S
Steve Tibbett
Hi. I've been working on this app at the company I work for for a little
while, and we're pretty close to really releasing it, but before we do, I'd
like to get some feedback on a number of things.
One of the big questions is, being a Windows Forms app, is this going to
deter people from downloading it? The app itself is pretty small, but this
is completely overshadowed by requiring a 24 meg runtime. For anyone that
already has the runtime the small app is a nice bonus but for everyone else,
I'm wondering if people will just not bother. On the flip side, at a recent
MSDN conference Microsoft said they've had 35 million framework downloads
from Windows Update, and 60% of new PCs come with it pre-installed. So
maybe this isn't so much of an issue.
Another bummer is startup time - launching a .NET app takes a lot longer
than launching, say, an MFC app. Our app runs at startup so this hauls in
the .NET framework during boot if you aren't already running something that
uses it..
With Longhorn, none of this will be an issue since the OS will come with and
be using .NET itself, but for now, well, I'm wondering if these are reasons
that Microsoft ships so few .NET applications themselves.
Anyway, my app's setup is here:
http://download.zimsms.com/zimchat/zim/zimsmschat.exe
It's an MSN Messenger style app that lets you chat with a person on their
cell phone. You can do this for free with some of the IM clients but ZIM
has a backend SMS routing system that should be able to deliver messages
pretty much worldwide, instead of just to certain carriers. But, because we
get billed for messages, we charge to use it. The details of that aren't
all worked out yet, but when you run this download version, it will give you
300 free credits so at least it won't cost anything to play with the app a
bit.
To keep this sorta on topic
I've been posting some notes on how the app
is written and I'm going to continue to do so on my weblog, at
http://www.stevex.org/dottext. A lot of it is pretty basic but it might
help some people. Anyway, if you run the app and anything bad happens
(bugs, won't run, etc) or you're curious about something, please send me an
email.
Thanks.
while, and we're pretty close to really releasing it, but before we do, I'd
like to get some feedback on a number of things.
One of the big questions is, being a Windows Forms app, is this going to
deter people from downloading it? The app itself is pretty small, but this
is completely overshadowed by requiring a 24 meg runtime. For anyone that
already has the runtime the small app is a nice bonus but for everyone else,
I'm wondering if people will just not bother. On the flip side, at a recent
MSDN conference Microsoft said they've had 35 million framework downloads
from Windows Update, and 60% of new PCs come with it pre-installed. So
maybe this isn't so much of an issue.
Another bummer is startup time - launching a .NET app takes a lot longer
than launching, say, an MFC app. Our app runs at startup so this hauls in
the .NET framework during boot if you aren't already running something that
uses it..
With Longhorn, none of this will be an issue since the OS will come with and
be using .NET itself, but for now, well, I'm wondering if these are reasons
that Microsoft ships so few .NET applications themselves.
Anyway, my app's setup is here:
http://download.zimsms.com/zimchat/zim/zimsmschat.exe
It's an MSN Messenger style app that lets you chat with a person on their
cell phone. You can do this for free with some of the IM clients but ZIM
has a backend SMS routing system that should be able to deliver messages
pretty much worldwide, instead of just to certain carriers. But, because we
get billed for messages, we charge to use it. The details of that aren't
all worked out yet, but when you run this download version, it will give you
300 free credits so at least it won't cost anything to play with the app a
bit.
To keep this sorta on topic
I've been posting some notes on how the appis written and I'm going to continue to do so on my weblog, at
http://www.stevex.org/dottext. A lot of it is pretty basic but it might
help some people. Anyway, if you run the app and anything bad happens
(bugs, won't run, etc) or you're curious about something, please send me an
email.
Thanks.