IE 6 and IE 7 together

Did you realize the possibility of running e.g. IE6 and IE7 together? - I didn't till today...

I had installed IE7 Beta2 when I realized, that I can't work on Gadgets for Live.com with IE7 on my development-server because of security limitation (do not allow cross-domain XmlHttp requests from trusted sites). - So I started to google, and found a solution which works for me: I installed IE7 stand-alone with some limitation - but still okay for me.... read the following articles for more information:

http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2006/02/02/437196.aspx

http://www.tech-recipes.com/internet_explorer_ie7_tips1188.html

Ray Ozzie - Microsoft's new brain and Gates' proxy

A very interesting article about Microsofts conquer the Web:

CNN Article

It seems, Ray Ozzie (Lotus Notes creator) will lead the the show @ microsoft.

File-Extensions Source

Test yourself! Do you know all exisiting file extensions?

http://filext.com/

This page is a usefull helper, if you get a file without any idea, what kind of file it should be. It was a *.xpi file. Do you know the content?

It was a Mozilla/Firefox Browser Extension Archive.

SQL Prompt - Intellisense for SQL

SQL Intellisense® style word completion for MS Query Analyzer, VS.NET 2003, SQL Server Management Studio and VS 2005:

Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio .NET 2005

if (.NET and Oracle?)
{
The new Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio .NET
(ODT - V 10.2.0.2.10 beta) is a tightly integrated
"Add-in" for Microsoft Visual Studio that brings the power
of the Oracle Database to .NET developers.

--> Download here
}

Web Application Project - MS InfoPaper

The new Web Application Project (WAP) Type is a usefull alternative to the ASP.NET 2.0 common Web Site Projects.

Personally, I prefer the WAP in regular project.

Most of the time, you don't need features like

• dynamic compilation
• treat directory as web project
• single page code model
• ...

"normally" you need features like

• pre-/postbuild steps
• strong-naming
• controlled and predefiened output
• ...

Web Site Projects are cool for demos, teaching and presentations - but in real world projects... I don't know...

Here's a Microsoft InfoPaper to give you the important informations and hints to do the right decision:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnvs05/html/WAP.asp

VS.IDE - Editing Project Files

I some cases, it is necessary (or, at least, more transparent) to edit the project-files (e.g. my.csproj) manually with an text-editor.

Here, you get the info, how to do this without leaving VS.IDE:

https://blogs.msdn.com/shawnfa/archive/2006/04/26/582326.aspx

URL Rebasing in MasterPages

Did you know about URL Rebasing in MasterPages? - I didn't.

Often, MasterPage and Slave (or ContentPage) are not located in the same directory-level. So you will run into trouble if you have for example images on the MasterPage referenced like this:

<IMG src="images/spice.jpg" />

The ContentPage in a SubDirectory can not resolve the URL and you will get an 404-Error.

What is the Solutions?

Just put an runat="server" and and id="yourID" attribut to the image and the runtime will try to “rebase” relative URLs it finds on server-side controls inside a MasterPage .

This means the following relative path will work, no matter where the MasterPages and ContentPage :

<IMG id="spiceImg" src="images/spice.jpg" runat="server"/>

Cool!

Blogger - Missing Features?

Currently, I'm missing some features on my blog (www.blogger.com). Maybe, they are here, but I can't find howto implement?

• Calendar, with bold date for days with blog-entry
• RSS-Support (currently, just ATOM)
• Auto-Archiving older posting (per month)

Do you know about this features on blogger.com?

Windows PowerShell (aka Monad)

Microsoft published Windows PowerShell RC1 - a new task-based command line shell and scripting language for system administration. - The according Team Blog for PowerShell here.

From the marketing perspective, you get...

• As interactive and composable as BASH/KSH
• As programmatic as Perl/Ruby
• As production oriented as AS400 CL/VMS DCL
• Access data stores as easily as accessing filesystems

Now, examples and code! I'm interested from a developer-perspective. Especially, if i'm able to replace some VB-Scripts with PowerShell Scripts. - It seems to be possible - with less code.

The first command to start with: get-help * (Wow, what a huge list)

I'm interested specially in the power of language constructs.

As a sample, a foreach implementation to loop thru file in the current directory and display a message for files with a size over 100k:

$i = 0
foreach ($file in Get-ChildItem)
{
if ($file.length -gt 100k)
{
Write-Host $file "file size:" ($file.length / 1024).ToString("F0") KB
$i = $i + 1
}
}

Cool! Easy to read! - But is it also easy to write, without digging thru the whole documentation... at least not for me. So, what about an IDE with intellisense (code completion), dynamic help etc. to get productive fast? - I googled thru the web, and found this blog-entry. According to this, Primal Script, a really powerfull Script-IDE (I use it for VB-Scripts) will give us this support soon.

I'm sure, with an IDE and the Power of PowerShell, this will be a new area in Command-Lining, Batching on Windows - Back to the roots, but with new Luxury! :-)