Lotus Notes continues to suck as much as ever.  Every day, I wake to find more suckage.

For example, today, when a coworker forwarded a meeting invitation to me, instead of allowing me to accept it in my calendar and schedule the event, it came across as a regular e-mail with no option to accept the meeting invitation which was attached.

Furthermore, there's this little gem:

Uhhh...thank you Lotus Notes for informing me that the meeting occurs in a different time zone.  It would be nice if you could tell me which time zone.  You know, since I can't automatically schedule the event, it would be nice if you could just tell me what time zone it's in so I can manually schedule it.  Furthermore, see that little outline around the globe and arrow?  This would lead one to believe that clicking on it does something like maybe map the actual time...but nope, nothing happens (the same with the text).  LotusNotes = Productivity--

Meanwhile, Amazon Prime is the polar opposite of suckage.  I ordered two books yesterday and used the default Prime "free" 2nd day shipping option.  To my surprise, they've arrived on my doorstep less than 24 hours later.  If that isn't awesome, then I don't know what is.

Microsoft has a very powerful set of group policy administrative templates which allow administrators to set configuration options for Office globally for all users in the domain.  This makes many development scenarios much easier since it allows you to easily ensure consistency in terms of Office configuration instead of writing custom code to do it in your add-in.

You can download the templates from MSDN.

You can find more details about installing and using the templates here.

And in case you were curious, here's a screen cap:

This is a must explore set of tools when working with Office applications.

An article in the April issue of MSDN magazine features an interview with Bjarne Stroustrup, the man that invented C++.  There's an interesting quote that quite eloquently and succintly sums up my distaste for Windows Workflow Foundation and BizTalk (at least the versions that I've worked with).

When asked about his feelings on IDEs and how they should (or should not) support languages and the role of the IDE in software development, Stroustrup responsed:

I'm not a heavy IDE user.  I appreciate a responsive IDE editor with understanding of my language, but I also want to be able to work without an IDE.  My desire for portability of code plays a role here.  With C++, I want to be able to understand my system from just the source code in the source files.  I actively dislike IDE mechanisms that involve trasformations or generation that cannot be represented as code fit for human consumption.

While WF does certainly generate code in the background, it's not what I would consider "code fit for human consumption".  It's messy and aesthetically unpleasing (so far as code goes).  I always inevitably end up spending quite a bit of time cleaning up the mess left by the code generation engine; there's an odd disconnect between the cleanly delineated visual design of the workflow and the mess of code that gets generated just for a dependency property.

Massive droolage:

I got an email today regarding a blog post by Jeffrey Palermo on the shortcomings of SharePoint as a development platform.

Now I have to say, SharePoint is not without fault (particularly in the area of feature packaging and deployment), but Jeffrey's perceived issues with SharePoint really show either the lack of personal development experience with SharePoint or a lack of creativity on the part of the team he's working with.

Let's get one thing clear first, okay?  SharePoint is meant as an enterprise collaboration and document storage platform, first and foremost.  One must always bear this in mind with regards to any discussion on SharePoint.  Why is it so big?  Why is it clunky in some places?  Why does it have to be installed on a server OS (okay, I admit, this one is probably more about licensing and $$ than anything technical)?

It seems that Jeffrey's major beef, that it must be installed on a server OS, kills any benefits of SharePoint as a development platform immediately.  So let's tackle this one first. 

First, a disclaimer: I'm not a SharePoint guru.  I don't have 5 years of experience with SharePoint.  I'm only going on what I've learned in working with SharePoint, day in and day out, for the last year.

In our development group of 5 or so people, we've managed to develop against SharePoint quite well, despite the fact that we all run XP as our primary development environment.  How?  Virtual machines.  Of course, some would view this as a hassle, as another stumbling block or quite clumsy.  I view it otherwise as there are numerous benefits in developing against a VM server environment:

1. Every deployment is exactly the same.  This means that server names, file structures, databases, and so on are exactly the same for every developer.  This aids -- not hinders -- the development of automated scripts and deployment utilities.  On our team, we usually synchronize images once every month or so.  What this means is that we'll take turns updating a common image and then everyone will grab a copy of said image.
2. Virtual Machines are easy to deploy.  It's called: copy-paste!  Nothing easier when adding a new developer to your team.  Instead of configuring a whole new SharePoint environment, just have the developer copy the latest development image.  So easy, a caveman could do it.
3. Virtual Machines can be rolled back.  Try doing that with your development environment!  If every developer had SharePoint deployed on his or her machine, a mistake (deleting/altering some core database tables or records, for example) would be devastating...it would mean at least a day of lost work time trying to rebuild the development environment.  Using virtual machines to host the server environment protects it from inadvertant dismantling.  And even if it is somehow altered for the worse, no matter, get another copy from someone else!  And of course, being able to rollback the image (provided that you created a snapshot) makes updates (for example, adding a SQL Server service pack) painless.
4. Virtual Machines are portable.  Why does this matter?  Demos!  There's nothing more convenient than having a sales guy pack up a copy of the VM with all of the software installed and tweaked for demos.  This is a huge bonus.

Look, the suggestion of developing with SharePoint in a "native" environment in a team is just plain stupid; it's a matter of working harder, not smarter and it shows a lack of creativity in terms of development management.  (One disclaimer: some Visual Studio tools from Microsoft for SharePoint cannot be installed on XP...this is a shortcoming, for sure, but it hasn't really affected our development.  If absolutely necessary, you can install a stripped down copy of Visual Studio on the VM).

Now let's address each of the other 7 points that Jeffrey brings up:

1. SharePoint isn't easy to install.  I'm going to skip that one because clearly, this man has never installed SharePoint.  It's nothing more than point and click...my gosh, I don't understand how it could possibly be easier.  Aside from this, using a VM approach, it only has to be installed once.
2. SharePoint isn't easy to configure.  See above.
3. SharePoint does not integrate well with simple tools.  I'm not sure what he means here.  Many administrative tasks can be handled by stsadm.exe which in turn, means that many of the administrative tasks can be handled by batch scripts.  Aside from this, SharePoint is just an average ASP.NET application.  Stopping and starting IIS, xcopy, and so on...these are all still applicable to a SharePoint deployment.
4. SharePoint isn't easily extended to make simple tools.  What?  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The only beef that I would hold is that Microsoft doesn't package the SharePoint DLLs separately so you have to extract the DLLs from the GAC of your server environment.  But once you do that, it's easy to reference and use the API by copying the DLLs to your development environment.
5. SharePoint isn't easy to debug.  Again, I'm not sure what the issue here is.  The process of debugging SharePoint applications (web parts, layout pages, etc.) is no harder than debugging any standard, run of the mill ASP.NET web applications.  Okay, sure, you can't just hit F5 (oooh, the horror!), but seriously, I hate F5 developers - sometimes, F5 just isn't the way to go, dude.  I'm also pretty sure chimps (or macros) can be trained to hook up the debugger and hit F10 and F11.  As for debugging core SharePoint, well, I guess he has a point since the source and debugging files aren't available (not that I know of), but I don't see that as an issue.  I mean, how many platforms ship with debugging symbols included?
6. It's not easy to create test automation for SharePoint.  There is some truth to this since it requires the developer to learn about the platform first (API, database tables, web services, and so on).  But I don't think it's any more difficult or challenging than setting up automated tests against any other third party platform.
7. SharePoint configuration does not store easily in source control.  See above regarding VMs.  Aside from this, he's got it all wrong again.  We can look at this from a few different angles.  First, SharePoint is just an ASP.NET application.  Repeat that to yourself about 100 times.  With regards to application configuration (in terms of the web.config), it's as simple as copying the web.config to your source control system and using a script to deploy it on build.  Secondly, if we look at the configuration in terms of web parts and layout pages, it's possible to include these in source control as well using solution packages deployed either on build or manually as features.  Certainly requires a bit of research to get it working the first time, but it's not a task that takes more than 1-2 days of experimentation.

From personal experience, I've found SharePoint a very compelling application development platform (again, that's not to say that it doesn't have shortcomings) because it's nothing more than ASP.NET but with the added bonus of a document management/storage API, profiling, permissions, and it acts as an integration platform for a variety of applications. 

You can make it as hard or as easy as you want it to be with regards to developing applications for SharePoint.  It's only a matter of how much time you are willing to put into flipping through the API and understanding the fundamentals of working with SharePoint.  A big part of successfully and painlessly developing against SharePoint is creativity in terms of setting up your development environment and automation (batch scripts, pre/post-build scripts).

The points that Jeffrey, didn't bring up -- the true pain points -- are really "fringe" features so far as I'm concerned.  Namely, this centers around SharePoint hosted and integrated workflows and InfoPath (because no one likes and no one actually uses the otherwise useless and purposeless InfoPath).  You're not required to use InfoPath or SharePoint hosted workflow; in FirstPoint, absent the early documentation and tools required to be productive on this front, we made an early decision to host workflow in our own environment. Sure, we miss out on some of the native features of SharePoint like workflow state visibility and integrated forms via Forms Services, but I don't see it as something we can't overcome as documentation and tool support becomes better on this front.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is repeating history as it mimics the allure and pitfalls of Lotus Notes, according to research released by CMS Watch, an independent analyst firm that evaluates content technologies.

SharePoint exploits traditionally underserved collaboration needs for information workers laboring within Office tools, and fulfills a common desire to easily create disposable workspaces, CMS Watch found.

Like Notes in a previous decade, IT often embraces SharePoint as a simple answer to myriad business information problems.  But the platform can morph into a technical and operational morass, as repositories proliferate, and IT comes to recognize that various custom applications require highly specialized expertise to keep running properly.

...

The SharePoint Report 2008 concludes by advising customers to establish clear boundaries on SharePoint services, to keep it from becoming their new Notes – the platform that everyone loved, but then loved to avoid.

While SharePoint does indeed have it's weaknesses (total lack of any integration with ASP.NET AJAX in the SharePoint implementation itself -- guess we'll just have to wait for 4.0, web services support is still kind of weak) and oddities (CAML?), it's nowhere near the steaming pile that is Lotus Notes.

As part of the transition from FCG to CSC (Computer Sciences Corporation), we are also switching our mail system from Outlook/Exchange to Lotus Notes/Domino/Whatever.

There can only be one immediate reaction up on switching from Outlook 2007 to Notes 6.5:

WTF?? AHHHHH!!11 MY EYES!! GIVE ME BACK MY OUTLOOK!

Surely, this application which looks like it crawled out of the late 90's cannot be the primary enterprise messaging system for a large, publicly traded company, can it?  Maybe it's a clever ruse to get people to stop using email and actually interact with one another by ecouraging calls instead of email...maybe.  I can't believe IBM actually sells this product and I can only imagine the painful life endured by the Notes sales team and all of the mockery they must live with.  If my parents worked on the Notes team in development or sales, I'd ask to be disavowed for their crime of bringing such a shitty piece of software into existence.

I think I'm going to start my own trail of why Lotus sucks posts, but Lotus Notes Hater already has a headstart on me.

The truly absurd thing that I've learned is that there are actually standalone programs that have been written to clean up crashed instances of Notes!  No kidding, I got the following email from a company wide distribution list:

If Lotus Notes crashes, you don't have to restart your PC anymore! Just run ZapNotes and allow it to clean up what Notes left behind so you can restart Lotus Notes. ZapNotes works on Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP

Lotus Notes Hater comments:

Cassetica charges US$1,500 for NotesMedic Pro and US$2,500 for the enterprise level of NotesMedic. The fact that a company makes money from a product that shouldn't even exist makes us ask, "Why haven't the owners of Lotus Notes put Cassetica out of business by incorporating the feature of NotesMedic directly into Lotus Notes?"

NotesMedic is not the only product out there. There is also ZapNotes. And KillNotes. There are at least three products that have no reason to exist.

Awesome!  Now I'm really gonna look forward to using Notes!

I also got to chat with some of my teammates in Vietnam just to see how they felt about it.  Who knows, maybe their Asian sensibilities would lead them to be more polite and less judgemental.  Maybe their allegiance to their employer would cause them to accept Lotus as their fate and use it dutifully.

So there you have it, even the Vietnamese hate it.

The highlight of this year's show, for me, was definitely the Nissan GT-R. It's quite possibly one of the most anticipated mass produced vehicles to be released in recent years.

I was also looking forward to the new Maxima. Admittedly, it looks way better in person than it does in photographs; you can't really capture how low slung and aggressive it looks.

It was also an opportunity for my wife and I to explore the 2009 Murano. We haven't made it a priority to stop by the dealership to check one out, but it is definitely a nice upgrade from the outgoing model with a price upgrade to match. The Murano is much more luxurious now and looks surprisingly good in person. I didn't think I'd like the new shape -- particularly the grill -- but I have to say that it looks great in person.

I was hoping to see the Mazda 2, but unfortunately, it wasn't at the show.

As far as the American manufacturers go, I have to say, I like where GM is headed. On a recent trip, I was upgraded to a new Malibu and I'm thoroughly impressed. It may have been the first time I've driven a product from the Big Three and actually could imagine myself purchasing the vehicle. I also really like what they've done with the CTS and the CTS Coupe concept...fantastic work.

Click here to go to the gallery.

Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group will have to revise his statement from July, 2007 regarding BD+: "BD+, unlike AACS which suffered a partial hack last year, won't likely be breached for 10 years". It is worth mentioning that since he made that statement only eight months have gone by.

There's a unique problem in an Office 2003 environment that may be encountered by add-in developers.  Namely, by default, Office 2003 documents, when opened from a URL (for example, clicking on a link in an email or typing a URL into a browser address bar) will cause the document to open "inline" with the browser.

The problem with this, for add-in developers, is that while the WINWORD.EXE process is indeed launched, the add-in is not loaded (I'm still not sure why, but I'm guessing it's due to the different security restrictions of being "hosted" in Internet Explorer).  Aside from this, it's generally problematic because the default menu bars and toolbars are not displayed by default...not the ideal behavior.

As it turns out, in Office 2007, the behavior is entirely different: the document always open in a standalone WINWORD.EXE process.  So how can we get Office 2003 to behave the same way?  A series of articles lead the way to an answer:

First, Microsoft actually has a KB (927009) which advises how to enabled Office 2003 behavior in an Office 2007 environment.  This is the first clue that the core of the issue is a series of registry keys.  Knowing which keys to look for, I simply checked the keys in an Office 2007 environment to get the values which would cause an application like Word to launch in standalone mode instead of inline mode (decimal 44 in the case of Word).

The next step was figuring out how to adjust these values in existing deployments.  One option would have been to use a similar registry script as porposed in the KB but I decided to use a programmatic approach instead.  I came across some hints on how to approach this task from a forum posting and MSDN articles.

The outcome was this script:

/*=============================================================================
   This file contains the scripts which are executed after installation of the 
   Office 2003 client update registry keys which would otherwise force Office 
   documents to open in Internet Explorer (inline behavior)
=============================================================================*/
// Key paths
var commonRootPath = "HKLM\\SOFTWARE\\Classes\\";
var commonPath = "SOFTWARE\\Classes\\";
var commonKey = "BrowserFlags";
var HKLM = 0x80000002;

// Instantiate the shell.
var shell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell");

// Holds the values for the key types
var keyTypes = {
    String:"REG_SZ", 
    Number:"REG_DWORD", 
    Binary:"REG_BINARY", 
    ExpandableString:"REG_EXPAND_SZ"
};

// Holds the array of all key paths (not including the shared "BrowserFlags" 
// DWORD key name) and the value to assign to the key (different for each
// runtime).
var keys = [
    {Class:"Word.Document", Value:44},
    {Class:"Word.Document.6", Value:44},
    {Class:"Word.Document.8", Value:44},
    {Class:"Word.Document.12", Value:44},
    {Class:"Word.RTF.8", Value:44},
    {Class:"Word.DocumentMacroEnabled.12", Value:44}
];

/*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Main method.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------*/    
function Run() {
    try {
        for(var i = 0; i < keys.length; i++) {  
            var key = keys[i];
            
            if(RegistryKeyExists(key.Class)) {            
                var keyPath = commonRootPath + key.Class + "\\" + commonKey;                              
            
                shell.RegWrite(keyPath, key.Value, keyTypes.Number);
            }
        }   

	    shell.Popup("Updated registry keys.", 0, "Completed", 0 + 64);
    }
    catch(all) {
        // Failures are considered non-fatal.
        var errorMessage = "A non-fatal error occurred while configuring Word 2003\r\n";
        errorMessage += "document handling in IE.\r\n\r\n";
        errorMessage += "You can re-run this script at a later time from:\r\n\r\n";
        errorMessage += "[Program Files]\\[Common Files]\\FirstPoint\";
		errorMessage += "UpdateOffice2003RegistrySettings.js\r\n\r\n";
        errorMessage += "Press OK to continue.";

        shell.Popup(errorMessage, 0, "Error", 0 + 48);
    }
}

/*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Checks to see if a registry key exists.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
function RegistryKeyExists(className) {
    var registry = GetObject("winmgmts:\\\\.\\root\\default:StdRegProv");   
    
    var path = commonPath + className;       
    
    var value = registry.GetStringValue(HKLM, path, "");
    
    return value == 0;
}

/*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Abstracts Popup()
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
function Alert(string) {
    shell.Popup(string, 0, "Message", 0);
}

Run();

Perhaps the most useful little tidbit in all of this is the RegistryKeyExists method which checks to see a registry path exists.  A return value of 0 from any of the Get[KeyType]Value() method calls indicates that the path was found; it's a very neat little trick to have up your sleeve.