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• Unicast traffic between hosts on a switch leaving the switch by its uplink. Why?

  - by Rich Lafferty

  I have a weird thing happening on our network at my office which I can't quite get my head around. In particular I can't tell if it's a problem with a switch, or a problem with configuration. We have a Cisco SG300-52 switch (sw01) in the top of a rack in our server room, connected to another SG300-28 that acts as our core switch (core01). Both run layer 2 only, our firewalls do routing between VLANs. They have a dozen or so VLANs between them. Gi1 on sw01 is a trunk port connected to gi1 on core01. (Disclosure: There are other switches in our environment but I'm pretty sure I've isolated the problem down to these two. Happy to provide more info if necessary.) The behaviour I'm seeing is limited to one VLAN, vlan 12 -- or, at least, it's not happening on the other ones I checked (It's hard to guarantee the absence of packets), and it is: sw01 is forwarding, to core01, traffic which is between two hosts which are both plugged into sw01. (I noticed this because the IDS in our firewall gave a false positive on traffic which should not reach the firewall.) We noticed this mostly between our two dhcp/dns servers, net01 (10.12.0.10) and net02 (10.12.0.11). net01 is physical hardware and net02 is on a VMware ESX server. net01 is connected to gi44 on sw01 and net02's ESX server to gi11. [net01]----gi44-[sw01]-gi1----gi1-[core01] [net02]----gi11/ Let's see some interfaces! Remember, vlan 12 is the problem vlan. Of the others I explicitly verified that vlan 27 was not affected. Here's the two hosts' ports: esx01 contains net02. sw01#sh run int gi11 interface gigabitethernet11 description esx01 lldp med disable switchport trunk allowed vlan add 5-7,11-13,100 switchport trunk native vlan 27 ! sw01#sh run int gi44 interface gigabitethernet44 description net01-1 lldp med disable switchport mode access switchport access vlan 12 ! Here's the trunk on sw01. sw01#sh run int gi1 interface gigabitethernet1 description "trunk to core01" lldp med disable switchport trunk allowed vlan add 4-7,11-13,27,100 ! And the other end of the trunk on core01. interface gigabitethernet1 description sw01 macro description switch switchport trunk allowed vlan add 2-7,11-16,27,100 ! I have a monitor port on core01, thus: core01#sh run int gi12 interface gigabitethernet12 description "monitor port" port monitor GigabitEthernet 1 ! And the monitor port on core01 sees unicast traffic going between net01 and net02, both of which are on sw01! I've verified this with a monitor port on sw01 that sees the net01-net02 unicast traffic leaving via gi1 too. sw01 knows that both of those hosts are on ports that are not its trunk port: :) ratchet$ arp -a | grep net net02.2ndsiteinc.com (10.12.0.11) at 00:0C:29:1A:66:15 [ether] on eth0 net01.2ndsiteinc.com (10.12.0.10) at 00:11:43:D8:9F:94 [ether] on eth0 sw01#sh mac addr addr 00:0C:29:1A:66:15 Aging time is 300 sec Vlan Mac Address Port Type -------- --------------------- ---------- ---------- 12 00:0c:29:1a:66:15 gi11 dynamic sw01#sh mac addr addr 00:11:43:D8:9F:94 Aging time is 300 sec Vlan Mac Address Port Type -------- --------------------- ---------- ---------- 12 00:11:43:d8:9f:94 gi44 dynamic I also brought up an unused port on sw01 on vlan 12, but the unicast traffic was (as best as I could tell) not coming out that port. So it doesn't look like sw01 is pushing it out all its ports, just the right ports and also gi1! I've verified that sw01 is not filling up its address-table: sw01#sh mac addr count This may take some time. Capacity : 8192 Free : 7983 Used : 208 The full configs for both core01 and sw01 are available: core01, sw01. Finally, versions: sw01#sh ver SW version 1.1.2.0 ( date 12-Nov-2011 time 23:34:26 ) Boot version 1.0.0.4 ( date 08-Apr-2010 time 16:37:57 ) HW version V01 core01#sh ver SW version 1.1.2.0 ( date 12-Nov-2011 time 23:34:26 ) Boot version 1.1.0.6 ( date 11-May-2011 time 18:31:00 ) HW version V01 So my understanding is this: sw01 should take unicast traffic for net01 and send it only out net02's port, and vice versa; none of it should go out sw01's uplink. But core01, receiving traffic on gi1 for a host it knows is on gi1, is right in sending it out all of its ports. (That is: sw01 is misbehaving, but core01 is doing what it should given the circumstances.) My question is: Why is sw01 sending that unicast traffic out its uplink, gi1? (And pre-emptively: yes, I know SG300s leave much to be desired, and yes, we should have spanning-tree enabled, but that's where I'm at right now.)

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• vsftpd not allowing uploads. 550 response.

  - by Josh

  I've set vsftpd up on a centos box. I keep trying to upload files but I keep getting "550 Failed to change directory" and "550 Could not get file size." Here's my vsftpd.conf # The default compiled in settings are fairly paranoid. This sample file # loosens things up a bit, to make the ftp daemon more usable. # Please see vsftpd.conf.5 for all compiled in defaults. # # READ THIS: This example file is NOT an exhaustive list of vsftpd options. # Please read the vsftpd.conf.5 manual page to get a full idea of vsftpd's # capabilities. # # Allow anonymous FTP? (Beware - allowed by default if you comment this out). anonymous_enable=YES # # Uncomment this to allow local users to log in. local_enable=YES # # Uncomment this to enable any form of FTP write command. write_enable=YES # # Default umask for local users is 077. You may wish to change this to 022, # if your users expect that (022 is used by most other ftpd's) local_umask=022 # # Uncomment this to allow the anonymous FTP user to upload files. This only # has an effect if the above global write enable is activated. Also, you will # obviously need to create a directory writable by the FTP user. anon_upload_enable=YES # # Uncomment this if you want the anonymous FTP user to be able to create # new directories. anon_mkdir_write_enable=YES anon_other_write_enable=YES # # Activate directory messages - messages given to remote users when they # go into a certain directory. dirmessage_enable=YES # # The target log file can be vsftpd_log_file or xferlog_file. # This depends on setting xferlog_std_format parameter xferlog_enable=YES # # Make sure PORT transfer connections originate from port 20 (ftp-data). connect_from_port_20=YES # # If you want, you can arrange for uploaded anonymous files to be owned by # a different user. Note! Using "root" for uploaded files is not # recommended! #chown_uploads=YES #chown_username=whoever # # The name of log file when xferlog_enable=YES and xferlog_std_format=YES # WARNING - changing this filename affects /etc/logrotate.d/vsftpd.log #xferlog_file=/var/log/xferlog # # Switches between logging into vsftpd_log_file and xferlog_file files. # NO writes to vsftpd_log_file, YES to xferlog_file xferlog_std_format=NO # # You may change the default value for timing out an idle session. #idle_session_timeout=600 # # You may change the default value for timing out a data connection. #data_connection_timeout=120 # # It is recommended that you define on your system a unique user which the # ftp server can use as a totally isolated and unprivileged user. #nopriv_user=ftpsecure # # Enable this and the server will recognise asynchronous ABOR requests. Not # recommended for security (the code is non-trivial). Not enabling it, # however, may confuse older FTP clients. #async_abor_enable=YES # # By default the server will pretend to allow ASCII mode but in fact ignore # the request. Turn on the below options to have the server actually do ASCII # mangling on files when in ASCII mode. # Beware that on some FTP servers, ASCII support allows a denial of service # attack (DoS) via the command "SIZE /big/file" in ASCII mode. vsftpd # predicted this attack and has always been safe, reporting the size of the # raw file. # ASCII mangling is a horrible feature of the protocol. #ascii_upload_enable=YES #ascii_download_enable=YES # # You may fully customise the login banner string: #ftpd_banner=Welcome to blah FTP service. # # You may specify a file of disallowed anonymous e-mail addresses. Apparently # useful for combatting certain DoS attacks. #deny_email_enable=YES # (default follows) #banned_email_file=/etc/vsftpd/banned_emails # # You may specify an explicit list of local users to chroot() to their home # directory. If chroot_local_user is YES, then this list becomes a list of # users to NOT chroot(). #chroot_list_enable=YES # (default follows) #chroot_list_file=/etc/vsftpd/chroot_list # # You may activate the "-R" option to the builtin ls. This is disabled by # default to avoid remote users being able to cause excessive I/O on large # sites. However, some broken FTP clients such as "ncftp" and "mirror" assume # the presence of the "-R" option, so there is a strong case for enabling it. #ls_recurse_enable=YES # # When "listen" directive is enabled, vsftpd runs in standalone mode and # listens on IPv4 sockets. This directive cannot be used in conjunction # with the listen_ipv6 directive. listen=YES # This directive enables listening on IPv6 sockets. To listen on IPv4 and IPv6 # sockets, you must run two copies of vsftpd whith two configuration files. # Make sure, that one of the listen options is commented !! #listen_ipv6=YES pam_service_name=vsftpd userlist_enable=YES tcp_wrappers=YES log_ftp_protocol=YES banner_file=/etc/vsftpd/issue local_root=/var/www guest_enable=YES guest_username=ftpusr ftp_username=nobody

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• Cluster failover and strange gratuitous arp behavior

  - by lazerpld

  I am experiencing a strange Windows 2008R2 cluster related issue that is bothering me. I feel that I have come close as to what the issue is, but still don't fully understand what is happening. I have a two node exchange 2007 cluster running on two 2008R2 servers. The exchange cluster application works fine when running on the "primary" cluster node. The problem occurs when failing over the cluster ressource to the secondary node. When failing over the cluster to the "secondary" node, which for instance is on the same subnet as the "primary", the failover initially works ok and the cluster ressource continues to work for a couple of minutes on the new node. Which means that the recieving node does send out a gratuitous arp reply packet that updated the arp tables on the network. But after x amount of time (typically within 5 minutes time) something updates the arp-tables again because all of a sudden the cluster service does not answer to pings. So basically I start a ping to the exchange cluster address when its running on the "primary node". It works just great. I failover the cluster ressource group to the "secondary node" and I only have loss of one ping which is acceptable. The cluster ressource still answers for some time after being failed over and all of a sudden the ping starts timing out. This is telling me that the arp table initially is updated by the secondary node, but then something (which I haven't found out yet) wrongfully updates it again, probably with the primary node's MAC. Why does this happen - has anyone experienced the same problem? The cluster is NOT running NLB and the problem stops immidiately after failing over back to the primary node where there are no problems. Each node is using NIC teaming (intel) with ALB. Each node is on the same subnet and has gateway and so on entered correctly as far as I am concerned. Edit: I was wondering if it could be related to network binding order maybe? Because I have noticed that the only difference I can see from node to node is when showing the local arp table. On the "primary" node the arp table is generated on the cluster address as the source. While on the "secondary" its generated from the nodes own network card. Any input on this? Edit: Ok here is the connection layout. Cluster address: A.B.6.208/25 Exchange application address: A.B.6.212/25 Node A: 3 physical nics. Two teamed using intels teaming with the address A.B.6.210/25 called public The last one used for cluster traffic called private with 10.0.0.138/24 Node B: 3 physical nics. Two teamed using intels teaming with the address A.B.6.211/25 called public The last one used for cluster traffic called private with 10.0.0.139/24 Each node sits in a seperate datacenter connected together. End switches being cisco in DC1 and NEXUS 5000/2000 in DC2. Edit: I have been testing a little more. I have now created an empty application on the same cluster, and given it another ip address on the same subnet as the exchange application. After failing this empty application over, I see the exact same problem occuring. After one or two minutes clients on other subnets cannot ping the virtual ip of the application. But while clients on other subnets cannot, another server from another cluster on the same subnet has no trouble pinging. But if i then make another failover to the original state, then the situation is the opposite. So now clients on same subnet cannot, and on other they can. We have another cluster set up the same way and on the same subnet, with the same intel network cards, the same drivers and same teaming settings. Here we are not seeing this. So its somewhat confusing. Edit: OK done some more research. Removed the NIC teaming of the secondary node, since it didnt work anyway. After some standard problems following that, I finally managed to get it up and running again with the old NIC teaming settings on one single physical network card. Now I am not able to reproduce the problem described above. So it is somehow related to the teaming - maybe some kind of bug? Edit: Did some more failing over without being able to make it fail. So removing the NIC team looks like it was a workaround. Now I tried to reestablish the intel NIC teaming with ALB (as it was before) and i still cannot make it fail. This is annoying due to the fact that now i actually cannot pinpoint the root of the problem. Now it just seems to be some kind of MS/intel hick-up - which is hard to accept because what if the problem reoccurs in 14 days? There is a strange thing that happened though. After recreating the NIC team I was not able to rename the team to "PUBLIC" which the old team was called. So something has not been cleaned up in windows - although the server HAS been restarted! Edit: OK after restablishing the ALB teaming the error came back. So I am now going to do some thorough testing and i will get back with my observations. One thing is for sure. It is related to Intel 82575EB NICS, ALB and Gratuitous Arp.

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• local user cannot access vsftpd server

  - by Zloy Smiertniy

  I'm currently running a vsftpd server and I added the necessary configurations in vsftpd.conf so that local users can use clients like FileZilla to manage their homes in a server. I found out that only users in the sudoers list access without a problem only they can't download the files, but users that are not sudoers cannot even access their homes from a client but they can access by a web browser using the FTP protocol and they can only access their home directories (as intented) Im running a fedora 14 on my server and my vsftpd.conf looks like this: # Example config file /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf # # The default compiled in settings are fairly paranoid. This sample file # loosens things up a bit, to make the ftp daemon more usable. # Please see vsftpd.conf.5 for all compiled in defaults. # # READ THIS: This example file is NOT an exhaustive list of vsftpd options. # Please read the vsftpd.conf.5 manual page to get a full idea of vsftpd's # capabilities. # # Allow anonymous FTP? (Beware - allowed by default if you comment this out). anonymous_enable=NO # # Uncomment this to allow local users to log in. local_enable=YES # # Uncomment this to enable any form of FTP write command. write_enable=YES # # Default umask for local users is 077. You may wish to change this to 022, # if your users expect that (022 is used by most other ftpd's) local_umask=022 # # Uncomment this to allow the anonymous FTP user to upload files. This only # has an effect if the above global write enable is activated. Also, you will # obviously need to create a directory writable by the FTP user. #anon_upload_enable=YES # # Uncomment this if you want the anonymous FTP user to be able to create # new directories. #anon_mkdir_write_enable=YES # # Activate directory messages - messages given to remote users when they # go into a certain directory. dirmessage_enable=YES # # The target log file can be vsftpd_log_file or xferlog_file. # This depends on setting xferlog_std_format parameter xferlog_enable=YES # # Make sure PORT transfer connections originate from port 20 (ftp-data). connect_from_port_20=YES # # If you want, you can arrange for uploaded anonymous files to be owned by # a different user. Note! Using "root" for uploaded files is not # recommended! #chown_uploads=YES #chown_username=whoever # # The name of log file when xferlog_enable=YES and xferlog_std_format=YES # WARNING - changing this filename affects /etc/logrotate.d/vsftpd.log #xferlog_file=/var/log/xferlog # # Switches between logging into vsftpd_log_file and xferlog_file files. # NO writes to vsftpd_log_file, YES to xferlog_file xferlog_std_format=YES # # You may change the default value for timing out an idle session. #idle_session_timeout=600 # # You may change the default value for timing out a data connection. #data_connection_timeout=120 # # It is recommended that you define on your system a unique user which the # ftp server can use as a totally isolated and unprivileged user. #nopriv_user=ftpsecure # # Enable this and the server will recognise asynchronous ABOR requests. Not # recommended for security (the code is non-trivial). Not enabling it, # however, may confuse older FTP clients. #async_abor_enable=YES # # By default the server will pretend to allow ASCII mode but in fact ignore # the request. Turn on the below options to have the server actually do ASCII # mangling on files when in ASCII mode. # Beware that on some FTP servers, ASCII support allows a denial of service # attack (DoS) via the command "SIZE /big/file" in ASCII mode. vsftpd # predicted this attack and has always been safe, reporting the size of the # raw file. # ASCII mangling is a horrible feature of the protocol. ascii_upload_enable=YES ascii_download_enable=YES # # You may fully customise the login banner string: ftpd_banner=Welcome to GAMBITA FTP service # # You may specify a file of disallowed anonymous e-mail addresses. Apparently # useful for combatting certain DoS attacks. #deny_email_enable=YES # (default follows) #banned_email_file=/etc/vsftpd/banned_emails # # You may specify an explicit list of local users to chroot() to their home # directory. If chroot_local_user is YES, then this list becomes a list of # users to NOT chroot(). chroot_local_user=YES chroot_list_enable=YES # (default follows) chroot_list_file=/etc/vsftpd/chroot_list # # You may activate the "-R" option to the builtin ls. This is disabled by # default to avoid remote users being able to cause excessive I/O on large # sites. However, some broken FTP clients such as "ncftp" and "mirror" assume # the presence of the "-R" option, so there is a strong case for enabling it. ls_recurse_enable=YES # # When "listen" directive is enabled, vsftpd runs in standalone mode and # listens on IPv4 sockets. This directive cannot be used in conjunction # with the listen_ipv6 directive. listen=YES # # This directive enables listening on IPv6 sockets. To listen on IPv4 and IPv6 # sockets, you must run two copies of vsftpd with two configuration files. # Make sure, that one of the listen options is commented !! #listen_ipv6=YES pam_service_name=vsftpd userlist_enable=YES tcp_wrappers=YES use_localtime=YES Anyone has an idea of what might be happening? Nothing concerning vsftpd is written in any log

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• Parallelism in .NET – Part 9, Configuration in PLINQ and TPL

  - by Reed

  Parallel LINQ and the Task Parallel Library contain many options for configuration.  Although the default configuration options are often ideal, there are times when customizing the behavior is desirable.  Both frameworks provide full configuration support. When working with Data Parallelism, there is one primary configuration option we often need to control – the number of threads we want the system to use when parallelizing our routine.  By default, PLINQ and the TPL both use the ThreadPool to schedule tasks.  Given the major improvements in the ThreadPool in CLR 4, this default behavior is often ideal.  However, there are times that the default behavior is not appropriate.  For example, if you are working on multiple threads simultaneously, and want to schedule parallel operations from within both threads, you might want to consider restricting each parallel operation to using a subset of the processing cores of the system.  Not doing this might over-parallelize your routine, which leads to inefficiencies from having too many context switches. In the Task Parallel Library, configuration is handled via the ParallelOptions class.  All of the methods of the Parallel class have an overload which accepts a ParallelOptions argument. We configure the Parallel class by setting the ParallelOptions.MaxDegreeOfParallelism property.  For example, let’s revisit one of the simple data parallel examples from Part 2: Parallel.For(0, pixelData.GetUpperBound(0), row => { for (int col=0; col < pixelData.GetUpperBound(1); ++col) { pixelData[row, col] = AdjustContrast(pixelData[row, col], minPixel, maxPixel); } }); .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; } Here, we’re looping through an image, and calling a method on each pixel in the image.  If this was being done on a separate thread, and we knew another thread within our system was going to be doing a similar operation, we likely would want to restrict this to using half of the cores on the system.  This could be accomplished easily by doing: var options = new ParallelOptions(); options.MaxDegreeOfParallelism = Math.Max(Environment.ProcessorCount / 2, 1); Parallel.For(0, pixelData.GetUpperBound(0), options, row => { for (int col=0; col < pixelData.GetUpperBound(1); ++col) { pixelData[row, col] = AdjustContrast(pixelData[row, col], minPixel, maxPixel); } }); Now, we’re restricting this routine to using no more than half the cores in our system.  Note that I included a check to prevent a single core system from supplying zero; without this check, we’d potentially cause an exception.  I also did not hard code a specific value for the MaxDegreeOfParallelism property.  One of our goals when parallelizing a routine is allowing it to scale on better hardware.  Specifying a hard-coded value would contradict that goal. Parallel LINQ also supports configuration, and in fact, has quite a few more options for configuring the system.  The main configuration option we most often need is the same as our TPL option: we need to supply the maximum number of processing threads.  In PLINQ, this is done via a new extension method on ParallelQuery<T>: ParallelEnumerable.WithDegreeOfParallelism. Let’s revisit our declarative data parallelism sample from Part 6: double min = collection.AsParallel().Min(item => item.PerformComputation()); Here, we’re performing a computation on each element in the collection, and saving the minimum value of this operation.  If we wanted to restrict this to a limited number of threads, we would add our new extension method: int maxThreads = Math.Max(Environment.ProcessorCount / 2, 1); double min = collection .AsParallel() .WithDegreeOfParallelism(maxThreads) .Min(item => item.PerformComputation()); This automatically restricts the PLINQ query to half of the threads on the system. PLINQ provides some additional configuration options.  By default, PLINQ will occasionally revert to processing a query in parallel.  This occurs because many queries, if parallelized, typically actually cause an overall slowdown compared to a serial processing equivalent.  By analyzing the “shape” of the query, PLINQ often decides to run a query serially instead of in parallel.  This can occur for (taken from MSDN): Queries that contain a Select, indexed Where, indexed SelectMany, or ElementAt clause after an ordering or filtering operator that has removed or rearranged original indices. Queries that contain a Take, TakeWhile, Skip, SkipWhile operator and where indices in the source sequence are not in the original order. Queries that contain Zip or SequenceEquals, unless one of the data sources has an originally ordered index and the other data source is indexable (i.e. an array or IList(T)). Queries that contain Concat, unless it is applied to indexable data sources. Queries that contain Reverse, unless applied to an indexable data source. If the specific query follows these rules, PLINQ will run the query on a single thread.  However, none of these rules look at the specific work being done in the delegates, only at the “shape” of the query.  There are cases where running in parallel may still be beneficial, even if the shape is one where it typically parallelizes poorly.  In these cases, you can override the default behavior by using the WithExecutionMode extension method.  This would be done like so: var reversed = collection .AsParallel() .WithExecutionMode(ParallelExecutionMode.ForceParallelism) .Select(i => i.PerformComputation()) .Reverse(); Here, the default behavior would be to not parallelize the query unless collection implemented IList<T>.  We can force this to run in parallel by adding the WithExecutionMode extension method in the method chain. Finally, PLINQ has the ability to configure how results are returned.  When a query is filtering or selecting an input collection, the results will need to be streamed back into a single IEnumerable<T> result.  For example, the method above returns a new, reversed collection.  In this case, the processing of the collection will be done in parallel, but the results need to be streamed back to the caller serially, so they can be enumerated on a single thread. This streaming introduces overhead.  IEnumerable<T> isn’t designed with thread safety in mind, so the system needs to handle merging the parallel processes back into a single stream, which introduces synchronization issues.  There are two extremes of how this could be accomplished, but both extremes have disadvantages. The system could watch each thread, and whenever a thread produces a result, take that result and send it back to the caller.  This would mean that the calling thread would have access to the data as soon as data is available, which is the benefit of this approach.  However, it also means that every item is introducing synchronization overhead, since each item needs to be merged individually. On the other extreme, the system could wait until all of the results from all of the threads were ready, then push all of the results back to the calling thread in one shot.  The advantage here is that the least amount of synchronization is added to the system, which means the query will, on a whole, run the fastest.  However, the calling thread will have to wait for all elements to be processed, so this could introduce a long delay between when a parallel query begins and when results are returned. The default behavior in PLINQ is actually between these two extremes.  By default, PLINQ maintains an internal buffer, and chooses an optimal buffer size to maintain.  Query results are accumulated into the buffer, then returned in the IEnumerable<T> result in chunks.  This provides reasonably fast access to the results, as well as good overall throughput, in most scenarios. However, if we know the nature of our algorithm, we may decide we would prefer one of the other extremes.  This can be done by using the WithMergeOptions extension method.  For example, if we know that our PerformComputation() routine is very slow, but also variable in runtime, we may want to retrieve results as they are available, with no bufferring.  This can be done by changing our above routine to: var reversed = collection .AsParallel() .WithExecutionMode(ParallelExecutionMode.ForceParallelism) .WithMergeOptions(ParallelMergeOptions.NotBuffered) .Select(i => i.PerformComputation()) .Reverse(); On the other hand, if are already on a background thread, and we want to allow the system to maximize its speed, we might want to allow the system to fully buffer the results: var reversed = collection .AsParallel() .WithExecutionMode(ParallelExecutionMode.ForceParallelism) .WithMergeOptions(ParallelMergeOptions.FullyBuffered) .Select(i => i.PerformComputation()) .Reverse(); Notice, also, that you can specify multiple configuration options in a parallel query.  By chaining these extension methods together, we generate a query that will always run in parallel, and will always complete before making the results available in our IEnumerable<T>.

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• Silverlight 4 Training Kit

  - by ScottGu

  We recently released a new free Silverlight 4 Training Kit that walks you through building business applications with Silverlight 4.  You can browse the training kit online or alternatively download an entire offline version of the training kit.  The training material is structured on teaching how to use the new Silverlight 4 features to build an end to end business application. The training kit includes 8 modules, 25 videos, and several hands on labs. Below is a breakdown and links to all of the content. [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] Module 1: Introduction Click here to watch this module. In this video John Papa and Ian Griffiths discuss the key areas that the Building Business Applications with Silverlight 4 course focuses on. This module is the overview of the course and covers many key scenarios that are faced when building business applications, and how Silverlight can help address them. Module 2: WCF RIA Services Click here to explore this module. In this lab, you will create a web site for managing conferences that will be the basis for the other labs in this course. Don’t worry if you don’t complete a particular lab in the series – all lab manual instructions are accompanied by completed solutions, so you can either build your own solution from start to finish, or dive straight in at any point using the solutions provided as a starting point. In this lab you will learn how to set up WCF RIA Services, create bindings to the domain context, filter using the domain data source, and create domain service queries. Online Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 2.1 - WCF RIA Services Ian Griffiths sets up the Entity Framework and WCF RIA Services for the sample Event Manager application for the course. He covers how to set up the services, how the Domain Services work and the role that the DomainContext plays in the sample application. He also reviews the metadata classes and integrating the navigation framework. Module 2.2 – Using WCF RIA Services to Edit Entities Ian Griffiths discusses how he adds the ability to edit and create individual entities with the features built into WCF RIA Services into the sample Event Manager application. He covers data binding fundamentals, IQueryable, LINQ, the DomainDataSource, navigation to a single entity using the navigation framework, and how to use the Visual Studio designer to do much of the work . Module 2.3 – Showing Master/Details Records Using WCF RIA Services Ian Griffiths reviews how to display master/detail records for the sample Event Manager application using WCF RIA Services. He covers how to use the Include attribute to indicate which elements to serialize back to the client. Ian also demonstrates how to use the Data Sources window in the designer to add and bind controls to specific data elements. He wraps up by showing how to create custom services to the Domain Services. Module 3 – Authentication, Validation, MVVM, Commands, Implicit Styles and RichTextBox Click here to visit this module. This lab demonstrates how to build a login screen, integrate ASP.NET authentication, and perform validation on data elements. Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) is introduced and used in this lab as a pattern to help separate the UI and business logic. You will also learn how to use implicit styling and the new RichTextBox control. Online Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 3.1 – Authentication Ian Griffiths covers how to integrate a login screen and authentication into the sample Event Manager application. Ian shows how to use the ASP.NET authentication and integrate it into WCF RIA Services and the Silverlight presentation layer. Module 3.2 – MVVM Ian Griffiths covers how to Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) patterns into the sample Event Manager application. He discusses why MVVM exists, what separated presentation means, and why it is important. He shows how to connect the View to the ViewModel, why data binding is important in this symbiosis, and how everything fits together in the overall application. Module 3.3 –Validation Ian Griffiths discusses how validation of user input can be integrated into the sample Event Manager application. He demonstrates how to use the DataAnnotations, the INotifyDataErrorInfo interface, binding markup extensions, and WCF RIA Services in concert to achieve great validation in the sample application. He discusses how this technique allows for property level validation, entity level validation, and asynchronous server side validation. Module 3.4 – Implicit Styles Ian Griffiths discusses how why implicit styles are important and how they can be integrated into the sample Event Manager application. He shows how implicit styles defined in a resource dictionary can be applied to all elements of a particular kind throughout the application. Module 3.5 – RichTextBox Ian Griffiths discusses how the new RichTextBox control and it can be integrated into the sample Event Manager application. He demonstrates how the RichTextBox can provide editing for the event information and how it can display the rich text for selection and copying. Module 4 – User Profiles, Drop Targets, Webcam and Clipboard Click here to visit this module. This lab builds new features into the sample application to take the user's photo. It teaches you how to use the webcam to capture an image, use Silverlight as a drop target, and take advantage of programmatic access to the clipboard. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 4.1 – Webcam Ian Griffiths demonstrates how the webcam adds value to the sample Event Manager application by capturing an image of the attendee. He discusses the VideoCaptureDevice, the CaptureDviceConfiguration, and the CaptureSource classes and how they allow audio and video to be captured so you can grab an image from the capture device and save it. Module 4.2 - Drag and Drop in Silverlight Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to capture and handle the Drop in the sample Event Manager application so the user can drag a photo from a file and drop it into the application. Ian reviews the AllowDrop property, the Drop event, how to access the file that can be dropped, and the other drag related events. He also reviews how to make this work across browsers and the challenges for this. Module 5 – Schedule Planner and Right Mouse Click Click here to visit this module. This lab builds on the application to allow grouping in the DataGrid and implement right mouse click features to add context menu support. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 5.1 – Grouping and Binding Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to use the grouping features for data binding in the DataGrid and how it applies to the sample Event Manager application. He reviews the role of the CollectionViewSource in grouping, customizing the templates for headers, and how to work with grouping with ItemsControls. Module 5.2 – Layout Visual States Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to use the Fluid UI animation support for visual states in the ListBox control DataGrid and how it applies to the sample Event Manager application. He reviews the 3 visual states of BeforeLoaded, AfterLoaded, and BeforeUnloaded. Module 5.3 – Right Mouse Click Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to add support for handling the right mouse button click event to display a context menu for the Event Manager application. He demonstrates how to handle the event, show a custom context menu control, and integrate it into the scheduling portion of the application. Module 6 – Printing the Schedule Click here to visit this module. This lab teaches how to use the new printing features in Silverlight 4. The lab walks through the PrintDocument class and the ViewBox control, while showing how to print multiple pages of content using them. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 6.1 – Printing and the Viewbox Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to add the ability to print the schedule to the sample Event Manager application. He walks through the importance of the PrintDocument class and its members. He also shows how to handle printing the visual tree and how the ViewBox control can help. Module 6.2 – Multi Page Printing Ian Griffiths expands on his printing discussion by showing how to handle printing multiple pages of content for the sample Event Manager application. He shows how to paginate the content and points out various tips to keep in mind when determining the printable area. Module 7 – Running the Event Dashboard Out of Browser Click here to visit this module. This lab builds a dashboard for the sample application while explaining the fundamentals of the out of browser features, how to handle authentication, displaying notifications (toasts), and how to use native integration to use COM Interop with Silverlight. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 7.1 – Out of Browser Ian Griffiths discusses the role of an Out of Browser application for administrators to manage the events and users in the sample Event Manager application. He discusses several reasons why out of browser applications may better suit your needs including custom chrome, toasts, window placement, cross domain access, and file access. He demonstrates the basic technique to take your application and make it work out of browser using the tools. Module 7.2 – NotificationWindow (Toasts) for Elevated Trust Out of Browser Applications Ian Griffiths discusses the how toasts can be used in the sample Event Manager application to show information that may require the user's attention. Ian covers how to create a toast using the NotificationWindow, security implications, and how to make the toast appear as needed. Module 7.3 – Out of Browser Window Placement Ian Griffiths discusses the how to manage the window positioning when building an out of browser application, handling the windows state, and controlling and handling activation of the window. Module 7.4 – Out of Browser Elevated Trust Application Overview Ian Griffiths discusses the implications of creating trusted out of browser application for the Event Manager sample application. He reviews why you might want to use elevated trust, what features is opens to you, and how to take advantage of them. Topics Ian covers include the dynamic keyword in C# 4, the AutomationFactory class, the API to check if you are in a trusted application, and communicating with Excel. Module 8 – Advanced Out of Browser and MEF Click here to visit this module. This hands-on lab walks through the creation of a trusted out of browser application and the new functionality that comes with that. You will learn to use COM Automation, handle the window closing event, set custom window chrome, digitally sign your Silverlight out of browser trusted application, create a silent install option, and take advantage of MEF. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 8.1 – Custom Window Chrome for Elevated Trust Out of Browser Applications Ian Griffiths discusses how to replace the standard operating system window chrome with customized chrome for an elevated trusted out of browser application. He covers how it is important to handle close, resize, minimize, and maximize events. Ian mentions that the tooling was not ready when he shot this video, but the good news is that the tooling now supports setting the custom chrome directly from the property page for the Silverlight application. Module 8.2 – Window Closing Event for Out of Browser Applications Ian Griffiths discusses the WindowClosing event and how to handle and optionally cancel the event. Module 8.3 – Silent Install of Out of Browser Applications Ian Griffiths discusses how to use the SLLauncher executable to install an out of browser application. He discusses the optional command line switches that can be set including how the emulate switch can help you emulate the install process. Ian also shows how to setup a shortcut for the application and tell the application where it should look for future updates online. Module 8.4 – Digitally Signing Out of Browser Application Ian Griffiths discusses how and why to digitally sign an out of browser application using the signtool program. He covers what trusted certificates are, the implications of signing (or not signing), and the effect on the user experience. Module 8.5 – The Value of MEF with Silverlight Ian Griffiths discusses what MEF is, how your application can benefit from it, and the fundamental features it puts at your disposal. He covers the 3 step import, export and compose process as well as how to dynamically import XAP files using MEF. Summary As you can probably tell from the long list above – this series contains a ton of great content, and hopefully provides a nice end-to-end walkthrough that helps explain how to take advantage of Silverlight 4 (and all its new features).  Hope this helps, Scott

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• Building an HTML5 App with ASP.NET

  - by Stephen Walther

  I’m teaching several JavaScript and ASP.NET workshops over the next couple of months (thanks everyone!) and I thought it would be useful for my students to have a really easy to use JavaScript reference. I wanted a simple interactive JavaScript reference and I could not find one so I decided to put together one of my own. I decided to use the latest features of JavaScript, HTML5 and jQuery such as local storage, offline manifests, and jQuery templates. What could be more appropriate than building a JavaScript Reference with JavaScript? You can try out the application by visiting: http://Superexpert.com/JavaScriptReference Because the app takes advantage of several advanced features of HTML5, it won’t work with Internet Explorer 6 (but really, you should stop using that browser). I have tested it with IE 8, Chrome 8, Firefox 3.6, and Safari 5. You can download the source for the JavaScript Reference application at the end of this article. Superexpert JavaScript Reference Let me provide you with a brief walkthrough of the app. When you first open the application, you see the following lookup screen: As you type the name of something from the JavaScript language, matching results are displayed: You can click the details link for any entry to view details for an entry in a modal dialog: Alternatively, you can click on any of the tabs -- Objects, Functions, Properties, Statements, Operators, Comments, or Directives -- to filter results by type of syntax. For example, you might want to see a list of all JavaScript built-in objects: You can login to the application to make modification to the application: After you login, you can add, update, or delete entries in the reference database: HTML5 Local Storage The application takes advantage of HTML5 local storage to store all of the reference entries on the local browser. IE 8, Chrome 8, Firefox 3.6, and Safari 5 all support local storage. When you open the application for the first time, all of the reference entries are transferred to the browser. The data is stored persistently. Even if you shutdown your computer and return to the application many days later, the data does not need to be transferred again. Whenever you open the application, the app checks with the server to see if any of the entries have been updated on the server. If there have been updates, then only the updates are transferred to the browser and the updates are merged with the existing entries in local storage. After the reference database has been transferred to your browser once, only changes are transferred in the future. You get two benefits from using local storage. First, the application loads very fast and works very fast after the data has been loaded once. The application does not query the server whenever you filter or view entries. All of the data is persisted in the browser. Second, you can browse the JavaScript reference even when you are not connected to the Internet (when you are on the proverbial airplane). The JavaScript Reference works as an offline application for browsers that support offline applications (unfortunately, not IE). When using Google Chrome, you can easily view the contents of local storage by selecting Tools, Developer Tools (CTRL-SHIFT I) and selecting Storage, Local Storage: The JavaScript Reference app stores two items in local storage: entriesLastUpdated and entries. HTML5 Offline App For browsers that support HTML5 offline applications – Chrome 8 and Firefox 3.6 but not Internet Explorer – you do not need to be connected to the Internet to use the JavaScript Reference. The JavaScript Reference can execute entirely on your machine just like any other desktop application. When you first open the application with Firefox, you are presented with the following warning: Notice the notification bar that asks whether you want to accept offline content. If you click the Allow button then all of the files (generated ASPX, images, CSS, JavaScript) needed for the JavaScript Reference will be stored on your local computer. Automatic Script Minification and Combination All of the custom JavaScript files are combined and minified automatically whenever the application is built with Visual Studio. All of the custom scripts are contained in a folder named App_Scripts: When you perform a build, the combine.js and combine.debug.js files are generated. The Combine.config file contains the list of files that should be combined (importantly, it specifies the order in which the files should be combined). Here’s the contents of the Combine.config file:   <?xml version="1.0"?> <combine> <scripts> <file path="compat.js" /> <file path="storage.js" /> <file path="serverData.js" /> <file path="entriesHelper.js" /> <file path="authentication.js" /> <file path="default.js" /> </scripts> </combine>   jQuery and jQuery UI The JavaScript Reference application takes heavy advantage of jQuery and jQuery UI. In particular, the application uses jQuery templates to format and display the reference entries. Each of the separate templates is stored in a separate ASP.NET user control in a folder named Templates: The contents of the user controls (and therefore the templates) are combined in the default.aspx page: <!-- Templates --> <user:EntryTemplate runat="server" /> <user:EntryDetailsTemplate runat="server" /> <user:BrowsersTemplate runat="server" /> <user:EditEntryTemplate runat="server" /> <user:EntryDetailsCloudTemplate runat="server" /> When the default.aspx page is requested, all of the templates are retrieved in a single page. WCF Data Services The JavaScript Reference application uses WCF Data Services to retrieve and modify database data. The application exposes a server-side WCF Data Service named EntryService.svc that supports querying, adding, updating, and deleting entries. jQuery Ajax calls are made against the WCF Data Service to perform the database operations from the browser. The OData protocol makes this easy. Authentication is handled on the server with a ChangeInterceptor. Only authenticated users are allowed to update the JavaScript Reference entry database. JavaScript Unit Tests In order to build the JavaScript Reference application, I depended on JavaScript unit tests. I needed the unit tests, in particular, to write the JavaScript merge functions which merge entry change sets from the server with existing entries in browser local storage. In order for unit tests to be useful, they need to run fast. I ran my unit tests after each build. For this reason, I did not want to run the unit tests within the context of a browser. Instead, I ran the unit tests using server-side JavaScript (the Microsoft Script Control). The source code that you can download at the end of this blog entry includes a project named JavaScriptReference.UnitTests that contains all of the JavaScripts unit tests. JavaScript Integration Tests Because not every feature of an application can be tested by unit tests, the JavaScript Reference application also includes integration tests. I wrote the integration tests using Selenium RC in combination with ASP.NET Unit Tests. The Selenium tests run against all of the target browsers for the JavaScript Reference application: IE 8, Chrome 8, Firefox 3.6, and Safari 5. For example, here is the Selenium test that checks whether authenticating with a valid user name and password correctly switches the application to Admin Mode: [TestMethod] [HostType("ASP.NET")] [UrlToTest("http://localhost:26303/JavaScriptReference")] [AspNetDevelopmentServerHost(@"C:\Users\Stephen\Documents\Repos\JavaScriptReference\JavaScriptReference\JavaScriptReference", "/JavaScriptReference")] public void TestValidLogin() { // Run test for each controller foreach (var controller in this.Controllers) { var selenium = controller.Value; var browserName = controller.Key; // Open reference page. selenium.Open("http://localhost:26303/JavaScriptReference/default.aspx"); // Click login button displays login form selenium.Click("btnLogin"); Assert.IsTrue(selenium.IsVisible("loginForm"), "Login form appears after clicking btnLogin"); // Enter user name and password selenium.Type("userName", "Admin"); selenium.Type("password", "secret"); selenium.Click("btnDoLogin"); // Should set adminMode == true selenium.WaitForCondition("selenium.browserbot.getCurrentWindow().adminMode==true", "30000"); } }   The results for running the Selenium tests appear in the Test Results window just like the unit tests: The Selenium tests take much longer to execute than the unit tests. However, they provide test coverage for actual browsers. Furthermore, if you are using Visual Studio ALM, you can run the tests automatically every night as part of your standard nightly build. You can view the Selenium tests by opening the JavaScriptReference.QATests project. Summary I plan to write more detailed blog entries about this application over the next week. I want to discuss each of the features – HTML5 local storage, HTML5 offline apps, jQuery templates, automatic script combining and minification, JavaScript unit tests, Selenium tests -- in more detail. You can download the source control for the JavaScript Reference Application by clicking the following link: Download You need Visual Studio 2010 and ASP.NET 4 to build the application. Before running the JavaScript unit tests, install the Microsoft Script Control. Before running the Selenium tests, start the Selenium server by running the StartSeleniumServer.bat file located in the JavaScriptReference.QATests project.

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• Using MS Standalone profiler in VS2008 Professional

  - by fishdump

  I am trying to profile my .NET dll while running it from VS unit testing tools but I am having problems. I am using the standalone command-line profiler as VS2008 Professional does not come with an inbuilt profiler. I have an open CMD window and have run the following commands (I instrumented it earlier which is why vsinstr gave the warning that it did): C:\...\BusinessRules\obj\Debug>vsperfclrenv /samplegclife /tracegclife /globalsamplegclife /globaltracegclife Enabling VSPerf Sampling Attach Profiling. Allows to 'attaching' to managed applications. Current Profiling Environment variables are: COR_ENABLE_PROFILING=1 COR_PROFILER={0a56a683-003a-41a1-a0ac-0f94c4913c48} COR_LINE_PROFILING=1 COR_GC_PROFILING=2 C:\...\BusinessRules\obj\Debug>vsinstr BusinessRules.dll Microsoft (R) VSInstr Post-Link Instrumentation 9.0.30729 x86 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved. Error VSP1018 : VSInstr does not support processing binaries that are already instrumented. C:\...\BusinessRules\obj\Debug>vsperfcmd /start:trace /output:foo.vsp Microsoft (R) VSPerf Command Version 9.0.30729 x86 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved. C:\...\BusinessRules\obj\Debug> I then ran the unit tests that exercised the instrumented code. When the unit tests were complete, I did... C:\...\BusinessRules\obj\Debug>vsperfcmd /shutdown Microsoft (R) VSPerf Command Version 9.0.30729 x86 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved. Waiting for process 4836 ( C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\vstesthost.exe) to shutdown... It was clearly waiting for VS2008 to close so I closed it... Shutting down the Profile Monitor ------------------------------------------------------------ C:\...\BusinessRules\obj\Debug> All looking good, there was a 3.2mb foo.vsp file in the directory. I next did... C:\...\BusinessRules\obj\Debug>vsperfreport foo.vsp /summary:all Microsoft (R) VSPerf Report Generator, Version 9.0.0.0 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. VSP2340: Environment variables were not properly set during profiling run and managed symbols may not resolve. Please use vsperfclrenv before profiling. File opened Successfully opened the file. A report file, foo_Header.csv, has been generated. A report file, foo_MarksSummary.csv, has been generated. A report file, foo_ProcessSummary.csv, has been generated. A report file, foo_ThreadSummary.csv, has been generated. Analysis completed A report file, foo_FunctionSummary.csv, has been generated. A report file, foo_CallerCalleeSummary.csv, has been generated. A report file, foo_CallTreeSummary.csv, has been generated. A report file, foo_ModuleSummary.csv, has been generated. C:\...\BusinessRules\obj\Debug> Notice the warning about environment variables and using vsperfclrenv? But I had run it! Maybe I used the wrong switches? I don't know. Anyway, loading the csv files into Excel or using the perfconsole tool gives loads of useful info with useless symbol names: *** Loading commands from: C:\temp\PerfConsole\bin\commands\timebytype.dll *** Adding command: timebytype *** Loading commands from: C:\temp\PerfConsole\bin\commands\partition.dll *** Adding command: partition Welcome to PerfConsole 1.0 (for bugs please email: [email protected]), for help type: ?, for a quickstart type: ?? > load foo.vsp *** Couldn't match to either expected sampled or instrumented profile schema, defaulting to sampled *** Couldn't match to either expected sampled or instrumented profile schema, defaulting to sampled *** Profile loaded from 'foo.vsp' into @foo > > functions @foo >>>>> Function Name Exclusive Inclusive Function Name Module Name -------------------- -------------------- -------------- --------------- 900,798,600,000.00 % 900,798,600,000.00 % 0x0600003F 20397910 14,968,500,000.00 % 44,691,540,000.00 % 0x06000040 14736385 8,101,253,000.00 % 14,836,330,000.00 % 0x06000041 5491345 3,216,315,000.00 % 6,876,929,000.00 % 0x06000042 3924533 <snip> 71,449,430.00 % 71,449,430.00 % 0x0A000074 42572 52,914,200.00 % 52,914,200.00 % 0x0A000073 0 14,791.00 % 13,006,010.00 % 0x0A00007B 0 199,177.00 % 6,082,932.00 % 0x2B000001 5350072 2,420,116.00 % 2,420,116.00 % 0x0A00008A 0 836.00 % 451,888.00 % 0x0A000045 0 9,616.00 % 399,436.00 % 0x0A000039 0 18,202.00 % 298,223.00 % 0x06000046 1479900 I am so close to being able to find the bottlenecks, if only it will give me the function and module names instead of hex numbers! What am I doing wrong? --- Alistair.

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• Configure TFS portal afterwards

  Update #1 January 8th, 2010: There is an updated post on this topic for Beta 2: http://www.ewaldhofman.nl/post/2009/12/10/Configure-TFS-portal-afterwards-Beta-2.aspx Update #2 October 10th, 2010: In the new Team Foundation Server Power Tools September 2010, there is now a command to create a portal. tfpt addprojectportal   Add or move portal for an existing team project Usage: tfpt addprojectportal /collection:uri                              /teamproject:"project name"                              /processtemplate:"template name"                              [/webapplication:"webappname"]                              [/relativepath:"pathfromwebapp"]                              [/validate]                              [/verbose] /collection Required. URL of Team Project Collection. /teamproject Required. Specifies the name of the team project. /processtemplate Required. Specifies that name of the process template. /webapplication The name of the SharePoint Web Application. Must also specify relativepath. /relativepath The path for the site relative to the root URL for the SharePoint Web Application. Must also specify webapplication. /validate Specifies that the user inputs are to be validated. If specified, only validation will be done and no portal setting will be changed. /verbose Switches on the verbose mode. I created a new Team Project in TFS 2010 Beta 1 and choose not to configure SharePoint during the creation of the Team Project. Of course I found out fairly quickly that a portal for TFS is very useful, especially the Iteration and the Product backlog workbooks and the dashboard reports. This blog describes how you can configure the sharepoint portal afterwards. Update: September 9th, 2009 Adding the portal afterwards is much easier as described below. Here are the steps Step 1: Create a new temporary project (with a SharePoint site for it). Open the Team Explorer Right click in the Team Explorer the root node (i.e. the project collection) Select "New team project" from the menu Walk throught he wizard and make sure you check the option to create the portal (which is by default checked) Step 2: Disable the site for the new project Open the Team Explorer Select the team project you created in step 1 In the menu click on Team -> Show Project Portal. In the menu click on Team -> Team Project Settings -> Portal Settings... The following dialog pops up Uncheck the option "Enable team project portal" Confirm the dialog with OK Step 3: Enable the site for the original one. Point it to the newly created site. Open the Team Explorer Select the team project you want to add the portal to In the menu open Team -> Team Project Settings -> Portal Settings... The same dialog as in step 2 pops up Check the option "Enable team project portal" Click on the "Configure URL" button The following dialog pops up   In the dialog select in the combobox of the web application the TFS server Enter in the Relative site path the text "sites/[Project Collection Name]/[Team Project Name created in step 1]" Confirm the "Specify an existing SharePoint Site" with OK Check the "Reports and dashboards refer to data for this team project" option Confirm the dialog "Project Portal Settings" with OK Step 4: Delete the temporary project you created. In Beta 1, I have found no way to delete a team project. Maybe it will be available in TFS 2010 Beta 2. Original post Step 1: Create new portal site Go to the sharepoint site of your project collection (/sites//default.aspx">/sites//default.aspx">http://<servername>/sites/<project_collection_name>/default.aspx) Click on the Site Actions at the left side of the screen and choose the option Site Settings In the site settings, choose the Sites and workspaces option Create a new site Enter the values for the Title, the description, the site address. And choose for the TFS2010 Agile Dashboard as template. Create the site, by clicking on the Create button Step 2: Integrate portal site with team project Open Visual Studio Open the Team Explorer (View -> Team Explorer) Select in the Team Explorer tool window the Team Project for which you are create a new portal Open the Project Portal Settings (Team -> Team Project Settings -> Portal Setings...) Check the Enable team project portal checkbox Click on Configure URL... You will get a new dialog as below Enter the url to the TFS server in the web application combobox And specify the relative site path: sites/<project collection>/<site name> Confirm with OK Check in the Project Portal Settings dialog the checkbox "Reports and dashboards refer to data for this team project" Confirm the settings with OK (this takes a while...) When you now browse to the portal, you will see that the dashboards are now showing up with the data for the current team project. Step 3: Download process template To get a copy of the documents that are default in a team project, we need to have a fresh set of files that are not attached to a team project yet. You can do that with the following steps. Start the Process Template Manager (Team -> Team Project Collection Settings -> Process Template Manager...) Choose the Agile process template and click on download Choose a folder to download Step 4: Add Product and Iteration backlog Go to the Team Explorer in Visual Studio Make sure the team project is in the list of team projects, and expand the team project Right click the Documents node, and choose New Document Library Enter "Shared Documents", and click on Add Right click the Shared Documents node and choose Upload Document Go the the file location where you stored the process template from step 3 and then navigate to the subdirectory "Agile Process Template 5.0\MSF for Agile Software Development v5.0\Windows SharePoint Services\Shared Documents\Project Management" Select in the Open Dialog the files "Iteration Backlog" and "Product Backlog", and click Open Step 5: Bind Iteration backlog workbook to the team project Right click on the "Iteration Backlog" file and select Edit, and confirm any warning messages Place your cursor in cell A1 of the Iteration backlog worksheet Switch to the Team ribbon and click New List. Select your Team Project and click Connect From the New List dialog, select the Iteration Backlog query in the Workbook Queries folder. The final step is to add a set of document properties that allow the workbook to communicate with the TFS reporting warehouse. Before we create the properties we need to collect some information about your project. The first piece of information comes from the table created in the previous step.  As you collect these properties, copy them into notepad so they can be used in later steps. Property How to retrieve the value? [Table name] Switch to the Design ribbon and select the Table Name value in the Properties portion of the ribbon [Project GUID] In the Visual Studio Team Explorer, right click your Team Project and select Properties.  Select the URL value and copy the GUID (long value with lots of characters) at the end of the URL [Team Project name] In the Properties dialog, select the Name field and copy the value [TFS server name] In the Properties dialog, select the Server Name field and copy the value [UPDATE] I have found that this is not correct: you need to specify the instance of your SQL Server. The value is used to create a connection to the TFS cube. Switch back to the Iteration Backlog workbook. Click the Office button and select Prepare – Properties. Click the Document Properties – Server drop down and select Advanced Properties. Switch to the Custom tab and add the following properties using the values you collected above. Variable name Value [Table name]_ASServerName [TFS server name] [Table name]_ASDatabase tfs_warehouse [Table name]_TeamProjectName [Team Project name] [Table name]_TeamProjectId [Project GUID] Click OK to close the properties dialog. It is possible that the Estimated Work (Hours) is showing the #REF! value. To resolve that change the formula with: =SUMIFS([Table name][Original Estimate]; [Table name][Iteration Path];CurrentIteration&"*";[Table name][Area Path];AreaPath&"*";[Table name][Work Item Type]; "Task") For example =SUMIFS(VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Original Estimate]; VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Iteration Path];CurrentIteration&"*";VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Area Path];AreaPath&"*";VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Work Item Type]; "Task") Also the Total Remaining Work in the Individual Capacity table may contain #REF! values. To resolve that change the formula with: =SUMIFS([Table name][Remaining Work]; [Table name][Iteration Path];CurrentIteration&"*";[Table name][Area Path];AreaPath&"*";[Table name][Assigned To];[Team Member];[Table name][Work Item Type]; "Task") For example =SUMIFS(VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Remaining Work]; VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Iteration Path];CurrentIteration&"*";VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Area Path];AreaPath&"*";VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Assigned To];[Team Member];VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Work Item Type]; "Task") Save and close the workbook. Step 6: Bind Product backlog workbook to the team project Repeat the steps for binding the Iteration backlog for thiw workbook too. In the worksheet Capacity, the formula of the Storypoints might be missing. You can resolve it with: =IF([Iteration]="";"";SUMIFS([Table name][Story Points];[Table name][Iteration Path];[Iteration]&"*")) Example =IF([Iteration]="";"";SUMIFS(VSTS_487f1e4c_db30_4302_b5e8_bd80195bc2ec[Story Points];VSTS_487f1e4c_db30_4302_b5e8_bd80195bc2ec[Iteration Path];[Iteration]&"*"))

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• "Translator by Moth"

  - by Daniel Moth

  This article serves as the manual for the free Windows Phone 7 app called "Translator by Moth". The app is available from the following link (browse the link on your Window Phone 7 phone, or from your PC with zune software installed): http://social.zune.net/redirect?type=phoneApp&id=bcd09f8e-8211-e011-9264-00237de2db9e   Startup At startup the app makes a connection to the bing Microsoft Translator service to retrieve the available languages, and also which languages offer playback support (two network calls total). It populates with the results the two list pickers ("from" and "to") on the "current" page. If for whatever reason the network call fails, you are informed via a message box, and the app keeps trying to make a connection every few seconds. When it eventually succeeds, the language pickers on the "current" page get updated. Until it succeeds, the language pickers remain blank and hence no new translations are possible. As you can guess, if the Microsoft Translation service add more languages for textual translation (or enables more for playback) the app will automatically pick those up. "current" page The "current" page is the main page of the app with language pickers, translation boxes and the application bar. Language list pickers The "current" page allows you to pick the "from" and "to" languages, which are populated at start time. Until these language get populated with the results of the network calls, they remain empty and disabled. When enabled, tapping on either of them brings up on a full screen popup the list of languages to pick from, formatted as English Name followed by Native Name (when the latter is known). The "to" list, in addition to the language names, indicates which languages have playback support via a * in front of the language name. When making a selection for the "to" language, and if there is text entered for translation, a translation is performed (so there is no need to tap on the "translate" application bar button). Note that both language choices are remembered between different launches of the application.   text for translation The textbox where you enter the translation is always enabled. When there is nothing entered in it, it displays (centered and in italics) text prompting you to enter some text for translation. When you tap on it, the prompt text disappears and it becomes truly empty, waiting for input via the keyboard that automatically pops up. The text you type is left aligned and not in italic font. The keyboard shows suggestions of text as you type. The keyboard can be dismissed either by tapping somewhere else on the screen, or via tapping on the Windows Phone hardware "back" button, or via taping on the "enter" key. In the latter case (tapping on the "enter" key), if there was text entered and if the "from" language is not blank, a translation is performed (so there is no need to tap on the "translate" application bar button). The last text entered is remembered between application launches. translated text The translated text appears below the "to" language (left aligned in normal font). Until a translation is performed, there is a message in that space informing you of what to expect (translation appearing there). When the "current" page is cleared via the "clear" application bar button, the translated text reverts back to the message. Note a subtle point: when a translation has been performed and subsequently you change the "from" language or the text for translation, the translated text remains in place but is now in italic font (attempting to indicate that it may be out of date). In any case, this text is not remembered between application launches. application bar buttons and menus There are 4 application bar buttons and 4 application bar menus. "translate" button takes the text for translation and translates it to the translated text, via a single network call to the bing Microsoft Translator service. If the network call fails, the user is informed via a message box. The button is disabled when there is no "from" language available or when there is not text for translation entered. "play" button takes the translated text and plays it out loud in a native speaker's voice (of the "to" language), via a single network call to the bing Microsoft Translator service. If the network call fails, the user is informed via a message box. The button is disabled when there is no "to" language available or when there is no translated text available. "clear" button clears any user text entered in the text for translation box and any translation present in the translated text box. If both of those are already empty, the button is disabled. It also stops any playback if there is one in flight. "save" button saves the entire translation ("from" language, "to" language, text for translation, and translated text) to the bottom of the "saved" page (described later), and simultaneously switches to the "saved" page. The button is disabled if there is no translation or the translation is not up to date (i.e. one of the elements have been changed). "swap to and from languages" menu swaps around the "from" and "to" languages. It also takes the translated text and inserts it in the text for translation area. The translated text area becomes blank. The menu is disabled when there is no "from" and "to" language info. "send translation via sms" menu takes the translated text and creates an SMS message containing it. The menu is disabled when there is no translation present. "send translation via email" menu takes the translated text and creates an email message containing it (after you choose which email account you want to use). The menu is disabled when there is no translation present. "about" menu shows the "about" page described later. "saved" page The "saved" page is initially empty. You can add translations to it by translating text on the "current" page and then tapping the application bar "save" button. Once a translation appears in the list, you can read it all offline (both the "from" and "to" text). Thus, you can create your own phrasebook list, which is remembered between application launches (it is stored on your device). To listen to the translation, simply tap on it – this is only available for languages that support playback, as indicated by the * in front of them. The sound is retrieved via a single network call to the bing Microsoft Translator service (if it fails an appropriate message is displayed in a message box). Tap and hold on a saved translation to bring up a context menu with 4 items: "move to top" menu moves the selected item to the top of the saved list (and scrolls there so it is still in view) "copy to current" menu takes the "from" and "to" information (language and text), and populates the "current" page with it (switching at the same time to the current page). This allows you to make tweaks to the translation (text or languages) and potentially save it back as a new item. Note that the action makes a copy of the translation, so you are not actually editing the existing saved translation (which remains intact). "delete" menu deletes the selected translation. "delete all" menu deletes all saved translations from the "saved" page – there is no way to get that info back other than re-entering it, so be cautious. Note: Once playback of a translation has been retrieved via a network call, Windows Phone 7 caches the results. What this means is that as long as you play a saved translation once, it is likely that it will be available to you for some time, even when there is no network connection.   "about" page The "about" page provides some textual information (that you can view in the screenshot) including a link to the creator's blog (that you can follow on your Windows Phone 7 device). Use that link to discover the email for any feedback. Other UI design info As you can see in the screenshots above, "Translator by Moth" has been designed from scratch for Windows Phone 7, using the nice pivot control and application bar. It also supports both portrait and landscape orientations, and looks equally good in both the light and the dark theme. Other than the default black and white colors, it uses the user's chosen accent color (which is blue in the screenshot examples above). Feedback and support Please report (via the email on the blog) any bugs you encounter or opportunities for performance improvements and they will be fixed in the next update. Suggestions for new features will be considered, but given that the app is FREE, no promises are made. If you like the app, don't forget to rate "Translator by Moth" on the marketplace. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• How to fix notifyDataSetChanged/ListView problems in dynamic Adapter wrapper Android

  - by ipaterson

  Summary: Trying to dynamically add heading rows to a ListView via a custom adapter wrapper. ListView is having trouble keeping the scroll position in sync. Runnable demo project provided. I would like to dynamically add items to a list based on the values in a CursorAdapter, several positions ahead of what the user is currently viewing. To do this, I have an adapter that wraps the CursorAdapter and keeps the new content indexed in a SparseArray. The ListView needs to be updated when items are added to the custom adapter, but I have met a lot of pitfalls trying to get that to work and would love some advice. The demo project can be downloaded here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15334423/DynamicSectionedList.zip In the demo, the headings are added dynamically by looking ahead 10 places to find the correct position where the list items switch to the next letter. Each implementation of notifyDataSetChanged has problems as described: Demo 1 This demo shows the importance of notifyDataSetChanged(). On clicking anything, the app will crash. This is due to some sanity checking in ListView... mItemCount != adapter.getItemCount(). Moral is, we need to notify the list that data has changed. Demo 2 The natural next step is to notify the ListView of changes when changes occur. Unfortunately, doing so while the ListView is scrolling firmly breaks all touch interaction until the app switches out of touch mode. You will need to "fling scroll" far enough to generate new headings in order to notice this. Tapping the screen will not cause the scroll to stop, and once stopped none of the list items will be clickable. This is due to some if (!mDataChanged) { /* do very important stuff */ } code in AbsListView.onTouchEvent(). Demo 3 To fix this, Demo 3 introduces a pendingChanges flag and the custom Adapter gains a notifyDataSetChangedIfNeeded() which can be called by the ListView once it has entered a "safe" state for changes. The first point where changes must be notified is in ListView.layoutChildren(), so I overrode that method to first notify of changes if needed, then call through. Fling past at least one heading then click a list item. This doesn't quite work right, though I'm not totally sure why. Tapping or selecting an item with the keyboard/trackball causes the list to refresh without properly syncing the old position. It scrolls to the top of the list which is not acceptable. Demo 4 The scroll problem in Demo 3 can be conquered, at least in touch mode. By adding a call to notifyDataSetChangedIfNeeded() on touch down, the data change happens to take place at such a time that all touch interaction works as expected and the list position is properly synced. However, I can't find an analog for that when the device is not in touch mode, not to mention the fact that it definitely seems like a hack. The list almost always scrolls back to the top, I can't find out what causes it to occasionally maintain the correct position. Since Android is fighting me at each step of the way, I feel like there should be a better approach. Please try the demo, if any fixes can be applied to get it working that would be great! Many thanks to anyone who can look into this, hopefully if we can get the code working it will be useful for others trying to accomplish the same optimization for lists with headings.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, April 10, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, April 10, 2010New ProjectsAlan Platform: Платформа, позволяющая создавать окружение для искусственного интеллекта.Eksploracja test: testowy projekt gry eksploracjaGeoJSON.NET: GeoJSON .NETIhan sama... vaihdan myöhemmin: Testaillaan...mailfish: pop mailMiBiblioteca: Aplicación muy simple para realizar búsquedas en un listado de libros en una aplicación de escritorio y en una móvil.ServiceManagementConsole: The Service Management Console is a data-driven web app which I'm setting up to help me learn a bit about ASP.NET MVC, Visual Studio 2010, TFS and ...SimpleGeo.NET: SimpleGeo .NET clientSimplexEngine: a 3D game development framework base on Microsoft XNA. it contains game level editor, 3d model exporters and some other tools which is helpful to c...sosql: A standalone osql clone designed to replicate the functionality of SQL Server's osql. The current release of SoSql supports the basic switches tha...SpearHead: A basic app thingspikie: spikie's codeTwitter Directory: A twitter directory for your organization. Allows users to list their twitter username and any other information you want. The directory is searcha...Weather forecast for handheld internet capable device: Small PHP-project. Display wind speed and temperature for one preconfigured location. Using XML weather data aquired from the popular weather forec...New ReleasesAStar.net: AStar.net 1.12 downloads: AStar.net 1.12 Version detailsChanged framework version requirement to 2.0 to increase compatibility, removed the icon from the dll to decrease spa...BackUpAnyWhere: Milestone 0 - Documentation: First milestone for us is the documentation period when we are working on the documents starting from project presentationBB Scheduler - BroadBand Scheduler: BroadBand Scheduler v3.0: - Broadband service has some of the cheap and best monthly plans for the users all over the nation. And some of the plans include unlimited night d...BizTalk Software Factory: BizTalk Software Factory v1.7: Version 1.7 for BizTalk Server 2006 (R2). This is a service release for the BSF to support updated versions of tools. Most important is the suppor...Braintree Client Library: Braintree-1.2.0: Includes support for Subscription Search and minor bugfixes.Data Access Component: version 2.8: implement linq to dac on .net cf 2.0 and .net cf 3.5. generate dynamic data proxy use reflection.emit.DNA Workstation: DNA Workstation 0.6: Physical memory manager added Grub supportDotNetNuke Russian Language packs: Russian Core Language Pack for DotNetNuke 05.03.01: Russian Core Language Pack for DotNetNuke 05.03.01 Русский языковый пакет для ядра DotNetNuke версии 05.03.01.DotNetNuke® Gallery: 04.03.01 Release Candidate: This is a RELEASE CANDIDATE of an update to fix a showstopper issue related to a mal-formed assembly: tagPrefix attribute that causes an exception ...DotNetNuke® Store: 02.01.31 RC: What's New in this release? Bugs corrected: - The PayPal gateway has been completly rewrited. Security fixes: - Several security fixes has been ap...EnhSim: Release v1.9.8.4: Release v1.9.8.4 Various fixes in GUI only for missing trinkets in dropdowns and mis-spelling of trinket names that would have caused sim to ignore...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts 3.0.6 beta 2 Released: Hi, This release contains following enhancements. * It implements “Zoom out” and “Show all” functionality over Zooming. Now, user will be abl...GeoJSON.NET: GeoJSON.NET 0.1: GeoJSON.NET 0.1Goblin XNA: Goblin XNA v3.4: This is Goblin XNA Version 3.4 release. The installation process is much simpler now!! Updates: 1. Inlcuded DShowNET.dll and Lidgren.Network.dll...jQuery UI DotNetNuke integration: jQuery Core module 0.6.0: This module package contains the core functionality for the jQuery UI integration. It includes the web controls, infrastructural code for including...jQuery UI DotNetNuke integration: jQUI library 0.6.0 for developers (DEBUG): This release includes the debug built .dll, .pdb, and .xml files for developers wanting to build DNN components using the jQuery UI widgets. The .d...jQuery UI DotNetNuke integration: jQUI library 0.6.0 for developers (RELEASE): This release includes the release built .dll and .xml files for developers wanting to build DNN components using the jQuery UI widgets. The .dll is...Kooboo blog: Kooboo CMS Blog Module for 2.1.0.0: Compatible with Kooboo cms 2.1.0.0 Upgrade to MVC 2Numina Application/Security Framework: Numina.Framework Core 50018: Added bulk import user page Added General settings page for updating Company Name, Theme, and API Key Add/Edit application calls Full URL to h...Open NFe: DANFe v1.9.8.1: Contribuições de Marco Aurélio (McSoft) e Leandro (Studio Classic). Melhorias de menus de contexto, tray icon, tela de configurações, correção do e...Pocket Wiki: wiki71.sbp: Incremental version (source .70 to .71) included changes are: disappearing horizontal bar fixed if you enter an invalid home page directory, you...PowerExt: v1.0 (Alpha 1): v1.0 (Alpha 1). PowerExt can display information such as assembly name, assembly version, public key etc in Explorer's File Properties dialog.RIA Services DataFilter Control for Silverlight: April 2010: Whats new?Updated to RC Added localizer for FilterOperator's (look at documentation) Added localizer for SortDirection's (look at documentation...SharePoint Labs: SPLab4006A-FRA-Level100: SPLab4006A-FRA-Level100 This SharePoint Lab will teach you the 6th best practice you should apply when writing code with the SharePoint API. Lab La...SharePoint Labs: SPLab6002A-FRA-Level300: SPLab6002A-FRA-Level300 This SharePoint Lab will teach you how to create a reusable and distributable project model for developping Feature Receive...SharePoint Labs: SPLab6003A-FRA-Level100: SPLab6003A-FRA-Level100 This SharePoint Lab will teach you how to create a custom Permission Level within Visual Studio. Lab Language : French Lab ...SimpleGeo.NET: SimpleGeo.NET 0.1: SimpleGeo.NET 0.1sosql: SoSql v1.0.0: Initial release of SoSql. This supports most of the basic parameters that osql does. sosql - SQL Server Command Line Tool Version 1.0.0.28646 usa...Syringe: Syringe 1.0 (source): Source code for Syringe 1.0Toast (for ASP.NET MVC): Toast (for ASP.NET MVC) 0.2.1: First releasetrx2html: trx2html 0.6: This version supports VS2005, VS2008 and VS2010 trx generated files with the same binaries targeting .Net 2.0Twitter Directory: TwitterDirectory 44240: Initial release See Numina Application/Security Framework for info on how to setup this application.Unit Test Specification Generator: TestDocs 1.0.2.1: Improved the performance when locating dependencies.VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30409.0: Automatic drop of latest buildvisinia: visinia_BETA_Src: The beta version is on its way, now you can drag a module and drop it on the webpage, all this dynamic side of visinia is built through the jquery,...Windows Azure - PHP contributions: PhpAzureExtensions (Azure Drives) - 0.1.1: Extension for use with Windows Azure SDK 1.1! Usage is described here.Most Popular ProjectsWBFS ManagerRawrMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseASP.NET Ajax LibrarySilverlight ToolkitAJAX Control ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesFacebook Developer ToolkitMost Active ProjectsnopCommerce. Open Source online shop e-commerce solution.Shweet: SharePoint 2010 Team Messaging built with PexRawrAutoPocopatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleFacebook Developer ToolkitFarseer Physics EngineNcqrs Framework - The CQRS framework for .NET

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• Core Data Model Design Question - Changing "Live" Objects also Changes Saved Objects

  - by mwt

  I'm working on my first Core Data project (on iPhone) and am really liking it. Core Data is cool stuff. I am, however, running into a design difficulty that I'm not sure how to solve, although I imagine it's a fairly common situation. It concerns the data model. For the sake of clarity, I'll use an imaginary football game app as an example to illustrate my question. Say that there are NSMO's called Downs and Plays. Plays function like templates to be used by Downs. The user creates Plays (for example, Bootleg, Button Hook, Slant Route, Sweep, etc.) and fills in the various properties. Plays have a to-many relationship with Downs. For each Down, the user decides which Play to use. When the Down is executed, it uses the Play as its template. After each down is run, it is stored in history. The program remembers all the Downs ever played. So far, so good. This is all working fine. The question I have concerns what happens when the user wants to change the details of a Play. Let's say it originally involved a pass to the left, but the user now wants it to be a pass to the right. Making that change, however, not only affects all the future executions of that Play, but also changes the details of the Plays stored in history. The record of Downs gets "polluted," in effect, because the Play template has been changed. I have been rolling around several possible fixes to this situation, but I imagine the geniuses of SO know much more about how to handle this than I do. Still, the potential fixes I've come up with are: 1) "Versioning" of Plays. Each change to a Play template actually creates a new, separate Play object with the same name (as far as the user can tell). Underneath the hood, however, it is actually a different Play. This would work, AFAICT, but seems like it could potentially lead to a wild proliferation of Play objects, esp. if the user keeps switching back and forth between several versions of the same Play (creating object after object each time the user switches). Yes, the app could check for pre-existing, identical Plays, but... it just seems like a mess. 2) Have Downs, upon saving, record the details of the Play they used, but not as a Play object. This just seems ridiculous, given that the Play object is there to hold those just those details. 3) Recognize that Play objects are actually fulfilling 2 functions: one to be a template for a Down, and the other to record what template was used. These 2 functions have a different relationship with a Down. The first (template) has a to-many relationship. But the second (record) has a one-to-one relationship. This would mean creating a second object, something like "Play-Template" which would retain the to-many relationship with Downs. Play objects would get reconfigured to have a one-to-one relationship with Downs. A Down would use a Play-Template object for execution, but use the new kind of Play object to store what template was used. It is this change from a to-many relationship to a one-to-one relationship that represents the crux of the problem. Even writing this question out has helped me get clearer. I think something like solution 3 is the answer. However if anyone has a better idea or even just a confirmation that I'm on the right track, that would be helpful. (Remember, I'm not really making a football game, it's just faster/easier to use a metaphor everyone understands.) Thanks.

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• Making a Case For The Command Line

  - by Jesse Taber

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2013/06/30/making-a-case-for-the-command-line.aspxI have had an idea percolating in the back of my mind for over a year now that I’ve just recently started to implement. This idea relates to building out “internal tools” to ease the maintenance and on-going support of a software system. The system that I currently work on is (mostly) web-based, so we traditionally we have built these internal tools in the form of pages within the app that are only accessible by our developers and support personnel. These pages allow us to perform tasks within the system that, for one reason or another, we don’t want to let our end users perform (e.g. mass create/update/delete operations on data, flipping switches that turn paid modules of the system on or off, etc). When we try to build new tools like this we often struggle with the level of effort required to build them. Effort Required Creating a whole new page in an existing web application can be a fairly large undertaking. You need to create the page and ensure it will have a layout that is consistent with the other pages in the app. You need to decide what types of input controls need to go onto the page. You need to ensure that everything uses the same style as the rest of the site. You need to figure out what the text on the page should say. Then, when you figure out that you forgot about an input that should really be present you might have to go back and re-work the entire thing. Oh, and in addition to all of that, you still have to, you know, write the code that actually performs the task. Everything other than the code that performs the task at hand is just overhead. We don’t need a fancy date picker control in a nicely styled page for the vast majority of our internal tools. We don’t even really need a page, for that matter. We just need a way to issue a command to the application and have it, in turn, execute the code that we’ve written to accomplish a given task. All we really need is a simple console application! Plumbing Problems A former co-worker of mine, John Sonmez, always advocated the Unix philosophy for building internal tools: start with something that runs at the command line, and then build a UI on top of that if you need to. John’s idea has a lot of merit, and we tried building out some internal tools as simple Console applications. Unfortunately, this was often easier said that done. Doing a “File –> New Project” to build out a tool for a mature system can be pretty daunting because that new project is totally empty.  In our case, the web application code had a lot of of “plumbing” built in: it managed authentication and authorization, it handled database connection management for our multi-tenanted architecture, it managed all of the context that needs to follow a user around the application such as their timezone and regional/language settings. In addition, the configuration file for the web application  (a web.config in our case because this is an ASP .NET application) is large and would need to be reproduced into a similar configuration file for a Console application. While most of these problems are could be solved pretty easily with some refactoring of the codebase, building Console applications for internal tools still potentially suffers from one pretty big drawback: you’d have to execute them on a machine with network access to all of the needed resources. Obviously, our web servers can easily communicate the the database servers and can publish messages to our service bus, but the same is not true for all of our developer and support personnel workstations. We could have everyone run these tools remotely via RDP or SSH, but that’s a bit cumbersome and certainly a lot less convenient than having the tools built into the web application that is so easily accessible. Mix and Match So we need a way to build tools that are easily accessible via the web application but also don’t require the overhead of creating a user interface. This is where my idea comes into play: why not just build a command line interface into the web application? If it’s part of the web application we get all of the plumbing that comes along with that code, and we’re executing everything on the web servers which means we’ll have access to any external resources that we might need. Rather than having to incur the overhead of creating a brand new page for each tool that we want to build, we can create one new page that simply accepts a command in text form and executes it as a request on the web server. In this way, we can focus on writing the code to accomplish the task. If the tool ends up being heavily used, then (and only then) should we consider spending the time to build a better user experience around it. To be clear, I’m not trying to downplay the importance of building great user experiences into your system; we should all strive to provide the best UX possible to our end users. I’m only advocating this sort of bare-bones interface for internal consumption by the technical staff that builds and supports the software. This command line interface should be the “back end” to a highly polished and eye-pleasing public face. Implementation As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, this is an idea that I’ve had for awhile but have only recently started building out. I’ve outlined some general guidelines and design goals for this effort as follows: Text in, text out: In the interest of keeping things as simple as possible, I want this interface to be purely text-based. Users will submit commands as plain text, and the application will provide responses in plain text. Obviously this text will be “wrapped” within the context of HTTP requests and responses, but I don’t want to have to think about HTML or CSS when taking input from the user or displaying responses back to the user. Task-oriented code only: After building the initial “harness” for this interface, the only code that should need to be written to create a new internal tool should be code that is expressly needed to accomplish the task that the tool is intended to support. If we want to encourage and enable ourselves to build good tooling, we need to lower the barriers to entry as much as possible. Built-in documentation: One of the great things about most command line utilities is the ‘help’ switch that provides usage guidelines and details about the arguments that the utility accepts. Our web-based command line utility should allow us to build the documentation for these tools directly into the code of the tools themselves. I finally started trying to implement this idea when I heard about a fantastic open-source library called CLAP (Command Line Auto Parser) that lets me meet the guidelines outlined above. CLAP lets you define classes with public methods that can be easily invoked from the command line. Here’s a quick example of the code that would be needed to create a new tool to do something within your system: 1: public class CustomerTools 2: { 3: [Verb] 4: public void UpdateName(int customerId, string firstName, string lastName) 5: { 6: //invoke internal services/domain objects/hwatever to perform update 7: } 8: } This is just a regular class with a single public method (though you could have as many methods as you want). The method is decorated with the ‘Verb’ attribute that tells the CLAP library that it is a method that can be invoked from the command line. Here is how you would invoke that code: Parser.Run(args, new CustomerTools()); Note that ‘args’ is just a string[] that would normally be passed passed in from the static Main method of a Console application. Also, CLAP allows you to pass in multiple classes that define [Verb] methods so you can opt to organize the code that CLAP will invoke in any way that you like. You can invoke this code from a command line application like this: SomeExe UpdateName -customerId:123 -firstName:Jesse -lastName:Taber ‘SomeExe’ in this example just represents the name of .exe that is would be created from our Console application. CLAP then interprets the arguments passed in order to find the method that should be invoked and automatically parses out the parameters that need to be passed in. After a quick spike, I’ve found that invoking the ‘Parser’ class can be done from within the context of a web application just as easily as it can from within the ‘Main’ method entry point of a Console application. There are, however, a few sticking points that I’m working around: Splitting arguments into the ‘args’ array like the command line: When you invoke a standard .NET console application you get the arguments that were passed in by the user split into a handy array (this is the ‘args’ parameter referenced above). Generally speaking they get split by whitespace, but it’s also clever enough to handle things like ignoring whitespace in a phrase that is surrounded by quotes. We’ll need to re-create this logic within our web application so that we can give the ‘args’ value to CLAP just like a console application would. Providing a response to the user: If you were writing a console application, you might just use Console.WriteLine to provide responses to the user as to the progress and eventual outcome of the command. We can’t use Console.WriteLine within a web application, so I’ll need to find another way to provide feedback to the user. Preferably this approach would allow me to use the same handler classes from both a Console application and a web application, so some kind of strategy pattern will likely emerge from this effort. Submitting files: Often an internal tool needs to support doing some kind of operation in bulk, and the easiest way to submit the data needed to support the bulk operation is in a file. Getting the file uploaded and available to the CLAP handler classes will take a little bit of effort. Mimicking the console experience: This isn’t really a requirement so much as a “nice to have”. To start out, the command-line interface in the web application will probably be a single ‘textarea’ control with a button to submit the contents to a handler that will pass it along to CLAP to be parsed and run. I think it would be interesting to use some javascript and CSS trickery to change that page into something with more of a “shell” interface look and feel. I’ll be blogging more about this effort in the future and will include some code snippets (or maybe even a full blown example app) as I progress. I also think that I’ll probably end up either submitting some pull requests to the CLAP project or possibly forking/wrapping it into a more web-friendly package and open sourcing that.

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• Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Tips and Tricks-Part 2: Key Shortcuts

  - by ToStringTheory

  Ask anyone that knows me, and they will confirm that I hate the mouse.  This isn’t because I deny affection to objects that don’t look like their mammalian-named self, but rather for a much more simple and not-insane reason: I have terrible eyesight.  Introduction Thanks to a degenerative eye disease known as Choroideremia, I have learned to rely more on the keyboard which I can feel digital/static positions of keys relative to my fingers, than the much more analog/random position of the mouse.  Now, I would like to share some of the keyboard shortcuts with you now, as I believe that they not only increase my productivity, but yours as well once you know them (if you don’t already of course)...  I share one of my biggest tips for productivity in the conclusion at the end. Visual Studio Key Shortcuts Global Editor Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are available from almost any application running in Windows, however are many times forgotten. Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality Ctrl + X Cut This shortcut works without a selection. If nothing is selected, the entire line that the caret is on is cut from the editor. Ctrl + C Copy This shortcut works without a selection. If nothing is selected, the entire line that the caret is on is copied from the editor. Ctrl + V Paste If you copied an entire line by the method above, the data is pasted in the line above the current caret line. Ctrl + Shift + V Next Clipboard Element Cut/Copy multiple things, and then hit this combo repeatedly to switch to the next clipboard item when pasting. Ctrl + Backspace Delete Previous Will delete the previous word from the editor directly before the caret. If anything is selected, will just delete that. Ctrl + Del Delete Next Word Will delete the next word/space from the editor directly after the caret. If anything is selected, will just delete that. Shift + Del Delete Focused Line Will delete the line from the editor that the caret is on. If something is selected, will just delete that. Ctrl + ? or Ctrl + ? Left/Right by Word This will move the caret left or right by word or special character boundary. Holding Shift will also select the word. Ctrl + F Quick Find Either the Quick Find panel, or the search bar if you have the Productivity Power Tools installed. Ctrl + Shift + F Find in Solution Opens up the 'Find in Files' window, allowing you to search your solution, as well as using regex for pattern matching. F2 Rename File... While not debugging, selecting a file in the solution explorer\navigator and pressing F2 allows you to rename the selected file. Global Application Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are available from almost any application running in Windows, however are many times forgotten... Again... Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality Ctrl + N New File dialog Opens up the 'New File' dialog to add a new file to the current directory in the Solution\Project. Ctrl + O Open File dialog Opens up the 'Open File' dialog to open a file in the editor, not necessarily in the solution. Ctrl + S Save File dialog Saves the currently focused editor tab back to your HDD/SSD. Ctrl + Shift + S Save All... Quickly save all open/edited documents back to your disk. Ctrl + Tab Switch Panel\Tab Tapping this combo switches between tabs quickly. Holding down Ctrl when hitting tab will bring up a chooser window. Building Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are focused on building and running a solution. These are not usable when the IDE is in Debug mode, as the shortcut changes by context. Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality Ctrl + Shift + B Build Solution Starts a build process on the solution according to the current build configuration manager settings. Ctrl + Break Cancel a Building Solution Will cancel a build operation currently in progress. Good for long running builds when you think of one last change. F5 Start Debugging Will build the solution if needed and launch debugging according to the current configuration manager settings. Ctrl + F5 Start Without Debugger Will build the solution if needed and launch the startup project without attaching a debugger. Debugging Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are used when debugging a solution. Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality F5 Continue Execution Continues execution of code until the next breakpoint. Ctrl + Alt + Break Pause Execution Pauses the program execution. Shift + F5 Stop Debugging Stops the current debugging session. NOTE: Web apps will still continue processing after stopping the debugger. Keep this in mind if working on code such as credit card processing. Ctrl + Shift + F5 Restart Debugging Stops the current debugging session and restarts the debugging session from the beginning. F9 Place Breakpoint Toggles/Places a breakpoint in the editor on the current line. Set a breakpoint in condensed code by highlighting the statement first. F10 Step Over Statement When debugging, executes all code in methods/properties on the current line until the next line. F11 Step Into Statement When debugging, steps into a method call so you can walk through the code executed there (if available). Ctrl + Alt + I Immediate Window Open the Immediate Window to execute commands when execution is paused. Navigation Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are used for navigating in the IDE or editor panel. Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality F4 Properties Panel Opens the properties panel for the selected item in the editor/designer/solution navigator (context driven). F12 Go to Definition Press F12 with the caret on a member to navigate to its declaration. With the Productivity tools, Ctrl + Click works too. Ctrl + K Ctrl + T View Call Hierarchy View the call hierarchy of the member the caret is on. Great for going through n-tier solutions and interface implementations! Ctrl + Alt + B Breakpoint Window View the breakpoint window to manage breakpoints and their advanced options. Allows easy toggling of breakpoints. Ctrl + Alt + L Solution Navigator Open the solution explorer panel. Ctrl + Alt + O Output Window View the output window to see build\general output from Visual Studio. Ctrl + Alt + Enter Live Web Preview Only available with the Web Essential plugin. Launches the auto-updating Preview panel. Testing Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are used for running tests in the IDE. Please note, Visual Studio 2010 is all about context. If your caret is within a test method when you use one of these combinations, the combination will apply to that test. If your caret is within a test class, it will apply to that class. If the caret is outside of a test class, it will apply to all tests. Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality Ctrl + R T Run Test(s) Run all tests in the current context without a debugger attached. Breakpoints will not be stopped on. Ctrl + R Ctrl + T Run Test(s) (Debug) Run all tests in the current context with a debugger attached. This allows you to use breakpoints. Substitute A for T from the preceding combos to run/debug ALL tests in the current context. Substitute Y for T from the preceding combos to run/debug ALL impacted/covering tests for a method in the current context. Advanced Editor Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are used for more advanced editing in the editor window. Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality Shift + Alt + ? Shift + Alt + ? Multiline caret up/down Use this combo to edit multiple lines at once. Not too many uses for it, but once in a blue moon one comes along. Ctrl + Alt + Enter Insert Line Above Inserts a blank line above the line the caret is currently on. No need to be at end or start of line, so no cutting off words/code. Ctrl + K Ctrl + C Comment Selection Comments the current selection out of compilation. Ctrl + K Ctrl + U Uncomment Selection Uncomments the current selection into compilation. Ctrl + K Ctrl + D Format Document Automatically formats the document into a structured layout. Lines up nodes or code into columns intelligently. Alt + ? Alt + ? Code line up/down *Use this combo to move a line of code up or down quickly. Great for small rearrangements of code. *Requires the Productivity Power pack from Microsoft. Conclusion This list is by no means meant to be exhaustive, but these are the shortcuts I use regularly every hour/minute of the day. There are still 100s more in Visual Studio that you can discover through the configuration window, or by tooltips. Something that I started doing months ago seems to have interest in my office.. In my last post, I talked about how I hated a cluttered UI. One of the ways that I aimed to resolve that was by systematically cleaning up the toolbars week by week. First day, I removed ALL icons that I already knew shortcuts to, or would never use them (Undo in a toolbar?!). Then, every week from that point on, I make it a point to remove an icon/two from the toolbar and make an effort to remember its key combination. I gain extra space in the toolbar area, AND become more productive at the same time! I hope that you found this article interesting or at least somewhat informative.. Maybe a shortcut or two you didn't know. I know some of them seem trivial, but I often see people going to the edit menu for Copy/Paste... Thought a refresher might be helpful!

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• The HTML5 doctype is not triggering standards mode in IE8

  - by El Guapo

  i work for a company where all our sites currently use the XHTML 1.0 transitional doctype (yes i know it is very old school). I want to change them all to use the HTML5 doctype seeing as it is backwards compatible. One of the reasons why i want to make the switch is because in IE8 if someone has the developer tools installed then the old XHTML doctype switches the browser into compatibility mode and renders the page as IE7. From reading up on it i was led to believe that the HTML5 doctype will set any page to render in standards mode, but this is not happening when i test it on our staging server it still flips into IE7 rendering mode. The weird thing is if i save the page with HTML5 doctype locally and open it, it is rendering in IE8 standards mode. There must be something else causing it to drop into compatibility IE7 rendering. Any ideas what this could be? Below is the head of the test page i have been looking at: <!DOCTYPE html > <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:og="http://opengraphprotocol.org/schema/" xmlns:fb="http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml"> <head> <title>Burton - Mens Clothing - Mens Fashion - Burton Menswear</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <meta name="description" content="Burton is one of the UK's leading men's clothing &amp; fashion retailers, with a range of men's clothing designed to make you look &amp; feel good. Find formal &amp; casual clothes &amp; accessories for men online at Burton menswear"/> <meta name="keywords" content="menswear, clothes for men, clothing for men, men clothes, men's fashion, men's wear, men's clothing online, men's clothes online, men's clothes shop, burton men's, burton menswear, burton uk, burton"/> <script type="text/javascript">document.getElementsByTagName('html')[0].className = 'js';</script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://eu.burton-menswear.com/wcsstore/ConsumerDirectStorefrontAssetStore/images/colors/color2/v3/css/screen.css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://eu.burton-menswear.com/wcsstore/ConsumerDirectStorefrontAssetStore/images/colors/color2/v3/css/print.css" media="print"/> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://eu.burton-menswear.com/wcsstore/ConsumerDirectStorefrontAssetStore/images/colors/color2/v3/css/brand.css" /> <!--[if lt IE 8]> <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://eu.burton-menswear.com/wcsstore/ConsumerDirectStorefrontAssetStore/images/colors/color2/v3/css/ie.css" type="text/css" media="screen, projection"> <![endif]--> <meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en-gb" /> <link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" href="http://eu.burton-menswear.com/favicon.ico" /> <link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" title="burton.co.uk Search" href="http://eu.burton-menswear.com/burton-search.xml"/> <!-- Start Summit Tag --> <script type="text/javascript"> var __stormJs = "t1.stormiq.com/dcv4/jslib/3286_D92B7532_4A18_46A8_864A_5FDF1DF25844.js"; </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://eu.burton-menswear.com/javascript/track.js"></script> <!-- End Summit Tag --> <!-- Start QuBit Tag --> <script src=//d3c3cq33003psk.cloudfront.net/opentag-31935-42109.js async defer></script> <!-- End QuBit Tag --> <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="http://reviews.br.wcstage.arcadiagroup.ltd.uk/bvstaging/static/6028-en_gb/bazaarvoice.css" ></link> </head>

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, July 29, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, July 29, 2014Popular ReleasesArtezio SharePoint 2013 Workflow Activities: SharePoint Designer 2013 custom workflow actions 1.0: SharePoint Designer 2013 custom workflow actions that work with permissions. Add Role Assignment Add Role Assignments Delete Role Assignments Get Role Definition Id Get Role Definition Id By Role Type Id Reset Role Inheritance Artezio SharePoint Consulting & DevelopmentVG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.32: changes NEW: Added Support for 'ImgMega.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgCandy.net' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgPit.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'Img.yt' links FIXED: 'Radikal.ru' links FIXED: 'ImageTeam.org' links FIXED: 'ImgSee.com' links FIXED: 'Img.yt' linksAsp.Net MVC-4,Entity Framework and JQGrid Demo with Todo List WebApplication: Asp.Net MVC-4,Entity Framework and JQGrid Demo: Asp.Net MVC-4,Entity Framework and JQGrid Demo with simple Todo List WebApplication, Overview TodoList is a simple web application to create, store and modify Todo tasks to be maintained by the users, which comprises of following fields to the user (Task Name, Task Description, Severity, Target Date, Task Status). TodoList web application is created using MVC - 4 architecture, code-first Entity Framework (ORM) and Jqgrid for displaying the data.Waterfox: Waterfox 31.0 Portable: New features in Waterfox 31.0: Added support for Unicode 7.0 Experimental support for WebCL New features in Firefox 31.0:New Add the search field to the new tab page Support of Prefer:Safe http header for parental control mozilla::pkix as default certificate verifier Block malware from downloaded files Block malware from downloaded files audio/video .ogg and .pdf files handled by Firefox if no application specified Changed Removal of the CAPS infrastructure for specifying site-sp...SuperSocket, an extensible socket server framework: SuperSocket 1.6.3: The changes below are included in this release: fixed an exception when collect a server's status but it has been stopped fixed a bug that can cause an exception in case of sending data when the connection dropped already fixed the log4net missing issue for a QuickStart project fixed a warning in a QuickStart projectYnote Classic: Ynote Classic 2.8.5 Beta: Several Changes - Multiple Carets and Multiple Selections - Improved Startup Time - Improved Syntax Highlighting - Search Improvements - Shell Command - Improved StabilityDatabase Schema Reader: v1.3.4.0: Contents DatabaseSchemaReader.dll - Class library (.net3.5) DatabaseSchemaViewer.exe - UI to read and view database schemas; options to generate SQL and code; option to compare another schema CopyToSQLite/CopyToSQLite.exe - UI to copy any database schema and data to SQLite or, if installed, SQL Server CE 4.0 net4/DatabaseSchemaReader.dll - .Net 4.0 class library This Release Schema Reading (MySQL)- reads UNSIGNED integers (available in the schema model's DatabaseColumn.DbDataType prope...TEBookConverter: 1.2: Fixed: Could not start convertion in some cases Fixed: Progress show during convertion was truncated Fixed: Stopping convertion didn't reset program titleQ2Cue \\: Q2Cue v. 0.85: Initial release.CS-Script Source: Release v3.8.4: CSScript.Evaluator is migrated to Mono v3.3.0 Added aggregating //css_ignore_ns from the imported scripts cs-script.7z - CS-Script Suite (binaries, documentation, samples) cs-script.ExtensionPack.7z - CS-Script Extension Pack (additional binaries and samples) cs-scriptDocs.7z - CS-Script DocumentationDotSpatial: DotSpatial 1.7: DotSpatial.Full - includes all DotSpatial libraries, extensions and DemoMap application DotSpatial.Core - includes only DotSpatial core libraries Entire list of changes see in the issue tracker. Main changes: Improved common stability, optimized memory and speed when loading and rendering shapefiles, fixed some memory leaks in rasters and shape layers. Simplified plugin infrastructure. Now there are predefined implementations for all required components (IStatusControl, IDockManager, IHead...NRepository: NRepository 2.2: NuGetNRepository packages are available from NuGet.org: NRepository.Core: Install-Package NRepository.Core NRepository.EntityFramework: Install-Package NRepository.EntityFramework NRepository.TestKit: Install-Package NRepository.TestKit Contoso University Sample Projects Added 3 versions of Contoso University sample code added: ContosoUniversityOriginal - This is the original Microsoft sample project for Entity Framework. ContosoUniversityUsingNRepository - This version simply repl...InstagramSaver: 1.5: Added: An option to wait between downloads to prevent ban from server Improved: File downloading performance Improved: File checking performancePVReportDeployer: PVReportDeployer 1.0: PVReportDeployer 1.0AD4 Application Designer for flow based .NET applications: AD4.AppDesigner.23.20: AD4.Iteration.23.20(Advanced Rendering Features) Option to render name of flow pins within flow chart (AlarmClockSample.10.ad4 used to test this extension): MainWindow extended by adding FlowChartShowFlowPinCaptionsComboBox ConfigureUIControls customized ManageFlowChartShowFlowPinCaptionsOptionFlow customized Parameter FlowChartFlowPins replaced FlowChartFlowPinCaptions in AD4.AppDesigner.cfg RenderFlowPinsCaptions customized to use the parameter ToDo: Some tutorials are unfinished b...CRM 2013 One Click Navigation: CRM2013OneClickNavigation_1_0_0_3_managed.zip: Fixes on Security PrivilegesAutomatedLab: AutomatedLab 2.1.0.0: 2.1.0 Support for external virtual switches CaRoot is a new role for installing Root Certificate Authorities Root domain controllers are installed in parallel now 2.0.0 Now supports also Windows Server 2008 R2 and 7 No longer the limit of just having one client and one server operating system Rewrite of the code that handles VHDs Lots of bug fixing Changed that parameter definition of some cmdlets in AutomatedLabDefinition and also adapted the sample scripts Now the Forest...BizTalk Deployment Utilities: 1.0.0.0: Draft VersionGroupMe Software Development Kit: GroupMe .NET SDK v1.0.1: Small update concerning the /users/me endpoint to get the currently authenticated user info. Documentation is available here: http://dotnetcorner.ch/Projects/GroupMe-NET-SDK/DocumentationOneNote Tagging Kit: OneNoteTaggingKit Add-In 2.4.5316.33833: New Features in this ReleaseThe Find Pages dialog preserves search string and tag filter selection on search scope changes Other ChangesDialog windows restored when action button is pressed while windows is minimized Code cleanup and simplification Code documentation Created some reusable UI controls Tags styling made more pleasant (I hope) Tag tooltips improved on the Find Pages dialog : Added dedicated tooltips to the page count and selection indicator of tags Closing open dial...New ProjectsCognitum ASP.NET Providers for Cassandra: Cassandra Providers is a ASP.NET solution that uses the Cassandra Database data source for a custom Membership, Role, Profile, an Session-State providers.DG Mobile: Simples aplicação para inserção, visualização e emissão de relatório de atividades relacionadas ao DG.Dynamics AX Development tools: Several AX Development related tools combined into one configurable packages: TFS Workspace, DEV_Tools, and X++ Editor components.E Drawing Library for WinRT: E Drawing Library for WinRT lets you create graphic rich Windows Store Apps easily, giving you all the power of Direct2D with simple classes and methods.EFramework.DataAccess: Summary ????freetalkserver: This php server, user can register!gicon: gicon is a project to help you to generate avatar/icon by hash (MD5, SHA1) or random hex string (such as GUID)hOOt - Full text search: Full text search engine built from scratch using bitmap indexesMelodyUI - Library for HTML, CSS & JS Development: MelodyUI is a set of classes and helpers that let us to create Web Applications. MelodyUI is lightweight and don't have any dependency.nRF24L01Plus .NETMF driver: nRF24L01, .NET MFNyan: Beginning...Prince Game Xna: Prince of Persia Net Game in Xna Game StudioSmartsby: Combining several small business web app's information into a single dashboard.Super snippets: Super snippets para Visual StudioTCP/IP Adapter BizTalk 2013: BizTalk 2013 TCP/IP community adapter. This is an updated version of the TCP/IP adapter for BizTalk, for use with BizTalk 2013.testMercurial: summaryUnit OF Work With Sql Helper: This project is intended to provide a simple data access object for SQL Server with repository and Unit of Work pattern.VisualRegEx: Prototype. Experimenting regex parsing, graph layout, etc.WDK Hardware Development Boards Add-On: Scripts for working with windows compatible hardware development boards like the Sharks Cove?????? 2014????????: ???????????????、????、????、??????、????、????????,????????、?????????,?????。?????? 2014????????: ????????????,????,??????????? ???? ???? ?????????,???,??,?????!???? 2014????????: ?????????????、????、????、??????、????、???????,?????,?????????!????? 2014???????: ????????????????,?????????????。????????????,???????,???????,?????,?????????? 2014????????: ?????????????????、????、??????、????????,????????????,???????????！??????? 2014???????: ??????????????????,??????????????、???????、???????、???????、?????！??????? 2014????????: ?????????????????????,????????????????,????????????????,??????！????? 2014????????: ?????????????????????????,???????????,????????,??????????????????????????? 2014????????: ??????????????????????,????“???????,???????”?????,????????????！?????? 2014???????: ?????????????????,????,????,??????,????“????、????、????、????”????????,??????.?????? 2014????????: ?????????????????"????,????"???,????????????????????????,??????????????。?????? 2014????????: ??????????????:????,????,????,???????,????????,??????:????????,?????!???? 2014????????: ????????????????????????,???????????????,????????????????！???? 2014?????????: ??????????????????,?????????????,???????????.????????????,????????????!?????? 2014??????: ??????????????:????,????,????,???????,????????,??????:????????,?????!?????? 2014??????: ?????????????????,???????????????。?????????????,???????,?????????。????? 2014???????: ????????????????"????,????"???,????????????????????????,??????????????。????? 2014??????: ???????????????????,?????????????,???????????.????????????,????????????!????? 2014???????: ?????????????????????????,???????????????,????????????????！?????? ????????: ??????????????300??,????????、???????、????、????????、?????,??????:????,????,???????！?????? ????????: ??????????????????,?????,???，???、???、?????,???,?????,??????????????????? ???????????: ??????????????????,?????????。????????????,??????,????,????,?????????！????? ???????: ????????????????????????，?????、???、????，????，???、???、???、???、???，????，?????！????? ???????: ????????????????????,????????,????????,????,????,??????，???????!????? ???????: ???????????????,??????????????????,????????,??????????????、????。?????? 2014????????: ????????????????????,????????:??、??、???,?????????????????????!?????? ????????: ????????????????6?,???????????????????????????,??????????????,?????????！?????? ??????: ????????????????8?，????????,????????,??????????,?????,????? ,????????!?????? ???????: ?????????????????????????????、????、????、???????????,????,????!????? 2014???????: ???????????、???、??、??????????????????????????????,????????????????!?????? 2014????????: ????????????????????????、??????,????、?????、????， ?????????，?????????????！?????? ????????: ?????????????????????、????、????、??????、???????,??????、??????。?????? ???????: ??????????????????,???????、????、????、??????、???????,??????,???????????。???? ????????: ??????,??????,?????????????????????,???????????????????????。???? ???????: ??????????????,???????、???????????,????????,????,?????????,??????,??????!?????? ????????: ?????????????????,?????????????。?????????,???????,???????,?????????????。?????? ????????: ????????????????、??????、??????、??????、??????、?????、??????、????、????、????????！????? ???????: ???????????????????,??????????????,???????????,??????,????,??????,??????。????? ???????: ?????????????!???????????,??????,????,?????????????,????????,??????,????,?????...?????? ???????: ????????????、??、???????????,??????,????????,??????????????????...?????????? ????????: ??????????????,??????????????,?????????,????,????,??????。???? ?????: ????????????、?????????,?????????,????,????????,????????????????!????? 2014??????????: ???????????????????,?????,???????,???????????,??????! ????? 2014?????????: ???????????????????,?????????????????????,?????,????,???????.

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• Thread Synchronisation 101

  - by taspeotis

  Previously I've written some very simple multithreaded code, and I've always been aware that at any time there could be a context switch right in the middle of what I'm doing, so I've always guarded access the shared variables through a CCriticalSection class that enters the critical section on construction and leaves it on destruction. I know this is fairly aggressive and I enter and leave critical sections quite frequently and sometimes egregiously (e.g. at the start of a function when I could put the CCriticalSection inside a tighter code block) but my code doesn't crash and it runs fast enough. At work my multithreaded code needs to be a tighter, only locking/synchronising at the lowest level needed. At work I was trying to debug some multithreaded code, and I came across this: EnterCriticalSection(&m_Crit4); m_bSomeVariable = true; LeaveCriticalSection(&m_Crit4); Now, m_bSomeVariable is a Win32 BOOL (not volatile), which as far as I know is defined to be an int, and on x86 reading and writing these values is a single instruction, and since context switches occur on an instruction boundary then there's no need for synchronising this operation with a critical section. I did some more research online to see whether this operation did not need synchronisation, and I came up with two scenarios it did: The CPU implements out of order execution or the second thread is running on a different core and the updated value is not written into RAM for the other core to see; and The int is not 4-byte aligned. I believe number 1 can be solved using the "volatile" keyword. In VS2005 and later the C++ compiler surrounds access to this variable using memory barriers, ensuring that the variable is always completely written/read to the main system memory before using it. Number 2 I cannot verify, I don't know why the byte alignment would make a difference. I don't know the x86 instruction set, but does mov need to be given a 4-byte aligned address? If not do you need to use a combination of instructions? That would introduce the problem. So... QUESTION 1: Does using the "volatile" keyword (implicity using memory barriers and hinting to the compiler not to optimise this code) absolve a programmer from the need to synchronise a 4-byte/8-byte on x86/x64 variable between read/write operations? QUESTION 2: Is there the explicit requirement that the variable be 4-byte/8-byte aligned? I did some more digging into our code and the variables defined in the class: class CExample { private: CRITICAL_SECTION m_Crit1; // Protects variable a CRITICAL_SECTION m_Crit2; // Protects variable b CRITICAL_SECTION m_Crit3; // Protects variable c CRITICAL_SECTION m_Crit4; // Protects variable d // ... }; Now, to me this seems excessive. I thought critical sections synchronised threads between a process, so if you've got one you can enter it and no other thread in that process can execute. There is no need for a critical section for each variable you want to protect, if you're in a critical section then nothing else can interrupt you. I think the only thing that can change the variables from outside a critical section is if the process shares a memory page with another process (can you do that?) and the other process starts to change the values. Mutexes would also help here, named mutexes are shared across processes, or only processes of the same name? QUESTION 3: Is my analysis of critical sections correct, and should this code be rewritten to use mutexes? I have had a look at other synchronisation objects (semaphores and spinlocks), are they better suited here? QUESTION 4: Where are critical sections/mutexes/semaphores/spinlocks best suited? That is, which synchronisation problem should they be applied to. Is there a vast performance penalty for choosing one over the other? And while we're on it, I read that spinlocks should not be used in a single-core multithreaded environment, only a multi-core multithreaded environment. So, QUESTION 5: Is this wrong, or if not, why is it right? Thanks in advance for any responses :)

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• Taking web sites offline for demonstration

  While working in software development in general, and in web development for a couple of customers it is quite common that it is necessary to provide a test bed where the client is able to get an image, or better said, a feeling for the visions and ideas you are talking about. Usually here at IOS Indian Ocean Software Ltd. we set up a demo web site on one of our staging servers, and provide credentials to the customer to access and review our progress and work ad hoc. This gives us the highest flexibility on both sides, as the test bed is simply online and available 24/7. We can update the structure, the UI and data at any time, and the client is able to view it as it suits best for her/him. Limited or lack of online connectivity But what is going to happen when your client is not capable to be online - no matter for what reasons; here are some more obvious ones: No internet connection (permanently or temporarily) Expensive connection, ie. mobile data package, stay at a hotel, etc. Presentation devices at an exhibition, ie. using tablets or iPads Being abroad for a certain time, and only occasionally online No network coverage, especially on mobile Bad infrastructure, like ie. in Third World countries Providing a catalogue on CD or USB pen drive Anyway, it doesn't matter really. We should be able to provide a solution for the circumstances of our customers. Presentation during an exhibition Recently, we had the following request from a customer: Is it possible to let us have a desktop version of ResortWork.co.uk that we can use for demo purposes at the forthcoming Ski Shows? It would allow us to let stand visitors browse the sites on an iPad to view jobs and training directory course listings. Yes, sure we can do that. Eventually, you might think why don't they simply use 3G enabled iPads for that purpose? As stated above, there might be several reasons for that - low coverage, expensive data packages, etc. Anyway, it is not a question on how to circumvent the request but to deliver a solution to that. Possible solutions... or not? We already did offline websites earlier, and even established complete mirrors of one or two web sites on our systems. There are actually several possibilities to handle this kind of request, and it mainly depends on the system or device where the offline site should be available on. Here, it is clearly expressed that we have to address this on an Apple iPad, well actually, I think that they'd like to use multiple devices during their exhibitions. Following is an overview of possible solutions depending on the technology or device in use, and how it can be done: Replication of source files and database The above mentioned web site is running on ASP.NET, IIS and SQL Server. In case that a laptop or slate runs a Windows OS, the easiest way would be to take a snapshot of the source files and database, and transfer them as local installation to those Windows machines. This approach would be fully operational on the local machine. Saving pages for offline usage This is actually a quite tedious job but still practicable for small web sites Tool based approach to 'harvest' the web site There quite some tools in the wild that could handle this job, namely wget, httrack, web copier, etc. Screenshots bundled as PDF document Not really... ;-) Creating screencast or video Simply navigate through your website and record your desktop session. Actually, we are using this kind of approach to track down difficult problems in order to see and understand exactly what the user was doing to cause an error. Of course, this list isn't complete and I'd love to get more of your ideas in the comments section below the article. Preparations for offline browsing The original website is dynamically and data-driven by ASP.NET, and looks like this: As we have to put the result onto iPads we are going to choose the tool-based approach to 'download' the whole web site for offline usage. Again, depending on the complexity of your web site you might have to check which of the applications produces the best results for you. My usual choice is to use wget but in this case, we run into problems related to the rewriting of hyperlinks. As a consequence of that we opted for using HTTrack. HTTrack comes in different flavours, like console application but also as either GUI (WinHTTrack on Windows) or Web client (WebHTTrack on Linux/Unix/BSD). Here's a brief description taken from the original website about HTTrack: HTTrack is a free (GPL, libre/free software) and easy-to-use offline browser utility. It allows you to download a World Wide Web site from the Internet to a local directory, building recursively all directories, getting HTML, images, and other files from the server to your computer. HTTrack arranges the original site's relative link-structure. Simply open a page of the "mirrored" website in your browser, and you can browse the site from link to link, as if you were viewing it online. And there is an extensive documentation for all options and switches online. General recommendation is to go through the HTTrack Users Guide By Fred Cohen. It covers all the initial steps you need to get up and running. Be aware that it will take quite some time to get all the necessary resources down to your machine. Actually, for our customer we run the tool directly on their web server to avoid unnecessary traffic and bandwidth. After a couple of runs and some additional fine-tuning - explicit inclusion or exclusion of various external linked web sites - we finally had a more or less complete offline version available. A very handsome feature of HTTrack is the error/warning log after completing the download. It contains some detailed information about errors that appeared on the pages and the links within the pages that have been processed. Error: "Bad Request" (400) at link www.resortwork.co.uk/job-details_Ski_hire:tech_or_mgr_or_driver_37854.aspx (from www.resortwork.co.uk/Jobs_A_to_Z.aspx)Error: "Not Found" (404) at link www.247recruit.net/images/applynow.png (from www.247recruit.net/css/global.css)Error: "Not Found" (404) at link www.247recruit.net/activate.html (from www.247recruit.net/247recruit_tefl_jobs_network.html) In our situation, we took the records of HTTP 400/404 errors and passed them to the web development department. Improvements are to be expected soon. ;-) Quality assurance on the full-featured desktop Unfortunately, the generated output of HTTrack was still incomplete but luckily there were only images missing. Being directly on the web server we simply copied the missing images from the original source folder into our offline version. After that, we created an archive and transferred the file securely to our local workspace for further review and checks. From that point on, it wasn't necessary to get any more files from the original web server, and we could focus ourselves completely on the process of browsing and navigating through the offline version to isolate visual differences and functional problems. As said, the original web site runs on ASP.NET Web Forms and uses Postback calls for interaction like search, pagination and partly for navigation. This is the main field of improving the offline experience. Of course, same as for standard web development it is advised to test with various browsers, and strangely we discovered that the offline version looked pretty good on Firefox, Chrome and Safari, but not in Internet Explorer. A quick look at the HTML source shed some light on this, and there are conditional CSS inclusions based on the user agent. HTTrack is not acting as Internet Explorer and so we didn't have the necessary overrides for this browser. Not problematic after all in our case, but you might have to pay attention to this and get the IE-specific files explicitly. And while having a view at the source code, we also found out that HTTrack actually modifies the generated HTML output. In several occasions we discovered that <div> elements were converted into <table> constructs for no obvious reason; even nested structures. Search 'e'nd destroy - sed (or Notepad++) to the rescue During our intensive root cause analysis for a couple of HTML/CSS problems that needed some extra attention it is very helpful to be familiar with any editor that allows search and replace over multiple files like, ie. sed - stream editor for filtering and transforming text on Linux or my personal favourite Notepad++ on Windows. This allowed us to quickly fix a lot of anchors with onclick attributes and Javascript code that was addressed to ASP.NET files instead of their generated HTML counterparts, like so: grep -lr -e '.aspx' * | xargs sed -e 's/.aspx/.html?/g' The additional question mark after the HTML extension helps to separate the query string from the actual target and solved all our missing hyperlinks very fast. The same can be done in Notepad++ on Windows, too. Just use the 'Replace in files' feature and you are settled. Especially, in combination with Regular Expressions (regex). Landscape of browsers Okay, after several runs of HTML/CSS code analysis, searching and replacing some strings in a pool of more than 4.000 files, we finally had a very good match of an offline browsing experience in Firefox and Chrome on Linux. Next, we transferred that modified set of files to a Windows 8 machine for review on Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer 7 to 10, and a Mac mini running Mac OS X 10.7 to check the output on Safari and again on Chrome. Besides IE, for reasons already mentioned above, the results were identical. And last but not least it was about to check web site on tablets. Please continue to read on the following articles: Taking web sites offline for demonstration on Galaxy Tablet Taking web sites offline for demonstration on iPad

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• Slow Jquery Animation

  - by Pyronaut

  I have this webpage : http://miloarc.pyrogenicmedia.com/ Which atm is nothing special. It has a few effects but none that break the bank. If you mouse over a tile, it should change it's opacity to give it a fade effect. This is done through the Jquery Animation, not through CSS (I do this so it can fade, instead of being a straight change). Everything looks nice when the page loads, and the fades look perfect. Infact if you drag your mouse all over the place, if gives you a "trail" almost like a snake. Anyway, My next problem is that you will see there is a box in the top left, which is going to tell you information about the tile you are hovering over. This seems to work fine. When you mouse over that information box, it switches it's position (So that you can reach the tiles that were previously hidden underneath it). From my understanding, this is all working fine, and to the letter. However, After one move of the info box (One hover). Viewing the page in Firefox turns slugish. As in, after a successful move of the info box, the fade effects become very stuttered, and it doesn't pick up events as fast meaning you can't draw a "trail" on the screen. Chrome doesn't have this issue. It seems to work fine no matter what. Safari also seems ok. Although I do notice if I move my mouse really fast, it does jump a bit but not as much as firefox. Internet explorer doesn't work at all. Seems to crash the browser... And there is an error with the rounded corner plugin im using (Not sure why...). All in all, I think whatever I'm doing inside my code must be heavily sluggish. But I don't know where it is happening. Here is the full code, but I would advise go to the link to view everything. <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function() { var WindowWidth = $(window).width(); var WindowMod = WindowWidth % 20; var WindowWidth = WindowWidth - WindowMod; var BoxDimension = WindowWidth / 20; var BoxDimensionFixed = BoxDimension - 12; var dimensions = BoxDimensionFixed + 'px'; $('.gamebutton').each(function(i) { $(this).css('width', dimensions); $(this).css('height', dimensions); }); var OuterDivHeight = BoxDimension * 10; var TopMargin = ($(window).height() - OuterDivHeight) / 2; var OuterDivWidth = BoxDimension * 20; var LeftMargin = ($(window).width() - OuterDivWidth) / 2; $('#gamePort').css('margin-top', TopMargin).css('margin-left', LeftMargin).css('margin-right', LeftMargin); $('.gamebutton img').each(function(i) { $(this).hover( function () { $(this).animate({'opacity': 0.65}); }, function () { $(this).animate({'opacity': 1}); } ); }); $('.rounded').corners(); $('.gamebutton').each(function(i) { $(this).hover(function() { $('.gameTitlePopup').html($(this).attr('title')); FadeActive(); }); }); function FadeActive() { $('.activeInfo').fadeIn('slow'); } $('#gameInfoLeft').hover(function() { $(this).removeClass('activeInfo'); $(this).fadeOut('slow', function() { $('#gameInfoRight').addClass('activeInfo'); FadeActive(); }); }); $('#gameInfoRight').hover(function() { $(this).removeClass('activeInfo'); $(this).fadeOut('slow', function() { $('#gameInfoLeft').addClass('activeInfo'); FadeActive(); }); }); }); </script> Thanks for any help :).

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• Maintaining State in Mud Engine

  - by Johnathon Sullinger

  I am currently working on a Mud Engine and have started implementing my state engine. One of the things that has me troubled is maintaining different states at once. For instance, lets say that the user has started a tutorial, which requires specific input. If the user types "help" I want to switch in to a help state, so they can get the help they need, then return them to the original state once exiting the help. my state system uses a State Manager to manage the state per user: public class StateManager { /// <summary> /// Gets the current state. /// </summary> public IState CurrentState { get; private set; } /// <summary> /// Gets the states available for use. /// </summary> /// <value> public List<IState> States { get; private set; } /// <summary> /// Gets the commands available. /// </summary> public List<ICommand> Commands { get; private set; } /// <summary> /// Gets the mob that this manager controls the state of. /// </summary> public IMob Mob { get; private set; } public void Initialize(IMob mob, IState initialState = null) { this.Mob = mob; if (initialState != null) { this.SwitchState(initialState); } } /// <summary> /// Performs the command. /// </summary> /// <param name="message">The message.</param> public void PerformCommand(IMessage message) { if (this.CurrentState != null) { ICommand command = this.CurrentState.GetCommand(message); if (command is NoOpCommand) { // NoOperation commands indicate that the current state is not finished yet. this.CurrentState.Render(this.Mob); } else if (command != null) { command.Execute(this.Mob); } else if (command == null) { new InvalidCommand().Execute(this.Mob); } } } /// <summary> /// Switches the state. /// </summary> /// <param name="state">The state.</param> public void SwitchState(IState state) { if (this.CurrentState != null) { this.CurrentState.Cleanup(); } this.CurrentState = state; if (state != null) { this.CurrentState.Render(this.Mob); } } } Each of the different states that the user can be in, is a Type implementing IState. public interface IState { /// <summary> /// Renders the current state to the players terminal. /// </summary> /// <param name="player">The player to render to</param> void Render(IMob mob); /// <summary> /// Gets the Command that the player entered and preps it for execution. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> ICommand GetCommand(IMessage command); /// <summary> /// Cleanups this instance during a state change. /// </summary> void Cleanup(); } Example state: public class ConnectState : IState { /// <summary> /// The connected player /// </summary> private IMob connectedPlayer; public void Render(IMob mob) { if (!(mob is IPlayer)) { throw new NullReferenceException("ConnectState can only be used with a player object implementing IPlayer"); } //Store a reference for the GetCommand() method to use. this.connectedPlayer = mob as IPlayer; var server = mob.Game as IServer; var game = mob.Game as IGame; // It is not guaranteed that mob.Game will implement IServer. We are only guaranteed that it will implement IGame. if (server == null) { throw new NullReferenceException("LoginState can only be set to a player object that is part of a server."); } //Output the game information mob.Send(new InformationalMessage(game.Name)); mob.Send(new InformationalMessage(game.Description)); mob.Send(new InformationalMessage(string.Empty)); //blank line //Output the server MOTD information mob.Send(new InformationalMessage(string.Join("\n", server.MessageOfTheDay))); mob.Send(new InformationalMessage(string.Empty)); //blank line mob.StateManager.SwitchState(new LoginState()); } /// <summary> /// Gets the command. /// </summary> /// <param name="message">The message.</param> /// <returns>Returns no operation required.</returns> public Commands.ICommand GetCommand(IMessage message) { return new NoOpCommand(); } /// <summary> /// Cleanups this instance during a state change. /// </summary> public void Cleanup() { // We have nothing to clean up. return; } } With the way that I have my FSM set up at the moment, the user can only ever have one state at a time. I read a few different posts on here about state management but nothing regarding keeping a stack history. I thought about using a Stack collection, and just pushing new states on to the stack then popping them off as the user moves out from one. It seems like it would work, but I'm not sure if it is the best approach to take. I'm looking for recommendations on this. I'm currently swapping state from within the individual states themselves as well which I'm on the fence about if it makes sense to do there or not. The user enters a command, the StateManager passes the command to the current State and lets it determine if it needs it (like passing in a password after entering a user name), if the state doesn't need any further commands, it returns null. If it does need to continue doing work, it returns a No Operation to let the state manager know that the state still requires further input from the user. If null is returned, the state manager will then go find the appropriate state for the command entered by the user. Example state requiring additional input from the user public class LoginState : IState { /// <summary> /// The connected player /// </summary> private IPlayer connectedPlayer; private enum CurrentState { FetchUserName, FetchPassword, InvalidUser, } private CurrentState currentState; /// <summary> /// Renders the current state to the players terminal. /// </summary> /// <param name="mob"></param> /// <exception cref="System.NullReferenceException"> /// ConnectState can only be used with a player object implementing IPlayer /// or /// LoginState can only be set to a player object that is part of a server. /// </exception> public void Render(IMob mob) { if (!(mob is IPlayer)) { throw new NullReferenceException("ConnectState can only be used with a player object implementing IPlayer"); } //Store a reference for the GetCommand() method to use. this.connectedPlayer = mob as IPlayer; var server = mob.Game as IServer; // Register to receive new input from the user. mob.ReceivedMessage += connectedPlayer_ReceivedMessage; if (server == null) { throw new NullReferenceException("LoginState can only be set to a player object that is part of a server."); } this.currentState = CurrentState.FetchUserName; switch (this.currentState) { case CurrentState.FetchUserName: mob.Send(new InputMessage("Please enter your user name")); break; case CurrentState.FetchPassword: mob.Send(new InputMessage("Please enter your password")); break; case CurrentState.InvalidUser: mob.Send(new InformationalMessage("Invalid username/password specified.")); this.currentState = CurrentState.FetchUserName; mob.Send(new InputMessage("Please enter your user name")); break; } } /// <summary> /// Receives the players input. /// </summary> /// <param name="sender">The sender.</param> /// <param name="e">The e.</param> void connectedPlayer_ReceivedMessage(object sender, IMessage e) { // Be good memory citizens and clean ourself up after receiving a message. // Not doing this results in duplicate events being registered and memory leaks. this.connectedPlayer.ReceivedMessage -= connectedPlayer_ReceivedMessage; ICommand command = this.GetCommand(e); } /// <summary> /// Gets the Command that the player entered and preps it for execution. /// </summary> /// <param name="command"></param> /// <returns>Returns the ICommand specified.</returns> public Commands.ICommand GetCommand(IMessage command) { if (this.currentState == CurrentState.FetchUserName) { this.connectedPlayer.Name = command.Message; this.currentState = CurrentState.FetchPassword; } else if (this.currentState == CurrentState.FetchPassword) { // find user } return new NoOpCommand(); } /// <summary> /// Cleanups this instance during a state change. /// </summary> public void Cleanup() { // If we have a player instance, we clean up the registered event. if (this.connectedPlayer != null) { this.connectedPlayer.ReceivedMessage -= this.connectedPlayer_ReceivedMessage; } } Maybe my entire FSM isn't wired up in the best way, but I would appreciate input on what would be the best to maintain a stack of state in a MUD game engine, and if my states should be allowed to receive the input from the user or not to check what command was entered before allowing the state manager to switch states. Thanks in advance.

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• VBA nested Loop flow control

  - by PCGIZMO

  I will be brief and stick to what I know. This code for the most part works as it should. The only issue is in the iteration of the x and z loop. these to loops should set the range and yLABEL for the Y loop. I can get through a set and come up with the correct range after that things go bonkers. I know some of it has to do with not breaking out of x to set z and then back to x update the range. It should work z is found then x. the range between them is set for y. then next x but y stays then rang between y and x is set for y.. so on and so forth kinda like a slinky down the stairs. or a slide rule depending on how I set the loops either way I end up all over the place after a couple iterations. I have done a few things but each time I break out of x to set z , X restarts at the top of the range. At least that's what I think I am seeing. In the example sheet i have since changed the way the way the offset works with the loop but the idea is still the same. I have goto statements at this time i was going to try figuring out conditional switches after the loops were working. Any help direction or advice is appreciated. Option Explicit Sub parse() Application.DisplayAlerts = False 'Application.EnableCancelKey = xlDisabled Dim strPath As String, strPathused As String strPath = "C:\clerk plan2" Dim objfso As FileSystemObject, objFolder As Folder, objfile As Object Set objfso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") Set objFolder = objfso.GetFolder(strPath) 'Loop through objWorkBooks For Each objfile In objFolder.Files If objfso.GetExtensionName(objfile.Path) = "xlsx" Then Dim objWorkbook As Workbook Set objWorkbook = Workbooks.Open(objfile.Path) ' Set path for move to at end of script strPathused = "C:\prodplan\used\" & objWorkbook.Name objWorkbook.Worksheets("inbound transfer sheet").Activate objWorkbook.Worksheets("inbound transfer sheet").Cells.UnMerge 'Range management WB Dim SRCwb As Worksheet, SRCrange1 As Range, SRCrange2 As Range, lastrow As Range Set SRCwb = objWorkbook.Worksheets("inbound transfer sheet") Set SRCrange1 = SRCwb.Range("g3:g150") Set SRCrange2 = SRCwb.Range("a1:a150") Dim DSTws As Worksheet Set DSTws = Workbooks("clerkplan2.xlsm").Worksheets("transfer") Dim STR1 As String, STR2 As String, xVAL As String, zVAL As String, xSTR As String, zSTR As String STR1 = "INBOUND TRANS" STR2 = "INBOUND CA TRANS" Dim x As Variant, z As Variant, y As Variant, zxRANGE As Range For Each z In SRCrange2 zSTR = Mid(z, 1, 16) If zSTR <> STR2 Then GoTo zNEXT If zSTR = STR2 Then zVAL = z End If For Each x In SRCrange2 xSTR = Mid(x, 1, 13) If xSTR <> STR1 Then GoTo xNEXT If xSTR = STR1 Then xVAL = x End If Dim yLABEL As String If xVAL = x And zVAL = z Then If x.Row > z.Row Then Set zxRANGE = SRCwb.Range(x.Offset(1, 0).Address & " : " & z.Offset(-1, 0).Address) yLABEL = z.Value Else Set zxRANGE = SRCwb.Range(z.Offset(-1, 0).Address & " : " & x.Offset(1, 0).Address) yLABEL = x.Value End If End If MsgBox zxRANGE.Address ' DEBUG For Each y In zxRANGE If y.Offset(0, 6) = "Temp" Or y.Offset(0, 14) = "Begin Time" Or y.Offset(0, 15) = "End Time" Or _ Len(y.Offset(0, 6)) = 0 Or Len(y.Offset(0, 14)) = 0 Or Len(y.Offset(0, 15)) = "0" Then yNEXT Set lastrow = Workbooks("clerkplan2.xlsm").Worksheets("transfer").Range("c" & DSTws.Rows.Count).End(xlUp).Offset(1, 0) y.Offset(0, 6).Copy lastrow.PasteSpecial Paste:=xlPasteValues, operation:=xlNone, skipblanks:=True, Transpose:=False DSTws.Activate ActiveCell.Offset(0, -1) = objWorkbook.Name ActiveCell.Offset(0, -2) = yLABEL objWorkbook.Activate y.Offset(0, 14).Copy Set lastrow = Workbooks("clerkplan2.xlsm").Worksheets("transfer").Range("d" & DSTws.Rows.Count).End(xlUp).Offset(1, 0) lastrow.PasteSpecial Paste:=xlPasteValues, operation:=xlNone, skipblanks:=True, Transpose:=False objWorkbook.Activate y.Offset(0, 15).Copy Set lastrow = Workbooks("clerkplan2.xlsm").Worksheets("transfer").Range("e" & DSTws.Rows.Count).End(xlUp).Offset(1, 0) lastrow.PasteSpecial Paste:=xlPasteValues, operation:=xlNone, skipblanks:=True, Transpose:=False yNEXT: Next y xNEXT: Next x zNEXT: Next z strPathused = "C:\clerk plan2\used\" & objWorkbook.Name objWorkbook.Close False 'Move proccesed file to new Dir Dim OldFilePath As String Dim NewFilePath As String OldFilePath = objfile 'original file location NewFilePath = strPathused ' new file location Name OldFilePath As NewFilePath ' move the file End If Next End Sub

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• Hardware/Software inventory open source projects

  - by Dick dastardly

  Dear Stackoverflowers I would like to develop a Network Inventory application that works on any operating system. Reports on every possible resource attacehd to a network. Reports all pertinent details of hardware and software. Thats (and i hate to use the phrase) my "End Game". However I am running before i can crawl here. I have no experience of this type of development, e.g. discovering a computers hardware and software settings. I've spent almost two weeks googling and come up short! :-(. So I am turning to you to ask these questions:- My first step is to find an existing open source project i can incorporate into my own code that extracts the fine grained details i am after, e.g. EVERYTHING there is to know about the hardaware and software on a single machine. Does this project exist? or do i have to develop that first? Have i got to write all this in C? I am guessing getting this information about a computer is going to be easier than for printers, scanners, routers etc... e.g. everything else you would find attached to a network. Once i have access to a single computers details i then need to investigate how i can traverse an entire newtork of printers, scanners, routers, load balancers, switches, firewalls, workstations, servers, storeage devices, laptops, monitors, the list goes on and on One problem i have is i dont have a 1000 machine newtork to play on! Is there any such resource available on theinternet? (is that a silly question?) Anywho, if you dont ask you wont find out! One aspect iam really looking forward to finding out how to travers the entire network, should i be using TCP/IP for this? Whats a good site, blog, usergorup, book for TCP/IP development? How do i go about getting through firewalls? How many questions can i ask in one go? :-) My previous question on this topic ended up with PYTHON being championed as the language/script to go with to develop this application in. Having looked at a few PYTHON examples they all seemed to be related to WINDOWS networks and interrogating Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). I had the feeling you cant rely on whats in WMI, and even if you can that s no good for UNIX netwrks. Surely there exist common code for extracting hardware and software details from a computer? Why cant i find it on the internet? Pease help? Theres no prizes though :-( Thanks in advance I would like to appologise if i have broken forum rules or not tried hard enough on my own before asking for assistance. I just would like to start moving forward with this as its one of the best projects i have been involved with. I am inspired by the many differnt number of challenges involved and that if i manage to produce a useful application at the end of it it would hopefully be extremely helpful to many people. That sit Thanks in advance DD

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, October 08, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, October 08, 2012Popular ReleasesSofire Suite v1.6: XSqlModelGenerator.AddIn: 1、?? VS2010/2012 2、?? .NET FRAMEWORK 2.0 3、?? SOFIRE V1.6Sofire XSql: XSqlFormDemo: ???? MSSQL ???????ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.68.0: ClosedXML now resolves formulas! Yes it finally happened. If you call cell.Value and it has a formula the library will try to evaluate the formula and give you the result. For example: var wb = new XLWorkbook(); var ws = wb.AddWorksheet("Sheet1"); ws.Cell("A1").SetValue(1).CellBelow().SetValue(1); ws.Cell("B1").SetValue(1).CellBelow().SetValue(1); ws.Cell("C1").FormulaA1 = "\"The total value is: \" & SUM(A1:B2)"; var...Picturethrill: Version 2.10.7.0: Major FeaturesWindows 8 Support!!! Picturethrill is fully tested on latest Windows 8. Try it now.New AboutPicturethrill Dialog Available from "Advanced" window. Describes Version, Developers and other infoFull Installation Information in Control Panel Picturethrill in ControlPanel has full information, including Version and Size. Minor Bug FixesImproved Logging AppDomain Unhandled Exception Logging Delete WallpaperDownload Folder (Saves Diskspace) Advanced Settings "Close" button bug ...VidCoder: 1.4.3 Beta: Fixed crash on switching container types. Updated subtitle selection to only allow one PGS subtitle to be selected under an MP4 container as PGS passthrough in MP4 is not supported and the sub must be burned in.Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.68: Fixes for issues: 17110 - added support for -moz-calc or -webkit-calc to previous fix for calc support. 18652 - if being run under Mono runtime, don't mistake UNIX-style paths for command-line switches. 18659 - added capability to specify JS settings for CSS files that have JS embedded in expressions. Did a lot of internal house-keeping: add DLL support for -pponly switch. Add support for -js:expr, -js:evt, and -js:json to allow easy parsing for expressions, event handlers, and JSON code...Json.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 10: New feature - Added Portable build to NuGet package New feature - Added GetValue and TryGetValue with StringComparison to JObject Change - Improved duplicate object reference id error message Fix - Fixed error when comparing empty JObjects Fix - Fixed SecAnnotate warnings Fix - Fixed error when comparing DateTime JValue with a DateTimeOffset JValue Fix - Fixed serializer sometimes not using DateParseHandling setting Fix - Fixed error in JsonWriter.WriteToken when writing a DateT...Readable Passphrase Generator: KeePass Plugin 0.7.2: Changes: Tested against KeePass 2.20.1 Tested under Ubuntu 12.10 (and KeePass 2.20) Added GenerateAsUtf8 method returning the encrypted passphrase as a UTF8 byte array.JSLint for Visual Studio 2010: 1.4.2: 1.4.2GPdotNET - artificial intelligence tool: GPdotNET v2 BETA3: This is hopefully the last beta before final version.RiP-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.02: changes NEW: Added Support Big Naturals Only forum NEW: Added Setting to enable/disable "Show last download image"patterns & practices: Prism: Prism for .NET 4.5: This is a release does not include any functionality changes over Prism 4.1 Desktop. These assemblies target .NET 4.5. These assemblies also were compiled against updated dependencies: Unity 3.0 and Common Service Locator (Portable Class Library).WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.3.2: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features AsyncUI extensions Controls and control extensions Converters Debugging helpers Imaging IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE: Namespace changes DebugConsol...Snoop, the WPF Spy Utility: Snoop 2.8.0: Snoop 2.8.0Announcing Snoop 2.8.0! It's been exactly six months since the last release, and this one has a bunch of goodies in it. In particular, there is now a PowerShell scripting tab, compliments of Bailey Ling. With this tab, the possibilities are limitless. It basically lets you automate/script the application that you are Snooping. Bailey has a couple blog posts (one and two) on his tab already, and I am sure more is to come. Please note that if you do not have PowerShell installed, y....NET Micro Framework: .NET MF 4.3 (Beta): This is the 4.3 Beta version of the .NET Micro Framework. Feature List for v4.3 Support for Visual Studio 2012 (including the Windows Desktop Express version) All v4.2 QFEs features and bug fixes (PWM enhancements, lwIP and network driver reliability improvements, Analog Output, WinUSB and latest GCC support) Improved diagnostic information for deployment Decreased boot time Bug fixes Work Item 1736 - Create link for MFDeploy under start menu Work Item 1504 - Customizing lwIP o...MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.1: 2.3.1All new Remote Client Server architecture. Reccomended Download. 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• Adventures in Windows 8: Placing items in a GridView with a ColumnSpan or RowSpan

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  Currently working on a Windows 8 app for an important client, I will be writing about small issues, tips and tricks, ideas and whatever occurs to me during the development and the integration of this app. When working with a GridView, it is quite common to use a VariableSizedWrapGrid as the ItemsPanel. This creates a nice flowing layout which will auto-adapt for various resolutions. This is ideal when you want to build views like the Windows 8 start menu. However immediately we notice that the Start menu allows to place items on one column (Smaller) or two columns (Larger). This switch happens through the AppBar. So how do we implement that in our app? Using ColumnSpan and RowSpan When you use a VariableSizedWrapGrid directly in your XAML, you can attach the VariableSizedWrapGrid.ColumnSpan and VariableSizedWrapGrid.RowSpan attached properties directly to an item to create the desired effect. For instance this code create this output (shown in Blend but it runs just the same): <VariableSizedWrapGrid ItemHeight="100" ItemWidth="100" Width="200" Orientation="Horizontal"> <Rectangle Fill="Purple" /> <Rectangle Fill="Orange" /> <Rectangle Fill="Yellow" VariableSizedWrapGrid.ColumnSpan="2" /> <Rectangle Fill="Red" VariableSizedWrapGrid.ColumnSpan="2" VariableSizedWrapGrid.RowSpan="2" /> <Rectangle Fill="Green" VariableSizedWrapGrid.RowSpan="2" /> <Rectangle Fill="Blue" /> <Rectangle Fill="LightGray" /> </VariableSizedWrapGrid> Using the VariableSizedWrapGrid as ItemsPanel When you use a GridView however, you typically bind the ItemsSource property to a collection, for example in a viewmodel. In that case, you want to be able to switch the ColumnSpan and RowSpan depending on properties on the item. I tried to find a way to bind the VariableSizedWrapGrid.ColumnSpan attached property on the GridView’s ItemContainerStyle template to an observable property on the item, but it didn’t work. Instead, I decided to use a StyleSelector to switch the GridViewItem’s style. Here’s how: First I added my two GridViews to my XAML as follows: <Page.Resources> <local:MainViewModel x:Key="Main" /> <DataTemplate x:Key="DataTemplate1"> <Grid Background="{Binding Brush}"> <TextBlock Text="{Binding BrushCode}" /> </Grid> </DataTemplate> </Page.Resources> <Page.DataContext> <Binding Source="{StaticResource Main}" /> </Page.DataContext> <Grid Background="{StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundThemeBrush}" Margin="20"> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" /> <ColumnDefinition Width="*" /> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <GridView ItemsSource="{Binding Items}" ItemTemplate="{StaticResource DataTemplate1}" VerticalAlignment="Top"> <GridView.ItemsPanel> <ItemsPanelTemplate> <VariableSizedWrapGrid ItemHeight="150" ItemWidth="150" /> </ItemsPanelTemplate> </GridView.ItemsPanel> </GridView> <GridView Grid.Column="1" ItemsSource="{Binding Items}" ItemTemplate="{StaticResource DataTemplate1}" VerticalAlignment="Top"> <GridView.ItemsPanel> <ItemsPanelTemplate> <VariableSizedWrapGrid ItemHeight="100" ItemWidth="100" /> </ItemsPanelTemplate> </GridView.ItemsPanel> </GridView> </Grid> The MainViewModel looks like this: public class MainViewModel { public IList<Item> Items { get; private set; } public MainViewModel() { Items = new List<Item> { new Item { Brush = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Red) }, new Item { Brush = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Blue) }, new Item { Brush = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Green), }, // And more... }; } } As for the Item class, I am using an MVVM Light ObservableObject but you can use your own simple implementation of INotifyPropertyChanged of course: public class Item : ObservableObject { public const string ColSpanPropertyName = "ColSpan"; private int _colSpan = 1; public int ColSpan { get { return _colSpan; } set { Set(ColSpanPropertyName, ref _colSpan, value); } } public SolidColorBrush Brush { get; set; } public string BrushCode { get { return Brush.Color.ToString(); } } } Then I copied the GridViewItem’s style locally. To do this, I use Expression Blend’s functionality. It has the disadvantage to copy a large portion of XAML to your application, but the HUGE advantage to allow you to change the look and feel of your GridViewItem everywhere in the application. For example, you can change the selection chrome, the item’s alignments and many other properties. Actually everytime I use a ListBox, ListView or any other data control, I typically copy the item style to a resource dictionary in my application and I tweak it. Note that Blend for Windows 8 apps is automatically installed with every edition of Visual Studio 2012 (including Express) so you have no excuses anymore not to use Blend :) Open MainPage.xaml in Expression Blend by right clicking on the MainPage.xaml file in the Solution Explorer and selecting Open in Blend from the context menu. Note that the items do not look very nice! The reason is that the default ItemContainerStyle sets the content’s alignment to “Center” which I never quite understood. Seems to me that you rather want the content to be stretched, but anyway it is easy to change.   Right click on the GridView on the left and select Edit Additional Templates, Edit Generated Item Container (ItemContainerStyle), Edit a Copy. In the Create Style Resource dialog, enter the name “DefaultGridViewItemStyle”, select “Application” and press OK. Side note 1: You need to save in a global resource dictionary because later we will need to retrieve that Style from a global location. Side note 2": I would rather copy the style to an external resource dictionary that I link into the App.xaml file, but I want to keep things simple here. Blend switches in Template edit mode. The template you are editing now is inside the ItemContainerStyle and will govern the appearance of your items. This is where, for instance, the “checked” chrome is defined, and where you can alter it if you need to. Note that you can reuse this style for all your GridViews even if you use a different DataTemplate for your items. Makes sense? I probably need to think about writing another blog post dedicated to the ItemContainerStyle :) In the breadcrumb bar on top of the page, click on the style icon. The property we want to change now can be changed in the Style instead of the Template, which is a better idea. Blend is not in Style edit mode, as you can see in the Objects and Timeline pane. In the Properties pane, in the Search box, enter the word “content”. This will filter all the properties containing that partial string, including the two we are interested in: HorizontalContentAlignment and VerticalContentAlignment. Set these two values to “Stretch” instead of the default “Center”. Using the breadcrumb bar again, set the scope back to the Page (by clicking on the first crumb on the left). Notice how the items are now showing as squares in the first GridView. We will now use the same ItemContainerStyle for the second GridView. To do this, right click on the second GridView and select Edit Additional Templates, Edit Generate Item Container, Apply Resource, DefaultGridViewItemStyle. The page now looks nicer: And now for the ColumnSpan! So now, let’s change the ColumnSpan property. First, let’s define a new Style that inherits the ItemContainerStyle we created before. Make sure that you save everything in Blend by pressing Ctrl-Shift-S. Open App.xaml in Visual Studio. Below the newly created DefaultGridViewItemStyle resource, add the following style: <Style x:Key="WideGridViewItemStyle" TargetType="GridViewItem" BasedOn="{StaticResource DefaultGridViewItemStyle}"> <Setter Property="VariableSizedWrapGrid.ColumnSpan" Value="2" /> </Style> Add a new class to the project, and name it MainItemStyleSelector. Implement the class as follows: public class MainItemStyleSelector : StyleSelector { protected override Style SelectStyleCore(object item, DependencyObject container) { var i = (Item)item; if (i.ColSpan == 2) { return Application.Current.Resources["WideGridViewItemStyle"] as Style; } return Application.Current.Resources["DefaultGridViewItemStyle"] as Style; } } In MainPage.xaml, add a resource to the Page.Resources section: <local:MainItemStyleSelector x:Key="MainItemStyleSelector" /> In MainPage.xaml, replace the ItemContainerStyle property on the first GridView with the ItemContainerStyleSelector property, pointing to the StaticResource we just defined. <GridView ItemsSource="{Binding Items}" ItemTemplate="{StaticResource DataTemplate1}" VerticalAlignment="Top" ItemContainerStyleSelector="{StaticResource MainItemStyleSelector}"> <GridView.ItemsPanel> <ItemsPanelTemplate> <VariableSizedWrapGrid ItemHeight="150" ItemWidth="150" /> </ItemsPanelTemplate> </GridView.ItemsPanel> </GridView> Do the same for the second GridView as well. Finally, in the MainViewModel, change the ColumnSpan property on the 3rd Item to 2. new Item { Brush = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Green), ColSpan = 2 }, Running the application now creates the following image, which is what we wanted. Notice how the green item is now a “wide tile”. You can also experiment by creating different Styles, all inheriting the DefaultGridViewItemStyle and using different values of RowSpan for instance. This will allow you to create any layout you want, while leaving the heavy lifting of “flowing the layout” to the GridView control. What about changing these values dynamically? Of course as we can see in the Start menu, it would be nice to be able to change the ColumnSpan and maybe even the RowSpan values at runtime. Unfortunately at this time I have not found a good way to do that. I am investigating however and will make sure to post a follow up when I find what I am looking for!   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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