Chua Wen Ching's Blog

VS 2008 SP1 - Error connecting to undo manager of source file

wenching — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 03:19:00 GMT

I got this error:

---------------------------
Microsoft Visual Studio
---------------------------
Error connecting to undo manager of source file 'C:\Users\chuawenching\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\TaskListExt\TaskListExt\Views\Home\Index.aspx.designer.cs'.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

I had never faced such a problem before this. Not sure why? Even though I had developed numerous ASP.NET 2.0 web applications for customers.

Till earlier today, I got this error when I was trying to insert Helper methods for ASP.NET MVC Beta.

<%= Html.TextBox("firstName") %>

When I ran it, I got the error above. Then, I tried to remove that Helper method and the error still existed. Wonder why? I had done some research on the internet and realize this.

I noticed people faced this issue back in VS 2005 too. There was a solution posted in here (credited to CoolBond) http://forums.asp.net/t/1100585.aspx

In case, you have to scroll down for the solution in that link above, do this:

a. Remove Index.aspx.designer.cs

b. Right click on Index.aspx and Convert to Web Application

c. Build your project or solution

d. Run it and it works.

It is really that easy :)

Thanks to CoolBond for this. Save my day.

ASP.NET MVC Beta - IE 7 browser not refreshed to CSS/Javascript changes in VS 2008 SP1

wenching — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 07:26:00 GMT

I think this might be useful to developers. I suspect this as a bug, hopefully it can be resolve soon. I can't find anyone talking about this on the internet. Maybe someone already posted this in the Microsoft Forum.If not, you can refer it here.

I was testing on ASP.NET MVC Beta on top of my Visual Studio 2008 SP1 earlier today until I spoted this issue. When I created a new ASP.NET MVC Application template, everything worked simply just fine. I could modify the existing Site.css and changed the body background-color to something else. It simply worked.

Now comes to the issue. When I started creating/modifying existing files within the generated template, my CSS/JavaScript would not work properly when I tried to do these as below:

a. Debug in IE 7 when pressing F5 in Visual Studio 2008 SP1

b. View in Browser on default.aspx

c. Browse with IE 7 (default)

** As for point c, it worked with FireFox 3.

I tried to change the background-color from

background-color: #5c87b2;

background-color: #FFFFFF; OR background-color: Orange;

It would only show the same original blue color. I had also added in JQuery for better UI navigations and it couldn't work. At first, I thought it could be the path issue for both JavaScript and CSS references in Site.master file. But it was not the cause.

When I tried to debug, it gave me this URL http://localhost:4944/. Then I made a wild guess, probably there could be a bug in Visual Studio 2008 for ASP.NET MVC Beta. So I copied that url and tested on a separate instance of IE. Now it works. It works in FireFox3 and other browsers too.

I am not sure whether this is a bug or anyone realizing it. I will ping Microsoft regarding this issue. Thanks.

JavaScript - With or Without Enclosing Script tag

wenching — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 03:38:00 GMT

This is really simple. But to be honest, I am still wondering why the later one will not work?

// Functional

// Non Functional

I believe it is nothing to do with JQuery. More to JavaScript thing.

Microsoft XSS Detect Code Analysis - Missing License or Expired

wenching — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 09:01:00 GMT

Why would you get to see this error when you install Microsoft XSS Detect Code Analysis on top of Visual Studio 2008 in Windows Vista Service Pack 1 environment?

In order to solve this problem ... easy

Run Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 as Administrator, then it works :) That's simple.

I believe XSS Detect requires certain authoritative rights before able to run it properly. Remember to build the whole project first before analyzing it.

One more thing to raise here ... in order to install this software in Windows Vista Service Pack 1 properly ... make sure you download both files and execute the exe file. I tried the msi file and it wouldn't install. Good luck.

Update: After reboot, the control is disappeared even it is under Tools menu. Wonder why?

TortoiseSVN - check-in/changed icons not rendered properly in Windows Vista SP 1

wenching — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 08:36:00 GMT

I realized this issue in Windows Vista only. It worked fine in Windows Server 2003 R2 machine. Check the image below :) As for me, I have to trust the right pane more than the left pane for accuracy.

Aptana 1.1 IntelliSense Weirdness for JQuery

wenching — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 06:41:00 GMT

I had installed Aptana 1.1 to learn JQuery and hopefully I could get full IntelliSense support for JQuery. Aptana has lots of interesting features though which impressed me. In terms of Intellisense experience, Visual Studio 2008 is indeed better. Maybe I am too used to Visual Studio 2008.

But I realized that the IntelliSense in Aptana was unstable. I couldn't determine when IntelliSense worked and sometimes not. Check the screenshot below and you will know what I mean. I couldn't find $ inside the IntelliSense.

I tried to find solutions online especially the Aptana support forum and yet I was not able to figure out the answer. I made a few assumptions:

a. Maybe I was using the older JQuery package. So I updated to the latest 1.2.6. Still failed.

b. Maybe I installed in the wrong OS (1st time I installed on Windows Server 2003 R2). Then I installed on my other partition Windows Vista Service Pack 1. Not working too.

c. At first I used an empty project which I had manually inserted the JavaScript. Later I tried to create a new JQuery Web Projects. Still failed.

d. I tried to update the software. But nothing new except extra plugins.

Then what's wrong?

Later I found out the solution. When you try to code JQuery in your external JavaScript file, make sure you open up the caller file like in my case flatland.html. Check the screenshot below:

It simply worked just fine. I would expect Aptana 1.1 smart enough to enable JQuery Intellisense for me since I had created JQuery Web Projects. Hope others find it handy here.

Running ASP.NET 2.0 on FileSystem instead of IIS without Visual Studio 2005/2008 installed

wenching — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 08:29:00 GMT

How are you able to run your ASP.NET 2.0 web application on File System (Standalone web server without IIS) without Visual Studio 2005/2008 installed in your local machine. I will say this is particular useful for POC ASP.NET 2.0 web application to customers or having web graphics designer testing out the ASP.NET 2.0 web application without knowing anything about IIS or trying to run F5 on Visual Studio 2005/2008.

How can you do that? I heard from lots of people that it wasn't possible to do this. There was no way you can extract out this FileSystem from Visual Studio 2005/2008. You can download the existing Cassini 1.0 and enhance it. You can also find some implementation online like this http://blogs.msdn.com/dmitryr/archive/2006/03/09/548131.aspx or download UltiDev Cassini (which I wasn't able to install it properly).

This might not be common but I believe it can be useful to lots of people out there.

Tip #1

You can run this filesystem without having Visual Studio 2005/2008 installed as long you have .NET Framework 2.0 and above installed.

You can locate this file "WebDev.WebServer.EXE" at C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727

Try it yourself

Tip #2

Run this application in the Visual Studio 2005/2008 command prompt as below or you can try open a command prompt and change directory to C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727

webdev.webserver.exe /path:"C:\MyPOC\TestWeb" /port:1337 /vpath:"/TestWeb"

First you define a path of your ASP.NET 2.0 Web Application. I include quotes around the path.

Set any ports you like, but do be careful of complication to existing ports used by other applications. I noticed when you debugged ASP.NET 2.0 FileSystem project in Visual Studio 2005/2008, it would use this port 1337 so I reused it.

I will recommend to set a virtual path like above. It can be anything you like.

Tip #3

webdev.webserver is not dependent to IIS. If you don't believe it, try to stop all your IIS web process.

Tip #4

The ASP.NET Development Server will run at your taskbar like below. But don't even try to click on the Root URL.

You will never able to get it to run. I almost gave up because of this as I thought there was some JIT error.

Instead, run the URL http://localhost:1337/SPAN directly on your web browser (IE or FireFox). It works :)

Hope you find this useful. If you know there is a better way, let me know. Thanks.

Updates:

I realized some machines did not have the webdev file in the right place, instead it was stored in this location C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\DevServer\9.0

Nevertheless, it works :) Good luck

My coming initiatives for Green Computing/Orphans July 20, Senior Citizens July 26

wenching — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:31:00 GMT

I will be having 2 events that is worth to highlight in my blog:

Date: Sunday, July 20, 2008

Organizers: MIND and Mesiniaga (co-organizer)

Venue: FRIM (within the forest)

Target audience: 60 orphans (age between 8 - 17), 60 working adults (registration will open soon), 10 (organizers, press)

Press: Newspaper, Magazines and TV Channel (tentative). PC.COM is confirmed coming and covering.

Entrance: It's free. MIND (my community) will be covering everything including lunch.

The session is a platform to educate the kids/adults about Green Computing as well as building synergies between the orphans and IT working professionals. There will be indoor and outdoor activities. Thanks to Microsoft for sponsoring my community and making things happen.

Current sponsors: Dell Malaysia, Microsoft Malaysia, Microsoft Singapore, Microsoft MVP SEA Team, Microsoft Corp - VSTS Team, ISA Technologies, eQuva, Jetbrains, O'Reilly, PeachPit, PC.COM, SSW Australia, Red-Gate.

Time	Topics
9.00 a.m.	Registration and Breakfast
9.30 a.m.	Welcome address and Keynote 1 – Mr. Fathil Sulaiman Ismail (Mesiniaga Managing Director)
9.45 a.m.	Green Computing Keynote 2 - Dell Country Manager Pang Yee Beng (TBC)
9.55 a.m.	Prize Giving Ceremony to Home by Dell + Photo Shooting with all sponsors involved
10.05 a.m.	Green Computing Overview (Ms. Hazreen, Mesiniaga)
10.20 a.m.	Approaches to Green Computing (Lim Fun Jin, ISA Technologies)
10.40 a.m.	Green Technology Speaker 2 (Microsoft)
11.00 a.m.	Canopy Walk (4 groups)
11.00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.	Press Briefing by Main Sponsor (Dell) and Organizer (MIND) and Mesiniaga
1.30 p.m.	Buffet Lunch (mingle with the kids)
2.30 p.m.	The End

If any of you like to be our sponsors, drop me an email. I am not looking at cash funding, instead anything that you can sponsors to rock these kids or donate to the Orphanage Home. Thanks.

The event promotion will be advertised soon. Stay tuned.

Date: Saturday, July 26, 2008

Organizers: MIND

Speaker Highlight: Yew Ban and Poh Sze

Venue: Microsoft Malaysia (Auditorium)

Target audience: minimum 30, maximum 100 senior citizens (age 40 - 70)

Press: Unknown yet. Probably Mandarin Newspaper.

Entrance: It's free. MIND's session is always free and making impact for the community in Malaysia

This is the 1st session that MIND will be conducting in Mandarin (traditional chinese) as well as to senior citizen. The prerequisite is that these senior citizens know the fundamentals of computer. Yew Ban, Poh Sze and myself will be speaking in Mandarin. MIND members can drop by for this session but this session is really simple and easy for the senior citizens to understand, so not sure suitable for the elite folks.

The agenda will be as below:

Time	Topics
9.30 a.m.	Registration
10.00 a.m.	Introducing Windows Vista in Chinese – Yew Ban and Wen Ching
10.40 a.m.	Break
10.45 a.m.	Introduction Microsoft Word 2007 in Chinese – Yew Ban and Wen Ching
11.30 a.m.	Break
11.35 a.m.	Using Windows Mobile 6 in Chinese (phones can be used other than just SMS and Phone Calls) – Poh Sze
12.15 p.m.	The END

Well I hope both events will run smoothly and it can be teaser to my blog readers of MIND coming initiatives. Thank you.

C# 3.0 - Using Anonymous Types

wenching — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:06:00 GMT

I had a friend who recently asked me on the ways using Anonymous Type in C# 3.0. Take note, this is just an example and to me it is like syntactic sugar. You can do the conventional way and it still works.

If you have a ComboBox within .NET Windows Forms and you like to programmatically configure the ComboBox with a list of values (Value & Member), normally people will do this:

   27             IList listOfAnimals = new ArrayList {
   28                 new Animal { Id = 10, Name = "Itik" },
   29                 new Animal { Id = 1, Name = "Ayam" }
   30             };
   31 
   32 
   33             comboBox1.DataSource = listOfAnimals;            
   34             comboBox1.ValueMember = "Id";
   35             comboBox1.DisplayMember = "Name";

   39     public class Animal
   40     {
   41         public int Id { get; set; }
   42         public string Name { get; set; }
   43     }

To me, it is a bit redundant to create an Animal class just for the purpose of programmatically setting the values to IList. Take note, tt will not read from the database and I am using ArrayList for this example. You can use other types of course. What if you have ComboBoxes that cater for Country, State, Cities, Phone Numbers, etc?

The other way that is most appealing will be:

   33     public class UltimateGenericComboBoxClass
   34     {
   35         public int Value { get; set; }
   36         public string Member { get; set; }
   37     } 

And you use it across all your programmatically ComboBoxes.

As for me, I will recommend to consider using Anonymous types as below:

   22             IList listOfAnimals = new ArrayList {
   23                 new { Id = 10, Name = "Itik" },
   24                 new { Id = 1, Name = "Ayam" }
   25             };
   26 
   27             comboBox1.DataSource = listOfAnimals;            
   28             comboBox1.ValueMember = "Id";
   29             comboBox1.DisplayMember = "Name";

As the code above, within the ArrayList I will call new { Id = 10, Name = "Itik" }. I did not create any really redundant class for this. Let me know if you have a shorter way for this. Have fun.

Japanese C# MVP session "Gaku Pro"

wenching — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 07:20:00 GMT

Great work Yuto. Even though I don't understand Japanese, but I like to see synergies among other countries C# MVP to promote C# in non English version.

You can download his "Gaku Pro" slides here http://www.questudents.com/Event/20070810gakupro/Materials/gakupro1.pdf

Gaku Pro means Programming for Students.

Download my slides for Heroes Community Launch {Here} in Microsoft Malaysia

wenching — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 04:16:00 GMT

My session was called C# 3.0 Syntactic Sugar ++. It was really about c# 3.0 but I was thinking about discussing other elements like software practices, lacking in software industry especially Malaysia, Visual Studio 2008 in general in case these audiences were new to this platform, etc.

I was on the breakout sessions which was held in the Level 29th, Microsoft Malaysia's boardroom. Nice place though.

I noticed few developers from ExactSoftware, eGenting, HongLeong Bank and other SMEs. Nice people :) There was one lady attending this session too. Thanks for supporting.

I failed to demo Lambda expression as I wasn't able to recall the syntax. Too many demos, and my brain wasn't functioning properly. Below is the code:

string[] listOfNames = { "Wen Ching", "Lau", "Steven", "Kok Wai" };

IEnumerable<string> query = listOfNames .Where(n => n.Contains("a"))

.Select(n => n.ToUpper());

As you know when I present, I never drag and drop snippets. I prefer to code on the spot as it has more weightage to my audiences :) Developers Rocks.

Hope you like my presentation and you can download the slides as below

CSharp_Syntactic_Sugar_ Chua_Wen Ching.zip

Microsoft Silverlight Tools Beta 2 and Expression Blend 2.5 June 2008 Preview are out

wenching — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:46:00 GMT

Check this out. I am downloading it now :)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=50A9EC01-267B-4521-B7D7-C0DBA8866434&displaylang=en

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=32a3e916-e681-4955-bc9f-cfba49273c7c&DisplayLang=en

Heroes Come Together in {Penang}

wenching — Fri, 23 May 2008 09:29:00 GMT

Dear IT heroes,

Four Malaysian technical communities, Intel IT Technical Community Malaysia Chapter .NET SIG, ELITE, MIND and SPAN, are coming together to host a community event focusing on technical dives of Microsoft Windows Server 2008™, Visual Studio 2008™, and SQL Server 2008™.

Date: 14 June 2008, Saturday

Venue: Intel Technology Sdn. Bhd. (PG12 Auditorium)

Bayan Lepas Free Industrial Zone

Phase 3, Halaman Kampung Jawa

11900 Penang, Malaysia

Agenda*:

8:00 – 8:30am	Registration
8:30 – 9:30am	Lap Around Visual Studio 2008 by Walter Wong, ISG Technologies Sdn. Bhd.
9:30 – 10:30am	Introducing Microsoft Entity Framework by Ryan Tee, SSW Pty Ltd
10:30 – 10:45am	Break
10:45 – 11:45am	Overview of New T-SQL Programmability Features in SQL Server 2008 by Jagathesan Balakrishnan, Intel Technology Sdn. Bhd.
11:45 – 12:45pm	Keynote by ELITE, MIND and SPAN leaders (Jay, Wen Ching and CK)
12:45 – 1:30pm	Networking lunch
1:30 – 2:30pm	SQL Server 2008, WTF?! by Chia Sheng Sin, Microsoft (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd.
2:30 – 3:30pm	Using Performance Studio in SQL Server 2008 by Phua Chiu Kiang, *Entellium* Technologies Sdn. Bhd.
3:30 – 4:30pm	Windows Server 2008 Features and Upgrade Consideration by Nadzif Jay Z, Iverson Associates Sdn. Bhd.
4:30 – 5:30pm	Windows 2008 Server new Security Features by Azra Rizal Noor Azman, Microsoft (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd.

* Subject to change without prior notice

Come join us for the IT communities get-together and be one of the first to receive technical demos & training, product readiness resources!

See you there!

GACUtil missing in Windows Server 2008/Visual Studio 2008 installation

wenching — Thu, 22 May 2008 07:15:00 GMT

I was testing Visual Studio 2008 on Windows Server 2008 for my research and development (sharepoint). Later I need to configure a post build for my class library in Visual Studio 2008. I need to set up the path as below:

"%programfiles%\[PATH_WHERE_THIS_TOOL_TO_BE_INSTALLED]\gacutil.exe" -if $(TargetPath)
cd $(ProjectDir)
Install.bat

So I decided to look for the GACUtil.exe's path. I searched into directories below and I was suprised that I wasn't able to find it:

** Take note, the file should be on the 1st path below based on Visual Studio 2005 installation

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\SDK\v3.5\Bin // NOT FOUND

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0 // NOT FOUND

C:\Program Files\Microsoft.NET // NOT FOUND

Then I searched into C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework and found out gacutil.exe.config which was based on .NET 1.1. That was quite old. There was no gacutil.exe in there.

Where could the file be? I tried to search the whole C:\ and I had yet to find anything. Maybe I didn't index my search properly. Running on VPC 2007 and allocating 1GB of RAM were insufficient :(

I was able to run gacutil command in Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt.

Lastly, I found out gacutil was located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin. This folder contains other assemblies like sn.exe.

Hope this could be handy for others :)

LINQ DataTable Query - Group Aggregation

wenching — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:21:00 GMT

My colleague asked me this question. Instead of doing the conventional way, he liked to try on LINQ for simplicity. The naming convention was ignored for this example. This was something that we hooked up together.

var query = from row in dtInvoice.AsEnumerable()
    group row by new { InvNo = row.Field< string >( "InvNo" ),
    EmpUNID = row.Field< decimal >( "EmployeeUNID" )} into grp
    orderby grp.Key.InvNo
        select new
        {
            Key = grp.Key,
            InvNo = grp.Key.InvNo,
            EmpID = grp.Key.EmpUNID,
            TotalCost = grp.Sum(r => r.Field< decimal >( "TotalCost" )),
            TotalRev = grp.Sum(r => r.Field< decimal >( "TotalRev" ))
        };

In order to come out with this solution, you have to understand the concept of LINQ which has similarities to T-SQL.

Explanations:

dtIncoice is a datatable. You can use generic list or any preferred choice. Instead of doing this grouping in T-SQL Stored Procedure, my colleague chose to do this in C# instead.

You notice that when we perform grouping, we have to do this:

group row by new { }

Do that if you plan to have multiple grouping, if not you can do this instead:

group row by { row.Field<string>("InvNo") }

Then why do I have to do this in multiple grouping?

group row by new { A = some values, B = some values }

If you don't do that, you will probably get an error when compiling your code or won't get proper results:

Anonymous type members must be declared with a member assignment, simple name or member access.

However, you can ignore that if you have single field

In order to use InvNo and EmpUNID from grouping aggregation, you need to reassign that values when you perform a Select in the LINQ query. That makes a lot of sense.

select new

{

InvNo = grp.Key.InvNo,
EmpID = grp.Key.EmpUNID,

}

If not, when you query this later for further processing, you are not able to access it. Hope you find this useful.

Thank you.