Hosts or Lmhosts file (Windows Vista)

Not able to save modified hosts or lmhosts file located in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\ ?

Here is the workaround: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923947/en-us

AJAX View

John Hrvatin talked about Web Development Tools for Internet Explorer at Microsoft TechEd 2007 in Orlando. There, he introduced a tool called Ajax View, developed by Microsoft Research.

Ajax View is able to profile a site’s JavaScript. It acts as a HTTP proxy that instruments JavaScript as it’s served to the client based on a set of rules defined by plug-ins. More information and first release download here, a good introduction here.

... and ... don't bother me - I know, there is (at least) a smarter browser out there, with an immense and open ecosystem of dev-plugins... :-)

Speed Firefox up!

Make Firefox download pages faster by allowing multiple connections so it can download more than one file at a time:

1. Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries and set the value like this:
   
   network.http.pipelining --> true
   network.http.proxy.pipelining --> true
   network.http.pipelining.maxrequests --> 30 (This means it will make 30 requests at once)
   
   Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.
   
2. Right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

Now, Firefox will load the pages much faster.

Sample MasterPages - Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

Microsoft has provided a set of MasterPages for WSS:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=7c05ca44-869a-463b-84d7-57b053711a96&displaylang=en

Acropolis - next generation platform for building WPF Applications

Acropolis is a next generation platform for building the kinds of applications that you currently build with CAB (Composite UI Application Block). With Acropolis you basically define your entire application in a very rich designer environment... etcetera... Sounds great.

Here is more information, video and package download available:

http://windowsclient.net/Acropolis/Default.aspx

WCSF June 2007 released

The June 2007 release of the Web Client Software Factory is an update to the January 2007 release and contains the following changes:

• The guidance package uses the February 2007 Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the Guidance Automation Extensions and Guidance Automation Toolkit
• The software factory uses the Enterprise Library 3.1 – May 2007.
• The guidance package recipes support Web Application Projects.
• The guidance package includes recipes that create Visual Basic .NET source code.
• The Windows installer includes a feature to analyze the computer for required and optional software dependencies.
• The Windows installer includes source code snippets for typical page flow development activities.
• Fix for the Add View (with presenter) Recipe which sometimes would not load due to an exception.

The WCSF is available here: http://www.codeplex.com/websf

Additional Links:

Michael Puleio - Development Lead - http://blogs.msdn.com/mpuleio
Blaine Wastell - Program Manager - http://blogs.msdn.com/blaine

PhotoSynth from Microsoft Live Labs

PhotoSynth is a amazing technology from Microsoft Live Labs that takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed three-dimensional space.

In the future we will be able to "photosynthesize" our own photos! Stay tuned via the blog @ http://labs.live.com/photosynth/blogs/

Refactor ASP.NET 2.0

Refactor! is freely available to all ASP.NET 2.0 developers and offers a comprehensive suite of tools that enable you and your team to simplify and shape complex code and HTML markup.

Refactor includes the following refactorings (and much more)

• Move Style Attributes to CSS
• Extract Style (Class)
• Add Validator
• Surround with Update Panel (ASP.NET AJAX)
• Extract ContentPlaceHolder (create master page)

Web Online-Desktop

One of the amazing new inventions (thanks to Web 2.0 Hype) are the Online-Desktop services, for example

• http://www.atoolo.com (free, beta, 1 GB Memory, free registration)
• http://www.mygoya.de/ (free, beta, closed user group)

They provide different tools via a browser-desktop:

• Calendar
• Appointments
• Adressbook
• Notes
• Bookmarks
• Players
• Messanger
• Documents
• etc.

And they offer a huge online-diskspace to save the informations and the desktop layout.

Open as WebSite in Windows Explorer

"Open as Visual Studio Website" command on any folder in windows explorer? Bradley posted an awesome how to, including the necessary macro and the registry entries.

AJAX Live Online Demo by Microsoft: DinnerNow

DinnerNow is brand new Demo Application by Microsoft utilizing several technologies including: IIS7, ASP.NET Ajax Extensions, Linq, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Powershell, and the .NET Compact Framework.

The Application is available for Download from CodePlex.

Marcel gave me the hint.

Web 2.0 Panel on WEF

Some weeks ago, I posted about the Web 2.0 Discussion Forum at the WEF.

The whole discussion is available as Webcast or/and Potcast: The Impact of Web 2.0 and Emerging Social Network Models .

Yihong Ding posted an excellent summary about the mentioned WEF Panel and the WWW Evolution.

IE8 or IE.Next, Firefox 3 - a set of informations

A good source with loads of articles and info's about wishes and possible features to Microsoft's next Internet Explorer.

Even more information is available about FireFox 3.0 (codename Gran Paradiso), the growing concurrence for Microsoft's IE. Offline capabilities seems to be one of the key features. Here a sample.

Imaging having Browser-Versions of Spreadsheet, Word processing à la Google-Docs available for Online- and Offline-Usage....

Why a private user will be willing to pay for Microsoft Office Software?

"sys is undefined" in AJAX RTM on VISTA solved!

In an older post, I talked about the 'sys is undefined' problem with ASP.NET AJAX RC1.

Last week I updated my samples to RTM Version and ... the problem is gone without doing anything! neither configuration or code changes inside the samples nor configuration changes on vista.

Zattoo WebTV - Quality TV live on your laptop

Wow - Live TV for free (even without swiss-local Bilag fee)! Currently 40 Channels available.

Zattoo was founded in US in 2005 by Sugih Jamin, professor for computer science at the University of Michigan, and Beat Knecht, a swiss software product marketing professional and former McKinsey consultant in Silicon Valley.

Zattoo is a Peer-to-Peer IPTV-Service. The main goal is a fast loading, long running Live-Internet-TV for broadband users, broadcaster, content owners and advertisers.

"Advances in broadband, video compression, and multicast streaming technology are rapidly lowering the technical hurdles for Internet and television to merge on a PC. However, there is still the matter of cost. Our streaming network solves that problem by reducing broadcasters' costs by a factor of ten, making it compelling for them to switch to our technology and broaden their service offering," said Sugih Jamin, CTO and co-founder of Zattoo. "Also, Zattoo's proprietary P2P streaming technology ensures a video delivery and smoothness that has until now been impossible to achieve."

Personally, I was impressed by the quality. No interrupt during 30 minutes test and I was surfing throu the web in parallel (Internet-connection: 4000 kb/s download, 400 kb/s upload).

WPF/E - Vista Emulation

Extreme, extreme - impressive emulation of Windows Vista by slovenians (and in slovenian language...) based on WPF/E technique. Loads of javascript to manipulate XAML (View Source) thru the DOM.

http://www.vista.si/main.htm

Make sure to install the WPF/E PlugIn before running the emulation.

Paint.NET 3.0

Paint.NET is free image editing and photo manipulation software . It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. Paint.NET is written in C#, the Source Code is available.

Windows Vista - beneficial features

Some reasons to use Windows Vista (by Chris Sells). No all are obvious at first glance and easy to detect. That make this list invaluable.

WEF: Leaders get a taste of Web 2.0

At the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos (Switzerland) 2,400 leaders in business, politics and science do chat about the Future and Past in different areas.

They use accurate mediums to publish informations - a blog. Every participant - including Microsoft chairman Bill Gates - has been asked to post at least once, according to this article.

This afternoon, I followed the discussion about Web 2.0 with Leaders from Microsoft, Flickr, Nike, Fortune and more. The topic aimed less about technique and more about participation, community, sharing, individualization of content and services.... order your individual, unique styled Nike-Shoes... Customize your desktop and web... just be a part of it.

Web 2.0 is everywhere. And Web 3.0 is already on its way....

Update 2007 (WEF): Beyond Web 2.0 -- From Content to Collective Knowledge?

While social networks and community-oriented interactive sites, known as Web 2.0, continue to gain pace, the advent of Web 3.0 is already taking shape. In this Update, panellists (WEF) will discuss how a fundamental, technology-enabled "semantic Web" could develop over the coming four to five years, driven by hyper personalization coupled with advances in meta tagging and search, revolutionizing the way the knowledge is shared.

Hope, I will find the according WEF potcast.

WEF - Please don't mix it with Wresting Entertainement Federation :-)

List of Microsoft software codenames

Project 42, Rosetta, Starfighter, Thunder, Daytona, Metro, Omega, Istanbul, Kahona, Darwin, Monad, Aurora, Lone Start.... Guess the Products behind Microsoft codenames...

Anti-Cross Site Scripting Library

Cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks exploit vulnerabilities in Web-based applications that fail to properly validate and/or encode input that is embedded in response data. Malicious users can then inject client-side script into response data causing the unsuspecting user's browser to execute the script code. The script code will appear to have originated from a trusted-site and may be able to bypass browser protection mechanisms such as security zones.

ASP.NET developers may wish to use the Microsoft Anti-Cross Site Scripting Library to encode output. This library differs from other encoding libraries in that it uses the principle of inclusions and provides a high degree of protection against XSS attacks.

Learn more about the Anti-Cross Site Scripting Library
Download the Anti-Cross Site Scripting Library
Follow the tutorials

WPF/E Future - Textbox and other Controls

There are a lot of gadget-examples with WPF/E! Nice - but not more. Flash V. 1.0 :-)

WPF/E does not even contain a Textbox control at the moment. It is in a really early stage. So don't be disappointed. According to this thread, Microsoft is working on adding basic control (TextBox, Checkbox, ...) in the next CTP. Then we're getting closer to business needs.

"We'll also be providing "WPF/E" integration with .NET managed code next year" announced Scott Guthrie, which will bring WPF/E even one level higher (more c#, less javascript).

In the meantime, Tony Lombardo from Infragistics did realize a cool combo (WPF/E and MS AJAX) - a "WPF/E Textbox". Take a look. An enthralling technical chat about WPF and WPF/E to gain insights:

• http://www.sneath.org/tim/06_1220_msdn_wpf.doc

AJAX XML-Script Tutorial (Future CTP Feature)

An excellent XML-Script Tutorial (Part 1 - 4) by Alessandro Gallo (Garbin) you will find on DotNetSlackers. XML-Script is a part of the Future CTP. This package does contain material additional to the AJAX Core Framework and could be included in further Core Releases.

The Future CTP is not official documented, so this kind of Tutorial from the community are really worthwhile.

WebApp Offline? Dojo Offline Toolkit!

"I had been prototyping and playing with some ideas around bringing true offline access to Web applications in a simple, generic way" annouced Brad Neuberg in this eweek article.

Sounds great. One big step further in Web-Development, if he will reach his goal. I will stay tuned.

Here some relevant links to get more details:

• Dojo Offline Toolkit
• Proxy Auto-Config (General Description)
• PAC (Proxy Auto-Config File Format)
• Dojo Storage (unified API to provide JavaScript applications with storage)
• Moxie (Dojo Offline Storage demo)

Windows Live Search Box

Search boxes powered by Windows Live are designed for website owners and bloggers who want to quickly add customized search capability to their site. The search box enables visitors to search your site, the Web, or any other locations you define by macros ... Get your own one here: http://search.live.com/siteowner/

Task Scheduler Library for .NET

For a project, we had to build a Web-UI to manage and run different scheduled tasks. Program the whole Scheduling-Management by ourself... hmmm, no way, there must be a solution.... why not just use the existing Windows Task Scheduler?

The Windows Task Scheduler is accessible thru a COM interface, but the .NET Framework does not offer any native wrapper for it. :-(

Dennis Austin built an excellent .NET wrapper for the Scheduler, including Source Code, MSDN Style Help and Demo Client. Wow, R-E-S-P-E-C-T !

I was able to build an ASP.NET 2.0 Application to list, add, edit and remove tasks to the scheduler - in no time! Thanks, Dennis - your my programmer of the Week

Media File Converter

Any video converter is a free media file converter. For example, you can convert video files to MPEG-4 movie format for the iPod.

AJAX Security Concerns

Recently, I read a well done article about security concerns, and recommendations for securing Web application development, especially AJAX applications.

Since Ajax Web applications exist on both the client and the server, they include the following security issues:

• Create a larger attack surface with many more inputs to secure
• Expose internal functions of the Web application server
• Allow a client-side script to access third-party resources with no builtin security mechanisms

AJAX implementations require a trust relationship between the client and server — a relationship that can be exploited by an attacker...

The JavaScript in the Ajax engine traps the user commands and makes function calls in clear text to the server. Browser requests and Ajax engine requests look identical. The server is incapable of discerning a request made by JavaScript and a request made in response to a user action. This fact means it is very difficult for an individual to prove that they did not do a certain action.

It also means that JavaScript can make a request for a resource using Ajax that occurs in the background without the user’s knowledge. The browser will automatically add the necessary authentication or state-keeping information such as cookies to the request. JavaScript code can then access the response to this hidden request and then send more requests. This expansion of JavaScript functionality increases the possible damage of a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attack.

Read the whole, excellent Article "AJAX Security Dangers" by Bill Hoffmann.

The Joys of Test Driven Development

No comment.... :-)

AJAX Architecture (Big Picture)

Based on Shawn Burke's excellent presentation, I tried to put two overview pictures about the different components of Microsoft AJAX (RC1) and their relationship. - Big pictures are one of the things I really miss within Microsoft's documentation. A picture can often tell more than pages of continuous text.

Microsoft AJAX is based on a client part (called the Microsoft AJAX Library), a complex JavaScript Framework, which brings the power of a base class library out to the browser programmers. The server part (called the ASP.NET AJAX Extension) is a .NET Assembly, bringing smooth AJAX communication and updates to the ASP.NET Framework. These two parts are also referred as AJAX Core.

Based on AJAX Core, we get the ASP.NET AJAX Toolkit, an Add-On to create AJAX Controls and AJAX Extenders. The Toolkit is set-up as "Shared Source" bringing Microsoft and the Community together - working on fancy, attractive Controls for everybody.

The ASP.NET AJAX Value-Add CTP's (called Future CTP's as well) are additional libraries, containing features and functionality, which could be included in further releases of the AJAX Core. CTP's are targeting eary adopters and development, interested in using upcoming codes, and ready to give (optional) feedback to the Microsoft Team.

Visual Studio 2005 on Windows Vista Issue List

Running Software Development on Windows Vista? - Here you will find two important articles from Microsoft:

Visual Studio 2005 on Windows Vista Issue List
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa964140.aspx

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 on Microsoft Windows Vista
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/howtobuy/windowsvistasupport.mspx

"Sys is undefined" in MS AJAX RC 1 on VISTA

Today, I'm working on an article about Microsoft AJAX Control Toolkit, which is based on AJAX Core (AJAX Extensions on the serverside, AJAX Library including the clientside Javascript Framework).

So I downloaded the latest AJAX Control Toolkit Bits from Codeplex and installed the VS-Templates as well.

But, no sample code was working on my machine (VISTA, VS.NET 2005 SP1, IE7 and FF2)!

I've got always the following Script-Error: "Sys is undefined" (Sys is one of the major "classes" of the MS AJAX Library). It seems, that the browser is not able to detect the Script-Library, where this object is located.

I've checked the references to the AjaxToolkit.dll, did all the config mentioned in this thread (http://forums.asp.net/1516718/ShowThread.aspx) - no success.

If you google for "Sys is undefined" "AJAX" you will find loads of post about this problems. Seems to exist since ages...

At least, when I'm running the sample on a Windows XP (with IE7), everything work as expected. --> expected means correct!! :-)