Miscellaneous

Blog Spammers: Update

David Gerhardt — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 21:57:00 GMT

We have not upgraded our blog server quite yet, but we did implement a security feature that should cut down on the blog spamming (kudos to Devin). Now, if you wish to submit a comment, you will be required to enter a case-sensitive code from a graphic. I consider this to be a minor inconvenience, but it sure beats having vulgar text messages and links getting displayed on our site every 15 minutes. So, I have once again enabled comments for my older posts. Please feel to let me know how little you regard the information I publish... ;-)

Blog Spammers

David Gerhardt — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 17:39:00 GMT

Sorry, folks. As a result of recent attacks by blog spammers, I have had to disable comments for most of my previous posts. We are in the process of upgrading our blog server. However, until that upgrade is complete, I will be forced to disable comments on posts that are more than a couple of weeks old. I apologize for this annoying inconvenience.

Help Wanted Again

David Gerhardt — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 13:58:00 GMT

One "consequence" of continually doing great work is being asked to take on even more projects. My team's tireless efforts at events such as PDC05, TechReady2, the Microsoft Office System Developers Conference 2006, etc., have been noticed by many. However, our group simply does not have the bandwidth to handle the numerous requests coming from all directions. As a result, we have modified the Technical Analyst job description I described earlier this month and posted it to CareerBuilder.com. If you or someone you know is interested in the position, you can forward a resume to jobs@3sharp.com.

Help Wanted

David Gerhardt — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 18:22:00 GMT

As the new manager of our Office System Solutions Group, I am in the process of building up our team. As a result, I am posting a job description for the position of Technical Analyst on my home page (http://blogs.3sharp.com/blog/davidg). Candidates matching the posted requirements can forward resumes to jobs@3sharp.com.

Making Sense of the Office "12" NDA

David Gerhardt — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 01:36:00 GMT

Our original understanding of the Office "12" non-disclosure agreement (NDA) was that beta testers and developers had limits as to what they could write publicly about Office "12". Then, Robert Scoble surprised us with his Office "12" NDA news. We were thrilled to see that post, because we have done so much Office "12" work since last summer and have plenty of information to share. However, before we could start blogging at will about the client applications, Robert provided an update (see the bottom of his post). Now, we are not so sure what to make of the NDA. Maybe we will just play it safe and wait until Beta 2 is released. After all, the only lawyer we have working for us is Lionel Hutz.

Developing with Colors

David Gerhardt — Fri, 11 Mar 2005 00:42:00 GMT

The task of developing a UI is difficult enough. If you are like me and have a red-green or blue-yellow color vision defect, the task becomes even more daunting. Fortunately, there are free tools available to help developers incorporate colors into their UIs.

One tool that a colleague tipped me off to recently is EyeDropper. This tool allows you to hover over any item on your screen to return the hex, decimal, or CMYK value of the associated color. What I appreciate most about EyeDropper is its magnification capabilities. I can hover over an "o" in 6pt, Times New Roman font in Microsoft Word and get separate return values for the letter type and the background.

Another useful tool for working with colors is ColorPic. Like EyeDropper, this tool can be used to hover over any object on your screen, with the associated colors shown as hex and decimal values. In addition, ColorPic allows you to edit these values after making a selection and to save multiple color palettes, which is helpful if you want to reuse certain color values.

There are many more tools that you can use to assist in the color-picking process, but these two should help you get started.