One Day Of My Own Life

What should I talk about?

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:25:00 +0000

Alsalam alikom wa ra7mat Allah wa barakatoh (aka Peace Upon You)

One of the problems every blogger faces is how to answer the above question… We often ask our fellow friends for suggestions, or even post a whole post and let people suggest topics in the comments… well, no more! skribit (http://skribit.com/) tries to find a better solution to that, by subscribing, it gives you a widget code that you can put as a side bar in your blog to let people suggest topics to talk about…

And I’m starting this right away, I’ve included the suggestions box in this post, please use it to suggest topics for me to talk about… after a while I’ll move it into the sidebar and keep it there for the foreseeable future :)

Note: if you are using RSS, you might not be able to get the box, please visit the original post link.

See all 0Suggestions

Thanks,

Stay tuned ;)

My first publicly-tested recipe

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 02:09:00 +0000

Alsalam alikom wa ra7mat Allah wa barakatoh..

so yes, I do cook!

Yesterday, we have held a potluck (Dish Party) in our office, people from all nations were invited to serve any dish they are famous for… and I’ve to tell you, these guys really know how to cook!.

I didn’t have much time to cook, had to wake up in the morning, buy supplies, come back home, cook and then go to work at 9ish… Cooking under pressure :D…

What recipe did I pick, Stuffed Grape Leaves (محشى ورق عنب)… I don’t have a good picture for it :( but here is a picture for the gr8 chiefs,

Here we were discussing what kobeba (كبيبة) is :D

Will post my recipe later! In Shaa Allah

Salam.

Friend Assemblies .NET

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:05:00 +0000

Alsalam alikom wa r7amat Allah wa barakatoh (Peace upon you..)

Long story short, you have AssemblyA (with source code) and AssemblyB… you want AssemblyB to be able to access internal members (types, data, methods.. etc) of AssemblyA…
You can of course do that through Reflection but come on, it’s not a descent way to do it.. right??

Continue Reading… [my MSDN blog]

Windows7 adds Math Input Panel

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 23:10:00 +0000

Alsalam alikom wa ra7mat Allah wa barakatoh…

I was reading a windows team post about Input Panels improvements in Windows7 [here]. When at the end I saw a very interesting –intuitive if you wish- new thing… which is, as you guessed, the Math Input Panel…

Yes, that crappy font is mine… I “drew” that by mouse as I don’t have a tablet pen/pc.

You can then paste it directly into word and it’ll recognize it as an editable equation…

During my tests, the output panel (the top part) hanged, but I liked that the drawing panel was still responsive and I could still write/erase… till the top one started to respond again…

One other thing to know, after you click Insert (that button down there) it copies the equation in MathML [Wikipedia link] format.. which is a standard way of representing equations and hence any application that recognizes the format can insert it not as an image but as a nice editable equation…

If you think it recognized something wrong, you can click “Select and Correct” then draw a circle around the part you suspect, you will get a list of other alternatives. However, It’s missing a “manually edit” or something like this, to let you define what you really mean in MathML or just as MS Word’s equation editor..

No, this isn’t mine.. I copied it from the post above

From the post:

The Math Input Panel (or MIP) is designed to be used with a tablet pen on a Tablet PC, but you can use it with any input device such as a touchscreen, external digitizer or even a mouse. MIP outputs the recognition result via the clipboard in MathML format, a standardized mathematical markup language. Any equation you write and recognize in MIP reaches your destination application in a completely editable form – you can insert and edit the output as you would edit any text.

We spent a lot of time researching and identifying as many areas of math as possible and endless different math notations. The final result is a great coverage of high school and college level math, and of even more advanced areas.

That’s it… stay tuned :)..

Thanks,

Into the hedge…

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:19:00 +0000

Alsalam alikom wa ra7mat Allah wa barakatoh (Peace upon you)

Have you ever got the feeling that you are sitting inside a hedge… in the sense that you are surrounded by noon-sun light but you don’t know the directions… and despite the fact that you are a few inches away from both sides, you are afraid to go either ways because you don’t know which side leads to the sharp edge and which is the safe ground…

What would you do… either wait the sun to set or take your best bet…

I don’t think there is a right answer, if there is one it would be “it depends”…

At least for me, I still can’t figure out what does it depend on! and I’m afraid to death that I won’t know till sunset! …

If I can ask you for one thing, that will be your prayers…

Alsalam alikom wa ra7mat Allah wa barakatoh

Microsoft Web Platform Installer… coming near you

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:36:00 +0000

The Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 (Web PI) is a free tool that makes it simple to download, install and keep up-to-date with the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform, including Internet Information Services (IIS), SQL Server Express, .NET Framework and Visual Web Developer. In addition, install popular open source ASP.NET and PHP web apps with the Web PI.

Here is the code snippet if you want to spread the word :)

<a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=146503" title="Get the Microsoft Web Platform">
<img src="http://www.microsoft.com/web/media/badge/get_microsoft_web_platform.png" alt="Get the Microsoft Web Platform" border="0" />
</a>

Visual Studio 2008 Not saving changes or project properties?

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 23:12:00 +0000

Alsalam alikom wa ra7mat Allah wa barakatoh (Peace upon you)

I’ve recently ran into problems with VS 2008. Summarized here:

When you try to edit the project properties (specially C++ projects) you are faced with a little nice message saying “Exception from HRESULT: 0xF9F0F308”.
Sometimes when you are editing a file (specially large ones), VS doesn’t recognize you’ve made changes (ie doesn’t display that ‘*’ in the files tabs) hence, when you save, nothing actually gets saved.

For those 2 problems, a friend explained the problem and a work around (till they officially release a fix)…

Open up a Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt
Run cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE"
Make a backup copy of devenv.exe in case something does not work right.
ie. copy devenv.exe devenv.exe.bak
Run editbin /largeaddressaware:no devenv.exe

Happy VSing… :)

Ostrich… not stupid anymore

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 20:56:00 +0000

Alsalam alikom wa ra7mat Allah wa barakatoh

When I was a child, teachers used to show us a picture of an Ostrich hiding her head in the ground, back then they told us she is stupid because she thinks by not seeing the enemy, the enemy can’t see her…

Have you ever wondered whether this story’s true at all ?! (ie. Have you personally asked an ostrich and she told you that weird reason ?)

Let me ask you a similar question, why do you close your eyes when your doctor gives you a shot? I think it’s the feeling that you don’t want to “watch” the shot that will cause you pain…

Why don’t you think the Ostrich’s that same concept as humans? why did we judge she is stupid enough to think the other way!

My whole point is, try not to “judge” people by how you see their actions, let them explain them for you!

Done!

Air without sound

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Alsalam alikom wa ra7mat Allah wa barakatoh

What is Air without Sound anyway?

I was looking from the window beside where I sit now, there were some construction happening over there, I have my windows open to get some fresh air...

I thought, sound is not a substance by itself, it's just a sort of signal moving through materials... so if the material can alter the waves in somehow to the extent it eliminates them or at least makes them regular, then it'll not transfer the original sound waves... right?
Some Science:

Image via Wikipedia

As I remember, to cancel a wave you have to face it with a similar wave in an exactly opposite direction +ve and -ve if you can say... if they matched in signal (+ve and +ve) that would produce resonance (e.g double the sound) and may drive me crazy :D !

What if this can be applied to a sheet that I can cover my window with, it can be driven by electricity or something.. it can have a sensor hold on some distance, that senses the sound wave coming, then it triggers non-mechanical part to produce a similar wave in an exact opposite direction...
Then, you get fresh air, without noise… wohooo

Sounds since fiction? maybe yes.. but I imagine it'll one day be doable !

Thanks,

When you wait by the Terminal...

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 02:25:00 +0000

Alsalam alikom wa ra7mat Allah wa barakatoh

This is a post I started to write loong ago but never finished. For some reasons I remembered it and decided to finish and post.

The Terminal(imdb link) is a movie that tells a story of a man who lived in a terminal at the airport for nearly a year waiting for the moment when they let him in to New York.
Away from the details of the story and why that happened to him, the movie shows a man preferred to wait for a year in the airport and fulfil a promise he gave to his father sometime ago... his father is dead but he insists on keeping his promise.
Sometimes -a lot of times actually- I feel people lost that thing inside to wait for their precious moments to come.
The guy in the movie was allowed many times to escape -legally and not- but he's never done that. Maybe he was smart enough to realize those were traps, and maybe he thought "maybe I can wait for the real solution to come".
It sometimes happen that you find yourself in a miserable situation, having nothing to spend, having no work, no friends, no life to live. You have the choice to wait for the best, or escape and live like a fugitive for the rest of your life!
The guy also had no money, no food, nothing... but yet he's not chosen to escape, eventually, he figured out a way to earn money, buy clothes, invite the girl he met for dinner... etc that even the airport manager once said "he earns more than I do!"
I believe we all pass by that same terminal, it's all about how long can you afford to wait for the gate to open!

Have a good night!

Do you miss your desktop?

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:39:00 +0000

Alsalam alikom wa ra7mat Allah wa barakatoh

Image by MaXiAoLiNg™ via Flickr

Do you have a desktop like this?
I bet you do… Today, I was restarting my pc (since like a month ago) and realized I have never really used my desktop !!.. I have never hit Win+D (to hide all open windows) and click an icon on my desktop..
What I do usually is hit Win+R, open what I want (i.e process, path, the desktop folder itself)
I’m not quite sure whether this is only me or not but this is what I see when I wander around in our office… everybody has something open, nobody is looking at their desktop !
What desktops are there for? a start page to use when you start your pc for the first time? makes no sense.. over time, companies/individuals are producing more and more ways to access everything without the need to go back to your desktop (i.e Google Desktop, MS Desktop Search, AutoHotKey… etc) they are all trying to put all your information at your hands..
For me, I even don’t use Vista’s –so cold so good application launcher- that shows up when you hit the win key.. why? because my machine is usually loaded with dozens of open software/windows, so hitting Win key and waiting for 2-3 seconds till it open then type something looks like a lot to me! I would say launching an application should not take more than 2 seconds. In vista/google desktop when your pc is loaded, it may take 4-5 secs..
A solution? I don’t have a direct one.. but for instance, I liked the Mozilla’s AURORA that small external LCD where you can see the latest information… what if it is clickable/touch-aware and what if this is integrated into your keyboard, so that you can put short cuts for most used applications?.
I just want to start an application when I want to, not when my machine allows me to… Am I asking for something hard !

Dare To Dream Different !

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 23:42:00 +0000

Alsalam alikom wa ra7mat Allah wa barakatoh

Microsoft has a .NET framework version called .NET Micro, which is basically a .Net framework for embded systems... they are making a competetion which has a relaxing schedule.. and suits the need for financial support (they will give you hardware if you are one of the top 100 ideas... which I believe will not be that hard )

So that was for the .NET Micro ...

This year, Imagine Cup theme is: "Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems facing us today."...

So for those of you who didn't yet start/pick their next fun project... or are hobbyists to challenge their minds... I believe this is a good deal .

For more information about the competetion, please visit Coding4Fun (e.g http://blogs.msdn.com/coding4fun/archive/2008/10/09/8991966.aspx)

If you think others can make use of that, please help spread the word .

Question Google Chrome Process Isolation Model..

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 20:36:00 +0000

Alsalam alikom wa ra7mat Allah wa barakatoh

Google once published this comics book about Google chrome (their Open Source Web Browser)
I've linked to one page that I'm concerning about for now...

Page 4, Google Chrome Comics Book

It explains that Chrome will have separate process per tab, away from the benefits/concerns about this... I was accidently checking chrome's task manager (Shift + Esc) and found something that -apparently- violates this rule...

As you see, tab1 process has actually spanned 3 tabs... which is a similar behavior to what IE8 does... I'm not quite sure why this happens in Chrome... but it's just a question to ask...

Thanks,
Haytham

I've finally started blogging!

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 05:03:00 +0000

Alsalam alikom wa ra7mat Allah wa barakatoh

Today, I've posted my first technical post on MSDN blogs.. you can find it here (Title: Javascript Execution Context)

I know it may not look fancy or rock science. It's just a start anyway.

Wait for more.
Thanks.

Is Google going bad?

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:44:00 +0000

Alsalam alikom wa ra7mat Allah wa barakatoh

About 20 years ago, Microsoft was on the peak. Those were the days young shareholders became millionaires. Everybody was super smart, innovative, loving the company. This was reflected to the outside world as well. People were seeing Microsoft as the dream company, they were all wishing to be developers to join the big MS.

Years later, people began to sue Microsoft, a lot of Anti-trust cases were issued, the biggest of them was about to break the big giant (I'm talking about merging IE into the OS when BillG lost about 40billions of his wealth).

Since that time, people's perception about Microsoft has changed, from the dream company to the enemy. Some people don't even know why they don't like Microsoft, they just don't.. they don't like windows because they just don't... they hate office because it's a MS product... A lot others have their very respected reasons. After all, MS will never be as it was 20 years ago.

How is this related to the title? it's actually very very related. When MS was built, I wasn't born yet, I was actually born when they built their first 6 buildings in the big MS campus. This's why all what I said was history that I read about... on the other hand, when Google was born and began to gain land, I was actually using the PC.. searching with Altavista/msn. So it's easier for me to watch and see what is happening over there...

Google at first was a "nice trial from a couple of young PhD guys" then it became "a great solution to many of our daily problems" then it became "the Internet Giant" then "Are they trying to dominate the web?" these days people started to actually "fight" against Google, more and more -unconfirmed- stories being published online about guys worked there and hated what the environment/type of work.

People started to question what Google do, as opposed to "loving" how Google do things.. of course a part of this is the fact that Google's actually started doing not-their-type of things (things like the weird Yahoo deal)

For me as a developer, I still admire both Google and Microsoft I admire the fact that they both have started very very small and ended up changing how the world handles a very trivial problem.

I wish Google doesn't continue doing mysterious steps and to start talk to change this bad perception they are gaining everyday. I will not be happy to see another fight against Google as it's going against MS.

Thanks,

SproutCore... Another Web2.0 Framework?

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:59:00 +0000

Since the recent announcement of Apple MobileMe -the MS ActiveSync like application- everybody in the Dev world have been speaking about what lies behind, about what gives it that desktop applications' smooth interface.. and here comes SproutCore.

SproutCore is a massive -yet elegant- MVC javascript framework, that gives developers the ability to quickly develop AJAX applications very efficiently.

It's claimed to be fast, optimized for both speed and size of javascript.

MS offers Silverlight to deliver the WPF experience to the web but you need to install the client to all machines + it's not really "light" yet.

Adobe has the widely spread Flash Player but it stands against all modern SEO techniques as it can't be indexed by search crawlers -while Silverlight can be-

Apple's recently used it to develop their MobileMe service and they are also willing to optimize their next Safari to run SproutCore scripts even faster...

A demo on SproutCore site to show a UI built completely with the framework

SproutCore is nice but when you think that each site you build that uses SomeWordButtong.js will actually have to download this file to the user, it doesn't sound really effective unless the framework will be fully integrated into the browser which brings us back to a Silverlight comparison...

My personal opinion is, I prefer to build -What I call- Text-Based sites than having to install a plugin. This gives the ability for the browser to do some magic... isn't that what browsers made for?

Thanks

Don't kill projects... Morph them

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:14:00 +0000

In a very nice -old- speech for Marissa Mayer (VP for Search in Google) she said that Eric once asked her "what will you do about these products that are not really gaining user base?"
she said: "well, either we cancel them, take them back to our labs, think about other ideas.... etc"
he said: "don't kill them, just morph them..."
What he meant is, if you have a smart group of people who worked hard to develop an idea and turn it into a product, it's more likely that this product has something inside that makes it successful. Failing to gain users base doesn't mean it's a bad idea/product, it's just that we didn't do it the right way, we didn't do it as people wants to see it..
We need to think about how to morph the product into something that people will actually like, and use happily everyday...
Wine 1.0's just been released today, this project took 15 years of development to see the light...

For those who doesn't know what Wine is, its an open source implementation for Windows APIs on Linux, it aims at emulating the windows environment so that any application that works on windows can work just fine under ~~windows~~ Linux.
This product was around for so many years, I've been watching it from a distance, seeing the 0.0x advances that happen, wondering if it'll reach a safe side or will wipe away.
Wine's 15 years of active development, proves -at least for me- that if someone has the passion to "finish" something as he dreams of, he will..
Wine is not perfect yet, nor is the only example about active development that could change something unusable into a really productive product that market needs.
Marissa was talking in Stanford University to CS students. She is a Stanford Graduate too. I believe this still applies to everybody out there.. we all had some crazy ideas that we soon gave up when we got no "nice" output...
The moral is "Don't give up, target people from a another viewpoint"
Thanks

What keeps ur feet on the ground?!

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:07:00 +0000

Alsalam alikom wa ra7mat Allah wa barakatoh,

The compass has been around since at least the 12th century, but scientists still don't know exactly how the Earth generates the magnetic field that keeps a compass needle pointing north.
Morning Edition, June 2, 2008 ·

One of the questions I kept thinking about A LOT is how does the earth generate that special magnetic field... what I was really wondering about is how weak it was, you can lift a 50kg +ve magnet rock and it'll feel the same as a 50kg -ve magnet rock!! ... and at the same time you can't jump more than 2 meters up... I was also imagining, if it's really a magnetic field as we know today, can we build a board with a very powerful opposite magnetic field to let us flyyy? I got no answers... Sob7ana Allah!

According to npr, a geophysicist from University of Maryland is trying to build a small model for a planet, give it a high spin speed and hope it will generate its own magnetic field.

He is planing to fill it with a liquid Sodium -as scientists believe earth has a big ball of liquid metal in its center-...

let's hope no one drops any water on the Sodium or else it'll be the end of such an interesting experiment!

Where I got the story: Slashdot link
Original Story: NPR

Thanks

What if it happened...

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Sat, 31 May 2008 22:20:00 +0000

Alsalam alikom wa ra7mat Allah wa barakatoh

Yesterday, when I was praying al Juma'a prayer, I faced a situation that I only read about in emails -till then- people forward.

I was not in the first line, when we started praying, a man in the line in front of me fell on his back... from what I saw, he seemed to fell unconcious, he couldn't resist or anything, he just fell on the ground, which interrupted 2 guys praying in the same line as myself.

I didn't know what to do, I actually didn't move or even turn my head to look to him... the two guys beside me -whom he interrupted- took care of him... so I saw no need for my help besides I didn't really know what to do except raising his leg -hoping it's just a low-pressure short coma- but they already did that... he was not moving, I can't deny I was sneaking some looks to check him...

The 2 guys did't want to lose their prayer too, the guy didn't move, they just went back to the prayer...

First raqa'a passed, no move yet...
Before the second raqa'a finishes, he started moving, but was still laying on the ground...

After the prayer finished, he standed up and went out... leaving me to my thoughts...

First thing came to my mind was... what if this guy died that time... how happy will he be... or not.
What if it happend to me... am I ready? it's really scary. It's really a good sign to die while praying, specially when a lot of people are around, like in Jumaa... and in a good day as Friday... but yet... what if ?

Second thing I thought about while writing the post is ... it'ld be really good and helpful to get a First-Aid course
because some day, you may be able to help saving a life...

Salam

How 3D Cities should be built...

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Fri, 30 May 2008 19:33:00 +0000

Alsalam alikom wa ra7mat Allah wa barakatoh

Yesterday, I got a post showing stockholm in 3D... not using Google Earth, not using Virtual Earth.. it's a new technology that a startup developed, it's 98% automated... they claim it took them 3 days to build a 3D model for stockholm (after capturing the photos).

Here is a random shot I picked...

As they say, the process is simple,

- They capture very hi-def areial photos,
- Input them to their processing unit for their innovative algorithms to analyze

and that's it, you get a nice fully textured 3D model...
When asked about Google Earth & Virtual Earth, they said
-GE using a very basic model to build 3D cities, they let the community manually build the cities..
-VE builds 3D Models for buildings only, we build anything that is higher than specific height, which means you will see 3D trees (not very nice though)

-GE runs as a desktop application (seems they didn't hear about the activeX browser plugin)
-VE runs as an activeX control (only on windows)
while hitta.se runs on Java (which runs on all OS, on all browsers)

Comparing the quality,
GE's models are the best in shape,
VE's models have textures,
Hitta.se is faster to build...

As I see the future in this field is toward a more accurate automated process, google's approach (so far) will need a lot of time -even with large participants- to build the universe in 3D...

Maybe a combination of both can do the job.

here is a link to enjoy the 3D Stockholm, it requires the latest JRE.

That's it so far, keep in touch.

[Update]
Live Maps added the functionality to rotate the camera while in bird's eye, I think this is a step toward automated 3D "cities" generation

Salam

What do you do? and how do you do it?

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Mon, 26 May 2008 03:52:00 +0000

Alsalam alikom wa ra7mat Allah wa barakatoh

I've remembered these two questions a couple of minutes ago, they were mentioned in a movie called "The Pursuit of Happyness" and as you see Happyness is written intentionally with 'y' but that's another story!

The scene was that the hero who was a depressed poor guy was walking in the street then found a guy parking his very nice & expensive car, he stopped him and asked him "may I as you two questions..." "What do you do? and how do you do it?"

Away from the scene and how things went on in the movie, the question that came to me was why don't I ask myself the same questions.. it's not that I'm successful or something but my point is to try to analyze what "were" my goals during my past life... and what did I do to reach the state I am in now -fail/success/progress...-

I believe what brought this to my mind is watching -again- Steve Jobs's motivational speech when he said "you can't connect the dots when you look to the future, you can only connect them when you look backward"
This is not 100% true I believe, because for somethings, we believe for sure what will happen if you did x then y then z...

Anyway, for some extent I felt his statement was true and can be applied to a lot of our day to day actions.

Are you now smoking? go back to what led you to smoke your first cigarette? was it depression? what were you depressed about?.... go back and back... you will find a lot of answers... a lot of consecutive actions you or somebody made that led to your first cigarette...

Are you leading your very successful company? I'm sure a lot you did in the past that led to you to this, nothing comes to lazy people, even if you didn't enter college, you did a lot of other things that you didn't realize back then that they will lead you to this...

Think about them again... What do you do now? and what led you to this?

The next question is, what is the point of tracking the past? I believe knowing what led you to this will make it easier for you to learn what mistakes you did and what did they led to.. and what good things you did and what did they led to... planning to your future should be easier by now In Shaa Allah..

Long post... this teaches you patience ;)

Have a nice week..

First day @ MS

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Mon, 12 May 2008 23:37:00 +0000

Alsalam alikom wa r7amat Allah wa barakatoh

This is my first day at Microsfot Canada Development Center (MCDC). I had a lot to tell but actually I don't have much time. I just wanted to post my first post from inside big M...

Catch you later.

Salam.

VS Winforms Designer inside your Application

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:00:00 +0000

This is not Visual Studio nor #Develop nor any other known IDE.. it's just a sample code from MSDN Magazine

Ever wanted to host Visual Studio Designer in your application? to give your user the ability to redesign forms or even create new forms ?

All you need is .NET framework installed (if you want to also compile the newly generated forms, you will need .NET SDK too -it's free :)- )

Surprisely, VS is not doing anything more than just "using" what is already there in the .NET framework winforms to enable users to design forms (drag, move, group, align,... etc).

There is a sample that was published once in MSDN Magazine, you can download it here

And an article published in this issue in "The Perfect Host" column..

Enjoy :)

Early look at MFC new feature pack

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 14:00:00 +0000

Alsalam alikom wa ra7mat Allah wa barakatoh

After the release of VS2008, VC++ team released a feature pack that includes a LOT of enhancemets to VC++...

One of the biggest steps is the built in support for Office 2007 UI styles (Ribbon, themes,.. etc)..

Here is what you get after creating a regular 0-code new project in MFC:

It also automatically saves the settings of the application theme, tool bar positions... etc in the registry to retrieve them on startup...

You can download the VC++ 2008 Feature Pack here

Last note, this set of UI controls is not originally implemented by MS, it's a third party that implemented them but MS aquired the control set and made sure they are fully compatible..

Looking forward for a similar step for C# guys ;)

The Soul of Opening Startups

noreply@blogger.com (Haytham Alaa) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:06:00 +0000

Alsalam alikom wa ra7mat Allah wa barakatoh,

I've never founded a startup -although I wish I do- sometimes looking at the situation from outside helps more realizing/analyzing the problems that may happen than being inside...

Every now and then, I find a blog post or an article speaking about startups and how to start yours and that you don't need to have real world experience... etc. A lot of chat from guys who experienced working in a big company as well as having their own startups..

What will follow is based on what I read (advices / success stories or even failure ones) and is based on what I personally see how it should go.

First we can start by defining what is a Startup.. it's an entity that one or more visionary people think about and put in action.

People have different claims against opening a startup

Claim 1: I need to wait a couple of years till I get real world experience in a well established company.

At different stages of your life you may start a startup, rule #1 it'll never be "too early" to start one.

My post will be dedicated to IT startups but some rules may apply to all other types.

If you didn't go to a college but you are a geek who has a dream. It's the best time to start one now... rule #2 if you failed, you have nothing to lose, if you succeeded you will get enough money for the rest of your life.

Are you a fresh graduate -like myself-? you are most probably inspired by the stories of Bill Gates (MS) and Steve Jobs (Apple) who all started their business so young and you have this thing inside you that pushes you that way, there is a voice inside tells you "hey, you are the perfect guy to have a startup"...

Some guys believe they should wait till they get their PhD, those believe in the way Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google Inc.) took. Keep in mind that eventually they brought Eric Shmidt from Novell to manage things, you can choose to be Sergey or Eric... it's all yours, they are both extremely famous/successful.... and wealthy ;)

My point is, whenever you have the passion to open a startup, just go and do it...

Claim 2: I've a family and I can't take that risk.

Your family comes first, that's the best but this should never be a barrier not to open a startup and fight for your dream.

There is a good probability that you will end up closing it and sitting at home for a couple of weeks/months till you get another job.. If you are not wealthy, those months will be a disaster for your family, I believe this is a risk you should never take.
But I also believe, having an understanding family, you may get a solution to do both (not risk your family & opening a startup)...

Partnership: having a partner, you are reducing the amount of money you will pay (hence saving some money for disasters :)) and it'll give your startup a better chance to succeed (two open minds will most probably be better than one, Bill Gates & Steve Ballmer, Larry Page & Sergey Brin... there are other non-celebrities success stories for 2 guys opening a very successful business)

Keep your old job: Opening a startup will require dedication in most cases, at first you have a lot to do to boost things, it'll be an overload on you to keep your old job even as a part timer. You should never expect an easy life!! instead, expect that you will have to skip a lot of weekends and a lot of pleasure time you used to have.

Save a big amount of money first: DON'T think about this... it's the ShipStopper bug that your mind may think of, if you decided to keep your job till you get a 'sufficient' amount of money that will keep your family safe, you will never feel safe about what you get... you will always say "what if something happened!! I need to save more money" and eventually you will lose your passion to start a company... I'm not saying that you don't save money for your family, sure you should :) but be reasonable and don't make that 'sufficient' thing a condition!

There may be other solutions to minimize the risk you may face with your family but I believe non will actually eliminate it... come on, risks are what give that nice taste to our lives!!.

Claim 3: I don't have that 1billion pounds idea

Who has it ? Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) didn't have it, there were dozens of famous social websites around there and they are still there but he managed to position his website among them by what? a 1billion pounds idea? no, he did a very regular website with a very simple UI, the only difference is that he did it well without spams :)...
There are a LOT of applications around the world that are waiting to be reinvented..

Just pick one that YOU like to work on and start working with your pals, maybe it's the 1billion pounds idea you were searching for.... and maybe not!

At some times when you have partners, and you don't have the 1BPI (1billion pounds idea).. it may be hard to pick something that you all like to work on... usually this should not happen because most probably your partners are guys with same interest as yours...
But anyway, assuming this happened, it'll be a hard choice, whether to separate to achieve your dream or to sacrify and work in your dream team... it's a trade off :)

Hope that was useful.