I’ve build a mobile web site a while ago, which provided xhtml based access to an e-commerce site. I’ve done the development with vs.net 2005, and when I migrated to vs.net 2008, I decided to move that project into new vs.net. Guess what, mobile web form designer features are gone. They’ve been gone from vs.net 2005 with sp1 for vs.net 2005, but designer support simply does not exist for vs.net 2008 ...

I’ve just started porting a Google Web Toolkit project (a small one) to JSF, and this time, I have to admit that none of the choices I’ve tested on Eclipse is a match for Netbeans 6.1. Once you get the basics, JSF development is not about visual designers etc, but current solutions on Eclipse platform are way unintuitive compared to usual unintuitive state of Eclipse tools :) I’m not happy about switching tools but I’m really not comfortable with Eclipse based ones. The list includes MyEclipse, Oracle’s solution (ex BEA), and a few others. Let’s see how Eclipse will perform in this field in the future. ...

I’ve just setup OpenVPN on a windows xp machine, and found out that there are both good and bad sides of it. Good thing is; if you do not deviate from the well known scenario, follow the howtos, you’ll mostly make it fairly easily on windows. Bad thing is; I rarely stay within well known scenarios, and I wanted a bridging setup. This means creating a virtual adapter and bridging it with an existing phsyical adapter. Lesson learned: on a windows machine with 2 nics, choose the one with default gateway to internet for bridging with the virtual adapter. You can use the other nic too, but I could not figure out how to connect that subnet to internet so that I can relay all traffic over vpn. ...

I’ve just fixed a problem with a Thomson 580 Speedtouch adsl modem/router. The problem is, the web gui does not save any settings you’ve done, and even though applying them works, if you restart the modem for any of the bazillion reasons, like power outage, angry girlfriend, choked embedded code on modem, you say goodbye to all your settings. The question is : “How on earth can you release a product without testing this functionality?”. Did not anyone bother to check if the web interface actually saves the settings? ...

Google has just announced that they will be releasing their own open source browser: Chrome. They’ve preferred an interesting approach instead of a press release, and they’ve posted this comic which tells us what Chrome is all about. Google has been investing in different domains, and I can see them focusing on two main targets: becoming a data processor who provides information using huge amounts of data, and an application provider who focuses on web based apps. ...

I’ve been working on WPF for a while, and I am quite impressed with some of the changes Microsoft has introduced. First: the event handling issues has been a real trouble for custom controls builders, and at some point you inevitably find yourself in need of building custom controls. Dependency properties, just like routed events, makes it very easy to create and consume composite controls, with data and events for the whole tree connected easily. ...

I’ve been using Eclipse since it was around version 2, and for the last three years or so, I’ve been writing plugins and sometimes RCP applications based on Eclipse. I’ve also gotten used to looking for an Eclipse plugin for many things like db tools or complete IDEs for Python etc. Anyone who has worked with Eclipse knows that managing plugins becomes a pain in the neck in time. In order to keep things clean, I usually keep multiple installations of Eclipse, wasting an enormous amount of space, and also forgetting in which installation I’ve put that darn plugin. ...

I’ve been discussing the issue of front ends with Omer, who is an MD who happens to work in Healthcare IT. He is a doctor, and he knows what doctors demand: everything! After a while the discussion came to a point where we both agreed that the usual way developers produce user interfaces is not simply good enough. I guess we are still making the mistake of accepting medical software as another form of “business software”. It is not accounting, it is not some sort of bookkeeping. Doctors and nurses need to benefit from every piece of technology in user interfaces to make their work faster. ...

Following part 1 , I’d like to talk about a little bit about the importance of user interfaces in medical informatics in general, their relationship to terminologies and Microsoft CUI as an important attempt. Snomed CT 2008 had many interesting speakers, one of them being a team member from Microsoft CUI team, who was accompanied by a colleague of his from the same team. Their presentation was about the user interfaces they’ve been developing with NHS for Microsoft CUI, which I’ve mentioned before. Inevitability I recalled the past efforts during the development of a hospital information system by a team which I was leading at the time. I remember the solution that was produced in response to the coding requirements. Put a tree on user interface, and add something else, like a text box so that the user (presumably the doctor) can click on the tree with the mouse, or use the text box to type in some sort of keyword to navigate to related code on the tree easily. ...

In part 2 I’ve written about MS CUI. Actually I’ve written about the part related to developing a common UI for efficiently using coding systems. The efficiency in user interfaces is important, without usability, you might have trouble at attaching the minimum level of semantics to data that can be easily processed by software. However, front end usability sometimes demands backend precautions. Assuming you have a very nice method of making users choose items from a classification system, you are halfway through. The other half is waiting for you to cover it, by focusing on aspects like efficiency. Even the nicest user interface in the world can not make your users wait for ten seconds for a single key type while performing a search in a terminology. ...