Visual Studio 2005 seems totally counter-intuitive when it comes to creating new Websites. I can’t be bothered going through it all right now but basically when you just want to start with a Website, it has to go in a “Solution.” You get to specify the physical location of the Website but it shoves the Solution files, which are required, in some other default location and everything turns to crap if you think in terms of physical locations on disk rather than the hybrid physical/abstract path model that Microsoft seem to have taken with Visual Studio.

I decided to do some research and found a helpful forum post that explains that starting with a ‘blank solution’ will cure this problem.

So my next question was where is this magical “Blank Solution” option? It turns out it’s in the New Project Wizard, under the ‘Other Project Types – Visual Studio Solutions’ category. This all seems a bit out of whack to me, and apparently a couple of other people agree.

Rory and I have been following the impending release of Microsoft’s own documentation compiler for the last month or so.

Last weeek the first CTP release of SandCastle, as it’s known, was made available here.

Scott Hanselman described the instructions accompanying the release as “ghetto”, which is a term I’ve never before heard used to describe documentation. Quite amusing. Anyway I’m sure it’s usable and as soon as I get .Net 2.0 happening on my laptop I’ll be trying it out.

I can appreciate where Dare is coming from in his post about how Every Bad Decision Has a Good Reason Behind It.

Most of the time I try to understand, rationalise and sometimes question decisions made either before I arrived on my current project or more recently by other teams. In general I see this as being a fairly healthy habit since I’m really just trying to get a broader and deeper understanding of system we’re building and to ensure that we make the right choices so the client gets the best result possible.

One thing I’ve noticed though, and this is something I’m trying to be more alert to, is that I probably only recognise the likelihood of “Good Reasons” half of the time. It’s way too easy to have a whinge to somebody close by about some seemingly ill-conceived decision without knowing all the the factors that have effected the final decision.

I guess a lot of people are guilty of this to some degree (, maybe?). Anway this post can serve as a reminder to myself to stop and think about the good reasons that probably led to those ‘bad’ decisions.

Two gems from Jason Yip this week. On monday he noted a recent trend in webdesign relating to font size::

Old thinking: let’s reduce font size and try to cram as much information as we can on the screen.

New thinking: let’s increase font size and reduce information so people can easily read and understand what’s on the screen

And on Tuesday, he explained what makes a well-behaved web application. This points made in this post are simple and well thought out.

I’d like to add that well-behaved web applications should use consistent and logical URLs for the resources being served. If there’s too many site areas/sections to link to directly off the main page, give me a short and memorable url so that I can get back there quick (like the ABCs news, triplej and rage.

I was going to use Joe Gregorio’s column, The Restful Web at xml.com as an example because for some reason I thought it was www.xml.com/therestfulweb but alas. What the hell kind of resource is represented at “http://www.xml.com/pub/at/34″?

Likewise, if it’s a multi-user site and I’m a member I want to be able to point my friends/family at my area without me needing to look it up, or them needing a pen and paper (think http://www.flickr.com/photos/dwightgunning and http://del.icio.us/dwightgunning.)

My Writeboard which you won’t be able to see at “http://123.writeboard.com/37536bb10b817edc9″ is a pretty good example of a bad URL to give me for my area.

Tonight I started thinking about requirements for this new pet project of mine.

The business will be based mostly online and be mainly self-service on the part of the customer. One thing I’d really like to do is offer some features that really encourage interactivity/communication amongst the customers and with myself.

The concept isn’t revolutionary so it’s not going to make it to TechCrunch and although there’s quite a few players already involved, the market is big enough and should only continue to grow. I’m pretty confident that it can be profittable. I guess I need to sit down and nut this out properly at some point pretty soon.

So I was thinking about how to gather the requirements and decided I should get a little bit XP by taking the User Story approach. I’m partnering up with a non-techie who’s definitely an expert in the field so I’m try and get them to drive out the stories. After that I’ll try the Planning Game.

Right now I’m just going to run with it for a while and see where it all ends up. My expectations aren’t real high but I really want to get something out there on the web and give it a bit of a shake. I’m bound to learn a few things, right?

Just earlier I was lying in bed, trying to get some sleep before the Australia Vs Italy game that’s on later tonight. I was thinking how I need to get my act together and start a bit of a project and try make a few extra dollars for beer money or whatever. I’ve got a bit of an idea but I seriously don’t know how it might pan out.

Anyway, I kind of had this moment of clarity where I just said “fuck it, who cares if its a failure… the first business always fails.” I dunno how true that a statement that really is but over the last couple months I’ve kind of decided I should stop waiting for the perfect business idea to come into my head and just start something. The web is so damn big and there’s so many people out there that even that targets a real niche can work out. The Network and Long Tail effect… yada, yada, yada.

So I got outta bed and went and made myself a trusty toasted cheese/Vegemite sandwich and turned on the laptop. First stop, as usual, was the news aggregator and I found that Brad Feld’s been talking about failure too. Some of the comments are equally motivating.

Joe Gregorio has a column,the Restful Web, and a great blog where he’s just mentioned that he needs a job. Well, I really like reading his stuff, and I am deadset certain he knows what he’s on about when it comes to scalable and efficient distributed systems built on web technologies.

We need a heap of developers on my current project but I don’t see him moving his family to Australia… and I don’t do the recruiting so I can’t help. But maybe you can?

Dare says…

I’m not sure I understand what Hugh means by Microsoft has opted to take the non-Cluetrain route but then again the entire Cluetrain trend is something I’ve never been too knowledgeable about.

Hugh’s thinking that Microsoft are heading down the path of ‘extinction management’; trying to keep the walls up and impermeable to conversation. I don’t see it that way. Maybe part of the organisation is on that track but there’s definitely enough people within Microsoft who are engaged in the conversation to make me believe they’ll pull through.

Where Dare does miss the cluetrain bigtime is in his suggestion that handing over Channel 9 to “professionals” could be a good thing in the wake of Scoble’s departure.

It may even be a good thing to have some professional media folks running Channel 9 instead of just amateur media geeks.

I haven’t ever used Ch9 but whenever I’ve read about it, it seems like a cool place. Replacing the amatures will suck, the real users will see through it in a second and it is so not what the cluetrain is all about.

Bah I haven’t posted in so long – definitely need to get back into the groove.

I’ve been working on a pretty interesting web application at work that uses the Microsoft User Interface Process (UIP) application block for navigation. We’re also mixing in quite a few components from Avanade’s ACA (Avanade Connected Architecture) framework.

I’m getting a pretty good look at Visual Studio 2005 and Team Foundation Server.

I’ll try and get organised and post some more about my experiences with these over the next few weeks.