Rolling back...

It's been a busy couple of weeks here at the esendex office. What with introducing transaction scope and testing it. Then finding problems with it and rolling it back it's been hectic to say the least. Now we've had a request to add some more functionality to our ActiveX component so it's time to get back into the joys of things like log4cpp and C++.

I should get round to making some progress on my send sms gadget this week or next but we have an impending release so i guess we'll see how that goes first.

iGoogle URL Gadgets

I've had a couple of hours this afternoon playing with iGoogle and gadgets again and i've decided that i will create a URL gadget that will effectively be a series of 3 pages. The first to send the message using form post and the other two as success / failure pages which in turn will re-direct back to the send page.

We already support this setup with formpost so i haven't got to write any backend code and by using a URL gadget i can get the layout done easily with 3 small web pages. I will also need to get the user prefferences (username, password and account reference) stored in the gadget itself so as not to clog up the gadget with unnecessary fields.

Hopefully i'll get a full day on this next friday and i'll be able to share my findings here, if not i'll try and update with what progress i make.

iGoogle and Gadgets

Well it's been far too long since i posted, i've been fairly busy with getting married and honeymoons and stuff, but i'm back now and hopefully i'll be updating this a lot more frequently.

I was looking into how to get google desktop gadgets added to googles gadget page last night and i came accross some interesting comments about google desktop being able to add gadgets made to run on iGoogle but not the other way around. So i grabbed the standard "Hello World" gadget for iGoogle and tried to host it. Apparently iGoogle doesn't let you add gadgets hosted on your localhost so i uploaded it using Google Page Creator as recommended in the google gadget sdk documentation. This worked a treat, i uploaded the xml file for hello world and was able to add the gadget to my iGoogle page and to my google desktop sidebar.

After trying this i think it's worth doing some work to get an iGoogle gadget working and looking nice that can also be added to Google Desktop, i'll keep you posted on my progress.

XNA Breakout

Well as i mentioned in my first post i've been working on a breakout clone in XNA. It's one of those games that gets made by most people when they start out in games development, either that or pong or tetris but it's simple and gives me a chance to play with XNA without geting into anything too complicated with regards to the game.

I've had two sessions with it now and im constantly surprised at how simple XNA seems to make things. I've probably spent around 4 hours and i've got a menu system, and a level of the game. As far as the level goes i have a ball bouncing around the play area and a paddle to keep it there that reacts to key presses. Adding 360 controller support would be very simple because of the way i'm handling input at the moment as well.

I reckon next time i should have some blocks on screen and a game to play so hopefully you'll have something to look at sooner rather than later.

Google Gadgets

Well i've had some success with microsoft live gadgets and i was hoping to get an Inbox gadget working that could be put onto a Live blog or homepage and you would be able to check your inbox. I had some problems with the live API which i'm still hoping to work thorugh at some point but i did have some success with sending messages. I've also been looking at the google desktop SDK and i managed to get a gadget working that allows you to input your esendex account details and send a message from the google desktop sidebar. I need to tidy it up and make sure i'm handling all 3 "modes" it can be in, sidebar, expanded and desktop but i should have soemthing that can be downloaded and installed over the next couple of weeks!

Hello World...

Hi,
this is a blog about problems encountered and resolved as a .Net developer at Esendex, a business sms provider based in Nottingham, England. Hopefully I'll be able to give you a light hearted insight into the world of .Net development here at Esendex and share with you any problems of interest and how we overcame them so that you won't have to go through those problems yourselves.

This is the new home of my windows live blog as i want to use google analytics to track visitors and i can't do that on windows live. I won't move any posts here from my live blog as it's still available but i will just give you a quick rundown on what i'm currently blogging about...

Web Gadgets and Google Gadgets: Here at Esendex we provide a business sms service as mentioned above and i thought that our service would give me a good opportunity to look into gadget development. Basically looking to provide an Inbox gadget and possibly a sending gadget as well. Progress has varied from week to week but i'm hoping that the next time i update you all on the how this is going i will have a working Google Desktop or Windows Live gadget. (Fingers Crossed!)

XNA: I've always been interested in games development and with Microsofts new games development SDK it's fairly simple to create games for both the PC and the XBox 360. I've started development of a breakout clone, something i once wrote in managed DirectX. Once i have a working version i'll find somewhere to host it and give you guys a download link!

I'll be updating roughly once a week, workload permitting and provided there's something worth saying.