Erik Porter's Blog

Windows Server 2003 Workstation

I realize I'm waaaay behind the crowd on this one, but I just moved to a different machine here at work and I setup Win2K3 as my development machine and so far I really like it.  I've got it so it looks and works just like XP, except now I have IIS 6.0 (that and it's more secure of course  ;)).

I already knew most of the stuff to change to get it more like a workstation, but this one helped me get everything.

Only thing I've found that doesn't work is my mp3 player (Archos Jukebox Recorder 20) doesn't show up as a hard drive, other than that, everything works great!  :)

Photopeer

Photopeer is a cool new product that is free and helps you share your photos easily.  Currently, there is just a Mac version, but very soon there will be a Windows version as well.

One reason I wanted to point it out is that I helped with the site.  I did all the easy stuff though (the ASP.NET and SQL Server work, nothing fancy).  ;)  Just kind of neat to see something I worked on up!

Using a Setup Project on a Machine Without .NET Installed

<rant>

Today, I setup a VPC instance of XP w/ SP1a (and nothing else) to test an extension of our product that is a Smart Client application.  The setup realizes that .NET is not installed and asks if the user would like to install it now.  Neat.  I clicked yes, only to be taken to this page.  I'm sorry Microsoft, but WHAT THE HELL is that?

1. That is totally lame that it takes you to a page that says it's been moved.
2. These are end users clicking these links.  It could be anybody!  Why would they want to go to the .NET Developer Center?
3. Where in the heck do I download .NET redist from there?  I finally found it, but it just says “It is recommended that all general users go to Microsoft Windows Update to install the .NET Framework“.  There is no way an end user could figure this out.
4. WindowsUpdate?  On a new machine there's a lot of critical updates and regular updates to wade through to find .NET 1.1.  How many extra steps is this now that the end user of my product has to go through just to get .NET on their machine?

I realize that LH will have it in the OS (thank you sweet jesus) but that is SO far out it's not even worth point out.  How do you expect we ISV's to distribute our smart clients?  NO, I DON'T think it's a good idea to include the Framework with the setup (let alone trying to figure out how to do it with what's built into VS today anyway).

</rant>

Ok, now that I have that out of my system, how's about we just tweek the setup a bit so it takes the user straight to download .NET (as one would expect it to  :P).

If you want to do this yourself, just go into the setup project file (.vdproj) using notepad (or whatever you like) and go down to the DeployProject -> Deployable -> ExternalPersistence -> LaunchCondition and under there you should see the Url that it points to when they say Yes.  It currently points to http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=9832.  BAD LINK, BAD...BYE BYE!  Change it to this: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=262d25e3-f589-4842-8157-034d1e7cf3a3&DisplayLang=en  YUMMY!  Recompile your setup and let'er fly!  Next time a user runs your setup, they should be taken right to the redist (until Microsoft decides to change their links, AGAIN  :P).

Another option is to just flat out tell the user they don't have the framework installed from say, an ASP.NET page and give them the link to the redist before supplying them with the link to your setup.

I'm not usually much of a ranter, but this one really amazed me!  :-|

What's New in .NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005

I will be giving the presentation at our next User Group meeting.  All you NUFW'ayens out there (or anybody going to be in the area) interested in the next version of the Microsoft .NET development platform, come check it out.  I plan on covering the following topics:

• Base Class Library
• Visual Basic
• C#
• ADO.NET
• ASP.NET
• WindowsForms
• Visual Studio

There are too many cool, new, exciting features to talk about in one meeting, so each subject will be short, sweet and to the point with some demos and time at the end for discussions on topics most important to you.  Come on down, learn about .NET 2.0 and have some pizza!  :)

Renaming the Project Assembly in ASP.NET 1.x

This is really a newbie tip, but I find that it's still not instinctive with me when I run into a weird problem and it should be.

Typically, we name the assembly for the project and the default Namespace the same thing in our ASP.NET projects (and class libraries) as I'd imagine most people do.  If you rename the assembly for your ASP.NET project today in VS.NET, it will leave behind the old assembly, in addition to adding the new one when you recompile.  Some really weird stuff can happen then if you have things like importing a namespace in your ASPX's or VS forgets to change the namespace in all the files, so that it works fine locally, but as soon as you deploy your project, it blows errors all over the place saying it can't find any of the classes it's looking for (first one's ususally the Global class if you have a Global.asax in your project).  This is because locally, it's still loading up the old assembly in addition to the new one, hence it still works locally, but when you deploy, the old DLL doesn't go along for the ride because it's no longer necessary.  To see the error locally, just go into the bin directory and delete the old assembly and now you'll see the same errors and be able to fix whatever you need to fix to point to the correct classes in your ASPX files.

It really should be the first thing I think of every time something “weird” like that happens, but for some reason it isn't.  I “think” the way you develop web projects in VS 2005 will make this problem not an issue anymore, but I could be wrong.  It would be nice, today, if there were an option to turn on to automatically delete the old assembly from the bin directory when i rename it in the project.

I, Robot...I, Like

I went and saw I, Robot this weekend.  Great flick!  Granted, I haven't read the book, so they might've totally trashed it from the book, but I wouldn't know, so from my oblivious perspective, it was really good!

Even though this post has nothing to do with .NET, I really think all tech geeks should see it.  It has some neat ideas for what the future might be like in 31 years.  That and the special effects were great, as well as some great camera shots.  Pretty much everything about it was great, including some funny stuff.  There were a couple little technology things that didn't seem very practical (this is not a spoiler, it's shown in the preview) such as where his car gets parked on its side by some machine.  Well, um...what if I had something loose in my car like a bag or a drink or whatever?  I saw no indication in the movie that at that time, anti-gravity had been invented.  ;)

Oh, one last thing, I also saw the 3rd Harry Potter movie (finally) in an IMAX Theater this weekend too.  Also really liked it (especially on the huge screen)!

Switch From VB to C#? Ha!

Sorry if whoever's doing this reads my blog, but personally I think a lot of the stuff on your list is really silly.

C-Sharpener For VB - Why Switch?

There will be no comments accepted on this post.  No language wars.  Just read and reflect!  ;)

Wording...Find vs. Search

Before Windows 2000 and Windows XP, looking for things on your hard drive was called “Find”.  The shortcut for it was Windows + “F”.  In 2000 and XP it was changed to Search.  The shortcut was never changed though, oddly enough.  Now that MSN has introduced their new search, the marketing campaign looks like this...

“Don't just search. Find.”

I like that.  But seems backwards from the previous change in 2000 and XP from “Find” to “Search”.

Is this a pattern to expect through Microsoft?  Does this mean LongHorn might be back to “Find”?

Media Center Extender for XBox

WindowsForms 2005 Beta 1 ToolBox Problem

Just wanted to let you know that if you can't seem to drag any WindowsForms Controls from the ToolBox onto a Form you're not the only one.  I've been having this problem on a couple installs of VS 2005 Beta 1.

Erick Ellis from Microsoft helped us out in the newsgroups and gave this suggestion.

try deleting toolbox.tbd from %userprofile%\local settings\application
data\microsoft\visualstudio\8.0\

This fixed it, btw...