8/29/2009

So for the past several months I've been running BucketSoft.com, RegexHero.net, SilverlightShaders.net, and 060calculator.com all on a shared server with GoDaddy. It's actually served me well for the most part. But there are some limitations with shared servers. I couldn't set up things like content expiration and gzip compression for js and css files. And I couldn't easily set up dynamic gzip compression for aspx files either. And then there were some severe limitations on SQL databases which I decided wasn't going to work for me.

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8/26/2009

Dead Ends and Searching
Dead ends occur whenever you search only to see that dreaded page that says "0 results." It can be a poor user experience to be limited to refining your search with a single textbox, not knowing if your search will return any results. Web search engines like Google can get away with this because they have billions of results to be found and dead ends are few and far between. That, and the wild wild web is so unpredictable and inconsistent that they can't easily implement more advanced features with any real benefit.

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7/30/2009

I'm really excited about this site. It'll be a place where Silverlight & WPF developers can go to find specialized pixel shader effects. Every shader will have an instant online preview to make it easy to find what you're looking for.

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5/13/2009

It's always exciting during the early days of launching your website and releasing your first products. I remember 10 years ago with gldomain.com I released my Nebula screensaver. It was a simple OpenGL screensaver that didn't take me long to create, but it was somewhat unique and perhaps cooler to look at than any of the default Windows screensavers at the time. One night I decided to send an email to 3dfiles.com about it. And to my surprise, the next morning it had been posted on their front page and had over 5,000 downloads overnight. It would go on to be downloaded over 100,000 times across the web. That was a really cool experience for me even if I didn't make a dime from it. It was the first time I had gotten my work out into the world on such a massive scale.

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4/30/2009

It's slow to start up, but once it gets going it really moves.

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4/28/2009

So this is one of my little side projects. I've been working on it after work for the past few days. It's simple, but as far as I know it's the first of its kind. It's a Silverlight .NET regular expression testing tool. The thing that makes it especially useful is it's real-time highlighting. In other words, it'll highlight all matches found as you change the regular expression and/or the target string.

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4/27/2009

Standards and Conventions
Conventional wisdom would state that the best way to create good usability in your desktop application would involve copying popular design standards. For example, users are accustomed to seeing a menu bar with Save and Open under "File" and Cut, Copy, and Paste under "Edit." And then there are keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl+S to save. There's really no point in changing that up on users. I mean, you wouldn't want to put Copy and Paste under "File" instead. And just think about how awful it would be if Ctrl+S closed your application instead of saving your work.

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4/24/2009

New in Data Comparisons Express 0.97 Beta:

• Improved start-up time by adding UI virtualization to many of the elements that don't need to appear initially. I also moved some of the initialization code into a BackgroundWorker thread to further improve perceived start-up performance.
• Added better error handling around auto-saving connection settings, opening new connections, and application start-up.
• The application will now check for updates as it starts up. I tried to make this obvious yet unobtrusive. I've always hated the big "there is an update available" popups that come up when you don't ask them to. So instead I just provide a little link that appears next to the help button that you can click to get the update.
• Created better multi-threading for opening connections. You should notice that if you click cancel while attempting to connect to a server, then the operation will be cancelled immediately.
• Added a context menu for the datagrid with the option to copy the cells you have selected into your clipboard. You can then paste this into Excel or your tool of choice.

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4/20/2009

Introduction
I'll be very up front about the fact that I'm making most of this up as I go along. After all, I don't have anything for sale yet and I don't think of BucketSoft as a success yet. Ever since I first started programming at age 12 I had lingering thoughts about what it would take to start my own software company. I thought about how great it would be to write some awesome software, sell it online, and then sit back and rake in the dough. Since then my delusions of grandeur have changed a bit, but the dream lives on.

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4/19/2009

I've been following my stats in Google Analytics as well as the download sites out there and I've noticed the increasing number of downloads of Data Comparisons Express with each passing week. However, I haven't gotten much as far as feedback. I'm trying to work out any bugs or UI problems while the product is still in beta. But I need your help. So if you find a problem let me know.

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