The first thing I did was check the Event Viewer on the server itself – notice the horrible information within the error. The one important code to write down is the exception code (0xE053534F).

After reading a tutorial on how to catch a crash I was able to catch the crash in a dump file. While the debug diag tool was useful for catching, I needed WinDbg to get to the root of the problem.

Note: I set the symbols location to SRV*c:\users\jsedlak\documents\websymbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols

As you can see, the debug view is fairly useless. Run the following commands:

• .loadby sos mscorwks
• !clrstack

Now you can see what is causing the stack overflow. Turns out it was an XSLT file that was doing a recursive climb up the Sitecore tree without a base case. The cause of the problem however was that I had just implemented Workflow on all items which corrupted their state and seemed to have removed their published version from the web database. By fixing the XSLT to have a base case and submitting all content through their workflow I was able to get the site back.

Anyways, I enjoy using Chrome because it is a painless and lightweight alternative to IE, although it does crash every now and then just like every other browser. Where the two new browsers fail is in support for new Windows 7 features like the title bar drag. While you can drag a Safari browser around by the tabs (which is a dumb idea) if you drag to the top and maximize, you can’t drag out of the maximized size. The same goes for Chrome, however I must give Chrome some props because it doesn’t use the entire top bar for two tabs!

What would be nice if Safari (and IE!) adopted Chrome’s look but implemented title bar drag by allowing users to drag from the area to the left and right of the tabs. Or if they abandoned the approach altogether and came back to a uniform look and feel to software.

Oh and thanks Google and Apple for not even using Aero!

+ The taskbar is amazing. I guess I never realized how little I actually needed the old task bar until now. I am still on the fence about grouping but am trying to force myself to radical change by adopting the “move it to the side” campaign. Essentially this includes running the taskbar in its default 7 state and moving it to either side of the monitor. While I find myself going to click at the bottom of the screen sometimes, my efficiency has not dropped. I can still find applications easily and quickly. However this is not a usual circumstance yet as I have not bloated up the drive with all my software.

+ The explorer got some major improvements since Vista. When I go into work I actually dread using XP. The explorer in XP is horrendous compared to that of Vista and the latter is like a retarded stepchild of Se7en’s beautiful explorer. My favorite part of the new bits? Favorites! Finally Microsoft has removed the useless built-in sidebar and allowed us to add our own important folders. My only hope now is that every application (HINT HINT Adobe!) will use this format! [b]Update:[/b] Bjoern says you can add your favorites in Vista by adding links to the “C:\Users\\Links” folder.

+ Libraries. They may be a basic implementation but boy are they powerful and useful. Imagine all of your stuff (that’s right I said stuff) located in one virtual spot despite being located physically throughout the drive. My first step with libraries was to create a Logs library for quickly viewing logs of my favorite applications. It removes the need to step through hundreds of directories when I need access to them.

+ The small stuff. People are saying this is Vista SP2 and “what Vista should have been” and they are right. For me it is the attention to detail that makes Windows 7 so great. Being able to see the desktop without losing window locations (Aero Peek) or the sliding animation of the thumbnail viewer. The biggest attention to detail I have seen? Standardization. Microsoft is a large company with hundreds (if not thousands) of pieces of software and naturally these were not very standardized. It is killing the company very quietly because of what Apple did, and I don’t agree with that either. Windows 7 takes a good step in a good direction with the inclusion of the Ribbon in more places and the semi-standard toolbar theme (found originally in Vista’s explorer). There are thousands of more things for me to discover and cover, so I will just leave them to you to find.

+ The bug fixing. I am going to touch on this not because of 7 directly but rather because of what Vista did. After using Vista for so long having to go back to XP is just flat out an annoying experience. To the point above, the little things matter and the bugs in XP are some of the most annoying bugs. Thankfully they have been addressed in Vista, and expanded upon in Se7en. What bugs am I talking about? Multi-monitor support in XP was pretty horrid; at work when I switch to an application via the taskbar it will randomly pop up a window on the other monitor. Let’s say I have IE open on one and Visual Studio on the other. When I click to goto VS, IE gets covered by another application! Hopefully you can see how annoying this can be. The other major bug that irritates me every day? The natural ability of XP to steal focus away from you just when you start typing. Today I am typing in IE as Visual Studio opens when all of a sudden my typing stops making words. What happened? Well of course XP switched focus to Visual Studio! Thankfully neither of these have been a problem since Vista.

- The instability. Yes, I know, it is a beta. The problem is that it is the ONLY beta we are seeing. After this it is supposedly RC0 and then RTM. Hopefully they can sort out the instability problems in that timeframe. For the record I got a BSOD this morning. “PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON_PAGED_AREA” or something to that effect. In fact I get this sometimes in Vista and think it is due to my system rather than the OS. I ran memory tests and they all passed so I am thoroughly confused. Oh well.

- IE8. The reason I like Chrome is because it is basic, lightweight, fast, simple. How many other adjectives do you want Microsoft? You need to either focus on a lightweight version of IE or fix it. IE8 crashes more times than I hit the A key today. It is likely to crash while writing this. And I know, beta software. The problem is Beta 1 on Vista wasn’t nearly this bad! The worst part is that a single tab crash still brings down every single tab. I thought a major reason for going the modular route was to prevent that Microsoft?

- The backwards compatibility. It is 2009 Microsoft and I suggest that for your next OS you drop 32bit all together. I also suggest you drop the “Program Files” directory for “Programs” or better yet, virtualize them and make them fast. Stop supporting these legacy systems, increase the phase out program. Make Windows leaner, meaner and ready to fight toe to toe with tomorrow’s OS, not an OS designed and developed 11 years ago.

- Integration will be the key to success for any OS in the future. Google and Apple know this and have built their platforms around it. Microsoft is, as usual, late to the game. While Live Services has been picking up the pace in taking on this attitude, the OS is a far ways away from full integration with the Microsoft “platform.” Think of all the hardware you support from Zune to WiMo to the 360. These things should all be tightly wound into your services and more importantly your OS. They should feel and look connected rather than this Games-For-Windows-Live-is-really-Windows-Live-is-really-Xbox-Live-kind-of-I-think-sort-of-complicated-web-bullcrap.

Now that the Windows 7 Beta went public I finally got my grubby little paws on a “copy” (download) and installed it within VirtualPC. I am only five minutes into using it and I already want to replace my Vista install with it. The big change is bigger than I thought, a problem that Microsoft marketing will have to overcome. What is the big change? The UI just makes sense. I guess it never occurred to me that Vista’s UI was confusing because it wasn’t to me. In my opinion, I always found Vista’s UI to be vastly superior to XP. Finding my documents, code, etc has never been easier until five minutes ago.

But it isn’t just about finding your data. Settings and general functionality of the OS is also much more discoverable. I am finding myself easily flowing through the control panel. The task bar, which I imagined to be a horrible gimmick, is something I will have to get used to but will grow to love. I can see why they made the changes. Finding your windows is easy and finding your favorite applications is easy.

While I am sure there will be problems with W7, I am blown out of the water that Microsoft actually took the time to work on the UI in such fine detail. Hopefully they carry the styling and standardization to their other applications like Office and Visual Studio.

The answer is to look at what Thrust currently supports. What built in system supports all three systems seamlessly? (~ means some support, X means full support)

The problem is we can’t rely on each individual hardware controller being present and useable. For example we can’t rely on a keyboard being a focusing mechanism on the Xbox 360 because it isn’t a guarantee it exists. Likewise, we cannot rely on the GamePad on the Zune because of the lack of buttons.

To get to the point, the UniversalButton system was meant as a virtualization of the various hardware supported for each platform. It turns GamePad, Mouse, and Keyboard events into simple events like Up, Left, Down, Right, Select and Cancel. Because of this we can rely on it and implement a few more events.

• TabPreviousLocal
• TabNextLocal
• TabPreviousGlobal
• TabNextGlobal

You can consider local tabbing to be much like you would on a Windows form: hitting the tab key (or shift-tab) will move you from one control to another based on some order and only in the context of the global focus point (you never tab to a control in another window). The global tabbing can be considered like an Alt-Tab (or shift-alt-tab) where you can switch between windows.

So how do we implement this? We need a managing class (sorry Bjoern) to produce a bottleneck for the input events. As events are channeled through this class, it massages the data and figures out what to do. For instance if a global tab next event is received it has to switch focus to the next window in the system on the same level as the current window. If it receives a local tab event it will pass a message to the current focal point to tab to the next control.

What does this do for us? For one, it unifies the approach to focusing across all the UI subsystems. This means that a Window/Form implementation will focus in much the same way a simple screen will. Unfortunately it also means a complexity requirement for implementation developers. The age of the simple StateManager class is coming to an end. Elements on the screen now need to have a basic state for animation as well as a state for focus (or lack thereof). While it may still be possible to simply unload an element through the StateManager, the reality is that UI elements will have to do a little more management under the hood. Whether this is exposed to the user / developer is still to be decided.

Hmm. Well, I went into the extra options mode (F8 during Bios) and ran the Directory Services Restore / Repair Mode. This got me to a “Configuring updates” screen which was farther than before. After finishing the machine rebooted and kept restarting. So I did it again, and this time the updates were able to finish!

[b]Update (07/07/08):[/b] It started doing it again. After some tracking on the web I found out it has to do with an outdated driver that came with the Dell Vista install disc. Installing Vista SP1 did the trick, but to get there I had to put the drive into IDE mode (via the BIOS) so Windows could boot.