Ask Paul: July 12 (Premium)

Heading into the weekend, I’m preparing for our trip next week to Amsterdam for this year’s home swap. Forgive me if I’m a bit distracted.

Automating the weekly post for Ask Paul

hrlngrv asks:

Why not automate posting these forum requests for questions?

I don’t have a good answer for this beyond I’m not sure how I’d do that. I don’t really have technical access to the site, etc. I should at least create a calendar reminder so I can get the post out on a timely basis, and will do that.

New Edge Beta/Release expectations

ggolcher asks:

Have you heard anything on when we can expect Chromium Edge betas or even release? I’m anxiously waiting for it.

No. I had figured that this week’s Inspire news drop might be tied to the beta. But instead, Microsoft says that the new Edge Developer channel is “ready for enterprises to trial and pilot.”

What does that mean? Microsoft says:

“This means companies considering Microsoft Edge can now start to validate within the enterprise with confidence, knowing they have access to the features needed. Microsoft will work to address  issues that may be discovered, even though it is pre-release.”

It seems like the new Edge being that ready should have triggered the availability of the Beta channel. But I do expect the first release version of the new Edge to appear by the end of 2019. My guess is that it will be tied to Microsoft Ignite in November.

Microsoft Store in London

WP7Mango asks:

Are you planning on visiting the new Microsoft store in London? It looks really impressive – I’m planning on going myself soon.

I don’t have any plans, but I will do so the next time I’m in London for sure. There is a small possibility that will happen in about two weeks, since our annual home swap starts next week, and London is one choice for a side-trip. But we still haven’t booked anything, and we could end up doing something else.

Programming Windows

jmeiii75 asks:

Programming Windows: I’m really loving this series, Paul. However, due to the speed at which you are churning these out (Obviously, this is a good thing), I find myself falling behind and have to seek out where I left off. These posts end up getting buried several pages deep on the site. Would you consider, in addition to them appearing as they do now, grouping them under one of the navigation menus (Premium Content, perhaps)? Not a big deal if this is not possible as they are certainly worth seeking out. Just an idea. Have a great weekend.

Thanks … You can find all of the Programming Windows articles on this page in reverse chronological order. This is OK for now, but I don’t always publish the articles in the order I’d arrange them otherwise. So, I’m working on a table of contents that could perhaps be published as a page at some point.

This is obviously a flash in time type thing, but here’s a rough look at what that TOC looks like so far.

Introduction

A Timeline

Pre-History

In the Beginning

Wintel

Windows API

Hello, World

Windows Application Basics

Hello, Windows

Windows API Wrap-Up

BASIC

Microsoft Basic

Hello, Microsoft Basic

Visual Basic Beginnings

Hello, Visual Basic

Visual Basic Takes Over the World

Visual Basic to the Future

Technologies of the 1990s

DDE and OLE

Microsoft OS/2

Windows NT and Windows 95

C++ and MFC

Object-Oriented Programming

Hello, C++

Microsoft Foundation Class Library

Hello, MFC

Worlds Collide

The Internet Tidal Wave

Netscape, Java, and JavaScript

Hello, Visual J++

Open Source and Linux

Antitrust

.NET

COOL

Microsoft .NET and Managed Code

C# and Visual Basic .NET

Hello, C#

Hello, VB .NET

Windows Forms

Hello, Windows Forms

Windows Presentation Foundation

Hello, WPF

.NET Core

Hello, .NET Core

Modern APIs

From Metro to Modern

Hello, Windows 8

Universal Windows Platform

Hello, Windows 10

Now What?

A couple of points are worth mentioning here. The non-linked articles have obviously not been published yet, though I’ve already written parts of several of them. This list isn’t complete, in that other articles will occur to me as I go and will be inserted in the TOC as needed. And I am already planning to go back and add more material in sections I’ve already moved past. There are a number of reasons for this, but the short version is that this took on a life of its own as I went, and I didn’t originally think I would want/need to actually use older Microsoft programming environments in older Microsoft platforms. But now I am absolutely doing that. We’ll see what comes of it, but I have some interesting ideas. Also, I hope to do a number of interviews with people relevant to the various technologies and products, and I will slot those in where they make the most sense.

Anyway. We’ll see where this takes me. I knew this could be big, literally. But I think it’s going to exceed what I imagined by the time it wraps up.

Which phone?

yoshi asks:

What phone do you find yourself using the most these days? Have you stuck with the latest OnePlus since your review?

I was just thinking about whether it made sense to write about this.

One thing I do when I complete a phone review is to move immediately to a different phone to see how it holds up by comparison. When I finished the OnePlus 7 Pro review, I wanted to use, in turn, the Huawei P30 Pro, Google Pixel 3 XL, Google Pixel 3a XL, and iPhone XR and just sort of re-evaluate them in the context of the OnePlus.

My expectation was that I’d end up with the Huawei P30 Pro, since it has the best camera, but that I’d want to switch my main phone number, which is on Google Fi, over to either the 3a XL or 3 XL because they natively support Fi network switching, and that would likely be desirable since we’ll be in Europe for three weeks. But whatever, I had time to experiment before we left.

There was just one problem: The Google Fi SIM I was using—which is at least a few years old now and has been pulled out and place in multiple phones multiple times—wouldn’t activate on the P30 Pro. I figured it was because of the SIM’s age/usage, so I ordered another one. And while I was waiting for that to arrive, I used, in turn, the 3 XL and then the 3a XL.

The Pixel 3 XL instantly reminded me of the things I didn’t like about it: The echoey sound and vibrations whenever audio plays through the speakers, the off-centered stereo playback, and the huge notch. The Pixel 3a XL, however, was still quite pleasant, and I came around to the notion that I might actually just use that phone as my primary device. (That said, both the 3 XL and 3a XL seems “small” now that I was used to the very large OnePlus 7 Pro. And of course, the screen on the 7 Pro is just amazing.)

But then the new SIM arrived, so I immediately set out to put it in the P30 Pro. And … it didn’t work. So, I finally Googled it, and sure enough, the P30 Pro is not compatible with Google Fi. (The Huawei Mate 20 Pro is.) You can apparently still use it; the network will work (without network switching), and calls and texts work. But you can’t use the Google Fi app to monitor usage, etc. So that was a non-starter. And I was already pretty happy with the Google Pixel 3a XL.

So, my current plan is to keep my phone line with the Pixel 3a XL but to use the Huawei P30 Pro with a Google Fi data SIM in Europe and use that to take photos. (I did this on a recent trip to Washington D.C. as well.) It’s a bit ponderous carrying around two phones, but both choices will take great photos, so whatever.

All this said, if the OnePlus 7 Pro’s camera in any way approached the quality of the Pixel handsets or the P30 Pro, I would choose it in a heartbeat. It is otherwise an incredible phone.