Hosam Kamel

Alex Thissen has posted a workaround for missing "Edit WCF Configuration" menu option in Visual Studio while working with WCF project in Visual Studio 2008

Check it out http://www.alexthissen.nl/blogs/main/archive/2008/08/28/workaround-for-missing-quot-edit-wcf-configuration-quot-menu-option.aspx

ASP.NET MVC enables Web developers to build compelling standards-based Web solutions that are easy to maintain because it decreases the dependency between layers by using the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern and provides complete control over the page markup. It also improves testability which enables Test Driven Development (TDD). Click here to download ASP.NET MVC or to learn more about it.

Source : http://www.asp.net/

IISreset.exe is a magical command that resolves many problems! Err… well, yeah that command restarts all IIS related processes and thus essentially running it cleans up all the “mess”. So is there anything special about IISReset.exe in Windows 2008? Yes and I do not recommend using it and here’s very useful information that you must know about what this command does.

Read more here http://blogs.msdn.com/sudeepg/archive/2009/02/14/windows-2008-and-iisreset-exe.aspx

A few users reported that with Web projects located on a remote machine closing project or solution may hang Visual Studio and Visual Web Developer Express for several minutes. We found that the issue may be caused by VS logging component that collects information on product usage. This is an opt-in feature activated in Help | Customer Feedback Options... The feature may cause logger to walk through folders on a remote server calculating project complexity. The feature does NOT send your project to Microsoft, it just collects some statistics on the project. If you are experiencing slow project close, try switching off participation in the feedback program in  Help | Customer Feedback Options... dialog. If it does not help, try disabling component in registry by changing

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Packages\{2DC9DAA9-7F2D-11d2-9BFC-00C04F9901D1}

to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Packages\Disabled-{2DC9DAA9-7F2D-11d2-9BFC-00C04F9901D1}

Thanks

 

Source: Visual Web Developer Team Blog

If you develop small utilities for Team Foundation Server a lot you might want to save some time and use a project template (see bottom for file attachment) that already comes equipped with the correct references to the Team Foundation Object Model (Microsoft.TeamFoundation.*.dlls) as well as the most important using statements and a few lines of code to get started.

Download and installation steps can be found here http://msmvps.com/blogs/vstsblog/archive/2009/01/14/download-visual-studio-2008-project-template-for-tfs-utilities.aspx

This event will focus on the solutions that our partners deliver on Microsoft SQL Server.

Date:     Wednesday February 4, 2009

Time:    9:00 AM – 5:00 PM

Venue: Intercontinental City Stars, Al Saraya Ballroom

Registration & Agenda

To register for the event and review the agenda, please log on to:

http://www.microsoft.com/middleeast/egypt/savemoney

For IIS 6.0:

• ASP.NET Forms authentication will only secure content that is processed by
  the aspnet_isapi.dll (mainly .aspx files). If you need to replace other static file types (such as text files, video files, etc...), you can do that by mapping them to the aspnet_isapi.dll.

OR using

• Peter Simple File Handler for ASP.NET 2.0 http://blogs.msdn.com/petel/archive/2005/12/01/499189.aspx

For IIS 7.0 (Integrated Pipeline mode):

• The default configuration for all managed modules shipped with IIS 7.0, including the Forms Authentication and URL Authorization modules, uses a precondition so that these modules only apply to content that an  (ASP.NET) handler manages. This is done for backwards compatibility reasons. (as mentioned in For IIS 6.0 section)

• By removing the precondition, we make the desired managed module execute for all requests to the application, regardless of content. This is necessary in order to protect our static files, and any other application content with Forms-based authentication.

• To do this, open the application's web.config file located in the %systemdrive%\inetpub\wwwroot directory, and paste the following lines immediately below the first <configuration> element:

   1:  <system.webServer> 

   2:  <modules> 

   3:      <remove name="FormsAuthenticationModule" />    

   4:     <add name="FormsAuthenticationModule" 

   5:  type="System.Web.Security.FormsAuthenticationModule" />    

   6:      <remove name="UrlAuthorization" />    

   7:      <add name="UrlAuthorization" 

   8:  type="System.Web.Security.UrlAuthorizationModule" />    

   9:      <remove name="DefaultAuthentication" />    

  10:      <add name="DefaultAuthentication" 

  11:  type="System.Web.Security.DefaultAuthenticationModule" />    

  12:  </modules> 

  13:  </system.webServer>

This configuration re-adds the module elements without the precondition, enabling them to execute for all requests to the application.

Check this article for more explanation  http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/244/how-to-take-advantage-of-the-iis7-integrated-pipeline/

Hope it helps.

.Question:

I've got the following control on my aspx page:

<asp:DropDownList ID="favList" runat="server" AutoPostBack="true">

<asp:ListItem Value="" Text="--" />

</asp:DropDownList>

I have three other drop down lists on the page that are working fine. However this one doesn't seem to come up under intellisense when I'm in my code-behind. If I type "favList." ....I get nothing. But I can still programmatically reference the control using

Dim favoritesDropDown As DropDownList = 
DirectCast(FindControl("favList"), DropDownList) 

I only recently added the control to the page, which has been in existence for some time now...could that have anything to do with it?

Solution:

Try the following steps  :

1. Switch the page View to design mode this may refresh the designer file and reflect the control in IntelliSense.
2. Make sure that the control is not a child of another control.

Hope it helps :)

Source : Can't reference server control in code-behind/intellisense?

Last week I was checking ASP.NET Forums as usual and I had answered a thread about renaming Windows Server 2003 and the impact of this renaming on IIS.

The issue was , after renaming the machine the http://ServerName no longer resolved to the localhost. (Check thread here  http://forums.asp.net/t/1350535.aspx)

So here is a small guidelines how to safely renaming the Windows Server 2003 machine name which hosting IIS 6.0

1. Make sure you have read HOWTO: Rename the Computer running IIS6 post.
2. You may manually map the new ServerName to localhost IP (127.0.0.1) through Windows hosts file located in <Windows Directory>\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

127.0.0.1       localhost

127.0.0.1       serverName

3. If you have DNS installed make sure you have corrected DNS entries.

If anyone know other steps or solutions, please feel free comment to this post ... Thanks !

To Schedule a build using TFS 2005 : (From TFSGuide)

• The Team Build feature in TFS does not support scheduled builds from the user interface. Instead, you can use the Microsoft Windows® Task Scheduler to run the TFSBuild command utility to start builds at predetermined time.

1. Create a TFSBuild command line.
   TfsBuild start <<TeamFoundationServer>> <<TeamProject>> <<BuildTypeName>>
2. Place the command line in a batch file. Note that you must specify the full path to the TFSBuild.exe file so that it can run from windows command prompt. An example of the command used in the batch file is shown here:
   "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\TFSBuild" start <<TeamFoundationServer>> <<TeamProject>> <<BuildTypeName>>
3. Create a Windows Scheduled Task that runs the batch file at your desired interval

To Schedule a build using TFS 2008:

• Navigate to the build definition prosperities and choose edit  then select triggers
• Select which days to schedule build on also the time.
• Note :
• Build Dated and times using your system local date and time.
• The build will not if no changes happened since previous build , if you need to build even no changes has been done you have to choose the "Build even if nothing has changed since the previous build" checkbox

Thanks !