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• Silverlight Cream for April 22, 2010 -- #844

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Miroslav Miroslavov, David Anson, Mike Snow, Jason Alderman, Denis Gladkikh, John Papa, Adam Kinney, and CrocusGirl. Shoutout: Mike Snow is moving his blog to Silverlight Tips of The Day... his first is a repeat of number 110 of the last list, but you'll want to bookmark the page. Falling in the 'too cool not to mention' category... Pete Brown posted another MIX10 interview: New Channel 9 Video: Josh Blake on NaturalShow Multi-touch in WPF Adam Kinney announced that the Upgrade to Expression Studio v4 for free – now in writing! From SilverlightCream.com: Visuals staring at the mouse cursor Miroslav Miroslavov at SilverlightShow has a first part post up on the design of the CompleteIT site... going through the 'follow the mouse' effect that is so cool on the main page... with source. Today's DataVisualizationDemos release includes new demos showing off stacked series behavior Falling squarly into the category of "when does he sleep"... David Anson has another Visualization post up today... adding a stacked series and Text-to-Chat sample. Silverlight: Unable to start Debugging. The Silverlight managed debugging package isn’t installed. Mike Snow has a tip up about what to do if you get an "Unable to start debugging" box when you crank up VS ... not a great solution, but it's a solution. Introducing Pillbox for Windows Phone The folks at Veracity definitely have way too much fun with technology :) ... check out the WP7 app that Jason Alderman blogged about... he has a link out to another page with screenshots... oh, AND the code... Export data to Excel from Silverlight/WPF DataGrid Denis Gladkikh demonstrates using COM Interop to export to Excel from both WPF and Silverlight. He discusses isses he had and has all the source for both platforms available. Silverlight TV 21: Silverlight 4 - A Customer's Perspective John Papa has Silverlight TV number 21 up and he's chatting with Franck Jeannin of Ormetis, Ward Bell of IdeaBlade, and Dave Wolf of Cynergy Systems, all presenters in the Keynote at DevConnections. Avatar Mosaic -Experimenting with the Artefact Animator Adam Kinney spent enough time with Artefact Animator to put up a lengthy post about it including his project. Artefact Animator itself is available on CodePlex, and Adam has the link... this looks like good stuff. Windows Phone 7 Design Notes – Part2: Metro + Adrian Frutiger CrocusGirl continues her WP7 Metro discussion with a great long post on background she's researched and some of her own work with typography... a great read. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Easy Scaling in XAML (WPF)

  - by Robert May

  Ran into a problem that needed solving that was kind of fun.  I’m not a XAML guru, and I’m sure there are better solutions, but I thought I’d share mine. The problem was this:  Our designer had, appropriately, designed the system for a 1920 x 1080 screen resolution.  This is for a full screen, touch screen device (think Kiosk), which has that resolution, but we also wanted to demo the device on a tablet (currently using the AWESOME Samsung tablet given out at Microsoft Build).  When you’d run it on that tablet, things were ugly because it was at a lower resolution than the target device. Enter scaling.  I did some research and found out that I probably just need to monkey with the LayoutTransform of some grid somewhere.  This project is using MVVM and has a navigation container that we built that lives on a single root view.  User controls are then loaded into that view as navigation occurs. In the parent grid of the root view, I added the following XAML: <Grid.LayoutTransform> <ScaleTransform ScaleX="{Binding ScaleWidth}" ScaleY="{Binding ScaleHeight}" /> </Grid.LayoutTransform> And then in the root View Model, I added the following code: /// <summary> /// The required design width /// </summary> private const double RequiredWidth = 1920; /// <summary> /// The required design height /// </summary> private const double RequiredHeight = 1080; /// <summary>Gets the ActualHeight</summary> public double ActualHeight { get { return this.View.ActualHeight; } } /// <summary>Gets the ActualWidth</summary> public double ActualWidth { get { return this.View.ActualWidth; } } /// <summary> /// Gets the scale for the height. /// </summary> public double ScaleHeight { get { return this.ActualHeight / RequiredHeight; } } /// <summary> /// Gets the scale for the width. /// </summary> public double ScaleWidth { get { return this.ActualWidth / RequiredWidth; } } Note that View.ActualWidth and View.ActualHeight are just pointing directly at FrameworkElement.ActualWidth and FrameworkElement.ActualHeight. That’s it.  Just calculate the ratio and bind the scale transform to it. Hopefully you’ll find this useful. Technorati Tags: WPF,XAML

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• So long Oracle ...

  - by arungupta

  ... and thanks for all the fish! This Friday (October 18, 2013) is my last day at Oracle. After Publishing almost 1400 blog entries with 5500+ comments on them Working in the Java EE team since inception Visiting 35+ countries and several cities around the world Speaking at all major Java conferences and lots of Java User Groups 15-year alumni of JavaOne as staff Meeting and working with best of the best in the Java community Most importantly having lots of fun Its time for me to move on! No new blog entries will be posted on this blog. Feel free to subscribe to The Aquarium for latest updates on Java EE and GlassFish. I'll continue to publish all the excellent content that you've been used to at blog.arungupta.me now onwards. Read my new blog to learn about my new adventures! Here are some of the conference badges collected over the past years ... And the cities visited ... View Cities Visited by "Miles To Go..." in a larger map The comments on this blog are disabled as I'll not be able to respond to them. Feel free to leave comments on the new blog and I'd love to follow up with you there. Thank you very much for all the support that has been shown on this blog. I'd like to conclude with a Hindi song that I've been humming for the past few days now ... Abhi alvida mat kaho doston ... Na jaane kahan phir mulaqaat ho ... Kyonki ... Beete huye lamhon ki kasak saath to hogi ... Khawabon mein hi ho chahe mulaqaat to hogi ... For my non-Hindi readers, here is my paraphrased meaning ... Don't say goodbye yet my friends ... We'll likely meet somewhere else ... Because ... We'll always have the memories of the wonderful time spent together ... May be in dreams but we will meet again ... With that, over and out, and see you at blog.arungupta.me!

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• Favorite moments of JavaOne

  - by Tori Wieldt

  There are so many events and sessions to attend at JavaOne, it's unfair to ask people to choose just one thing they liked, but here are some favorite moments: I loved meeting many open source contributors and friends I have not met in person before and seeing that projects like e.g. Hudson are alive and kicking and have a great future ahead of them. -Manfred Moser My "The Problem with Women" session. It had LOADS of interactivity from the audience, who really helped to make that session.  I came out if it with a real sense of optimism - we love our jobs, we love what we do, and we should be proud of telling everyone about it to attract different talent into the industry. (Read her blog JavaOne: The Problem With Women - A Technical Approach for details.) -Trish Gee My kudos to Oracle for making the presentation materials quickly available to the public. Some of them were already available during JavaOne. Lots of slide decks are already there, and in some cases you may even find the video recordings too. Go to http://www.oracle.com/javaone and select JavaOne Technical Sessions.  -Yakov Fain I loved that not only was James Gosling present at the Community Keynote (which felt more like the keynotes of old times [big space, big screens, fun and tech]) but he was also found wandering the halls of the Hilton the day prior. Bring back James! Add back the toys section in the Community Keynote. Let the t-shirt tossing begin anew. These are "small" things that really fire up the community. -Andres Almiray Seeing James Gosling at JavaOne was a real shot in the arm for Java.  He needs to be there every year. -Frank Greco +42 on having James and the T-shirt tossing. -Stephan Janssen The session "Integrate Java with Robots, Home Automation, Musical Instruments, and Kinect." Fabiane Nardon explained connecting Jenkins to jHome to a truck horn placed in their sysadmin's bedroom. She dubbed it "extreme feedback."  -Tori Wieldt The User Group Forum [on Sunday] was a success! Congratulations Bruno Souza and John Yeary and everybody that were involved. I believe it really helps to increase community participation! There were lots of interesting talks, and great discussion with JUG leaders and members. Thank you Oracle for supporting that! -Yara Senger What was your favorite moment? Please comment! 

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• National Give Camp Weekend - January 14-16, 2011

  - by MOSSLover

  What is a Give Camp?  I get asked this question constantly in the SharePoint Community.  About 3 years ago there was an event called "We Are Microsoft" in Dallas, TX.  A lady named, Toi Wright, gathered up a bunch of charities and gathered up a bunch of IT Professionals in the community.  They met for an entire weekend devising better ways to help these charities with 3 days projects.  None of these charities had in house IT staff or they were lacking.  The time these projects would save would help out other people in the long run.  The first give camp was really popular that a couple guys from Kansas City decided to come up with a give camp in the Kansas City regiona.  The event was called Coders 4 Charity.  I read Jeff Julian's post on the "We Are Microsoft" event that it inspired me to get involved.  i showed up to this event and we were split into teams.  On that team I met a couple really awsome guys: Blake Theiss, Lee Brandt, Tim Wright, and Joe Loux.  We created a SharePoint site for a boyscout troup.  It was my first exposure to Silverlight 1.1.  I had so much fun that I attended the event the next year and the St. Louis Coders 4 Charity.  Last year in 2010 when I moved i searched high and low.  Sure enough they had an event in Philadelphia.  I helped out with two SharePoint Projects for a team of firefighters and another charity.  This year there are a series of give camps around the U.S.  They have consolidated most of the give camps.  The first ever New York City Give Camp is on National Give Camp Day.  If you guys are interested I see there is a give camp in Philadelphia, St. Louis, Northwest Arkansas, Seattle, Atlanta, Houston, and more...Here is a link to the site I would definitely encourage you to get involved: http://givecamp.org/national-givecamp/.  Also, if you feel like it's only developer focused that's entirely wrong.  They need DBAs, Project Leads, Architects, and many other roles fulfilled aside from development.  It is a great experience to meet good people and help out a charity doing what we all love to do.  I strongle encourage getting involved in a give camp.  if you are coming to the NYC Give Camp I would love to meet you.  i will be there on Saturday somewhere in the morning until around dinner time.

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• How to Format a USB Drive in Ubuntu Using GParted

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  If a USB hard drive or flash drive is not properly formatted, then it will not show up in the Ubuntu Places menu, making it hard to interact with. We’ll show you how to format a USB drive using the tool GParted. Note: Formatting a USB drive will destroy any data currently stored on it. If you think that your USB drive is already properly formatted, but Ubuntu just isn’t picking it up, try unplugging it and plugging it back in to a different USB slot, or restarting your machine with the device plugged in on start-up. Open a terminal by clicking on Applications in the top-left of the screen, then Accessories > Terminal. GParted should be installed by default, but we’ll make sure it’s installed by entering the following command in the terminal: sudo apt-get install gparted To open GParted, enter the following command in the terminal: sudo gparted Find your USB drive in the drop-down box at the top right of the GParted window. The drive should be unallocated – if it has a valid partition on it, then you may be looking at the wrong drive. Note: Make sure you’re on the correct drive, as making changes on the wrong hard drive with GParted can delete all data on a hard drive! Assuming you’re on the right drive, right-click on the unallocated grey block and click New. In the window that pops up, change the File System to fat32 for USB Flash Drives, NTFS for USB Hard Drives that will be used in Windows, or ext3/ext4 for USB Hard Drives that will be used exclusively in Linux. Add a label if you’d like, and then click Add. Click the green checkmark and then the Apply button to apply the changes. GParted will now format your drive. If you’re formatting a large USB Hard Drive, this can take some time. Once the process is done, you can close GParted, and the drive will now show up in the Places menu. Clicking on the drive will mount it and open it in a File Browser window. It will also add a shortcut to the drive on the Desktop by default. Your USB drive is now ready to store your files! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using GParted to Resize Your Windows Vista PartitionInstall an RPM Package on Ubuntu LinuxCreate a Persistent Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash DriveShare Ubuntu Home Directories using SambaCreate a Samba User on Ubuntu TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Fun with 47 charts and graphs Tomorrow is Mother’s Day Check the Average Speed of YouTube Videos You’ve Watched OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott

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• Convert Chrome Bookmark Toolbar Folders to Icons

  - by Asian Angel

  So you have your regular bookmarks reduced to icons but what about the folders? With our little hack and a few minutes of your time you can turn those folders into icons too. Condensing the Folders Reducing bookmark folders to icons is a little more tricky than regular bookmarks but not hard to do. Right click on the folder and select “Rename…”. The folder’s name should already be highlighted/selected as shown here. Delete the text…notice that the “OK Button” has become unusable for the moment. Now what you will need to do is: Hold down the “Alt Key” Type in “0160” (without the quotes) using the numbers keypad on the right side of your keyboard Release the “Alt Key” after you have finished typing in the number above Once you have released the “Alt Key” you will notice two things…the “cursor” has moved further into the text area and you can now click on the “OK Button” again. There is our folder after editing. And it works just as well as before but without taking up so much room. Here is how our “iconized” folder looks next to our bookmarks. Perfect! What if you want to reduce multiple folders to icons? Perform the same exact steps shown above for each folder and pack your “Bookmarks Toolbar” full of folder goodness! As seen here the folders will have a little more space between them in comparison with singular bookmarks due to the “blank name” for each folder. For those who may be curious this is what your bookmarks will look like in the “Bookmark Manager Page”. Note: If you export your bookmarks all bookmarks contained in multiple blank name folders will be combined into a single folder. Conclusion With just a little bit of work you can pack a lot of goodness into your “Bookmarks Toolbar”. No more wasted space… Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Condense the Bookmarks in the Firefox Bookmarks ToolbarAccess Your Bookmarks with a Toolbar Button in Google ChromeAdd the Bookmarks Menu to Your Bookmarks Toolbar with Bookmarks UI ConsolidatorAdd a Vertical Bookmarks Toolbar to FirefoxReduce Your Bookmarks Toolbar to a Toolbar Button TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error

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• Find a Faster DNS Server with Namebench

  - by Mysticgeek

  One way to speed up your Internet browsing experience is using a faster DNS server. Today we take a look at Namebench, which will compare your current DNS server against others out there, and help you find a faster one. Namebench Download the file and run the executable (link below). Namebench starts up and will include the current DNS server you have configured on your system. In this example we’re behind a router and using the DNS server from the ISP. Include the global DNS providers and the best available regional DNS server, then start the Benchmark. The test starts to run and you’ll see the queries it’s running through. The benchmark takes about 5-10 minutes to complete. After it’s complete you’ll get a report of the results. Based on its findings, it will show you what DNS server is fastest for your system. It also displays different types of graphs so you can get a better feel for the different results. You can export the results to a .csv file as well so you can present the results in Excel. Conclusion This is a free project that is in continuing development, so results might not be perfect, and there may be more features added in the future. If you’re looking for a method to help find a faster DNS server for your system, Namebench is a cool free utility to help you out. If you’re looking for a public DNS server that is customizable and includes filters, you might want to check out our article on helping to protect your kids from questionable content using OpenDNS. You can also check out how to speed up your web browsing with Google Public DNS. Links Download NameBench for Windows, Mac, and Linux from Google Code Learn More About the Project on the Namebench Wiki Page Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Open a Second Console Session on Ubuntu ServerShare Ubuntu Home Directories using SambaSetup OpenSSH Server on Ubuntu LinuxDisable the Annoying “This device can perform faster” Balloon Message in Windows 7Search For Rows With Special Characters in SQL Server TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app

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• TechEd 2010 Day Three: The Database Designer (Isn't)

  - by BuckWoody

  Yesterday at TechEd 2010 here in New Orleans I worked the front-booth, answering general SQL Server questions for the masses. I was actually a little surprised to find most of the questions I got were from folks that wanted to know more about Stream Insight and Master Data Services. In past conferences I've been asked a lot of "free consulting" questions, about problems folks have had from older products. I don't mind that a bit - in fact, I'm always happy to help in any way I can. But this time people are really interested in the new features in the product, and I like that they are thinking ahead, not just having to solve problems in production. My presentation was on "Database Design in an Hour". We had the usual fun, and SideShow Bob made an appearance - I kid you not. The guy in the back of the room looked just like Sideshow Bob, so I quickly held a "bes thair" contest, and he won. Duing the presentation, I explain the tools you can use to design databases. I also explain that the "Database Designer" tool in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) isn't truly a desinger - it uses non-standard notation, doesn't have a meta-data dictionary, and worst of all, it works at the physical level. In other words, whatever you do in SSMS will automatically change the field/table/relationship structures in the database. We fixed this in SSMS 2008 and higher by adding an option to block that, but the tool is not a good design function nonetheless. To be fair, no one I know of at Microsoft recommends that it is - but I was shocked to hear so many developers in the room defending it as a good tool. I think the main issue for someone who doesn't have to work with Relational Systems a great deal is that it can be difficult to figure out Foreign Keys. The syntax makes them look "backwards", so it's just easier to grab a field and place it on the table you want to point to. There are options. You can download a couple of free tools (CA has a community edition of ER-WIN, Quest has one, and Embarcadero also has one) and if you design more than one or two databases a year, it may be worth buying a true design tool. For years I used Visio, but we changed it so that it doesn't forward-engineer (create the DDL) any more, so it isn't a true design tool either. So investigate those free and not-so-free tools. You'll find they help you in your job - but stay away from the Database Designer in SSMS. Or I'll send Sideshow Bob over there to straighten you out. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Getting developers and support to work together

  - by Matt Watson

  Agile development has ushered in the norm of rapid iterations and change within products. One of the biggest challenges for agile development is educating the rest of the company. At my last company our biggest challenge was trying to continually train 100 employees in our customer support and training departments. It's easy to write release notes and email them to everyone. But for complex software products, release notes are not usually enough detail. You really have to educate your employees on the WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHY, WHEN of every item. If you don't do this, you end up with customer service people who know less about your product than your users do. Ever call a company and feel like you know more about their product than their customer service people do? Yeah. I'm talking about that problem.WHO does the change effect?WHAT was the actual change?WHERE do I find the change in the product?WHY was the change made? (It's hard to support something if you don't know why it was done.)WHEN will the change be released?One thing I want to stress is the importance of the WHY something was done. For customer support people to be really good at their job, they need to understand the product and how people use it. Knowing how to enable a feature is one thing. Knowing why someone would want to enable it, is a whole different thing and the difference in good customer service. Another challenge is getting support people to better test and document potential bugs before escalating them to development. Trying to fix bugs without examples is always fun... NOT. They might as well say "The sky is falling, please fix it!"We need to over train the support staff about product changes and continually stress how they document and test potential product bugs. You also have to train the sales staff and the marketing team. Then there is updating sales materials, your website, product documentation and other items there are always out of date. Every product release causes this vicious circle of trying to educate the rest of the company about the changes.Do we need to record a simple video explaining the changes and email it to everyone? Maybe we should  use a simple online training type app to help with this problem. Ultimately the struggle is taking the time to do the training, but it is time well spent. It may save you a lot of time answering questions and fixing bugs later. How do we efficiently transfer key product knowledge from developers and product owners to the rest of the company? How have you solved these issues at your company?

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• SQL Server MVP Deep Dives 2. The Awesome Returns.

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  Two years ago 59 SQL Server MVP's came together and helped make one of the best book on SQL Server out there. Each chapter was written by an MVP about a part of SQL Server they loved working with. This resulted in superb quality content and excellent ratings from the readers. To top it off all earnings went to a good cause, the War Child International organization. That book was SQL Server MVP Deep Dives. This year 63 SQL Server MVPs, me included, decided it was time do repeat the success of the first book. Let me introduce you the: SQL Server MVP Deep Dives 2 The topics in 60 chapters are grouped in 5 groups: Architecture, Database Administration, Database Development, Performance Tuning and Optimization, Business Intelligence. They represent over 1000 years of daily experience in various areas of SQL Server. I have contributed chapter 28 in Database Development group titled Getting asynchronous with Service Broker. In it I show you the Service Broker template you can use for secure communication between two or more SQL server instances for whatever purpose you may have. If you haven't heard of Service Broker it's a part of the database engine that enables you to do completely async operations in the database itself or between databases and instances. The official release of the book will be next week at PASS where there will be 2 slots where most of the authors will be there signing the books you bring. This is also a great opportunity to meet everyone and ask about any problems you may have. So definitely come say hi. Again we decided on a charity that will be supported by this book. It's called Operation Smile. They provide free surgeries to repair cleft lip, cleft palate and other facial deformities for children around the globe. You can also help them by donating. You can preorder it on at Manning Publications website or on Amazon. By having it you not only get to learn a lot, improve your skills and have fun but you also help a child have a normal life. If that's not a good cause then I don't know what it is.

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• Speaking at Mix11

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  In April Microsoft will hold the next MIX event. MIX was usually targeted at web designers and developers but has grown over the years to be more a general conference focused on the web and devices. In other words: everything the normal consumer might encounter. It’s not your typical developers conference, although you’ll find many developers there as well. But next to the developers you’ll probably run into designers and user experience specialists as well. This year I am proud to say that I will be one of the people presenting there. Together with all the Surface MVP’s in the world (sounds impressive, but there are only 7 of us) we’ll host a panel discussion on all things Surface, NUI and everything else that matches those subjects. Here’s what the abstract says: The Natural User Interface (NUI) is a hot topic that generates a lot of excitement, but there are only a handful of companies doing real innovation with NUIs and most of the practical experience in the NUI style of design and development is limited to a small number of experts. The Microsoft Surface MVPs are a subset of these experts that have extensive real-world experience with Microsoft Surface and other NUI devices. This session is a panel featuring the Microsoft Surface MVPs and an unfiltered discussion with each other and the audience about the state of the art in NUI design and development. We will share our experiences and ideas, discuss what we think NUI will look like in the near future, and back up our statements with cutting-edge demonstrations prepared by the panelists involving combinations of Microsoft Surface 2.0, Kinect, and Windows Phone 7. We, as Surface MVPs think we are more than just Surface oriented. We like to think we are more NUI MVP’s. But since that’s not a technology with Microsoft you can’t actually become a NUI MVP so Surface is the one that comes the closest. We are currently working on the details of our session but believe me: it will blow you away. Several people we talked to have said this could potentially be the best session of Mix. Quite a challenge, but we’re up for it! Of course I won’t be telling you exactly what we’re going to do in Las Vegas but rest assured that when you visit our session you’ll leave with a lot of new ideas and hopefully be inspired to bring into practice what you’ve seen. Even if the technology we’ll show you isn’t readily available yet. So, if you are in Las Vegas between April 12th and 14th, please join Joshua Blake, Neil Roodyn, Rick Barraza, Bart Roozendaal, Josh Santangelo, Nicolas Calvi and myself for some NUI fun! See you in Vegas! Tags van Technorati: mix11,las vegas,surface,nui,kinecct

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• Good Scoop: The PeopleSoft/IBM Backstory

  - by [email protected]

  Sometimes you're searching for something online and you find an unrelated, bonus nugget. Last week I stumbled across an interesting blog post from Chris Heller of a PeopleSoft consulting shop in San Ramon, CA called Grey Sparling. I don't know these guys. But Chris, who apparently used to work on the PeopleTools team, wrote a great article on a pre-acquisition, would-be deal between IBM and PeopleSoft that would have standardized PeopleSoft on IBM technology. The behind-the-scenes perspective is interesting. His commentary on the challenges that the company and PeopleSoft customers would have encountered if the deal had gone through was also interesting: ·         "No common ownership. It's hard enough to get large groups of people to work together when they work for the same company, but with two separate companies it is much, much harder. Even within Oracle, progress on Fusion applications was slow until Thomas Kurian took over Fusion applications in addition to Fusion middleware." ·         "No customer buy-in. PeopleSoft customers weren't asking for a conversion to WebSphere, so the fact that doing that could have helped PeopleSoft stay independent wouldn't have meant much to them, especially since the cost of moving to whatever a "PeopleSoft built on WebSphere" would have been significant." ·         "No executive buy-in. This is related to the previous point, but it's worth calling out separately. If Oracle had walked away and the deal with IBM had gone through, and PeopleSoft customers got put through the wringer as part of WebSphere move, all of the PeopleSoft project teams would be put in the awkward position of explaining to their management why these additional costs and headaches were happening. Essentially they would need to "sell" the partnership internally to their own management team. That's not a fun conversation to have." I'm not surprised that something like this was in the works. But I did find the inside scoop and Heller's perspective on the challenges particularly interesting. Especially the advantages of aligning development of applications and infrastructure development under one roof. Here's a link to the whole blog entry.  

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• Make Firefox Show Google Results for Default Address Bar Searches

  - by The Geek

  Have you ever typed something incorrectly into the Firefox address bar, and then had it take you to a page you weren’t expecting? The reason is because Firefox uses Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” search, but you can change it. Scratching your head? Let’s take a quick run through what we’re talking about… Normally, if you typed in something like just “howtogeek” in the address bar, and then hit enter… you’ll be taken directly to the How-To Geek site. But how? Very simple! It’s the same place you would have been taken to if you typed “howtogeek” into Google, and then clicked the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button, which takes you to the first result. This is what Firefox does behind the scenes when you put something into the address bar that isn’t a URL. But what if you’d rather head to the search results page instead? Luckily, all you have to do is tweak an about:config parameter in Firefox. Just head into about:config in the address bar, and then filter for keyword.url like so: Double-click on the entry in the list, and then delete the &gfns=1 from the value. That’s the part of the URL that triggers Google to redirect to the first result. And now, the next time you type something into the address bar, either on purpose or because you typo’d it, you’ll be taken to the results page instead: About:Config tweaking is lots of fun. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Make Firefox Quick Search Use Google’s Beta Search KeysMake Firefox Built-In Search Box Use Google’s Experimental Search KeysCombine Wolfram Alpha & Google Search Results in FirefoxHow To Run 4 Different Google Searches at Once In the Same TabChange Default Feed Reader in Firefox TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Looking for Good Windows Media Player 12 Plug-ins? Find Out the Celebrity You Resemble With FaceDouble Whoa ! Use Printflush to Solve Printing Problems Icelandic Volcano Webcams Open Multiple Links At One Go

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• Ubuntu 10.10 Network Issues (wireless as well as wired)

  - by user9054

  down vote favorite Hi Friends, I have got this issue with Ubuntu 10.10 . I have been with ubuntu 8.04 and then decided to try out ubuntu 10.10 . I booted with a LiveCD and was able to configure the wireless network painlessly using the livecd . so happily i installed ubuntu 10.10 . As soon as ubuntu came up it detected the wireless network and i was able to assign a static IP to eth1 (i dont use DHCP option on my ADSL router) and enter a wap key and use pppoeconf to configure the dialer . The net was on and i was able to surf the net . all hunky dory so far . However on the next boot the fun started . It did not detect the wireless network . I could not see the network manager icon in the systray . I used ifconfig and saw that the entry for eth1 was missing .I used ifup eth1 and it said that eth1 was already up . Then i installed wifi-radar . Wifi-Radar detected the wireless network . I configured wifi-radar for the detected wireless network , set the wap driver as wext and used the manual IP settings . However on clicking connect wifi-radar started looking for a DHCP IP , needless to say it failed . For the love of god i cannot understand why wifi-radar is using DHCP when i have specified manual settings . Next i decided to use the wired network to surf the net looking for a solution . So i plugged in the network cable from my modem , it detected the plugged in connection , i configured eth0 , used pppoeconf and connected to the net . Then i foolishly decided to reboot my PC . And wonders of wonders , the same problem appeared . I cannot see eth0 in my ifconfig anymore . i used pon to start the dsl-provider connection and it said something about network error or something . Now my ifconfig shows only lo , both eth0 and eth1 have disappeared .Can anybody help me on this ? Is it a problem with ipv6 , if so how do you disable ipv6 on ubuntu 10.10 ? OR is this is a known issue with ubuntu 10.10 ? .PS : 1) i tried linux mint 10 and had the same issue . on rebooting wireless network was not getting detected . 2) i have made myself the administrator so that there is no issue of rights or anything. Any help is appreciated.

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• Configure Jenkins and Tomcat using Puppet on Vagrant

  - by ex3v

  I'm playing with setting up my first Spring + jenkins + Tomcat CI dev environment. For now it's just a test/fun phase, but in the near future I'll be starting new project with my coworkers. That's the reason that I want development environment virtualized and exactly te same on every development machine, as well as on production server. I choosen to use Vagrant and to try to write puppet scripts that not only install everything, but also configure everything so each of us will have the same jenkins plugins, same jenkins and tomcat login and password, and literally after calling vagrant up we are ready to work. What I managed to do so far is installation of stuff needed and port forwarding. My vagrantfile looks like this (comments stripped): VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION = "2" Vagrant.configure(VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION) do |config| config.vm.box = "precise32" config.vm.box_url = "http://files.vagrantup.com/precise32.box" config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 80, host: 8090 config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 8080, host: 8091 config.vm.network :private_network, ip: "192.168.33.10" config.vm.provision :puppet do |puppet| puppet.manifests_path = "puppet/" puppet.manifest_file = "default.pp" puppet.options = ['--verbose'] end end And this is my puppet file: Exec { path => [ "/bin/", "/sbin/" , "/usr/bin/", "/usr/sbin/" ] } class system-update { exec { 'apt-get update': command => 'apt-get update', } $sysPackages = [ "build-essential" ] package { $sysPackages: ensure => "installed", require => Exec['apt-get update'], } } class tomcat { package { "tomcat": ensure => present, require => Class["system-update"], } service { "tomcat": ensure => "running", require => Package["tomcat"], } } class jenkins { package { "jenkins": ensure => present, require => Class["system-update"], } service { "jenkins": ensure => "running", require => Package["jenkins"], } } include system-update include tomcat include jenkins Now, when I hit vagrant provision and go to http://localhost:8091/ I can see jenkins running, so above script works good. Next step is configurating jenkins and tomcat by extending above puppet scripts. I'm pretty green when it comes to CI. After wandering around web I've found few tutorials about jenkins configuration (here's one of them). I really want to move configuration presented in this tutorial to puppet file, so when I spread my vagrantfile and puppet file between my coworkers, I will be sure that everyone has exactly te same setup. Unfortunately I'm also green about using puppet, I don't know how to do this. Any help will be apreciated.

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• Hello From South Florida

  - by Sam Abraham

  Fellow Blog Readers: I figured I use my first blog post on GeeksWithBlogs to introduce myself.   I recently relocated from Long Island, NY to South Florida where I joined a local company as Software Engineer specializing in technologies such as C#, ASP.Net 3.5, WCF, Silverlight, SQL Server 2008 and LINQ, to name a few. I am an MCP and MCTS ASP.Net 3.5, looking to get my .Net 4.0 certification soon.   Having been in industry for a few years so far, I figured I would share with you my take on the importance of being involved(at least attending) in local user groups.   I am a firm believer that besides using a certain technology, the best way to expand one’s knowledge is by sharing it with others and being equally open to learn from others just as much as you are willing to share what you know.   In my opinion, an important factor that makes a good developer stand-out is his/her ability to keep abreast with the latest and greatest even in areas outside his/her direct expertise.   Additionally, having spoken to various recruiters, technical user group attendees are always favorably looked upon as genuinely interested in their field and willing to take the initiative to expand their knowledge which offers job candidates good leverage when competing for jobs.   I believe I am very blessed to be in an area with a very strong and vibrant developer community. I found in the local .Net community leadership a genuine interest in constantly extending the opportunity to all developers to get more involved and encouraging those who are willing to take that initiative achieve their goal: Speak in meetings, volunteer at events or write and publish articles/blogs about latest and greatest technologies.   With Vishal Shukla (Site director for the West Palm Beach .Net User Group) traveling overseas, I have been extended the opportunity to come on board as site coordinator for FladotNet's WPB .Net User Group along with Venkata Subramanian, an opportunity which I gratefully accepted.   Being involved in running a .Net User Group will surely help me personally and professionally, but my real hope is to use this opportunity to assist in delivering the ultimate common-goal: spread the word about new .Net Technologies, help everybody get more involved and simply have fun learning new things.   With my introduction out of the way, in the next few days I will be posting some notes on an upcoming talk I will be giving about MVC2 and VS2010 in mid-April.   Environment.Exit(0); --Sam

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• Somewhere to get inspiration - Pair up the creative with the tech

  - by Morten Bergfall

  I am a somewhat green developer; some work experience, last year of school. As most of you, I am constantly working on an assortment of personal projects. Since my mind often has a somewhat drifting characteristic; I am not always able to keep the projects in check. After some time they all exhibit the moral fiber of Vikings, harlots and chain-letter-knitters. This includes constant forking, round-abouting, eating of school assignments of rather mundane, and hence pretty yawn-inducing, specifications, and of course quite a bit of gathering of folder dust. Well, on to my question....is there a place, forum... or something with the purpose of linking people with ideas to the people actually being able to bring said ideas to life? Of course, I know of the professional ones, like rent-a-coder and such. And there seem to be a lot of open source projects available for participation. What I'm looking for doesn't really fit into any of those categories....the form would be somewhat like rent-a-coder, but this is ideas&inspiration, not bubble-sort-my-quarterly-for-a-buck. The possibilities for developing bonds, spicy code, and plain old fun seem quite possible.As I see it, the main benefit would be that we (that is the tech-flipside of the proverbial eCoin) get something worthwhile to do, rather than squeeze the last creative grain out of our code-heavy brains.To give it some perspective...: My last project consists of an absurd jQuery-plugin that includes animated png-robots migrating from Google Earth to drag a html-element of your choosing onto the map, where it gets color, for so to be dragged back by this poorly animated robot.... Often, the line between the creative and the tech is blurred, to say the least. I wouldn't think that would be a problem. Think someone who has developed a nifty little windows application, then sees possibility for a broader use, perhaps some sort of networking functionality. This fellow sadly lacks the skill to implememet this. So he, she or it would then seek a developer with the know-how and they could complete this project together. So, do any of you know of such a place, or can nudge in the right direction? And yes, I understand completely that I should be dedicating myself to doing school work, or applying for mundane developer positions, so please.... :-) UPDATE Sadly, I'm situated in Oslo, Norway, and the number of developers are somewhat limited...and I have had quite some ahem personality issues with the ones who are available ;-) So I feel I must go deeper; search the multitude of the web...

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• Is ASP.NET MVC completely (and exclusively) based on conventions?

  - by Mike Valeriano

  --TL;DR Is there a "Hello World!" ASP.NET MVC tutorial out there that doesn't rely on conventions and "stock" projects? Is it even possible to take advantage of the technology without reusing the default file structure, and start from a single "hello_world.asp" file or something (like in PHP)? Am I completely mistaken and I should be looking somewhere else, maybe this? I'm interested in the MVC framework, not Web Forms --Background I've played a bit with PHP in the past, just for fun, and now I'm back to it since web development became relevant for me once again. I'm no professional, but I try to gain as much knowledge and control over the technology I'm working with as possible. I'm using Visual Studio 2012 for C# - my "desktop" language of choice - and since I got the Professional Edition from Dreamspark, the Web Development Tools are available, including ASP.NET MVC 4. I won't touch Web Forms, but the MVC Framework got my attention because the MVC pattern is something I can really relate to, since it provides the control I want but... not quite. Learning PHP was easy - and right form the start I could just create a "hello_world.php" file and just do something like this for immediate results: <!-- file: hello_world.php --> <?php> echo "Hello World!"; <?> But I couldn't find a single ASP.NET (MVC) tutorial out there (I'll be sure to buy one of the upcoming MVC 4 books, only a month away or so) that would start like that. They all start with a sample project, building up knowledge from the basics and heavily using conventions as they go along. Which is fine, I suppose, but it's now the best way for me to learn things. Even the "Empty" project template for a new ASP.NET MVC 4 Application in VS2012 is not empty at all: several files and folders are created for you - much like a new C# desktop application project, but with C# I can in fact start from scratch, creating the project structure myself. It is not the case with PHP: I can choose from a plethora of different MVC frameworks I can just create my own framework I can just skip frameworks altogether, and toss random PHP along with my HTML on a single file and make it work I understand the framework needs to establish some rules, but what if I just want to create a single page website with some C# logic behind it? Do I really need to create a whole bloat of files and folders for the sake of convention? Also, please understand that I haven't gotten far on any of those tutorials mainly because of this reason, but, if that's the only way to do it, I'll go for it using one of the books I've mentioned before. This is my first contact with ASP.NET but from the few comparisons I've read, I believe I should stay the hell away from Web Forms. Thank you. (Please forgive the broken English - it is not my primary language.)

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• How can story and gameplay be artfully merged?

  - by NauticalMile

  Let me give some context. Three of my friends and I have a pretty good game idea cooking. It's based off of a prototype I made that's evolving into a cool game mechanic. The mechanic itself is a toy that's fun on its own, but we haven't designed any puzzles around it yet. We have a design document going, and we are answering a lot of questions about what's in the game. It's become clear early on that everyone (including myself) likes the characters and the story a lot. Considering what our favorite games are, this is unsurprising. A story driven game makes sense to me. I like the emphasis that Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year-Door, Portal 2, and Tomb Raider place on story, and I imagine our game will have a similar feel (lots of dialogue, plot twists, lovable characters). However, one team member raised this point in the design doc: I am feeling like [fleshing out the story] is our biggest hurdle right now for making more design decisions - like more specific decisions about levels etc. Is this true? I am uncertain about working on the story extensively before gameplay, and my uneasiness was reinforced when I read this question about story vs. gameplay. What I want to say is: "Let's continue to work on the story, but also start brainstorming and prototyping abstract puzzles and combat sequences, and we'll creatively match them together later." Is this a reasonable approach? If so, how much of the development of these elements should be done independently? Should I try and create a whole bunch of puzzles while my other teammates focus on story and aesthetics? Then when we have a lot of story and game 'chunks' we can match them with eachother to build something meaningful. Or should we focus on iterating individual levels as distinct units where puzzles, story, etc... are designed together? Or maybe we need to put our excitement about the story on hold and just focus on gameplay. Is there another approach to design that we can take? Am I missing something crucial? I have discussed story and gameplay because they seem the most likely to be at odds with each other, but we also have to consider user interface, music, art direction, etc... Can we design these independently as well?

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• 302: this blog will be closed

  - by preishuber

  After nearly 7 years I will discontinue blogging on this site. My resources are limited. You can reach my German blog which is used to support my customers. Looking back to a long an interesting journey ASP.NET by ScottGu That was the reason to attend this site and support Microsoft as much as I can. For that I was honored as ASP.NET MVP- thanks again. Meet Scoot several times. Great guy! Forums I have left NNTP forums a few years ago and now Microsoft closed it- It was my idea ;-) AJAX Was the wrong way- JQuery won the game IIS7 That is really a great plattform and the IIS team rules. I am sad that is so silent around that topic. ASP.NET after 2.0 Is no longer my world. I love ASP.NET and ASP.NET Server controls. I hate the discussion about how to follow the holy rules of MVC. Microsoft have dropped the goal to bring ASP.NET to #1 and accepted PHP is it. Facebook & Twittering Microblogging takes over a part of the blogging business. Shorter faster cheaper- or as SteveB mentioned - do more with less. Google Google is taking over the web. I am using Bing every time as I can but Google have more options. Sorry Microsoft you will loose that game. Apple That is not the biggest problem of Microsoft. the Ixxx takes over a small part but big money of the market, but the customers are not strongly linked. New wave new hype- Game over Apple. Silverlight My new home. I can reuse a lot of my skills and love the possibilitys. Silverligth will passing WPF-and strike Flash Windows phone 7 Also my skills fit. I just will use it for fun. I am not really satisfied about what I have heard from MIX. Guys from Redmond, I am sad to say you have been the best Smartphone OS and lost everything. The ADO vNext Story That will be the next mystic point. WCF, REST, JSON, ATOM and now OData. Nothing about SQL commands. LINQ, ORM is also not the final solution for multilayered disconnected async scenarios. Personally I prefere the OData idea and dislike the Swiss Army Knife (German Eierlegende Wollmilchsau) WCF. I am still in INETA Speakers board and I am glad to come to your user group. In all other cases you can hire me over ppedv AG. Good by and have good live.

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• What do you think of the EntLib 5.0 configuration tool?

  Hello again! Its been a while, I know. Ive been busy over the last few months with several projects, some of them software related, and one of them human my son Jesse was born on 26 February 2010. Fun times! Meanwhile, back in Redmond, the p&p team has been busy working on Enterprise Library 5.0 see Grigoris announcement for details on the beta. Theres a ton of new stuff in this release, but theres one big new feature that hasnt received a lot of attention that Im keen to hear your perspectives on. The change is the biggest overhaul to the configuration tool since Enterprise Library was launched. If you havent yet grabbed the EntLib 5.0 beta, heres a before and after shot of the config tool: Enterprise Library 4.1 config tool Enterprise Library 5.0 (beta 1) config tool The tool has been rebuilt from the ground up in response to some feedback and usability studies from the previous version of the tool. But is this a step in the right direction? Id love to hear what you think. If youve downloaded EntLib 5.0 and tried out the tool, please share your thoughts on: First impressions. Is the tool easy to understand? Easy to find what youre looking for? Easy to read existing configuration? Pretty? Ease of use for real life tasks. Rather than make up your own tasks, here are a few sample scenarios you might want to try: Configure the data access block with a SQL Server connection called Audit that points to a database called Audit on a server called DB Configure the logging block so that any log entries in the Audit category are written to both the Event Log and the Audit database (see above) Configure the validation block with a ruleset called Email Address that uses an appropriate regular expression for e-mail addresses Configure the policy injection block such that any calls to classes in the MyCompany.Security namespace are logged before and after the call using the Audit category (see above) Comparison with the old config tool. What do you like better in the new tool? What did you like better in the old tool? How do you rate your level of expertise using the old tool? Keep in mind that I no longer work in the p&p team, so I cant say how any of this feedback will be used (although Im sure the team is listening!). However since Ive invested so much time in Enterprise Library, both in leading the team and using the product on real projects Im very interested to hear what you all think of the tools new direction.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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• Networking works on Live CD but not after installation.

  - by user9054

  Hi Friends, I have got this issue with Ubuntu 10.10. I have been with ubuntu 8.04 and then decided to try out ubuntu 10.10 . I booted with a LiveCD and was able to configure the wireless network painlessly using the livecd, so happily I installed ubuntu 10.10. As soon as ubuntu came up it detected the wireless network and i was able to assign a static IP to eth1 (i dont use DHCP option on my ADSL router) and enter a wap key and use pppoeconf to configure the dialer. The net was on and i was able to surf the net. All hunky dory so far. However on the next boot the fun started . It did not detect the wireless network. I could not see the network manager icon in the systray. I used ifconfig and saw that the entry for eth1 was missing. I used ifup eth1 and it said that eth1 was already up. Then i installed wifi-radar. Wifi-Radar detected the wireless network. I configured wifi-radar for the detected wireless network , set the wap driver as wext and used the manual IP settings. However on clicking connect wifi-radar started looking for a DHCP IP. I cannot understand why wifi-radar is using DHCP when I have specified manual settings. Then I decided to use the wired network to surf the net looking for a solution. So I plugged in the network cable from my modem , configured eth0 , used pppoeconf and connected the net. Then I foolishly decided to reboot my PC. And wonders of wonders , the same problem appeared. I cannot see eth0 in my ifconfig anymore. I used pon and it said something about network error or something. Now my ifconfig shows only lo .Can anybody help me on this. PS : 1) I tried linux mint 10 and had the same issue . on rebooting wireless network was not getting detected. 2) I have made myself the administrator so that there is no issue of rights or anything.

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• Use CSS Selectors with HtmlUnit

  - by kerry

  HtmlUnit is a great library for performing web integration tests in Java.  But sometimes node traversal can be somewhat cumbersome. Fear not fellow automated tester (good for you!).  I found a great little project on Github that will allow you to query your document for elements via css selectors similar to jQuery. The project is located at https://github.com/chrsan/css-selectors.  You can use Maven to build it, or download 1.0.2 here.  Beware.  I will not be updating this link so I suggest you download the latest code. In any case, you can use it like so: // from HtmlUnit getting started final WebClient webClient = new WebClient(); final HtmlPage page = webClient.getPage("http://htmlunit.sourceforge.net"); final DOMNodeSelector cssSelector = new DOMNodeSelector(page.getDocumentElement()); final Set elements = cssSelector.querySelectorAll("div.section h2"); final Node first = elements.iterator().next(); assertThat(first.getTextContent(), equalTo("HtmlUnit")); The only problem here is that the querySelectAll returns a Set<Node>.  Not HtmlElement like we may want in some cases.   However, if you were to reflect on the Set, you would find that it is indeed a Set of HtmlElement objects. Typically, I like to create a base class for my web tests.  Just for fun, I am using the $ method similar to jQuery. public class WebTestBase { protected WebClient webClient; protected HtmlPage htmlPage; protected void goTo(final String url){ return (HtmlPage)webClient.getPage(url); } protected List $(final String cssSelector) { final DOMNodeSelector cssSelector = new DOMNodeSelector(htmlPage.getDocumentElement()); final Set nodes = cssSelector.querySelectorAll("div.section h2"); // for some reason Set cannot be cast to Set? final List elements = new ArrayList(nodes.size()); for (final Node node : nodes) { elements.add((HtmlElement)node); } return elements; } } Now we can write tests like this: public class LoginWebTest extends WebTestBase { @Test public void login_page_has_instructions() throws Exception { goTo(baseUrl + "/login") assertThat( $("p.instructions").size(), equalTo(1) ); } }

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• Mixing It Up with BluesMix

  - by Oracle OpenWorld Blog Team

  By Karen Shamban At home base in London prior to making a swing on the US west coast later this month, BluesMix took a few minutes to answer some musical questions. Q: What are the top three things people should know about your music? A: We focus on original material and blend funk with blues. We're big on songwriting but also performance, groove, and feel of the music. It's music you can dance to! We're from London, England and have been labeled 'one of the UK's leading blues/funk bands'. Oh - that's four things! :) Q: Do you prefer smaller, intimate venues or larger, louder ones? A: Actually both, for different reasons. We play many intimate club shows in London at prestigious venues such as the 100 Club. There's lots of musical history with these types of clubs where the likes of the Rolling Stones used to play week-in week-out in the '60s. Usually these shows generally have a fantastic atmosphere, with a close connection to the audience, who are packed close to the stage. They often turn up surprises too…for example, we've had artists such as Amy Winehouse and Mick Abrahams in the crowd enjoying the show and then asking to come onstage and play with the band. Lots of fun! The larger venues are great too, in a different way. We've played to 3,000-person+ crowds and the atmosphere with so many people enjoying the show is a real buzz. It's also nice to play outdoor venues, especially in places with nice weather like California! Q: What's new and different in the music you are playing today, versus a year or two ago? A: Well, we released a new album earlier this year. It's called Flat Nine; it's on the Proper Records label. Whilst our music has always been a blend of blues and vintage funk, this album in particular has evolved our funk side even further. We've received some really great reviews from the music press in the UK and had generous comparisons to the likes of The Meters, Dr. John, The Average White Band, Howlin' Wolf. The album has generated lots of interest, which is fantastic. We're playing to regular sellout shows in the UK and are also opening for some legends of the funk music scene, such as The New Mastersounds. BluesMix are headlining the Oracle OpenWorld Welcome Reception in Yerba Buena Gardens on Sunday, September 30 and are playing at the Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival at Slim's on Tuesday, October 2. More on the music: Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival BluesMix  >>

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