We’re happy to formally announce the launch of Support Details, our first planned public product. This is one of those ideas which was in the works here at Imulus far longer then need be. In fact the idea was discussed in ’03 and sadly it fell off the radar until this year. Support Details is an attempt to add clarification to browser related issues between non-technical web visitors and their clients & customers.

This idea started as way to save time. To solve odd browser issues our team was always asking the clients questions like:

“What browser are you using?”, “Which version of Flash is installed?”,”Do you have cookies enabled?” “What is your screen size?”

You get the point.

We simply were losing too much time to explaining the “how to” aspect; hence Support Details.

To be useful the product had to determine what browser a customer was using, along with any other configuration data which could be detected. Then, it needed a reliable way for capturing and sending the data over to the person who was working on the problem.

The concept is simple. That is part of the reason we believe it works so well. Yet, we’re always open to good suggestions for improvement and we’re eager to hear your feedback.

For a long time here at Imulus we had trouble keeping track of internal company information. Client datasheets, software licenses, Imulus specific programming tips, bug tracking, email setup documentation, employee calendar links, etc. This problem was not something isolated to just us, every work environment I’ve been a part of has struggled with documenting and finding information. Generally the solution ends up being a massive repository of excel documents or a shared hard drive full of text files and snippets. Neither of these solutions are practical or scalable.

Our answer to this problem was an internal company wiki. Our goal was to have a central resource that was easy to update and easy to get information out of. It needed to be searchable, easy to edit, and secure. Being a .NET shop we decided to go with ScrewTurn a free open source wiki for .NET environments. A few other alternatives are: Wordpress plugins and hosted solutions such as pbwiki.

We’ve been using this solution since last August and it has been a huge time saver. Our project manager no longer gets flooded with requests for, “that spec requirement the client sent over,” and our programmer’s no longer have to use local text files to keep track of bugs in their code.

Yesterday I needed to reference the syntax for getting the string representation of a .NET DateTime object in a specific format. Google and MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network)’s own search brought me to this page. This page and the next few I found on the topic where less then helpful. These pages highlight two issues I have with MSDN’s documentation.

First, while MSDN’s documentation is excellent and thorough as an encyclopedic work, it fails as a quick reference. It’s often hard to find the nugget of info you need, especially if you are in a hurry. For example – on the page I reference above – instead of providing some simple examples demonstrating the concept – you need to scroll through about 80 lines of code. I’m happy to do that, but I’d appreciate some quick examples at the top for when I’m in a hurry. It would make my life a little easier.

Second, the default .NET version that MSDN shows documentation for is the latest .NET version, 3.5. I respect Microsoft’s desire to push and promote the latest version of its framework, but not taking developers to the most common – and the version of documentation they are most likely looking for – does not seem the best strategy, or even a good strategy. It’s annoying because it requires extra clicks and effort to get to the version of info you are actually looking for. It’s double annoying because .NET 3.5 is still a new technology and not yet widely adopted; 2.0 seems to the de facto standard.

I think that MSDN will get better in time, especially with the feedback system that was implemented sometime ago. Microsoft seems more open to input these days and I hope the .NET community can encourage MSDN to evolve.

We are a .NET shop and I’m constantly at a loss for why there aren’t more .NET open-source projects. I’m disappointed that the only open-source .NET application that has gained any attention has been DotNetNuke.

Why hasn’t the .NET community churned out more .NET based open-source projects? I fully understand the strength of the other web software tools / development environments outside of .NET but rather then discussing the pros and cons I want to better understand why there is a void.

Microsoft, perhaps you should sponsor a .NET open-source challenge? Common, you put your name and money behind it and we’ll organize the show. Even ex-Microsoft evangelist / employee Robert Scoble is using WordPress (a non-.NET based blog tool).

In the past we’ve had great success pulling in resumes for web developers and asp.net programmers. It seems as if in the last 6-8 months the pool of resumes has dried up. At first I thought maybe our job posting was poorly writen, but after talking with several area competitors it seems we’re not the only ones. Which leads me to wonder where have all the web developers gone?

Have the post dot com bust web developers taken jobs elsewhere? Has the surge in Indian off-shore programming scared developers away?