Microsoft held another launch event and since I enjoyed attending the last one I decided to go. The first event I wanted to attend was full so I had to settle for another one. It was a fairly sad introduction to Vista and Office 2007. They kept focusing on unimportant eye-candy, but they didn’t really talk about any of the features that will improve your actual productivity.

They kept using keywords and slogans and they just said ‘these new releases will increase security and productivity while keeping things easy to use” but they never actually went into detail. The most we really saw of Vista is what we saw in between presentations as the demo machine was running it. However, I’m not sure what laptop they had but Vista was running perfectly.

Because of what I do I’ll eventually need to get Vista, but I am eager to play around with it as well. I received a free standard edition of Office 2007 for attending (otherwise I would never have gone), so I’ll be playing with that. I don’t use any of the Office applications much anymore except Excel. I use Word for project contracts, but that’s about it – the rest of my documents are created in Google Documents.

I played with the Office 2007 beta last year and was fairly impressed, so I’m excited to have a copy that is more stable and is actually a final product. Now, if they would have just given me a copy of Vista I’d be set!

The work that I did for VersionTracker.com is finally seeing the light of day.

The new developer connect system is available, and looks so much better than the last one (no frames!). I spent a majority of the summer and fall working on this – the various forms went through a hefty amount of revisions but after several months it all paid off.

Here is a small image of the default page after logging in to dev connect:

The new category navigation system is finally visible. The original specification did not have the fade-out that you see now, but that was one of my recommendations as the menu was vanishing too quickly.

The sub-category navigation took some work getting things to work properly across the various browsers, but it looks great!

The new Updates by Category page looks good too. The grid system was fairly simple, although I had some tweaks to do in IE6/7.

The menu was the most difficult part, and unfortunately I didn’t have any time to clean up my javascript (don’t look at the source!). Getting the sub menu to display and have a hover color in both IE6 and Safari was a pain. I wasted several days and several emails to the css-discuss list trying to figure out what was happening. I finally found a work-around, but the javascript is still ugly.

VT uses the prototype framework on some pages, so I was trying to see if they wanted to use it on the home page, however I left in the middle of those decisions. VT already suffers from an immensely high page size, so I doubt they want another library attached.

Although it’s been out for a while, the VT subscription system is the only xhtml/css work that’s entirely from me.

I’ve known since 2005 that I needed a better logo. Until now, it was essentially ‘botsko.net’ in blue lettering using the same font found on this website. After I finally received my LLC papers this past weekend, I decided it was time for a new logo. I needed something that would easily connect any business cards, documents, envelopes, labels, etc.

I originally was going to pay someone else to design it so that I could focus that time on current projects. However, while searching for alternatives this weekend I found an excellent online logo creator. What would have cost $150-300 for someone else to design, cost $9 and a bit of time playing around with ideas. Spending $9 for your logo and loosing a few hours on your weekend sure beats spending $300.
Click here to view a nice large version.

Over the next few weeks I’ll begin updating the various documents I use to display this nice new logo. I’ll also work on a seriously-needed update to my business card.

In 1998 I began working under the name Jazit Web Design which lasted until mid-2003. In 2002 I started working with more advanced languages and concepts and felt that I needed to escape from something that resembled a pre-bubble business to a post-bubble one. I continued using my name instead (Michael Botsko Web Designs) even though I had little direction and it was still a hobby business.

In 2005 I spent several months figuring out a new direction for my business, with the goal of being self-employed by 2007. I worked with a marketing company to define a general direction for the next year. As recommended by their final report, I worked on a new identity for the business, re-did the website (and blog), and I started to act as business rather than an individual. I decided to use Botsko.net as the official company name.

To start out 2007, I’ve finally turned Botsko.net into an official business. There are all kinds of advantages I’m looking forward to, and it’s going to feel better knowing that it’s official. Filing services and excellent work by The Company Corporation.
Botsko.net, LLC. Official on 1/10/2007.