Archives
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sysobjects, sys.objects... what about INFORMATION_SCHEMA?
SQL Server Management Objects (SMO) is one of the coolest parts of SQL Server 2005, in my opinion. I've written about SMO before, and used it extensively in writing Data Dictionary Creator. In a nutshell, SMO is a collection of objects that are designed for programming all aspects of managing Microsoft SQL Server.
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[tip] Use the Database Publishing Wizard to script your table data
Jeff Atwood recently asked "Is your database under version control?" Well, is it? It's not as easy as it sounds. Until now, there wasn't a good, scriptable solution to the problem. I'll run through a few of the options I've looked at in the past, but let's jump to to the punchline:
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Things I wish I'd known before I installed VS 2005 Service Pack 1
The SP1 requires a lot of disk I/O. You can eliminate 1.3 GB of disk I/O, and cut the installation time significantly, by temprorarily disabling the Patch Cache. You can read more about it on Heath's post, but here's the basic idea:
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Freeing up drive space on Windows XP
I just cleaned up my computer in preparation for an upgrade to Vista. Here's how I did it: -
SQL Server recovery model selection (or, what's this 3GB LDF file?!)
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Reporting Services - Add a logo to the Report Manager
The SQL Server Reporting Services Report Manager is functional, but it's not very customizable. The ASPX pages just reference compiled assemblies, so the only real way to modify them is via CSS. -
A simple example of a fluent interface
Roiy recently released a really nice c# image enhancement filters library on CodeProject. It includes a nice collection of easy to use image transformation filters - ResizeFilter, RotateFilter, ImageWatermarkFilter, etc. They follow a simple pattern:
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Tips for a Technical Presentation
I spoke at the local .NET user group meeting last week. I've done my share of software demos and short presentations to small groups, but this was the first time I've given an hour long technical talk to a large group. I'm making a list - partly for my future reference1- on some presentation tips while it's still fresh in my mind. -
Notes for 11/28 Talk - SMO and INFORMATION_SCHEMA
I spoke at the San Diego .NET User Group meetin on 11/28 on SQL Server Metadata (SMO and INFORMATION_SCHEMA). The complete notes should be available on the user group downloads page, but here are the rough notes:
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Macro to add a Codebehind file to an ASPX page in VS2005
The best way to add a code file (a.k.a. codebehind) to an ASP.NET ASPX page is check the "Place code in separate file" checkbox when you create it:
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Creating a User Defined Language in Notepad++
I just posted about adding PowerShell syntax support to Notepad++ by adding a User Defined Language definition. It's pretty simple; here's a quick overview of how I did it. For a more in depth overview of the User Defined Language system, check out the Notepad++ docs. -
PowerShell Language Definitions for Notepad++
I saw a request on the Notepad++ forums today to add PowerShell syntax support. Notepad++ has a pretty good extension system for adding user defined languages, so I went ahead and put on together. You can grab it from the Notepad++ download area (zip download). Installation information is in the included readme file - you extract the zip, rename a file, and drop it in your %APPDATA%\Notepad++\ directory.1
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Speaking: 11/28 - San Diego .NET User Group
I'll be speaking at the San Diego .NET User Group on 11/28:
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Make Zune a winner... as a platform
It's no secret - the Zune could be better than the iPod and still languish as an also ran for years. iPod has a huge marketshare, a solid brand, and a following whose passion would be the envy of most terrorist organizations. The "second mover advantage" sweet spot time has come and gone. iPod is firmly established, and "feature parity and a bag of chips" won't win any marketshare. The Zune WiFi feature is a good example - it's a cool feature, but it's been written off as to heavily locked down by DRM restrictions; the iPod doesn't have any WiFi and the Fairplay system is pretty restrictive. My point is that features alone won't beat brand loyalty. -
Top 10 DOS Batch tips (Yes, DOS Batch...)
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Data Dictionary Creator 1.2 is out on CodePlex
We just released Data Dictionary Creator version 1.2 to CodePlex. Version 1.2 adds a lot of great features:
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Mono 1.2 Released
Novell released Mono 1.2 at TechEd today. The main feature of 1.2 is support for System.Windows.Forms. The roadmap and previous releases indicate that 1.2 has a lot of other cool features, but it's hard to tell exactly what they are since the release notes apparently aren't available yet. UPDATE: The release notes are now available.
I even dug through the repository, but couldn't find any release notes. I'm sure it's just a matter of time. Until then, the release announcement on the Mono site says: -
Code Puzzle #1 - Solution
If you haven't read the puzzle, you can read more about it on my previous post.
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Code Puzzle #1 - What numbers under one million are divisible by their reverse?
The other day I got stuck waiting in a slow line at the store all hopped up on espresso and breakbeat, so I started trying to think of numbers which are evenly divisible by their reverse. Example: If 721 were divisble by 127, I'd have a match. Yes, I'm aware this is not normal behavior.
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Animated GIF Plugin for Cropper + some .NET Animated GIF code
Cropper is a great free screen capture program. It has a cool plugin system which lets you send the screenshots anywhere you can write code to send it. I wrote a plugin to save a portion of the screen to an Animated GIF. -
Handling "GO" Separators in SQL Scripts - the easy way
If you've ever had to execute one or more SQL scripts from ADO.NET, you've likely run into the GO batch terminator issue. Any SQL script that does anything worthwhile has more than one batch, separated by a GO terminator. The problem is that "GO" isn't valid T-SQL, it's just a command used by the SQLCMD, OSQL and ISQL utilities that can also be used within Query Analyzer and the Query Editor window. If you try to execute T-SQL scripts with GO commands in them via ADO.NET SqlCommand.ExecuteNonQuery, you'll get an error that says something like:
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SQL Puzzle #1 - Answer
Here's my solution to the puzzle in my previous post. If you haven't seen the challenge, go back and read that first.
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SQL Puzzle #1
I had to write a semi-interesting SQL query this past week and thought it might make for a fun SQL puzzle (for very small values of "fun").
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Showing a Connection String prompt in a WinForm application
When I was putting together the Data Dictionary Creator program, I needed to allow users to input a connection string. A lot of winform applications that require data connections give you a textbox and tell you to figure it out yourself, but I really wanted to show a prompt that let you test your connections, select databases on a server, etc.
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Reading the SQL 2005 instance and installation directory from a DOS batch file
SQL 2005 installs each instance to a numbered directory based on the order installed: MSSQL.1, MSSQL.2, etc. That makes scripting a little tricky. Fortunately, you can find them in the registry.
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Batch files to check SQL 2005 (MDF) files in and out of Subversion source control
Here are a few batch files I whipped up to help our team keep development databases in sync with our Subversion repository. These handle detach / reattach from the database, so running the checkout script has us the latest version in the repository in twenty seconds.
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[link] 9MinutesOfFame
Back in February, I posted about MyLastFM, an open source player for Last.FM radio. MyLastFM is a really slick looking application with some slick code under the covers. It's the product of a killer team - Eric's the programmer and Nicole's the designer.
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Subscription updates for my blog
If you subscribe to my weblog's RSS feed (rather than the main weblogs.asp.net feed), you'll need to update it to my new feedburner feed link: http://feeds.feedburner.com/jongalloway -
Can Operating Systems tell if they're running in a Virtual Machine?
Or, do androids know they're dreaming of electric sheep...
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[OT] Getting stupid with Smart Art in PowerPoint 2007
Sure, you've seen the Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation. You may have even seen the Death Start Attack PowerPoint, or David Byrne's PowerPoint fueled artwork. PowerPoint has always been there when we needed our bullet points to say something more.
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[OT] Google buying YouTube for $1.65 Billion
MarketWatch: Google to acquire YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock
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[Tool] RegmonToRegfile - Record and playback registry changes
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[.NET Gotcha] Commandline args ending in \" are subject to CommandLineToArgvW whackiness
I recently posted on my confusion when I tried to use commandline arguments ending in \" and got unpredictable results. It seemed that all backslashes before a double quote character needed to be escaped, but if they didn't preceed a doublequote, they didn't need to be escaped.
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[.NET Gotcha] SettingsPropertyValue typed as a string will never be null
I like to use chained null coalesce operators (??) to handle default console application parameters. The idea is that I provide a default value, override it via application settings (app.config and user.config), and then overridede it with command-line arguments. I think it provides for a nice user experience - if you're always going to to run the application with the same settings, you can set them in the config; if you need to script it you can control everything from the command-line.
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Free OCR software? You may already have it...
Update (2011): This post describes using a little know feature of Microsoft Office which does a good job with OCR. It was written 5 years ago, but still gets a lot of traffic. Unfortunately, Office 2010 removes that feature (Microsoft Office Document Imaging).
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Orcas VPC Download info
Greg pointed me to the Visual Studio Orcas CTP Virtual PC image download. Downloading now.
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[Tool] Data Dictionary Creator - Rapid database documentation
[UPDATE] A newer version of DDC has been released to Codeplex
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VS2003 and Vista - Is the sky really falling?
As part of a recent Visual Studio 2005 SP1 announcement, the Corp VP of Microsoft's Developer Division stated that Visual Studio.NET 2003 won't be supported under Windows Vista. Frans Bouma, Paul Wilson, and others have done a good job of raising the level of awareness on the issue. I agree that it's not, you know, a good thing, but I wanted to hear how big a problem it really is. -
Command Line Confusion
I kept getting wierd errors in a simple console application which takes a regular expression as an argument. The regular expression kept failing with an "Illegal \ at end of pattern" error. The odd thing was that I was properly escaping the \ as \\.
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[tool] TimeSnapper - Never lose work again
TimeSnapper is
one of my favorite applications. It does one thing and it does it well - it
takes a screenshot every few seconds, then lets you browse through your history
by date and time. Most people focus on this as a way to simplify filling in time
sheets, but I've come to rely on this program as a safety net. This
thing has saved my butt countless times: -
Sometimes it's easier to just hex edit the assembly
PalPal's Single Item Purchase links are not technically valid - the query portion of the URL doesn't start with a question mark. This confuses ASP.NET 2.0's Response.Redirect(url) call, which causes the return URL to be malformed. Rather than spend dozens of hours upgrading to the newest version of the store software, I spent 15 minutes with Reflector, WinMerge, and a hex editor to modify the .NET assembly.
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SQL Reporting Services - CSS fix for Firefox
SSRS 2005 is pretty slick, but the HTML is just terrible. Reports are displayed in an IFRAME that's deep in nested table land, and the IFRAME's height setting only works in IE. The end result is that reports don't display correctly in Firefox - the IFRAME's height defaults to a few hundred pixels, so you only see the top 2 inches of the report. However, they did the right thing by designating CSS classes for most of the important elements, so we can fix it by adding a min-height setting. I'm sure there are other issues with getting SSRS to display correctly in Firefox, and possibly other answers (let me hear them in the comments below), but this CSS fix at least lets the reports show.
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How NOCOUNT affects ADO.NET
A co-worker recommended we include "SET NOCOUNT ON" in all stored procedures, since it reduces the network traffic for queries. I did a bit of digging; here's my take on it:
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IE7 Standalone Launcher updated for RC1
IE7 RC1 is out, so my launcher script needed an update. You can get it here. Read the previous relase announcement here.
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Microsoft should ship SubSonic (formerly called ActionPack) with Atlas
Yesterday, Phil got me to watch the SubSonic screencast (it was actually called the ASP.NET ActionPack and was since renamed). I'd seen posts about it on my main RSS feeds and had ignored it because everyone had been giving their posts titles like "ActionPack - Ruby on Rails for ASP.NET." I've watched all the ROR screencasts and have been a little underwhelmed1, so I didn't bother reading further. Big mistake.
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San Diego User Group (8/22/06) - Toolbox Meeting
On Tuesday I was one of several presenters at the San Diego .NET User Group's second annual Toolbox meeting. The presentations were supposed to be "rapid-fire (15 – 20 minutes), brief presentations", but I kind of took it to the extreme. I presented eleven of my favorite tools in under 18 minutes.
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[Tools] Switched to Notepad++, here's my C# syntax file
I replaced Notepad with Notepad2 on all my computers when Roy Osherove recommended it back in 2004. I've really appreciated it - it's small and lightweight like Notepad, but has some great features like syntax highlighting, block selection, and regular expression search.
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Speaking at the 8/22 San Diego .NET User Group Meeting
The San Diego .NET User Group is having their second anual "toolbox" meeting on 8/22/06, and I'll be one of the presenters. This sounds like it will be a lot of fun - several user group members doing rapid-fire 15 minute presentations.
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CodeProject - Avoiding software licensing makes for a very bad license
Update: CodeProject has added license support since I wrote this. Hooray!
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[SQL] Scripting backup and restore all databases on a server (Part 2 - Extra Credit)
In the first post of this series, I discussed scripting database restore statements. It seems simple enough, but there's a complication - the restore statement requires the database logical name. The logical name usually follows the default format (a database named Example would have a data logical name of Example_Data and a log logical name of Example_Log), but it doesn't have to. The logical name could be just about anything.
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[SQL] Scripting backup and restore all databases on a server (Part 1 - Simple Case)
We just migrated a group of production sites from one hosting environment to another. The new environment has staging and production servers, so we really completed two migrations. There were a lot of databases, and if you've been following my blog at all you probably know that I love to script repetetive tasks - not (only) from laziness, but from a desire to avoid typographical errors due in repetetive manual work.
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[SQL] Change Logical Filenames
A little while ago, we deployed some really great sites built on the DotNetNuke platform. We started with a base DNN install, worked for several months, and ended up with a really nice suite of sites. Along the way, we renamed the databases, but the logical database names remained DotNetNuke_Data and DotNetNuke_Log. We looked into changing the logical names, but came up empty.
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IE7 Standalone (Updated for IE7 Release)
I just released a new version of the IE7 Standalone Launcher. Due to changes in this beta release of IE7, a simple batch file alone won't cut it. You can grab a zip package (two batch files, two reg files) on the new tools.veloc-it.com site. -
Lessons from Home Remodeling: One Week Phases
A few times a year, someone will write about how software development is like building construction, and shortly afterwards a bunch of people will write about how software development is very different from building construction, but the two disciplines can inform eachother. I'm squarely in the second camp. I think software development is easier in many ways - our only real raw material is time, and we don't suffer from pesky constraints like gravity. I'm always happy to learn from anyone who will teach me, though, and in this case it's a guy who spent decades remodeling homes.
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[SQL] Some of my favorite INFORMATION_SCHEMA utility queries
Phil just posted about using INFORMATION_SCHEMA to bulletproof your SQL change scripts. I've been working up a post on using queries against INFORMATION_SCHEMA views to generate SQL scripts, so this seems like a good time to chime in. The INFORMATION_SCHEMA views are views which describe a database's objects and schema. Phil did a great job of explaining what the INFORMATION_SCHEMA views are, so go take a look at his post if you'd like to know more. As the title of his post indicates, he's using INFORMATION_SCHEMA to make SQL change scripts more robust. I'm going to focus on using ad-hoc queries against INFORMATION_SCHEMA to save time.
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Motorcycle blogging from San Diego to the Arctic Circle
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Mouseless Computing
The professional programmer encounters a variety of challenges and annoyances in the line of duty, but by far the top job hazard is Repetitive Stress Injury (RSI). We can muddle our way through less than optimal projects and coding blunders (hopefully learning as we go), but it's pretty hard to program if you can't type or double-click.
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Google TechTalks (EngEdu)
Google's been posting videos of some interesting Tech Talks on video.google.com. Most of them focus on computer science topics, but there are also some general informational videos on topics like astronomy, biotech and biofuels. I haven't had the time to watch too many of them, but the topics sure are interesting!
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Avoid IISRESET in ASP.NET applications (added bonus: ASPRESET)
I'm always a
bit worried when I work with developers or system admins that still think you
should "throw in an IISRESET just in case" when deploying ASP.NET
applications. Cargo cult server
administration at its worst ("Not sure why, but it always seems to help if I
throw in an IISRESET after pushing code. If that don't get it, a reboot
will!"). -
The easiest way to see your site in IE7 and Safari
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Make MS codenames cool again: WinCom, WinPrez, WinFlow
A letter read on this week's DotNetRocks (Kimberly Tripp on SQL Server) reiterated the common complaint that our cool codenames have been replaced with exquisitely boring names. I agree - Windows Communication Foundation sounds like an ailment, and WCF sounds like a part number.
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[OT] My rockstar wife is on tour...
Rachel's on the tour with The Danielson Famile (tour dates here, some songs on MySpace) until June 11:
6-2 - San Francisco, CA - Bottom Of The Hill**
6-3 - Los Angeles, CA - Spaceland
6-4 - San Diego, CA - The Casbah w/Goblin Cock
6-5 - Tucson, AZ - Solar Culture
6-6 - Phoenix, AZ - Modified Arts
6-8 - Salt Lake City, UT - Kayo Gallery
6-9 - Denver, CO - Hi Dive *
6-10 - Lawrence, KS - Bottleneck
6-11 - Indianapolis, IN - Harrison Center for The Arts
(The band's on tour the rest of the summer)
They're in Portland, Oregon tonight at the Loveland. I'm gonna drive up and see her in San Francisco on Friday at the Bottom of the Hill - cool place.
Then she's back in my world, the one where crazy stuff has been going down. Her car got towed as I was dropping her off at the airport due to a DMV screwup that became my problem, my car got broken into in our driveway, and I even managed to explode a Pyrex container due to some crazy heat differential disaster while roasting lamb chops yesterday. I hope I survive until she returns...
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. I just like saying "My wife? Oh, she's on tour..." -
Must read .NET dev blog - Ayende
I stumbled across Ayende's site in February looking for an NHibernate UI. His NHibernate Query Analyzer's pretty nice - check out the Flash demo. I was blown away by Ayende's blog, though, and it's been one of my favorites since then.
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Windows Media Player 11 (Beta) available for public download
As promised, WMP 11 Beta is available for public download here. It was leaked a few days ago, but this is the official Microsoft release.
What struck me is that this is the default version on the WMP download page. Normally MS is a bit more cautious with Beta releases - they're available, but never the default. I'm a beta junkie, so this doesn't worry me at all, but it's an interesting shift in MS's generally cautious release approach. Keeping up with the Joneses? -
Mentioned on DotNetRocks
I e-mailed the DotNetRocks guys a few months ago about Kim Cameron, they guy behind Microsoft's new Identity initiative. They interviewed him on DotNetRocks Episode 176 (4/25/06) and read my e-mail about the show on episode 177. Bottom line - my e-mail prompted the interview. Cool!
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Job Application? Name and weblog only, please!
Scott Hanselman wrote about being put off by a resume submission with this sort of e-mail signature: Joe Blow, MCSE, MCSE+I, MCSD, MCT, MCP. He jokingly (?) proposed that we sign our names with something a bit more useful: Scott Hanselman, 11 Successful Large Projects, 3 Open Source Applications, 1 Collossal Failure.
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Assault on 13th Labour - Cross Platform Distributed Computing in .NET
BoingBoing linked to a distributed program attack on an encryption puzzle on Perspex City called Assault on 13th Labour. What caught my eye was the fact that it's a .NET console application which runs on Mac and Linux under Mono as well as Windows under the Microsoft.NET runtime. -
The Death Star - The Ultimate Waterfall Project?
James Higgs asks a great question: Was the Death Star built using waterfall?
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[SQL] FTP download and restore an MSSQL database backup
I extended my DOS batch script to restore a SQL 2000 database and grant permission to ASPNET account to pull the database backup from an FTP location.
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Sparklines
Jon Udell recently posted about Sparklines :
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[JS/CSS] event:Selectors - the simplest way to hook Javascript events to a CSS class
event:Selectors is a really nice wrapper for the Prototype.js library. It allows you to hook Javascript events to CSS classes with 2 or 3 lines of Javascript code:
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[AJAX] Let's hear it for the WebBus
Andrew Stopford proposed a WebBus - a common communications system for browser components (AJAX, Javascript, Applets, Flash, etc.). That makes a lot of sense - all these AJAX widgets are kind of neat as little individual pieces of flair, but they could do a lot more if there was a common communications protocol for inter-component communication in the browser.
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[T-SQL] Call a stored procedure once for each row in a query or table
Although it's not at all good from a database performance perspective, sometimes data import or upgrade scenarios require a script which calls a stored procedure once for each row in a table. In this example, I'm calling usp_InsertUser on every employee in EmployeeImportTable.
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[T-SQL] Drop all constraints on a table
Here's a simple scriptlet I've included in database upgrade scripts to drop all constraints on a table which will then allow dropping the table. Of course, you'll want to replace the @database and @table parameters.
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SQLite - ALMOST a great embedded database solution for .NET applications
A comment on my post
about the SQL/e announcement said it sounds a lot
like SQLite. The subject warrents a
separate post. SQLite is a great embedded database. It's free, open source,
small, fast, ACID
compliant, and frequently updated. -
SQL/e - Microsoft to release an Embedded Database version of SQL Server
Last year I wrote about how we need an Embedded Database for .NET applications. Microsoft's current .NET database lineup runs as data servers, which is completely inappropriate when you need a simple data format for a desktop application . My post was based on the problems I faced while working on an RSS aggregator built for speed and scalability - I spent all my time troubleshooting problems with open source embedded database engines (SQLite, SharpHSQL, Firebird), and eventually just gave up on the project for the time being.
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Could desktop search and virus scanning start a carpool?
Most of us have at least two systems scanning our hard drives. In my case, one is checking them for viruses, the other is updating indexes for desktop file search. It seems like a lot of duplicated effort, since they both do very similar things: -
[tip / tools] Pausing music when you get a Skype call
Phil sent me a link to a Motorola / Skype Bluetooth Headset that automatically stops your music when calls come in. We both use Skype a lot - I hardly touch the phone anymore - and it sure sounded convenient to be able to switch from music or podcasts to a phone call, then automatically switch back when the call ended. That got me looking for Skype toys that let you do that with my existing headphones; here's what I turned up. -
[OT] Web 2.0 Redefinition: Dialup Access
Dialup Access (noun, circa web 1.0): "Dial-up access is an inexpensive but relatively slow form of internet access in which the client uses a modem to dial the internet service provider's node, a dialup server type such as the PPP and TCP/IP protocols to establish a modem-to-modem link, which is then routed to the internet. It is now legacy technology in the advent of widely available broadband internet access in the Western World." [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialup_access] -
[tool] Remove source control bindings from a VS.NET 2003 Solution or Project
We recently gave up on trying to use SCC bindings in VS.NET 2003. We're using SourceGear Vault in CVS style checkout mode, which means you merge on checkin instead of lock on checkout. Yep, we're optimists, and optimistic locks are more our speed. Unfortunately, VS.NET's source code control doesn't play well with that at all.
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Get VS.NET 2003 SP1 Beta Now
VS.NET 2003 is about two years overdue for SP1. If you don't want to wait until June (or thereabouts), you can apply to download it early through connect.microsoft.com. -
MS Office - free, but pay for services?
There's a very interesting article in this month's issue of Business 2.0 about Ryanair's innovative business model. This is an incredibly successful business model - Ryanair's profit margin is about 3 times Southwest Airlines' margin ; Ryanair is said to have the strongest financials of any European airline. -
[MIX06] Wrapup
Yes, I'm aware the conference ended 6 days ago. I returned to a pretty full workload, so it's taken me a few days to get my notes typed up. I'm finally ready to say goodbye to Mix06; thanks for bearing with me.
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[MIX06] Microformats un-meeting
I went to Marc Canter 's Microformats Un-meeting at Mix06 . It was interesting on a lot of levels. First of all, I had some vague notions of what microformats are, but it was great to hear Marc, Tantek, Eric Meyer, and others describe the idea. -
[MIX06] IE Standalone - Update
I talked with Dean Hachamovitch (the IE General Manager) a few times at Mix06 about why I feel Virtual PC is not a complete or practical solution to web developers who need to migrate from IE6 to IE7. I recommended a few alternate ideas in the very likely case that they just can't support a side-by-side install of IE in the near future. I think this is an important issue - it's a first experience sort of thing for web developers, many of whom have only ever supported one version of IE. I'm quite at home with VPC, but I don't think we should expect that from web developers who feel inconvenienced to have to use a PC in the first place. It's important that web developers learn to like IE, and first impressions are important. -
[MIX06] Corporate types to Microsoft - Don't Change A Thing!
As a web developer who's into web standards, I cringed when I heard the feedback several corporate IT guys gave the IE team at Mix06:
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[OT] Quoted in Network World about IE / Eolas changes
I did a short interview with Robert McMillan for his article Eolas changes to go widespread with next IE update based on my previous blog post on the subject.
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[MIX06] Why no IE Roadmap?
I asked Dave Massey why the IE team doesn't publish a product roadmap for Internet Explorer. Firefox publishes a roadmap, which gives web designers an idea of what's ahead - why can't Microsoft do the same? -
[MIX06] How long will IE6 be supported? How about IE5.5?
At Mix06, Andy Clarke asked if IE7 could be be released as a critical update, and support for IE6 dropped soon after IE7 is released.
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[MIX06] Making Your Site Look Great in IE7
Web developers have come up with a variety of techniques for dealing with a quirky, stagnant browser that continued to dominate the market for the past few years. Most chose the low road, doing whatever it took to look good in IE and ignoring the other browsers. Those who tried to build standards compliant sites relied on a slew of CSS hacks to include adjustments for IE without affecting other browsers. -
[MIX06] WPF/E
WPF/E (Windows Presentation Framework Everywhere) is conceptually similar to Flash. It allows for rich client functionality in the browser through the use of a browser plugin. It supports audio and video, vector graphics (2D only), etc. It was announced at the PDC in 2005.
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[MIX06] Day 2 - ATLAS
Atlas is an AJAX system for use with ASP.NET. Here are a few interesting notes from the Atlas session if, like me, you're generally aware of Atlas but haven't really dug into it that much.
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[Mix06] Web 2.0 needs InfoCard a lot more than AJAX
I'm watching a Mix06 panel on Digital Identity with Johannes Ernst (NetMesh), Kim Cameron (MS), Stefan Brands (Crendentica), Paul Trevithick (Social Physics), and Hillary Ward (Citigroup). I'm finishing a post I started on Sunday; I've been interested in digital identity for over a year now, when I heard Kim Cameron interviewed on The Gillmor Gang.
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The current IE7 B2 Preview is stable for website testing
The IE team announced that the IE7 B2 Preview build available online is ready for use in testing site rendering. The feature list frozen, and the rendering engine is solid and won't change between now and release anymore.
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Siloist!
Accusing someone of not allowing access to their proprietary data is the Web 2.0 equivalent to calling them a racist.
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[Mix06] Day One Summary
The highlight was the discussion between Tim O'Reilly and Bill Gates. This was unscripted, casual, and really interesting to watch. Some quotes and themes:
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OPML 2.0 Will Support Includes
OPML is a simple outline format which has been most commonly used to manage RSS feed lists. The problem I've run into is that it's a static document, so the feed list needs to be manually updated. I subscribe to a lot of feeds, many of them on group blog sites. It would be great to be able to subscribe to an OMPL link and automatically get any newly added feeds in my aggregator.
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Going to Mix06
I'm going to Mix06 in Las Vegas, March 20 - 22. Phil (Haacked.com) and I decided we should wear really ugly Hawaiian shirts so you can find us and give us free stuff or hire our company. Good plan, right? Phil's got an ugly red one, and I've gone with one that a nice shade of... um, I guess it's yellow. -
More .NET apps in Fedora Core 5 than Windows Vista?
Will Fedora Core 5, the Linux distro supported by Red Hat, have more managed code than Windows Vista? It sure looks that way. Microsoft has made heavy use of .NET in their developer and enterprise products, but .NET is pretty much absent from Windows Vista , as evidenced by Richard Grimes' recent analysis. -
IE Update disables Flash. Flash navigation is stupid. If you have to embed Flash, use FlashObject.
Due to the Eolas patent case , a new update to Internet Explorer will no longer automatically allow user interaction with plugins which are embeded in webpages. Think Flash navigation, music players (Quicktime, Windows Media, Real Audio), Java applets, etc. The applets will be usable, but only once you enable them, usually by clicking on them. (see the demo screencast here ).
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Microsoft to Origami ad firm: [0x8024402c]!!!!
You've probably seen the images and promos for Microsoft Origami product (leaked video here). The ad geniuses at D-Kitchen put it up on their portfolio page before the product launch, which might take them off the "preferred vendors" list... -
Last.FM, and MyLastFM - an open source c# player for Last.FM radio
Summary: Last.FM is cool, but their player desktop application is pretty horrible. MyLastFM is the beautiful player that Last.FM deserves. myLastFM has always been free, but now it's better than ever and open source.
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[OT] Rough week
This is way off-topic from my normal technical content, so you may just want to move along. It just doesn't feel right to write about technical content and pretend like real life doesn't exist.
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Attention - profile first, recommendations afterwards
The concept of Attention (as it relates to the internet) is still a new and amorphous enough concept that it's hard to find a simple definition to link to. Wikipedia has almost nothing to say about it. There are technologies and services built around it, like AttentionTrust and attention.xml. Meme engines (like TailRank and Findory, which personalize news based on user input - OPML import for TailRank, OPML import and click tracking for Findory) get close but aren't the full picture. Robert Scoble is excited about Attention, but he's too hung up on the commercial and marketing side of it. Steve Gillmor , Alex Barnett, and others talk about it pretty often, but without any real practical demonstrations of what they're talking about, it's still pretty theoretical at this point.
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[tip] Prevent Windows Automatic Updates from rebooting your computer
I recently wrote about how much I dislike the way Windows OneCare requires you to enable Windows Automatic Update to download and install updates automatically, since Automatic Update installations often automatically reboot my computer when complete. Jason Stangroome left a comment informing me that there are registry and group policy settings to prevent automatic reboots. I looked into both approaches (registry and group policy) and decided to go with group policy, since the registry settings require manually killing the Windows Update process .
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Windows OneCare, Automatic Updates, and Automatic Reboots
I've been beta testing Windows OneCare™ Live : "the all-in-one, automatic and self-updating PC care service aimed at helping consumers more easily protect and maintain their PCs to keep them running well."It integrates smoothly with Windows, consolidates firewall, antivirus, backup, and more. It's one of the better designed pieces of software I've used , and it puts the standard Windows security packages (Symantec, McAfee, etc.) to shame. I'm a thrifty consumer (readers of my blog will note my love of free software), and I think the price is very reasonable: the subscription price for up to three computers will be $49.95. If that seems pricey, consider that it does a lot more than the other antivirus packages, does it very well, and covers three computers. They're now in an open Beta period, so you can try it out free here.
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Runing IE7 Beta 2 Preview next to IE6 (the right way)
UPDATE: See this post for the latest release of IE7 standalone.
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[DotNetNuke] Eagerly awaiting the release of the DotNetNuke Store Module...
UPDATE: DotNetNuke Store (BETA) has been released. Get it here.
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[tip] Test command line settings with EchoArgs 9.78 PRO
Occasionally, applications will allow you to call external helper programs via command line. That can get tricky when you're supplying a command line template and the application does some token replacement before running the commandline. For example, when I hooked up SourceGear Vault to WinMerge, the trick was in figuring out which tokens it was replacing and how those mapped to WinMerge's commandline arguments. So if my commandline setting is /dl "%WORKING_LABEL%" /dr "%OTHER_LABEL%" "%WORKING_PATH%" "%OTHER_PATH%" "%DEST_PATH%", what exactly is being passed for "WORKING_LABEL" and "OTHER_LABEL"?
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[tip] Use WinMerge for compare / merge in SourceGear Vault
I previously blogged about how to use WinMerge as the diff tool in StarTeam. Diff / Merge against source control is something I do very frequently, so I think it's worth the few minutes to use the best possible tool. I've been a fan of WinMerge for a while, so when I started using SourceGear Vault this post was pretty much inevitable.
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[fix] DotNetNuke SolPart menu positioning fix for Firefox
The admin dropdown menus in our DNN 3.1.1 sites haven't been working in FireFox - they show up in the upper left hand corner of the screen (absolutely positioned at 0,0). A javascript change (in spmenu.js) fixed it for us.
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Judicious dependency selection is a powerful tool
Ah, the blog comment turned rant turned blog post...
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[funny] Best Blonde Joke Ever
Definitely the best blonde joke ever.[1]
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SharpDevelop2 LGPL'd, can now be used in Closed Source Apps
The SharpDevelop project switched
licenses with the 2.0 release in December from
GPL to LGPL. That means you can use the components in own applications, both
open and closed source. Unlike the GPL, you can statically or dynamically link
to LGPL
code from open or closed source applications as long as you don't make any
changes to the LGPL'd code. This goes against the goals of the
Free Software Foundation, but he who writes the code picks the license. -
Using Markup Based Javascript Effect Libraries to make dynamic sites in standards compliant HMTL
You can make websites effects with plenty of glitter using simple, standards compliant HTML through the use Javascript effect libraries which operate on CSS classes. I'll talk about why I think it's important, and if you stick with me, I'll point you to some of my favorite lightweight Javascript effect libraries.
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Inexpensive ASP.NET hosting with wildcard subdomains?
I had an idea for a fun little site that would work best with wildcard subdomains[1]. Any suggestions on an inexpensive host? I found LFC Hosting, which would be $15/month with the static IP they require for wildcard subdomains. Cheap is good in this case.
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"Vista Re-Introduced (as OSX)" vs. "Developers, Developer, Developers.."
Windows Vista is a heck of a development platform. Head and shoulders over the competition - Mac's stuck with Objective C, and the real action in Linux development these days (at least in my twisted world) is in Mono, the open source implementation of .NET. Group hug...
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X-Ray Extension for Firefox
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Understanding how Google rankings have changed after the "Jagger" algorithm update (or, Enter the Trustbox)
Google rankings have a huge impact on internet usage, both for content providers and consumers, so I think it's a good idea to understand how that first page of results are selected. Top listing on Google can make or break a company, but it can also determine which articles you read on a topic, which shapes your thoughts. In other words, I think this is important stuff to understand.
