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• Upgrading Windows 8 boot to VHD to Windows 8.1&ndash;Step by step guide

  - by Liam Westley

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/twickers/archive/2013/10/19/upgrading-windows-8-boot-to-vhd-to-windows-8.1ndashstep-by.aspxBoot to VHD – dual booting Windows 7 and Windows 8 became easy When Windows 8 arrived, quite a few people decided that they would still dual boot their machines, and instead of mucking about with resizing disk partitions to free up space for Windows 8 they decided to use the boot from VHD feature to create a huge hard disc image into which Windows 8 could be installed.  Scott Hanselman wrote this installation guide, while I myself used the installation guide from Ed Bott of ZD net fame. Boot to VHD is a great solution, it achieves a dual boot, can be backed up easily and had virtually no effect on the original Windows 7 partition. As a developer who has dual booted Windows operating systems for years, hacking boot.ini files, the boot to VHD was a much easier solution. Upgrade to Windows 8.1 – ah, you can’t do that on a virtual disk installation (boot to VHD) Last week the final version of Windows 8.1 arrived, and I went into the Windows Store to upgrade.  Luckily I’m on a fast download service, and use an SSD, because once the upgrade was downloaded and prepared Windows informed that This PC can’t run Windows 8.1, and provided the reason, You can’t install Windows on a virtual drive.  You can see an image of the message and discussion that sparked my search for a solution in this Microsoft Technet forum post. I was determined not to have to resize partitions yet again and fiddle with VHD to disk utilities and back again, and in the end I did succeed in upgrading to a Windows 8.1 boot to VHD partition.  It takes quite a bit of effort though … tldr; Simple steps of how you upgrade Boot into Windows 7 – make a copy of your Windows 8 VHD, to become Windows 8.1 Enable Hyper-V in your Windows 8 (the original boot to VHD partition) Create a new virtual machine, attaching the copy of your Windows 8 VHD Start the virtual machine, upgrade it via the Windows Store to Windows 8.1 Shutdown the virtual machine Boot into Windows 7 – use the bcedit tool to create a new Windows 8.1 boot to VHD option (pointing at the copy) Boot into the new Windows 8.1 option Reactivate Windows 8.1 (it will have become deactivated by running under Hyper-V) Remove the original Windows 8 VHD, and in Windows 7 use bcedit to remove it from the boot menu Things you’ll need A system that can run Hyper-V under Windows 8 (Intel i5, i7 class CPU) Enough space to have your original Windows 8 boot to VHD and a copy at the same time An ISO or DVD for Windows 8 to create a bootable Windows 8 partition Step by step guide Boot to your base o/s, the real one, Windows 7. Make a copy of the Windows 8 VHD file that you use to boot Windows 8 (via boot from VHD) – I copied it from a folder on C: called VHD-Win8 to VHD-Win8.1 on my N: drive. Reboot your system into Windows 8, and enable Hyper-V if not already present (this may require reboot) Use the Hyper-V manager , create a new Hyper-V machine, using half your system memory, and use the option to attach an existing VHD on the main IDE controller – this will be the new copy you made in Step 2. Start the virtual machine, use Connect to view it, and you’ll probably discover it cannot boot as there is no boot record If this is the case, go to Hyper-V manager, edit the Settings for the virtual machine to attach an ISO of a Windows 8 DVD to the second IDE controller. Start the virtual machine, use Connect to view it, and it should now attempt a fresh installation of Windows 8.  You should select Advanced Options and choose Repair - this will make VHD bootable When the setup reboots your virtual machine, turn off the virtual machine, and remove the ISO of the Windows 8 DVD from the virtual machine settings. Start virtual machine, use Connect to view it.  You will see the devices to be re-discovered (including your quad CPU becoming single CPU).  Eventually you should see the Windows Login screen. You may notice that your desktop background (Win+D) will have turned black as your Windows installation has become deactivate due to the hardware changes between your real PC and Hyper-V. Fortunately becoming deactivated, does not stop you using the Windows Store, where you can select the update to Windows 8.1. You can now watch the progress joy of the Windows 8 update; downloading, preparing to update, checking compatibility, gathering info, preparing to restart, and finally, confirm restart - remember that you are restarting your virtual machine sitting on the copy of the VHD, not the Windows 8 boot to VHD you are currently using to run Hyper-V (confused yet?) After the reboot you get the real upgrade messages; setting up x%, xx%, (quite slow) After a while, Getting ready Applying PC Settings x%, xx% (really slow) Updating your system (fast) Setting up a few more things x%, (quite slow) Getting ready, again Accept license terms Express settings Confirmed previous password Next, I had to set up a Microsoft account – which is possibly now required, and not optional Using the Microsoft account required a 2 factor authorization, via text message, a 7 digit code for me Finalising settings Blank screen, HI .. We're setting up things for you (similar to original Windows 8 install) 'You can get new apps from the Store', below which is ’Installing your apps’ - I had Windows Media Center which is counts as an app from the Store ‘Taking care of a few things’, below which is ‘Installing your apps’ ‘Taking care of a few things’, below ‘Don't turn off your PC’ ‘Getting your apps ready’, below ‘Don't turn off your PC’ ‘Almost ready’, below ‘Don't turn off your PC’ … finally, we get the Windows 8.1 start menu, and a quick Win+D to check the desktop confirmed all the application icons I expected, pinned items on the taskbar, and one app moaning about a missing drive At this point the upgrade is complete – you can shutdown the virtual machine Reboot from the original Windows 8 and return to Windows 7 to configure booting to the Windows 8.1 copy of the VHD In an administrator command prompt do following use the bcdedit tool (from an MSDN blog about configuring VHD to boot in Windows 7) Type bcedit to list the current boot options, so you can copy the GUID (complete with brackets/braces) for the original Windows 8 boot to VHD Create a new menu option, copy of the Windows 8 option; bcdedit /copy {originalguid} /d "Windows 8.1" Point the new Windows 8.1 option to the copy of the VHD; bcdedit /set {newguid} device vhd=[D:]\Image.vhd Point the new Windows 8.1 option to the copy of the VHD; bcdedit /set {newguid} osdevice vhd=[D:]\Image.vhd Set autodetection of the HAL (may already be set); bcdedit /set {newguid} detecthal on Reboot from Windows 7 and select the new option 'Windows 8.1' on the boot menu, and you’ll have some messages to look at, as your hardware is redetected (as you are back from 1 CPU to 4 CPUs) ‘Getting devices ready, blank then %xx, with occasional blank screen, for the graphics driver, (fast-ish) Getting Ready message (fast) You will have to suffer one final reboots, choose 'Windows 8.1' and you can now login to a lovely Windows 8.1 start screen running on non virtualized hardware via boot to VHD After checking everything is running fine, you can now choose to Activate Windows, which for me was a toll free phone call to the automated system where you type in lots of numbers to be given a whole bunch of new activation codes. Once you’re happy with your new Windows 8.1 boot to VHD, and no longer need the Windows 8 boot to VHD, feel free to delete the old one.  I do believe once you upgrade, you are no longer licensed to use it anyway. There, that was simple wasn’t it? Looking at the huge list of steps it took to perform this upgrade, you may wonder whether I think this is worth it.  Well, I think it is worth booting to VHD.  It makes backups a snap (go to Windows 7, copy the VHD, you backed up the o/s) and helps with disk management – want to move the o/s, you can move the VHD and repoint the boot menu to the new location. The downside is that Microsoft has complete neglected to support boot to VHD as an upgradable option.  Quite a poor decision in my opinion, and if you read twitter and the forums quite a few people agree with that view.  It’s a shame this got missed in the work on creating the upgrade packages for Windows 8.1.

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• Open Source WPF UML Design tool

  - by oazabir

  PlantUmlEditor is my new free open source UML designer project built using WPF and .NET 3.5. If you have used plantuml before, you know that you can quickly create sophisitcated UML diagrams without struggling with a designer. Especially those who use Visio to draw UML diagrams (God forbid!), you will be at heaven. This is a super fast way to get your diagrams up and ready for show. You can *write* UML diagrams in plain English, following a simple syntax and get diagrams generated on-the-fly. This editor really saves time designing UML diagrams. I have to produce quick diagrams to convey ideas quickly to Architects, Designers and Developers everyday. So, I use this tool to write some quick diagrams at the speed of coding, and the diagrams get generated on the fly. Instead of writing a long mail explaining some complex operation or some business process in English, I can quickly write it in the editor in almost plain English, and get a nice looking activity/sequence diagram generated instantly. Making major changes is also as easy as doing search-replace and copy-pasting blocks here and there. You don't get such agility in any conventional mouse-based UML designers. I have submited a full codeproject article to give you a detail walkthrough how I have built this. Please read this article and vote for me if you like it. PlantUML Editor: A fast and simple UML editor using WPF http://www.codeproject.com/KB/smart/plantumleditor.aspx You can download the project from here: http://code.google.com/p/plantumleditor/

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• Setting up Mercurial server in IIS7 using a ISAPI module

  - by mhawley

  I'm using Twitter. Follow me @matthawley Previously, Jeremy Skinner posted a very thorough guide on setting up Mercurial in IIS. The difference between his guide, and what I'll be walking you through, is how Mercurial is hosted in IIS. Where he shows you using a CGI script that executes python.exe, my guide will show you how to use isapi-wsgi to host Mercurial. (read more…)

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• What are developer's problems with helpful error messages?

  - by Moo-Juice

  It continue to astounds me that, in this day and age, products that have years of use under their belt, built by teams of professionals, still to this day - fail to provide helpful error messages to the user. In some cases, the addition of just a little piece of extra information could save a user hours of trouble. A program that generates an error, generated it for a reason. It has everything at its disposal to inform the user as much as it can, why something failed. And yet it seems that providing information to aid the user is a low-priority. I think this is a huge failing. One example is from SQL Server. When you try and restore a database that is in use, it quite rightly won't let you. SQL Server knows what processes and applications are accessing it. Why can't it include information about the process(es) that are using the database? I know not everyone passes an Applicatio_Name attribute on their connection string, but even a hint about the machine in question could be helpful. Another candidate, also SQL Server (and mySQL) is the lovely string or binary data would be truncated error message and equivalents. A lot of the time, a simple perusal of the SQL statement that was generated and the table shows which column is the culprit. This isn't always the case, and if the database engine picked up on the error, why can't it save us that time and just tells us which damned column it was? On this example, you could argue that there may be a performance hit to checking it and that this would impede the writer. Fine, I'll buy that. How about, once the database engine knows there is an error, it does a quick comparison after-the-fact, between values that were going to be stored, versus the column lengths. Then display that to the user. ASP.NET's horrid Table Adapters are also guilty. Queries can be executed and one can be given an error message saying that a constraint somewhere is being violated. Thanks for that. Time to compare my data model against the database, because the developers are too lazy to provide even a row number, or example data. (For the record, I'd never use this data-access method by choice, it's just a project I have inherited!). Whenever I throw an exception from my C# or C++ code, I provide everything I have at hand to the user. The decision has been made to throw it, so the more information I can give, the better. Why did my function throw an exception? What was passed in, and what was expected? It takes me just a little longer to put something meaningful in the body of an exception message. Hell, it does nothing but help me whilst I develop, because I know my code throws things that are meaningful. One could argue that complicated exception messages should not be displayed to the user. Whilst I disagree with that, it is an argument that can easily be appeased by having a different level of verbosity depending on your build. Even then, the users of ASP.NET and SQL Server are not your typical users, and would prefer something full of verbosity and yummy information because they can track down their problems faster. Why to developers think it is okay, in this day and age, to provide the bare minimum amount of information when an error occurs? It's 2011 guys, come on.

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• Is JSF really ready to deliver high performance web applications?

  - by aklin81

  I have heard a lot of good about JSF but as far as I know people also had lots of serious complains with this technology in the past, not aware of how much the situation has improved. We are considering JSF as a probable technology for a social network project. But we are not aware of the performance scores of JSF neither we could really come across any existing high performance website that had been using JSF. People complain about its performance scalability issues. We are still not very sure if we are doing the right thing by choosing jsf, and thus would like to hear from you all about this and take your inputs into consideration. Is it possible to configure JSF to satisfy the high performance needs of social networking service ? Also till what extent is it possible to survive with the current problems in JSF.

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• Chester Devs Presentation and source code &ndash; &lsquo;Event Store - an introduction to a DSD for event sourcing and notifications&rsquo;

  - by Liam Westley

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/twickers/archive/2013/11/11/chester-devs-presentation-and-source-code-ndash-lsquoevent-store.aspxThank you everyone at Chester Devs Thanks to Fran Hoey and all the people from Chester Devs. It was a hard drive up and back but the enthusiasm of the audience, with some great questions does make it worthwhile. Presentation and source code My presentation, source code, Event Store runners and text files containing the various command line parameters used for curl is now available on GitHub; https://github.com/westleyl/ChesterDevs-EventStore. Don’t worry if you don’t have a GitHub account, you don’t need one, you can just click on the Download Zip button on the right hand menu to download all the files as a single ZIP file.  If all you want is the PowerPoint presentation, go to https://github.com/westleyl/ChesterDevs-EventStore/blob/master/Powerpoint/Huddle-EventStore.pptx, and click on the View Raw button. Downloading and installing Event Store and Tools Download Event Store http://download.geteventstore.com – I unzipped these files into C:\EventStore\v2.0.1 Download Curl from http://curl.haxx.se/download.html – I downloaded Win64 Generic (with SSL) and unzipped these files into C:\curl version 7.31.0 Running the tools I used in my presentation Demonstration 1 (running Event Store) You can use one of my Event Store runner command files to run the single node version of Event Store, using default ports of 2213 for HTTP and 1113  for TCP, and with a wildcard HTTP pattern.  Both take a single command line parameter to specify the location of the data and log files.  The runners assume the single node executable is located in C:\EventStore\v2.0.1, and will placed data files and logs beneath C:\EventStore\Data, i.e. RunEventStore.cmd TestData1 This will create data files in C:\EventStore\Data\TestData1\Data and log files in C:\EventStore\Data\TestData1\logs. If, when running Event Store you may see the following message, [03288,15,06:23:00.622] Failed to start http server Access is denied You will either need to run Event Store in an administrator console window, or you can use the netsh command to create a firewall permission to allow HTTP listening (this will need to be run, once, in an administrator console window), netsh http add urlacl url=http://*:2213/ user=liam You can always delete this later by running the delete; netsh http delete urlacl url=http://*:2213/ If you want to confirm that everything is running OK, open the management console in a browser by navigating to http://127.0.0.1:2213. If at any point you are asked for a user name and password use the default of ‘admin’/‘changeit’. Demonstration 2 (reading and adding data, curl) In my second demonstration I used curl directly from the console to read streams, write events and then read back those events. On GitHub I have included is a set of curl commands, CurlCommandLine.txt, and a sample data file, SampleData.json, to load an event into a DDDNorth3 stream. As there is not much data in the Event Store at this point I used the $stats-127.0.0.1:2113 which is a stream containing performance statistics for Event Store and is updated every 30 seconds (default). Demonstration 3 (projections) On GitHub I have included a sample projection, Projection-ByRoom.txt, which will create streams based on the room on which a session was held on the DDDNorth3 agenda. Browse to the management console, http://127.0.0.1:2213.  Click on Projections, New Projection, give it a name, Sessions-ByRoom, and copy in the JavaScript in the Projection-ByRoom.txt file.  Select Continuous, tick Emit Enabled and then click on Post. It should run immediately. You may by challenged for the administration login for the management console, if so use the default user name and password; 'admin'/'changeit'. Demonstration 4 (C# client) The final demonstration was the Visual Studio 2012 project using the Event Store client – referenced directly as C:\EventStore\v2.0.1\EventStore.ClientAPI.dll, although you can switch this to the latest Event Store client NuGet package. The source code provides a console app for viewing projections with the projection manager (HTTP connection), as well as containing a full set of data for the entire DDDNorth3 agenda.  It also deals with the strategy for reading newest events backwards to older events and ignoring older events that have been superseded. Resources Event Store home page: http://www.geteventstore.com/ Event Store source code on GitHub: https://github.com/eventstore/eventstore Event Store documentation on GitHub: https://github.com/eventstore/eventstore/wiki (includes index to @RobAshton’s blog series on Event Store at https://github.com/eventstore/eventstore/wiki#rob-ashton---projections-series) Event Store forum in Google Groups: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/event-store TopShelf Windows service wrapper is available on github: https://gist.github.com/trbngr/5083266

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• Office Live add-in 1.5 cannot be installed

  - by wisecarver

  Having trouble with a recent Windows Update that failed to install the Office Live add-in 1.5? This has been driving me nuts on a Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit system for three days. Windows Update would fail, click the “Try again” button and…fail So like I good boy I used http://www.bing.com and have been searching for resolutions. Success! The Microsoft Social forums. http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/officeinstall/thread/4c62e615-a3e5-4cf9-ae6a-5fd870dfb0bc http://support.microsoft...(read more)

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• DiscountASP.NET adds Web Application Gallery

  - by wisecarver

  Apr 23, 2010 What if you could install a blog, CMS, image gallery, wiki or other application with a few simple entries and one click of your mouse? Now you can! DiscountASP.NET is happy to announce that we are now providing access to "one-click" installation of many popular applications in Control Panel . The applications are part of Microsoft's Web Application Gallery and are tested for compatibility with our platform before they are made available to you.  You can glean more details...(read more)

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• Recommendation for Regex editor?

  - by Tim

  I asked for recommendations for Regex editors on stackoverflow a while ago. Following is one of the replies: What is "good" depends on what is most useful to you. For me, though, these are the key features for a good regex editor (besides the ability to test and create regular expressions, of course, which is a prerequisite to be called a "regex editor" :-) : Displays matches hierarchically with captured groups. Explains/analyzes an entered regex in plain English, showing a hierarchical tree. Translates your regex into code for a language of your choice. RegexBuddy, as @Max mentioned, does all these but there is also a free alternative, Expresso that also does them very well. These two utilities are the only ones I have found with the crucial ability to explain a regex. The features sound very attractive to me. But later I found the two are for Windows. I tried to install Expresso, the free one, via Wine, but met some trouble, about which I asked in another post. So I was wondering if in Ubuntu there are some applications comparable to RegexBuddy and Expresso? If it is required to install .NET Framework in order to install Expresso, is it still worth to install Expresso on Ubuntu? Thanks and regards!

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• Windows Phone 7 review

  - by Jeff

  I finally got around to composing some thoughts on what I think about Windows Phone 7, and I posted those impressions on my personal blog. I'll save a few bytes and not repost it here.It should be obvious that my general impression is overwhelmingly positive. What I don't go into very deeply is how much I enjoy developing stuff for it. Baby Stopwatch was not even remotely hard to build, because it wasn't complex, but also because the platform itself is so easy to deal with. I've been messing around and building something a little more involved, and it too has been fun to work with. Sure, you have the quirks of Silverlight to work out, and then the phone-specific quirks after that, but it really is a lot of fun. If you haven't come up with a science project for the phone, I would encourage you to do so.Now if only I could find a gig here at Microsoft where people just build phone apps all day! (But not games... I know we already do that quite a bit.)

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• JavaScript: this

  - by bdukes

  JavaScript is a language steeped in juxtaposition.  It was made to “look like Java,” yet is dynamic and classless.  From this origin, we get the new operator and the this keyword.  You are probably used to this referring to the current instance of a class, so what could it mean in a language without classes? In JavaScript, this refers to the object off of which a function is referenced when it is invoked (unless it is invoked via call or apply). What this means is that this is not bound to your function, and can change depending on how your function is invoked. It also means that this changes when declaring a function inside another function (i.e. each function has its own this), such as when writing a callback. Let's see some of this in action: var obj = { count: 0, increment: function () { this.count += 1; }, logAfterTimeout = function () { setTimeout(function () { console.log(this.count); }, 1); } }; obj.increment(); console.log(obj.count); // 1 var increment = obj.increment; window.count = 'global count value: '; increment(); console.log(obj.count); // 1 console.log(window.count); // global count value: 1 var newObj = {count:50}; increment.call(newObj); console.log(newObj.count); // 51 obj.logAfterTimeout();// global count value: 1 obj.logAfterTimeout = function () { var proxiedFunction = $.proxy(function () { console.log(this.count); }, this); setTimeout(proxiedFunction, 1); }; obj.logAfterTimeout(); // 1 obj.logAfterTimeout = function () { var that = this; setTimeout(function () { console.log(that.count); }, 1); }; obj.logAfterTimeout(); // 1 The last couple of examples here demonstrate some methods for making sure you get the values you expect.  The first time logAfterTimeout is redefined, we use jQuery.proxy to create a new function which has its this permanently set to the passed in value (in this case, the current this).  The second time logAfterTimeout is redefined, we save the value of this in a variable (named that in this case, also often named self) and use the new variable in place of this. Now, all of this is to clarify what’s going on when you use this.  However, it’s pretty easy to avoid using this altogether in your code (especially in the way I’ve demonstrated above).  Instead of using this.count all over the place, it would have been much easier if I’d made count a variable instead of a property, and then I wouldn’t have to use this to refer to it.  var obj = (function () { var count = 0; return { increment: function () { count += 1; }, logAfterTimeout = function () { setTimeout(function () { console.log(count); }, 1); }, getCount: function () { return count; } }; }()); If you’re writing your code in this way, the main place you’ll run into issues with this is when handling DOM events (where this is the element on which the event occurred).  In that case, just be careful when using a callback within that event handler, that you’re not expecting this to still refer to the element (and use proxy or that/self if you need to refer to it). Finally, as demonstrated in the example, you can use call or apply on a function to set its this value.  This isn’t often needed, but you may also want to know that you can use apply to pass in an array of arguments to a function (e.g. console.log.apply(console, [1, 2, 3, 4])).

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• TDD and your emerging design

  - by andrewstopford

  I was at DevWeek last week, it was a great week and I got a chance to speak with some of my geek heroes (Jeff Richter is a walking, talking CLR). One of the folks I most enjoyed listening to was ThoughtWorker Neal Ford who gave a session on emergeant design in TDD. Something struck me about the RGR cycle in TDD in that design could either be missed or misplaced if the refactor phase is never carried out and after the inital green phase the design is considered done. In TDD the emergant design that evolves as part of the cycle is key to the approach.  Neal talked about using cyclometric complexity as a measure of your emerging design but other considerations would surely include SOLID and DRY during the cycles. As you refactor to these kinds of design principles your design evolves.

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• Tracking My Internet Provider Speeds

  - by Scott Weinstein

  Of late, our broadband internet has been feeling sluggish. A call to the company took way more hold-time than I wanted to spend, and it only fixed the problem for a short while. Thus a perfect opportunity to play with some new tech to solve a problem, in this case, documenting a systemic issue from a service provider. The goal – a log a internet speeds, taken say every 15 min. Recording ping time, upload speed, download speed, and local LAN usage.   The solution A WCF service to measure speeds Internet speed was measured via speedtest.net LAN usage was measured by querying my router for packets received and sent A SQL express instance to persist the data A PowerShell script to invoke the WCF service – launched by Windows’ Task Scheduler An OData WCF Data Service to allow me to read the data MS PowerPivot to show a nice viz (scratch that, the beta expired) LinqPad to get the data, export it to excel Tableau Public to show the viz     Powered by Tableau

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• Artificial Intelligence Research within Microsoft

  - by Bigtrend

  I've got the contact with Eric Horvitz today, interview with him about Artificial Intelligence-related research within Microsoft you can see below: ...(read more)

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• ASP.NET MVC Tabular Display Template

  - by Latest Microsoft Blogs

  The ASP.NET MVC2 templates feature is a pretty nice way to quickly scaffold objects at runtime. Be sure to read Brad Wilson ’s fantastic series on this topic starting at ASP.NET MVC 2 Templates, Part 1: Introduction . As great as this feature is, there Read More......(read more)

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• Want to go to DevConnections for Free? Speak at DotNetNuke Connections

  - by Chris Hammond

  So every year in November (for the past 3 years at least!) DotNetNuke has been part of the DevConnections conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. This year (2010) will be no different as DotNetNuke Connections is back ( This year’s conference is scheduled for 11/1-11/4/2010 ) and guess what? I can tell you how to get to go to the conference for free! (travel to/from Las Vegas not included) How, might you ask? Well if you didn’t know this already, people who are selected to give a presentations at...(read more)

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• MS Expression Web 4 SuperPreview – Big Disappointment

  - by smehaffie

  I just downloaded Expression 4 and expected to see some improvements in the Web4 SuperPreview application.  The one main function I was expecting to be in this release is the ability to enter data and click on links so pages of the sites could be assessed.  There a many use cases where this functionality is needed and there were quite a few people vocal about it when MS first released the application. 1) Where you have to login to a site to access either all the content or some of the content on the site 2) Where you have to enter date in a certain order and cannot go to next page until the previous pages data is filled out (payment process, storefront, etc). 3) Where you just want to make sure things are displayed correctly based on data entered (validation messages, etc). 4 ) You need to make sure the links go to the page in all the different browsers.  I have seen scenerios where links worked fine in all but one browser, or for some reason the text showed on screen but it was not a clickable link. IMO this application is a great idea, but until MS fixed the above issue and add the functionality above the SuperPreview is totally worthless unless you need it to test a totally static site that does not require any user input at all to get access to the content.  There is no reason this feature should not have been in this release, and it should have been a priority to make sure it was. Let me know how you feel about the new version of the Web4 SuperPreview application.  Did MS really miss the target on this by not adding this functionality, or do I think it is a bigger deal that it really is?  If you are actively using SuperPreview, please post how you are using it and the type of sites you are using it on.

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• MonoDroid Article in Visual Studio Magazine

  - by Wallym

  The February edition of Visual Studio magazine is now online.  In it, my article regarding MonoDroid, the implementation of C# and .NET for Android devices, is online.  I can't thank Michael Desmond enough for the opportunity.  Its fitting now that Android is the most popular smartphone platform.  This article is available online at: Intro to MonoDroid Part 1. Intro to MonoDroid Part 2. Along with the article, check out this short video that I did regarding MonoDroid on the Mac. The article(s) were written based on MonoDroid Preview 9.1, so there are a few updates necessary, but I think this gets the basics out.  I hope you enjoy the article(s). And yes, we're still working on our book on MonoDroid.  I've got a great author group and am excited about the book. If you get a chance, come to AnDevCon in San Francisco in March.  I'll be presenting on MonoDroid there.

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• Working with Legacy code

  - by andrewstopford

  I'm going to start a series on working with legacy code based on some of things I have learnt over the years. First I define my terms for 'legacy', I define legacy as (as someone on twitter called it) not brownfield but blackfield. Brownfield can be code you did yesterday, last week or last month etc. Blackfield tends to be a great older (think years old) and worked on by a great deal many people. Sure brownfield can also be legacy code but often has far less smells and technical debt, due to it's age the problems are often far worse and far harder to treat.  I'm not sure how many posts I'll write for the series or how long it will run for but I'll add them as and when they occur to me. Finally if you are working with the kind of codebase I describe then Michael Feathers 'Working with Legacy code' is a great resource.

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• Code Contracts: Hiding ContractException

  - by DigiMortal

  It’s time to move on and improve my randomizer I wrote for an example of static checking of code contracts. In this posting I will modify contracts and give some explanations about pre-conditions and post-conditions. Also I will show you how to avoid ContractExceptions and how to replace them with your own exceptions. As a first thing let’s take a look at my randomizer. public class Randomizer {     public static int GetRandomFromRange(int min, int max)     {         var rnd = new Random();         return rnd.Next(min, max);     }       public static int GetRandomFromRangeContracted(int min, int max)     {         Contract.Requires(min < max, "Min must be less than max");           var rnd = new Random();         return rnd.Next(min, max);     } } We have some problems here. We need contract for method output and we also need some better exception handling mechanism. As ContractException as type is hidden from us we have to switch from ContractException to some other Exception type that we can catch. Adding post-condition Pre-conditions are contracts for method’s input interface. Read it as follows: pre-conditions make sure that all conditions for method’s successful run are met. Post-conditions are contracts for output interface of method. So, post-conditions are for output arguments and return value. My code misses the post-condition that checks return value. Return value in this case must be greater or equal to minimum value and less or equal to maximum value. To make sure that method can run only the correct value I added call to Contract.Ensures() method. public static int GetRandomFromRangeContracted(int min, int max) {     Contract.Requires(min < max, "Min must be less than max");       Contract.Ensures(         Contract.Result<int>() >= min &&         Contract.Result<int>() <= max,         "Return value is out of range"     );       var rnd = new Random();     return rnd.Next(min, max); } I think that the line I added does not need any further comments. Avoiding ContractException for input interface ContractException lives in hidden namespace and we cannot see it at design time. But it is common exception type for all contract exceptions that we do not switch over to some other type. The case of Contract.Requires() method is simple: we can tell it what kind of exception we need if something goes wrong with contract it ensures. public static int GetRandomFromRangeContracted(int min, int max) {     Contract.Requires<ArgumentOutOfRangeException>(         min < max,         "Min must be less than max"     );       Contract.Ensures(         Contract.Result<int>() >= min &&         Contract.Result<int>() <= max,         "Return value is out of range"     );       var rnd = new Random();     return rnd.Next(min, max); } Now, if we violate the input interface contract giving min value that is not less than max value we get ArgumentOutOfRangeException. Avoiding ContractException for output interface Output interface is more complex to control. We cannot give exception type there and hope that this type of exception will be thrown if something goes wrong. Instead we have to use delegate that gathers information about problem and throws the exception we expect to be thrown. From documentation you can find the following example about the delegate I mentioned. Contract.ContractFailed += (sender, e) => {     e.SetHandled();     e.SetUnwind(); // cause code to abort after event     Assert.Fail(e.FailureKind.ToString() + ":" + e.DebugMessage); }; We can use this delegate to throw the Exception. Let’s move the code to separate method too. Here is our method that uses now ContractException hiding. public static int GetRandomFromRangeContracted(int min, int max) {     Contract.Requires(min < max, "Min must be less than max");       Contract.Ensures(         Contract.Result<int>() >= min &&         Contract.Result<int>() <= max,         "Return value is out of range"     );     Contract.ContractFailed += Contract_ContractFailed;       var rnd = new Random();     return rnd.Next(min, max)+1000; } And here is the delegate that creates exception. public static void Contract_ContractFailed(object sender,     ContractFailedEventArgs e) {     e.SetHandled();     e.SetUnwind();       throw new Exception(e.FailureKind.ToString() + ":" + e.Message); } Basically we can do in this delegate whatever we like to do with output interface errors. We can even introduce our own contract exception type. As you can see later then ContractFailed event is very useful at unit testing.

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• Globalizing ASP.NET MVC Client Validation

  - by Latest Microsoft Blogs

  One of my favorite features of ASP.NET MVC 2 is the support for client validation. I’ve covered a bit about validation in the following two posts: ASP.NET MVC 2 Custom Validation covers writing a custom client validator. Localizing ASP.NET MVC Validation Read More......(read more)

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• Including additional DLL’s in an MSBuild script for Module Packaging

  - by Chris Hammond

  Late last year I created a blog post and video about a new version of the module development template that I released on Codeplex . This new template uses MSBuild scripts instead of NANT scripts to automate the packaging process for the modules built with the template. The MSBuild script works well out of the box, to package your module you simple change into RELEASE mode and then execute the build. If your project contains references to DLLs (in the website’s BIN folder) that you also need to package...(read more)

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• POP Forums v9 Beta 1 for ASP.NET MVC 3 posted to CodePlex!

  - by Jeff

  As promised, I posted a beta build of my forum app for ASP.NET MVC 3. Get the new goodies here: http://popforums.codeplex.com/releases/view/58228 This is the first beta for the ASP.NET MVC 3 version of POP Forums. It is nearly feature complete, and ready for testing and feedback. For previous release notes, look here, here and here.Check out the live preview: http://preview.popforums.com/ForumsSetup instructions are on the home page of this project. The new hotness in the beta, or what has been done since the last preview: All views converted to use Razor E-mail subscription/notification of new posts New post indicators/mark read buttons Permalinks to posts Jump to newest post (from new post indicators) Recent topics Favorite topics Moderator functions for topics (pin/close/delete, plus move and rename) Search, ported from v8. Not a ton of optimization here, or new unit testing, but the old version worked pretty well User posts (topics the user posted in) Forgot password Vanity items (signatures and avatars) Hide vanity items per user preference Some minor data caching where appropriate A little bit of UI refinement Lots-o-bug fixes Lots-o-unit tests What's next? The plan between now and the next beta is as follows: Continue working through features/tasks, and fix bugs as they're reported Integrate the forum into a real, production site Refine the UI Refactor as much as possible... the code organization is not entirely logical in some places After the second beta, a release candidate will follow, with a real "final" release after that. Subsequent releases should come relatively frequently and without a lot of risk. The trick in building this thing has been that it mostly tossed the previous WebForms version, which was all full of crusties. The time table for this is a little harder to pin down, as day jobs and families will have their effect. Other notes Refactoring will be a priority. As the features of MVC have evolved, so have my desires to use it in a fashion that makes things clear and easy to follow. I don't even know if anyone will ever start mucking around in the code, but on the off chance they do, I'd like what they find to not suck. Other nice-to-haves are builds to target Windows Azure and SQL CE. A nice setup UI would be super too. I think the ASP.NET MVC world has gone long enough without a decent forum.The biggest challenge that I've found is making the forum something that can be dropped in any app. While it does rope its views into an area, areas are mostly just routing details. I haven't thought of a clever way yet to limit dependency injection, for example, to just the forum bits. I mean, everyone should be using Ninject, but how realistic is that? ;)How much time and effort should you spend on POP Forums in its current state? Change is inevitable, but at this point I'm reasonably committed to not changing the database schema. I really think it will stay as-is. All bets are off for the various interfaces throughout the app, but the data should generally resist change. It's not even that different from v8, which was one of the original goals because I didn't want to rewrite SQL or introduce a new ORM or whatever. My point is that if you wanted to build a site around this today, even though it's not entirely functional, I think it's low risk in terms of data loss. I can't vouch for whether or not you know what you're doing.I've been having some chats with people lately about quoting posts, and honestly there has to be something better and straight forward. That continues to be a holy grail of mine, and some day, I hope to find it.Enjoy... it's starting to feel more real every day!

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• Visual studio add-in

  - by Suresh Behera

  I was looking for a add in which could help to file the filename and found following few links for add-in All Visual Studio gallery http://www.visualstudiogallery.com Do you have any recommended add-ons/plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2767/do-you-have-any-recommended-add-ons-plugins-for-microsoft-visual-studio Visual Studio Add-Ins Every Developer Should Download Now http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc300778.aspx Post here if you have any other extra...(read more)

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• Artificial Intelligence Research within Microsoft

  - by Bigtrend

  I've got the contact with Eric Horvitz today, interview with him about Artificial Intelligence-related research within Microsoft you can see below: ...(read more)

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