Random observations about food, gear, and other silliness by Tony Chor.
Wahoo! I'm super excited to announce that the beta 2 preview release of IE7 is now available on Microsoft.com. We'll also have lots of info over the next few days on the IE Blog. You can also see a video of my boss talking about what's new in IE7 on Channel 9.
Check it out and let us know what you think!
The IE Program Management team (my merry band) took a little break yesterday to learn about coffee at the Zoka Coffee headquarters. First, we learned all about the different kinds of coffee and how it goes from seed to cup. We then learned how to really smell and taste coffee, doing our own cupping. We did similar things with tea. We also learned what it takes to make an amazing latte (this was easily the best latte I've ever had.) Finally, we learned about roasting and the intricacies of getting that right.
It was a very nice break, and the folks at Zoka were very hospitable. (I won't say it was relaxing; we were all buzzing from caffeine the rest of the day.) If you're ever in Seattle, stop by one of their stores. You won't be disappointed.
More photos of our day.
One of the things I like least about IE (and am least happy that we're not addressing in IE7) is the use of Notepad to view HTML source code. While many fantastic web pages have been built in Notepad, it wasn't a state of the art editor in 1995 let alone 2005.
There are a lot of text editors out there that are better than Notepad (I like Notepad2, a very slick, free editor with extensive syntax highlighting, regex searches, and a small package). But, none of these is as useful if it's not integrated with IE's View Source command. Fear not, intrepid reader, you can point IE to use another editor pretty easily, if you don't mind using RegEdit.
Honestly, I found this on the web (sometimes it's faster than asking the IE developers, especially since they're busy on IE7.) I got this from Thea Burger's blog and copied and pasted the clear instructions. He even likes Notepad2 also. (I did make one small change, fixing some terminology.)
Run REGEDIT, follow the following directions to the proper key.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
|- Software
|-- Microsoft
|--- Internet Explorer
|---- View Source Editor
|----- Editor Name (Default) = C:\windows\notepad.exe
If this doesnt exist (but it should) then create the Key "View Source Editor".
Then create a Key within that named "Editor Name". Modify the "(Default)" value to make it point towards any program on your computer using "D:\Tools\Notepad2\Notepad2.exe" (without the quotes).
If you want to completely replace Notepad across Windows with, say, Notepad2, Omar Shahine's blog has instructions.
Have fun!
It's been a while since I've posted any tips on IE, so I thought it was time.
I commonly want to print just part of a web page, say directions to a friend's house, without all the extra junk on the page like the ads or copyright info. For a long time, I either sucked it up and accepted the extra stuff, or I'd copy/paste the page into Word and edit the content to get my desired form. This was something I wanted to fix in IE7.
Well, it turns out that IE already can print selections. To do this:One of my colleagues, Markus Mielke, mentioned this feature in the IE team blog as well as some other tips for printing in IE6. He also talked about the numerous printing improvements we have in the works for IE7, including fixes for the dreaded chopped off right edge that plagues IE6. I swear, of all the features I show in IE7 during the countless demos I've done, the printing fixes generate the most applause.
Anyway, there's lot more info on the IE Blog, so check it out.
Wired had an interesting article recently, titled "Who's Afraid of Google. Everyone." They describe how lots of companies, both tech and non-tech, fear Google. This parallels a phenomenon I've seen at Microsoft where each team is concerned about Google for different reasons. Certainly, the rumors of a "Gbrowser" got our attention in IE; similarly other teams throughout the company considered what it might mean for Google to get into their spaces.
I've begun to view Google as a boggart from the Harry Potter world. As defined by Wikipedia: "A boggart in the Harry Potter fictional books is a shape-shifter that takes on the form of its intended victim's worst fear." Similarly, Google can take the shape of whatever a team or company most fears. For the IE team, it's a browser maker and so on.
I find it interested that Google has been assigned the role of the heavy in the industry; this was the role Microsoft played for many years (and maybe still does). I heard stories that every high tech business plan had to include how the company would compete, partner, and/or co-exist with Microsoft. Now, it looks everyone has Google on their radar. Maybe that will take some of the boogey man pressure off of us.
Probably not.
(As a side note, I'm amazed that there's an entry in Wikipedia for boggart. Definitely useful for me, but not your traditional reference topic.)
Aside from the fact that I would have gone to Andersen Consulting after college, left after a few years of living out of motel rooms, and then gone to business school only to jump from one failed dot-com to another, I'm sure the world would have been different in other ways without Microsoft.
ExtremeTech takes a tongue-in-cheek stab at a view of the world without Microsoft. I like the real world better.
Yesterday was a big day. We shipped betas for both Vista (the next gen Windows formerly known as Longhorn) and IE7 on XP. These events were a long time coming, so the party felt pretty good. Robert Scoble, Microsoft evangelist and Chief Blogging Officer (my title for him, not his), covered the event in his blog. I even managed to wind up in a photo being geeky.
More information on the IE team blog.
Between the new Harry Potter book and Andrew's birthday party, I totally forgot that yesterday was the 15th anniversary of my start at Microsoft. It truly has been a great fifteen years; I've made a lot of friends, learned tons, and shipped some great software (and a few dogs.) I feel totally lucky to have stumbled into Microsoft senior year of college and to have been offered a job. I'm definitely one of the few people I know who is still at the same company they started with right after college (actually, the others are also at MS.)
The company has certainly grown a lot. The summer I joined, we crossed $1B in revenues for the first time and had around 5500 employees. Last fiscal year (we announce FY05 earnings later this week), we were over $36.8B in revenue and somewhere around 55000-60000 employees. Crazy. (It is, however, nice to see revenue growth dramatically outpacing headcount/cost growth.)
We've also grown up in a lot of other ways, I think. We care more deeply about taking care of our existing customers in addition to driving ahead for the next release. We're definitely more serious about quality and security than ever. I also think we're becoming a better partner, vendor, and citizen.
We are, of course, a little more bureaucratic these days. Nothing like IBM or 3M, two places I interned, but there are definitely a few more hoops. I understand that some of the hoops are necessary, but I do miss the lighter Microsoft. (If I have to chase down stragglers on my team to watch one more mandatory HR video, I'm going to scream.) A blog written by an anonymous MS employee talks about this topic further. MiniMsft. I don't agree with everything he/she says, but much of it rings true.
I'm also a little tired of everyone attributing our actions to some nefarious plot. Get over it. We're not that smart or coordinated. If you have to choose between incompetence or evil to explain a Microsoft action, 99.9% of the time, incompetence is the reason. (Actually, this is true for many things in life.) We really are trying to do good things. I liked it better when were just incompetent. This evil thing gets me down.
Fortunately, many important things have not changed. We still hire smart, creative, passionate people who love helping customers with technology. We still have a strong merit-based system that recognizes and nurtures talent. And we still have free soft drinks.
It's been a fun ride so far. I'm curious where it will take me, but I'm up for it.
I did an IE 7 in Longhorn (the next version of Windows) and RSS demo today to the entire Windows Client division. There were a few hundred people in the room plus we were webcasting to people in their offices, so potentially thousands.
I had no problems with the machines in the days leading up to the demo, and the demo was running well in rehearsal. Everything looked great.
Showtime. It's my turn. I get introduced. I hop up on stage and look at the monitor and see the machine is hung. Dead. I can't get any response. I start tap dancing with jokes (e.g. "If it were perfect, we'd be shipping it." or "Web browsing is the most common activity for PC users, except me, apparently.")while I feverishly think about what to do and say. My face, meanwhile, is up on two huge screens behind me and streaming out over the our corporate network. I'm sure I had a look of sheer panic on my face. (I'm afraid to look at the recordings.)
I finally decide I need to hard reboot the box. Chris Jones, our VP and an old friend who is on stage with me, suggests that someone else go while my machine gets reset. I return to my seat, grab my laptop, and consider remoting into the machine to get the demo reset.
Now I have a conundrum. I had used Remote Desktop Connection (sometimes referred to by its old name, Terminal Server) to reset the machine after the rehearsals, but I hadn't done this in my office. Was TS causing the problem? I opted to give it a try. I logged in, reset the demo, and prayed. Everything looked OK.
My turn again. I went up, logged into the machine, unsure of what I'd see, talking and joking all the while to keep the thousands of people from suffering from dead air.
Thank, God. The machine was working. My heart started beating again. I looked down at my notes and saw the "Smile" and "SLOW" reminders I had scribbled all over my crib sheet to remind myself to do those things. I proceeded with my demo and managed to get through it without much more drama.
I'm told I did OK recovering from my machine meltdown. These problems are common when showing off pre-release code (hell, it happens with release code too), but knowing that didn't make me feel any better as I looked out on the audience over my dead machine.
Ah, the joys of live performance. A lot of good wine eased the pain afterwards.
Back in the day, there was a great game called Lemmings. On each level, your poor lemmings faced a myriad of challenges, but fortunately, they had certain skills that you could control. For instance, some could dig, some could build, and others could blow things up. Your job was to get a set of lemmings home by utilizing their skills.
Anyway, some guy pseudonamed "crisp" has done a brilliant version in DHTML (Dynamic HTML). It's true to the game I remember and is just as fun. I'm constantly amazed at the great stuff people can build in DHTML. Check out DHTML Asteroids too. It's an old demonstration of IE's abilities by Michael Wallent (former Product Unit Manager of Internet Explorer and now the General Manager of our Avalon effort.) It runs a bit fast on modern hardware, but it's still cool.
(Note, the screenshot above has been scaled down a bit to fit here. The real thing looks better.)
