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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, September 30, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, September 30, 2012Popular ReleasesCAPTCHA Solver: Initial Release: This is the initial Release :) Still very much a WIP.MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.2.17: Reccomended update to 2.2.16 Changelog for 2.2.17 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Fixed bugs around thread synchronization with new remote model (fixes cause the app to crash or hang) 2. Updated UPnP code base, faster and more reliable now 3. Now you can get audio/video properties for multiple files on main page. Selected multiple files and right click, all selected files properties will be shown. 4. Fix a bug, not able to enter a conversion task name in the GUIAggravation: Version 1.0: This version 1.0 release is pretty stable. You need the Silverlight 4 runtime, developer tools, and Experssion Blend 4 installed.Readable Passphrase Generator: KeePass Plugin 0.7.1: See the KeePass Plugin Step By Step Guide for instructions on how to install the plugin. Changes Built against KeePass 2.20Windows 8 Toolkit - Charts and More: Beta 1.0: The First Compiled Version of my LibraryPDF.NET: PDF.NET.Ver4.5-OpenSourceCode: PDF.NET Ver4.5 ????，????Web??????。 PDF.NET Ver4.5 Open Source Code,include a sample Web application project.D3 Loot Tracker: 1.4: Session name is displayed in the UI. Changes data directory for clickonce deployment so that sessions files are persisted between versions. Added a delete button in the sessions list window. Allow opening of the sessions local folder from the session list widow. Display the session name in the main window Ability to select which diablo process to hook up to when pressing new () function BUT only if multi-process support is selected in the generals settings tab menu. Session picker...CRM 2011 Visual Ribbon Editor: Visual Ribbon Editor 1.1 Beta: Visual Ribbon Editor 1.1 Beta What's New: Fixed scrolling issue in UnHide dialog Added support for connecting via ADFS / IFD Added support for more than one action for a button Added support for empty StringParameter for Javascript functions Fixed bug in rule CrmClientTypeRule when selecting Outlook option Extended Prefix field in New Button dialogVisual Studio Icon Patcher: Version 1.5.2: This version contains no new images from v1.5.1 Contains the following improvements: Better support for detecting the installed languages The extract & inject commands won’t run if Visual Studio is running You may now run in extract or inject mode The p/invoke code was cleaned up based on Code Analysis recommendations When a p/invoke method fails the Win32 error message is now displayed Error messages use red text Status messages use green textZXing.Net: ZXing.Net 0.9.0.0: On the way to a release 1.0 the API should be stable now with this version. sync with rev. 2393 of the java version improved api better Unity support Windows RT binaries Windows CE binaries new Windows Service demo new WPF demo WindowsCE Hotfix: Fixes an error with ISO8859-1 encoding and scannning of QR-Codes. The hotfix is only needed for the WindowsCE platform.C.B.R. : Comic Book Reader: CBR 0.7: Synthesis since 0.6 : ePUB : Complete refactoring Add a new dedicated feed viewer for opds stream PDF conversion : improved with image merge Make all backstage panel scrollable Integrate the new AvalonDock 2 library. Support multi-document. Library explorer and Table of content are now toolboxes Designer for dynamic books is now mvvm and much better New BrowserForControl Customized xps viewer to suppress toolbars and bind it to cbr commands Add quick start manual and button ...menu4web: menu4web 1.0 - free javascript menu for web sites: menu4web 1.0 has been tested with all major browsers: Firefox, Chrome, IE, Opera and Safari. Minified m4w.js library is less than 9K. Includes 21 menu examples of different styles. Can be freely distributed under The MIT License (MIT).Rawr: Rawr 5.0.0: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...Coevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0.0.26: The zh-CN issue has been solved. We also add a project management module.VidCoder: 1.4.1 Beta: Updated to HandBrake 4971. This should fix some issues with stuck PGS subtitles. Fixed build break which prevented pre-compiled XML serializers from showing up. Fixed problem where a preset would get errantly marked as modified when re-opening the encode settings window or importing a new preset.Snake!: Snake 1.0: Version 1 StablePaging SharePoint ListItems using listitems position: Paginglistitems V1.0: This is a console application which has two methods both on CSOM and SOM to display the listitems in a paged manner.SharePoint Move Discussion Threads: SharePoint Move Discussion Threads ver 0.1: ver 0.1NTCPMSG: V1.1.1.0: increase the performance. Support .net framework 4.0.BlackJumboDog: Ver5.7.2: 2012.09.23 Ver5.7.2 (1)InetTest?? (2)HTTP?????????????????100???????????New Projects2D Sprite Editor: This is a 2d sprite editor. Import your sprite sheet, trace your animations frame and export the coordinates points in a simple txt file, ready to import.caifenweb1: test project.CatchThatException: This is a small logging library We created at developerpath.com to help us log exceptions. It write it to a text file and you can easilay open that txt.FsxWs - WebServices for Microsoft FSX: WebServices for MS Flight Simulator. Get flights data as JSON, KML. !! Still in SetUp phase - be patient !!GetTPB: Some training in downloading and parsing web pages, with multithreading too.JSON-RPC Client Generator (for XBMC): The goal of this project is to provide a .Net client for the XBMC JSONRPC API. The main part is not XBMC dependent and may be used for any JSON-RPC client.matlab-silhouette-pose-wtf: Whatevermfp: this is random codeMVC Grid: MVC Grid ExampleMyWebSocketTry: sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssNetduino Console: Netduino Console is an interface with built in messaging layers that allows you as a developer to dynamically create plugins following a provided interface to iSharePoint ASP.NET Verifier: Project will allow to verify SharePoint 2010 components using ASP.NET web applicationSharepoint Custom Upload: This is a SharePoint solution that allows an administrator to customize the upload page individually for each document library in a site.. It allows you to makeWinWeb Browser Deluxe: WinWeb Browser Deluxe es un navegador web de código abierto basado en Internet Explorer hecho en Visual Basic .NET. Descargalo ya!writethatoutput: This is the official release page for WriteThatOutPut from developerpath.com

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• The new workflow management of Oracle´s Hyperion Planning: Define more details with Planning Unit Hierarchies and Promotional Paths

  - by Alexandra Georgescu

  After having been almost unchanged for several years, starting with the 11.1.2 release of Oracle´s Hyperion Planning the Process Management has not only got a new name: “Approvals” now is offering the possibility to further split Planning Units (comprised of a unique Scenario-Version-Entity combination) into more detailed combinations along additional secondary dimensions, a so called Planning Unit Hierarchy, and also to pre-define a path of planners, reviewers and approvers, called Promotional Path. I´d like to introduce you to changes and enhancements in this new process management and arouse your curiosity for checking out more details on it. One reason of using the former process management in Planning was to limit data entry rights to one person at a time based on the assignment of a planning unit. So the lowest level of granularity for this assignment was, for a given Scenario-Version combination, the individual entity. Even if in many cases one person wasn´t responsible for all data being entered into that entity, but for only part of it, it was not possible to split the ownership along another additional dimension, for example by assigning ownership to different accounts at the same time. By defining a so called Planning Unit Hierarchy (PUH) in Approvals this gap is now closed. Complementing new Shared Services roles for Planning have been created in order to manage set up and use of Approvals: The Approvals Administrator consisting of the following roles: Approvals Ownership Assigner, who assigns owners and reviewers to planning units for which Write access is assigned (including Planner responsibilities). Approvals Supervisor, who stops and starts planning units and takes any action on planning units for which Write access is assigned. Approvals Process Designer, who can modify planning unit hierarchy secondary dimensions and entity members for which Write access is assigned, can also modify scenarios and versions that are assigned to planning unit hierarchies and can edit validation rules on data forms for which access is assigned. (this includes as well Planner and Ownership Assigner responsibilities) Set up of a Planning Unit Hierarchy is done under the Administration menu, by selecting Approvals, then Planning Unit Hierarchy. Here you create new PUH´s or edit existing ones. The following window displays: After providing a name and an optional description, a pre-selection of entities can be made for which the PUH will be defined. Available options are: All, which pre-selects all entities to be included for the definitions on the subsequent tabs None, manual entity selections will be made subsequently Custom, which offers the selection for an ancestor and the relative generations, that should be included for further definitions. Finally a pattern needs to be selected, which will determine the general flow of ownership: Free-form, uses the flow/assignment of ownerships according to Planning releases prior to 11.1.2 In Bottom-up, data input is done at the leaf member level. Ownership follows the hierarchy of approval along the entity dimension, including refinements using a secondary dimension in the PUH, amended by defined additional reviewers in the promotional path. Distributed, uses data input at the leaf level, while ownership starts at the top level and then is distributed down the organizational hierarchy (entities). After ownership reaches the lower levels, budgets are submitted back to the top through the approval process. Proceeding to the next step, now a secondary dimension and the respective members from that dimension might be selected, in order to create more detailed combinations underneath each entity. After selecting the Dimension and a Parent Member, the definition of a Relative Generation below this member assists in populating the field for Selected Members, while the Count column shows the number of selected members. For refining this list, you might click on the icon right beside the selected member field and use the check-boxes in the appearing list for deselecting members. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TIP: In order to reduce maintenance of the PUH due to changes in the dimensions included (members added, moved or removed) you should consider to dynamically link those dimensions in the PUH with the dimension hierarchies in the planning application. For secondary dimensions this is done using the check-boxes in the Auto Include column. For the primary dimension, the respective selection criteria is applied by right-clicking the name of an entity activated as planning unit, then selecting an item of the shown list of include or exclude options (children, descendants, etc.). Anyway in order to apply dimension changes impacting the PUH a synchronization must be run. If this is really necessary or not is shown on the first screen after selecting from the menu Administration, then Approvals, then Planning Unit Hierarchy: under Synchronized you find the statuses Yes, No or Locked, where the last one indicates, that another user is just changing or synchronizing the PUH. Select one of the not synchronized PUH´s (status No) and click the Synchronize option in order to execute. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the next step owners and reviewers are assigned to the PUH. Using the icons with the magnifying glass right besides the columns for Owner and Reviewer the respective assignments can be made in the ordermthat you want them to review the planning unit. While it is possible to assign only one owner per entity or combination of entity+ member of the secondary dimension, the selection for reviewers might consist of more than one person. The complete Promotional Path, including the defined owners and reviewers for the entity parents, can be shown by clicking the icon. In addition optional users might be defined for being notified about promotions for a planning unit. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TIP: Reviewers cannot change data, but can only review data according to their data access permissions and reject or promote planning units. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In order to complete your PUH definitions click Finish - this saves the PUH and closes the window. As a final step, before starting the approvals process, you need to assign the PUH to the Scenario-Version combination for which it should be used. From the Administration menu select Approvals, then Scenario and Version Assignment. Expand the PUH in order to see already existing assignments. Under Actions click the add icon and select scenarios and versions to be assigned. If needed, click the remove icon in order to delete entries. After these steps, set up is completed for starting the approvals process. Start, stop and control of the approvals process is now done under the Tools menu, and then Manage Approvals. The new PUH feature is complemented by various additional settings and features; some of them at least should be mentioned here: Export/Import of PUHs: Out of Office agent: Validation Rules changing promotional/approval path if violated (including the use of User-defined Attributes (UDAs)): And various new and helpful reviewer actions with corresponding approval states. About the Author: Bernhard Kinkel started working for Hyperion Solutions as a Presales Consultant and Consultant in 1998 and moved to Hyperion Education Services in 1999. He joined Oracle University in 2007 where he is a Principal Education Consultant. Based on these many years of working with Hyperion products he has detailed product knowledge across several versions. He delivers both classroom and live virtual courses. His areas of expertise are Oracle/Hyperion Essbase, Oracle Hyperion Planning and Hyperion Web Analysis.

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• SharePoint – The Most Important Feature

  - by Bil Simser

  Watching twitter and doing a search for SharePoint and you see a lot (almost one every few minutes) of tweets about the top 10 new features in SharePoint. What answer do you get when you ask the question, “What’s the most important feature in SharePoint?”. Chances are the answer will vary. Some will say it’s the collaboration aspect, others might say it’s the new ribbon interface, multi-item editing, external content types, faceted search, large list support, document versioning, Silverlight, etc. The list goes on. However I think most people might be missing the most important feature that’s sitting right under their noses all this time. The most important feature of SharePoint? It’s called User Empowerment. Huh? What? Is that something I find in the Site Actions menu? Nope. It’s something that’s always been there in SharePoint, you just need to get the word out and support it. How many times have you had a team ask you for a team site (assuming you had SharePoint up and running). Or to create them a contact list. Or how long have you employed that guy in the corner who’s been copying and pasting content from Corporate Communications into the web from a Word document. Let’s stop the insanity. It doesn’t have to be this way. SharePoint’s strongest feature isn’t anything you can find in the Site Settings screen or Central Admin. It’s all about empowering your users and letting them take control of their content. After all, SharePoint really is a bunch of tools to allow users to collaborate on content isn’t it? So why are you stepping in as IT and helping the user every moment along the way. It’s like having to ask users to fill out a help desk ticket or call up the Windows team to create a folder on their desktop or rearrange their Start menu. This isn’t something IT should be spending their time doing nor is it something the users should be burdened with having to wait until their friendly neighborhood tech-guy (or gal) shows up to help them sort the icons on their desktop. SharePoint IS all about empowerment. Site owners can create whatever lists and libraries they need for their team, and if the template isn’t there they can always turn to my friend and yours, the Custom List. From that can spew forth approval tracking systems, new hire checklists, and server inventory. You’re only limited by your imagination and needs. Users should be able to create new sites as they need. Want a blog to let everyone know what your team is up to? Go create one, here’s how. What’s a blog you ask? Here’s what it is and why you would use one. SharePoint is the shift in the balance of power and you need, and an IT group, let go of certain responsibilities and let your users run with the tools. A power user who knows how to create sites and what features are available to them can help a team go from the forming stage to the storming stage overnight. Again, this all hinges on you as an IT organization and what you can and empower your users with as far as features go. Running with tools is great if you know how to use them, running with scissors not recommended unless you enjoy trips to the hospital. With Great Power comes Great Responsibility so don’t go out on Monday and send out a memo to the organization saying “This Bil guy says you peeps can do anything so here it is, knock yourself out” (for one, they’ll have *no* idea who this Bil guy is). This advice comes with the task of getting your users ready for empowerment. Whether it’s through some kind of internal training sessions, in-house documentation; videos; blog posts; on how to accomplish things in SharePoint, or full blown one-on-one sit downs with teams or individuals to help them through their problems. The work is up to you. Helping them along also should be part of your governance (you do have one don’t you?). Just because you have InfoPath client deployed with your Office suite, doesn’t mean users should just start publishing forms all over your SharePoint farm. There should be some governance behind that in what you’ll support and what is possible. The other caveat to all this is that SharePoint is not everything for everyone. It can’t cook you breakfast and impregnate your cat or solve world hunger. It also isn’t suited for every IT solution out there. It’s a horrible source control system (even though some people try to use it as such) and really can’t do financials worth a darn. Again, governance is key here and part of that governance and your responsibility in setting up and unleashing SharePoint into your organization is to provide users guidance on what should be in SharePoint and (more importantly) what should not be in SharePoint. There are boundaries you have to set where you don’t want your end users going as they might be treading into trouble. Again, this is up to you to set these constraints and help users understand why these pylons are there. If someone understands why they can’t do something they might have a better understanding and respect for those that put them there in the first place. Of course you’ll always have the power-users who want to go skiing down dead mans curve so this doesn’t work for everyone, but you can catch the majority of the newbs who don’t wander aimlessly off the beaten path. At the end of the day when all things are going swimmingly your end users should be empowered to solve the needs they have on a day to day basis and not having to keep bugging the IT department to help them create a view to show only approved documents. I wouldn’t go as far as business users building out full blown solutions and handing the keys to SharePoint Designer or (worse) Visual Studio to power-users might not be a path you want to go down but you also don’t have to lock up the SharePoint system in a tight box where users can’t use what’s there. So stop focusing on the shiny things in SharePoint and maybe consider making a shift to what’s really important. Making your day job easier and letting users get the most our of your technology investment.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, April 04, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, April 04, 2010New ProjectsAcervo 2 - Gerenciador de coleções: Acervo 2 is a web application developed in ASP.NET 3.5 with Entity Framework, Coolite UI web controls and MySQL database that helps to catalog and ...AssemblyInfo Editor: AssemblyInfo Editor is a small Visual Studio 2010 extension I developed for my personal use mainly for automatically incrementing AssemblyVersion a...CommLine: It's a Command Line Interpreter. At the moment, it's a beta version, so I wait for developers that wanna help meFlowgraph Viewer: The flowgraph viewer enables users to view, build and share flowgraphs for the Crysis-franchise. It's built on Silverlight4, using MEF and Mvvmlight.Hash Calculator: WPF Windows 7 program to compute SHA1 & MD5 hash functions.MediaRSS library for .NET: This is a small set of libraries that allow you to create, read, and write MediaRSS files. By leveraging the syndication model object in .NET this...MEF Visualizer Tool: Helps to see what is going on inside the CompositionContainerone framework for developing asp.net project more elegent、flexible、and testable: if you are familiar with jsf、cdi、scoped javabean and work under asp.net, you may want to support aop and max flexibility and testability , all of ...Picasa Manager: A Silverlight Out Of Browser Application that Helps you manage your PicasaWeb albums in the easyest way possible.SharePhone: Windows Phone 7 library for connecting to SharePoint 2007/2010. Lets you work with SPWeb, SPList, reading/writing strong typed list items, user ...Silverlight Resource Extension: Silverlight Resource Extension. Extension silverlight project for use ResX resources and localize satellite dll.Silverlight Streamgraph: Streamgraph component for SilverlightTFTP Server: Managed TFTP server implementation, written in C#. Supports: - IPv4 and IPv6 - correct retry behavior. - TFTP options: block size, transfer size, a...Virtual UserGroup Video Helpers: This is a project that holds all the tools used by the C4MVC Virtual Usergroup. Tools written in C# and Powershell to automate, Live Meeting, Expr...xBlog: xBlog is a project to build a simple and extensible Blog Engine based on xml and linqXmlCodeEditor: XmlCodeEditor is a Silverlight 4 control based on RichTextControl that creates coloring and intellisense similar to the one in Visual Studio for ed...Zinc Launcher: Zinc Launcher is a simple Windows Media Center plugin that launches Zinc and attempts to manage the windows as seamlessly as possible. In addition ...New ReleasesAcervo 2 - Gerenciador de coleções: Acervo 2 - v1.0: Arquivos para implantação do sistema Acervo2 Aplicação web Web service Smart ClientAssemblyInfo Editor: Beta 1: Initial release of Assembly Info Editor. At this point, it is feature-complete and is relatively stable. There are undoubtedly some bugs to work o...Box2D.XNA: Box2D.XNA r70 Source Code and Solution: This version is synced to changeset 44697. This represents our official port of the C Box2D up to r70 on the Google Code project. With this versi...Boxee Launcher: Boxee Launcher Release 1.0.1.2: Will now stop Media Center playback before launching BoxeeBoxee Launcher: Boxee Launcher Release 1.0.1.3: Added a background window that attempts to display over the desktop and taskbar, and below Boxee and Media Center so that the desktop and taskbar a...CommLine: Beta Version 0.1: First Beta Of the AppCommLine: Source v0.1 Beta: Source Code C of 0.1 beta versionEncrypted Notes: Encrypted Notes 1.6.2: This is the latest version of Encrypted Notes (1.6.2), with general changes and improved randomness for the key generator. It has an installer that...Hash Calculator: HashCalculator: HashCalculator 1.0Hash Calculator: HashCalculator Source code: HashCalculator 1.0Hulu Launcher: Hulu Launcher 1.0.1.3: Added a background window that attempts to display over the desktop and taskbar, and below Hulu and Media Center so that the desktop and taskbar ar...Hulu Launcher: Hulu Launcher Release 1.0.1.2: Hulu Launcher will now stop playback in Media Center before launching Hulu Desktop.Innovative Games: 4.3 - Sprite Effects: Source code download for chapter 4.3 - "Sprite Effects"MediaRSS library for .NET: 0.1: Alpha release. Majority of MediaRSS spec is supported. A small set of unit test / sample code are included. A lightly tested CustomFormatter object...MEF Visualizer Tool: MEF Visualizer Tool 0.1: Help to see what going on in side CompositionContainer Container = new CompositionContainer( new AggregateCatalog( ...Ncqrs Framework - A CQRS framework for .NET: Ncqrs with sample application: This is the first release of the Ncqrs Framework. It contains the Ncqrs source code and a runnable sample application. All the code in this release...Rubik Cube's 3D Silverlight 3.0 Animated Solution: Rubik Cube 3D with Animated Solution: This project is a realization of Silverlight 3.0 Rubik Cube 3D with Animated Solution. The Solution is available for 3x3x3 cube, other features are...Scrabler: scrabler release 0.6.2.5: fixed a bug that werent executed some scriptsSharePhone: SharePhone: Initial release with basic functionality: Open SharePoint webs and subwebs Retrieve lists on SPWeb objects Read metadata/properties on lists ...SharePhone: SharePhone v.1.0.1: Fixed a bug that prevented saving list items to SharePointSharePoint Labs: SPLab4001A-FRA-Level100: SPLab4001A-FRA-Level100 This SharePoint Lab will teach you the first best practice you should apply when writing code with the SharePoint API. Lab ...Silverlight Resource Extension: ResourceExtension (alpha): Alpha version is not stable. Only for review.Silverlight Streamgraph: Port from processing.org: A port from the processing.org streamgraph. Code-heavy with very little XAML involved at this point.Theocratic Ministry School System: TMSS - Ver 1.1.1: What’s New! Added Menu Options 2010 Schedule Access 2007 Runtime There are still many uncompleted items so this is still a conceptual release....Theocratic Ministry School System: TMSS - Ver 1.1.2: Fixed the Schedule Import. Need needs to be tested. Click import button and make sure you can get the 2010 Schedule from the internet.thinktecture Starter STS (Community Edition): StarterSTS v1.0 RTW: Version 1.0 RTWTribe.Cache: Tribe.Cache Alpha - 0.2.0.0: Tribe.Cache Alpha - 0.2.0.0 - Now has sliding and absolute expiration on cache entries. Functional Alpha Release - But do not use in productionTwitterVB - A .NET Twitter Library: TwitterVB-2.3.1: This is mostly a minor release that adds br.st URL shortening to the menu (API key from http://br.st required)Virtu: Virtu 0.8.1: Source Requirements.NET Framework 3.5 with Service Pack 1 Visual Studio 2008 with Service Pack 1, or Visual C# 2008 Express Edition with Service Pa...Visual Studio DSite: Advanced C++ Calculator: An advanced visual c 2008 calculator that can do all your basic operations, plus some advanced mathematical functions. Source Code Only.xnaWebcam: xnaWebcam 0.3: xnaWebcam 0.3 Version 0.3: -ResolutionSet: 400x300 (Default), 800x600, 1024x720 -Settings Window got Icon -Settings Window Changes -DevConsole.cs ...Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseASP.NET Ajax LibrarySilverlight ToolkitAJAX Control ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesDotNetNuke® Community EditionMost Active ProjectsGraffiti CMSnopCommerce. Open Source online shop e-commerce solution.RawrFacebook Developer ToolkitjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesLINQ to TwitterBlogEngine.NETN2 CMSBase Class LibrariesFarseer Physics Engine

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• Using Teleriks new LINQ implementation to create OData feeds

  This week Telerik released a new LINQ implementation that is simple to use and produces domain models very fast. Built on top of the enterprise grade OpenAccess ORM, you can connect to any database that OpenAccess can connect to such as: SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, SQL Azure, VistaDB, etc. While this is a separate LINQ implementation from traditional OpenAccess Entites, you can use the visual designer without ever interacting with OpenAccess, however, you can always hook into the advanced ORM features like caching, fetch plan optimization, etc, if needed. Just to show off how easy our LINQ implementation is to use, I will walk you through building an OData feed using Data Services Update for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. (Memo to Microsoft: P-L-E-A-S-E hire someone from Apple to name your products.) How easy is it? If you have a fast machine, are skilled with the mouse, and type fast, you can do this in about 60 seconds via three easy steps. (I promise in about 2-3 weeks that you can do this in less then 30 seconds. Stay tuned for that.)  Step 1 (15-20 seconds): Building your Domain Model In your web project in Visual Studio, right click on the project and select Add|New Item and select Telerik OpenAccess Domain Model as your item template. Give the file a meaningful name as well. Select your database type (SQL Server, SQL Azure, Oracle, MySQL, VistaDB, etc) and build the connection string. If you already have a Visual Studio connection string already saved, this step is trivial.  Then select your tables, enter a name for your model and click Finish. In this case I connected to Northwind and selected only Customers, Orders, and Order Details.  I named my model NorthwindEntities and will use that in my DataService. Step 2 (20-25 seconds): Adding and Configuring your Data Service In your web project in Visual Studio, right click on the project and select Add|New Item and select ADO .NET Data Service as your item template and name your service. In the code behind for your Data Service you have to make three small changes. Add the name of your Telerik Domain Model (entered in Step 1) as the DataService name (shown on line 6 below as NorthwindEntities) and uncomment line 11 and add a * to show all entities. Optionally if you want to take advantage of the DataService 3.5 updates, add line 13 (and change IDataServiceConfiguration to DataServiceConfiguration in line 9.) 1: using System.Data.Services; 2: using System.Data.Services.Common; 3:   4: namespace Telerik.RLINQ.Astoria.Web 5: { 6: public class NorthwindService : DataService<NorthwindEntities> 7: { 8: //change the IDataServiceConfigurationto DataServiceConfiguration 9: public static void InitializeService(DataServiceConfiguration config) 10: { 11: config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("*", EntitySetRights.All); 12: //take advantage of the "Astoria3.5 Update" features 13: config.DataServiceBehavior.MaxProtocolVersion = DataServiceProtocolVersion.V2; 14: } 15: } 16: } .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; }   Step 3 (~30 seconds): Adding the DataServiceKeys You now have to tell your data service what are the primary keys of each entity. To do this you have to create a new code file and create a few partial classes. If you type fast, use copy and paste from your first entity,  and use a refactoring productivity tool, you can add these 6-8 lines of code or so in about 30 seconds. This is the most tedious step, but dont worry, Ive bribed some of the developers and our next update will eliminate this step completely. Just create a partial class for each entity you have mapped and add the attribute [DataServiceKey] on top of it along with the keys field name. If you have any complex properties, you will need to make them a primitive type, as I do in line 15. Create this as a separate file, dont manipulate the generated data access classes in case you want to regenerate them again later (even thought that would be much faster.) 1: using System.Data.Services.Common; 2:   3: namespace Telerik.RLINQ.Astoria.Web 4: { 5: [DataServiceKey("CustomerID")] 6: public partial class Customer 7: { 8: } 9:   10: [DataServiceKey("OrderID")] 11: public partial class Order 12: { 13: } 14:   15: [DataServiceKey(new string[] { "OrderID", "ProductID" })] 16: public partial class OrderDetail 17: { 18: } 19:   20: } .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; }   Done! Time to run the service. Now, lets run the service! Select the svc file and right click and say View in Browser. You will see your OData service and can interact with it in the browser. Now that you have an OData service set up, you can consume it in one of the many ways that OData is consumed: using LINQ, the Silverlight OData client, Excel PowerPivot, or PhP, etc. Happy Data Servicing! Technorati Tags: Telerik,Astoria,Data Services Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Regression testing with Selenium GRID

  - by Ben Adderson

  A lot of software teams out there are tasked with supporting and maintaining systems that have grown organically over time, and the web team here at Red Gate is no exception. We're about to embark on our first significant refactoring endeavour for some time, and as such its clearly paramount that the code be tested thoroughly for regressions. Unfortunately we currently find ourselves with a codebase that isn't very testable - the three layers (database, business logic and UI) are currently tightly coupled. This leaves us with the unfortunate problem that, in order to confidently refactor the code, we need unit tests. But in order to write unit tests, we need to refactor the code :S To try and ease the initial pain of decoupling these layers, I've been looking into the idea of using UI automation to provide a sort of system-level regression test suite. The idea being that these tests can help us identify regressions whilst we work towards a more testable codebase, at which point the more traditional combination of unit and integration tests can take over. Ending up with a strong battery of UI tests is also a nice bonus :) Following on from my previous posts (here, here and here) I knew I wanted to use Selenium. I also figured that this would be a good excuse to put my xUnit [Browser] attribute to good use. Pretty quickly, I had a raft of tests that looked like the following (this particular example uses Reflector Pro). In a nut shell the test traverses our shopping cart and, for a particular combination of number of users and months of support, checks that the price calculations all come up with the correct values. [BrowserTheory] [Browser(Browsers.Firefox3_6, "http://www.red-gate.com")] public void Purchase1UserLicenceNoSupport(SeleniumProvider seleniumProvider) {     //Arrange     _browser = seleniumProvider.GetBrowser();     _browser.Open("http://www.red-gate.com/dynamic/shoppingCart/ProductOption.aspx?Product=ReflectorPro");                  //Act     _browser = ShoppingCartHelpers.TraverseShoppingCart(_browser, 1, 0, ".NET Reflector Pro");     //Assert     var priceResult = PriceHelpers.GetNewPurchasePrice(db, "ReflectorPro", 1, 0, Currencies.Euros);         Assert.Equal(priceResult.Price, _browser.GetText("ctl00_content_InvoiceShoppingItemRepeater_ctl01_Price"));     Assert.Equal(priceResult.Tax, _browser.GetText("ctl00_content_InvoiceShoppingItemRepeater_ctl02_Tax"));     Assert.Equal(priceResult.Total, _browser.GetText("ctl00_content_InvoiceShoppingItemRepeater_ctl02_Total")); } These tests are pretty concise, with much of the common code in the TraverseShoppingCart() and GetNewPurchasePrice() methods. The (inevitable) problem arose when it came to execute these tests en masse. Selenium is a very slick tool, but it can't mask the fact that UI automation is very slow. To give you an idea, the set of cases that covers all of our products, for all combinations of users and support, came to 372 tests (for now only considering purchases in dollars). In the world of automated integration tests, that's a very manageable number. For unit tests, it's a trifle. However for UI automation, those 372 tests were taking just over two hours to run. Two hours may not sound like a lot, but those cases only cover one of the three currencies we deal with, and only one of the many different ways our systems can be asked to calculate a price. It was already pretty clear at this point that in order for this approach to be viable, I was going to have to find a way to speed things up. Up to this point I had been using Selenium Remote Control to automate Firefox, as this was the approach I had used previously and it had worked well. Fortunately,  the guys at SeleniumHQ also maintain a tool for executing multiple Selenium RC tests in parallel: Selenium Grid. Selenium Grid uses a central 'hub' to handle allocation of Selenium tests to individual RCs. The Remote Controls simply register themselves with the hub when they start, and then wait to be assigned work. The (for me) really clever part is that, as far as the client driver library is concerned, the grid hub looks exactly the same as a vanilla remote control. To create a new browser session against Selenium RC, the following C# code suffices: new DefaultSelenium("localhost", 4444, "*firefox", "http://www.red-gate.com"); This assumes that the RC is running on the local machine, and is listening on port 4444 (the default). Assuming the hub is running on your local machine, then to create a browser session in Selenium Grid, via the hub rather than directly against the control, the code is exactly the same! Behind the scenes, the hub will take this request and hand it off to one of the registered RCs that provides the "*firefox" execution environment. It will then pass all communications back and forth between the test runner and the remote control transparently. This makes running existing RC tests on a Selenium Grid a piece of cake, as the developers intended. For a more detailed description of exactly how Selenium Grid works, see this page. Once I had a test environment capable of running multiple tests in parallel, I needed a test runner capable of doing the same. Unfortunately, this does not currently exist for xUnit (boo!). MbUnit on the other hand, has the concept of concurrent execution baked right into the framework. So after swapping out my assembly references, and fixing up the resulting mismatches in assertions, my example test now looks like this: [Test] public void Purchase1UserLicenceNoSupport() {    //Arrange    ISelenium browser = BrowserHelpers.GetBrowser();    var db = DbHelpers.GetWebsiteDBDataContext();    browser.Start();    browser.Open("http://www.red-gate.com/dynamic/shoppingCart/ProductOption.aspx?Product=ReflectorPro");                 //Act     browser = ShoppingCartHelpers.TraverseShoppingCart(browser, 1, 0, ".NET Reflector Pro");    var priceResult = PriceHelpers.GetNewPurchasePrice(db, "ReflectorPro", 1, 0, Currencies.Euros);    //Assert     Assert.AreEqual(priceResult.Price, browser.GetText("ctl00_content_InvoiceShoppingItemRepeater_ctl01_Price"));     Assert.AreEqual(priceResult.Tax, browser.GetText("ctl00_content_InvoiceShoppingItemRepeater_ctl02_Tax"));     Assert.AreEqual(priceResult.Total, browser.GetText("ctl00_content_InvoiceShoppingItemRepeater_ctl02_Total")); } This is pretty much the same as the xUnit version. The exceptions are that the attributes have changed,  the //Arrange phase now has to handle setting up the ISelenium object, as the attribute that previously did this has gone away, and the test now sets up its own database connection. Previously I was using a shared database connection, but this approach becomes more complicated when tests are being executed concurrently. To avoid complexity each test has its own connection, which it is responsible for closing. For the sake of readability, I snipped out the code that closes the browser session and the db connection at the end of the test. With all that done, there was only one more step required before the tests would execute concurrently. It is necessary to tell the test runner which tests are eligible to run in parallel, via the [Parallelizable] attribute. This can be done at the test, fixture or assembly level. Since I wanted to run all tests concurrently, I marked mine at the assembly level in the AssemblyInfo.cs using the following: [assembly: DegreeOfParallelism(3)] [assembly: Parallelizable(TestScope.All)] The second attribute marks all tests in the assembly as [Parallelizable], whilst the first tells the test runner how many concurrent threads to use when executing the tests. I set mine to three since I was using 3 RCs in separate VMs. With everything now in place, I fired up the Icarus* test runner that comes with MbUnit. Executing my 372 tests three at a time instead of one at a time reduced the running time from 2 hours 10 minutes, to 55 minutes, that's an improvement of about 58%! I'd like to have seen an improvement of 66%, but I can understand that either inefficiencies in the hub code, my test environment or the test runner code (or some combination of all three most likely) contributes to a slightly diminished improvement. That said, I'd love to hear about any experience you have in upping this efficiency. Ultimately though, it was a saving that was most definitely worth having. It makes regression testing via UI automation a far more plausible prospect. The other obvious point to make is that this approach scales far better than executing tests serially. So if ever we need to improve performance, we just register additional RC's with the hub, and up the DegreeOfParallelism. *This was just my personal preference for a GUI runner. The MbUnit/Gallio installer also provides a command line runner, a TestDriven.net runner, and a Resharper 4.5 runner. For now at least, Resharper 5 isn't supported.

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• What is SharePoint Out of the Box?

  - by Bil Simser

  It’s always fun in the blog-o-sphere and SharePoint bloggers always keep the pot boiling. Bjorn Furuknap recently posted a blog entry titled Why Out-of-the-Box Makes No Sense in SharePoint, quickly followed up by a rebuttal by Marc Anderson on his blog. Okay, now that we have all the players and the stage what’s the big deal? Bjorn started his post saying that you don’t use “out-of-the-box” (OOTB) SharePoint because it makes no sense. I have to disagree with his premise because what he calls OOTB is basically installing SharePoint and admiring it, but not using it. In his post he lays claim that modifying say the OOTB contacts list by removing (or I suppose adding) a column, now puts you in a situation where you’re no longer using the OOTB functionality. Really? Side note. Dear Internet, please stop comparing building software to building houses. Or comparing software architecture to building architecture. Or comparing web sites to making dinner. Are you trying to dumb down something so the general masses understand it? Comparing a technical skill to a construction operation isn’t the way to do this. Last time I checked, most people don’t know how to build houses and last time I checked people reading technical SharePoint blogs are generally technical people that understand the terms you use. Putting metaphors around software development to make it easy to understand is detrimental to the goal. </rant> Okay, where were we? Right, adding columns to lists means you are no longer using the OOTB functionality. Yeah, I still don’t get it. Another statement Bjorn makes is that using the OOTB functionality kills the flexibility SharePoint has in creating exactly what you want. IMHO this really flies in the absolute face of *where* SharePoint *really* shines. For the past year or so I’ve been leaning more and more towards OOTB solutions over custom development for the simple reason that its expensive to maintain systems and code and assets. SharePoint has enabled me to do this simply by providing the tools where I can give users what they need without cracking open up Visual Studio. This might be the fact that my day job is with a regulated company and there’s more scrutiny with spending money on anything new, but frankly that should be the position of any responsible developer, architect, manager, or PM. Do you really want to throw money away because some developer tells you that you need a custom web part when perhaps with some creative thinking or expectation setting with customers you can meet the need with what you already have. The way I read Bjorn’s terminology of “out-of-the-box” is install the software and tell people to go to a website and admire the OOTB system, but don’t change it! For those that know things like WordPress, DotNetNuke, SubText, Drupal or any of those content management/blogging systems, its akin to installing the software and setting up the “Hello World” blog post or page, then staring at it like it’s useful. “Yes, we are using WordPress!”. Then not adding a new post, creating a new category, or adding an About page. Perhaps I’m wrong in my interpretation. This leads us to what is OOTB SharePoint? To many people I’ve talked to the last few hours on twitter, email, etc. it is *not* just installing software but actually using it as it was fit for purpose. What’s the purpose of SharePoint then? It has many purposes, but using the OOTB templates Microsoft has given you the ability to collaborate on projects, author/share/publish documents, create pages, track items/contacts/tasks/etc. in a multi-user web based interface, and so on. Microsoft has pretty clear definitions of these different levels of SharePoint we’re talking about and I think it’s important for everyone to know what they are and what they mean. Personalization and Administration To me, this is the OOTB experience. You install the product and then are able to do things like create new lists, sites, edit and personalize pages, create new views, etc. Basically use the platform services available to you with Windows SharePoint Services (or SharePoint Foundation in 2010) to your full advantage. No code, no special tools needed, and very little user training required. Could you take someone who has never done anything in a website or piece of software and unleash them onto a site? Probably not. However I would argue that anyone who’s configured the Outlook reading layout or applied styles to a Word document probably won’t have too much difficulty in using SharePoint OUT OF THE BOX. Customization Here’s where things might get a bit murky but to me this is where you start looking at HTML/ASPX page code through SharePoint Designer, using jQuery scripts and plugging them into Web Part Pages via a Content Editor Web Part, and generally enhancing the site. The JavaScript debate might kick in here claiming it’s no different than C#, and frankly you can totally screw a site up with jQuery on a CEWP just as easily as you can with a C# delegate control deployed to the server file system. However (again, my blog, my opinion) the customization label comes in when I need to access the server (for example creating a custom theme) or have some kind of net-new element I add to the system that wasn’t there OOTB. It’s not content (like a new list or site), it’s code and does something functional. Development Here’s were the propeller hats come on and we’re talking algorithms and unit tests and compilers oh my. Software is deployed to the server, people are writing solutions after some kind of training (perhaps), there might be some specialized tools they use to craft and deploy the solutions, there’s the possibility of exceptions being thrown, etc. There are a lot of definitions here and just like customization it might get murky (do you let non-developers build solutions using development, i.e. jQuery/C#?). In my experience, it’s much more cost effective keeping solutions under the first two umbrellas than leaping into the third one. Arguably you could say that you can’t build useful solutions without *some* kind of code (even just some simple jQuery). I think you can get a *lot* of value just from using the OOTB experience and I don’t think you’re constraining your users that much. I’m not saying Marc or Bjorn are wrong. Like Obi-Wan stated, they’re both correct “from a certain point of view”. To me, SharePoint Out of the Box makes total sense and should not be dismissed. I just don’t agree with the premise that Bjorn is basing his statements on but that’s just my opinion and his is different and never the twain shall meet.

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• Psychonauts crashes right after entering load save door

  - by user67974

  Psychonauts crashes right after entering the 'Load Save' door. Here is the terminal output: Shader assembly time: 0.88 seconds Found OpenAL device: 'Simple Directmedia Layer' Found OpenAL device: 'ALSA Software' Found OpenAL device: 'OSS Software' Found OpenAL device: 'PulseAudio Software' Opened OpenAL Device: '(null)' ERROR: CAudioDrv::CAudioDrv->alGenSources reports AL_INVALID_VALUE error. PSYCHONAUTS UNIX FILENAME: corrected 'workresource/sounds/commonfx.isb' to 'WorkResource/Sounds/commonfx.isb' PSYCHONAUTS UNIX FILENAME: corrected 'workresource/sounds/commonvoice.isb' to 'WorkResource/Sounds/commonvoice.isb' PSYCHONAUTS UNIX FILENAME: corrected 'workresource/sounds/commonmusic.isb' to 'WorkResource/Sounds/commonmusic.isb' PSYCHONAUTS UNIX FILENAME: corrected 'workresource/sounds/commonmentalfx.isb' to 'WorkResource/Sounds/commonmentalfx.isb' PSYCHONAUTS UNIX FILENAME: corrected 'workresource/sounds/commonmenfxmem.isb' to 'WorkResource/Sounds/commonmenfxmem.isb' PSYCHONAUTS UNIX FILENAME: corrected 'workresource/sounds/commonfxmem.isb' to 'WorkResource/Sounds/commonfxmem.isb' GameApp::StartUp InitSoundFiles() completed in 0.15 seconds GameApp::StartUp Load some common textures completed in 0.00 seconds WARN: ENGINE: Lua garbage collection starting FreeUnusedBlocksInBuckets released 0 Kb GameApp::StartUp InitEntities() completed in 0.02 seconds PSYCHONAUTS UNIX FILENAME: corrected 'WorkResource/SavedGames/savegameprefs.ini' to 'WorkResource/SAVEDGAMES/savegameprefs.ini' PSYCHONAUTS UNIX FILENAME: corrected 'WorkResource/SavedGames/savegameprefs.ini' to 'WorkResource/SAVEDGAMES/savegameprefs.ini' GameApp::StartUp m_pSaveLoadInterface->Startup() completed in 0.00 seconds GameApp::StartUp m_UserInterface.Setup() completed in 0.00 seconds STUBBED: multisample at EDisplayOptionsWidget (/home/icculus/projects/psychonauts/Source/game/luatest/Game/UIPCDisplayOptions.cpp:97) STUBBED: VK_* at CheckVirtualKey (/home/icculus/projects/psychonauts/Source/CommonLibs/DirectX/SDLInput.cpp:1443) Game: Engine Running hook startup Game: Engine -> SetupGlobalObjects Game: Engine -> SetupLevelMenu Game: Engine -> InitMath GameApp::StartUp InitLua2() completed in 0.00 seconds GameApp::StartUp SetupLevelMenu() completed in 0.00 seconds STUBBED: do we even use this? at InitSocket (/home/icculus/projects/psychonauts/Source/game/luatest/Game/Gameplaylogger.cpp:210) GameApp::StartUp Post-Install total completed in 0.20 seconds Start Up completed in 1.57 seconds UnixMain: StartUp successful.. Working directory: /opt/psychonauts STUBBED: dispatch SDL events at PCMainHandleAnyWindowsMessages (/home/icculus/projects/psychonauts/Source/game/luatest/UnixMain.cpp:56) STUBBED: write me at GetJoystickInput (/home/icculus/projects/psychonauts/Source/CommonLibs/DirectX/SDLInput.cpp:428) STUBBED: write me at GetJoystickActionValue (/home/icculus/projects/psychonauts/Source/CommonLibs/DirectX/SDLInput.cpp:613) PSYCHONAUTS UNIX FILENAME: corrected 'workresource/cutScenes/prerendered/dflogo.bik' to 'WorkResource/cutscenes/prerendered/DFLogo.bik' Prerender subtitle file: workresource\cutScenes\prerendered\dflogo.dfs not found PSYCHONAUTS UNIX FILENAME: corrected 'workresource/cutScenes/prerendered/dflogo.bik' to 'WorkResource/cutscenes/prerendered/DFLogo.bik' STUBBED: fixed function pipeline? at setColorOp (/home/icculus/projects/psychonauts/Source/CommonLibs/DFGraphics/Texture.cpp:2097) STUBBED: fixed function pipeline? at setColorArg1 (/home/icculus/projects/psychonauts/Source/CommonLibs/DFGraphics/Texture.cpp:2106) STUBBED: fixed function pipeline? at setColorArg2 (/home/icculus/projects/psychonauts/Source/CommonLibs/DFGraphics/Texture.cpp:2115) STUBBED: fixed function pipeline? at setAlphaOp (/home/icculus/projects/psychonauts/Source/CommonLibs/DFGraphics/Texture.cpp:2124) STUBBED: fixed function pipeline? at setAlphaArg1 (/home/icculus/projects/psychonauts/Source/CommonLibs/DFGraphics/Texture.cpp:2133) STUBBED: fixed function pipeline? at setAlphaArg2 (/home/icculus/projects/psychonauts/Source/CommonLibs/DFGraphics/Texture.cpp:2142) STUBBED: fixed function pipeline? at setProjected (/home/icculus/projects/psychonauts/Source/CommonLibs/DFGraphics/Texture.cpp:2223) LOC WARN: Could not open Localization file 'Localization/English/_StringTable.lub' STUBBED: memory status at UpdateMemoryTracking (/home/icculus/projects/psychonauts/Source/game/luatest/Game/GameApp.cpp:4884) WARN: Couldn't resize array to 128; out-of-bounds elements are still in use: Vertex Pool, 188 Loading new level 'STMU' STUBBED: Need multithreaded GL at DisplayLoadingScreen (/home/icculus/projects/psychonauts/Source/game/luatest/Game/LoadingScreen.cpp:83) ========================= Memory post unload level ========================= ========================= LOC WARN: Could not open Localization file 'Localization/English/ST_StringTable.lub' DaveD: Info: Texture pack file contains 137 textures Doing a texture readback for locking! Game: Engine Saved[GLOBAL]: InstaHintFord_HostileRecord = [table] Game: Engine Saved[GLOBAL]: InstaHintFord_HostileOrder = [table] WARN: Redundant packfile read: anims\thought_bubble\bubblefirestarting.jan WARN: Redundant packfile read: anims\thought_bubble\bubbleintothemind.jan WARN: Redundant packfile read: anims\thought_bubble\bubbleinvisibility.jan WARN: Redundant packfile read: anims\thought_bubble\bubblepopperfill.jan WARN: Redundant packfile read: anims\thought_bubble\bubbletelekinesis.jan Initializing level script (if there is one) PSYCHONAUTS UNIX FILENAME: corrected 'workresource/sounds/stfx.isb' to 'WorkResource/Sounds/stfx.isb' Game: Engine Reloading goals: Game: Engine Saved[GLOBAL]: NextEncouragement = '/GLZF014TO/ 10' Game: Engine Saved[GLOBAL]: bUsedSalts = 0 Game: Engine Saved[GLOBAL]: bSTEntered = 1 Game: Engine Saved[GLOBAL]: memoriesST = 1 Game: Engine Saved[GLOBAL]: PsiBallColor = 'red' Game: Engine Saved[ST]: lastSubLevel = 'STMU' Game: Engine LOADING LEVEL st.STMU Game: Engine Saved[CA]: CALevelState = 1 Game: Engine Cutscene progression: CS Script moving from state nil to state nil, resultant state nil. Time: 0.124746672809124. * Stack Trace 1: (null) (line -1, file '(none)) () 2: SpawnScript (line -1, file 'C) (global) 3: onBeginLevel (line -1, file '(none)) (field) 4: (null) (line -1, file '(none)) () WARN: Cannot call GetDirectoryListing when running from the DVD Game: Engine Raz spawning at DartStart startpoint VM : LevelScript could not find script 'doorrimlight1' * Stack Trace 1: (null) (line -1, file '(none)) () WARN: (none(-1) SetEntityAlpha LevelScript: NULL script object passed Game: Engine Saved[GLOBAL]: bLoadedFromMainMenu = 1 Game: Engine Saved[GLOBAL]: NextEncouragement = '/GLZF014TO/ 10' Game: Engine Saved[GLOBAL]: NeedRankIncrement = 0 STUBBED: Need multithreaded GL at HideLoadingScreen (/home/icculus/projects/psychonauts/Source/game/luatest/Game/LoadingScreen.cpp:110) WARN: ENGINE: Lua garbage collection starting FreeUnusedBlocksInBuckets released 0 Kb Game: Engine Saved[GLOBAL]: SplineFigmentTVSizex = 4.51434326171875 Game: Engine Saved[GLOBAL]: SplineFigmentTVSizey = 46.38104248046875 Game: Engine Saved[GLOBAL]: SplineFigmentTVSizez = 47.08810424804688 WARN: (none(-1) SetNewAction LevelScript: no string passed ====================== Asset load progression ====================== Initial: 2.518 MB Vertex, 8.688 MB Texture Level : 3.719 MB Vertex, 22.535 MB Texture Scripts: 3.747 MB Vertex, 22.848 MB Texture ====================== ====================== Memory post level load ====================== ====================== WARN: ENGINE: Lua garbage collection starting FreeUnusedBlocksInBuckets released 0 Kb DaveD: Level loaded in 0.14 seconds Anim: anims\objects\tk_arrow_idle.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\dartnew\helmet\darthelmetdn.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\thought_bubble\shieldloop.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\dartnew\standready.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\dartnew\walkmove.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\janitor\hint_end.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\thought_bubble\ballstatic.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\dartnew\actionfall.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\dartnew\standstill.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\dartnew\pack\packbounce_lf_rt.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\dartnew\pack\packbounce_up_dn.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\dartnew\helmet\darthelmetdefpose.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) 1: 1 (number) 1: 1 (number) STUBBED: This is probably wrong at GetDt (/home/icculus/projects/psychonauts/Source/CommonLibs/DFUtil/Profiler.cpp:181) STUBBED: set specular highlights at setSpecularEnable (/home/icculus/projects/psychonauts/Source/CommonLibs/DFGraphics/Renderer.cpp:2035) Anim: anims\dartnew\trnrtcycle.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\dartnew\run.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\dartnew\walk.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\thought_bubble\bubbledoublejump.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\dartnew\longjump.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\menubrain\door1crack.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\menubrain\door1crackedidle.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\menubrain\door1closedidle.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\dartnew\180.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\menubrain\door3crack.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\menubrain\door3crackedidle.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\menubrain\door3closedidle.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\dartnew\railslide45angle.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\dartnew\railslideflat.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\dartnew\trnlfcycle.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) WARN: (none(-1) SetNewAction LevelScript: no string passed Anim: anims\dartnew\mainmenu_jump.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) Anim: anims\menubrain\door1open.jan: loaded (1 frames latency) ERROR: Assert in /home/icculus/projects/psychonauts/Source/game/luatest/../../CommonLibs/Include/../DFGraphics/Color.h, line 96 v.x >= 0.0f && v.x <= 1.0f && v.y >= 0.0f && v.y <= 1.0f && v.z >= 0.0f && v.z <= 1.0f && v.w >= 0.0f && v.w <= 1.0f Encountered Error: Psychonauts has encountered an error /home/icculus/projects/psychonauts/Source/game/luatest/../../CommonLibs/Include/../DFGraphics/Color.h, line 96 v.x >= 0.0f && v.x <= 1.0f && v.y >= 0.0f && v.y <= 1.0f && v.z >= 0.0f && v.z <= 1.0f && v.w >= 0.0f && v.w <= 1.0f Please contact technical support at http://www.doublefine.com. I am currently using Bumblebee for hybrid graphics, if that helps in any way.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, May 02, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, May 02, 2010New ProjectsAdventureWorks in Access: AdventureWorks database in Access format. Data has been ported in Access starting from Adventure Works database for SQL Server 2008.amplifi: This project is still under construction. We will add more information here as soon as it is available.ASP.NET MVC Bug Tracker: Bug Track written in C# ASP.NET MVC 2BigDecimal: BigDecimal is an attempt to create a number class that can have large precision. It is developed in vb.net (.net 4).CBM-Command: Coming soon....Chuyou: ChuyouCMinus: A C Minus Compiler!Complex and advanced mathematical functions: Mathematics toolkit is a Class Library Project which help Programmers to Calculate Mathematics Functions easily.Confuser: Confuser is a obfuscator for .NET. It is developed in C# and using Mono.Cecil for assembly manipulation.easypos: Micro punto de venta que permite ventas express de ropa, que se acopla fácil y transaparente con el ERP Click OneElmech Address Book: Web based Address Book for maintaining details of your business clients. This project targets Suppliers - Traders - Manufacturers - users. Applicat...Feed Viewer: Feed Viewer is able to synchronize subscribed feed and red news among all computers you are using. It understands both RSS and Atom format. It can ...Google URL Shortener, C#: Implementation in C# of generating short URLs by Goo.gl service (Google URL Shortener)MARS - Medical Assistant Record System: MARS - Medical Assistant Record SystemRx Contrib: Rx Contrib is a library which contain extensions for the Rx frameworkSimple Service Administration Tool: A simple tool to start/stop/restart a service of a WinNT based system. The tool is placed in the task bar as a notify icon, so the specified servic...Vis3D: Visual 3D controls for Silverlight.VisContent: XML content controls for ASP.NET.Windows Phone 7 database: This project implements a Isolated Storage (IsolatedStorage) based database for Windows Phone 7. The database consists of table object, each one s...New Releases$log$ / Keyword Substitution / Expansion Check-In Policy (TFS - LogSubstPol): LogSubstPol_v1.2010.0.4 (VS2010): LogSubstPol is a TFS check-in policy which insertes the check-in comments and other keywords into your source code, so you can keep track of the ch...Bojinx: Bojinx Core V4.5.1: The following new features were added: You can now use either BojinxMXMLContext or ContextModule to configure your application or module context. ...CBM-Command: Initial Public Demonstration: Initial public demonstration version. Can browse attached drives and display directory of any attached drive. A common question is "How does it w...Confuser: Confuser v1.0: It is the Confuser v1.0 that used to confuse the reverse-engineers :)Font Family Name Retrieval: 2nd Release: Added New MKV Font Extractor application to showcase the library. MKV Font Extractor depends on MKVToolnix to be installed before it will work. R...Google URL Shortener, C#: Goo.gl-CS v1 Beta: Extract the ZIP file to any location. Two files have to be in the same folder!HouseFly controls: HouseFly controls alpha 0.9.6.1: HouseFly controls release 0.9.6.1 alphaIsWiX: IsWiX 1.0.261.0: Build 1.0.261.0 - built against Fireworks 1.0.264.0. Adds support for VS2010 Integration to support WiX 3.5 beta releases.Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) Contrib: MefContrib 0.9.2.0: Added conventions based catalog (read more at http://www.thecodejunkie.com/2010/03/bringing-convention-based-registration.html) MEF + Unity integ...MARS - Medical Assistant Record System: license: licenseNSIS Autorun: NSIS Autorun 0.1.5: This release includes source code, executable binary, files and example materials.PHP.net: Release 0.0.0.1: This is the first release of PHP.Net. The features available in this release are: new File Save File Save As Open File In the rar file is th...Rx Contrib: V1: Rx Contrib is ongoing effort for community additions for Rx. Current features are: ReactiveQueue: ISubject that does not loose values if there are ...Silverlight 4.0 Popup Menu: Context Menu for Silverlight 4 v1.0: - Added a margin for icon display. - Added the PopupMenuItem class which is a derivative of the DockPanel. - Find* methods can now drill down the v...Silverlight 4.0 Popup Menu: Context Menu for Silverlight 4 v1.1 Beta: - Added a margin for icon display. - Added the PopupMenuItem class which is a derivative of the DockPanel. - Added a AddSeperator method. - The Fin...Simple Service Administration Tool: SSATool 0.1.3: New Simple Service Administration Tool Version 0.1.3 compiled with Visual Studio .NET 2010.sMAPedit: sMAPedit v0.7a + Map-Pack: Required Additional Map-Pack Added: height setting by color picker (shift+leftclick)sMAPedit: sMAPedit v0.7b: Fixed: force a gargabe collection update to prevent pictureBox's memory leaksqwarea: Sqwarea 0.0.228.0 (alpha): This release corrects a critical bug in ConnexityNotifier service. We strongly recommend you to upgrade to this version. Known bugs : if you open...StackOverflow Desktop Client in C# and WPF: StackOverflow Client 0.1: Source code for the sample.TortoiseHg: TortoiseHg 1.0.2: This is a bug fix release, we recommend all users upgrade to 1.0.2VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30501.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVidCoder: 0.4.0: Changes: Added ability to queue up multiple video files or titles at once. These queued jobs will use the currently selected encoding settings. Mul...WabbitStudio Z80 Software Tools: Wabbitemu 32-bit Test Release: Wabbitemu Visual Studio build for testing purposesWindows Phone 7 database: Initial Release v1.0: This project implements a Isolated Storage (IsolatedStorage) based database for Windows Phone 7. The usage of this software is very simple. You cre...YouTubeEmbeddedVideo WebControl for ASP.NET: VideoControls version 1: This zip file contains the VideoControls.dll, version 1.Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control Toolkitpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)iTuner - The iTunes CompanionASP.NETDotNetNuke® Community EditionMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryRawrIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterHydroServer - CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System Serverpatterns & practices: Azure Security GuidanceTinyProjectNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleBlogEngine.NETDambach Linear Algebra FrameworkFacebook Developer Toolkit

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• RequestValidation Changes in ASP.NET 4.0

  - by Rick Strahl

  There’s been a change in the way the ValidateRequest attribute on WebForms works in ASP.NET 4.0. I noticed this today while updating a post on my WebLog all of which contain raw HTML and so all pretty much trigger request validation. I recently upgraded this app from ASP.NET 2.0 to 4.0 and it’s now failing to update posts. At first this was difficult to track down because of custom error handling in my app – the custom error handler traps the exception and logs it with only basic error information so the full detail of the error was initially hidden. After some more experimentation in development mode the error that occurs is the typical ASP.NET validate request error (‘A potentially dangerous Request.Form value was detetected…’) which looks like this in ASP.NET 4.0: At first when I got this I was real perplexed as I didn’t read the entire error message and because my page does have: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="NewEntry.aspx.cs" Inherits="Westwind.WebLog.NewEntry" MasterPageFile="~/App_Templates/Standard/AdminMaster.master" ValidateRequest="false" EnableEventValidation="false" EnableViewState="false" %> WTF? ValidateRequest would seem like it should be enough, but alas in ASP.NET 4.0 apparently that setting alone is no longer enough. Reading the fine print in the error explains that you need to explicitly set the requestValidationMode for the application back to V2.0 in web.config: <httpRuntime executionTimeout="300" requestValidationMode="2.0" /> Kudos for the ASP.NET team for putting up a nice error message that tells me how to fix this problem, but excuse me why the heck would you change this behavior to require an explicit override to an optional and by default disabled page level switch? You’ve just made a relatively simple fix to a solution a nasty morass of hard to discover configuration settings??? The original way this worked was perfectly discoverable via attributes in the page. Now you can set this setting in the page and get completely unexpected behavior and you are required to set what effectively amounts to a backwards compatibility flag in the configuration file. It turns out the real reason for the .config flag is that the request validation behavior has moved from WebForms pipeline down into the entire ASP.NET/IIS request pipeline and is now applied against all requests. Here’s what the breaking changes page from Microsoft says about it: The request validation feature in ASP.NET provides a certain level of default protection against cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. In previous versions of ASP.NET, request validation was enabled by default. However, it applied only to ASP.NET pages (.aspx files and their class files) and only when those pages were executing. In ASP.NET 4, by default, request validation is enabled for all requests, because it is enabled before the BeginRequest phase of an HTTP request. As a result, request validation applies to requests for all ASP.NET resources, not just .aspx page requests. This includes requests such as Web service calls and custom HTTP handlers. Request validation is also active when custom HTTP modules are reading the contents of an HTTP request. As a result, request validation errors might now occur for requests that previously did not trigger errors. To revert to the behavior of the ASP.NET 2.0 request validation feature, add the following setting in the Web.config file: <httpRuntime requestValidationMode="2.0" /> However, we recommend that you analyze any request validation errors to determine whether existing handlers, modules, or other custom code accesses potentially unsafe HTTP inputs that could be XSS attack vectors. Ok, so ValidateRequest of the form still works as it always has but it’s actually the ASP.NET Event Pipeline, not WebForms that’s throwing the above exception as request validation is applied to every request that hits the pipeline. Creating the runtime override removes the HttpRuntime checking and restores the WebForms only behavior. That fixes my immediate problem but still leaves me wondering especially given the vague wording of the above explanation. One thing that’s missing in the description is above is one important detail: The request validation is applied only to application/x-www-form-urlencoded POST content not to all inbound POST data. When I first read this this freaked me out because it sounds like literally ANY request hitting the pipeline is affected. To make sure this is not really so I created a quick handler: public class Handler1 : IHttpHandler { public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) { context.Response.ContentType = "text/plain"; context.Response.Write("Hello World <hr>" + context.Request.Form.ToString()); } public bool IsReusable { get { return false; } } } and called it with Fiddler by posting some XML to the handler using a default form-urlencoded POST content type: and sure enough – hitting the handler also causes the request validation error and 500 server response. Changing the content type to text/xml effectively fixes the problem however, bypassing the request validation filter so Web Services/AJAX handlers and custom modules/handlers that implement custom protocols aren’t affected as long as they work with special input content types. It also looks that multipart encoding does not trigger event validation of the runtime either so this request also works fine: POST http://rasnote/weblog/handler1.ashx HTTP/1.1 Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=------7cf2a327f01ae User-Agent: West Wind Internet Protocols 5.53 Host: rasnote Content-Length: 40 Pragma: no-cache <xml>asdasd</xml>--------7cf2a327f01ae *That* probably should trigger event validation – since it is a potential HTML form submission, but it doesn’t. New Runtime Feature, Global Scope Only? Ok, so request validation is now a runtime feature but sadly it’s a feature that’s scoped to the ASP.NET Runtime – effective scope to the entire running application/app domain. You can still manually force validation using Request.ValidateInput() which gives you the option to do this in code, but that realistically will only work with the requestValidationMode set to V2.0 as well since the 4.0 mode auto-fires before code ever gets a chance to intercept the call. Given all that, the new setting in ASP.NET 4.0 seems to limit options and makes things more difficult and less flexible. Of course Microsoft gets to say ASP.NET is more secure by default because of it but what good is that if you have to turn off this flag the very first time you need to allow one single request that bypasses request validation??? This is really shortsighted design… <sigh>© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  

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• Customize Team Build 2010 – Part 16: Specify the relative reference path

  In the series the following parts have been published Part 1: Introduction Part 2: Add arguments and variables Part 3: Use more complex arguments Part 4: Create your own activity Part 5: Increase AssemblyVersion Part 6: Use custom type for an argument Part 7: How is the custom assembly found Part 8: Send information to the build log Part 9: Impersonate activities (run under other credentials) Part 10: Include Version Number in the Build Number Part 11: Speed up opening my build process template Part 12: How to debug my custom activities Part 13: Get control over the Build Output Part 14: Execute a PowerShell script Part 15: Fail a build based on the exit code of a console application Part 16: Specify the relative reference path As I have already blogged about, it is not intuitive how to specify the paths where the build server has to look for references that are stored in Source Control. It is a common practice to store 3rd party libraries in Source Control, so they are available to everyone, everyone uses the same version of the libraries and updating a library can be done centrally. In Team Build 2010 these paths are specified as a parameter for MSBuild. What we will do in this post is building the values for this parameter based on the values in an argument. You are now pretty aware how to customize the build template, so let’s do the modifications in another way. Instead of opening the xaml file in the workflow designer, we open it in the XML editor. You can open it in the XML Editor by either selecting the Open with menu (see the context menu), or by choosing the View code option. To add this functionality we need to: Specify a new argument Add the argument to the metadata Build the absolute paths for the references and add these paths to the MSBuild arguments 1. Specify a new argument Locate at the top of the document the Members (which are the arguments) of the XAML and add the following line <x:Property Name="ReferencePaths" Type="InArgument(s:String[])" /> 2. Add the argument to the metadata Then locate the line <mtbw:ProcessParameterMetadataCollection> and paste the following line <mtbw:ProcessParameterMetadata Category="Misc" Description="The list of reference paths, relative to the root path in the Workspace mapping." DisplayName="Reference paths" ParameterName="ReferencePaths" /> 3. Build the absolute paths for the references and add these paths to the MSBuild arguments Now locate the place where the assignments are done to the variables used in the agent. And add the following lines after the last Assign activity         <Sequence DisplayName="Initialize ReferencePath" sap:VirtualizedContainerService.HintSize="464,428">           <Sequence.Variables>             <Variable x:TypeArguments="x:String" Name="ReferencePathsArgument">               <Variable.Default>                 <Literal x:TypeArguments="x:String" Value="" />               </Variable.Default>             </Variable>           </Sequence.Variables>           <sap:WorkflowViewStateService.ViewState>             <scg:Dictionary x:TypeArguments="x:String, x:Object">               <x:Boolean x:Key="IsExpanded">True</x:Boolean>             </scg:Dictionary>           </sap:WorkflowViewStateService.ViewState>           <ForEach x:TypeArguments="x:String" DisplayName="Iterate through the paths" sap:VirtualizedContainerService.HintSize="287,206" mtbwt:BuildTrackingParticipant.Importance="Low" Values="[ReferencePaths]">             <ActivityAction x:TypeArguments="x:String">               <ActivityAction.Argument>                 <DelegateInArgument x:TypeArguments="x:String" Name="path" />               </ActivityAction.Argument>               <Assign x:TypeArguments="x:String" DisplayName="Build ReferencePath argument" sap:VirtualizedContainerService.HintSize="257,100" mtbwt:BuildTrackingParticipant.Importance="Low"  To="[ReferencePathsArgument]" Value="[If(String.IsNullOrEmpty(ReferencePathsArgument), &quot;&quot;, ReferencePathsArgument + &quot;;&quot;) + IO.Path.Combine(SourcesDirectory, path)]" />             </ActivityAction>           </ForEach>           <Assign DisplayName="Append the reference paths to the MSBuild Arguments" sap:VirtualizedContainerService.HintSize="287,58">             <Assign.To>               <OutArgument x:TypeArguments="x:String">[MSBuildArguments]</OutArgument>             </Assign.To>             <Assign.Value>               <InArgument x:TypeArguments="x:String">[String.Format("{0} /p:ReferencePath=""{1}""", MSBuildArguments, ReferencePathsArgument)]</InArgument>             </Assign.Value>           </Assign>         </Sequence> Now you can use the template to specify the paths relative to SourcesDirectory. You can download the full solution at BuildProcess.zip. It will include the sources of every part and will continue to evolve.

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• Setup and Use SpecFlow BDD with DevExpress XAF

  - by Patrick Liekhus

  Let’s get started with using the SpecFlow BDD syntax for writing tests with the DevExpress XAF EasyTest scripting syntax.  In order for this to work you will need to download and install the prerequisites listed below.  Once they are installed follow the steps outlined below and enjoy. Prerequisites Install the following items: DevExpress eXpress Application Framework (XAF) found here SpecFlow found here Liekhus BDD/XAF Testing library found here Assumptions I am going to assume at this point that you have created your XAF application and have your Module, Win.Module and Win ready for usage.  You should have also set any attributes and/or settings as you see fit. Setup So where to start. Create a new testing project within your solution. I typically call this with a similar naming convention as used by XAF, my project name .FunctionalTests (i.e. AlbumManager.FunctionalTests). Add the following references to your project.  It should look like the reference list below. DevExpress.Data.v11.x DevExpress.Persistent.Base.v11.x DevExpress.Persistent.BaseImpl.v11.x DevExpress.Xpo.v11.2 Liekhus.Testing.BDD.Core Liekhus.Testing.BDD.DevExpress TechTalk.SpecFlow TestExecutor.v11.x (found in %Program Files%\DevExpress 2011.x\eXpressApp Framework\Tools\EasyTest Right click the TestExecutor reference and set the “Copy Local” setting to True.  This forces the TestExecutor executable to be available in the bin directory which is where the EasyTest script will be executed further down in the process. Add an Application Configuration File (app.config) to your test application.  You will need to make a few modifications to have SpecFlow generate Microsoft style unit tests.  First add the section handler for SpecFlow and then set your choice of testing framework.  I prefer MS Tests for my projects. Add the EasyTest configuration file to your project.  Add a new XML file and call it Config.xml. Open the properties window for the Config.xml file and set the “Copy to Ouput Directory” to “Copy Always”. You will setup the Config file according to the specifications of the EasyTest library my mapping to your executable and other settings.  You can find the details for the configuration of EasyTest here.  My file looks like this Create a new folder in your test project called “StepDefinitions”.  Add a new SpecFlow Step Definition file item under the StepDefinitions folder.  I typically call this class StepDefinition.cs. Have your step definition inherit from the Liekhus.Testing.BDD.DevExpress.StepDefinition class.  This will give you the default behaviors for your test in the next section. OK.  Now that we have done this series of steps, we will work on simplifying this.  This is an early preview of this new project and is not fully ready for consumption.  If you would like to experiment with it, please feel free.  Our goals are to make this a installable project on it’s own with it’s own project templates and default settings.  This will be coming in later versions.  Currently this project is in Alpha release. Let’s write our first test Remove the basic test that is created for you. We will not use the default test but rather create our own SpecFlow “Feature” files. Add a new item to your project and select the SpecFlow Feature file under C#. Name your feature file as you do your class files after the test they are performing. Writing a feature file uses the Cucumber syntax of Given… When… Then.  Think of it in these terms.  Givens are the pre-conditions for the test.  The Whens are the actual steps for the test being performed.  The Thens are the verification steps that confirm your test either passed or failed.  All of these steps are generated into a an EasyTest format and executed against your XAF project.  You can find more on the Cucumber syntax by using the Secret Ninja Cucumber Scrolls.  This document has several good styles of tests, plus you can get your fill of Chuck Norris vs Ninjas.  Pretty humorous document but full of great content. My first test is going to test the entry of a new Album into the application and is outlined below. The Feature section at the top is more for your documentation purposes.  Try to be descriptive of the test so that it makes sense to the next person behind you.  The Scenario outline is described in the Ninja Scrolls, but think of it as test template.  You can write one test outline and have multiple datasets (Scenarios) executed against that test.  Here are the steps of my test and their descriptions Given I am starting a new test – tells our test to create a new EasyTest file And (Given) the application is open – tells EasyTest to open our application defined in the Config.xml When I am at the “Albums” screen – tells XAF to navigate to the Albums list view And (When) I click the “New:Album” button – tells XAF to click the New Album button on the ribbon And (When) I enter the following information – tells XAF to find the field on the screen and put the value in that field And (When) I click the “Save and Close” button – tells XAF to click the “Save and Close” button on the detail window Then I verify results as “user” – tells the testing framework to execute the EasyTest as your configured user Once you compile and prepare your tests you should see the following in your Test View.  For each of your CreateNewAlbum lines in your scenarios, you will see a new test ready to execute. From here you will use your testing framework of choice to execute the test.  This in turn will execute the EasyTest framework to call back into your XAF application and test your business application. Again, please remember that this is an early preview and we are still working out the details.  Please let us know if you have any comments/questions/concerns. Thanks and happy testing.

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• WCF – interchangeable data-contract types

  - by nmarun

  In a WSDL based environment, unlike a CLR-world, we pass around the ‘state’ of an object and not the reference of an object. Well firstly, what does ‘state’ mean and does this also mean that we can send a struct where a class is expected (or vice-versa) as long as their ‘state’ is one and the same? Let’s see. So I have an operation contract defined as below: 1: [ServiceContract] 2: public interface ILearnWcfServiceExtend : ILearnWcfService 3: { 4: [OperationContract] 5: Employee SaveEmployee(Employee employee); 6: } 7:  8: [ServiceBehavior] 9: public class LearnWcfService : ILearnWcfServiceExtend 10: { 11: public Employee SaveEmployee(Employee employee) 12: { 13: employee.EmployeeId = 123; 14: return employee; 15: } 16: } Quite simplistic operation there (which translates to ‘absolutely no business value’). Now, the data contract Employee mentioned above is a struct. 1: public struct Employee 2: { 3: public int EmployeeId { get; set; } 4:  5: public string FName { get; set; } 6: } After compilation and consumption of this service, my proxy (in the Reference.cs file) looks like below (I’ve ignored the rest of the details just to avoid unwanted confusion): 1: public partial struct Employee : System.Runtime.Serialization.IExtensibleDataObject, System.ComponentModel.INotifyPropertyChanged I call the service with the code below: 1: private static void CallWcfService() 2: { 3: Employee employee = new Employee { FName = "A" }; 4: Console.WriteLine("IsValueType: {0}", employee.GetType().IsValueType); 5: Console.WriteLine("IsClass: {0}", employee.GetType().IsClass); 6: Console.WriteLine("Before calling the service: {0} - {1}", employee.EmployeeId, employee.FName); 7: employee = LearnWcfServiceClient.SaveEmployee(employee); 8: Console.WriteLine("Return from the service: {0} - {1}", employee.EmployeeId, employee.FName); 9: } The output is: I now change my Employee type from a struct to a class in the proxy class and run the application: 1: public partial class Employee : System.Runtime.Serialization.IExtensibleDataObject, System.ComponentModel.INotifyPropertyChanged { The output this time is: The state of an object implies towards its composition, the properties and the values of these properties and not based on whether it is a reference type (class) or a value type (struct). And as shown above, we’re actually passing an object by its state and not by reference. Continuing on the same topic of ‘type-interchangeability’, WCF treats two data contracts as equivalent if they have the same ‘wire-representation’. We can do so using the DataContract and DataMember attributes’ Name property. 1: [DataContract] 2: public struct Person 3: { 4: [DataMember] 5: public int Id { get; set; } 6:  7: [DataMember] 8: public string FirstName { get; set; } 9: } 10:  11: [DataContract(Name="Person")] 12: public class Employee 13: { 14: [DataMember(Name = "Id")] 15: public int EmployeeId { get; set; } 16:  17: [DataMember(Name="FirstName")] 18: public string FName { get; set; } 19: } I’ve created two data contracts with the exact same wire-representation. Just remember that the names and the types of data members need to match to be considered equivalent. The question then arises as to what gets generated in the proxy class. Despite us declaring two data contracts (Person and Employee), only one gets emitted – Person. This is because we’re saying that the Employee type has the same wire-representation as the Person type. Also that the signature of the SaveEmployee operation gets changed on the proxy side: 1: [System.CodeDom.Compiler.GeneratedCodeAttribute("System.ServiceModel", "4.0.0.0")] 2: [System.ServiceModel.ServiceContractAttribute(ConfigurationName="ServiceProxy.ILearnWcfServiceExtend")] 3: public interface ILearnWcfServiceExtend 4: { 5: [System.ServiceModel.OperationContractAttribute(Action="http://tempuri.org/ILearnWcfServiceExtend/SaveEmployee", ReplyAction="http://tempuri.org/ILearnWcfServiceExtend/SaveEmployeeResponse")] 6: ClientApplication.ServiceProxy.Person SaveEmployee(ClientApplication.ServiceProxy.Person employee); 7: } But, on the service side, the SaveEmployee still accepts and returns an Employee data contract. 1: [ServiceBehavior] 2: public class LearnWcfService : ILearnWcfServiceExtend 3: { 4: public Employee SaveEmployee(Employee employee) 5: { 6: employee.EmployeeId = 123; 7: return employee; 8: } 9: } Despite all these changes, our output remains the same as the last one: This is type-interchangeability at work! Here’s one more thing to ponder about. Our Person type is a struct and Employee type is a class. Then how is it that the Person type got emitted as a ‘class’ in the proxy? It’s worth mentioning that WSDL describes a type called Employee and does not say whether it is a class or a struct (see the SOAP message below): 1: <soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" 2: xmlns:tem="http://tempuri.org/" 3: xmlns:ser="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/ServiceApplication"> 4: <soapenv:Header/> 5: <soapenv:Body> 6: <tem:SaveEmployee> 7: <!--Optional:--> 8: <tem:employee> 9: <!--Optional:--> 10: <ser:EmployeeId>?</ser:EmployeeId> 11: <!--Optional:--> 12: <ser:FName>?</ser:FName> 13: </tem:employee> 14: </tem:SaveEmployee> 15: </soapenv:Body> 16: </soapenv:Envelope> There are some differences between how ‘Add Service Reference’ and the svcutil.exe generate the proxy class, but turns out both do some kind of reflection and determine the type of the data contract and emit the code accordingly. So since the Employee type is a class, the proxy ‘Person’ type gets generated as a class. In fact, reflecting on svcutil.exe application, you’ll see that there are a couple of places wherein a flag actually determines a type as a class or a struct. One example is in the ExportISerializableDataContract method in the System.Runtime.Serialization.CodeExporter class. Seems like these flags have a say in deciding whether the type gets emitted as a struct or a class. This behavior is different if you use the WSDL tool though. WSDL tool does not do any kind of reflection of the data contract / serialized type, it emits the type as a class by default. You can check this using the two command lines below:   Note to self: Remember ‘state’ and type-interchangeability when traversing through the WSDL planet!

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• Handling HTTP 404 Error in ASP.NET Web API

  - by imran_ku07

          Introduction:                     Building modern HTTP/RESTful/RPC services has become very easy with the new ASP.NET Web API framework. Using ASP.NET Web API framework, you can create HTTP services which can be accessed from browsers, machines, mobile devices and other clients. Developing HTTP services is now become more easy for ASP.NET MVC developer becasue ASP.NET Web API is now included in ASP.NET MVC. In addition to developing HTTP services, it is also important to return meaningful response to client if a resource(uri) not found(HTTP 404) for a reason(for example, mistyped resource uri). It is also important to make this response centralized so you can configure all of 'HTTP 404 Not Found' resource at one place. In this article, I will show you how to handle 'HTTP 404 Not Found' at one place.         Description:                     Let's say that you are developing a HTTP RESTful application using ASP.NET Web API framework. In this application you need to handle HTTP 404 errors in a centralized location. From ASP.NET Web API point of you, you need to handle these situations, No route matched. Route is matched but no {controller} has been found on route. No type with {controller} name has been found. No matching action method found in the selected controller due to no action method start with the request HTTP method verb or no action method with IActionHttpMethodProviderRoute implemented attribute found or no method with {action} name found or no method with the matching {action} name found.                                          Now, let create a ErrorController with Handle404 action method. This action method will be used in all of the above cases for sending HTTP 404 response message to the client.  public class ErrorController : ApiController { [HttpGet, HttpPost, HttpPut, HttpDelete, HttpHead, HttpOptions, AcceptVerbs("PATCH")] public HttpResponseMessage Handle404() { var responseMessage = new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.NotFound); responseMessage.ReasonPhrase = "The requested resource is not found"; return responseMessage; } }                     You can easily change the above action method to send some other specific HTTP 404 error response. If a client of your HTTP service send a request to a resource(uri) and no route matched with this uri on server then you can route the request to the above Handle404 method using a custom route. Put this route at the very bottom of route configuration,  routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "Error404", routeTemplate: "{*url}", defaults: new { controller = "Error", action = "Handle404" } );                     Now you need handle the case when there is no {controller} in the matching route or when there is no type with {controller} name found. You can easily handle this case and route the request to the above Handle404 method using a custom IHttpControllerSelector. Here is the definition of a custom IHttpControllerSelector, public class HttpNotFoundAwareDefaultHttpControllerSelector : DefaultHttpControllerSelector { public HttpNotFoundAwareDefaultHttpControllerSelector(HttpConfiguration configuration) : base(configuration) { } public override HttpControllerDescriptor SelectController(HttpRequestMessage request) { HttpControllerDescriptor decriptor = null; try { decriptor = base.SelectController(request); } catch (HttpResponseException ex) { var code = ex.Response.StatusCode; if (code != HttpStatusCode.NotFound) throw; var routeValues = request.GetRouteData().Values; routeValues["controller"] = "Error"; routeValues["action"] = "Handle404"; decriptor = base.SelectController(request); } return decriptor; } }                     Next, it is also required to pass the request to the above Handle404 method if no matching action method found in the selected controller due to the reason discussed above. This situation can also be easily handled through a custom IHttpActionSelector. Here is the source of custom IHttpActionSelector,  public class HttpNotFoundAwareControllerActionSelector : ApiControllerActionSelector { public HttpNotFoundAwareControllerActionSelector() { } public override HttpActionDescriptor SelectAction(HttpControllerContext controllerContext) { HttpActionDescriptor decriptor = null; try { decriptor = base.SelectAction(controllerContext); } catch (HttpResponseException ex) { var code = ex.Response.StatusCode; if (code != HttpStatusCode.NotFound && code != HttpStatusCode.MethodNotAllowed) throw; var routeData = controllerContext.RouteData; routeData.Values["action"] = "Handle404"; IHttpController httpController = new ErrorController(); controllerContext.Controller = httpController; controllerContext.ControllerDescriptor = new HttpControllerDescriptor(controllerContext.Configuration, "Error", httpController.GetType()); decriptor = base.SelectAction(controllerContext); } return decriptor; } }                     Finally, we need to register the custom IHttpControllerSelector and IHttpActionSelector. Open global.asax.cs file and add these lines,  configuration.Services.Replace(typeof(IHttpControllerSelector), new HttpNotFoundAwareDefaultHttpControllerSelector(configuration)); configuration.Services.Replace(typeof(IHttpActionSelector), new HttpNotFoundAwareControllerActionSelector());         Summary:                       In addition to building an application for HTTP services, it is also important to send meaningful centralized information in response when something goes wrong, for example 'HTTP 404 Not Found' error.  In this article, I showed you how to handle 'HTTP 404 Not Found' error in a centralized location. Hopefully you will enjoy this article too.

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• When OneTug Just Isn&rsquo;t Enough&hellip;

  - by onefloridacoder

  I stole that from the back of a T-shirt I saw at the Orlando Code Camp 2010.  This was my first code camp and my first time volunteering for an event like this as well.  It was an awesome day.  I cannot begin to count the “aaahh”, “I did-not-know I could do that”, in the crowds and for myself.  I think it was a great day of learning for everyone at all levels.  All of the presenters were different and provided great insights into the topics they were presenting.  Here’s a list of the ones that I attended. KodeFuGuru, “Pirates vs. Ninjas” He touched on many good topics to relax some of the ways we think when we are writing out code, and still looks good, readable, etc.  As he pointed out in all of his examples, we might not always realize everything that’s going on under the covers.  He exposed a bug in his own code, and verbalized the mental gymnastics he went through when he knew there was something wrong with one of his IEnumerable implementations.  For me, it was great to hear that someone else labors over these gut reactions to code quickly snapped together, to the point that we rush to the refactor stage to fix what’s bothering us – and learn.  He has some content on extension methods that was very interesting.  My “that is so cool” moment was when he swapped out AddEntity method on an entity class and used a With extension method instead.  Some of the LINQ scales fell off my eyes at that moment, and I realized my own code could be a lot more powerful (and readable) if incorporate a few of these examples at the appropriate times.  And he cautioned as well… “don’t go crazy with this stuff”, there’s a place and time for everything.  One of his examples demo’d toward the end of the talk is on his sight where he’s chaining methods together, cool stuff. Quotes I liked: “Extension Methods - Extension methods to put features back on the model type, without impacting the type.” “Favor Declarative Code” – Check out the ? and ?? operators if you’re not already using them. “Favor Fluent Code” “Avoid Pirate Ninja Zombies!  If you see one run!” I’m definitely going to be looking at “Extract Projection” when I get into VS2010. BDD 101 – Sean Chambers http://github.com/schambers This guy had a whole host of gremlins against him, final score Sean 5, Gremlins 1.  He ran the code samples from his github repo  in the code github code viewer since the PC they school gave him to use didn’t have VS installed. He did a great job of converting the grammar between BDD and TDD, and how this style of development can be used in integration tests as well as the different types of gated builds on a CI box – he didn’t go into a discussion around CI, but we could infer that it could work. Like when we use WSSF, it does cause a class explosion to happen however the amount of code per class it limit to just covering the concern at hand – no more, no less.  As in “When I as a <Role>, expect {something} to happen, because {}”  This keeps us (the developer) from gold plating our solutions and creating less waste.  He basically keeps the code that prove out the requirement to two lines of code.  Nice. He uses SpecUnit to merge this grammar into his .NET projects and gave an overview on how this ties into writing his own BDD tests.  Some folks were familiar with Given / When / Then as story acceptance criteria and here’s how he mapped it: “Given <Context>  When <Something Happens> Then <I expect...>”  There are a few base classes and overrides in the SpecUnit framework that help with setting up the context for each test which looked very handy. Successfully Running Your Own Coding Business The speaker ran through a list of items that sounded like common sense stuff LLC, banking, separating expenses, etc.  Then moved into role playing with business owners and an ISV.  That was pretty good stuff, it pays to be a good listener all of the time even if your client is sitting on the other side of the phone tearing you head off for you – but that’s all it is, and get used to it its par for the course.  Oh, yeah always answer the phone was one simple thing that you can do to move  your business forward.  But like Cory Foy tweeted this week, “If you owe me a lot of money, don’t have a message that says your away for five weeks skiing in Colorado.”  Lots of food for thought that’s on my list of “todo’s and to-don’ts”. Speaker Idol Next, I had the pleasure of helping Russ Fustino tape this part of Code Camp as my primary volunteer opportunity that day.  You remember Russ, “know the code” from the awesome Russ’ Tool Shed series.  He did a great job orchestrating and capturing the Speaker Idol finals.   So I didn’t actually miss any sessions, but was able to see three back to back in one setting.  The idol finalists gave a 10 minute talk and very deep subjects, but different styles of talks.  No one walked away empty handed for jobs very well done.  Russ has details on his site.  The pictures and  video captured is supposed to be published on Channel 9 at a later date.  It was also a valuable experience to see what makes technical speakers effective in their talks.  I picked up quite a few speaking tips from what I heard from the judges and contestants. Design For Developers – Diane Leeper If you are a great developer, you’re probably a lousy designer.  Diane didn’t come to poke holes in what we think we can do with UI layout and design, but she provided some tools we can use to figure out metaphors for visualizing data.  If you need help with that check out Silverlight Pivot – that’s what she was getting at.  I was first introduced to her at one of John Papa’s talks last year at a Lakeland User Group meeting and she’s very passionate about design.  She was able to discuss different elements of Pivot, while to a developer is just looked cool. I believe she was providing the deck from her talk to folks after her talk, so send her an email if you’re interested.   She says she can talk about design for hours and hours – we all left that session believing her.   Rinse and Repeat Orlando Code Camp 2010 was awesome, and would totally do it again.  There were lots of folks from my shop there, and some that have left my shop to go elsewhere.  So it was a reunion of sorts and a great celebration for the simple fact that its great to be a developer and there’s a community that supports and recognizes it as well.  The sponsors were generous and the organizers were very tired, namely Esteban Garcia and Will Strohl who were responsible for making a lot of this magic happen.  And if you don’t believe me, check out the chatter on Twitter.

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• Speaker at the German Visual FoxPro Developer Conference 2004

  The following is an excerpt from the UniversalThread conference coverage of the German Visual FoxPro Developer Conference 2004 written by Hans-Otto Lochmann, Armin Neudert and myself. TRACK Active FoxPro Pages Back in 1996 Peter Herzog invented a FoxPro based solution to provide intranet capabilities for one of his customers. Nearly at the same time Rick Strahl had the same task and created WestWind Web Connection (WWWC). The aspect that developers have to have a full Visual FoxPro development environment to create WWWC solutions was the starting point of a "personal sportive competition" of Peter to write his own solution. But the main aspect has to be that it doesn't rely on a full VFP version in order to run. The VFP runtime should enough and the source code has to be compiled and interpreted on the fly. So, as Microsoft released Active Server Pages a name for Peter's solution was found: Active FoxPro Pages (AFP). During the years many drawbacks, design aspects as well as technological hassles forced ProLib Software to refactor the product. This way many limits like DCOM configuration, file-based information transfer between Web server and AFP, missing features (like upload forms or other Web servers than IIS) and extensibility were eliminated. As a consequence ProLib Software decided to rewrite Active FoxPro Pages in mid of 2002 completely. Christof Wollenhaupt, before his marriage known as Christof Lange, and Jochen Kirstätter had to solve this task. AFP 3.0 was officially released at German Devcon in November 2002. Today AFP has six distributors world-wide and there is a lot more information available online than before version 3.0. Directly after a short welcome speech by Rainer Becker, Jochen Kirstätter - aka JoKi - opened today's AFP track and introduced the basic concepts how Active FoxPro Pages works in general, explained the AFP terminilogy and every single component, and presented a small Walk-Through about how to write an AFP-based Web solution. Actually his presentation slides themselves were an AFP Web application. This way it was easy to integrate accompanying AFP samples on the fly. Additionally it was shown that no Visual FoxPro development environment is needed to create a Web application. A simple text editor like NotePad or any WYSIWYG editor on the market is usable to fullfil customer's requirements.Welcome at least two new speakers - Nina Schwanzer and Bernhard Reiter. Both are working at ProLib Software and this year's conference is their first time as speakers. And they did their job very well. The whole session was kind of a "ping pong" game and those two complemented each other to keep the audience in tension. First, they described typical requirements a modern desktop application should fullfil - online registration and activation, auto-update capabilities, or even frontend to administer a Web application on a remote system via internet, and explained how possible solutions like Web Services (using the SOAP interface), DCOM, and even .NET might solve those requirements. But any of those ways has different drawbacks like complicated installation or configuration, or extraordinary download sizes. Next, they introduced a technology they developed and used in a customer's project: Active FoxPro Pages Remote Procedure Call (AFP RPC). [...]   In the next session JoKi described how to extend Active FoxPro Pages. On the one hand AFP provides a plugin interface, and on the other hand any addon for Visual FoxPro might be usable as well. During the first half he spoke about the plugin interface and wrote live a new AFP extension - the Devcon plugin. Later he questioned any former step and showed that a single AFP document may solve the problem as well. So, developing extensions is only interesting if they are re-usable and generic. At the end he talked about multiple interfaces for the same business logic. For instance plain VFP class, COM server and .NET integration. Currently there are several specialized AFP extensions for sending mail, for using cryptographic routines (ie. based on .NET classes), or enhanced methods to handle HTML/XML strings.Rainer Becker and Peter Herzog introduced a new development for Visual Extend (VFX) - an AFP form builder. With this builder creating an AFP Web form designed with Visual FoxPro's form designer was a matter of seconds. The builder itself is currently in pre-release status and will be part of the VFX framework in the future. It was very impressive to see that the whole design of a form as well as most parts of its functionality were exported to a combination of HTML, JavaScript and Active FoxPro Pages. At half-time Jürgen "wOOdy" Wondzinski and JoKi changed places with Rainer and Peter, and presented some Web solutions in AFP. [...] Visual FoxPro 9.0 und Linux Is Linux still a topic for Visual FoxPro developers based on the activities during this year? In his session Jochen Kirstätter - aka JoKi - went not through the technical steps and requirements on how to setup and run FoxPro on a Linux client. Instead, he explained what Linux actually is, and talked about the high variety of distributions. In fact there are a lot of distributions around but since some several years there are some specialized ones available: Live Distributions (aka LiveCDs).The intension of LiveCDs is to run a full-featured Linux operating system on any personal computer directly from a bootable medium, like CD, DVD, or even USB memory stick, without installation on a hard disk. One of the first Linux LiveCDs was made by Klaus Knopper and is well-known as Knoppix. Today, many other LiveCDs are based on the concepts of Knoppix. During the session Jochen booted Morphix, a very light-weighted LiveCD, on his notebook, and actually showed the attendees that testing and playing around with Linux is absolutely easy. Running a text processing application swept away most of the contrary aspects the audience had. Okay, where is the part about FoxPro? Well, there are several scenarios a customer might require usage of Linux, and actually with all of them FoxPro could deal with. I guess that one of the more common ones is the situation that a customer has a heterogeneous intranet with Windows clients and Linux servers, i.e. Windows XP Professional and any Linux distribution on their servers. Even in this scenario there are two variants hidden! Why? Well, on the one hand there is a software package called Samba, that provides Windows server capabilities to a Linux system, and on the other hand there are several SQL servers for Linux, like PostgreSQL, DB2 and MySQL. Either way, FoxPro is able to deal with these scenarios, but you as developer have to know what you are talking about with your customers. And even if there's no Windows operating system, you are able to provide a FoxPro-based solution. Using the wine library - wine stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator - you are able to run your VFP applications on Linux clients, too; but not without reading VFP's EULA. Licenses were also part the session, and Jochen discussed the meaning of Open Source and its misunderstanding throughout most developers. Open Source does not mean that it's without a fee. Instead, it stands for access to the source code of an application or tool. And, VFP itself is one of the best samples to explain Open Source due to fact that since years, VFP is shipped with the xSource.zip archive. [...]

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• Updating a SharePoint master page via a solution (WSP)

  - by Kelly Jones

  In my last blog post, I wrote how to deploy a SharePoint theme using Features and a solution package.  As promised in that post, here is how to update an already deployed master page. There are several ways to update a master page in SharePoint.  You could upload a new version to the master page gallery, or you could upload a new master page to the gallery, and then set the site to use this new page.  Manually uploading your master page to the master page gallery might be the best option, depending on your environment.  For my client, I did these steps in code, which is what they preferred. (Image courtesy of: http://www.joiningdots.net/blog/2007/08/sharepoint-and-quick-launch.html ) Before you decide which method you need to use, take a look at your existing pages.  Are they using the SharePoint dynamic token or the static token for the master page reference?  The wha, huh? SO, there are four ways to tell an .aspx page hosted in SharePoint which master page it should use: “~masterurl/default.master” – tells the page to use the default.master property of the site “~masterurl/custom.master” – tells the page to use the custom.master property of the site “~site/default.master” – tells the page to use the file named “default.master” in the site’s master page gallery “~sitecollection/default.master” – tells the page to use the file named “default.master” in the site collection’s master page gallery For more information about these tokens, take a look at this article on MSDN. Once you determine which token your existing pages are pointed to, then you know which file you need to update.  So, if the ~masterurl tokens are used, then you upload a new master page, either replacing the existing one or adding another one to the gallery.  If you’ve uploaded a new file with a new name, you’ll just need to set it as the master page either through the UI (MOSS only) or through code (MOSS or WSS Feature receiver code – or using SharePoint Designer). If the ~site or ~sitecollection tokens were used, then you’re limited to either replacing the existing master page, or editing all of your existing pages to point to another master page.  In most cases, it probably makes sense to just replace the master page. For my project, I’m working with WSS and the existing pages are set to the ~sitecollection token.  Based on this, I decided to just upload a new version of the existing master page (and not modify the dozens of existing pages). Also, since my client prefers Features and solutions, I created a master page Feature and a corresponding Feature Receiver.  For information on creating the elements and feature files, check out this post: http://sharepointmagazine.net/technical/development/deploying-the-master-page . This works fine, unless you are overwriting an existing master page, which was my case.  You’ll run into errors because the master page file needs to be checked out, replaced, and then checked in.  I wrote code in my Feature Activated event handler to accomplish these steps. Here are the steps necessary in code: Get the file name from the elements file of the Feature Check out the file from the master page gallery Upload the file to the master page gallery Check in the file to the master page gallery Here’s the code in my Feature Receiver: 1: public override void FeatureActivated(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties) 2: { 3: try 4: { 5:   6: SPElementDefinitionCollection col = properties.Definition.GetElementDefinitions(System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); 7:   8: using (SPWeb curweb = GetCurWeb(properties)) 9: { 10: foreach (SPElementDefinition ele in col) 11: { 12: if (string.Compare(ele.ElementType, "Module", true) == 0) 13: { 14: // <Module Name="DefaultMasterPage" List="116" Url="_catalogs/masterpage" RootWebOnly="FALSE"> 15: // <File Url="myMaster.master" Type="GhostableInLibrary" IgnoreIfAlreadyExists="TRUE" 16: // Path="MasterPages/myMaster.master" /> 17: // </Module> 18: string Url = ele.XmlDefinition.Attributes["Url"].Value; 19: foreach (System.Xml.XmlNode file in ele.XmlDefinition.ChildNodes) 20: { 21: string Url2 = file.Attributes["Url"].Value; 22: string Path = file.Attributes["Path"].Value; 23: string fileType = file.Attributes["Type"].Value; 24:   25: if (string.Compare(fileType, "GhostableInLibrary", true) == 0) 26: { 27: //Check out file in document library 28: SPFile existingFile = curweb.GetFile(Url + "/" + Url2); 29:   30: if (existingFile != null) 31: { 32: if (existingFile.CheckOutStatus != SPFile.SPCheckOutStatus.None) 33: { 34: throw new Exception("The master page file is already checked out. Please make sure the master page file is checked in, before activating this feature."); 35: } 36: else 37: { 38: existingFile.CheckOut(); 39: existingFile.Update(); 40: } 41: } 42:   43: //Upload file to document library 44: string filePath = System.IO.Path.Combine(properties.Definition.RootDirectory, Path); 45: string fileName = System.IO.Path.GetFileName(filePath); 46: char slash = Convert.ToChar("/"); 47: string[] folders = existingFile.ParentFolder.Url.Split(slash); 48:   49: if (folders.Length > 2) 50: { 51: Logger.logMessage("More than two folders were detected in the library path for the master page. Only two are supported.", 52: Logger.LogEntryType.Information); //custom logging component 53: } 54:   55: SPFolder myLibrary = curweb.Folders[folders[0]].SubFolders[folders[1]]; 56:   57: FileStream fs = File.OpenRead(filePath); 58:   59: SPFile newFile = myLibrary.Files.Add(fileName, fs, true); 60:   61: myLibrary.Update(); 62: newFile.CheckIn("Updated by Feature", SPCheckinType.MajorCheckIn); 63: newFile.Update(); 64: } 65: } 66: } 67: } 68: } 69: } 70: catch (Exception ex) 71: { 72: string msg = "Error occurred during feature activation"; 73: Logger.logException(ex, msg, ""); 74: } 75:   76: } 77:   78: /// <summary> 79: /// Using a Feature's properties, get a reference to the Current Web 80: /// </summary> 81: /// <param name="properties"></param> 82: public SPWeb GetCurWeb(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties) 83: { 84: SPWeb curweb; 85:   86: //Check if the parent of the web is a site or a web 87: if (properties != null && properties.Feature.Parent.GetType().ToString() == "Microsoft.SharePoint.SPWeb") 88: { 89:   90: //Get web from parent 91: curweb = (SPWeb)properties.Feature.Parent; 92: 93: } 94: else 95: { 96: //Get web from Site 97: using (SPSite cursite = (SPSite)properties.Feature.Parent) 98: { 99: curweb = (SPWeb)cursite.OpenWeb(); 100: } 101: } 102:   103: return curweb; 104: } This did the trick.  It allowed me to update my existing master page, through an easily repeatable process (which is great when you are working with more than one environment and what to do things like TEST it!).  I did run into what I would classify as a strange issue with one of my subsites, but that’s the topic for another blog post.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 06, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 06, 2010New ProjectsActive Worlds Dot Net Wrapper (Based on AwSdk): Active Worlds Dot Net Wrapper (Based on AwSdk)Combina: Smart calculator for large combinatorial calculations.Concurrent Cache: ConcurrentCache is a smart output cache library extending OutputCacheProvider. It consists of in memory, cache files and compressed files modes and...Decay: Personal use. For learningFazTalk: FazTalk is a suite of tools and products that are designed to improve collaboration and workflow interactions. FazTalk takes an innovative approach...grouped: A peer to peer text editor, written in C# [update] I wrote this little thing a while back and even forgot about it, I stopped coding for more tha...HitchARide MVC 2 Sample: An MVC 2 sample written as part of the Microsoft 2010 London Web Camp based on the wireframes at http://schematics.earthware.co.uk/hitcharide. Not...Inspiration.Web: Description: A simple (but entertaining) ASP.NET MVC (C#) project to suggest random code names for projects. Intended audience: People who ne...NetFileBrowser - TinyMCE: tinyMCE file plugin with asp.netOil Slick Live Feeds: All live feeds from BP's Remotely Operated VehiclesParticle Lexer: Parser and Tokenizer libraryPdf Form Tool: Pdf Form Tool demonstrates how the iTextSharp library could be used to fill PDF forms. The input data is provided as a csv file. The application ...Planning Poker Windows Mobile 7: This project is a Planning Poker application for Windows Mobile 7 (and later?). RandomRat: RandomRat is a program for generating random sets that meet specific criteriaScience.NET: A scientific library written in managed code. It supports advanced mathematics (algebra system, sequences, statistics, combinatorics...), data stru...Spider Compiler: Spider Compiler parses the input of a spider programming source file and compiles it (with help of csc.exe; the C#-Compiler) to an exe-file. This p...Sununpro: sunun's project for study by team foundation server.TFS Buddy: An application that manipulates your I-Buddy whenever something happens in your Team Foundation ServerValveSoft: ValveSysWiiMote Physics: WiiMote Physics is an application that allows you to retrieve data from your WiiMote or Balance Board and display it in real-time. It has a number...WinGet: WinGet is a download manager for Windows. You can drag links onto the WinGet Widget and it will download a file on the selected folder. It is dev...XProject.NET: A project management and team collaboration platformNew Releases.NET DiscUtils: Version 0.9 Preview: This release is still under development. New features available in this release: Support for accessing short file names stored in WIM files Incr...Active Worlds Dot Net Wrapper (Based on AwSdk): Active World Dot Net Wrapper (0.0.1.85): Based on AwSdk 85AwSdk UnOfficial Wrapper Howto Use: C# using AwWrapper; VB.Net Import AwWrapperAjaxControlToolkit additional extenders: ZhecheAjaxControls for .NET3.5: Used AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - April 12th 2010 Release Version 40412. Fixed deadlock in long operation canceling Some other fixesAnyCAD: AnyCAD.v1.2.ENU.Install: http://www.anycad.net Parametric Modeling *3D: Sphere, Box, Cylinder, Cone •2D: Line, Rectangle, Arc, Arch, Circle, Spline, Polygon •Feature: Extr...Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V29: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has ad...Concurrent Cache: 1.0: This is the first release for the ConcurrentCache library.Configuration Section Designer: 2.0.0: This is the first Beta Release for VS 2010 supportDoxygen Browser Addin for VS: Doxygen Browser Addin - v0.1.4 Beta: Support for Visual Studio 2010 improved the logging of errors (Event Logs) Fixed some issues/bugs Hot key for navigation "Control + F1, Contr...Folder Bookmarks: Folder Bookmarks 1.6.2: The latest version of Folder Bookmarks (1.6.2), with new UI changes. Once you have extracted the file, do not delete any files/folders. They are n...HERB.IQ: Beta 0.1 Source code release 5: Beta 0.1 Source code release 5Inspiration.Web: Initial release (deployment package): Initial release (deployment package)NetFileBrowser - TinyMCE: Demo Project: Demo ProjectNetFileBrowser - TinyMCE: NetFileBrowser: NetImageBrowserNLog - Advanced .NET Logging: Nightly Build 2010.06.05.001: Changes since the last build:2010-06-04 23:29:42 Jarek Kowalski Massive update to documentation generator. 2010-05-28 15:41:42 Jarek Kowalski upda...Oil Slick Live Feeds: Oil Slick Live Feeds 0.1: A the first release, with feeds from the MS Skandi, Boa Deep C, Enterprise and Q4000. They are live streams from the ROV's monitoring the damaged...Pcap.Net: Pcap.Net 0.7.0 (46671): Pcap.Net - June 2010 Release Pcap.Net is a .NET wrapper for WinPcap written in C++/CLI and C#. It Features almost all WinPcap features and includes...sqwarea: Sqwarea 0.0.289.0 (alpha): API supportTFS Buddy: TFS Buddy First release (Beta 1): This is the first release of the TFS Buddy.Visual Studio DSite: Looping Animation (Visual C++ 2008): A solider firing a bullet that loops and displays an explosion everytime it hits the edge of the form.WiiMote Physics: WiiMote Physics v4.0: v4.0.0.1 Recovered from existing compiled assembly after hard drive failure Now requires .NET 4.0 (it seems to make it run faster) Added new c...WinGet: Alpha 1: First Alpha of WinGet. It includes all the planned features but it contains many bugs. Packaged using 7-Zip and ClickOnce.Most Popular ProjectsWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)PHPExcelpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesASP.NETMost Active ProjectsCommunity Forums NNTP bridgeRawrpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationN2 CMSIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterStyleCopsmark C# LibraryFarseer Physics Enginepatterns & practices: Composite WPF and Silverlight

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• API Message Localization

  - by Jesse Taber

  In my post, “Keep Localizable Strings Close To Your Users” I talked about the internationalization and localization difficulties that can arise when you sprinkle static localizable strings throughout the different logical layers of an application. The main point of that post is that you should have your localizable strings reside as close to the user-facing modules of your application as possible. For example, if you’re developing an ASP .NET web forms application all of the localizable strings should be kept in .resx files that are associated with the .aspx views of the application. In this post I want to talk about how this same concept can be applied when designing and developing APIs. An API Facilitates Machine-to-Machine Interaction You can typically think about a web, desktop, or mobile application as a collection “views” or “screens” through which users interact with the underlying logic and data. The application can be designed based on the assumption that there will be a human being on the other end of the screen working the controls. You are designing a machine-to-person interaction and the application should be built in a way that facilitates the user’s clear understanding of what is going on. Dates should be be formatted in a way that the user will be familiar with, messages should be presented in the user’s preferred language, etc. When building an API, however, there are no screens and you can’t make assumptions about who or what is on the other end of each call. An API is, by definition, a machine-to-machine interaction. A machine-to-machine interaction should be built in a way that facilitates a clear and unambiguous understanding of what is going on. Dates and numbers should be formatted in predictable and standard ways (e.g. ISO 8601 dates) and messages should be presented in machine-parseable formats. For example, consider an API for a time tracking system that exposes a resource for creating a new time entry. The JSON for creating a new time entry for a user might look like: 1: { 2: "userId": 4532, 3: "startDateUtc": "2012-10-22T14:01:54.98432Z", 4: "endDateUtc": "2012-10-22T11:34:45.29321Z" 5: }   Note how the parameters for start and end date are both expressed as ISO 8601 compliant dates in UTC. Using a date format like this in our API leaves little room for ambiguity. It’s also important to note that using ISO 8601 dates is a much, much saner thing than the \/Date(<milliseconds since epoch>)\/ nonsense that is sometimes used in JSON serialization. Probably the most important thing to note about the JSON snippet above is the fact that the end date comes before the start date! The API should recognize that and disallow the time entry from being created, returning an error to the caller. You might inclined to send a response that looks something like this: 1: { 2: "errors": [ {"message" : "The end date must come after the start date"}] 3: }   While this may seem like an appropriate thing to do there are a few problems with this approach: What if there is a user somewhere on the other end of the API call that doesn’t speak English?  What if the message provided here won’t fit properly within the UI of the application that made the API call? What if the verbiage of the message isn’t consistent with the rest of the application that made the API call? What if there is no user directly on the other end of the API call (e.g. this is a batch job uploading time entries once per night unattended)? The API knows nothing about the context from which the call was made. There are steps you could take to given the API some context (e.g.allow the caller to send along a language code indicating the language that the end user speaks), but that will only get you so far. As the designer of the API you could make some assumptions about how the API will be called, but if we start making assumptions we could very easily make the wrong assumptions. In this situation it’s best to make no assumptions and simply design the API in such a way that the caller has the responsibility to convey error messages in a manner that is appropriate for the context in which the error was raised. You would work around some of these problems by allowing callers to add metadata to each request describing the context from which the call is being made (e.g. accepting a ‘locale’ parameter denoting the desired language), but that will add needless clutter and complexity. It’s better to keep the API simple and push those context-specific concerns down to the caller whenever possible. For our very simple time entry example, this can be done by simply changing our error message response to look like this: 1: { 2: "errors": [ {"code": 100}] 3: }   By changing our error error from exposing a string to a numeric code that is easily parseable by another application, we’ve placed all of the responsibility for conveying the actual meaning of the error message on the caller. It’s best to have the caller be responsible for conveying this meaning because the caller understands the context much better than the API does. Now the caller can see error code 100, know that it means that the end date submitted falls before the start date and take appropriate action. Now all of the problems listed out above are non-issues because the caller can simply translate the error code of ‘100’ into the proper action and message for the current context. The numeric code representation of the error is a much better way to facilitate the machine-to-machine interaction that the API is meant to facilitate. An API Does Have Human Users While APIs should be built for machine-to-machine interaction, people still need to wire these interactions together. As a programmer building a client application that will consume the time entry API I would find it frustrating to have to go dig through the API documentation every time I encounter a new error code (assuming the documentation exists and is accurate). The numeric error code approach hurts the discoverability of the API and makes it painful to integrate with. We can help ease this pain by merging our two approaches: 1: { 2: "errors": [ {"code": 100, "message" : "The end date must come after the start date"}] 3: }   Now we have an easily parseable numeric error code for the machine-to-machine interaction that the API is meant to facilitate and a human-readable message for programmers working with the API. The human-readable message here is not intended to be viewed by end-users of the API and as such is not really a “localizable string” in my opinion. We could opt to expose a locale parameter for all API methods and store translations for all error messages, but that’s a lot of extra effort and overhead that doesn’t add a lot real value to the API. I might be a bit of an “ugly American”, but I think it’s probably fine to have the API return English messages when the target for those messages is a programmer. When resources are limited (which they always are), I’d argue that you’re better off hard-coding these messages in English and putting more effort into building more useful features, improving security, tweaking performance, etc.

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• ASP.NET MVC 3 Hosting :: Rolling with Razor in MVC v3 Preview

  - by mbridge

  Razor is an alternate view engine for asp.net MVC.  It was introduced in the “WebMatrix” tool and has now been released as part of the asp.net MVC 3 preview 1.  Basically, Razor allows us to replace the clunky <% %> syntax with a much cleaner coding model, which integrates very nicely with HTML.  Additionally, it provides some really nice features for master page type scenarios and you don’t lose access to any of the features you are currently familiar with, such as HTML helper methods. First, download and install the ASP.NET MVC Preview 1.  You can find this at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=cb42f741-8fb1-4f43-a5fa-812096f8d1e8&displaylang=en. Now, follow these steps to create your first asp.net mvc project using Razor: 1. Open Visual Studio 2010 2. Create a new project.  Select File->New->Project (Shift Control N) 3. You will see the list of project types which should look similar to what’s shown:   4. Select “ASP.NET MVC 3 Web Application (Razor).”  Set the application name to RazorTest and the path to c:projectsRazorTest for this tutorial. If you select accidently select ASPX, you will end up with the standard asp.net view engine and template, which isn’t what you want. 5. For this tutorial, and ONLY for this tutorial, select “No, do not create a unit test project.”  In general, you should create and use a unit test project.  Code without unit tests is kind of like diet ice cream.  It just isn’t very good. Now, once we have this done, our brand new project will be created.    In all likelihood, Visual Studio will leave you looking at the “HomeController.cs” class, as shown below: Immediately, you should notice one difference.  The Index action used to look like: public ActionResult Index () { ViewData[“Message”] = “Welcome to ASP.Net MVC!”; Return View(); } While this will still compile and run just fine, ASP.Net MVC 3 has a much nicer way of doing this: public ActionResult Index() { ViewModel.Message = “Welcome to ASP.Net MVC!”; Return View(); } Instead of using ViewData we are using the new ViewModel object, which uses the new dynamic data typing of .Net 4.0 to allow us to express ourselves much more cleanly.  This isn’t a tutorial on ALL of MVC 3, but the ViewModel concept is one we will need as we dig into Razor. What comes in the box? When we create a project using the ASP.Net MVC 3 Template with Razor, we get a standard project setup, just like we did in ASP.NET MVC 2.0 but with some differences.  Instead of seeing “.aspx” view files and “.ascx” files, we see files with the “.cshtml” which is the default razor extension.  Before we discuss the details of a razor file, one thing to keep in mind is that since this is an extremely early preview, intellisense is not currently enabled with the razor view engine.  This is promised as an updated before the final release.  Just like with the aspx view engine, the convention of the folder name for a set of views matching the controller name without the word “Controller” still stands.  Similarly, each action in the controller will usually have a corresponding view file in the appropriate view directory.  Remember, in asp.net MVC, convention over configuration is key to successful development! The initial template organizes views in the following folders, located in the project under Views: - Account – The default account management views used by the Account controller.  Each file represents a distinct view. - Home – Views corresponding to the appropriate actions within the home controller. - Shared – This contains common view objects used by multiple views.  Within here, master pages are stored, as well as partial page views (user controls).  By convention, these partial views are named “_XXXPartial.cshtml” where XXX is the appropriate name, such as _LogonPartial.cshtml.  Additionally, display templates are stored under here. With this in mind, let us take a look at the index.cshtml file under the home view directory.  When you open up index.cshtml you should see 1:   @inherits System.Web.Mvc.WebViewPage 2:  @{ 3:          View.Title = "Home Page"; 4:       LayoutPage = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml"; 5:   } 6:  <h2>@View.Message</h2> 7:  <p> 8:     To learn more about ASP.NET MVC visit <a href="http://asp.net/mvc" title="ASP.NET MVC     9:    Website">http://asp.net/mvc</a>. 10:  </p> So looking through this, we observe the following facts: Line 1 imports the base page that all views (using Razor) are based on, which is System.Web.Mvc.WebViewPage.  Note that this is different than System.Web.MVC.ViewPage which is used by asp.net MVC 2.0 Also note that instead of the <% %> syntax, we use the very simple ‘@’ sign.  The View Engine contains enough context sensitive logic that it can even distinguish between @ in code and @ in an email.  It’s a very clean markup.  Line 2 introduces the idea of a code block in razor.  A code block is a scoping mechanism just like it is in a normal C# class.  It is designated by @{… }  and any C# code can be placed in between.  Note that this is all server side code just like it is when using the aspx engine and <% %>.  Line 3 allows us to set the page title in the client page’s file.  This is a new feature which I’ll talk more about when we get to master pages, but it is another of the nice things razor brings to asp.net mvc development. Line 4 is where we specify our “master” page, but as you can see, you can place it almost anywhere you want, because you tell it where it is located.  A Layout Page is similar to a master page, but it gains a bit when it comes to flexibility.  Again, we’ll come back to this in a later installment.  Line 6 and beyond is where we display the contents of our view.  No more using <%: %> intermixed with code.  Instead, we get to use very clean syntax such as @View.Message.  This is a lot easier to read than <%:@View.Message%> especially when intermixed with html.  For example: <p> My name is @View.Name and I live at @View.Address </p> Compare this to the equivalent using the aspx view engine <p> My name is <%:View.Name %> and I live at <%: View.Address %> </p> While not an earth shaking simplification, it is easier on the eyes.  As  we explore other features, this clean markup will become more and more valuable.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, October 22, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, October 22, 2011Popular ReleasesWatchersNET CKEditor™ Provider for DotNetNuke®: CKEditor Provider 1.12.17: Changes Added FilePath Length Check when Uploading Files. Fixed Issue #6550 Fixed Issue #6536 Fixed Issue #6525 Fixed Issue #6500 Fixed Issue #6401 Fixed Issue #6490DotNet.Framework.Common: DotNet.Framework.Common 4.0: ??????????，????????????XML Explorer: XML Explorer 4.0.5: Changes in 4.0.5: Added 'Copy Attribute XPath to Address Bar' feature. Added methods for decoding node text and value from Base64 encoded strings, and copying them to the clipboard. Added 'ChildNodeDefinitions' to the options, which allows for easier navigation of parent-child and ID-IDREF relationships. Discovery happens on-demand, as nodes are expanded and child nodes are added. Nodes can now have 'virtual' child nodes, defined by an xpath to select an identifier (usually relative to ...Media Companion: MC 3.419b Weekly: A couple of minor bug fixes, but the important fix in this release is to tackle the extremely long load times for users with large TV collections (issue #130). A note has been provided by developer Playos: "One final note, you will have to suffer one final long load and then it should be fixed... alternatively you can delete the TvCache.xml and rebuild your library... The fix was to include the file extension so it doesn't have to look for the video file (checking to see if a file exists is a...CODE Framework: 4.0.11021.0: This build adds a lot of our WPF components, including our MVVC and MVC components as well as a "Metro" and "Battleship" style.Manejo de tags - PHP sobre apache: tagqrphp: Primera version: Para que funcione el programa se debe primero obtener un id para desarrollo del tag eso lo entrega Microsoft registrandose en el sitio. http://tag.microsoft.com - En tagm.php que llama a la libreria Microsoft Tag PHP Library (Codigo que sirve para trabajar con PHP y Tag) - Llenamos los datos del formulario y ejecutamos para obtener el codigo tag de microsoft el cual apunte a la url que le indicamos en el formulario - Libreria MStag.php (tiene mucha explicación del funciona...GridLibre para Visual FoxPro: GridLibre para Visual FoxPro v3.5: GridLibre Para Visual FoxPro: esta herramienta ayudara a los usuarios y programadores en los manejos de los datos, como Filtrar, multiseleccion y el autoformato a las columnas como la asignacion del controlsource.Self-Tracking Entity Generator for WPF and Silverlight: Self-Tracking Entity Generator v 0.9.9: Self-Tracking Entity Generator v 0.9.9 for Entity Framework 4.0Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 5.0 CMS Alpha 3: Umbraco 5 Alpha 3Umbraco 5 (aka Jupiter) will be the next version of everyone's favourite, friendly ASP.NET CMS that already powers over 100,000 websites worldwide. Try out the Alpha of v5 today! If you're new to Umbraco and would like to get a low-down on our popular and easy-to-learn approach to content management, check out our intro video. What's Alpha 3?This is our third Alpha release. It's intended for developers looking to become familiar with the codebase & architecture, or for thos...Vkontakte WP: Vkontakte: source codeWay2Sms Applications for Android, Desktop/Laptop & Java enabled phones: Way2SMS Desktop App v2.0: 1. Fixed issue with sending messages due to changes to Way2Sms site 2. Updated the character limit to 160 from 140GART - Geo Augmented Reality Toolkit: 1.0.1: About Release 1.0.1 Release 1.0.1 is a service release that addresses several issues and improves performance. As always, check the Documentation tab for instructions on how to get started. If you don't have the Windows Phone SDK yet, grab it here. Breaking Change Please note: There is a breaking change in this release. As noted below, the WorldCalculationMode property of ARItem has been replaced by a user-definable function. ARItem is now automatically wired up with a function that perform...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.32: Fix for issue #16710 - string literals in "constant literal operations" which contain ASP.NET substitutions should not be considered "constant." Move the JS1284 error (Misplaced Function Declaration) so it only fires when in strict mode. I got a couple complaints that people didn't like that error popping up in their existing code when they could verify that the location of that function, although not strict JS, still functions as expected cross-browser.Naked Objects: Naked Objects Release 4.0.110.0: Corresponds to the packaged version 4.0.110.0 available via NuGet. Please note that the easiest way to install and run the Naked Objects Framework is via the NuGet package manager: just search the Official NuGet Package Source for 'nakedobjects'. It is only necessary to download the source code (from here) if you wish to modify or re-build the framework yourself. If you do wish to re-build the framework, consul the file HowToBuild.txt in the release. Documentation Please note that after ...myCollections: Version 1.5: New in this version : Added edit type for selected elements Added clean for selected elements Added Amazon Italia Added Amazon China Added TVDB Italia Added TVDB China Added Turkish language You can now manually add artist Added Order by Rating Improved Add by Media Improved Artist Detail Upgrade Sqlite engine View, Zoom, Grouping, Filter are now saved by category Added group by Artist Added CubeCover View BugFixingFacebook C# SDK: 5.3: This is a BETA release which adds new features and bug fixes to v5.2.1. removed dependency from Code Contracts enabled Task Parallel Support in .NET 4.0+ added support for early preview for .NET 4.5 added additional method overloads for .NET 4.5 to support IProgress<T> for upload progress added new CS-WinForms-AsyncAwait.sln sample demonstrating the use of async/await, upload progress report using IProgress<T> and cancellation support Query/QueryAsync methods uses graph api instead...IronPython: 2.7.1 RC: This is the first release candidate of IronPython 2.7.1. Like IronPython 54498, this release requires .NET 4 or Silverlight 4. This release will replace any existing IronPython installation. If there are no showstopping issues, this will be the only release candidate for 2.7.1, so please speak up if you run into any roadblocks. The highlights of 2.7.1 are: Updated the standard library to match CPython 2.7.2. Add the ast, csv, and unicodedata modules. Fixed several bugs. IronPython To...Rawr: Rawr 4.2.6: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr AddonWe now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including bag and bank items) like Char...Home Access Plus+: v7.5: Change Log: New Booking System (out of Beta) New Help Desk (out of Beta) New My Files (Developer Preview) Token now saved into Cookie so the system doesn't TIMEOUT as much File Changes: ~/bin/hap.ad.dll ~/bin/hap.web.dll ~/bin/hap.data.dll ~/bin/hap.web.configuration.dll ~/bookingsystem/admin/default.aspx ~/bookingsystem/default.aspx REMOVED ~/bookingsystem/bookingpopup.ascx REMOVED ~/bookingsystem/daylist.ascx REMOVED ~/bookingsystem/new.aspx ~/helpdesk/default.aspx ...Visual Micro - Arduino for Visual Studio: Arduino for Visual Studio 2008 and 2010: Arduino for Visual Studio 2010 has been extended to support Visual Studio 2008. The same functionality and configuration exists between the two versions. The 2010 addin runs .NET4 and the 2008 addin runs .NET3.5, both are installed using a single msi and both share the same configuration settings. The only known issue in 2008 is that the button and menu icons are missing. Please logon to the visual micro forum and let us know if things are working or not. Read more about this Visual Studio ...New Projects#foo Core: Core functionality extensions of .NET used by all HashFoo projects.#foo Nhib: #foo NHibernate extensions.Aagust G: Hello all ! Its a free JQuery Image Slider....ACP Log Analyzer: ACP Log Analyzer provides a quick and easy mechanism for generating a report on your ACP-based astronomical observing activities. Developed in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 using C#, the .NET Framework version 4 and WPF.BlobShare Sample: TBDCompletedWorkflowCleanUp: This tool once executed on a list delete all completed workflow instancesCRM 2011 Visual Ribbon Editor: Visual Ribbon Editor is a tool for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 that lets you edit CRM ribbons. This ribbon editor shows a preview of the CRM ribbon as you are editing it and allows you to add ribbon buttons and groups without needing to fully understand the ribbon XML schema.GearMerge: Organizes Movies and TV Series files from one Hard Drive to another. I created it for myself to update external drives with movies and TV shows from my collection.Generic Object Storage Helper for WinRT: ObjectStorageHelper<T> is a Generic class that simplifies storage of data in WinRT applications.Government Sanctioned Espionage RPG: Government Sanctioned is a modern SRD-like espionage game server. Visit http://wiki.government-sanctioned.us:8040 for game design and play information or homepage http://www.government-sanctioned.us Government Sanctioned is an online, text-based espionage RPG (similar to a MUD/MOO) that takes place against the backdrop of a highly-secretive U.S. Government agency whose stated goals don't always match the dirty work the agents tend to find themselves in. - over 15 starting profession...GridLibre para Visual FoxPro: GridLibre Para Visual FoxPro: esta herramienta ayudara a los usuarios y programadores en los manejos de los datos, como Filtrar, multiseleccion y el autoformato a las columnas como la asignacion del controlsource.HTML5 Video Web Part for SharePoint 2010: A web part for SharePoint 2010 that enable users playing video into the page using the Ribbon bar.Jogo do Galo: JOGO DO GALO REGRAS •O tabuleiro é a matriz de três linhas em três colunas. •Dois jogadores escolhem três peças cada um. •Os jogadores jogam alternadamente, uma peça de cada vez, num espaço que esteja vazio. •O objectivo é conseguir três peças iguais em linha, quer horizontal, vKarol sie uczy silverlajta: on sie naprawde tego uczy!Manejo de tags - PHP sobre apache: Hago uso de la libreria Microsoft Tag PHP Library para que pueda funcionar la aplicación sobre Apache finalmente puede crear tag de micrsosoft desde el formulario creado. Modem based SMS Gateway: It is an easy to use modem based SMS server that provide easier solutions for SMS marketing or SMS based services. It is highly programmable and the easy to use API interface makes SMS integration very easy. Embedded SMS processor provides customized solution to many of your needs even without building any custom software.Mund Publishing Feture: Mund Publishing FeatureMyTFSTest: TestNHS HL7 CDA Document Developer: A project to demonstrate how templated HL7 CDA documents can be created by using a common API. The API is designed to be used in .NET applications. A number of examples are provided using C#OpenShell: OpenShell is an open source implementation of the Windows PowerShell engine. It is to make integrating PowerShell into standalone console programs simple.Powershell Script to Copy Lists in a Site Collection in MOSS 2007 and SPS 2010: Hi, This is a powershell script file that copies a list within the same site collection. This works in Sharepoint 2007 and Sharepoint 2010 as well. THis will flash the messages before taking the input values. This will in this way provide the clear ideas about the values to beSharePoint Desktop: SharePoint Desktop is a explorer-like webpart that makes it possible to drag and drop items (documents and folders), copy and paste items and explore all SharePoint document libraries in 1 place.SQL floating point compare function: Comparison of floating point values in SQL Server not always gives the expected result. With this function, comparison is only done on the first 15 significant digits. Since SQL Server only garantees a precision of 15 digits for float datatypes, this is expected to be secure.Stock Analyzer: It is a stock management software. It's main job is to store market realtime data on a database to be able to analyse it latter and create automatic systems that operate directly on the stock exchange market. It will have different modules to do this task: - Realtime data capture. - Realtime data analysis - Historic analysis. - Order execution. - Strategy test. - Strategy execution. It's developed in C# and with WPF.VB_Skype: VB_Skype utilizza la libreria Skype4COM per integrare i servizi Skype con un'applicazione Visual Basic (Windows Forms). L'applicazione comprende un progetto di controllo personalizzato che costituisce il "wrapper" verso la libreria Skype4COM e un progetto con una demo di utilizzo. Progetto che dovrebbe essere utilizzato nella mia sessione, come uno degli speaker della conferenza "WPC 2011" che si terrà ad Assago (MI) nei giorni 22-23-24 Novembre 2011. La mia sessione è in agenda per il 24...Word Template Generator: Custom Template Generator for Microsoft Word, developed in C#?????OA??: ?????OA??

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, May 16, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, May 16, 2010New Projects3D Calculator: 3D Calc is a simple calculator application for Windows Phone 7, the purpose of this project is to demo the 3D animations capabilities of WP7 and sh...azaleas: AzaleasBlueset Studio Opensource Projects: Only for Opensource projects form Blueset Studio.Breck: A Phoenix and Jumper Moneky Production: Breck is a first person non-violent shooter developed in C++ and Dark GDK. After the main game is developed we are looking into making a sequel or...Discuz! Forum SDK: This project is use to login in and post or reply topic on discuz forum.Dominion.NET: Evolving Dominion source code originally written in VB6 and posted by "jatill" on Collectible Card Game Headquarters. Migration of the design and s...EkspSys2010-ITR: A mini project for the course Experimental System devolopment in spring 2010Facebook Graph Toolkit: This project is a .Net implementation of the Facebook Graph API. The aim of this project is to be a replacement to the existing Facebook Toolkit (h...iFree: This is a solution for Vietnamese network socialInfoPath Editor for Developer: InfoPath Editor for developer allows user to modify the html text directly inside InfoPath designer or filler and push the change back to InfoPath ...iZeit: Run your own online calendar, with blog integration, recurrence, todo list and categories.machgos dotNet Tests: Just some little test-projects for learningmim: TBAMinePost: MinePost is a game made for the first 48 hour Reddit Game Jam.Mockina: Mockina is a mock framework. Expression tree syntax is used to specify which members to mock, both public and non-public. The code is easy to under...MSBuild Launch Pad (mPad): This is just another shell extension for MSBuild to enable quick execution of MSBuild scripts via Windows Explorer context menu. (C) 2010 Lex LiPeacock: A browser like tabbed applicationPrimeCalculation: PrimeCalculation is a .NET app to calculate primes in a given range. Speed on Core2Duo 2,4GHZ: Found all primes from 0 to 1 billion in 35 seconds (...Slightly Silverlight: A Framework that leverages Silverlight for processing, business logic but standard HTML for the presentation layer.Stopwatch: Stopwatch is a tool for measuring the time. To start and pause stopwatch you only need to press a key on the keyboard. An additional context menu a...YAXLib: Yet Another XML Serialization Library for the .NET Framework: YAXLib is an XML Serialization library which helps you structure freely the XML result, choose among private and public fields to be serialized, an...New ReleasesActivate Your Glutes: v1.0.3.0: This release is a migration to VS2010, .Net 4, MVC2 and Entity Framework 4. The code has also been considerably cleaned up - taking advantage of E...AnyCAD: AnyCAD.Free.ENU.v1.1: http://www.anycad.net Modeling •2D: Line, Rectangle, Arc, Arch, Circle, Spline, Polygon •Feature: Extrude, Loft, Chamfer, Sweep, Revol •Boolean: ...Blueset Studio Opensource Projects: 多功能计算器 3.5: 稳定版本。Code for Rapid C# Windows Development eBook: LLBLGen LINQPad Data Context Driver Ver 1.0.0.0: First release of a Static LLBLGen Pro Data Context Driver for LINQPad I recommend LINQPad 4 as it seems more stable with this driver than LINQPad 2.DSQLT - Dynamic SQL Templates: Release 1.2. Some behaviour has changed!!: Attention. Some behaviour has changed! Now its necessary to use WildCards in the pattern-parameter for DSQLT.AllSourceContains DSQLT.Databases DSQ...FDS AutoCAD plug-in: FDS to AutoCAD plug-in: Basic functionality was implemented. Some routines like setting fds executable location are still not automated.Feature Builder Guidance Extensions: FBGX 2 - Standalone FX: Background: The Feature Builder Guidance is extensible and displays guidance content supplied by all the Feature Builder Guidance Extensions (FBGX...Floe IRC Client: Floe IRC Client 2010-05 R3: - You can now right click on the input box to get options for toggling bold, underline, colors, etc. - The size of the nickname column is now saved...Floe IRC Client: Floe IRC Client 2010-05 R4: - A user's channel status now appears next to their nick when they talk (e.g. @Nick or +Nick) - Fixed an error where certain kinds of network probl...HD-Trailers.NET Downloader: HD-Trailers.NET Downloader v1.0: Version 1.0 Thanks to Wolfgang for all his help. I let this project languish for too long while focusing on other things, but his involvement has ...InfoPath Editor for Developer: InfoPath Editor Beta 1: Intial Release: Can load InfoPath inner html. Can edit InfoPath inner html. InfoPath 2007 only.LinkSharp: LinkSharp 0.1.0: First release of LinkSharp. Set up iis, and use the sql script to create a new database.PowerAuras: PowerAuras V3.0.0F: This version adds better integration with GTFO New Flags Added PvP flag In 5-Man Instance In Raid Instance In Battleground In ArenaRx Contrib: V1.4: Add the ability to catch internal exception and the ability to publish error by queue adaptersSEO SiteMap: SEO SiteMap RC1: -SevenZipLib Library: v9.13.2: Stable release associated with 7z.dll 9.13 beta. Ability to create and update archives not implemente yet.Silverlight / WPF Controls: Upload, FlipPanel, DeepZoom, Animation, Encryption: Code Camp Demonstration: This code example demonstrates MVVM/MEF with WPF with attached properties,security and custom ICommand class.SQL Data Capture - Black Box Application Testing: SQLDataCapture V1.2: Added Entity Framework Support to CRUD generator (Insert Stored Procedure) and switched to VS 2010 for development.Stopwatch: Stopwatch 0.1: Stopwatch Release 0.1VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30515.0: Automatic drop of latest buildYet another developer blog - Examples: Asynchronous TreeView in ASP.NET MVC: This sample application shows how to use jQuery TreeView plugin for creating an asynchronous TreeView in ASP.NET MVC. This application is accompani...Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesPHPExcelASP.NETMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryRawrPHPExcelBlogEngine.NETMicrosoft Biology FoundationCustomer Portal Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRMWindows Azure Command-line Tools for PHP DevelopersMirror Testing SystemN2 CMSStyleCop

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• June 2013 Release of the Ajax Control Toolkit

  - by Stephen.Walther

  I’m happy to announce the June 2013 release of the Ajax Control Toolkit. For this release, we enhanced the AjaxFileUpload control to support uploading files directly to Windows Azure. We also improved the SlideShow control by adding support for CSS3 animations. You can get the latest release of the Ajax Control Toolkit by visiting the project page at CodePlex (http://AjaxControlToolkit.CodePlex.com). Alternatively, you can execute the following NuGet command from the Visual Studio Library Package Manager window: Uploading Files to Azure The AjaxFileUpload control enables you to efficiently upload large files and display progress while uploading. With this release, we’ve added support for uploading large files directly to Windows Azure Blob Storage (You can continue to upload to your server hard drive if you prefer). Imagine, for example, that you have created an Azure Blob Storage container named pictures. In that case, you can use the following AjaxFileUpload control to upload to the container: <toolkit:ToolkitScriptManager runat="server" /> <toolkit:AjaxFileUpload ID="AjaxFileUpload1" StoreToAzure="true" AzureContainerName="pictures" runat="server" /> Notice that the AjaxFileUpload control is declared with two properties related to Azure. The StoreToAzure property causes the AjaxFileUpload control to upload a file to Azure instead of the local computer. The AzureContainerName property points to the blob container where the file is uploaded. .int3{position:absolute;clip:rect(487px,auto,auto,444px);}SMALL cash advance VERY CHEAP To use the AjaxFileUpload control, you need to modify your web.config file so it contains some additional settings. You need to configure the AjaxFileUpload handler and you need to point your Windows Azure connection string to your Blob Storage account. <configuration> <appSettings> <!--<add key="AjaxFileUploadAzureConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true"/>--> <add key="AjaxFileUploadAzureConnectionString" value="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=testact;AccountKey=RvqL89Iw4npvPlAAtpOIPzrinHkhkb6rtRZmD0+ojZupUWuuAVJRyyF/LIVzzkoN38I4LSr8qvvl68sZtA152A=="/> </appSettings> <system.web> <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.5" /> <httpRuntime targetFramework="4.5" /> <httpHandlers> <add verb="*" path="AjaxFileUploadHandler.axd" type="AjaxControlToolkit.AjaxFileUploadHandler, AjaxControlToolkit"/> </httpHandlers> </system.web> <system.webServer> <validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false" /> <handlers> <add name="AjaxFileUploadHandler" verb="*" path="AjaxFileUploadHandler.axd" type="AjaxControlToolkit.AjaxFileUploadHandler, AjaxControlToolkit"/> </handlers> <security> <requestFiltering> <requestLimits maxAllowedContentLength="4294967295"/> </requestFiltering> </security> </system.webServer> </configuration> You supply the connection string for your Azure Blob Storage account with the AjaxFileUploadAzureConnectionString property. If you set the value “UseDevelopmentStorage=true” then the AjaxFileUpload will upload to the simulated Blob Storage on your local machine. After you create the necessary configuration settings, you can use the AjaxFileUpload control to upload files directly to Azure (even very large files). Here’s a screen capture of how the AjaxFileUpload control appears in Google Chrome: After the files are uploaded, you can view the uploaded files in the Windows Azure Portal. You can see that all 5 files were uploaded successfully: New AjaxFileUpload Events In response to user feedback, we added two new events to the AjaxFileUpload control (on both the server and the client): · UploadStart – Raised on the server before any files have been uploaded. · UploadCompleteAll – Raised on the server when all files have been uploaded. · OnClientUploadStart – The name of a function on the client which is called before any files have been uploaded. · OnClientUploadCompleteAll – The name of a function on the client which is called after all files have been uploaded. These new events are most useful when uploading multiple files at a time. The updated AjaxFileUpload sample page demonstrates how to use these events to show the total amount of time required to upload multiple files (see the AjaxFileUpload.aspx file in the Ajax Control Toolkit sample site). SlideShow Animated Slide Transitions With this release of the Ajax Control Toolkit, we also added support for CSS3 animations to the SlideShow control. The animation is used when transitioning from one slide to another. Here’s the complete list of animations: · FadeInFadeOut · ScaleX · ScaleY · ZoomInOut · Rotate · SlideLeft · SlideDown You specify the animation which you want to use by setting the SlideShowAnimationType property. For example, here is how you would use the Rotate animation when displaying a set of slides: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="ShowSlideShow.aspx.cs" Inherits="TestACTJune2013.ShowSlideShow" %> <%@ Register TagPrefix="toolkit" Namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" Assembly="AjaxControlToolkit" %> <script runat="Server" type="text/C#"> [System.Web.Services.WebMethod] [System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptMethod] public static AjaxControlToolkit.Slide[] GetSlides() { return new AjaxControlToolkit.Slide[] { new AjaxControlToolkit.Slide("slides/Blue hills.jpg", "Blue Hills", "Go Blue"), new AjaxControlToolkit.Slide("slides/Sunset.jpg", "Sunset", "Setting sun"), new AjaxControlToolkit.Slide("slides/Winter.jpg", "Winter", "Wintery..."), new AjaxControlToolkit.Slide("slides/Water lilies.jpg", "Water lillies", "Lillies in the water"), new AjaxControlToolkit.Slide("slides/VerticalPicture.jpg", "Sedona", "Portrait style picture") }; } </script> <!DOCTYPE html> <html > <head runat="server"> <title></title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div> <toolkit:ToolkitScriptManager ID="ToolkitScriptManager1" runat="server" /> <asp:Image ID="Image1" Height="300" Runat="server" /> <toolkit:SlideShowExtender ID="SlideShowExtender1" TargetControlID="Image1" SlideShowServiceMethod="GetSlides" AutoPlay="true" Loop="true" SlideShowAnimationType="Rotate" runat="server" /> </div> </form> </body> </html> In the code above, the set of slides is exposed by a page method named GetSlides(). The SlideShowAnimationType property is set to the value Rotate. The following animated GIF gives you an idea of the resulting slideshow: If you want to use either the SlideDown or SlideRight animations, then you must supply both an explicit width and height for the Image control which is the target of the SlideShow extender. For example, here is how you would declare an Image and SlideShow control to use a SlideRight animation: <toolkit:ToolkitScriptManager ID="ToolkitScriptManager1" runat="server" /> <asp:Image ID="Image1" Height="300" Width="300" Runat="server" /> <toolkit:SlideShowExtender ID="SlideShowExtender1" TargetControlID="Image1" SlideShowServiceMethod="GetSlides" AutoPlay="true" Loop="true" SlideShowAnimationType="SlideRight" runat="server" /> Notice that the Image control includes both a Height and Width property. Here’s an approximation of this animation using an animated GIF: Summary The Superexpert team worked hard on this release. We hope you like the new improvements to both the AjaxFileUpload and the SlideShow controls. We’d love to hear your feedback in the comments. On to the next sprint!

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• Rockmelt, the technology adoption model, and Facebook's spare internet

  - by Roger Hart

  Regardless of how good it is, you'd have to have a heart of stone not to make snide remarks about Rockmelt. After all, on the surface it looks a lot like some people spent two years building a browser instead of just bashing out a Chrome extension over a wet weekend. It probably does some more stuff. I don't know for sure because artificial scarcity is cool, apparently, so the "invitation" is still in the post*. I may in fact never know for sure, because I'm not wild about Facebook sign-in as a prerequisite for anything. From the video, and some initial reviews, my early reaction was: I have a browser, I have a Twitter client; what on earth is this for? The answer, of course, is "not me". Rockmelt is, in a way, quite audacious. Oh, sure, on launch day it's Bay Area bar-chat for the kids with no lenses in their retro specs and trousers that give you deep-vein thrombosis, but it's not really about them. Likewise,  Facebook just launched Google Wave, or something. And all the tech snobbery and scorn packed into describing it that way is irrelevant next to what they're doing with their platform. Here's something I drew in MS Paint** because I don't want to get sued: (see: The technology adoption lifecycle) A while ago in the Guardian, John Lanchester dusted off the idiom that "technology is stuff that doesn't work yet". The rest of the article would be quite interesting if it wasn't largely about MySpace, and he's sort of got a point. If you bolt on the sentiment that risk-averse businessmen like things that work, you've got the essence of Crossing the Chasm. Products for the mainstream market don't look much like technology. Think for  a second about early (1980s ish) hi-fi systems, with all the knobs and fiddly bits, their ostentatious technophile aesthetic. Then consider their sleeker and less (or at least less conspicuously) functional successors in the 1990s. The theory goes that innovators and early adopters like technology, it's a hobby in itself. The rest of the humans seem to like magic boxes with very few buttons that make stuff happen and never trouble them about why. Personally, I consider Apple's maddening insistence that iTunes is an acceptable way to move files around to be more or less morally unacceptable. Most people couldn't care less. Hence Rockmelt, and hence Facebook's continued growth. Rockmelt looks pointless to me, because I aggregate my social gubbins with Digsby, or use TweetDeck. But my use case is different and so are my enthusiasms. If I want to share photos, I'll use Flickr - but Facebook has photo sharing. If I want a short broadcast message, I'll use Twitter - Facebook has status updates. If I want to sell something with relatively little hassle, there's eBay - or Facebook marketplace. YouTube - check, FB Video. Email - messaging. Calendaring apps, yeah there are loads, or FB Events. What if I want to host a simple web page? Sure, they've got pages. Also Notes for blogging, and more games than I can count. This stuff is right there, where millions and millions of users are already, and for what they need it just works. It's not about me, because I'm not in the big juicy area under the curve. It's what 1990s portal sites could never have dreamed of achieving. Facebook is AOL on speed, crack, and some designer drugs it had specially imported from the future. It's a n00b-friendly gateway to the internet that just happens to serve up all the things you want to do online, right where you are. Oh, and everybody else is there too. The price of having all this and the social graph too is that you have all of this, and the social graph too. But plenty of folks have more incisive things to say than me about the whole privacy shebang, and it's not really what I'm talking about. Facebook is maintaining a vast, and fairly fully-featured training-wheels internet. And it makes up a large proportion of the online experience for a lot of people***. It's the entire web (2.0?) experience for the early and late majority. And sure, no individual bit of it is quite as slick or as fully-realised as something like Flickr (which wows me a bit every time I use it. Those guys are good at the web), but it doesn't have to be. It has to be unobtrusively good enough for the regular humans. It has to not feel like technology. This is what Rockmelt sort of is. You're online, you want something nebulously social, and you don't want to faff about with, say, Twitter clients. Wow! There it is on a really distracting sidebar, right in your browser. No effort! Yeah - fish nor fowl, much? It might work, I guess. There may be a demographic who want their social web experience more simply than tech tinkering, and who aren't just getting it from Facebook (or, for that matter, mobile devices). But I'd be surprised. Rockmelt feels like an attempt to grab a slice of Facebook-style "Look! It's right here, where you already are!", but it's still asking the mature market to install a new browser. Presumably this is where that Facebook sign-in predicate comes in handy, though it'll take some potent awareness marketing to make it fly. Meanwhile, Facebook quietly has the entire rest of the internet as a product management resource, and can continue to give most of the people most of what they want. Something that has not gone un-noticed in its potential to look a little sinister. But heck, they might even make Google Wave popular.     *This was true last week when I drafted this post. I got an invite subsequently, hence the screenshot. **MS Paint is no fun any more. It's actually good in Windows 7. Farewell ironically-shonky diagrams. *** It's also behind a single sign-in, lending a veneer of confidence, and partially solving the problem of usernames being crummy unique identifiers. I'll be blogging about that at some point.

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• My Code Kata–A Solution Kata

  - by Glav

  There are many developers and coders out there who like to do code Kata’s to keep their coding ability up to scratch and to practice their skills. I think it is a good idea. While I like the concept, I find them dead boring and of minimal purpose. Yes, they serve to hone your skills but that’s about it. They are often quite abstract, in that they usually focus on a small problem set requiring specific solutions. It is fair enough as that is how they are designed but again, I find them quite boring. What I personally like to do is go for something a little larger and a little more fun. It takes a little more time and is not as easily executed as a kata though, but it services the same purposes from a practice perspective and allows me to continue to solve some problems that are not directly part of the initial goal. This means I can cover a broader learning range and have a bit more fun. If I am lucky, sometimes they even end up being useful tools. With that in mind, I thought I’d share my current ‘kata’. It is not really a code kata as it is too big. I prefer to think of it as a ‘solution kata’. The code is on bitbucket here. What I wanted to do was create a kind of simplistic virtual world where I can create a player, or a class, stuff it into the world, and see if it survives, and can navigate its way to the exit. Requirements were pretty simple: Must be able to define a map to describe the world using simple X,Y co-ordinates. Z co-ordinates as well if you feel like getting clever. Should have the concept of entrances, exists, solid blocks, and potentially other materials (again if you want to get clever). A coder should be able to easily write a class which will act as an inhabitant of the world. An inhabitant will receive stimulus from the world in the form of surrounding environment and be able to make a decision on action which it passes back to the ‘world’ for processing. At a minimum, an inhabitant will have sight and speed characteristics which determine how far they can ‘see’ in the world, and how fast they can move. Coders who write a really bad ‘inhabitant’ should not adversely affect the rest of world. Should allow multiple inhabitants in the world. So that was the solution I set out to act as a practice solution and a little bit of fun. It had some interesting problems to solve and I figured, if it turned out ok, I could potentially use this as a ‘developer test’ for interviews. Ask a potential coder to write a class for an inhabitant. Show the coder the map they will navigate, but also mention that we will use their code to navigate a map they have not yet seen and a little more complex. I have been playing with solution for a short time now and have it working in basic concepts. Below is a screen shot using a very basic console visualiser that shows the map, boundaries, blocks, entrance, exit and players/inhabitants. The yellow asterisks ‘*’ are the players, green ‘O’ the entrance, purple ‘^’ the exit, maroon/browny ‘#’ are solid blocks. The players can move around at different speeds, knock into each others, and make directional movement decisions based on what they see and who is around them. It has been quite fun to write and it is also quite fun to develop different players to inject into the world. The code below shows a really simple implementation of an inhabitant that can work out what to do based on stimulus from the world. It is pretty simple and just tries to move in some direction if there is nothing blocking the path. public class TestPlayer:LivingEntity { public TestPlayer() { Name = "Beta Boy"; LifeKey = Guid.NewGuid(); } public override ActionResult DecideActionToPerform(EcoDev.Core.Common.Actions.ActionContext actionContext) { try { var action = new MovementAction(); // move forward if we can if (actionContext.Position.ForwardFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.ForwardFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Forward; return action; } } if (actionContext.Position.LeftFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.LeftFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Left; return action; } } if (actionContext.Position.RearFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.RearFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Back; return action; } } if (actionContext.Position.RightFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.RightFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Right; return action; } } return action; } catch (Exception ex) { World.WriteDebugInformation("Player: "+ Name, string.Format("Player Generated exception: {0}",ex.Message)); throw ex; } } private bool CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(MapBlock block) { if (block == null || block.Accessibility == MapBlockAccessibility.AllowEntry || block.Accessibility == MapBlockAccessibility.AllowExit || block.Accessibility == MapBlockAccessibility.AllowPotentialEntry) { return true; } return false; } } It is simple and it seems to work well. The world implementation itself decides the stimulus context that is passed to he inhabitant to make an action decision. All movement is carried out on separate threads and timed appropriately to be as fair as possible and to cater for additional skills such as speed, and eventually maybe stamina, strength, with actions like fighting. It is pretty fun to make up random maps and see how your inhabitant does. You can download the code from here. Along the way I have played with parallel extensions to make the compute intensive stuff spread across all cores, had to heavily factor in visibility of methods and properties so design of classes was paramount, work out movement algorithms that play fairly in the world and properly favour the players with higher abilities, as well as a host of other issues. So that is my ‘solution kata’. If I keep going with it, I may develop a web interface for it where people can upload assemblies and watch their player within a web browser visualiser and maybe even a map designer. What do you do to keep the fires burning?

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