For a long time I've been thinking about taking a look at developing for mobile platforms. Since I have an iPad the thoughts go to iOS development. I also thought about using a development tool like Corona SDK or Unity or build HTML5 web based applications in order to target Android and other mobile platforms as well.

Now, using a tool like Corona SDK is a great idea if your goal is to quickly get apps and games out on the market. But my goal is to learn how things really work so my first step is to look into Apples Xcode environment and Objective-C. Besides, you get a lot of templates with Xcode and the storyboard feature is cool.

I've heard a lot about Objective-C, that it's a pain learning. However, I do have experience with C, C++ and C# and I must say that Objective-C doesn't look that scary... YET. On top of that, using the latest version of Xcode with iOS 5 and the storyboard feature makes it easy to get started.

To get accustomed to the Xcode environment I've started reading iPad Development For Dummies. It felt like the right level to start at. The first couple of hundred pages is a very quick read.
Then I started to look at Apple's iOS Developer Library and went throught the Your First iOS App tutorial. The Developer Library is a treasure chest of information.
To find out how to work with storyboards I've also gone through three tutorials at codingandcoffee.com. I must say, it was a breeze putting togehter the mandatory Hello World! apps and also some with a bit more interacitivity. :)
When it comes to Objective-C my first stop is Apple's Objective-C Primer.
Objective-C is an object-oriented language and thus it's important to structure your app using an object-oriented process with interfaces, classes, inheritance and so on. The syntax is different from C# which is my language of choice for the past 6 years and it's been a long time since I used C and C++, but it still feels pretty comfortable to write Obj-C. The theory is the same and if you've used a couple of different programming languages before it's not that hard to get started. The basic rules of programming and the logic behind structuring your code is the same no matter what language you use. Object-Oriented Programming with Objective-C is a good place to start to get into how OOP is used in Obj-C.

My thoughts so far:
1. Remember to think object-oriented.
2. Use Xcode storyboard to quickly set up the basics of the app.
3. Have fun!

OK, so now I'm all set for a deeper dive into the wonderful world of mobile development.
My next step is to get into Obj-C a little more by reading The Objective-C Language.
I will also check out Apple's sample library and I have a lot of reference links for tutorials, samples, blog articles, frameworks and it goes on and on.

What kind of app would you like in your iPhone or iPad?

When I bought my wifi only iPad a couple of weeks ago I started to read up about rooting my HTC Hero so I could wifi tether it. I bought a wifi only iPad since I knew I could use my Android phone as a wifi router.

After a lot of searching and reading I discovered a lot of apps that made it easy to root my phone. One click and it's done. I chose the app Universal Android Root (or Universal Androot)
It was quick and simple and even allowed me to root the phone temporarily if I wanted to.

Now I needed an app for wifi sharing. I tried Wifi Tether, aNetShare and Barnacle Wifi Tether.
Nothing worked and after some reading I discovered that I might need to flash another ROM to my phone.

I felt a little scared about flashing since I knew that it might turn my phone into a brick if I failed. However, after doing some reading I felt comfortable enough. I found some good guides and what looked like a great Froyo ROM (only in Swedish, sorry, but the ROM is english and awesome)
Now I was back to searching and reading about how to flash my phone and after trying to get Flashrec into my phone, and failing, I found ROM Manager.
With one click I flashed a recovery image. Another click and I took a backup of my current system. One more click and I flashed my phone to Froyo. Success.....almost. But if you fail, try again. This is what I did, what I did wrong and what I did to fix it.

First I flashed a recovery image. You have to do this in order to flash a custom ROM. ROM Manager gave me a message saying an error occurred while attempting to run privileged command. This means that the app doesn't have super user permissions. So I ran Universal Androot again, this time with the login option checked. Now when I ran ROM Manager I got the question to give it super user permission and then the recovery image was flashed.

I then selected the backup option, the phone rebooted and the backup was created. I mounted my SD card and copied the backup to my computer just in case.

The step after that is to install a ROM from the SD card. I previously copied my Froyo ROM from my computer to my SD card, /sdcard/. When starting the installation you get an option to clear the cache, and I checked it. The phone rebooted and ..... NOOOOO .... "the red triangle of death". I had already seen this a couple of times when I tried Flashrec so I took out my battery and went back to ROM Manager to start over. The red triangle means that the recovery image failed to run so I flashed it again. This time, instead of choosing install from SD card, I selected to reboot to recovery. This time the reboot worked and I got the text menu for the recovery image.
Now I installed the ROM from my SD card and it seemed to work great. The phone rebooted and instead of the HTC logo I got the Android logo. I knew the first boot could take awhile but after 20 minutes I got worried. After 30 minutes I knew something was wrong so I removed the battery again and started the phone in recovery (press Home while powering up). I was back in the recovery image and selected to clear data and cache, and most importantly the dalvik cache (whatever that is). I rebooted again and in a couple of minutes the Android setup instructions started. Finally, SUCCESS!!!

Now my HTC Hero is running Froyo and it feels faster, smoother and looks good even compared to the HTC Sense UI. The ROM I used had ADWLauncher installed and I like it.
The first thing I tried was aNetShare, also installed in the ROM. The wifi tether started up, I checked my network settings on my iPad, the phone popped up, I connected and .... WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
This is totally awesome! I don't regret for a second that I bought the wifi only iPad.

My Froyo HTC Hero works great and this is one happy camper. If you have a Hero, don't be scared to flash it to Android 2.2. HTC won't do it but it's easy to do it yourself.

The other day I had a problem in a SharePoint application. I have created a couple of web part pages but in these pages the Quick Launch menu on the left side disappeared. After some searching I found a blog post describing how to get it back. The reason is that the page templates have empty content placeholder included.
Empty placeholders that you may want to remove are:
• PlaceHolderLeftActions
• PlaceHolderPageDescription
• PlaceHolderBodyRightMargin
• PlaceHolderPageImage
• PlaceHolderLeftNavBar
• PlaceHolderNavSpacer

However, the post describes how to open the page in SharePoint Designer and remove the placeholders. I would rather not do that since that will change the templates for all Web Applications on that server. Instead I chose to create new custom page templates withoug those specific placeholders.

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Today I've been playing around with Paint.Net. The reason is that I need a new logotype for my site, http://www.pdc.se, since I'm rebuilding it using ASP.NET MVC. I'm using it as a learning project and while I'm at it I'll put in a new design.

Comments and improvements are very welcome.
Two variants is shown below and the other you can find at http://pdc.nu/logo.html

Friday was the second day of the SharePoint Advanced Development seminar with Shannon Bray.
We went deep-diving into feature development, the Business Data Catalog, Enterprise Search and WCF Web Services. Just as in my previous post this is me cleaning up my notes and also a way to know where I have them. I hope you'll find use for it, even if there are no code samples it may give you some good pointers on where to start.

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Today and tomorrow I'm spending my time in AddSkills seminar SharePoint Advanced Development with Shannon Bray. Shannon is a well-known SharePoint expert and Microsoft's SharePoint MCT. The seminar is focused on real-world problems. We also got the book "Inside Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0" by Ted Pattison and Daniel Larson which is supposed to be one of the best books on SharePoint development.

This blog post is my way of cleaning up my notes and a place to keep them to look back at when I need to.
I don't have any demonstration code in this post, that will have to wait until future posts when I try some of these things out.

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I've been thinking about getting a netbook for a while now and Wednesday morning i decided to buy one. I decided on an Asus Eee PC 1000HE mainly because I've heard a lot of good about it and also it has a great battery life. It was delivered at lunch Thursday and I started with installing Windows 7 RC1 on it. The blog post by Sara J Chipps was a good start for information on how to install from a USB device.

UPDATE: The problems with the Windows 7 installation was that I downloaded a Checked build from MSDN. A "checked" build is used for debugging and development so be sure to download a non checked build.

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I am currently re-reading Code Complete 2nd Edition by Steve McConnell. If you're a developer you should not only have heard about this book, you should have read it. Preferrably more than once. This book is totally awesome and cover all the fundamental knowledge a programmer should have. Everytime you read this you will learn something new, no matter what level programmer you are.

So, if you by some unknown reason haven't read it yet, do it now!

After doing some reading on ASP.NET MVC I'm ready to start trying it out for myself.
When I'm learning new stuff I want to have a real project to work on. During the past 10 years I have been working on a framework/platform/call it what you want with functionality for Content Management, File management, invoicing, distribution, shopping and so on.
It's fun and I even have some customers using it.
So when I wanted to learn ASP.NET MVC I started to think about what module in the framework I wanted to start with.

Me and my friends have a whisky society. We meet once in awhile for whisky tastings and have talked about setting up a small website for this. Of course i could use a Starter kit or other open-source applications but this is a perfect project to learn MVC.

The free chapter by Scott Guthrie from Professional ASP.NET MVC 1.0 is a great guide to follow. You can download the PDF here, http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/03/10/free-asp-net-mvc-ebook-tutorial.aspx

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A long long time ago in a small town far away, I wrote a programming blog that started out fine but faded away. That's not unusual but I really want to try it again since it's the best way to learn.

So why I new blog?
I don't know, maybe a new beginning can be an extra boost.

Why "The Swedish Coder"?
You remember "The Swedish Chef" from The Muppets? Maybe this is kind of like that. I'm Swedish, I code instead of cook, I play around and nobody knows what I'm doing or saying.

When I learn new stuff I want to have real projects to work on so in most of my posts I will build small applications or modules, ususally part of my own framework.
Hopefully you will have some use for it.