Digital Thoughts @ Wesstyware

This is first post of an on-going series of posts from Wesstyware on the ZVGQ v2.0 project. To find a listing of all the posts in the series, please refer to the posts section of the project page for the ZVGQ project.

Introduction

A very close friend of mine, kiggidykev used to be part of the team for zanyvgquotes.com many years ago. In late 2009, after not being part of the project for many years, he was given the chance to take possession of the site and decided to seize the opportunity to bring some life back into the site.

He approached me with the idea of working on the site with him, where I would take point on the development side and he would take point on the content. After looking over the site, and the source I came to the conclusion that we needed to build the site from scratch and port over the current content.

The Catch

The catch is simple: I am a .NET developer and have been my entire career. That means all of my development strengths lie within the realm of Microsoft technologies and tool. ZVGQ is hosted on a Linux based server, hence the catch. Although, after thinking about it for a while, I too found the chance to seize an opportunity.

I have been a user of Microsoft Expression since WPF was still in beta. Version 2 of the software proved to be useful, but not really full enough to be used on its own. With version 3 release in 2009, I felt as though the software was ready. The thing is without some kind of proof or personal experience showing that it would hold its own, it felt odd for me to recommend that as a tool to my colleagues and co-workers

Enter ZVGQ.com…

The project is a real web development project that can benefit from the tools that the Expression Suite bring to the table. I see the ZVGQ project as the opportunity for me to see if Expression Suite is all that it can be. Here is how I plan on using the software:

Expression Blend: Prototyping & Silverlight Development

Prototyping out this site is a must, and SketchFlow is the best tool for the job. On top of that, I plan on revisiting Blend when we tackle some Silverlight development as there are a few components where I see Silverlight producing a far richer UX for the users of ZVGQ.

Expression Web: HTML/PHP/JavaScript Development

Web is meant to be a web development tool for all types of web development mark up and code, including those that live outside of Redmond. This will be the test to see whether Expression can hold its own considering that all the technologies that will be used within Web will not have stemmed from the depths of Redmond.

Expression Design: Screen Designs

I’m not a designer, nor do I think I have the abilities of a designer. Still, we will want to build some sample screens that have some styling applied so we know what the site is actually going to look like before we release it. For that, we are going to use Expression Design.

Expression Encoder: Media Updates

ZVGQ has a large amount of media that will be updated which includes videos. The plan is to update these videos using Encoder to test the waters and see what we can do to improve the quality of what we have.

Development Schedule

The next thing, is the development schedule and what kind of milestones we have in front of us. This may be changing over the next little while, but here is the plan for the time being:

• Phase 1: Prototyping [January 18, 2010]
• Phase 2: Database Implementation [March 1, 2010]
• Phase 3: Security Implementation [April 1, 2010]
• Phase 4: Administration Section Development [May 1, 2010]
• Phase 5: Public Site Development [June 1, 2010]
• Phase 6: Styling [July 1, 2010]
• Phase 7: Beta Launch [August 1, 2010]
• Phase 8: Go Live [September 1, 2010]

I realize that it seems like development is going to take quite a while. Keep in mind that this is a part time thing for me, and I will be learning from the ground up how to program in PHP. There are many pieces to this software that I will need to research and determine the best way to implement, but with time and effort we will build a new and improved ZVGQ.

With that, I believe that there is work to be done. It is time to kick the tires and light the fires and get this project under way. Add comments to the bottoms to provide some feedback or to ask any questions you may have.

Catch you on the flip side.

With the new year upon us I thought I would take a moment to discuss some of the plans for the upcoming year. Plus, it will be interesting to review this post a year from now to see what I had planned for 2010 and compare it to what I actually completed.

Enter 2010...

Project: ZVGQ.com

If you have been checking out the site in the later part of the year, you may have noticed that a project section appeared at the top. The main reason for this section is the fact that I have a project that I will be working on in the new year. If you want more details, check out the project page here.

Winnipeg .NET User Group

I have been part of the Winnipeg .NET User Group for a while, but playing primarily the role of an attendee. As of late, I have been given the opportunity to take a bigger role with the group by contributing to their events. So far there are a couple of items that have been brought to my attention, but so far nothing is completely solid nor has it been announced. As things develop, I will discuss them further via the blog.

In the meantime, you can learn more about the the group at their website here.

18 (or so) Original Posts + Updates

Last year I had a handful of original posts that actually stirred up some comments from people in the digital woods. Between the Expression Design discussion, Vancouver 2010 Virtual Waiting Room, and the review of Bing from a different perspective I managed to get some people reading and even commenting on my thoughts.

The problem was that I did not really have an idea of the amount of work that it was going to be to maintain the blog. For starters, spam became a serious problem thus responding to comments became exceptionally difficult. Plus, writing a decent post is not something that is simple. It requires some serious thought, and more importantly time.

This year I have a very good idea of the time I need to put into to keep the blog updated and get some digital lifeblood flowing through it. With that in mind, I figure it is possible for me to schedule time to post about one original post every three weeks or so, in combination with the quick updates about events and such.

Other Projects

On the projects page, you’ll notice that there are other projects that I have listed there. I always have ideas of work that I would like to do, but there is only so much time that I can dedicate to my personal projects. The most important thing I would like to see in 2010 is the actual completion of a project from Wesstyware. Considering that Wesstyware is just yours truly, it makes sense to focus my efforts on one thing at a time.

Still, you can probably expect to see other projects either appear or extend over the upcoming year. This stuff is fun for me, and it if it isn’t fun then why I am spending so much time on it?

Conclusion

This is what I predict for Wesstyware in the year 2010 as of December 31, 2009. We shall see how the year goes and meet back here in 365 days to see how I did.

Catch you on the flip side.

Hey all,

I needed to post a claim code on the new blog to register the new site with Technorati. I was just informed that the claim code was found and that they just need to review things.

In any case, I spent some time updating my profile on Technorati to better reflect me. Feel free to check it out (link to follow when claim is complete).

Catch you on the flip side.

I posted the other day about how I was going to make do with what I have, and breathe some life back into my blog. I continued working on the blog to attempt to bring it up to snuff, when I thought to myself I should build it back up from scratch, assuming I can port it over. I found WordPress, got it working, ported over my previous posts (complete with comments) and here we are.

I thought I would take the time to go off and talk about some of the new features that are available through the new implementation of Digital Thoughts with WordPress.

Thank you BlogEngine...you served me well.

New Feature #1: Comments

I realize that v1 of Digital Thoughts had comments, but there were some definite issues with how the comments were working in the old version. I just wanted to

V1 Comments = 90% Spam. v2 = Spam Control

Yesterday, I went through all of the comments that were ported over from the original posts. Out of the 550 or so comments, just under 500 were spam or at least appeared to be spam. If you do the math, that means that about 90% of the comments were spam. I was unaware that Digital Thoughts was plagued with so many spam posts, but now that I know it is an issue, it has been addressed.

WordPress provides a plugin called Akismet, which is supposed to help catch spam comments. With that in place, I am hoping that I’ll be able to keep the comment sections on the posts and pages to users that are actual people.

New Comment Management Interface

I realize that this feature doesn’t exactly apply directly to you, but it definitely does have an effect on your user experience with Digital Thoughts.

WordPress provides a comment administrative console that makes sorting through new comments, responding to people, and filtering out spam easy. Meaning, when you comment on a blog post, it will be much easier for me to find your new comment and respond to you! In conclusion, we now have some working two way comment communication, which is the whole reason why I started this blog in the first place.

Blog Comments RSS Feed

I am a big fan of RSS feeds, and subscribe to many. WordPress provides me with an RSS feed for the comments on the blog so that I can be notified about your thoughts on my posts ASAP as soon as Google Reader tells me you have commented.

New Feature #2: Categories

I know that BlogEngine.NET provided categories as well. The thing is, if the author doesn’t take the time to use them, then what good are they? No good, that’s how good.

With the new blog in place, I spent time sorting the old posts into a series of categories that I think organize things well. I know this isn’t a big step, but I’m hoping that it helps people navigate through the site and find things that they find interesting.

New Feature #3: New Style

With an updated site comes an updated style that I think better suits me. It’s simple, it’s clean, it works. That isn’t saying the old style didn’t work. People actually told me that the Digital Thoughts style from the BlogEngine version worked well.

The thing is, the style of the old blog never really felt like me. Sure, the ideas were mine and the content felt like me, but the look never did. Since I was updating the blog anyway, why not update something that I wanted to change? And so, here we are basking in the new style of Digital Thoughts.

Reason for the Switch

For record, I enjoyed working with BlogEngine.NET and it served me well. Sure, it didn’t have all the bells and whistles that WordPress has, but it also didn’t have a huge team of developers constantly working on it, nor has it had the chance to spill over to version 2. The latest build of BlogEngine.NET is v1.5, while WordPress is 2.8.5, on their way to 2.9.

Plus, considering that my development skills have been refined using almost nothing but .NET technologies and tools, it makes sense for me to have a .NET based blog. The problem was that BlogEngine required a bit of extra effort to get things working how I wanted them to work, and I didn’t have the time to put into the code.

WordPress has a much larger following, and ultimately has more options and tools at my disposal. With those tools, I’m able to manage my blog much easier than I could with BlogEngine.NET and so the switch was made.

Conclusion

There you have it. You now have a brief summary of the changes and you can expect with my new blog. Hopefully your future experiences with Digital Thoughts are improved over version one. I am eager to read and respond to your comments.

Catch you on the flip side.

I’ll be honest; this isn’t the big announcement I was intending to release a few weeks ago. The tides have changed with respect to my professional life. I figure I would take some time and explain my new situation.

New Job = User Experience Developer

As of about three weeks ago, ANVIL Digital decided to give me the opportunity to focus my efforts on my real passion in Computer Science: the user experience. The new job is very exciting and has involved a lot of work on my part to get UX data and results for our software in the short term, while defining new development processes that involve more UX input.  It’s a lot of work, but I am truly enjoying myself. It’s not everyday that you get assigned solely to the work you love.

On top of that, I have been getting much more involved with the Winnipeg .NET community through the user groups. Not only have I been working with D’Arcy Lussier on the new Silverlight User Group, but I have starting to get involved with the Winnipeg .NET User Group as well. I hope to be taking a role with them in the upcoming months. I will be sure to keep you all posted.

Same Wessty

Although the winds of change have swept the lands of Wesstyware, I am still the same Wessty that you all know and love. The difference is that I will be reprioritizing my personal projects a bit and probably be discussing UX a little more often on my blog.

With that in mind, my plan is to breathe some life back into this blog and update the content. As opposed to publishing a substandard web site, I figure I will coast along with what I have until I have the proper time to develop what I have in mind. Although, just because I’m making do with what I have doesn’t mean that things aren’t going to get better.

Blog Updates

Over the next few weeks, I will be making some organizational changes to the blog. To be more specific, I am going to be cleaning up the categories for the posts, adding some pages, and limiting the comments on my posts to about 30 days. I am continuing to get great comments from people and I appreciate them, but I am finding it difficult keeping up with responding to people, especially on the older posts.

Realize that enjoy the comments and all the feedback and I hope that people keep them up with the new date cap on how long people can comment on my posts. Still, keep commenting on upcoming posts. If you want to comment on older posts drop me a line through the contact page or add me to Twitter (@Wessty) and send me a message. I’m pretty active in the “Twitterverse”, and would be happy to hear from everyone.

As I grow more comfortable in my new shoes at ANVIL, I hope to find the time to continue my work and discuss here soon. In the meantime though…

Catch you on the flip side.

I am happy to announce that I have succeeded in getting Digital Thoughts @ Wesstyware claimed at Technorati. Since I am using BlogEngine.NET to host there have been some issues getting things working the way, but after finally finding a solution, it appears that Technorati has changed their process a bit and the solution wasn’t necessary.

If you feel like checking out the blog you can find it here.

This also means that I have taken the first step in getting Wesstyware.com out there in the world, and with the release of Silverlight 3 and Microsoft Expression 3 Suite almost upon us, you will be seeing more posts about the development of my site using these new tools.

Catch you on the flip side.

That’s right! Now that I have completed the project with The Designer for the Mozilla Summer Design Challenge 2009, I have the need to start up a new project. What better than one I have started countless times over the years and now have the knowledge and experience to properly implement: my very own web page. I figure I will discuss it here and maybe get some feedback on what my plans are and hopefully getting some feedback.

Project Goal

I registered Wesstyware.com with the following intent:

• To get my name in the software development world out into the open
• To give back to the development community that has aided me in my career more times than I can count
• To create a home point for all work associated with Wessty (myself) and/or Wesstyware
• To have a web-based communication tool for people to find me

Project History

Throughout my academic career, I always held an interest in web technology. I never really got to work on web specific work in school, which is where the idea for Wesstyware.com came about. Why not build myself a website while I’m learning about web development.

Since the inception of the idea, I have started the project from scratch about four times now for a number of reasons but mainly because school and “actual” work always took priority, thus I take breaks from development for months at a time. When I would finally get time to go back to the code I had worked on, I would just restart because I had new ideas for where I wanted to go with the site.

As you can guess, constantly restarting a project is never really the best way of getting something done. This time around though, I have experience under my belt, along with a new toolkit of technology and practices to make the project work.

Project Requirements

For now, I’m only going to discuss the requirements I have listed for v1.0 for the project. They are light enough that I think they are quite doable, but concrete enough to leave little to no grey area for me to start drifting the project focus elsewhere.

• Have a completely independent presentation layer architecture
  • By this, I mean I should be able to create a whole new presentation layer using any type of UI technology that I choose, and still utilize the same communication and data components that I have created.
• Have the following pages:
  • Home Page: The home page should contain news about all Wessty and Wesstyware events and projects (i.e. blog posts, twitter posts, etc…)
  • Profile Page: A page where all “official” Wessty and Wesstyware online profile can be found.

There are other features that I plan to implemented throughout while under the v1.x version number, but I’ll wait to mention those until I actually finish v1.0.

Development Phases

One of the biggest problems I had whenever I would take a stab and creating Wesstyware.com was not having clearly defined sprints or phases. This time around, I have a plan with multiple phases, and I am going to list them below. Please note that the phases listed include what has already been completed for the project and what needs to be done before I actually continue work on the website itself.

1. Start up a professional blog and post to it weekly (completed)
2. Expand access to the blog by registering with Technorati
3. Launch v1.0 of Wesstyware.com with a home page and profile page with the following features:
   • Presentation layer using ASP.NET 3.5 and jQuery
   • Communication layer using WCF
   • Data driven for all non-static data on the site
4. Add a new Silverlight 3 presentation layer using same communication and data components.

I could go further, but I think this is a big enough chunk for me to chew for the next while, considering that I do work full-time, have something of a life outside of software development to maintain. The key part of my site that I want to make sure is done properly is the architecture, which I have down. Just like with any project, you want to be able to exchange components for others, without having to disturb everything else. This is where I failed in the past, but this time it’s different…this time, it’s personal.

Okay, so it’s not really personal, I just thought that sounded kind of intense. Getting back to my point though, being a UI/UX developer, I like playing with all sorts of presentation frameworks and technologies, which is why I require proper architecture to be completed.

Feedback

My final comment will be to ask for some feedback about personal/professional websites that you browse for your own interests. Leave comments on this post about my site, or any site that you think works well or poorly. I want to get this right, and although I don’t expect v1.0 to be perfect, the more usable the better. Here are a couple of questions that could help get you started:

• What features do you like from your “regular” sites that other seem to lack?
• What makes them useful to you, outside of the content (as we can assume that the site already contains content that you find interesting)? Is it functionality, layout, social media?
• Does social media content on a site make a difference on whether or not you will revisit the site?

Any feedback or suggestions would be great. Until then world…

Catch you on the flip side.

A while back I posted about the Mozilla Labs Design Challenge for Summer 2009 and how I had been working on a submission with a very good friend of mine, who I will refer to as The Designer in my blog. Over the weekend, we managed to complete our submission and now that we have received official word from Mozilla that our submission has been accepted I am here to tell you about it.

We call our idea “Corner Petals” for two reasons:

1. We store open pages in the corners of the viewport
2. When viewing what pages are stored in each corner, the corner blooms into a bunch of “flower petals” that display the different tabs to the user.

You can find our submission and all other 115 concepts that were submitted here at the showcase. You can find it under “Corner Petals”, as you may have guessed. I have also included a link to the wireframes we submitted, along with the video we produced in this post.

Check it out and leave some comments as feedback is always appreciated.

Catch you on the flip side.