When using Outlook 2010 RC1, I "suddenly" found that when clicking on hyperlinks, I was prompted by the dialog: This operation has been canceled due to restriction in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator. Now I have local administrator rights, so I wondered what had happened. Its turns out the culprit was Google Chrome. After recently uninstalling it, I found that had not cleaned my registry properly. The value you are looking for (depending on your SID) is located under: Before: Key: HKEY_USERS\<LONG-SID>-2147\Software\Classes\.html Value:... [More]

The /admin switch confused me recently, because I thought it was the same features as a normal login. As usual, I was wrong :-) /admin is a reduced set of features that allow you to, in effect, kick people off of the server. Only the full login's (without /admin) have access to features like copy and paste and shared remote drives.

I was writing my own custom configuration class to reduce the amount of <appSettings> in my code, but also to make sure the values were type safe. I wrote a simple test application to try this out. 1: class MyConfigurationTestConfiguration : System.Configuration.ConfigurationSection 2: { 3: private static MyConfigurationTestConfiguration settings = ConfigurationManager.GetSection("MyConfigurationSettingsConfiguration") as MyConfigurationTestConfiguration; 4:  5: public static MyConfigurationTestConfigurat... [More]

Nothing to complex this time, just for reference really. Sometimes you want a simple button to just go back to the previous page. All you need is: <asp:Button runat="server" Text="<%$Resources:MyResources,Back%>" OnClientClick="javascript:history.back(); return false;"/> The reason I'm using an ASP.NET Button is purely for the Localization functionality, so you can use with with HTML controls as well

When trying to connect to TFS 2008 on VS 2008, I had this error: The path xxx is already mapped in workspace xxx It turns out that when using my VPC, it was cloned incorrectly. Someone else had created a workspace using their credentials, cloned the VPC for my use and then when I logged on using the same account name, I got this error message. The way to allow you to continue is to close VS 2008 and then rename the settings file with a .bak extension located at: C:\Documents And Settings\<current user>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Team Foundation\2.0\Cache\VersionControl.... [More]

Recently, I’ve had to interpret some user input and then place this input into an XML file for processing by BizTalk Server 2006. Unfortunately, BizTalk Server 2006 likes you to encode characters using their XML equivalents. Let me explain.. Background This can seem quite easy using the System.Xml.XmlSerializer, with its ability to automatically generate XML and escape invalid characters for us. There are problems though. Here is a template class: public class TestClass {     public string Element1 { get; set; }     public string Element2 { get; set; }     public string Element3 { get;... [More]

A colleague of mine had some problems after recently upgrading an EPiServer site developed in Visual Studio 2005. The site he was developing was brought up to date by using Visual Studio 2008. After changing the web project build framework to .NET 3.5, the development machine compiled the site no problem. However the problem was that the STAGE Web.config file had not been updated with some extra entries that the upgrade wizard had put in. The error he was getting was highlighting the “this PageData data”, saying “Type expected”. public static class EPiServerExtensions { public stat... [More]

I've found a bug with IE8 Beta 2 (in both IE7 and IE8 browser modes) where list boxes that, although disabled but containing selected items, do not show the selected items. Here is an example of what should be displayed I am selected Not selected I am selecting this as well! Not selected either I am selecting this too! I am selecting this again! For those of you who are not using IE8 Beta 2, here is what it appears like: I am selected Not selected I am selecting this as well! Not selected either I am selecting this too! I am selecting this again! I have logge... [More]

One of IE8's new features is a that when closing a window or tab, it can remember the session ID and therefore maintain the session with a website. This is an advantage if you accidentally close a window or tab, but there is a problem. For example, if you have several logins for a site, each login giving totally separate functionality of the site (e.g customer and administrator), then you may close your browser and login as someone else. What you may find is that when you open a new window, you are already logged in as the other person. Why does this happen? IE8 seems to use the first window... [More]

The 3 types of connections Silverlight can make are: Connections to web services and WCF services HTTP requests (via HttpWebRequest and WebClient) Raw data transfers When building one of your early applications, you may choose to try out one of these classes to get back a really simple piece of HTML, purely to test the connection. For example: protected void Button_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { WebClient wc = new WebClient("http://www.google.com"); wc.DownloadStringAsyncCompleted += new EventHandler<DownloadStringEventArgs>(wc_DownloadStringComplet... [More]

I put my VPC's on my external hard disk and run them off there, as the hard drive can run independently of Windows. I've noticed over the past few months, that randomly, my external USB 2.0 hard drive (Freecom 400GB) disconnects for no reason and I get a balloon in the system tray with the title "Delayed Write Problem" , then something to do with G:\$MFT or G:\$Bitmap. Yesterday, I was defragmenting my external hard disk and noticed it kept happening. I turned it off and on again, started defragmenting and the same problem happened. I thought it might be the writing caching, which helps im... [More]

After various conversations on both internal and external projects, I’ve noticed that some of our web projects were being developed using a Session state called InProc. InProc means In-Process, so IIS is hosting all of the Session[“Dom”] = “Idiot!”; variables. Now, if the web application eats up too much memory, IIS 6 and above can be configured to recycle the Application pool – a contained unit of web sites, in order to free up memory. This is good for IIS but baaaad news for your website, as everything in the Session is lost – that could be shopping basket, current order status, use... [More]

When working on a project recently, the data saved back to the database was huge. We are talking well over 100 properties. After talking to my Java buddy, he said that one way is to create an IsDirty method that returns if the object has changed state. The IsDirty() method is used to query the state of an object - if it has been modified or not. The implementation is up to the developer, but ultimately it's use can save you a trip to the data source. I have split this example into 3 stages: First attempt Refactored Event Handled N.B. This article helps someone in (archaic) .NE... [More]

When writing stored procedures or views, I always create them in Visual Studio (2005/2008) and then run them on a specified database. When using "SELECT *", it is compact, but obviously does not help you find the columns of the table or view. When using the IDE, I added a new SQL Script for Stored Procedures, and then I typed: SELECT *FROM Customers and a blue box surrounded the statement. I right-clicked -> Design SQL Block. The designer then listed all of the column names for me, and when clicking OK, instantly put them back into the SQL script I was creating! SELECT CustomerI... [More]

I was trying to parse a file which was divided into numerous parts - each one 12 lines long. For debugging, I was interested in how fast the file was being read and processed and therefore looked at the StreamReader.BaseStream.Position property. Here is an example of what I was trying to do: class Program{ static void Main(string[] args) { string filename = @"C:\windows\windowsupdate.log"; string filenameBackup = filename + ".bac"; File.Copy(filename, filenameBackup); FileStream fs = new FileStream(filenameBackup, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read); Str... [More]

WPF is revolutionary as it re-invents the Windows design and programming for the Microsoft platform. But why bother? I could write an article for hours and hours on the changes brought about with WPF. Here, I will give a very brief overview of the more visual changes brought about. History If you have had any experience programming Windows in .NET, VB6 or C++ MFC, you'll have heard of GDI. GDI (more recently GDI+) is an API which you use to render text images and other custom drawing functions (like lines, circles, rectangles etc). The GDI library has been around since Windows 95 and was a ... [More]

Microsoft recently (on my birthday) released a tool to analyse coding structure and formatting. No - its not FxCop - StyleCop analyses syntactical formatting. Let me explain: Background When Microsoft released FxCop, some people cringed. I remember at my previous job when having a code review and the conversation following: Consultant: "Have you FxCop'd it?". Me: "No...." Consultant: "Hahahah - see you in 3 months!" Those days, for me anyway, have gone. I started to use it in my everyday coding and am now pleased I use it without a second thought. In my position with this com... [More]

I was generating some test data and tried to use the RAND() function to query data. When trying this out on the Northwind database, it returned with the following result: SELECT LastName, RAND() from Employees   LastName (No column name) Buchanan 0.747783 Callahan 0.747783 Davolio 0.747783 Dodsworth 0.747783 Ful... [More]

After a trip to London to visit one of my friends who works for Rightmove -  the UK's No 1 Online Housing Site and we (we meaning I) got into talking about the ways we test our code. He told me that they started to use a Test Driven Development methodology. When testing in a development environment, their test framework used something called "mock objects" - these are objects that simulate behaviour, but in reality, don't do anything! I was intrigued.... Background One of the drawback of the development process, especially with Test Driven Development, is that there comes a stage when a larg... [More]

I don’t know about you, but when I’ve seen some string comparisons, some people use: string text = GetStringFromDB()   if( text != string.Empty ) DoThis(); This looks good, but its actually quite a long running process, as the CLR has to compare both strings character by character. It is much better to use String.IsNullOrEmpty to cater for this, or use .Length == 0 property, as this never changes and is computed when assigned. Here is what the String.IsNullOrEmpty method looks like: public static bool IsNullOrEmpty(string value) { if (value != null) { ... [More]