In short, never ever never use Regexes or anything else to parse HTML. To do so is to descend into madness. HTML is not simple text, it has structure. Even simple fragments have structure to them that cannot be identified simply through token parsing.

Always always always use an HTML parser, such as the Html Agility Pack. That is what I did. The parser created the document and tokenized everything for me and from there I was able to parse and manipulate the node tree to match the requirements we had.

Never use anything else if you can avoid it.

In general I’ve been very happy with this phone. I’ve liked the tile interface, but it is a little dull to have the flat colours. Its nice that stuff like the weather apps put in some colour.

Internet Explorer for Windows Phone 7 is still awful even on Mango. Probably the biggest issue is that most mobile sites are designed only for iPhone or mobile Safari so it works on Android and iPhone.

I’ve noticed that the hardware and handsets are not getting picked up by carriers. Android is getting all the sexy hardware. Google has spent gajillions advertising the new Galaxy Nexus phone but I haven’t seen any ads for Windows 7 phones in my city. My cell provider, Telus hasn’t updated its stock of Windows Phones all year, in fact they’ve gone from two phones to just the one. I’m pretty sure that it is the same in the US and world-wide.

I’m very disappointed that Microsoft isn’t pushing WP7 harder. Samsung should be able to put WP7 on the same hardware as the Galaxy S II but they aren’t. The same goes for HTC and Motorola. Android seems to be getting all the hardware love!

My wife just got the new RAZR from Motorola and I’m pretty impressed. Another friend has the new Galaxy S II and it is just as good. They’re fun phones with big screens and lots of great features; tons of apps and games, dual-core processors, expandable memory, a great web browser.

I’m starting to worry that Microsoft isn’t as comitted to WP7 as I originally thought. It certainly seems that the manufacturers and carriers are not. 2012 is the year of Windows 8, hopefully not the end of the Windows Phone.

I remember the first tablets coming out, but they were expensive and under-powered. Still, I remember seeing them at the doctor’s office and a few other places. A $2500 tablet is inaccessible to most people, Apple got it right with a sub-$1000, heck sub-$600 iPad tablet. It wasn’t a full on OS, it was a slightly bigger phone OS, but iPad was what got people into tablets.

Microsoft recently demoed Windows 8 on YouTube: Windows 8 Demo

It looks like a pure tablet OS – except it is a full version of Windows. It will also run on ARM processors, the cheap processors in your cell phone, not the expensive mobile versions of desktop processors that previous Windows tablets used. This means reasonable prices and a desktop caliber OS.

A recent interview with a Microsoft executive showed Microsoft’s concern for hitting the market. There was a huge lag between IE6 and IE7, Windows XP and Windows Vista. Microsoft’s product cycles are measured in geological time, something unacceptable in a fast moving high-tech world. They’re acknowledging it, and moving on it, but its too late – they’re already buried.

Apple is clearly dominating the tablet market, and the iPhone is the gold standard for cell phones. Steve Jobs and the Apple team know exactly how to place a product in front of people and turn them into consumers. Microsoft is doing well with Windows and Office because people are comfortable with them, but they haven’t got a clue when it comes to introducing new products. When Microsoft finally does bring out a tablet running Windows 8 they need to capitalize on the market they were first to, but was opened up by Apple.

When the iPhone first came out it made waves. It had probably the best web browser available on a phone. Apple was banking on people using the web on their phones. Apple’s Mobile Safari had a lot of tricks built into, especially CSS tricks, to make a consistent “Apple-style” UI with mobile websites. Unfortunately at the time consumers did not agree, and developers demanded a programming API to write native applications instead of web applications.

Things are coming around full circle now. Late last year RIM (BlackBerry) CEO Jim Balsillie said you don’t need apps, you need the web. Its a funny thing to say, because when Steve Jobs said it he was wrong – and especially when there are so many thousands of apps in the various “App Stores” out there. Its funnier still that I think he might be right this time.

The desktop internet world has matured but the fragmentation we saw during the browser wars is coming back in the mobile world. One interesting fact though is that the default iPhone web browser (Safari) and the Android web browser are both based on the same desktop browser engine: WebKit – the same WebKit that Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome desktop browsers are. The new BlackBerry Torch has the new BlackBerry OS 6 also including a WebKit based web browser. This is good news: WebKit is one of the best HTML5 browsers available right now. Both Safari and the Android Browser score pretty high on Html5Test.com, (I don’t have the exact figures) so I assume that the BlackBerry would as well. With all of these big companies working on the same open-source project we are seeing some good results in the WebKit area!

I recently loaded up the Firefox Mobile browser on an Android phone I have and I was EXTREMELY impressed despite the fact it is beta bits! It has the best mobile HTML5 support I’ve seen in a mobile device (207 + 9 points at Html5Test.com when 3.6.12 for desktop gets 139 + 4!). The best part is the navigation and control though: like tabs on the left and the back/forward buttons on the right. It was designed for mobile from the start.

Opera Mini is another popular browser, though slower than Webkit and Firefox, it still has some other nice features – and has been around a lot longer. It (severely) lacks the HTML5 support of Firefox and Safari (only 27 points!), it does have the nice “Speed Dial” feature. Opera is really pushing the mobile browsers though, so hopefully they will be innovating in HTML5 quite a bit further, but despite that it is still a decent mobile browser. Opera is available on almost any smartphone too (even iPhone!), while Firefox is really only on Android.

I have Windows Phone 7 with mobile IE, like its desktop cousin it is easily the worst of the modern mobile browsers, thankfully the Mango update to Phone 7 will bring more advanced features, but it will still leave mobile IE way behind. Despite the lack of features and polish in Safari though, IE is a very capable browser.

It doesn’t look like fragmentation will stop, since each browser is defined and tied to the phone OS (just like the IE bad-old days), but this time it looks like the competitors are on a more level playing field.

Larry Wall truthfully said the best virtues for a programmer are laziness, impatience and hubris. Sometimes you ignore these virtues when you get bored, you start to do stuff you know you shouldn’t, and your laziness doesn’t balance your hubris.

My new virtue that I’m going to work hard on is, ironically, laziness. KISS is the new methodology for me to follow: Keep It Simple, Stupid for design, YAGNI: You Aren’t Gonna Need It for architecture.

I’m baffled. The way the ad looks to me someone was texting while driving and almost killed everyone in the commercial! And then everyone is too busy texting about it to notice each other…

It’s time for a phone to save us from our phones is the big take-away line. The problem I see with this ad is that it condemns all phones as causing accidents and distracting people.

Microsoft: people love using their phones! I do, even my lousy Storm. Phones are distracting because they’re good. Sell me a phone I want to use and does the things I need. In a way, I think that is what you’re saying, but I’m seeing something different.