Good UI discussion
Joe believes the OS should do a better job of extending a consistent UI to all applications.
Avalon
Microsoft UI Guidelines
C# SpellChecker
“Why not just block the apps that rely on undocumented behavior?”
Raymond Chen has a Terrific Win32 Blog from inside Microsoft
Here are some great comments on backward compatibility
Default buttons, focus stealing applications, and User Interface Continuations
Start reading the thread for “Default buttons, focus stealing applications, and User Interface Continuations.”
here.
There are a lot of good points. I just want to comment on the paper (PDF) Richard linked to about UI Continuations. We just have to remember that often, perceived UI “improvements” sometimes comes with a price and the price I see is complexity. The example sited of a person wanting to lookup multiple e-mail addresses at once and the desire to maintain multiple name-browsing contexts begins to make get muddled in my mind. I’m not even sure I can describe the point sufficiently using words alone. I don’t see a novice user benefiting from this “improvement”. Some will always prefer a single-task wizard-like approach.
An agile HTML parser
This .NET parser with source code allows you to use malformed HTML as if it were valid XML. [via Richard]
Coding standards
“Paper-bag” code [Via Richard]
C++ days numbered?
Bryan writes about the demise of C++. Like Bryan, I also code excusively in C++. I agree with iggykin’s comment that the demand today is for form/databases and web apps. I’m sure I will move to C# one day but it just doesn’t make sense for me now. [Via Scobleizer]