New look for EDSK

I have a blog called Every Developer Should Know.... It's developing slowly, but today it feels like more progress has been made as it now has a customised look.

Let me know what you think of the colour scheme.

The next stage will be to move into the real domain.

Oh, plus I must prioritise actually finishing more drafts.

How to make Google Reader better

Ways to make Google Reader better:

1. Be able to view and make comments, where available. - Obviously this is also a restriction of RSS as it currently stands.

2. Control a separate tab in the browser which is automatically redirected to the source of the message currently being viewed. This would have two benefits(?) Firstly it would be much quicker and simpler to go to the original version of a feed item. Something which is common if the feed doesn't contain the whole text, or if wanted to view or add a comment. Secondly, it would provide page impression information for the site owners. OK, so page views might not be totally accurate, but would get more analytics type data than from with a feed.

EDSK ... not to make assumptions about a file system

Every developer should know not to make assumptions about a file system.

Don't assume that certain folders or drives will ever exist on the machine your software will be deployed on.

Also, don't assume you will have permission to access a location.

Why is this important?

If you assume a certain drive or folder will exist, or you have permission to access it but it doesn't or you don't. You software is likely to fail in unpredicted ways.

What do you do once you know this?

Test all assumptions. In code.
Want to install to the C drive? Test it exists first.
Want to write a file to a particular directory? Check it exists and you have permissions to write to it.


What do you think?
Is this something every developer should know? Have you say in the comments.

The most important InstallShield setting

It's highlighted above.
Change the Project File Format, to XML, from the default of Binary.

This will enable to see the differences in the different versions of the project file save in the file repository to be compared. Without this, knowing what was changed between different versions of the project file is next to impossible.

The above is based on InstallShield 11, which is what I am currently having to work with.

Blog.Count = 3

Yes, I've got another new blog.

This one, however is less likely (?) to be interesting to anyone other than me though. It's a simple diary of what I do at work each day.

Matt Lacey: Wot I've Done Today

I find it useful as I'm very good at forgetting, plus it prompts me to think about what I actually get done each day.

I also find it useful to look at it in combination with my Twitter account to get a more complete picture of how I've spent my time. (It's a nice theory but I'm very good at forgetting to twit though, so my life looks a lot less busy than it is.)