Monday, March 29, 2010

15% discount on Help Server till the end of March

Enter 2010.03 coupon code after following any of "Buy now" links on this page to get it.

Posted by Alex Yakunin 0 comments

"Can ORM make your application faster?" series

In March I started to write a series of posts called "Can ORM make your application faster?". 6 posts are already there, although the whole sequence isn't finished yet (planning to do this in two weeks).

I hope it will be interesting for anyone who uses ORM tools or considers this.

Posted by Alex Yakunin 0 comments

DataObjects.Net: upcoming changes and plans

Recently I made two important posts related to DataObjects.Net future:

Please read them, if you're using this product or planning to use it.

Posted by Alex Yakunin 0 comments

Discount and subscriptions on DataObjects.Net

We updated "License" page in DataObjects.Net Wiki - now it reflects some changes we're planning to implement. There are:

  • Discounts: right now we offer 15% discount for new orders, and 10% - for subscription prolongations. The offer is intact till March 31, 2010.
  • Subscriptions: now you can pay for SMB and Enterprise licenses by ordering a subscription with 2-month billing period. So totally there are 6 payments, 20% of pay-at-once license cost each, thus total license cost is about 20%. But imagine: 99 USD per month - it's cheaper than VPS, and there is 15% discount! Conditions will never be more attractive. I wrote we'll adjust the prices in June, mainly to properly position the product relatively to its competitors. Check out e.g. this one, and think which of such functional can be covered by DO4 with DisconnectedState.
  • Internal license is not available now.

Posted by Alex Yakunin 0 comments

Saturday, March 06, 2010

New posts in blogs

P.S. Guys, sorry, but I just decided to share your Skype pics here - people should know your real nature :)

// Actually I did this just to add some colors. And I know they don't read comments.

Posted by Alex Yakunin 2 comments

Online web help: industry standards, help browsers \ converters and help authoring tools

Abstract: this article might be helpful for you, if you ever considered publishing product help on the web. It provides a short review of online help browsers used by market leaders, as well as widely adopted  commercial and freeware solutions allowing to publish product help on the web. So if you're planning to publish help files for your product on the web, you'll be aware of all the options, as well as of standard user expectations.


Disclaimer: since my company has its own product in this category, I can't pretend to provide fully independent review of various help browsers. But I'll try to.


What is really important for your potential (or existing) customers browsing your help? There are many factors (documentation quality itself, usability, design), but finally all of them can be expressed as overall user experience in comparison to widely known help browsers on the market, such as online MSDN Library web site or Visual Studio .NET Help.



Online help browsers used by market leaders

Microsoft MSDN Library
URL: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/default.aspx

Nice features:
  • 3 versions – Classic, Lightweight Beta, ScriptFree
  • Search with hints, but only in Classic version!
  • Good URLs
  • Good print version
  • Community content (comments), "Rate the article".
Notes:
  • No index - likely, because it must be incredibly large there
  • I don't understand why it always reload the whole page. In general, this makes impression of slower operation.
  • Open TOC nodes get closed on navigation (except the ones in current navigation path).
Summary: really good browser for such a large help collection.

Adobe Online Help
URL: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Acrobat/9.0/Professional/index.html - for Adobe Acrobat

Nice features:
  • Comments, rating - with RSS
  • Good design
  • Good URLs (but see the notes below - it looks like plain HTML everywhere)
  • No need for Print button :)
Issues:
  • TOC disappears when you click on a TOC link
  • TOC always gets completely loaded.
Notes:
  • No AJAX, no frames
  • No index
  • Search there relies on global search at Adobe.com.
Summary: this is mainly plain HTML (except comments), with all the limitations. The same approach won't work for large help collections (references, etc.). But Adobe team made really a good job - all the exposed documentation there is relatively short.

Autodesk Online Help

Issues:
  • Top frame URL does not change. It seems there is no way to get link to current page.
  • Keyword and search indexes are fully loaded into the browser on navigation to corresponding tabs. Chrome process immediately eats ~ 200Mb.
  • It seems search is implemented in JavaScript.
  • No "Print" button.
  • Buggy splitter (IE8, Chrome, Firefox 3.6).
  • I'd say, design looks a bit ancient ;)
Summary: an attempt to provide Windows Help user experience there looks at least as unfinished.

JetBrains WebHelp
URL: http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/webhelp/ - for ReSharper

Nice features:
  • AJAX TOC with sync on navigation
  • Search on the right is good solution for wide screen (now it is the most frequent case, especially for developers).
Issues:
  • No URLs. Permalinks are available, but they lead to pages without header, TOC and Search.
  • No highlighting of search results
  • No index (probably, JetBrains help does not contain it)
  • No "Print" button, but permalinks bring you to pages that are ideal for printing.
Notes:
Summary: very good, especially for API references. Good UX, as at the whole JetBrains' web site.

ComponentOne NetHelp
URL: http://helpcentral.componentone.com/Documentation.aspx - for all C1 products

Nice features:
  • "Previous page" and "Next page" buttons available at toolbar.
Issues:
  • Top frame URL does not change. It seems there is no way to get link to current page.
  • TOC, keyword and search indexes are fully loaded into the browser on navigation to corresponding tabs.
  • Most likely, search is implemented in JavaScript.
Summary: visually better than Autodesk Online Help, but UX is very similar.

Oracle Help Technologies

Nice features:
  • All the features I expect to see (based on e.g. MSDN library experience) are available there.
Issues:
  • No good URLs, but there are permalinks.
Notes:
  • Animation of left pane is slooow... Completely unclear, why they use it at all there.
  • Design must be improved (my own opinion = very subjective).
Resume: one of the most featured help browser among the others. The only lacks I'd list is its design & slow animation.

Eclipse Documentation
URL: http://help.eclipse.org/galileo/index.jsp

Nice features:
  • All the  features I expect to see are available there. 
  • Good search results (with quotations).
Issues:
  • No URLs, no permalinks.
Notes:
  • Index search returns paged results. Looks a bit strange from the point of UX.
  • Really ancient design.
Resume: one of the most featured help browser among others here, although I think its design must be improved as well.

Mono Documentation
URL: http://www.go-mono.com/docs/index.aspx

Nice features:
  • AJAX TOC
  • It works noticeably faster than other help browsers - at least, from our office. Most likely, they properly tuned up content caching headers there.
Issues:
  • No search
  • No index
  • No URLs
  • Clicking on "permalink" closes all the nodes in TOC
  • 1px splitter  - I noticed it only by occasion :)
Resume: search feature must definitely be added there. Generally, it must be better, since Mono is positioned as free alternative to Microsoft .NET. The only fact partially "saving" them now is that people can use Microsoft .NET help instead of this one (although Mono has a set of unique assemblies).

Other examples:

Online help browsers available on the market

This part contains just a list of them: usually product web site provides all the necessary information (supported features, browsers, etc.).

Supported help formats (.CHM, .HxS, etc.) and server platforms are mentioned here. Products are listed alphabetically.

A!K Research Labs chm2web
Product page: http://chm2web.aklabs.com/
Online demo: http://chm2web.aklabs.com/helpfr/

Supported help file formats: .CHM
Supported server platform: any (generated web sites use only HTML and JavaScript).

Herd Software Development WinhelpCGI
Product page: http://www.herdsoft.com/linux/produkte/winhelpcgi.html
Online demo: http://www.herdsoft.com/ti/winhelpcgi/

Supported help file formats: WinHelp (.HLP)
Supported server platform: Linux, web server with CGI support is required.

Oracle Help Technologies
URL: http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/java/help/index.html - there is a link to demo.
This tool was described above.

Supported help file formats: Oracle Help
Supported server platform: cross-platform (viewer is implemented in Java),

X-tensive.com Help Server
Online demo: http://help.x-tensive.com/

Supported help file formats: Microsoft Help 1.x (.CHM) and 2.x (.HxS), plain HTML
Supported server platform: Windows, IIS 6.0/7.0 with ASP.NET 3.5.


Help authoring/generation tools supporting web help (website) output

Tools listed below are capable to generate web site from help project. They do not support standard help formats, but if you're building a documentation using one of these tools, it can can be converted to a website exposing it on the web.

Adobe RoboHelp
Product page: http://www.adobe.com/products/robohelp/

There are two ways of building web-based documentation in RoboHelp:
  • Using FlashHelp output format. An example is here (official).
  • Using WebHelp output format. An example is here (not official - unfortunately, I was unable to find an official one at Adobe.com, so I took one from this list).

ComponentOne NetHelp in Doc2Help
This tool was described above.

Supported server platform: any (generated web sites use only HTML and JavaScript).

ExtremeEase HelpConsole

Supported server platform: any (generated web sites use only HTML and JavaScript).

Helixoft VSdocman and VBdocman

Supported server platform: any (generated web sites use only HTML and JavaScript).

Microsoft Sandcastle

Sandcastle is general purpose documentation generator using XML comments in C# \ VB.NET files to build it. There are two ways of building web-based documentation using it:
  • Using DocSite Templates for Docproject. Example output screenshots are here (I couldn't find real web site, so there are just screenshots). Generated web site requires IIS 6.0 with ASP.NET 2.0 to run.
  • Using Sandcastle Website output. Examples of such documentation: first, second, third (not official, Sandcastle authors currently don't maintain official example site).
NDoc


Discontinued, although you still can use this tool to build documentation for .NET 1.1 projects.

Supported server platform: any (generated web sites use only HTML and JavaScript).

Links
P.S. Please leave a comment here, if you'll find a mistake.

Posted by Alex Yakunin 0 comments

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

DataObjects.Net v4.2 is released!

DataObjects.Net v4.2 is our first official release after v4.0.5 (August 2009) - a bit more than 6 months have passed after that moment, and as you will find, we didn't waste the time during this period:

What's new

We've made a lot of other features and changes, but I hope the most important ones are listed above now. If you're interested, see this and that lists, there are all the issues we've implemented from v4.0.5 release (198 in total).

Known issues

Installer
  • Install.bat \ Uninstall.bat files must be executed with Administrator permissions on Windows Vista and above. Of course, this is important only if you'll use them. Standard installer already does this (you'll be requested to provide Administrator permissions for it by UAC prompt on its start).
Framework itself
  • Oracle support for 10g is temporarily broken in the current version, so you can use it only with Oracle 9i and 11g.
Manual
  • A set of  sections must be added, including "Disconnected operations", "Full-text search", etc.
Reference
Sandbox projects
  • OrderAccounting project is buggy. Frankly speaking, we were unable to fix all the issues there during last days. The cause is DissconnectedState key remapping behavior on ApplyChanges, which is relatively new. All the issues there will be fixed shortly; for now we recommend you to study WPF - it fully relies on DisconnectedState as well now.
Nearest plans
  • Improve Manual and samples further releasing minor updates 1-2 times per month. 
  • Migrate to .NET 4.0 and PostSharp 2.0. Or, more precisely, provide .NET 4.0 version - so far we aren't going to fully leave .NET 3.5.

Posted by Alex Yakunin 0 comments
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