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  • Best of "The Moth" 2009

    Not wanting to break the tradition (2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008) below are some blog posts I picked from my blogging last year. As you can see by comparing with the links above, 2009 marks my lowest output yet with only 64 posts, but hopefully the quality has not been lowered ;-) 1. Parallel Computing was a strong focus of course. You can find links to most of that content aggregated in the post where I shared my entire parallelism session. Related to that was the link to the screencast I shared of the Parallel Computing Features Tour.2. Parallel Debugging is obviously part of the parallel computing links above, but I created more in depth content around that area of Visual Studio 2010 since it is the one I directly own. I aggregated all the links to that content in my post: Parallel Debugging.3. High Performance Computing through clusters is an area I'll be focusing more next year (besides parallelism on a single node on the client captured above) and I started introducing the topic on my blog this year. Read the (currently) 6 posts bottom up from my category on HPC.4. Windows 7 Task Manager. In April I shared a screenshot which was the most "borrowed" item from my blog (I should have watermarked it ;-)5. Windows Phone non-support in VS2010. Did my bit to spread clarification of the story.6. Window positions in Visual Studio is a long post, but one that I strongly advise all VS users to read and benefit from.7. Bug Triage gives you a glimpse into one thing all (Microsoft) product teams do.If you haven't yet, you can subscribe via one of the options on the left. Either way, thank you for staying tuned… Happy New Year! Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • Windows HPC Server links

    I've already described how to setup a Windows HPC Server for development. Before you dive into developing for the cluster, if you are new to this it is probably a good idea to learn the basics by reading some overview material. Below is a list of links.Direct Links to Windows HPC content1. Windows HPC Server 2008 Overview Datasheet (4 page pdf).2. Windows HPC Server 2008 Technical Overview (32 page doc).3. Windows HPC Server 2008 Getting Started Guide (26 page doc) which actually is available online as part of the TechNet technical library section on Windows HPC Server 2008, which includes much more useful data.4. Windows HPC Server 2008 Job Scheduler (38 page doc).5. Windows HPC Server 2008 Job Templates (56 page doc).6. Developing for the Windows HPC Server 2008 Platform (16 page doc or pdf version).Windows HPC sites7. Windows HPC Forums.8. HPC Developer Resources.9. Windows HPC Server 2008 Resource Kit - Developer.10. Windows HPC Server 2008 - TechNet.11. The Windows HPC Team Blog.HPC Course12. High-Performance Computing Fundamentals Course (pluralisight)13. Classic HPC Development using Visual C++ (course slides and materials in a ZIP). Author's blog post.14. From sequential to parallel code (course slides and materials in a ZIP). Author's blog post. Next time I will post resources specific to the most popular programming models for the cluster today: MPI and Cluster SOA - until then, happy reading! Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • Parallel Debugging

    Using Visual Studio 2010 parallel debugging is easy. Two new debugging windows provide a total view of the internals of your PPL and TPL applications with hints on where to start investigations. These are not mere extensions to VS, but tightly integrated with the rest of the debugger experience, so you don't need to learn many new techniques. Use them in your program to eclipse bugs from existence!One of the most FAQ I receive is links to VS2010 parallel debugging content and rather than keep sending many, I decided to gather them all under one permalink, hence this multi link blog post.- MSDN Magazine article on Parallel Debugging.- Screencast of sample code from the article.- MSDN Walkthrough: Debugging a Parallel Application (VB, C++, C#).- Screencast of walkthrough for Parallel Stacks.- Screencast of walkthrough for Parallel Tasks.- MSDN "How To" on Parallel Tasks.- MSDN "How To" on Parallel Stacks.- Detailed blog post on Parallel Tasks.- Detailed blog post on Parallel Stacks.- Detailed blog post on Parallel Stacks - Tasks View.- Detailed blog post on Parallel Stacks - Method View.- Download slides on Parallel Tasks and Parallel Stacks (pptx).If you have questions on these, please post to any of the parallel computing forums or the debugging forum (your question will be routed to me if nobody else can answer it). Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • Slides and code for MPI Cluster Debugger

    I've blogged before about the MPI Cluster Debugger in VS2010 that facilitates launching the application on the cluster and attaching the debugger (btw, a shorter version of the screencast I link to there, is here).There have been requests for the code I use in the screencast, so please find a ZIP with that code.There have also been requests for a PowerPoint deck to use when showing this feature to others. Feel free to download some slides I threw together the other day. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • MPI Project Template for VS2010

    If you are developing MS MPI applications with Visual Studio 2010, you are probably tired of following some tedious steps for every new C++ project that you create, similar to the following:1. In Solution Explorer, right-click YourProjectName, then click Properties to open the Property Pages dialog box.2. Expand Configuration Properties and then under VC++ Directories place the cursor at the beginning of the list that appears in the Include Directories text box and then specify the location of the MS MPI C header files, followed by a semicolon, e.g.C:\Program Files\Microsoft HPC Pack 2008 SDK\Include;3. Still under Configuration Properties and under VC++ Directories place the cursor at the beginning of the list that appears in the Library Directories text box and then specify the location of the Microsoft HPC Pack 2008 SDK library file, followed by a semicolon, e.g.if you want to build/debug 32bit application:C:\Program Files\Microsoft HPC Pack 2008 SDK\Lib\i386;if you want to build/debug 64bit application:C:\Program Files\Microsoft HPC Pack 2008 SDK\Lib\amd64;4. Under Configuration Properties and then under Linker, select Input and place the cursor at the beginning of the list that appears in the Additional Dependencies text box and then type the name of the MS MPI library, i.e.msmpi.lib;5. In the code file#include "mpi.h"6. To debug the MPI project you have just setup, under Configuration Properties select Debugging and then switch the Debugger to launch combo value from Local Windows Debugger to MPI Cluster Debugger.Wouldn't it be great if at C++ project creation time you could choose an MPI Project Template that included the steps/configurations above? If you answered "yes", I have good news for you courtesy of a developer on our team (Qing). Feel free to download from Visual Studio gallery the MPI Project Template. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • Message Passing Interface (MPI)

    So you have installed your cluster and you are done with introductory material on Windows HPC. Now you want to develop an application with the most common programming model: Message Passing Interface.The MPI programming model is a standard with implementations from many vendors. For newbies (like myself!), I have aggregated below links for getting started.Non-Microsoft MPI resources (useful even if you are not on the Windows platform)1. Message Passing Interface on wikipedia. 2. The MPI standard.3. MPICH2 - an MPI implementation.4. Tutorial on MPI by William Gropp.5. MPI patterns presented as a tutorial with sample code. 6. THE official MPI Forum (maintains the standard) including the wiki discussing the MPI future.7. Great MPI tutorial including at the end the MPI Exercise.8. C++ MPI Exercises by John Burkardt.9. Book online: MPI The Complete Reference.MS-MPI10. Windows HPC Server 2008 - Using MS-MPI whitepaper (15 page doc).11. Tracing MPI applications (27 page doc).12. Using Microsoft MPI (TechNet section).13. Windows HPC Server MPI forum (for posting questions). MPI.NET14. MPI.NET Home Page (not owned by Microsoft).15. MPI.NET Tutorial.16. HPC Development using F# using MPI.NET (38 page doc).Next time I'll post resources for the Microsoft Cluster SOA programming model - happy coding... Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • Code for Parallelism Features Tour

    Last year I linked to a screencast that shows off many VS2010 features delivered by the Parallel Computing team.There have been requests for the code used to demonstrate the features. Like with all my screencasts, you can see all the code in action, so you could simply type it in. To save you doing that though, you may download the two files with the demo code here: MM.cs and Program.cs. HTH. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • MPI Cluster Debugger launch integration in VS2010

    Let's assume that you have all the HPC bits installed and that you have existing MPI code (or you created a "Hello World" project using the MPI project template). Of course, you create a single MPI application and at runtime it will correspond to multiple processes (of the same app) launched on multiple nodes (i.e. machines) on the cluster. So how do you debug such a situation by simply hitting the familiar "F5" keystroke (i.e. Debug - Start Debugging)?WATCH IT INSTEAD OF READING ABOUT ITIf you can't bear to read through all the details below, just watch this 19-minute screencast explaining this VS2010 feature. Alternatively, or even additionally, keep on reading.REQUIREMENTWhen you debug an MPI application, you would want the copying of resources from your client machine (where Visual Studio is installed) to each compute node (where Windows HPC Server is installed) to take place automatically for you. 'Resources' in the previous sentence includes your application binary, plus any binary or data dependencies it may have, plus PDBs if needed, plus the debug CRT of the correct bitness, plus msvsmon for remote debugging to work. You would also want, after copying is complete, to have your app and msvsmon launched and attached so that you can hit breakpoints back in Visual Studio on your client machine. All these thing that you would want are delivered in VS2010.STEPS TO F51. In your MPI project where you have placed a breakpoint go to Project Properties - Configuration Properties - Debugging. Ensure the "Debugger to launch" combo box value is set to MPI Cluster Debugger.2. There are a whole bunch of properties here and typically you can ignore all of them except one: Run Environment. By default it is set to run 1 process on your local machine and if you change the number after that to, for example, 4 it will launch 4 processes of your app on your local machine.You want this to run on your cluster though, so go to the dropdown arrow at the end of the Run Environment cell and open it to expose the "Edit Hpc node" menu which opens the Node Selector dialog:In this dialog you can enter (or pick from a list) the cluster head node name and then the number of processes you want to execute on the cluster and then hit OK and… you are done.3. Press F5 and watch your breakpoint get hit (after giving it some time for copying, remote execution, attachment and symbol resolution to take place).GOING DEEPERIn the MPI Cluster Debugger project properties above, you can see many additional properties to the Run Environment. They are all optional, but you may want to understand them in order to fine tune your cluster debugging. Read all about each one of these on the MSDN page Configuration Properties for the MPI Cluster Debugger.In the Node Selector dialog above you can see more options than just the Head Node name and Number of Process to run. They should be self-explanatory but I also cover them in depth in my screencast showing you an example of why you would choose to schedule processes per core versus per node. You can also read about these options on MSDN as part of the page How to: Configure and Launch the MPI Cluster Debugger.To read through an example that touches on MPI project creation, project properties, node selector, and also usage of MPI with OpenMP plus MPI with PPL, read the MSDN page Walkthrough: Launching the MPI Cluster Debugger in Visual Studio 2010.Happy MPI debugging! Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • Managed code and the Shell – Do?

    Back in 2006 I wrote a blog post titled: Managed code and the Shell – Don't!. Please visit that post to see why that advice was given.The crux of the issue has been addressed in the latest CLR via In-Process Side-by-Side Execution. In addition to the MSDN documentation I just linked, there is also an MSDN article on the topic: In-Process Side-by-Side.Now, even though the major technical impediment seems to be removed, I don’t know if Microsoft is now officially supporting managed extensions to the shell. Either way, I noticed a CodePlex project that is marching ahead to enable exactly that: Managed Mini Shell Extension Framework. Not much activity there, but maybe it will grow once .NET 4 is released... Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • Extension Manager in Visual Studio 2010

    One of the powerful aspect of Visual Studio is its ability to be extended and many people do that. You can find numerous extensions at the Visual Studio Gallery. The VSX team links to a 4-part blog series on how to create and share templates. You can also look find extension examples on the vsx code gallery.With Visual Studio 2010, you can search for items and install them directly from within Visual Studio's new Extension Manager. You launch it from the Tools menu:When the dialog comes up, be sure to explore the various actionable areas on the left and also note the search on the right. For example, I typed "MP" and it quickly filtered the list to show me the MPI Project Template:Others have written about this before me, just bing Extension Manager (and note that Beta2 introduced changes, some of which you can witness in the screenshot above). Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • Core debugger enhancements in VS2010

    Since my team offers "parallel debugging", we refer to the team delivering all the other debugging features as the "core debugger" team. They have published a video of new VS2010 debugger features that I encourage you to watch to find out about enhancements with DataTips, breakpoints, dump debugging (inc. IL interpreter) and Threads window.The raw list of features with short description is also here. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • Dev Lead Job opening on my team

    My product unit (Parallel Developer Tools) is hiring a developer lead here in Redmond. This position is specifically on the debugger feature team that I "Program Manage".So, if you have what it takes and don't mind working with me every single day, click on the link below to read more and apply. You can also send me your resume and I'll make sure it gets to the right place and that you get a prompt response.There is a very long job description on the Microsoft careers site under job id 707388.Here is an excerpt from the middle (emphasis mine):"...We are in search of a talented and innovative senior lead software design engineer to own development of the debugging tools for data parallelism (including GP-GPU) and HPC Clusters being built by our team.To be successful, you need to be able to guide careers, design and architect well, communicate and share the best development practices, collaborate with your peers, contribute to the vision, and code significant portions of the solution. We want to hear from you if you're passionate about making your mark in the parallel development space, improving people, and building world-class tools."Responsibilities include:Managing a team of senior and junior developersDesign and coding high-quality software..."For the full background story, requirements, qualifications and responsibilities please visit the official page. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • Extension Manager in Visual Studio 2010

    One of the powerful aspect of Visual Studio is its ability to be extended and many people do that. You can find numerous extensions at the Visual Studio Gallery. The VSX team links to a 4-part blog series on how to create and share templates. You can also look find extension examples on the vsx code gallery.With Visual Studio 2010, you can search for items and install them directly from within Visual Studio's new Extension Manager. You launch it from the Tools menu:When the dialog comes up, be sure to explore the various actionable areas on the left and also note the search on the right. For example, I typed "MP" and it quickly filtered the list to show me the MPI Project Template:Others have written about this before me, just bing Extension Manager (and note that Beta2 introduced changes, some of which you can witness in the screenshot above). Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • Slides for Parallel Debugging windows

    Recently I gave a talk at our Microsoft Shanghai offices on Parallel Programming so I had to update my existing Beta1 deck to Beta2 content. Specifically for Parallel Tasks and Parallel Stacks, I used 5 slides to accompany the demo.In case you are giving talks on parallelism within Visual Studio 2010, please feel free to download and use the updated parallel debugger slides (pptx).TIP: The slides have animations so be sure to F5 the deck for the full benefit and they also have text in the Comments section so be sure to see them at design time too. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • MPI Cluster Debugger launch integration in VS2010

    Let's assume that you have all the HPC bits installed and that you have existing MPI code (or you created a "Hello World" project using the MPI project template). Of course, you create a single MPI application and at runtime it will correspond to multiple processes (of the same app) launched on multiple nodes (i.e. machines) on the cluster. So how do you debug such a situation by simply hitting the familiar "F5" keystroke (i.e. Debug - Start Debugging)?WATCH IT INSTEAD OF READING ABOUT ITIf you can't bear to read through all the details below, just watch this 19-minute screencast explaining this VS2010 feature. Alternatively, or even additionally, keep on reading.REQUIREMENTWhen you debug an MPI application, you would want the copying of resources from your client machine (where Visual Studio is installed) to each compute node (where Windows HPC Server is installed) to take place automatically for you. 'Resources' in the previous sentence includes your application binary, plus any binary or data dependencies it may have, plus PDBs if needed, plus the debug CRT of the correct bitness, plus msvsmon for remote debugging to work. You would also want, after copying is complete, to have your app and msvsmon launched and attached so that you can hit breakpoints back in Visual Studio on your client machine. All these thing that you would want are delivered in VS2010.STEPS TO F51. In your MPI project where you have placed a breakpoint go to Project Properties - Configuration Properties - Debugging. Ensure the "Debugger to launch" combo box value is set to MPI Cluster Debugger.2. There are a whole bunch of properties here and typically you can ignore all of them except one: Run Environment. By default it is set to run 1 process on your local machine and if you change the number after that to, for example, 4 it will launch 4 processes of your app on your local machine.You want this to run on your cluster though, so go to the dropdown arrow at the end of the Run Environment cell and open it to expose the "Edit Hpc node" menu which opens the Node Selector dialog:In this dialog you can enter (or pick from a list) the cluster head node name and then the number of processes you want to execute on the cluster and then hit OK and… you are done.3. Press F5 and watch your breakpoint get hit (after giving it some time for copying, remote execution, attachment and symbol resolution to take place).GOING DEEPERIn the MPI Cluster Debugger project properties above, you can see many additional properties to the Run Environment. They are all optional, but you may want to understand them in order to fine tune your cluster debugging. Read all about each one of these on the MSDN page Configuration Properties for the MPI Cluster Debugger.In the Node Selector dialog above you can see more options than just the Head Node name and Number of Process to run. They should be self-explanatory but I also cover them in depth in my screencast showing you an example of why you would choose to schedule processes per core versus per node. You can also read about these options on MSDN as part of the page How to: Configure and Launch the MPI Cluster Debugger.To read through an example that touches on MPI project creation, project properties, node selector, and also usage of MPI with OpenMP plus MPI with PPL, read the MSDN page Walkthrough: Launching the MPI Cluster Debugger in Visual Studio 2010.Happy MPI debugging! Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • Parallel Computing Features Tour in VS2010

    Just realized that I have not linked from here to a screencast I recorded a couple weeks ago that shows the API, parallel debugger and concurrency visualizer in VS2010. Take a few minutes to watch the VS2010 Parallel Computing Features Tour. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • Dump debugging with Parallel Stacks

    One of the areas where we fixed many bugs for Beta2 in our parallel debugging windows is with regards to managed dump debugging. So it was really cool to see Tess use the Parallel Stacks window in that scenario in her video demo with Scott.Other than the neat ability to open managed dumps in VS2010, Parallel Stacks was the only debugging feature she needed for diagnosing the issue! Check out the video, definitely worth 10 minutes of your time. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • Core debugger enhancements in VS2010

    Since my team offers "parallel debugging", we refer to the team delivering all the other debugging features as the "core debugger" team. They have published a video of new VS2010 debugger features that I encourage you to watch to find out about enhancements with DataTips, breakpoints, dump debugging (inc. IL interpreter) and Threads window.The raw list of features with short description is also here. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • Parallel Computing Features Tour in VS2010

    Just realized that I have not linked from here to a screencast I recorded a couple weeks ago that shows the API, parallel debugger and concurrency visualizer in VS2010. Take a few minutes to watch the VS2010 Parallel Computing Features Tour. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • Too Clever for My Own Good

    - by AjarnMark
    Yesterday I caught myself being a little too clever for my own good with some ASP.NET code.  It seems that I have forgotten some of my good old classic HTML and JavaScript skills, and become too dependent on the .NET Framework and WebControls to do the work for me.  Here’s the scenario… In order to improve the User Interface and better communicate to the user when something is happening that they need to wait for, we have started to modify some of our larger (slower) pages to display messages like Processing… or Reloading… while they are cycling through a postback.  (Yes, I understand this could be improved by using AJAX / Callbacks and so on, but even then, you need to let your user know that they need to wait for that section to be re-rendered, so for the moment these pages will continue to use good ol’ Postbacks.)  It’s a very simple trick, really.  All I want to do is when some control triggers a postback, first run a little client-side JavaScript to hide the main contents of the page (such as a GridView) and display the appropriate message.  This lets the user know, “Hey, we’re doing something, don’t click another link or scroll and try to take action right now.” The first places I hooked this up were easy.  Most common cause of a postback:  Buttons.  And when you’re writing the markup or declarative code for an ASP:Button control, there is the handy OnClientClick property which is designed for just this purpose…to run client-side JavaScript before the postback occurs.  This is distinguished from the OnClick property which tells the control what Server-side code to run.  Great!  Done!  Easy! But then there are other controls like DropDownLists and CheckBoxes that we use on our pages with the AutoPostback=True setting which cause postbacks.  And these don’t have OnClientClick or OnClientSelectedIndexChanged events.  So I started getting creative, using an ASP:CustomValidator control in conjunction with setting the CausesValidation and ValidationGroup settings on these controls, which basically caused the action on the control to fire the Custom Validator, which was defined with a Client Side validation function which then did the hide content/show message code (and return a meaningless IsValid setting).  This also caused me to define a different ValidationGroup setting for my real data entry validator controls so that I could control them separately and only have them fire when I really wanted validation, and not just my show/hide trick. For a little while I was pretty proud of myself for coming up with this clever approach to get around what I considered to be a serious oversight on the DropDownList and CheckBox controls declarative syntax.  Then, in the midst of my smugness, just as I was about to commit my changes to the source code repository, it dawned on me that there is a much simpler and much more appropriate way to accomplish this.  All that I really needed to do was to put in my server-side code (I used the Page_Init section) a call to MyControl.Attributes.Add(“onClick”, “myJavaScriptFunctionName()”) for the checkboxes, and for the DropDownLists (which become select tags) use “onChange” instead of “onClick”.  This is exactly the type of thing that the Attributes collection is there for…so you can add attributes to be rendered with the control that you would have otherwise stuck right into the HTML markup if you had been doing this by hand in the first place. Ugh!  A few hours wasted on clever tricks that I ended up completely removing, but I did learn a lot more about custom validators and validation groups in the process.  And got a good reminder that all that stuff (HTML, JavaScript, and CSS) I learned back when I wrote classic ASP pages is still valuable today.  Oh, and one more thing…don’t get lulled into too much reliance on the the whiz-bang tool to do it for you.  After all, WebControls are just another layer of abstraction, and sometimes you need to dig down through the layers and get a little closer to the native language.

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  • Impressions on jQuery Mobile

    - by Jeff
    For the uninitiated, jQuery Mobile is a sweet little client framework that turns regular HTML into something more touch and mobile friendly. It results in a user interface that has bigger targets, rounded corners and simple skinning capability. When it was announced that ASP.NET MVC 4 would include support for a mobile-sensitive view engine, offering up alternate views for clients that fit the mobile profile, I was all over that. Combined with jQuery Mobile, it brought a chance to do some experimentation. I blitzed through the views in POP Forums and converted them all to mobile views. (For the curious, this first pass can be found here on CodePlex, while a more recent update that uses RC 2 of jQuery Mobile v1.1.0 is running on the demo site.) Initially, it was kind of a mixed bag. The jQuery demo site also acts as documentation, and it’s reasonably complete. I had no problem getting up a lot of basic views quickly, splitting out portions of some pages as subpages that they quickly load in. The default behavior in the older version was to slide the pages in, which looked a little weird when you were using a back button. They’ve since changed it so the default transition is a fade in/out. Because you’re dealing with Web pages, I don’t think anyone is really under the illusion that you’re not using a native app, so I don’t know that this matters. I’ve tested extensively on iPad and Windows Phone, and to be honest, I’ve encountered a lot of issues. On Windows Phone, there is some kind of inconsistency that prevents the proper respect for the viewport settings. The text background on text fields (for labeling) doesn’t work, either. On both platforms, certain in-DOM page navigation links work only half of the time. Is this an issue of user error? Probably, but that’s what’s frustrating about it. Most of what you accomplish with this framework involves decorating various elements with CSS classes. There isn’t any design-time safety to speak of to make sure that you’re doing it right. I think the issues can be overcome, but there are some trade-offs to consider. The first is download size. Yes, the scripts and CSS do get cached, but that first hit will cost nearly 40k for the mobile parts. That’s still a lot when you’re on some crappy AT&T EDGE network, or hotel Wi-Fi. Then you have to ask yourself, do you really want your app to look like it’s native to iOS? I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, because consistent UI is good, but you will end up feeling a whole lot of sameness, and maybe you don’t want that. I did some experimentation to try and Metro-ize the jQuery Mobile theme, and it’s kind of a mixed bag. It mostly works, but you get some weirdness on badges and with buttons that I’m not crazy about. It probably just means you need to keep tweaking. At this point, I’m a little torn about whether or not I’ll use it for POP Forums or one of the sites I’m working on. The benefits are pretty strong, but figuring out where I’m doing it wrong is proving a little time consuming.

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  • Is the Internet Making us Smarter or Not?

    - by BuckWoody
    I’ve been reading recently about an exchange among some very bright folks, some who posit that the Internet with its instant-on, sometimes-right, big-statement-wins mentality is making people think in a more shallow way, teaching us to rely on others as experts and diluting our logical thought process. Others state that it broadens our perspective and extends our mental reach. Whenever I see this kind of exchange on two ends of a spectrum, I begin to wonder if both sides might be correct.   I can certainly say that I have changed my way of learning, reading, and social interactions because of the Internet. And my tolerance for reading long missives has indeed gone down. I tend to (mentally and literally) “bookmark” things I never seem to have time to get back to. But I also agree that I’ve been exposed to thoughts, ideas and people I never would have encountered any other way. So how to deal with this dichotomy?   Well, I’m going to go off and think about it. No, I’m really going to go off for a full week to a cabin I’ve rented in a National Forest in the Midwest. It has no indoor plumbing, phones, Internet connections or anything else – only a bed to sleep in and a place to cook a little. I’m taking one book, some paper, and a guitar with me and that’s it. I plan to spend my days walking, reading a little, playing a little on the guitar, but mostly just thinking. Those of you who know me might find this unusual. I’m an always-on, hyper-caffeinated, overly-busy, connected person. I haven’t taken a vacation in five years, at least for more than two or three days at a time. Even then, I keep us on the move constantly – our vacations aren’t cruises or anything like that. I check e-mail, post and all that. When I’m not on vacation, I live with and leverage lots of technology, and work with those that do the same. This, however, is a really “unplugged” event, and I’m hoping that it will let me unpack the things I’ve been stuffing in my head. I plan to spend a lot of time on a single subject, writing notes, thinking, and writing more notes.   So after I post tomorrow's “quote of the day” I’ll be “going dark” for a week. No twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, e-mail, chat, none of my five blogs will get updated, and I’ll have to turn in my two articles for InformIT.com early. I won’t have access to my college class portal, so my students will be without me for a week. I will really be offline. I’ll see you in a week – hopefully a little more educated. See you then.   Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • Is the Internet Making us Smarter or Not?

    - by BuckWoody
    I’ve been reading recently about an exchange among some very bright folks, some who posit that the Internet with its instant-on, sometimes-right, big-statement-wins mentality is making people think in a more shallow way, teaching us to rely on others as experts and diluting our logical thought process. Others state that it broadens our perspective and extends our mental reach. Whenever I see this kind of exchange on two ends of a spectrum, I begin to wonder if both sides might be correct.   I can certainly say that I have changed my way of learning, reading, and social interactions because of the Internet. And my tolerance for reading long missives has indeed gone down. I tend to (mentally and literally) “bookmark” things I never seem to have time to get back to. But I also agree that I’ve been exposed to thoughts, ideas and people I never would have encountered any other way. So how to deal with this dichotomy?   Well, I’m going to go off and think about it. No, I’m really going to go off for a full week to a cabin I’ve rented in a National Forest in the Midwest. It has no indoor plumbing, phones, Internet connections or anything else – only a bed to sleep in and a place to cook a little. I’m taking one book, some paper, and a guitar with me and that’s it. I plan to spend my days walking, reading a little, playing a little on the guitar, but mostly just thinking. Those of you who know me might find this unusual. I’m an always-on, hyper-caffeinated, overly-busy, connected person. I haven’t taken a vacation in five years, at least for more than two or three days at a time. Even then, I keep us on the move constantly – our vacations aren’t cruises or anything like that. I check e-mail, post and all that. When I’m not on vacation, I live with and leverage lots of technology, and work with those that do the same. This, however, is a really “unplugged” event, and I’m hoping that it will let me unpack the things I’ve been stuffing in my head. I plan to spend a lot of time on a single subject, writing notes, thinking, and writing more notes.   So after I post tomorrow's “quote of the day” I’ll be “going dark” for a week. No twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, e-mail, chat, none of my five blogs will get updated, and I’ll have to turn in my two articles for InformIT.com early. I won’t have access to my college class portal, so my students will be without me for a week. I will really be offline. I’ll see you in a week – hopefully a little more educated. See you then.   Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • How 'terse' is too terse? -- Practical guidelines for expressing as much intent in as few characters

    - by Christopher Altman
    First, I love writing as little code as possible. I think, and please correct me, one of the golden rules of programming is to express your code in as few of character as possible while maintaining human readability. But I can get a little carried away. I can pack three or four lines into one statement, something like $startDate = $dateTime > time() ? mktime(0,0,0,date('m',time()-86400),date('d',time()*2),2011) : time(); (Note: this is a notional example) I can comprehend the above code when reading it. I prefer 'mushing' it all together because having less lines per page is a good thing to me. So my question: When writing code and thinking about how compact or terse you can express yourself, what are some guidelines you use? Do you write multiple lines because you think it helps other people? Do you write as little as possible, but use comments? Or do you always look for the way to write as little code as possible and enjoy the rewards of compact statements? (Just one slightly off topic comment: I love the Perl one-liners, but that is not what I am talking about here)

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  • How do I rewrite .after( content, content )?

    - by Evan Carroll
    I've got this form working, but according to my previous question it might not be supported: it isn't in the docs either way -- but the intention is pretty obvious in the code. $(".section.warranty .warranty_checks :last").after( $('<div class="little check" />').click( function () { alert('hi') } ) , $('<span>OEM</span>') /*Notice this (a second) argument */ ); What this does is insert <div class="little check"> with a simple .click() callback, followed by a sibling of <span>OEM</span>. How else can I write this then? I'm having difficulty conjuring something working by chaining any combination of .after(), and .insertAfter()? I would expect this to work, but it doesn't: $(".section.warranty .warranty_checks :last").after( $('<div class="little check" />').click( function () { alert('hi') } ).after ( $('<span>OEM</span>') ) ); I would also expect this to work, but it doesn't: $(".section.warranty .warranty_checks :last").after( $('<span>OEM</span>').insertAfter( $('<div class="little check" />').click( function () { alert('hi') } ) ); );

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