LiveSide - Developer Blog - All Comments

re: Create a Deep Zoom Panorama with Windows Live

SteveBallmer — Sun, 11 May 2008 22:11:48 GMT

Our maps are best by far!

re: Create a Deep Zoom Panorama with Windows Live

Chris — Sun, 11 May 2008 14:16:59 GMT

Yes great post. Now I just have to go and take some photos!

re: Create a Deep Zoom Panorama with Windows Live

Avatar X — Sun, 11 May 2008 10:20:31 GMT

Awesome Article John and Welcome.

re: Live Mesh, From A Developer’s Side

ScottIsAFool — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:50:46 GMT

I believe so, yes. Based on the known issues where it says the Silverlight player won't play videos, only pictures and audio. But that's only for viewing the files.

re: Live Mesh, From A Developer’s Side

BuciboLebo — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:46:50 GMT

What exactly is powering that Live Desktop (in a browser), is it Silverlight ??

re: Is Microsoft serious about gadgets?

Rex Dee — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 21:02:18 GMT

I absolutely "love" quality sidebar gadgets. I check for new ones every month religiously. It's the perfect compliment to a 20-22" monitor. Without them, there is a lot of wasted space.

This has to be one of the more frustrating parts of the OS application and software + services philosphy. Huge potential just being wasted away because Microsoft constantly disbands groups to work elsewhere after completing whatever version they are working on. It's only after a long period of inactivity with no updates and the inevitable complaining from users or competition starts kicking their posteriors that they decide that maybe that was a bad idea. Case in point: "IE6" and "Ultimate Extras!"

Note to Microsoft: Keep your teams in tack and hire more developers for new projects. Don't disband just because the winds of interest have changed. You can't tell me you can't afford it with a 41 billion dollar proposal to buy out Yahoo!

re: Is Microsoft serious about gadgets?

someone — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 08:07:21 GMT

As a matter of fact, is Microsoft even concerned about other Windows Vista components. Why aren't there dedicated teams to various apps like Movie Maker/DVD Maker, Windows Explorer, Windows Calendar? What's happening with the Live apps like Live Mail, Photo Gallery once v1 has shipped? Why are releases so slow? MS is not even fixing shell and Explorer bugs. Windows Calendar seems to be 1-time done thing, no integration with other apps, no further improvements.

re: Windows Live Messenger Web Controls - Part 2

Hackersoft — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 18:55:21 GMT

All conversations are stored in the conversation collection and all messages are stored in the messenger collection.

You can simply re-query these collections after the roundtrip as long as the user is still signed in.

re: Windows Live Messenger Web Controls - Part 2

moglir — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 18:09:03 GMT

The problem that I have, is that on every roundtrip the Messenger resets and the discussion gets lost. I know that an AJAX site should not have roundtrips, but the site I am working on is not fully AJAX driven. Do you have any ideas or even samples how I can manage this?

re: Windows Live Messenger Web Controls - Part 2

joeale — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 17:57:23 GMT

How do you messager block so i can use it on popfly.I can find any info on how two this.

www.popfly.com

re: Microsoft's lack of sticking to standards rears it's ugly head again

kenbw2 — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 03:48:36 GMT

I'm not as picky as my friend MisinformedDNA here. But I do hve one small gripe.

rears ITS ugly head!

If you're going to be a journalist, learn the English language!

re: Microsoft's lack of sticking to standards rears it's ugly head again

MisinformedDNA — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 05:48:05 GMT

The article was not cut short by Microsoft's non-standards compliance, it was cut short by what looks like a plugin for Technorati for WLW. Blogging sites often offer non-compliant sites because you can't expect bloggers to even know what the standards are. MS could autofix the HTML, but it it likely that that would cause an uproar from MS editiing your post.

Now if you really want to make an interesting article. You can do 2 things. 1) Post about something that isn't obvious. Scott Guthrie already covered this topic pretty well here: weblogs.asp.net/.../using-linq-to-xml-and-how-to-build-a-custom-rss-feed-reader-with-it.aspx and 2) Look at www.codeplex.com/htmlagilitypack. It will fix malformed HTML for you.

Just do me one favor, don't use LiveSide as a megaphone for your personal griping. Don't report without researching ala "although I would be surprised if the editor within WLS itself actually gives standards compliant XHTML". If you want to report, do the research first.

Hackersoft:
Thank you MisinformedDNA for the information you provided. However if you'd actually studied Scott's blog post that you linked to, you would see that he is actually using an RSS feed that has correctly formed HTML. Therefore a completely different scenario.
Also if you studied the RSS feed I pointed to you would notice that it is infact non-standard html and therefore LINQ to XML would still have failed. What I didn't publish was that I started creating code to fix the problems as I found them, got well into the body of the RSS feed before giving up as it was just not worth the hassle.
I agree that bloggers probably don't know compliant HTML and there should be no need for them to know. The tools should handle all of that for them, which Microsoft's are not.
And 2). It is impractical to run every single tag and possible attribute combination through the htmlagility pack. That defeats the purpose and doesn't fix the underlying problem of sloppy coding on Microsoft's part. Why should I or anyone need to do this?

So yes, I have done the research, which you obviously have not fully.

re: The Traffic Gadget is Back!

donavon — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:03:21 GMT

@tophtucker: I agree that there should be MSFT branded gadgets for more apps, not only as a developer/vendor, but as a user of Microsoft products. A Zune gadget is a great example. I pitched the idea of a Zune gadget right after it's initial release but nothing became of it. And yes, where is the Microsoft branded calendar gadget? Hey Microsoft: call me! ;)

@quikboy: I understand what you are saying, but I think that each group is more focused on their actual product to worry about the additional resources needed to write a quality gadget. I think it makes sense (both from a quality end product perspective and financially) to outsource the development to specialized gadget development houses.

@BasP: I know that the VE people are aware that they need more international support for traffic but thanks for reiterating the point. It's comments like yours that hopefully will get Microsoft to listen and take action.

re: The Traffic Gadget is Back!

BasP — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:13:05 GMT

This would be incredibly useful... if I lived in the US. Since that is not the case, I have exactly zero use for this gadget.

I realise that that's not your fault, and that you're limited by whatever data the traffic service provides you, but, hey, maybe the Virtual Earth guys can take a hint from this and get international Microsoft offices into gear to provide worldwide traffic data.

re: The Traffic Gadget is Back!

tophtucker — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 06:18:52 GMT

"Though I think Microsoft should have more skills to make them on their own, considering they are the largest software company in the world."

You'd think so, eh? I absolutely feel like they should be promoting their own platform a little more. Every MS product team should have this item on their to-do list: evaluate whether a gadget would make sense, and if it would, do it. It's not all that hard... is it? And the more support it has internally, the more attractive it will be for other developers. But first they need to reach that critical mass, and I don't think they've done that yet.