Why Some Web Sites Suck

I am an active Internet user. I visit and use a lot of different web sites including those for all kinds of e-commerce and utilities. Being at the same time an experienced professional web developer allows me to understand why some web sites are not as good as others and some of them simply suck. The first and foremost reason from my experience is that web site's developers do not follow web development best practices and most likely do not test their creations thoroughly.

In this article I am trying to analyse and describe most commonly occurring problems not visible to a non-professional eye but significantly affecting users' experience.

Base technology platform selection

Often a web site could be built on top of a platform that is familiar to a development team but not necessarily a good choice for a new project but sill would be selected. One particular example is a high traffic e-commerce web site built upon Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server because the developer team used this technology for a corporate news portal. The platform choice always brings its limitations and must be validated against a particular web site goals and usages. How fast do you expect it to work? How cross-browser compatible do you expect it to be? Those and other similar questions should be asked to make sure the technological platform choice is proper.

Web development framework

Obviously the platform choice limits the options for a Web development framework but if you are a .NET developer you most likely have at least two choices: ASP.NET WebForms and ASP.NET MVC. Both frameworks are modern first-class web development tools and support all the recent technological advances of web development. However regardless of the framework choice a team needs to make sure it uses all those advances and follows known best practices for a selected framework.

Most frequently noticed ASP.NET development bad practices

When I come across a web site that I don't like but still have to use I usually take a pick at the source code and easily spot some from the known bad practices listed below.

• HTML 4.01 Transitional. Remind me what year is it?
• JavaScript and CSS references neither bundled nor minified. Page load time, anyone?
• Inline JavaScripts that are neither minified nor obfuscated. See the previous point.
• Inline JavaScripts do not use OOP: still the old school functions only.
• Inline handling of cross-browser differences like "<!--[if IE 7]>". Well, this is really old school. No need to do that any more especially with JS libraries like jQuery.
• Inline CSS using ASP.NET long IDs. Shame on you, development team. That was considered poor poor practice since I can remember. Basically it's just a hack.
• Still using long ASP.NET IDs. You really need to do your home work and read documentation.
• Viewstate embedded right on a page. No comments here. If I see that my only hope that it's properly encrypted. How fast have you expected it to load?
• Still using hidden input elements to manage state. Have you considered other methods like Session maybe?
• Still using server controls for simple HTML like 'a' or 'li'. I call this lazy and I want to blame your team's coding best practice policies for that.
• Multiple different JavaScript libraries are present for example jQuery and Microsoft Ajax, that functionally overlap with each other. You do need to make up your mind and pick up just one.

Recommendations

Try follow the suggestions below as they are proven best practice and help develop much better web sites.

• Use HTML 5.
• Minify and bundle CSS and JavaScript files. Not only doing that improves web site load times but also makes development and maintenance easier. Take a look at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.optimization.aspx and also try to search for ASP.NET Bundling.
• When develop on JavaScript treat it as a first class programming language and apply all the same practices as you would for a server-side language like C#. Read this http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd453033.aspx and notice that it's from the year 2009.
• Use proven JavaScript libraries that handle cross-browser compatibility well and do not try to invent your own wheel.
• Implement well known solutions for hiding framework's specifics like client IDs, Viewstate, etc. Even though you need to use them it does not mean you cannot do it right.
• Always prefer server-side technique instead of client-side for handling application state. If nothing else Session is your best friend.
• Learn and use HTML directly for simple cases instead of server controls. It's not 2001 any more and you call yourself a Web developer.
• Do not use multiple client-side libraries that functionally are similar. Not only that makes development and maintenance a nightmare but also tells a lot about your software design skills. Make your choice and use the best tool for your job.

User Experience

It's enough of technical stuff. Let me become just a regular user and tell you that when a  web site is slow, confusing, inconsistent and not cross-browser compatible it sucks. Test it thoroughly and remember the web site is your professional resume. 

Conclusion

This post was not intended as a thorough review of web development best practices and more like a spur of a moment cry-out, but come on! It is 2013 and professional web developers are supposed to build Web 3.0 web sites today for tomorrow and not for a day before yesterday. It also touches me personally when I visit web sites with similar issues because they bring shame on all the web professionals not just those who worked on a web site. Colleagues, please listen up and make improvements. Everybody will like that.

Setting a "Content-Disposition" HTTP Header in Web API Controller Method

When developing an ASP.NET Web API controller method that allows to download a file it is considered a good practice to set a "Content-Disposition" header to guide a browser of a name of a file being downloaded.

There are two different ways to approach this simple task. First is to add a new HTTP header to the HTTP response using string values for the header's name and value. The second is to try and use the .NET framework's infrastructure methods that presumably should make this task easier.

The first method seems to be very simple but potentially dangerous: one would need to hard-code string values and be totally responsible for the values to be properly formatted according to the W3C standards.

var response = new HttpResponseMessage();
response.Headers.Add("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=fileName.ext");

The second method is to try and delegate handling of the specifics of the HTTP protocol to the .NET framework by using corresponding presumably built-in methods. This seems more appropriate and even easier to achieve. However due to poor documentation of the Web API extensions that is easier said than done. without further ado this is how it's done:

var response = new HttpResponseMessage();
response.Content.Headers.ContentDisposition = 
   new ContentDispositionHeaderValue("attachment") { FileName = fileName};

Only one string value here should hard-coded with a guideline available in the official documentation so it's not that bad.

If you find this information possible share it with your fellow colleagues so it may save their valuable time.

Fixing 'Bootmgr is missing' problem on Windows 7

The reason for this post is that it took me three hours on the weekend to fix this problem and based on the amount of search results the Google returns for that keywords I figured there are a lot of people facing such a problem. So my goal is to provide with a simple explanation and easy fix to save one's time and may be even prevent this problem from happening.

Let's start first from understanding what exactly is the problem. Secondly we see how to fix it and lastly we discuss the scenarios that could cause such a problem.

The problem

When one tries to boot up a computer with Windows 7 OS on it and instead sees a black screen with a message "Bootmgr is missing - Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart". (I guess it's obvious that restarting will not fix the problem)

There is an important condition for the fix described in this article: the computer was booting before but after some changes this error occurred. If this is not the case than the solution might not be applicable but from another hand it would not hurt to read further.

So what exactly is the problem? The answer is easy: it's right in the message. Windows is looking for a file with a name "bootmgr" and cannot find it. This is a hidden file of a size about 320Kb that should reside in the root of a boot partition on a hard drive where the Windows OS is installed. We will discuss the reasons why it's missing later but now since we know what the problem is how can it be fixed?

The fix

Copy the bootmgr file from the source to the root of the boot Windows partition on hard drive. An XCOPY command can be used with an /h switch that allows copying hidden and system files. For example:

X:/>xcopy bootmgr C:\ /h

Where to find the bootmgr file?

This is an important question. The answer depends on a particular computer's configuration but based on the problem statistics let's just mention the most probable locations to search for the file (don't forget it's hidden):

• Root of another hard drive with Windows 7 on it
• Root of another partition on the same hard drive with Windows 7 on it
• Windows 7 installation DVD

Once you figure the location of the bootmgr file simply copy it over to a boot partition and restart the computer: it should be able to boot in windows successfully this time and you are done.

The possible causes of the problem

In my case and based on the Internet search results that seems to be a very popular cause I have installed a second hard drive in the computer and then installed Windows 7 on a new hard drive. The key here is that Windows installer did not copy the bootmgr file on a new hard drive because it already existed on an old hard drive. The same problem would have happened if Windows was installed on a new partition on the same hard drive where another Windows installation present. These two reasons cover over 80% of the problem occurrences with some variations around different versions of Windows that existed at the moment of a new Windows installation and dual-boot related problem with the same outcome.

Another set of reasons relate to hardware problems with hard drives and not covered in this post for an obvious reason that the only solution for that is to replace a hard drive and reinstall Windows.

Prevention

Apparently the only proper way of installing Windows is first to hide a hard drive or a partition with another Windows installation and once a new Windows is installed make it visible again. Unfortunately to the best of my knowledge that is not mentioned in the installation instruction.

Advanced technical details

For those who would like to dig a bit deeper I suggest to boot into a Windows Recovery environment (F8 for Windows boot advanced options), open a command line prompt and use a bcdedit utility to explore the BCD (boot configuration database) content to see where Windows looks for the bootmgr file.

Conclusion

Once the cause of the problem is understood the fix is easy however the search for the cause has been significantly slowed down by an amount of misinformation that Google search returned.

Using Anonymous Types Outside of Local Context with Dynamic Keyword

Anonymous types that have been introduced in C# with .NET 3.5 is a convenient and powerful feature and can be used to simplify and speed up development without sacrificing code quality or violating coding standards.

Using jQuery to Consume ASP.NET MVC JSON Services

Since the inception of ASP.NET Web Services have been an important part of any professional web developer's tool set. Starting .NET 3.5 Web Services became even more useful as it became possible to call Web Services asynchronously from a browser using JavaScript and ASP.NET AJAX.

However for the last two years the alternative ASP.NET MVC framework has been drawing more and more attention from the development community due to its good implementation of the MVC design pattern and adherence to web standards and bleeding edge web technologies.

For many experienced ASP.NET developers accustomed to Web Services especially accompanied with ASP.NET AJAX framework a natural question occurs: how to implement similar approach with ASP.NET MVC framework and its natural JavaScript companion jQuery?

Fix for Bing Maps not working in Firefox 4+

UPDATE
Apparently that problem exists for Firefox 5 also and perhaps will apply for the future versions too. So the solution below should be considered a best practice for using Bing Maps 6.x with Firefox 4+.

Recently I've upgraded from Firefox 3.6 to Firefox 4 and while doing regression testing I've notice that apparently Bing Maps has some issues in Firefox 4. In particular I saw a JavaScript error that said "p_elSource.attachEvent is not a function":

The problem at this point looks like this:

1. the error happens in Bing's JavaScript itself; and
2. it only happens in Firefox 4 browser. Other browsers like IE 8 & 9, Chrome, Safari, Opera and Firefox 3.6 don't produce that problem.

Since the page where I saw an error belonged to a web application I've been working on I had to fix the problem. Initial search on the Internet did not bring up anything useful except that a few other people also stepped on this problem. I tried Bing Maps interactive SDK and it worked all right. That told me the Bing Maps script itself does work but it clearly depends on some other condition that does not necessarily happen on other pages like mine.

What's that condition? I looked at the difference between Firefox browser and the other browsers. When in Firefox Bing Maps dynamically loads another JavaScript file atlascompat.js. Apparently that file is required since it contains a definition for the attachEvent function that caused an error and must be loaded first before the main Bing Maps script. So that's the condition I've been looking for! Now the picture got clearer:

1. the error happens in Bing's JavaScript itself; and
2. it only happens in Firefox 4 browser. Other browsers like IE 8 & 9, Chrome, Safari, Opera and Firefox 3.6 don't produce that problem;
3. it happens when the atlascompat.js is not present on a page at the moment when the main Bing Maps script is being loaded.

Now why the error is happening on my page and not on the Bing Maps SDK page? Apparently the conditions #3 is not satisfied since my page contains a whole bunch of other scripts and the atlascompat.js did not load before the main Bing Maps script due to internal differences that have been introduced in Firefox 4. Now I have a complete picture of the problem and can come up with a solution for it.

The solution is simple: since the Bing Maps itself cannot load the atlascompat.js reliably I need to help it and just add a reference to the atlascompat.js script on my page before a reference to the main Bing Maps script. This can be easily accomplished with a few line of code like below:

if ((Page.Request.Browser.Browser.IndexOf("Firefox") >= 0) && (Page.Request.Browser.MajorVersion >= 4))
{
   // add script reference on a page
   // use technique that is suitable for your application
}

Notice that the browser version is more or equal 4 to cover the future versions of Firefox too (for version 5 this solution is confirmed). In my case I've added the code above into a GetScriptReferences method of an IScriptControl that was responsible for rendering the Bing Maps on a page.

.NET Reflector is becoming a paid-for product

As you may already have learned the famous .NET Reflector created by Lutz Roeder almost a decade ago that was always free to use is becoming a paid-for product thanks to Red Gate Software. The decision is confirming the worst suspicions many had when first heard about Lutz's agreement with the Red Gate and has already created a massive controversy in development communities.

For those who do not remember the .NET Reflector was born in the beginning of 2000s and has quickly become one of the must-have tool for every serious professional .NET developer. A large users community has quickly formed around the tool and many great add-ons have been written by inspired developers. Reflector has influenced great many developers' careers and earned community recognition. Scott Hanselman included the program in his "Ultimate Developer Tool List".

The Reflector's success was growing for over half a decade when out of a sudden the original author of .NET Reflector announced about his decision to stop developing the product and give it over to Red Gate Software in August 2008. One part of the agreement was that

...Red Gate will continue to provide the free community version... [of .NET Reflector]

confirmed by James Moore of Red Gate Software but many had skepticism about that part of the agreement from the very beginning.

During the period of Red Gate's ownership there were not many real improvements to the Reflector except for the annoying built-in "time-bomb" feature forcing one to upgrade to the newer version of the product even though the installed version worked perfectly. Some time ago a paid-for "Pro" version was announced with an obvious reason to raise some money for the owner but based on the Red Gate's plea was not successful among developers. One of the suggested explanations for that is that paid-for functionality was not really of any interest (more creativity, please, Red Gate) for professionals and beside there were already free add-ons doing similar things.

So now Red Gate wants to charge $35 for "a perpetual license, with no time bomb or forced updates" for the version 7 that will come out in early March and promises some new features in V7.

Red Gate claims that they need money to "keep .NET Reflector up-to-date and relevant" and cannot do that "without revenue coming in". That may be true for the Red Gate Software but there is a proven recipe for that: how about make the product open source, put it on Code Plex or any other similar location and let the community take care of its relevancy? To make it even more interesting let's make it a challenge: you, Red Gate, charge for your new shiny V7 but give away the previous version to the open source community and let's see which version survives in a few years. I personally have no doubts on the results.

There is a discussion going on about the Reflector's future on Red Gate's user forum. However if you are a professional developer that uses and loves Lutz Roeder's Reflector I encourage you to share your opinion and vote for the Reflector's future right here in my blog on the right side or answer polls on LinkedIn here and here. Please share the poll with your friends and colleagues.

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UPDATE

Interesting list of open-source alternatives to Reflector on Stack Overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2425973/open-source-alternatives-to-reflector

To my taste the closest to .NET Reflector user experience is provided by the ILSpy. I am going to try and compare it with the Reflector.

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Another UPDATE of May 1, 2011
Apparently free Reflector's lifespan is going to end on May 30, 2011. Today I've started my free copy and saw this alert:

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UPDATE of May 31, 2011
Free version of Reflector is finally dead. Now those who does not want to switch to a paid version has to consider alternatives. A couple of new alternatives include:

JustDecompile

Telerik has recently released a beta version of their new JustDecompile, designed to enable easy .NET assembly browsing and decompiling. While Telerik is not know for free software, this product is featured as being free. According to Telerik, "Unlike Open Source alternatives, Telerik JustDecompile benefits from a dedicated development team, which is focused on continuously improving the product in line with your feedback. Telerik is recognized as one of the leading providers of .NET development tools and JustDecompile will benefit from our years of experience in the field."

dotPeek

JetBrains, an author of an extremely popular ReSharper Visual Studio add-in, has recently released a beta version of the dotPeek which is another new and free .NET decompiler with search features from JetBrains. dotPeek has gone public for the first time on Wednesday, May 11, as JetBrains opened an Early Access Program (EAP) that implied regular publishing of pre-release builds. According to JetBrains they are going to keep the product free.

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Final Thought

JetBrains dotPeek has become my tool of choice for the time being. It's functional, free and being updated frequently. For those who also uses JetBrain's ReSharper starting version 6 the dotPeek functionality is built-in and available through the Navigate/To Decompiled Source menu.

Set up local SMTP for your .NET development environment on Windows 7

If you are developing a .NET application that sends emails then you need a way to do that without needing to actually send emails out. On Windows 7 with IIS 7 installed you can easily configure a local SMTP service that will intercept all the SMTP sessions initiated in your code and successfully emulate sending the outbound email by saving it as a text file in a folder on your local hard drive. This is extremely convenient and allows you to keep working on your code without interruption even when you are not connected to the Internet.

To achieve that just add a few lines in your application's .config file (could be web.config or app.config). Here is an example of such a configuration:

<system .net="">
  <mailsettings>
     <smtp deliverymethod="SpecifiedPickupDirectory">
        <specifiedpickupdirectory pickupdirectorylocation="c:\smtp">
     </specifiedpickupdirectory></smtp>
  </mailsettings>
</system>

After adding such a configuration every time your application sends an e-mail using a .NET framework built-in SmtpClient.Send method a new file with the .eml extension will appear in the configured folder.

You can open a file with any text editor like Notepad++ for example or you can use this free EML Viewer to improve viewing experience.

Re: Can architecture emerge from continuous refactoring?

Recently I've been asked this question "Can architecture emerge from continuous refactoring?" and since this topic is very close to what I do professionally I wanted to share my thoughts about it.

What is software architecture?

I see software architecture as a parallel to a traditional architecture: it consists of knowledge about everything that is required to build a successful software product as in to successfully construct a building. In a context of a particular project architecture eventually results in a team vision and a set of documents that guide the team towards the successful completion of a project and achieving the goal. From this point of view it is obvious that if the goal itself or any of its dependencies and prerequisite are not envisioned and well defined then a team simply will not know where to go and never reach the point of success.

Can software architecture emerge successfully from continuous small refactoring?

Often there is some legacy software in place and there is not enough time to redo the whole project from scratch so the only way is to apply small refactoring steps in order to make software better from the architecture standpoint.

Hence software architecture can and should emerge successfully from continuous small refactoring. For me this is not a theory but a proven fact since that is what most of my job as a Software architect consists of: I am orchestrating my development team to apply continuous changes and refactoring to the code base in order to shape the architecture into the right direction.

Factors of success and failure of a re-architecture project

The main reason for success is for a team to be persistent and consistent on the way and for an architect to have a complete vision, fully understand the final state of the re-architecture process and the way of the architecture transformations.

Opposite to the above when an architecture transformation is not a priority target and a team is not given enough time to work on the necessary changes then the new architecture will not emerge. It's not a "rocket science" and it's exactly the same process of achieving a goal as in any other human activity.

Some other reasons of re-architecture failure could be lack of the architectural vision, poor management, lack of architecture transformation understanding but I don't consider those to be the primary reasons bur rather the missing prerequisites for a re-architecture project.

Lessons learned on the way

Even though it's somewhat useful to learn from mistakes but I'd rather learn from successful implementations since what you can learn is a way to actually achieve the success.

Re-architecture methodologies

Some people are convinced that using a right tool will guarantee the success and therefore focus on comparing and selecting the "best of the best" methodology. Lately the "agile" word became very popular in regards to that.

From my experience any agile method is just a tool that may or may not help depending on a use case. Agile for me in this context is only a synonym of "continuous, persistent and consistent" way of moving towards a project's target. Whatever method is embraced by a team will work for me as long as it allows a successful completion of a project.