Search Results

Search found 27042 results on 1082 pages for 'google forms'.

Page 1063/1082 | < Previous Page | 1059 1060 1061 1062 1063 1064 1065 1066 1067 1068 1069 1070  | Next Page >

• Make your CHM Help Files show HTML5 and CSS3 content

  - by Rick Strahl

  The HTML Help 1.0 specification aka CHM files, is pretty old. In fact, it's practically ancient as it was introduced in 1997 when Internet Explorer 4 was introduced. Html Help 1.0 is basically a completely HTML based Help system that uses a Help Viewer that internally uses Internet Explorer to render the HTML Help content. Because of its use of the Internet Explorer shell for rendering there were many security issues in the past, which resulted in locking down of the Web Browser control in Windows and also the Help Engine which caused some unfortunate side effects. Even so, CHM continues to be a popular help format because it is very easy to produce content for it, using plain HTML and because it works with many Windows application platforms out of the box. While there have been various attempts to replace CHM help files CHM files still seem to be a popular choice for many applications to display their help systems. The biggest alternative these days is no system based help at all, but links to online documentation. For Windows apps though it's still very common to see CHM help files and there are still a ton of CHM help out there and lots of tools (including our own West Wind Html Help Builder) that produce output for CHM files as well as Web output. Image is Everything and you ain't got it! One problem with the CHM engine is that it's stuck with an ancient Internet Explorer version for rendering. For example if you have help content that uses HTML5 or CSS3 content you might have an HTML Help topic like the following shown here in a full Web Browser instance of Internet Explorer: The page clearly uses some CSS3 features like rounded corners and box shadows that are rendered using plain CSS 3 features. Note that I used Internet Explorer on purpose here to demonstrate that IE9 on Windows 7 can properly render this content using some of the new features of CSS, but the same is true for all other recent versions of the major browsers (FireFox 3.1+, Safari 4.5+, WebKit 9+ etc.). Unfortunately if you take this nice and simple CSS3 content and run it through the HTML Help compiler to produce a CHM file the resulting output on the same machine looks a bit less flashy: All the CSS3 styling is gone and although the page display and functionality still works, but all the extra styling features are gone. This even though I am running this on a Windows 7 machine that has IE9 that should be able to render these CSS features. Bummer. Web Browser Control - perpetually stuck in IE 7 Mode The problem is the Web Browser/Shell Components in Windows. This component is and has been part of Windows for as long as Internet Explorer has been around, but the Web Browser control hasn't kept up with the latest versions of IE. In a nutshell the control is stuck in IE7 rendering mode for engine compatibility reasons by default. However, there is at least one way to fix this explicitly using Registry keys on a per application basis. The key point from that blog article is that you can override the IE rendering engine for a particular executable by setting one (or more) registry flags that tell the Windows Shell which version of the Internet Explorer rendering engine to load. An application that wishes to use a more recent version of Internet Explorer can then register itself during installation for the specific IE version desired and from then on the application will use that version of the Web Browser component. If the application is older than the specified version it falls back to the default version (IE 7 rendering). Forcing CHM files to display with IE9 (or later) Rendering Knowing that we can force the IE usage for a given process it's also possible to affect the CHM rendering by setting same keys on the executable that's hosting the CHM file. What that executable file is depends on the type of application as there are a number of ways that can launch the help engine. hh.exeThe standalone Windows CHM Help Viewer that launches when you launch a CHM from Windows Explorer. You can manually add hh.exe to the registry keys. YourApplication.exeIf you're using .NET or any tool that internally uses the hhControl ActiveX control to launch help content your application is your host. You should add your application's exe to the registry during application startup. foxhhelp9.exeIf you're building a FoxPro application that uses the built-in help features, foxhhelp9.exe is used to actually host the help controls. Make sure to add this executable to the registry. What to set You can configure the Internet Explorer version used for an application in the registry by specifying the executable file name and a value that specifies the IE version desired. There are two different sets of keys for 32 bit and 64 bit applications. 32 bit only or 64 bit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MAIN\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION Value Key: hh.exe 32 bit on 64 bit machine: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MAIN\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION Value Key: hh.exe Note that it's best to always set both values ideally when you install your application so it works regardless of which platform you run on. The value specified is a DWORD value and the interesting values are decimal 9000 for IE9 rendering mode depending on !DOCTYPE settings or 9999 for IE 9 standards mode always. You can use the same logic for 8000 and 8888 for IE8 and the final value of 7000 for IE7 (one has to wonder what they're going todo for version 10 to perpetuate that pattern). I think 9000 is the value you'd most likely want to use. 9000 means that IE9 will be used for rendering but unless the right doctypes are used (XHTML and HTML5 specifically) IE will still fall back into quirks mode as needed. This should allow existing pages to continue to use the fallback engine while new pages that have the proper HTML doctype set can take advantage of the newest features. Here's an example of how I set the registry keys in my Tarma Installmate registry configuration: Note that I set all three values both under the Software and Wow6432Node keys so that this works regardless of where these EXEs are launched from. Even though all apps are 32 bit apps, the 64 bit (the default one shown selected) key is often used. So, now once I've set the registry key for hh.exe I can now launch my CHM help file from Explorer and see the following CSS3 IE9 rendered display: Summary It sucks that we have to go through all these hoops to get what should be natural behavior for an application to support the latest features available on a system. But it shouldn't be a surprise - the Windows Help team (if there even is such a thing) has not been known for forward looking technologies. It's a pretty big hassle that we have to resort to setting registry keys in order to get the Web Browser control and the internal CHM engine to render itself properly but at least it's possible to make it work after all. Using this technique it's possible to ship an application with a help file and allow your CHM help to display with richer CSS markup and correct rendering using the stricter and more consistent XHTML or HTML5 doctypes. If you provide both Web help and in-application help (and why not if you're building from a single source) you now can side step the issue of your customers asking: Why does my help file look so much shittier than the online help… No more!© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in HTML5  Help  Html Help Builder  Internet Explorer  Windows   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

  Read the article

• Dynamic Types and DynamicObject References in C#

  - by Rick Strahl

  I've been working a bit with C# custom dynamic types for several customers recently and I've seen some confusion in understanding how dynamic types are referenced. This discussion specifically centers around types that implement IDynamicMetaObjectProvider or subclass from DynamicObject as opposed to arbitrary type casts of standard .NET types. IDynamicMetaObjectProvider types  are treated special when they are cast to the dynamic type. Assume for a second that I've created my own implementation of a custom dynamic type called DynamicFoo which is about as simple of a dynamic class that I can think of:public class DynamicFoo : DynamicObject { Dictionary<string, object> properties = new Dictionary<string, object>(); public string Bar { get; set; } public DateTime Entered { get; set; } public override bool TryGetMember(GetMemberBinder binder, out object result) { result = null; if (!properties.ContainsKey(binder.Name)) return false; result = properties[binder.Name]; return true; } public override bool TrySetMember(SetMemberBinder binder, object value) { properties[binder.Name] = value; return true; } } This class has an internal dictionary member and I'm exposing this dictionary member through a dynamic by implementing DynamicObject. This implementation exposes the properties dictionary so the dictionary keys can be referenced like properties (foo.NewProperty = "Cool!"). I override TryGetMember() and TrySetMember() which are fired at runtime every time you access a 'property' on a dynamic instance of this DynamicFoo type. Strong Typing and Dynamic Casting I now can instantiate and use DynamicFoo in a couple of different ways: Strong TypingDynamicFoo fooExplicit = new DynamicFoo(); var fooVar = new DynamicFoo(); These two commands are essentially identical and use strong typing. The compiler generates identical code for both of them. The var statement is merely a compiler directive to infer the type of fooVar at compile time and so the type of fooExplicit is DynamicFoo, just like fooExplicit. This is very static - nothing dynamic about it - and it completely ignores the IDynamicMetaObjectProvider implementation of my class above as it's never used. Using either of these I can access the native properties:DynamicFoo fooExplicit = new DynamicFoo();// static typing assignmentsfooVar.Bar = "Barred!"; fooExplicit.Entered = DateTime.Now; // echo back static values Console.WriteLine(fooVar.Bar); Console.WriteLine(fooExplicit.Entered); but I have no access whatsoever to the properties dictionary. Basically this creates a strongly typed instance of the type with access only to the strongly typed interface. You get no dynamic behavior at all. The IDynamicMetaObjectProvider features don't kick in until you cast the type to dynamic. If I try to access a non-existing property on fooExplicit I get a compilation error that tells me that the property doesn't exist. Again, it's clearly and utterly non-dynamic. Dynamicdynamic fooDynamic = new DynamicFoo(); fooDynamic on the other hand is created as a dynamic type and it's a completely different beast. I can also create a dynamic by simply casting any type to dynamic like this:DynamicFoo fooExplicit = new DynamicFoo(); dynamic fooDynamic = fooExplicit; Note that dynamic typically doesn't require an explicit cast as the compiler automatically performs the cast so there's no need to use as dynamic. Dynamic functionality works at runtime and allows for the dynamic wrapper to look up and call members dynamically. A dynamic type will look for members to access or call in two places: Using the strongly typed members of the object Using theIDynamicMetaObjectProvider Interface methods to access members So rather than statically linking and calling a method or retrieving a property, the dynamic type looks up - at runtime  - where the value actually comes from. It's essentially late-binding which allows runtime determination what action to take when a member is accessed at runtime *if* the member you are accessing does not exist on the object. Class members are checked first before IDynamicMetaObjectProvider interface methods are kick in. All of the following works with the dynamic type:dynamic fooDynamic = new DynamicFoo(); // dynamic typing assignments fooDynamic.NewProperty = "Something new!"; fooDynamic.LastAccess = DateTime.Now; // dynamic assigning static properties fooDynamic.Bar = "dynamic barred"; fooDynamic.Entered = DateTime.Now; // echo back dynamic values Console.WriteLine(fooDynamic.NewProperty); Console.WriteLine(fooDynamic.LastAccess); Console.WriteLine(fooDynamic.Bar); Console.WriteLine(fooDynamic.Entered); The dynamic type can access the native class properties (Bar and Entered) and create and read new ones (NewProperty,LastAccess) all using a single type instance which is pretty cool. As you can see it's pretty easy to create an extensible type this way that can dynamically add members at runtime dynamically. The Alter Ego of IDynamicObject The key point here is that all three statements - explicit, var and dynamic - declare a new DynamicFoo(), but the dynamic declaration results in completely different behavior than the first two simply because the type has been cast to dynamic. Dynamic binding means that the type loses its typical strong typing, compile time features. You can see this easily in the Visual Studio code editor. As soon as you assign a value to a dynamic you lose Intellisense and you see which means there's no Intellisense and no compiler type checking on any members you apply to this instance. If you're new to the dynamic type it might seem really confusing that a single type can behave differently depending on how it is cast, but that's exactly what happens when you use a type that implements IDynamicMetaObjectProvider. Declare the type as its strong type name and you only get to access the native instance members of the type. Declare or cast it to dynamic and you get dynamic behavior which accesses native members plus it uses IDynamicMetaObjectProvider implementation to handle any missing member definitions by running custom code. You can easily cast objects back and forth between dynamic and the original type:dynamic fooDynamic = new DynamicFoo(); fooDynamic.NewProperty = "New Property Value"; DynamicFoo foo = fooDynamic; foo.Bar = "Barred"; Here the code starts out with a dynamic cast and a dynamic assignment. The code then casts back the value to the DynamicFoo. Notice that when casting from dynamic to DynamicFoo and back we typically do not have to specify the cast explicitly - the compiler can induce the type so I don't need to specify as dynamic or as DynamicFoo. Moral of the Story This easy interchange between dynamic and the underlying type is actually super useful, because it allows you to create extensible objects that can expose non-member data stores and expose them as an object interface. You can create an object that hosts a number of strongly typed properties and then cast the object to dynamic and add additional dynamic properties to the same type at runtime. You can easily switch back and forth between the strongly typed instance to access the well-known strongly typed properties and to dynamic for the dynamic properties added at runtime. Keep in mind that dynamic object access has quite a bit of overhead and is definitely slower than strongly typed binding, so if you're accessing the strongly typed parts of your objects you definitely want to use a strongly typed reference. Reserve dynamic for the dynamic members to optimize your code. The real beauty of dynamic is that with very little effort you can build expandable objects or objects that expose different data stores to an object interface. I'll have more on this in my next post when I create a customized and extensible Expando object based on DynamicObject.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in CSharp  .NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

  Read the article

• HTML5 Form Validation

  - by Stephen.Walther

  The latest versions of Google Chrome (16+), Mozilla Firefox (8+), and Internet Explorer (10+) all support HTML5 client-side validation. It is time to take HTML5 validation seriously. The purpose of the blog post is to describe how you can take advantage of HTML5 client-side validation regardless of the type of application that you are building. You learn how to use the HTML5 validation attributes, how to perform custom validation using the JavaScript validation constraint API, and how to simulate HTML5 validation on older browsers by taking advantage of a jQuery plugin. Finally, we discuss the security issues related to using client-side validation. Using Client-Side Validation Attributes The HTML5 specification discusses several attributes which you can use with INPUT elements to perform client-side validation including the required, pattern, min, max, step, and maxlength attributes. For example, you use the required attribute to require a user to enter a value for an INPUT element. The following form demonstrates how you can make the firstName and lastName form fields required: <!DOCTYPE html> <html > <head> <title>Required Demo</title> </head> <body> <form> <label> First Name: <input required title="First Name is Required!" /> </label> <label> Last Name: <input required title="Last Name is Required!" /> </label> <button>Register</button> </form> </body> </html> If you attempt to submit this form without entering a value for firstName or lastName then you get the validation error message: Notice that the value of the title attribute is used to display the validation error message “First Name is Required!”. The title attribute does not work this way with the current version of Firefox. If you want to display a custom validation error message with Firefox then you need to include an x-moz-errormessage attribute like this: <input required title="First Name is Required!" x-moz-errormessage="First Name is Required!" /> The pattern attribute enables you to validate the value of an INPUT element against a regular expression. For example, the following form includes a social security number field which includes a pattern attribute: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Pattern</title> </head> <body> <form> <label> Social Security Number: <input required pattern="^d{3}-d{2}-d{4}$" title="###-##-####" /> </label> <button>Register</button> </form> </body> </html> The regular expression in the form above requires the social security number to match the pattern ###-##-####: Notice that the input field includes both a pattern and a required validation attribute. If you don’t enter a value then the regular expression is never triggered. You need to include the required attribute to force a user to enter a value and cause the value to be validated against the regular expression. Custom Validation You can take advantage of the HTML5 constraint validation API to perform custom validation. You can perform any custom validation that you need. The only requirement is that you write a JavaScript function. For example, when booking a hotel room, you might want to validate that the Arrival Date is in the future instead of the past: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Constraint Validation API</title> </head> <body> <form> <label> Arrival Date: <input id="arrivalDate" type="date" required /> </label> <button>Submit Reservation</button> </form> <script type="text/javascript"> var arrivalDate = document.getElementById("arrivalDate"); arrivalDate.addEventListener("input", function() { var value = new Date(arrivalDate.value); if (value < new Date()) { arrivalDate.setCustomValidity("Arrival date must be after now!"); } else { arrivalDate.setCustomValidity(""); } }); </script> </body> </html> The form above contains an input field named arrivalDate. Entering a value into the arrivalDate field triggers the input event. The JavaScript code adds an event listener for the input event and checks whether the date entered is greater than the current date. If validation fails then the validation error message “Arrival date must be after now!” is assigned to the arrivalDate input field by calling the setCustomValidity() method of the validation constraint API. Otherwise, the validation error message is cleared by calling setCustomValidity() with an empty string. HTML5 Validation and Older Browsers But what about older browsers? For example, what about Apple Safari and versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer older than Internet Explorer 10? What the world really needs is a jQuery plugin which provides backwards compatibility for the HTML5 validation attributes. If a browser supports the HTML5 validation attributes then the plugin would do nothing. Otherwise, the plugin would add support for the attributes. Unfortunately, as far as I know, this plugin does not exist. I have not been able to find any plugin which supports both the required and pattern attributes for older browsers, but does not get in the way of these attributes in the case of newer browsers. There are several jQuery plugins which provide partial support for the HTML5 validation attributes including: · jQuery Validation — http://docs.jquery.com/Plugins/Validation · html5Form — http://www.matiasmancini.com.ar/jquery-plugin-ajax-form-validation-html5.html · h5Validate — http://ericleads.com/h5validate/ The jQuery Validation plugin – the most popular JavaScript validation library – supports the HTML5 required attribute, but it does not support the HTML5 pattern attribute. Likewise, the html5Form plugin does not support the pattern attribute. The h5Validate plugin provides the best support for the HTML5 validation attributes. The following page illustrates how this plugin supports both the required and pattern attributes: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>h5Validate</title> <style type="text/css"> .validationError { border: solid 2px red; } .validationValid { border: solid 2px green; } </style> </head> <body> <form id="customerForm"> <label> First Name: <input id="firstName" required /> </label> <label> Social Security Number: <input id="ssn" required pattern="^d{3}-d{2}-d{4}$" title="Expected pattern is ###-##-####" /> </label> <input type="submit" /> </form> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.4.4.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery.h5validate.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> // Enable h5Validate plugin $("#customerForm").h5Validate({ errorClass: "validationError", validClass: "validationValid" }); // Prevent form submission when errors $("#customerForm").submit(function (evt) { if ($("#customerForm").h5Validate("allValid") === false) { evt.preventDefault(); } }); </script> </body> </html> When an input field fails validation, the validationError CSS class is applied to the field and the field appears with a red border. When an input field passes validation, the validationValid CSS class is applied to the field and the field appears with a green border. From the perspective of HTML5 validation, the h5Validate plugin is the best of the plugins. It adds support for the required and pattern attributes to browsers which do not natively support these attributes such as IE9. However, this plugin does not include everything in my wish list for a perfect HTML5 validation plugin. Here’s my wish list for the perfect back compat HTML5 validation plugin: 1. The plugin would disable itself when used with a browser which natively supports HTML5 validation attributes. The plugin should not be too greedy – it should not handle validation when a browser could do the work itself. 2. The plugin should simulate the same user interface for displaying validation error messages as the user interface displayed by browsers which natively support HTML5 validation. Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer all display validation errors in a popup. The perfect plugin would also display a popup. 3. Finally, the plugin would add support for the setCustomValidity() method and the other methods of the HTML5 validation constraint API. That way, you could implement custom validation in a standards compatible way and you would know that it worked across all browsers both old and new. Security It would be irresponsible of me to end this blog post without mentioning the issue of security. It is important to remember that any client-side validation — including HTML5 validation — can be bypassed. You should use client-side validation with the intention to create a better user experience. Client validation is great for providing a user with immediate feedback when the user is in the process of completing a form. However, client-side validation cannot prevent an evil hacker from submitting unexpected form data to your web server. You should always enforce your validation rules on the server. The only way to ensure that a required field has a value is to verify that the required field has a value on the server. The HTML5 required attribute does not guarantee anything. Summary The goal of this blog post was to describe the support for validation contained in the HTML5 standard. You learned how to use both the required and the pattern attributes in an HTML5 form. We also discussed how you can implement custom validation by taking advantage of the setCustomValidity() method. Finally, I discussed the available jQuery plugins for adding support for the HTM5 validation attributes to older browsers. Unfortunately, I am unaware of any jQuery plugin which provides a perfect solution to the problem of backwards compatibility.

  Read the article

• Day 2 - Game Design Documentation

  - by dapostolov

  So yesterday I didn't cut any code for my game but I was able to do a tiny bit of research on the XNA Game Development Technology and the communities out there and do you know what? I feel I'm a bit closer to my goal. The bad news is today I didn't cut code either. However, not all is lost because I wanted to get my ideas on paper and today I just did that.  Today, I began to jot down notes about the game and how I felt the visual elements would interact with each other. Unlike my workplace, my personal level of documentation is nothing more than a task list or a mind map of my ideas; it helps me streamline my solutions quiet effectively and circumvent the long process of articulating each thought to the n-th degree. I truly dislike documentation (because I have an extremely hard time articulating my thought and solutions); however, because I tend to do a really good job with documentation I tend to get stuck writing the buggers. But as a generalist remark: 'No Developer likes documentation.' For now let's stick with my basic notes and call this post a living document. Here are my notes, fresh, from after watching the new first episode of Merlin second season! Actually, a quick recommendation to anyone who is reading this (if anyone is): I truly recommend you envelope yourself in the medium or task you're trying to tackle. Be one with moment and feel it! For instance: Are you writing a fantasy script / game? What would the music of the genre sound like? For me the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack by Basil Poledouris is frackin awesome. There are many other good CD's out there, which I listen to (some who even use medival instruments, but Conan I keep returning to. It's a creative trigger for me. Ask yourself what would the imagery look like? Time to surf google for artist renditions of fantasy! What would the game feel like? Start playing some of your favorite games that inspire you, be wary though, have some self control and don't let it absorb your time. Anyhow, onto the documentation... Screens, Scenes, and Sprites. Oh My! (groan...) The first thing that came to mind were the screens, I thought the following would suffice: Menu Screen Character Customisation Screen Loading Screen? Battle Ground The Menu Screen Ok. So, the thought here is when the game loads a huge title is displayed: Wizard Wars. The player is prompted with 3 menu items: 1 Player Game, 2 Player Game, and Exit. Since I'm targetting the PC platform, as a non-networked game to start, I picture myself running my mouse over each menu option and the visual element of the menu item changes, along with a sound to indicate that I am over a curent menu item. And as I move my mouse away, it changes back, and possibly an exit mouse sound. Maybe on the screen somewhere is a brazier alit with a magical tome open right beside it, OR, maybe the tome is the menu! I hear the menu music as mellow, not obtrusive or piercing. On a menu item select, a confirmation sound bellows to indicate the players selection. The Esc key will always return me to the previous screens or desktop. The menu screen must feel...dark, like a really important ritual is about to happen and thus the music should build up. 1 Player Game - > Customize Character(s) 2 Player Game - > Customize Character(s) Exit - > Back to Windows Notes: So the first thing I pick up here are a couple things: First and foremost, my artistic abilities suck crap, so I may have to hire an artist (now that i've said that, lets get techy) graphical objects will be positioned within a scene on each screen / window. Menu items will be represented grapically, possibly animated, and have sound / animation effects triggered by user input or a time line. I have an animated scene involving a brazier or fire on a stick IF I was to move this game to the xbox, I'd have to track which menu item is currently selected (unless I do a mouse pointer type thing.) WindowObject has a scene A Scene has many GameObjects GameObject has a position graphic or animation MenuObject is a GameObject which has a mouse in, mouse out, and click event which either does something graphically (animation), does something with sound, or moves to another screen.  Character Customisation Screen With either the 1 or 2 player option selected, both selections will come to this screen; a wizard requires a name, powers, and vestements of course! Player one will configure his character first and then player two. I considered a split screen for PC but to have two people fighting over a keyboard would probably suck. For XBox, a split screen could work; maybe when I get into the networking portion (phase 2 blog?) of this game I will remove the 2 player option for PC and provide only multiplayer and I will leave 2 player for xbox...hmm... Anyhow...I picture the creation process as follows: Name: (textbox / keyboard entry) - for xbox, this would have to be different. Robe Color: (color box, or something) Stats: Speed, Oomph, and Health. (as sliders) 1 as minimum and 10 as maximum. Ok, Back, and Cancel buttons / options. Each stat has a benefit which are listed below. The idea is the player decides if he wants his wizard to run fast, be a tank and ... hit with a purse.Regardless, the player will have a pool of 12 points to use. Ideally, A balanced wizard will have 5 in each attribute. Spells? The only spell of choice is a ball of fire which comes without question. The music and screen should still feel like a ritual. The Character Speed Basically, how fast your character moves and casts. Oomph (Best Monster Truck Voice): PURE POWAH!!! The damage output of your fireball. Health How much damage you can take. Notes: I realise the game dynamics may sound uninteresting at the moment; but I think after a couple releases, we could have some other grand ideas such as: saved profiles, gold to upgrade arsenal of spells, talents, etc...but for now...a vanilla fireball thrower mage will suffice for this experiment. OK. So... a MenuObject  may need to be loosely coupled to allow future items such as networking? may be a button? a CharacterObject has a name speed oomph health and a funky robe color. cap on the three stats (1-10) an arsenal of 1 spell (possibly could expand this) The Loading Screen As is. The Battleground Screen For now, I'm keeping the screen as max resolution for the PC. The screen isn't going to move or even be a split screen. I'm not aiming high here because I want to see what level of change is involved when new features / concepts are added to game content. I'm interested to find out if we could apply techniques such as MVC or MVVM to this type of development or is it too tightly coupled? This reminds me when when my best friend and I were brainstorming our game idea (this is going back a while...1994, 6?) and he cringed at the thought of bringing business technology into games, especially when I suggested a database to store character information and COM / DCOM as the medium, but it seems I wasn't far off (reflecting); just like his implementation of a xml "config file" for dynamic direct-x menus back before .net in 1999...anyhow...i digress... The Battle One screen, two characters lobing balls of fire at each other...It doesn't get better than that. Every so often a scroll appears...and the fireballs bounce off walls, or the wizard has rapid fire, or even scrolls of healing! The scroll options are endless. Two bars at the top, each the color of the wizard (with their name beside the bar) indicate how much health they have. Possibly the appearance of the scrolls means the battle is taking too long? I'm thinking 1 player controls: up, down, left, right and space to fire the button. Or even possibly, mouse click and shift - mouse button to fire a spell in the direction they are facing. Two player controls: a, s, d, f and space AND arrows (up, down, left, right) and Del key or Crtl. The game ends when a player has 0 health and a dialog box appears asking for a rematch / reconfigure / exit. Health goes down when a fireball (friendly or not), connects with a wizard. When a wizard connects with a scroll, a countdown clock / icon appears near the health bar and the wizard begins to glow. For the most part, a wizard can have only scroll 1 effect on him at a time. Notes: Ok, there's alot to cover here. a CharacterObject is a GameObject it travels at a set velocity it travels in a direction it has sounds (walking, running, casting, impact, dying, laughing, whistling, other?) it has animations (walking, running, casting, impact, dying, laughing, idle, other?) it has a lifespan (determined by health) it is alive or dead it has a position a ScrollObject is a GameObject it carries a transferance of points "damage" (or healing, bad scroll effect?) (determinde by caster) it carries a transferance of "other" it is stationary it has a sound on impact it has a stationary animation it has an impact animation / or transfers an impact animation it has a fade animation? it has a lifespan (determined by game) it is alive or dead it has a position a WallObject is a GameObject it has a sound on fireball impact? it is a still image / stationary it has an impact animation / or transfers an impact animation it is dead it has a position A FireBall is a GameObject it carries a transferance of poinst "damage" (or healing, bad scroll effect?) (determinde by caster) it travels at a set velocity it travels in a direction it has a sound it has a travel animation it has an impact animation / or transfers an impact animation it has a fade animation? it has a lifespan (determined by caster) it is alive or dead it has a position As I look at this, I can see some common attributes in each object that I can carry up to the GameObject. I think I'm going to end the documentation here, it's taken me a bit of time to type this all out, tomorrow. I'll load up my IDE and my paint studio to get some good old fashioned cowboy hacking going!   D.

  Read the article

• Creating HTML5 Offline Web Applications with ASP.NET

  - by Stephen Walther

  The goal of this blog entry is to describe how you can create HTML5 Offline Web Applications when building ASP.NET web applications. I describe the method that I used to create an offline Web application when building the JavaScript Reference application. You can read about the HTML5 Offline Web Application standard by visiting the following links: Offline Web Applications Firefox Offline Web Applications Safari Offline Web Applications Currently, the HTML5 Offline Web Applications feature works with all modern browsers with one important exception. You can use Offline Web Applications with Firefox, Chrome, and Safari (including iPhone Safari). Unfortunately, however, Internet Explorer does not support Offline Web Applications (not even IE 9). Why Build an HTML5 Offline Web Application? The official reason to build an Offline Web Application is so that you do not need to be connected to the Internet to use it. For example, you can use the JavaScript Reference Application when flying in an airplane, riding a subway, or hiding in a cave in Borneo. The JavaScript Reference Application works great on my iPhone even when I am completely disconnected from any network. The following screenshot shows the JavaScript Reference Application running on my iPhone when airplane mode is enabled (notice the little orange airplane):   Admittedly, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find locations where you can’t get Internet access. A second, and possibly better, reason to create Offline Web Applications is speed. An Offline Web Application must be downloaded only once. After it gets downloaded, all of the files required by your Web application (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Image) are stored persistently on your computer. Think of Offline Web Applications as providing you with a super browser cache. Normally, when you cache files in a browser, the files are cached on a file-by-file basis. For each HTML, CSS, image, or JavaScript file, you specify how long the file should remain in the cache by setting cache headers. Unlike the normal browser caching mechanism, the HTML5 Offline Web Application cache is used to specify a caching policy for an entire set of files. You use a manifest file to list the files that you want to cache and these files are cached until the manifest is changed. Another advantage of using the HTML5 offline cache is that the HTML5 standard supports several JavaScript events and methods related to the offline cache. For example, you can be notified in your JavaScript code whenever the offline application has been updated. You can use JavaScript methods, such as the ApplicationCache.update() method, to update the cache programmatically. Creating the Manifest File The HTML5 Offline Cache uses a manifest file to determine the files that get cached. Here’s what the manifest file looks like for the JavaScript Reference application: CACHE MANIFEST # v30 Default.aspx # Standard Script Libraries Scripts/jquery-1.4.4.min.js Scripts/jquery-ui-1.8.7.custom.min.js Scripts/jquery.tmpl.min.js Scripts/json2.js # App Scripts App_Scripts/combine.js App_Scripts/combine.debug.js # Content (CSS & images) Content/default.css Content/logo.png Content/ui-lightness/jquery-ui-1.8.7.custom.css Content/ui-lightness/images/ui-bg_glass_65_ffffff_1x400.png Content/ui-lightness/images/ui-bg_glass_100_f6f6f6_1x400.png Content/ui-lightness/images/ui-bg_highlight-soft_100_eeeeee_1x100.png Content/ui-lightness/images/ui-icons_222222_256x240.png Content/ui-lightness/images/ui-bg_glass_100_fdf5ce_1x400.png Content/ui-lightness/images/ui-bg_diagonals-thick_20_666666_40x40.png Content/ui-lightness/images/ui-bg_gloss-wave_35_f6a828_500x100.png Content/ui-lightness/images/ui-icons_ffffff_256x240.png Content/ui-lightness/images/ui-icons_ef8c08_256x240.png Content/browsers/c8.png Content/browsers/es3.png Content/browsers/es5.png Content/browsers/ff3_6.png Content/browsers/ie8.png Content/browsers/ie9.png Content/browsers/sf5.png NETWORK: Services/EntryService.svc http://superexpert.com/resources/JavaScriptReference/ A Cache Manifest file always starts with the line of text Cache Manifest. In the manifest above, all of the CSS, image, and JavaScript files required by the JavaScript Reference application are listed. For example, the Default.aspx ASP.NET page, jQuery library, JQuery UI library, and several images are listed. Notice that you can add comments to a manifest by starting a line with the hash character (#). I use comments in the manifest above to group JavaScript and image files. Finally, notice that there is a NETWORK: section of the manifest. You list any file that you do not want to cache (any file that requires network access) in this section. In the manifest above, the NETWORK: section includes the URL for a WCF Service named EntryService.svc. This service is called to get the JavaScript entries displayed by the JavaScript Reference. There are two important things that you need to be aware of when using a manifest file. First, all relative URLs listed in a manifest are resolved relative to the manifest file. The URLs listed in the manifest above are all resolved relative to the root of the application because the manifest file is located in the application root. Second, whenever you make a change to the manifest file, browsers will download all of the files contained in the manifest (all of them). For example, if you add a new file to the manifest then any browser that supports the Offline Cache standard will detect the change in the manifest and download all of the files listed in the manifest automatically. If you make changes to files in the manifest (for example, modify a JavaScript file) then you need to make a change in the manifest file in order for the new version of the file to be downloaded. The standard way of updating a manifest file is to include a comment with a version number. The manifest above includes a # v30 comment. If you make a change to a file then you need to modify the comment to be # v31 in order for the new file to be downloaded. When Are Updated Files Downloaded? When you make changes to a manifest, the changes are not reflected the very next time you open the offline application in your web browser. Your web browser will download the updated files in the background. This can be very confusing when you are working with JavaScript files. If you make a change to a JavaScript file, and you have cached the application offline, then the changes to the JavaScript file won’t appear when you reload the application. The HTML5 standard includes new JavaScript events and methods that you can use to track changes and make changes to the Application Cache. You can use the ApplicationCache.update() method to initiate an update to the application cache and you can use the ApplicationCache.swapCache() method to switch to the latest version of a cached application. My heartfelt recommendation is that you do not enable your application for offline storage until after you finish writing your application code. Otherwise, debugging the application can become a very confusing experience. Offline Web Applications versus Local Storage Be careful to not confuse the HTML5 Offline Web Application feature and HTML5 Local Storage (aka DOM storage) feature. The JavaScript Reference Application uses both features. HTML5 Local Storage enables you to store key/value pairs persistently. Think of Local Storage as a super cookie. I describe how the JavaScript Reference Application uses Local Storage to store the database of JavaScript entries in a separate blog entry. Offline Web Applications enable you to store static files persistently. Think of Offline Web Applications as a super cache. Creating a Manifest File in an ASP.NET Application A manifest file must be served with the MIME type text/cache-manifest. In order to serve the JavaScript Reference manifest with the proper MIME type, I added two files to the JavaScript Reference Application project: Manifest.txt – This text file contains the actual manifest file. Manifest.ashx – This generic handler sends the Manifest.txt file with the MIME type text/cache-manifest. Here’s the code for the generic handler: using System.Web; namespace JavaScriptReference { public class Manifest : IHttpHandler { public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) { context.Response.ContentType = "text/cache-manifest"; context.Response.WriteFile(context.Server.MapPath("Manifest.txt")); } public bool IsReusable { get { return false; } } } } The Default.aspx file contains a reference to the manifest. The opening HTML tag in the Default.aspx file looks like this: <html manifest="Manifest.ashx"> Notice that the HTML tag contains a manifest attribute that points to the Manifest.ashx generic handler. Internet Explorer simply ignores this attribute. Every other modern browser will download the manifest when the Default.aspx page is requested. Seeing the Offline Web Application in Action The experience of using an HTML5 Web Application is different with different browsers. When you first open the JavaScript Reference application with Firefox, you get the following warning: Notice that you are provided with the choice of whether you want to use the application offline or not. Browsers other than Firefox, such as Chrome and Safari, do not provide you with this choice. Chrome and Safari will create an offline cache automatically. If you click the Allow button then Firefox will download all of the files listed in the manifest. You can view the files contained in the Firefox offline application cache by typing about:cache in the Firefox address bar: You can view the actual items being cached by clicking the List Cache Entries link: The Offline Web Application experience is different in the case of Google Chrome. You can view the entries in the offline cache by opening the Developer Tools (hit Shift+CTRL+I), selecting the Storage tab, and selecting Application Cache: Notice that you view the status of the Application Cache. In the screen shot above, the status is UNCACHED which means that the files listed in the manifest have not been downloaded and cached yet. The different possible values for the status are included in the HTML5 Offline Web Application standard: UNCACHED – The Application Cache has not been initialized. IDLE – The Application Cache is not currently being updated. CHECKING – The Application Cache is being fetched and checked for updates. DOWNLOADING – The files in the Application Cache are being updated. UPDATEREADY – There is a new version of the Application. OBSOLETE – The contents of the Application Cache are obsolete. Summary In this blog entry, I provided a description of how you can use the HTML5 Offline Web Application feature in the context of an ASP.NET application. I described how this feature is used with the JavaScript Reference Application to store the entire application on a user’s computer. By taking advantage of this new feature of the HTML5 standard, you can improve the performance of your ASP.NET web applications by requiring users of your web application to download your application once and only once. Furthermore, you can enable users to take advantage of your applications anywhere -- regardless of whether or not they are connected to the Internet.

  Read the article

• Why is Postfix trying to connect to other machines SMTP port 25?

  - by TryTryAgain

  Jul 5 11:09:25 relay postfix/smtp[3084]: connect to ab.xyz.com[10.41.0.101]:25: Connection refused Jul 5 11:09:25 relay postfix/smtp[3087]: connect to ab.xyz.com[10.41.0.247]:25: Connection refused Jul 5 11:09:25 relay postfix/smtp[3088]: connect to ab.xyz.com[10.41.0.101]:25: Connection refused Jul 5 11:09:25 relay postfix/smtp[3084]: connect to ab.xyz.com[10.41.0.247]:25: Connection refused Jul 5 11:09:25 relay postfix/smtp[3087]: connect to ab.xyz.com[10.41.0.110]:25: Connection refused Jul 5 11:09:25 relay postfix/smtp[3088]: connect to ab.xyz.com[10.41.0.110]:25: Connection refused Jul 5 11:09:25 relay postfix/smtp[3084]: connect to ab.xyz.com[10.41.0.102]:25: Connection refused Jul 5 11:09:30 relay postfix/smtp[3085]: connect to ab.xyz.com[10.41.0.102]:25: Connection refused Jul 5 11:09:30 relay postfix/smtp[3086]: connect to ab.xyz.com[10.41.0.247]:25: Connection refused Jul 5 11:09:30 relay postfix/smtp[3086]: connect to ab.xyz.com[10.41.0.102]:25: Connection refused Jul 5 11:09:55 relay postfix/smtp[3087]: connect to ab.xyz.com[10.40.40.130]:25: Connection timed out Jul 5 11:09:55 relay postfix/smtp[3084]: connect to ab.xyz.com[10.40.40.130]:25: Connection timed out Jul 5 11:09:55 relay postfix/smtp[3088]: connect to ab.xyz.com[10.40.40.130]:25: Connection timed out Jul 5 11:09:55 relay postfix/smtp[3087]: connect to ab.xyz.com[10.41.0.135]:25: Connection refused Jul 5 11:09:55 relay postfix/smtp[3084]: connect to ab.xyz.com[10.41.0.110]:25: Connection refused Jul 5 11:09:55 relay postfix/smtp[3088]: connect to ab.xyz.com[10.41.0.247]:25: Connection refused Is this a DNS thing, doubtful as I've changed from our local DNS to Google's..still Postfix will occasionally try and connect to ab.xyz.com from a variety of addresses that may or may not have port 25 open and act as mail servers to begin with. Why is Postfix attempting to connect to other machines as seen in the log? Mail is being sent properly, other than that, it appears all is good. Occasionally I'll also see: relay postfix/error[3090]: 3F1AB42132: to=, relay=none, delay=32754, delays=32724/30/0/0, dsn=4.4.1, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: connect to ab.xyz.com[10.41.0.102]:25: Connection refused) I have Postfix setup with very little restrictions: mynetworks = 127.0.0.0/8, 10.0.0.0/8 only. Like I said it appears all mail is getting passed through, but I hate seeing errors and it is confusing me as to why it would be attempting to connect to other machines as seen in the log. Some Output of cat /var/log/mail.log|grep 3F1AB42132 Jul 5 02:04:01 relay postfix/smtpd[1653]: 3F1AB42132: client=unknown[10.41.0.109] Jul 5 02:04:01 relay postfix/cleanup[1655]: 3F1AB42132: message-id= Jul 5 02:04:01 relay postfix/qmgr[1588]: 3F1AB42132: from=, size=3404, nrcpt=1 (queue active) Jul 5 02:04:31 relay postfix/smtp[1634]: 3F1AB42132: to=, relay=none, delay=30, delays=0.02/0/30/0, dsn=4.4.1, status=deferred (connect to ab.xyz.com[10.41.0.110]:25: Connection refused) Jul 5 02:13:58 relay postfix/qmgr[1588]: 3F1AB42132: from=, size=3404, nrcpt=1 (queue active) Jul 5 02:14:28 relay postfix/smtp[1681]: 3F1AB42132: to=, relay=none, delay=628, delays=598/0.01/30/0, dsn=4.4.1, status=deferred (connect to ab.xyz.com[10.41.0.247]:25: Connection refused) Jul 5 02:28:58 relay postfix/qmgr[1588]: 3F1AB42132: from=, size=3404, nrcpt=1 (queue active) Jul 5 02:29:28 relay postfix/smtp[1684]: 3F1AB42132: to=, relay=none, delay=1527, delays=1497/0/30/0, dsn=4.4.1, status=deferred (connect to ab.xyz.com[10.41.0.135]:25: Connection refused) Jul 5 02:58:58 relay postfix/qmgr[1588]: 3F1AB42132: from=, size=3404, nrcpt=1 (queue active) Jul 5 02:59:28 relay postfix/smtp[1739]: 3F1AB42132: to=, relay=none, delay=3327, delays=3297/0/30/0, dsn=4.4.1, status=deferred (connect to ab.xyz.com[10.40.40.130]:25: Connection timed out) Jul 5 03:58:58 relay postfix/qmgr[1588]: 3F1AB42132: from=, size=3404, nrcpt=1 (queue active) Jul 5 03:59:28 relay postfix/smtp[1839]: 3F1AB42132: to=, relay=none, delay=6928, delays=6897/0.03/30/0, dsn=4.4.1, status=deferred (connect to ab.xyz.com[10.41.0.101]:25: Connection refused) Jul 5 04:11:03 relay postfix/qmgr[2039]: 3F1AB42132: from=, size=3404, nrcpt=1 (queue active) Jul 5 04:11:33 relay postfix/error[2093]: 3F1AB42132: to=, relay=none, delay=7653, delays=7622/30/0/0, dsn=4.4.1, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: connect to ab.xyz.com[10.41.0.101]:25: Connection refused) Jul 5 05:21:03 relay postfix/qmgr[2039]: 3F1AB42132: from=, size=3404, nrcpt=1 (queue active) Jul 5 05:21:33 relay postfix/error[2217]: 3F1AB42132: to=, relay=none, delay=11853, delays=11822/30/0/0, dsn=4.4.1, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: connect to ab.xyz.com[10.41.0.101]:25: Connection refused) Jul 5 06:29:25 relay postfix/qmgr[2420]: 3F1AB42132: from=, size=3404, nrcpt=1 (queue active) Jul 5 06:29:55 relay postfix/error[2428]: 3F1AB42132: to=, relay=none, delay=15954, delays=15924/30/0/0.08, dsn=4.4.1, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: connect to ab.xyz.com[10.41.0.101]:25: Connection refused) Jul 5 07:39:24 relay postfix/qmgr[2885]: 3F1AB42132: from=, size=3404, nrcpt=1 (queue active) Jul 5 07:39:54 relay postfix/error[2936]: 3F1AB42132: to=, relay=none, delay=20153, delays=20123/30/0/0, dsn=4.4.1, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: connect to ab.xyz.com[10.40.40.130]:25: Connection timed out)

  Read the article

• top tweets WebLogic Partner Community – November 2011

  - by JuergenKress

  Send us your tweets @wlscommunity #WebLogicCommunity and follow us on twitter http://twitter.com/wlscommunity glassfish GlassFish Marek’s JAX-RS 2.0 content from Devoxx 2011 – bit.ly/sp2NJO chriscmuir chriscmuir New blog post: ADF bug: missing af:column borders in af:table for IE7 – t.co/81np2jug chriscmuir chriscmuir Reading: Oracle’s ADF Rich Client User Interface (RCUI) Guidelines – oracle.com/webfolder/ux/m… netbeans NetBeans Team Bottlenecks be gone! #Java Performance Tuning workshop in Munich w Kirk Pepperdine, Nov 29-Dec 2: ow.ly/7Akh5 OracleBlogs OracleBlogs Creating ADF Faces Comamnd Button at Runtime ow.ly/1fM9dE alexismp Alexis MP blogged "GlassFish Back from Devoxx 2011, Mature Java EE 6 and EE 7 well on its way" – bit.ly/rP8LV0 JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Usage of jQuery in ADF dlvr.it/x3t84 20 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat Webcast: Introducing Oracle WebLogic Server 12c: Developer Deep Dive – Dec 1 – 11am PT / 2pm ET bit.ly/t61W4G oraclepartners ORCL PartnerNetwork Brand new Oracle WebLogic 12c will launch on December 1, 10AM PT with a global Webcast highlighting salient… t.co/aflQQ3IX OracleBlogs OracleBlogs JDeveloper and ADF at UKOUG t.co/2CQTiB9n fnimphiu Frank Nimphius Attending UKOUG? All ADF sessions at a glance: t.co/TcMNTMXp 21 Nov Favorite Retweet Reply JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Free Webinar ‘ADF Task Flows for Beginners’, information and registration t.co/66jXnGgo via javafx4you javafx4you Java Developer Workshop #2 – Dec 1, 2011 @ Oracle Aoyama center in Tokyo t.co/8p9q3W2B AMIS_Services AMIS Services #vacature #Oracle #ADF ontwikkelaars. bit.ly/AMISADF Gun jezelf een nieuwe uitdaging? Meer op: dld.bz/azZ5N OracleBlogs OracleBlogs Launch Invitation: Introducing Oracle WebLogic Server 12c t.co/bRxCKwAk fnimphiu Frank Nimphius The brand new WebLogic 12c will be released on December 1st 2011 !!! Register for online launch event t.co/pPScg4Xh glassfish GlassFish Announcing Oracle WebLogic 12c – t.co/qh8TdFEl AdamBien Adam Bien Sun Coding Conventions–The Only Standard (Stop Inventing): Code written according to the Sun Coding Conventions… t.co/qaUWp5Mz wlscommunity WebLogic Community Launch Invitation: Introducing Oracle WebLogic Server 12c wp.me/p1LMIb-4y andrejusb Andrejus Baranovskis Andrejus Baranovskis’s Blog: Custom Exception Registration for ADF BC EO Attribute fb.me/1m6nXQD52 MNEMONIC01 Michel Schildmeijer Blog by Michel Schildmeijer: "Oracle WebLogic 12c has been announced" bit.ly/vk6WQL glassfish GlassFish Tab Sweep – Coherence, SBT for GlassFish, OSGi in question, Java EE plugins, … t.co/tVIL95lj OracleBlogs OracleBlogs JavaFX 2.0 at Devoxx 2011 ow.ly/1fJ5iT JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Experimenting with ADF BC Application Module Pool Tuning dlvr.it/wjLC1 OracleWebLogic Oracle WebLogic Brand New #WebLogic 12c Launch Event, Dec 1 10am PT. Hasan Rizvi, SVP Fusion Middleware. Developer session. bit.ly/weblogic12clau… JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF PopUp and Esc/Cancel operations. ADF 11g dlvr.it/whrmC JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF BPM Workspace: issue loading ADF task flows t.co/vk1gKPx5 OpenJDK OpenJDK Kelly O’Hair — OpenJDK B24 Available : t.co/1bFws6Nw JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Oracle ADF setting Task flow to use same page definition file of caller page t.co/9k6UIoYZ JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Master Detail Data presentation and CRUD Operations. Detail records in an Editable Popup. ADF 11g t.co/H8uudR0Y JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Entity Attribute Validation Rule (Business Rule) based on Master View Object Attribute Example ADF 11g t.co/1agxEQcZ oracletechnet Justin Kestelyn Webcast: Oracle WebLogic Server 12c Launch/Developer Deep-Dive (Dec. 1) t.co/OVBdGKzC JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF How to render different node icons for different tree levels dlvr.it/wY2jL JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Query Component with ‘dynamic’ view criteria dlvr.it/wXlF1 JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF How to play Flash .swf file in Oracle ADF application t.co/zaSONWAH Devoxx Devoxx Duke at the #Devoxx 2011 Noxx Party! pic.twitter.com/bVJWyu1Z brhubart Bob Rhubart Adam Leftik: JavaEE adoption continues to increase, reaching 40+ million downloads this year. #qconsf11 JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Free #ODTUG Seminar – #ADF Task Flows for Beginners – sign up today. www3.gotomeeting.com/register/13372… java Java New Project: OpenJFX j.mp/tI4k3s #javafx #openjdk #devoxx << JavaFX is open source! /via frankmunz Frank Munz WebLogic 12c launch event Dec 1st. t.co/jQKinBqN brhubart Bob Rhubart Spring to Java EE Migration | David Heffelfinger feedly.com/k/td8ccG odtug ODTUG Mark your calendars and register for our upcoming webinars: bit.ly/dWKG1C ADF Task Flows & Measuring Scalability & Performance w/TCP myfear Markus Eisele Anybody willing to take this question? Using #JavaMail with #Weblogic Server bit.ly/stJOET AMIS_Services AMIS Services 20-22 december #training #Oracle JHeadstart #11g, productief ontwikkelen met ADF. Schrijf je in op: amis.nl/trainingen/ora… AdamBien Adam Bien Stress Testing Java EE 6 Applications – Free Article In Free Java Magazine: In the November / December 2011 issu… bit.ly/vmzKkc java Java New Tech Article: Spring to #JavaEE Migration t.co/0EvdHNxb OracleBlogs OracleBlogs WebLogic Java record SPARC T4-4 Servers Set World Record on SPECjEnterprise2010 t.co/Eu1b6ZE0 OracleBlogs OracleBlogs What Is JavaFX? ow.ly/1frb6I OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat The openJDK Windows Binary Download | Adam Bien ow.ly/7fRiG wlscommunity WebLogic Community WebLogic – Java record – SPARC T4-4 Servers Set World Record on SPECjEnterprise2010 glassfish GlassFish "youtube.com/java" blogs.oracle.com/theaquarium/en… OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat Beta Testing Concludes: 1Z1-102 – "Oracle WebLogic Server 11g: System Administration I" (Oracle Certification) ow.ly/7fJCl wlscommunity WebLogic Community A deep dive in Oracle WebLogic! @ Contribute – November 29th, 2011 Kontich Belgium wp.me/p1LMIb-4u glassfish GlassFish Gartner’s Latest Enterprise Application Server Magic Quadrant – Oracle’s leadership t.co/aYDqipD8 OpenJDK OpenJDK Terrence Barr – Open sourcing of JavaFX: OpenJFX Project proposed – bit.ly/uKVnEl OpenJDK OpenJDK Maurizio Cimadamore – Testing overload resolution: bit.ly/vgXAbQ java Java Java User Groups Roundup, November 2011 : t.co/hea6vVnk /via @robilad << in German JavaSpotlight The Java Spotlight Java Spotlight Episode 54: Stuart Marks on the Coinification of JDK7 goo.gl/fb/3UXoM OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat Article Series: Migrating Spring to Java EE 6 | Arun Gupta bit.ly/twUJtz glassfish GlassFish New Java EE 6 Hands-On lab, Devoxx-approved! bit.ly/vup5uE java Java Brian Goetz’s enthusiasm for Java is palpable! #devoxx interview adf_emg ADF EMG "ADF testing with a mock framework" – what is a mock framework? Visit the forum and see: groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/… java Java Taping a bunch of interviews today with Java experts at #devoxx. View on Parleys.com tomorrow. glassfish GlassFish New screencast to configure and run a cross-machine cluster using GlassFish 3.1.1 in < 7 mins faissalb.blogspot.com/2011/11/glassf… (via @bfaissal) glassfish GlassFish Oracle Contributor Agreements – New Home! bit.ly/tD2eLo OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat Java Magazine – by and for the Java Community- inaugural issue bit.ly/tTv8UD OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat The Heroes of Java: Michael Hüttermann | @MyFear bit.ly/rYYOFe javafx4you javafx4you Development with #JavaFX on #Linux j.mp/uOpe69 #not_for_the_faint_of_heart java Java Contribute Technical Questions for Java Experts at #devoxx bit.ly/up2cN0 netbeans NetBeans Team A simple REST service using #NetBeans 7, #Java Servlet, and #JAXB: t.co/pKkufsD8 AdamBien Adam Bien The most beautiful, and portable slide of the whole #jaxcon for "Die Hard Java EE 6"session checked-in: kenai.com/projects/javae… jaxlondon JAX London Mark Little’s (@nmcl) excellent keynote from #jaxlondon ‘Middleware Everywhere…’ is available in full – t.co/8vBmtDJ1 AdamBien Adam Bien Calculator sample from "Die Hard Java EE 6" #jaxcon session checked-in: t.co/0UqaULfg OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat ADF Faces – a logic bomb in the order of bean instantiations | @ChrisCMuir bit.ly/vjqRaZ OracleBlogs OracleBlogs ODI 11g y JMS Queue de Weblogic ow.ly/1fzfQJ frankmunz Frank Munz Which WebLogic book do you recommend? Review of S. Alapati’s WebLogic 11g Administration Handbook. bit.ly/rP0RtW JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF PageFlowScope with Unbounded Task Flows: the magic sauce for multi-browser-tab support in JDeveloper ADF applications dlvr.it/vNFgn OracleBlogs OracleBlogs 3 New ADF Insider Essential training videos published. ow.ly/1fz94q OracleBlogs OracleBlogs Weblogic Server 11gR1 PS2: Administration Essentials book and eBook t.co/ykzwIaqs OracleBlogs OracleBlogs Specialized Partners Only! New Service to Promote Your Events t.co/qTgyEpY4 wlscommunity WebLogic Community Oracle Weblogic Server 11gR1 PS2: Administration Essentials book and eBook andrejusb Andrejus Baranovskis Andrejus Baranovskis’s Blog: Stress Testing Oracle ADF BC Applications – Intern… andrejusb.blogspot.com/2011/11/stress… OracleBlogs OracleBlogs Frank Nimphius presenting a full day of Oracle ADF in Switzerland ow.ly/1fxU78 java Java #JavaEE and #GlassFish: #JavaOne11 Slides, Demos, Replays, Hands-on Labs t.co/tLM0ehrD OracleBlogs OracleBlogs weblogic.security.SecurityInitializationException: Authentication for user weblogic denied ow.ly/1fxmiu glassfish GlassFish The Last Migration – GlassFish Wiki : t.co/Dc5FT1SJ OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat A Successful Year of @MiddlewareMagic t.co/amcGGTTk OracleWebLogic Oracle WebLogic Unbeatable Performance for your Cloud Applications with Exalogic, #OracleCoherence and #WebLogic. ow.ly/7lYKm OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat Stress Testing Oracle ADF BC Applications – Passivation and Activation | @AndrejusB bit.ly/sASssL OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat Review: "Oracle Weblogic Server 11gR1 PS2: Administration Essentials" by Michel Schildmeijer | @MyFear t.co/ll6ra0J9 OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat GlassFish 3.1.2 themes and features | The Aquarium bit.ly/vVqr9r Andre_van_Dalen Andre van Dalen Masterclass: Advanced Oracle ADF 11g lnkd.in/M_45Pi AdamBien Adam Bien The "lunch" edition of RentACar is pushed into: kenai.com/projects/javae… #wjax AdamBien Adam Bien In munich, room munich at #wjax. Welcome to #javaee workshop. Gather your questions. 15 minutes to go lucasjellema Lucas Jellema Review by Markus of Michel’s book: t.co/41U9wvOb In short: valuable for novice WLS users, maybe not so much for die-hard WLS admin. biemond Edwin Biemond “@myfear: [blog] #Review: "#Weblogic Server 11gR1 PS2: Administration Essentials" t.co/LsODcb3e” got the same conclusion on amazon glassfish GlassFish Practical advice for deploying Lift apps to GlassFish: bit.ly/t3KUml glassfish GlassFish The unbearable lightness of GlassFish t.co/v9307SEJ javafx4you javafx4you Building Java EE applications in JavaFX: JavaFX 2.0, FXML and Spring j.mp/tiMDUh andrejusb Andrejus Baranovskis Andrejus Baranovskis’s Blog: Stress Testing Oracle ADF BC Applications – Passiv… andrejusb.blogspot.com/2011/11/stress… wlscommunity WebLogic Community “@AMIS_Services: Follow @amis_services To Win a copy of SOA Suite 11g Handbook by @lucasjellema dld.bz/axD22 pls RT” excellent book! glassfish GlassFish GlassFish 3.1.2 themes and features bit.ly/uEc6uZ biemond Edwin Biemond Weblogic pre-sales exam was hard, you really need to know the versions , upgrade path and have a score above 80% monkchips James Governor The Rise and Fall and Rise of Java. JAX 2011 london keynote. how big data and the web are floating the boat. slidesha.re/u3Kzlo glassfish GlassFish Tab Sweep – Jersey, Hudson, GlassFish Hosting, GC’s compared, Spring to JavaEE, Modularity, … bit.ly/u9Cc30 oracletechnet Justin Kestelyn Oracle Tuxedo: A renewed acquaintance t.co/gp0mmf20 OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse, OEPE 11.1.1.8 bit.ly/tC3eKp OracleBlogs OracleBlogs NetBeans HTML Editor and Groovy Editor in a Multiview Component (Part 2) ow.ly/1ftCeI myfear Markus Eisele [blog] #Oracle 2008 – 2011 in Gartners Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Application Servers t.co/2Bs1vgMZ myfear Markus Eisele [blog] #EclipseCon Europe – Java 7 in the Enterprise goo.gl/fb/r80df #ece2011 #java7 javafx4you javafx4you JavaFX 2.0 for Mac build b07 (developer preview) is available for download j.mp/vSwmBP Enjoy! #JavaFX #Mac OracleBlogs OracleBlogs A deep dive in Oracle WebLogic! @ Contribute November 29th, 2011 Kontich Belgium ow.ly/1fsEZs arungupta Arun Gupta #JavaEE7 slides from #jaxlondon and #jfall11 now available: slidesha.re/sh4iFq AdamBien Adam Bien Just checked-in the results of the #jaxlondon community night (somehow beer related): kenai.com/projects/javae… glassfish GlassFish GlassFish Podcast Episode #080 – User Stories, Part 3: Adam Bien and Sean Comerford (ESPN) blogs.oracle.com/glassfishpodca… glassfish GlassFish Story: t.co/jQPqihJb using GlassFish blogs.oracle.com/stories/entry/… "3000+ requests/sec" and more enterprisejava Java EE Mentions New blog post WebLogic deployment status checks for CI wp.me/pOOSs-F #weblogic #continuousintegration /vi… bit.ly/uZz0fk The become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please first login at http://partner.oracle.com and then visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: twitter,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,OPN,Oracle,Jürgen Kress

  Read the article

• Visual Studio 2013, ASP.NET MVC 5 Scaffolded Controls, and Bootstrap

  - by plitwin

  A few days ago, I created an ASP.NET MVC 5 project in the brand new Visual Studio 2013. I added some model classes and then proceeded to scaffold a controller class and views using the Entity Framework. Scaffolding Some Views Visual Studio 2013, by default, uses the Bootstrap 3 responsive CSS framework. Great; after all, we all want our web sites to be responsive and work well on mobile devices. Here’s an example of a scaffolded Create view as shown in Google Chrome browser   Looks pretty good. Okay, so let’s increase the width of the Title, Description, Address, and Date/Time textboxes. And decrease the width of the  State and MaxActors textbox controls. Can’t be that hard… Digging Into the Code Let’s take a look at the scaffolded Create.cshtml file. Here’s a snippet of code behind the Create view. Pretty simple stuff. @using (Html.BeginForm()) { @Html.AntiForgeryToken() <div class="form-horizontal"> <h4>RandomAct</h4> <hr /> @Html.ValidationSummary(true) <div class="form-group"> @Html.LabelFor(model => model.Title, new { @class = "control-label col-md-2" }) <div class="col-md-10"> @Html.EditorFor(model => model.Title) @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Title) </div> </div> <div class="form-group"> @Html.LabelFor(model => model.Description, new { @class = "control-label col-md-2" }) <div class="col-md-10"> @Html.EditorFor(model => model.Description) @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Description) </div> </div> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } A little more digging and I discover that there are three CSS files of importance in how the page is rendered: boostrap.css (and its minimized cohort) and site.css as shown below.   The Root of the Problem And here’s the root of the problem which you’ll find the following CSS in Site.css: /* Set width on the form input elements since they're 100% wide by default */ input, select, textarea { max-width: 280px; } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Yes, Microsoft is for some reason setting the maximum width of all input, select, and textarea controls to 280 pixels. Not sure the motivation behind this, but until you change this or overrride this by assigning the form controls to some other CSS class, your controls will never be able to be wider than 280px. The Fix Okay, so here’s the deal: I hope to become very competent in all things Bootstrap in the near future, but I don’t think you should have to become a Bootstrap guru in order to modify some scaffolded control widths. And you don’t. Here is the solution I came up with: Find the aforementioned CSS code in SIte.css and change it to something more tenable. Such as: /* Set width on the form input elements since they're 100% wide by default */ input, select, textarea { max-width: 600px; } Because the @Html.EditorFor html helper doesn’t support the passing of HTML attributes, you will need to repalce any @Html.EditorFor() helpers with @Html.TextboxFor(), @Html.TextAreaFor, @Html.CheckBoxFor, etc. helpers, and then add a custom width attribute to each control you wish to modify. Thus, the earlier stretch of code might end up looking like this: @using (Html.BeginForm()) { @Html.AntiForgeryToken() <div class="form-horizontal"> <h4>Random Act</h4> <hr /> @Html.ValidationSummary(true) <div class="form-group"> @Html.LabelFor(model => model.Title, new { @class = "control-label col-md-2" }) <div class="col-md-10"> @Html.TextBoxFor(model => model.Title, new { style = "width: 400px" }) @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Title) </div> </div> <div class="form-group"> @Html.LabelFor(model => model.Description, new { @class = "control-label col-md-2" }) <div class="col-md-10"> @Html.TextAreaFor(model => model.Description, new { style = "width: 400px" }) @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Description) </div> </div> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Resulting Form Here’s what the page looks like after the fix: Technorati Tags: ASP.NET MVC,ASP.NET MVC 5,Bootstrap

  Read the article

• Replacing jQuery.live() with jQuery.on()

  - by Rick Strahl

  jQuery 1.9 and 1.10 have introduced a host of changes, but for the most part these changes are mostly transparent to existing application usage of jQuery. After spending some time last week with a few of my projects and going through them with a specific eye for jQuery failures I found that for the most part there wasn't a big issue. The vast majority of code continues to run just fine with either 1.9 or 1.10 (which are supposed to be in sync but with 1.10 removing support for legacy Internet Explorer pre-9.0 versions). However, one particular change in the new versions has caused me quite a bit of update trouble, is the removal of the jQuery.live() function. This is my own fault I suppose - .live() has been deprecated for a while, but with 1.9 and later it was finally removed altogether from jQuery. In the past I had quite a bit of jQuery code that used .live() and it's one of the things that's holding back my upgrade process, although I'm slowly cleaning up my code and switching to the .on() function as the replacement. jQuery.live() jQuery.live() was introduced a long time ago to simplify handling events on matched elements that exist currently on the document and those that are are added in the future and also match the selector. jQuery uses event bubbling, special event binding, plus some magic using meta data attached to a parent level element to check and see if the original target event element matches the selected selected elements (for more info see Elijah Manor's comment below). An Example Assume a list of items like the following in HTML for example and further assume that the items in this list can be appended to at a later point. In this app there's a smallish initial list that loads to start, and as the user scrolls towards the end of the initial small list more items are loaded dynamically and added to the list.<div id="PostItemContainer" class="scrollbox"> <div class="postitem" data-id="4z6qhomm"> <div class="post-icon"></div> <div class="postitemheader"><a href="show/4z6qhomm" target="Content">1999 Buick Century For Sale!</a></div> <div class="postitemprice rightalign">$ 3,500 O.B.O.</div> <div class="smalltext leftalign">Jun. 07 @ 1:06am</div> <div class="post-byline">- Vehicles - Automobiles</div> </div> <div class="postitem" data-id="2jtvuu17"> <div class="postitemheader"><a href="show/2jtvuu17" target="Content">Toyota VAN 1987</a></div> <div class="postitemprice rightalign">$950</div> <div class="smalltext leftalign">Jun. 07 @ 12:29am</div> <div class="post-byline">- Vehicles - Automobiles</div> </div> … </div> With the jQuery.live() function you could easily select elements and hook up a click handler like this:$(".postitem").live("click", function() {...}); Simple and perfectly readable. The behavior of the .live handler generally was the same as the corresponding simple event handlers like .click(), except that you have to explicitly name the event instead of using one of the methods. Re-writing with jQuery.on() With .live() removed in 1.9 and later we have to re-write .live() code above with an alternative. The jQuery documentation points you at the .on() or .delegate() functions to update your code. jQuery.on() is a more generic event handler function, and it's what jQuery uses internally to map the high level event functions like .click(),.change() etc. that jQuery exposes. Using jQuery.on() however is not a one to one replacement of the .live() function. While .on() can handle events directly and use the same syntax as .live() did, you'll find if you simply switch out .live() with .on() that events on not-yet existing elements will not fire. IOW, the key feature of .live() is not working. You can use .on() to get the desired effect however, but you have to change the syntax to explicitly handle the event you're interested in on the container and then provide a filter selector to specify which elements you are actually interested in for handling the event for. Sounds more complicated than it is and it's easier to see with an example. For the list above hooking .postitem clicks, using jQuery.on() looks like this:$("#PostItemContainer").on("click", ".postitem", function() {...}); You specify a container that can handle the .click event and then provide a filter selector to find the child elements that trigger the  the actual event. So here #PostItemContainer contains many .postitems, whose click events I want to handle. Any container will do including document, but I tend to use the container closest to the elements I actually want to handle the events on to minimize the event bubbling that occurs to capture the event. With this code I get the same behavior as with .live() and now as new .postitem elements are added the click events are always available. Sweet. Here's the full event signature for the .on() function: .on( events [, selector ] [, data ], handler(eventObject) ) Note that the selector is optional - if you omit it you essentially create a simple event handler that handles the event directly on the selected object. The filter/child selector required if you want life-like - uh, .live() like behavior to happen. While it's a bit more verbose than what .live() did, .on() provides the same functionality by being more explicit on what your parent container for trapping events is. .on() is good Practice even for ordinary static Element Lists As a side note, it's a good practice to use jQuery.on() or jQuery.delegate() for events in most cases anyway, using this 'container event trapping' syntax. That's because rather than requiring lots of event handlers on each of the child elements (.postitem in the sample above), there's just one event handler on the container, and only when clicked does jQuery drill down to find the matching filter element and tries to match it to the originating element. In the early days of jQuery I used manually build handlers that did this and manually drilled from the event object into the originalTarget to determine if it's a matching element. With later versions of jQuery the various event functions in jQuery essentially provide this functionality out of the box with functions like .on() and .delegate(). All of this is nothing new, but I thought I'd write this up because I have on a few occasions forgotten what exactly was needed to replace the many .live() function calls that litter my code - especially older code. This will be a nice reminder next time I have a memory blank on this topic. And maybe along the way I've helped one or two of you as well to clean up your .live() code…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in jQuery   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

  Read the article

• ASP.NET and WIF: Showing custom profile username as User.Identity.Name

  - by DigiMortal

  I am building ASP.NET MVC application that uses external services to authenticate users. For ASP.NET users are fully authenticated when they are redirected back from external service. In system they are logically authenticated when they have created user profiles. In this posting I will show you how to force ASP.NET MVC controller actions to demand existence of custom user profiles. Using external authentication sources with AppFabric Suppose you want to be user-friendly and you don’t force users to keep in mind another username/password when they visit your site. You can accept logins from different popular sites like Windows Live, Facebook, Yahoo, Google and many more. If user has account in some of these services then he or she can use his or her account to log in to your site. If you have community site then you usually have support for user profiles too. Some of these providers give you some information about users and other don’t. So only thing in common you get from all those providers is some unique ID that identifies user in service uniquely. Image above shows you how new user joins your site. Existing users who already have profile are directed to users homepage after they are authenticated. You can read more about how to solve semi-authorized users problem from my blog posting ASP.NET MVC: Using ProfileRequiredAttribute to restrict access to pages. The other problem is related to usernames that we don’t get from all identity providers. Why is IIdentity.Name sometimes empty? The problem is described more specifically in my blog posting Identifying AppFabric Access Control Service users uniquely. Shortly the problem is that not all providers have claim called http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/name. The following diagram illustrates what happens when user got token from AppFabric ACS and was redirected to your site. Now, when user was authenticated using Windows Live ID then we don’t have name claim in token and that’s why User.Identity.Name is empty. Okay, we can force nameidentifier to be used as name (we can do it in web.config file) but we have user profiles and we want username from profile to be shown when username is asked. Modifying name claim Now let’s force IClaimsIdentity to use username from our user profiles. You can read more about my profiles topic from my blog posting ASP.NET MVC: Using ProfileRequiredAttribute to restrict access to pages and you can find some useful extension methods for claims identity from my blog posting Identifying AppFabric Access Control Service users uniquely. Here is what we do to set User.Identity.Name: we will check if user has profile, if user has profile we will check if User.Identity.Name matches the name given by profile, if names does not match then probably identity provider returned some name for user, we will remove name claim and recreate it with correct username, we will add new name claim to claims collection. All this stuff happens in Application_AuthorizeRequest event of our web application. The code is here. protected void Application_AuthorizeRequest() {     if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(User.Identity.Name))     {         var identity = User.Identity;         var profile = identity.GetProfile();         if (profile != null)         {             if (profile.UserName != identity.Name)             {                 identity.RemoveName();                   var claim = new Claim("http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/name", profile.UserName);                 var claimsIdentity = (IClaimsIdentity)identity;                 claimsIdentity.Claims.Add(claim);             }         }     } } RemoveName extension method is simple – it looks for name claims of IClaimsIdentity claims collection and removes them. public static void RemoveName(this IIdentity identity) {     if (identity == null)         return;       var claimsIndentity = identity as ClaimsIdentity;     if (claimsIndentity == null)         return;       for (var i = claimsIndentity.Claims.Count - 1; i >= 0; i--)     {         var claim = claimsIndentity.Claims[i];         if (claim.ClaimType == "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/name")             claimsIndentity.Claims.RemoveAt(i);     } } And we are done. Now User.Identity.Name returns the username from user profile and you can use it to show username of current user everywhere in your site. Conclusion Mixing AppFabric Access Control Service and Windows Identity Foundation with custom authorization logic is not impossible but a little bit tricky. This posting finishes my little series about AppFabric ACS and WIF for this time and hopefully you found some useful tricks, tips, hacks and code pieces you can use in your own applications.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, April 11, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, April 11, 2010New ProjectsArkzia: This Silverlight game.CodePlex Wiki Editor: CodePlex Wiki Editor makes it easier for CodePlex users to create their wiki documentations. This project offer a rich interface for the edition...Evaluate: Evaluate & Comet DWR like .NET library with powerfull Evaluate and Ajax Comet support. Also, you may use Evaluate library in your own .Net applicat...FamAccountor: 家庭记账薄Horadric: This is common tools freamwork!K8061.Managed: This is a solution to use the Velleman Extended K8061 USB Interface board with .net and to have a nice wrapper handling most of the overhead for us...Latent semantic analysis: all you need is to use!: Baggr is feed aggregator with web interface, user rating and LSA filter. Enjoy it!LIF7 ==> RISK : TOWER DEFENSE: Université Lyon 1, L2 MATH-INFO 2009-2010 Semestre de printemps Projet RISK : TOWER DEFENSE Membres : Jessica El Melhem, Vincent Sébille, et Jonat...Managed ESL Suite: Managed ESL Suite using C# for FreeSWITCH Omni-Tool - A program version concept of the tool used in Mass Effect.: A program version concept of the tool used in Mass Effect. It will support little apps (plugins) that run inside the UI. Its talor mainly at develo...PdxCodeCamp: Web application for Portland Code CampProjeto Vírus: Desenvolvimento do Jogo Virus em XNAsilverlight control - stars with rounded corners: Draw stars and cogs including rounded cornersSilverlight MathParser: Implementation of mathematical expressions parser to compute and functions.turing machine simulator: Project for JCE in course SW engeenering. Turing Machine simulator with GUI.WpD - Wallpapers Downloader: You can easy download wallpapers to your computer without any advertising or registration. On 5 minutes you can download so many wallpapers!New ReleasesAJAX Control Framework: v1.0.0.0: New AJAX project that helps you create AJAX enabled controls. Make use of control level AJAX methods, a Script Manager that works like you'd expect...AutoFixture: Version 1.1: This is version 1.1 of AutoFixture. This release contains no known bugs. Compared to Release Candidate 1 for version 1.1, there are no changes. Ho...AutoPoco: AutoPoco 0.3: Method Invocation in configuration Custom type providers during configuration Method invocation for generationBacicworx (Basic Services Framework): 3.0.10.410 (Beta): Major update, winnowing, and recode of the library. Removed redundant classses and methods which have similar functionality to those available in ...Bluetooth Radar: Version 1.5: Mostly UI and Animation Changes.BUtil: BUtil 4.9: 1. Icons of kneo are almost removed 2. Deployment was moved to codeplex.com 3. Adding of storages was unavailable when any of storages are used FIXEDcrudwork library: crudwork 2.2.0.3: few bug fixes new object viewer - allow the user to view and change an object through the property grid and/or the simple XML editor pivot table ...EnhSim: Release v1.9.8.5: Release v1.9.8.5Removed the debugging output from the Armor Penetration change.EnhSim: Release v1.9.8.6: Release v1.9.8.6Updated release to include the correct version of EnhSimGUIEvaluate: Evaluate Library: This file contains Evaluate library source code under Visual Studio project. Also, there is a sample project to see the use.ExcelDna: ExcelDna Version 0.25: This is an important bugfix release, with the following changes: Fix case where unpacked .config temp file might not be deleted. Fix compiler pro...FamAccountor: 家庭账薄 预览版v0.0.1: 家庭账薄 预览版v0.0.1 该版本提供基本功能，还有待扩展! Feature: 实现基本添加、编辑、删除功能。FamAccountor: 家庭账薄 预览版v0.0.2: 家庭账薄 预览版v0.0.2 该版本提供基本功能，还有待扩展! Feature: 添加账户管理功能。Folder Bookmarks: Folder Bookmarks 1.4.2: This is the latest version of Folder Bookmarks (1.4.2), with general improvements. It has an installer - it will create a directory 'CPascoe' in My...GKO Libraries: GKO Libraries 0.3 Beta: Added Silverlight support for Gko.Utils Added ExtensionsHash Calculator: HashCalculator 1.2: HashCalculator 1.2HD-Trailers.NET Downloader: Version: TrailersOnly if set to 'true' only titles with 'trailer' in the title will be download MinTrailerSize Added a minimum trailer size, this avoids t...Home Access Plus+: v3.2.6.0: v3.2.5.1 Release Change Log: Add lesson naming Fixed a bug in the help desk which was rendering the wrong URL for tickets Planning has started ...HTML Ruby: 6.20.0: All new concept, all new code. Because this release does not support complex ruby annotations, "Furigana Injector" is not supported by this release...HTML Ruby: 6.20.1: Fixed problem where ruby with closed tags but no rb tag will result in empty page Added support for complex ruby annotation (limited single ruby)...K8061.Managed: K8061.Managed: This is a pre-compilled K8061.Managed.DLL file release 1.0.Kooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 2.1.0.0: Users of Kooboo CMS 2.0, please use the "Check updates" feature under System to upgrade New featuresWebDav support You can now use tools like w...Kooboo forum: Kooboo Forum Module for 2.1.0.0: Compatible with Kooboo cms 2.1.0.0 Upgrade to MVC 2Kooboo GoogleAnalytics: Kooboo GoogleAnalytics Module for 2.1.0.0: Compatible with Kooboo cms 2.1.0.0 Upgrade to MVC 2Kooboo wiki: Kooboo CMS Wiki module for 2.1.0.0: Compatible with Kooboo cms 2.1.0.0 Upgrade to MVC 2Mavention: Mavention Simple SiteMapPath: Mavention Simple SiteMapPath is a custom control that renders breadcrumbs as an unordered list what makes it a perfect solution for breadcrumbs on ...MetaSharp: MetaSharp v0.3: MetaSharp v0.3 Roadmap: Oslo Independence Custom Grammar library Improved build environment dogfooding Project structure simplificationsRoTwee: RoTwee (10.0.0.7): New feature of this version is support for mouse wheel. You can rotate tweets rotating mouse wheel.silverlight control - stars with rounded corners: first step: These are the first examples.Silverlight MathParser: Silverlight MathParser 1.0: Implementation of mathematical expressions parser to compute and functions.SimpleGeo.NET: SimpleGeo.NET example website project: ConfigurationYou must change these three configuration values in AppSettings.config: Google Maps API key: for the maps on the test site. Get one he...StickyTweets: 0.6.0: Version 0.6.0 Code - PERFORMANCE Hook into Async WinInet to perform async requests without adding an additional thread Code - Verify that async r...System.Html: Version 1.3; fixed bugs and improved performance: This release incorporates bug fixes, a new normalize method proposed by RudolfHenning of Codeplex.VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30410.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVFPX: FoxTabs 0.9.2: The following issues were addressed: 26744 24954 24767Visual Studio DSite: Advanced Guessing Number Game (Visual C++ 2008): A guessing number game made in visual c 2008.WpD - Wallpapers Downloader: WpD v0.1: My first release, I hope you enjoyMost Popular ProjectsWBFS ManagerRawrASP.NET Ajax LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseAJAX Control ToolkitSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesFacebook Developer ToolkitMost Active ProjectsRawrnopCommerce. Open Source online shop e-commerce solution.AutoPocopatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryShweet: SharePoint 2010 Team Messaging built with PexFarseer Physics EngineNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterBlogEngine.NETBeanProxy

  Read the article

• Back to Basics: When does a .NET Assembly Dependency get loaded

  - by Rick Strahl

  When we work on typical day to day applications, it's easy to forget some of the core features of the .NET framework. For me personally it's been a long time since I've learned about some of the underlying CLR system level services even though I rely on them on a daily basis. I often think only about high level application constructs and/or high level framework functionality, but the low level stuff is often just taken for granted. Over the last week at DevConnections I had all sorts of low level discussions with other developers about the inner workings of this or that technology (especially in light of my Low Level ASP.NET Architecture talk and the Razor Hosting talk). One topic that came up a couple of times and ended up a point of confusion even amongst some seasoned developers (including some folks from Microsoft <snicker>) is when assemblies actually load into a .NET process. There are a number of different ways that assemblies are loaded in .NET. When you create a typical project assemblies usually come from: The Assembly reference list of the top level 'executable' project The Assembly references of referenced projects Dynamically loaded at runtime via AppDomain/Reflection loading In addition .NET automatically loads mscorlib (most of the System namespace) the boot process that hosts the .NET runtime in EXE apps, or some other kind of runtime hosting environment (runtime hosting in servers like IIS, SQL Server or COM Interop). In hosting environments the runtime host may also pre-load a bunch of assemblies on its own (for example the ASP.NET host requires all sorts of assemblies just to run itself, before ever routing into your user specific code). Assembly Loading The most obvious source of loaded assemblies is the top level application's assembly reference list. You can add assembly references to a top level application and those assembly references are then available to the application. In a nutshell, referenced assemblies are not immediately loaded - they are loaded on the fly as needed. So regardless of whether you have an assembly reference in a top level project, or a dependent assembly assemblies typically load on an as needed basis, unless explicitly loaded by user code. The same is true of dependent assemblies. To check this out I ran a simple test: I have a utility assembly Westwind.Utilities which is a general purpose library that can work in any type of project. Due to a couple of small requirements for encoding and a logging piece that allows logging Web content (dependency on HttpContext.Current) this utility library has a dependency on System.Web. Now System.Web is a pretty large assembly and generally you'd want to avoid adding it to a non-Web project if it can be helped. So I created a Console Application that loads my utility library: You can see that the top level Console app a reference to Westwind.Utilities and System.Data (beyond the core .NET libs). The Westwind.Utilities project on the other hand has quite a few dependencies including System.Web. I then add a main program that accesses only a simple utillity method in the Westwind.Utilities library that doesn't require any of the classes that access System.Web: static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine(StringUtils.NewStringId()); Console.ReadLine(); } StringUtils.NewStringId() calls into Westwind.Utilities, but it doesn't rely on System.Web. Any guesses what the assembly list looks like when I stop the code on the ReadLine() command? I'll wait here while you think about it… … … So, when I stop on ReadLine() and then fire up Process Explorer and check the assembly list I get: We can see here that .NET has not actually loaded any of the dependencies of the Westwind.Utilities assembly. Also not loaded is the top level System.Data reference even though it's in the dependent assembly list of the top level project. Since this particular function I called only uses core System functionality (contained in mscorlib) there's in fact nothing else loaded beyond the main application and my Westwind.Utilities assembly that contains the method accessed. None of the dependencies of Westwind.Utilities loaded. If you were to open the assembly in a disassembler like Reflector or ILSpy, you would however see all the compiled in dependencies. The referenced assemblies are in the dependency list and they are loadable, but they are not immediately loaded by the application. In other words the C# compiler and .NET linker are smart enough to figure out the dependencies based on the code that actually is referenced from your application and any dependencies cascading down into the dependencies from your top level application into the referenced assemblies. In the example above the usage requirement is pretty obvious since I'm only calling a single static method and then exiting the app, but in more complex applications these dependency relationships become very complicated - however it's all taken care of by the compiler and linker figuring out what types and members are actually referenced and including only those assemblies that are in fact referenced in your code or required by any of your dependencies. The good news here is: That if you are referencing an assembly that has a dependency on something like System.Web in a few places that are not actually accessed by any of your code or any dependent assembly code that you are calling, that assembly is never loaded into memory! Some Hosting Environments pre-load Assemblies The load behavior can vary however. In Console and desktop applications we have full control over assembly loading so we see the core CLR behavior. However other environments like ASP.NET for example will preload referenced assemblies explicitly as part of the startup process - primarily to minimize load conflicts. Specifically ASP.NET pre-loads all assemblies referenced in the assembly list and the /bin folder. So in Web applications it definitely pays to minimize your top level assemblies if they are not used. Understanding when Assemblies Load To clarify and see it actually happen what I described in the first example , let's look at a couple of other scenarios. To see assemblies loading at runtime in real time lets create a utility function to print out loaded assemblies to the console: public static void PrintAssemblies() { var assemblies = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies(); foreach (var assembly in assemblies) { Console.WriteLine(assembly.GetName()); } } Now let's look at the first scenario where I have class method that references internally uses System.Web. In the first scenario lets add a method to my main program like this: static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine(StringUtils.NewStringId()); Console.ReadLine(); PrintAssemblies(); } public static void WebLogEntry() { var entry = new WebLogEntry(); entry.UpdateFromRequest(); Console.WriteLine(entry.QueryString); } UpdateFromWebRequest() internally accesses HttpContext.Current to read some information of the ASP.NET Request object so it clearly needs a reference System.Web to work. In this first example, the method that holds the calling code is never called, but exists as a static method that can potentially be called externally at some point. What do you think will happen here with the assembly loading? Will System.Web load in this example? No - it doesn't. Because the WebLogEntry() method is never called by the mainline application (or anywhere else) System.Web is not loaded. .NET dynamically loads assemblies as code that needs it is called. No code references the WebLogEntry() method and so System.Web is never loaded. Next, let's add the call to this method, which should trigger System.Web to be loaded because a dependency exists. Let's change the code to: static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine(StringUtils.NewStringId()); Console.WriteLine("--- Before:"); PrintAssemblies(); WebLogEntry(); Console.WriteLine("--- After:"); PrintAssemblies(); Console.ReadLine(); } public static void WebLogEntry() { var entry = new WebLogEntry(); entry.UpdateFromRequest(); Console.WriteLine(entry.QueryString); } Looking at the code now, when do you think System.Web will be loaded? Will the before list include it? Yup System.Web gets loaded, but only after it's actually referenced. In fact, just until before the call to UpdateFromRequest() System.Web is not loaded - it only loads when the method is actually called and requires the reference in the executing code. Moral of the Story So what have we learned - or maybe remembered again? Dependent Assembly References are not pre-loaded when an application starts (by default) Dependent Assemblies that are not referenced by executing code are never loaded Dependent Assemblies are just in time loaded when first referenced in code All of this is nothing new - .NET has always worked like this. But it's good to have a refresher now and then and go through the exercise of seeing it work in action. It's not one of those things we think about everyday, and as I found out last week, I couldn't remember exactly how it worked since it's been so long since I've learned about this. And apparently I'm not the only one as several other people I had discussions with in relation to loaded assemblies also didn't recall exactly what should happen or assumed incorrectly that just having a reference automatically loads the assembly. The moral of the story for me is: Trying at all costs to eliminate an assembly reference from a component is not quite as important as it's often made out to be. For example, the Westwind.Utilities module described above has a logging component, including a Web specific logging entry that supports pulling information from the active HTTP Context. Adding that feature requires a reference to System.Web. Should I worry about this in the scope of this library? Probably not, because if I don't use that one class of nearly a hundred, System.Web never gets pulled into the parent process. IOW, System.Web only loads when I use that specific feature and if I am, well I clearly have to be running in a Web environment anyway to use it realistically. The alternative would be considerably uglier: Pulling out the WebLogEntry class and sticking it into another assembly and breaking up the logging code. In this case - definitely not worth it. So, .NET definitely goes through some pretty nifty optimizations to ensure that it loads only what it needs and in most cases you can just rely on .NET to do the right thing. Sometimes though assembly loading can go wrong (especially when signed and versioned local assemblies are involved), but that's subject for a whole other post…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in .NET  CSharp   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

  Read the article

• Connecting Linux to WatchGuard Firebox SSL (OpenVPN client)

  Recently, I got a new project assignment that requires to connect permanently to the customer's network through VPN. They are using a so-called SSL VPN. As I am using OpenVPN since more than 5 years within my company's network I was quite curious about their solution and how it would actually be different from OpenVPN. Well, short version: It is a disguised version of OpenVPN. Unfortunately, the company only offers a client for Windows and Mac OS which shouldn't bother any Linux user after all. OpenVPN is part of every recent distribution and can be activated in a couple of minutes - both client as well as server (if necessary). WatchGuard Firebox SSL - About dialog Borrowing some files from a Windows client installation Initially, I didn't know about the product, so therefore I went through the installation on Windows 8. No obstacles (and no restart despite installation of TAP device drivers!) here and the secured VPN channel was up and running in less than 2 minutes or so. Much appreciated from both parties - customer and me. Of course, this whole client package and my long year approved and stable installation ignited my interest to have a closer look at the WatchGuard client. Compared to the original OpenVPN client (okay, I have to admit this is years ago) this commercial product is smarter in terms of file locations during installation. You'll be able to access the configuration and key files below your roaming application data folder. To get there, simply enter '%AppData%\WatchGuard\Mobile VPN' in your Windows/File Explorer and confirm with Enter/Return. This will display the following files: Application folder below user profile with configuration and certificate files From there we are going to borrow four files, namely: ca.crt client.crt client.ovpn client.pem and transfer them to the Linux system. You might also be able to isolate those four files from a Mac OS client. Frankly, I'm just too lazy to run the WatchGuard client installation on a Mac mini only to find the folder location, and I'm going to describe why a little bit further down this article. I know that you can do that! Feedback in the comment section is appreciated. Configuration of OpenVPN (console) Depending on your distribution the following steps might be a little different but in general you should be able to get the important information from it. I'm going to describe the steps in Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail). As usual, there are two possibilities to achieve your goal: console and UI. Let's what it is necessary to be done. First of all, you should ensure that you have OpenVPN installed on your system. Open your favourite terminal application and run the following statement: $ sudo apt-get install openvpn network-manager-openvpn network-manager-openvpn-gnome Just to be on the safe side. The four above mentioned files from your Windows machine could be copied anywhere but either you place them below your own user directory or you put them (as root) below the default directory: /etc/openvpn At this stage you would be able to do a test run already. Just in case, run the following command and check the output (it's the similar information you would get from the 'View Logs...' context menu entry in Windows: $ sudo openvpn --config client.ovpn Pay attention to the correct path to your configuration and certificate files. OpenVPN will ask you to enter your Auth Username and Auth Password in order to establish the VPN connection, same as the Windows client. Remote server and user authentication to establish the VPN Please complete the test run and see whether all went well. You can disconnect pressing Ctrl+C. Simplifying your life - authentication file In my case, I actually set up the OpenVPN client on my gateway/router. This establishes a VPN channel between my network and my client's network and allows me to switch machines easily without having the necessity to install the WatchGuard client on each and every machine. That's also very handy for my various virtualised Windows machines. Anyway, as the client configuration, key and certificate files are located on a headless system somewhere under the roof, it is mandatory to have an automatic connection to the remote site. For that you should first change the file extension '.ovpn' to '.conf' which is the default extension on Linux systems for OpenVPN, and then open the client configuration file in order to extend an existing line. $ sudo mv client.ovpn client.conf $ sudo nano client.conf You should have a similar content to this one here: dev tunclientproto tcp-clientca ca.crtcert client.crtkey client.pemtls-remote "/O=WatchGuard_Technologies/OU=Fireware/CN=Fireware_SSLVPN_Server"remote-cert-eku "TLS Web Server Authentication"remote 1.2.3.4 443persist-keypersist-tunverb 3mute 20keepalive 10 60cipher AES-256-CBCauth SHA1float 1reneg-sec 3660nobindmute-replay-warningsauth-user-pass auth.txt Note: I changed the IP address of the remote directive above (which should be obvious, right?). Anyway, the required change is marked in red and we have to create a new authentication file 'auth.txt'. You can give the directive 'auth-user-pass' any file name you'd like to. Due to my existing OpenVPN infrastructure my setup differs completely from the above written content but for sake of simplicity I just keep it 'as-is'. Okay, let's create this file 'auth.txt' $ sudo nano auth.txt and just put two lines of information in it - username on the first, and password on the second line, like so: myvpnusernameverysecretpassword Store the file, change permissions, and call openvpn with your configuration file again: $ sudo chmod 0600 auth.txt $ sudo openvpn --config client.conf This should now work without being prompted to enter username and password. In case that you placed your files below the system-wide location /etc/openvpn you can operate your VPNs also via service command like so: $ sudo service openvpn start client $ sudo service openvpn stop client Using Network Manager For newer Linux users or the ones with 'console-phobia' I'm going to describe now how to use Network Manager to setup the OpenVPN client. For this move your mouse to the systray area and click on Network Connections => VPN Connections => Configure VPNs... which opens your Network Connections dialog. Alternatively, use the HUD and enter 'Network Connections'. Network connections overview in Ubuntu Click on 'Add' button. On the next dialog select 'Import a saved VPN configuration...' from the dropdown list and click on 'Create...' Choose connection type to import VPN configuration Now you navigate to your folder where you put the client files from the Windows system and you open the 'client.ovpn' file. Next, on the tab 'VPN' proceed with the following steps (directives from the configuration file are referred): General Check the IP address of Gateway ('remote' - we used 1.2.3.4 in this setup) Authentication Change Type to 'Password with Certificates (TLS)' ('auth-pass-user') Enter User name to access your client keys (Auth Name: myvpnusername) Enter Password (Auth Password: verysecretpassword) and choose your password handling Browse for your User Certificate ('cert' - should be pre-selected with client.crt) Browse for your CA Certificate ('ca' - should be filled as ca.crt) Specify your Private Key ('key' - here: client.pem) Then click on the 'Advanced...' button and check the following values: Use custom gateway port: 443 (second value of 'remote' directive) Check the selected value of Cipher ('cipher') Check HMAC Authentication ('auth') Enter the Subject Match: /O=WatchGuard_Technologies/OU=Fireware/CN=Fireware_SSLVPN_Server ('tls-remote') Finally, you have to confirm and close all dialogs. You should be able to establish your OpenVPN-WatchGuard connection via Network Manager. For that, click on the 'VPN Connections => client' entry on your Network Manager in the systray. It is advised that you keep an eye on the syslog to see whether there are any problematic issues that would require some additional attention. Advanced topic: routing As stated above, I'm running the 'WatchGuard client for Linux' on my head-less server, and since then I'm actually establishing a secure communication channel between two networks. In order to enable your network clients to get access to machines on the remote side there are two possibilities to enable that: Proper routing on both sides of the connection which enables both-direction access, or Network masquerading on the 'client side' of the connection Following, I'm going to describe the second option a little bit more in detail. The Linux system that I'm using is already configured as a gateway to the internet. I won't explain the necessary steps to do that, and will only focus on the additional tweaks I had to do. You can find tons of very good instructions and tutorials on 'How to setup a Linux gateway/router' - just use Google. OK, back to the actual modifications. First, we need to have some information about the network topology and IP address range used on the 'other' side. We can get this very easily from /var/log/syslog after we established the OpenVPN channel, like so: $ sudo tail -n20 /var/log/syslog Or if your system is quite busy with logging, like so: $ sudo less /var/log/syslog | grep ovpn The output should contain PUSH received message similar to the following one: Jul 23 23:13:28 ios1 ovpn-client[789]: PUSH: Received control message: 'PUSH_REPLY,topology subnet,route 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0,dhcp-option DOMAIN ,route-gateway 192.168.6.1,topology subnet,ping 10,ping-restart 60,ifconfig 192.168.6.2 255.255.255.0' The interesting part for us is the route command which I highlighted already in the sample PUSH_REPLY. Depending on your remote server there might be multiple networks defined (172.16.x.x and/or 10.x.x.x). Important: The IP address range on both sides of the connection has to be different, otherwise you will have to shuffle IPs or increase your the netmask. {loadposition content_adsense} After the VPN connection is established, we have to extend the rules for iptables in order to route and masquerade IP packets properly. I created a shell script to take care of those steps: #!/bin/sh -eIPTABLES=/sbin/iptablesDEV_LAN=eth0DEV_VPNS=tun+VPN=192.168.1.0/24 $IPTABLES -A FORWARD -i $DEV_LAN -o $DEV_VPNS -d $VPN -j ACCEPT$IPTABLES -A FORWARD -i $DEV_VPNS -o $DEV_LAN -s $VPN -j ACCEPT$IPTABLES -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o $DEV_VPNS -d $VPN -j MASQUERADE I'm using the wildcard interface 'tun+' because I have multiple client configurations for OpenVPN on my server. In your case, it might be sufficient to specify device 'tun0' only. Simplifying your life - automatic connect on boot Now, that the client connection works flawless, configuration of routing and iptables is okay, we might consider to add another 'laziness' factor into our setup. Due to kernel updates or other circumstances it might be necessary to reboot your system. Wouldn't it be nice that the VPN connections are established during the boot procedure? Yes, of course it would be. To achieve this, we have to configure OpenVPN to automatically start our VPNs via init script. Let's have a look at the responsible 'default' file and adjust the settings accordingly. $ sudo nano /etc/default/openvpn Which should have a similar content to this: # This is the configuration file for /etc/init.d/openvpn## Start only these VPNs automatically via init script.# Allowed values are "all", "none" or space separated list of# names of the VPNs. If empty, "all" is assumed.# The VPN name refers to the VPN configutation file name.# i.e. "home" would be /etc/openvpn/home.conf#AUTOSTART="all"#AUTOSTART="none"#AUTOSTART="home office"## ... more information which remains unmodified ... With the OpenVPN client configuration as described above you would either set AUTOSTART to "all" or to "client" to enable automatic start of your VPN(s) during boot. You should also take care that your iptables commands are executed after the link has been established, too. You can easily test this configuration without reboot, like so: $ sudo service openvpn restart Enjoy stable VPN connections between your Linux system(s) and a WatchGuard Firebox SSL remote server. Cheers, JoKi

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – Guest Post – Jonathan Kehayias – Wait Type – Day 16 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  Jonathan Kehayias (Blog | Twitter) is a MCITP Database Administrator and Developer, who got started in SQL Server in 2004 as a database developer and report writer in the natural gas industry. After spending two and a half years working in TSQL, in late 2006, he transitioned to the role of SQL Database Administrator. His primary passion is performance tuning, where he frequently rewrites queries for better performance and performs in depth analysis of index implementation and usage. Jonathan blogs regularly on SQLBlog, and was a coauthor of Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting. On a personal note, I think Jonathan is extremely positive person. In every conversation with him I have found that he is always eager to help and encourage. Every time he finds something needs to be approved, he has contacted me without hesitation and guided me to improve, change and learn. During all the time, he has not lost his focus to help larger community. I am honored that he has accepted to provide his views on complex subject of Wait Types and Queues. Currently I am reading his series on Extended Events. Here is the guest blog post by Jonathan: SQL Server troubleshooting is all about correlating related pieces of information together to indentify where exactly the root cause of a problem lies. In my daily work as a DBA, I generally get phone calls like, “So and so application is slow, what’s wrong with the SQL Server.” One of the funny things about the letters DBA is that they go so well with Default Blame Acceptor, and I really wish that I knew exactly who the first person was that pointed that out to me, because it really fits at times. A lot of times when I get this call, the problem isn’t related to SQL Server at all, but every now and then in my initial quick checks, something pops up that makes me start looking at things further. The SQL Server is slow, we see a number of tasks waiting on ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION, IO_COMPLETION, or PAGEIOLATCH_* waits in sys.dm_exec_requests and sys.dm_exec_waiting_tasks. These are also some of the highest wait types in sys.dm_os_wait_stats for the server, so it would appear that we have a disk I/O bottleneck on the machine. A quick check of sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats() and tempdb shows a high write stall rate, while our user databases show high read stall rates on the data files. A quick check of some performance counters and Page Life Expectancy on the server is bouncing up and down in the 50-150 range, the Free Page counter consistently hits zero, and the Free List Stalls/sec counter keeps jumping over 10, but Buffer Cache Hit Ratio is 98-99%. Where exactly is the problem? In this case, which happens to be based on a real scenario I faced a few years back, the problem may not be a disk bottleneck at all; it may very well be a memory pressure issue on the server. A quick check of the system spec’s and it is a dual duo core server with 8GB RAM running SQL Server 2005 SP1 x64 on Windows Server 2003 R2 x64. Max Server memory is configured at 6GB and we think that this should be enough to handle the workload; or is it? This is a unique scenario because there are a couple of things happening inside of this system, and they all relate to what the root cause of the performance problem is on the system. If we were to query sys.dm_exec_query_stats for the TOP 10 queries, by max_physical_reads, max_logical_reads, and max_worker_time, we may be able to find some queries that were using excessive I/O and possibly CPU against the system in their worst single execution. We can also CROSS APPLY to sys.dm_exec_sql_text() and see the statement text, and also CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_query_plan() to get the execution plan stored in cache. Ok, quick check, the plans are pretty big, I see some large index seeks, that estimate 2.8GB of data movement between operators, but everything looks like it is optimized the best it can be. Nothing really stands out in the code, and the indexing looks correct, and I should have enough memory to handle this in cache, so it must be a disk I/O problem right? Not exactly! If we were to look at how much memory the plan cache is taking by querying sys.dm_os_memory_clerks for the CACHESTORE_SQLCP and CACHESTORE_OBJCP clerks we might be surprised at what we find. In SQL Server 2005 RTM and SP1, the plan cache was allowed to take up to 75% of the memory under 8GB. I’ll give you a second to go back and read that again. Yes, you read it correctly, it says 75% of the memory under 8GB, but you don’t have to take my word for it, you can validate this by reading Changes in Caching Behavior between SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005 RTM and SQL Server 2005 SP2. In this scenario the application uses an entirely adhoc workload against SQL Server and this leads to plan cache bloat, and up to 4.5GB of our 6GB of memory for SQL can be consumed by the plan cache in SQL Server 2005 SP1. This in turn reduces the size of the buffer cache to just 1.5GB, causing our 2.8GB of data movement in this expensive plan to cause complete flushing of the buffer cache, not just once initially, but then another time during the queries execution, resulting in excessive physical I/O from disk. Keep in mind that this is not the only query executing at the time this occurs. Remember the output of sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats() showed high read stalls on the data files for our user databases versus higher write stalls for tempdb? The memory pressure is also forcing heavier use of tempdb to handle sorting and hashing in the environment as well. The real clue here is the Memory counters for the instance; Page Life Expectancy, Free List Pages, and Free List Stalls/sec. The fact that Page Life Expectancy is fluctuating between 50 and 150 constantly is a sign that the buffer cache is experiencing constant churn of data, once every minute to two and a half minutes. If you add to the Page Life Expectancy counter, the consistent bottoming out of Free List Pages along with Free List Stalls/sec consistently spiking over 10, and you have the perfect memory pressure scenario. All of sudden it may not be that our disk subsystem is the problem, but is instead an innocent bystander and victim. Side Note: The Page Life Expectancy counter dropping briefly and then returning to normal operating values intermittently is not necessarily a sign that the server is under memory pressure. The Books Online and a number of other references will tell you that this counter should remain on average above 300 which is the time in seconds a page will remain in cache before being flushed or aged out. This number, which equates to just five minutes, is incredibly low for modern systems and most published documents pre-date the predominance of 64 bit computing and easy availability to larger amounts of memory in SQL Servers. As food for thought, consider that my personal laptop has more memory in it than most SQL Servers did at the time those numbers were posted. I would argue that today, a system churning the buffer cache every five minutes is in need of some serious tuning or a hardware upgrade. Back to our problem and its investigation: There are two things really wrong with this server; first the plan cache is excessively consuming memory and bloated in size and we need to look at that and second we need to evaluate upgrading the memory to accommodate the workload being performed. In the case of the server I was working on there were a lot of single use plans found in sys.dm_exec_cached_plans (where usecounts=1). Single use plans waste space in the plan cache, especially when they are adhoc plans for statements that had concatenated filter criteria that is not likely to reoccur with any frequency.  SQL Server 2005 doesn’t natively have a way to evict a single plan from cache like SQL Server 2008 does, but MVP Kalen Delaney, showed a hack to evict a single plan by creating a plan guide for the statement and then dropping that plan guide in her blog post Geek City: Clearing a Single Plan from Cache. We could put that hack in place in a job to automate cleaning out all the single use plans periodically, minimizing the size of the plan cache, but a better solution would be to fix the application so that it uses proper parameterized calls to the database. You didn’t write the app, and you can’t change its design? Ok, well you could try to force parameterization to occur by creating and keeping plan guides in place, or we can try forcing parameterization at the database level by using ALTER DATABASE <dbname> SET PARAMETERIZATION FORCED and that might help. If neither of these help, we could periodically dump the plan cache for that database, as discussed as being a problem in Kalen’s blog post referenced above; not an ideal scenario. The other option is to increase the memory on the server to 16GB or 32GB, if the hardware allows it, which will increase the size of the plan cache as well as the buffer cache. In SQL Server 2005 SP1, on a system with 16GB of memory, if we set max server memory to 14GB the plan cache could use at most 9GB  [(8GB*.75)+(6GB*.5)=(6+3)=9GB], leaving 5GB for the buffer cache.  If we went to 32GB of memory and set max server memory to 28GB, the plan cache could use at most 16GB [(8*.75)+(20*.5)=(6+10)=16GB], leaving 12GB for the buffer cache. Thankfully we have SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2, 3, and 4 these days which include the changes in plan cache sizing discussed in the Changes to Caching Behavior between SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005 RTM and SQL Server 2005 SP2 blog post. In real life, when I was troubleshooting this problem, I spent a week trying to chase down the cause of the disk I/O bottleneck with our Server Admin and SAN Admin, and there wasn’t much that could be done immediately there, so I finally asked if we could increase the memory on the server to 16GB, which did fix the problem. It wasn’t until I had this same problem occur on another system that I actually figured out how to really troubleshoot this down to the root cause.  I couldn’t believe the size of the plan cache on the server with 16GB of memory when I actually learned about this and went back to look at it. SQL Server is constantly telling a story to anyone that will listen. As the DBA, you have to sit back and listen to all that it’s telling you and then evaluate the big picture and how all the data you can gather from SQL about performance relate to each other. One of the greatest tools out there is actually a free in the form of Diagnostic Scripts for SQL Server 2005 and 2008, created by MVP Glenn Alan Berry. Glenn’s scripts collect a majority of the information that SQL has to offer for rapid troubleshooting of problems, and he includes a lot of notes about what the outputs of each individual query might be telling you. When I read Pinal’s blog post SQL SERVER – ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION – Wait Type – Day 11 of 28, I noticed that he referenced Checking Memory Related Performance Counters in his post, but there was no real explanation about why checking memory counters is so important when looking at an I/O related wait type. I thought I’d chat with him briefly on Google Talk/Twitter DM and point this out, and offer a couple of other points I noted, so that he could add the information to his blog post if he found it useful.  Instead he asked that I write a guest blog for this. I am honored to be a guest blogger, and to be able to share this kind of information with the community. The information contained in this blog post is a glimpse at how I do troubleshooting almost every day of the week in my own environment. SQL Server provides us with a lot of information about how it is running, and where it may be having problems, it is up to us to play detective and find out how all that information comes together to tell us what’s really the problem. This blog post is written by Jonathan Kehayias (Blog | Twitter). Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: MVP, Pinal Dave, PostADay, Readers Contribution, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• Passing multiple simple POST Values to ASP.NET Web API

  - by Rick Strahl

  A few weeks backs I posted a blog post  about what does and doesn't work with ASP.NET Web API when it comes to POSTing data to a Web API controller. One of the features that doesn't work out of the box - somewhat unexpectedly -  is the ability to map POST form variables to simple parameters of a Web API method. For example imagine you have this form and you want to post this data to a Web API end point like this via AJAX: <form> Name: <input type="name" name="name" value="Rick" /> Value: <input type="value" name="value" value="12" /> Entered: <input type="entered" name="entered" value="12/01/2011" /> <input type="button" id="btnSend" value="Send" /> </form> <script type="text/javascript"> $("#btnSend").click( function() { $.post("samples/PostMultipleSimpleValues?action=kazam", $("form").serialize(), function (result) { alert(result); }); }); </script> or you might do this more explicitly by creating a simple client map and specifying the POST values directly by hand:$.post("samples/PostMultipleSimpleValues?action=kazam", { name: "Rick", value: 1, entered: "12/01/2012" }, $("form").serialize(), function (result) { alert(result); }); On the wire this generates a simple POST request with Url Encoded values in the content:POST /AspNetWebApi/samples/PostMultipleSimpleValues?action=kazam HTTP/1.1 Host: localhost User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; rv:15.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/15.0.1 Accept: application/json Connection: keep-alive Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8 X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest Referer: http://localhost/AspNetWebApi/FormPostTest.html Content-Length: 41 Pragma: no-cache Cache-Control: no-cachename=Rick&value=12&entered=12%2F10%2F2011 Seems simple enough, right? We are basically posting 3 form variables and 1 query string value to the server. Unfortunately Web API can't handle request out of the box. If I create a method like this:[HttpPost] public string PostMultipleSimpleValues(string name, int value, DateTime entered, string action = null) { return string.Format("Name: {0}, Value: {1}, Date: {2}, Action: {3}", name, value, entered, action); }You'll find that you get an HTTP 404 error and { "Message": "No HTTP resource was found that matches the request URI…"} Yes, it's possible to pass multiple POST parameters of course, but Web API expects you to use Model Binding for this - mapping the post parameters to a strongly typed .NET object, not to single parameters. Alternately you can also accept a FormDataCollection parameter on your API method to get a name value collection of all POSTed values. If you're using JSON only, using the dynamic JObject/JValue objects might also work. ModelBinding is fine in many use cases, but can quickly become overkill if you only need to pass a couple of simple parameters to many methods. Especially in applications with many, many AJAX callbacks the 'parameter mapping type' per method signature can lead to serious class pollution in a project very quickly. Simple POST variables are also commonly used in AJAX applications to pass data to the server, even in many complex public APIs. So this is not an uncommon use case, and - maybe more so a behavior that I would have expected Web API to support natively. The question "Why aren't my POST parameters mapping to Web API method parameters" is already a frequent one… So this is something that I think is fairly important, but unfortunately missing in the base Web API installation. Creating a Custom Parameter Binder Luckily Web API is greatly extensible and there's a way to create a custom Parameter Binding to provide this functionality! Although this solution took me a long while to find and then only with the help of some folks Microsoft (thanks Hong Mei!!!), it's not difficult to hook up in your own projects. It requires one small class and a GlobalConfiguration hookup. Web API parameter bindings allow you to intercept processing of individual parameters - they deal with mapping parameters to the signature as well as converting the parameters to the actual values that are returned. Here's the implementation of the SimplePostVariableParameterBinding class:public class SimplePostVariableParameterBinding : HttpParameterBinding { private const string MultipleBodyParameters = "MultipleBodyParameters"; public SimplePostVariableParameterBinding(HttpParameterDescriptor descriptor) : base(descriptor) { } /// <summary> /// Check for simple binding parameters in POST data. Bind POST /// data as well as query string data /// </summary> public override Task ExecuteBindingAsync(ModelMetadataProvider metadataProvider, HttpActionContext actionContext, CancellationToken cancellationToken) { // Body can only be read once, so read and cache it NameValueCollection col = TryReadBody(actionContext.Request); string stringValue = null; if (col != null) stringValue = col[Descriptor.ParameterName]; // try reading query string if we have no POST/PUT match if (stringValue == null) { var query = actionContext.Request.GetQueryNameValuePairs(); if (query != null) { var matches = query.Where(kv => kv.Key.ToLower() == Descriptor.ParameterName.ToLower()); if (matches.Count() > 0) stringValue = matches.First().Value; } } object value = StringToType(stringValue); // Set the binding result here SetValue(actionContext, value); // now, we can return a completed task with no result TaskCompletionSource<AsyncVoid> tcs = new TaskCompletionSource<AsyncVoid>(); tcs.SetResult(default(AsyncVoid)); return tcs.Task; } private object StringToType(string stringValue) { object value = null; if (stringValue == null) value = null; else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(string)) value = stringValue; else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(int)) value = int.Parse(stringValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(Int32)) value = Int32.Parse(stringValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(Int64)) value = Int64.Parse(stringValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(decimal)) value = decimal.Parse(stringValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(double)) value = double.Parse(stringValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(DateTime)) value = DateTime.Parse(stringValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(bool)) { value = false; if (stringValue == "true" || stringValue == "on" || stringValue == "1") value = true; } else value = stringValue; return value; } /// <summary> /// Read and cache the request body /// </summary> /// <param name="request"></param> /// <returns></returns> private NameValueCollection TryReadBody(HttpRequestMessage request) { object result = null; // try to read out of cache first if (!request.Properties.TryGetValue(MultipleBodyParameters, out result)) { // parsing the string like firstname=Hongmei&lastname=Ge result = request.Content.ReadAsFormDataAsync().Result; request.Properties.Add(MultipleBodyParameters, result); } return result as NameValueCollection; } private struct AsyncVoid { } }   The ExecuteBindingAsync method is fired for each parameter that is mapped and sent for conversion. This custom binding is fired only if the incoming parameter is a simple type (that gets defined later when I hook up the binding), so this binding never fires on complex types or if the first type is not a simple type. For the first parameter of a request the Binding first reads the request body into a NameValueCollection and caches that in the request.Properties collection. The request body can only be read once, so the first parameter request reads it and then caches it. Subsequent parameters then use the cached POST value collection. Once the form collection is available the value of the parameter is read, and the value is translated into the target type requested by the Descriptor. SetValue writes out the value to be mapped. Once you have the ParameterBinding in place, the binding has to be assigned. This is done along with all other Web API configuration tasks at application startup in global.asax's Application_Start:GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.ParameterBindingRules .Insert(0, (HttpParameterDescriptor descriptor) => { var supportedMethods = descriptor.ActionDescriptor.SupportedHttpMethods; // Only apply this binder on POST and PUT operations if (supportedMethods.Contains(HttpMethod.Post) || supportedMethods.Contains(HttpMethod.Put)) { var supportedTypes = new Type[] { typeof(string), typeof(int), typeof(decimal), typeof(double), typeof(bool), typeof(DateTime) }; if (supportedTypes.Where(typ => typ == descriptor.ParameterType).Count() > 0) return new SimplePostVariableParameterBinding(descriptor); } // let the default bindings do their work return null; });   The ParameterBindingRules.Insert method takes a delegate that checks which type of requests it should handle. The logic here checks whether the request is POST or PUT and whether the parameter type is a simple type that is supported. Web API calls this delegate once for each method signature it tries to map and the delegate returns null to indicate it's not handling this parameter, or it returns a new parameter binding instance - in this case the SimplePostVariableParameterBinding. Once the parameter binding and this hook up code is in place, you can now pass simple POST values to methods with simple parameters. The examples I showed above should now work in addition to the standard bindings. Summary Clearly this is not easy to discover. I spent quite a bit of time digging through the Web API source trying to figure this out on my own without much luck. It took Hong Mei at Micrsoft to provide a base example as I asked around so I can't take credit for this solution :-). But once you know where to look, Web API is brilliantly extensible to make it relatively easy to customize the parameter behavior. I'm very stoked that this got resolved  - in the last two months I've had two customers with projects that decided not to use Web API in AJAX heavy SPA applications because this POST variable mapping wasn't available. This might actually change their mind to still switch back and take advantage of the many great features in Web API. I too frequently use plain POST variables for communicating with server AJAX handlers and while I could have worked around this (with untyped JObject or the Form collection mostly), having proper POST to parameter mapping makes things much easier. I said this in my last post on POST data and say it again here: I think POST to method parameter mapping should have been shipped in the box with Web API, because without knowing about this limitation the expectation is that simple POST variables map to parameters just like query string values do. I hope Microsoft considers including this type of functionality natively in the next version of Web API natively or at least as a built-in HttpParameterBinding that can be just added. This is especially true, since this binding doesn't affect existing bindings. Resources SimplePostVariableParameterBinding Source on GitHub Global.asax hookup source Mapping URL Encoded Post Values in  ASP.NET Web API© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api  AJAX   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

  Read the article

• Package Dependencies Error in almost every install

  - by Betaxpression

  New to Ubuntu. In the other sofware sources i have "Debian 4.0 eth" officially supported "non-us.debian.org/"; etc ... "ppa.launcpad.net" and installing applications has stopped working. I think i first came across this problem after installing Blender 2.58 When using update manager it is prompting for a partial upgrade. Almost every software when trying to install showing the same error Package Dependencies Error or GPG PUB KEY missing, tried to fixing to them but no luck. Output to: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade (links disabled http:// -- http:/ as new user can't put more no. of hyperlinks) Ign http:/non-us.debian.org stable/non-US InRelease Ign http:/non-us.debian.org stable/non-US Release.gpg Ign http:/non-us.debian.org stable/non-US Release Ign http:/non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/contrib TranslationIndex Ign http:/non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/main TranslationIndex Ign http:/non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/non-free TranslationIndex Err http:/non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/main Sources 503 Service Unavailable Err http:/non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/contrib Sources 503 Service Unavailable Err http:/non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/non-free Sources 503 Service Unavailable Err http:/non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/main amd64 Packages 503 Service Unavailable Err http:/non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/contrib amd64 Packages 503 Service Unavailable Err http:/non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/non-free amd64 Packages 503 Service Unavailable Ign http:/non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/contrib Translation-en_IN Ign http:/non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/contrib Translation-en Ign http:/non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/main Translation-en_IN Ign http:/non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/main Translation-en Ign http:/non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/non-free Translation-en_IN Ign http:/non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/non-free Translation-en Ign http:/archive.ubuntu.com natty InRelease Ign http:/archive.canonical.com natty InRelease Ign http:/extras.ubuntu.com natty InRelease Ign http:/http.us.debian.org stable InRelease Ign http:/ftp.us.debian.org etch InRelease Ign http:/archive.ubuntu.com natty-updates InRelease Hit http:/archive.canonical.com natty Release.gpg Get:1 http:/extras.ubuntu.com natty Release.gpg [72 B] Ign http:/ppa.launchpad.net natty InRelease Get:2 http:/http.us.debian.org stable Release.gpg [1,672 B] Ign http:/linux.dropbox.com natty InRelease Ign http:/ftp.us.debian.org etch Release.gpg Ign http:/archive.ubuntu.com natty-security InRelease Hit http:/archive.canonical.com natty Release Hit http:/extras.ubuntu.com natty Release Ign http:/ppa.launchpad.net natty InRelease Get:3 http:/linux.dropbox.com natty Release.gpg [489 B] Ign http:/ftp.us.debian.org etch Release Ign http:/dl.google.com stable InRelease Get:4 http:/archive.ubuntu.com natty Release.gpg [198 B] Ign http:/ppa.launchpad.net natty InRelease Hit http:/archive.canonical.com natty/partner Sources Hit http:/extras.ubuntu.com natty/main Sources Get:5 http:/linux.dropbox.com natty Release [2,599 B] Get:6 http:/archive.ubuntu.com natty-updates Release.gpg [198 B] Ign http:/ppa.launchpad.net natty InRelease Hit http:/archive.canonical.com natty/partner amd64 Packages Hit http:/extras.ubuntu.com natty/main amd64 Packages Get:7 http:/linux.dropbox.com natty/main amd64 Packages [784 B] Get:8 http:/archive.ubuntu.com natty-security Release.gpg [198 B] Ign http:/ppa.launchpad.net natty InRelease Ign http:/archive.canonical.com natty/partner TranslationIndex Ign http:/extras.ubuntu.com natty/main TranslationIndex Get:9 http:/http.us.debian.org stable Release [104 kB] Ign http:/linux.dropbox.com natty/main TranslationIndex Hit http:/archive.ubuntu.com natty Release Ign http:/ppa.launchpad.net natty InRelease Ign http:/http.us.debian.org stable Release Hit http:/archive.ubuntu.com natty-updates Release Get:10 http:/ppa.launchpad.net natty InRelease [316 B] Ign http:/ppa.launchpad.net natty InRelease Hit http:/archive.ubuntu.com natty-security Release Get:11 http:/ppa.launchpad.net natty InRelease [316 B] Ign http:/ppa.launchpad.net natty InRelease Hit http:/archive.ubuntu.com natty/restricted Sources Get:12 http:/ppa.launchpad.net natty Release.gpg [316 B] Ign http:/http.us.debian.org stable/main Sources/DiffIndex Get:13 http:/ppa.launchpad.net natty Release.gpg [316 B] Hit http:/archive.ubuntu.com natty/main Sources Ign http:/ftp.us.debian.org etch/contrib TranslationIndex Ign http:/http.us.debian.org stable/contrib Sources/DiffIndex Get:14 http:/ppa.launchpad.net natty Release.gpg [1,502 B] Ign http:/http.us.debian.org stable/non-free Sources/DiffIndex Ign http:/ftp.us.debian.org etch/main TranslationIndex Get:15 http:/ppa.launchpad.net natty Release.gpg [1,928 B] Ign http:/http.us.debian.org stable/main amd64 Packages/DiffIndex Ign http:/ftp.us.debian.org etch/non-free TranslationIndex Ign http:/ppa.launchpad.net natty Release.gpg Hit http:/http.us.debian.org stable/contrib amd64 Packages/DiffIndex W: GPG error: http:/http.us.debian.org stable Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY AED4B06F473041FA NO_PUBKEY 64481591B98321F9 W: GPG error: http:/ppa.launchpad.net natty InRelease: File /var/lib/apt/lists/partial/ppa.launchpad.net_sunab_kdenlive-release_ubuntu_dists_natty_InRelease doesn't start with a clearsigned message W: GPG error: http:/ppa.launchpad.net natty InRelease: File /var/lib/apt/lists/partial/ppa.launchpad.net_ubuntu-wine_ppa_ubuntu_dists_natty_InRelease doesn't start with a clearsigned message E: Could not open file /var/lib/apt/lists/http.us.debian.org_debian_dists_stable_contrib_binary-amd64_Packages.IndexDiff - open (2: No such file or directory) output to: sudo cat /etc/apt/sources.list # deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 11.04 _Natty Narwhal_ - Release amd64 (20110427.1)]/ natty main restricted # See http:/help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes for how to upgrade to # newer versions of the distribution. deb http:/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty main restricted deb-src http:/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty restricted main multiverse universe #Added by software-properties ## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the ## distribution. deb http:/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty-updates main restricted deb-src http:/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty-updates restricted main multiverse universe #Added by software-properties ## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team. Also, please note that software in universe WILL NOT receive any ## review or updates from the Ubuntu security team. deb http:/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty universe deb http:/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty-updates universe ## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to ## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in ## multiverse WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu ## security team. deb http:/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty multiverse deb http:/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty-updates multiverse ## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'backports' ## repository. ## N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as ## extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes ## newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features. ## Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review ## or updates from the Ubuntu security team. # deb http:/us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty-backports main restricted universe multiverse # deb-src http:/us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty-backports main restricted universe multiverse deb http:/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty-security main restricted deb-src http:/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty-security restricted main multiverse universe #Added by software-properties deb http:/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty-security universe deb http:/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty-security multiverse ## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from Canonical's ## 'partner' repository. ## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by Canonical and the ## respective vendors as a service to Ubuntu users. deb http:/archive.canonical.com/ubuntu natty partner deb-src http:/archive.canonical.com/ubuntu natty partner ## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by third-party ## developers who want to ship their latest software. deb http:/extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty main deb-src http:/extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty main deb http:/ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ etch main contrib non-free deb-src http:/ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ etch main contrib non-free deb http:/http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free deb-src http:/http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free deb http:/non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable/non-US main contrib non-free deb-src http:/non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable/non-US main contrib non-free Thanks But after removing Debian repositories still getting this error: W:GPG error: http://ppa.launchpad.net natty Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 9BDB3D89CE49EC21, W:GPG error: http://ppa.launchpad.net natty Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 80E7349A06ED541C, W:GPG error: http://ppa.launchpad.net natty Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 8C851674F96FD737, W:GPG error: http://ppa.launchpad.net natty Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 94E58C34A8670E8C, E:Unable to parse package file /var/lib/apt/lists/partial/archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_natty-updates_multiverse_i18n_Index (1) I actually tried this before, but i am always getting this error --Executing: gpg --ignore-time-conflict --no-options --no-default-keyring --secret-keyring /etc/apt/secring.gpg --trustdb-name /etc/apt/trustdb.gpg --keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --primary-keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 8C851674F96FD737 gpg: requesting key F96FD737 from hkp server keyserver.ubuntu.com ?: keyserver.ubuntu.com: Connection refused gpgkeys: HTTP fetch error 7: couldn't connect: Connection refused gpg: no valid OpenPGP data found. gpg: Total number processed: 0

  Read the article

• What&rsquo;s New in ASP.NET 4.0 Part Two: WebForms and Visual Studio Enhancements

  - by Rick Strahl

  In the last installment I talked about the core changes in the ASP.NET runtime that I’ve been taking advantage of. In this column, I’ll cover the changes to the Web Forms engine and some of the cool improvements in Visual Studio that make Web and general development easier. WebForms The WebForms engine is the area that has received most significant changes in ASP.NET 4.0. Probably the most widely anticipated features are related to managing page client ids and of ViewState on WebForm pages. Take Control of Your ClientIDs Unique ClientID generation in ASP.NET has been one of the most complained about “features” in ASP.NET. Although there’s a very good technical reason for these unique generated ids - they guarantee unique ids for each and every server control on a page - these unique and generated ids often get in the way of client-side JavaScript development and CSS styling as it’s often inconvenient and fragile to work with the long, generated ClientIDs. In ASP.NET 4.0 you can now specify an explicit client id mode on each control or each naming container parent control to control how client ids are generated. By default, ASP.NET generates mangled client ids for any control contained in a naming container (like a Master Page, or a User Control for example). The key to ClientID management in ASP.NET 4.0 are the new ClientIDMode and ClientIDRowSuffix properties. ClientIDMode supports four different ClientID generation settings shown below. For the following examples, imagine that you have a Textbox control named txtName inside of a master page control container on a WebForms page. <%@Page Language="C#"      MasterPageFile="~/Site.Master"     CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="WebApplication1.WebForm2"  %> <asp:Content ID="content"  ContentPlaceHolderID="content"               runat="server"               ClientIDMode="Static" >       <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtName" /> </asp:Content> The four available ClientIDMode values are: AutoID This is the existing behavior in ASP.NET 1.x-3.x where full naming container munging takes place. <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"        id="ctl00_content_txtName" /> This should be familiar to any ASP.NET developer and results in fairly unpredictable client ids that can easily change if the containership hierarchy changes. For example, removing the master page changes the name in this case, so if you were to move a block of script code that works against the control to a non-Master page, the script code immediately breaks. Static This option is the most deterministic setting that forces the control’s ClientID to use its ID value directly. No naming container naming at all is applied and you end up with clean client ids: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName"         type="text" id="txtName" /> Note that the name property which is used for postback variables to the server still is munged, but the ClientID property is displayed simply as the ID value that you have assigned to the control. This option is what most of us want to use, but you have to be clear on that because it can potentially cause conflicts with other controls on the page. If there are several instances of the same naming container (several instances of the same user control for example) there can easily be a client id naming conflict. Note that if you assign Static to a data-bound control, like a list child control in templates, you do not get unique ids either, so for list controls where you rely on unique id for child controls, you’ll probably want to use Predictable rather than Static. I’ll write more on this a little later when I discuss ClientIDRowSuffix. Predictable The previous two values are pretty self-explanatory. Predictable however, requires some explanation. To me at least it’s not in the least bit predictable. MSDN defines this value as follows: This algorithm is used for controls that are in data-bound controls. The ClientID value is generated by concatenating the ClientID value of the parent naming container with the ID value of the control. If the control is a data-bound control that generates multiple rows, the value of the data field specified in the ClientIDRowSuffix property is added at the end. For the GridView control, multiple data fields can be specified. If the ClientIDRowSuffix property is blank, a sequential number is added at the end instead of a data-field value. Each segment is separated by an underscore character (_). The key that makes this value a bit confusing is that it relies on the parent NamingContainer’s ClientID to build its own ClientID value. This effectively means that the value is not predictable at all but rather very tightly coupled to the parent naming container’s ClientIDMode setting. For my simple textbox example, if the ClientIDMode property of the parent naming container (Page in this case) is set to “Predictable” you’ll get this: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"         id="content_txtName" /> which gives an id that based on walking up to the currently active naming container (the MasterPage content container) and starting the id formatting from there downward. Think of this as a semi unique name that’s guaranteed unique only for the naming container. If, on the other hand, the Page is set to “AutoID” you get the following with Predictable on txtName: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"         id="ctl00_content_txtName" /> The latter is effectively the same as if you specified AutoID because it inherits the AutoID naming from the Page and Content Master Page control of the page. But again - predictable behavior always depends on the parent naming container and how it generates its id, so the id may not always be exactly the same as the AutoID generated value because somewhere in the NamingContainer chain the ClientIDMode setting may be set to a different value. For example, if you had another naming container in the middle that was set to Static you’d end up effectively with an id that starts with the NamingContainers id rather than the whole ctl000_content munging. The most common use for Predictable is likely to be for data-bound controls, which results in each data bound item getting a unique ClientID. Unfortunately, even here the behavior can be very unpredictable depending on which data-bound control you use - I found significant differences in how template controls in a GridView behave from those that are used in a ListView control. For example, GridView creates clean child ClientIDs, while ListView still has a naming container in the ClientID, presumably because of the template container on which you can’t set ClientIDMode. Predictable is useful, but only if all naming containers down the chain use this setting. Otherwise you’re right back to the munged ids that are pretty unpredictable. Another property, ClientIDRowSuffix, can be used in combination with ClientIDMode of Predictable to force a suffix onto list client controls. For example: <asp:GridView runat="server" ID="gvItems"              AutoGenerateColumns="false"             ClientIDMode="Static"              ClientIDRowSuffix="Id">     <Columns>     <asp:TemplateField>         <ItemTemplate>             <asp:Label runat="server" id="txtName"                        Text='<%# Eval("Name") %>'                   ClientIDMode="Predictable"/>         </ItemTemplate>     </asp:TemplateField>     <asp:TemplateField>         <ItemTemplate>         <asp:Label runat="server" id="txtId"                     Text='<%# Eval("Id") %>'                     ClientIDMode="Predictable" />         </ItemTemplate>     </asp:TemplateField>     </Columns>  </asp:GridView> generates client Ids inside of a column in the master page described earlier: <td>     <span id="txtName_0">Rick</span> </td> where the value after the underscore is the ClientIDRowSuffix field - in this case “Id” of the item data bound to the control. Note that all of the child controls require ClientIDMode=”Predictable” in order for the ClientIDRowSuffix to be applied, and the parent GridView controls need to be set to Static either explicitly or via Naming Container inheritance to give these simple names. It’s a bummer that ClientIDRowSuffix doesn’t work with Static to produce this automatically. Another real problem is that other controls process the ClientIDMode differently. For example, a ListView control processes the Predictable ClientIDMode differently and produces the following with the Static ListView and Predictable child controls: <span id="ctrl0_txtName_0">Rick</span> I couldn’t even figure out a way using ClientIDMode to get a simple ID that also uses a suffix short of falling back to manually generated ids using <%= %> expressions instead. Given the inconsistencies inside of list controls using <%= %>, ids for the ListView might not be a bad idea anyway. Inherit The final setting is Inherit, which is the default for all controls except Page. This means that controls by default inherit the parent naming container’s ClientIDMode setting. For more detailed information on ClientID behavior and different scenarios you can check out a blog post of mine on this subject: http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/54760.aspx. ClientID Enhancements Summary The ClientIDMode property is a welcome addition to ASP.NET 4.0. To me this is probably the most useful WebForms feature as it allows me to generate clean IDs simply by setting ClientIDMode="Static" on either the page or inside of Web.config (in the Pages section) which applies the setting down to the entire page which is my 95% scenario. For the few cases when it matters - for list controls and inside of multi-use user controls or custom server controls) - I can use Predictable or even AutoID to force controls to unique names. For application-level page development, this is easy to accomplish and provides maximum usability for working with client script code against page controls. ViewStateMode Another area of large criticism for WebForms is ViewState. ViewState is used internally by ASP.NET to persist page-level changes to non-postback properties on controls as pages post back to the server. It’s a useful mechanism that works great for the overall mechanics of WebForms, but it can also cause all sorts of overhead for page operation as ViewState can very quickly get out of control and consume huge amounts of bandwidth in your page content. ViewState can also wreak havoc with client-side scripting applications that modify control properties that are tracked by ViewState, which can produce very unpredictable results on a Postback after client-side updates. Over the years in my own development, I’ve often turned off ViewState on pages to reduce overhead. Yes, you lose some functionality, but you can easily implement most of the common functionality in non-ViewState workarounds. Relying less on heavy ViewState controls and sticking with simpler controls or raw HTML constructs avoids getting around ViewState problems. In ASP.NET 3.x and prior, it wasn’t easy to control ViewState - you could turn it on or off and if you turned it off at the page or web.config level, you couldn’t turn it back on for specific controls. In short, it was an all or nothing approach. With ASP.NET 4.0, the new ViewStateMode property gives you more control. It allows you to disable ViewState globally either on the page or web.config level and then turn it back on for specific controls that might need it. ViewStateMode only works when EnableViewState="true" on the page or web.config level (which is the default). You can then use ViewStateMode of Disabled, Enabled or Inherit to control the ViewState settings on the page. If you’re shooting for minimal ViewState usage, the ideal situation is to set ViewStateMode to disabled on the Page or web.config level and only turn it back on particular controls: <%@Page Language="C#"      CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="Westwind.WebStore.WebForm2"        ClientIDMode="Static"                ViewStateMode="Disabled"     EnableViewState="true"  %> <!-- this control has viewstate  --> <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtName"  ViewStateMode="Enabled" />       <!-- this control has no viewstate - it inherits  from parent container --> <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtAddress" /> Note that the EnableViewState="true" at the Page level isn’t required since it’s the default, but it’s important that the value is true. ViewStateMode has no effect if EnableViewState="false" at the page level. The main benefit of ViewStateMode is that it allows you to more easily turn off ViewState for most of the page and enable only a few key controls that might need it. For me personally, this is a perfect combination as most of my WebForm apps can get away without any ViewState at all. But some controls - especially third party controls - often don’t work well without ViewState enabled, and now it’s much easier to selectively enable controls rather than the old way, which required you to pretty much turn off ViewState for all controls that you didn’t want ViewState on. Inline HTML Encoding HTML encoding is an important feature to prevent cross-site scripting attacks in data entered by users on your site. In order to make it easier to create HTML encoded content, ASP.NET 4.0 introduces a new Expression syntax using <%: %> to encode string values. The encoding expression syntax looks like this: <%: "<script type='text/javascript'>" +     "alert('Really?');</script>" %> which produces properly encoded HTML: &lt;script type=&#39;text/javascript&#39; &gt;alert(&#39;Really?&#39;);&lt;/script&gt; Effectively this is a shortcut to: <%= HttpUtility.HtmlEncode( "<script type='text/javascript'>" + "alert('Really?');</script>") %> Of course the <%: %> syntax can also evaluate expressions just like <%= %> so the more common scenario applies this expression syntax against data your application is displaying. Here’s an example displaying some data model values: <%: Model.Address.Street %> This snippet shows displaying data from your application’s data store or more importantly, from data entered by users. Anything that makes it easier and less verbose to HtmlEncode text is a welcome addition to avoid potential cross-site scripting attacks. Although I listed Inline HTML Encoding here under WebForms, anything that uses the WebForms rendering engine including ASP.NET MVC, benefits from this feature. ScriptManager Enhancements The ASP.NET ScriptManager control in the past has introduced some nice ways to take programmatic and markup control over script loading, but there were a number of shortcomings in this control. The ASP.NET 4.0 ScriptManager has a number of improvements that make it easier to control script loading and addresses a few of the shortcomings that have often kept me from using the control in favor of manual script loading. The first is the AjaxFrameworkMode property which finally lets you suppress loading the ASP.NET AJAX runtime. Disabled doesn’t load any ASP.NET AJAX libraries, but there’s also an Explicit mode that lets you pick and choose the library pieces individually and reduce the footprint of ASP.NET AJAX script included if you are using the library. There’s also a new EnableCdn property that forces any script that has a new WebResource attribute CdnPath property set to a CDN supplied URL. If the script has this Attribute property set to a non-null/empty value and EnableCdn is enabled on the ScriptManager, that script will be served from the specified CdnPath. [assembly: WebResource(    "Westwind.Web.Resources.ww.jquery.js",    "application/x-javascript",    CdnPath =  "http://mysite.com/scripts/ww.jquery.min.js")] Cool, but a little too static for my taste since this value can’t be changed at runtime to point at a debug script as needed, for example. Assembly names for loading scripts from resources can now be simple names rather than fully qualified assembly names, which make it less verbose to reference scripts from assemblies loaded from your bin folder or the assembly reference area in web.config: <asp:ScriptManager runat="server" id="Id"          EnableCdn="true"         AjaxFrameworkMode="disabled">     <Scripts>         <asp:ScriptReference          Name="Westwind.Web.Resources.ww.jquery.js"         Assembly="Westwind.Web" />     </Scripts>        </asp:ScriptManager> The ScriptManager in 4.0 also supports script combining via the CompositeScript tag, which allows you to very easily combine scripts into a single script resource served via ASP.NET. Even nicer: You can specify the URL that the combined script is served with. Check out the following script manager markup that combines several static file scripts and a script resource into a single ASP.NET served resource from a static URL (allscripts.js): <asp:ScriptManager runat="server" id="Id"          EnableCdn="true"         AjaxFrameworkMode="disabled">     <CompositeScript          Path="~/scripts/allscripts.js">         <Scripts>             <asp:ScriptReference                    Path="~/scripts/jquery.js" />             <asp:ScriptReference                    Path="~/scripts/ww.jquery.js" />             <asp:ScriptReference            Name="Westwind.Web.Resources.editors.js"                 Assembly="Westwind.Web" />         </Scripts>     </CompositeScript> </asp:ScriptManager> When you render this into HTML, you’ll see a single script reference in the page: <script src="scripts/allscripts.debug.js"          type="text/javascript"></script> All you need to do to make this work is ensure that allscripts.js and allscripts.debug.js exist in the scripts folder of your application - they can be empty but the file has to be there. This is pretty cool, but you want to be real careful that you use unique URLs for each combination of scripts you combine or else browser and server caching will easily screw you up royally. The script manager also allows you to override native ASP.NET AJAX scripts now as any script references defined in the Scripts section of the ScriptManager trump internal references. So if you want custom behavior or you want to fix a possible bug in the core libraries that normally are loaded from resources, you can now do this simply by referencing the script resource name in the Name property and pointing at System.Web for the assembly. Not a common scenario, but when you need it, it can come in real handy. Still, there are a number of shortcomings in this control. For one, the ScriptManager and ClientScript APIs still have no common entry point so control developers are still faced with having to check and support both APIs to load scripts so that controls can work on pages that do or don’t have a ScriptManager on the page. The CdnUrl is static and compiled in, which is very restrictive. And finally, there’s still no control over where scripts get loaded on the page - ScriptManager still injects scripts into the middle of the HTML markup rather than in the header or optionally the footer. This, in turn, means there is little control over script loading order, which can be problematic for control developers. MetaDescription, MetaKeywords Page Properties There are also a number of additional Page properties that correspond to some of the other features discussed in this column: ClientIDMode, ClientTarget and ViewStateMode. Another minor but useful feature is that you can now directly access the MetaDescription and MetaKeywords properties on the Page object to set the corresponding meta tags programmatically. Updating these values programmatically previously required either <%= %> expressions in the page markup or dynamic insertion of literal controls into the page. You can now just set these properties programmatically on the Page object in any Control derived class on the page or the Page itself: Page.MetaKeywords = "ASP.NET,4.0,New Features"; Page.MetaDescription = "This article discusses the new features in ASP.NET 4.0"; Note, that there’s no corresponding ASP.NET tag for the HTML Meta element, so the only way to specify these values in markup and access them is via the @Page tag: <%@Page Language="C#"      CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="Westwind.WebStore.WebForm2"      ClientIDMode="Static"                MetaDescription="Article that discusses what's                      new in ASP.NET 4.0"     MetaKeywords="ASP.NET,4.0,New Features" %> Nothing earth shattering but quite convenient. Visual Studio 2010 Enhancements for Web Development For Web development there are also a host of editor enhancements in Visual Studio 2010. Some of these are not Web specific but they are useful for Web developers in general. Text Editors Throughout Visual Studio 2010, the text editors have all been updated to a new core engine based on WPF which provides some interesting new features for various code editors including the nice ability to zoom in and out with Ctrl-MouseWheel to quickly change the size of text. There are many more API options to control the editor and although Visual Studio 2010 doesn’t yet use many of these features, we can look forward to enhancements in add-ins and future editor updates from the various language teams that take advantage of the visual richness that WPF provides to editing. On the negative side, I’ve noticed that occasionally the code editor and especially the HTML and JavaScript editors will lose the ability to use various navigation keys like arrows, back and delete keys, which requires closing and reopening the documents at times. This issue seems to be well documented so I suspect this will be addressed soon with a hotfix or within the first service pack. Overall though, the code editors work very well, especially given that they were re-written completely using WPF, which was one of my big worries when I first heard about the complete redesign of the editors. Multi-Targeting Visual Studio now targets all versions of the .NET framework from 2.0 forward. You can use Visual Studio 2010 to work on your ASP.NET 2, 3.0 and 3.5 applications which is a nice way to get your feet wet with the new development environment without having to make changes to existing applications. It’s nice to have one tool to work in for all the different versions. Multi-Monitor Support One cool feature of Visual Studio 2010 is the ability to drag windows out of the Visual Studio environment and out onto the desktop including onto another monitor easily. Since Web development often involves working with a host of designers at the same time - visual designer, HTML markup window, code behind and JavaScript editor - it’s really nice to be able to have a little more screen real estate to work on each of these editors. Microsoft made a welcome change in the environment. IntelliSense Snippets for HTML and JavaScript Editors The HTML and JavaScript editors now finally support IntelliSense scripts to create macro-based template expansions that have been in the core C# and Visual Basic code editors since Visual Studio 2005. Snippets allow you to create short XML-based template definitions that can act as static macros or real templates that can have replaceable values that can be embedded into the expanded text. The XML syntax for these snippets is straight forward and it’s pretty easy to create custom snippets manually. You can easily create snippets using XML and store them in your custom snippets folder (C:\Users\rstrahl\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Code Snippets\Visual Web Developer\My HTML Snippets and My JScript Snippets), but it helps to use one of the third-party tools that exist to simplify the process for you. I use SnippetEditor, by Bill McCarthy, which makes short work of creating snippets interactively (http://snippeteditor.codeplex.com/). Note: You may have to manually add the Visual Studio 2010 User specific Snippet folders to this tool to see existing ones you’ve created. Code snippets are some of the biggest time savers and HTML editing more than anything deals with lots of repetitive tasks that lend themselves to text expansion. Visual Studio 2010 includes a slew of built-in snippets (that you can also customize!) and you can create your own very easily. If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to spend a little time examining your coding patterns and find the repetitive code that you write and convert it into snippets. I’ve been using CodeRush for this for years, but now you can do much of the basic expansion natively for HTML and JavaScript snippets. jQuery Integration Is Now Native jQuery is a popular JavaScript library and recently Microsoft has recently stated that it will become the primary client-side scripting technology to drive higher level script functionality in various ASP.NET Web projects that Microsoft provides. In Visual Studio 2010, the default full project template includes jQuery as part of a new project including the support files that provide IntelliSense (-vsdoc files). IntelliSense support for jQuery is now also baked into Visual Studio 2010, so unlike Visual Studio 2008 which required a separate download, no further installs are required for a rich IntelliSense experience with jQuery. Summary ASP.NET 4.0 brings many useful improvements to the platform, but thankfully most of the changes are incremental changes that don’t compromise backwards compatibility and they allow developers to ease into the new features one feature at a time. None of the changes in ASP.NET 4.0 or Visual Studio 2010 are monumental or game changers. The bigger features are language and .NET Framework changes that are also optional. This ASP.NET and tools release feels more like fine tuning and getting some long-standing kinks worked out of the platform. It shows that the ASP.NET team is dedicated to paying attention to community feedback and responding with changes to the platform and development environment based on this feedback. If you haven’t gotten your feet wet with ASP.NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010, there’s no reason not to give it a shot now - the ASP.NET 4.0 platform is solid and Visual Studio 2010 works very well for a brand new release. Check it out. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  

  Read the article

• Cloud MBaaS : The Next Big Thing in Enterprise Mobility

  - by shiju

  In this blog post, I will take a look at Cloud Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) and how we can leverage Cloud based Mobile Backend as a Service for building enterprise mobile apps. Today, mobile apps are incredibly significant in both consumer and enterprise space and the demand for the mobile apps is unbelievably increasing in day to day business. An enterprise can’t survive in business without a proper mobility strategy. A better mobility strategy and faster delivery of your mobile apps will give you an extra mileage for your business and IT strategy. So organizations and mobile developers are looking for different strategy for meeting this demand and adopting different development strategy for their mobile apps. Some developers are adopting hybrid mobile app development platforms, for delivering their products for multiple platforms, for fast time-to-market. Others are adopting a Mobile enterprise application platform (MEAP) such as Kony for their enterprise mobile apps for fast time-to-market and better business integration. The Challenges of Enterprise Mobility The real challenge of enterprise mobile apps, is not about creating the front-end environment or developing front-end for multiple platforms. The most important thing of enterprise mobile apps is to expose your enterprise data to mobile devices where the real pain is your business data might be residing in lot of different systems including legacy systems, ERP systems etc., and these systems will be deployed with lot of security restrictions. Exposing your data from the on-premises servers, is not a easy thing for most of the business organizations. Many organizations are spending too much time for their front-end development strategy, but they are really lacking for building a strategy on their back-end for exposing the business data to mobile apps. So building a REST services layer and mobile back-end services, on the top of legacy systems and existing middleware systems, is the key part of most of the enterprise mobile apps, where multiple mobile platforms can easily consume these REST services and other mobile back-end services for building mobile apps. For some mobile apps, we can’t predict its user base, especially for products where customers can gradually increase at any time. And for today’s mobile apps, faster time-to-market is very critical so that spending too much time for mobile app’s scalability, will not be worth. The real power of Cloud is the agility and on-demand scalability, where we can scale-up and scale-down our applications very easily. It would be great if we could use the power of Cloud to mobile apps. So using Cloud for mobile apps is a natural fit, where we can use Cloud as the storage for mobile apps and hosting mechanism for mobile back-end services, where we can enjoy the full power of Cloud with greater level of on-demand scalability and operational agility. So Cloud based Mobile Backend as a Service is great choice for building enterprise mobile apps, where enterprises can enjoy the massive scalability power of their mobile apps, provided by public cloud vendors such as Microsoft Windows Azure. Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) We have discussed the key challenges of enterprise mobile apps and how we can leverage Cloud for hosting mobile backend services. MBaaS is a set of cloud-based, server-side mobile services for multiple mobile platforms and HTML5 platform, which can be used as a backend for your mobile apps with the scalability power of Cloud. The information below provides the key features of a typical MBaaS platform: Cloud based storage for your application data. Automatic REST API services on the application data, for CRUD operations. Native push notification services with massive scalability power. User management services for authenticate users. User authentication via Social accounts such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter. Scheduler services for periodically sending data to mobile devices. Native SDKs for multiple mobile platforms such as Windows Phone and Windows Store, Android, Apple iOS, and HTML5, for easily accessing the mobile services from mobile apps, with better security.  Typically, a MBaaS platform will provide native SDKs for multiple mobile platforms so that we can easily consume the server-side mobile services. MBaaS based REST APIs can use for integrating to enterprise backend systems. We can use the same mobile services for multiple platform so hat we can reuse the application logic to multiple mobile platforms. Public cloud vendors are building the mobile services on the top of their PaaS offerings. Windows Azure Mobile Services is a great platform for a MBaaS offering that is leveraging Windows Azure Cloud platform’s PaaS capabilities. Hybrid mobile development platform Titanium provides their own MBaaS services. LoopBack is a new MBaaS service provided by Node.js consulting firm StrongLoop, which can be hosted on multiple cloud platforms and also for on-premises servers. The Challenges of MBaaS Solutions If you are building your mobile apps with a new data storage, it will be very easy, since there is not any integration challenges you have to face. But most of the use cases, you have to extract your application data in which stored in on-premises servers which might be under VPNs and firewalls. So exposing these data to your MBaaS solution with a proper security would be a big challenge. The capability of your MBaaS vendor is very important as you have to interact with your legacy systems for many enterprise mobile apps. So you should be very careful about choosing for MBaaS vendor. At the same time, you should have a proper strategy for mobilizing your application data which stored in on-premises legacy systems, where your solution architecture and strategy is more important than platforms and tools.  Windows Azure Mobile Services Windows Azure Mobile Services is an MBaaS offerings from Windows Azure cloud platform. IMHO, Microsoft Windows Azure is the best PaaS platform in the Cloud space. Windows Azure Mobile Services extends the PaaS capabilities of Windows Azure, to mobile devices, which can be used as a cloud backend for your mobile apps, which will provide global availability and reach for your mobile apps. Windows Azure Mobile Services provides storage services, user management with social network integration, push notification services and scheduler services and provides native SDKs for all major mobile platforms and HTML5. In Windows Azure Mobile Services, you can write server-side scripts in Node.js where you can enjoy the full power of Node.js including the use of NPM modules for your server-side scripts. In the previous section, we had discussed some challenges of MBaaS solutions. You can leverage Windows Azure Cloud platform for solving many challenges regarding with enterprise mobility. The entire Windows Azure platform can play a key role for working as the backend for your mobile apps where you can leverage the entire Windows Azure platform for your mobile apps. With Windows Azure, you can easily connect to your on-premises systems which is a key thing for mobile backend solutions. Another key point is that Windows Azure provides better integration with services like Active Directory, which makes Windows Azure as the de facto platform for enterprise mobility, for enterprises, who have been leveraging Microsoft ecosystem for their application and IT infrastructure. Windows Azure Mobile Services  is going to next evolution where you can expect some exciting features in near future. One area, where Windows Azure Mobile Services should definitely need an improvement, is about the default storage mechanism in which currently it is depends on SQL Server. IMHO, developers should be able to choose multiple default storage option when creating a new mobile service instance. Let’s say, there should be a different storage providers such as SQL Server storage provider and Table storage provider where developers should be able to choose their choice of storage provider when creating a new mobile services project. I have been used Windows Azure and Windows Azure Mobile Services as the backend for production apps for mobile, where it performed very well. MBaaS Over MEAP Recently, many larger enterprises has been adopted Mobile enterprise application platform (MEAP) for their mobile apps. I haven’t worked on any production MEAP solution, but I heard that developers are really struggling with MEAP in different way. The learning curve for a proprietary MEAP platform is very high. I am completely against for using larger proprietary ecosystem for mobile apps. For enterprise mobile apps, I highly recommend to use native iOS/Android/Windows Phone or HTML5  for front-end with a cloud hosted MBaaS solution as the middleware. A MBaaS service can be consumed from multiple mobile apps where REST APIs are using to integrating with enterprise backend systems. Enterprise mobility should start with exposing REST APIs on the enterprise backend systems and these REST APIs can host on Cloud where we can enjoy the power of Cloud for our services. If you are having REST APIs for your enterprise data, then you can easily build mobile frontends for multiple platforms.   You can follow me on Twitter @shijucv

  Read the article

• Communication Between Your PC and Azure VM via Windows Azure Connect

  - by Shaun

  With the new release of the Windows Azure platform there are a lot of new features available. In my previous post I introduced a little bit about one of them, the remote desktop access to azure virtual machine. Now I would like to talk about another cool stuff – Windows Azure Connect.   What’s Windows Azure Connect I would like to quote the definition of the Windows Azure Connect in MSDN With Windows Azure Connect, you can use a simple user interface to configure IP-sec protected connections between computers or virtual machines (VMs) in your organization’s network, and roles running in Windows Azure. IP-sec protects communications over Internet Protocol (IP) networks through the use of cryptographic security services. There’s an image available at the MSDN as well that I would like to forward here As we can see, using the Windows Azure Connect the Worker Role 1 and Web Role 1 are connected with the development machines and database servers which some of them are inside the organization some are not. With the Windows Azure Connect, the roles deployed on the cloud could consume the resource which located inside our Intranet or anywhere in the world. That means the roles can connect to the local database, access the local shared resource such as share files, folders and printers, etc.   Difference between Windows Azure Connect and AppFabric It seems that the Windows Azure Connect are duplicated with the Windows Azure AppFabric. Both of them are aiming to solve the problem on how to communication between the resource in the cloud and inside the local network. The table below lists the differences in my understanding. Category Windows Azure Connect Windows Azure AppFabric Purpose An IP-sec connection between the local machines and azure roles. An application service running on the cloud. Connectivity IP-sec, Domain-joint Net Tcp, Http, Https Components Windows Azure Connect Driver Service Bus, Access Control, Caching Usage Azure roles connect to local database server Azure roles use local shared files,  folders and printers, etc. Azure roles join the local AD. Expose the local service to Internet. Move the authorization process to the cloud. Integrate with existing identities such as Live ID, Google ID, etc. with existing local services. Utilize the distributed cache.   And also some scenarios on which of them should be used. Scenario Connect AppFabric I have a service deployed in the Intranet and I want the people can use it from the Internet.   Y I have a website deployed on Azure and need to use a database which deployed inside the company. And I don’t want to expose the database to the Internet. Y   I have a service deployed in the Intranet and is using AD authorization. I have a website deployed on Azure which needs to use this service. Y   I have a service deployed in the Intranet and some people on the Internet can use it but need to be authorized and authenticated.   Y I have a service in Intranet, and a website deployed on Azure. This service can be used from Internet and that website should be able to use it as well by AD authorization for more functionalities. Y Y   How to Enable Windows Azure Connect OK we talked a lot information about the Windows Azure Connect and differences with the Windows Azure AppFabric. Now let’s see how to enable and use the Windows Azure Connect. First of all, since this feature is in CTP stage we should apply before use it. On the Windows Azure Portal we can see our CTP features status under Home, Beta Program page. You can send the apply to join the Beta Programs to Microsoft in this page. After a few days the Microsoft will send an email to you (the email of your Live ID) when it’s available. In my case we can see that the Windows Azure Connect had been activated by Microsoft and then we can click the Connect button on top, or we can click the Virtual Network item from the left navigation bar.   The first thing we need, if it’s our first time to enter the Connect page, is to enable the Windows Azure Connect. After that we can see our Windows Azure Connect information in this page.   Add a Local Machine to Azure Connect As we explained below the Windows Azure Connect can make an IP-sec connection between the local machines and azure role instances. So that we firstly add a local machine into our Azure Connect. To do this we will click the Install Local Endpoint button on top and then the portal will give us an URL. Copy this URL to the machine we want to add and it will download the software to us. This software will be installed in the local machines which we want to join the Connect. After installed there will be a tray-icon appeared to indicate this machine had been joint our Connect. The local application will be refreshed to the Windows Azure Platform every 5 minutes but we can click the Refresh button to let it retrieve the latest status at once. Currently my local machine is ready for connect and we can see my machine in the Windows Azure Portal if we switched back to the portal and selected back Activated Endpoints node.   Add a Windows Azure Role to Azure Connect Let’s create a very simple azure project with a basic ASP.NET web role inside. To make it available on Windows Azure Connect we will open the azure project property of this role from the solution explorer in the Visual Studio, and select the Virtual Network tab, check the Activate Windows Azure Connect. The next step is to get the activation token from the Windows Azure Portal. In the same page there is a button named Get Activation Token. Click this button then the portal will display the token to me. We copied this token and pasted to the box in the Visual Studio tab. Then we deployed this application to azure. After completed the deployment we can see the role instance was listed in the Windows Azure Portal - Virtual Connect section.   Establish the Connect Group The final task is to create a connect group which contains the machines and role instances need to be connected each other. This can be done in the portal very easy. The machines and instances will NOT be connected until we created the group for them. The machines and instances can be used in one or more groups. In the Virtual Connect section click the Groups and Roles node from the left side navigation bar and clicked the Create Group button on top. This will bring up a dialog to us. What we need to do is to specify a group name, description; and then we need to select the local computers and azure role instances into this group. After the Azure Fabric updated the group setting we can see the groups and the endpoints in the page. And if we switch back to the local machine we can see that the tray-icon have been changed and the status turned connected. The Windows Azure Connect will update the group information every 5 minutes. If you find the status was still in Disconnected please right-click the tray-icon and select the Refresh menu to retrieve the latest group policy to make it connected.   Test the Azure Connect between the Local Machine and the Azure Role Instance Now our local machine and azure role instance had been connected. This means each of them can communication to others in IP level. For example we can open the SQL Server port so that our azure role can connect to it by using the machine name or the IP address. The Windows Azure Connect uses IPv6 to connect between the local machines and role instances. You can get the IP address from the Windows Azure Portal Virtual Network section when select an endpoint. I don’t want to take a full example for how to use the Connect but would like to have two very simple tests. The first one would be PING.   When a local machine and role instance are connected through the Windows Azure Connect we can PING any of them if we opened the ICMP protocol in the Filewall setting. To do this we need to run a command line before test. Open the command window on the local machine and the role instance, execute the command as following netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="ICMPv6" dir=in action=allow enable=yes protocol=icmpv6 Thanks to Jason Chen, Patriek van Dorp, Anton Staykov and Steve Marx, they helped me to enable  the ICMPv6 setting. For the full discussion we made please visit here. You can use the Remote Desktop Access feature to logon the azure role instance. Please refer my previous blog post to get to know how to use the Remote Desktop Access in Windows Azure. Then we can PING the machine or the role instance by specifying its name. Below is the screen I PING my local machine from my azure instance. We can use the IPv6 address to PING each other as well. Like the image following I PING to my role instance from my local machine thought the IPv6 address.   Another example I would like to demonstrate here is folder sharing. I shared a folder in my local machine and then if we logged on the role instance we can see the folder content from the file explorer window.   Summary In this blog post I introduced about another new feature – Windows Azure Connect. With this feature our local resources and role instances (virtual machines) can be connected to each other. In this way we can make our azure application using our local stuff such as database servers, printers, etc. without expose them to Internet.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

  Read the article

• Another Marketing Conference, part two – the afternoon

  - by Roger Hart

  In my previous post, I’ve covered the morning sessions at AMC2012. Here’s the rest of the write-up. I’ve skipped Charles Nixon’s session which was a blend of funky futurism and professional development advice, but you can see his slides here. I’ve also skipped the Google presentation, as it was a little thin on insight. 6 – Brand ambassadors: Getting universal buy in across the organisation, Vanessa Northam Slides are here This was the strongest enforcement of the idea that brand and campaign values need to be delivered throughout the organization if they’re going to work. Vanessa runs internal communications at e-on, and shared her experience of using internal comms to align an organization and thereby get the most out of a campaign. She views the purpose of internal comms as: “…to help leaders, to communicate the purpose and future of an organization, and support change.” This (and culture) primes front line staff, which creates customer experience and spreads brand. You ensure a whole organization knows what’s going on with both internal and external comms. If everybody is aligned and informed, if everybody can clearly articulate your brand and campaign goals, then you can turn everybody into an advocate. Alignment is a powerful tool for delivering a consistent experience and message. The pathological counter example is the one in which a marketing message goes out, which creates inbound customer contacts that front line contact staff haven’t been briefed to handle. The NatWest campaign was again mentioned in this context. The good example was e-on’s cheaper tariff campaign. Building a groundswell of internal excitement, and even running an internal launch meant everyone could contribute to a good customer experience. They found that meter readers were excited – not a group they’d considered as obvious in providing customer experience. But they were a group that has a lot of face-to-face contact with customers, and often were asked questions they may not have been briefed to answer. Being able to communicate a simple new message made it easier for them, and also let them become a sales and marketing asset to the organization. 7 – Goodbye Internet, Hello Outernet: the rise and rise of augmented reality, Matt Mills I wasn’t going to write this up, because it was essentially a sales demo for Aurasma. But the technology does merit some discussion. Basically, it replaces QR codes with visual recognition, and provides a simple-looking back end for attaching content. It’s quite sexy. But here’s my beef with it: QR codes had a clear visual language – when you saw one you knew what it was and what to do with it. They were clunky, but they had the “getting started” problem solved out of the box once you knew what you were looking at. However, they fail because QR code reading isn’t native to the platform. You needed an app, which meant you needed to know to download one. Consequentially, you can’t use QR codes with and ubiquity, or depend on them. This means marketers, content providers, etc, never pushed them, and they remained and awkward oddity, a minority sport. Aurasma half solves problem two, and re-introduces problem one, making it potentially half as useful as a QR code. It’s free, and you can apparently build it into your own apps. Add to that the likelihood of it becoming native to the platform if it takes off, and it may have legs. I guess we’ll see. 8 – We all need to code, Helen Mayor Great title – good point. If there was anybody in the room who didn’t at least know basic HTML, and if Helen’s presentation inspired them to learn, that’s fantastic. However, this was a half hour sales pitch for a basic coding training course. Beyond advocating coding skills it contained no useful content. Marketers may also like to consider some of these resources if they’re looking to learn code: Code Academy – free interactive tutorials Treehouse – learn web design, web dev, or app dev WebPlatform.org – tutorials and documentation for web tech  11 – Understanding our inner creativity, Margaret Boden This session was the most theoretical and probably least actionable of the day. It also held my attention utterly. Margaret spoke fluently, fascinatingly, without slides, on the subject of types of creativity and how they work. It was splendid. Yes, it raised a wry smile whenever she spoke of “the content of advertisements” and gave an example from 1970s TV ads, but even without the attempt to meet the conference’s theme this would have been thoroughly engaging. There are, Margaret suggested, three types of creativity: Combinatorial creativity The most common form, and consisting of synthesising ideas from existing and familiar concepts and tropes. Exploratory creativity Less common, this involves exploring the limits and quirks of a particular constraint or style. Transformational creativity This is uncommon, and arises from finding a way to do something that the existing rules would hold to be impossible. In essence, this involves breaking one of the constraints that exploratory creativity is composed from. Combinatorial creativity, she suggested, is particularly important for attaching favourable ideas to existing things. As such is it probably worth developing for marketing. Exploratory creativity may then come into play in something like developing and optimising an idea or campaign that now has momentum. Transformational creativity exists at the edges of this exploration. She suggested that products may often be transformational, but that marketing seemed unlikely to in her experience. This made me wonder about Listerine. Crucially, transformational creativity is characterised by there being some element of continuity with the strictures of previous thinking. Once it has happened, there may be  move from a revolutionary instance into an explored style. Again, from a marketing perspective, this seems to chime well with the thinking in Youngme Moon’s book: Different Talking about the birth of Modernism is visual art, Margaret pointed out that transformational creativity has historically risked a backlash, demanding what is essentially an education of the market. This is best accomplished by referring back to the continuities with the past in order to make the new familiar. Thoughts The afternoon is harder to sum up than the morning. It felt less concrete, and was troubled by a short run of poor presentations in the middle. Mainly, I found myself wrestling with the internal comms issue. It’s one of those things that seems astonishingly obvious in hindsight, but any campaign – particularly any large one – is doomed if the people involved can’t believe in it. We’ve run things here that haven’t gone so well, of course we have; who hasn’t? I’m not going to air any laundry, but people not being informed (much less aligned) feels like a common factor. It’s tough though. Managing and anticipating information needs across an organization of any size can’t be easy. Even the simple things like ensuring sales and support departments know what’s in a product release, and what messages go with it are easy to botch. The thing I like about framing this as a brand and campaign advocacy problem is that it makes it likely to get addressed. Better is always sexier than less-worse. Any technical communicator who’s ever felt crowded out by a content strategist or marketing copywriter  knows this – increasing revenue gets a seat at the table far more readily than reducing support costs, even if the financial impact is identical. So that’s it from AMC. The big thought-provokers were social buying behaviour and eliciting behaviour change, and the value of internal communications in ensuring successful campaigns and continuity of customer experience. I’ll be chewing over that for a while, and I’d definitely return next year.      

  Read the article

• Windows Azure: Import/Export Hard Drives, VM ACLs, Web Sockets, Remote Debugging, Continuous Delivery, New Relic, Billing Alerts and More

  - by ScottGu

  Two weeks ago we released a giant set of improvements to Windows Azure, as well as a significant update of the Windows Azure SDK. This morning we released another massive set of enhancements to Windows Azure.  Today’s new capabilities include: Storage: Import/Export Hard Disk Drives to your Storage Accounts HDInsight: General Availability of our Hadoop Service in the cloud Virtual Machines: New VM Gallery, ACL support for VIPs Web Sites: WebSocket and Remote Debugging Support Notification Hubs: Segmented customer push notification support with tag expressions TFS & GIT: Continuous Delivery Support for Web Sites + Cloud Services Developer Analytics: New Relic support for Web Sites + Mobile Services Service Bus: Support for partitioned queues and topics Billing: New Billing Alert Service that sends emails notifications when your bill hits a threshold you define All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note that some features are still in preview).  Below are more details about them. Storage: Import/Export Hard Disk Drives to Windows Azure I am excited to announce the preview of our new Windows Azure Import/Export Service! The Windows Azure Import/Export Service enables you to move large amounts of on-premises data into and out of your Windows Azure Storage accounts. It does this by enabling you to securely ship hard disk drives directly to our Windows Azure data centers. Once we receive the drives we’ll automatically transfer the data to or from your Windows Azure Storage account.  This enables you to import or export massive amounts of data more quickly and cost effectively (and not be constrained by available network bandwidth). Encrypted Transport Our Import/Export service provides built-in support for BitLocker disk encryption – which enables you to securely encrypt data on the hard drives before you send it, and not have to worry about it being compromised even if the disk is lost/stolen in transit (since the content on the transported hard drives is completely encrypted and you are the only one who has the key to it).  The drive preparation tool we are shipping today makes setting up bitlocker encryption on these hard drives easy. How to Import/Export your first Hard Drive of Data You can read our Getting Started Guide to learn more about how to begin using the import/export service.  You can create import and export jobs via the Windows Azure Management Portal as well as programmatically using our Server Management APIs. It is really easy to create a new import or export job using the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Simply navigate to a Windows Azure storage account, and then click the new Import/Export tab now available within it (note: if you don’t have this tab make sure to sign-up for the Import/Export preview): Then click the “Create Import Job” or “Create Export Job” commands at the bottom of it.  This will launch a wizard that easily walks you through the steps required: For more comprehensive information about Import/Export, refer to Windows Azure Storage team blog.  You can also send questions and comments to the [email protected] email address. We think you’ll find this new service makes it much easier to move data into and out of Windows Azure, and it will dramatically cut down the network bandwidth required when working on large data migration projects.  We hope you like it. HDInsight: 100% Compatible Hadoop Service in the Cloud Last week we announced the general availability release of Windows Azure HDInsight. HDInsight is a 100% compatible Hadoop service that allows you to easily provision and manage Hadoop clusters for big data processing in Windows Azure.  This release is now live in production, backed by an enterprise SLA, supported 24x7 by Microsoft Support, and is ready to use for production scenarios. HDInsight allows you to use Apache Hadoop tools, such as Pig and Hive, to process large amounts of data in Windows Azure Blob Storage. Because data is stored in Windows Azure Blob Storage, you can choose to dynamically create Hadoop clusters only when you need them, and then shut them down when they are no longer required (since you pay only for the time the Hadoop cluster instances are running this provides a super cost effective way to use them).  You can create Hadoop clusters using either the Windows Azure Management Portal (see below) or using our PowerShell and Cross Platform Command line tools: The import/export hard drive support that came out today is a perfect companion service to use with HDInsight – the combination allows you to easily ingest, process and optionally export a limitless amount of data.  We’ve also integrated HDInsight with our Business Intelligence tools, so users can leverage familiar tools like Excel in order to analyze the output of jobs.  You can find out more about how to get started with HDInsight here. Virtual Machines: VM Gallery Enhancements Today’s update of Windows Azure brings with it a new Virtual Machine gallery that you can use to create new VMs in the cloud.  You can launch the gallery by doing New->Compute->Virtual Machine->From Gallery within the Windows Azure Management Portal: The new Virtual Machine Gallery includes some nice enhancements that make it even easier to use: Search: You can now easily search and filter images using the search box in the top-right of the dialog.  For example, simply type “SQL” and we’ll filter to show those images in the gallery that contain that substring. Category Tree-view: Each month we add more built-in VM images to the gallery.  You can continue to browse these using the “All” view within the VM Gallery – or now quickly filter them using the category tree-view on the left-hand side of the dialog.  For example, by selecting “Oracle” in the tree-view you can now quickly filter to see the official Oracle supplied images. MSDN and Supported checkboxes: With today’s update we are also introducing filters that makes it easy to filter out types of images that you may not be interested in. The first checkbox is MSDN: using this filter you can exclude any image that is not part of the Windows Azure benefits for MSDN subscribers (which have highly discounted pricing - you can learn more about the MSDN pricing here). The second checkbox is Supported: this filter will exclude any image that contains prerelease software, so you can feel confident that the software you choose to deploy is fully supported by Windows Azure and our partners. Sort options: We sort gallery images by what we think customers are most interested in, but sometimes you might want to sort using different views. So we’re providing some additional sort options, like “Newest,” to customize the image list for what suits you best. Pricing information: We now provide additional pricing information about images and options on how to cost effectively run them directly within the VM Gallery. The above improvements make it even easier to use the VM Gallery and quickly create launch and run Virtual Machines in the cloud. Virtual Machines: ACL Support for VIPs A few months ago we exposed the ability to configure Access Control Lists (ACLs) for Virtual Machines using Windows PowerShell cmdlets and our Service Management API. With today’s release, you can now configure VM ACLs using the Windows Azure Management Portal as well. You can now do this by clicking the new Manage ACL command in the Endpoints tab of a virtual machine instance: This will enable you to configure an ordered list of permit and deny rules to scope the traffic that can access your VM’s network endpoints. For example, if you were on a virtual network, you could limit RDP access to a Windows Azure virtual machine to only a few computers attached to your enterprise. Or if you weren’t on a virtual network you could alternatively limit traffic from public IPs that can access your workloads: Here is the default behaviors for ACLs in Windows Azure: By default (i.e. no rules specified), all traffic is permitted. When using only Permit rules, all other traffic is denied. When using only Deny rules, all other traffic is permitted. When there is a combination of Permit and Deny rules, all other traffic is denied. Lastly, remember that configuring endpoints does not automatically configure them within the VM if it also has firewall rules enabled at the OS level.  So if you create an endpoint using the Windows Azure Management Portal, Windows PowerShell, or REST API, be sure to also configure your guest VM firewall appropriately as well. Web Sites: Web Sockets Support With today’s release you can now use Web Sockets with Windows Azure Web Sites.  This feature enables you to easily integrate real-time communication scenarios within your web based applications, and is available at no extra charge (it even works with the free tier).  Higher level programming libraries like SignalR and socket.io are also now supported with it. You can enable Web Sockets support on a web site by navigating to the Configure tab of a Web Site, and by toggling Web Sockets support to “on”: Once Web Sockets is enabled you can start to integrate some really cool scenarios into your web applications.  Check out the new SignalR documentation hub on www.asp.net to learn more about some of the awesome scenarios you can do with it. Web Sites: Remote Debugging Support The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 we released two weeks ago introduced remote debugging support for Windows Azure Cloud Services. With today’s Windows Azure release we are extending this remote debugging support to also work with Windows Azure Web Sites. With live, remote debugging support inside of Visual Studio, you are able to have more visibility than ever before into how your code is operating live in Windows Azure. It is now super easy to attach the debugger and quickly see what is going on with your application in the cloud. Remote Debugging of a Windows Azure Web Site using VS 2013 Enabling the remote debugging of a Windows Azure Web Site using VS 2013 is really easy.  Start by opening up your web application’s project within Visual Studio. Then navigate to the “Server Explorer” tab within Visual Studio, and click on the deployed web-site you want to debug that is running within Windows Azure using the Windows Azure->Web Sites node in the Server Explorer.  Then right-click and choose the “Attach Debugger” option on it: When you do this Visual Studio will remotely attach the debugger to the Web Site running within Windows Azure.  The debugger will then stop the web site’s execution when it hits any break points that you have set within your web application’s project inside Visual Studio.  For example, below I set a breakpoint on the “ViewBag.Message” assignment statement within the HomeController of the standard ASP.NET MVC project template.  When I hit refresh on the “About” page of the web site within the browser, the breakpoint was triggered and I am now able to debug the app remotely using Visual Studio: Note above how we can debug variables (including autos/watchlist/etc), as well as use the Immediate and Command Windows. In the debug session above I used the Immediate Window to explore some of the request object state, as well as to dynamically change the ViewBag.Message property.  When we click the the “Continue” button (or press F5) the app will continue execution and the Web Site will render the content back to the browser.  This makes it super easy to debug web apps remotely. Tips for Better Debugging To get the best experience while debugging, we recommend publishing your site using the Debug configuration within Visual Studio’s Web Publish dialog. This will ensure that debug symbol information is uploaded to the Web Site which will enable a richer debug experience within Visual Studio.  You can find this option on the Web Publish dialog on the Settings tab: When you ultimately deploy/run the application in production we recommend using the “Release” configuration setting – the release configuration is memory optimized and will provide the best production performance.  To learn more about diagnosing and debugging Windows Azure Web Sites read our new Troubleshooting Windows Azure Web Sites in Visual Studio guide. Notification Hubs: Segmented Push Notification support with tag expressions In August we announced the General Availability of Windows Azure Notification Hubs - a powerful Mobile Push Notifications service that makes it easy to send high volume push notifications with low latency from any mobile app back-end.  Notification hubs can be used with any mobile app back-end (including ones built using our Mobile Services capability) and can also be used with back-ends that run in the cloud as well as on-premises. Beginning with the initial release, Notification Hubs allowed developers to send personalized push notifications to both individual users as well as groups of users by interest, by associating their devices with tags representing the logical target of the notification. For example, by registering all devices of customers interested in a favorite MLB team with a corresponding tag, it is possible to broadcast one message to millions of Boston Red Sox fans and another message to millions of St. Louis Cardinals fans with a single API call respectively. New support for using tag expressions to enable advanced customer segmentation With today’s release we are adding support for even more advanced customer targeting.  You can now identify customers that you want to send push notifications to by defining rich tag expressions. With tag expressions, you can now not only broadcast notifications to Boston Red Sox fans, but take that segmenting a step farther and reach more granular segments. This opens up a variety of scenarios, for example: Offers based on multiple preferences—e.g. send a game day vegetarian special to users tagged as both a Boston Red Sox fan AND a vegetarian Push content to multiple segments in a single message—e.g. rain delay information only to users who are tagged as either a Boston Red Sox fan OR a St. Louis Cardinal fan Avoid presenting subsets of a segment with irrelevant content—e.g. season ticket availability reminder to users who are tagged as a Boston Red Sox fan but NOT also a season ticket holder To illustrate with code, consider a restaurant chain app that sends an offer related to a Red Sox vs Cardinals game for users in Boston. Devices can be tagged by your app with location tags (e.g. “Loc:Boston”) and interest tags (e.g. “Follows:RedSox”, “Follows:Cardinals”), and then a notification can be sent by your back-end to “(Follows:RedSox || Follows:Cardinals) && Loc:Boston” in order to deliver an offer to all devices in Boston that follow either the RedSox or the Cardinals. This can be done directly in your server backend send logic using the code below: var notification = new WindowsNotification(messagePayload); hub.SendNotificationAsync(notification, "(Follows:RedSox || Follows:Cardinals) && Loc:Boston"); In your expressions you can use all Boolean operators: AND (&&), OR (||), and NOT (!).  Some other cool use cases for tag expressions that are now supported include: Social: To “all my group except me” - group:id && !user:id Events: Touchdown event is sent to everybody following either team or any of the players involved in the action: Followteam:A || Followteam:B || followplayer:1 || followplayer:2 … Hours: Send notifications at specific times. E.g. Tag devices with time zone and when it is 12pm in Seattle send to: GMT8 && follows:thaifood Versions and platforms: Send a reminder to people still using your first version for Android - version:1.0 && platform:Android For help on getting started with Notification Hubs, visit the Notification Hub documentation center.  Then download the latest NuGet package (or use the Notification Hubs REST APIs directly) to start sending push notifications using tag expressions.  They are really powerful and enable a bunch of great new scenarios. TFS & GIT: Continuous Delivery Support for Web Sites + Cloud Services With today’s Windows Azure release we are making it really easy to enable continuous delivery support with Windows Azure and Team Foundation Services.  Team Foundation Services is a cloud based offering from Microsoft that provides integrated source control (with both TFS and Git support), build server, test execution, collaboration tools, and agile planning support.  It makes it really easy to setup a team project (complete with automated builds and test runners) in the cloud, and it has really rich integration with Visual Studio. With today’s Windows Azure release it is now really easy to enable continuous delivery support with both TFS and Git based repositories hosted using Team Foundation Services.  This enables a workflow where when code is checked in, built successfully on an automated build server, and all tests pass on it – I can automatically have the app deployed on Windows Azure with zero manual intervention or work required. The below screen-shots demonstrate how to quickly setup a continuous delivery workflow to Windows Azure with a Git-based ASP.NET MVC project hosted using Team Foundation Services. Enabling Continuous Delivery to Windows Azure with Team Foundation Services The project I’m going to enable continuous delivery with is a simple ASP.NET MVC project whose source code I’m hosting using Team Foundation Services.  I did this by creating a “SimpleContinuousDeploymentTest” repository there using Git – and then used the new built-in Git tooling support within Visual Studio 2013 to push the source code to it.  Below is a screen-shot of the Git repository hosted within Team Foundation Services: I can access the repository within Visual Studio 2013 and easily make commits with it (as well as branch, merge and do other tasks).  Using VS 2013 I can also setup automated builds to take place in the cloud using Team Foundation Services every time someone checks in code to the repository: The cool thing about this is that I don’t have to buy or rent my own build server – Team Foundation Services automatically maintains its own build server farm and can automatically queue up a build for me (for free) every time someone checks in code using the above settings.  This build server (and automated testing) support now works with both TFS and Git based source control repositories. Connecting a Team Foundation Services project to Windows Azure Once I have a source repository hosted in Team Foundation Services with Automated Builds and Testing set up, I can then go even further and set it up so that it will be automatically deployed to Windows Azure when a source code commit is made to the repository (assuming the Build + Tests pass).  Enabling this is now really easy.  To set this up with a Windows Azure Web Site simply use the New->Compute->Web Site->Custom Create command inside the Windows Azure Management Portal.  This will create a dialog like below.  I gave the web site a name and then made sure the “Publish from source control” checkbox was selected: When we click next we’ll be prompted for the location of the source repository.  We’ll select “Team Foundation Services”: Once we do this we’ll be prompted for our Team Foundation Services account that our source repository is hosted under (in this case my TFS account is “scottguthrie”): When we click the “Authorize Now” button we’ll be prompted to give Windows Azure permissions to connect to the Team Foundation Services account.  Once we do this we’ll be prompted to pick the source repository we want to connect to.  Starting with today’s Windows Azure release you can now connect to both TFS and Git based source repositories.  This new support allows me to connect to the “SimpleContinuousDeploymentTest” respository we created earlier: Clicking the finish button will then create the Web Site with the continuous delivery hooks setup with Team Foundation Services.  Now every time someone pushes source control to the repository in Team Foundation Services, it will kick off an automated build, run all of the unit tests in the solution , and if they pass the app will be automatically deployed to our Web Site in Windows Azure.  You can monitor the history and status of these automated deployments using the Deployments tab within the Web Site: This enables a really slick continuous delivery workflow, and enables you to build and deploy apps in a really nice way. Developer Analytics: New Relic support for Web Sites + Mobile Services With today’s Windows Azure release we are making it really easy to enable Developer Analytics and Monitoring support with both Windows Azure Web Site and Windows Azure Mobile Services.  We are partnering with New Relic, who provide a great dev analytics and app performance monitoring offering, to enable this - and we have updated the Windows Azure Management Portal to make it really easy to configure. Enabling New Relic with a Windows Azure Web Site Enabling New Relic support with a Windows Azure Web Site is now really easy.  Simply navigate to the Configure tab of a Web Site and scroll down to the “developer analytics” section that is now within it: Clicking the “add-on” button will display some additional UI.  If you don’t already have a New Relic subscription, you can click the “view windows azure store” button to obtain a subscription (note: New Relic has a perpetually free tier so you can enable it even without paying anything): Clicking the “view windows azure store” button will launch the integrated Windows Azure Store experience we have within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  You can use this to browse from a variety of great add-on services – including New Relic: Select “New Relic” within the dialog above, then click the next button, and you’ll be able to choose which type of New Relic subscription you wish to purchase.  For this demo we’ll simply select the “Free Standard Version” – which does not cost anything and can be used forever:  Once we’ve signed-up for our New Relic subscription and added it to our Windows Azure account, we can go back to the Web Site’s configuration tab and choose to use the New Relic add-on with our Windows Azure Web Site.  We can do this by simply selecting it from the “add-on” dropdown (it is automatically populated within it once we have a New Relic subscription in our account): Clicking the “Save” button will then cause the Windows Azure Management Portal to automatically populate all of the needed New Relic configuration settings to our Web Site: Deploying the New Relic Agent as part of a Web Site The final step to enable developer analytics using New Relic is to add the New Relic runtime agent to our web app.  We can do this within Visual Studio by right-clicking on our web project and selecting the “Manage NuGet Packages” context menu: This will bring up the NuGet package manager.  You can search for “New Relic” within it to find the New Relic agent.  Note that there is both a 32-bit and 64-bit edition of it – make sure to install the version that matches how your Web Site is running within Windows Azure (note: you can configure your Web Site to run in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode using the Web Site’s “Configuration” tab within the Windows Azure Management Portal): Once we install the NuGet package we are all set to go.  We’ll simply re-publish the web site again to Windows Azure and New Relic will now automatically start monitoring the application Monitoring a Web Site using New Relic Now that the application has developer analytics support with New Relic enabled, we can launch the New Relic monitoring portal to start monitoring the health of it.  We can do this by clicking on the “Add Ons” tab in the left-hand side of the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Then select the New Relic add-on we signed-up for within it.  The Windows Azure Management Portal will provide some default information about the add-on when we do this.  Clicking the “Manage” button in the tray at the bottom will launch a new browser tab and single-sign us into the New Relic monitoring portal associated with our account: When we do this a new browser tab will launch with the New Relic admin tool loaded within it: We can now see insights into how our app is performing – without having to have written a single line of monitoring code.  The New Relic service provides a ton of great built-in monitoring features allowing us to quickly see: Performance times (including browser rendering speed) for the overall site and individual pages.  You can optionally set alert thresholds to trigger if the speed does not meet a threshold you specify. Information about where in the world your customers are hitting the site from (and how performance varies by region) Details on the latency performance of external services your web apps are using (for example: SQL, Storage, Twitter, etc) Error information including call stack details for exceptions that have occurred at runtime SQL Server profiling information – including which queries executed against your database and what their performance was And a whole bunch more… The cool thing about New Relic is that you don’t need to write monitoring code within your application to get all of the above reports (plus a lot more).  The New Relic agent automatically enables the CLR profiler within applications and automatically captures the information necessary to identify these.  This makes it super easy to get started and immediately have a rich developer analytics view for your solutions with very little effort. If you haven’t tried New Relic out yet with Windows Azure I recommend you do so – I think you’ll find it helps you build even better cloud applications.  Following the above steps will help you get started and deliver you a really good application monitoring solution in only minutes. Service Bus: Support for partitioned queues and topics With today’s release, we are enabling support within Service Bus for partitioned queues and topics. Enabling partitioning enables you to achieve a higher message throughput and better availability from your queues and topics. Higher message throughput is achieved by implementing multiple message brokers for each partitioned queue and topic.  The  multiple messaging stores will also provide higher availability. You can create a partitioned queue or topic by simply checking the Enable Partitioning option in the custom create wizard for a Queue or Topic: Read this article to learn more about partitioned queues and topics and how to take advantage of them today. Billing: New Billing Alert Service Today’s Windows Azure update enables a new Billing Alert Service Preview that enables you to get proactive email notifications when your Windows Azure bill goes above a certain monetary threshold that you configure.  This makes it easier to manage your bill and avoid potential surprises at the end of the month. With the Billing Alert Service Preview, you can now create email alerts to monitor and manage your monetary credits or your current bill total.  To set up an alert first sign-up for the free Billing Alert Service Preview.  Then visit the account management page, click on a subscription you have setup, and then navigate to the new Alerts tab that is available: The alerts tab allows you to setup email alerts that will be sent automatically once a certain threshold is hit.  For example, by clicking the “add alert” button above I can setup a rule to send myself email anytime my Windows Azure bill goes above $100 for the month: The Billing Alert Service will evolve to support additional aspects of your bill as well as support multiple forms of alerts such as SMS.  Try out the new Billing Alert Service Preview today and give us feedback. Summary Today’s Windows Azure release enables a ton of great new scenarios, and makes building applications hosted in the cloud even easier. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

  Read the article

• .NET 4.5 is an in-place replacement for .NET 4.0

  - by Rick Strahl

  With the betas for .NET 4.5 and Visual Studio 11 and Windows 8 shipping many people will be installing .NET 4.5 and hacking away on it. There are a number of great enhancements that are fairly transparent, but it's important to understand what .NET 4.5 actually is in terms of the CLR running on your machine. When .NET 4.5 is installed it effectively replaces .NET 4.0 on the machine. .NET 4.0 gets overwritten by a new version of .NET 4.5 which - according to Microsoft - is supposed to be 100% backwards compatible. While 100% backwards compatible sounds great, we all know that 100% is a hard number to hit, and even the aforementioned blog post at the Microsoft site acknowledges this. But there's so much more than backwards compatibility that makes this awkward at best and confusing at worst. What does ‘Replacement’ mean? When you install .NET 4.5 your .NET 4.0 assemblies in the \Windows\.NET Framework\V4.0.30319 are overwritten with a new set of assemblies. You end up with overwritten assemblies as well as a bunch of new ones (like the new System.Net.Http assemblies for example). The following screen shot demonstrates system.dll on my test machine (left) running .NET 4.5 on the right and my production laptop running stock .NET 4.0 (right):   Clearly they are different files with a difference in file sizes (interesting that the 4.5 version is actually smaller). That’s not all. If you actually query the runtime version when .NET 4.5 is installed with with Environment.Version you still get: 4.0.30319 If you open the properties of System.dll assembly in .NET 4.5 you'll also see: Notice that the file version is also left at 4.0.xxx. There are differences in build numbers: .NET 4.0 shows 261 and the current .NET 4.5 beta build is 17379. I suppose you can use assume a build number greater than 17000 is .NET 4.5, but that's pretty hokey to say the least. There’s no easy or obvious way to tell whether you are running on 4.0 or 4.5 – to the application they appear to be the same runtime version. And that is what Microsoft intends here. .NET 4.5 is intended as an in-place upgrade. Compile to 4.5 run on 4.0 – not quite! You can compile an application for .NET 4.5 and run it on the 4.0 runtime – that is until you hit a new feature that doesn’t exist on 4.0. At which point the app bombs at runtime. Say you write some code that is mostly .NET 4.0, but only has a few of the new features of .NET 4.5 like aync/await buried deep in the bowels of the application where it only fires occasionally. .NET will happily start your application and run everything 4.0 fine, until it hits that 4.5 code – and then crash unceremoniously at runtime. Oh joy! You can .NET 4.0 applications on .NET 4.5 of course and that should work without much fanfare. Different than .NET 3.0/3.5 Note that this in-place replacement is very different from the side by side installs of .NET 2.0 and 3.0/3.5 which all ran on the 2.0 version of the CLR. The two 3.x versions were basically library enhancements on top of the core .NET 2.0 runtime. Both versions ran under the .NET 2.0 runtime which wasn’t changed (other than for security patches and bug fixes) for the whole 3.x cycle. The 4.5 update instead completely replaces the .NET 4.0 runtime and leaves the actual version number set at v4.0.30319. When you build a new project with Visual Studio 2011, you can still target .NET 4.0 or you can target .NET 4.5. But you are in effect referencing the same set of assemblies for both regardless which version you use. What's different is the compiler used to compile and link your code so compiling with .NET 4.0 gives you just the subset of the functionality that is available in .NET 4.0, but when you use the 4.5 compiler you get the full functionality of what’s actually available in the assemblies and extra libraries. It doesn’t look like you will be able to use Visual Studio 2010 to develop .NET 4.5 applications. Good news – Bad news Microsoft is trying hard to experiment with every possible permutation of releasing new versions of the .NET framework apparently. No two updates have been the same. Clearly updating to a full new version of .NET (ie. .NET 2.0, 4.0 and at some point 5.0 runtimes) has its own set of challenges, but doing an in-place update of the runtime and then not even providing a good way to tell which version is installed is pretty whacky even by Microsoft’s standards. Especially given that .NET 4.5 includes a fairly significant update with all the aysnc functionality baked into the runtime. Most of the IO APIs have been updated to support task based async operation which significantly affects many existing APIs. To make things worse .NET 4.5 will be the initial version of .NET that ships with Windows 8 so it will be with us for a long time to come unless Microsoft finally decides to push .NET versions onto Windows machines as part of system upgrades (which currently doesn’t happen). This is the same story we had when Vista launched with .NET 3.0 which was a minor version that quickly was replaced by 3.5 which was more long lived and practical. People had enough problems dealing with the confusing versioning of the 3.x versions which ran on .NET 2.0. I can’t count the amount support calls and questions I’ve fielded because people couldn’t find a .NET 3.5 entry in the IIS version dialog. The same is likely to happen with .NET 4.5. It’s all well and good when we know that .NET 4.5 is an in-place replacement, but administrators and IT folks not intimately familiar with .NET are unlikely to understand this nuance and end up thoroughly confused which version is installed. It’s hard for me to see any upside to an in-place update and I haven’t really seen a good explanation of why this approach was decided on. Sure if the version stays the same existing assembly bindings don’t break so applications can stay running through an update. I suppose this is useful for some component vendors and strongly signed assemblies in corporate environments. But seriously, if you are going to throw .NET 4.5 into the mix, who won’t be recompiling all code and thoroughly test that code to work on .NET 4.5? A recompile requirement doesn’t seem that serious in light of a major version upgrade.  Resources http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2011/09/26/compatibility-of-net-framework-4-5.aspx http://www.devproconnections.com/article/net-framework/net-framework-45-versioning-faces-problems-141160© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in .NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

  Read the article

• SSH new connection begins to hang (not reject or terminate) after a day or so on Ubuntu 13.04 server

  - by kross

  Recently we upgraded the server from 12.04 LTS server to 13.04. All was well, including after a reboot. With all packages updated we began to see a strange issue, ssh works for a day or so (unclear on timing) then a later request for SSH hangs (cannot ctrl+c, nothing). It is up and serving webserver traffic etc. Port 22 is open (ips etc altered slightly for posting): nmap -T4 -A x.acme.com Starting Nmap 6.40 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2013-09-12 16:01 CDT Nmap scan report for x.acme.com (69.137.56.18) Host is up (0.026s latency). rDNS record for 69.137.56.18: c-69-137-56-18.hsd1.tn.provider.net Not shown: 998 filtered ports PORT STATE SERVICE VERSION 22/tcp open ssh OpenSSH 6.1p1 Debian 4 (protocol 2.0) | ssh-hostkey: 1024 54:d3:e3:38:44:f4:20:a4:e7:42:49:d0:a7:f1:3e:21 (DSA) | 2048 dc:21:77:3b:f4:4e:74:d0:87:33:14:40:04:68:33:a6 (RSA) |_256 45:69:10:79:5a:9f:0b:f0:66:15:39:87:b9:a1:37:f7 (ECDSA) 80/tcp open http Jetty 7.6.2.v20120308 | http-title: Log in as a Bamboo user - Atlassian Bamboo |_Requested resource was http://x.acme.com/userlogin!default.action;jsessionid=19v135zn8cl1tgso28fse4d50?os_destination=%2Fstart.action Service Info: OS: Linux; CPE: cpe:/o:linux:linux_kernel Service detection performed. Please report any incorrect results at http://nmap.org/submit/ . Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 12.89 seconds Here is the ssh -vvv: ssh -vvv x.acme.com OpenSSH_5.9p1, OpenSSL 0.9.8x 10 May 2012 debug1: Reading configuration data /Users/tfergeson/.ssh/config debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh_config debug1: /etc/ssh_config line 20: Applying options for * debug2: ssh_connect: needpriv 0 debug1: Connecting to x.acme.com [69.137.56.18] port 22. debug1: Connection established. debug3: Incorrect RSA1 identifier debug3: Could not load "/Users/tfergeson/.ssh/id_rsa" as a RSA1 public key debug1: identity file /Users/tfergeson/.ssh/id_rsa type 1 debug1: identity file /Users/tfergeson/.ssh/id_rsa-cert type -1 debug1: identity file /Users/tfergeson/.ssh/id_dsa type -1 debug1: identity file /Users/tfergeson/.ssh/id_dsa-cert type -1 debug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_6.1p1 Debian-4 debug1: match: OpenSSH_6.1p1 Debian-4 pat OpenSSH* debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0 debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_5.9 debug2: fd 3 setting O_NONBLOCK debug3: load_hostkeys: loading entries for host "x.acme.com" from file "/Users/tfergeson/.ssh/known_hosts" debug3: load_hostkeys: found key type RSA in file /Users/tfergeson/.ssh/known_hosts:10 debug3: load_hostkeys: loaded 1 keys debug3: order_hostkeyalgs: prefer hostkeyalgs: [email protected],[email protected],ssh-rsa debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT sent debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT received debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256,diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1,diffie-hellman-group14-sha1,diffie-hellman-group1-sha1 debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: [email protected],[email protected],ssh-rsa,[email protected],[email protected],ssh-dss debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: aes128-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes256-ctr,arcfour256,arcfour128,aes128-cbc,3des-cbc,blowfish-cbc,cast128-cbc,aes192-cbc,aes256-cbc,arcfour,[email protected] debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: aes128-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes256-ctr,arcfour256,arcfour128,aes128-cbc,3des-cbc,blowfish-cbc,cast128-cbc,aes192-cbc,aes256-cbc,arcfour,[email protected] debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: hmac-md5,hmac-sha1,[email protected],hmac-sha2-256,hmac-sha2-256-96,hmac-sha2-512,hmac-sha2-512-96,hmac-ripemd160,[email protected],hmac-sha1-96,hmac-md5-96 debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: hmac-md5,hmac-sha1,[email protected],hmac-sha2-256,hmac-sha2-256-96,hmac-sha2-512,hmac-sha2-512-96,hmac-ripemd160,[email protected],hmac-sha1-96,hmac-md5-96 debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: none,[email protected],zlib debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: none,[email protected],zlib debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: first_kex_follows 0 debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: reserved 0 debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: ecdh-sha2-nistp256,ecdh-sha2-nistp384,ecdh-sha2-nistp521,diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256,diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1,diffie-hellman-group14-sha1,diffie-hellman-group1-sha1 debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: ssh-rsa,ssh-dss,ecdsa-sha2-nistp256 debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: aes128-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes256-ctr,arcfour256,arcfour128,aes128-cbc,3des-cbc,blowfish-cbc,cast128-cbc,aes192-cbc,aes256-cbc,arcfour,[email protected] debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: aes128-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes256-ctr,arcfour256,arcfour128,aes128-cbc,3des-cbc,blowfish-cbc,cast128-cbc,aes192-cbc,aes256-cbc,arcfour,[email protected] debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: hmac-md5,hmac-sha1,[email protected],hmac-sha2-256,hmac-sha2-512,hmac-ripemd160,[email protected],hmac-sha1-96,hmac-md5-96 debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: hmac-md5,hmac-sha1,[email protected],hmac-sha2-256,hmac-sha2-512,hmac-ripemd160,[email protected],hmac-sha1-96,hmac-md5-96 debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: none,[email protected] debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: none,[email protected] debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: first_kex_follows 0 debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: reserved 0 debug2: mac_setup: found hmac-md5 debug1: kex: server->client aes128-ctr hmac-md5 none debug2: mac_setup: found hmac-md5 debug1: kex: client->server aes128-ctr hmac-md5 none debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REQUEST(1024<1024<8192) sent debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_GROUP debug2: dh_gen_key: priv key bits set: 130/256 debug2: bits set: 503/1024 debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_INIT sent debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REPLY debug1: Server host key: RSA dc:21:77:3b:f4:4e:74:d0:87:33:14:40:04:68:33:a6 debug3: load_hostkeys: loading entries for host "x.acme.com" from file "/Users/tfergeson/.ssh/known_hosts" debug3: load_hostkeys: found key type RSA in file /Users/tfergeson/.ssh/known_hosts:10 debug3: load_hostkeys: loaded 1 keys debug3: load_hostkeys: loading entries for host "69.137.56.18" from file "/Users/tfergeson/.ssh/known_hosts" debug3: load_hostkeys: found key type RSA in file /Users/tfergeson/.ssh/known_hosts:6 debug3: load_hostkeys: loaded 1 keys debug1: Host 'x.acme.com' is known and matches the RSA host key. debug1: Found key in /Users/tfergeson/.ssh/known_hosts:10 debug2: bits set: 493/1024 debug1: ssh_rsa_verify: signature correct debug2: kex_derive_keys debug2: set_newkeys: mode 1 debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS sent debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS debug2: set_newkeys: mode 0 debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS received debug1: Roaming not allowed by server debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_REQUEST sent debug2: service_accept: ssh-userauth debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received debug2: key: /Users/tfergeson/.ssh/id_rsa (0x7ff189c1d7d0) debug2: key: /Users/tfergeson/.ssh/id_dsa (0x0) debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey debug3: start over, passed a different list publickey debug3: preferred publickey,keyboard-interactive,password debug3: authmethod_lookup publickey debug3: remaining preferred: keyboard-interactive,password debug3: authmethod_is_enabled publickey debug1: Next authentication method: publickey debug1: Offering RSA public key: /Users/tfergeson/.ssh/id_rsa debug3: send_pubkey_test debug2: we sent a publickey packet, wait for reply debug1: Server accepts key: pkalg ssh-rsa blen 277 debug2: input_userauth_pk_ok: fp 3c:e5:29:6c:9d:27:d1:7d:e8:09:a2:e8:8e:6e:af:6f debug3: sign_and_send_pubkey: RSA 3c:e5:29:6c:9d:27:d1:7d:e8:09:a2:e8:8e:6e:af:6f debug1: read PEM private key done: type RSA debug1: Authentication succeeded (publickey). Authenticated to x.acme.com ([69.137.56.18]:22). debug1: channel 0: new [client-session] debug3: ssh_session2_open: channel_new: 0 debug2: channel 0: send open debug1: Requesting [email protected] debug1: Entering interactive session. debug2: callback start debug2: client_session2_setup: id 0 debug2: fd 3 setting TCP_NODELAY debug2: channel 0: request pty-req confirm 1 debug1: Sending environment. debug3: Ignored env ATLAS_OPTS debug3: Ignored env rvm_bin_path debug3: Ignored env TERM_PROGRAM debug3: Ignored env GEM_HOME debug3: Ignored env SHELL debug3: Ignored env TERM debug3: Ignored env CLICOLOR debug3: Ignored env IRBRC debug3: Ignored env TMPDIR debug3: Ignored env Apple_PubSub_Socket_Render debug3: Ignored env TERM_PROGRAM_VERSION debug3: Ignored env MY_RUBY_HOME debug3: Ignored env TERM_SESSION_ID debug3: Ignored env USER debug3: Ignored env COMMAND_MODE debug3: Ignored env rvm_path debug3: Ignored env COM_GOOGLE_CHROME_FRAMEWORK_SERVICE_PROCESS/USERS/tfergeson/LIBRARY/APPLICATION_SUPPORT/GOOGLE/CHROME_SOCKET debug3: Ignored env JPDA_ADDRESS debug3: Ignored env APDK_HOME debug3: Ignored env SSH_AUTH_SOCK debug3: Ignored env Apple_Ubiquity_Message debug3: Ignored env __CF_USER_TEXT_ENCODING debug3: Ignored env rvm_sticky_flag debug3: Ignored env MAVEN_OPTS debug3: Ignored env LSCOLORS debug3: Ignored env rvm_prefix debug3: Ignored env PATH debug3: Ignored env PWD debug3: Ignored env JAVA_HOME debug1: Sending env LANG = en_US.UTF-8 debug2: channel 0: request env confirm 0 debug3: Ignored env JPDA_TRANSPORT debug3: Ignored env rvm_version debug3: Ignored env M2_HOME debug3: Ignored env HOME debug3: Ignored env SHLVL debug3: Ignored env rvm_ruby_string debug3: Ignored env LOGNAME debug3: Ignored env M2_REPO debug3: Ignored env GEM_PATH debug3: Ignored env AWS_RDS_HOME debug3: Ignored env rvm_delete_flag debug3: Ignored env EC2_PRIVATE_KEY debug3: Ignored env RUBY_VERSION debug3: Ignored env SECURITYSESSIONID debug3: Ignored env EC2_CERT debug3: Ignored env _ debug2: channel 0: request shell confirm 1 debug2: callback done debug2: channel 0: open confirm rwindow 0 rmax 32768 I can hard reboot (only mac monitors at that location) and it will again be accessible. This now happens every single time. It is imperative that I get it sorted. The strange thing is that it behaves initially then starts to hang after several hours. I perused logs previously and nothing stood out. From the auth.log, I can see that it has allowed me in, but still I get nothing back on the client side: Sep 20 12:47:50 cbear sshd[25376]: Accepted publickey for tfergeson from 10.1.10.14 port 54631 ssh2 Sep 20 12:47:50 cbear sshd[25376]: pam_unix(sshd:session): session opened for user tfergeson by (uid=0) UPDATES: Still occurring even after setting UseDNS no and commenting out #session optional pam_mail.so standard noenv This does not appear to be a network/dns related issue, as all services running on the machine are as responsive and accessible as ever, with the exception of sshd. Any thoughts on where to start?

  Read the article

• ParallelWork: Feature rich multithreaded fluent task execution library for WPF

  - by oazabir

  ParallelWork is an open source free helper class that lets you run multiple work in parallel threads, get success, failure and progress update on the WPF UI thread, wait for work to complete, abort all work (in case of shutdown), queue work to run after certain time, chain parallel work one after another. It’s more convenient than using .NET’s BackgroundWorker because you don’t have to declare one component per work, nor do you need to declare event handlers to receive notification and carry additional data through private variables. You can safely pass objects produced from different thread to the success callback. Moreover, you can wait for work to complete before you do certain operation and you can abort all parallel work while they are in-flight. If you are building highly responsive WPF UI where you have to carry out multiple job in parallel yet want full control over those parallel jobs completion and cancellation, then the ParallelWork library is the right solution for you. I am using the ParallelWork library in my PlantUmlEditor project, which is a free open source UML editor built on WPF. You can see some realistic use of the ParallelWork library there. Moreover, the test project comes with 400 lines of Behavior Driven Development flavored tests, that confirms it really does what it says it does. The source code of the library is part of the “Utilities” project in PlantUmlEditor source code hosted at Google Code. The library comes in two flavors, one is the ParallelWork static class, which has a collection of static methods that you can call. Another is the Start class, which is a fluent wrapper over the ParallelWork class to make it more readable and aesthetically pleasing code. ParallelWork allows you to start work immediately on separate thread or you can queue a work to start after some duration. You can start an immediate work in a new thread using the following methods: void StartNow(Action doWork, Action onComplete) void StartNow(Action doWork, Action onComplete, Action<Exception> failed) For example, ParallelWork.StartNow(() => { workStartedAt = DateTime.Now; Thread.Sleep(howLongWorkTakes); }, () => { workEndedAt = DateTime.Now; }); Or you can use the fluent way Start.Work: Start.Work(() => { workStartedAt = DateTime.Now; Thread.Sleep(howLongWorkTakes); }) .OnComplete(() => { workCompletedAt = DateTime.Now; }) .Run(); Besides simple execution of work on a parallel thread, you can have the parallel thread produce some object and then pass it to the success callback by using these overloads: void StartNow<T>(Func<T> doWork, Action<T> onComplete) void StartNow<T>(Func<T> doWork, Action<T> onComplete, Action<Exception> fail) For example, ParallelWork.StartNow<Dictionary<string, string>>( () => { test = new Dictionary<string,string>(); test.Add("test", "test"); return test; }, (result) => { Assert.True(result.ContainsKey("test")); }); Or, the fluent way: Start<Dictionary<string, string>>.Work(() => { test = new Dictionary<string, string>(); test.Add("test", "test"); return test; }) .OnComplete((result) => { Assert.True(result.ContainsKey("test")); }) .Run(); You can also start a work to happen after some time using these methods: DispatcherTimer StartAfter(Action onComplete, TimeSpan duration) DispatcherTimer StartAfter(Action doWork,Action onComplete,TimeSpan duration) You can use this to perform some timed operation on the UI thread, as well as perform some operation in separate thread after some time. ParallelWork.StartAfter( () => { workStartedAt = DateTime.Now; Thread.Sleep(howLongWorkTakes); }, () => { workCompletedAt = DateTime.Now; }, waitDuration); Or, the fluent way: Start.Work(() => { workStartedAt = DateTime.Now; Thread.Sleep(howLongWorkTakes); }) .OnComplete(() => { workCompletedAt = DateTime.Now; }) .RunAfter(waitDuration);   There are several overloads of these functions to have a exception callback for handling exceptions or get progress update from background thread while work is in progress. For example, I use it in my PlantUmlEditor to perform background update of the application. // Check if there's a newer version of the app Start<bool>.Work(() => { return UpdateChecker.HasUpdate(Settings.Default.DownloadUrl); }) .OnComplete((hasUpdate) => { if (hasUpdate) { if (MessageBox.Show(Window.GetWindow(me), "There's a newer version available. Do you want to download and install?", "New version available", MessageBoxButton.YesNo, MessageBoxImage.Information) == MessageBoxResult.Yes) { ParallelWork.StartNow(() => { var tempPath = System.IO.Path.Combine( Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData), Settings.Default.SetupExeName); UpdateChecker.DownloadLatestUpdate(Settings.Default.DownloadUrl, tempPath); }, () => { }, (x) => { MessageBox.Show(Window.GetWindow(me), "Download failed. When you run next time, it will try downloading again.", "Download failed", MessageBoxButton.OK, MessageBoxImage.Warning); }); } } }) .OnException((x) => { MessageBox.Show(Window.GetWindow(me), x.Message, "Download failed", MessageBoxButton.OK, MessageBoxImage.Exclamation); }); The above code shows you how to get exception callbacks on the UI thread so that you can take necessary actions on the UI. Moreover, it shows how you can chain two parallel works to happen one after another. Sometimes you want to do some parallel work when user does some activity on the UI. For example, you might want to save file in an editor while user is typing every 10 second. In such case, you need to make sure you don’t start another parallel work every 10 seconds while a work is already queued. You need to make sure you start a new work only when there’s no other background work going on. Here’s how you can do it: private void ContentEditor_TextChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (!ParallelWork.IsAnyWorkRunning()) { ParallelWork.StartAfter(SaveAndRefreshDiagram, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10)); } } If you want to shutdown your application and want to make sure no parallel work is going on, then you can call the StopAll() method. ParallelWork.StopAll(); If you want to wait for parallel works to complete without a timeout, then you can call the WaitForAllWork(TimeSpan timeout). It will block the current thread until the all parallel work completes or the timeout period elapses. result = ParallelWork.WaitForAllWork(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1)); The result is true, if all parallel work completed. If it’s false, then the timeout period elapsed and all parallel work did not complete. For details how this library is built and how it works, please read the following codeproject article: ParallelWork: Feature rich multithreaded fluent task execution library for WPF http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/parallelwork.aspx If you like the article, please vote for me.

  Read the article

• Monitor your Hard Drive’s Health with Acronis Drive Monitor

  - by Matthew Guay

  Are you worried that your computer’s hard drive could die without any warning?  Here’s how you can keep tabs on it and get the first warning signs of potential problems before you actually lose your critical data. Hard drive failures are one of the most common ways people lose important data from their computers.  As more of our memories and important documents are stored digitally, a hard drive failure can mean the loss of years of work.  Acronis Drive Monitor helps you avert these disasters by warning you at the first signs your hard drive may be having trouble.  It monitors many indicators, including heat, read/write errors, total lifespan, and more. It then notifies you via a taskbar popup or email that problems have been detected.  This early warning lets you know ahead of time that you may need to purchase a new hard drive and migrate your data before it’s too late. Getting Started Head over to the Acronis site to download Drive Monitor (link below).  You’ll need to enter your name and email, and then you can download this free tool. Also, note that the download page may ask if you want to include a trial of their for-pay backup program.  If you wish to simply install the Drive Monitor utility, click Continue without adding. Run the installer when the download is finished.  Follow the prompts and install as normal. Once it’s installed, you can quickly get an overview of your hard drives’ health.  Note that it shows 3 categories: Disk problems, Acronis backup, and Critical Events.  On our computer, we had Seagate DiskWizard, an image backup utility based on Acronis Backup, installed, and Acronis detected it. Drive Monitor stays running in your tray even when the application window is closed.  It will keep monitoring your hard drives, and will alert you if there’s a problem. Find Detailed Information About Your Hard Drives Acronis’ simple interface lets you quickly see an overview of how the drives on your computer are performing.  If you’d like more information, click the link under the description.  Here we see that one of our drives have overheated, so click Show disks to get more information. Now you can select each of your drives and see more information about them.  From the Disk overview tab that opens by default, we see that our drive is being monitored, has been running for a total of 368 days, and that it’s health is good.  However, it is running at 113F, which is over the recommended max of 107F.   The S.M.A.R.T. parameters tab gives us more detailed information about our drive.  Most users wouldn’t know what an accepted value would be, so it also shows the status.  If the value is within the accepted parameters, it will report OK; otherwise, it will show that has a problem in this area. One very interesting piece of information we can see is the total number of Power-On Hours, Start/Stop Count, and Power Cycle Count.  These could be useful indicators to check if you’re considering purchasing a second hand computer.  Simply load this program, and you’ll get a better view of how long it’s been in use. Finally, the Events tab shows each time the program gave a warning.  We can see that our drive, which had been acting flaky already, is routinely overheating even when our other hard drive was running in normal temperature ranges. Monitor Acronis Backups And Critical Errors In addition to monitoring critical stats of your hard drives, Acronis Drive Monitor also keeps up with the status of your backup software and critical events reported by Windows.  You can access these from the front page, or via the links on the left hand sidebar.  If you have any edition of any Acronis Backup product installed, it will show that it was detected.  Note that it can only monitor the backup status of the newest versions of Acronis Backup and True Image. If no Acronis backup software was installed, it will show a warning that the drive may be unprotected and will give you a link to download Acronis backup software.   If you have another backup utility installed that you wish to monitor yourself, click Configure backup monitoring, and then disable monitoring on the drives you’re monitoring yourself. Finally, you can view any detected Critical events from the Critical events tab on the left. Get Emailed When There’s a Problem One of Drive Monitor’s best features is the ability to send you an email whenever there’s a problem.  Since this program can run on any version of Windows, including the Server and Home Server editions, you can use this feature to stay on top of your hard drives’ health even when you’re not nearby.  To set this up, click Options in the top left corner. Select Alerts on the left, and then click the Change settings link to setup your email account. Enter the email address which you wish to receive alerts, and a name for the program.  Then, enter the outgoing mail server settings for your email.  If you have a Gmail account, enter the following information: Outgoing mail server (SMTP): smtp.gmail.com Port: 587 Username and Password: Your gmail address and password Check the Use encryption box, and then select TLS from the encryption options.   It will now send a test message to your email account, so check and make sure it sent ok. Now you can choose to have the program automatically email you when warnings and critical alerts appear, and also to have it send regular disk status reports.   Conclusion Whether you’ve got a brand new hard drive or one that’s seen better days, knowing the real health of your it is one of the best ways to be prepared before disaster strikes.  It’s no substitute for regular backups, but can help you avert problems.  Acronis Drive Monitor is a nice tool for this, and although we wish it wasn’t so centered around their backup offerings, we still found it a nice tool. Link Download Acronis Drive Monitor (registration required) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Quick Tip: Change Monitor Timeout From Command LineAnalyze and Manage Hard Drive Space with WinDirStatMonitor CPU, Memory, and Disk IO In Windows 7 with Taskbar MetersDefrag Multiple Hard Drives At Once In WindowsFind Your Missing USB Drive on Windows XP TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Windows 7’s WordPad is Actually Good Greate Image Viewing and Management with Zoner Photo Studio Free Windows Media Player Plus! – Cool WMP Enhancer Get Your Team’s World Cup Schedule In Google Calendar Backup Drivers With Driver Magician TubeSort: YouTube Playlist Organizer

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 1059 1060 1061 1062 1063 1064 1065 1066 1067 1068 1069 1070  | Next Page >