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Showing posts from August, 2008

Why Podcasts Suck, Redux!

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  I weighed in on this subject some time ago here and I think it's high time for a rehash. Why?  Because they just won't give up! I'm putting links to Silverlight stuff into IttyUrl.net , which finally has a good, fast  new home (hasta-la-vista gate.com -- useless hosting company!)  -- and now I keep coming up with these podcast promotions.  NO, NO, NO! Podcasts are linear, they are like TV, which has become virtually prehistoric for us Internet Geeks! A podcast cannot be indexed by Google, you cannot "Search" it to find the part you are interested in (if there actually is one!) , and, except in rare cases, it's not professionally produced media - not by a long shot. And you certainly cannot copy code samples from a FYOOKIN' PODCAST! I mean, if I want to listen to the BBC audiobook narrated edition of Ernest Hemingway's " The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber " , that's professional media! Podcasts, "NOT"! As I opined ...
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Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 out, and compatibility tags

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Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 was released today in multiple languages, with more to come in the next 30 days. So, this represents a move beyond the "BETA 1" developer preview stage (possibly by a longshot). As can be expected, there will be a lot of pages and sites that want to opt-out of IE 8 “Standards” mode rendering. There are two ways to do this: On a per-site basis, add a custom HTTP header X-UA-Compatible: IE=EmulateIE7 (IIS 7.0 example:) On a per-page basis, add a special HTML tag to each document, right after the <head> tag <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" /> Implementing the HTTP header is useful if a site owner wants most of their site to render as it did in IE7 or if there are no plans to update site content. Inclusion of this header honors any Quirks mode pages that belong to the site. Using the meta-tag on a per-page basis is beneficial when you want to opt-in specific pages to render as they did in IE7. ...
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Bugs in Silverlight?

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Dr. Evil: Right, people you have to tell me these things, okay? I've been frozen for thirty years, okay? Throw me a frickin' bone here! I'm the boss! Need the info. I've seen more than a few posts on the Silverlight Forums where people are complaining (or sometimes just asking for help / guidance) on issues where they appear to be attempting to "tax the system"  and thus expose what they believe is "a bug".  Hey - Silverlight has bugs - even release software does -- that's not the issue. But creating artificial programming situations where one can claim "It's a bug" is not always a  legitimate effort. More often than not, this revolves around issues like "memory leaks" when attempting to set up some sort of "test" code that does some operation in a tight loop, or some similar operation that does not necessarily relate to what would likely happen in a "real world" Silverlight application. The poste...
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Visual Studio: Enable / Disable IE Script Debugging Tool

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Rocky: There has already been two attempts on your life. Bullwinkle: Don't worry, we'll be renewed. If you are like me, you are always keeping your eye out for shortcuts and ways to make your life easier. One of the little annoyances of working with Visual Studio .NET is that it has no option to turn Client Script Debugging on or off – you have to open up Internet Explorer, go to Tools/Internet Options/Advanced and either check or uncheck the checkbox option. All this checkbox does is control a Registry entry, so why not just make a little .vbs script and register it as an External Tool in Visual Studio? The steps to do this are very simple. But first, you need to find out what Registry Key has your value. The key is located at HKEY_USERS\XXXXXX\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\ where “XXXXXX'” could either be “.default” or one of the machine user identities such as “S-1-5-19”. Once you have identified where your actual ...
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Silverlight 2 Beta 2: ConfigUnrecognizedElement issue and Fix

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  When you create a Service Reference in a Silverlight App to an ASMX WebService, you may get the:  "An unhanded exception ('Sys.InvalidOperationException: ManagedRuntimeError error #4004 in control 'Xaml1': System.InvalidOperationException: ConfigUnrecognizedElement at System.ServiceModel.Configuration.BindingsSection.ReadXml(XmlReader reader)" Exception. This "is a real bug".  When your Visual Studio 2008 Silverlight app generates the ServiceReferences.ClientConfig file, it creates a customBinding section that it cannot parse. In fact even the IDE marks the customBinding tag with squiggles saying "The element 'bindings' has invalid child element 'customBinding'. List of possible elements expected: 'basicHttpBinding'." This is because SIlverlight doesn't understand SOAP 1.2, which is the default for ASMX webservices. DUH! To fix, you can do this with WCF: <customBinding> <binding name=...
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When Hosting Plans Go Bad...

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Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.   -- Euripides When I started using paid hosting for ASP.NET sites, I started out with CrystalTech and they were very good. Then I found Gate.com and they seemed like they had a pretty good deal going - SQL Server 2005, plenty of bandwidth (200GB), plenty of space, ASP.NET 2.0 and a control panel that would let you create custom subfolder IIS applications, set mime-types in IIS, and even your own custom 404 page - which I instantly turned into a custom UrlRewriting handler. All this for like $9.95 / mo, and a 25% discount on additional sites. Sweet. For an extra $5.00 I could go up to 500GB bandwidth. Then, about a month ago, I got an email from gate.com promoting how they were going to have a new "improved" control panel page, new features, more this, more that -- you get the idea. Turns out that they REMOVED features. They blew away my custom 404 handler and removed the ability to specfy "my" page for HT...
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Silverlight: Some HttpWebRequest Headers don't work

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Parents: Talk to your kids about Linux. Before somebody else does. -- XKCD I saw a couple of posts where people were attempting to make GET or POST requests to some service (which, if not same-domain, had the required crossdomain.xml or clientaccesspolicy.xml file) and this service required BASIC authentication credentials. Normally, you would add an "Authorization" header with the value "Basic QWxhZGRpbjpvcGVuIHNlc2FtZQ==" where the gobblydegook after the word BASIC is username:password converted to a Base64 string.  That's standard W3C Header protocol . Unfortunately, even though there is sample code illustrating this from Karen Corby here , it does not work (she does not actually add an Authorization header, just illustrates how to add a header). It turns out that the "Authorization" header is on the "restricted list". See here for a complete listing .  So, if you have been trying to do this, or any similar header that is on th...
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Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (release) now available

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"In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from." -- Peter Drucker Here is a page with a bunch of related stuff, including a prep tool that will set you up in cases where you had a beta Service Pack installed: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/Results.aspx?DisplayLang=en&nr=50&startDate=7/12/2008&period=30&sortCriteria=date   The actual Service Pack link is about the 10th one down in the list, here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=27673c47-b3b5-4c67-bd99-84e525b5ce61&DisplayLang=en I use UltraISO to extract this to the file system, and then you can just execute the "SPInstaller.exe" to start the install. A lot easier than burning a DVD. You can also mount the ISO using the VCD Control Tool or a similar utility such as Daemon Tools. But don’t forget if you ever need to do update or repair, you need to do so from Control Panel , ...
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SQL Server 2008 RTM - First Experiences

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FACTOID: B-2 bombers are capable of dropping 85 500-pound bombs in a single run. I installed SQL Server 2008 RTM Developer Edition this evening. First it installed .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, no problems. Then we went with the full install and I chose an Upgrade over SQL Server 2005. Everything went fine until the prerequisites check, and it reported FAIL on Visual Studio 2008 - saying that SP1 was required. Well, I already went through this stuff with Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta and it clobbered Silverlight. So, when you guys solve this issue and provide a Visual Studio 2008 SP1 that preserves all my existing Silverlight 2 BETA 2 work and doesn't put me out of business - then I'll be happy to install SQL Server 2008. Meanwhile, I'm choosing the safe route, which is to keep my powder dry. Be advised. UPDATE (8/8/2008):  According to Microsoft sources, VS 2008 SP1 will be accompanied by a new Silverlight Tools Beta 2 chainer.  The new chainer will have the patch for ...
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On Documentation for (and by) Developers

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The government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.  - Ronald Reagan This has become a personal pet - peeve of mine, having been in various developer groups using the .NET platform since 2001 (ancient history, to be sure -- at least by Internet standards). When I write a class library, if there is even the HINT that it may be used by other developers (or  -- even by me myself at some later date) I've learned to produce decent documentation in the standard XML comment format that has been available in .NET since the very first BETA 1.0 was distributed at the Orlando PDC (Professional Developers Conference) in 2000.  Here's the "thing": as you progress in your career as a professional .NET developer, you'll learn to produce libraries and classes of useful code that you'll use again and again. The idea is that as you gain more and more...
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