I was looking at my desktop and it just didn’t seem very vibrant, so i created this one(4MB), its more vibrant and exciting, with a lot more colour and brightness.
Category Archives: Technology
So im making a twitter client
Over the last few weeks i have been learning WPF, and have been creating a Twitter Client
While i am still learning, this is what i have produced so far, although now i have learnt more i am planning on a slight redesign
[edit: there was a picture here, but due to a server crash it disappeared (i now have better backups)]
What do you think?
I did have to stop using Visual Studio 2010 as its editor was playing up and begin really slow, although this is a beta, and i expect this to be corrected
WPF & XAML
Over the past week i have spent a lot of time reading “Pro WPF in C# 2008”, and all i can say is WPF and XAML make UI design bearable, and its brilliant, its so powerful, and easy to learn.
Well done Microsoft
VS2010 Beta 1, and the annoying bug it has created
I have had VS2010 Beta 1 since Tuesday, and its brilliant, it seriously good, and i have been working on my twitter client in it.
But all this good has been destroyed by one little annoying bug (my Microsoft Connect bug report).
Basically when i access a menu item in any of the following applications (List Growing) Live Writer, Explorer, IE8, Live Mesh. The Menu Item will not disappear, but it will persist. Now here’s the weird bit, to clean the menu item i just need to close Media Center or Media Player.
Its very weird and very annoying when its in the middle of the screen.
I know its beta and i should expect bugs but MS please patch this ASAP!!!
IE8 and Why i use it.
Now i am often asked to explain my reasoning for using IE8 especially as I’m doing computer science, i am often ridiculed for it, but i continue to use it and i have 2 simple reasons:
Firstly IE8 has a decent UI the only thing that is slightly better is Chrome (but i will come back to why i don’t use Chrome), i personally find that Firefox has a ugly and cluttered interface, and that its default theme is crap. Yes, by default IE8 does have a slightly cluttered interface but as soon as you turn of the favourites bar, it is perfectly fine, nice and tidy. The chrome UI is even simpler and tidier. Safari 3 is as ugly as iTunes is, it ignores any native UI components its just terrible, yes Safari 4 is an improvement, but it still as bad as Firefox.
Secondly the features. IE8 has built in developer features that are almost as good as firebug, but i don’t use them that often so they are not a killer feature. What i do like is my RSS feed manager at a key press away, a feature i have yet to find in Firefox (standard install I’m not counting 3rd party plug-ins). Chrome just doesn’t seem to have any features.
So in conclusion while Firefox has the better set of 3rd Party plug-ins, BUT it has a dreadful interface, and a lack of a decent RSS manager. Chrome has a slightly better UI, but has a complete lack of features.
That’s why i use IE8, its fast, its responsive, it has a decent UI (could be better though), it has a brilliant RSS Manager, and very good built-in developer tools.