But it’s now fully baked and available in the Windows Phone Marketplace, you can download by following the link below (there’s a FREE trial available!), if you have already purchased then the update should show on you Windows Phone Marketplace tile in the next few days.

Here are the details of the upgrades and additions that appear in V2.0.0

Live Tile

The number one request has been live tile functionality, well I’m glad to say that it’s arrived in V2.0!

Live Tile Front

You can see on the front the Bin Day recycle logo, this is used as a ‘countdown’ to the next collection. Each of the 6 segments of the logo represent a 24 hour period and will dim one by one as it approaches your next collection day. The major decision I made here is that if the collection is more than 6 days away you won’t really need to know. In the centre of the logo is the count of the number of bins that will be collected. At the top of the tile is a thin row of coloured strips, this represents the colours of the bins in the next collection.

One thing that I don’t like in the new live tile API is you can only schedule live tile updates for up to 14 days if the application isn’t run This causes a bit of a UX problem for me, with the live tile functionality incorporated I imagine that for most users for most of the time, Bin Day will be a  ‘set and forget’ app, you will enter your data, pin the tile to the home screen and all the information you need is right there on display. However, at the moment you will need to run the application at least once every 14 days. Like it or not I’m bound to the way the phone works and I need to alert the user that they need to run the app, so when the tile is about to stop being updated (currently set at 2 days away) a small alert symbol shows in the top right corner.

Live Tile Back

On the back you can see the next collection date and small icons of the bins that are due to collected. The tile will show the first five bins that are due for collection on the next collection date, any more and the tile will prompt you to run the app. This is a trade off between keeping the information legible and displaying instant information.

Updated Graphics

I’m trying to bring the app more into line with the Metro style so I’ve revamped the icons and general look of the app.

Additional Languages

Version one was localized to the US, UK and Germany, in version two I’ve added four more languages, Danish, French, Italian and Spanish hopefully making the app useful to a much broader audience. I had help from some good friends for a lot of the translation work but some still went through a combination of Bing Translate an Google Translate, so if you spot any howlers please let me know in the comments below and I can get them fixed up.

Email & SMS

Added the ability to either email or txt the next collection details to somebody.

Cleaned up About Panel

The about panel on version 1.0 was a bit messy, I’ve cleaned it up and split out the about, feedback and help into separate screens.

Splash Screen

Tidied up the splash screen and hopefully ended up with something a little more classy

Full Change Log.

Bin Day Version 1.0.0

• Initial Launch

Bin Day Version 2.0.0

• Added: Live Tile and Scheduled Agent
• Added: Email collection details
• Added: SMS collection details
• Fixed: Brown looked red
• Improved: General graphics update

Most companies who sell MIS or Project Management systems will offer a free evaluation period, but there is still a big barrier to entry, getting your data in (and out if you decide not to purchase) of the system.

A lot of providers offer to install test data, but it’s never the same as working with data you know, and part time cynic that I am, I end up with a nagging doubt that everything is set up to display the system in the best possible light

To be honest these days, if a service doesn’t offer at least company detail import via CSV I won’t evaluate it, they don’t even get a chance to sell to me.

So what about it MIS suppliers, SaaS providers and the big boys? It’s in your interest, can’t you knock heads and come up with a nice Standard XML format that holds MIS data, so we poor saps only have to input it once then export and import quickly and cleanly into multiple systems? More prospects will evaluate your pride and joy, and the more prospects who evaluate the higher the number that convert.

It’s not down to hardware or form factor, or ARM versus Intel, or slate versus laptop versus desktop. Windows 8 wows plain and simply because of the quality, breadth and depth of the design effort that was put into Metro, Microsoft’s new and increasing pervasive UI paradigm.

The seeds of Metro can be found in the Zune music player, then about 18 months ago it was introduced as the UI for Windows Phone 7, the XBOX 360 dashboard will be updated with Metro sometime this Autumn and then, about this time next year, it will hit Windows desktops and slates.

I believe that finally Microsoft have ‘got’ what Apple have know all along – design matters, REALLY matters, and that it’s not just a case of making buttons look shiny or an icon look glossy, design runs to the very core of the way a user interacts with any system.

They call it way-finding, pretty much any action you perform on a computer is to get you from one place (or state) to another, and you want the simplest and clearest form of guidance to help you do that. From what I’ve seen so far of Metro in action, it does that in spades.

I’d recommend you watch these two videos from the Build conference, they weigh in at nearly 3 hours but if you can find the time they are a great insight into Microsoft’s current thinking regarding UX, and into how the design team are now first class citizens in a company full of developers, suits and marketers.

• 8 traits of great Metro style apps: Jensen Harris – http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011/BPS-1004
• Designing Metro style, principles and personality: Samuel Moreau – http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011/APP-395T

Now all the Mango goodness is available and it’s time to upgrade the Bin Day to take advantage of the new features available in the 7.5 update. Top of the requested features list is Live Tile support, so today I started in on supporting that feature. I’ve not tried Live Tile support in a 7.0 app, but by all accounts it was quite hard to set up local updates to the applications tile, Mango makes it a lot easier! However, this is where my off the cuff design decision from weeks before bit back.

Your Live Tile is updated locally by a ScheduledAgent, this is a separate project in your solution and is kicked off about every 30 minutes on the phone (if resources are available). The ScheduledAgent runs in a separate background thread, as mentioned my Bin Object stores the colour as a SolidColourBrush, newing up a SolidColorBrush needs the UI thread so when the agent tries to run it chokes with an Invalid cross-thread access error. Whilst you can dispatch to the UI thread because I was instancing the SolidColorBrush so deep in the code I figured I’d just change it all up and do it a different way. I’m now storing the colours in the database as a serialised argb string – a lot easier to deal with.

A lot of mudslinging is going on (coming from both sides of the debate!) but the “No” argument I’m seem to be hearing most runs something like this: The Alternative Vote is complicated, the great British public couldn’t understand the complexities involved in using the AV system.

That argument is simply not true. So what’s a conscientious designer to do to explain the AV system – an Infographic of course!

Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

For those who are interested there is a great in-depth examination of both the AV and FPTP systems on Gowers’s Weblog, it does have a bit of a mathematical slant but between his post and the numerous well thought out comments it covers pretty much anything you want to know about the positives and negatives of the two voting systems.

In closing (the mild soap-boxy bit).

It’s probably quite clear that I am in favour of AV in preference to FPTP. I’ve tried to present the reasons that AV is MY preference, but I don’t presume to influence your decision about which system to vote for in the referendum. However I would happily stand and shout in your face for a week to convince you to ACTUALLY VOTE. The opportunity for We The People to decide how we are governed is not a God given right, it a hard fought for privilege, don’t waste that privilege.

UPDATE (April 14th): It has since been pointed out that you CAN run your previous version as well as the upgrade on the same computer – from the CS5 licence aggrement;

If the Software is an upgrade or update to a previous version of Adobe software, you must possess a valid license to such previous version in order to use such upgrade or update. After you install such update or upgrade, you may continue to use any such previous version in accordance with its end-user license agreement only if (a) the upgrade or update and all previous versions are installed on the same Computer, (b) the previous versions or copies thereof are not transferred to another party or device unless all copies of the update or upgrade are also transferred to such party or device, and (c) you acknowledge that any obligation Adobe may have to support the previous version(s) may end upon the availability of the upgrade or update. No other use of the previous version(s) is permitted after installation of an update or upgrade. Upgrades and updates may be licensed to you by Adobe with additional or different terms.

Freelancers are hit pretty hard by this; at each new release of CS we have to make a choice, upgrade to save cash but risk not being compatible with a bunch of our clients, or buy a new full suite licence (to the best of my knowledge upgrade licences rely on previous versions, you cannot install both versions side by side).

InDesign is the only CS application that is not either fully file compatible (a la Photoshop and Fireworks) or has the ability to save back to previous versions (aka Illustrator – honestly; is ANYONE out there still using Illustrator 3 )

I think it’s time for a little lateral thinking here – and maybe some pressure from user groups like this. Here are a couple of suggestions to kick off (in order of  my preference);

1. Add back saving into the application proper; similar to how MS Word does it, if you are using features that are not supported in the version you want to save back to you are warned what’s wrong.
2. A web service that takes your InDesign document and saves it back to whatever version you require.
3. Your licence for copy of CS*latest* enables you to run any previous stand-alone version of InDesign (special downloadable version if necessary) This is already true – see above.
4. Adobe supply a virtual machine with all previous versions of InDesign preinstalled but hobbled so they can only open a file and save as IDML. (both Mac and Windows can run a Windows VM with relative ease)

Any other ideas? Discuss

First Thing First!

Number your Projects. If you aren’t numbering your projects already go now – buy a Red & Black and start a Job/Project book. Seriously, sequentially numbering your projects is the very heart of getting your studio organised.

The Project Folder System

Create a folder that only holds files for work that is currently active, I call ours WIP (work in progress) but it can be anything that makes sense to you, as long as it will only hold projects that you are currently working on. Grab all the files and folders for current work and dump them into you WIP folder.

Create another folder alongside it called Archive, grab everything that didn’t make it to the WIP folder and dump it in this new Archive folder, don’t worry we’ll come back to that in another blog post!

Suddenly things look a lot less scary, you’ve gone from one or two years of accumulated project files to deal with down to what, a month or twos worth of files?

File Like a Demon

After twenty years of managing digital assets for projects the following is the structure that I’ve settled into like a big comfy armchair.

Now, it’s your call here whether you want to spend the time to convert the projects that are now in the WIP folder into the new format or just use it for new projects from this point on, however I would strongly recommend you spend the time and rearrange the files, it gets you used to the structure.

The project folder name should contain the project number, the client name (or short version thereof) and a short title, for example;

0000 – GAP – New logo design

Within that folder we have eight sub-folders, the number at the start of each folder name keeps them in the same order on both a mac and pc, the increments of 10 gives you room to breath, you can slip another folder in should special project circumstances require it.

10 – Reference & Research

Almost every project you do will need some sort of research or require some reference material; mood boards, existing corporate guidelines, the client brief, a copy of your pitch document. Basically anything that a creative or production team member might want to refer back too can go in this folder.

20 – Supplier Info

If you sell on printing, promotional good, exhibition work or any other type of outwork then during the process of assembling your estimates you’ll most likely accumulate a sizable chunk of information from your suppliers  – file them in here. If you never sell on other companies services simply delete this folder from the Template and never speak of it again.

30 – Quotes

This is another optional folder that may not suit your workflow, however I have found it invaluable in the past when dealing with repeat projects. It basically holds financials, file all quotes from suppliers and your quotes to clients in here, then when it comes to doing a similar or repeat project you have quick access to how much you charged and who produced the work for you. If you use a MIS (Management Information System) then this is a pretty redundant folder so feel free to nuke it!

40 – Design – Creative

Don’t try to impose structure on creative talent, it will end in a world of pain for both of you! For all that I am a process driven organised sort of chap, as soon as I start “designing” things get a little more – shall we say – freeform. The solution is simple, give design a home folder, a blank canvas for each project. the 40 – Design & Creative folder is inviolate, nobody can complain that its disorganised or a mess, nobody mucks around or moves files within that folder, it is the realm of the creative and that’s that! With one major caveat, when the client signs off the designs the designer then moves the latest working files into the 60 – Artwork folder and any required assets (icons, retouched images etc.) into the 50 – Assets & Images folder. 

50 – Assets & Images

This one usually gets broken down into more sub-folders, Images, Images-Retouched, Copy-Supplied, Copywriter etc. Basically anything that will actually be used directly goes in here. If your projects usually run for more than 3 or 4 weeks (web-dev work for example) you might want to think about structuring within this folder to make finding assets nice and easy.

60 – Artwork

Does what it says on the tin – file your artwork here. By way of organisation we create a sub-folder for each item that is being artworked, so if you are doing a stationery set you would end up with

0000 – GAP Letterhead
0000 – Gap Compslip
0000 – Gap Business Card

Version every artwork file consistently. I’ve found that the best balance between efficiency and red-tape to be incrementing the version number only when a proof is presented to the client, but if you want to keep track of internal changes you could use ‘dot’ increments – V3, V3.1, V3.2 etc. To avoid confusion try and keep just the latest version in the job folder and have an OLD folder in either each of the job folders or in the root of 60 – Artwork (a bit like the trash can on your desktop)

70 – Misc

You may as well make a place for the other accumulated detritus that gathers, particularly on larger projects, if you don’t it will only pile up somewhere else.

99 – FINAL ARTWORK

This is the granddaddy folder of the system, this is your “bang for buck” folder, this folder WILL save you professional reputation and, if you ever put work out to print WILL save you money!

If you are currently working ad-hoc and even if the person who created the artwork is in the office, this conversation with the client will bring you out in a cold sweat.

You did a brochure for us about nine month ago,
we need some more really urgently,
can you send the artwork to the printers again please,
like now, they have a slot on the press tonight!

Absolutely no question, if you send the wrong files you are to blame. The client won’t want to check the PDFs again, he did that nine months ago when he signed off the first run. It’s wasting his time and just looks plain unprofessional.

99 to the rescue.

When a piece of artwork is signed off by the client the very last thing the artworker should do is copy the final version into the 99 – FINAL ARTWORK folder along with a copy of the sign off. Then, should the reprint call come in anybody in the company can quickly deal with that request confident that the correct version of the artwork is going to press.

I tend to “package” the artwork into the 99 folder, is does lead to duplicated assets on your server, however the upside is that absolutely everything that is required for that piece of artwork is in one place.

House Keeping

So the project is finished, everything signed off and delivered, now what? Stay on top of your files! if you can, set aside an hour a week to sort out completed project folders, here’s a little check list;

• Make sure the final artwork that went to the client/went to print is packaged into the 99 – Final Artwork folder, you can zip it all up if you want to save hard disk real estate.
• If the designer hasn’t already done it, have them move any doodles or designs that weren’t approved into their reference/bag of bits/inspiration folder
• Clean out all the OLD folders in the 60 – Artwork folder to save space
• Check through the 20 – Supplier Info folder and make sure the contact details of any new suppliers are transferred into your company address book.
• If you have an imagebank for the client transfer any new images from 50-Assets & Images (read about client assets in a future post)
• File any relevant emails into the 70 – Misc folder. If there have been a number of people involved on the project get them to do the same.
• Now drag the entire folder structure out of WIP and into Archive.

And that’s it, you’ve put the project to bed, you have a complete reference of the project and what it took to put it together, anyone in your organisation can find and access the final artwork quickly and everything is neatly filed in the Archive folder – bonza!

…and Finally

You can take this system and use it as inspiration to build your own that’s matched perfectly to your workflow, as a reference to tweak an existing system or simply use it verbatim (you can download a zipped archive of the folder structure at the end of this post).

In future “Getting your studio organised”  posts I’ll cover;

• Archives
• Client Assets
• Backup
• Email
• Q & A (anything I’m asked about in the comments

Thanks for reading!

Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

You can find out more at http://svghelpers.odd-uk.com and download the source at http://github.com/sowen69/SvgHelpers.

At the moment it supports converting a double input value in millimeters (“mm”), centimeters (“cm”), meters (“m”), inches (“in”), feet (“ft”) and picas (“pc”).

You can convert a length or an area, the default values are input unit is mm, convert a length and return the answer to 2 decimal places. Usage is simple;

Using default values.

double number = 100;
double numberInPoints = number.ToPoints();

Convert an Inch value to 3 decimal places.

double number = 100;
double numberInPoints = number.ToPoints("in",3);

Convert an area in Centimeters to 4 decimal places.

double number = 100;
double numberInPoints = number.ToPoints("cm",4,true);

And the Code is:

using System;

namespace Odd.Maths.Convert
{
    public static class ConversionFactors
    {
        public const double mmToPoint = 2.834645669291;
        public const double cmToPoint = mmToPoint*10;
        public const double mToPoint = mmToPoint*1000;
        public const double inToPoint = mmToPoint * 25.4;
        public const double ftToPoint = (mmToPoint * 25.4) * 12;
        public const double picaToPoint = 72;
    }

    public static class ConversionExtensionMethods
    {
        public static double ToPoints(this double d, string fromUnit = "mm", int precision = 2, bool isArea = false)
        {
            switch (fromUnit)
            {
                case "mm":
                    return (isArea == true)
                        ? Math.Round(d * Math.Pow(ConversionFactors.mmToPoint, 2), precision)
                        : Math.Round(d * ConversionFactors.mmToPoint, precision);
                case "cm":
                    return (isArea == true)
                        ? Math.Round(d * Math.Pow(ConversionFactors.cmToPoint, 2), precision)
                        : Math.Round(d * ConversionFactors.cmToPoint, precision);
                case "m":
                    return (isArea == true)
                        ? Math.Round(d * Math.Pow(ConversionFactors.mToPoint, 2), precision)
                        : Math.Round(d * ConversionFactors.mToPoint, precision);
                case "in":
                    return (isArea == true)
                        ? Math.Round(d * Math.Pow(ConversionFactors.inToPoint, 2), precision)
                        : Math.Round(d * ConversionFactors.inToPoint, precision);
                case "ft":
                    return (isArea == true)
                        ? Math.Round(d * Math.Pow(ConversionFactors.ftToPoint, 2), precision)
                        : Math.Round(d * ConversionFactors.ftToPoint, precision);
                case "pc":
                    return (isArea == true)
                        ? Math.Round(d * Math.Pow(ConversionFactors.picaToPoint, 2), precision)
                        : Math.Round(d * ConversionFactors.picaToPoint, precision);
                default:
                    //Returns 0 if an incorrect fromUnit unit is specified
                    return 0;
            }

        }

    }
}

It’s all quite basic with minimal (read none!) error checking but hopefully it might help someone out

The MVC pattern is not new technology, in fact quite the opposite. First developed by Trygve Reenskaug at Xerox Parc Labs in the late 1970s, you can find an implementation of the software pattern in most popular languages today. Zend under PHP and Ruby on Rails are just two well used applications of the MVC pattern, but Wikipedia lists twenty three separate implementations for PHP alone. It is not even the first to the party under ASP.NET – Maveric.Net, Monorail and ProMesh.Net have all been around for some time. However, with Microsoft’s offering MVC is now rolled right into the .Net Framework.

An MVC application is divided into three distinct roles, Models, Views and Controllers.

• Models handle the maintaining of state; usually this is persisted inside a database.
• Views are responsible for handling the display of the user interface.
• Controllers handle user interaction and ultimately decided which view to render.

This clean separation between the three roles, Model, View and Controller, makes an MVC application much easier to test. The MVC pattern also facilitates the use of red/green, or test driven development (TDD), where unit tests that define the requirements and scope of the code are written before the actual code itself.

ASP.NET MVC applications can be written using any of the .Net Framework languages and takes advantage of the frameworks existing support for features like authentication, membership and roles, output and data caching, session state management and the configuration system.

Routing

Developed as part of the MVC framework the routing engine – an exceptionally powerful URL routing system – allows you to set URL mapping rules to route incoming, and construct outgoing, URLs. The mapping rules are defined once, at the application level, within the Global.asax file. This means if you change the URL structure of your application you only need to modify this one set of mapping rules. The controllers and views in your application will continue to work totally unchanged.

The routing engine was initially in the System.Web.Mvc.Routing namespace, but has proved so useful it has been shuffled up the namespace tree into the System.Web.Routing, meaning it can now be used in web forms applications as well.

Your Views Are Your Own

The MVC framework was designed from the ground up to be pluggable and extensible. You can use Microsoft’s default routing or view engine, create your own, or swap them out the for third party offerings.

Out of the box views are created using .aspx pages, including full support for master and nested master pages. But you can use any existing templating language, with spark and nVelocity currently receiving a lot of attention. This, for web developers, is a huge plus in the frameworks favour. You can use the templating engine of your choice; you know nVelocity, use nVelocity. Prefer Spark? Fill your boots! You have 100% control of the angle brackets, you produce exactly the html you want.

A New Microsoft?

Whilst the ins and outs of the ASP.NET MVC framework are defiantly interesting and exciting for anyone developing under the .Net Framework, the way that Microsoft approached bringing the product to market is equally so. Better known for slow product cycles and closed development the MVC team appears to have instigated a paradigm shift.

Development of the ASP.NET MVC Framework has been open to scrutiny from a very early stage. The source code has been available for download from Codeplex, and the team asked for the community at large to review their work. Feedback was extensive, but when pushed for details of a release date the response was always “it’ll launch when its’ ready”. Now, for a company the size of Microsoft, whose life blood is a well structured product release cycle, that’s a bold statement of intent.

Then there is the ASP.NET MVC team itself. In October 2007 Scott Guthrie, the VP of DevDiv, hired two developers from within the .NET community. Phil Haack and Rob Conery had both developed and maintained successful open source projects, Phil with Subtext and Rob with Subsonic.

Plucking a couple of high profile and well respected open source developers, with established and widely used applications, out of the community was risky. Indeed, there was concern raised by avid fans that both Subtext and Subsonic would suffer adversely when Phil and Rob announced they would be working for Microsoft. It’s now a year down the line and both projects continue to flourish unhindered, despite the authors being assimilated by ‘the evil empire’.

In addition to actually getting ASP.NET MVC out the door both developers, and the rest of the MVC team, have been pumping out screencasts, application samples, and snippets of code at a prolific rate. On forums, the asp.net website and their own blogs the content just keeps rolling out. In fact the wealth of information available to anyone wanting to dip their toe in to the Microsoft flavoured MVC water is staggering; especially for a product that is yet to reach V1.0.

We sat down with Phil Haack to discuss how the MVC project has matured over the last twelve months and talk about his experience since joining the company.

odd: Phil, thanks for taking the time to talk to us. You have been at Microsoft a little over twelve months now, how has the experience differed from your expectations?

PH: One thing that has really differed from my expectations is that there is a real emphasis on work-life balance here that is more than just lip service. I expected everyone to work crazy hours all the time, but I’ve had my manager on several occasions warn me about not burning myself out. This is really a company that is in it for the long haul and you see that in many ways.

odd: You have obviously been extremely busy in the day job, how hard has it been to keep forging ahead with Subtext?

PH: Extremely hard, but partly because I have a one year old son now who is a joy to be around and I can’t rightly come home from work and ignore him and my wife. Also, I like to sleep a lot more now. I think it’s these dreary winters. After joining, I was able to help push out a 2.0 release, and I will get back into it again. Subtext development, like many OSS projects, tends to go in waves.

odd: We have mentioned that the source code for the ASP.NET MVC framework is available on Codeplex, could you briefly explain the scope of the license.

PH: The current license is a modified reference license. It allows you to change the source code to meet your needs, but not redistribute the code. It also allows you to go live with your application built on MVC, but at your own risk. My hope is to make the license even less restrictive than it is.

odd: It has been made clear from the start that ASP.NET MVC is not a replacement for ASP.NET Web Forms but will sit alongside as an alternative option when building your applications. In what scenarios could YOU see the advantage of using MVC as opposed to Web Forms?

PH: I think MVC will provide an advantage for those building public facing “Web 2.0” style applications where the importance of human friendly “hackable” URLs, clean semantic markup, agile development, etc… are of the primary importance. For other systems built for the long haul where maintainability is a primary concern, I think MVC, with its focus on testability, will be advantageous.

odd: Could you give us an insight into what development methodologies were used to build out the MVC project; was is agile, did the team incorporate TDD, pair programming or continuous integration?

PH: It’s rather a hodge podge of methodologies, but most closely resembles “Scrum-but”. That’s a term for anything that’s like Scrum, but differs in some ways. We have roughly daily triage meetings and weekly design meetings. We have extensive unit test coverage, as unit test coverage is required before check-in. All check-ins are peer reviewed, but we don’t do pair programming. I’d like to implement continuous integration, but we don’t have it currently in place. We have a very small number of developers so it hasn’t bitten us in the butt too often.

odd: In reaching V1.0 there have been number of preview releases, how much feedback (positive and negative) did the team actually receive from the community, and how much influence did that feedback have in shaping the product we see today?

PH: The amount of feedback we’ve received has been immense and has had a huge influence in shaping the product. One specific example is the sheer amount of changes from Preview 2 to Preview 3 when we introduced the ActionResult. That was a result of direct feedback from many developers who complained about how difficult it was to test their controller actions.

Scott Guthrie, Eilon Lipton, and I had a long design meeting in Scott’s office where we hashed out this new design. It was hard work, and set our schedule back a bit, but we feel the improved design was worth it and the response to the change has been largely positive.

odd: It was recently announced that jQuery will ship as part of ASP.NET MVC, was that an easy sell to the Microsoft higher echelons?

PH: I wasn’t heavily involved in the decision making at the executive level. I know that Scott Guthrie, who is a Corporate VP, was heavily in favour of it, if not the driving force for it. I’m not sure how those above him reacted, but I think you’ll see that Microsoft’s attitude towards open source appears to be shifting in a positive direction. So it probably wasn’t as tough a sell as people might think.

odd: What would be your top tip for say a PHP or Ruby programmer looking to learn about developing a web site under the ASP.NET MVC framework?

PH: One of the benefits of developing for ASP.NET MVC is the underlying .NET Framework that the whole stack sits on. It’s common on other platforms to need to grab libraries from all sorts of other vendors who each provide varying levels of support, such as an XML library from here, a network library from there.

With .NET, the framework is fairly complete and fully supported. Security updates can be applied automatically without having to check five different places. The platform itself is very secure, scalable, and highly performant.

Not to mention that the tooling built on top of the stack is well integrated and makes development a breeze. Once yours sold on the .NET Framework, ASP.NET MVC will feel very familiar to a PHP or Ruby on Rails developer.

I am also the PM for dynamic languages on ASP.NET. As we bring that towards maturity, Ruby and Python developers will be able to benefit from all the advantages of the .NET Framework while still enjoying their favourite programming language.

A Bright Future

It’s clear that some departments within Microsoft are radically changing the way they bring products to market, embracing a more open and inclusive philosophy traditionally seen within the open source community. Will these changes improve the quality of Microsoft products? Will it change the web development community’s negative perception of the company? It’s too soon to tell, but in this little corner of the Microsoft behemoth, feedback seems very favourable.