Archives
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WinTranslate 1.0 with Source Code released
Come and get it...
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Listed on Blogshares
Now I can be traded as a company of sorts...rather strange... -
Navigating Objects within the Microsoft Shell (MSH)
My latest article was published on the 26th. Learn how to use providers to get access to your resources at the command line as virtual drives. It shows how to create a very simple provider in C#.
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The Simple Things
Don't you hate working on a complex problem only to stumble on something so simplistic you just feel like a dolt? Today (more like yesterday, given the early hour EST), I realized the solution to a problem I was having with a winform combobox derived class. The problem? Whenever I tried to compile in release mode, the visual representation of the control would disappear from the winform designer, and the app would not compile. As is usually the case with strange problems, the solution came while I was away from my keyboard... on the way to work.
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First Publication
I have my first published article (“Coming soon to Windows: The Microsoft Shell (MSH)“) at:
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Added languages to Translation Web Service
I added the following to my translation web service. Please post feedback if you like it or are having problems with it. The old method is now deprecated, and the new method that should be used is TranslateLanguage(LanguagePair,InputText);
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Hola Mundo! - A translation service.
I got the idea of using the google translate page as a web service, and using that service in Speech2Blog. Think about being able to speak and make posts in other languages, or to provide auto-translated RSS feeds (granted this will come with a performance costs, but at a huge gain for accessibility). Here's the first step in the process -- a translation service that interacts with Google's translator.
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Speech SDK 1.0 Beta 4
I see the MS Speech team has released Beta 4 of the Speech SDK. Grab it now at a mere 320mb for the full package.
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The Weekend
So many projects, so little time.
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Speech SDK
John Lawrence writes about speech2blog:
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Microsoft Enterprise Instrumentation Framework
After previously being available for download only by MSDN Enterprise and Universal subscribers, the Microsoft Enterprise Instrumentation Framework is now available here.
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Speech2Blog Plans
I was all set to code for Speech2Blog, and work on an article I'm writing, but Whidbey doesn't want to play nice tonight. Unfortunately, this pushes back development of Speech2Blog quite a bit, as well as prevents me from working on the code portions of my article. I did manage to get quite a bit ahead through the use of code from an external source; it looks like now the application is going to support the metablog api, which should remove the only-.text limitation. I'm adding in lots more features, now that the app is evolving into something more than the proof-of-concept that Alpha 1 was.
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Whidbey - Hosed
Whidbey finally gave up on my machine. All of the controls in the toolbox are greyed out, but I can copy controls from other forms onto the form I'm working on. The properties dialog also is non-functional (greyed out). On the plus side, I'll get to test out the “Restore installation to its initial state” feature in Whidbey. I'll update this post with the results of the attempted repair.
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Manually Compile your XAML into BAML
For those of you who are hardcore console compilers, here's how you can manually compile your BAML partial classes, using the Windows Application Compiler:
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RSS Reader
Steve Tibbett has written some very cool code for MSH which reads RSS feeds and displays them at the command shell.
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Whidbey Distributed Applications
While exploring Whidbey, sometimes the most interesting features have a “This feature is not available in the Visual Studio 'Whidbey' Alpha release” teaser accompanying them.
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Directories for the DOS Inclined
I found a new surprise in Longhorn today; here's something that should be fixed:
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Whidbey Gotchas
So far, developing in Whidbey has been great, with one gotcha that I've seen so far. I have a windows form, with 4 textboxes, 4 labels, and a couple of buttons. Clicking on one of the textboxes, entering “Edit Properties Mode,” and changing the text property gets VS stuck in an exception loop.
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my first spoken post
this is my first post from an application I am writing and to recognize speech and have it instantly show on your web log . it uses the speech API in longhorn. I will post an Alpha version as soon as I clean up the code , since it is so embarrassing right now. my initial results are pretty good and I can speak quite quickly without a great deal of corrections from the suggestions More information will come later.
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Speech2Blog Alpha 1
As promised, here's my first release of Speech2Blog. It will take your speech, and post it to a .Text weblog. (Thanks Scott for clarification of the asmx address.) Since this is an Alpha release, here's the gotcha's:
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Longhorn Sidebar RSS Howto
Well, after trying to compile and run the RSS Newsfeed sidebar from MSDN, it threw an exception on explorer. Notice the file “bullet.png” is not available on the web site, and just replacing it with another png file did not do the trick.
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LH/VPC Speed boost?
In response to a post by G. Andrew Duthie, Drew Marsh tells of a possible speed tweak for the longhorn/virtual pc combo:
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Longhorn Bug Reporting
Well, since the WindowsBeta site doesn't accept bug reports this iteration, Microsoft recommends either the Longhorn public newsgroups: http://msdn.microsoft.com/longhorn/community/newsgroups/default.aspx (a great source of information, with many a Microsoft employee posting helpful advice) or the Report Client on the Longhorn DVD 1 (x:\ReportClient\Microsoft Beta Client 1.1.msi). The funny thing is, in order to install it, you need .NET framework 1.1 installed. I am surprised that they didn't compile it to work with 1.2 (2.0). Suffice it to say, though, that once you do have it installed, you get a very clean looking reporting tool, and now you don't have to worry about a time limit to finish the bug report (or should I say "Windows Issue Report"). Here's to helping make a better product!
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Namespace Management
With all of the new classes in 2.0, I sometimes find myself guessing at the dll's in order to find out how to reference them in a project. Case in point: with the MONAD namespaces (System.Management) , I didn't realize that they were actually found in the “Program Files\Longhorn Command Shell Preview” folder. Another point (from 1.1), the System.ComponentModel.Design namespace is actually held in System.Design.dll. I was recommended to use Reflector to search for the classes, but what about classes that are not included in the framework?
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New Keyword: yield
The new yield keyword lets you return a value from an enumerated method. You can use this wherever either you can't use a ref or out param, or when you can't use a return value.
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Whidbey Avalon Projects
After installing Whidbey, and looking for some of those new Avalon projects under C# Projects, I realized that the Longhorn SDK actually installs additional project templates for Whidbey.
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Longhorn Product Activation Info
Just thought I'd let everyone know that we can install this on multiple pc's if we want. Now I can have a virtual pc install, as well as a dedicated install.
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Web, WinForms, and ???
During the final breakout session I attended, Rocking the web with ASP.NET, the last question asked by the attendees was whether the winform and the web worlds would totally converge, now that we have an abstracted user interface model. Scott Guthrie's response was that he didn't see this happening in the Whidbey timeframe, but he believes with the next version of VS (”Orcas,” from the future products timeline; not mentioned by name at the PDC to my knowledge) would allow for 3 user interface models. One would support fully rich user interfaces, and be the complete Longhorn/Avalon experience. One would allow for total ubiquity of platform for the client. And one would support “adaptive” rendering to the client. This should be relatively easy now that they have XAML/BAML. Point towards resources (images, movies, behaviors), and the client will figure out how it can best show those resources to the end user based on the specs of the machine it's running on. In conversations throughout the week, DonXML was speculating about the timeframe; it seemed a natural course, now that Microsoft has brought the User Interface into the XML world. Only time will tell; the popularity of Longhorn will determine how long those legacy platforms have to be supported.
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VS.NET Whidbey First Impressions
First install of VS Whidbey, and what do I discover? Web projects are not considered normal “projects” anymore. Under File->New, the first two are Project and Web Site. The only web project in the first option is Web Control Library. Also, upon choosing Web Services, Visual Basic and J# are there (as well as C#), even though I chose not to install VB or J# during the install.
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PDC Remarks - An Open Letter to MS
Throughout the conference, my view on Microsoft and their policies towards developers has changed a great deal. I had always pictured them as aloof, just wanting to make their products the best they could, and release them to the public, and leaving the support to MS support services. OK, I was half right. What they really want is for the developer community to help them find out what the best product is, and make it for the public.
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MS "Media2Go"
At the CES 2003 show, MS revealed their prototype for their Media2Go device. It seems to be running on a scaled down version of XP MCE. Full article by Paul Thurrot is available here.
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Longhorn Tweaking Guide
Sam Gentile writes: “Someone has already put together a Longhorn Tweaking Guide! “
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Codename "MONAD"
In one of the most overlooked cool things at the PDC (in my opinion, anyway), the new Command Shell that will be in Longhorn blew me away when I saw it. I walked up to the booth asking if unix-like file aliases would be in the new shell, and was given a demo by the team that had my mind racing.
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Extended Blog Conversation
Here's what I came out with after the blogging birds of a feather session last night:
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Blogger BoF Pics
Check out my photo blog for pics of last nights blogger BoF at http://nadal.textamerica.com .
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Free is good
How's this for a load of free stuff? http://nadal.textamerica.com/default.asp?r=130959 Although the bits will have to wait until tomorrow after the keynote. Also, I noticed at MS pavilion station 24, they are showing Aero. My curiosity is piqued...
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Near the PDC
Well, after an interesting flight (big fire near LA; we couldn't see ANYTHING out the plane for around 5 minutes), Scott, Doug, DonXML, and I made it to our hotels. I have pictures from my camera at my moblog at http://nadal.textamerica.com if anyone's interested. Off to watch the World Series game 6 now, at another conference hotel. Westin Bonaventure seems pretty good so far.
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Using Windows Server 2003 As Dev
While trying to program ASP.NET, I used my copy of Windows Server 2003 Enterprise to make my laptop into one smoking loaded development machine. And it was good. But as soon as I tried to install the Virtual PC drivers (needed to run the pocket pc emulator), it failed, saying that the likely culprit was that I was not an administrator (I am).
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PDC and Future Security
From the MSDN “General Articles” Section: Using the Emulator in Smart Device Projects.
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Preventing Postbacks on the Client Side
Have you ever had the desire to prevent a form from posting back if certain conditions were met on a form? Suitable reasons would be for pages that send a large amount of data to/from the server on postback. My first thought was that this could be handled by adding an OnSubmit to the form tag using the Form.Attributes.Add() method, but I found that whatever I added through codebehind was put in execution order AFTER the submit method.
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XP MCE 2004
A CNET video shows the recently released Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004. They cleaned up the UI, and added a few more features, along with the stability that is XP. Highlights: XPMCE - “Is it chocolate or is it peanut butter? ... It's both” --Rick Thompson, corp vice president
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Microsoft PDC
I'll of course be attending the Microsoft PDC conference in LA, although I've been late in posting it. I can't wait! Especially the attendee party at Universal Studios...
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SD Camera
How's this for cool? An SD slot camera...It's sold out until September, but this sure beats the sleeve cameras that have been out for pocket pc's in the past.
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PPC RSS Aggregator
After about a month of working on it off and on, my PocketPC RSS aggregator actually is functional...I'm still deciding whether or not the client will just be ie on the PPC, or if I'll also make a CF client reader. (I probably will). It's fully coded in .NET, of course...
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RE: RSS...Authentication...and why?
In EPorter's post , he mentions the issue of RSS authentication, to get to personal information. Why shouldn't we be able to secure content via server tools (although I do think this should be extended into the RSS / XXXX specs)?
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Multithreading in .NET
While trying to write my latest app, I've discovered some more about divergence between Java and .NET. I'm writing a multithreaded app, only to uncover that .NET parent threads don't “own” their child threads (!). So, what are other peoples' experiences with threading books for .NET? The only one I've come across so far is Alan Dennis' “.NET Multithreading” but that seems to have gotten mixed reviews over at amazon. Is his the authoritative source, or are there better?
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Blogging about Blogs
As a relative newcomer into the blogging scene, I see the mammoth presences of the giants. They are those who get loads of visitors, whether by word of mouth, or through OEM (so to speak) inclusion via such programs as the wickedly fast SharpReader. I wonder just how to attract readers so to actually have an impact through writings. Today Dave Winer of Scripting News posted an essay about pointers (anchors).
I must admit that while I don't agree with some of the things he has to say, this point is perfectly on target. The article, titled “Pointers Are Cheap,” touches briefly on the issue of journalistic integrity, but the greater point is the fact that links in articles are 99% more likely to produce results that the end user is interested in. They are reading the article because it is of interest, therefore, the link may be of use to them as well (NB: made-up statistic). -
SysTray Redux...&rants
Well, my SystemTrayApplication project is pretty hot.... at least it is according to the GotDotNet Community Workspaces.
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SystemTrayApplication
SystemTrayApplication 1.0:
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C# System Tray Winforms
I just got tired of writing separate System Tray winforms, even though the article at Code Project makes it pretty easy. So, I'm writing a generic SystemTrayApplication, which will hopefully be up here sometime tonight or tomorrow. Thanks to Scott for providing the blog space (after goading me for months to finally give in and use the application :) ) I must admit it makes me less of a hypocrite than to be an ASP.NET developer using Movable Type.
