So, without further ado, here is a quick rundown of the new features, the new appearance and my innitial thoughts on the new member of the Expression Web family.

New Flat-tastic User Interface

The first thing you’ll notice (apart from the new logo in the splash page of course) when opening Expression Web 3 is the new UI skin. The application looks very different from its two prior iterations in that the team has moved away from the classic fake 3D/embossed look to a 2D/3D inspired look with flat surfaces and drop-shadows. The interface is also a lot darker than the prior ones with a dark gray being the predominant colour. The new look makes me think of new media applications like TweetDeck and DestroyTwitter and there is little doubt in my mind that much of the inspiration was taken from what I want to refer to as the post-web2.0 look.

As you can see in the graphic at the top of this article the new look is very clean and sharp and makes icons, toolbars and panels pop out. This dark flat-tastic look has already been used in Expression Design and Expression Blend and I think it is a welcome change that not only links Expression Web to it’s application siblings. It also visually separates the new application from those of the past and signals a new beginning of sorts. Not to mention that to me at least it is much easier on the eye (I tend to do a lot of design work in the dark).

AutoHide Panels

One of the things that really irks me with design applications in general is all these toolbars and task panes that take up valuable screen space. To curb my frustrations I prefer to work on a dual-monitor setup where I can stash all the tools and task panes on one monitor and leave the application on the other. But this doesn’t work when I’m on my laptop (which is where I’m at most of the time these days). And in Expression Web 1 and 2 even with a widescreen monitor the task panes ate up a lot of real estate. As a result I kept turning the task panes on and off all the time - a process that was a real time waster. In response to complaints and suggestions to do something about the task panes, the dev team introduced a simple AutoHide feature that lets you collapse the panels (they’re not called “task panes” anymore) to the sides from where you can open them by hovering over their names. In practical terms that means you can leave all your favourite panels on the workspace without having them take up tons of room in the process.

The AutoHide feature is easily toggled on and off with a pin logo (seen in the upper right-hand corner of the grab to the right). When the pin is lying sideways as in the grab, the panel is pinned to the wall (AutoHide on). When it’s in the upright position, the panel is a permanent part of the workspace. It’s a simple feature but it makes a world of difference, especially because you can pin individual and rarely used panels to the sides for easy access if you were to need them.

New and improved publishing options

It’s no secret that the publishing options, and especially the FTP publishing option, in Expression Web 1 and 2 were less than stellar. It was so bad in fact that I urged the readers of my book to not use them. Well, without breaking any deals with my publisher I can tell you that my recommendation in the new book is quite different. Not only has the troll that was messing with the FTP been slaughtered but two all new publishing methods have been added to the list providing more secure transfers and options. The list of publishing options now features SFTP (Secure Shell File Transfer Protocol), FTPS/SSL (File Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer) as well as the original FTP, FrontPage Server Extensions, WebDAV and File System.
But that’s not all. Expression Web 3’s publishing option has been rebuilt from scratch and features a whole new range of functions including the ability to define multiple publishing locations for one site so you can push your files to a backup storage as well as publish them online, or publish them to multiple servers, or set up a testing server and a main server within the same project. This again is a seeminly minor but actual major improvement that makes life a lot easier for people like myself who do a lot of server testing and cross-publishing.

In-application Browser Previews with Snapshot

In addition to alterations and improvements to the old versions of the application, Expression Web 3 introduces some new features that are going to make your life as a designer/developer a hell of a lot easier. They are connected at the hip but I’d rather deal with them independently. The first one is the Snapshot panel. Like the name suggests, Snapshot takes a real-time browser shot of your current page and displays it in a panel inside your workspace. This means you now have a quick and easy way to see what your recent changes will look like in different browsers, including Internet Explorer 6 and 7 and Firefox, without having to actually run the page in a real browser.

Snapshot’s output is just that - a snapshot - and does not provide functional links and the like. But it does generate JavaScript, CSS, HTML, PHP and whatever else you want to throw at it and gives you a true representation of what your page looks like in the different browsers.Like the other panels you can undock the Snapshot panel and place it somewhere else, for instance on your second monitor.

SuperPreview - Browser Testing Made SuperSimple

I’ve written about SuperPreview before both here on DesignIsPhilosophy.com and in the official Microsoft Expression Newsletter but it can’t be repeated enough: Expression Web SuperPreview could one of the most important innovations in web development of the last several years. SuperPreview is the powerful big brother of Snapshot - a stand-alone application that lets you perform cross-browser testing that lets you compare true output from multiple different browsers with onion skinning and side-by-side preview. To identify incompatibilities, problems and even tiny shifts the application also features simultaneous box highlighting of individual elements and even provides full FireBug-like DOM trees to give you as much info as possible about what’s going on when things go wrong.

I’m not going to go into too much detail here - the application will be better served with a tutorial video that shows how it actually works in real-time - but I will say one thing: Even if I was still a DreamWeaver user, I would buy Expression Web 3 just to get the full version of SuperPreview. And that says a lot cuz’ I’m a cheap guy. With alligator arms.

For more info on Expression Web 3 microsoft just published Expression Web 3: An Overview on the official Microsoft Expression website.

For another take on the new version check out fellow Microsoft MVP Cheryl D. Wise’s blog.

“Even when we start shipping VAIOs with Windows 7, hardware virtualization will be disabled. Sony has no plans to make this function available in any of our computers.”

Sony confirms they will continue disabling Hardware Virtualization (also known as VT) in the BIOS of all their Vaio computers even after the release of Windows 7 making the new Windows XP Mode unavailable to all Vaio owners.

A couple of months ago I discovered that in spite of the hardware of my Sony Vaio laptop fully supporting Hardware Virtualization, Sony has decided to disable this feature in the BIOS making it unavailable. There has been much chatter and theorizing about this on the net but no clear conclusions, statements or solutions have been provided. So today I contacted Sony directly to find out exactly what was going on. What I found was both surprising and infuriating.

A quick summary of the back story: I bought a Sony Vaio VGN-SR140D laptop last fall and have been very happy with it. That was until I tried to enable Hardware Virtualization so I could run a virtual machine on it for beta testing purposes. It turned out that even though the processor fully supports this feature, Sony has disabled it in the BIOS making it impossible to run any type of virtualization on the computer. The problem is there is no mention of this in any documentation available about the computer or its product siblings. For this reason it is fair to say the computer does not perform to specifications.

To get to the bottom of this I contacted Sony customer support. After a lot of back and forth, explaining and some feeble attempts at tricking me into giving up claiming that “hardware virtualization has been disabled because there is a conflict with this type of functionality with other hardware in the computer” I was passed on to a high level tech located somewhere on the US west coast, and it is from him I got all the nasty details.

Hardware Virtualization will not be available on Sony Vaios. Period!

Right off the bat the tech told me flat out that Hardware Virtualization not only is not available on older or current Vaio models, both laptops and desktops, but that there will be no support for Hardware Virtualization in future models either! When I mentioned that this would become a hot topic once Windows 7 with its much talked about Virtual XP feature is released in November of this year he responded “Even when we start shipping Vaios with Windows 7, hardware virtualization will be disabled.” And he continues: “Sony has no plans to make this function available in any of our computers.”

Hardware Virtualization is disabled to cut cost!

This of course begged the obvious question of why: “It’s part of our licensing deal with Intel,” he explained: “To retain a competitive edge they sell the boards to Sony with a guarantee from us that we will disable the feature on all our computers. That way we get the boards at a discount and they (Intel) can sell them at full price to other computer manufacturers who want the feature enabled.” At this point I mentioned that I had just been in touch with Dell who confirmed that all their new XPS laptops have Hardware Virtualization enabled and that these computers on average retail for $400 less than the comparable Sony ones. “VT (Hardware Virtualization) is a fairly obscure function that not many people use. Corporate feels that it’s not worth it. That is in spite of us techs recommending they enable it” was his somewhat surprising response.

It’s not on the box, so you can’t return it

As I promised in my first post about this situation I am hell bent on returning my laptop for a full refund claiming either defect or that it does not perform to spec. I asked the tech about this and he at once told me they will not refund the computer under any circumstances: “It doesn’t say on the box that the computer supports Virtualization so they (corporate) feel that you have no case. If it’s not on the box you won’t get your money back is where they stand.” I pointed out that if you look up the specs of the processor on Intel’s website or go to a store and buy it on its own the spec sheet clearly states that it has Intel® Virtualization Technology. To that he had no answer. I then pointed out that the box doesn’t say anything about stereo sound or colour screen either but that if they shipped computers that only had mono sound and black and white screens people would be furious. His response was the same as before: “Virtualization is something few people use and corporate doesn’t think this is a real issue. And they are willing to take the hit of bad publicity if people start to complain. They are willing to lose customers over this!” In other words they don’t think enough people will voice their frustration or make life difficult for them so they are willingly screwing their customers to turn a profit. Classy.

Class action lawsuit anyone?

It seems abundantly clear that Sony has deliberately disabled Hardware Virtualization on their Vaio computers to save money. It is equally clear that they have made no effort to inform their customers of this. As a result many customers, myself included, have purchased computers with the perception that they would perform to the specifications provided by the OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers - in this case Intel) only to find they do not. Any rational person would agree that under these circumstances Sony should have provided some form of written information or warning stating that in spite of hardware support, Hardware Virtualization has been disabled in the same way that they would have warned that in spite of the screen being able to display colours, the screens on certain computers would only display black and white. Now I’m no lawyer but I think the customers have a valid case for a class action lawsuit here. The argument that Sony is in the clear just because the box doesn’t state that the computer does Hardware Virtualization is logically defeated by the fact that the processor itself has this functionality as one of its main features and selling points.

So, does anyone know a good class action lawyer willing to take on this case and go up against a major multinational corporation? And does anyone want to join forces to show Sony that when you treat your customers like crap they fight back? In the meantime I’m taking my computer back to the store I bought it from and make the guys there sweat for selling me a computer that doesn’t work!

Problem: After Automatic Update the site turns white!

The main culprit is the automatic upgrade feature included with WordPress 2.7. For a lot of users (me included), the automatic upgrade does not fully update and/or replace the necessary core files and actually ends up putting them in the wrong place. As a result the update is not completed and the database is not updated either.

The result of this is that both the public pages of the blog as well as the admin areas are replaced by white blank pages. Not exactly what you want from a simple update, right?

Solution: Delete everything and do a manual install, then a manual database update

Unfortunately if after the auto update your blog is gone, you have to do a manual upgrade. And I mean a complete manual upgrade. I’ve done this with three separate blogs now and it’s painfully obvious that for whatever reason simply replacing files does not do the job. To get things up and running again you have to fully delete your entire WordPress install from the server and then upload a fresh new version of WordPress 2.8. And that’s not all. Even after uploading a fresh version of 2.8, your site will probably still be white. To solve this you have to manually update the database by going to http://www.yoursitename.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php. Only after this is done will you have access to the front and back end.

How to safely upgrade to WordPress 2.8

This is especially important for people with blogs hosted by 1and1.com

If you do not like the prospect of potentially spending several hours banging your head against your desk while your blog disappears and your inbox fills up with emails from people telling you your blog is gone I strongly urge you to do a complete manual upgrade if you want to go to 2.8 right now. Or better yet, just wait until whatever it is that is causing this mess is fixed. The good people behind WordPress have published a great and easy to understand guide on how to manually upgrade WordPress and I suggest you follow it to the letter (including all the backup stages - trust me, you don’t want all  your work to disappear!)

I’m confident that the problems that have been reported will be ironed out by the developers in a matter of days, but until then I’m going to ignore the “Please Update Now!” warning at the top of my admin panel.

Upgrade Typograph to work under WordPress 2.8

1. Download and unzip the archive with the fixed functions.php file here.
2. Access your Typograph theme directory in your hosted WordPress installation (should be under www.yoursitename.com/wp-content/themes/Typograph).
3. Delete the old functions.php file under the Typograph theme directory.
4. Upload the new functions.php file to the Typograph theme directory.

I have tested this critical fix and it works.

Snap your windows to any location

We’ve all run into this problem: When working with multiple documents, multiple file folders or using a web browser to research content while writing a document, doing image editing or programming a web site we keep having to switch between different windows. And if there’s a lot of switching back and forth or  you have a lot of windows open at the same time this can get quite tedious. To aleviate this issue many end up trying to resize the windows so that each fit half the screen. In extreme cases (like myself), they buy a second monitor so they can place one folder or application on each screen. But even so you are still left with the annoying task of resizing your windows and drag them around.

That’s now a thing of the past. Windows 7 has an intelligent “window snapping” feature built in that does the brunt of this work for you.There are five main positions for this snapping feature:

• Grabbing the top bar of any window (even when it is maximized) you can drag it in “hovering window” size to any place on your desktop. This pretty much eliminates the need for the Restore Down button in the upper right-hand corner.
• Grabbing the top bar and moving the window to the extreme left of the screen automatically snaps the window to the left so it covers exactly half of the screen widthwise.
• Likewise moving the window to the right makes it snap to the right and cover the right half of the screen.
• Dragging the top bar to the extreme top of the desktop automatically maximizes the window to full screen mode.
• Grabbing the top bar of any window and shaking the mouse pointer back and forth a couple of times automatically minimizes all the other windows on the desktop leaving only the shaken one.

Control your windows with the arrow keys

The above snapping actions are all cool, but the mouse movements are just the beginning. A far more important innovation is that you can also control the same window snapping functions using the Windows key in combination with the arrow keys:

• Windows key + Up maximizes the current window.
• Windows key + Down sets the window to “float” or Restore Down mode. Hitting Windows key + Down while in a window that is already floating minimizes it to the taskbar.
• Windows key + Left snaps the window to the left half of the screen
• Windows key + Right snaps the window to the right half of the screen

Practical useage

I’m sure you, like me when I first heard about this, are thinking “Ok, so what’s the big deal? It’s not like I’m ever going to use this feature!” Trust me, you will. The power of this feature (and especially the key combinations) became obvious to me when I was doing the rewrite for my upcoming book Sams Teach Yourself Expression Web 3 in 24 Hours. A huge part of the rewrite consisted of opening two Word documents and cross-referencing them and opening two file folders and moving files back and forth between them. Since I do all my writing on my laptop I didn’t have the benefit of two monitors so I ended up having to fit two instances of Word or two opens folder on the same screen. This process now takes about 1 second and requires no fine motor skills or mouse work. Simply use the Alt+Tab combination to pick the appropriate window and hit Windows key + Left or Right depending on what location you want the window to be in. So when I was working with two Word documents side by side switching between single full-screen document view and dual document view became a matter of 3 or 4 keystrokes rather than Restore Down, resize with mouse, move around, switch back and forth etc etc.

It seems like a small thing but holy crap does it ever make my life (and yours) easier!

Bonus: Desktop Peek!

One of the things that really annoyed me about Windows Vista was all the Sidebar Gadgets. That is to say the gadgets themselves didn’t annoy me but the sidebar did. The whole point of having these gadgets available was, in my mind, to be able to access them and see them when I needed to without having to do a lot of moving around and closing windows etc. But the sidebar was a total pain and always got in the way so I ended up just turning the damned thing off completely. In Windows 7 the Gadgets are released from the sidebar and can be placed wherever you want them. But that still leaves the problem of how to see them quickly (not to mention all the other crap I store on your desktop). Well, there’s a really clever solution to this too: At the extreme right hand side of the taskbar there is a small rectangular box. If  you hover your mouse over it all your open windows automatically become transparent and you can peek at your desktop. Clicking the rectangle minimizes all your windows so you have access to the desktop. Likewise clicking it again restores all the windows to where they were in the order they were stacked. Couldn’t be any easier.

You can read a very long and detailed explanation of how this all came about in the article Designing Aero Snap in the Engineering Windows 7 blog.

As per usual nothing of my session will be set in stone until a couple of minutes before the session starts (because I’m just that organized) so if you’re attending and you have a request or a suggestion or a question that you’d like me to talk about, drop a line in the comments of this post or send me an email and I’ll take it under consideration.

I was going to bring some of my new and insanely cool limited edition shirts to the event but sadly the printer decided they need two full weeks to do the job so they won’t be ready in time. Instead I might be bringing some other cool nicknacks to remember me by. And who knows, it might be something you actually want!

Windows 7 shows a complete reinventing of the Windows task bar. More than a launch platform it is now a full fledged object dock with tons of added functionality and it is fully customizable. I could write a whole article just on the new taskbar, but here I’m just going to give you some highlights:

Object dock

The most useful new feature of the taskbar is that you can now drag and drop any item, whether a shortcut, a folder or even a file, onto it for easy access. And whereas in the older versions the quicklaunch icons were separated from the actual running app icons, they are now one and the same. In practical terms this means when you launch an application already docked on the taskbar it gets highligted rather than duplicated. And if yo launch several windows (or in the case of most browsers several tabs) they stack one behind the other to give you access to all of them at the same time. The same goes for file folders and documents. Additionally you can move and reorganize any and all items on the taskbar in any way you want even when they are open.

Aero Peek

If you have multiple windows or folders open at the same time it can be tricky to remember which one contains which item. To abolish this problem the taskbar has a new feature called Peek. Like the name suggests it gives you a peek of the opened content when you hover over the different active icons providing a preview and full access to all the options without actually having to open them.

Peek manifests itself like a bigger taskbar with preview images of each of the open windows, tabs, files or folders and when you hover your mouse over each of them, the full window gets switched to the object in question giving you a quick preview. When I’m writing I usually have multiple browser tabs, three or four folders and at least two or three Word documents open at the same time and this feature makes it infinitely easier for me to find what I’m looking for rather than having to Alt+Tab my way through all the opened elements.

Enhanced functionality

In addition to simply launching and previewing open applications, the taskbar gives you enhanced and program-specific functionality at the click of the right mouse button. This activates a pop-up menu which, depending on the icon in question, gives you a list of everything from bookmarked or pinned pages to recently viewed documents and frequently accessed folders. And for each of the pinned applications you can pin sub-elements directly to the taskbar for instant access. In practical terms it functions like a favourites list for all your applications allowing you to pin important or useful documents, graphics, web sites, folders, videos, projects, whatevers directly to the taskbar for instant access.

See only what you want to see

One of my pet peeves with the taskbar in XP and Vista was the section that is supposed to give you information about running background applications such as virus scanners, wireless status, audio,  video etc. My big problem with this feature was that everything and it’s seccond cousin twice removed wanted to get top billing in the bar and as a result I had this insanely annoying accordion thing going on where I needed to hit a button to make all the icons appear and then quickly navigate to the right one to make my change.

No more! The new Windows 7 task bar lets you decide exactly what icons to display and what icons to ignore. And you are provided with two levels of access: The icons on the taskbar itself and the icons in a pop-up menu that can be accessed from a button. With these two features you can hand pick what application icons you want to see and which ones you don’t care about. And as with the other applications you can reorganize the icons in any way you want giving you full control over your workspace.

So in the coming week I will publish ten articles outlining ten Windows 7 features that will make you fall in love with the application (and quite possibly reconsider your “Mac is better” stance):

1. It Just Works - Right Out of the Box!

The first thing that astounded me with Windows 7 is that it works properly out of the box. That may sound weird but if you’ve even tried to reinstall a Microsoft operating system on a computer, be it a branded unit, a custom built machine or a laptop, you know that the OS install is just step one of several. In the old days, simply installing the operating system would give you a computer with terrible screen resolution, no networking and generally sub-par performance. To get things running properly you needed to search for and install numerous drivers including screen drivers, motherboard drivers, networking drivers, audio drivers etc etc. All of this took time, effort and a lot of patience - three things people normally don’t have.

To try to curb this problem many PC manufacturers ship their computers with custom OS installs that revert the system back to store shelf operation. The problem with this is that the manufacturers have started selling space on these reset systems and filling that space with bloatware and garbage you don’t want and don’t need. And when you revert your system to shelf operation it means reinstalling all the trash - an operation that ruins performance and clutters your PC. All in all it’s a crap chute.

No more: Windows 7, out of the box with zero custom drivers and no setup, works properly on most if not all modern computers. Case in point: I just installed Windows 7 RC on my wife’s aging Toshiba Satellite M100. It took 15 minutes in total and once the OS was installed, everything except the audio and the scrolling function on the mouse pad worked perfectly (and in the Windows 7 team’s defense, there is a known problem with the M100 audio because the drivers from the audio manufacturer don’t work properly). I had wireless networking, full functionality including custom Fn keys, optimal screen resolution and performance and even card reader functionality. When I installed Vista Ultimate on the same computer a week earlier I had to download and install 12 drivers to get the same functionality.

The same can be said for my Sony Vaio SR140D only this time no drivers were needed to get the computer up to fully working status.

Why does it work so well now? With the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft ran into an unexpected problem: The 3rd party component manufacturers were unbelievably slow in rolling out drivers for the new OS and as a result users were stuck with computers that didn’t work properly. And even though the driver problems sorted themselves out over the first 6 months of Vista’s life, the damage was done and people wrongfully blamed Vista (and Microsoft) for the problems. The Windows 7 team took the experiences from the Vista launch to heart and devised a novel yet ingenious solution: Invite all the hardware manufacturers to work with the development team on the Microsoft campus to create generic drivers for all their hardware, and place those generic drivers either in the install itself or in an open repository for easy access.

As a result when you install Windows 7 on a computer with hardware from a known manufacturer, the installation disk more than likely already has a fully functional generic driver for that hardware that works to spec making the search for specialized drivers pretty much pointless.

But does it crash?

Much has been made of the Windows platform’s uncanny ability to crash at the most inopportune of times. But truth be told this really isn’t as big an issue as it is made out to be. In my experience (and for the record, I currently have 7 computers running in my house) computers crash for two reasons: Either you make them do something they really shouldn’t be doing or something inside the computer goes bump in the night. System crashes caused by “crappy” operating systems are incredibly rare and just as likely to happen on a Mac or a Linux based computer as a PC.

That said I have managed to crash Windows 7 RC once while trying to run a corrput .avi file in Windows Media Centre, Windows Media Player and VLC at the same time. Not surprisingly when all three applications encountered the same bad part of the clip at the same time things went horribly wrong and the famous blue screen of death appeared.

My point is this: If your Windows 7 computer is functioning properly hardware wise and you’re not trying to bring it to its knees, it won’t crash. Period.

Hardware Virtualization is Supported on a Sony Vaio…

When I started looking for a laptop back in the fall of 2008 I had a number of requirements: It had to be small (13.3” screen), light and powerful. I’m also a big proponent of future proofing so I did a lot of research on the capabilities of the processor to ensure that when I encountered unusual situations that required above-standard specs I would be able to get this from my laptop as well. As a result I narrowed my search down to laptops with the Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 or above processor. Not only were these processors based on the new 45nm technology making them faster and more energy efficient than their predecessors but they also had full support for 64bit operating systems and hardware virtualization. This last bit was paramount because as a beta tester I knew that somewhere down the line I would need to run virtual operating systems on my computer to do proper testing.

After much pining and tons of research I landed on the Sony Vaio VGN-SR140D - it was small, light, powerful, full featured and had the right processor. Before buying it I read all the specs on both Sony’s own site and in multiple reviews and store listings and saw nothing about hardware virtualization being disabled so I figured like any sane person would that this meant the computer would let me use the processor the way it was designed if and when the time came. To make double sure I ran the Intel Processor Identification Utility on a store model and as expected it stated that Intel Virtualization Technology was supported.

Done deal.

… But Sony Has Disabled Virtualization in the BIOS

Flash forward to May 2009 and I was in for a big and unpleasant surprise. Needing to run some tests on Expression Web 3 for my upcoming book I set up a virtual PC on my laptop to run XP inside my current OS. But when I tried to start the virtualization environment I got an error message saying that hardware virtualization was disabled in the BIOS and asking me to enable it. Sure thing I thought and spent the next hour trying to figure out how to access the BIOS on my laptop in the first place (tip to Vaio owners: To access the BIOS you have to hit F1 or F2 when the VAIO screen flashes).

Once I did get into the BIOS I was flabbergasted. The BIOS on this laptop is so stunted it is really not useful for anything but setting the system time and selecting a booting device. And nowhere was there any virtualization settings.

A quick search on Google told me I should have been more vigilant in my research: Users all over the world have reported for some time that Sony has stunted all their Vaio laptops and turned off hardware virtualization. And in spite of heroic efforts from hacks to full on BIOS rewrites users have had little to no success enabling the feature without risking killing their laptops in the process. But most surprisingly Sony has been beligerent in their refusal to even address the issue of why virtualization has been disabled and have provided zero information on whether this feature will be enabled in the future.

No Virtualization Means the Computer Does Not Perform to Specifications

So it turns out no Vaio laptop allows hardware virtualization in spite of full support for this feature from the processor. This is because Sony has deliberately (or ignorantly) disabled the feature. I can imagine two scenarios that may explain this bizarre situation:

Either the BIOS on the newer Vaios with the new processors that support hardware virtualization is left over from older versions with processors that did not support this technology and they simply forgot or were too lazy to update the BIOS.

Or Sony deliberately disabled the feature in some half-brained effort to force people who want the feature to pay top dollar for a more advanced model.

The problem with the latter is that to my knowledge not even the top-of-the-line Sony laptop allows for virtualization so my money is on the first option.

Regardless, any fair minded, logical and intelligent person will agree that when the hardware supports a feature and there is no explicit information warning that this feature has been disabled, one can assume that the feature will work properly. And since there is no information in the documentation or spec sheets for these computers stating that hardware virtualization has been disabled in spite of the processor supporting it, it is fair to say the computer is not performing to specifications.

Fix it or I’m Sending it Back!

Where does that leave us? The answer should be simple. Just like if you had bought a new 1080p HDTV only to discover that for whatever reason the manufacturer decided to turn off the colour feature leaving you with only black and white images without warning about this, a laptop that has hardware virtualization disabled in the BIOS in spite of hardware support without the customer being warned about this is by definition not performing to specifications and should be returned. That is unless the manufacturer gets its head screwed on straight and fixes the problem immediately.

I know for a fact that Sony is well aware of this problem but so far they have not lifted a finger to do anything about it. So here’s my ultimatum: I need hardware virtualization enabled on my Vaio VGN-SR140D on or before June 1st. If Sony has not coughed up a viable solution to this problem by then, I am taking my computer back to the store and demanding a full refund of the purchase price claiming the computer does not perform to specifications. This is unfortunate because I love my laptop and I’m having a hard time finding a replacement, but I will not stand for this kind of disrespect where customer service is concerned.

Why should you care? Windows 7 is just around the corner!

I’m sure a lot of people are reading this thinking “seriously dude, why do you care. It’s not like normal people need hardware virtualization anyway.” Well, here’s some news for you and for Sony: When Windows 7 rolls out before the end of this year, the support calls from Vaio owners frustrated with not being able to turn on virtualization are going to go through the roof. Why? Because Windows 7 comes packaged with Virtual XP - an application that lets everyone run a fully working version of the old operating system within Windows 7 thus letting them use older applications that don’t run properly in Vista and Windows 7 environments. This is a huge and revolutionary feature in Windows 7 and a big selling point and unless Sony gets their act together there’s going to be a long line of people wanting to return their laptops come December.

The countdown starts NOW!

Needless to say writing a book about software that not only is not out yet but is not even finished yet is a bit of a challenge. And like last year (when I wrote the first version of the book) I will probably spend the next couple of months in constant revision mode making new screen grabs, changing tutorials to fit a not-yet-completed user interface and so on. But hey, I’m not complaining: Writing these books means I have to learn and understand every minute detail about the software. And knowing your tools inside out makes for a faster and more productive work routine.

The new book is more than just an update to fit the new user interface: Over the past year I’ve received countless emails from readers with questions and comments about everything from how to save files in Expression Web to how I got a book deal and I’ve taken all these comments, suggestions and criticisms along with my own experiences and thoughts to rewrite many of the chapters and add new and exciting content. And yes, my sentences are just as long in the book!

New features in the book

The new version of the book will, amongst other things, include:

• a completely new project that the reader will build from the ground up. The new project has a better design, more flexibility and new choices for the designer to make the site her own. The idea behind the new project is that once the site is completed by the end of Hour 24, the reader can simply replace the content from the book with her own content and launch the site.
• New menu tutorials showcasing vertical and horizontal CSS based menus as well as a CSS based drop-down menu.
• A CSS layout tutorial explaining how you can use CSS to create multiple different layouts within one site without having to make separate style sheets.
• An entire chapter on cross-browser testing using SuperPreview and the other accessibility and reporting tools built into Expression Web 3.

I am currently rewriting Hour 18 and, having skipped some chapters, still have about 10 to go (plus a couple of apendixes and a bonus chapter) so if you have comments, questions, concerns or anything else you want to say before I wrap this baby up, please feel free to put it in the comments below or send me an email. The book is written to help you so if you need help, speak up!

That said, go to Amazon.com and buy the book now. That way you know you’ll have it the minute it comes out!