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• tfs 2010 RC Agile Process template update New Task progress report

  Maybe my next post will just be about why I am so excited and impressed with the out of the box templates.  But, for this first blog with my new focus, I thought I would just walk through the process I went through to create a task progress report (to enhance the out of the box Agile template). So, I started with the MSF for Agile Development 5.0 RC template.  After reviewing the template, I came away pretty excited about many of the new reports.  I am especially excited about the reporting services reports.  The big advantage I see here is that these are querying the Warehouse directly instead of the Analysis Services Cube which means that they are much closer to real-time which I find very important for reports like Burndown and task status.  One report that I focused on right away was the User Story Progress Report.  An overview is shown below: This report is very useful, but a lot of our internal managers really prefer to manage at the task level and either dont have stories in TFS or would like to view this type of report for tasks in addition to the User Stories.  So, what did I do? Step 1: Download the Agile Template In VS 2010 RC, open Process Template Manager from Team->Team Project Collection Settings.  Download the MSF for Agile Development template to your local file system.  A project template is a folder of xml files.  There is a ProcessTemplate.xml in the root and then a bunch of directories for things like Work Item Definitions and Queries, Reports, Shared Documents and Source Control Settings.  Step 2: Copy the folder My plan here is to make a new template with all of my modifications.  You can also just enhance update the MSF template.  However, I think it is cleaner when you start making modifications to make your own template.  So, copy the folder and name it with your new template name. Step 3: Change Template Name Open ProcessTemplate.xml and change the <name> of the template. Step 4: Copy the rdl of the Report you want to use a starting point In my case, I copied Stories Progress.rdl and named the file Task Progress Breakdown.rdl.  I reviewed the requirements for the new report with some of the users here and came up with this plan.  Should show tasks and be expandable to show subtasks.  Should add Assigned To and Estimated Finish Date as 2 extra columns. Step 5: Walkthrough the existing report to understand how it works The main thing that I do here is try to get the sql to run in SQL Management Studio.  So, I can walkthrough the process of building up the data for the report. After analyzing this particular report I found a couple of very useful things.  One, this report is already built to display subtasks if I just flip the IncludeTasks flag to 1.  So, if you are using Stories and have tasks assigned to each story.  This might give you everything you want.  For my purposes, I did make that change to the Stories Progress report as I find it to be a more useful report to be able to see the tasks that comprise each story.  But, I still wanted a task only version with the additional fields. Step 6: Update the report definition I tend to work on rdl in visual studio directly as xml.  Especially when I am just altering an existing report, I find it easier than trying to deal with the BI Studio designer.  For my report I made the following changes. Updated Fields Removed Stack Rank and Replaced with Priority since we dont use Stack Rank Added FinishDate and AssignedTo Changed the root deliverable SQL to pull @tasks instead of @deliverablecategory and added a join CurrentWorkItemView for FinishDate and Assigned to SELECT cwi.[System_Id] AS ID FROM [CurrentWorkItemView] cwi             WHERE cwi.[System_WorkItemType] IN (@Task)             AND cwi.[ProjectNodeGUID] = @ProjectGuid SELECT lh.SourceWorkItemID AS ID FROM FactWorkItemLinkHistory lh             INNER JOIN [CurrentWorkItemView] cwi ON lh.TargetWorkItemID = cwi.[System_Id]             WHERE lh.WorkItemLinkTypeSK = @ParentWorkItemLinkTypeSK                 AND lh.RemovedDate = CONVERT(DATETIME, '9999', 126)                 AND lh.TeamProjectCollectionSK = @TeamProjectCollectionSK                 AND cwi.[System_WorkItemType] NOT IN (@DeliverableCategory) Added AssignedTo and FinishDate columns to the @Rollups table Added two columns to the table used for column headers <Tablix Name="ProgressTable">         <TablixBody>           <TablixColumns>             <TablixColumn>               <Width>2.7625in</Width>             </TablixColumn>             <TablixColumn>               <Width>0.5125in</Width>             </TablixColumn>             <TablixColumn>               <Width>3.4625in</Width>             </TablixColumn>             <TablixColumn>               <Width>0.7625in</Width>             </TablixColumn>             <TablixColumn>               <Width>1.25in</Width>             </TablixColumn>             <TablixColumn>               <Width>1.25in</Width>             </TablixColumn>           </TablixColumns> Added Cells for the two new headers Added Cells to the data table to include the two new values (Assigned to & Finish Date) Changed a bunch of widths that would change the format of the report to display landscape and have room for the two additional columns Set the Value of the IncludeTasks Parameter to 1 <ReportParameter Name="IncludeTasks">       <DataType>Integer</DataType>       <DefaultValue>         <Values>           <Value>=1</Value>         </Values>       </DefaultValue>       <Prompt>IncludeTasks</Prompt>       <Hidden>true</Hidden>     </ReportParameter> Change a few descriptions on how the report should be used This is the resulting report I have attached the final rdl. Step 7: Update ReportTasks.xml Last step before the template is ready for use is to update the reportTasks.xml file in the reports folder.  This file defines the reports that are available in the template.           <report name="Task Progress Breakdown" filename="Reports\Task Progress Breakdown.rdl" folder="Project Management" cacheExpiration="30">             <parameters>               <parameter name="ExplicitProject" value="" />             </parameters>             <datasources>               <reference name="/Tfs2010ReportDS" dsname="TfsReportDS" />             </datasources>           </report> Step 8: Upload the template Open the process Template Manager just like Step 1.  And upload the new template. Thats it.  One other note, if you want to add this report to existing team project you will have to go into reportmanager (the reporting services portal) and upload the rdl to that projects directory.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Code Bubbles: Disruption comes to the IDE

  - by andrewbrust

  If you’re like me, you might see the open source Eclipse IDE as a copy or, more generously, a port of the Microsoft’s Visual Studio for the non-.NET world.  It’s not that Microsoft invented the IDE (I would credit Borland with that), but they really took the idea and ran with it for the first version of Visual Studio .NET in 2002.  The question is whether someone outside of Microsoft could take the modern IDE yet another major step forward in both principle and productivity. I think that has actually happened already, and I think the innovator in question is a second-year Computer Science PhD student at Brown, named Andrew Bragdon.  His project, which he calls Code Bubbles, is an IDE that allows for editing, debugging and exploration of code in “bubbles” which remind me a little bit of the discrete note tiles on OneNote…but they’re much more than that.  Bubbles actually allow for call stack traversal, saved debug sessions, sophisticated breakpoint and value watch behaviors and more.  And because bubbles, unlike windows, are borderless, and focus on code fragments rather than whole files, the de-cluttering effect is unbelievably liberating.  The best way to understand what Code Bubbles does is to watch the screencast video:     Code Bubbles is an IDE for Java development.  Why didn’t Microsoft come up with something like this for .NET devs?  Between the existing features in Visual Studio 2010, its WPF code editor, and the fact that OneNote’s UI bears some affinity to Code Bubbles’, it’s interesting that Microsoft still has not thought outside of its own “box” to get us something like this. Heck, that’s easy for me to say.  But it’s easy for you to say that you’d like something like this in Visual Studio sometime soon.  That’s because the ASP.NET site within UserVoice is taking votes on this very issue.  Just click this link and vote! Thanks to my fellow Microsoft Regional Director Sondre Bjellås for making me aware of Code Bubbles, and to RD Steve Smith for creating the UserVoice voting option.

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• Enable compiz on intel core i5 (Nvidia GT330M) based laptop

  - by Eshwar

  Hi, I am trying to enable compiz on my laptop via Desktop Effects but it does not allow it. I modified the xorg.conf file as on the compiz wiki but still no luck. So can someone just tell me how to enable compiz desktop on an Intel i5 based system. This is an Arrandale processor so its got the graphics bit on the processor itself. My system also has a discrete graphics card (Nvidia GT330M - yup its those hybrid graphics combos n- not Optimus). As far as i know the nvidia gpu is not being used since the intel one is enabled and there is no bios route to disable it. The laptop is a Dell Vostro 3700 with bios version A10 I did lotsa google searches about intel compiz, etc but not a single conclusive guide as to how to enable it. so my guess is it should work out of the box. but it doesn't. glxinfo gives me: name of display: :0.0 Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". Error: couldn't find RGB GLX visual or fbconfig Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". 3 GLXFBConfigs: visual x bf lv rg d st colorbuffer ax dp st accumbuffer ms cav id dep cl sp sz l ci b ro r g b a bf th cl r g b a ns b eat ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Segmentation fault lsbusb gives me: 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:0046] (rev 18) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: nVidia Corporation GT216 [GeForce GT 330M] [10de:0a29] (rev a2)

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• Installing a VADTools design component into your 3CX Voice Application Designer toolbox

  - by ParadigmShift

  The 3CX Voice Application Designer is an innovative tool for creating IVR (Interactive Voice Response) Applications, or Voice Applications.  It is a familiar drag-and-drop experience that Visual Studio developers will get the hang of pretty quick. Additionally, there are new 3rd party components released by BlueVoice, that are distributed though www.UtahVoIPStore.com I thought I’d post a quick introduction to it, by showing how to install a component into you designer tool box.  In this example I am using the CommandLine component, which lets you call the command line from your voice application. First, copy the ZIP file that came with your component to the root folder of your VAD project. Now extract the zip file into the root directory. The component will be in the root directory and the Libraries directory will have a new DLL file. Open your VAD project and right-click on the project in project explorer to add the new component to your project. Navigate to the root folder of your project and select the new component. The component is now ready for you to use in your toolbox.

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• Including Overestimates in MSF Agile Burndown Report

  After using the MSF Agile Burndown report for a few weeks in our new TFS 2010 environment, I have to say I am a huge fan.  I especially find the assignment of Work (hours) portion to be very useful in motivating the team to keep their tasks up to date every day.  Here is a view of the report that you get out of the box. However, I have one problem.  Id like the top line to have some more meaning.  Specifically, when it is changing is that an indication of scope creep, mis-estimation or a combination of the two.  So, today I decided to try to build in a view that would show overestimated time.  This would give me a more consistent top line.  My idea was to add another visual area on top of the graph whenever my originally estimated time was greater than the sum of completed and remaining.  This will effectively show me at least when the top line goes down whether it was scope change or over-estimation. Here is the final result. How did I do it?  Step 1: Add Cumulative_Original_Estimate field to the dsBurndown My approach was to follow the pattern where the completed time is included in the burndown chart and add my Overestimated hours.  First I added a field to the dsBurndown to hold the estimated time.         <Field Name="Cumulative_Original_Estimate">           <DataField><?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><Field xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xsi:type="Measure" UniqueName="[Measures].[Microsoft_VSTS_Scheduling_OriginalEstimate]" /></DataField>           <rd:TypeName>System.Int32</rd:TypeName>         </Field> Step 2: Add a column to the query SELECT {     [Measures].[DateValue],     [Measures].[Work Item Count],     [Measures].[Microsoft_VSTS_Scheduling_RemainingWork],     [Measures].[Microsoft_VSTS_Scheduling_CompletedWork],     [Measures].[Microsoft_VSTS_Scheduling_OriginalEstimate],     [Measures].[RemainingWorkLine],     [Measures].[CountLine] Step 3: Add a new Item to the QueryDefinition <Item> <ID xsi:type="Measure"> <MeasureName>Microsoft_VSTS_Scheduling_OriginalEstimate</MeasureName> <UniqueName>[Measures].[Microsoft_VSTS_Scheduling_OriginalEstimate]</UniqueName> </ID> <ItemCaption>Cumulative Original Estimate</ItemCaption> <FormattedValue>true</FormattedValue> </Item> Step 4: Add a new ChartMember to DundasChartControl1 The burndown chart is called DundasChartControl1.  I need to add a ChartMember for the estimated time. <ChartMember>   <Label>Cumulative Original Estimate</Label> </ChartMember> Step 5: Add a ChartSeries to show the Overestimated Time <ChartSeries Name="OriginalEstimate">   <Hidden>=IIF(Parameters!YAxis.Value="count",True,False)</Hidden>   <ChartDataPoints>     <ChartDataPoint>       <ChartDataPointValues>         <Y>=IIF(Parameters!YAxis.Value = "hours", IIF(SUM(Fields!Cumulative_Original_Estimate.Value)>SUM(Fields!Cumulative_Completed_Work.Value+Fields!Cumulative_Remaining_Work.Value), SUM(Fields!Cumulative_Original_Estimate.Value-(Fields!Cumulative_Completed_Work.Value+Fields!Cumulative_Remaining_Work.Value)),Nothing),Nothing)</Y>       </ChartDataPointValues>       <ChartDataLabel>         <Style>           <FontFamily>Microsoft Sans Serif</FontFamily>           <FontSize>8pt</FontSize>         </Style>       </ChartDataLabel>       <Style>         <Border>           <Color>#9bdb00</Color>           <Width>0.75pt</Width>         </Border>         <Color>#666666</Color>         <BackgroundGradientEndColor>#666666</BackgroundGradientEndColor>       </Style>       <ChartMarker>         <Style />       </ChartMarker>       <CustomProperties>         <CustomProperty>           <Name>LabelStyle</Name>           <Value>Top</Value>         </CustomProperty>       </CustomProperties>     </ChartDataPoint>   </ChartDataPoints>   <Type>Area</Type>   <Subtype>Stacked</Subtype>   <Style />   <ChartEmptyPoints>     <Style>       <Color>#00ffffff</Color>     </Style>     <ChartMarker>       <Style />     </ChartMarker>     <ChartDataLabel>       <Style />     </ChartDataLabel>   </ChartEmptyPoints>   <LegendName>Default</LegendName>   <ChartItemInLegend>     <LegendText>Overestimated Hours</LegendText>   </ChartItemInLegend>   <ChartAreaName>Default</ChartAreaName>   <ValueAxisName>Primary</ValueAxisName>   <CategoryAxisName>Primary</CategoryAxisName>   <ChartSmartLabel>     <Disabled>true</Disabled>     <MaxMovingDistance>22.5pt</MaxMovingDistance>   </ChartSmartLabel> </ChartSeries> Thats it.  I find the improved report to add some value over the out of the box version.  You can download the updated rdl for the report here.  Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• WPF Login Verification Using Active Directory

  - by psheriff

  Back in October of 2009 I created a WPF login screen (Figure 1) that just showed how to create the layout for a login screen. That one sample is probably the most downloaded sample we have. So in this blog post, I thought I would update that screen and also hook it up to show how to authenticate your user against Active Directory. Figure 1: Original WPF Login Screen I have updated not only the code behind for this login screen, but also the look and feel as shown in Figure 2. Figure 2: An Updated WPF Login Screen The UI To create the UI for this login screen you can refer to my October of 2009 blog post to see how to create the borderless window. You can then look at the sample code to see how I created the linear gradient brush for the background. There are just a few differences in this screen compared to the old version. First, I changed the key image and instead of using words for the Cancel and Login buttons, I used some icons. Secondly I added a text box to hold the Domain name that you wish to authenticate against. This text box is automatically filled in if you are connected to a network. In the Window_Loaded event procedure of the winLogin window you can retrieve the user’s domain name from the Environment.UserDomainName property. For example: txtDomain.Text = Environment.UserDomainName The ADHelper Class Instead of coding the call to authenticate the user directly in the login screen I created an ADHelper class. This will make it easier if you want to add additional AD calls in the future. The ADHelper class contains just one method at this time called AuthenticateUser. This method authenticates a user name and password against the specified domain. The login screen will gather the credentials from the user such as their user name and password, and also the domain name to authenticate against. To use this ADHelper class you will need to add a reference to the System.DirectoryServices.dll in .NET. The AuthenticateUser Method In order to authenticate a user against your Active Directory you will need to supply a valid LDAP path string to the constructor of the DirectoryEntry class. The LDAP path string will be in the format LDAP://DomainName. You will also pass in the user name and password to the constructor of the DirectoryEntry class as well. With a DirectoryEntry object populated with this LDAP path string, the user name and password you will now pass this object to the constructor of a DirectorySearcher object. You then perform the FindOne method on the DirectorySearcher object. If the DirectorySearcher object returns a SearchResult then the credentials supplied are valid. If the credentials are not valid on the Active Directory then an exception is thrown. C#public bool AuthenticateUser(string domainName, string userName,  string password){  bool ret = false;   try  {    DirectoryEntry de = new DirectoryEntry("LDAP://" + domainName,                                           userName, password);    DirectorySearcher dsearch = new DirectorySearcher(de);    SearchResult results = null;     results = dsearch.FindOne();     ret = true;  }  catch  {    ret = false;  }   return ret;} Visual Basic Public Function AuthenticateUser(ByVal domainName As String, _ ByVal userName As String, ByVal password As String) As Boolean  Dim ret As Boolean = False   Try    Dim de As New DirectoryEntry("LDAP://" & domainName, _                                 userName, password)    Dim dsearch As New DirectorySearcher(de)    Dim results As SearchResult = Nothing     results = dsearch.FindOne()     ret = True  Catch    ret = False  End Try   Return retEnd Function In the Click event procedure under the Login button you will find the following code that will validate the credentials that the user types into the login window. C#private void btnLogin_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e){  ADHelper ad = new ADHelper();   if(ad.AuthenticateUser(txtDomain.Text,         txtUserName.Text, txtPassword.Password))    DialogResult = true;  else    MessageBox.Show("Unable to Authenticate Using the                      Supplied Credentials");} Visual BasicPrivate Sub btnLogin_Click(ByVal sender As Object, _ ByVal e As RoutedEventArgs)  Dim ad As New ADHelper()   If ad.AuthenticateUser(txtDomain.Text, txtUserName.Text, _                         txtPassword.Password) Then    DialogResult = True  Else    MessageBox.Show("Unable to Authenticate Using the                      Supplied Credentials")  End IfEnd Sub Displaying the Login Screen At some point when your application launches, you will need to display your login screen modally. Below is the code that you would call to display the login form (named winLogin in my sample application). This code is called from the main application form, and thus the owner of the login screen is set to “this”. You then call the ShowDialog method on the login screen to have this form displayed modally. After the user clicks on one of the two buttons you need to check to see what the DialogResult property was set to. The DialogResult property is a nullable type and thus you first need to check to see if the value has been set. C# private void DisplayLoginScreen(){  winLogin win = new winLogin();   win.Owner = this;  win.ShowDialog();  if (win.DialogResult.HasValue && win.DialogResult.Value)    MessageBox.Show("User Logged In");  else    this.Close();} Visual Basic Private Sub DisplayLoginScreen()  Dim win As New winLogin()   win.Owner = Me  win.ShowDialog()  If win.DialogResult.HasValue And win.DialogResult.Value Then    MessageBox.Show("User Logged In")  Else    Me.Close()  End IfEnd Sub Summary Creating a nice looking login screen is fairly simple to do in WPF. Using the Active Directory services from a WPF application should make your desktop programming task easier as you do not need to create your own user authentication system. I hope this article gave you some ideas on how to create a login screen in WPF. NOTE: You can download the complete sample code for this blog entry at my website: http://www.pdsa.com/downloads. Click on Tips & Tricks, then select 'WPF Login Verification Using Active Directory' from the drop down list. Good Luck with your Coding,Paul Sheriff ** SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY BLOG READERS **We frequently offer a FREE gift for readers of my blog. Visit http://www.pdsa.com/Event/Blog for your FREE gift!

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• Accessing and Updating Data in ASP.NET: Filtering Data Using a CheckBoxList

  Filtering Database Data with Parameters, an earlier installment in this article series, showed how to filter the data returned by ASP.NET's data source controls. In a nutshell, the data source controls can include parameterized queries whose parameter values are defined via parameter controls. For example, the SqlDataSource can include a parameterized SelectCommand, such as: SELECT * FROM Books WHERE Price > @Price. Here, @Price is a parameter; the value for a parameter can be defined declaratively using a parameter control. ASP.NET offers a variety of parameter controls, including ones that use hard-coded values, ones that retrieve values from the querystring, and ones that retrieve values from session, and others. Perhaps the most useful parameter control is the ControlParameter, which retrieves its value from a Web control on the page. Using the ControlParameter we can filter the data returned by the data source control based on the end user's input. While the ControlParameter works well with most types of Web controls, it does not work as expected with the CheckBoxList control. The ControlParameter is designed to retrieve a single property value from the specified Web control, but the CheckBoxList control does not have a property that returns all of the values of its selected items in a form that the CheckBoxList control can use. Moreover, if you are using the selected CheckBoxList items to query a database you'll quickly find that SQL does not offer out of the box functionality for filtering results based on a user-supplied list of filter criteria. The good news is that with a little bit of effort it is possible to filter data based on the end user's selections in a CheckBoxList control. This article starts with a look at how to get SQL to filter data based on a user-supplied, comma-delimited list of values. Next, it shows how to programmatically construct a comma-delimited list that represents the selected CheckBoxList values and pass that list into the SQL query. Finally, we'll explore creating a custom parameter control to handle this logic declaratively. Read on to learn more! Read More >

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• VSNewFile: A Visual Studio Addin to More Easily Add New Items to a Project

  - by InfinitiesLoop

  My first Visual Studio Add-in! Creating add-ins is pretty simple, once you get used to the CommandBar model it is using, which is apparently a general Office suite extensibility mechanism. Anyway, let me first explain my motivation for this. It started out as an academic exercise, as I have always wanted to dip my feet in a little VS extensibility. But I thought of a legitimate need for an add-in, at least in my personal experience, so it took on new life. But I figured I can’t be the only one who has felt this way, so I decided to publish the add-in, and host it on GitHub (VSNewFile on GitHub) hoping to spur contributions. Adding Files the Built-in Way Here’s the problem I wanted to solve. You’re working on a project, and it’s time to add a new file to the project. Whatever it is – a class, script, html page, aspx page, or what-have-you, you go through a menu or keyboard shortcut to get to the “Add New Item” dialog. Typically, you do it by right-clicking the location where you want the file (the project or a folder of it): This brings up a dialog the contains, well, every conceivable type of item you might want to add. It’s all the available item templates, which can result in anywhere from a ton to a veritable sea of choices. To be fair, this dialog has been revamped in Visual Studio 2010, which organizes it a little better than Visual Studio 2008, and adds a search box. It also loads noticeably faster.   To me, this dialog is just getting in my way. If I want to add a JavaScript script to my project, I don’t want to have to hunt for the script template item in this dialog. Yes, it is categorized, and yes, it now has a search box. But still, all this UI to swim through when all I need is a new file in the project. I will name it. I will provide the content, I don’t even need a ‘template’. VS kind of realizes this. In the add menu in a class library project, for example, there is a “Add Class…” choice. But all this really does is select that project item from the dialog by default. You still must wait for the dialog, see it, and type in a name for the file. How is that really any different than hitting F2 on an existing item? It isn’t. Adding Files the Hack Way What I often find myself doing, just to avoid going through this dialog, is to copy and paste an existing file, rename it, then “CTRL-A, DEL” the content. In a few short keystrokes I’ve got my new file. Even if the original file wasn’t the right type, it doesn’t matter – I will rename it anyway, including the extension. It works well enough if the place I am adding the file to doesn’t have much in it already. But if there are a lot of files at that level, it sucks, because the new file will have the name “Copy of xyz”, causing it to be moved into the ‘C’ section of the alphabetically sorted items, which might be far, far away from the original file (and so I tend to try and copy a file that starts with ‘C’ *evil grin*). Using ‘Export Template’ To be completely fair I should at least mention this feature. I’m not even sure if this is new in VS 2010 or not (I think so). But it allows you to export a project item or items, including potential project references required by it. Then it becomes a new item in the available ‘installed templates’. No doubt this is useful to help bootstrap new projects. But that still requires you to go through the ‘New Item’ dialog. Adding Files with VSNewFile So hopefully I have sufficiently defined the problem and got a few of you to think, “Yeah, me too!”… What VSNewFile does is let you skip the dialog entirely by adding project items directly to the context menu. But it does a bit more than that, so do read on. For example, to add a new class, you can right-click the location and pick that option. A new .cs file is instantly added to the project, and the new item is selected and put into the ‘rename’ mode immediately. The default items available are shown here. But you can customize them. You can also customize the content of each template. To do so, you create a directory in your documents folder, ‘VSNewFile Templates’. In there, you drop the templates you want to use, but you name them in a particular way. For example, here’s a template that will add a new item named “Add TITLE”. It will add a project item named “SOMEFILE.foo” (or ‘SOMEFILE1.foo’ if that exists, etc). The format of the file name is: <ORDER>_<KEY>_<BASE FILENAME>_<ICON ID>_<TITLE>.<EXTENTION> Where: <ORDER> is a number that lets you determine the order of the items in the menu (relative to each other). <KEY> is a case sensitive identifier different for each template item. More on that later. <BASE FILENAME> is the default name of the file, which doesn’t matter that much, since they will be renaming it anyway. <ICON ID> is a number the dictates the icon used for the menu item. There are a huge number of built-in choices. More on that later. <TITLE> is the string that will appear in the menu. And, the contents of the file are the default content for the item (the ‘template’). The content of the file can contain anything you want, of course. But it also supports two tokens: %NAMESPACE% and %FILENAME%, which will be replaced with the corresponding values. Here is the content of this sample: testing Namespace = %NAMESPACE% Filename = %FILENAME% I kind went back and forth on this. I could have made it so there’d be an XML or JSON file that defines the templates, instead of cramming all this data into the filename itself. I like the simplicity of this better. It makes it easy to customize since you can literally just throw these files around, copy them from someone else, etc, without worrying about merge data into a central description file, in whatever format. Here’s our new item showing up: Practical Use One immediate thing I am using this for is to make it easier to add very commonly used scripts to my web projects. For example, uh, say, jQuery? :) All I need to do is drop jQuery-1.4.2.js and jQuery-1.4.2.min.js into the templates folder, provide the order, title, etc, and then instantly, I can now add jQuery to any project I have without even thinking about “where is jQuery? Can I copy it from that other project?”   Using the KEY There are two reasons for the ‘key’ portion of the item. First, it allows you to turn off the built-in, default templates, which are: FILE = Add File (generic, empty file) VB = Add VB Class CS = Add C# Class (includes some basic usings) HTML = Add HTML page (includes basic structure, doctype, etc) JS = Add Script (includes an immediately-invoking function closure) To turn one off, just include a file with the name “_<KEY>”. For example, to turn off all the items except our custom one, you do this: The other reason for the key is that there are new Visual Studio Commands created for each one. This makes it possible to bind a keyboard shortcut to one of them. So you could, for example, have a keyboard combination that adds a new web page to your website, or a new CS class to your class library, etc. Here is our sample item showing up in the keyboard bindings option. Even though the contents of the template directory may change from one launch of Visual Studio to the next, the bindings will remain attached to any item with a particular key, thanks to it taking care not to lose keyboard bindings even though the commands are completely recreated each time. The Icon Face ID Visual Studio uses a Microsoft Office style add-in mechanism, I gather. There are a predetermined set of built-in icons available. You can use your own icons when developing add-ins, of course, but I’m no designer. I just wanted to find appropriate-ish icons for the built-in templates, and allow you to choose from an existing built-in icon for your own. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot out there on the interwebs that helps you figure out what the built-in types are. There’s an MSDN article that describes at length a way to create a program that lists all the icons. But I don’t want to write a program to figure them out! Just show them to me! Sheesh :) Thankfully, someone out there felt the same way, and uses a novel hack to get the icons to show up in an outlook toolbar. He then painstakingly took screenshots of them, one group at a time. It isn’t complete though – there are tens of thousands of icons. But it’s good enough. If anyone has an exhaustive list, please let me, and the rest of the add-in community know. Icon Face ID Reference Installing the Add-in It will work with Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010. Just unzip the release into your Documents\Visual Studio 20xx\Addins folder. It contains the binary and the Visual Studio “.addin” file. For example, the path to mine is: C:\Users\InfinitiesLoop\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Addins Conclusion So that’s it! I hope you find it as useful as I have. It’s on GitHub, so if you’re into this kind of thing, please do fork it and improve it! Reference: VSNewFile on GitHub VSNewFile release on GitHub Icon Face ID Reference

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• How to Change the Default Application for Android Tasks

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  When it comes time to switch from using one application to another on your Android device it isn’t immediately clear how to do so. Follow along as we walk you through swapping the default application for any Android task. Initially changing the default application in Android is a snap. After you install the new application (new web browser, new messaging tool, new whatever) Android prompts you to pick which application (the new or the old) you wish to use for that task the first time you attempt to open a web page, check your text message, or otherwise trigger the event. Easy! What about when it comes time to uninstall the app or just change back to your old app? There’s no helpful pop-up dialog box for that. Read on as we show you how to swap out any default application for any other with a minimum of fuss. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Change the Default Application for Android Tasks Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images The How-To Geek Valentine’s Day Gift Guide Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines RGB? CMYK? Alpha? What Are Image Channels and What Do They Mean? How to Recover that Photo, Picture or File You Deleted Accidentally Now Together and Complete – McBain: The Movie [Simpsons Video] Be Creative by Using Hex and RGB Codes for Crayola Crayon Colors on Your Next Web or Art Project [Geek Fun] Flash Updates; Finally Supports Full Screen Video on Multiple Monitors 22 Ways to Recycle an Altoids Mint Tin Make Your Desktop Go Native with the Tribal Arts Theme for Windows 7 A History of Vintage Transformers: Decepticons Edition [Infographic]

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• Where did my form go in SharePoint 2010!?

  - by MOSSLover

  So I was working on an intro to development demo for the Central NJ .Net User Group and I found a few kinks.  I opened up a form to custom in InfoPath and Quick Published it wouldn’t work.  I imed my InfoPath guru friend, Lori Gowin, she said try to run a regular publish.  The form was still not showing up in SharePoint.  I could open it and it knew my changes, but it would just not render in a browser.  So I decided to create a form from scratch without using the button customize form in the list.  That did not work, so it was google time.  Finally I found this blog post: http://qwertconsulting.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/list-form-from-infopath-2010-is-blank/.  Once I went into the configuration wizard and turned on the State Service everything worked perfectly fine.  It was great.  See I normally don’t run through the wizard and check the box to turn all the services on in SharePoint.  I usually like a leaner environment plus I want to learn how everything works.  So I guess most people had no idea what was going on in the background.  To get InfoPath to work you need the session state.  It’s doing some type of caching in the browser.  Very neat stuff.  I hope this helps one of you out there some day. Technorati Tags: InfoPath 2010,SharePoint 2010,State Service

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• OTN Virtual Developer Day for WebLogic Server and WebLogic Developer Broadcasts

  - by mike.lehmann

  To further move the new year of 2011 underway for WebLogic Server, quite a series of hands on technical online events and broadcasts are about to get underway from the WebLogic team. The first is Virtual Developer Day: Oracle WebLogic Server which is an online event that combines hands on labs with WebLogic Server through a series of Virtual Box images. This event will cover things like the new Java EE 6 capabilities one can use on WebLogic Server, using Maven and Hudson with WebLogic Server, developing with Web services on WebLogic Server and even upgrading from Oracle Application Server. Very technical, very hands on. And its global - multiple geographies covered.  Nice! James Bayer has put out a full agenda for this on his blog as well as links on how to register. The second is a 5 week long weekly technical broadcast under the umbrella of Accelerate Your Development with Oracle WebLogic Suite walking through topics like working with JPA, designing distributed caching strategies with WebLogic Server, advanced JMS topics and UI topics like JQuery as well restful Web services with Jersey and JAX-RS.  Again in James' blog the full agenda is available to check out if it is interesting for you to attend including a brief video introduction outlining in a bit more detail exactly what will be covered. Hopefully between these two events and the release of WebLogic Server 10.3.4 earlier in January, we are kicking off 2011 in a good fashion.  Looking forward to sharing more as we go forward in 2011.

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• Windows Azure Boot Camp coming to KC in April

  - by John Alexander

  Interested in getting up to speed on Windows Azure? Then check out this FREE boot camp, all across the US this   What is a Windows Azure Boot Camp? Windows Azure Boot Camp is a two day deep dive class to get you up to speed on developing for Windows Azure. The class includes a trainer with deep real world experience with Azure, as well as a series of labs so you can practice what you just learned. ABC is more than just a class, it is also an event in a box. If you don't see a class near you, then throw your own. We provide all of the materials and training you need to host your own class. This can be for your company, your customers, your friends, or even your family. Please let us know so we can give you all of the details.   Awesome. How much does it cost? Thanks to all of our fantabulous sponsors, this two day training event is FREE! We will provide drinks and snacks, but you will be on your own for lunch on both days. This is a training class after all.   How do I attend one? You can click here to register for the Kansas City event on April 8th and 9th or click here to see where else ABC will be… WHAT TO BRING – important!!!

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• Oracle Insurance Gets Innovative with Insurance Business Intelligence

  - by nicole.bruns(at)oracle.com

  Oracle Insurance announced yesterday the availability of Oracle Insurance Insight 7.0, an insurance-specific data warehouse and business intelligence (BI) system that transforms the traditional approach to BI by involving business users in the creation and maintenance."Rapid access to business intelligence is essential to compete and thrive in today's insurance industry," said Srini Venkatasantham, vice president, Product Strategy, Oracle Insurance. "The adaptive data modeling approach of Oracle Insurance Insight 7.0, combined with the insurance-specific data model, offers global insurance companies a faster, easier way to get the intelligence they need to make better-informed business decisions." New Features in Oracle Insurance 7.0 include:"Adaptive Data Modeling" via the new warehouse palette: Gives business users the power to configure lines of business via an easy-to-use warehouse palette tool. Oracle Insurance Insight then automatically creates data warehouse elements - such as line-specific database structures and extract-transform-load (ETL) processes -speeding up time-to-value for BI initiatives. Out-of-the-box insurance models or create-from-scratch option: Includes pre-built content and interfaces for six Property and Casualty (P&C) lines. Additionally, insurers can use the warehouse palette to deploy any and all P&C or General Insurance lines of business from scratch, helping insurers support operations in any country.Leverages Oracle technologies: In addition to Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, the solution includes Oracle Database 11g as well as Oracle Data Integrator Enterprise Edition 11g, which delivers Extract, Load and Transform (E-L-T) architecture and eliminates the need for a separate transformation server. Additionally, the expanded Oracle technology infrastructure enables support for Oracle Exadata. Martina Conlon, a Principal with Novarica's Insurance practice, and author of Business Intelligence in Insurance: Current State, Challenges, and Expectations says, "The need for continued investment by insurers in business intelligence capabilities is widely understood, and the industry is acting. Arming the business intelligence implementation with predefined insurance specific content, and flexible and configurable technology will get these projects up and running faster."Learn moreTo see a demo of the Oracle Insurance Insight system, click hereTo read the press announcement, click here

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• How To Setup Email Alerts on Linux Using Gmail or SMTP

  - by Sysadmin Geek

  Linux machines may require administrative intervention in countless ways, but without manually logging into them how would you know about it? Here’s how to setup emails to get notified when your machines want some tender love and attention. Of course, this technique is meant for real servers, but if you’ve got a Linux box sitting in your house acting as a home server, you can use it there as well. In fact, since many home ISPs block regular outbound email, you might find this technique a great way to ensure you still get administration emails, even from your home servers. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Get the Complete Android Guide eBook for Only 99 Cents [Update: Expired] Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 7: Design and Typography How to Choose What to Back Up on Your Linux Home Server How To Harmonize Your Dual-Boot Setup for Windows and Ubuntu Hang in There Scrat! – Ice Age Wallpaper How Do You Know When You’ve Passed Geek and Headed to Nerd? On The Tip – A Lamborghini Theme for Chrome and Iron What if Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner were Human? [Video] Peaceful Winter Cabin Wallpaper Store Tabs for Later Viewing in Opera with Tab Vault

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• My View on ASP.NET Web Forms versus MVC

  - by Ricardo Peres

  Introduction A lot has been said on Web Forms and MVC, but since I was recently asked about my opinion on the subject, here it is. First, I have to say that I really like both technologies and I don’t think any is going away – just remember SharePoint, which is built on top of Web Forms. I see them as complementary, targeting different needs and leveraging different skills. Let’s go through some of their differences. Rapid Application Development Rapid Application Development (RAD) is the development process by which you have an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), a visual design surface and a toolbox, and you drag components from the toolbox to the design surface and set their properties through a property inspector. It was introduced with some of the earliest Windows graphical IDEs such as Visual Basic and Delphi. With Web Forms you have RAD out of the box. Visual Studio offers a generally good (and extensible) designer for the layout of pages and web user controls. Designing a page may simply be about dragging controls from the toolbox, setting their properties and wiring up some events to event handlers, which are implemented in code behind .NET classes. Most people will be familiar with this kind of development and enjoy it. You can see what you are doing from the beginning. MVC also has designable pages – called views in MVC terminology – the problem is that they can be built using different technologies, some of which, at the moment (MVC 4) do not support RAD – Razor, for example. I believe it is just a matter of time for that to be implemented in Visual Studio, but it will mostly consist on HTML editing, and until that day comes, you have to live with source editing. Development Model Web Forms features the same development model that you are used to from Windows Forms and other similar technologies: events fired by controls and automatic persistence of their properties between postbacks. For that, it uses concepts such as view state, which some may love and others may hate, because it may be misused quite easily, but otherwise does its job well. Another fundamental concept is data binding, by which a collection of data can be fed to a control and have it render that data somehow – just thing of the GridView control. The focus is on the page, that’s where it all starts, and you can place everything in the same code behind class: data access, business logic, layout, etc. The controls take care of generating a great part of the HTML and JavaScript for you. With MVC there is no free lunch when it comes to data persistence between requests, you have to implement it yourself. As for event handling, that is at the core of MVC, in the form of controllers and action methods, you just don’t think of them as event handlers. In MVC you need to think more in HTTP terms, so action methods such as POST and GET are relevant to you, and may write actions to handle one or the other. Also of crucial importance is model binding: the way by which MVC converts your posted data into a .NET class. This is something that ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms has introduced as well, but it is a cornerstone in MVC. MVC also has built-in validation of these .NET classes, which out of the box uses the Data Annotations API. You have full control of the generated HTML - except for that coming from the helper methods, usually small fragments - which requires a greater familiarity with the specifications. You normally rely much more on JavaScript APIs, they are even included in the Visual Studio template, that is because much less is done for you. Reuse It is difficult to accept a professional company/project that does not employ reuse. It can save a lot of time thus cutting costs significantly. Code reused in several projects matures as time goes by and helps developers learn from past experiences. ASP.NET Web Forms was built with reuse in mind, in the form of controls. Controls encapsulate functionality and are generally portable from project to project (with the notable exception of web user controls, those with an associated .ASCX markup file). ASP.NET has dozens of controls and it is very easy to develop new ones, so I believe this is a great advantage. A control can inject JavaScript code and external references as well as generate HTML an CSS. MVC on the other hand does not use controls – it is possible to use them, with some view engines like ASPX, but it is just not advisable because it breaks the flow – where do Init, Load, PreRender, etc, fit? The most similar to controls is extension methods, or helpers. They serve the same purpose – generating HTML, CSS or JavaScript – and can be reused between different projects. What differentiates them from controls is that there is no inheritance and no context – an extension method is just a static method which doesn’t know where it is being called. You also have partial views, which you can reuse in the same project, but there is no inheritance as well. This, in my view, is a weakness of MVC. Architecture Both technologies are highly extensible. I have writtenstarted writing a series of posts on ASP.NET Web Forms extensibility and will probably write another series on MVC extensibility as well. A number of scenarios are covered in any of these models, and some extensibility points apply to both, because, of course both stand upon ASP.NET. With Web Forms, if you’re like me, you start by defining you master pages, pages and controls, with some helper classes to glue everything. You may as well throw in some JavaScript, but probably you’re main work will be with plain old .NET code. The controls you define have the chance to inject JavaScript code and references, through either the ScriptManager or the page’s ClientScript object, as well as generating HTML and CSS code. The master page and page model with code behind classes offer a number of “hooks” by which you can change the normal way of things, for example, in a page you can access any control on the master page, add script or stylesheet references to its head and even change the page’s title. Also, with Web Forms, you typically have URLs in the form “/SomePath/SomePage.aspx?SomeParameter=SomeValue”, which isn’t really SEO friendly, no to mention the HTML that some controls produce, far from standards, optimization and best practices. In MVC, you also normally start by defining the master page (or layout) and views, which are the visible parts, and then define controllers on separate files. These controllers do not know anything about the views, except the names and types of the parameters that will be passed to and from them. The controller will be responsible for the data access and business logic, eventually relying on additional classes for this purpose. On a controller you only receive parameters and return a result, which may be a request for the rendering of a view, a redirection to another URL or a JSON object, to name just a few. The controller class does not know anything about the web, so you can effectively reuse it in a non-web project. This separation and the lack of programmatic access to the UI elements, makes it very difficult to implement, for example, something like SharePoint with MVC. OK, I know about Orchard, but it isn’t really a general purpose development framework, but instead, a CMS that happens to use MVC. Not having controls render HTML for you gives you in turn much more control over it – it is your responsibility to create it, which you can either consider a blessing or a curse, in the later case, you probably shouldn’t be using MVC at all. Also MVC URLs tend to be much more SEO-oriented, if you design your controllers and actions properly. Testing In a well defined architecture, you should separate business logic, data access logic and presentation logic, because these are all different things and it might even be the need to switch one implementation for another: for example, you might design a system which includes a data access layer, a business logic layer and two presentation layers, one on top of ASP.NET and the other with WPF; and the data access layer might be implemented first using NHibernate and later on switched for Entity Framework Code First. These changes are not that rare, so care should be taken in designing the system to make them possible. Web Forms are difficult to test, because it relies on event handlers which are only fired in web contexts, when a form is submitted or a page is requested. You can call them with reflection, but you have to set up a number of mocking objects first, HttpContext.Current first coming to my mind. MVC, on the other hand, makes testing controllers a breeze, so much that it even includes a template option for generating boilerplate unit test classes up from start. A well designed – from the unit test point of view - controller will receive everything it needs to work as parameters to its action methods, so you can pass whatever values you need very easily. That doesn’t mean, of course, that everything can be tested: views, for instance, are difficult to test without actually accessing the site, but MVC offers the possibility to compile views at build time, so that, at least, you know you don’t have syntax errors beforehand. Myths Some popular but unfounded myths around MVC include: You cannot use controls in MVC: not true, actually, you can, at least with the Web Forms (ASPX) view engine; the declaration and usage is exactly the same as with Web Forms; You cannot specify a base class for a view: with the ASPX view engine you can use the Inherits Page directive, with this and all the others you can use the pageBaseType and userControlBaseType attributes of the <page> element; MVC shields you from doing “bad things” on your views: well, you can place any code on a code block, at least with the ASPX view engine (you may be starting to see a pattern here), even data access code; The model is the entity model, tied to an O/RM: the model is actually any class that you use to pass values to a view, including (but generally not recommended) an entity model; Unit tests come with no cost: unit tests generally don’t cover the UI, although there are frameworks just for that (see WatiN, for example); also, for some tests, you will have to mock or replace either the HttpContext.Current property or the HttpContextBase class yourself; Everything is testable: views aren’t, without accessing the site; MVC relies on HTML5/some_cool_new_javascript_framework: there is no relation whatsoever, MVC renders whatever you want it to render and does not require any framework to be present. The thing is, the subsequent releases of MVC happened in a time when Microsoft has become much more involved in standards, so the files and technologies included in the Visual Studio templates reflect this, and it just happens to work well with jQuery, for example. Conclusion Well, this is how I see it. Some folks may think that I am being too rude on MVC, probably because I don’t like it, but that’s not true: like I said, I do like MVC and I am starting my new projects with it. I just don’t want to go along with that those that say that MVC is much superior to Web Forms, in fact, some things you can do much more easily with Web Forms than with MVC. I will be more than happy to hear what you think on this!

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• No endpoint listening at.........

  - by Michael Stephenson

  I was having some very frustrating behaviour on our build server and while I found a number of articles online with similar error messages none of them helped me.  I thought I would just explain this here incase if helps me or anyone else in future.The error message we were getting is:There was no endpoint listening at http://localhostStubs.ExternalApplication/SampleService.svc that could accept the message. This is often caused by an incorrect address or SOAP action. See InnerException, if present, for more detailsOur scenario is as follows:We have a solution where a WCF service application hosting the WCF routing service is listening to the Windows Azure Service Bus Relay.  We have an acceptance test project in the solution which sends a message to the service bus which is then received by the WCF routing service and routed to SampleService.svc which is hosted in another IIS application on the same box.  A response is flowed back through to the test.  In the tests there are 5 scenarios simulating a successful message, and various error conditions.  On my developer machine it was working absolutely fine every time, and a clean build on my developer machine worked fine.  On the build server however one or more of the tests would fail each time with the above error message.  There didnt seem to be any pattern to which test would fail.The solution was building on a Windows 2008 R2 machine with IIS 7 and AppFabric Server installed with auto-start configured for the IIS Application which would be listening to service bus.After lots of searching online and looking at logs etc it turned out to be a simple solution to just restart the WAS service (Windows Process Activation Service) and the services it advised you to restart with it.  Hope this helps someone else

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• Inverted textures

  - by brainydexter

  I'm trying to draw textures aligned with this physics body whose coordinate system's origin is at the center of the screen. (XNA)Spritebatch has its default origin set to top-left corner. I got the textures to be positioned correctly, but I noticed my textures are vertically inverted. That is, an arrow texture pointing Up , when rendered points down. I'm not sure where I am going wrong with the math. My approach is to convert everything in physic's meter units and draw accordingly. Matrix proj = Matrix.CreateOrthographic(scale * graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.AspectRatio, scale, 0, 1); Matrix view = Matrix.Identity; effect.World = Matrix.Identity; effect.View = view; effect.Projection = proj; effect.TextureEnabled = true; effect.VertexColorEnabled = true; effect.Techniques[0].Passes[0].Apply(); SpriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.BackToFront, BlendState.AlphaBlend, null, DepthStencilState.Default, RasterizerState.CullNone, effect); m_Paddles[1].Draw(gameTime); SpriteBatch.End(); where Paddle::Draw looks like: SpriteBatch.Draw(paddleTexture, mBody.Position, null, Color.White, 0f, new Vector2(16f, 16f), // origin of the texture 0.1875f, SpriteEffects.None, // width of box is 3*2 = 6 meters. texture is 32 pixels wide. to make it 6 meters wide in world space: 6/32 = 0.1875f 0); The orthographic projection matrix seem fine to me, but I am obviously doing something wrong somewhere! Can someone please help me figure out what am i doing wrong here ? Thanks

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• UX Design Principles Pluralsight course review

  - by pluginbaby

  I've just finished the "Creating User Experiences: Fundamental Design Principles" course on Pluralsight, I am glad I took it, and here is why you should. The course is held by Billy Hollis, an internationally known author and speaker focused on user experience design. It was published in May 2012, so it is quite fresh (You’ll hear some reference to XAML, even if the content is not focused on any particular technology). I think what I liked the most about this course is the fact that Billy is not just imposing design ideas and pushing them in your throat (which would be too confronting for us developers, even if he was right), he spends a fair share amount of time explaining each topics, and illustrate them with great metaphors. If you are a minimum open minded you should get great value out of this course. Billy makes you think outside the box, he encourages you to use your right side brain, and understand design principles by simply looking at what’s around us (physical objects, nature, …). During the course he refers several time to "don't make me think" a book on UX design, which is about giving confidence to users, by making it easier for them to achieve their goals when using your app. Billy thinks that every developer can participate in elaborating good design when building software, not only designers should be involved. Get away of the easy path "let's build functional stuff for now and we will hire a designer later if we have time and budget". The course is also live and interactive as the author suggests that you do some live exercises during each module. He actually makes you realize and understand by yourself the need for change. We’re in a new era of software and devices, where grids and menus aren't enough. You can’t remain satisfied by just making things possible, you need to make them easier for your users. Understanding some fundamental design principles will help. This course can definitely be followed by any developers who wants to improve user experience of software they are working on, and I definitely recommend it.

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• BizTalk 2009 - BizTalk Server Best Practice Analyser

  - by StuartBrierley

  The BizTalk Server Best Practices Analyser  allows you to carry out a configuration level verification of your BizTalk installation, evaluating the deployed configuration but not modifying or tuning anything that it finds. The Best Practices Analyser uses "reading and reporting" to gather data from different sources, such as: Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) classes SQL Server databases Registry entries When I first ran the analyser I got a number of errors, if you get any errors these should all be acted upon to resolve them, you should then run the scan again and see if any thing else is reported that needs acting upon. As you can see in the image above, the initial issue that jumped out to me was that the SQL Server Agent was not started. The reasons for this was absent mindedness - this run was against my development PC and I don't have SQL/BizTalk actively running unless I am using them.  Starting the agent service and running the scan again gave me the following results: This resolved most of the issues for me, but next major issue to look at was that there was no tracking host running.  You can also see that I was still getting an error with two of the SQL jobs.  The problem here was that I had not yet configured these two SQL jobs.  Configuring the backup and purge jobs and then starting the tracking host before running the scan again gave: This had cleared all the critical issues, but I did stil have a number of warnings.  For example on this report I was warned that the BizTalk Message box is hosted on the BizTalk Server.  While this is known to be less than ideal, it is as I expected on my development environment where I have installed Visual Studio, SQL and BizTalk on my laptop and I was happy to ignore this and other similar warnings. In your case you should take a look at any warnings you receive and decide what you want to do about each of them in turn.

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• What happened to Alan Cooper's Unified File Model?

  - by PAUL Mansour

  For a long time Alan Cooper (in the 3 versions of his book "About Face") has been promoting a "unified file model" to, among other things, dispense with what he calls the most idiotic message box ever invented - the one the pops up when hit the close button on an app or form saying "Do you want to discard your changes?" I like the idea and his arguments, but also have the knee-jerk reaction against it that most seasoned programmers and users have. While Cooper's book seems quite popular and respected, there is remarkably little discussion of this particular issue on the Web that I can find. Petter Hesselberg, the author of "Programming Industrial Strength Windows" mentions it but that seems about it. I have an opportunity to implement this in the (desktop) project I am working on, but face resistance by customers and co-workers, who are of course familiar with the MS Word and Excel way of doing things. I'm in a position to override their objections, but am not sure if I should. My questions are: Are there any good discussions of this that I have failed to find? Is anyone doing this in their apps? Is it a good idea that it is unfortunately not practical to implement until, say, Microsoft does it?

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• Real or False Recovery? Economic 'tea-leaves'

  - by [email protected]

  "Information-technology is allowing the city's economy to speak to us in lots of different ways," Mr. Egan said. "We just need to find new ways of listening." Source: "New Way to Read Economy" WSJ_ARTICLE  April 8th, Carli Tuna, Blog by ARC's Steve Banker Apr 12, 2010 Alan Greenspan used cardboard box purchases and other 'source-commodity' indicators. The Carli Tuna WSJ article said that truck diesel fuel sales are a reliable indicator. What factor do you and your company use as future forward indicators? .. is it quotes, perhaps calls into the call center or sales activity?  Is your business moving to the internet and your supply chain driven by your iStore?  How do your distributors, retailers and supply chain partners provide the 'side-line' signals to you to either ramp up or contract production? With competition being only one click away, organizations need to know with higher degrees of certainty, what the econmic 'tea-leaves' are telling us and how firms need to react with production and shipping forecasts.  Firms using the latest forecasting and supply chain analytical (Bus.Intelligence) tools and technologies appear to be leading their markets "Had we been aware of that data in 2008," Mr. Leamer said, "we would have made a different call." .        

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• Mirror virtualized development environment

  - by David Casillas

  I work alone in some iOS projects in a local environment. I have been thinking in a way to be able to share my development environment between my Mac Mini and my MacBook. I mostly work at home in the Mini but sometimes I need to do a demo or work outside and I would like to have the development environment mirrored in both. I have think in using a virtual machine (via VirtualBox) with just my development tools instaled. Then I could synchronize that VM with some software between both computers so I will always have the exact environment no matter what computer I use. Is there any good reason not do do this way? I have not used Virtualization to much so I have no background on the subject. My basic setup will be: Mac Mini: i7 dual Core, 8Gb. OSX Mountain Lion Host OS: MacBook: 2.4 Core 2 Duo. 4Gb. OSX Lion Host OS. Virtual Box with Mountain Lion guest OS in both machines. XCode5, Simulator.

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• Drag2Up Brings Multi-Source Drag and Drop Uploading to Firefox

  - by ETC

  Last fall we shared Drag2Up with you, a handy little Chrome extension that make it a snap to drag, drop, and upload files to a variety of file sharing sites. Now that same easy sharing is available for Firefox. Just like the Chrome version the Firefox version adds in super simple drag and drop file sharing to your web browsing experience. Drag images, text, and other file types onto any text box and Drag2Up uploads them to the file sharing service you’ve specified in the settings menu such as Imgur, Imageshack, Pastebin, Hotfile, Droplr, and more. Hit up the link below to read more and grab a copy for your Firefox install. Drag2Up [Mozilla Add-ons] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Never Call Me at Work [Humorous Star Wars Video] Add an Image Properties Listing to the Context Menu in Chrome and Iron Add an Easy to View Notification Badge to Tabs in Firefox SpellBook Parks Bookmarklets in Chrome’s Context Menu Drag2Up Brings Multi-Source Drag and Drop Uploading to Firefox Enchanted Swing in the Forest Wallpaper

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• Ribbon Search: Locate MS Office Ribbon Menu Features/Functions Quickly

  - by Kavitha

  In the new versions of Microsoft Office  everything has changed with the introduction of Ribbon menus. Even though Ribbon menus has many advantages that simplifies accessing features, at times it’s a daunting task to navigate the Ribbon menus and find a specific command. Ribbon search is one of the interesting freeware tools to overcome these complaints from users, with this one can search Office ribbon for any feature or function easily. It supports both Office 2007 and  Office 2010(the versions which have ribbon). Once Installation has completed, you can find a text box on top of the ribbon in all the office applications (Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, Excel etc.). As you type few letters of the feature you are looking for, Ribbon Search instantly displays the path through which you can access the feature. Here is a screen grab search of Ribbon Search in action When you start typing itself shows results instantly. And also it gives the path through which you can access feature you are searching for. If there are multiple ways to access the feature, it is also shown in the list. Download Ribbon Search This article titled,Ribbon Search: Locate MS Office Ribbon Menu Features/Functions Quickly, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• New Experts Direct Contribution - Multiple Currency in Analytics

  - by Cheryl

  We do our best to anticipate what you need to know when we design and write our courses for CRM On Demand. But we know that we cannot hit on every situation or implementation scenario that you might encounter. That's why I love our Experts Direct program - this is where we encourage our wide network of CRM On Demand experts to contribute knowledge that they have gained from working directly with companies on their specific challenges or questions. (See Direct From Our Experts!) The latest Experts Direct contribution comes from Leon Dolman, who works with CRM On Demand customers every day. Leon addresses what you should expect to see in your reports and in the application when your company's users enter opportunity revenue information in more than one currency. He works through a scenario to show how currency settings can affect the data that you see in your reports. For example, do you know what will you see in your Opportunity reports if you have two different currencies represented, besides your company's default currency, but your company administrator has only set exchange rates for one of them? Leon knows...and now he has shared that knowledge - and more - with the rest of us. Go to the Multiple Currency in Analytics item in the Training and Support Center to read more - and while you're there, take a look at the other Experts Direct content to tap into that expert knowledge that we're collecting for you. Just click the Browse More Topics link in the Experts Direct box on the home page to see the full list. And let us know if there are other topics that you'd like to see our experts address. Post a comment to start a conversation or send us an email.

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