So this:

$.ajax(selectedAction.url(), {
    cache: false,
    dataType: "html",
    data: data,
    complete: function(jqXHR) {
        var responseText = jqXHR.responseText;
        if (jqXHR.isResolved()) {
            jqXHR.done(function(r) {
                responseText = r;
            });
        }
    },
    error: function(e) {
        self.onError(e);
    }
});

becomes this:

$.ajax(selectedAction.url(), {
    cache: false,
    dataType: "html",
    data: data
}).always(function (responseText, statusText, jqXHR) {
    if (jqXHR.state() === "resolved") {
        jqXHR.done(function (r) {
            responseText = r;
        });
    }
}).fail(function (e) {
    self.onError(e);
});

Not a huge change, but change enough.

Digging around online, on the Xbox support site, it states that this error requires a repair. So I try and register my device, but this doesn’t work as I’m using Firefox – the script to pick the states/regions doesn’t run on FF – way to go. Switch to IE and I’m told that my machine is out of warranty (no surprise there, it was bought second had), so they’ll be a £50 fee. A fee, for a problem caused by a software update? What. The. Fuck. Really Microsoft, you think that’s acceptable? That you supply a software update that fails, it kills my machine, and you expect me to pay?

I’ve been told it could be a failed update holding the queue, so clearing the maintenance cache might be an answer, but after trying via USB I can not longer even get to the dashboard. The machine now boots straight into the update, which again fails.

Now given that I rarely use the thing, a fix isn’t critical, but I’d possible use it for movies with Smart Glass; that’s fairly compelling. I’m now going to look into hard resets; I’m not that bothered if I have to reset it and lose everything.

Really Microsoft, you could do better here.

I worried how this was going to work with Windows 8, given that I now login with my LiveID account (to enable seamless sync between my desktop and laptop). My worries seemed to be surfacing when the music app couldn’t login; it’s an XBox app and uses the same ID system checks, telling me that I needed to set my Windows region to the US before I could use it.

Now though, it seems that Microsoft allow account migration between regions, as mentioned in an Xbox forum post. I’ve just been through the live chat process with support and the migration request has been submitted. The only issue I had was that my original account needed a valid US address and phone number, but luckily I have friends that helped on that (thanks Kendall). How long it’ll take I’ve no idea; I have no licensing or payment issues to worry about, so there shouldn’t be any problems, but I’m really glad that this is possible now. It’s been a problem for far too long.

Space, not enough of it. This is a simple equation: more space = more money. We’re lucky at the Reading event because Microsoft host it for us, but that still costs; someone has to pay, for the hire, the staff, security, the food, etc. In this case it’s another Microsoft business unit that covered most of the costs, and for that we are extremely grateful (and to the other sponsors, whose generosity was very welcome). But the fact is that Microsoft’s campus isn’t designed as a conference venue, especially not for 300+ people; even adding the fourth room costs extra because of additional security concerns, the room being in a different building. More rooms just aren’t available. So we have two options; we keep as we are, or we move venues, which brings additional problems, such as sourcing somewhere suitable. We investigated this i earlier in the year and the figures that came back were well outside any budget we could find. The organisers of other DDDs know this only too well. As yet we don’t have a solution, but we’ll continue to look at this.

Next up is registration and the waitlist. Registration fills up quickly and missing the opening time by 10 minutes or so means you’re on the waitlist; we can’t help it if you lot are keen, but the waitlist system works. Yes, it may be the night before the event that you get the email letting you know you’ve a place, but that’s the system. We’ve discussed releasing places in batches, but we’d still have the same problem – more people want to attend than we have places for. A suggestion that was raised in the feedback is one of fees and it’s an option we’ve discussed many times: charge an upfront fee to dissuade those who register but don’t turn up (we know who you are). But how much? Too low and it’s disposable and doesn’t help, too high and we put people off. The middle ground is a hard place to find. Plus DDD has always been free and open; money changes what we’re trying to do with DDD.

Now to AV. Yes we had some issues, it happens. We weren’t on the ball enough to check every presenter into their room early enough. Our bad, well sort it next time. Recordings? I’ve been told that Chicagoe 1 & 2 were recorded, but I’m not 100% sure; I was away last week and have been too busy to chase this week. If those sessions were recorded, we’ll make them available when we can.

There are other minor issues, some are website issues (yeah, let’s not talk about that), but overall the event was a success and the feedback mostly positive. If you’ve not filled in feedback, then go do so now, or just contact us via twitter, or comment here.

[update: minor correction from "100% sure" to "not 100% sure". It looks like one of the rooms was recorded, but we've yet to get that confirmed]

public class TopSecretHardware
{
    public int ID { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public IPAddressAndPort IPAddress { get; set; }
}

The IPAddress property was previously a string, but now needed to encapsulate the IP address and the port number. Given that this is used elsewhere in the project, I created a separate class to encapsulate the functionality (parsing, validation, etc):

public class IPAddressAndPort
{
    public string Address { get; private set; }
    public int Port { get; private set; }

    public IPAddressAndPort(string address)
    {
        string[] IPParts = address.Split(new char[] { ':' });
        if (IPParts.Length > 1)
        {
            Address = IPParts[0];
            Port = int.Parse(IPParts[1]);
        }
    }

    public override string ToString()
    {
        return string.Format("{0}:{1}", Address, Port);
    }
}

There’s a little more to the validation, but I’ve removed it for brevity.

This all seemed fine until my tests pointed out that the IP address and port weren’t persisting through my application. A simple Console project confirmed that:

var hardware = new TopSecretHardware()
{
    ID = 1,
    Name = "box 1",
    IPAddress = new IPAddressAndPort("192.168.1.71:123")
};

string json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(hardware);

Console.WriteLine(json);

TopSecretHardware dehardware = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<TopSecretHardware>(json);

Console.WriteLine("{0} - {1} - {2}", dehardware.ID, dehardware.Name, dehardware.IPAddress);

The output wasn’t what I expected

{"ID":1,"Name":"box 1","IPAddress":{"Address":"192.168.1.71","Port":123}}
1 - box 1 - :0

The serialization seemed OK, but what was happening when the object was deserialised? A bit of digging leads to some properties you can add to your objects to help with serialization, so I decorate my properties:

[JsonProperty("Address")]
public string Address { get; private set; }
[JsonProperty("Port")]
public int Port { get; private set; }

The output of this is even weirder:

{"ID":1,"Name":"box 1","IPAddress":{"Address":"192.168.1.71","Port":123}}
1 - box 1 - :123

Again the serialisation is fine, but not the reverse. The port number comes across, but no address? Confused I put a breakpoint on the constructor and find that when deserialising, only the address is passed in, not the address and port. Aha. Here we have an object with two properties; how does the serialiser know that these should be combined in “address:port” form to pass into the constructor? It doesn’t, of course. So there are two solutions:

1. Add a default constructor. The serialiser will use that to construct the object, then fill in the properties based upon the JsonProperty attribute.
2. Don’t use the JsonProperty attributes and create a constructor with a signature that matches the number and type of arguments that are serialised, then decorate it with the JsonConstructor attribute. That way the serialiser knows which constructor to use.

So my class is now:

public class IPAddressAndPort
{
    public string Address { get; private set; }
    public int Port { get; private set; }

    public IPAddressAndPort(string address)
    {
        string[] IPParts = address.Split(new char[] { ':' });
        if (IPParts.Length > 1)
        {
            Address = IPParts[0];
            Port = int.Parse(IPParts[1]);
        }
    }

    [JsonConstructor()]
    public IPAddressAndPort(string address, int port)
    {
        Address = address;
        Port = port;
    }

    public override string ToString()
    {
        return string.Format("{0}:{1}", Address, Port);
    }
}

And everything works fine. The lesson here is that when using external libraries you have to learn about them, even if they often just work out of the box. In all this took an hour or two to dig into and solve, but I’m now much more aware of the problems that can arise and that can only be a good thing.

<asp:SiteMapDataSource ID="menuData" runat="server" />
<asp:TreeView ID="tv1" runat="server" 
    DataSourceID="menuData"
    ontreenodedatabound="tv1_TreeNodeDataBound" />

You can have the following event code:

protected void tv1_TreeNodeDataBound(object sender, TreeNodeEventArgs e)
{
    SiteMapNode node = e.Node.DataItem as SiteMapNode;

    if (SiteMap.CurrentNode.IsDescendantOf(node))
    {
        e.Node.Text = String.Format("<span class='parentselected'>{0}</span>", e.Node.Text);
    }

    if (node.Url == SiteMap.CurrentNode.Url)
    {
        e.Node.Text = String.Format("<span class='selected'>{0}</span>", e.Node.Text);
    }
}

Add in the appropriate styles and now not only is the current item highlighted, but the path back to the parent is highlighted too.

I’ve also got a DropBox account, which I setup because a client was using it and it just made things easy to share files. But I hate the central folder – the one true place – that their methodology forces you to adopt. “Here”, they say, “have some free storage, we’ll synchronise it automatically for you. You want multiple folders? No, sorry, we only support a single folder. Move all of your folders into that one. It’s free, what more do you want?” Yeah, right, that’s what I want, to be forced to organise my files under your folder. I suck it up because that’s what the client used, and it’s a great price, but I have my own structure – clients, projects, etc – so now I copy between them, my local folder structure and DropBox, which kinda ruins the seamless experience.

Now Microsoft release a SkyDrive application, which synchronises with free 25gb of storage online. Ooh, nice; I already use SkyDrive too, so that’ll fit nicely, thinks I. But no, it’s the same as the DropBox model, a single folder and one that’s not even integrated with LiveSync. Really, I just don’t get it. You’ve this sweet sync technology that allows you to select folders to synchronise and to which machines and you force me to use a single folder. I’ve already got a folder structure, neatly set out in my anal OCD way, but no, that’s not good enough, I now have to have everything I want synchronised under a single folder. Really? A single folder? You didn’t think that, maybe, I’d have files and folders scattered around my disc? You didn’t think that a good way to differentiate yourself is to do something different rather than copy the competition? You’ve already got a multi-folder sync technology, one that’s been working happily for years, but no, let’s not use that, let’s pick the restrictive way of doing things.

And while I’m ranting, why can’t LiveSync and SkyDrive be combined? I get that SkyDrive is the consumer friendly model, but it seems odd, wasteful even, that you have two technologies providing almost the same features, but not the same enough to combine them. There seems to be a lack of vision here, the view that since people already accept the single folder view, that’s good enough for everyone.

One of the properties being overridden was the colour of a grid view header; other properties were set fine, but the colour for the header wasn’t set. Firebug showed the hierarchy was correct too; the colour was set – it even had !important – but it just wasn’t taking effect. This stumped me and a quick search came up with a SO post that had a working solution, which is to add the universal selector to the overriding rule. So instead of:

.table_title {

You have:

.table_title * {

The style now takes effect. Weird, huh?

So the real question is why doesn’t the overriding take place in the first instance? The answer is that the universal selector bypasses the inheritance chain, so nothing overrides it, unless you actually override the universal selector again. Eric has a full description of the universal selector and a read through shows you how confusing it can be. It’s powerful, but does lead you to situations like this where the expected rules don’t work.

protected void topMenu_MenuItemDataBound(object sender, MenuEventArgs e)
{
    SiteMapNode node = e.Item.DataItem as SiteMapNode;

    if (SiteMap.CurrentNode.IsDescendantOf(node))
    {
        e.Item.Text = String.Format("<span class='staticSelectedStyle'>{0}</span>", e.Item.Text);
    }
}

This simply checks if the current node (ie, the current page) is a descendent of the node being rendered (the parent node). Unfortunately the MenuItem doesn’t expose the attributes, so you can’t directly modify the style or class, so the rather hacky trick is to add an additional element with the appropriate class set. Doing so might mean you have to change some of the CSS, to ensure that the anchor is full width. I changed the the bottom border of the staticMenuItemStyle and changed staticSelectedStyle to display as a block element.