To emphasize the importance of a modal form and the information it presents, you could gray out the main form of the application when the modal form is activated. Here's how to add a dim-out effect to your main form when modal forms are waiting for the user input.

Last night, I decided I would read a couple of documents and migrate the old Windows NT 4.0 Server over to the new Dell computer with Windows Small Business Server 2003. It turns out the process is quite involved and after the third long document in tiny print, my eyes were getting bleary and time was swiftly flying by. There's a long checklist of things to make sure are in place before doing the big switch and there are many warnings that if the software is not updated, or if any of the settings are wrong or if you don't follow the directions exactly, the migration will fail!

Well, it's been a while since my last blog entry. But after the triumpful ending of my last post, it was hard to admit what ensued next. Yes, I finally got VMWare installed on Linux CentOS, but that was as far as I got with it. Try as I might, I could not get any version of Windows to install on the virtual machine I had created. It kept crashing with strange errors and in one case, even booted my whole computer (yes, the physical one, not just the virtual one).

Microsoft likes to take credit for "innovations" in software. But usually, they just steal or purchase other companies' ideas. For example, Borland pioneered Integrated Development Environments back when most people had 5-1/4" floppy disks and CPU Mhz was rated in "K" units. Turbo Pascal was a terrific way to quickly create applications, and allowed the programmer to edit, compile, and run their programs without creating a bunch of batch files and launching them just before going out for lunch. Alas, Borland has lost most of its pioneering geniuses to the Redmond, Washington monolith.

A live template can call YOUR custom function when a user invokes it. For instance, a template could brings up a message saying "How disgusting." when a user types "GOTO", and then proceed to erase the GOTO. There's a blog post that tells you how to extend this script schema. The extension involves writing a package with a new "script engine" and then calling that script engine from the live template XML file.

In the old days, playing around with Linux and installing programs and such was quite a chore. Typically, only students and geeks without any social life knew how to make their systems sing and dance. All the business professionals know that time is money. So Windows was the natural choice because to install a new program, you just insert the CD and click Next, Next, Next.

But over the last few years, things have been changing. Linux is getting easier because there's been a big push to hide a lot of the gory details and just present a nice interface with buttons and rounded corners and all. I suppose you could say it's looking more like Windows (or like Macintoshes!).

I opened the box of the new server for the Beaverton SDA Church and was reminded that we didn't order a keyboard or mouse to go with it. At first this makes sense--why not just use the one we have on the old server? Well, the old server is, uh, old! Like over 8 years. That's an eternity in the computer industry. Some people alive today haven't even heard of the OS we still have on that machine, Windows NT 4.0.

But still, keyboards and mice don't wear out quickly on servers--they just sit there and collect dust over the years. You blow them off twice a year when you actually need to use them. So why get new ones?