My wife had an old Canon. I don’t remember its model number either, but it was old and it was one of those small printers that you can get for around $50 these days. It cost probably 3 times that when she bought it. It was very slow but it never missed a beat. The problem with it was that it was set up in her make-shift office, but she worked on a laptop, often in the lounge room in front of the heater. She would then carry her laptop to the printer, plug it in, and print.

I decided to end all this. So I bought a Canon MX850. My son had a slightly different model Canon and he said it did everything he wanted. His model was superceded by now so I had a look at what was on offer.

This is what I needed. First I had to be able to network the printer. I print from my two desktop PCs which are networked, my laptop and my wife’s laptop. Second, I wanted to be able to print onto a CD or DVD. In the past I have delivered software to clients on CDs which I have then written on. Not a very professional look. Third, I wanted to be able to print duplex, or both sides of the paper. I know that you can print on one side, take the paper out, turn it over, and print the other side. I always forget which way to put the paper back in. So duplex printing solved that for me.

The Canon does all of that. The duplex printing is slow. The dialog box says that after it has printed one side it is waiting for the ink to dry before feeding it back in. I can live with the low speed. I don’t do duplex very often, but there are times when it is very useful and it does this automatically.

The print quality on the CDs is good, and easy to do. The printer comes with a program called CD Label Print. It is not very sophisticated or feature rich but it does the job. The version that came with the printer is out of date but a later version is available. I am sure that there are other CD printing software packages on the net, and I may look for one at some stage. But at the moment it produces CDs that are much more professional looking than my handwritten scrawl.

The printing review web sites may have things to say about the print quality. I am not a graphic artist and nearly all the printing I do is straight text. I have no complaints about the quality.

The printer, like many others these days, has options for printing photographs from digital camera cards. I haven’t tried this and I am not likely to. It seems a very expensive way to get photos. But if you need a photo in a hurry you can do it.

The final thing that I don’t know yet is the cost of ink. I have bought ink but I haven’t used the printer for long enough to work out the cost. But it is a bit like buying petrol for the car. It is one of the costs of doing business so you pay for it. And it certainly isn’t a major cost.

If you are after a multi funtion printer that does everything and does it well then the Canon is worth a look.

If you are new to source control then Eric has also written a Source Control Howto. This is aimed at SourceGear’s own product, Vault, but most of what he says is generally applicable to any source control product.

If, like me, you use Subversion then there is also online documentation available.

I should say, at the outset, that I don’t consider Subversion to be better than Vault. I use it because it is what I got to know and it works for me. One of the things about being a solo developer is that any of the minor differences between the various source control systems are largely irrelevant. I don’thave to worry about locking files, or how different files are merged. Working on my own means that concurrency issued just do not arise.

In the past I have used Subversion as a Windows service. There are two ways you can set it up, either as a service or as an Apache server. The service was easier to set up and I haven’t had the need to provide access via http. I also installed TortoiseSVN which is a Subversion client which integrates with Windows Explorer. Everything has worked well.

Some people have integrated source control with Visual Studio. I have never felt the need to do this. There were two reasons. First, I version more than source files. For example, I version documentation, not because of the versioning, but because it provides an easy backup. And secondly, because I stick more than source files into the source control, it seemed to me to be a separate exercise to the coding.

But there are some problems with this approach. The main one is forgetting to commit my changes. It goes something like this. I work at home in an office outside of, but attached to, our house. This is a good way to work. It means that I leave the house to go to work. But early in the evening my wife is likely to come out and tell me that dinner is ready. So I stop what I am doing and go and eat. Then I have coffee after dinner, maybe watch some TV, and figure that I am not going back to work. So I go back to the office to turn everything off. By now it is raining, and cold, and I want to get back inside in the warmth. I’ll check in my work in the morning, I say. But, of course, I don’t. I figure I’ll just make a few more changes and then check it in.

So I decided that I needed something better. I could, of course, embark on a course of self-discipline, but from past experience I know that that won’t work.

I then discovered VisualSVN. This integrates TortoiseSVN into Visual Studio, and it works with VS 2003, 2005, and the lastest version with VS2008. And I have to say it is brilliant. Because it uses TortoiseSVN I still have access to the tight integration with Windows Explorer for those files that do not form part of the development. And it is not intrusive. There are small, but noticeable, icons, like traffic lights, next to the files in Solution Explorer. After using it for a morning I am hooked.

VisualSVN is not free. There is a 30 demo, completely uncrippled. After that it is US$49. Given the good exchange rate between the AUD and USD at the moment it seems like a worthwhile investment.

VisualSVN works with Subversion as a service. However, they also have a free product called VisualSVNServer which is an Apache based server. I thought I would give this a go just to see what I thought. I didn’t want to spend time setting up a server but I thought, what the heck. VisualSVNServer is a 6meg download. You get an msi file and it just installs. You tell it where to install and where to put your repository. You can change port settings if you want. I didn’t need to. The thing that I thought might cause me a problem is that I am running 64 bit Vista. But it didn’t seem to care. It just installed and it runs fine.

If you want Source control, and if you are a developer then you need it, and you want integration with Visual Studio, and you want a simple install then this is the product for you. You will also need to install TortoiseSVN, but it is also a very simple installation process.

So far I couldn’t be happier.

I have just installed it and had a quick play with it for about 15 minutes, so this is not an exhaustive review.

First a bit of history.

There are two types of people in the world. Those who love everything that Microsoft does, and those who hate everything that Microsoft does. Actually there are three types of people in the world. There are also those, like me, who don’t fall into either camp. But the point is that Microsoft creates a great deal of passion in the IT world. And this is especially so when it comes to Internet Explorer.

In the mid 1990s Netscape had the lion’s share of the browser market. The web was very young, Tim Berners-Lee had created the web in 1989 and 1990 and it has been evolving ever since. Unfortunately, Netscape seemed to lose their way and Microsoft, somewhat belatedly, entered the browser market.

Microsoft, of course, had an enormous marketing advantage. Not because of their size, but because Windows was the most popular PC operating system, and they bundled Internet Explorer into Windows, so everyone who bought or upgraded Windows, or bought a new PC with Windows pre-installed, got IE.

Netscape’s codebase eventually became the basis of Mozilla and Firefox browsers. These two browsers, even though they were free, did not overtake the market, although they did manage to attain significant market share, especially among web developers.

The problem that Microsoft has had is that Internet Explorer has been much less compliant with web standards, as laid down by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), of which Microsoft is a member, than the other browsers. Microsoft’s explanation for non compliance is that it wished to provide its users with a better internet experience. Translated, that means “We are big enough to do what we like! Bad luck to the rest of you.”

This was a nightmare for web developers who had to develop sites that would render properly according to the web standards and then insert hacks to make the sites render in IE.

However, despite the complaints you hear from web developers, and I have often complained long and loud about IE, by version 6 things were very much improved. There were still problems, but it was a vast improvement over versions 5 and 5.5. At this stage MS announced that no further development would take place on IE. Rather a new browser would be produced for the next version of Windows.

For a number of reasons MS changed its mind, and IE7 was announced, and now delivered.

Let me state that I have enormous respect for the developers at Microsoft who worked on IE7. I have often read bits from Chris Wilson’s blog, and it seems that given the constraints of time, budget, corporate philosophy, and a host of other issues, he has done what was humanly possible to improve IE. There are still some issues to do with compliance, but that is also true of every other browser.

So what do I think? I was going to write this aricle in IE, but there was a problem with the excerpt box, the place where you insert the summary. I don’t know if this is an IE7 problem or a WordPress problem. I assume that WordPress will have a fix for it. It may be something I did, but the nature of the problem makes me think otherwise.

I love tabbed browsing, and IE7′s implementation works well. I have also downloaded a developer toolbar. I have something similar in Firefox and it is invaluable for debugging web sites that you are building.

All in all, first looks are good. When I have played with it a bit more I will say a bit more about it. But I want to congratulate Microsoft in bringing out a more compliant browser.

Some people mix all their styling in with the HTML, often because that’s how their WYSIWYG editor does it for them. But I don’t think that is a good way to produce web pages. The main reason is that What You See Is Definitely Not What You Get. OK, you may get it, but someone else using a different browser may not. So I think that the best way to produce web pages is to hand code them.

And the best way to style them is to use CSS. There are a thousand reasons to go this route. Read Eric Meyer or Jeffrey Zeldman or Molly Holzschlag or a thousand other web gurus to find out why.

So, let’s take it for granted that you are using CSS to style your web page. How do you edit the CSS? You go and get yourself a copy of Style Master, which is a product of Western Civilization, an Australian company which, I think, is located in Bondi, home of Australia’s most famous, although not its best, beach.

Should you use Style Master because it is Australian? Absolutely not! You should use it because it works, and it works very well. They have very satisfied users all around the world. Along with TopStyle it is, in my opinion, the best CSS editor that I have found. TopStyle and Style Master will both do what you want. I have tried both and have stuck with Style Master now for the last couple of years.

I don’t, in fact, do a lot of web development. That means that when I get back to it, like I am now, there are many things that I have forgotten. Style Master fills in the gaps in my knowledge. There are wizards for creating sites from scratch, using valid CSS. There are on line tutorials, good documentation, and even a related product called Layout Master. Layout Master is no longer a supported product, you can read why at their site. However, while I don’t use it for building sites, I found it to be a good tool to help me learn about absolute positioning of elements on web sites. It is a free download and could be useful if you are starting out in web design.

You will also find a number of courses available for download at very reasonable prices. I went through these courses a year or so back and they were invaluable.

The final thing to say about Style Master is that Maxine Sherrin and John Allsopp, the two people behind the company, are committed to web development and web standards. They conduct a number of international conferences, all of which are well attended with great speakers.

Disclaimer – I have no connection with Western Civilization and have never met or spoken to either Maxine Sherrin or John Allsopp, although Maxine did respond to an email I sent to her about 18 months ago.

However, it has always come bundled with Crystal Reports.

When I first started using and learning VB I thought that Microsoft knew what they were doing and since Crystal Reports came with VB then that is the way to write reports. I don’t think I have ever, before or since, become thoroughly disillusioned so quickly. Crystal Reports was unusable, incomprehensible, and even though it was given away, it was still overpriced.

I vowed never to use it again. And for over 10 years I have stuck to my promise. VB versions 4, 5 and 6 all came out and all had Crystal Reports bundled in, and I scrupulously avoided it.

When I got hold of Visual Studio 2003, of course I got Crystal Reports. I think it was version 8.something. And of course, I ignored it.

The time came, however, when I would need some kind of reporting tool. So I wrote my own. But it was very simple, and because it was written for a specific project it wasn’t very flexible. Recently I had to write an application which needed reporting and my reporting library wasn’t up to it. So I had two choices. I could re-write my own report generator, but that would have been a big job, or I could try Crystal Reports again.

I foolishly chose the latter course.

But I must justify my decision. There were a number of reasons for going with Crystal Reports this time.

• It was over 10 years since I had first tried it. Surely it would have improved by now.
• I needed to produce reports in both Word format and as PDFs.
• I was in a hurry.

Let’s look at these in turn. First, I think it is quite reasonable to assume that software will improve over time. Everyone has written bad software – I know that I have. Often you aren’t aware of the problems until someone has used it for a while and then pointed out where it could be improved. I can’t remember all the problems I had with the earlier version 10 years ago, but it still doesn’t work.

My report generator only produced straight text files and these weren’t acceptable for the application I was writing. An earlier version of this app wrote to Word files, and while this is a somewhat cumbersome thing to write it can be done quite simply. But I have never created PDF files before and I didn’t think I had time to find out how. Although, when I do get some time, this is something that I will investigate. However, I also hate PDF (I am a great hater!) But you have to produce what the client wants. And Crystal Reports can produce both Word and PDF files.

I was in a hurry so I thought that Crystal Reports would save the day. It took me four days to produce a simple one page report containing three sub-reports.

I looked at the documentation that came with Crystal Reports. It didn’t help. I searched the web and found very little to help. I went to the Business Objects (the company that now owns Crystal Reports) web site and looked at their documentation. Mostly I found sales guff on why I should upgrade to version 11. You’ve got to be joking!

I then went to the forums on their web site. After all, there must be other users who have had the same problems that I have had. And there were. Under the section for Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET I found 521 pages of posts, over 5,000 threads. And there were lots of posts describing the problems that I was having. But there were no answers. The only replies to posts that I found were a lot of people saying that they had the same problem and was there a solution yet. Then I came across this:

Do they post answers on this forum? All I ever seem to see are questions.

To which was posted this reply:

If they don’t post answers, then you have to call and give them $95. What possible motivation do they have to post.

I eventually got my reports to work. Business Objects were no help. They will all suffer 7 eternities in hell as penance for their lousy product and even worse support.

Obviously, the answer is one. You only need one computer. You write your program, you compile it, you make the distribution CDs all on the one PC. Many people do this, and I have done it myself.

But I don’t think it is the best way to go.

At the moment I use 3 separate PCs to produce programs. Well, not always, sometimes I get by with 2.

So I thought it might be useful to describe my hardware configuration. Of course, it is always subject to change.

Most of my development is done on my desktop. It is not the latest and greatest but it is OK. It is fairly basic in its configuration. A Pentium 4, 2.8 GHz, 120 gig hard disk and 1 gig of RAM. Until recently I had 512 meg of RAM but I upgraded to fast RAM and doubled the capacity. I am running Windows XP Pro with Service Pack 2.

This is a very common configuration, and quite suitable for development work.

Networked to this computer is another desktop. It is, in fact, my wife’s old computer, although it isn’t all that old. It is a 2.6 GHz Celeron with 256 meg of RAM and a 40 gig hard disk. It is running XP Home with Service Pack 2. This computer has one purpose only, it is for back ups and Source Control. Actually, these are the same thing because I do all my backing up, regardless of the type of data, through source control, in my case, Subversion. It’s just easier to do all your backing up using the one method, and source control is vital for development.

I have been thinking that I may move my project building to this machine, but at this stage I haven’t decided how to do it. NAnt will be part of it, but I have been wondering whether I need continuous integration. I have had a look at CruiseControl, but I wonder if it is needed in my situation. I will think more about this.

Thirdly I use a lap top. Sometimes I do some development on this PC, especially if I am not in my office, or I am sitting in my lounge room in front of the heater on a cold winter’s night.

But when I am in my office I use the laptop for looking up the specs of what I am building, checking how I did something on a previous project, maybe gaining some insight from the Web when I need a bit of inspiration.

Three computers just to build one small application – it might seem like overkill, but it works fine for me.

Perhaps a little background first. I program, mostly, in Visual Basic .NET, and sometimes in Visual C#. I have been using the 2003 version which requires the 1.1 version of the .NET framework. I need to continue using this version because I have some clients who are still using Windows 98, although I hope that this won’t continue for much longer.

Throughout last year I followed all the Microsoft hype about the upcoming 2005 version. Microsoft, especially with .NET, and going back to 2000 and 2001, have been quite adept at publishing vapourware. The announcements flow for a year or more before anything of substance is available.

Sometime last year I got hold of a Beta version of VB 2005 Express edition. I had a quick play with it but then put it out of my mind until the real thing arrived. Well now it has arrived. And I need to decide, some time, whether I will get the full version.

Actually, my mind has probably been made up for me, I will have to get it at some stage. But in the meantime, before I fork out many hundreds, or is it a few thousand, of my hard earned dollars, I thought I would go back and look at the Express editions and get a feel for whether I need all that they have to offer now, or whether I should wait until I need them. And I certainly don’t want to grab the 2005 version and have the 2006 version announced a week or two later with another swag of must have new features. This is possible because Microsoft have announced that upgrades to Visual Studio will be more frequent than in the past.

I liked what I saw with C#. I haven’t had a serious look at it, but I have written a relatively small application with it and everything went well. It was nice to use, and had some real productivity improvement features.

But Visual Basic is different. Now I need to stress that I am only looking at the Express version, and it is designed for home hobyists and people hoping to start out Visual Basic programming. But the same is true for C#.

The big difference between the two is that C# Express is a programming environment that allows you to produce proper applications. But Visual Basic appears to be dumbed down. There has long been a battle between the C programmers and the Visual Basic programmers, stretching back for years. With Visual Basic NET I thought that this war could finally be put to rest. Unfortunately, from what I have seen with the two Express editions it is likely to flare up again, and with good reason.

I wonder if this is a conscious effort on behalf of Microsoft to position Visual Basic as the language of choice for dilettantes and dabblers, and leave C# as the sole serious programming language for .NET.

I wait to see what develops.

I have also, from time to time, written a small amount in C#. It has been many years since I did much C programming. The last time I was employed Visual Basic was used for all Windows programming, and during my time there we used every version of Visual Basic from 3 to 6. So it was natural that when I went out on my own I would stick to what I knew.

However, a few days ago I downloaded Express version of Visual C# 2005, and SQLServer 2005 Express and had a bit of a play with them. I have been thinking of upgrading to Visual Studio 2005, but I still have clients running Windows 98, so, for the moment, I am sticking with the Version 1.1 Framework.

But it can’t hurt to be prepared, and it is nice to be able to show clients what they can expect after they upgrade their Windows, because there are things in the latest versions of Visual Studio that just weren’t available previously.

Another big plus is that SQLServer 2005 has taken over from MSDE, which was a nightmare to deploy.

Most of my clients are small businesses and they use Access – or more correctly, JET – databases. It would be nice to get them off Access and onto a real database.

There are a number of improvements in the latest version of C#. You can read all the hype at Microsoft. What you won’t read there are the bugs. But it seems that they are going to provide upgrades, or patches, at reasonably frequent intervals, unlike their practice with Visual Studio 2003. There are a number of bugs in the 2003 version which they are not going to fix. If you run the world I suppose you can get away with that.

The nicest thing about the new C#, to my mind, is Intellisense. A lot of people decry it, I love it. It is especially helpful when you are using some form of code generation, which I do for the data access layer. Because you don’t build some of the code yourself you are less likely to remember what the properties are in each of the classes. A little bit of reminding is very handy.

C# and VB produce, in most cases, identical code for the Common Language Runtime. Instead of compiling to object code the .NET Framework compiles to Intermediate Language, which is used by the framework. So the choice of which language to use is entirely up to the coder. C# is more compact, and so, probably, a bit quicker to code in. There are also more tools around for C#, and increasingly, more is written about C# than VB. So if you are looking for examples on unit testing, or refactoring, or documenting your code you will find much more that is aimed at the C# developer.

The final nice touch, for those of us not used to languages with monkey tails { and }, the IDE shows the matching braces, a great help when you have a bundle of them at the end of a function. Or perhaps that is another indication that more refactoring is in order.