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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 12, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 12, 2012Popular ReleasesKanboxAPI: KanboxAPI beta: ????? Token Info List DownloadMedia Companion: Media Companion 3.502b: It has been a slow week, but this release addresses a couple of recent bugs: Movies Multi-part Movies - Existing .nfo files that differed in name from the first part, were missed and scraped again. Trailers - MC attempted to scrape info for existing trailers. TV Shows Show Scraping - shows available only in the non-default language would not show up in the main browser. The correct language can now be selected using the TV Show Selector for a single show. General Will no longer prompt for ...NewLife XCode ??????: XCode v8.5.2012.0508、XCoder v4.7.2012.0320: X????： 1，????For .Net 4.0?? XCoder????： 1，???????，????X????，?????? XCode????： 1，Insert/Update/Delete???????????????，???SQL???? 2，IEntityOperate?????? 3，????????IEntityTree 4，????????????????? 5，?????????? 6，??????????????dycom: v1.0: DYCom ????????：Silverlight, Windows phone 7.5.NETMF_for_STM32: Beta 1 Release: First public beta release.Google Book Downloader: Google Books Downloader Lite 1.0: Google Books Downloader Lite 1.0Python Tools for Visual Studio: 1.5 Alpha: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 1.5 Alpha. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including: • Supports Cpython, IronPython, Jython and Pypy • Python editor with advanced member, signature intellisense and refactoring • Code navigation: “Find all refs”, goto definition, and object browser • Local and remote debugging...JayData - The cross-platform HTML5 data-management library for JavaScript: JayData 1.0 RC1 Refresh 1: JayData 1.0.0 RC1 Refresh 1 JayData is a unified data access API to webSQL, indexedDB, OData, Facebook and YQL. Overview The major feature of this release is related to OData provider, FunctionImport is now generally supported. Now you can consume OData service operations (WebMethods). We extended the JaySvcUtil to generate the necessary metadata. We included many fixes, such as the Visual Studio 2010 IntelliSense optimalization (RC1 was optimized only to VS11). It's recommended to upgrade...AD Gallery: AD Gallery 1.2.7: NewsFixed a bug which caused the current thumbnail not to be highlighted Added a hook to take complete control over how descriptions are handled, take a look under Documentation for more info Added removeAllImages()51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.4.8: One Click Install from NuGet Data ChangesIncludes 42 new browser properties in both the Lite and Premium data sets. Premium Data includes many new devices including Nokia Lumia 900, BlackBerry 9220 and HTC One, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 range and Samsung Galaxy S III. Lite data includes devices released in January 2012. Changes to Version 2.1.4.81. The IsFirstTime method of the RedirectModule will now return the same value when called multiple times for the same request. This was prevent...Mugen Injection: Mugen Injection ver 2.2 (WinRT supported): Added NamedParameterAttribute, OptionalParameterAttribute. Added behaviors ICycleDependencyBehavior, IResolveUnregisteredTypeBehavior. Added WinRT support. Added support for NET 4.5. Added support for MVC 4.NShape - .Net Diagramming Framework for Industrial Applications: NShape 2.0.1: Changes in 2.0.1:Bugfixes: IRepository.Insert(Shape shape) and IRepository.Insert(IEnumerable<Shape> shapes) no longer insert shape connections. Several context menu items did display although the required permission was not granted Display did not reset the visible and active layers when changing the diagram NullReferenceException when pressing Del key and no shape was selected Changed Behavior: LayerCollection.Find("") no longer throws an exception. Improvements: Display does not rese...AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.11.6: ?? ●AcDown??????????、??、??????，????1M，????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????????????????????????，???，???????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDo...sb0t: sb0t 4.64: New commands added: #scribble <url> #adminscribble on #adminscribble offDocument.Editor: 2012.4: Whats new for Document.Editor 2012.4: Improved Template support Improved Options Dialog Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsJson.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 5: New feature - Added ItemIsReference, ItemReferenceLoopHandling, ItemTypeNameHandling, ItemConverterType to JsonPropertyAttribute New feature - Added ItemRequired to JsonObjectAttribute New feature - Added Path to JsonWriterException Change - Improved deserializer call stack memory usage Change - Moved the PDB files out of the NuGet package into a symbols package Fix - Fixed infinite loop from an input error when reading an array and error handling is enabled Fix - Fixed base objec...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.6.1: 2012.05.07 Ver5.6.1 (1)????????????????(Ver5.6.0??)??? (2)HTTP?????SSL????????????（Ver5.6.0??）??? (3)HTTP?????2G??????????????????????????? (4)HTP????　?????????ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.5: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://extasp.net/ ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-05-06 v3.1.5 -????????：grid/grid_twogrid.aspx。 +?...SharpDevelop: SharpDevelop 4.2: Please see http://community.sharpdevelop.net/forums/t/15772.aspx for the release announcement.Desktop Google Reader: 1.4.4: Taskbar icon overlay (number of unread items) can now be switched off in preferences (Windows Vista / 7 only) Maximize button now can be toggled to be fullscreen (as befor) or only normal maximize (taskbar stays visible) in preferences List of feeds is now sorted by alphabetNew Projects3D Scene Editor: A generic 3d level editor built using XNA to speed up designing and building game levels.Attribute Based Cache using Unity Interception: Unity interception handler attribute for Caching which allows to apply boiler plate caching pattern to classes, and class members directly, without configuring them in the application configuration file. Configure your choice of Cache Provider (ObjectCache, Azure included) in the Unity IoC Container and apply the attribute to the method which you want to cache AutoCompleteBox for WinRT: None yetBAC2 Bachelor's Thesis Source Code: The source code of my Bachelor's ThesisBAMabase: It's a bamabase.BBSProject: BBSProjectBrain 2 - Game Engine: Brain 2 is a Game Engine that runs on multiple platforms.cobra-winldtp: Cobra - Windows version of Linux Desktop Testing Project (WinLDTP) - http://ldtp.freedesktop.org LDTP is a GUI test automation tool works on both Windows and Linux platform Windows GUI test automation tool written in C# and test scripts can be written in Python for now. Ruby API will be added soon.CS322: C# Programski jezikDoxBotPlugin: The DoxBotPlugin is a Plug-In for Ice-Chat9 that allows a user to use Icechat9 as both a normal IRC client and to switch on bot mode in certain channels to have DoxBotPlugin act on their behalf.dycom: DYCom??(DY Communication)???????????,?????????????????.????????????????. ??????????????????????,?????????????????。Eyes Protector: PL: Program pomagajacy w ochronie oczu przed przemeczeniem zwiazanym ze zbyt dluga praca przy komputerze. EN: ---kshell: ????Linux??????Lumia: This is Lumia project.MacroDoc: MacroDoc is an engine written in C# for composing documents from reusable pieces of structure and content.Mssql: This is Sql Server project.NETMF_for_STM32: This is the Codeplex project for NETMF for STM32 (F4 Edition). Ocular - a free, open source WYSIWYG editor for HTML: Ocular is a free C# WYSIWYG HTML editor, similar to Adobe Dreamweaver. We are always looking for contributors, so please help us!PeopleCredit: Prototype web service to maintain all employee credits.Project Server workflow: This workflow creates the project site for Basic project plan EPT when workflow task is approved.(This is the correction done over the Branching workflow provided with Project Server 2010 SDK). Workflow task is created using PSWApprovalTask Content type in Project Server Workflow Task List. Quick Reminder: PL: Program pomagajacy zapisac szybkie przypomnienia podczas pracy przy komputerze. EN: ---Random Projects: My random projects...Recommendation Engine Demo: How does the Amazon recommendation works? This is about visualizing the item to item collaborations filtering mechanism using a item-to-item matrix table. The item-to-item matrix, the vectors and the calculated data values are displayed. There are n different items and the item recommendation can display up to m items. There are implemented different item-to-item neighborhood functions. A simple max count of seen neighbor items, the Cosine Similarity and the Jaccard Index. A t...SaveSeaTurtle: Sea TurtleSharpGpx: SharpGpx implements an object model for reading and writing GPX (GPS eXchange Format).SlimDo: SlimDo is a scripting language coded in C#Spring: This is Spring.Net projectSQL Server Quick Tools Pack: SQL Server Quick Tools Pack for your sql server SuLD framework: Supported Link Discovery framework (SuLD) is a tool to discover links to multiple Linked Data datasets. Finding is supported by various features like synonym module or autocomplete.TQuery.Net: .Net??????WAAP - World of warcraft Auction house Analysis Project: A project in which we try to analyse prices and auctioneers on the various World of Warcraft Auction housesxhttp.net: The Xhttp.Net framework is a dotnet implementation of the Extended Hypertext Transfer Protocol (http://www.xhttp.org), with simple service integration, full arguments support including Base64 and DateTime, single and multiple asynchronous requests, data streaming, remote API creation from XHTTP service schemas, and a runtime plugin architecture.

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• Windows Azure Evolution &ndash; Preview Developer Portal

  - by Shaun

  With the MEET Windows Azure event on 7th June, there are many new features and updates in windows azure platform. In the coming several posts I will try to cover some of them. And in the first post here I would like to just have a quick walkthrough of the new preview developer portal.   History of the Developer Portal If you have been working with windows azure since 2009 or 2010, you should remember the first version of the developer portal. It was built in HTML with very limited features. I have the impression when I was using is old one. The layout is not that attractive and you have very limited features. On November, 2010 alone with the SDK 1.3 release, the developer portal was getting a big jump. In order to give more usability and features this it turned to be built on Silverlight. Hence it runs like a desktop application with many windows, lists, commands and context menus. From 2010 till now many features were involved into this portal, such as the remote desktop, co-admin, virtual connect, VM role, etc.. And the portal itself became more and more complicated. But it brought some problems by using the Silverlight. The first one is the browser capability. As you know in most mobile and tablet device the browser doesn’t allow the rich content plugin, such as Flash and Silverlight. This means people cannot open and configure their azure services from their iPad, iPhone and Windows Phone, etc., even though what they need may just be restart a hosted service, or view the status of their databases. Another problem is the performance. Silverlight provides rich experience to the users, but also needs more bandwidth. So in this upgrade the preview developer portal will be back to use HTML, with JavaScript, as a mobile friendly, cross browser, interactively web site.   Preview Portal vs. Silverlight Portal Before I started to talk about the new preview portal I’d better highlight that, this preview portal is a PREVIEW version, which means even though you can do almost all features that already in the old one, as long as some cool new features I will mention in the coming several posts, there are something still under developed and migrated. So sometimes you need to switch back to the old one. For example, in preview portal there is no co-admin manage function, no remote desktop function and the SQL database manage function will take you back to the old SQL Azure Manage Portal. But as Microsoft said these missing features will be moved in the preview portal in the couple of next few months. Since the public URL of the developer portal, https://windows.azure.com/, had been changed to point to this preview one, you need to click to preview button on top of the page and click the “Take me to the previous portal” link.   Overview There are four parts in the preview portal. On the top is the header which shows the account you are currently logging in. If you click on the header it will show the top menu of windows azure, where you can navigate to the windows azure home page, the price information page, community and account, etc.. The navigation bar is on the left hand side, with the categories listed below. ALL ITEMS All items in your windows azure account, includes the web sites, services, databases, etc.. WEB SITES The web sites in your windows azure account. It will only show the web sites you have. The linked resources will be shown if you drill down into a web site. VIRTUAL MACHINES The virtual machines that you had been deployed to azure. CLOUD SERVICES All windows azure hosted services in your account. SQL DATABASES All SQL databases (SQL Azure) in your account. STORAGE All windows azure storage services in your account. NETWORKS The virtual network (Windows Azure Connect) you had been created. The available items will be listed in the main part of the page based on which category your currently selected. If there’s no item it will show the link to you to quick create. At the bottom of the page there will be the command and information bar. Based on what is selected and what is performed by the user, it will show the related information and commands. For example, in the image below when I was creating a new web site, the information bar told me that my web site is being provisioned; and there are two commands in the command bar. And once it ready the command bar will show some commands that I can do to my new web site. The “Web Sites” is a new feature introduced alone with this upgrade. It gives us an easier and quicker way to establish a website from the scratch or from some existing library. I will introduce it more details in the coming next post. Also in the command bar you can create a service by clicking the NEW button. It will slide the creation panel up to you.   Where’s My Hosted Services The Windows Azure Hosted Services had been renamed to the Cloud Services. Create a new service would be very easy. Just click the NEW button at the bottom of the page, and select the CLOUD SERVICE and QIUICK CREATE. This will create a blank hosted service without deployment and certificate. It just needs you to specify the service URL and the affinity/region. Then the service will be shown in the list. If you clicked the item all information will be shown in the main part. Since there’s no package deployed to this service so currently we cannot see any information about it. But we can upload the package by using the command at the bottom. And as you can see, we could manage the configuration, instances, certificates and we can scale up and down (change the VM size), in and out (increase and decrease the instance count) to our service. Assuming I had created an ASP.NET MVC 3 web role project in Visual Studio and completed the package. Then I can click the UPLOAD button in this page to deploy my package. In the popping up window I just specify my deployment name, package file and configure file. Also I can check the box below so that it will NOT warn me if only one instance of this deployment. Once we clicked the OK button our package will be uploaded and provisioned by the platform. After a while we can see the service was ready from the information bar. We can have the basic information about this service and deployment if we to the dashboard page. For example the usage overview diagram, status, URL, public IP address, etc.. In the configure page we can view and change the CSCFG content such as the monitor setting, connection strings, OS family. In scale page we can increase and decrease the count of the instances. And in the instances page we can view all instances status. And, if your services is using some SQL databases and storages they will be shown as the linked resources under the linked resources page. And you can manage the certificates of this service as well under the certificates page.   How About My Storage Services The storage service can be managed by clicking into the STORAGES link in the navigation bar. And we can create a new storage service from the NEW button. After specify the storage name and region it will be previsioned by the platform. If you want to copy or manage the storage key you can just click the Manage Keys button at the bottom, which is very easy. What I want to highlight here is that, you can monitor your storage service by enabling the monitor configuration. Click the storage item in the list and navigate to the configure page. As you can see in the page you can enable the monitoring for blob, table and queue. And you can also enable the logging when any requests come to the storage. But as the tooltip shown in the page, enabling the monitoring and logging will increase the usage of the storage, which means increase the bill of them. So make sure you enable them properly.   And My SQL Databases (SQL Azure) The last thing I want to quick introduce is the SQL databases, which was formally named SQL Azure. You can create a new SQL Database Server and a new database by clicking the ADD button under the SQL Database navigation item. In the popping up windows just specify the database name, the edition, size, collation and the server. You can select an existing SQL Database Server if you have, or cerate a new one. If you selected to create a new server, there will be another step you need to do, which is specify the server login, password and the region. Once it ready you can mange your databases as well as the servers in the portal. In a particular server you can update the firewall settings in its Configure page. So, What Else There are some other area on the preview portal I didn’t cover, such as the virtual machines, virtual network and web sites. Regarding the virtual machines and web sites I will talk about them in the future separated post. Regarding the virtual network, it the Windows Azure Connect we are familiar with. But as I mention in the beginning of this post, the preview portal is still under developed. Some features are not available here. For example, you cannot manage the co-admin of your subscriptions, you cannot open the remote desktop on your hosted services, and you cannot navigate to the Windows Azure Service Bus, Access Control and Caching, which formally named Windows Azure AppFabric directly. In these cases you need to navigate back to the old portal. So in the coming several months we might need to use both these two sites.   Summary In this post I quick introduced the new windows azure developer portal. Since it had been rearranged and renamed I demonstrated some features that existing in the old portal, such as how to create and deploy a hosted service, how to provision a storage service and SQL database. All features in the old portal had been, is being and will be migrated into this new portal, but some of them were in a different category and page we need to figure out.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, November 11, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, November 11, 2012Popular ReleasesZXMAK2: Version 2.7.2.0: show extended rzx error info fix reset lag for PROFI ULA 5.xx fix reset behavior fix PROFI ULA timings (thanks to solegstar) fix #FF port for PROFI ULA add ATM710 memory module add new predefined machine configs: ATM Turbo 2, PROFI 3.XX???????: Monitor 2012-11-11: This is the first releaseVidCoder: 1.4.5 Beta: Removed the old Advanced user interface and moved x264 preset/profile/tune there instead. The functionality is still available through editing the options string. Added ability to specify the H.264 level. Added ability to choose VidCoder's interface language. If you are interested in translating, we can get VidCoder in your language! Updated WPF text rendering to use the better Display mode. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5045. Removed logic that forced the .m4v extension in certain ...ImageGlass: Version 1.5: http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/cc483/phapsuxeko/ImageGlass/1.png v1.5.4401.3015 Thumbnail bar: Increase loading speed Thumbnail image with ratio Support personal customization: mouse up, mouse down, mouse hover, selected item... Scroll to show all items Image viewer Zoom by scroll, or selected rectangle Speed up loading Zoom to cursor point New background design and customization and others... v1.5.4430.483 Thumbnail bar: Auto move scroll bar to selected image Show / Hi...Building Windows 8 Apps with C# and XAML: Full Source Chapters 1 - 10 for Windows 8 Fix 002: This is the full source from all chapters of the book, compiled and tested on Windows 8 RTM. Includes: A fix for the Netflix example from Chapter 6 that was missing a service reference A fix for the ImageHelper issue (images were not being saved) - this was due to the buffer being inadequate and required streaming the writeable bitmap to a buffer first before encoding and savingmyCollections: Version 2.3.2.0: New in this version : Added TheGamesDB.net API for Games and NDS Added Support for Windows Media Center Added Support for myMovies Added Support for XBMC Added Support for Dune HD Added Support for Mede8er Added Support for WD HDTV Added Fast search options Added order by Artist/Album for music You can now create covers and background for games You can now update your ID3 tag with the info of myCollections Fixed several provider Performance improvement New Splash ...Draw: Draw 1.0: Drawing PadPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (v1.0): IMPORTANT: List of breaking changes from preview 7 Ability to move control panel or individual elements outside media player. more info... New Entertainment app theme for out of the box support for Windows 8 Entertainment app guidelines. more info... VSIX reference names shortened. Allows seeing plugin name from "Add Reference" dialog without resizing. FreeWheel SmartXML now supports new "Standard" event callback type. Other minor misc fixes and improvements ADDITIONAL DOWNLOADSSmo...WebSearch.Net: WebSearch.Net 3.1: WebSearch.Net is an open-source research platform that provides uniform data source access, data modeling, feature calculation, data mining, etc. It facilitates the experiments of web search researchers due to its high flexibility and extensibility. The platform can be used or extended by any language compatible for .Net 2 framework, from C# (recommended), VB.Net to C++ and Java. Thanks to the large coverage of knowledge in web search research, it is necessary to model the techniques and main...Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.10.0: NugetNuGet BlogRead the release blog post for 4.10.0. Whats newMVC support New request pipeline Many, many bugfixes (see the issue tracker for a complete list) Read the documentation for the MVC bits. Breaking changesWe have done all we can not to break backwards compatibility, but we had to do some minor breaking changes: Removed graphicHeadlineFormat config setting from umbracoSettings.config (an old relic from the 3.x days) U4-690 DynamicNode ChildrenAsList was fixed, altering it'...SQL Server Partitioned Table Framework: Partitioned Table Framework Release 1.0: SQL Server 2012 ReleaseSharePoint Manager 2013: SharePoint Manager 2013 Release ver 1.0.12.1106: SharePoint Manager 2013 Release (ver: 1.0.12.1106) is now ready for SharePoint 2013. The new version has an expanded view of the SharePoint object model and has been tested on SharePoint 2013 RTM. As a bonus, the new version is also available for SharePoint 2010 as a separate download.D3D9Client: D3D9Client R7: New release for Orbiter 2010-P1 - Added horizon/sun angle for night-lights into the configuration file (default 10deg) - Some runway lights related bugs are fixed - Added more configuration options for runway lightsFiskalizacija za developere: FiskalizacijaDev 1.2: Verzija 1.2. je, prije svega, odgovor na novu verziju Tehnicke specifikacije (v1.1.) koja je objavljena prije nekoliko dana. Pored novosti vezanih uz (sitne) izmjene u spomenutoj novoj verziji Tehnicke dokumentacije, projekt smo prošili sa nekim dodatnim feature-ima od kojih je vecina proizašla iz vaših prijedloga - hvala :) Novosti u v1.2. su: - Neusuglašenost zahtjeva (http://fiskalizacija.codeplex.com/workitem/645) - Sample projekt - iznosi se množe sa 100 (http://fiskalizacija.codeplex.c...MFCMAPI: October 2012 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1036 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeDictationTool: DictationCool-WPF: • Open a media file to start a new dication. • Open a dct file to continue a dictation. • Compare your dictation with original text if exists. • Save your dictation to dct file, and restore it to continue later. • Save the compared result to html file.MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.7: Changelog for 2.3.7 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Improved performance of MP4 Fast and M4V Fast Profiles (no deinterlacing, removed --decomb) 2. Improved priority handling 3. Added support for Pausing and Resume conversions 4. Added support for fallback to source directory if network destination directory is unavailable 5. MCEBuddy now installs ShowAnalyzer during installation 6. Added support for long description atom in iTunesDyanamic Reports (RDLC) - SharePoint 2010 Visual WebPart: Initial Release: This is a Initial Release.HTML Renderer: HTML Renderer 1.0.0.0 (3): Major performance improvement (http://theartofdev.wordpress.com/2012/10/25/how-i-optimized-html-renderer-and-fell-in-love-with-vs-profiler/) Minor fixes raised in issue tracker and discussions.Window Manager: Window Manager 1.0: First releaseNew Projectsarteytex: este es una prueba blockworld: An implementation of a goal stack planner.Customer Note: customer note is windows store applicationDraw: ?????????????：??????、CAD??、????。Football Management: Football Management System is web management system for football (soccer) leagues, teams and players. Hijri Converter API: This project is aimed to create a simple RESTful API using VB and ASP.NET to do Hijri-to-Gregorian and Gregorian-to-Hijri conversion.httpclient?????????: httpclient?????????（1）??????????（2）?????????（3）??2012-11-06??，???????。 Imagine Cup 2013: Develop project to Imagine Cup 2013MyAppReji: MyAppN2F Request: The N2F Request object is used to handle interactions between N2F and the global $_REQUEST variable, sanitizing any results which are returned.Orchard Metro Theme: Orchard Metro Theme is a clean and flexible multi-zone theme.Poker Clock And Goodies: poker w8ProjectASPReviewer: Review website for notebooks, tablets and smartphones.Prototype: Its about making an proto type for the final project.Prototype - 7COM0207: 7COM0207 web scripting module, Assignment 2QuickToAD: QuickToAD is a foundational development project for the purpose of jump-starting data-driven application projects.Release Manager: Release Manager is a project to design and develop Windows based Release Management Software.ResW File Code Generator: A Visual Studio 2012 Custom Tool for generating a strongly typed helper class for accessing localized resources from a .ResW file.SEO Tools: This is a website containing some commonly used SEO tools. I have only added a blog ping utility at this time but there is more to come. Thales communicator: A C# library that helps communicate with Thales HSMTrivial: A trivia framework: Trivial is a C# framework that helps you creating custom trivia-like applications.

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• Performance Optimization &ndash; It Is Faster When You Can Measure It

  - by Alois Kraus

  Performance optimization in bigger systems is hard because the measured numbers can vary greatly depending on the measurement method of your choice. To measure execution timing of specific methods in your application you usually use Time Measurement Method Potential Pitfalls Stopwatch Most accurate method on recent processors. Internally it uses the RDTSC instruction. Since the counter is processor specific you can get greatly different values when your thread is scheduled to another core or the core goes into a power saving mode. But things do change luckily: Intel's Designer's vol3b, section 16.11.1 "16.11.1 Invariant TSC The time stamp counter in newer processors may support an enhancement, referred to as invariant TSC. Processor's support for invariant TSC is indicated by CPUID.80000007H:EDX[8]. The invariant TSC will run at a constant rate in all ACPI P-, C-. and T-states. This is the architectural behavior moving forward. On processors with invariant TSC support, the OS may use the TSC for wall clock timer services (instead of ACPI or HPET timers). TSC reads are much more efficient and do not incur the overhead associated with a ring transition or access to a platform resource." DateTime.Now Good but it has only a resolution of 16ms which can be not enough if you want more accuracy.   Reporting Method Potential Pitfalls Console.WriteLine Ok if not called too often. Debug.Print Are you really measuring performance with Debug Builds? Shame on you. Trace.WriteLine Better but you need to plug in some good output listener like a trace file. But be aware that the first time you call this method it will read your app.config and deserialize your system.diagnostics section which does also take time.   In general it is a good idea to use some tracing library which does measure the timing for you and you only need to decorate some methods with tracing so you can later verify if something has changed for the better or worse. In my previous article I did compare measuring performance with quantum mechanics. This analogy does work surprising well. When you measure a quantum system there is a lower limit how accurately you can measure something. The Heisenberg uncertainty relation does tell us that you cannot measure of a quantum system the impulse and location of a particle at the same time with infinite accuracy. For programmers the two variables are execution time and memory allocations. If you try to measure the timings of all methods in your application you will need to store them somewhere. The fastest storage space besides the CPU cache is the memory. But if your timing values do consume all available memory there is no memory left for the actual application to run. On the other hand if you try to record all memory allocations of your application you will also need to store the data somewhere. This will cost you memory and execution time. These constraints are always there and regardless how good the marketing of tool vendors for performance and memory profilers are: Any measurement will disturb the system in a non predictable way. Commercial tool vendors will tell you they do calculate this overhead and subtract it from the measured values to give you the most accurate values but in reality it is not entirely true. After falling into the trap to trust the profiler timings several times I have got into the habit to Measure with a profiler to get an idea where potential bottlenecks are. Measure again with tracing only the specific methods to check if this method is really worth optimizing. Optimize it Measure again. Be surprised that your optimization has made things worse. Think harder Implement something that really works. Measure again Finished! - Or look for the next bottleneck. Recently I have looked into issues with serialization performance. For serialization DataContractSerializer was used and I was not sure if XML is really the most optimal wire format. After looking around I have found protobuf-net which uses Googles Protocol Buffer format which is a compact binary serialization format. What is good for Google should be good for us. A small sample app to check out performance was a matter of minutes: using ProtoBuf; using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.IO; using System.Reflection; using System.Runtime.Serialization; [DataContract, Serializable] class Data { [DataMember(Order=1)] public int IntValue { get; set; } [DataMember(Order = 2)] public string StringValue { get; set; } [DataMember(Order = 3)] public bool IsActivated { get; set; } [DataMember(Order = 4)] public BindingFlags Flags { get; set; } } class Program { static MemoryStream _Stream = new MemoryStream(); static MemoryStream Stream { get { _Stream.Position = 0; _Stream.SetLength(0); return _Stream; } } static void Main(string[] args) { DataContractSerializer ser = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(Data)); Data data = new Data { IntValue = 100, IsActivated = true, StringValue = "Hi this is a small string value to check if serialization does work as expected" }; var sw = Stopwatch.StartNew(); int Runs = 1000 * 1000; for (int i = 0; i < Runs; i++) { //ser.WriteObject(Stream, data); Serializer.Serialize<Data>(Stream, data); } sw.Stop(); Console.WriteLine("Did take {0:N0}ms for {1:N0} objects", sw.Elapsed.TotalMilliseconds, Runs); Console.ReadLine(); } } The results are indeed promising: Serializer Time in ms N objects protobuf-net   807 1000000 DataContract 4402 1000000 Nearly a factor 5 faster and a much more compact wire format. Lets use it! After switching over to protbuf-net the transfered wire data has dropped by a factor two (good) and the performance has worsened by nearly a factor two. How is that possible? We have measured it? Protobuf-net is much faster! As it turns out protobuf-net is faster but it has a cost: For the first time a type is de/serialized it does use some very smart code-gen which does not come for free. Lets try to measure this one by setting of our performance test app the Runs value not to one million but to 1. Serializer Time in ms N objects protobuf-net 85 1 DataContract 24 1 The code-gen overhead is significant and can take up to 200ms for more complex types. The break even point where the code-gen cost is amortized by its faster serialization performance is (assuming small objects) somewhere between 20.000-40.000 serialized objects. As it turned out my specific scenario involved about 100 types and 1000 serializations in total. That explains why the good old DataContractSerializer is not so easy to take out of business. The final approach I ended up was to reduce the number of types and to serialize primitive types via BinaryWriter directly which turned out to be a pretty good alternative. It sounded good until I measured again and found that my optimizations so far do not help much. After looking more deeper at the profiling data I did found that one of the 1000 calls did take 50% of the time. So how do I find out which call it was? Normal profilers do fail short at this discipline. A (totally undeserved) relatively unknown profiler is SpeedTrace which does unlike normal profilers create traces of your applications by instrumenting your IL code at runtime. This way you can look at the full call stack of the one slow serializer call to find out if this stack was something special. Unfortunately the call stack showed nothing special. But luckily I have my own tracing as well and I could see that the slow serializer call did happen during the serialization of a bool value. When you encounter after much analysis something unreasonable you cannot explain it then the chances are good that your thread was suspended by the garbage collector. If there is a problem with excessive GCs remains to be investigated but so far the serialization performance seems to be mostly ok.  When you do profile a complex system with many interconnected processes you can never be sure that the timings you just did measure are accurate at all. Some process might be hitting the disc slowing things down for all other processes for some seconds as well. There is a big difference between warm and cold startup. If you restart all processes you can basically forget the first run because of the OS disc cache, JIT and GCs make the measured timings very flexible. When you are in need of a random number generator you should measure cold startup times of a sufficiently complex system. After the first run you can try again getting different and much lower numbers. Now try again at least two times to get some feeling how stable the numbers are. Oh and try to do the same thing the next day. It might be that the bottleneck you found yesterday is gone today. Thanks to GC and other random stuff it can become pretty hard to find stuff worth optimizing if no big bottlenecks except bloatloads of code are left anymore. When I have found a spot worth optimizing I do make the code changes and do measure again to check if something has changed. If it has got slower and I am certain that my change should have made it faster I can blame the GC again. The thing is that if you optimize stuff and you allocate less objects the GC times will shift to some other location. If you are unlucky it will make your faster working code slower because you see now GCs at times where none were before. This is where the stuff does get really tricky. A safe escape hatch is to create a repro of the slow code in an isolated application so you can change things fast in a reliable manner. Then the normal profilers do also start working again. As Vance Morrison does point out it is much more complex to profile a system against the wall clock compared to optimize for CPU time. The reason is that for wall clock time analysis you need to understand how your system does work and which threads (if you have not one but perhaps 20) are causing a visible delay to the end user and which threads can wait a long time without affecting the user experience at all. Next time: Commercial profiler shootout.

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• Speaker at the German Visual FoxPro Developer Conference 2004

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

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• Dynamic Code for type casting Generic Types 'generically' in C#

  - by Rick Strahl

  C# is a strongly typed language and while that's a fundamental feature of the language there are more and more situations where dynamic types make a lot of sense. I've written quite a bit about how I use dynamic for creating new type extensions: Dynamic Types and DynamicObject References in C# Creating a dynamic, extensible C# Expando Object Creating a dynamic DataReader for dynamic Property Access Today I want to point out an example of a much simpler usage for dynamic that I use occasionally to get around potential static typing issues in C# code especially those concerning generic types. TypeCasting Generics Generic types have been around since .NET 2.0 I've run into a number of situations in the past - especially with generic types that don't implement specific interfaces that can be cast to - where I've been unable to properly cast an object when it's passed to a method or assigned to a property. Granted often this can be a sign of bad design, but in at least some situations the code that needs to be integrated is not under my control so I have to make due with what's available or the parent object is too complex or intermingled to be easily refactored to a new usage scenario. Here's an example that I ran into in my own RazorHosting library - so I have really no excuse, but I also don't see another clean way around it in this case. A Generic Example Imagine I've implemented a generic type like this: public class RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> where TBaseTemplateType : RazorTemplateBase, new() You can now happily instantiate new generic versions of this type with custom template bases or even a non-generic version which is implemented like this: public class RazorEngine : RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase> { public RazorEngine() : base() { } } To instantiate one: var engine = new RazorEngine<MyCustomRazorTemplate>(); Now imagine that the template class receives a reference to the engine when it's instantiated. This code is fired as part of the Engine pipeline when it gets ready to execute the template. It instantiates the template and assigns itself to the template: var template = new TBaseTemplateType() { Engine = this } The problem here is that possibly many variations of RazorEngine<T> can be passed. I can have RazorTemplateBase, RazorFolderHostTemplateBase, CustomRazorTemplateBase etc. as generic parameters and the Engine property has to reflect that somehow. So, how would I cast that? My first inclination was to use an interface on the engine class and then cast to the interface.  Generally that works, but unfortunately here the engine class is generic and has a few members that require the template type in the member signatures. So while I certainly can implement an interface: public interface IRazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> it doesn't really help for passing this generically templated object to the template class - I still can't cast it if multiple differently typed versions of the generic type could be passed. I have the exact same issue in that I can't specify a 'generic' generic parameter, since there's no underlying base type that's common. In light of this I decided on using object and the following syntax for the property (and the same would be true for a method parameter): public class RazorTemplateBase :MarshalByRefObject,IDisposable { public object Engine {get;set; } } Now because the Engine property is a non-typed object, when I need to do something with this value, I still have no way to cast it explicitly. What I really would need is: public RazorEngine<> Engine { get; set; } but that's not possible. Dynamic to the Rescue Luckily with the dynamic type this sort of thing can be mitigated fairly easily. For example here's a method that uses the Engine property and uses the well known class interface by simply casting the plain object reference to dynamic and then firing away on the properties and methods of the base template class that are common to all templates:/// <summary> /// Allows rendering a dynamic template from a string template /// passing in a model. This is like rendering a partial /// but providing the input as a /// </summary> public virtual string RenderTemplate(string template,object model) { if (template == null) return string.Empty; // if there's no template markup if(!template.Contains("@")) return template; // use dynamic to get around generic type casting dynamic engine = Engine; string result = engine.RenderTemplate(template, model); if (result == null) throw new ApplicationException("RenderTemplate failed: " + engine.ErrorMessage); return result; } Prior to .NET 4.0  I would have had to use Reflection for this sort of thing which would have a been a heck of a lot more verbose, but dynamic makes this so much easier and cleaner and in this case at least the overhead is negliable since it's a single dynamic operation on an otherwise very complex operation call. Dynamic as  a Bailout Sometimes this sort of thing often reeks of a design flaw, and I agree that in hindsight this could have been designed differently. But as is often the case this particular scenario wasn't planned for originally and removing the generic signatures from the base type would break a ton of other code in the framework. Given the existing fairly complex engine design, refactoring an interface to remove generic types just to make this particular code work would have been overkill. Instead dynamic provides a nice and simple and relatively clean solution. Now if there were many other places where this occurs I would probably consider reworking the code to make this cleaner but given this isolated instance and relatively low profile operation use of dynamic seems a valid choice for me. This solution really works anywhere where you might end up with an inheritance structure that doesn't have a common base or interface that is sufficient. In the example above I know what I'm getting but there's no common base type that I can cast to. All that said, it's a good idea to think about use of dynamic before you rush in. In many situations there are alternatives that can still work with static typing. Dynamic definitely has some overhead compared to direct static access of objects, so if possible we should definitely stick to static typing. In the example above the application already uses dynamics extensively for dynamic page page templating and passing models around so introducing dynamics here has very little additional overhead. The operation itself also fires of a fairly resource heavy operation where the overhead of a couple of dynamic member accesses are not a performance issue. So, what's your experience with dynamic as a bailout mechanism? © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in CSharp   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• UPK Pre-Built Content Update

  - by Karen Rihs

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} UPK pre-built content development efforts are always underway and growing. Over the last few months, the following new, upgraded, and revised modules became available:  NEW CONTENT RELEASES E-Business Suite 12.1 Install Base Process Manufacturing, Process Quality Fundamentals for EBS Fusion 11g Release 1 Receivables Assets Purchasing Distributed Order Orchestration Payables Functional Setup Manager Project Portfolio Management Self Service Procurement JDE E1 9.0 Accounts Payable 9.0 with 9.1 Tools Fundamentals 9.0 with 9.1 Tools General Ledger 9.0 with 9.1 Tools Accounts Receivable 9.0 with 9.1 Tools Procurement and Subcontract Management 9.0 with 9.1 Tools Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing 2.3.1 Administrative Setup User Tasks Primavera Primavera Contract Management 14 Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management 8.2 UPK CONTENT UPGRADES Agile CNM 1.2 Customer Needs Management E-Business Suite 12.1 Project Foundation JDE E1 9.1 Fixed Assets Accounting General Ledger Fundamentals Inventory Management Sales Order Management PeopleSoft 9.1 Reporting Tools for PeopleTools 8.5.2  UPK CONTENT REVISIONS Oracle Utilities for Meter Data Management 2.0.1 Administrative Setup User Tasks VEE and Usage Rules Working with Measurement Data PeopleSoft 9.0 and 9.1 Enterprise Learning Management Reporting Tools for HCM (previously Reporting Tools for HRMS) PeopleSoft 9.1 Expenses General Ledger Inventory Contracts Grants Strategic Sourcing For a list of modules currently available for each product line, visit the UPK Resource Library on Oracle.com. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} For more information on how your organization can take advantage of UPK pre-built content, see our previous blog,  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} The Value of UPK Pre-Built Content. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} - Karen Rihs, UPK Outbound Product Management

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• Silverlight Recruiting Application Part 4 - Navigation and Modules

  After our brief intermission (and the craziness of Q1 2010 release week), we're back on track here and today we get to dive into how we are going to navigate through our applications as well as how to set up our modules. That way, as I start adding the functionality- adding Jobs and Applicants, Interview Scheduling, and finally a handy Dashboard- you'll see how everything is communicating back and forth. This is all leading up to an eventual webinar, in which I'll dive into this process and give a honest look at the current story for MVVM vs. Code-Behind applications. (For a look at the future with SL4 and a little thing called MEF, check out what Ross is doing over at his blog!) Preamble... Before getting into really talking about this app, I've done a little bit of work ahead of time to create a ton of files that I'll need. Since the webinar is going to cover the Dashboard, it's not here, but otherwise this is a look at what the project layout looks like (and remember, this is both projects since they share the .Web): So as you can see, from an architecture perspective, the code-behind app is much smaller and more streamlined- aka a better fit for the one man shop that is me. Each module in the MVVM app has the same setup, which is the Module class and corresponding Views and ViewModels. Since the code-behind app doesn't need a go-between project like Infrastructure, each MVVM module is instead replaced by a single Silverlight UserControl which will contain all the logic for each respective bit of functionality. My Very First Module Navigation is going to be key to my application, so I figured the first thing I would setup is my MenuModule. First step here is creating a Silverlight Class Library named MenuModule, creatingthe View and ViewModel folders, and adding the MenuModule.cs class to handle module loading. The most important thing here is that my MenuModule inherits from IModule, which runs an Initialize on each module as it is created that, in my case, adds the views to the correct regions. Here's the MenuModule.cs code: public class MenuModule : IModule { private readonly IRegionManager regionManager; private readonly IUnityContainer container; public MenuModule(IUnityContainer container, IRegionManager regionmanager) { this.container = container; this.regionManager = regionmanager; } public void Initialize() { var addMenuView = container.Resolve<MenuView>(); regionManager.Regions["MenuRegion"].Add(addMenuView); } } Pretty straightforward here... We inject a container and region manager from Prism/Unity, then upon initialization we grab the view (out of our Views folder) and add it to the region it needs to live in. Simple, right? When the MenuView is created, the only thing in the code-behind is a reference to the set the MenuViewModel as the DataContext. I'd like to achieve MVVM nirvana and have zero code-behind by placing the viewmodel in the XAML, but for the reasons listed further below I can't. Navigation - MVVM Since navigation isn't the biggest concern in putting this whole thing together, I'm using the Button control to handle different options for loading up views/modules. There is another reason for this- out of the box, Prism has command support for buttons, which is one less custom command I had to work up for the functionality I would need. This comes from the Microsoft.Practices.Composite.Presentation assembly and looks as follows when put in code: <Button x:Name="xGoToJobs" Style="{StaticResource menuStyle}" Content="Jobs" cal:Click.Command="{Binding GoModule}" cal:Click.CommandParameter="JobPostingsView" /> For quick reference, 'menuStyle' is just taking care of margins and spacing, otherwise it looks, feels, and functions like everyone's favorite Button. What MVVM's this up is that the Click.Command is tying to a DelegateCommand (also coming fromPrism) on the backend. This setup allows you to tie user interaction to a command you setup in your viewmodel, which replaces the standard event-based setup you'd see in the code-behind app. Due to databinding magic, it all just works. When we get looking at the DelegateCommand in code, it ends up like this: public class MenuViewModel : ViewModelBase { private readonly IRegionManager regionManager; public DelegateCommand<object> GoModule { get; set; } public MenuViewModel(IRegionManager regionmanager) { this.regionManager = regionmanager; this.GoModule = new DelegateCommand<object>(this.goToView); } public void goToView(object obj) { MakeMeActive(this.regionManager, "MainRegion", obj.ToString()); } } Another for reference, ViewModelBase takes care of iNotifyPropertyChanged and MakeMeActive, which switches views in the MainRegion based on the parameters. So our public DelegateCommand GoModule ties to our command on the view, that in turn calls goToView, and the parameter on the button is the name of the view (which we pass with obj.ToString()) to activate. And how do the views get the names I can pass as a string? When I called regionManager.Regions[regionname].Add(view), there is an overload that allows for .Add(view, "viewname"), with viewname being what I use to activate views. You'll see that in action next installment, just wanted to clarify how that works. With this setup, I create two more buttons in my MenuView and the MenuModule is good to go. Last step is to make sure my MenuModule loads in my Bootstrapper: protected override IModuleCatalog GetModuleCatalog() { ModuleCatalog catalog = new ModuleCatalog(); // add modules here catalog.AddModule(typeof(MenuModule.MenuModule)); return catalog; } Clean, simple, MVVM-delicious. Navigation - Code-Behind Keeping with the history of significantly shorter code-behind sections of this series, Navigation will be no different. I promise. As I explained in a prior post, due to the one-project setup I don't have to worry about the same concerns so my menu is part of MainPage.xaml. So I can cheese-it a bit, though, since I've already got three buttons all set I'm just copying that code and adding three click-events instead of the command/commandparameter setup: <!-- Menu Region --> <StackPanel Grid.Row="1" Orientation="Vertical"> <Button x:Name="xJobsButton" Content="Jobs" Style="{StaticResource menuStyleCB}" Click="xJobsButton_Click" /> <Button x:Name="xApplicantsButton" Content="Applicants" Style="{StaticResource menuStyleCB}" Click="xApplicantsButton_Click" /> <Button x:Name="xSchedulingModule" Content="Scheduling" Style="{StaticResource menuStyleCB}" Click="xSchedulingModule_Click" /> </StackPanel> Simple, easy to use events, and no extra assemblies required! Since the code for loading each view will be similar, we'll focus on JobsView for now.The code-behind with this setup looks something like... private JobsView _jobsView; public MainPage() { InitializeComponent(); } private void xJobsButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { if (MainRegion.Content.GetType() != typeof(JobsView)) { if (_jobsView == null) _jobsView = new JobsView(); MainRegion.Content = _jobsView; } } What am I doing here? First, for each 'view' I create a private reference which MainPage will hold on to. This allows for a little bit of state-maintenance when switching views. When a button is clicked, first we make sure the 'view' typeisn't active (why load it again if it is already at center stage?), then we check if the view has been created and create if necessary, then load it up. Three steps to switching views and is easy as pie. Part 4 Results The end result of all this is that I now have a menu module (MVVM) and a menu section (code-behind) that load their respective views. Since I'm using the same exact XAML (except with commands/events depending on the project), the end result for both is again exactly the same and I'll show a slightly larger image to show it off: Next time, we add the Jobs Module and wire up RadGridView and a separate edit page to handle adding and editing new jobs. That's when things get fun. And somewhere down the line, I'll make the menu look slicker. :) 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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• C#: Optional Parameters - Pros and Pitfalls

  - by James Michael Hare

  When Microsoft rolled out Visual Studio 2010 with C# 4, I was very excited to learn how I could apply all the new features and enhancements to help make me and my team more productive developers. Default parameters have been around forever in C++, and were intentionally omitted in Java in favor of using overloading to satisfy that need as it was though that having too many default parameters could introduce code safety issues.  To some extent I can understand that move, as I’ve been bitten by default parameter pitfalls before, but at the same time I feel like Java threw out the baby with the bathwater in that move and I’m glad to see C# now has them. This post briefly discusses the pros and pitfalls of using default parameters.  I’m avoiding saying cons, because I really don’t believe using default parameters is a negative thing, I just think there are things you must watch for and guard against to avoid abuses that can cause code safety issues. Pro: Default Parameters Can Simplify Code Let’s start out with positives.  Consider how much cleaner it is to reduce all the overloads in methods or constructors that simply exist to give the semblance of optional parameters.  For example, we could have a Message class defined which allows for all possible initializations of a Message: 1: public class Message 2: { 3: // can either cascade these like this or duplicate the defaults (which can introduce risk) 4: public Message() 5: : this(string.Empty) 6: { 7: } 8:  9: public Message(string text) 10: : this(text, null) 11: { 12: } 13:  14: public Message(string text, IDictionary<string, string> properties) 15: : this(text, properties, -1) 16: { 17: } 18:  19: public Message(string text, IDictionary<string, string> properties, long timeToLive) 20: { 21: // ... 22: } 23: }   Now consider the same code with default parameters: 1: public class Message 2: { 3: // can either cascade these like this or duplicate the defaults (which can introduce risk) 4: public Message(string text = "", IDictionary<string, string> properties = null, long timeToLive = -1) 5: { 6: // ... 7: } 8: }   Much more clean and concise and no repetitive coding!  In addition, in the past if you wanted to be able to cleanly supply timeToLive and accept the default on text and properties above, you would need to either create another overload, or pass in the defaults explicitly.  With named parameters, though, we can do this easily: 1: var msg = new Message(timeToLive: 100);   Pro: Named Parameters can Improve Readability I must say one of my favorite things with the default parameters addition in C# is the named parameters.  It lets code be a lot easier to understand visually with no comments.  Think how many times you’ve run across a TimeSpan declaration with 4 arguments and wondered if they were passing in days/hours/minutes/seconds or hours/minutes/seconds/milliseconds.  A novice running through your code may wonder what it is.  Named arguments can help resolve the visual ambiguity: 1: // is this days/hours/minutes/seconds (no) or hours/minutes/seconds/milliseconds (yes) 2: var ts = new TimeSpan(1, 2, 3, 4); 3:  4: // this however is visually very explicit 5: var ts = new TimeSpan(days: 1, hours: 2, minutes: 3, seconds: 4);   Or think of the times you’ve run across something passing a Boolean literal and wondered what it was: 1: // what is false here? 2: var sub = CreateSubscriber(hostname, port, false); 3:  4: // aha! Much more visibly clear 5: var sub = CreateSubscriber(hostname, port, isBuffered: false);   Pitfall: Don't Insert new Default Parameters In Between Existing Defaults Now let’s consider a two potential pitfalls.  The first is really an abuse.  It’s not really a fault of the default parameters themselves, but a fault in the use of them.  Let’s consider that Message constructor again with defaults.  Let’s say you want to add a messagePriority to the message and you think this is more important than a timeToLive value, so you decide to put messagePriority before it in the default, this gives you: 1: public class Message 2: { 3: public Message(string text = "", IDictionary<string, string> properties = null, int priority = 5, long timeToLive = -1) 4: { 5: // ... 6: } 7: }   Oh boy have we set ourselves up for failure!  Why?  Think of all the code out there that could already be using the library that already specified the timeToLive, such as this possible call: 1: var msg = new Message(“An error occurred”, myProperties, 1000);   Before this specified a message with a TTL of 1000, now it specifies a message with a priority of 1000 and a time to live of -1 (infinite).  All of this with NO compiler errors or warnings. So the rule to take away is if you are adding new default parameters to a method that’s currently in use, make sure you add them to the end of the list or create a brand new method or overload. Pitfall: Beware of Default Parameters in Inheritance and Interface Implementation Now, the second potential pitfalls has to do with inheritance and interface implementation.  I’ll illustrate with a puzzle: 1: public interface ITag 2: { 3: void WriteTag(string tagName = "ITag"); 4: } 5:  6: public class BaseTag : ITag 7: { 8: public virtual void WriteTag(string tagName = "BaseTag") { Console.WriteLine(tagName); } 9: } 10:  11: public class SubTag : BaseTag 12: { 13: public override void WriteTag(string tagName = "SubTag") { Console.WriteLine(tagName); } 14: } 15:  16: public static class Program 17: { 18: public static void Main() 19: { 20: SubTag subTag = new SubTag(); 21: BaseTag subByBaseTag = subTag; 22: ITag subByInterfaceTag = subTag; 23:  24: // what happens here? 25: subTag.WriteTag(); 26: subByBaseTag.WriteTag(); 27: subByInterfaceTag.WriteTag(); 28: } 29: }   What happens?  Well, even though the object in each case is SubTag whose tag is “SubTag”, you will get: 1: SubTag 2: BaseTag 3: ITag   Why?  Because default parameter are resolved at compile time, not runtime!  This means that the default does not belong to the object being called, but by the reference type it’s being called through.  Since the SubTag instance is being called through an ITag reference, it will use the default specified in ITag. So the moral of the story here is to be very careful how you specify defaults in interfaces or inheritance hierarchies.  I would suggest avoiding repeating them, and instead concentrating on the layer of classes or interfaces you must likely expect your caller to be calling from. For example, if you have a messaging factory that returns an IMessage which can be either an MsmqMessage or JmsMessage, it only makes since to put the defaults at the IMessage level since chances are your user will be using the interface only. So let’s sum up.  In general, I really love default and named parameters in C# 4.0.  I think they’re a great tool to help make your code easier to read and maintain when used correctly. On the plus side, default parameters: Reduce redundant overloading for the sake of providing optional calling structures. Improve readability by being able to name an ambiguous argument. But remember to make sure you: Do not insert new default parameters in the middle of an existing set of default parameters, this may cause unpredictable behavior that may not necessarily throw a syntax error – add to end of list or create new method. Be extremely careful how you use default parameters in inheritance hierarchies and interfaces – choose the most appropriate level to add the defaults based on expected usage. Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Software,Default Parameters

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• Authenticating clients in the new WCF Http stack

  - by cibrax

  About this time last year, I wrote a couple of posts about how to use the “Interceptors” from the REST starker kit for implementing several authentication mechanisms like “SAML”, “Basic Authentication” or “OAuth” in the WCF Web programming model. The things have changed a lot since then, and Glenn finally put on our hands a new version of the Web programming model that deserves some attention and I believe will help us a lot to build more Http oriented services in the .NET stack. What you can get today from wcf.codeplex.com is a preview with some cool features like Http Processors (which I already discussed here), a new and improved version of the HttpClient library, Dependency injection and better TDD support among others. However, the framework still does not support an standard way of doing client authentication on the services (This is something planned for the upcoming releases I believe). For that reason, moving the existing authentication interceptors to this new programming model was one of the things I did in the last few days. In order to make authentication simple and easy to extend,  I first came up with a model based on what I called “Authentication Interceptors”. An authentication interceptor maps to an existing Http authentication mechanism and implements the following interface, public interface IAuthenticationInterceptor{ string Scheme { get; } bool DoAuthentication(HttpRequestMessage request, HttpResponseMessage response, out IPrincipal principal);} An authentication interceptors basically needs to returns the http authentication schema that implements in the property “Scheme”, and implements the authentication mechanism in the method “DoAuthentication”. As you can see, this last method “DoAuthentication” only relies on the HttpRequestMessage and HttpResponseMessage classes, making the testing of this interceptor very simple (There is no need to do some black magic with the WCF context or messages). After this, I implemented a couple of interceptors for supporting basic authentication and brokered authentication with SAML (using WIF) in my services. The following code illustrates how the basic authentication interceptors looks like. public class BasicAuthenticationInterceptor : IAuthenticationInterceptor{ Func<UsernameAndPassword, bool> userValidation; string realm;  public BasicAuthenticationInterceptor(Func<UsernameAndPassword, bool> userValidation, string realm) { if (userValidation == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("userValidation");  if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(realm)) throw new ArgumentNullException("realm");  this.userValidation = userValidation; this.realm = realm; }  public string Scheme { get { return "Basic"; } }  public bool DoAuthentication(HttpRequestMessage request, HttpResponseMessage response, out IPrincipal principal) { string[] credentials = ExtractCredentials(request); if (credentials.Length == 0 || !AuthenticateUser(credentials[0], credentials[1])) { response.StatusCode = HttpStatusCode.Unauthorized; response.Content = new StringContent("Access denied"); response.Headers.WwwAuthenticate.Add(new AuthenticationHeaderValue("Basic", "realm=" + this.realm));  principal = null;  return false; } else { principal = new GenericPrincipal(new GenericIdentity(credentials[0]), new string[] {});  return true; } }  private string[] ExtractCredentials(HttpRequestMessage request) { if (request.Headers.Authorization != null && request.Headers.Authorization.Scheme.StartsWith("Basic")) { string encodedUserPass = request.Headers.Authorization.Parameter.Trim();  Encoding encoding = Encoding.GetEncoding("iso-8859-1"); string userPass = encoding.GetString(Convert.FromBase64String(encodedUserPass)); int separator = userPass.IndexOf(':');  string[] credentials = new string[2]; credentials[0] = userPass.Substring(0, separator); credentials[1] = userPass.Substring(separator + 1);  return credentials; }  return new string[] { }; }  private bool AuthenticateUser(string username, string password) { var usernameAndPassword = new UsernameAndPassword { Username = username, Password = password };  if (this.userValidation(usernameAndPassword)) { return true; }  return false; }} This interceptor receives in the constructor a callback in the form of a Func delegate for authenticating the user and the “realm”, which is required as part of the implementation. The rest is a general implementation of the basic authentication mechanism using standard http request and response messages. I also implemented another interceptor for authenticating a SAML token with WIF. public class SamlAuthenticationInterceptor : IAuthenticationInterceptor{ SecurityTokenHandlerCollection handlers = null;  public SamlAuthenticationInterceptor(SecurityTokenHandlerCollection handlers) { if (handlers == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("handlers");  this.handlers = handlers; }  public string Scheme { get { return "saml"; } }  public bool DoAuthentication(HttpRequestMessage request, HttpResponseMessage response, out IPrincipal principal) { SecurityToken token = ExtractCredentials(request);  if (token != null) { ClaimsIdentityCollection claims = handlers.ValidateToken(token);  principal = new ClaimsPrincipal(claims);  return true; } else { response.StatusCode = HttpStatusCode.Unauthorized; response.Content = new StringContent("Access denied");  principal = null;  return false; } }  private SecurityToken ExtractCredentials(HttpRequestMessage request) { if (request.Headers.Authorization != null && request.Headers.Authorization.Scheme == "saml") { XmlTextReader xmlReader = new XmlTextReader(new StringReader(request.Headers.Authorization.Parameter));  var col = SecurityTokenHandlerCollection.CreateDefaultSecurityTokenHandlerCollection(); SecurityToken token = col.ReadToken(xmlReader);  return token; }  return null; }}This implementation receives a “SecurityTokenHandlerCollection” instance as part of the constructor. This class is part of WIF, and basically represents a collection of token managers to know how to handle specific xml authentication tokens (SAML is one of them). I also created a set of extension methods for injecting these interceptors as part of a service route when the service is initialized. var basicAuthentication = new BasicAuthenticationInterceptor((u) => true, "ContactManager");var samlAuthentication = new SamlAuthenticationInterceptor(serviceConfiguration.SecurityTokenHandlers); // use MEF for providing instancesvar catalog = new AssemblyCatalog(typeof(Global).Assembly);var container = new CompositionContainer(catalog);var configuration = new ContactManagerConfiguration(container); RouteTable.Routes.AddServiceRoute<ContactResource>("contact", configuration, basicAuthentication, samlAuthentication);RouteTable.Routes.AddServiceRoute<ContactsResource>("contacts", configuration, basicAuthentication, samlAuthentication); In the code above, I am injecting the basic authentication and saml authentication interceptors in the “contact” and “contacts” resource implementations that come as samples in the code preview. I will use another post to discuss more in detail how the brokered authentication with SAML model works with this new WCF Http bits. The code is available to download in this location.

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• VLC 2.0.3 on Lubuntu 12.04: No audio?

  - by drezabek

  I am on Lubuntu 12.04, and I have installed VLC media player version 2.0.3. When I try and play an audio file, it appears to load fine, and the media position bar displays the progress, and it says it is playing, but I can't here any thing through my speakers. I can hear game audio, web audio, and audio from SMPlayer just fine, but with VLC, I can't here anything. Below is the "Messages" output with the verbosity option set to "2 (debug)" main debug: processing request item: The Bottom, node: Playlist, skip: 0 main debug: resyncing on The Bottom main debug: The Bottom is at 0 main debug: starting playback of the new playlist item main debug: resyncing on The Bottom main debug: The Bottom is at 0 main debug: creating new input thread main debug: Creating an input for 'The Bottom' main debug: TIMER input launching for 'Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack - 01 The Bottom.flac' : 23.706 ms - Total 23.706 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 23.706 ms) main debug: using timeshift granularity of 50 MiB, in path '/tmp' main debug: `file:///home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack%20-%2001%20The%20Bottom.flac' gives access `file' demux `' path `/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack%20-%2001%20The%20Bottom.flac' main debug: creating demux: access='file' demux='' location='/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack%20-%2001%20The%20Bottom.flac' file='/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack - 01 The Bottom.flac' main debug: looking for access_demux module: 3 candidates main debug: no access_demux module matching "file" could be loaded main debug: TIMER module_need() : 2.332 ms - Total 2.332 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 2.332 ms) main debug: creating access 'file' location='/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack%20-%2001%20The%20Bottom.flac', path='/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack - 01 The Bottom.flac' main debug: looking for access module: 2 candidates filesystem debug: opening file `/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack - 01 The Bottom.flac' main debug: using access module "filesystem" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.762 ms - Total 0.762 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.762 ms) main debug: Using stream method for AStream* main debug: starting pre-buffering main debug: received first data after 0 ms main debug: pre-buffering done 1024 bytes in 0s - 43478 KiB/s main debug: looking for stream_filter module: 7 candidates main debug: no stream_filter module matching "any" could be loaded main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.236 ms - Total 0.236 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.236 ms) main debug: looking for stream_filter module: 1 candidate main debug: using stream_filter module "stream_filter_record" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.156 ms - Total 0.156 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.156 ms) main debug: creating demux: access='file' demux='' location='/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack%20-%2001%20The%20Bottom.flac' file='/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack - 01 The Bottom.flac' main debug: looking for demux module: 54 candidates flacsys debug: Picture type=3 mime=image/png description='' file length=679371 qt4 debug: IM: Setting an input main debug: looking for packetizer module: 21 candidates main debug: using packetizer module "packetizer_flac" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.211 ms - Total 0.211 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.211 ms) main debug: using demux module "flacsys" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 4.023 ms - Total 4.023 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 4.023 ms) main debug: looking for a subtitle file in /home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack/ main debug: looking for meta reader module: 2 candidates main debug: using meta reader module "taglib" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 5.245 ms - Total 5.245 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 5.245 ms) main debug: removing module "taglib" main debug: `file:///home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack%20-%2001%20The%20Bottom.flac' successfully opened main debug: selecting program id=0 main debug: looking for decoder module: 30 candidates main debug: using decoder module "flac" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.442 ms - Total 0.442 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.442 ms) main debug: Buffering 0% flac debug: decode STREAMINFO flac debug: channels:2 samplerate:44100 bitspersamples:16 flac debug: STREAMINFO decoded main debug: Buffering 30% main debug: recycling audio output main debug: looking for audio output module: 3 candidates main debug: Buffering 61% pulse debug: using stereo channel map pulse debug: using library version 1.1.0 pulse debug: (compiled with version 1.1.0, protocol 26) main debug: Buffering 92% main debug: Stream buffering done (371 ms in 2 ms) pulse debug: connected locally to unix:/home/doug/.pulse/dce22254e867f905188a2ce200000003-runtime/native as client #14 pulse debug: using protocol 26, server protocol 26 pulse debug: using buffer metrics: maxlength=4194304, tlength=9880, prebuf=0, minreq=3528 pulse debug: connected to sink 0: alsa_output.pci-0000_00_14.2.analog-stereo main debug: using audio output module "pulse" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 4.571 ms - Total 4.571 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 4.571 ms) main debug: output 's16l' 44100 Hz Stereo frame=1 samples/4 bytes main debug: mixer 'f32l' 44100 Hz Stereo frame=1 samples/8 bytes main debug: filter(s) 'f32l'->'s16l' 44100 Hz->44100 Hz Stereo->Stereo main debug: looking for audio filter module: 14 candidates audio_format debug: f32l->s16l, bits per sample: 32->16 main debug: using audio filter module "audio_format" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.187 ms - Total 0.187 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.187 ms) main debug: conversion pipeline completed main debug: looking for audio mixer module: 2 candidates main debug: using audio mixer module "float32_mixer" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.125 ms - Total 0.125 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.125 ms) main debug: input 's16l' 44100 Hz Stereo frame=1 samples/4 bytes main debug: looking for audio filter module: 1 candidate scaletempo debug: format: 44100 rate, 2 nch, 4 bps, fl32 scaletempo debug: params: 30 stride, 0.200 overlap, 14 search scaletempo debug: 1.000 scale, 1323.000 stride_in, 1323 stride_out, 1059 standing, 264 overlap, 617 search, 2204 queue, fl32 mode main debug: using audio filter module "scaletempo" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.233 ms - Total 0.233 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.233 ms) main debug: filter(s) 's16l'->'f32l' 44100 Hz->44100 Hz Stereo->Stereo pulse debug: listing sink alsa_output.pci-0000_00_14.2.analog-stereo (0): Built-in Audio Analog Stereo main debug: looking for audio filter module: 14 candidates audio_format debug: s16l->f32l, bits per sample: 16->32 main debug: using audio filter module "audio_format" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.147 ms - Total 0.147 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.147 ms) main debug: conversion pipeline completed pulse debug: base volume: 65536 main debug: looking for audio filter module: 1 candidate equalizer debug: equalizer loaded for 44100 Hz with 10 bands 2 pass equalizer debug: 60 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.003013 beta:0.993973 gamma:1.993901 equalizer debug: 170 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.008490 beta:0.983019 gamma:1.982437 equalizer debug: 310 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.015374 beta:0.969252 gamma:1.967331 equalizer debug: 600 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.029328 beta:0.941343 gamma:1.934254 equalizer debug: 1000 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.047918 beta:0.904163 gamma:1.884869 equalizer debug: 3000 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.130408 beta:0.739184 gamma:1.582718 equalizer debug: 6000 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.226555 beta:0.546889 gamma:1.015267 equalizer debug: 12000 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.344937 beta:0.310127 gamma:-0.181410 equalizer debug: 14000 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.366438 beta:0.267123 gamma:-0.521151 equalizer debug: 16000 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.379009 beta:0.241981 gamma:-0.808451 main debug: using audio filter module "equalizer" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.353 ms - Total 0.353 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.353 ms) main debug: filter(s) 'f32l'->'f32l' 44100 Hz->44100 Hz Stereo->Stereo main debug: conversion pipeline completed main debug: looking for visualization2 module: 1 candidate main debug: looking for text renderer module: 2 candidates freetype debug: Building font databases. freetype debug: Took 0 microseconds freetype debug: Using Serif Bold as font from file /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSans.ttf freetype debug: using fontsize: 2 main debug: using text renderer module "freetype" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 3.278 ms - Total 3.278 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 3.278 ms) main debug: looking for video filter2 module: 18 candidates swscale debug: 32x32 chroma: YUVA -> 16x16 chroma: RGBA with scaling using Bicubic (good quality) main debug: using video filter2 module "swscale" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 1.037 ms - Total 1.037 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 1.037 ms) main debug: looking for video filter2 module: 18 candidates yuvp debug: YUVP to YUVA converter main debug: using video filter2 module "yuvp" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.156 ms - Total 0.156 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.156 ms) main debug: Deinterlacing available main debug: deinterlace 0, mode blend, is_needed 0 main debug: Opening vout display wrapper main debug: looking for vout display module: 6 candidates main debug: looking for vout window xid module: 4 candidates qt4 debug: requesting video... qt4 debug: Video was requested 0, 0 main debug: using vout window xid module "qt4" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 61.671 ms - Total 61.671 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 61.671 ms) main debug: looking for inhibit module: 2 candidates main debug: using inhibit module "xdg_screensaver" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.336 ms - Total 0.336 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.336 ms) xdg_screensaver debug: started xdg-screensaver (PID = 6682) xcb_xv debug: connected to X11.0 server xcb_xv debug: vendor : The X.Org Foundation xcb_xv debug: version: 11103000 xcb_xv debug: using screen 0x15a xcb_xv debug: using XVideo extension v2.2 xcb_xv debug: using adaptor NV17 Video Texture xcb_xv debug: using port 310 xcb_xv debug: using image format 0x30323449 xcb_xv debug: using X11 visual ID 0x21 (depth: 24) xcb_xv debug: using X11 window 0x03400000 xcb_xv debug: using X11 graphic context 0x03400002 main debug: VoutDisplayEvent 'fullscreen' 0 main debug: VoutDisplayEvent 'resize' 800x500 window main debug: using vout display module "xcb_xv" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 69.890 ms - Total 69.890 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 69.890 ms) main debug: original format sz 800x500, of (0,0), vsz 800x500, 4cc I420, sar 1:1, msk r0x0 g0x0 b0x0 main debug: removing module "freetype" main debug: looking for text renderer module: 2 candidates freetype debug: Building font databases. freetype debug: Took 0 microseconds freetype debug: Using Serif Bold as font from file /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSans.ttf freetype debug: using fontsize: 2 main debug: using text renderer module "freetype" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 4.552 ms - Total 4.552 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 4.552 ms) main debug: using visualization2 module "visual" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 84.104 ms - Total 84.104 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 84.104 ms) main debug: filter(s) 'f32l'->'f32l' 44100 Hz->44100 Hz Stereo->Stereo main debug: conversion pipeline completed main debug: filter(s) 'f32l'->'f32l' 44100 Hz->44100 Hz Stereo->Stereo main debug: conversion pipeline completed main debug: filter(s) 'f32l'->'f32l' 48510 Hz->44100 Hz Stereo->Stereo main debug: looking for audio filter module: 14 candidates main debug: using audio filter module "samplerate" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.375 ms - Total 0.375 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.375 ms) main debug: conversion pipeline completed main debug: End of audio preroll main debug: Decoder buffering done in 91 ms main warning: PTS is out of range (-9269), dropping buffer pulse debug: deferring start (190703 us) main debug: looking for video blending module: 1 candidate main debug: using video blending module "blend" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.275 ms - Total 0.275 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.275 ms) main debug: Detected interlaced video main debug: deinterlace 0, mode blend, is_needed 1 xcb_xv debug: display is visible pulse debug: starting deferred pulse warning: too late by 93760 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44186 Hz pulse debug: started pulse warning: too late by 94474 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44229 Hz pulse warning: too late by 93532 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44272 Hz pulse warning: too late by 92829 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44315 Hz pulse warning: too late by 92132 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44358 Hz xcb_xv debug: display is visible pulse warning: too late by 91534 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44401 Hz xcb_xv debug: display is visible pulse warning: too late by 89482 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44440 Hz xcb_xv debug: display is visible xcb_xv debug: display is visible pulse warning: too late by 87529 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44479 Hz pulse warning: too late by 84577 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44504 Hz main debug: auto hiding mouse cursor pulse warning: too late by 78562 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44492 Hz pulse warning: too late by 68015 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44422 Hz xcb_xv debug: display is visible xcb_xv debug: display is visible xcb_xv debug: display is visible xcb_xv debug: display is visible main debug: auto hiding mouse cursor pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44336 Hz xcb_xv debug: display is visible xcb_xv debug: display is visible xcb_xv debug: display is visible main debug: auto hiding mouse cursor I have had issues with VLC in the past- the audio quality was extremely crackly, as if the headphone jack was plugged in only half way, and the sounds were extremely sharp and caused my speakers to make a ringing/vibrating noise... It would eventually start working after I messed around with the audio settings, but it happened every restart. I eventually switched to SMPlayer, but now I need some of the features that VLC offers, but I still can't use VLC. At this point, the audio can not be heard at all, and the method I used before, messing around with the audio settings, isn't getting me anywhere. (note, I reposted this on VideoLan's forums, link is here: http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=104726) Please let me know if you need more information, or are confused by something I posted! Thanks!

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• Using the BAM Interceptor with Continuation

  - by Charles Young

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/cyoung/archive/2014/06/02/using-the-bam-interceptor-with-continuation.aspxI’ve recently been resurrecting some code written several years ago that makes extensive use of the BAM Interceptor provided as part of BizTalk Server’s BAM event observation library.  In doing this, I noticed an issue with continuations.  Essentially, whenever I tried to configure one or more continuations for an activity, the BAM Interceptor failed to complete the activity correctly.   Careful inspection of my code confirmed that I was initializing and invoking the BAM interceptor correctly, so I was mystified.  However, I eventually found the problem.  It is a logical error in the BAM Interceptor code itself. The BAM Interceptor provides a useful mechanism for implementing dynamic tracking.  It supports configurable ‘track points’.  These are grouped into named ‘locations’.  BAM uses the term ‘step’ as a synonym for ‘location’.   Each track point defines a BAM action such as starting an activity, extracting a data item, enabling a continuation, etc.  Each step defines a collection of track points. Understanding Steps The BAM Interceptor provides an abstract model for handling configuration of steps.  It doesn’t, however, define any specific configuration mechanism (e.g., config files, SSO, etc.)  It is up to the developer to decide how to store, manage and retrieve configuration data.  At run time, this configuration is used to register track points which then drive the BAM Interceptor. The full semantics of a step are not immediately clear from Microsoft’s documentation.  They represent a point in a business activity where BAM tracking occurs.  They are named locations in the code.  What is less obvious is that they always represent either the full tracking work for a given activity or a discrete fragment of that work which commences with the start of a new activity or the continuation of an existing activity.  The BAM Interceptor enforces this by throwing an error if no ‘start new’ or ‘continue’ track point is registered for a named location. This constraint implies that each step must marked with an ‘end activity’ track point.  One of the peculiarities of BAM semantics is that when an activity is continued under a correlated ID, you must first mark the current activity as ‘ended’ in order to ensure the right housekeeping is done in the database.  If you re-start an ended activity under the same ID, you will leave the BAM import tables in an inconsistent state.  A step, therefore, always represents an entire unit of work for a given activity or continuation ID.  For activities with continuation, each unit of work is termed a ‘fragment’. Instance and Fragment State Internally, the BAM Interceptor maintains state data at two levels.  First, it represents the overall state of the activity using a ‘trace instance’ token.  This token contains the name and ID of the activity together with a couple of state flags.  The second level of state represents a ‘trace fragment’.   As we have seen, a fragment of an activity corresponds directly to the notion of a ‘step’.  It is the unit of work done at a named location, and it must be bounded by start and end, or continue and end, actions. When handling continuations, the BAM Interceptor differentiates between ‘root’ fragments and other fragments.  Very simply, a root fragment represents the start of an activity.  Other fragments represent continuations.  This is where the logic breaks down.  The BAM Interceptor loses state integrity for root fragments when continuations are defined. Initialization Microsoft’s BAM Interceptor code supports the initialization of BAM Interceptors from track point configuration data.  The process starts by populating an Activity Interceptor Configuration object with an array of track points.  These can belong to different steps (aka ‘locations’) and can be registered in any order.  Once it is populated with track points, the Activity Interceptor Configuration is used to initialise the BAM Interceptor.  The BAM Interceptor sets up a hash table of array lists.  Each step is represented by an array list, and each array list contains an ordered set of track points.  The BAM Interceptor represents track points as ‘executable’ components.  When the OnStep method of the BAM Interceptor is called for a given step, the corresponding list of track points is retrieved and each track point is executed in turn.  Each track point retrieves any required data using a call back mechanism and then serializes a BAM trace fragment object representing a specific action (e.g., start, update, enable continuation, stop, etc.).  The serialised trace fragment is then handed off to a BAM event stream (buffered or direct) which takes the appropriate action. The Root of the Problem The logic breaks down in the Activity Interceptor Configuration.  Each Activity Interceptor Configuration is initialised with an instance of a ‘trace instance’ token.  This provides the basic metadata for the activity as a whole.  It contains the activity name and ID together with state flags indicating if the activity ID is a root (i.e., not a continuation fragment) and if it is completed.  This single token is then shared by all trace actions for all steps registered with the Activity Interceptor Configuration. Each trace instance token is automatically initialised to represent a root fragment.  However, if you subsequently register a ‘continuation’ step with the Activity Interceptor Configuration, the ‘root’ flag is set to false at the point the ‘continue’ track point is registered for that step.   If you use a ‘reflector’ tool to inspect the code for the ActivityInterceptorConfiguration class, you can see the flag being set in one of the overloads of the RegisterContinue method.    This makes no sense.  The trace instance token is shared across all the track points registered with the Activity Interceptor Configuration.  The Activity Interceptor Configuration is designed to hold track points for multiple steps.  The ‘root’ flag is clearly meant to be initialised to ‘true’ for the preliminary root fragment and then subsequently set to false at the point that a continuation step is processed.  Instead, if the Activity Interceptor Configuration contains a continuation step, it is changed to ‘false’ before the root fragment is processed.  This is clearly an error in logic. The problem causes havoc when the BAM Interceptor is used with continuation.  Effectively the root step is no longer processed correctly, and the ultimate effect is that the continued activity never completes!   This has nothing to do with the root and the continuation being in the same process.  It is due to a fundamental mistake of setting the ‘root’ flag to false for a continuation before the root fragment is processed. The Workaround Fortunately, it is easy to work around the bug.  The trick is to ensure that you create a new Activity Interceptor Configuration object for each individual step.  This may mean filtering your configuration data to extract the track points for a single step or grouping the configured track points into individual steps and the creating a separate Activity Interceptor Configuration for each group.  In my case, the first approach was required.  Here is what the amended code looks like: // Because of a logic error in Microsoft's code, a separate ActivityInterceptorConfiguration must be used // for each location. The following code extracts only those track points for a given step name (location). var trackPointGroup = from ResolutionService.TrackPoint tp in bamActivity.TrackPoints                       where (string)tp.Location == bamStepName                       select tp; var bamActivityInterceptorConfig =     new Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.EventObservation.ActivityInterceptorConfiguration(activityName); foreach (var trackPoint in trackPointGroup) {     switch (trackPoint.Type)     {         case TrackPointType.Start:             bamActivityInterceptorConfig.RegisterStartNew(trackPoint.Location, trackPoint.ExtractionInfo);             break; etc… I’m using LINQ to filter a list of track points for those entries that correspond to a given step and then registering only those track points on a new instance of the ActivityInterceptorConfiguration class.   As soon as I re-wrote the code to do this, activities with continuations started to complete correctly.

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• HTML5 Form Validation

  - by Stephen.Walther

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

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, October 15, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, October 15, 2013Popular ReleasesFFXIV Crafting Simulator: Crafting Simulator 2.4.1: -Fixed the offset for the new patch (Auto Loading function)iBoxDB.EX - Fast Transactional NoSQL Database Resources: iBoxDB.net fast transactional nosql database 1.5.2: Easily process objects and documents, zero configuration. fast embeddable transactional nosql document database, includes CURD, QueryLanguage, Master-Master-Slave Replication, MVCC, etc. supports .net2, .net4, windows phone, mono, unity3d, node.js , copy and run. http://download-codeplex.sec.s-msft.com/Download?ProjectName=iboxdb&DownloadId=737783 Benchmark with MongoDB Compatibility more platforms for java versionneurogoody: slicebox: this is the slice box jsEvent-Based Components AppBuilder: AB3.AppDesigner.55: Iteration 55 (Feature): Moving of TargetEdge (simple wires only) by mouse.Sandcastle Help File Builder: SHFB v1.9.8.0 with Visual Studio Package: General InformationIMPORTANT: On some systems, the content of the ZIP file is blocked and the installer may fail to run. Before extracting it, right click on the ZIP file, select Properties, and click on the Unblock button if it is present in the lower right corner of the General tab in the properties dialog. This new release contains bug fixes and feature enhancements. There are some potential breaking changes in this release as some features of the Help File Builder have been moved into...SharpConfig: SharpConfig 1.2: Implemented comment parsing. Comments are now part of settings and setting categories. New properties: Setting: Comment PreComments SettingCategory: Comment PreCommentsC++ REST SDK (codename "Casablanca"): C++ REST SDK 1.3.0: This release fixes multiple customer reported issues as well as the following: Full support for Dev12 binaries and project files Full support for Windows XP New sample highlighting the Client and Server APIs : BlackJack Expose underlying native handle to set custom options on http_client Improvements to Listener Library Note: Dev10 binaries have been dropped as of this release, however the Dev10 project files are still available in the Source CodeAD ACL Scanner: 1.3.2: Minor bug fixed: Powershell 4.0 will report: Select—Object: Parameter cannot be processed because the parameter name p is ambiguous.Json.NET: Json.NET 5.0 Release 7: New feature - Added support for Immutable Collections New feature - Added WriteData and ReadData settings to DataExtensionAttribute New feature - Added reference and type name handling support to extension data New feature - Added default value and required support to constructor deserialization Change - Extension data is now written when serializing Fix - Added missing casts to JToken Fix - Fixed parsing large floating point numbers Fix - Fixed not parsing some ISO date ...RESX Manager: ResxManager 0.2.1: FIXED: Many critical bugs have been fixed. New Features Error logging for improved exception handling New toolbar Improvements of user interfaceFast YouTube Downloader: YouTube Downloader 2.2.0: YouTube Downloader 2.2.0VidCoder: 1.5.8 Beta: Added hardware acceleration options: Bicubic OpenCL scaling algorithm, QSV decoding/encoding and DXVA decoding. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5834. Updated VidCoder setup icon. Fixed crash when choosing the mp4v2 container on x86 and opening on x64. Warning: the hardware acceleration features require specific hardware or file types to work correctly: QSV: Need an Intel processor that supports Quick Sync Video encoding, with a monitor hooked up to the Intel HD Graphics output and the lat...ASP.net MVC Awesome - jQuery Ajax Helpers: 3.5.2: version 3.5.2 - fix for setting single value to multivalue controls - datepicker min max date offset fix - html encoding for keys fix - enable Column.ClientFormatFunc to be a function call that will return a function version 3.5.1 - fixed html attributes rendering - fixed loading animation rendering - css improvements version 3.5 ========================== - autosize for all popups ( can be turned off by calling in js awe.autoSize = false ) - added Parent, Paremeter extensions ...Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1310.12: Allow the Update Creation Wizard to be set in full screen mode. Fix a bug which prevent WPP to Reset Remote Sus Client ID. Change the behavior of links in the Update Detail Viewer. Left-Click to open, Right-Click to copy to the Clipboard.TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v7 [Terraria Inventory Editor]: This is a complete overhaul but has the same core style. I hope you enjoy it. This version is compatible with 1.2.0.3 Please send issues to my Twitter or https://github.com/TJChap2840WDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.6.maint: I think this covers all of the issues. new additions: fixed the thumbnail problem for backgrounds. general clean up and error checking. need to get this put through the wringer and all feedback is welcome.BIDS Helper: BIDS Helper 1.6.4: This BIDS Helper release brings the following new features and fixes: New Features: A new Bus Matrix style report option when you run the Printer Friendly Dimension Usage report for an SSAS cube. The Biml engine is now fully in sync with the supported subset of Varigence Mist 3.4. This includes a large number of language enhancements, bugfixes, and project deployment support. Fixed Issues: Fixed Biml execution for project connections fixing a bug with Tabular Translations Editor not a...MoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): MoreTerra 1.11.3: =========== =New Features= =========== New Markers added for Plantera's Bulb, Heart Fruits and Gold Cache. Markers now correctly display for the gems found in rock debris on the floor. =========== =Compatibility= =========== Fixed header changes found in Terraria 1.0.3.1Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.581b: Fix in place for TVDB xml issue. New* Movie - General Preferences, allow saving of ignored 'The' or 'A' to end of movie title, stored in sorttitle field. * Movie - New Way for Cropping Posters. Fixed* Movie - Rename of folders/filename. caught error message. * Movie - Fixed Bug in Save Cropped image, only saving in Pre-Frodo format if Both model selected. * Movie - Fixed Cropped image didn't take zoomed ratio into effect. * Movie - Separated Folder Renaming and File Renaming fuctions durin...SmartStore.NET - Free ASP.NET MVC Ecommerce Shopping Cart Solution: SmartStore.NET 1.2.0: HighlightsMulti-store support "Trusted Shops" plugins Highly improved SmartStore.biz Importer plugin Add custom HTML content to pages Performance optimization New FeaturesMulti-store-support: now multiple stores can be managed within a single application instance (e.g. for building different catalogs, brands, landing pages etc.) Added 3 new Trusted Shops plugins: Seal, Buyer Protection, Store Reviews Added Display as HTML Widget to CMS Topics (store owner now can add arbitrary HT...New ProjectsArtezio SharePoint 2013 Workflow Activities: SharePoint Workflow 2013 doesn’t provide activities to work with permissions, we've fixed it using HttpSend activity that makes REST API calls.Dependency.Injection: An attempt to write a really simple dependency injection framework. Does property-based and recursive dependency injection. Handles singletons. Yay!DHGMS SUO Killer: SUO Killer is a Visual Studio extension to deal with the removal of SUO file to mitigate SUO related issues in Visual Studio. This project is written in C#.dynamicsheet: dynamicsheetExcel Comparator: Excel Comparator is an add-in for Microsoft Excel that allows the user to compare a range between two sheets. FetchAIP: FetchAIP is a utility to download the various sections of the Aeronautical Information Publication (AIP) for New Zealand.Fluent Method and Type Builder: Still working on the summary.getboost: NuGet package for Boost framework.Goldstone Forum: WebForms Forum - TelerikAcademy Team ProjectGroupMe Software Development Kit: .NET Software Development Kit for http://groupme.com/ chat service.GSLMS: ----Import Excel Files Into SQL Server: Load Excel files into SQL Database without schema changes.Inaction: ?????????? jBegin: Learning ASP.net MVC from beginning, then here will be the source code for jbegin.comKDG's Statistical Quality Control Solver: This tool will include methods that can solve sample standard deviation, sample variance, median, mode, moving average, percentiles, margin of error, etc.kpi: Key Performance Indicator (KPI)????; visual studio 2010 with .NET 4.0 runtimeLECO Remote Control Client Application: Sample code and binaries are provided to demonstrate the remote control capability of a LECO Cornerstone instrument.LinkPad: My first Windows Store app intended for student to sketch up thoughts and concepts in quick diagrams.Modler.NET - Automating Graphical Data Model Co-Evolution: Modler.NET was the tool created for a Master's thesis project, which automates the co-evolution of graphical data models and the database that they represent.MyFileManager1: SummaryNever Lotto: Korean 465 Lotto Analyzer and Simulator. The real purpose of this project is to show that this kind of lotto things are just shit.NHibernate: The purpose of this project is to demo CRUD operations using NHibernate with Mono in Visual Studio 2012 using C# language. OAuth2 Authorizer: OAuth2 Authorizer helps you get the access code for a standard OAuth2 REST service that implements 3-legged authentication.Regular Expression for Excel: Regular Expression For Excel is an Excel Plugin. It provides a regular expressions EXCEL support. We can use it in the EXCEL function.Service Tester: Service Tester is an Azure Cloud based load testing application targeted at Soap Web Services which allows you to invoke your Web Service by random parameters.Simple TypeScript and C# Class Generator: Simple GUI application to generate compatible class source code for C# and TypeScript for communications between C# and TypeScript. Soccer team management: ---Spanner: No more stringly-typed web development! Build statically typed single page web applications in C#, automatically generating all HTML, JavaScript, and Knockout.

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• June 2013 Release of the Ajax Control Toolkit

  - by Stephen.Walther

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

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, November 27, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, November 27, 2011Popular ReleasesTerminals: Version 2 - Beta 4 Release: Beta 4 Refresh Build Dont forget to backup your config files BEFORE upgrading! As usual, please take time to use and abuse this release. We left logging in place, and this is a debug build so be sure to submit your logs on each bug reported, and please do report all bugs! Updated the About form to include the date and time of the build. Useful for CI builds to ensure we have the correct version "Favourites" and "History" save their expanded states after app restarts Code cleanup, secu...MiniTwitter: 1.76: MiniTwitter 1.76 ???? ?? ?????????? User Streams ???????????? User Streams ???????????、??????????????? REST ?????????? ?????????????????????????????? ??????????????????????????????Media Companion: MC 3.424b Weekly: Ensure .NET 4.0 Full Framework is installed. (Available from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17718) Ensure the NFO ID fix is applied when transitioning from versions prior to 3.416b. (Details here) Movie Show Resolutions... Resolved issue when reverting multiselection of movies to "-none-" Added movie rename support for subtitle files '.srt' & '.sub' Finalised code for '-1' fix - radiobutton to choose either filename or title Fixed issue with Movie Batch Wizard Fanart - ...Advanced Windows Phone Enginering Tool: WPE Downloads: This version of WPE gives you basic updating, restoring, and, erasing for your Windows Phone device.Anno 2070 Assistant: Beta v1.0 (STABLE): Anno 2070 Assistant Beta v1.0 Released! Features Included: Complete Building Layouts for Ecos, Tycoons & Techs Complete Production Chains for Ecos, Tycoons & Techs Completed Credits Screen Known Issues: Not all production chains and building layouts may be on the lists because they have not yet been discovered. However, data is still 99.9% complete. Currently the Supply & Demand, including Calculator screen are disabled until version 1.1.Minemapper: Minemapper v0.1.7: Including updated Minecraft Biome Extractor and mcmap to support the new Minecraft 1.0.0 release (new block types, etc).Visual Leak Detector for Visual C++ 2008/2010: v2.2.1: Enhancements: * strdup and _wcsdup functions support added. * Preliminary support for VS 11 added. Bugs Fixed: * Low performance after upgrading from VLD v2.1. * Memory leaks with static linking fixed (disabled calloc support). * Runtime error R6002 fixed because of wrong memory dump format. * version.h fixed in installer. * Some PVS studio warning fixed.NetSqlAzMan - .NET SQL Authorization Manager: 3.6.0.10: 3.6.0.10 22-Nov-2011 Update: Removed PreEmptive Platform integration (PreEmptive analytics) Removed all PreEmptive attributes Removed PreEmptive.dll assembly references from all projects Added first support to ADAM/AD LDS Thanks to PatBea. Work Item 9775: http://netsqlazman.codeplex.com/workitem/9775VideoLan DotNet for WinForm, WPF & Silverlight 5: VideoLan DotNet for WinForm, WPF, SL5 - 2011.11.22: The new version contains Silverlight 5 library: Vlc.DotNet.Silverlight. A sample could be tested here The new version add and correct many features : Correction : Reinitialize some variables Deprecate : Logging API, since VLC 1.2 (08/20/2011) Add subitem in LocationMedia (for Youtube videos, ...) Update Wpf sample to use Youtube videos Many others correctionsEZ-NFC: Alpha 1: THIS IS AN ALPHA RELEASE. STILL UNSTABLE AND SUBJECT TO ARCHITECTURE CHANGE What is implemented (In alpha) : ACR122L Device Mifare 1K tag Windows frontend#liveDB: liveDB 0.3.2: New featuresNew abstract storage scheme enabling future cloud support New file system structure and naming scheme for snapshots and journal files based on sequence numbers Journal files are never deleted Automatic snapshots during load or shutdown Renamed/added hooks to Model JournalRestored, SnapshotRestored Created an extensible logging facade Journal gets split into 1MB segments (configurable) Integrity checks before during load/create Commands are cloned by default before ...ReactiveMVVM: ReactiveMVVM v1.0: Example 1 property change: public class Example1 : ViewModelBase{ string _Userid; /// <summary> /// person infomation of owner. /// </summary> public string Userid { get { return _Userid; } set { this.RaiseAndSetIfChanged(x => x.Userid, ref _Userid, value, *true*); } // true, broadcast property change message. } //if the property changed to do...... this.ObservableProperty(x => x.Useid) ...IoCWrap: Initial: Initial release of the source code.Code for Rapid C# Windows Development eBook + LINQPad and Data Tools: LinqPad Custom Visualizer Version 1.0: First release of my LinqPad Custom Visualizer. It is compiled against the Any-CPU build of LINQPad v4.36.6 so it can only be used with the LINQPad Beta: v4.36.x. To install unzip to the LinqPad plugins folder.Distributed replay GUI: Distributed Replay Snapin: This is the dll for registering the snapin in mmc.FaST-LMM: FActored Spectrally Transformed Linear Mixed Models: FaSTLMM v1.03 Binaries for Windows and Linux: These files contain the files necessary to run FaSTLMM on Windows or Linux along with the license and users manual. To download FaSTLMM source code, please follow the changeset link located above to the Source Code tab. The FaSTLMM.Win.zip download contains both C++ and CSharp executable versions of FaSTLMM. No installer is required, just UnZip the file into a directory and run from there. Or put the installation directory on your path and run it from anywhere. The C++ version included r...SharePoint 2010 FBA Pack: SharePoint 2010 FBA Pack 1.2.0: Web parts are now fully customizable via html templates (Issue #323) FBA Pack is now completely localizable using resource files. Thank you David Chen for submitting the code as well as Chinese translations of the FBA Pack! The membership request web part now gives the option of having the user enter the password and removing the captcha (Issue # 447) The FBA Pack will now work in a zone that does not have FBA enabled (Another zone must have FBA enabled, and the zone must contain the me...SharePoint 2010 Education Demo Project: Release SharePoint SP1 for Education Solutions: This release includes updates to the Content Packs for SharePoint SP1. All Content Packs have been updated to install successfully under SharePoint SP1SQL Monitor - managing sql server performance: SQLMon 4.1 alpha 6: 1. improved support for schema 2. added find reference when right click on object list 3. added object rename supportBugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 0.9.126: First stable release of version 0.9. Upgrades from 0.8 are fully supported and upgrades to future releases will also be supported. This release is now compiled against the .NET 4.0 framework and is a requirement. Because of this the web.config has significantly changed. After upgrading, you will need to configure the authentication settings for user registration and anonymous access again. Please see our installation / upgrade instructions for more details: http://wiki.bugnetproject.c...New Projectsandrewtatham.robocode: Andrew Tatham's Robocode botsClear SharePoint Lists: This project contains the tools used to clear the items from the one or more Lists.Clipboard Editor: How many times have you pasted something in Notepad and then copied the plain text again? We do it all the time to strip formatting from the clipboard. This utility lets you pick which format from the clipboard to keep.CS New Rus: ?? ????? ??????????? ??????. ??? ??? - CS New. ?? ???? ????? ?? ????? ??????????? ??? ? ?????????? ? ???????. ElfDoc: ElfDoc enables you to create word documents from templates, using open xml.HTC RUU .NET: HTC's legendary RUU goes .NET and Open Source.................. You can browse for .nbh file, not locked at current directory and, you can update your device's rom in .NET wayMobileGamePrototype: For now just a skeleton of the architecture.NopCommerce 23 Multi Store Support: NopCommerce 23 Multi Store Support novel: fetch novelOrchard Custom Shapes: Ready to use custom orchard shapes like a table shape.Philosophy Gadget: This gadget helps people associate known works of philosophy with their known authors.ReefTracker: A controller agnostic logging and reporting application for reef aquarium controllers. SQLQuery: SQL QueryWindows Phone Marketplace Viewer: Windows Phone Marketplace Viewer is a single aspx page for asp.net 3+ with no additional dependencies. It will show the top 2000 apps in one of the 3 categories: paid and free together, only paid or only free, for all the marketplace languages.

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• LibPCL issues on Ubuntu 13.10

  - by user254885

  i wanted to install the Point Cloud Library but it does not work i use an ODROID board(ARM processor) Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: libpcl-all : Depends: libpcl-1.7-all but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. by compiling v1.7 , i get these errors : /usr/lib/gcc/arm-linux-gnueabihf/4.8/../../../arm-linux-gnueabihf/libpthread.a(ptw-fcntl.o): In function `__fcntl_nocancel': /build/buildd/eglibc-2.17/nptl/../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/i386/fcntl.c:37: undefined reference to `__libc_do_syscall' /usr/lib/gcc/arm-linux-gnueabihf/4.8/../../../arm-linux-gnueabihf/libpthread.a(ptw-fcntl.o): In function `__libc_fcntl': /build/buildd/eglibc-2.17/nptl/../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/i386/fcntl.c:53: undefined reference to `__libc_do_syscall' /build/buildd/eglibc-2.17/nptl/../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/i386/fcntl.c:57: undefined reference to `__libc_do_syscall' /usr/lib/gcc/arm-linux-gnueabihf/4.8/../../../arm-linux-gnueabihf/libpthread.a(ptw-open64.o): In function `__libc_open64': /build/buildd/eglibc-2.17/nptl/../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/open64.c:41: undefined reference to `__libc_do_syscall' /build/buildd/eglibc-2.17/nptl/../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/open64.c:45: undefined reference to `__libc_do_syscall' /usr/lib/gcc/arm-linux-gnueabihf/4.8/../../../arm-linux-gnueabihf/libpthread.a(cancellation.o):/build/buildd/eglibc-2.17/nptl/cancellation.c:96: more undefined references to `__libc_do_syscall' follow collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status make[2]: *** [bin/pcl_convert_pcd_ascii_binary] Error 1 make[1]: *** [io/tools/CMakeFiles/pcl_convert_pcd_ascii_binary.dir/all] Error 2 make: *** [all] Error 2 i could not find anything in google to solve these errors i believe some packages were not ported for ARM processors any help would be appreciated $ dpkg --list | grep headers ii linux-headers-3.0.63-odroidx2 20130215 ii linux-headers-3.0.71-odroidx2 20130415 ii linux-headers-3.0.74-odroidx2 20130417 ii linux-headers-3.0.75-odroidx2 20130426 ii linux-headers-3.1.10-6 3.1.10-6.10 ii linux-headers-3.1.10-6-ac100 3.1.10-6.10 ii linux-headers-ac100 3.1.10.6.2 installing packages did'nt do well sudo apt-get install linux-generic [sudo] password for odroid: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: debugedit libasound2-dev libestools2.1-dev librpmbuild3 librpmsign1 thunderbird-locale-en thunderbird-locale-en-gb thunderbird-locale-en-us thunderbird-locale-ko Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them. The following extra packages will be installed: linux-headers-3.11.0-17 linux-headers-3.11.0-17-generic linux-headers-generic linux-image-3.11.0-17-generic linux-image-generic Suggested packages: fdutils linux-doc-3.11.0 linux-source-3.11.0 linux-tools The following NEW packages will be installed: linux-generic linux-headers-3.11.0-17 linux-headers-3.11.0-17-generic linux-headers-generic linux-image-3.11.0-17-generic linux-image-generic 0 upgraded, 6 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 58.2 MB of archives. After this operation, 203 MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y Get:1 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ saucy-updates/main linux-image-3.11.0-17-generic armhf 3.11.0-17.31 [44.5 MB] Get:2 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ saucy-updates/main linux-image-generic armhf 3.11.0.17.18 [2,356 B] Get:3 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ saucy-updates/main linux-headers-3.11.0-17 all 3.11.0-17.31 [12.6 MB] Get:4 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ saucy-updates/main linux-headers-3.11.0-17-generic armhf 3.11.0-17.31 [1,128 kB] Get:5 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ saucy-updates/main linux-headers-generic armhf 3.11.0.17.18 [2,350 B] Get:6 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ saucy-updates/main linux-generic armhf 3.11.0.17.18 [1,726 B] Fetched 58.2 MB in 13s (4,379 kB/s) Selecting previously unselected package linux-image-3.11.0-17-generic. (Reading database ... 258618 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking linux-image-3.11.0-17-generic (from .../linux-image-3.11.0-17-generic_3.11.0-17.31_armhf.deb) ... Examining /etc/kernel/preinst.d/ Done. Selecting previously unselected package linux-image-generic. Unpacking linux-image-generic (from .../linux-image-generic_3.11.0.17.18_armhf.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package linux-headers-3.11.0-17. Unpacking linux-headers-3.11.0-17 (from .../linux-headers-3.11.0-17_3.11.0-17.31_all.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package linux-headers-3.11.0-17-generic. Unpacking linux-headers-3.11.0-17-generic (from .../linux-headers-3.11.0-17-generic_3.11.0-17.31_armhf.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package linux-headers-generic. Unpacking linux-headers-generic (from .../linux-headers-generic_3.11.0.17.18_armhf.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package linux-generic. Unpacking linux-generic (from .../linux-generic_3.11.0.17.18_armhf.deb) ... Setting up linux-image-3.11.0-17-generic (3.11.0-17.31) ... Running depmod. update-initramfs: deferring update (hook will be called later) cp: cannot stat ‘/boot/initrd.img-3.11.0-17-generic’: No such file or directory Failed to copy /boot/initrd.img-3.11.0-17-generic to /boot/initrd.img at /var/lib/dpkg/info/linux-image-3.11.0-17-generic.postinst line 730. dpkg: error processing linux-image-3.11.0-17-generic (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of linux-image-generic: linux-image-generic depends on linux-image-3.11.0-17-generic; however: Package linux-image-3.11.0-17-generic is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing linux-image-generic (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Setting up linux-headers-3.11.0-17 (3.11.0-17.31) ... No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Setting up linux-headers-3.11.0-17-generic (3.11.0-17.31) ... Examining /etc/kernel/header_postinst.d. Setting up linux-headers-generic (3.11.0.17.18) ... dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of linux-generic: linux-generic depends on linux-image-generic (= 3.11.0.17.18); however: Package linux-image-generic is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing linux-generic (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Errors were encountered while processing: linux-image-3.11.0-17-generic linux-image-generic linux-generic E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) i had to uninstall these cos they were messing up other packages installation(buildessentials were already installed)

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• Using rounded corners in modern websites with CSS3

  - by nikolaosk

  This is going to be the sixth post in a series of posts regarding HTML 5. You can find the other posts here , here, here , here and here.In this post I will provide a hands-on example on how to use rounded corners (rounded corners in CSS3) in your website. I think this is the feature that is most required in the new modern websites.Most websites look great with their lovely round panels and rounded corner tab style menus. We could achieve that effect earlier but we should resort to complex CSS rules and images. I will show you how to accomplish this great feature with the power of CSS 3.We will not use Javascript.Javascript is required for IE 7, IE 8 and the notorious IE 6. The best solution for implementing corners using CSS and Javascript without using images is Nifty corners cube. There are detailed information how to achieve this in the link I provided. This solution is tested in earlier vesrions of IE (IE 6,IE 7,IE 8) and Opera,Firefox,Safari. In order to be absolutely clear this is not (and could not be) a detailed tutorial on HTML 5. There are other great resources for that.Navigate to the excellent interactive tutorials of W3School.Another excellent resource is HTML 5 Doctor.Two very nice sites that show you what features and specifications are implemented by various browsers and their versions are http://caniuse.com/ and http://html5test.com/. At this times Chrome seems to support most of HTML 5 specifications.Another excellent way to find out if the browser supports HTML 5 and CSS 3 features is to use the Javascript lightweight library Modernizr.In this hands-on example I will be using Expression Web 4.0.This application is not a free application. You can use any HTML editor you like.You can use Visual Studio 2012 Express edition. You can download it here.Before I go on with the actual demo I will use the (http://www.caniuse.com) to see the support for web fonts from the latest versions of modern browsers.Please have a look at the picture below. We see that all the latest versions of modern browsers support this feature.We can see that even IE 9 supports this feature.  Let's move on with the actual demo. This is going to be a rather simple demo.I create a simple HTML 5 page. The markup follows and it is very easy to use and understand <!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en">  <head>    <title>HTML 5, CSS3 and JQuery</title>    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" >    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css">       </head>  <body>      <div id="header">      <h1>Learn cutting edge technologies</h1>    </div>        <div id="main">          <h2>HTML 5</h2>                        <p id="panel1">            HTML5 is the latest version of HTML and XHTML. The HTML standard defines a single language that can be written in HTML and XML. It attempts to solve issues found in previous iterations of HTML and addresses the needs of Web Applications, an area previously not adequately covered by HTML.          </p>      </div>             </body>  </html>Then I need to write the various CSS rules that style this markup. I will name it style.css   body{        line-height: 38px;        width: 1024px;        background-color:#eee;        text-align:center;      }#panel1 { margin:auto; text-align:left; background-color:#77cdef;width:400px; height:250px; padding:15px;font-size:16px;font-family:tahoma;color:#fff;border-radius: 20px;}Have a look below to see what my page looks like in IE 10. This is possible through the border-radious property. The colored panel has all four corners rounded with the same radius.We can add a border to the rounded corner panel by adding this property declaration in the #panel1,  border:4px #000 solid;We can have even better visual effects if we specify a radius for each corner.This is the updated version of the style.css. body{        line-height: 38px;        width: 1024px;        background-color:#eee;        text-align:center;      }#panel1 { margin:auto; text-align:left; background-color:#77cdef;border:4px #000 solid;width:400px; height:250px; padding:15px;font-size:16px;font-family:tahoma;color:#fff;border-top-left-radius: 20px;border-top-right-radius: 70px;border-bottom-right-radius: 20px;border-bottom-left-radius: 70px;} This is how my page looks in Firefox 15.0.1  In this final example I will show you how to style with CSS 3 (rounded corners) a horizontal navigation menu. This is the new version of the HTML markup<!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en">  <head>    <title>HTML 5, CSS3 and JQuery</title>    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" >    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css">       </head>  <body>      <div id="header">      <h1>Learn cutting edge technologies</h1>    </div>        <div id="nav"><ul><li><a class="mymenu" id="activelink" href="http://weblogs.asp.net/controlpanel/blogs/posteditor.aspx?SelectedNavItem=Posts§ionid=1153&postid=8934038#">Main</a></li><li><a class="mymenu" href="http://weblogs.asp.net/controlpanel/blogs/posteditor.aspx?SelectedNavItem=Posts§ionid=1153&postid=8934038#">HTML 5</a></li><li><a class="mymenu" href="http://weblogs.asp.net/controlpanel/blogs/posteditor.aspx?SelectedNavItem=Posts§ionid=1153&postid=8934038#">CSS 3</a></li><li><a class="mymenu" href="http://weblogs.asp.net/controlpanel/blogs/posteditor.aspx?SelectedNavItem=Posts§ionid=1153&postid=8934038#">JQuery</a></li></ul></div>        <div id="main">          <h2>HTML 5</h2>                        <p id="panel1">            HTML5 is the latest version of HTML and XHTML. The HTML standard defines a single language that can be written in HTML and XML. It attempts to solve issues found in previous iterations of HTML and addresses the needs of Web Applications, an area previously not adequately covered by HTML.          </p>      </div>             </body>  </html> This is the updated version of style.css body{        line-height: 38px;        width: 1024px;        background-color:#eee;        text-align:center;      }#panel1 { margin:auto; text-align:left; background-color:#77cdef;border:4px #000 solid;width:400px; height:250px; padding:15px;font-size:16px;font-family:tahoma;color:#fff;border-top-left-radius: 20px;border-top-right-radius: 70px;border-bottom-right-radius: 20px;border-bottom-left-radius: 70px;}#nav ul {width:900px; position:relative;top:24px;}ul li { text-decoration:none; display:inline;}ul li a.mymenu { font-family:Tahoma; color:black; font-size:14px;font-weight:bold;background-color:#77cdef; color:#fff;border-top-left-radius:18px; border-top-right-radius:18px; border:1px solid black; padding:15px; padding-bottom:10px;margin :2px; text-decoration:none; border-bottom:none;}.mymenu:hover { background-color:#e3781a; color:black;} The CSS rules are the classic rules that are extensively used for styling menus.The border-radius property is still responsible for the rounded corners in the menu.This is how my page looks in Chrome version 21.  Hope it helps!!!

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• Pre-rentrée Oracle Open World 2012 : à vos agendas

  - by Eric Bezille

  A maintenant moins d'un mois de l’événement majeur d'Oracle, qui se tient comme chaque année à San Francisco, fin septembre, début octobre, les spéculations vont bon train sur les annonces qui vont y être dévoilées... Et sans lever le voile, je vous engage à prendre connaissance des sujets des "Key Notes" qui seront tenues par Larry Ellison, Mark Hurd, Thomas Kurian (responsable des développements logiciels) et John Fowler (responsable des développements systèmes) afin de vous donner un avant goût. Stratégie et Roadmaps Oracle Bien entendu, au-delà des séances plénières qui vous donnerons  une vision précise de la stratégie, et pour ceux qui seront sur place, je vous engage à ne pas manquer les séances d'approfondissement qui auront lieu dans la semaine, dont voici quelques morceaux choisis : "Accelerate your Business with the Oracle Hardware Advantage" avec John Fowler, le lundi 1er Octobre, 3:15pm-4:15pm "Why Oracle Softwares Runs Best on Oracle Hardware" , avec Bradley Carlile, le responsable des Benchmarks, le lundi 1er Octobre, 12:15pm-13:15pm "Engineered Systems - from Vision to Game-changing Results", avec Robert Shimp, le lundi 1er Octobre 1:45pm-2:45pm "Database and Application Consolidation on SPARC Supercluster", avec Hugo Rivero, responsable dans les équipes d'intégration matériels et logiciels, le lundi 1er Octobre, 4:45pm-5:45pm "Oracle’s SPARC Server Strategy Update", avec Masood Heydari, responsable des développements serveurs SPARC, le mardi 2 Octobre, 10:15am - 11:15am "Oracle Solaris 11 Strategy, Engineering Insights, and Roadmap", avec Markus Flier, responsable des développements Solaris, le mercredi 3 Octobre, 10:15am - 11:15am "Oracle Virtualization Strategy and Roadmap", avec Wim Coekaerts, responsable des développement Oracle VM et Oracle Linux, le lundi 1er Octobre, 12:15pm-1:15pm "Big Data: The Big Story", avec Jean-Pierre Dijcks, responsable du développement produits Big Data, le lundi 1er Octobre, 3:15pm-4:15pm "Scaling with the Cloud: Strategies for Storage in Cloud Deployments", avec Christine Rogers,  Principal Product Manager, et Chris Wood, Senior Product Specialist, Stockage , le lundi 1er Octobre, 10:45am-11:45am Retours d'expériences et témoignages Si Oracle Open World est l'occasion de partager avec les équipes de développement d'Oracle en direct, c'est aussi l'occasion d'échanger avec des clients et experts qui ont mis en oeuvre  nos technologies pour bénéficier de leurs retours d'expériences, comme par exemple : "Oracle Optimized Solution for Siebel CRM at ACCOR", avec les témoignages d'Eric Wyttynck, directeur IT Multichannel & CRM  et Pascal Massenet, VP Loyalty & CRM systems, sur les bénéfices non seulement métiers, mais également projet et IT, le mercredi 3 Octobre, 1:15pm-2:15pm "Tips from AT&T: Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Database, and SPARC Enterprise", avec le retour d'expérience des experts Oracle, le mardi 2 Octobre, 11:45am-12:45pm "Creating a Maximum Availability Architecture with SPARC SuperCluster", avec le témoignage de Carte Wright, Database Engineer à CKI, le mercredi 3 Octobre, 11:45am-12:45pm "Multitenancy: Everybody Talks It, Oracle Walks It with Pillar Axiom Storage", avec le témoignage de Stephen Schleiger, Manager Systems Engineering de Navis, le lundi 1er Octobre, 1:45pm-2:45pm "Oracle Exadata for Database Consolidation: Best Practices", avec le retour d'expérience des experts Oracle ayant participé à la mise en oeuvre d'un grand client du monde bancaire, le lundi 1er Octobre, 4:45pm-5:45pm "Oracle Exadata Customer Panel: Packaged Applications with Oracle Exadata", animé par Tim Shetler, VP Product Management, mardi 2 Octobre, 1:15pm-2:15pm "Big Data: Improving Nearline Data Throughput with the StorageTek SL8500 Modular Library System", avec le témoignage du CTO de CSC, Alan Powers, le jeudi 4 Octobre, 12:45pm-1:45pm "Building an IaaS Platform with SPARC, Oracle Solaris 11, and Oracle VM Server for SPARC", avec le témoignage de Syed Qadri, Lead DBA et Michael Arnold, System Architect d'US Cellular, le mardi 2 Octobre, 10:15am-11:15am "Transform Data Center TCO with Oracle Optimized Servers: A Customer Panel", avec les témoignages notamment d'AT&T et Liberty Global, le mardi 2 Octobre, 11:45am-12:45pm "Data Warehouse and Big Data Customers’ View of the Future", avec The Nielsen Company US, Turkcell, GE Retail Finance, Allianz Managed Operations and Services SE, le lundi 1er Octobre, 4:45pm-5:45pm "Extreme Storage Scale and Efficiency: Lessons from a 100,000-Person Organization", le témoignage de l'IT interne d'Oracle sur la transformation et la migration de l'ensemble de notre infrastructure de stockage, mardi 2 Octobre, 1:15pm-2:15pm Echanges avec les groupes d'utilisateurs et les équipes de développement Oracle Si vous avez prévu d'arriver suffisamment tôt, vous pourrez également échanger dès le dimanche avec les groupes d'utilisateurs, ou tous les soirs avec les équipes de développement Oracle sur des sujets comme : "To Exalogic or Not to Exalogic: An Architectural Journey", avec Todd Sheetz - Manager of DBA and Enterprise Architecture, Veolia Environmental Services, le dimanche 30 Septembre, 2:30pm-3:30pm "Oracle Exalytics and Oracle TimesTen for Exalytics Best Practices", avec Mark Rittman, de Rittman Mead Consulting Ltd, le dimanche 30 Septembre, 10:30am-11:30am "Introduction of Oracle Exadata at Telenet: Bringing BI to Warp Speed", avec Rudy Verlinden & Eric Bartholomeus - Managers IT infrastructure à Telenet, le dimanche 30 Septembre, 1:15pm-2:00pm "The Perfect Marriage: Sun ZFS Storage Appliance with Oracle Exadata", avec Melanie Polston, directeur, Data Management, de Novation et Charles Kim, Managing Director de Viscosity, le dimanche 30 Septembre, 9:00am-10am "Oracle’s Big Data Solutions: NoSQL, Connectors, R, and Appliance Technologies", avec Jean-Pierre Dijcks et les équipes de développement Oracle, le lundi 1er Octobre, 6:15pm-7:00pm Testez et évaluez les solutions Et pour finir, vous pouvez même tester les technologies au travers du Oracle DemoGrounds, (1133 Moscone South pour la partie Systèmes Oracle, OS, et Virtualisation) et des "Hands-on-Labs", comme : "Deploying an IaaS Environment with Oracle VM", le mardi 2 Octobre, 10:15am-11:15am "Virtualize and Deploy Oracle Applications in Minutes with Oracle VM: Hands-on Lab", le mardi 2 Octobre, 11:45am-12:45pm (il est fortement conseillé d'avoir suivi le "Hands-on-Labs" précédent avant d'effectuer ce Lab. "x86 Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure with Oracle VM 3.x and Sun ZFS Storage Appliance", le mercredi 3 Octobre, 5:00pm-6:00pm "StorageTek Tape Analytics: Managing Tape Has Never Been So Simple", le mercredi 3 Octobre, 1:15pm-2:15pm "Oracle’s Pillar Axiom 600 Storage System: Power and Ease", le lundi 1er Octobre, 12:15pm-1:15pm "Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure for SPARC with Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c", le lundi 1er Octobre, 1:45pm-2:45pm "Managing Storage in the Cloud", le mardi 2 Octobre, 5:00pm-6:00pm "Learn How to Write MapReduce on Oracle’s Big Data Platform", le lundi 1er Octobre, 12:15pm-1:15pm "Oracle Big Data Analytics and R", le mardi 2 Octobre, 1:15pm-2:15pm "Reduce Risk with Oracle Solaris Access Control to Restrain Users and Isolate Applications", le lundi 1er Octobre, 10:45am-11:45am "Managing Your Data with Built-In Oracle Solaris ZFS Data Services in Release 11", le lundi 1er Octobre, 4:45pm-5:45pm "Virtualizing Your Oracle Solaris 11 Environment", le mardi 2 Octobre, 1:15pm-2:15pm "Large-Scale Installation and Deployment of Oracle Solaris 11", le mercredi 3 Octobre, 3:30pm-4:30pm En conclusion, une semaine très riche en perspective, et qui vous permettra de balayer l'ensemble des sujets au coeur de vos préoccupations, de la stratégie à l'implémentation... Cette semaine doit se préparer, pour tailler votre agenda sur mesure, à travers les plus de 2000 sessions dont je ne vous ai fait qu'un extrait, et dont vous pouvez retrouver l'ensemble en ligne.

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• How I Work: A Cloud Developer's Workstation

  - by BuckWoody

  I've written here a little about how I work during the day, including things like using a stand-up desk (still doing that, by the way). Inspired by a Twitter conversation yesterday, I thought I might explain how I set up my computing environment. First, a couple of important points. I work in Cloud Computing, specifically (but not limited to) Windows Azure. Windows Azure has features to run a Virtual Machine (IaaS), run code without having to control a Virtual Machine (PaaS) and use databases, video streaming, Hadoop and more (a kind of SaaS for tech pros). As such, my designs run the gamut of on-premises, VM's in the Cloud, and software that I write for a platform. I focus on data primarily, meaning that I design a lot of systems that use an RDBMS (like SQL Server or Windows Azure Databases) or a NoSQL approach (MongoDB on Azure or large-scale Key-Value Pairs in Table storage) and even Hadoop and R, and also Cloud Numerics in F#. All that being said, those things inform my choices below. Hardware I have a Lenovo X220 tablet/laptop which I really like a great deal - it's a light, tough, extremely fast system. When I travel, that's the system I take. It has 8GB of RAM, and an SSD drive. I sometimes use that to develop or work at a client's site, on the road, or in the living room when I'm not in my home office. My main system is a GateWay DX430017 - I've maxed it out on RAM, and I have two 1TB drives in it. It's not only my workstation for work; I leave it on all the time and it streams our videos, music and books. I have about 3400 e-books, and I've just started using Calibre to stream the library. I run Windows 8 on it so I can set up Hyper-V images, since Windows Azure allows me to move regular Hyper-V disks back and forth to the Cloud. That's where all my "servers" are, when I have to use an IaaS approach. The reason I use a desktop-style system rather than a laptop only approach is that a good part of my job is setting up architectures to solve really big, complex problems. That means I have to simulate entire networks on-premises, along with the Hybrid Cloud approach I use a lot. I need a lot of disk space and memory for that, and I use two huge monitors on my stand-up desk. I could probably use 10 monitors if I had the room for them. Also, since it's our home system as well, I leave it on all the time and it doesn't travel.   Software For the software for my systems, it's important to keep in mind that I not only write code, but I design databases, teach, present, and create Linux and other environments. Windows 8 - While the jury is out for me on the new interface, the context-sensitive search, integrated everything, and speed is just hands-down the right choice. I've evaluated a server OS, Linux, even an Apple, but I just am not as efficient on those as I am with Windows 8. Visual Studio Ultimate - I develop primarily in .NET (C# and F# mostly) and I use the Team Foundation Server in the cloud, and I'm asked to do everything from UI to Services, so I need everything. Windows Azure SDK, Windows Azure Training Kit - I need the first to set up my Azure PaaS coding, and the second has all the info I need for PaaS, IaaS and SaaS. This is primarily how I get paid. :) SQL Server Developer Edition - While I might install Oracle, MySQL and Postgres on my VM's, the "outside" environment is SQL Server for an RDBMS. I install the Developer Edition because it has the same features as Enterprise Edition, and comes with all the client tools and documentation. Microsoft Office -  Even if I didn't work here, this is what I would use. I've just grown too accustomed to doing business this way to change, so my advice is always "use what works", and this does. The parts I use are: OneNote (and a Math Add-in) - I do almost everything - and I mean everything in OneNote. I can code, do high-end math, present, design, collaborate and more. All my notebooks are on my Skydrive. I can use them from any system, anywhere. If you take the time to learn this program, you'll be hooked. Excel with PowerPivot - Don't make that face. Excel is the world's database, and every Data Scientist I know - even the ones where I teach at the University of Washington - know it, use it, and love it.  Outlook - Primary communications, CRM and contact tool. I have all of my social media hooked up to it, so when I get an e-mail from you, I see everything, see all the history we've had on e-mail, find you on a map and more. Lync - I was fine with LiveMeeting, although it has it's moments. For me, the Lync client is tres-awesome. I use this throughout my day, present on it, stay in contact with colleagues and the folks on the dev team (who wish I didn't have it) and more.  PowerPoint - Once again, don't make that face. Whenever I see someone complaining about PowerPoint, I have 100% of the time found they don't know how to use it. If you suck at presenting or creating content, don't blame PowerPoint. Works great on my machine. :) Zoomit - Magnifier - On Windows 7 (and 8 as well) there's a built-in magnifier, but I install Zoomit out of habit. It enlarges the screen. If you don't use one of these tools (or their equivalent on some other OS) then you're presenting/teaching wrong, and you should stop presenting/teaching until you get them and learn how to show people what you can see on your tiny, tiny monitor. :) Cygwin - Unix for Windows. OK, that's not true, but it's mostly that. I grew up on mainframes and Unix (IBM and HP, thank you) and I can't imagine life without  sed, awk, grep, vim, and bash. I also tend to take a lot of the "Science" and "Development" and "Database" packages in it as well. PuTTY - Speaking of Unix, when I need to connect to my Linux VM's in Windows Azure, I want to do it securely. This is the tool for that. Notepad++ - Somewhere between torturing myself in vim and luxuriating in OneNote is Notepad++. Everyone has a favorite text editor; this one is mine. Too many features to name, and it's free. Browsers - I install Chrome, Firefox and of course IE. I know it's in vogue to rant on IE, but I tend to think for myself a great deal, and I've had few (none) problems with it. The others I have for the haterz that make sites that won't run in IE. Visio - I've used a lot of design packages, but none have the extreme meta-data edit capabilities of Visio. I don't use this all the time - it can be rather heavy, but what it does it does really well. I also present this way when I'm not using PowerPoint. Yup, I just bring up Visio and diagram away as I'm chatting with clients. Depending on what we're covering, this can be the right tool for that. Tweetdeck - The AIR one, not that new disaster they came out with. I live on social media, since you, dear readers, are my cube-mates. When I get tired of you all, I close Tweetdeck. When I need help or someone needs help from me, or if I want to see a picture of a cat while I'm coding, I bring it up. It's up most all day and night. Windows Media Player - I listen to Trance or Classical when I code, and I find music managers overbearing and extra. I just use what comes in the box, and it works great for me. R - F# and Cloud Numerics now allows me to load in R libraries (yay!) and I use this for statistical work on big data loads. Microsoft Math - One of the most amazing, free, rich, amazing, awesome, amazing calculators out there. I get the 64-bit version for quick math conversions, plots and formula-checks. Python - I know, right? Who knew that the scientific community loved Python so much. But they do. I use 2.7; not as much runs with 3+. I also use IronPython in Visual Studio, or I edit in Notepad++ Camstudio recorder - Windows PSR - In much of my training, and all of my teaching at the UW, I need to show a process on a screen. Camstudio records screen and voice, and it's free. If I need to make static training, I use the Windows PSR tool that's built right in. It's ostensibly for problem duplication, but I use it to record for training.   OK - your turn. Post a link to your blog entry below, and tell me how you set your system up.  

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• So&hellip; What is a SharePoint Developer?

  - by Mark Rackley

  A few days ago Stacy Draper and I were chatting about what it means to be a SharePoint Developer. That actually turns about to be a conversation with lots of shades of grey. Stacy thought it would make a good blog post… well, I can’t promise this to be a GOOD blog post… So, anyway, I decided to let off a little bomb this morning by posting the following tweet on Twitter: @mrackley: Can someone be considered a SharePoint Developer if all they know how to do is work in SPD? Now, I knew this is a debate that has been going on since the first SharePoint Designer User put SharePoint Developer on their resume. There are probably several blogs out there on the subject, but with the wildfire that is jQuery and a few other new features out there I believe it is an important subject to tackle again. I got a lot of great feedback as well on Twitter. The entire twitter conversation is at the end of this blog posting. Thanks everyone for their opinions. Who cares? Why does it matter? Can’t we all just get along? Yes it matters… everything must be labeled and put in it’s proper place. Pigeon holing is the only way to go!  Just kidding.. I’m not near that anal, but yes! It is important to be able to properly identify the skill set of those people on your team and correctly identify the role you are wanting to hire. Saying you are a “SharePoint Developer” is just too vague and just barely begins to answer the question. Also, knowing who’s on your team and what they can do will ensure you give your clients the best people for the job. A Developer writes code right? So, a Developer uses Visual Studio! Whoa, hold on there Sparky. Even if I concede that to be a developer you have to write code then you still can’t say a SharePoint Developer has to use Visual Studio.  So, you can spell C#, how well can you write XSLT? How’s your jQuery? Sorry bud, that’s code whether you like it or not. There are many ways to write code in SharePoint that have nothing to do with cracking open Visual Studio. So, what are the different ways to develop in SharePoint then? How many different ways can you “develop” in SharePoint?? A lot… Out of the box features In SharePoint you can create a site, create a custom list on that site, do basic calculations in a calculated column, set up alerts, and add all sorts of web parts to a page. Let’s face it.. that IS development! javaScript/jQuery Perhaps you’ve heard by now about this thing called jQuery? It’s all over the place and the answer to a lot of people’s prayers. However be careful, with great power comes great responsibility. Remember, javaScript is executed on the client side and if you abuse it your performance could be affected. Also, Marc Anderson (@sympmarc) wrote a pretty awesome javaScript library called SPServices.  This allows you to access SharePoint’s Web Services using jQuery. How freakin cool is that? With these tools at your disposal the number of things you CAN’T do without Visual Studio grows smaller and smaller. This is definitely development no matter what anyone else says and there is no Visual Studio involved. SharePoint Designer Ahhh.. The cause of and the answer to all of your SharePoint development problems. With SharePoint Designer you can use DataView Web Parts, develop (there’s that word again) your branding, and even connect to external datasources.  There’s a lot you can do in SharePoint Designer. It’s got it’s shortcomings, but it is an invaluable tool in the SharePoint developers toolbox. InfoPath So, can InfoPath development really be considered SharePoint development? I would say yes. You can connect to SharePoint lists, populate fields in a SharePoint list, and even write code in InfoPath. Sounds like SharePoint development to me. Visual Studio – Web Services/WCF So, get this. You can write code for SharePoint and not have a clue what the 12 hive is, what “site actions” means, or know how to do ANYTHING in SharePoint? Poppycock! You say? SharePoint Web Services I say… With SharePoint Web Services you can totally interact with SharePoint without knowing anything about SharePoint. I don’t recommend it of course, but it’s possible. What can you write using SharePoint Web Services? How about a little application called SharePoint Designer? Visual Studio – Object Model And here we are finally:  the SharePoint Object Model.  When you hear “SharePoint Developer” most people think of someone opening Visual Studio and creating a custom web part, workflow, event receiver, etc.. etc.. but I hope that by now I have made the point that this is NOT the only form of SharePoint Development! Again… Who cares? Just crack open Visual Studio for everything! Problem solved! Let’s ponder for a moment, shall we? The business comes to you with a requirement that involves some pretty fancy business calculations, and a complicated view that they do NOT want to look like SharePoint. “No Problem” you proclaim you mighty SharePoint Developer. You go back to your cube, chuckle at the latest Dilbert comic, and crack open Visual Studio. Then you build your custom web part… fight with all the deployment, migration, and UAT that you must go through and proclaim victory two weeks later!!!! Well done my good sir/ma’am! Oh wait… it turns out Sally who is not a “developer” did the exact same thing with a Dataview web part and some jQuery and it’s been in production for two weeks? #CockinessFail I know there are many ASP.NET developers out there that can create a custom control and wrap it to be a SharePoint Web Part.  That does NOT mean they are SharePoint Developers though as far as I’m concerned and I personally would much rather have someone on my team that can manipulate the heck (yes, I said ‘heck’) out of SharePoint using Dataview Web Parts, jQuery, and a roll of duct tape. Just because you know how to write code in Visual Studio does not mean you are a SharePoint Developer. What’s the conclusion here? How do we define ‘it’ and what ‘it’ is called? Fortunately, this is MY blog. I don’t have to give answers, I can stir the pot, laugh and leave you to ponder what it means! There is obviously no right or wrong answer here (unless you disagree with me,then you are flat out wrong). Anyway, there are many opinions.  Here’s mine.  If you put SharePoint Developer on your resume make sure to clearly specify HOW you develop in SharePoint and what tools you use. If we must label these gurus of jQuery and SPD, how about “SharePoint Client Developer” or “SharePoint Front End Developer”? Just throwing out an idea. Whatever we call them, to say they are not developers is short-sighted, arrogant, and unfair. Of course, then we need to figure out what to call all those other SharePoint development types.  Twitter Conversation @next_connect: RT @mrackley: Can someone be considered a SharePoint Developer if all they know how to do is work in SPD? | I say no.... @mikegil:  @mrackley re: yr Developer question: SPD expert <> SP Developer. Can be "sous-developer," though. #SharePoint #SPD @WonderLaura:  Rt @mrackley Can someone be considered a SharePoint Dev if all they know how to do is work in SPD? -- My opinion is that devs write code. @exnav29:  Rt @mrackley Can someone be considered a SharePoint Dev if all they know how to do is work in SPD? => I think devs would use VS as well @ssKevin:  @WonderLaura @mrackley does that mean strictly vb and c# when it comes to #SharePoint ? @jimmywim:  @exnav29 @mrackley nah, I'd say they were a power user. Devs know their way around the 12 hive ;) @sympmarc:  RT @mrackley: Can someone be considered a SharePoint Developer if all they know how to do is work in SPD? -> Fighting words. @sympmarc:  @next_connect @mrackley Besides, we prefer to be called "hacks". ;+) @next_connect:  @sympmarc The important thing is that you don't have to develop code to solve problems and create solutions. @mrackley @mrackley:  @sympmarc @next_connect not tryin to pick fight.. just try and find consensus on definition @usher:  @mrackley I'd still argue that you have a DevLite title that's out there for the collaboration engineers (@sympmarc @next_connect) @next_connect: @usher I agree. I've called it Light Dev/ Configuration before. @sympmarc @mrackley @usher:  @next_connect I like DevLite, low calorie but still same great taste :) @mrackley @sympmarc @mrackley:  @next_connect @usher @sympmarc I don't think there's any "lite" to someone who can bend jQuery and XSLT to their will. @usher:  @mrackley okay, so would you refer to someone that writes user controls and assemblies something different (@next_connect @sympmarc) @usher:  @mrackley when looking for a developer that can write .net code, it's a bit different than an XSLT/jQuery designer. @sympmarc @next_connect @jimmywim:  @mrackley @sympmarc @next_connect I reckon a "dev" does managed code and works in the 12 hive @sympmarc:  @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect We had a similar debate a few days ago @toddbleeker et al @sympmarc:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @toddbleeker @stevenmfowler More abt my Middle Tier term, but still connected. Meet bus need. @toddbleeker:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect I used "No Assembly Required" in the past. I also suggested "Supplimenting the SharePoint DOM" @toddbleeker:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect Others suggested Information Worker Solutions/Enhancements @toddbleeker:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler I also like "SharePoint Scripting Solutions". All the technologies are script. @jimmywim:  @toddbleeker @sympmarc @mrackley @next_connect I like the IW solutions one... @toddbleeker:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler This is like the debate that never ends: it is definitely not called Middle Tier. @jimmywim:  @toddbleeker @sympmarc @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler "Scripting" these days makes me think PowerShell... @sympmarc:  @toddbleeker @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler If it forces a debate on h2 best solve bus probs, I'll keep sayin Middle Tier. @usher:  @sympmarc so we know what we're looking for, we just can't define a name? @toddbleeker @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevemfowler @sympmarc:  @usher @sympmarc @toddbleeker @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevemfowler The naming seems to matter more than the substance. :-( @jimmywim:  @sympmarc @usher @toddbleeker @mrackley @next_connect @stevemfowler work brkdn defines tasks, defines tools needed, can then b grp'd by user @WonderLaura:  @mrackley @toddbleeker @jimmywim @sympmarc @usher @next_connect Funny you're asking. @johnrossjr and I spent hours this week on the subject. @stevenmfowler:  RT @toddbleeker: @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler it is definitely not called Middle Tier. < I'm with Todd

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• How to disable Mac OS X from using swap when there still is "Inactive" memory?

  - by Motin

  A common phenomena in my day to day usage (and several other's according to various posts throughout the internet) of OS X, the system seems to become slow whenever there is no more "Free" memory available. Supposedly, this is due to swapping, since heavy disk activity is apparent and that vm_stat reports many pageouts. (Correct me from wrong) However, the amount of "Inactive" ram is typically around 12.5%-25% of all available memory (^1.) when swapping starts/occurs/ends. According to http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1342 : Inactive memory This information in memory is not actively being used, but was recently used. For example, if you've been using Mail and then quit it, the RAM that Mail was using is marked as Inactive memory. This Inactive memory is available for use by another application, just like Free memory. However, if you open Mail before its Inactive memory is used by a different application, Mail will open quicker because its Inactive memory is converted to Active memory, instead of loading Mail from the slower hard disk. And according to http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Performance/Conceptual/ManagingMemory/Articles/AboutMemory.html : The inactive list contains pages that are currently resident in physical memory but have not been accessed recently. These pages contain valid data but may be released from memory at any time. So, basically: When a program has quit, it's memory becomes marked as Inactive and should be claimable at any time. Still, OS X will prefer to start swapping out memory to the Swap file instead of just claiming this memory, whenever the "Free" memory gets to low. Why? What is the advantage of this behavior over, say, instantly releasing Inactive memory and not even touch the swap file? Some sources (^2.) indicate that OS X would page out the "Inactive" memory to swap before releasing it, but that doesn't make sense now does it if the memory may be released from memory at any time? Swapping is expensive, releasing is cheap, right? Can this behavior be changed using some preference or known hack? (Preferably one that doesn't include disabling swap/dynamic_pager altogether and restarting...) I do appreciate the purge command, as well as the concept of Repairing disk permissions to force some Free memory, but those are ways to painfully force more Free memory than to actually fixing the swap/release decision logic... Btw a similar question was asked here: http://forums.macnn.com/90/mac-os-x/434650/why-does-os-x-swap-when/ and here: http://hintsforums.macworld.com/showthread.php?t=87688 but even though the OPs re-asked the core question, none of the replies addresses an answer to it... ^1. UPDATE 17-mar-2012 Since I first posted this question, I have gone from 4gb to 8gb of installed ram, and the problem remains. The amount of "Inactive" ram was 0.5gb-1.0gb before and is now typically around 1.0-2.0GB when swapping starts/occurs/ends, ie it seems that around 12.5%-25% of the ram is preserved as Inactive by osx kernel logic. ^2. For instance http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/4288/what-does-it-mean-if-i-have-lots-of-inactive-memory-at-the-end-of-a-work-day : Once all your memory is used (free memory is 0), the OS will write out inactive memory to the swapfile to make more room in active memory. UPDATE 17-mar-2012 Here is a round-up of the methods that have been suggested to help so far: The purge command "Used to approximate initial boot conditions with a cold disk buffer cache for performance analysis. It does not affect anonymous memory that has been allocated through malloc, vm_allocate, etc". This is useful to prevent osx to swap-out the disk cache (which is ridiculous that osx actually does so in the first place), but with the downside that the disk cache is released, meaning that if the disk cache was not about to be swapped out, one would simply end up with a cold disk buffer cache, probably affecting performance negatively. The FreeMemory app and/or Repairing disk permissions to force some Free memory Doesn't help releasing any memory, only moving some gigabytes of memory contents from ram to the hd. In the end, this causes lots of swap-ins when I attempt to use the applications that were open while freeing memory, as a lot of its vm is now on swap. Speeding up swap-allocation using dynamicpagerwrapper Seems a good thing to do in order to speed up swap-usage, but does not address the problem of osx swapping in the first place while there is still inactive memory. Disabling swap by disabling dynamicpager and restarting This will force osx not to use swap to the price of the system hanging when all memory is used. Not a viable alternative... Disabling swap using a hacked dynamicpager Similar to disabling dynamicpager above, some excerpts from the comments to the blog post indicate that this is not a viable solution: "The Inactive Memory is high as usual". "when your system is running out of memory, the whole os hangs...", "if you consume the whole amount of memory of the mac, the machine will likely hang" To sum up, I am still unaware of a way of disabling Mac OS X from using swap when there still is "Inactive" memory. If it isn't possible, maybe at least there is an explanation somewhere of why osx prefers to swap out memory that may be released from memory at any time?

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• Guest Post: Using IronRuby and .NET to produce the &lsquo;Hello World of WPF&rsquo;

  - by Eric Nelson

  [You might want to also read other GuestPosts on my blog – or contribute one?] On the 26th and 27th of March (2010) myself and Edd Morgan of Microsoft will be popping along to the Scottish Ruby Conference. I dabble with Ruby and I am a huge fan whilst Edd is a “proper Ruby developer”. Hence I asked Edd if he was interested in creating a guest post or two for my blog on IronRuby. This is the second of those posts. If you should stumble across this post and happen to be attending the Scottish Ruby Conference, then please do keep a look out for myself and Edd. We would both love to chat about all things Ruby and IronRuby. And… we should have (if Amazon is kind) a few books on IronRuby with us at the conference which will need to find a good home. This is me and Edd and … the book: Order on Amazon: http://bit.ly/ironrubyunleashed Using IronRuby and .NET to produce the ‘Hello World of WPF’ In my previous post I introduced, to a minor extent, IronRuby. I expanded a little on the basics of by getting a Rails app up-and-running on this .NET implementation of the Ruby language — but there wasn't much to it! So now I would like to go from simply running a pre-existing project under IronRuby to developing a whole new application demonstrating the seamless interoperability between IronRuby and .NET. In particular, we'll be using WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) — the component of the .NET Framework stack used to create rich media and graphical interfaces. Foundations of WPF To reiterate, WPF is the engine in the .NET Framework responsible for rendering rich user interfaces and other media. It's not the only collection of libraries in the framework with the power to do this — Windows Forms does the trick, too — but it is the most powerful and flexible. Put simply, WPF really excels when you need to employ eye candy. It's all about creating impact. Whether you're presenting a document, video, a data entry form, some kind of data visualisation (which I am most hopeful for, especially in terms of IronRuby - more on that later) or chaining all of the above with some flashy animations, you're likely to find that WPF gives you the most power when developing any of these for a Windows target. Let's demonstrate this with an example. I give you what I like to consider the 'hello, world' of WPF applications: the analogue clock. Today, over my lunch break, I created a WPF-based analogue clock using IronRuby... Any normal person would have just looked at their watch. - Twitter The Sample Application: Click here to see this sample in full on GitHub. Using Windows Presentation Foundation from IronRuby to create a Clock class Invoking the Clock class   Gives you The above is by no means perfect (it was a lunch break), but I think it does the job of illustrating IronRuby's interoperability with WPF using a familiar data visualisation. I'm sure you'll want to dissect the code yourself, but allow me to step through the important bits. (By the way, feel free to run this through ir first to see what actually happens). Now we're using IronRuby - unlike my previous post where we took pure Ruby code and ran it through ir, the IronRuby interpreter, to demonstrate compatibility. The main thing of note is the very distinct parallels between .NET namespaces and Ruby modules, .NET classes and Ruby classes. I guess there's not much to say about it other than at this point, you may as well be working with a purely Ruby graphics-drawing library. You're instantiating .NET objects, but you're doing it with the standard Ruby .new method you know from Ruby as Object#new — although, the root object of all your IronRuby objects isn't actually Object, it's System.Object. You're calling methods on these objects (and classes, for example in the call to System.Windows.Controls.Canvas.SetZIndex()) using the underscored, lowercase convention established for the Ruby language. The integration is so seamless. The fact that you're using a dynamic language on top of .NET's CLR is completely abstracted from you, allowing you to just build your software. A Brief Note on Events Events are a big part of developing client applications in .NET as well as under every other environment I can think of. In case you aren't aware, event-driven programming is essentially the practice of telling your code to call a particular method, or other chunk of code (a delegate) when something happens at an unpredictable time. You can never predict when a user is going to click a button, move their mouse or perform any other kind of input, so the advent of the GUI is what necessitated event-driven programming. This is where one of my favourite aspects of the Ruby language, blocks, can really help us. In traditional C#, for instance, you may subscribe to an event (assign a block of code to execute when an event occurs) in one of two ways: by passing a reference to a named method, or by providing an anonymous code block. You'd be right for seeing the parallel here with Ruby's concept of blocks, Procs and lambdas. As demonstrated at the very end of this rather basic script, we are using .NET's System.Timers.Timer to (attempt to) update the clock every second (I know it's probably not the best way of doing this, but for example's sake). Note: Diverting a little from what I said above, the ticking of a clock is very predictable, yet we still use the event our Timer throws to do this updating as one of many ways to perform that task outside of the main thread. You'll see that all that's needed to assign a block of code to be triggered on an event is to provide that block to the method of the name of the event as it is known to the CLR. This drawback to this is that it only allows the delegation of one code block to each event. You may use the add method to subscribe multiple handlers to that event - pushing that to the end of a queue. Like so: def tick puts "tick tock" end timer.elapsed.add method(:tick) timer.elapsed.add proc { puts "tick tock" } tick_handler = lambda { puts "tick tock" } timer.elapsed.add(tick_handler)   The ability to just provide a block of code as an event handler helps IronRuby towards that very important term I keep throwing around; low ceremony. Anonymous methods are, of course, available in other more conventional .NET languages such as C# and VB but, as usual, feel ever so much more elegant and natural in IronRuby. Note: Whether it's a named method or an anonymous chunk o' code, the block you delegate to the handling of an event can take arguments - commonly, a sender object and some args. Another Brief Note on Verbosity Personally, I don't mind verbose chaining of references in my code as long as it doesn't interfere with performance - as evidenced in the example above. While I love clean code, there's a certain feeling of safety that comes with the terse explicitness of long-winded addressing and the describing of objects as opposed to ambiguity (not unlike this sentence). However, when working with IronRuby, even I grow tired of typing System::Whatever::Something. Some people enjoy simply assuming namespaces and forgetting about them, regardless of the language they're using. Don't worry, IronRuby has you covered. It is completely possible to, with a call to include, bring the contents of a .NET-converted module into context of your IronRuby code - just as you would if you wanted to bring in an 'organic' Ruby module. To refactor the style of the above example, I could place the following at the top of my Clock class: class Clock include System::Windows::Shape include System::Windows::Media include System::Windows::Threading # and so on...   And by doing so, reduce calls to System::Windows::Shapes::Ellipse.new to simply Ellipse.new or references to System::Windows::Threading::DispatcherPriority.Render to a friendlier DispatcherPriority.Render. Conclusion I hope by now you can understand better how IronRuby interoperates with .NET and how you can harness the power of the .NET framework with the dynamic nature and elegant idioms of the Ruby language. The manner and parlance of Ruby that makes it a joy to work with sets of data is, of course, present in IronRuby — couple that with WPF's capability to produce great graphics quickly and easily, and I hope you can visualise the possibilities of data visualisation using these two things. Using IronRuby and WPF together to create visual representations of data and infographics is very exciting to me. Although today, with this project, we're only presenting one simple piece of information - the time - the potential is much grander. My day-to-day job is centred around software development and UI design, specifically in the realm of healthcare, and if you were to pay a visit to our office you would behold, directly above my desk, a large plasma TV with a constantly rotating, animated slideshow of charts and infographics to help members of our team do their jobs. It's an app powered by WPF which never fails to spark some conversation with visitors whose gaze has been hooked. If only it was written in IronRuby, the pleasantly low ceremony and reduced pre-processing time for my brain would have helped greatly. Edd Morgan blog Related Links: Getting PhP and Ruby working on Windows Azure and SQL Azure

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• 8 Reasons Why Even Microsoft Agrees the Windows Desktop is a Nightmare

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Let’s be honest: The Windows desktop is a mess. Sure, it’s extremely powerful and has a huge software library, but it’s not a good experience for average people. It’s not even a good experience for geeks, although we tolerate it. Even Microsoft agrees about this. Microsoft’s Surface tablets with Windows RT don’t support any third-party desktop apps. They consider this a feature — users can’t install malware and other desktop junk, so the system will always be speedy and secure. Malware is Still Common Malware may not affect geeks, but it certainly continues to affect average people. Securing Windows, keeping it secure, and avoiding unsafe programs is a complex process. There are over 50 different file extensions that can contain harmful code to keep track of. It’s easy to have theoretical discussions about how malware could infect Mac computers, Android devices, and other systems. But Mac malware is extremely rare, and has  generally been caused by problem with the terrible Java plug-in. Macs are configured to only run executables from identified developers by default, whereas Windows will run everything. Android malware is talked about a lot, but Android malware is rare in the real world and is generally confined to users who disable security protections and install pirated apps. Google has also taken action, rolling out built-in antivirus-like app checking to all Android devices, even old ones running Android 2.3, via Play Services. Whatever the reason, Windows malware is still common while malware for other systems isn’t. We all know it — anyone who does tech support for average users has dealt with infected Windows computers. Even users who can avoid malware are stuck dealing with complex and nagging antivirus programs, especially since it’s now so difficult to trust Microsoft’s antivirus products. Manufacturer-Installed Bloatware is Terrible Sit down with a new Mac, Chromebook, iPad, Android tablet, Linux laptop, or even a Surface running Windows RT and you can enjoy using your new device. The system is a clean slate for you to start exploring and installing your new software. Sit down with a new Windows PC and the system is a mess. Rather than be delighted, you’re stuck reinstalling Windows and then installing the necessary drivers or you’re forced to start uninstalling useless bloatware programs one-by-one, trying to figure out which ones are actually useful. After uninstalling the useless programs, you may end up with a system tray full of icons for ten different hardware utilities anyway. The first experience of using a new Windows PC is frustration, not delight. Yes, bloatware is still a problem on Windows 8 PCs. Manufacturers can customize the Refresh image, preventing bloatware rom easily being removed. Finding a Desktop Program is Dangerous Want to install a Windows desktop program? Well, you’ll have to head to your web browser and start searching. It’s up to you, the user, to know which programs are safe and which are dangerous. Even if you find a website for a reputable program, the advertisements on that page will often try to trick you into downloading fake installers full of adware. While it’s great to have the ability to leave the app store and get software that the platform’s owner hasn’t approved — as on Android — this is no excuse for not providing a good, secure software installation experience for typical users installing typical programs. Even Reputable Desktop Programs Try to Install Junk Even if you do find an entirely reputable program, you’ll have to keep your eyes open while installing it. It will likely try to install adware, add browse toolbars, change your default search engine, or change your web browser’s home page. Even Microsoft’s own programs do this — when you install Skype for Windows desktop, it will attempt to modify your browser settings t ouse Bing, even if you’re specially chosen another search engine and home page. With Microsoft setting such an example, it’s no surprise so many other software developers have followed suit. Geeks know how to avoid this stuff, but there’s a reason program installers continue to do this. It works and tricks many users, who end up with junk installed and settings changed. The Update Process is Confusing On iOS, Android, and Windows RT, software updates come from a single place — the app store. On Linux, software updates come from the package manager. On Mac OS X, typical users’ software updates likely come from the Mac App Store. On the Windows desktop, software updates come from… well, every program has to create its own update mechanism. Users have to keep track of all these updaters and make sure their software is up-to-date. Most programs now have their act together and automatically update by default, but users who have old versions of Flash and Adobe Reader installed are vulnerable until they realize their software isn’t automatically updating. Even if every program updates properly, the sheer mess of updaters is clunky, slow, and confusing in comparison to a centralized update process. Browser Plugins Open Security Holes It’s no surprise that other modern platforms like iOS, Android, Chrome OS, Windows RT, and Windows Phone don’t allow traditional browser plugins, or only allow Flash and build it into the system. Browser plugins provide a wealth of different ways for malicious web pages to exploit the browser and open the system to attack. Browser plugins are one of the most popular attack vectors because of how many users have out-of-date plugins and how many plugins, especially Java, seem to be designed without taking security seriously. Oracle’s Java plugin even tries to install the terrible Ask toolbar when installing security updates. That’s right — the security update process is also used to cram additional adware into users’ machines so unscrupulous companies like Oracle can make a quick buck. It’s no wonder that most Windows PCs have an out-of-date, vulnerable version of Java installed. Battery Life is Terrible Windows PCs have bad battery life compared to Macs, IOS devices, and Android tablets, all of which Windows now competes with. Even Microsoft’s own Surface Pro 2 has bad battery life. Apple’s 11-inch MacBook Air, which has very similar hardware to the Surface Pro 2, offers double its battery life when web browsing. Microsoft has been fond of blaming third-party hardware manufacturers for their poorly optimized drivers in the past, but there’s no longer any room to hide. The problem is clearly Windows. Why is this? No one really knows for sure. Perhaps Microsoft has kept on piling Windows component on top of Windows component and many older Windows components were never properly optimized. Windows Users Become Stuck on Old Windows Versions Apple’s new OS X 10.9 Mavericks upgrade is completely free to all Mac users and supports Macs going back to 2007. Apple has also announced their intention that all new releases of Mac OS X will be free. In 2007, Microsoft had just shipped Windows Vista. Macs from the Windows Vista era are being upgraded to the latest version of the Mac operating system for free, while Windows PCs from the same era are probably still using Windows Vista. There’s no easy upgrade path for these people. They’re stuck using Windows Vista and maybe even the outdated Internet Explorer 9 if they haven’t installed a third-party web browser. Microsoft’s upgrade path is for these people to pay $120 for a full copy of Windows 8.1 and go through a complicated process that’s actaully a clean install. Even users of Windows 8 devices will probably have to pay money to upgrade to Windows 9, while updates for other operating systems are completely free. If you’re a PC geek, a PC gamer, or someone who just requires specialized software that only runs on Windows, you probably use the Windows desktop and don’t want to switch. That’s fine, but it doesn’t mean the Windows desktop is actually a good experience. Much of the burden falls on average users, who have to struggle with malware, bloatware, adware bundled in installers, complex software installation processes, and out-of-date software. In return, all they get is the ability to use a web browser and some basic Office apps that they could use on almost any other platform without all the hassle. Microsoft would agree with this, touting Windows RT and their new “Windows 8-style” app platform as the solution. Why else would Microsoft, a “devices and services” company, position the Surface — a device without traditional Windows desktop programs — as their mass-market device recommended for average people? This isn’t necessarily an endorsement of Windows RT. If you’re tech support for your family members and it comes time for them to upgrade, you may want to get them off the Windows desktop and tell them to get a Mac or something else that’s simple. Better yet, if they get a Mac, you can tell them to visit the Apple Store for help instead of calling you. That’s another thing Windows PCs don’t offer — good manufacturer support. Image Credit: Blanca Stella Mejia on Flickr, Collin Andserson on Flickr, Luca Conti on Flickr     

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• Scripting Language Sessions at Oracle OpenWorld and MySQL Connect, 2012

  - by cj

  This posts highlights some great scripting language sessions coming up at the Oracle OpenWorld and MySQL Connect conferences. These events are happening in San Francisco from the end of September. You can search for other interesting conference sessions in the Content Catalog. Also check out what is happening at JavaOne in that event's Content Catalog (I haven't included sessions from it in this post.) To find the timeslots and locations of each session, click their respective link and check the "Session Schedule" box on the top right. GEN8431 - General Session: What’s New in Oracle Database Application Development This general session takes a look at what’s been new in the last year in Oracle Database application development tools using the latest generation of database technology. Topics range from Oracle SQL Developer and Oracle Application Express to Java and PHP. (Thomas Kyte - Architect, Oracle) BOF9858 - Meet the Developers of Database Access Services (OCI, ODBC, DRCP, PHP, Python) This session is your opportunity to meet in person the Oracle developers who have built Oracle Database access tools and products such as the Oracle Call Interface (OCI), Oracle C++ Call Interface (OCCI), and Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) drivers; Transparent Application Failover (TAF); Oracle Database Instant Client; Database Resident Connection Pool (DRCP); Oracle Net Services, and so on. The team also works with those who develop the PHP, Ruby, Python, and Perl adapters for Oracle Database. Come discuss with them the features you like, your pains, and new product enhancements in the latest database technology. CON8506 - Syndication and Consolidation: Oracle Database Driver for MySQL Applications This technical session presents a new Oracle Database driver that enables you to run MySQL applications (written in PHP, Perl, C, C++, and so on) against Oracle Database with almost no code change. Use cases for such a driver include application syndication such as interoperability across a relationship database management system, application migration, and database consolidation. In addition, the session covers enhancements in database technology that enable and simplify the migration of third-party databases and applications to and consolidation with Oracle Database. Attend this session to learn more and see a live demo. (Srinath Krishnaswamy - Director, Software Development, Oracle. Kuassi Mensah - Director Product Management, Oracle. Mohammad Lari - Principal Technical Staff, Oracle ) CON9167 - Current State of PHP and MySQL Together, PHP and MySQL power large parts of the Web. The developers of both technologies continue to enhance their software to ensure that developers can be satisfied despite all their changing and growing needs. This session presents an overview of changes in PHP 5.4, which was released earlier this year and shows you various new MySQL-related features available for PHP, from transparent client-side caching to direct support for scaling and high-availability needs. (Johannes Schlüter - SoftwareDeveloper, Oracle) CON8983 - Sharding with PHP and MySQL In deploying MySQL, scale-out techniques can be used to scale out reads, but for scaling out writes, other techniques have to be used. To distribute writes over a cluster, it is necessary to shard the database and store the shards on separate servers. This session provides a brief introduction to traditional MySQL scale-out techniques in preparation for a discussion on the different sharding techniques that can be used with MySQL server and how they can be implemented with PHP. You will learn about static and dynamic sharding schemes, their advantages and drawbacks, techniques for locating and moving shards, and techniques for resharding. (Mats Kindahl - Senior Principal Software Developer, Oracle) CON9268 - Developing Python Applications with MySQL Utilities and MySQL Connector/Python This session discusses MySQL Connector/Python and the MySQL Utilities component of MySQL Workbench and explains how to write MySQL applications in Python. It includes in-depth explanations of the features of MySQL Connector/Python and the MySQL Utilities library, along with example code to illustrate the concepts. Those interested in learning how to expand or build their own utilities and connector features will benefit from the tips and tricks from the experts. This session also provides an opportunity to meet directly with the engineers and provide feedback on your issues and priorities. You can learn what exists today and influence future developments. (Geert Vanderkelen - Software Developer, Oracle) BOF9141 - MySQL Utilities and MySQL Connector/Python: Python Developers, Unite! Come to this lively discussion of the MySQL Utilities component of MySQL Workbench and MySQL Connector/Python. It includes in-depth explanations of the features and dives into the code for those interested in learning how to expand or build their own utilities and connector features. This is an audience-driven session, so put on your best Python shirt and let’s talk about MySQL Utilities and MySQL Connector/Python. (Geert Vanderkelen - Software Developer, Oracle. Charles Bell - Senior Software Developer, Oracle) CON3290 - Integrating Oracle Database with a Social Network Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Google Maps. There are many social network sites, each with their own APIs for sharing data with them. Most developers do not realize that Oracle Database has base tools for communicating with these sites, enabling all manner of information, including multimedia, to be passed back and forth between the sites. This technical presentation goes through the methods in PL/SQL for connecting to, and then sending and retrieving, all types of data between these sites. (Marcelle Kratochvil - CTO, Piction) CON3291 - Storing and Tuning Unstructured Data and Multimedia in Oracle Database Database administrators need to learn new skills and techniques when the decision is made in their organization to let Oracle Database manage its unstructured data. They will face new scalability challenges. A single row in a table can become larger than a whole database. This presentation covers the techniques a DBA needs for managing the large volume of data in a standard Oracle Database instance. (Marcelle Kratochvil - CTO, Piction) CON3292 - Using PHP, Perl, Visual Basic, Ruby, and Python for Multimedia in Oracle Database These five programming languages are just some of the most popular ones in use at the moment in the marketplace. This presentation details how you can use them to access and retrieve multimedia from Oracle Database. It covers programming techniques and methods for achieving faster development against Oracle Database. (Marcelle Kratochvil - CTO, Piction) UGF5181 - Building Real-World Oracle DBA Tools in Perl Perl is not normally associated with building mission-critical application or DBA tools. Learn why Perl could be a good choice for building your next killer DBA app. This session draws on real-world experience of building DBA tools in Perl, showing the framework and architecture needed to deal with portability, efficiency, and maintainability. Topics include Perl frameworks; Which Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) modules are good to use; Perl and CPAN module licensing; Perl and Oracle connectivity; Compiling and deploying your app; An example of what is possible with Perl. (Arjen Visser - CEO & CTO, Dbvisit Software Limited) CON3153 - Perl: A DBA’s and Developer’s Best (Forgotten) Friend This session reintroduces Perl as a language of choice for many solutions for DBAs and developers. Discover what makes Perl so successful and why it is so versatile in our day-to-day lives. Perl can automate all those manual tasks and is truly platform-independent. Perl may not be in the limelight the way other languages are, but it is a remarkable language, it is still very current with ongoing development, and it has amazing online resources. Learn what makes Perl so great (including CPAN), get an introduction to Perl language syntax, find out what you can use Perl for, hear how Oracle uses Perl, discover the best way to learn Perl, and take away a small Perl project challenge. (Arjen Visser - CEO & CTO, Dbvisit Software Limited) CON10332 - Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service’s Connect PHP API: Intro, What’s New, and Roadmap Connect PHP is a public API that enables developers to build solutions with the Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service platform. This API is used primarily by developers working within the Oracle RightNow Customer Portal Cloud Service framework who are looking to gain access to data and services hosted by the Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service platform through a backward-compatible API. Connect for PHP leverages the same data model and services as the Connect Web Services for SOAP API. Come to this session to get an introduction and learn what’s new and what’s coming up. (Mark Rhoads - Senior Principal Applications Engineer, Oracle. Mark Ericson - Sr. Principle Product Manager, Oracle) CON10330 - Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service APIs and Frameworks Overview Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service APIs are available in the following areas: desktop UI, Web services, customer portal, PHP, and knowledge. These frameworks provide access to Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service’s Connect Common Object Model and custom objects. This session provides a broad overview of capabilities in all these areas. (Mark Ericson - Sr. Principle Product Manager, Oracle)

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