Robert McLaws: FunWithCoding.NET

I just finished the coding cycle for VisualBlogger 2004 Beta 3. I posted some screenshots a few days ago, and I'm getting ready to post a few more soon. The goal of this cycle was to make the UI more usable while not intruducing any functionality regressions. This entailed several goals:

Betcha thought this entry was going to talk about Skype getting a blog. Didn't mean to get your hopes up. They don't have one, and they need one. Why? Well, for starters, because I want to know when new builds get released. They launched a new version a few days ago that contains hooks for soon-to-be-released Skype-to-Phone service called SkypeOut. Good to see that they're actually looking to make money on this cool service. I'd pay for it.

I'm probably the last person on earth that didn't know that you could use the PropertyGrid in WinForms apps. Well, I found out today, and I'm liking it so far. It doesn't show up by default in the Toolbox, but you can add it with the "Add Items" dialog.

I keep getting all this flak that my UI design skills suck. My only response thus far has been... "DUH!" So I've been working on some new UI, the first of which I showed off last week. I call it the "sexification" of VisualBlogger (sexification being a word I just made up meaning "to make sexy.") My CEO keeps telling me that I should stop using the word "sexy" in relation to software. I told him that if a computer program was 1/10th as sexy as a woman, more people would be happier using their computers.

Leave it to Dave Winer to figure out how to do it...

Alright. I just spent like 3 hours downloading, burning, and installing the latest Release Candidate from the WindowsBeta site. From what I hear, the rest of you will get access to RC2 later today. Anyways, so I'm running the latest build, and I have good news and bad news. First, the good news. RC2 can be installed over RC1 without issue. I was worried about this, because I was expecting to have to uninstall RC1 first.

Anders Hejlsberg gave Charles Torre a tour of the Microsoft Museum, and how his work fits in with the history of the industry. If you've never been on campus, it's quite a sight. Check it out over on Channel9.

Lots of people have been complaining at how poor the design of the Blog Configuration dialog for VisualBlogger 2004 is. For the record, I hated it too, it was just in there because it was quick-and-dirty. Well, I just finished the redesign, and posted a screenshot over on my other blog. I'd love your feedback, tell me what you think.