The last week or so I have been doing a lot of coding. I am going to get a little technical below, so if you don't know what I'm talking about that's ok. I barely know what I'm talking about myself.
First of all, I switched from .Net 2003 to .Net 2005. I had some hurdles to overcome in order to do this. First of all, my strongly-typed Dataset modifier no longer worked, since Datasets are now generated in two parts, using partial classes. I re-did all my Datasets to conform (mostly) with the say .Net 2005 likes to do them. I did not use their TableAdapter stuff -- I am still using my way of saving Dataset updates which is much more efficient. I started switching from the old DataGrid to the new GridView control. I had to upgrade ActiveReports. And I upgraded my copy of Vault. Lots of busy work but it turned out good.
I like the enhancements in .Net 2005.
The editor is much friendlier -- lots of Intellisense stuff -- I barely hit a few keys and the program types itself in!
The new ClickOnce technology is way cool! Now whenever I have an upgrade to my rich-client app, I just “publish” it to my web site. When a PoolChlor office starts up their app, it first looks on my web site to see if a newer version is available. If so, it asks the user if he/she wants to download it. In a few seconds the new version is up and running. This happens on each node in their office. No more sending updates and talking users thru installing at each workstation. Or going on-site and doing it myself. Slicker than snot!
Now I am working on the web version of the product. You can see it at www.poolcarepro.com. It still needs a bunch of work, so don't expect much.
Themes are neat -- I can support multiple styles of the same web site at the same time. In fact you can even change themes at runtime. I will add a link to the site soon to show how that is done. Now each customer can choose their own look and feel. I'm liking it.
Themes work with skin files and css files. Skin files are just a way of customizing the look / behavior of .Net's custom controls. Css is all the rage right now -- instead of table tags all over the place, you can use a few div's and get a much simpler page that is easier to control. Well, mostly. I'm in the middle of the learning curve on css layout. It has been frustrating -- things haven't worked the way I expected. I am learning, slowly. And I am also learning why people dis the Internet Explorer browser and praise the Firefox one. I have encountered situations (in the area of auto widths), where Firefox works right and IE doesn't. Piece of junk. I am having to find work-arounds. It shouldn't be this hard. At least once I get the hang of it, it will get better. I hope.
The last challenge is to get ActiveReports web working. I'm hoping it's just an issue with beta and the real .Net 2005 version fixes it and is released real soon. But maybe it's another case of “rearranging the furniture”. I hate that. Oh well.
Well anyway that's what is going on at the moment. Pretty exiting if you are a nerd. Pretty boring if you are not.