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 Friday, March 18, 2005
Programming with Media Center's DVR-MS

Excellent article by Stephen Toub about how to develop managed applications in C# that can work with Windows Media Centers DVR-MS file format.

"...I delve into working with DirectShow and DVR-MS files (the recorded television files generated by Windows Media Center) from managed code, and I demonstrate how to do things like work with DirectShow filter graphs, play DVR-MS files in your own applications, convert DVR-MS files to other file formats, edit and splice DVR-MS files, extract and change metadata, etc."

MCE
3/18/2005 9:07:36 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Monday, March 14, 2005
NASA World Winds: A view from above

A friend of mine who is an enthusiast of astronomy showed my this cool application: NASA World Winds 1.3.

Installing the app quickly revealed that it is based on .NET, namely written in C# with Managed DirectX as a graphics library. Even better, the source code is available on sourceforge.

The lead developer justifies his decision in a nice plea for .NET.

.NET Framework
3/14/2005 8:54:53 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Differences between System.Web.UI.LiteralControl and System.Web.UI.WebControls.Literal

Mike Ogden pointed out the fact that the DynamicControlsPlaceholder (DCP) does not correctly recreate System.Web.UI.LiteralControl. At first I was very perplexed because I was somehow sure that I successfully tried that before. However, I must have mixed it up with the System.Web.UI.WebControls.Literal which works without problems.

That raises the question why there are two different controls and how they differ. The major difference is that the LiteralControl does not persist the Text property in ViewState, which is why it is recreated emptily by the DCP. The Literal, however, takes a LiteralControl as a child and saves its Text in ViewState:

protected override void AddParsedSubObject(object obj)
{
    if (!(obj is LiteralControl))
    {
	throw new HttpException(
	    HttpRuntime.FormatResourceString("Cannot_Have_Children_Of_Type", 
	    "Literal", obj.GetType().Name.ToString()));
    }
    this.Text = ((LiteralControl) obj).Text;
}

So, if you want to use literal controls with the DynamicControlsPlaceholder make sure that you use Literal instead of LiteralControl.

ASP.NET | DynamicCtrlPlh
2/8/2005 8:40:45 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [1] 


Using unmanaged C++ Class Libraries from C#

If you are not very familiar with writing a managed C++ wrapper around an unmanaged C++ class library as I had to do last week, the following tutorial is of great help: http://www.codeguru.com/Cpp/Cpp/cpp_managed/interop/article.php/c6867/

The sample shows how to instantiate classes from C# and make callbacks from unmanaged to managed code with delegates.

One of the next things I needed was the conversion between STL strings std:string and System::String which is described here.

.NET Framework
2/8/2005 8:21:42 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [2] 


 Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Needed permissions for the ASP.NET worker process user

Twice during the last 7 days, I had to look up the privileges, a custom user account needs when you want to run the ASP.NET worker process under. How to fix the ugly 80004005 error message is described here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/secmod/html/secmod15.asp

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/317012/EN-US/

ASP.NET
1/12/2005 9:25:02 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


Customizing Quickwatch in VS.NET debugger for custom classes

Today I was asked how to customize the quickwatch that the Visual Studio debugger displays for custom types. For an integer, a string, a DateTime or most other System types their values are correctly displayed. However for all custom types it just displays {MyNamespace.MyClass}.

My first guess was that the debugger just displays the output of the ToString() method however that is not true. After some searching on the web I found a newsgroup post that points out to edit the file mcee_cs.dat in the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Common7\Packages\Debugger directory.

Their entries are structured like that: <Typename with Namespace>=<member to display> (but that is described in the file as well). So I made a test with my PictureGalleryImage class "<DBauer.Web.UI.WebControls.PictureGallery.PictureGalleryImage>=<Index>" and it worked really find. Not very intuitive but good to know.

After I found it out I googled again and then I found the blog post by Dan Vallejo that describes the same just with other keywords :)

VS.NET
1/12/2005 6:10:20 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Guerilla Yukon training in Redmond and the new Reflector.SQL2005Browser addin

The week before Christmas I attended DevelopMentor's "Guerilla SQL Server 2005 for Developers" training on the Microsoft Campus in Redmond. This was my first trip to Redmond after having joined the company 3 years ago and it was really nice to see "the temple". *g

Regarding the training: The trainers Bob Beauchemin, Niels Berglund and Dan Sullivan did an excellent job in transferring their knowledge about Yukon to the 60 attendees. What was really cool about the training being on MS campus was that many PMs from the different SQL groups came to the conference center and offered Q&As and feedback sessions.

During the training we talked about ways to browse through the assemblies stored in a SQL database and retrieve them with SELECT statements. This inspired me to create a Reflector addin that connects to a SQL instance, lists the databases and the assemblies contained. By clicking the "Load assemblies" button you can open them in .NET Reflector without the need to first connect to the SQL Server manually, dump the assembly, copy the file to the dev machine, etc...

You can download the SQL2005 Browser tool here. Let me know, if you find it useful or have ideas how to improve it.

SQL2005Browser
1/11/2005 4:35:24 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Sunday, December 12, 2004
HierarGrid not working in MAC IE

I got an email from Steve Miller who tries to use the HierarGrid on his MAC in the newest version of Internet Explorer. Unfortunately, he mentions some problems:

  1. It seems like IE has problems with the standard ASP.NET Image tag rendering to <img ... /> instead of <img ...></img> which seems to work.
  2. The other problem is when clicking on the "+" icon, the detail row is not displayed directly below the master row. Instead it is appended to the end of the grid.

As I don't have a MAC myself I was wondering if somebody has ever tried it and can comment on these problems? TIA

HierarGrid
12/12/2004 7:37:40 AM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Monday, December 06, 2004
Why does the DataItem of my HierarGrid contain a DataSet instead of a DataRowView (or vice versa)?

This is still the most frequently asked question that I get via email. The answer is: TemplateDataMode.
Please make sure you set this property to the value that corresponds to your scenario.

In the current version there are two possibilities:

  • SingleRow: For each row in a table a child template is displayed. Therefore in the Databind event of the child control the DataItem contains a DataRowView - the DataRow that corresponds to the current row in the table
  • Table: For each table a child template is displayed like in a nested grid scenario. Therefore in the Databind event of the child control the DataItem contains a DataSet with all child rows that have a relationship to the current parent row.

In one of the next version I'll add a third option to specify the value at runtime. This may be helpful for mixed scenarios where you want to display nested grids for one table and single row templates for another.

Update: Another reason why you might get an InvalidCastException is when you set TemplateDataMode to Table and try to bind the child dataset in the Page_Load event. Please change that to the DataBind event as shown in the NestedHierarGrid demo on my website.

HierarGrid
12/6/2004 9:02:59 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Saturday, December 04, 2004
Releases, releases, releases: WSE 2.0 SP2, MSN Messenger 7.0, MSN Spaces and SQL Server 2005/Yukon CTP December

There were a couple of interesting releases last week:

WSE 2.0 SP2:
The update can be downloaded here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/building/wse/default.aspx
The new Hands-on-labs now also include a VB.NET version.

MSN Spaces:
http://spaces.msn.com
MSN® Spaces is more than an ordinary personal Web site; it’s an easy-to-use service that is more like a dynamic online scrapbook, giving people a place to create and update a Web log, or blog, and share their photos, music playlists and more, all while better connecting them with friends, family or the online world.

MSN Messenger 7.0 Beta:
http://messenger.msn.com/Beta/Default.aspx
Integrates with MSN Spaces to show contact's recent blogs.

SQL Server 2005/Yukon CTP December:
Available for MSDN subscribers and Beta testers via Betaplace. You can use the old Whidbey version from MSDN and just reinstall the .NET Framework that comes with the new build.

Windows
12/4/2004 6:15:48 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Thursday, November 25, 2004
Consuming Webservices over HTTPS (SSL)

Today, I tried to implement SSL-based transport security for the webservices calls between our smart client running on NT4 and the server. Additionally, the client was supposed to include a user certificate in each call.

For the server configuration, IIS help provided a pretty good step-by-step tutorial which made it really easy.

The client certificate can be included with the following code (from MSDN):

// Load the client certificate from a file.
X509Certificate x509 = X509Certificate.CreateFromCertFile(@"c:\user.cer");
// Add the client certificate to the ClientCertificates property of the proxy class.
bank.ClientCertificates.Add(x509);

A blog post by Jan Tielens described the steps necessary to change the client code so that it accepts the servers SSL certificate.

Finally, I wanted to take the client certificate from Windows Certificate store instead of the file system and noticed that currently (.NET FX 1.1) there is no managed implementation for this scenario. A webpage by Michael Gallant explained two possibilities for that: one using the unmanaged CAPICOM dll and the second by P/Invoking the CryptoAPI. I decided for the second due to lower deployment hassle and it worked without problems.

To enumerate all certificates in the stores you can use the function CertEnumCertificatesInStore.

.NET Framework
11/25/2004 8:54:33 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


Smartphone on sale in Germany

Finally, T-Mobile decided to offer a Windows Mobile-based Smartphone called SDA at a reasonable price here in Germany. Hopefully, more people can now enjoy the benefit of being able to sync their mails, contacts and appointments easily with their "handy".

http://www.t-mobile.de/shop/handy/1,4855,2963-_3127-0-1-0,00.html

Windows
11/25/2004 7:52:25 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


Back from Vacation

I am back from a wonderful trip to Australia and already heads down in a new project with the main focus on smart client, webservices, WSE 2.0 etc.

First thing I noticed when I got back was that I couldn't dial in to Microsoft Corpnet with my laptop. The hotline told me that my computer account was deleted after such a long inactivity. Seems to be really bizar for an American company that an employee is away for 5 weeks without having left the company or being on sabbatical. :)

General
11/25/2004 7:40:18 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [1] 


 Monday, October 18, 2004
Vacation

I am out on vacation for nice 5 weeks to Australia :)

So no HierarGrid and ASP.NET support for the next month. I am sure the geeks on www.asp.net/forums will jump in...

General
10/18/2004 4:42:57 AM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [3] 


 Friday, October 15, 2004
Edit&Continue in C#

Soma announces:

"One of the top feedback requests from our customers is support for Edit & Continue (E&C) in C# in Visual Studio 2005.  I am excited to announce that the C# team took your feedback to heart and has added support for E&C in Visual Studio 2005."

 

.NET Framework
10/15/2004 6:30:29 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Monday, October 11, 2004
Biztalk-related blog posts

Alan Smith created a cool compilation of Biztalk-related blog posts as a CHM file:

http://www.gotdotnet.com/workspaces/releases/viewuploads.aspx?id=0dfb4f4e-d241-4bc8-8418-2c385d8e3e

Server Products
10/11/2004 12:56:16 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Wednesday, October 06, 2004
Reported Vulnerability in ASP.NET

Please take a close look at the info page about a reported security issue with ASP.NET:

http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/aspnet.mspx

Brian Goldfarb also started a new thread about it on the ASP.NET Forums:

http://www.asp.net/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?tabindex=1&PostID=711220

ASP.NET
10/6/2004 11:04:42 AM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Friday, August 20, 2004
 Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Updated FileDisassembler for Reflector 4.1.0.0

The update can be found here.

FileDisassembler
8/17/2004 12:53:49 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Wednesday, August 11, 2004
MSN Web Messenger Beta

In case you haven't seen it yourself there is now a web version of MSN Messenger on http://webmessenger.msn.com/.

This is excellent news for people like me who are often behind firewalls at customer sites and cannot connect directly to the Messenger service.

Software
8/11/2004 2:26:43 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Tuesday, August 10, 2004
New FileDisassembler 4.0.18.0

The new Reflector.FileDisassembler 4.0.18.0 contains the following changes:

  • Feature: AssemblyResolver dialog appears only once per assembly
  • Bugfix: Progressbar corrected

Download here

FileDisassembler
8/10/2004 4:19:25 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Monday, August 09, 2004
New HierarGrid version 1.7

The new release 1.7 of the HierarGrid contains the following changes:

  • Feature: TemplateDataMode.RunTime makes it possible to choose between SingleRow and Table for each relation at runtime (thanks to Tom Schmidt)
  • Feature: child templates are displayed for rows in selected state (thanks to Patrick Martin)
  • Bugfix: state of Checkboxes in child templates is now correctly preserved (thanks to Paolo Falabella)
  • Bugfix: corrected Mozilla DHTML incompatibilities (thanks to David Tétreault)

Download here.

HierarGrid
8/9/2004 12:45:40 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Monday, July 26, 2004
SQL Server 2005 (Yukon) Beta 2 released

Today SQL Server 2005 has been released to the MSDN subscriber downloads. If you try to install it on a machine that has Whidbey Beta 1 already installed you'll get a asking you to deinstall the .NET Framework. This is because Yukon ships with a slightly newer Framework build (40607.42) than the original Beta 1 of Whidbey (40607.16).

Just go to Add/Remove Programs and deinstall the .NET Framework - no need to deinstall Visual Studio 2005 itself. After that, you should be able to install Yukon which copies the newer version of the Framework to the disk.

Ready is your side-by-side install of Whidbey Beta1 and Yukon Beta2!

.NET Framework
7/26/2004 6:47:46 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Friday, July 09, 2004
Feedback and question mails vs. SPAM

If you send me an email and wonder why I never get back to you, maybe it has been stuck in my SPAM filter. My mail software blocks and sends me a list of all potential SPAM and virus mails and I just skim the subjects. So please make sure you DON'T use a trivial subject like "question" or "hi" and rather include "HierarGrid", "ASP.NET" or whatever might catch my attention.

DynamicCtrlPlh | HierarGrid | Version Switcher
7/9/2004 3:58:30 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Wednesday, July 07, 2004
ASP.NET Version Switcher on MSDN Magazine

James Avery was kind enough to include my ASP.NET Version Switcher in his list of the "Ten Must-Have Tools Every Developer Should Download Now" that is published in the current edition of MSDN Magazine July 2004.

Yesterday, I've checked the current version with the Beta1 of Visual Web Developer Express and it worked. Please note that it does seem to have problems running from a network share but once locally installed everything was fine. Let me know if you have difficulties.

Version Switcher
7/7/2004 8:25:00 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [1] 


 Monday, July 05, 2004
A day in the life of a Microsoft security patch

Interesting article I stumbled over while reading an internal DL about the work of the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC).

Windows
7/5/2004 6:47:23 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 has shipped

Today at Teched Europe 2004, Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 (formerly code-named Whidbey) is announced. On the new Developer Center site you can download two sets of products:

  • The full Visual Studio 2005 Beta, available to MSDN Subscribers initially; and by order for non-subscribers for a small fee in the near future.
  • The Visual Studio 2005 Express Beta Products, available for free public download. "The Express products are lightweight, easy to use, easy to learn tools for hobbyists, enthusiasts, and students who want to build dynamic Windows applications and Web sites."

The other interesting site when developing with Whidbey is the MSDN Product Feedback Center, where you can submit Feature Requests and Bugs directly to the product teams, get notified of fixes, rate on the importance etc.

The MSDN documentation is available here.

.NET Framework
6/29/2004 11:16:01 AM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


FileDisassembler versioning and Reflector 4.0.9.0

The new reflector build 4.0.9.0 is available vie Help|Check for updates.

As I am receiving many emails asking "Where is FileDisassembler for Reflector version X.X.X.X?" I wanted to point out, that not for each new Reflector build there needs to be a new FileDisassembler build.

Lutz changes the assembly version number only when breaking changes affect add-in writers. Therefore, a FileDisassembler build should work with a couple of different Reflector builds. Whenever he includes breaking changes, I am notified before and try to get a new version of FileDisassembler out simultaneously.

So please ask me only for new version, if you get the error message: "The following add-in(s) failed to load. Please check if you have the correct version installed."

FileDisassembler
6/29/2004 10:27:21 AM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Thursday, June 24, 2004
Excellent MSDN article on ASP.NET Viewstate

Scott Mitchell wrote an excellent MSDN article on the inner workings of the ASP.NET ViewState. That's cool because now I can answer half of the emails I receive about my DynamicControlsPlaceholder and dynamic controls samples by sending them the link to this article :)

It consolidates much of the information that is contained in numerous ASP.NET forum posts and extends Paul Wilson's ASPAlliance article.

Good job, Scott!

ASP.NET
6/24/2004 5:43:31 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Sunday, June 20, 2004
Updated FileDisassembler for Reflector 4.0.6.0

The update can be found here.

FileDisassembler
6/20/2004 10:53:21 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Thursday, June 17, 2004
Cryptographic failure when recompiling the HierarGrid, DCP, FileDisassembler etc.

I've been asked twice in the last 24h about the following error when trying to create your own build of the HierarGrid or any other of my components:

error CS1548: Cryptographic failure while signing assembly 'DBauer.Web.UI.WebControls.HierarGrid.dll'
-- 'Error reading key file '..\..\..\DBauer.Web.UI.WebControls.snk' -- The system cannot find the file specified. '

This happens because all builds that I compile are strong named and signed with my private key. The reference to my private key is located in the AssemblyInfo.cs file. Therefore, if you want to recompile the HierarGrid please either remove the reference to my keyfile in the AssemblyInfo.cs or create your own private key and use it to sign the assembly.

Further information on creating a key and strong named assemblies can be found here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpguide/html/cpconStrong-NamedAssemblies.asp

FileDisassembler | DynamicCtrlPlh | HierarGrid
6/17/2004 10:12:05 AM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [3] 


 Tuesday, June 01, 2004
New FileDisassembler page

Reflector.FileDisassembler now has its own page and of course RSS Category Feed.

FileDisassembler
6/1/2004 1:36:15 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Sunday, May 30, 2004
New HierarGrid version 1.6

The new minor release 1.6 of the HierarGrid contains the following changes:

  • Bugfix: corrected problem with non-unique IDs that were generated for "ChildTemplate" panel in a DataMode=Table HierarGrid
  • Bugfix: child templates were inserted into first column when PagerStyle was set to "Top"
  • Bugfix: resetting the DataItem after inserting the child templates for further custom processing
  • Bugfix: copying selected state for <select> tags

Download here.

With the first bugfix, the FindControl call to access a child template changes to Control c=HierarGrid1.Items[i].Cells[1].FindControl("DCP").FindControl("Panel").FindControl("Panel_[PanelId]").FindControl("ChildTemplate_[PanelId]").FindControl("[InnerControlId]");

HierarGrid
5/30/2004 9:00:33 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Demos of Visual Studio 2005 Team System

There are a couple of interesting demo videos of some parts of Visual Studio 2005 Team System (code-named Burton)

http://www.activewin.com/awin/comments.asp?HeadlineIndex=24465

.NET Framework
5/26/2004 10:23:18 AM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [1] 


 Saturday, May 22, 2004
New FileDisassembler version for Reflector 4.0.3.0

The new version of FileDisassembler, an add-in for Lutz Roeder's Reflector 4.0.3.0 that allows to dump an assembly to source code files, contains the following new features:

  • Assemblyinfo.cs is generated
  • Reflector supports IL code as another language => FileDisassembler can now dump assembly in IL code
  • (Custom) Attributes are written to the file (no matter what the reflector settings are)

FileDisassembler
5/22/2004 1:26:16 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [1] 


 Wednesday, May 05, 2004
FileDisassembler for Reflector 4.0

I've created a little add-in called FileDisassembler for the new version of Lutz Roeder's .NET Reflector that you can use to dump the decompiler output to files of any Reflector supported language (C#, VB.NET, Delphi). This is extremely useful if you are searching for a specific line of code as you can use VS.NET's "Find in Files" or want to convert a class from one language to another.

FileDisassembler
5/5/2004 4:10:42 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [9] 


 Tuesday, May 04, 2004
Interesting article about the future of Microsoft from a business perspective

BusinessWeek has a very interesting yet critical article about the future of Microsoft called "Microsoft's Midlife Crisis". Interesting to see the company more from a business analyst and less technical point of view.

Technology
5/4/2004 6:12:17 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Monday, May 03, 2004
Advanced HierarGrid demo application

Nigel Parham was kind enough to create and let me publish a simplified version of his business application that uses the HierarGrid. Included in the app are samples for:

- sorting, filtering
- paging with variable page size and customized style
- row highlighting
- export to Excel
- keyboard support

Please note that due to simplifying the original application, data access code was moved into the code-behind files thus resulting in methods that exceed a screen page. Of course, that should not be considered a best practice :)
Furthermore, as any code on my site it is provided as-is with no warranties, and confers no rights - please consider this as a quick tutorial or proof-of-concept.

The sample app can be downloaded here ("How to get started") and there is also a separate word document that describes installing it.
Thanks Nigel!

HierarGrid
5/3/2004 3:44:26 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Thursday, April 29, 2004
Interesting Forbes article about the commercialization of linux

This article talks about the trend of linux distributors to commercialize the OS and cites Rick Carey, a former proponent of OSS who was Chief Technology Architect at Merril Lynch and now Bank One: "The companies that are trying to treat Linux like it's regular software and have a business model based on per-CPU or per-desktop licensing worry the heck out of me. For us, that makes Linux prohibitively expensive. And it makes a stronger case for us to go Windows".

Technology
4/29/2004 1:38:33 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Article on ASPAlliance about LoadControl vs LoadTemplate

While developing the HierarGrid I noticed that there are some subtle differences between loading UserControls with Page.LoadControl and Page.LoadTemplate. Without digging deeper into that I decided to add a property “TemplateControlMode” to the HierarGrid so that the developer can choose which way to load the template.

After some users asked what the "right" setting for the property is or reported exceptions that were related to choosing the "wrong" setting, I decided to take a look at the two implementations to find the differences. My new article on ASPAlliance explains what I've found.

ASP.NET | HierarGrid
3/30/2004 2:55:27 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Friday, February 20, 2004
News about the HierarGrid

I've found an interesting page on CodeProject that references the HierarGrid: Tony Truong wrote an article about the ExDataGrid, which has the ability to expand and contract datagrid columns rather than datagrid rows as the HierarGrid does. Unfortunately, he decided not to build his own custom control instead of extending the HierarGrid to support both requirements. But it looks like he did a good job anyway.

Furthermore, I got an email from Ariel Dolan who pointed me to his homepage which integrates the HierarGrid with filtering, sorting and paging. Enter "555" into the textbox and hit search. Then click on the "Filter Sort/Hit table" and see the hierarchical grid in action.

Didier Depretz sent me a snapshot of his application which also shows the possibilites of the HierarGrid.

HierarGrid
2/20/2004 6:22:48 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Monday, February 02, 2004
Xen, formerly X#, in the news

"Xen, a new programming language coming out of Microsoft Research and developed in conjunction with the University of Cambridge, promises to bring together three disparate but integral components of programming, wrapping them together in .Net."

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1441099,00.asp

.NET Framework
2/2/2004 12:51:00 AM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


"Behind the scenes of ASPX files"

A nice article called Behind the scenes of ASPX files by Natty Gur describes how dynamic compilation in ASP.NET works and extends the last paragraph of Dino's article The ASP.NET HTTP Runtime I wrote about a couple of months ago.

Still, I am missing an article that explains how dynamic code generation in ASP.NET works from an ASPX page with a couple of markup tags through the PageParser into a .cs file that is then compiled into a .NET assembly.

ASP.NET
2/2/2004 12:42:20 AM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [1] 


 Tuesday, January 06, 2004
Watch MediaCenter Recorded TV on Other Microsoft Windows XP-Based PCs

The following document explains how to watch dvr-ms files on a standard Windows XP machine:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/using/tips/recordedTV.asp

MCE
1/6/2004 4:20:29 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Saturday, January 03, 2004
Using the Hauppauge remote control with MCE

Another MCE related post:

On a thread on TheGreenButton.com I found a nice enhancement to the Irremote.ini file that makes the Hauppauge remote control work with MCE. I do have some problems with the shortcuts that include special keys like Ctrl, Alt etc. (I have to press several times until it recognizes it) but it works.

Link is here and search for "IR.exe". One additional comment: delete the remarks like "; Up arrow" from Kenzos listing.

Update: updated the link

MCE
1/3/2004 12:11:26 AM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [18] 


 Wednesday, December 31, 2003
IT-Outsourcing on Red Herring

Interesting take on IT outsourcing in Red Herring.

Bottom line:
"How much does outsourcing really save companies? According to a November 2003 report by People 3, only 21.1 percent of companies surveyed reported a cost savings of greater than 20 percent due to IT outsourcing, while 18.4 percent did not achieve any cost reductions, and 9.2 percent actually had an increase in costs from outsourcing contracts."

“Many companies often neglect to factor in all costs associated with managing outsourcing engagements, which average 4.5 percent of the total contract value and can be as high as 15 percent,...”

Technology
12/31/2003 11:12:40 AM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Tuesday, December 30, 2003
Media Center 2004 Community Sites

Now, that I've set up Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 on my brand new Dell Dimension 8300 with ATI Radeon 9800XT and Hauppauge WinTV PVR350, I wanted to know how to burn the recorded dvr-ms files to a DVD so that my standard DVD player is capable of displaying them.

During my Google search I came across these three cool MCE community sites:

  • TheGreenButton.com: informative forum, good FAQ and download section
  • xpMCE:good forum and FAQ as well
  • shspvr.com: which is mostly related to the Hauppauge WinTV card

The answer to my question is:

The dvr-ms format is a MPEG-2 stream extended by some metadata. For further reference see this MSDN article. Sonic MyDVD and Nero's newest version 6.3 are able to import these files and burn them onto DVD.

However, when I try to import a recorded TV show using either program, it suddenly locks up with a Watson screen. Anyone aware of what's wrong?

MCE
12/30/2003 11:30:23 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Monday, December 29, 2003
Cultural differences between Unix and Windows developers

Joel Spolsky has a very nice article on his homepage that talks about the cultural clash between Unix and Windows developers. Absolutely worth a reading.

Guten Rutsch ("have a good slide" as we say in German) into a happy new year!

Technology
12/29/2003 3:52:57 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Monday, December 08, 2003
Tracing HTTP requests with ieHttpHeaders

Jon points to this nice tool called ieHttpHeaders which I haven't heard of previously.

ASP.NET
12/8/2003 4:06:35 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 


 Friday, December 05, 2003
How to convert your Windows Server 2003... to a Workstation!

In case you are using WS2003 as your primary, every day OS the following site may be helpful. It consolidates many of the tips to deactivate features directed to a "real" server (like shutdown tracker etc.) and reactivate features for a consumer OS (like theming, DirectX, etc.)

How to convert your Windows Server 2003... to a Workstation!

Windows
12/5/2003 10:36:49 AM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0] 



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The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.

© Copyright 2012, Denis Bauer