Just a quick post after my rant yesterday, seams like Microsoft is already working on a new version of Internet Explorer , at least according to the IE developer blog. You can read the entry at http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2007/12/05/internet-explorer-8.aspx
There is no mention of new features or anything yet, but keep checking back as i’m sure they will post the latest info there first.
When you think about it, most there money comes from selling operating systems and Office products. Now, browsers are becoming more and more the platform of choice to write applications on. it makes sense really.
The app will run on any device with a net connection (including phones, pda’s etc), you can almost guarantee it will work, there is no need for the user to install software, updates are easy to roll out, ease of distribution, the list go’s on and on.
While as it stands there aren’t to many office based application that can challenge the MS office in the features category, there are certainly very capable alternatives out there, the main one being Googles offering, Google docs (http://docs.google.com/). All the documents are saved online, so you can give other people access to them and wherever you are in the World you will always have access to your data.
One of the only downfalls of online applications is when you lose your net connection. We’ll Google have even come up with a way of getting round that. It’s called gears ( http://gears.google.com/).
I dont personally know all that much about it, its a framework that will allow you to build web based applications that will also work of line. At the moment the only apps I have seen that use it are Google ones, but i’m sure more will be popping up.
So, are the mighty Microsoft doing anything of there own like this. Well, a bit. They have bought a stake in the social networking site Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/).
One of the cool features of Facebook is the fact that you can create applications using there framework, and post them to the community. As the Facebook community is absolutely massive (according to compete.com 14 million used applications in Facebook in August) your application will get a lot of exposure.
On the back of this Microsoft has added support via a developer kit into its Visual web Developer product (http://www.microsoft.com/express/samples/facebook/default.aspx). The thing I find funny about this is when you look at the Facebook developer documentation it’s language of choice is PHP. Will this be changing to dotnet now Microsoft have got there claws into it?
So, are Microsoft trying to embrace the internet as its development platform of the future, or sticking to there so far successful business model of traditional desktop software. I’m sure we’ll find out over the next few years.
And just out of interest, while we are talking about browsers, this is a breakdown of what browsers people visiting this site have been using over the last month:
Firefox 3 is now at its beta stage, so i’ve decided to start using it. you can get more details at http://developer.mozilla.org/devnews/
As well as a new rendering engine (gecko) there are various new features, such as the places options that let you easily bookmark and tag you favorites, and have fast access to them. As its a beta its probably not a good idea to use it on any production machines.
On another note i am in the process of creating a new blogg based on the wordpress platform. I’ve not fallen out with blogger or anything like that, its just that wordpress gives me more flexibility over what I can do. You can check it out at http://www.beakersoft.oldmanales.co.uk.
Its a work in progress so some things might not be perfect yet
There’s been a lot of talk throughout the IT industry recently about being more ‘Green’. Well, being all for that and also sick of users who leave there pc’s turned on all night for no good reason I have come up with a script to turn of pc’s.
The script looks into Active Directory for computer objects in a specific OU, loops through all of the computers and creates a batch file that calls the windows script Shutdown.vbs. This is a script that comes bundled with XP, and allows an administrator to shutdown a remote machine from the command line.
You can download the script from http://www.beakersoft.oldmanales.co.uk/ShutDownPCs.txt
Rename the file to a .vbs file, change the 3 variables at the top of the script to match your environment and it should create your file. A couple of things to note before using this script:
BE CAREFUL! You could end up shutting down servers or client machines that are being used. I would make sure first the pc’s are ok to shutdown, and only run the script after you know the users aren’t likely to be using them.
This script will not forcefully close open applications, so not to lose any users work. If you really want to force the machine down (even if the user has un-saved open work) you can add a ‘-f’ switch to the script on the line where it writes the computer name out to the file.
You will need to be a Domain admin or similar to shutdown the remote machines, or you’ll just get an access denied errors.
As I mentioned before this could be dangerous so make sure the pc’s are ok to shut down before running the script.
This Blog about my (mis)adventures in the IT industry. My aim is to update this blog as often as possable with any tips, news or rants I might have. You can reach me at luke@beakersoft.co.uk
