Decoupling Your Classes

Don't you hate it when you go back to some old code and then just want to vomit? I had an experience like that recently. I went into the options form of my pet project Bitter and found this gem:

The Aaron and Mike Show #3

Our third installment is signed, sealed and delivered. Despite a temporary change of cohosts and change of location, it... well... we got through it. That's all that counts. Check it out!

Streaming live video by Ustream

The Aaron and Mike Show #2

The second show is in the bag. Talked a little about PDC (which I knew very little about) and a little about Aaron's upcoming trip. Check it out!

Streaming live video by Ustream

I Have a Path.Combine, But How About a Url.Combine?

If you're wanting to combine two URLs with Path.Combine, then you're likely to wind up with something like "http://bitterware.com\download.html"... and that's not very good. What we need is something like a Url.Combine. Well, we have something like that. We have …

Showing Administrator Shield on a Button

By now, I'm sure that everyone has seen the little shield image on a button or file:

We all know that it means that you need adminstrator rights, or to log in to an admin account in order to install something or perform some operation that only admins can do. Well …

The Aaron and Mike Show #1

Yesterday was a successful run (at least in our eyes) of our first show. The recording starts a few minutes in, pesky record button, but we have most of it. We have the video stored up on ustream in case you missed it. We'll be broadcasting again next Thursday, so don't …

The Aaron and Mike Show

Aaron Lerch and I have started a new venture. No, it's not "The Aaron and Mike Show". Ok, maybe it is. Basically we're going to be talking tech and probably making fools of ourselves along the way. It's being broadcast at 4pm EST live and we'll keep the recordings …

Zune 3.0 Software Released

New software for the Zune for both the desktop and the device was released today.

You can download it, but the Zune desktop software should do that for you. Anyway, it looks like some new features are managing your Zune identity and a new search box on the desktop.

…

How Soon We Forget

According to this other Mike Hall, Vista isn't all it's cracked up to be. Apparently it's too difficult to understand, especially that darn Windows logo:

It's completely alien to the user until they get used to it. It's silly little things like where you used to have …

Design vs. Usability

When should design trump usability? Can a pretty site be a little less usable if it's extra beautiful? Or is that always a no-no?

In traditional desktop applications, it's a common rule of thumb to not hide functionality behind things such as right-click menus, but to …

The user will see it

Never assume that the user will never encounter your crazy error condition. "I'll put this in a message box for me to see it" is what you might think. "They'll never see this in the field" is a tempting thought. But then your users might end up seeing something like …

Innovation vs Convention

What's the best way to balance innovation and convention? creativity and expectations? novelty and normality? When you have a good idea to improve the UX of your product when do you choose to use that rather than stick to what users are used to seeing? If you don't have …

Intent Programming

One of the things that was hard for me to get past when transitioning from C++ to C# was the lack of a 'const' keyword. Sure C# has 'const' (albeit a weaker version), 'readonly', and "final', but none of them have quite the same semantics as the good ol' C++ const. In …

Software Development Meme

I was called out by Dan Rigsby to do this, so here she goes:

1. How old were you when you started programming?
   

   I believe I was 12 or 13.

   
   
2. How did you get started in programming?
   

   I remember learning some BASIC in school in either 6th or 7th grade. Ya know, you draw a blocky …

Conducting a Card Sort

I conducted an initial test run of a card sort today for my Twitter client Bitter. A card sort is a usability technique in which you hold sessions with potential users of your application and you, well, have them sort cards. Each card will contain a label used in your …

Wearing your blog in style

Do have you a blog? Do you like word clouds? Do you wear shirts? Well then do I have a web site for you!

Just follow these three easy steps:

1) Go to SnapShirts.com, click "Custom" and enter your blog address:

2) Generate your word cloud:

3) Order your shirt:

It's …

It's Time to Get Serious About Security

Scott has been receiving emails from Sprint for several months now. The emails are kind and courteous and they thank him for his payment. They're in plain text, no links. It's not spam. It's a real email from Sprint. The problem is that it's not for Scott's account. …

How Should You Update Your Application?

I've been thinking about how to do this recently with Bitter. When you have an update for your application that you want your users to have, how should you push it down? I see four distinct levels of updating:

Manual Check and Web Page Download

You can require the …

How to auto update your application

In my quest to make my Twitter client Bitter as easy to use as possible, one upgrade I had considered was making it auto-updateable. You click a button, it updates. Done.

As most things in .NET, it turned out to be relatively simple. You download the file, you move it …

And now I present you with... Bitter

On Friday, I finally released version 1.0 of my Twitter client Bitter. Bitter is a .NET application with a tabbed interface similar to multi-tabbed web browsers (which should be all of them by now). I usability tested it with a team of twelve people for the whole week …