We enjoyed meeting the TechSmith team at TechED this year. We are big fans of Snagit and Camtesia Studio and all of us here at Falafel use their products for several years now.  SnagIt 9 was released this week at TechED with awesome new features.

Picture below is for Betsy Weber, Chief Evangelist of TechSmith, and Lino Tadros from Falafel Software at the show.  Stay tuned for great new announcements coming up from both companies partnering to bring the latest and greatest in technology to customers worldwide :)

The Falafellites are having fun at TechED 2008 at our Bronze Sponsor booth.  Rocking on RockBand for XBOX 360 till late last night with attendees for several hours.  Too much booooooze! We don't remember anything!

I had the pleasure to be invited to participate on the "LINQ in the UI" panel at TechED 2008 this week with some of the brightest minds at Microsoft in regards to that topic.  I shared the stage with Amanda Silver, VB Program Manager, Erick Thompson, MS Program Manager and Charlie Calvert, C# community Program Manager.

At Falafel, John Waters and Bary Nusz have been working very hard on releasing the new Telerik Trainer product for Telerik Corp. when they have used LINQ to XML and LINQ to Objects to simplify the UI code and make it readable and maintainable to build a XAML based WPF application.  The main point that we wanted to push on the panel is that LINQ is not just for queries and databases, but you can use it's power to build elegant User Interfaces as it is capable to work with any IEnumerable to accomplish the job.

  Looking for a good time? Join Falafel Software, Inc. at Microsoft Tech•Ed North America 2008 during the IT Professionals Conference June 10–13, booth #308.
We will showcase ActiveFocus, a web-based project management and team collaboration tool enabling teams to quickly share information, track progress, and deliver projects on time. Group and one-on-one demos will be available.
We'll be giving away three Zune® media players and a complete Xbox 360™ gaming system including Rock Band™. Rock Band will be set up at the booth and available for your enjoyment!
Microsoft Tech•Ed North America 2008 IT Professionals is the Microsoft premier technical education conference for IT professionals.
Falafel Software is proud to be a Bronze Sponsor of this prestigious event.

Falafel Software today released its new TestCompleteTV.com web site, a subscription based video library to train on the award winning Automated QA tool, TESTCOMPLETE.  We are all very excited about the site and the possibilities it brings to our loyal customers worldwide.

Subscriptions vary from $39 for 3 months, to $99 for the whole year or $299 for lifetime membership.
Falafel intends to produce between 200 to 250 videos by the end of 2008.
We encourage all members in the community to send us their feedback and their wish list on what videos we should produce first.

TelerikTV.com was released this week as a show site for case studies involving Telerik technologies.  Falafel Software is very pleased to have its flag ship product, ActiveFocus, be the first product showcased on the site.  I was interviewed by my friend Cark Franklin, co founder of the very successful .NET Rocks! Internet audio talk show for .NET Developers, for an hour, we discussed the elegance and power of the Telerik radControls and dived into source code to demonstrate the architecture and implementation of these amazing components.

Go view the video today and let us know what you think! :)

Falafel is partnering with Microsoft to offer this free half day seminar at the beautiful Saint Claire hotel in downtown San Jose, CA to celebrate the release of Visual Studio 2008, LINQ, WPF, WCF, WF and other exciting technologies.

Congrats to the VS Team at Microsoft.  The Visual Studio 2008 bits are being uploaded to the MSDN as I am writing this blog.

Good luck getting it downloaded today or tomorrow, You might as well use Pigeons to transfer the bits from the MSDN

Cheers

Wow!  I was told so many times that Visual Studio 2008 will ship in 2007, well it does not sound like that is a possibility anymore.

Microsoft released a new date, February 27th 20008 to release Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008

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With the demands of new major consulting projects, preparing for ActiveFocus 2007 Q3 and 300% increase in the company's training business this year, Falafel is hiring!

We are looking for:

• Sharepoint Experts
• ASP.NET 2.0 Developer
• .NET Architect
• 2 Technical Writers

If you want to join a dynamic team, fun company to work for, excellent atmosphere, full benefits and work with the best on the latest and greatest of technologies worldwide, send us your resume at jobs@falafel.com

Falafel software is proud to announce the successful launch of version 2.0 of its custom built ERP system Velocity. Velocity handles billions of dollars of business for America’s leading organic produce company. Version 2.0 provided a rewrite of key parts of the user interface, using Web 2.0 technology like AJAX and Web Services to provide the data entry performance of a desktop application combined with the ease of deployment and central manageability of a web application. The system handles hundreds of users, hundreds of thousands of sales orders and invoices, and provides 24/7 availability and high performance using a scale-out Microsoft architecture.

I had the privilege of attending a two-day training for Expression Design and Expression Blend this week in San Jose, CA.  The trainer, Joshua, was knowledgeable and fun to learn from.  We enjoyed his training and personality.

Unfortunately, the product is just NOT ready for prime time.  I was shocked! Really shocked! Poor guy had to apologize almost every three minutes for two days on how the product works and why he has to do things in a very awkward way to get it to behave.
First the IDE is not intuitive at all.  I thought, hey I am a developer, maybe this is just not for me, but all the designers in the room were shaking their heads as well.

There was total confusion between canvas and layers in Blend, disturbing implementation for differentiating between selection and scope that could easily waste hours of work. There lacked in the IDE a clear path to redirect the effort to the correct path.
Look at the Trigger clickable button in the IDE in the picture below.

I thought you click that to access the Trigger page, nope, if you click on that Trigger button, you will delete the only trigger you have on your WPF form.  Who designed this IDE?
Yes I can see now the + sign and the minus sign but that is just not the way it is done guys.
At some point the IDE will be so cluttered with docked windows that it rendered the experience of working in the IDE totally useless.
You can save your designs as .Design files in Expression Design and export the XAML to Blend. That is a one way street; blend can not send the xaml back to design.  Expression Design does not know anything about .XAML files either and can not open them.  Just make them!
The scrollbar in the properties window disappears often and the user can no longer get to the properties off the screen space currently visible. Eventually, resizing the docked windows brings back the scrollbar.
Modifying XAML code in the editor sometimes does not reflect the change in the designer unless you close down the project and reopen.
Ok, that is enough, you get the picture.  Great idea, powerful product, long way to go to get it to be productive and useful.

Back at TechEd 2007 in Orlando, Florida, both teams celebrated the release of the Telerik radControls Training courseware authored by Falafel Software and the start of a great relationship.  Here at Falafel we have nothing but respect and admiration for Telerik's products and their quality.  At the same time, we all here enjoy the Bulgarian spirit, sense of humor and great team.

The picture below was taken at the Texas De Brazil steakhouse with both teams after 14 bottles of Wine, and a lot of other weird drinks, for some reason no one remembers this picture on both teams

San Jose, CA June 2nd 2007 - While the software industry has benefited greatly from project productivity management solutions, very few industries have seen a truly all-inclusive easy-to-use tool for managing projects throughout their entire lifecycle. Falafel Software has recognized this industry gap and has developed ActiveFocus, a Web 2.0 application that allows multiple types of organizations to take advantage of modern project management technologies. ActiveFocus represents the first truly multipurpose project productivity solution on the market today and Falafel Software is proudly launching it at Microsoft TechEd in Orlando, Florida, June 4th to 8th 2007.

"Calling ActiveFocus a multipurpose project productivity solution really doesn't even scratch the surface of what our product can do," remarked Lino Tadros, President and CEO of Falafel Software

"What's really remarkable is all of the amazing features that will help any business get through any project. We're really excited about ActiveFocus and our current partners and customers are eagerly waiting to see what ActiveFocus can do for them."

“It is exciting to see how customers such as Falafel Software have used the power and productivity of ASP.NET 2.0, AJAX and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 to deliver a project productivity management solution to their customers,” said Keith Smith, group product manager of the Developer Tools Team at Microsoft Corp. “The combination of ASP.NET 2.0, AJAX and SQL Server 2005 gives ActiveFocus a solid platform for developing its applications.”

Campbell, CA - November 3rd 2006 - Falafel Software is proud to announce that as of November 1, 2006, every member of the Falafel team has achieved MCP status by having passed one or more Microsoft Certification Exams.

"This is a monumental achievement for the Falafel team as I know of no other company with 100% of its team having this level of certification." says Lino Tadros, President of Falafel. "It reflects our commitment to the development community and to the high standards of professionalism and talent we give to our clients."
Go Falafel!

Campbell, CA - October 30th 2006 - Falafel Software today earned the prestigious Microsoft Gold Partner Certification level.

"It is very exciting to all of us at Falafel to achieve this milestone", said Lino Tadros, President & CEO of Falafel Software "We intend to use the new Gold level to create an even stronger relationship with Microsoft for Training and Consulting in the .NET 3.0 based technologies."
Falafel Software is a Gold Certified Partner with ISV Solution Provider and Mobility competencies.

Falafel Software launched their fast and easy to use web site that promotes their software development, consulting, and training services. In addition to promoting Falafel’s products and services, the site also features informative blogs by Falafel employees, an active community forum, and a store where Falafel and AutomatedQA products can be purchased.

The site also marks the debut of Falafel’s new creative director, Eric Titolo. On the Falafel web site, Eric spent many hours researching the previous Falafel sites trying to figure the best way of presenting the products and services Falafel has to offer.

“One the of the first things a web designer should do before even attempting a look and feel is to really sit down and contemplate the existing content,” remarked Mr. Titolo. “You really need to determine whether the site is organized in a way that your customers will understand and is easy to use. If it isn’t, you’re ultimately wasting your time and money.”

After the Falafel team agreed on the site’s organization, they moved into the marketing and design. “It really started out as a joke,” chuckled Eric. “I made this design flat with a graphic of a delicious looking falafel sandwich. Then I started thinking: why not make reference to food in the company’s slogan? There’s plenty of sayings in food services that can cross over into software. So I came up with the slogan ‘Made to Order’.”

Regardless of starting as a joke, the “made to order” slogan captures the philosophy of Falafel Software. Falafel provides top quality software, consulting, and training that meets the individual needs of every one of their clients. In other words, Falafel Software specializes in making sure your project is made to order.

“I absolutely loved the new slogan,” exclaimed Ramesh Theivendran, Principal Architect. “It makes me hungry just thinking about it!”

“I am extremely happy with the new web site. I think it really reflects who we are and where we are going,” remarked president, Lino Tadros. “Falafel prides itself on providing top quality products and services that are truly ‘made to order.’ Our new web site allows us to promote our objectives confidently and tastefully.”

Written by Phillip Blanton

There seems to be a lot of trouble encountered by people attempting their first install of DotnetNuke 4.x. I have developed a step by step guide for installing a new Dnn4 development system on your Windows XP machine, and I find that I am constantly looking for the last place I posted it so that I can copy and paste it into a new thread.

I figured that Falafel would be a good place to stick it. That way I can just post a link to this one static location whenever I need to share this information.

If you follow these steps to the letter, you *WILL* have a DotNetNuke installation running on Windows XP Professional. If you want to then open and compile the solution in Visual Studio, that is the subject of another post, but let's first get you installed...

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Update: There is a lot of confusion about which system account needs permission to the database and directory structure of your DNN installation. It used to be "ASPNET" on non XP and Server 2000 machines, and "NETWORK SERVICE" on Windows Server 2003 machines. Now it is a little more complicated.

If you are running IIS 6, then you should use "NETWORK SERVICE". If you are using IIS 5.x, then  you should use "ASPNET". Without regard to the OS.

The rese of these instructions will refer to "ASP System Account". Please substitute either ASPNET or  "NETWORK SERVICE" as appropriate to your version of IIS.
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1. Unzip the DotNetNuke 4.x Source Install zip into an empty directory where it will reside on your machine. In my case that is D:\Development\WebProjects\DnnDev.

2. Right click on the DnnDev directory and select "Sharing and Security" and click the Security tab.

(If you don't have a security tab, click "Tools | Folder Options", select the "View" tab, scroll to the bottom and turn off simple file sharing. Close the dialog and repeat step 2.)

3. Click the "Add" button and in the "Enter the Object Names to Select" area, enter the necessary ASP System Account.

4. Click the [Check Names] button and the system username will be verified and fully qualified. Click OK.

5. Select the new user account and give it "Modify" permission. It doesn't need "Full Control". Click OK.

6. Back in the WebRoot directory, Make a copy of the release.config file and rename it "web.config". Also copy the \config\SiteUrls.config file to WebRoot.

7. Open the web.config file in a text editor (Textpad is the best, so go buy it now!) I use SQLServer Developer edition and not SQL Server Express so these directions are for SQL Server.

Comment out the two SQL Express SiteSqlServer keys, and uncomment the SQL Server 2000 / 2005 ones and set the "value" element of them both as follows...

"Server=(local);Database=DnnDev;trusted_connection=yes;"

Make both SiteSqlServer keys have the same connection string. Save and close the text editor. Don't modify anything else in the web.config file.

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SQL Server:

 This is slightly different in SQL Server 2005 and SQLServer 2000, but the concepts are the same.

Before you create the database...

8. Start up SQL Server Enterprise Manager and expand the "Security" section. Make sure the ASP System Account has been added to the list of "Logins" and given default access to "master".

9. Collapse the security node, right click on the "Databases" node and select "New Database". Name the database DnnDev (or whatever you called it in the connection strings in step 7). Accept all defaults and let the Enterprise Manager create the database.

10. Expand the new DnnDev database node and select "Users". Right click in the users area and select "New Database User". From the drop down list, select the ASP System Account account you just created. Give it dbowner access. Click OK.

Close the SQL Server Enterprise Manager.

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IIS Administrator:

11. Open IIS Adminstrator applet and add a new virtual directory to the default website. Name it "DnnDev", point it to the D:\Development\WebProjects\DnnDev directory. Make sure "Read" and "Run Scripts" are checked and accept all other defaults.

12. Right Click the new website entry in IIS and click "Properties". Select the "ASP.NET" tab and make sure you are running the 2.0.50215.0 version of ASP.NET.

Setup is now complete. If there is not a problem with the system, opening up IE or Firefox and navigating to http://localhost/dnndev will instantiate the DotNetNuke installer. After the installer has completed, there will be a link at the bottom of the page that will take you to the new portal site. Installation will only run once. After which point, navigating to http://localhost/dnndev will just display the site.