After having successfully weaned myself completely off Outlook, I decided that Internet Explorer was a good candidate to also stop using. Realistically, I doubt I can ever completely stop using IE seeing that I have develop web software and need to test with it, but I can certainly choose to not use it for everyday browsing. For two weeks now, my default browser has been Firefox. And I am loving it.

In addition to not crashing as often when I have 15-20 tabs open, the single most compelling feature for me is Firefox's "Restore session?" dialog when you startup the browser after a not-so-clean shutdown of the computer. I love the fact that without doing anything, Firefox remembers all the tabs I had open when the event that caused my computer to "shutdown unexpectedly" occurred and brings up the browser exactly the way I had it. I am sure IE has a similar feature that I can enable after clicking around through a few dialogs, but the beauty of the Firefox solution is that I had to do nothing.

There are other things I like about Firefox, such as the pretty source code and its color-coded search, overall stability and adherence to standards, etc., but the "Restore session" feature is my favorite. 

A recent head-to-head comparison of Open Source CMS products credited DotNetNuke with "high usability, a large number of stock modules, and a penchant for commerce." The article compares DotNetNuke and other offerings such as Alfresco, Drupal, Joomla and Plone: 

Head-to-head: Open Source CMS

The review identified authentication, workflow and versioning as shortcomings. Of these authentication has already been addressed in 4.6 and the remaining features are in the pipeline.

We also have some exciting things in store for DotNetNuke 5.0 which will make DotNetNuke even stronger (OpenForce '07 attendees will get a first-look).

If you are on FaceBook or LinkedIn, please join the DotNetNuke Communities on those sites:

FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2253343839

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/35599/05A240643C77

It is now one month since I started using Zimbra, a free, Open Source mail server. I previously used Thunderbird, then started using Outlook in order to handle calendaring with work colleagues. I have hated the Outlook experience every step of the way. Here are some of the problems:

• Periodically need to shut-down and restart the app to get new mail
• Regular White Screen of Death situations where the app just goes white and does who-knows-what before returning control
• Lousy feed handling (I use Google Reader now and it is fantastic)
• Problems keeping Internet calendar sync'd
• S-L-O-W
  

Outlook is probably good if you have one or two email accounts, but when you are managing more accounts and mixing IMAP/POP, Outlook just is not up for the task. I got totally fed-up with the whole situation a month ago, and started searching for an alternative. More specifically, I looked for a web-based alternative that so closely resembled a desktop client, that you would not be able to tell the difference. I found many Windows mail servers but all of them had crappy webmail clients and the ones that were crappy were too pricey.

When I saw the Zimbra demo, I knew my search was over. One big problem -- it runs on Linux. I saw this as an opportunity to keep up my skills on the Linux platform. I got a cheap Ubuntu dedicated virtual server at Linode.com, downloaded and installed Zimbra and a few hiccups later, I am in email Utopia. All my work and personal email, in one location, web-based with sharing of Address Books, Calendar, Documents with other family members, full-support for email identities. To be honest, I did not need to get the virtual server...I found an exceptional hosted service at 01.com that is a pretty good deal, however I have always liked to have full access to my mail server and I did not want to lose this.

So far, things have been great. I don't think I am ever going back to Outlook or any other Windows client. The speed, responsiveness and features (that matter) of the Zimbra web client rival and exceed those of most Windows client (definitely better than Outlook). Drag-and-drop, context menus, alerts...everything just works.

I look forward to seeing what innovative things happen with Zimbra now that Yahoo! has purchased it.

Several months after the official release of Microsoft's ASP.NET AJAX, I am still waiting to be amazed by slick web components from Redmond that make it possible to create rich, interactive user interfaces without third-party component suites. From the looks of it, my wait is not going to end anytime soon. With all the attention Microsoft is showering on Silverlight, it is now obvious that the component aspect of its AJAX solution has been and will continue to be a step-child. The message is clear -- if you want to make your apps more responsive with fewer postbacks, use AJAX; if you want to create graphically rich user interfaces without spending a lot of time, use Silverlight; if you want to create graphically rich user interfaces that are also usable, keep looking. 

Seriously, what is the ASP.NET team thinking? Is the crap officially named ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit the best Microsoft can do? With a handful of exceptions, these components are a joke. They are ugly, clunky and lack consistency in their usability. What is the deal? Are there no designers or usability engineers in the company that can help the ASP.NET team fix this garbage?

In all fairness, I should not single out Microsoft. This problem occurs more or less across the board. Every major AJAX framework is so heavily focused on the technology, that usability and elegance are after-thoughts. DOJO and YUI have the exact same problem at varying levels. Excellent frameworks...mediocre components.

If you want slick components, you have only one choice -- break out the wallet and check in with Telerik, ComponentArt or Infragistics, or write them yourself.

Crappy components are just one small aspect of the problem as I see it. There is a much, much bigger problem -- each of these free (and commercial) frameworks is guilty of delivering a solution that puts the responsibility on developers to work out the appearance and overall user experience of an app that makes use of its components. Let me repeat that...the responsibility for appearance and user experience is placed on DEVELOPERS.

Take those alluringly elegant components from Telerik and ComponentArt, put them into the hands of your average ASP.NET developer, and what do you have -- disaster. Why? Because there is nothing that makes it easy for a developer to:

1. Determine in which situations it is appropriate to use a certain component
2. Make multiple components work together so the user experience is fluid
3. Style components so they have a consistent appearance, different from the shipping default
4. Interchange or mix in the same app, components from different vendors without going insane

It seems to me that components are not the solution, they are the problem. Ever since Visual Basic 1.0 gave developers the means to easily drag all manner of UI widgets onto a canvas, we have been stuck with this problem of horrible user interfaces. And no one has fixed it. Now, don't be telling me about Silverlight or Flex or RIA. They all are stuck in the same evolutionary rut. All they are doing is swapping out the what and the where; the how remains unchanged.

There are enough desktop and web applications out now where it should be possible for us to evolve past UI components and isolate and identify UI patterns that can then be used to create "UI Pattern Panels" that snap together to form a complete application.

How would these be different from components? Well, for one, they would represent a complete solution. Let's take a common situation -- tree on the left, data grid on the right, some action icons on the top, some action buttons on the bottom. I have just described some 90% of apps that allow management of any kind of hierarchical data. Instead of a developer wiring all this together with individual components, this should be a "Tree-Grid Data Panel." Instead of having a zillion places where a developer can customize the styles, colors, fonts etc. there should be one for the panel. That's it. You can't muck with individual pieces. This might be painful at first, but once you get used to not mucking with the individual pieces, it leaves you with more time to focus on more important things and create a better solution. Does this sound familiar? You bet...it's "convention over configuration."

To its credit, the YUI! team has taken a small step in this direction with its Design Pattern Library. This is not nearly enough. TIBCO, which has arguably the most elegant and powerful UI suite of all, the TIBCO General Interface is heading in the generally correct direction with a SOA emphasis on UI components.

Who will put UI's on Rails? What do you think about component-centric versus pattern-centric approaches to user interfaces?