Before I start my rant, I have to tell you, I'm not an Apple hater. I'm more of a PC than a Mac, simply because I've just rolled that way for so long. My first computer was an Apple II-C, and after that, a Macintosh Plus. For a while after that, PCs. Currently I have a Mac Mini running Snow Leopard and I love it. I also have two computers running Windows 7 and I love those too. Yes, people DO exist that enjoy both worlds. Don't hate.

Rant on.

While people are defending the iPad (which doesn't support Flash just like the iPhone/iPod), some people are saying they don't need Flash. Some people just don't get it. Flash IS important right now. Sure you can argue that you don't need Flash on your iPhone/iPod/iPad, but are you doing that because you're trying to defend your purchase decision? Sure HTML5 will do away with the need for Flash VIDEO, but what about all the existing Flash based sites, games and apps out there? Do you ever go to your favorite music artist's site to check out new music? Chances are, their site uses Flash. You happen to use Pandora outside of your phone? That uses Flash. Do you like checking out game reviews? Their videos use Flash (and most of them don't use Youtube). Also, you're giving up all the great flash based games and apps out there. Then there's the question of how soon sites will roll out support for HTML5. Youtube is basically there, but what about Hulu or Netflix? I could bore you with a big list of video sites.

Then there are the people who say we need to get rid of Flash altogether. So I ask you...

What's the answer?

Should we get rid of Silverlight as well? If your answer is a "standard, open source" flash/silverlight-like language, what makes you think it won't just give us what we currently have with HTML? The HTML "Standard" has been around for a while now, and guess what? It's ANYTHING BUT STANDARD. Web developers still struggle on a day to day basis to get HTML displayed the same way in 5 or so browsers. You can blame IE all you want, but Firefox and Chrome have their crappy moments. If you want some kind of standard, there needs to be a set of standard unit tests for which implentations need to pass. Something similar to the Acid Test.

So I'm going to say this. Flash is here to stay... At least for a more dynamic web. Not neccessarily video. HTML5 will roll out eventually, but it won't happen overnight and there will always be a need for something more than what simple markup and javascript can bring to the table. A standard, open, flash/silverlight-language is going to take serious time before it will ever be successful. Us developers already have enough to deal with, thanks.

One thing the iPad showed us is that Apple continues to embrace a closed and highly regulated architecture on their devices.

By the way, if you're like me and need a more open phone, the Nexus One will support flash soon, has a simple way to enable multitouch support (which by the way is supported in all apps that are coded for it), supports multitasking, and they will be rolling out the phone for Verizon's network this Spring. The best of all worlds. You can thank me later.

Rant off.

If you're one of the fortunate that has access to Visual Studio 2008 Professional editions or above, you might be asking, "Why would you want to use NUnit with Visual Studio 2008 Standard?". The answer is, the Standard edition (as well as Express editions) don't come integrated with a unit testing framework, nor do they come with unit testing project templates for ASP.NET MVC like the Professional edition and above. Unit testing has become more popular lately, especially with the advantages it adds for ASP.NET MVC.

However, if you're like me and can't afford the more pricey editions, there are some third party unit testing frameworks you can still use. NUnit is not your only choice, but is one of the more common frameworks and is the one I use, so I'll tell you how to get it working within Visual Studio 2008 Standard (or Visual Web Developer Express) along with debugging support while running your unit tests in ASP.NET MVC projects.

Hit the jump to see how to integrate NUnit

It's been two years since my wife Anna and I moved to Overland Park, Kansas and we've been enjoying life here. We've had one of the nicer (and more expensive) views from the balcony of our apartment that you could possibly get in this area and I thought I'd share some of these views with you before we move to a cheaper and far less scenic place. Enjoy.Taken March 28th 2009. We knew from the forecast that we were going to get snow, but waking up to it was still a shock this time of year. It all melted the next day. Typical Midwest weather! Funny thing is you can see the fountain running in the center of the pond.Taken April 4th 2009. We've seen some very amazing sunsets from this apartment. The view will be missed.More photos of the same sunset.

If you're like me, you like to use the "prop" snippet from Visual Studio 2005. If you don't know what I'm talking about, with a C# file open in Visual Studio 2005 (or 2008), type: prop then hit tab twice. In 2005, you are able to initialize the variable like so:

private string _name = "default"; public string Name { get { return _name; } set { _name = value; } }

However, in 2008, prop tab tab gives you the following..

public string Name { get; set; }

This is a problem because there's no simple quick way to initialize the variable.
You can initialize it in a constructor, but what if you're using a static class? You're only other option is to use a DefaultValue attribute like so:

[DefaultValue("default")] public string Name { get; set; }

The problem with using the DefaultValue attribute is that, as far as I know, it requires using Reflection. So not only is it a pain to type, you also take a performance hit.

The way that 2005 handled it still works in 2008, so the easiest solution is to use the snippet from 2005 in 2008. I have created a propx snippet to handle just that. Simply unzip and put the propx.snippet file into your My Code Snippets folder (in Windows 7 this is located at C:\Users\Gordon\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Code Snippets\Visual C#\My Code Snippets\), restart visual studio then type propx tab tab to use it.

In my quest to find a great text/code editor for Mac OS-X, so far, I've chosen Smultron. It has a nice set of features for what I need: It supports Unicode, can display East Asian characters just fine (shame on you TextMate), has project support, syntax highlighting, auto-complete and more, and it's free. Most importantly, it also has support to configure and run shell commands, which means you can use other apps to modify the text. One thing I found missing right off the bat was the ability to format, tabify, and indent XML, so it's time to find a command to format XML and integrate it with Smultron.

Read more to find out how to format XML in Smultron

I needed to write a Windows Service using Visual Studio 2005 Standard at home, however when I went to New Project, I was missing the Windows Service project template. Ok, weird. So a quick web search and I found a post with similar instructions on how to restore the Windows Service project templates.

Basically what it says is, you need to download the Windows Service template zip files:
C# Windows Service Template
VB Windows Service Template
(Hosted at megaupload.com)

Hit the jump to see the remaining instructions on how to restore the Windows Service templates.

A few things have changed since my previous Desktop Feng Shui.

My older Viewsonic LCD no longer works, so I ended up getting an HP w2207h LCD. In fact, BOTH of my Viewsonic LCDs no longer work, so my wife had to revert back to using her smaller, older Samsung SyncMaster 730B LCD. (She didn't want to get a newer LCD.)

I really like the HP w2207h, esp because my wife was able to find it for about $160. It only comes with VGA and HDMI inputs (no DVI), so some people might think that's a big drawback, but it doesn't matter to me. My cousin is about to visit from Georgia, and we do a lot of video gaming, so I will use my LCD to hook the 360 up via HDMI, so we have the option of playing on two systems simultaneously (sometimes we will play our own games at the same time, other times we'll play multiplayer games together). Anyway, for $160, it's practically a steal. Furthermore the HP can rotate into portrait mode, which I like to use a lot.

Hit the jump to see the latest Desktop Feng Shui.

Being quite the Mac OS-X newb, I had a little trouble knowing how to share files from my PC to my Mac. Apparently there are still quite a lot of confused people out there in various threads and forums, so I thought I might help clear up with providing my experience on how I got it working. From what others have said, this used to be much easier in OS-X Tiger, and it was a change made in Leopard that is causing all the fuss. I used to have a Macbook Pro and I didn't seem to have this problem, even while using Leopard, but it is definitely an issue on the recently released new Mac Mini.

I will explain how to connect to a windows workgroup, because that's how my network is set up. For other network configurations, this obviously may not work. Furthermore, this only explains how to get your Mac to see Windows shares. My Windows PC can see my Mac Mini, but it cannot access any shares. I'm guessing I need to authenticate somehow, but I'm not sure yet. I'll update if I find out how to get it working the other direction (from Windows to Mac).

Hit the jump to see the instructions on how to enable Windows sharing in Mac OS-X Leopard