Laurent Kempé

Orbit Downloader

Since some weeks now I changed my download manager from Free Download Manager to Orbit Downloader.

I enjoyed Free Download Manager for quite a long time but when I installed Vista I started to have troubles.

I really like the features of Orbit Downloader and the fact that it is light weight; they say "Super Light: micro-sized and resource-friendly"' !

Here are some of the main features:

Download Rich Media: Streaming media, social music & video

Orbit Downloader supports HTTP/FTP/HTTPS/RTSP/MMS/RTMP protocols and provides a total solution to download rich media. So you can download music and video from social music/video websites including Pandora and YouTube more simply and easily. Learn more...

Super Light: micro-sized and resource-friendly

Orbit Downloader is written with efficiency in mind, it typically uses less than 3MB of memory and 3% of cpu when downloading. Additionally, the installation package is less than 2MB.

Great Speed

Orbit Downloader is based on p2p and multi-source downloading technology, which allows you to download files up to 500% faster than before.

Support RapidShare

Orbit Downloader supports most of the file-sharing service websites, including megaupload, badongo, sendspace, sexuploader, yourfilehost, uploading, filefront, 4shared, turboupload, depositfiles, filefactory, more....

Easy to Use

Orbit Downloader has a simple and clear user interface. It is easy to use and configure for both newbies and professionals.

Free and Safe

100% free and no registration required. No adware!!! No spyware!!!

Holiday doing some Popfly :-)

Thanks to my son for the duck :-)

After the joke I have to say that yes I tried it and yes it is impressive.

Optimization of a Web Site - Using Content Expiration (IIS 6.0)

As you might know, I am running the French .NET portal Tech Head Brothers and I am always searching for good way to optimize it and make it run better.

Following the post of Jeremy Zawodny's blog: "How To Add Good Expires Headers to Images in Apache 1.3" I decided to check this on my server running Tech Head Brothers on IIS 6.0.

You can read more about the way to configure this option on technet "Using Content Expiration (IIS 6.0)".

After several tests I must say that yes it increase the performance of the site. I used the wonderful httpwatch 4.2 to run the tests.

The other optimization I did in the past:

1. added compression to the site to optimize the load time of all the ASP.NET AJAX and Control Toolkit scripts and the page html
2. modified the site to use less external files, I had multiple css files so migrated to almost one
3. usage of the AJAX Control Toolkit - ToolkitScriptManager

Outlook 2007 Instant Search not working anymore on Vista

Since the beginning of this week I wasn't able to search anymore in Outlook and has I am using this a lot I was really pissed off.

I finally found an explanation in one of the Microsoft Forum:

Jake, you may have been hitting a known Office 2003/2007 setup issue.  If you install any Office 2003 component after installing Office 2007, Outlook 2007 Instant Seaerch stops working.  You'd have to repair your Office 2007 installation to repair the issue.

 I did installed Word 2003 because otherwise I couldn't work on my Tech Head Brothers authoring tool that is using VSTO 2005. So I had no choice than to install Word 2003. Even if my tool is working in Word 2007, I can't load the solution in Visual Studio 2005 without having Word 2003 installed. What are you doing guys? It is a real pain.

I am now trying to repair my Office 2007 as recommended... and bingo :-(

What should I do now ? :-( 1:23 AM I go to bed that stuff really suck!

they did it!!!!

Again a good step in a direction that I am waiting for quite some time!!!

I just hope I could say more than that. soon... the countdown started ;-)

Starting ASP.NET Development Server from a right click in explorer

Update: Following the comment of Jon Galloway

I know that there are other solutions doing this but I was just asked about how to do it today (hey Christine ;) and had this registry file stored somewhere for a while waiting for a blog post.

Save this to a file with an extension .reg, e.g. "asp.net web server here.reg":

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\VS2005 WebServer]
@="ASP.NET 2.0 Web Server Here"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\VS2005 WebServer\command]
@="C:\\Windows\\Microsoft.NET\\Framework\\v2.0.50727\\Webdev.WebServer.exe /port:9081 /path:\"%1\""

You might also change the port used to start the ASP.NET Development Server. If this option is not specified then the port 80 is used.

Then double click on the .reg file to save the settings in the registry.

Now you will have access to the following right click menu in explorer and you can browse your site without running Visual Studio:

Update: This is not needed anymore

You will need to copy hstart.exe to your C:\Windows\system32\ first, or change the path used in the .reg file. This little tool (3kb); Hidden start, by NTWind Software is really good for "small startup manager that allows console applications to be started without any windows in the background.". Exactly what is need in our case.