Amr Eldib

Updated release of Arabic translation for Cubic Explorer

eldib.amr@gmail.com (Amr Eldib) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:15:00 +0000

A year ago, I released an Arabic translation for my favorite alternative of Windows Explorer, Cubic Explorer. After a year of updates of the software, I thought the translation might need some updating and I also noticed some mistakes that needed to be fixed.

Now you can get an updated release of the translation (release 1.1). You can find it at my public SkyDrive here. This translation works with Cubic Explorer release 0.91.0.1223 (SVN Snapshot) which you can get here.

Hopefully the updated translation will be included in the installer very soon.

Enjoy.

New Firefox Addons Collection for the New Year

eldib.amr@gmail.com (Amr Eldib) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 05:12:00 +0000

It’s been a good year for Firefox and Mozilla. They released the 3.5 version with lots of improvements. We celebrated five years of Firefox. Ubiquity has become more stable, got lots more of commands, Personas reached the 2.0 milestone and the Thunderbird 3.0 looks really great. Firefox 3.5 has become the most popular browser on the web.

To celebrate this year and the one to come, I created a collection of the addons I use on daily basis. Maybe some of them can help you like it help me.

To view the contents of the collection please visit this page. Here’s a list of the addons in the collection:

Appearance

Strata40 and StrataBuddy (Windows Only) gives you the look and feel of the mockups of Firefox 4.0 which makes your browser looks great in Windows 7.

Personal Menu puts all Firefox menus in one place and hides the menu bar.

Fission displays the progress bar in the address bar.

Tabs

Tab Progress Bar shows a little progress bar in tab header.

TabMixPlus what can I say. Nothing is like having complete and total control over your browser tabs. Take 20 minutes of your time to go through all the configurations and then export it to a file a keep it in a safe place.

TabScope lets you peek at the other tabs that aren’t in focus like Windows live thumbnail for applications in the taskbar. Scroll page in the preview and even click links. You can control the size of the preview.

Ctrl-Tab displays a preview of all tabs while switching between them just like Windows 7 Alt + Tab.

Work-ish

Evernote Web Clipper if you’re not using Evernote, it’s probably because you’re using OneNote.

Clip to OneNote if you’re not using OneNote, it’s because you’re using Evernote.

Read it Later this is definitely for work. You mark web pages you’re interested in and then read later at work :)

Cooliris (Windows Only) great tool for slideshowing any picture collection. Look at a wall of pictures and zoom in to any one for details. Love it.

Development

CacheViewer easily browse and search your browser cache. Open a file or save it to disk.

FireBug debugging CSS never been easier.

Firefox Utilities

Adblock Plus blocks ads like they don’t exist.

Organize Status Bar controls how all those other addons are arranged in the status bar.

United States English Dictionary you need this if you stink at spelling like I do.

Download

Video DownloadHelper helps you download video. It’s that simple really.

Download Statusbar puts downloading status in the status bar with simple pause, resume, cancel, rename, open and even delete.

Little Things that Matter

PastoGo Don’t paste a link in the address bar then click the ‘Go’ button. Have the link the clipboard and just click the ‘PastoGo’ button. Place it next to the address bar and make sure it opens links in a new tab.

CuteMenus - Crystal SVG makes all menus cuter.

CoLT I installed this a long time ago, and one day I uninstalled it because I wasn’t sure what it does, my life was difficult for a couple of days.

For Mozilla Groupies :)

Ubiquity is a one-stop command line to do everything web-related. Search, check the whether, send quick e-mail, tweet, you name it. Make sure to download the latest beta from the Ubiquity website.

JetPack is the future of Firefox addons. No restart for installation or updates with the same functionality and awesomeness. Try visiting the jetpacks gallery to find a little awesomeness now.

TestPilot if you want to help Firefox development just by using Firefox. Use this addon to collect anonymous statistics about your usage. TestPilot asks you to participates in tests and shows the data it collected before submitting it.

Arabic and International

FoxClocks it’s really not nice to call your overseas friends at a late hour. This helps avoiding that.

Arabic Spell-Check Dictionary to spell-check Arabic writing.

PrayTimes stop browsing for a little time to pray.

Hope you enjoy this and found it useful. Happy New Year.

Time to Start Versioning Web Applications

eldib.amr@gmail.com (Amr Eldib) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:56:00 +0000

It's clear to me with every newly released version of a web application that we need a mechanism for users to choose which web app release to use.

With the rollout of new features in Facebook and this week the new ReTweeting feature in Twitter, users acted negatively to these new features. For some of features, the company would eventually have to roll back the new feature(s).

However, some users actually like the new features and want to keep them. It’s a lose-lose for the company rolling out the new feature. Not only because some users are upset but also they also already lost all the effort going into developing and deploying those features.

From the start, the concept of versioning was missing from the web, mainly because we were using web sites. Now that we’re using web applications, I don’t see why we can’t keep track of application versions.

Let’s differentiate between two kinds of updates, Minor and Major. There are some updates that are important to be deployed to everyone like fixes, security updates, and performance improvements. These updates are ‘Minor’ updates that have to be applied to everyone. Other updates that include rolling out new features are ‘Major’ updates that users login one day and say to themselves “What the hell happened here?”.

There are two ways that companies are using to update their web applications right now. The first is to incrementally roll out one feature at a time like Twitter introducing the new ‘ReTweeting’ feature. The other is introducing totally new interface with new features like the new Hotmail and Facebook lite.

Any web applications (or at least the ones affecting big number of users) should have an option for users to either opt-out of new features (in case of incrementally rolled-out features) or to simply choose which version to use.

This requires companies to keep clear and announced track of application version. It also requires them to keep different version of their application deployed which will eventually lead to applying End-of-Life concept to web applications as it’s applied to desktop applications.

As time goes on, more and more of our activities are going into web applications instead of desktop applications. And while users appreciate the removal of application management overhead, they don’t appreciate software companies defining how and when they should use those applications. To put it in a cheap populist chant “Power to the People”.

A Distant Cousin

eldib.amr@gmail.com (Amr Eldib) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:17:00 +0000

This is pretty much a technical blog. Okey, it’s a technical blog about software and developers, even the tag line is about a developer in some kind of heart surgery or something. So, I thought hard before taking a D-tour of those topics to address a political event like Obama’s address in Cairo tomorrow.

The reason is that I think I have a vantage point on the topic, being an Egyptian living in the west and subjected to the sheer volume of press coverage of the Obama campaign, transition, administration, and every little thing.

First of all, I want to address some of the arguments about the visit and the speech.

No Muslim World: trying to put a geographical boundary around the Muslim world is like giving membership cards for intellectuals. There are no specific qualifications yet a lot of people are qualified.

Visit is endorsement to the Mubarak regime: Not really, the reason the Obama administration chose Cairo rather than any other Islamic country is on basis of elimination. Helene Cooper predicted it best. You know, Syria and Iran off limit, Indonesia would be playing favor with his childhood town, Saudi Arabia too holy, Turkey not Arabic enough, Iraq too many American forces, Palestine and Pakistan no no from secret service, Libya too crazy, Gulf Area too rich and too small for a big speech. So Cairo is the place, not with all the advantages but rather the place with no ‘Obvious’ disadvantages except for the no-democracy thing. Well, America lived with that for so long why stop now?. I can assure you that all Obama wanted was a podium with Al-Azhar or any other mosque in the background, a Muslim-y looking crowd and his teleprompter of course. If Mubarak had visited Washington as planned, maybe Obama wouldn’t have met with him in Cairo.

Cairo turning into a police/security barrack: Well, what else is new? Every time Mubarak goes out to buy new socks, Cairo turns upside down and a buffer zone of police top officers is created along the way from the presidential palace to the socks shop downtown.

Invitation to the ‘real’ Egypt: As much as I love for that to happen, we all know that not gonna. Simply because such a trip for Mubarak himself isn’t gonna happen. The guy have a financial meltdown, a GM bankruptcy, fading middle class, rising unemployment numbers, diving home prices across America, two wars, failing health care system, failing students, near failing social security system, changing climate, and a VP who doesn’t stop talking and you want him to pay attention to your problems of being unemployed, under paid if employed, having no health care, or decent education, having no freedom, or rights, being tortured, beaten, robbed, and used by all means possible. Please be serious. It’s not that Obama doesn’t care, or doesn’t know, or doesn’t have the means, no it’s just he’s not your president and probably have shit to do.

Protesting the visit: Look, I’m totally for the protests and all that. But don’t protest a speech from a pretty reasonable guy who is globally beloved and hugely popular in Europe, home of all Anti-American protests during the last 8 years. A guy who literally gave his first TV interview in office to an Arabic TV network. I’m not saying don’t protest, I’m saying protest something that is actually worth protesting. For example, Obama broke one of his promises few weeks ago when he didn’t release the torture photos of Guantanamo camp and said that his administration will not seek the prosecution of those who carried out the torture or those who authorized it under the banner of protecting the American troops overseas. But it’s actually for political reasons including avoiding the embarrassment of addressing the Muslim world while photos of torturing Muslims is circulating the media and the Internet, and also avoiding a fight with the Republicans (who are basically responsible for all what happened in Gitmo) in a time where national unity and bipartisanship in Washington is the talk of the town. So, if you wanna protest, protest all you want but do it for something that will get you some air time in the west to where you wanna deliver a message and not just get couple of nights in a Cairo police station.

Obama speech in Cairo for the Muslim world is part of his effort to fix the image of the United States around the world, especially in the Muslim world where good relations would go a long way in proving Obama right when he talks about dialog and direct diplomacy being the best way to secure America. So, this is more about Obama playing his best card in the effort to secure his own country, just like Bush did. And while Bush best card was his ‘Dickishness’ powered by Tomahawk cruise missiles, Stealth fighter jets, and empty threats of plug ’n’ play democracy, Obama’s best card is ‘Inclusion’ powered by inspiring rhetoric, compelling life story, and head-on style of addressing problems. Just look at what he’s done in Notre Dame and you’ll get a sense of how he tackle problems. Of course the middle east is no anti-abortion protest but you get the picture.

So, stop treating the man as if he’s the distant cousin who was elevated to leading the company producing all of our products and suddenly we’re expecting him to return all the favors that we never gave him, forgetting that the company is declining and stuck in legal disputes while its PR machine has been put on hold for the last 8 years. Stop casting your unrealistic hopes, disappointed dreams, everlasting problems, and growing anger on him. Start taking matters in your own hands and realize that no one, but you, can solve your own problems.

CubicExplorer Arabic Translation is Available

eldib.amr@gmail.com (Amr Eldib) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 19:16:00 +0000

There are many Windows Explorer alternatives available on the web. The one that I’m using is CubicExplorer which is pretty cool. It supports tabs, saving sessions, multiple sessions, bookmarks, bookmarks grouping, themes, and localization (here are some screenshots).

I’m contributing to CubicExplorer with the Arabic translation in an effort to make it more available to the Arabic user. The translation file is not integrated in the application build yet. You can get the link to the translation file from the CubicExplorer forum, or you can download the file directly from my SkyDrive page.

The translation works with the RC3 release of the 0.9 version of the application which is pretty stable. I recommend that you download the RC3 release rather than the 0.8 version. You can find the RC3 release at this page (or directly to the executable file or the zip package).

Enjoy it.

No Thanks, we don’t want your feedback..

eldib.amr@gmail.com (Amr Eldib) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:23:00 +0000

So, I have this idea about including a dropdown list in the Google web search results page so you can select a saved URL to search in. In the advanced search page, you can enter a URL to limit the search results to. I use this feature a lot with a number of web sites. So, I thought that it would be great to get those web sites in a drop down list so I can quickly search them. This will actually add a benefit to logging in while searching other than recording my activity on the web which is benefiting other people more it’s benefiting me.

Following a positive attitude to improve the products that I’m using, I decided to submit a suggestion to Google about this idea and here’s the shock. No link to submit feedback in the search home page. No link to submit feedback in the About Google page. No link to submit feedback in Contact Us page. Now, I have to ask a question in the Google web search help forum just to submit a suggestion of improvement. The only link to feedback is about the search results. If you’re not satisfied with the results you can submit a comment.

Gmail is no better. No link in the home page or in the Settings page. When searching the Gmail Help for “Submit Feedback” you get 3 results.

Chrome doesn’t have a link either. When searching the Chrome Help for “Submit Feedback” you get 2 results. Firefox has a “How to Contribute” link in the Support home page (that you can access from Help > Help Contents) where you can – not only submit feedback but also – do a lot of things to help. IE has a menu item in the Help menu that leads to the Support page.

So, Is Google not interested at all in what we have to say? Of course, there are the forums like the Chrome forum. But it’s not like a “Submit Feedback” link that is a classic software practice that every software company does. Is Google re-writing the rules of software companies? first, it’s the never ending beta products. Then the Chrome EULA (which they had to update after controversy) and now this.

The whole feedback thing is a little annoying. The “Submit Feedback” pages in other web sites are not that great either. They feel like dumping a paragraph or two in a never ending list that no body really reads. I wish that feedback is taking more seriously.

I want my dropdown list. I guess that’s what I’m saying..

Windows 7: The missing point

eldib.amr@gmail.com (Amr Eldib) — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 05:40:00 +0000

With everyone reviewing the first “beta” of Windows 7, I wouldn’t say that this is a first look. If you haven’t seen these snapshots before, you’re definitely not online.

Two quick notes before we start. First, It’s not really a beta, it’s just Build 7000 which the Microsoft page for Windows 7 doesn’t confirm as an official beta. However they have a “What’s coming in the Windows 7 beta” title in the page. Second, how I got it and how can you. It’s out there, man. you know it, I know it, even Microsoft knows it. Anyway, Let’s dive in.

Was it 20 minutes? maybe a little more, I’m not sure. But I’m sure that the installation is much faster than Vista and XP. The installation is pretty much straight forward and similar to Vista except for the option to setup a “homegroup” which was the first thing to grab my attention (only because I saw the new task bar in snapshots. We’ll get to that later).

Homegroup is simply a simple way to create a home network. The name is – I think – an opposite to Workgroup which is the nickname for any network group with no domain controller. So, Other than the name, how’s a Homegroup is different from a Workgroup?

It’s easier to create/join a Homegroup. Open a Windows Explorer and choose “Homegroup” on the left and you get the wizard. When you click to create a homegroup you get the option to share a “Library”.

Library is a new word for me, so I decided to follow what it means. I found in the task bar an icon with a folder in it.

I assumed that it’s “My Computer” or “Computer” (since Microsoft decided in Vista that it’s not mine anymore) but it turns out to be Windows Explorer and it opens on “libraries”

Interesting, so is this like Virtual folders from Vista that never really made it to mainstream? Yes, but with a different approach. Virtual folders was a shortcut to the results of search keyword except the results are dynamic. It wasn’t a snapshot of the results but a shortcut to the search. In Windows 7, a library is a pool of the content of many folders in one view which is great if you want to find things quickly unless those things have the same name because the view doesn’t show content with the same name differently. so you can easily end up with this.

So, a library is a folder of folders which is cool but my question is “Why?”. Isn’t the whole point of folders is to keep things organized and if you want to find them use “Search”. The only logical benefit of libraries is to combine the content of different folders in your machine and offer them in one entry point on a Homegroup which is exclusive to Windows 7 machines (a note in the Help section) at Home (at least for now, not clear if it’s offered through Windows Server).

What I’m trying to say – again - is “Why?”. Libraries in Windows 7 are replacing “My Documents”. If you click “Documents” in Start menu, windows explorer opens on the “Documents” library. So, Microsoft is pushing libraries as the default option (with no obvious chance for the user to change this default).

Anyway, what’s the default folders included in this Documents library? Two folders, [My] Documents and Public Documents. This choice brings another subject to my attention. My Documents. There are couple of issues here:

Anyone who ever had to suddenly re-install Windows (which is a big portion of the Windows population) knows very well that keeping files under My Documents is a bad bad bad idea. Why there isn’t a way to easily change the default location of My Documents, anyway?
The default and only breakdown of folders includes Documents, Downloads, Favorites, Music, Pictures, Videos (and other less famous ones). Of course you can create new folders, but Microsoft is treating those folders specially, they’re referenced in all Microsoft application in Windows and sometimes you can’t get rid of them. Like Windows Media Player you can’t remove the “Users” folder. You can only “Ignore” it.

Other than My Documents, there are also Public Documents. Now, you can share My Documents and you can share Public Documents. In Windows 7 they’re combined in the Documents library. Again, the urging question, “Why?”. What’s the point of having two folders?

Back to libraries in Windows 7, if you take a look at the image of the wizard. You’ll notice that you can select the libraries to share and they’re only limited to the default libraries created by Microsoft (by the way, if you shared a default library after you have deleted it. It will be created again!!!). Now, What about “My” libraries? the ones that I created. I have to use something similar to “Share” in Windows Vista. How is this faster or simpler? Why can’t the windows Users folder be easily customizable and expandable. Why can’t it have profiles based on the user category? Does Microsoft really think that ALL Windows users are the same? I want to be able to apply a certain User folder based on my category (Student, Power user, Developer, Mum, etc.) and I want those profiles to be expandable, editable and created by the community.

For my first look at Windows 7, Microsoft is missing the point on why they’re making changes. Not only for the libraries, but also for the new taskbar. But that’s another post.

How Firefox can outlast other browsers?

eldib.amr@gmail.com (Amr Eldib) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 04:29:00 +0000

It’s probably not news by now, but you should know up front. I really like Firefox. I favor it over IE, Chrome, that Apple thing, Opera, and even Oprah (these are the only links I could find, really). But my favorite software is in – shall we say – “danger”. It’s being attacked by all the other competitors who are planning its end. Okey, that’s a little over-dramatic.

With the release of Google Chrome and replacing Firefox in Google package (who is the idiot who didn’t see that coming?), everybody knows that the browser war is far more interesting now than ever. Even though that IE is the front runner which everybody should be after, but with its 70+ % market share, it’s more realistic to consider the Firefox-Chrome race more interesting.

Even though the difference in market share between the Firefox 20% and the 3-months-old Chrome is significant, the weight of Google and its control over Mozilla cash-supply (after 2011) closes the gap between the two. Google deal with Mozilla to share advertisement revenues offers Mozilla a big share of its annual revenue. Shutting down this deal might significantly affect Mozilla and it will cause a big reaction from the community against Google until the next time they decide to google something (I wanted to say ‘search’, but.. c’mon). Mozilla has to figure this out starting now, and I hope they’re doing that.

Meanwhile, the market share battle is on between the two browsers. Chrome could enjoy a temporary spike in its market share (it did) by all the power users who are curious about the brand new browser (I was one of them). But when the dust settle, Firefox users return to their browsers just to avoid missing the not-so-secret weapon of Extensions.

When was the last time you tried a bare Firefox with absolutely no extensions? it’s really awkward experience. Extensions are what makes Firefox a really special software. It’s all the little things that saves you seconds but really brings the web to your finger tips. It’s going to take Chrome along time to build a community that can match the effort of the Mozilla community.

But for Firefox to really survive, it must go on the offense. Tackle the IE market share rather than worrying about Chrome.

Since it’s extensions that distinguish Firefox, they somehow should be available to the average user as they are to the power user. Most average users don’t use advanced tools because they simply don’t know they have the option. I watched a guy using Edit > Copy because he doesn’t know about Ctrl+C and context menus (seriously). Mozilla should make an effort to somehow offer the average user the blessings of extensions. Maybe they’re already doing that by ‘Fashion your Firefox’ but it’s still a web page that the average user needs to go to first. Try to put extensions more front and center.

Then, there’s the distribution problem. Most average users don’t really user IE, they use the ‘internet’ through the blue ‘e’ icon. The whole concept of browser and better browser is missing for these people. So, these are like 20% of IE share (I’m totally making those numbers up). 40% don’t care about the browser to choose the better one. 35% don’t know why they should switch, they really think that this is the best browser. and 5% are stupid because they know it’s a bad browser but they’re using it anyway (of course, I’m excluding IE testers). What I’m trying to say is a large share of IE users are using it because it’s pre-loaded and this is a problem not only for Firefox but also for Chrome. Apply tried to go through the back door and push Safari through iTunes. I don’t think that this has made a huge difference but it’s worth the shot.

Frankly, I don’t know how to solve the distribution problem. But I know this, until Google figures about a way to solve it, Chrome is not going to make a lot of progress in Firefox market share. I hope ;)

Raising Expectations

eldib.amr@gmail.com (Amr Eldib) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 03:19:00 +0000

If you’re following up with the US presidential election these days, you probably heard about Bill Clinton praising Sarah Palin and describing her as a candidate who can’t be underestimated. Even though Sarah Palin has been proven to be a political joke that is clearly not qualified to run anything not to mention a superpower. Add this to the Clinton’s (newly found) support for Obama, it’s easy to find yourself wondering what’s Bill doin’. The answer is simple, he’s raising expectations for Sarah Palin, making her look like someone who’s is very tough to beat so that when the fight is over and she won then Bill was right and if she lost then she’s letting everybody down.

Now, I hear your question from the minute you started reading. What does this has to do with anything that I ever wrote about? It’s simple really, Bill Clinton is a very skilled politician but Microsoft maybe not so much.

Couple of weeks ago, Microsoft started rolling out the “highly anticipated” ad campaign starring Jerry Seinfeld. Here are three facts about this campaign. First, People were waiting for months for Microsoft’s response to “Get a Mac” campaign by Apple. Second, All the buzz through August was about how Microsoft is spending 300 millions on a counter-attack ad campaign led by an agency that is known for its re-branding experience. And last, The negative reviews started 90 seconds after the first run of the first ad that didn’t deliver any kind of message.

Now, contrast Microsoft’s ads rollout strategy with what Bill Clinton did in the ABC interview and you’ll figure out one killer mistake that Microsoft is doing. Whenever I’m watching one of those ads, all I can think of is “300 millions for this”. Other people are even adding “crap” to my question. Even though we don’t know what the 300 millions are actually for (they could be for production, for distribution or both) But the important thing is that all we can think of is that Microsoft’s counter punch that costs more than a year and 300 million dollars is a not-so-funny joke between Gates and Seinfeld. It’s not the first time that Microsoft has done this mistake, remember the roll out of Vista, back when it was longhorn, people were very excited about Aero and the new Windows that just looks fantastic. And then there was the waiting, the features cutting to finish the waiting, and UAC messages. Over time people started getting used to how exciting Vista looks like and when it was time for it to be released it was like “So, what else is new”.

I can understand Microsoft’s reasons for involving the community in the development process by providing feedback and participating in testing. But let me revise those two reasons for a second. Feedback like suggesting features and tweaking existing features based on suggesting is an endless meaningless process. With all do respect to feedback, there’s a limit to people’s involvement in the process. Software design is simply not a democracy where anyone can be the designer and everyone can vote on design. If Microsoft don’t trust their own designers to build the right thing then maybe they should fire them and get other people who they can trust. Users involvement in Microsoft’s products via feedback is certainly not helping products being better and it’s not helping making users feel like they’re part of the process because at the end of the day they’re paying for those products, how can I help build something and then you’re charging me for it. As for testing, Microsoft can always test their products in a controlled environment by professional teams without having 5 million users testing it like they did with Vista.

Even if there are more reasons to involve the community in the development process, this still doesn’t justify letting products out in the open very early and giving away the excitement factor months before the final release and raising expectations for what the final release will look like.

You can say that Microsoft started avoiding this mistake with Windows 7 by setting a very strict secrecy policy (even with the leak of some screenshots) described as translucency Vs. transparency (credited to Steven Sinofsky who is the senior VP for windows) which is widely criticized by critics and Microsoft news bloggers that with no news coming out of Redmond will probably have nothing to blog about.

To sum up. Microsoft, stop building expectations for your products and find a balance between how to share info with the media, partners, and community and how to roll out the excitement very near to the shipping date.

What Google Reader is missing?

eldib.amr@gmail.com (Amr Eldib) — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 17:11:00 +0000

I must confess something. Google Reader really changed a part of my life. Before it, I used to spend - at least - 5 times the time I'm spending now to keep track of all those web sites and blogs (actually I'm spending the same time but I'm following up with 5 times the content). Even though I'm a great fan as it's obvious. Lately, I think I'm having some problems with Reader. They're not really problems but more like I've pushed the application to its limit that I need something more. Something like:

"No, thanks" button in feed preview:
Whenever you're reviewing a feed from the recommendations page and you realize that you don't want this feed anymore, you have to go back to the recommendations page and click the "No, Thanks" button to make room for other feeds. Why can't I get a button in the top banner while I'm reviewing the feed.

Keep the preview banner visible.
The banner on the top while I'm reviewing the feed should be kept visible so that I can decide on the feed quickly and don't have to scroll back up and click "Subscribe" or "No, Thanks" (which is not really there as I described earlier).

"Show me More" button in the Top Recommendation section to show three more suggestions.
I really like the small badge on the top right of the home page that shows the top recommendations. If only I can quickly display 3 more feeds without having to view the recommendations page.

Control the keywords of recommendations.
I've subscribed to tens of feeds through the recommendations page that is reading my subscriptions and bringing me more feeds that are like my subscriptions (totally violating my privacy without even asking if I like to do this or not or even giving me a chance to turn it off but whatever). But sometimes I want to add more topics without subscribing to feeds of that topic and without searching for a feed. This way I can include this topic in my daily 5 minutes preview of recommended feeds.

Sort unread items from old to new while keeping the read items visible.
Whenever I travel or away from any PC for couple of days, I get back and I find 1000+ posts (which takes me either 5 hours or 1 second to read). Reading the news section of my feeds is the most troubling one in this situation because I get the latest updates on sports (for example) before the pre-match analysis (which I love especially when I can find out the results 2 seconds after I read them to find out how ridiculous those sports analysts are. They're starting to be more like political analysts and we're way off topic now). Of course I can sort the posts by oldest which will show me the older posts first but will also give me the already read posts. And I can also only show the unread posts which will solve this problem but will prevent me from reading the already read posts (which I like to do every once in a while just for fun). What I want is to be able to display all posts (not just the unread ones) and while they're sorted by oldest. Something like scrolling down to the first unread post and then go through them to the newer ones. I don't travel that much but maybe I will if I have this feature.

More clever use of the Home page.
Most of the time I finish reading all the posts. So I go back to the Home page which is empty now because I finished reading all the posts. The message tells me that I can browse the recommendations or go to Google news. But I don't want to do this, I just want something to fill this area. Something like bigger recommendations badge, clip of Google news that displays the kind of news that I would be interested in (like news from my hometown or ones that match my subscriptions keywords, you know more violation of my privacy type of thing).

Read later folder/section.
I don't know what the Starred folder is for, I just used it to mark stuff to be read later. But that not the way I wanted to always be. I wanna be able to see how many items I have marked to be read later.

That's it for now, maybe I have more demands later. If I'm sending this as a letter to Google, I would probably sign it as "yours truely, lazy reader lover" :).

Why Help Suck (2 of 2)

eldib.amr@gmail.com (Amr Eldib) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 02:22:00 +0000

It doesn’t really matter why exactly help system has become inefficient (if it ever were efficient). That fact by itself is not that important unless we do something about it. If you’re developing software and you’re considering developing a help system for your product. Here are some Does and Don’ts that could help you.

Use screen casts instead of how-to guides: important part of any help system is the how-to guide (step-by-step description of how to do a specific task). Screen casts are videos capturing the user’s (in this case, the tutor’s) behavior on screen while performing a task. Videos are way cooler than how-to guides, and they’re not that hard to produce. Those videos have to be described in text in a way that would make it easy for the user to find a video using search.
Focus on search: the problem with categorization is that no two people can ever agree on how to categorize any content. No matter how organized and simple your categorization might be, it will always be hard for some people to follow because they’re not aware of all the content and that’s why they don’t understand why would you put this topic under this category not that one. Search goes around all that hassle by directly jumping to what’s related to the user’s input. You can optimize your content for search by adding the different forms of questions that might be asked about each topic. This way when users asks those questions, they can find them and hence their answers. You might as well tell the users that it’s okey to ask their questions in plain English because they don’t really expect that.
Use search engines to index your help system: since search should be the central focus of the start page of any help system, if you’re using an online help system you might as well use a search engine as your primary search engine to search your help system. All major search engines offer powerful tools to use their search as the primary search for any web site.
Offer categories as alternative: the Office 2007 Ribbon is one of the best things ever, but some people just didn’t like it. Don’t do the same mistake as Microsoft and drop categorization completely and only relay on search (they dropped menus and toolbars completely and only relied on the ribbon). Two reasons: some users might not know exactly what they’re looking for, browsing can help them. Other users use the topics related to the result of their search to find out more information about the software (Related topics. that sound like another thing you can do).
Offer related topics: some users use help to learn about the software, it’s a very hands-on approach. On the side of each page (not necessarily on the side, it could be up and down as well), make a list of the topics that are related to the topic is being displayed sorted by their relativity to the displayed topic. You could also create another section similar to the idea of “People who browsed this, also browsed..”. Offer a list of the topic that are not directly related to this topic but can be linked to it.
Avoid endless hierarchies: categories should have a limited number of levels. Avoid having 20 levels of subcategories that will never guide a user to their destination, it will only drive them mad.
Avoid confusing titles: while browsing your content, topics titles are not only representing the content of that topic, they are pretty much the topic. No one we’ll go through a topic unless it’s exactly what he’s looking for and if the title is not clear enough to speak for the topic, no one will read it. If the titles of your pages doesn’t seem clear enough for the average user, modify them or make it clear that you’re applying some naming conventions and list their meanings.
Audience-Sensitive content: wouldn’t it be great if my help system can speak to me? And I don’t mean “speak” as in the act of talking, but more like as in using a language that I can understand. One major problem with help systems is that the content is used according to the concept “one size fits all”. If you’re looking for a piece of information, it’s there; you just have to find it. And finding that piece of information isn’t just about finding what page it’s on. It’s also about finding in what part of the page it is. Average users find themselves scrolling through pages of details on how a file is being streamed as binary before it’s transmitted over the TCP/IP protocol and how it’s being… zzz. Power users find themselves scrolling through pages of introductions on how to create a new file and a description of the Open File window. An audience sensitive content would offer different forms of the same content depending on the level of user’s proficiency determined by the user. Users are promoted to select their level of proficiency in the software and other topics that are related to the software. For example, a user that has experience in the previous version of the software doesn’t need to know about how features work; he only needs to know about the differences between the two versions. This kind of content can be developed by carefully tagging each paragraph of the content and just hiding and showing those paragraphs depending on the user’s preferences.

All this is great (I’m sure you agree ;) ), but is it really what you want? Do you want your help system to be efficient enough that users can actually learn and solve their problems without contact your support line or attending your courses? Maybe it’s not, but that’s another story.

Why Help Suck (1 of 2)

eldib.amr@gmail.com (Amr Eldib) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 04:23:00 +0000

Ever used the help system? Of course you have. Hated it? Of course you did. No body likes to go into the Help menu and just browse the Help Content. Everybody seems to try to use those other resources (forums, blogs, screen casts, etc.) to learn how to go around the software they’re using. Since this is quite clear, why would you bother build a Help Contents for your software. Most software vendors already know that, yet the only obvious enhancement in Help systems is to make it online. In other words, make it everywhere.

But what’s wrong with Help. I mean we know it’s not the best thing, but what’s exactly is wrong with it.

First, It's a lot of reading. No body likes to read that much, even book lovers, they read for fun and knowledge not for solving problems. It’s like those emergency instructions, the plane is going down, your hair is on fire and you’re reading the emergency instructions. Users don’t want to read those long pages just to figure out an solution to their problem, they want “Help”. They want answers to their questions, which are most likely not to be included in the frequently asked questions (I don’t know where do these come from anyway).

Second, when users turn to help, they’re looking for answers. That means Search, right? well, CHM (the most used format for help files) have a terrible search capabilities and results. The problem with using plain search for help is it’s not optimized for finding answers for questions. A user should be able to enter a question and get an answer for it. Online help system have better search capabilities but they still lead to the same boring content.

Finally, It’s not that help content is long and unreadable. It’s that “everybody” has to read (or rather scan) it to get any information out of it. A beginner user doesn’t need to know every little detail that a power user might be looking for. Users don’t just want answers to their questions, they also want that answer in a way they understand.

But it’s not like help systems are that bad all the way and no one tried to make them better. Some companies are actually trying. The new Vista help looks pretty good.

You can see from the snapshot that:

1. Search is front and center in the help window, it’s your primarily entry point.

2. Windows Basics is the first item in the “Find an answer” section. Because it’s a help system for Windows which is the most basic thing, the users expected to land here are beginners (and I mean people who need a second to tell the difference between a mouse and a keyboard).

3. Windows Online Help is important because offline help can’t be updated as online help. It should be reached easily.

4. Most software application put “What’s New” up front, which is not a topic for help but rather a topic for white papers. Good job to keep the section but put it at the end of the list.

5. Also, because the expected users are beginners, it’s logical to offer them a chance to contact someone for help.

6. The offline help sign switch the search box results to include results from online help.

Other help systems include:

Option to comment on the content page where users can add their own experience and discuss the content of the page.
Social tools to share the content of those pages.
Discussion forums.

All of that seems fine but still not enough. What would it take for a help system not to suck. Let’s leave that to another post.

Firefox 3 is here..

eldib.amr@gmail.com (Amr Eldib) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:52:00 +0000

Of course by now you already know that Firefox 3 has been released yesterday. Instead of just talking about how great the new version seems to be, I’m gonna cover the release coverage. Here’s a sum up of some interesting links about the new Firefox.

Watch it in action

Field Guide

Field Guide for Power Users

Download Count

Spread Firefox: Download Day: An attempt by the Firefox community to set a Guinness world record for the most downloads of an application in 24 hours.

Firefox 3 passes 8 million downloads in the first 24 hours

News Coverage

Firefox 3 on Sky News

Article about the effect of community on Firefox

Forbes article on why Firefox matter

Funny stuff

IE team sends a cake to the Firefox team (also here)

The Colbert bump for Firefox 3

Get a download certificate from Mozilla

.. enjoy your new Firefox everyone.

Getting on the Geo Train

eldib.amr@gmail.com (Amr Eldib) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:30:00 +0000

So, looks like Acrobat 9 is getting map support. But instead of talking about what is it exactly what Acrobat 9 is supporting (which you find here), I'm gonna focus on with the question "why". Acrobat has no relation with GIS or GeoWeb, but it seems like Geo info is the next big thing (or at least one of them) where everyone wants to get a part of it (of course, not as big as advertisement). Google Earth (currently accessible at any browser near you), Live maps (with the amazing bird's eye functionality), and yahoo maps are on the geo train for a while now as GIS (or to be more specific geo-info) is being brought to the masses by car navigation devices, and cell phone embedded GPSs.

But even "Why" is not the key question here, "Who" is. Geo-enabled apps are being brought to the masses by companies that had close to no existence in the GIS market, 3 or 4 years ago. ESRI, ERDAS, Intergraph and other GIS software vendors who has been in this business for years if not decades, are not the ones who is bringing GIS to the masses. On the contrary, these companies still have no significant - or even absolutely no - contribution to GeoWeb.

So, instead of simplifying GIS in a way that would make the average Joe be able to explode its full potential. The regular databases and information systems are being extended to store X and Y coordinates to represent locations on a map. This extending is a big step, but it only limits the functionalities to answering the questions of how far, how large, and which is closer.

Of course, it's up to the GIS software vendors not to bring GIS to the masses. It could be their idea to keep low profile and enjoy their share of the GIS market without a competition with the big guys (GIS market was estimated in 2004 to be 2.2B$, where software represent 64%). A friend of mine who works for a GIS software vendor told about how they're avoiding their software in comparison with Google Earth to avoid explaining why their software is that expensive. This kind of behavior is what is keeping the GIS genie in the bottle, and it will go on until the attitude changes (I don't see why) or another software vendor gets in the market and maybe change the rules a bit.

Until then, we're just watching more people getting on the geo train.

It's getting really old..

eldib.amr@gmail.com (Amr Eldib) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 02:33:00 +0000

Yesterday, I watched the new "Get A Mac" ad. And unlike other ads before, no new Mac features were introduced and the joke wasn't even that funny. There is no doubt about the fact that Mac OS market share is feeding on Windows users, it's not like new users are growing on trees here. But, there's no need to be that destructive. The Get A Mac ad campaign started out by making a point which was that Mac is better than PC and Mac OS X is better than any other OS (a.k.a. windows) because it has lots of stuff. And every ad used to tell the story of a certain feature. Like the one that has many Macs that are taking about Time Machine feature, which is if you're a regular windows user wouldn't know that windows had something similar since XP which is "Restore Point" but it had never been an easy to use or popular feature that is worth making an ad for.

Then the ads became just funny, like the one with the group therapy where there's no point other than making fun of Vista and branding Mac as the cool kid in the block more than it already is. But when you start over profiting from anything, it backfires.

Some people are asking "How do they get away with it" as in how can a company say something that mean about another company and not get sued. I don't know, I'm not a lawyer, but I think that they - Apple - don't wanna get away with it, they don't care. Apple always been a fan of making fun of competitors. There was the famous "1984" ad that pictured IBM as the dominate dictator who is brain-washing everyone. And I remember those banners in Mac World conference couple of years ago that said "Redmond, Start your Photocopiers" (as in Microsoft is copying everything Apple is doing). And of course, tons of Steve Jobs's remarks on competitors in Mac World demos. It's a natural extension of Apple's arrogant attitude drawn from their CEO's ego.

Don't get me wrong, I admire Steve Jobs, the guy built Apple twice, and if you wanna know the man himself, just watch his Stanford commencement address speech in 2005 (really wise stuff) but there's no doubt that Steve's ego is really burning Apple's bridges with other companies. Once in 1997, Apple needed help from Microsoft for its resurrection. Of course, Microsoft got a fair deal (settlements for for Patent disputes, IE as the default browser on Mac, and revenues from Office for Mac and Apple shares) but if Microsoft knew that Apple would be mocking Vista like they are now, I'm sure Microsoft would have been thinking this through.

Personalized TV Guide

eldib.amr@gmail.com (Amr Eldib) — Sat, 31 May 2008 00:44:00 +0000

I was watching TV this morning and I went through my 37-channels favorite list and I found nothing interesting to watch. So, I turned to the TV guide. I don't use the guide that much so here's my impression. SHOCKED. the TV guide is listing more than 800 channels, how am I supposed to go through these. Of course there's a categorization for shows by theme, channel, or title. Maybe other cable boxes even have search. But, that's not what I want to do, I just want to watch a good show, I don't know what it is but I want it and I want it now. I got frustrated with the TV guide so I turned off the TV and turned to the computer to check my Gmail, I opened a new e-mail and I found this small ad in the top banner about something related to the e-mail I'm reading right at the same moment. So, I thought what if my TV (or rather cable box) can do that.

Here's the idea, What if TV channels have enough metadata to suggest shows to the viewer. Metadata can include Show Rating, Theme, Production Year, Cast Names. The viewer selects his/her favorite picks in each of these categories and there's magic. It's simple matter of mix and match.

Now, here's the problem, I don't know how cable boxes work, I don't have a cable company to apply something like this. So, I thought I just put this out there for anyone to apply it. But I reserve the right of having one of those cable boxes for free.

By the way, if by any chance, someone already applied this idea, let me know.

GIS, GPS, LBS, and GeoWeb - They're different, People.

eldib.amr@gmail.com (Amr Eldib) — Thu, 22 May 2008 00:39:00 +0000

When I tell anyone one that I work in GIS and tell them about what it's about, I always get the response of "Oh, I know what that is, it's the little screen in my car with the navigator". No people, that's GPS. Smarter responses include "Is that part of GPS?" and "Yeah, I know what that is, I use Google Maps". But All of that is still not GIS. So, I'm gonna write this down for one last time and the next person to ask me about what I'm doing for living, I'll just give him the link for this post.

GPS

Let's start with the most known one, GPS. The Global Positioning System is a network of satellites that orbits around the earth at let a receiver device determine its location, speed, direction, and time. The receiver device (which is commonly known as "GPS") needs to be connected to at least 4 satellites to determine its location, and hence speed, direction and time. GPS is an American system, and it's the only completely implemented global navigation satellite system. There are other GNSS like Russian GLONASS, European Galileo, the proposed Chinese COMPASS, and Indian IRNSS. GPS devices are now widely, not just used but also, integrated into other devices like cars, smart phones, and cameras.

GIS

Geographic Information System is the implementation of database for spatial data. If a database can have text, numbers, dates, and photos, it can have maps as well. It's not just about the location, it's about querying the location and analyzing that location with respect to other locations. It's just like querying and analyzing tabular data. The only difference is that if a picture is worth a thousand words, a map is worth a thousand pictures.

GIS is a mix of science (Geography), information systems, and modern software technologies that hasn't - unfortunately - exploit the potentials of GIS yet, but hopefully one day it will.

GeoWeb

This is the new buzz, and I think we owe the credit to Keyhole. Keyhole was the company that created the software that we know now as Google Earth. In 2004, Google acquired Keyhole and changed their paid software to a free software that we all use now.

It was Google Earth and its user generated content that required the creation of this new term "GeoWeb". GeoWeb is basically to provide a geographic dimension to the information on the web. You want to find a house in your area, but what really defines "Your Area", it's where you think is close to you and you can't define that unless you use a map.

Even though GeoWeb is the natural evolution of GIS - It's GIS for the public, where everyone can search, add, or analyze spatial-based information -, the GeoWeb didn't come from a GIS software company but rather a company founded only in 2001.

LBS

Location Based Services is the product of GIS, GPS, GeoWeb, and mobile computing. Here's a scenario of what LBS can offer, you're on the go and you want to find the nearest favorite sports store, you pick up your cell phone and connect to the Internet to get that info, easy, then you get directions to the store and as you move, the cell phone adjusts the route and suggests other routs depending on the traffic and how long is the route, still easy. As you approach the store you get a message telling you that there's another sports store near by that is offering 50% discount on exactly what you're looking for. Now, that's not easy. Of course there are other applications to LBS, but this is one of its most widely known ones. It's about offering the right information at the right time in the right location so you can act on it immediately, and if that info is an ad, that mean there gonna be people looking forward for LBS.

Google has been working building an alternative to LBS that can be implemented now. Based on a free widely available WiFi network, Google can distribute ads to those logging in to the network with their Google account.

Downside, Privacy. LBS - in my opinion as one whose working in GIS - is a major violation of privacy. It's not just that the service providers know who you are and what you're interested in, but also where you are and where you've been. Your location is identified in real time but also could be logged very easily. And who knows who's listening.

Anyway, forget about the differences between the technical terms. One thing is for sure, Location is next big buzz.

Microsoft vs. Google: Is it a real fight?

eldib.amr@gmail.com (Amr Eldib) — Sat, 17 May 2008 15:32:00 +0000

I think it would be fair to say that there seem to be a competition going on between Microsoft and Google. It's ridiculous to deny it since Microsoft is making all of those moves to compete with Google (Enhancing Windows Search, Ballmer announcing that 25% of Microsoft revenues would come from advertising, acquisition of aQuantive for 6B$, and offer to buy Yahoo! for more than 44B$). Even though the two companies doesn't share much of battlegrounds (search and online advertising, which both represent a fraction of Microsoft revenues), The two companies - especially Microsoft - seem to be more concerned with one another more and more. Why is that?

1. A few years back when Google was on the rise, the question "How can stop Google?" was naturally followed by "Could it be Microsoft?". The collision of the two powers is a natural course of events, and Microsoft is thinking "let's do it now before Google gets too big to handle".

2. Google expanding its products to provide cheap (free is cheap, right?) only-core-widely-used-features everywhere-accessible alternatives to Microsoft products (for example, Google Docs vs Office) is threatening Microsoft future revenues. It kinda feels like Netscape replacing windows all over again. Microsoft is thinking "It's not about generating more profit, it's a matter of national security".

3. The business model offered by Google, a company offering free products that makes millions of dollars, is more effective than Microsoft traditional-software-company business model. Microsoft is thinking "Adopt it or beat it, or maybe adopt it and beat everybody else".

4. Google's products are the closest thing to Microsoft's Software-as-a-Service licensing model that was supposed to replace the traditional license model currently used. Microsoft is probably thinking "Those Google guys stole my idea and they're making money of it, I'll #&jlk%fn&h!i* them".

5. Online advertising is generating more profit everyday. Microsoft is thinking "Why not get a bigger piece of the pie".

Well, we've established that there is a fight. But how real is it?

Microsoft can avoid the "If Google is winning, then we must be losing" attitude which seem be driving the company lately, like the Microhoo merger that will take at least a year to be active because of all the in-house arrangements that has to happen. Stopping that attitude will make the fight look much less intense.
Microsoft should take a moment and re-plan its online strategy, at least to avoid all the redundant services (for example, Folder Share, SkyDrive, and Live Mesh). This might give Microsoft's effort in online services a chance to compete with Google in that area.
Even though online advertising is driving Google's revenues, Google's services is what's threatening Microsoft. And while it's a good strategy to directly compete in online advertising which will dry Google funds for building those services, it's still sufficient to build better services - or software - to limit Google services' affect on Microsoft revenues.

How real is the fight, if someone came out on top.. then, it's real.

Internet Day to Day tools - for geeks only

eldib.amr@gmail.com (Amr Eldib) — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 22:53:00 +0000

As you use the Internet on daily basis, either in work or home or both, for business or pleasure, you spend more and more time in front of your browser. Over the last month, I've been trying to cut down the time I spend on daily activities on the Internet. Here are some of the tools that helped me do that and others that introduce some really great benefits that might come in handy for you too..

Essential Tools

Firefox: There's one feature in firefox that IE can't compete with, and that is Extensions. When I was on the edge between using IE or Firefox, Extensions - and themes also - was the winning card for firefox.
Google Reader: Great Web based RSS reader from Google. Not only you get to follow your favorite RSS feeds through this simple well-designed Ajax interface, but also, you can share the posts you find most interesting directly with your friends, you can also have a URL of page listing those posts. You can also receive links of feeds as recommended by Google (of course, through inspecting your data) which can be very accurate.
Windows Live Writer: very cool blog writer tool from Microsoft. With colorful very nice interface, WLW is open to large number of blogging services, starting of course with Windows Live.
Spell-check dictionaries: you can get spell check as you're writing e-mails or any text in web pages in firefox by installing the dictionaries of the languages you use. It might be not as accurate in corrections as Office but at least it's gonna catch the wrong words.
FEBE: Backup firefox data including extensions, themes, bookmarks, preferences, cookies, and many more..

Development and Technology

CodeProject Newletter: a careful daily selection of 8 IT industry and development headlines with very hilarious comments. You need to register in CodeProject to receive this newsletter.
Jeff Atwood Visual Studio Settings: Great VS color schema for both 2005 and 2008. Download Here.

Bookmarks

Online Bookmark Manager - StartAid: Haven't you ever want to show your friend that web site that you bookmarked couple a days ago, but you can't remember the URL. Bookmarks (or Favorites for IE users) is a great tool but you depend on it too much that it makes you forget URL. StartAid helps you solve this problem by offering an online bookmark manager that has a web interface in a folder hierarchy with the ability to show those bookmarks in a firefox menu just like firefox bookmarks and a side tab to offer search capabilities. Also, sharing bookmarks and searching others' bookmarks are great features offered by this extension.
Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer: If you're using firefox on more than one machine, you would like to sync your bookmarks between those machines. This extension helps do that.

Google-Related

Better Gmail 2: Adds enhancements to the GMail web page. You can prefer Better Gmail, you can read the differences here.
Gmail Manager: manages Gmail accounts and shows notifications of new e-mails.
Google Reader Notifier: notification of Google Reader updates.
Google Gears: this doesn't really adds direct tool to the browser, but it enables web applications to provide offline functionality using JavaScript APIs. A functionality that is nice to have if you're using laptop.
Google Browser Sync: This extension from Google continuously synchronizes including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across multiple computers.
Google Notebook: allows you to store notes on web pages using a popup in your browser.
gTranslate: Translates the selected text via Google Translate.

Firefox Interface Customization

CoLT: Adds a Copy Link Text item to the browser's context menu along with the Copy Link Location item.
CuteMenus: Adds icons to all menus.
Favicon Picker 2: adds UI for replacing bookmarks icon.
Fission: puts the progress bar in the address bar like Safari.
Tab Scope: Vista-like live thumbnails for firefox tabs.

Other tools

Skype: turns every phone number on each web page to a click-able link that can be called directly using Skype.
SearchWith: search selected text with various search services from context menu.
MrUptime: Get notified when an unavalible web site starts to work again.
Read it Later: Save pages to read later instead of keeping them as open tabs.

Let us know what tools are you using...

Technorati Tags: firefox,extensions,google,browser

Windows 7: What it's rumored to have, and What it should have..

eldib.amr@gmail.com (Amr Eldib) — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 17:21:00 +0000

As the year is coming to an end, everyone is gazing into the future and making predictions for 2008. So, I thought I’d gaze a little into the future of Windows..

Windows 7 is the codename for the next windows version, as you all might know by now. Until now, number of features of the next windows has been leaked/rumored recently, even some snapshots were claimed to of windows 7. The list contains some obvious, known, demanded, and - of course - copied features, like:

1. Virtual machines for legacy software: one of the main reasons for the late adoption for Vista by users is for incompatibility for most software. And as Windows team would want to make larger modifications in the OS, they should worry more about this issue. Apple people had a similar situation when moving from OS 9 to OS X, to overcome this they had "Classic" programs run in a virtual machine mode. With the Hyper-V feature in the new Windows Server 2008, it's possible for Microsoft to think about including a virtual machine mode to run classic programs too. This would give the development team the advantage of making as much modifications as they want.

2. New smaller kernel: Vista is installed in almost 14GB (just the windows folder on my machine) unlike XP that is around 3GB, if we're going to continue on this ratio.. we'll be seeing a 100GB OS soon. It's not about hard disk size, HDs gets more GBs every year with cheaper prices. It's about re-building the core of system instead modifying the existing one. Microsoft didn't change much of the core of windows since NT, maybe it's time to do so.

3. WinFS: Microsoft promised to include WinFS in Vista and they didn't. WinFS is as fancy idea as it's wanted. WinFS is announced to be included in ADO.NET Entity Framework and SQL Server 2008. In November 2006, Steve Ballmer said that WinFS will be integrated in the windows codebase after the development has fully completed, which should be in time for Windows 7.

4. Entirely new look: Vista got a new GUI , Areo, with significant new look, but the experience is the same as XP. Microsoft should inspect the real needs of the users and modify the experience to fit that, like they did in Office 2007. Luckily enough, Steven Sinofsky who is the Senior Vice President for the Windows Engineering Group, was responsible for developing Office 2007. Maybe he'll do the same in the new position..

5. De-coupling the interface from the explorer shell: sounds like a complicated inner behind-the-scene feature, but actually this would affect the user interface in a great way. Now, you can change the whole interface and still make full benefit of the shell.

6. Multi-touch Support: with Microsoft Surface going from research to production and Support for Tablet-PCs, Supporting Multi-touch in windows seems like a good idea.

That's what Windows 7 is most likely to have according to number of articles, but what it should have..

1. Better file operation management: Don't you just hate how XP is handling copy operations. If you don't, try to copy two files in parallel rather than in sequence, it'll take you almost twice as much time. Or try to copy/move a large folder to another drive and after half an hour you get this message that there's no enough space. What if you left your machine and came back in an hour assuming that copying is in progress but actually it's not. Also, There's the un-explainable waiting before displaying the confirmation message when trying to delete a large number of files. Well, that was in XP, what about Vista? I tell you, it's even worse.. I miss the good old days of XP when it comes to copying. In Vista, you can't rename/delete/move any file on the System drive without getting all those confirmation messages (at least 3 messages). And it's also slow, and when I say slow, I mean sloooooow. Of course, I don't need to mention the crazy estimated time counter, One time, Vista indicated that it needs 129 years to complete the remaining 7.55MB.

It's not that hard to have better copy operation. Check out those copy managers like Copy Handler, and Total Copy. That's not impossible to do, right? Copy operations in windows needs Pause and Resume capabilities, better handling for parallel copying, fault tolerance for network failure when copying over network or for removable devices, Minimize to tray button, centralized window for all operations and maybe history recording, and to put more human common sense in the sequence of messages.

2. Less/No UAC (User Account Control) pop-ups: If you didn't hear about UAC and how it operates, expect a moment of panic when your first UAC message pop up. But don't worry, you'll get used to it, as more and more are coming your way.

For those how hasn't experienced UAC, here's how it work. The screen turns to black in the same way it turns off, and then in about a moment everything is grayed and here's your UAC message, why the suspense? and for what? No UAC message has ever warned me about something I don't know, instead it treats Visual Studio 2005, VMware Workstation, and Real Player as they're programs that are about to violate my machine.

Of course, the principle idea behind UAC is running applications processes in a standard user privileges until the user grant them higher privileges. But, it's handled very badly as a user experience and most importantly, Applications still not playing nicely with it. Microsoft is putting avoiding UAC messages as an essential part in their conditions to grant application the "Certified for Vista" logo. But that's just for small companies or close partners to Microsoft, other wise, the user has face those messages on daily basis.

3. Less minimum requirements: One of the primary reasons for Vista's low distribution numbers is the high configurations that are set as minimum requirements for running the OS. And don't get fooled with the "Vista Capable" statement, this's just mean that you're gonna be running the OS, but we're not sure about other programs. To run Vista in a comfortable way, you need a dual core processor, and 2GB of RAM, not to mention a upper-medium graphics card.

It's not that difficult to expect when new hardware will be available, and when it will be mainstream. The hardware (Processors, Memory, and Graphic Cards like Intel, AMD, MSI, and those people) companies and PCs (Desktop and laptops like HP, Dell, and Toshiba) companies, they have road maps for these things and they can tell you if you lunch an OS in 2010 what kind of configuration will be available. If Microsoft took couple of hours to search on the Internet for these information (even without using Google), you should be able to fix the Vista hardware mistake.

4. Themes: Microsoft promised to enable themes in both XP and Vista, but didn't deliver. Large number of applications are allowing themes and actually helping developers and designers building themes, and also a large number of applications are turning to web applications which can change their looks every now and then or even allowing personalization. Microsoft should keep their promise this time, if they make one..

5. .NET framework built into Windows core: The idea behind the CLR and JIT compilation of the .net framework is to allow converting written code in the time of execution to the code appropriate to the platform which the application is running on, like the Java Virtual Machine. But wait a minute, Isn't Microsoft only releasing .net framework for the Windows platform. Yes, they're sharing source of the CLI and Novell is building Mono but .net applications are not really platform independent. On the other hand, Maybe Microsoft's perfect chance to push the .net as a development option for commercial software (and not just solutions) built by enterprises is to play their favorite move and integrate .net into the core of Windows.

If Microsoft pushed the framework into the core of the system and done it right, maybe that's will help overcoming the performance problem known for the .net applications.

I don't know if this is possible or not, but maybe it's worth thinking about.

What do you think.. what would you like the next windows version, Windows 7, to have.. let us know..

How Firefox makes money..

eldib.amr@gmail.com (Amr Eldib) — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 14:03:00 +0000

Ever wondered how firefox is still running even though all of Mozilla's products are for free..

First, it must be denotations, the "Best Browser Implementing Web Standards" - according to Mozilla - must be receiving lots of denotations from its wide user base. But There are actually two Mozillas, the Foundation and the Corporation.

The Foundation is a non-profit organization that handles the leadership for the open source Mozilla project, the polices, key infrastructure, trademarks and that stuff. Its revenue is tax-exempt status under the U.S. tax code as it's based in Mountain View, California.

The Corporation is a subsidiary of the foundation that coordinates the development of internet-related applications such as firefox. It also depends on denotations but there's also a deal with Google that whenever a user uses that little search box on the top right and he/she clicks an ad in the search results offered by Google, Mozilla gets 80% of the revenue. That little box is rumored to had made $72M last year. It's confirmed (by Wikipedia, read the Financing section) that $61.5M were Mozilla's revenues in 2006 because of the little box out of a total $66.8M of revenues.

It's good to see Mozilla going strong financially as they are technically. Looks like the red fox is gonna be sticking around for a while.. bad news for the guys in Redmond..

"How Do I" Video Series on Microsoft Technologies

eldib.amr@gmail.com (Amr Eldib) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 18:32:00 +0000

http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/1/9/4191d186-e2a1-4b45-b4dd-b6364a4d5ced/13printformcomponent.zip

http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/1/9/4191d186-e2a1-4b45-b4dd-b6364a4d5ced/14reportviewer.zip

http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/1/9/4191d186-e2a1-4b45-b4dd-b6364a4d5ced/15understandingdata.zip

http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/1/9/4191d186-e2a1-4b45-b4dd-b6364a4d5ced/16updatingrelatedtables.zip

How Do I Visual Studio Tools for Office Series
http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/4/3/f43d2b40-1db3-4a9d-9cfe-4f033464a08a/winvideo-vsto-openxml.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/4/9/649d7520-d8d9-4366-af88-e066fd028290/winvideo-vsto-actionspane.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/4/f/84f1e1a5-0e1d-44e8-942b-6064b00279f9/winvideo-vsto-webservices.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/6/b/96b94b3e-1a7a-4a75-9ced-4a97a95574ff/winvideo-vsto-outlookformregions.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/c/2/1c211aac-85a6-4e83-9c7c-57eed96df6e4/winvideo-vsto-ribbondesigner.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/f/0/2f02720b-dfa3-480f-afbd-fec5b47f3229/winvideo-vsto-customxmlparts.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/8/1/7817cb9b-326b-4f4b-ac99-791662d3641e/winvideo-vsto-vbainterop.zip

http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/6/a/36ac35e5-367b-4831-94ba-8278b5e15a24/winvideo-vsto-taskpanesinoutlook.zip

http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/2/3/223cef8e-dcb3-4f6d-af1f-d31f8f65d8ef/winvideo-vsto-excel-linq.zip

http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/b/f/2bf81364-6468-45a9-94d1-76e51a485440/winvideo-vsto-consumedatabasedatainexcel.zip

http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/4/8/748d4ef0-6716-494d-ad34-88c984ae7fa0/winvideo-vsto-summarizedatainexcelwithdatabasefunctions.zip

http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/7/d/77de3f6d-0fbd-4ecc-8d93-e4fc7792ea12/winvideo-vsto-usexmlmappinginexcel.zip

http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/8/b/48b0877d-aa5a-4037-b5b3-817de810209f/winvideo-vsto-usesmarttagsinmicrosoftword.zip

http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/9/4/194ec190-4d2d-438a-adb6-84c4799e9f63/winvideo-vsto-managetaskpanesinawordadd-in.zip

http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/a/7/3a7bbed0-d018-424e-826d-79f5eb35e159/winvideo-vsto-customizeoutlookitemcontextmenus.zip

http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/b/d/7bd6a2d4-ac14-43f6-97bc-07a334257dde/winvideo-vsto-deployavstoadd-in.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/c/9/0c957bf7-86c7-4e33-a99a-30fe29c8c74a/winvideo-vsto-useexcelwebservices.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/e/0/ae0d2ae5-aaaa-4958-a52c-bea1b3f2eb1d/winvideo-vsto-usemossenterprisesearchfromaclientapplication.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/1/3/a1358d23-e999-427e-b530-0e861799b54c/winvideo-vsto-useeventsexcel2007addin.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/2/9/d2915252-fd2a-49c2-8bce-cb01a919770e/winvideo-vsto-usethefindmethodinanexceladd-in.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/b/21b8783c-5a2f-4848-a0cd-4431be5749f9/winvideo-vsto-automatepowerpointfromanexceladd-in.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/1/5/715e1fa7-b91a-42cb-aeb4-2a98f3160aa5/winvideo-vsto-simulatedocexcel2007add-in.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/1/1/311f2fba-90ab-4b31-910a-6808c3f5bf84/winvideo-vsto-createadjoiningformregionsinoutlook2007.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/c/a/5ca43d8e-c3e7-457c-a038-9a978d25bbe4/winvideo-vsto-createanoutlook2007add-in.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/a/5/4a5856fc-f28b-4ecf-ad98-e8730eaec0c5/winvideo-vsto-deployadocumentlevelvstosolutionlocally(part%202).wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/f/a/dfa519ef-3be5-4426-8abf-a13dae3d66eb/winvideo-vsto-deployadocumentlevelvstosolutionlocally(part%201).wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/6/7/56731e6a-ad37-44c8-b8a5-a16918a32165/winvideo-vsto-prepareforavstodeployment.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/c/2/5c2da2bc-6b92-46ab-b20a-bd9f90cd4ae9/winvideo-vsto-synchtaskpanevisibilitywithribboncontrols.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/5/f/e5ff7f30-6c33-4766-9017-9ee68b426428/winvideo-vsto-createuserdefinedfunctionsforexcelservices.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/c/0/d/c0d9af61-e981-41a7-bb8d-c98d5698b251/winvideo-vsto-bindsharepointcontenttypefieldstoword2007contentcontrols.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/b/e/9be80aad-8d83-4458-8fba-8c53af52ef5a/winvideo-vsto-bindsharepointcontenttypefieldstoexcelranges.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/5/9/959614f9-0bb6-446f-97d1-e9f6fe9d9b4e/winvideo-vsto-manipulatecustomxmlpartsoutsideofword.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/3/f/53f80cd7-81a0-421a-98f8-f8778e8b1f5d/use%20the%20range%20object%20to%20manipulate%20data%20in%20an%20excel%20workbook.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/d/4/ad40fa0a-f799-4019-bd49-d7fa258e7fa8/winvideo-vsto-manipulatecustomxmlpartsinword2007.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/a/d/7ad9fddf-02c2-4a86-8419-faffe25c5db1/winvideo-vsto-powerpoint.wmv

How Do I Visual Studio Team Suite Series
http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/3/8/83828647-2468-4fe5-bd3d-e4ad1413d3bf/winvideo-vsts-codemetrics.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/0/f/60f84780-a2f7-4fa2-9140-dcc9dac9dae2/winvideo-vsts-unittestingsmartdevices.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/9/7/3978262b-c63b-4377-8186-96ccb171aee4/winvideo-vsts-customcheck-inpolicy.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/5/d/55d46db6-aa20-4dcb-94be-a8cd7e4f7dff/winvideo-vsts-codeanalysischeck-inpolicies.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/c/2/e/c2e84e6f-7665-4609-ac86-af79e2f44c9c/winvideo-vsts-usingthevisualstudioteamtestloadagent.zip

http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/3/7/537232b5-f09b-47b0-bd88-4c94ba8de077/winvideo-vsts-implementaninterfaceusingtheclassdesigner.zip

http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/f/e/7fe1618e-b0cc-484a-968e-887aa3e79ef4/winvideo-vsts-interpretwebtestresults.zip

http://download.microsoft.com/download/c/0/1/c017ad8f-c3ff-419e-b73c-c0c0b5ffe3ad/winvideo-vsts-databindaloadtest.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/6/7/d67b070a-a345-4b8b-a5ad-a986ac481567/winvideo-vsts-codedwebtests.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/5/0/150ccb4a-7038-4e91-bea1-466181abc2cf/winvideo-vsts-databindaunittest.wmv

How Do I ASP.NET AJAX
http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/5/1/d511b06d-f0d9-4428-9a0a-4625f81c704f/HDI-AJAX-Timer.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/5/1/d511b06d-f0d9-4428-9a0a-4625f81c704f/HDI-AJAX-P-PredictiveFetch.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/c/b/f/cbfd5187-75a9-48b3-9135-e0de1e8787c6/HDI-AJAX-P-Paging.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/9/c/a9c329f8-2ffa-4124-8ad9-9bd846999055/HDI-AJAX-TK-Amination.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/1/b/31bc6707-4f00-4232-9e31-7800373e9fdd/HDI-AJAX-P-IncremantalPageFetch-AWS.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/1/b/31bc6707-4f00-4232-9e31-7800373e9fdd/HDI-AJAX-TK-ConfirmButton.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/c/8/ec85ba39-6290-438e-9f35-11989c61e0a4/HDI-AJAX-P-IncremantalPageFetch-GP.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/c/8/ec85ba39-6290-438e-9f35-11989c61e0a4/HDI-AJAX-TK-Slider.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/1/3/a134c3ec-8244-4099-af4d-b18a6bf7ee32/HDI-AJAX-TK-AutoComplete.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/1/3/a134c3ec-8244-4099-af4d-b18a6bf7ee32/HDI-AJAX-UpdateProgress.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/d/d/0dd32fc2-9907-4fdc-8ee5-38dd02b241d7/HDI-AJAX-TK-Calendar.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/d/d/0dd32fc2-9907-4fdc-8ee5-38dd02b241d7/HDI-AJAX-TK-DropDown.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/9/0/690a9206-fd41-47ea-ae51-293c52780bfe/HDI-AJAX-TK-MaskedEdit.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/9/0/690a9206-fd41-47ea-ae51-293c52780bfe/HDI-AJAX-TK-MutuallyExclusive.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/c/d/3/cd3449c5-afe9-491c-b607-c3494d3130ac/WinVideo-AJAX-TK-NoBot.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/d/c/8dc76759-69ce-442f-9b99-594d4e96c76b/WinVideo-AJAX-TK-ListSearch.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/b/7/1b7cb0ee-6896-4727-8b51-881e3d50778e/WinVideo-AJAX-TK-PageBullet.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/7/c/e7caba41-5c56-4689-9e36-46d0d121642a/WinVideo-AJAX-TK-NumUpDown.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/3/1/831ffcd7-c571-4075-b8fa-6ff678794f60/WinVideo-ASP-BrowserHistoryinAJAX.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/9/8/e9826780-23f4-4ac3-b2ff-c4ac6c8ddab9/WinVideo-AJAX-TK-ValidatorCallout.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/b/3/0b3a4fb0-7616-4444-bce2-7649f6267da5/WinVideo-Ajax-AfterProcessingPattern.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/b/8/2b82e043-e575-4812-9f9a-2e3735a07936/WinVideo-HDI-AJAX-TK-ResizableControl.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/0/b/e0b4ddeb-9bb4-470b-9719-00c10a851b08/WinVideo-AJAX-TK-Tab.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/b/7/4b7f03f8-4d81-415c-a3fb-b7273aeffd16/WinVideo-ASP-UpdateMultipleRegionsofaPage.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/5/5/95531f98-e05e-4dad-a8ba-02502371a868/WinVideo-AJAX-ChooseBetweenMethods.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/a/c/faca52f2-5d38-44ec-a284-341c1877ecff/WinVideo-HDI-AJAX-TK-SlideShow.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/5/d/45d75c7a-09e2-4ae1-a341-854866d77e54/WinVideo-HDI-AJAX-TK-UpdatePanelAnim.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/b/7/ab7a399f-a7fb-4ad8-bac6-6a296567eba6/WinVideo-HDI-Ajax-With3rdParty.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/6/7/4679a038-202f-4ed2-b97d-1452a042502e/WinVideo-ASP-ProfileInfoinAJAX.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/2/6/e2694a0e-0916-4f26-a494-50a45d271e99/WinVideo-ASP-DebugAJAXApplicationsUsingVisualStudio2005.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/d/9/fd93e5b9-f3c3-452b-88ca-c5379c27f303/WinVideo-ASP-AJAXCustomAJAXControl.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/c/7/8c729f96-7096-4c4b-8f16-08411e324fa2/WinVideo-AJAX-UpdatePanelWithJavascript.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/6/a/56a8757a-fc91-4339-8546-81ff26c70652/WinVideo-HDI-Ajax-UpdatePanelCondition.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/d/1/ad1f12a7-5151-443e-bcae-6307ecff70af/WinVideo-AJAX-UpdatePanel-ServerUpdate.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/1/1/311f85d5-2051-44fa-ae66-90ecc8374fca/WinVideo-HDI-AJAX-P-PersistentComm-UpdatePanels.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/0/c/f0cf9c94-532e-44b1-b9e8-a2873d83008a/WinVideo-LocalizeYourAJAXApplication.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/3/4/b3438ddf-ac31-4219-a952-c3b2fa730cf7/WinVideo-AJAX-P-PersistentComm-WS.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/7/7/d776165f-e617-4773-be6f-8c140aa96861/WinVideo-AJAX-DDL-UP-CSS.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/2/4/a24ff483-27d7-4be4-b6b9-e72929a91892/WinVideo-ASP-CreateExtender.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/0/f/30f85549-1b3b-4ce6-ab28-209b5c874c73/WinVideo-ASP-AJAXEnableYourExistingCustomControl.wmv

http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/b/d/fbd29899-c07a-4d31-a2ab-545aa0505073/WinVideo-ASP-AJAXClientBehavior.wmv

Enjoy...
Amr

Welcome to my blog

eldib.amr@gmail.com (Amr Eldib) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 18:24:00 +0000

Welcome to my blog,
This is my second trial to have a blog, visit my my old blog at live spaces. last time I tried to write complete full articles about technologies. even though that was great, I was too busy to find enough time to research a subject to write about. This time I'm gonna try to do it differently...
Try to stick around, and let's see how is goes...

Amr