What a game!  After Novak, Rafael, I thought Federer is next to exit French Open 2009 early after watching Tommy Haas taking the first 2 set.  But Federer fought back to win the 3rd set and then cruise to a 6-0 win in the 4th set.  In the tense final set, he managed to win it and thus putting himself through to the Quarter finals.

There I’ve said it.  And after a few years with Google, I am happy that I can actually says this.  This new search engine, or decision engine as Microsoft puts it, is way cooler than Google.  It is as simple as Google but with a touch of class.  Bing put an image on an otherwise boring first page and with a change of new font, give itself a modernized look.  Using Silverlight, Bing is also able to hide not so important meta data until the user call for it, thus putting the search data in the front row but still give the user additional information when it is needed.

However, can the new Bing bring back the bacon?  All this improvement will means nothing if Bing cannot bring you the website that you are trying to find, the news that you want to read or the image that you want to keep.  So far, it is quite there.  Definitely better than Live Search, MSN Search or what not, and it feels as good as Google.  But the verdict is still out.  Bing or Google, I will need more millage to confirm this.

WPF has been providing a feature that people wanted for a very long time.  Have you ever wonder why a screen with a very high resolution will give you application and text that are too small to use and read properly.  If you take a look at printed material, no matter how big the medium is or how high the dpi used for printing, a 10 point text will always appear as a 10 point text, the higher dpi will just make it appear so much smoother and nicer.  WPF set out to mimic that, thus a WPF application will always appear the same size no matter where you view it.  This is achieved by making the graphic display truly device independent.  A 10cm line will appear as a 10cm line no matter how big the screen or how high the resolution.

Windows 7 will finally bring this feature to the masses, you don’t need to run a WPF application to get this benefit for text.  And I hope that this will also be true for other elements in the Windows.  If this is true, that Vaio P will definitely be good to ship in Windows 7, since the current one under Vista shows text that are way too small to read properly (cause Sony choose to put a high resolution screen on a 8.9” screen).

I’ve always been wondering why netbook can’t run Vista properly.  Somehow a lot of review have put it that if a netbook is using Vista it will take a performance hit.  A modern processor at 1.6Ghz and 1GB of RAM can’t run a modern Vista OS?  I know that Vista is resource hungry but I don’t think it is that resource hungry.  After some thoughts, I felt that the reason might be due to the slow hard disk that most netbook are using, since Vista is always doing file indexing on the fly and will thus cause a performance dip if the hard disk is slow.

After trying out Sony Vaio P at the Sony shop, it is confirmed that Vista felt sluggish on the Vaio P which is using a 1.3Ghz Atom but with 2GB of RAM.  But I still have my doubts. Then when I get my hand on a HP Mini 1000 (1012TU), I’ve decided to install a dual boot Vista on top of the XP to try out the theory.  I was thinking that if it is slow then I’ll just turn off the file indexing and see whether the speed will become decent.  However, after successfully getting Vista installed, I feel that it is fast, as fast as the XP that was originally installed and I did not do any tweaking and this is even with Aero turn on!  This confirm the theory that with 1GB of RAM Vista should be as fast as XP.

So why is it that people are saying that netbook can’t take Vista?  I feel that this is because the manufacturer want to sell the netbook cheap, the first netbook came installed with Linux but Linux is not something that people are comfortable to use (not all people, at least) and soon people are asking for a Window version.  But if HP, Dell, Lenovo and what not put Vista on their netbook, the cost will be much higher than those netbook that comes with Linux.  Thus Windows XP came into the scene.  Being cheaper than Vista, manufacturer can thus keep the price range of netbook.  To justify the choice, they make use of the negative image of Vista, since netbook comes with cheap setup, it can’t run Vista.  And it seems like they are successful in this marketing gimmick.

The latest information out for Windows 7 is that there are basically 3 editions for consumers to purchase, Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate.  However, the other editions are still available, Windows 7 Starter and Windows 7 Home Basic are available for OEM builder and Windows 7 Enterprise is for those Enterprise customer who wants volume licensing.  Although off the shelf consumer will only get to see 3 edition of Windows 7, when buying or using computer system, be it desktop or laptop or netbook, personal or belonging to the company, there are still 5 edition that user will see.  Thus this is definitely still confusing to the average Joe.

I would think that Microsoft should ditch all other editions and stay with only 3, Home, Professional and Ultimate.  Windows 7 Home is for home users and it will include special license that will limit some of the features, for example, Windows 7 Home found on netbook will not have Aero and some other features that are not available under the previous Home Basic.  Users who want these features can purchase a full Home license from Microsoft and these features will then unlock (as what Windows 7 upgrade will currently do).  Windows 7 Ultimate is also the edition for the Enterprise customers.  In this case there are really just 3 editions of Windows 7 and it serve the purpose of the previous 6.

After using Windows 7 for a few weeks, the one thing that keep surprising me is that it is so much faster.  The start up is faster, the shut down is faster, opening of application is also much faster.  This is even when compared to Windows XP.  I can say that it is as fast if not faster than the Mac OS X in terms of start up and shut down of course.

The new taskbar is also much easier to use, as it is no longer cramp up by all those windows titles.  Only application icon is left on the taskbar.  The mixture of pin up application and already launched application also make the taskbar simpler and more efficient.  No longer does the launch bar needs to fight for spaces with the active taskbar.  Further you can move all this icons around on the taskbar to suit your personal taste even when the application has been launched.

All features of the Windows has also been made much more accessible.  For example you can now change the resolution of the display by simply right clicking on the desktop.

But speed will still be the one reason why I will switch to Windows 7 as soon as it is launched.  It is really like using a Vista that is on steroid.

When you choose to have a WPF application without border or caption, you need to provide your own maximize button and your own code to maximize the window.  Normally you can just do:

    this.WindowState = WindowState.Maximized;

and the window will be maximized.  But this call will cause the window to cover up the taskbar.  Thus we will need to set the maximum height and width of the window to a size where the window will not cover the taskbar before you call the above stage change.

    MaxHeight = SystemParameters.MaximizedPrimaryScreenHeight;

    MaxWidth = SystemParameters.MaximizedPrimaryScreenWidth;

This will work at first glance until you test the application on a system with an extended secondary display that has a higher resolution than your primary display.  When you drag your application to the secondary display and maximize it, the height and width will be limited to the primary display’s height and width.  Thus you will see a blank area not cover by your application while it is maximized.  Another thing will happen is that if you try to expand your application while it is on the secondary display, the height and width will also be limited by that of the primary display.

To solve this I’ve immediately thought of finding a way to get the height and width of the secondary display and also to detect whether the application is on a secondary display.  This is all quite complicated.  Then something hit me, this problem only occur on an extended secondary display and on this kind of display there isn’t any taskbar, thus a much easier way is to detect whether the current display is a primary display and then set or reset the MaxHeight and MaxWidth accordingly.  Thus I implement 2 methods RestoreWindow() and MaximizeWindow().

    private void RestoreWindow()

    {

        // reset the max width and height so that you can expand

        // the window properly while on a secondary window

        MaxHeight = double.PositiveInfinity;

        MaxWidth = double.PositiveInfinity;

        // set the window back to normal state

        this.WindowState = WindowState.Normal;

    }

    private void MaximizeWindow()

    {

        // Get the current display, whether it is on primary or 

        // secondary

        System.Drawing.Point pt = 

                System.Windows.Forms.Cursor.Position;

        System.Windows.Forms.Screen currentScreen;

        currentScreen = 

                System.Windows.Forms.Screen.FromPoint(pt);

        // test whether the screen is a primary display

        if (currentScreen.Primary) 

        {

            // if it is a primary display, set the max width and

            // height so that the maximize window will not cover 

            // the taskbar

            MaxHeight = 

                SystemParameters.MaximizedPrimaryScreenHeight;

            MaxWidth = 

                SystemParameters.MaximizedPrimaryScreenWidth;

        }

        else

        {

            // if it is not a primary display, reset the max 

            // width and height

            MaxHeight = double.PositiveInfinity;

            MaxWidth = double.PositiveInfinity;

        }

        // set window to become maximized

        this.WindowState = WindowState.Maximized;

    }

Yes! Finally!  CopySourceAsHtml come to the rescue.  I was just wondering why is it that putting source code on to a HTML page is so difficult and I accidentally bump into a page that talk about using CopySourceAsHtml add in for Visual Studio 2008.  It is still a bit tedious but definitely much much better than manually hand code the html tag or using CSS.  CSS can help a lot as well but when you change your web design, you’ve got to remember to add the necessary CSS back and if you are on a web site that wants you to pay for using CSS then you are out of luck.

Developer who blog should definitely check out this wonderful add in.

And so the challenger to flash has finally come of age.  Silverlight 2.0 should be the one that really put Silverlight on the map but I’ve to agree that Silverlight 1.0 did help to jazz up the scene for the release of 2.0.  Be sure to check out this cool site that uses Silverlight 2.0, Hard Rock Memorabilia, by Hard Rock Cafe, especially if you are a fan of Jimi Hendrix or Elvis Presley or The Beatles or …

I was just talking about the change in codename from Vienna to Windows 7 and Microsoft officially announced that the new name for the next generation Windows is going to be Windows 7.  Simplicity? Copied from Apple?  I hope they didn’t pay some expensive product consultant to come out with this name.  Personally I’m neutral to the new name, it is the OS itself that matter.  And I sure hope that the pre-beta that Microsoft is going to review is closer to the one that they are going to ship.