November 2005 - Posts
The
Nightcrawler release of RSSBandit just
got released. I've been using RSSBandit for quite awhile and like it,
although I'm hoping this new version has some performance enhancements.
That's been my main gripe with it. Other than that I've been very happy
with the interface and each release seems to bring some cool new
features.
Okay, I knew a little about this file, but just ran into something I
thought I should post as an FYI. I'm trying to get my personal site up
and running in ASP.NET 2.0 and one of the things I'm doing is trying to
get nGallery running under 2.0. I've been pulling my hair out for the
last hour or so trying to figure out why every single aspx file is
coming back as a 404 when I try to view it. Checked the base page,
checked config settings, all kinds of things. Won't debug either,
doesn't load the symbols for the site. Of course I thought this was
something screwy with the new compilation or something like that. I
finally noticed I had an app_offline.htm file in my directory and I
remembered hearing about using this file to make your app unviewable if
you are doing maintenance or something like that. I assumed that it
would redirect to that page and say something about the app being down,
but apparently it just makes all aspx pages return a 404. I believe if
you put some valid HTML content in the app_offline.htm, you'll see that
instead, but mine is just blank. I don't remember putting this file
into my project, but that was my problem. So maybe I'm an idiot, but
just in case you run into this I thought I'd point it out.
Here's some more
info
Brian Goldfarb points on
this article
with detailed instructions on how to migrate your VS 2003 web projects
to VS 2005. Having previously attempted some migrations using beta
versions of VS 2005, I can say that some of the issues I ran into are
addressed in the article. The particular one I had trouble with
involved having 2 web project files in my web app. This was a holdover
from some old work I was doing and not even necessary to be there
anymore, but was causing no issues in VS 2003. The migration wizard
attempts to convert each web project file in the project you migrate,
so you end up with duplicate files and references and it just gets
really ugly. There are also some good comments on getting a handle on
the XHTML validation warnings, which many projects are likely to have a
lot of in the beginning.
Richard Tallent has a good
post about the problems he sees with Microsoft moving to being a services company. I think the thing that really struck me (and I'm in total agreement with) is this comment
Want to see what a Microsoft application-gone-service looks like? Try Microsoft Money. Is that what you really want to have to deal with 5 years from now when you open Excel and Word?
I like Money okay, but the things that bug me about it are exactly what he is referring to: the Passport integration, the going out and grabbing ads, the nag factor that comes with a connected application. No, I don't want to store a copy of all my financial data on your web server, thank you very much. I mean, it's a generous offer and all, but are you freakin' kidding me?
I also agree with the products he thinks Microsoft does right btw.
I finally decided to check out MySpace again, after being unimpressed with several initial attempts just to sign up. I have a bunch of friends using it now, so it makes sense to at least try it out. First of all, at times the service is so slow as to almost be unusable. Since the parent company was bought by NewsCorp, you would think they could at least invest in some better servers and/or bandwidth. Certain functions at night take a minute or more to pull up. I've heard the site was cobbled together using ColdFusion and if so, I'm not surprised that it doesn't scale well. The useability of the site isn't that great either, it just looks kinda amateurish, especially when stacked up against the new wave of community sites like Flickr, who has one of the best user experiences I've seen yet on a large scale web app.
So why the heck is it so popular? Well, first of all it does give you a lot of the functions you would want to keep up with friends, make new friends and tell the world about yourself. Much of this is pretty barebones, but it basically works. Second, they went after the music community which in retrospect was very smart. Lots of bands and artists have MySpace sites and it's one of the first sites that come up when you talk about musicians and how they connect with fans.
It just comes back to the idea. It's a good idea for a site and it's something people wanted. If you look back at the initial versions of Ebay or Amazon, they weren't that functional or pretty either. But it was a great idea and people flocked to it. When it comes down to it, the web is much like any other content property. Everybody wants eyeballs and they want people to stay on the site so they can show ads. MySpace has amazing stickiness, despite my frustration with the user experience I still found it easy to spend lots of time up there checking out what my friends were up to.
I guess what I'm saying is execution matters, especially as a web site matures, but the idea matters more. You can always improve the design and useability, but if you don't have a good idea that serves the user community, you'll only have so much success.