long time, I've become adjusted to recommending the "Express" SKU's to developers interested in .NET development. I'd recommend the Visual Studio Express SKU because it allowed them to get the feel for a good IDE (slimmed down on features of course) but they still got to use a lot of built in functionality, and it was FREE. That was the nice thing (note: if you're a student you can utilize the Dreamspark campaign to get a free version of Visual Studio Pro, and other products).

Was this the slimmed down version? No... not at all. Not only was this version not slimmed down, it wasn't even installable - its a pure browser based solution. I was thinking that maybe it was a "Click Once" app, nope. Not even close. This is purely a browser based solution. Ok, that's not too bad, then I started to use it...

My Second False Assumption

I believe a company of Adobe's caliber would be able to create a compelling graphics app that would be very responsive and effective - regardless of the platform (install or web). Anyone who has worked with any graphics program knows that they are memory hogs. Literally, they eat memory for breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner (and some snacks between). They need to utilize a vast memory base to keep the program responsive - I like to say - if its a' swappin' it's a' doggin'. I had assumed that this program would be snappy like its big brother Photoshop. Nope. Not at all.

Since Photoshop Express is a web based hosted solution the images have to be uploaded to the server. The problem lies in the last four words of that sentence. Uploaded to the server. I don't know about you, but there is nothing snappy about loading up a 2MB file to a web site. Applying the filters are rudimentary, adjusting contrast, color balance and other tasks leave your image looking like you took a trip back to hippyville with too many pink elephants.

Conclusion

I had assumed I might be able to replace Paint.NET with Photoshop Express upon its initial release. Unfortunately Photoshop Express is insanely slow and the graphic manipulation tools that I need to accomplish my tasks are not what I need them to be. The lack of options are kind of a bummer and the responsiveness of the app is less than lackluster. But I'll say this... its a good attempt. Maybe version 2.x will be better.

How could Adobe get me to use the app? They could make it a Click-Once app. Make it a local installation. Follow the Visual Studio Express SKU model. Look at Paint.NET, It's worked great for them, why wouldn't it work for Adobe? I know they have a ginormous Apple following so they'd have to use a installation procedure that would work with MAC's as well as Windows. Possibly supporting two different models of the software is just too much for them at this point to foot the bill for a Free product and support. But, if they did go down the route of an installable Express type of app, I'd be all over it.

For the meantime I'll be sticking with Paint.NET. It's installable. Its a subset of Photoshop Features, and the real key is... ITS FAST. Any tool that I use MUST BE FAST. If its not, its gone.

Click thumbs for larger image

Screenshot of Paint.NET	Screenshot of Photoshop Express

I Can't Read Your Screen, Mr. Presenter

donnfelker — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 02:18:31 GMT

We've all been there, at the code camp/user group meeting/conference/etc where we CANNOT read the screen. Even though your code is projected onto a gigantic screen I cannot see you 10pt Courier Font, Mr Presenter, from 50 feet away in the back row. The audience faces contort and become scrunched up to the point of looking like the human version of a pug.

This is one of my biggest pet peeves during a presentation - the presenter may know the content like no other, but they don't have the skills to present their content properly. What's even more amazing is that that 9/10 presenters (in my personal experience) do not attempt to adjust the font on their screen to increase content readability. Aren't you trying to teach me something Mr. Presenter? I can't learn what I can't read. :\ As said before by many others, if you, as the presenter say "You know, you probably can't see this..." - you're right, and you're wasting my time. You've got a gazillion pixels on the screen, make them work for you. :P

What if the presenter bumps up the font to 18pt? That's all well and fine, and I can see the content, but I still have NO IDEA what the heck that 8pt menu font says, nor what menu you clicked on to get to that magical wizard that writes N-Layer architecture systems with a click of a button (sorry, got side tracked).

Gimme Da' Big Font's and ZoomIt Buddy!

Here's what I do when I'm giving a presentation...

Use ZoomIt. I'm utterly baffled by how many presenters do not know about this tool. It's been around for quite awhile too! This tool allows you to zoom into a certain part of your screen with variable magnification. Once zoomed in, you can draw on your screen with multiple colors, write text on the screen and even change the color. You can also draw shapes as well (ellipse, rect, straight line). To view the options, double click the ZoomIt icon (shown here to the left).

How does it work? Simple, fire up the app. It will run in the background. When you hit the CTRL + 1 key combo, the screen is now magnified. Use your mouse to browse the the area where you want to display additional info.
I've created a simple screen cast, which is below. Click to watch. (there is no sound in this, it's just here to demonstrate what can be done).

Create an Account that has Big Fonts. I prefer to set up an additional account on my machine that has all of my tools set up. I mean, everything has big fonts. From the command line to Visual Studio, to Notepad++. These are nice, big ol' fatty fonts. Trust me, its not pretty to look at, but for presentations it does well. You can adjust the font size of your machine by setting the font size in the control panel as seen below:

Note: This will REQUIRE a restart.

Next time you're presenting, don't forget the reason you're there - to present FOR AN AUDIENCE. Be kind to their eyes! Let them see what you're doing. Trust me, you'll get higher scores on your review sheets.

Implicitly Typed Locals - R# V4

donnfelker — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:28:53 GMT

Recently Ilya Ryzhenkov posted a thread on the ReSharper blog. The article was about how R# 4.0 gives you a suggestion to use implicitly typed locals.

I've been running R# 4.0 nightly builds for a few weeks now and I've noticed these little buggers popping up all over the place.

Here's what it looks like:

Usually, I nearly agree with most of everything the R# team posts and even though sometimes I may disagree with something, I'll find the edge case where it does apply, so we're at a 99% agreement rate with them! Hell, you can't lie about it, R# seriously improves your productivity and it only keeps getting better.

Unfortunately, this is the one time I'm going to fully disagree with this post and actually the suggestion in R# - which is why I have disabled it. You can disable it by going to the R# options:

Why I Disagree

The post stated that "It induces better naming for local variables". I don't know about that. I can still call an apple an orange and call a orange a banana I want. Nothing forces me to do anything. The only thing I know at that point is that it's still an anonymous type. A name is that, just a name. Nothing forces developer x to write a good variable name. I still see Junior developers using wrong variable names. The only thing that's going to help here is a good code review process.

The post then goes into to say that it "It induces a better API". Again, I don't agree. How can this induce a better API? I feel that letting the compiler choose which types it is returning has its validity in certain cases, but not inside of your entire system. It brings back the horror days of VB's "Variant" (and yes, I'm aware that var is not Variant and I know the differences - but have you seen an old system where EVERYTHING was a variant? Oh my jeebus, save me now). Just because I'm letting the compiler do the work doesn't mean that I should have "good variable names" to help me distinguish what I'm working with.

This the one that sent me over the top... "It removes code noise". *insert sound of game show buzzer* Yeah... um... I'd have to say that's complete non-sense (in my opinion). Over use of the var keyword is going to add code noise and is definitely a smell to me. If I open up a class and see everything as "var" type, I'm going to cringe. The readability of this code has diminished to a point where its now costing me more money to maintain and read the code than it is if I were to use a strongly typed variables when I could. Even the MSDN states:

Overuse of var can make source code less readable for others. It is recommended to use var only when it is necessary, that is, when the variable will be used to store an anonymous type or a collection of anonymous types. [Source]

The last one is almost not worth putting into the post... "it doesn't require a using directive". Wait a minute... I bought ReSharper so I could be more productive... hitting ALT + ENTER to add the directive isn't a bad thing. Who cares if another directive is up there, that's what its used for, to tell the compiler what blocks of code look into during compilation.

Conclusion

This is not a bash on the ReSharper guys, not at all, but an explanation of why I disagree completely with this post. Heck, I agree with most everything on that blog (most of the time) and I'll never speak up about it. I'm a huge ReSharper fan and I will continue to use it and proclaim its greatness, but while reading this post I noticed a smell immediately. While using var has its uses, I think it can be abused.

The saying goes... "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Lets not use var as our hammer. Its a special tool for special cases. We don't use ice axes for steak knives do we (even though that would be very manly and barbaric - and hell, kind of fun), so we shouldn't use var for unintended uses.