Here’s a question for folks. Right now, the 1st edition of the WinForms book has several footnotes like the following that include URLs:

“The ntcopyres.exe tool can be obtained from http://www.codeguru.com/cpp_mfc/rsrc-simple.html.”

Unfortunately, unlike the browser you’re using now, while we can underline an URL in a book, we can’t do anything useful with you “click” it, which forces you to type it. Since the URL above is by no means the longest in the book (MS likes to put GUIDs in theirs), I’d prefer not to put that burden on the reader if I don’t have to. With the invention of shrinkster, I don’t have to:

“The ntcopyres.exe tool can be obtained from http://shrinkster.com/452.”

The problem with this, of course, is that I don’t really know if shrinkster is going to be around forever or if I want to tie my book to a single external resource that I can’t control. The idea I had this morning was to use both, which increases the size of the URL in print but gives the reader a shortcut and doesn’t hold me hostage to shrinkster*:

“The ntcopyres.exe tool can be obtained from http://www.codeguru.com/cpp_mfc/rsrc-simple.html (shrinker.com/452).”

What do people think?

*Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big shrinkster fan, else I wouldn’t be dropping their links into my books at all.

More people than you’d expect have been asking, so here’s an update on ATL Internals 2e.

This effort actually started in 2003, when Kirk Fertita updated the first 9 chapters to ATL7 as provided in VS 2002. Then he had to go work on his start-up, which represented his only income stream and would’ve gone belly up w/o him (selfish bastard! : ).

Then George Shepherd did a little work, writing bits of two new chapters on ATL Server before he had to bale.

Now, finally, we have an author that’s going to see this book to the finish line: Chris Tavares. I’ve written with him before and he’s excellent. He’s already ported chapters 1-4 to ATL8 as provided in VS 2005 and is on schedule to bring my and Brent’s work on ATL3, Kirk and George’s work on ATL7 and his own new work into a cohesive ATL8 book to hit the shelves 3-4 months after VS05 has hit RTM.

Jose “heard” that I’m working on an update for the first edition of Windows Forms Programming in C# for Windows Forms 2.0 (we’re not updating the VB.NET version due to poor sales for VB.NET-related titles in general). I didn’t mean to keep it a secret; it’s been listed at the top of my writing page for a year or more. : )

While we’ve been working closely together on the update, the bulk of the writing work is being done by Micheal Weinhardt, my main writing partner for the last coupla years or so. He’s got 90% of the book updated for VS05b1 already and is in the process of updating the whole thing to b2. After that, we pass it back and forth between ourselves for review-edit ’til we’re both happy. By the end of May, hopefully the whole thing will be out for review. After that, we apply reviewer comments and update at each successive beta/release candidate until the Whidbey team decides they’re done, at which point we send it to the publisher and 3-4 months later, it hits the shelves.

In addition to updating the existing material for WF2, we’ve made the following changes:

• Split a Layout chapter out of the Forms chapter due to all of the extra WF2 layout functionality
• Refactored the existing design-time and controls chapters and the standard components & controls appendix into the following chapters: components, controls, design-time 1 and design-time 2 (includes smart tags)
• Split the applications & settings chapters into 2
• Added a Document Management chapter for MFC folks finding themselves in the app framework-free environment of Windows Forms
• Dropped the data access chapter as covered better in other sources
• Re-wrote the data binding chapter from scratch with a story I always wanted to tell in WF1, but isn’t supported nicely ’til WF2 (object-centric binding instead of relational database-centric)
• Refactored the drag ‘n’ drop material into it’s own appendix
• Added a “What’s New in Windows Forms 2.0” appendix for those already familiar with Windows Forms 1.x
• Dropped the delegates bedtime story in favor of beefed up coverage in chapter 1 (and a more general knowledge of delegates in the universe as a whole). Don’t get my wrong, I love that story, but it doesn’t fit into the overall theme of the rest of the book. I knew this when I first edition shipped, but I just didn’t take the time to update the book properly to live w/o it

I have to say that working with Mike on this process has been fabulous. An ordinary author faced with updating to a new version of a technology might just update the material and leave the story alone, even if it needs update. Instead, Mike took the time to reexamine the book from first principles, fixing the problems in the story that always nagged at me in the 1st edition and proposing improvements to stuff I was pretty proud of. In general, even without the update to the new technology, the book is better than the 1st edition.

Curt Johnson, my marketing guy at Addison-Wesley, has let me know this morning at the UK Amazon is having a 1/2 price sale on my Windows Forms book this month. Plus, the UK guys have their own reviews that are just as nice as the US reviews. Who knew? : )

Here.

The one where I outline every technical piece I’ve ever written.

Here. The one where I toot my own horn much less subtly than usual (and I'm not known for subtlety : ).

It has been my pleasure to spend the last 2+ years writing with Mike Wienhardt. I remember fondly his first piece. When I give feedback, I work very hard to let the author know just exactly what I think so that they can bring their work to its highest possible potential. When Mike sent me his first draft, I was as careful as I could be to point out the parts that I liked to let him know that he had real potential, but basically, I ripped it apart. I have literally caused authors to tear up reading my feedback in the past, but I give Mike credit — he turned his piece around and came right back for more. We did this 5 or 6 times, but by the end, his first piece was better than most of the experienced authors filling magazines and web sites. It has been a real pleasure watching him grow into his writing talent and it made me very happy when he accepted the major writing duties on the 2nd edition of Windows Forms Programming in C# and when he took over my Wonders of Windows Forms column.

In his most recent blog post, it was very interesting to read about Mike working his way through the worst part of writing: writer’s block. Nearly all authors get this occasionally and it’s a real killer (and a pox on those authors that don’t suffer from it). It makes me proud to see him so concerned about his writing that he’s willing to share these kinds of experiences with the world. I wish more engineers took that kind of pride in their work. You’re setting an example for us all, Mike.

Here.

I love Luke’s RSS Aggregator [1]. He loves my book. For what more could a man ask?

[1] I just tried the lastest RSS Bandit — don’t get me started…