The Eric Wroolie Blog

Overpass Experiences

DotNetNuke–yesterday’s CMS

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I started working with DotNetNuke almost 5 years ago when it was pretty new.  I had used php-nuke, so was excited to use a cms written for the .net platform.  I skinned a few apps and played with it a bit.  But ultimately, I didn’t use.

So, I started using DNN for a job recently.  It’s on version 5 now (version 6 is very soon to be released), and I have to say—it shows its age.  I’m not a fan.  When the web is trying to go very mvc, ajaxy, and rest-y, DotNetNuke is stuck in 2006.  It’s as if web 2.0 left it behind.

There are a lot of great things going on the web development arena, even for Microsoft developers.  The MVC framework is elegant and fantastic.  Silverlight is very cool.  HTML5 and jquery make cross-browser more fun than ever.  It makes you want to forget all that messy webform code with its code-behind and postbacks.  So, DNN just feels old.

I never really liked the way Microsoft abandoned classic ASP, which was not all that different from php.  It encouraged developers to think about session state and requests and responses.  It focused more on the html that was delivered to the browser.  You could view the source of any page you wrote in classic asp and recognize the html as the markup you had written. 

When MS moved to ASP.Net webforms, they tried to let desktop developers feel comfortable with web development.  You could drag a button on a page, double-click it, and write some code for it.  You didn’t even have to worry about what kind of tag it would produce.  Who wants to use HTML anyway, right?  It was awful.  You got a new breed of web developers who didn’t know any html or javascript—only .net. 

I’m glad Microsoft is really pushing the MVC framework, which gives developers more control over the HTML that is produced.

DNN is a good platform, but written with a bad technology.  I hope someone notices the writing on the wall for .net webforms and starts a massive rewrite into a more current language.

HTML5, it’s DHTML all over again

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I watched a video from MIX 2011 called “HTML5 for Silverlight Developers” last night and it was very compelling.  I was all on-board.  I would prefer to not code things in Silverlight and give my clients the caveat—“but it won’t work on an iPad”.  So, I whipped out Visual Studio and started to code.

There is something very cool about being able to code something and not have to wonder if they client has Silverlight installed.  This was awesome.

Except . . . nothing works in a browser below IE9 or Chrome or Firefox or whatever.  IE6 through IE8 didn’t work at all.

I myself am a Chrome user and gave up IE long ago unless a contract requires that I use it. But most corporate environments are a long way from upgrading to IE 8, let alone the latest IE9.

After doing some googling, I found the HTML5 shim which allows things to render properly in IE and the ExplorerCanvas javascript plugin to allow using the canvas in IE.  So, there are work-arounds.  However, these plugins allowed me to do basic things in IE8—but failed in other areas.  For example, with these plugins I could draw a rectangle on the canvas in IE8—but I couldn’t implement the drag/drop interface.

At one point, I had 5 different browsers open and was refreshing each one after making a change to my html.  Ever time, at least one of them failed.  If I tried to cater for a quirk in IE, Chrome would stop working.  When I got it working in Chrome, IE would give an ugly javascript error.

But this is nothing new.

Back in 1999, I bought an big Microsoft book called “Dynamic HTML” which espoused DHTML as the future of the web.  It gave loads of examples on how to create animations and include very cool stuff in your pages.  DHTML was term used by Netscape and IE, but this book focused entirely on Internet Explorer.  When you tried to run your same code in the counterpart Netscape browsers, nothing rendered at all and you ended up with javascript errors.  The book got around the cross-browser difficulties by ignoring all other browsers.  If you worked in a corporate environment and would never code on anything but Internet Explorer, DHTML (or the Microsoft version of it) was great.

DHTML was a broad term (as is HTML 5) and doesn’t belong to company.  You code to a certain specification and each browser (or device) renders that as they see fit.  You have very little control over how it will look unless you code with a plugin like Flash (and now, Silverlight).

I have seen fantastic DHTML animations in IE which only worked in IE.  I can remember seeing stunning animations in Netscape which didn’t work in IE (all using ‘layer’ tags).  I remember last year seeing a cool Arcade Fire video in HTML 5 which worked great in Chrome but not in IE.  There is still no consistency here.

The “HTML5 for Silverlight developers” video was a lot like the DHTML book.  It looks great until you dig deeper.

The reason I’m hesitant to jump on the HTML5 bandwagon (and I reeeallly want to) is Internet Explorers slow adoption of it.  Actually, it’s not Internet Explorer—since they are implementing a lot of new features in IE9, but most corporate environments won’t take up the new browser for at least one or two years.  So, if you put something on the web, you have to think about the large amount of lunchtime surfers who won’t even be able to see your page.  You need to write loads of conditional code just to make sure your down-level browsers can even see a message saying “Not supported by your browser” instead of a javascript “Errors in page” popup.

One thing you should never ask your clients is “What browser versions do you want this to support?”  The answer is always the same—“Well, all of them.”  This is why the IE-only inventions of the past (HTML+Time, background filters, etc) never took off.  This is why a lot of the HTML5 features—as cool as they are—won’t take off either.  We Chrome users don’t carry enough weight yet to move the entire world to the newer code.  If Apple had allowed Flash on the iPad, I don’t think anyone would care about HTML5 at all.

I want to be converted and go back to plug-in-less web development. But so far, HTML5 (or rather, the browser creators) have let us down.

Another update

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Okay, so it’s been, like, months since I posted anything.  I haven’t been neglecting the blog on purpose—I’ve just been working a contract that keeps me pretty busy and training for the marathon.

First, I ran the Reading Half Marathon in March for the third straight year.  This year, my time was 1 hour, 53 minutes and some odd seconds.  I’ve been training a lot, but it wasn’t a tremendous improvement.

I finished the London Marathon in April with a time of 4:35:58.  My only goal on the run was to keep from walking.  I didn’t care what my time was—as long as I didn’t walk.  I walked in the 1994 Honolulu Marathon and I didn’t want to walk in this one.  Well, despite my 21.8 mile training runs, I did succumb to walking after the twenty-first mile.  It was a pretty warm day and I just couldn’t keep it up.  I finished the marathon with a new personal-best (since my 1994 marathon was over five hours), but couldn’t keep running.  Oh well—if it was easy, everyone would do it.  Still, I’m proud of myself.

I’ve been working a Silverlight job for the past six months.  I’m enjoying it. 

I’ve really fallen off the social networking band-wagon.  I’ve tweeted like one thing this year and haven’t posted here, either.  Despite not tweeting anything, I still get new followers every day—this just goes to show how many people are trying to game the system and collect followers by following as many people as they can no matter how active they are.  And I haven’t been on Facebook much, either.  Sometimes it just feels nice to (as they say in the spy movies) go dark and just disappear for a while. 

So, that’s what I’ve been up to—running, working, and not much else.  I’m trying to keep things simple.  I’m happy.