As you may already know, we released the “Atlas” Control Toolkit a few weeks ago to almost…

As you may already know, we released the “Atlas” Control Toolkit a few weeks ago to almost…

Things I found interesting on April 21, 2006:

The Code Wont be Ready - Bruce Kroeze breaks the bad news to his soon-to-be former employers when they accepted a project they shouldn’t have
A Tour of Microsoft’s Mac Labs - Along with picture…

Imes, you need to read my original article to fully understand the study I’ve done and the premise I’m working from, which is widely shared among web developers.

Chris, what can I say? Many would argue that the results of open source development are far superior to those of commercial software companies. Do you think it’s “fair” to compare Firefox to IE? Of course you do. If that’s the case, there’s nothing at all hypocritical about comparing Microsoft’s late entry into the Ajax field with all of the excellent entries–mostly from 2005–from open source projects. You’re just upset because I’m criticizing Microsoft, who you somehow think is above criticism.

And did you read my reply on the whole beta thing a few paragraphs back? Atlas is no more beta software than Google’s many beta projects, like gMail. Microsoft expects you to download Atlas and begin using it to build production websites today! Does Microsoft make clear that you shouldn’t do that because the Atlas library isn’t ready for that yet? Heck, no. Case closed.

That’s just hypocritical. You deem it appropriate to compare a bunch of (mostly) “totally volunteer” frameworks to that of a multi-billion dollar company or two. But that’s ok, because the underdogs get a better score in this case…

This article is nothing more than a cheap shot at Microsoft. They’ve said it’s not ‘perfect’ yet, which is exactly why it’s a CTP release. That means Community Technology Preview, for those who are too shortsighted to find out what you’re actually reviewing.

And really, you’re being dishonest with your readers if you fail to point that out.

I also realize that people are starting to blur the lines between a web application and a rich client application, so it’s understandable that you are confused, but when Microsoft claims that something like Atlas is “Beta” that means “not finished” and very often “buggy”. This isn’t a website, it’s a development tool. In fact, they don’t even say “Beta”, they actually say “Early Preview”.

Here’s some information that some of the developers of Atlas have released on compatibility.

http://weblogs.asp.net/bleroy/archive/2006/04/13/442815.aspx

It’s not that I disagree with your article - the testing you do is very thorough. It’s just that the point you are trying to make about expecting ASP.NET development tools to work on a Mac are odd because no one expects that. If you want to do server-side development on a Mac, don’t look to ASP.NET… no one would recommend that. And for you to expect a very “Early Preview” to be “done”, “bug free” and “completely compatible” seems illogical. They have a go-live license for early adopters, which will allow risk-takers to jump on board before the product is done, but that doesn’t mean they are recommending you actually do so.

Microsoft makes it clear that cross-browser compatibility is their goal, but you want to wait a minute till they are done?

1. First, you somehow think it’s appropriate to compare the meagre resources I have to devote to this personal–totally volunteer–website with the vast resources of a multi-billion dollar company. Now, that takes some nerve!
2. More to the point, I care a great deal about Opera… in fact I use it frequently (as now) to browse the web. However, you’re still using Opera 8, which has numerous bugs in CSS and Javascript that was one reason developers failed to “care” about it enough to bend their code to work there. All you have to do is upgrade to version 9, and you’ll be amazed by how many sites now work! And look correct! Like this one. See the screenshot of the site in Opera 9 (on the Mac) below. There are so many cool things about Opera 9 that I have made a note to write a future article about it. I discovered a new one just tonight that I can’t wait to share with all the well-meaning-but-sour-on-Opera geeks out there.

Click on the image below to see it full-size. This was taken just a little while ago in Opera 9:

The silly little grey bars at the top and bottom of the screen are inappropriately right-justified, and they dont line up with any of the text.

Fix your blog’s browser compatibility before you complain about someone else’s compatibility issues.

And to all of you who think it’s unfair to judge Microsoft Atlas because it’s beta software, let me point out that Microsoft makes absolutely no mention of that on the Atlas home page. Instead, you find language like”

If you’re an “Atlas” early adopter and already have an “Atlas” powered site be sure to enter your site in the “Mash-It-Up with ‘Atlas’ Contest”. You can win cool prizes and get new exposure for your site. If you’re itching to dig in download “Atlas” now for free, learn the nitty gritty in the “Atlas” Quickstart Tutorials and see what other people are doing with “Atlas”.

Atlas is no more beta software than Google maps or Google news is. It’s production-ready software, according to Microsoft. They just don’t care enough about encouraging development of cross-platform, cross-browser websites.

Take a look at the Atlas home page and see if you find the word “beta” anywhere. Yes, later on Microsoft refers to it as “preview” software, but compare this to how Apple handled the release of their beta version of Boot Camp a couple of weeks ago. Take a look at the small link about it on the Mac OS X home page (http://www.apple.com/macosx/) and also the Boot Camp home page (http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/)

That couldn’t be any clearer, could it?

Now go look at the Atlas home page. See the difference?

Face it… Microsoft is a dishonest company. That’s been true in the past, and judging from what they’re doing with Atlas versus what they say they’re doing with Atlas, they still are.

Finally, to people who think I should know what an MSI is (or care), let me put it another way: Nearly every other maker of Ajax/DHTML toolkits is making their code available as a straight download in zip or gzip format… after all, Ajax is nothing but JavaScript, CSS, and XML. Instead, they make it hard for everyone but people using .Net or .Asp.

@#4: just because something is “beta” it doesn’t mean it has to suck. Anyway, in this case i think MS just tries to jump the bandwagon by calling it beta when in fact the final product wont be any better

You might be interested to know that I am also plugging your scorecard in the AJAX chapter of my upcoming book:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590596803/102-9490962-7664160

Leland Scott has done an amazing job researching dozens of different AJAX libraries on the web and compared term in terms of cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility: http://www.musingsfrommars.org/2006/03/ajax-dhtml-library-scorecard.html
Here is a cut of the most famous and used libraries with some information as to their goals and attributes.

And trying to use a non-cross platform executable (MSI = Microsoft Installer) is just plain silly. Those controls are for development in Visual Studio 2005.

1) Who cares what an MSI file is? The point being made was that this is NOT a cross-platform file, so what the freak is it doing in there?

2) Leland has an excellent point. M$’s behavior with IE has caused web developers of all stripes an immeasurable amount of pain. For that reason alone, loads of people view M$ disfavorably. How can you blame them? Having been through all that, why in the world would we sit back and let it happen again? Cross-platform is the very soul of the web.

3) “Useful” and “best choice” are being conflated. The article calls Atlas a siren, and for good reason. Do you understand what that term means? I don’t think that you do, so let me break it down for you. A siren lures men (developers) to their deaths (bad coding practices) by seeming to be quite attractive. It’s the old bait-and-switch. You can use Atlas, but it locks you into a M$ solution and shuts out other browsers from your consideration. In time, you forget that the rest of the world even exists, because you think that M$ is the only game in town. Your code has become proprietary, sub-par, and certainly not robust. Is this a problem for the whole CS discipline? You bet it is.

4) Bias is irrelevant. Look at Atlas. It is not cross-platform and it is not standards-compliant. It is more “embrace and extend”. It is obvious where the toolset is leading you. You go along like a sheep to the slaughter.

P.S. I understand all about intranets, and can imagine there might be a place for Atlas there. This series is describing cross-browser, cross-platform compatibility for heterogeneous computing environments and the public Internet.

Uh, yeah. A small amount of research here would have told you he was a Microsoft employee.

“Now really, with all of the A-rated toolkits available to you, why would you choose Microsoft’s if you care about cross-browser compatibility?”

Yep, and tons of people DON’T care about cross-browser compatibility because they work on Intranets. Scream all you want but this toolkit (even in its current form) is still useful to a great number of developers as a result.

“AtlasSamples.msi””

Do you live in a cave? That is the standard windows installer extension that has been around since Windows 2000. This is not an ASP.NET specific extension.

Microsoft builds stuff for Microsoft software - big surprise. Get over it. It’s obvious that you haven’t used Microsoft software in a long time (or you’d know what an .msi is) and that you don’t like Microsoft. Even if your review is accurate it is hard to take at face value when it is littered with “300 pound gorilla” comments which only serve to make you look biased. My suggestion is that you continue on in happy fun Mac world and not worry about what Microsoft is doing….after all, I trust that you are a super happy Mac user who has all the development tools one would need so why waste time thinking about Microsoft.