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Articles indexed Monday December 6 2010

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  • Silverlight Firestarter 2010 Keynote with Scott Guthrie: Silverlight has a bright future!

    - by Jim Duffy
    If you didn’t get chance to watch the Silverlight Firestart event live during the webcast it is available online to view now. If you’re a Silverlight developer or perhaps a shop actively planning on developing a Silverlight application then you’re going to want to watch this video. The Silverlight 5 feature set unveiled during the keynote is fantastic! I particularly like Scott’s approach and comments on the future of Silverlight. I appreciated his open and direct acknowledgment that there has “been a lot of angst on this topic in the last few weeks” and he took the bull by the horns and stated “Let me say up front that there is a Silverlight future, and we think it’s going to be a very bright one.” That comment drew applause from the local audience and in our local viewing event held in Raleigh, NC. Of course my first question was when can we get our grubby little hands on Silverlight 5 and start working with it. The answer unfortunately wasn’t “right now” but they did announce the Silverlight 5 beta will be available in the first half of 2011. Of course the following is pure speculation on my part but I wouldn’t be surprised if they made it available at a certain event in April 2011. Additional information about the Silverlight 5 announcement is available on Scott’s blog. Have a day.

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  • Virtual Brown Bag Recap: NuGet, PoshCode, Code Templates

    - by Brian Schroer
    "Virtual Brown Bag" anagrams: Roving Tuba Brawl Lawn Bug Vibrator Rubbing Two Larva Vulgar Rabbi Town A Vibrant Grub Owl Blurting a Bar Vow At this week's Roving Tuba Brawl Virtual Brown Bag meeting: Claudio Lassala asked "What does your work environment look like?" He and several others shared pictures. George Mauer talked about NuGet, .NET's answer to Ruby Gems, and PoshCode, a PowerShell code repository Claudio showed how he uses CodeRush templates to quickly generate unit test code Alan Stevens showed how to do the same thing with Resharper templates For detailed notes, links, and the video recording, go to the VBB wiki page: https://sites.google.com/site/vbbwiki/main_page/2010-12-02

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  • My Session in TechED 2010 Beijing

    - by Shaun
    Thanks for all people who attended my session at the TechED 2010 on the 2nd of Dec in Beijing. I had uploaded my presentation (in Chinese) and the demos codes here. As I said in my session please feel free to email me ([email protected]) if you have any questions about the Windows Azure platform. And please have a look on my company’s website (www.ethos.com.cn) if you are interested.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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  • APress Deal of the Day 4/Dec/2010

    - by TATWORTH
    Todays Apress deal of the day at http://www.apress.com/info/dailydeal is for Crafting Digital Media. Full details at http://www.apress.com/book/view/1430218878 It covers software such as: Audacity Drupal GIMP While the book is aimed primary at the world of LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP), many of the packages are available for Windows. It is well worth today's bargain price of $10!

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  • Pimp my Silverlight Firestarter

    - by mbcrump
    So Silverlight Firestarter is over and your sitting on your couch thinking… what now? Well its time to So how exactly can you pimp the Silverlight Firestarter? Well read below and you will find out: 1) Pimp the videos: First we are going to use a program named Juice to download all of the Silverlight Firestarter videos. Go ahead and point your browser to http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/ and download the application. It works on Mac, Linux and PC. After it is downloaded you are going to want to add an RSS feed by clicking the button highlighted below. At this point you are going to want to add the following URL inside the textbox and hit Save: http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Silverlight-Firestarter/RSS This RSS feed includes all the Silverlight Firestarter Labs and Presentations located below. The Future of Silverlight Data Binding Strategies with Silverlight and WP7 Building Compelling Apps with WCF using REST and LINQ Building Feature Rich Business Apps Today with RIA Services MVVM: Why and How? Tips and Patterns using MVVM and Service Patterns with Silverlight and WP7 Tips and Tricks for a Great Installation Experience Tune Your Application: Profiling and Performance Tips Performance Tips for Silverlight Windows Phone 7 Select all the videos and click the Download button located below (has blue arrow): Once all the videos are downloaded you will have about 4.64GB of Silverlight fun. You can now move these videos to your MediaServer and watch them with whatever device you want. Put it on an iPad, iPhone.. emm wait I mean WP7 or WMC7.  2) Pimp the Training Material – Download the offline installer for the labs here. This will give you almost a gig of free training materials. Here is the topics covered: Level 100: Getting Started Lab 01 - WinForms and Silverlight Lab 02 - ASP.NET and Silverlight Lab 03 - XAML and Controls Lab 04 - Data Binding Level 200: Ready for More Lab 05 - Migrating Apps to Out-of-Browser Lab 06 - Great UX with Blend Lab 07 - Web Services and Silverlight Lab 08 - Using WCF RIA Services Level 300: Take me Further Lab 09 - Deep Dive into Out-of-Browser Lab 10 - Silverlight Patterns: Using MVVM Lab 11 - Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 You will notice that it install Firestarter to the default of C:\Firestarter. So you will have to navigate to that folder and double click on Default.htm to get started. Now if you followed part one of the pimping guide then you will already have all the videos on your pc. You will notice that once you go into the lab you will get a Lab Document and Source at the bottom of the article. Now instead of opening the Source Folder in a web browser you can just copy the folder C:\Firestarter\Labs into your Visual Studio 2010 Project Folder. This will save a lot of time later.   3) Pimp my Silverlight 5 Knowledge – Always keep reading as much as possible and remember that the Silverlight 5 Beta should come Q1 of 2011 and the final release at the end of 2011. Here are 5 great blog post on Silverlight 5. Scott Gu’s Blog Mary Jo’s Article on Silverlight 5 The Future of Silverlight (Official) Kunal Chowdhury Blog Tim Heuer’s Blog Thats all that I got for now. Have fun with all the new Silverlight content.  Subscribe to my feed

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  • Android - creating a custom preferences activity screen

    - by Bill Osuch
    Android applications can maintain their own internal preferences (and allow them to be modified by users) with very little coding. In fact, you don't even need to write an code to explicitly save these preferences, it's all handled automatically! Create a new Android project, with an intial activity title Main. Create two more activities: ShowPrefs, which extends Activity Set Prefs, which extends PreferenceActivity Add these two to your AndroidManifest.xml file: <activity android:name=".SetPrefs"></activity> <activity android:name=".ShowPrefs"></activity> Now we'll work on fleshing out each activity. First, open up the main.xml layout file and add a couple of buttons to it: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"    android:orientation="vertical"    android:layout_width="fill_parent"    android:layout_height="fill_parent"> <Button android:text="Edit Preferences"    android:id="@+id/prefButton"    android:layout_width="wrap_content"    android:layout_height="wrap_content"    android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"/> <Button android:text="Show Preferences"    android:id="@+id/showButton"    android:layout_width="wrap_content"    android:layout_height="wrap_content"    android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"/> </LinearLayout> Next, create a couple button listeners in Main.java to handle the clicks and start the other activities: Button editPrefs = (Button) findViewById(R.id.prefButton);       editPrefs.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {              public void onClick(View view) {                  Intent myIntent = new Intent(view.getContext(), SetPrefs.class);                  startActivityForResult(myIntent, 0);              }      });           Button showPrefs = (Button) findViewById(R.id.showButton);      showPrefs.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {              public void onClick(View view) {                  Intent myIntent = new Intent(view.getContext(), ShowPrefs.class);                  startActivityForResult(myIntent, 0);              }      }); Now, we'll create the actual preferences layout. You'll need to create a file called preferences.xml inside res/xml, and you'll likely have to create the xml directory as well. Add the following xml: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <PreferenceScreen xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"> </PreferenceScreen> First we'll add a category, which is just a way to group similar preferences... sort of a horizontal bar. Add this inside the PreferenceScreen tags: <PreferenceCategory android:title="First Category"> </PreferenceCategory> Now add a Checkbox and an Edittext box (inside the PreferenceCategory tags): <CheckBoxPreference    android:key="checkboxPref"    android:title="Checkbox Preference"    android:summary="This preference can be true or false"    android:defaultValue="false"/> <EditTextPreference    android:key="editTextPref"    android:title="EditText Preference"    android:summary="This allows you to enter a string"    android:defaultValue="Nothing"/> The key is how you will refer to the preference in code, the title is the large text that will be displayed, and the summary is the smaller text (this will make sense when you see it). Let's say we've got a second group of preferences that apply to a different part of the app. Add a new category just below the first one: <PreferenceCategory android:title="Second Category"> </PreferenceCategory> In there we'll a list with radio buttons, so add: <ListPreference    android:key="listPref"    android:title="List Preference"    android:summary="This preference lets you select an item in a array"    android:entries="@array/listArray"    android:entryValues="@array/listValues" /> When complete, your full xml file should look like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <PreferenceScreen xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">  <PreferenceCategory android:title="First Category"> <CheckBoxPreference    android:key="checkboxPref"    android:title="Checkbox Preference"    android:summary="This preference can be true or false"    android:defaultValue="false"/> <EditTextPreference    android:key="editTextPref"    android:title="EditText Preference"    android:summary="This allows you to enter a string"    android:defaultValue="Nothing"/>  </PreferenceCategory>  <PreferenceCategory android:title="Second Category">   <ListPreference    android:key="listPref"    android:title="List Preference"    android:summary="This preference lets you select an item in a array"    android:entries="@array/listArray"    android:entryValues="@array/listValues" />  </PreferenceCategory> </PreferenceScreen> However, when you try to save it, you'll get an error because you're missing your array definition. To fix this, add a file called arrays.xml in res/values, and paste in the following: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <resources>  <string-array name="listArray">      <item>Value 1</item>      <item>Value 2</item>      <item>Value 3</item>  </string-array>  <string-array name="listValues">      <item>1</item>      <item>2</item>      <item>3</item>  </string-array> </resources> Finally (for the preferences screen at least...) add the code that will display the preferences layout to the SetPrefs.java file:  @Override     public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {      super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);      addPreferencesFromResource(R.xml.preferences);      } OK, so now we've got an activity that will set preferences, and save them without the need to write custom save code. Let's throw together an activity to work with the saved preferences. Create a new layout called showpreferences.xml and give it three Textviews: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"     android:orientation="vertical"     android:layout_width="fill_parent"     android:layout_height="fill_parent"> <TextView   android:id="@+id/textview1"     android:layout_width="fill_parent"     android:layout_height="wrap_content"     android:text="textview1"/> <TextView   android:id="@+id/textview2"     android:layout_width="fill_parent"     android:layout_height="wrap_content"     android:text="textview2"/> <TextView   android:id="@+id/textview3"     android:layout_width="fill_parent"     android:layout_height="wrap_content"     android:text="textview3"/> </LinearLayout> Open up the ShowPrefs.java file and have it use that layout: setContentView(R.layout.showpreferences); Then add the following code to load the DefaultSharedPreferences and display them: SharedPreferences prefs = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(this);    TextView text1 = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.textview1); TextView text2 = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.textview2); TextView text3 = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.textview3);    text1.setText(new Boolean(prefs.getBoolean("checkboxPref", false)).toString()); text2.setText(prefs.getString("editTextPref", "<unset>"));; text3.setText(prefs.getString("listPref", "<unset>")); Fire up the application in the emulator and click the Edit Preferences button. Set various things, click the back button, then the Edit Preferences button again. Notice that your choices have been saved.   Now click the Show Preferences button, and you should see the results of what you set:   There are two more preference types that I did not include here: RingtonePreference - shows a radioGroup that lists your ringtones PreferenceScreen - allows you to embed a second preference screen inside the first - it opens up a new set of preferences when clicked

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  • What other skins do you like?

    - by Staff of Geeks
    Here at Staff of Geeks we love to see the other skins you like from alternative blog sites like WordPress.  We want to be able to offer you great skins as soon as possible when a request is made.  Some of our skins are outdated or just don't look good on newer browsers.  So what do you like?  Feel free to leave a comment, or tweet us at @staffofgeeks.  If you have a site template you like from Template Monster or some other template site that is relativly inexpensive and could easily be used for a blogs, send us those to. Thanks, Staff of Geeks

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  • and the winner is Google Chrome

    - by anirudha
    Browser war really still uncompleted but here i tell that Why Google chrome better. 1. Easy to install:- as IE 9 Google chrome not force user to purchase a new OS. the chrome have a facelity that they install in minutes then less then other just like Firefox a another competitor or bloody fool  IE 9. 2. Easy to test: if you want to test their beta that’s no problem as well as Firefox. if user use Firefox 4 beta that they found that they can’t use many good plugin such as a big list the Web Developer tool and many other are one of them. in Chrome beta they provide you more then the last official release of chrome. 3. Google chrome Sync:-  i myself used  sync inside Firefox but nothing i found good and from a long time i feel nothing good and any feature in Firefox sync. but in google chrome their sync system is much better. When user login for sync in chrome they install everything and get back the user every settings they set the last time such as apps, autofill, bookmark ,extensions preference and theme. if you want to check bookmark from other browser that you can use google docs because google provided their bookmark backup in their docs account they have. performance:- after testing a website i found that a website open in 36 seconds in Firefox that Google chrome open them in 10 seconds. i found a interesting thing that when i test offline in IE 8 they show me in one or two seconds. i wonder how it’s possible after a long puzzle i found that IE was integrated software from Microsoft that the both software Visual studio and IE was integrated with windows. if user  test javascript in IE that the error they find show in visual studio not in IE as well as other software like chrome and IE. chrome not have a vast range of plugin as well as firefox so developer spent less time on chrome that would be a problem of future of chrome. interface comparison : the chrome have a common but user friendly interface then the user easily can use them. are you watching menu in Firefox 4. they make them complex as well as whole software IE 9. IE developer team thing that they can make everything fool by making a slogan HTML 5 inside IE. if anyone want to open a page in IE 9 that they show after some second. some time they show page not found even site is not gone wrong. when anyone want to use IE 9 developer tool that they thing that “ are this really  a developer tool ? ”. yeah they not make them for human as well as Firebug working team make firebug inside Firefox. they thing that how they can make public fool. Are you see that if you want to install Visual studio they force you to install sql server even you use other database system. a big stupidity of their tool can be found here today we hear that they Microsoft launched silverlight 5. are you know how Microsoft make silverlight yeah he copycat the idea of Adobe and their product Adobe Flash. that’s a other matter we can use .Net language instead of actionscript , lingo or shockwave.

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  • SSIS Send Mail Task and ForceExecutionValue Error

    - by Kevin Shyr
    I tried to use the "ForcedExecutionValue" on several Send Mail Tasks and log the execution into a ExecValueVariable so that at the end of the package I can log into a table to say whether the data check is successful or not (by determine whether an email was sent out) I set up a Boolean variable that is accessible at the package level, then set up my Send Mail Task as the screenshot below with Boolean as my ForcedExecutionValueType.  When I run the package, I got the error described below. Just to make sure this is not another issue of SSIS having with Boolean type ( you also can't set variable value from xp_cmdshell of type Boolean), I used variables of types String, Int32, DateTime with the corresponding ForcedExecutionValueType.  The only way to get around this error, was to set my variable to type Object, but then when you try to get the value out later, the Object is null. I didn't spend enough time on this to see whether it's really a bug in SSIS or not, or is this just how Send Mail Task works.  Just want to log the error and will circle back on this later to narrow down the issue some more.  In the meantime, please share if you have run into the same problem.  The current workaround is to attach a script task at the end. Also, need to note 2 existing limitation: Data check needs to be done serially because every check needs to be inner join to a master table.  The master table has all the data in a single XML column and hence need to be retrieved with XQuery (a fundamental design flaw that needs to be changed) The next iteration will be to change this design into a FOR loop and pull out the checking query from a table somewhere with all the info needed for email task, but is being put to the back of the priority. Error Message: Error: 0xC001F009 at CountCheckBetweenODSAndCleanSchema: The type of the value being assigned to variable "User::WasErrorEmailEverSent" differs from the current variable type. Variables may not change type during execution. Variable types are strict, except for variables of type Object. Error: 0xC0019001 at Send Mail Task on count mismatch: The wrapper was unable to set the value of the variable specified in the ExecutionValueVariable property.   Screenshot of my Send Mail Task setup:

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  • ResponseStatusLine protocol violation

    - by Tom Hines
    I parse/scrape a few web page every now and then and recently ran across an error that stated: "The server committed a protocol violation. Section=ResponseStatusLine".   After a few web searches, I found a couple of suggestions – one of which said the problem could be fixed by changing the HttpWebRequest ProtocolVersion to 1.0 with the command: 1: HttpWebRequest req = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create(strURI); 2: req.ProtocolVersion = HttpVersion.Version10;   …but that did not work in my particular case.   What DID work was the next suggestion I found that suggested the use of the setting: “useUnsafeHeaderParsing” either in the app.config file or programmatically. If added to the app.config, it would be: 1: <!-- after the applicationSettings --> 2: <system.net> 3: <settings> 4: <httpWebRequest useUnsafeHeaderParsing ="true"/> 5: </settings> 6: </system.net>   If done programmatically, it would look like this: C++: 1: // UUHP_CPP.h 2: #pragma once 3: using namespace System; 4: using namespace System::Reflection; 5:   6: namespace UUHP_CPP 7: { 8: public ref class CUUHP_CPP 9: { 10: public: 11: static bool UseUnsafeHeaderParsing(String^% strError) 12: { 13: Assembly^ assembly = Assembly::GetAssembly(System::Net::Configuration::SettingsSection::typeid); //__typeof 14: if (nullptr==assembly) 15: { 16: strError = "Could not access Assembly"; 17: return false; 18: } 19:   20: Type^ type = assembly->GetType("System.Net.Configuration.SettingsSectionInternal"); 21: if (nullptr==type) 22: { 23: strError = "Could not access internal settings"; 24: return false; 25: } 26:   27: Object^ obj = type->InvokeMember("Section", 28: BindingFlags::Static | BindingFlags::GetProperty | BindingFlags::NonPublic, 29: nullptr, nullptr, gcnew array<Object^,1>(0)); 30:   31: if(nullptr == obj) 32: { 33: strError = "Could not invoke Section member"; 34: return false; 35: } 36:   37: FieldInfo^ fi = type->GetField("useUnsafeHeaderParsing", BindingFlags::NonPublic | BindingFlags::Instance); 38: if(nullptr == fi) 39: { 40: strError = "Could not access useUnsafeHeaderParsing field"; 41: return false; 42: } 43:   44: if (!(bool)fi->GetValue(obj)) 45: { 46: fi->SetValue(obj, true); 47: } 48:   49: return true; 50: } 51: }; 52: } C# (CSharp): 1: using System; 2: using System.Reflection; 3:   4: namespace UUHP_CS 5: { 6: public class CUUHP_CS 7: { 8: public static bool UseUnsafeHeaderParsing(ref string strError) 9: { 10: Assembly assembly = Assembly.GetAssembly(typeof(System.Net.Configuration.SettingsSection)); 11: if (null == assembly) 12: { 13: strError = "Could not access Assembly"; 14: return false; 15: } 16:   17: Type type = assembly.GetType("System.Net.Configuration.SettingsSectionInternal"); 18: if (null == type) 19: { 20: strError = "Could not access internal settings"; 21: return false; 22: } 23:   24: object obj = type.InvokeMember("Section", 25: BindingFlags.Static | BindingFlags.GetProperty | BindingFlags.NonPublic, 26: null, null, new object[] { }); 27:   28: if (null == obj) 29: { 30: strError = "Could not invoke Section member"; 31: return false; 32: } 33:   34: // If it's not already set, set it. 35: FieldInfo fi = type.GetField("useUnsafeHeaderParsing", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance); 36: if (null == fi) 37: { 38: strError = "Could not access useUnsafeHeaderParsing field"; 39: return false; 40: } 41:   42: if (!Convert.ToBoolean(fi.GetValue(obj))) 43: { 44: fi.SetValue(obj, true); 45: } 46:   47: return true; 48: } 49: } 50: }   F# (FSharp): 1: namespace UUHP_FS 2: open System 3: open System.Reflection 4: module CUUHP_FS = 5: let UseUnsafeHeaderParsing(strError : byref<string>) : bool = 6: // 7: let assembly : Assembly = Assembly.GetAssembly(typeof<System.Net.Configuration.SettingsSection>) 8: if (null = assembly) then 9: strError <- "Could not access Assembly" 10: false 11: else 12: 13: let myType : Type = assembly.GetType("System.Net.Configuration.SettingsSectionInternal") 14: if (null = myType) then 15: strError <- "Could not access internal settings" 16: false 17: else 18: 19: let obj : Object = myType.InvokeMember("Section", BindingFlags.Static ||| BindingFlags.GetProperty ||| BindingFlags.NonPublic, null, null, Array.zeroCreate 0) 20: if (null = obj) then 21: strError <- "Could not invoke Section member" 22: false 23: else 24: 25: // If it's not already set, set it. 26: let fi : FieldInfo = myType.GetField("useUnsafeHeaderParsing", BindingFlags.NonPublic ||| BindingFlags.Instance) 27: if(null = fi) then 28: strError <- "Could not access useUnsafeHeaderParsing field" 29: false 30: else 31: 32: if (not(Convert.ToBoolean(fi.GetValue(obj)))) then 33: fi.SetValue(obj, true) 34: 35: // Now return true 36: true VB (Visual Basic): 1: Option Explicit On 2: Option Strict On 3: Imports System 4: Imports System.Reflection 5:   6: Public Class CUUHP_VB 7: Public Shared Function UseUnsafeHeaderParsing(ByRef strError As String) As Boolean 8:   9: Dim assembly As [Assembly] 10: assembly = [assembly].GetAssembly(GetType(System.Net.Configuration.SettingsSection)) 11:   12: If (assembly Is Nothing) Then 13: strError = "Could not access Assembly" 14: Return False 15: End If 16:   17: Dim type As Type 18: type = [assembly].GetType("System.Net.Configuration.SettingsSectionInternal") 19: If (type Is Nothing) Then 20: strError = "Could not access internal settings" 21: Return False 22: End If 23:   24: Dim obj As Object 25: obj = [type].InvokeMember("Section", _ 26: BindingFlags.Static Or BindingFlags.GetProperty Or BindingFlags.NonPublic, _ 27: Nothing, Nothing, New [Object]() {}) 28:   29: If (obj Is Nothing) Then 30: strError = "Could not invoke Section member" 31: Return False 32: End If 33:   34: ' If it's not already set, set it. 35: Dim fi As FieldInfo 36: fi = [type].GetField("useUnsafeHeaderParsing", BindingFlags.NonPublic Or BindingFlags.Instance) 37: If (fi Is Nothing) Then 38: strError = "Could not access useUnsafeHeaderParsing field" 39: Return False 40: End If 41:   42: If (Not Convert.ToBoolean(fi.GetValue(obj))) Then 43: fi.SetValue(obj, True) 44: End If 45:   46: Return True 47: End Function 48: End Class   Technorati Tags: C++,CPP,VB,Visual Basic,F#,FSharp,C#,CSharp,ResponseStatusLine,protocol violation

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  • Apress Books - 3 - Pro ASP.NET 4 CMS (ISBN 987-1-4302-2712-0) - Final comments

    - by TATWORTH
    This book is more than just  a book about an ASP.NET CMS system -  it has much practical advice and examples for the Dot Net web developer. I liked the use of JQuery to detect that JavaScript was not enabled. One chapter was about MemCached - this one chapter could justify the price of the book if you run a server farm and need to improve performance. Some links to get you started are: Windows Memcache at http://code.jellycan.com/memcached/ Dot Net Access Library at http://sourceforge.net/projects/memcacheddotnet/ The chapters on scripting, performance analysis and search engne optimisation all provide excellent examples. This certainly is a book that should be part of every Dot Net Web Development team library. Congratulations to the author and to Apress for publishing this book!

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  • Remote Desktop to Your Azure Virtual Machine

    - by Shaun
    The Windows Azure Team had just published their new development portal this week and the SDK 1.3. Within this new release there are a lot of cool feature available. The one I’m looking forward to is Remote Desktop Access to your running Windows Azure Virtual Machine.   Configuration Remote Desktop Access It would be very simple to make the azure service enable the remote desktop access. First of all let’s create a new windows azure project from the Visual Studio. In this example I just created a normal MVC 2 web role without any modifications. Then we right-click the azure project node in the solution explorer window and select “Publish”. Then let’s select the “Deploy your Windows Azure project to Windows Azure” on the top radio button. And then select the credential, deployment service/slot, storage and label as susal. You must have the Management API Certificates uploaded to your Windows Azure account, and install the certification on you machine before in order to use this one-click deployment feature. If you are familiar with this dialog you will notice that there’s a linkage named “Configure Remote Desktop connections”. Here is where you need to make this service enable the remote desktop feature. After clicked this link we will set the configuration of the remote desktop access authorization information. There are 4 steps we need to do to configure our access. Certificates: We need either create or select a certificate file in order to encypt the access cerdenticals. In this example I will use the certificate file for my Management API. Username: The remote desktop user name to access the virtual machine. Password: The password for the access. Expiration: The access cerdentals would be expired after 1 month by default but we can amend here. After that we clicked the OK button to back to the publish dialog.   The next step is to back to the new windows azure portal and navigate to the hosted services list. I created a new hosted service and upload the certificate file onto this service. The user name and password access to the azure machine must be encrypted from the local machine, and then send to the windows azure platform, then decrypted on the azure side by the same file. This is why we need to upload the certificate file onto azure. We navigated to the “Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN"” from the left panel and created a new hosted service named “SDK13” and selected the “Certificates” node. Then we clicked the “Add Certificates” button. Then we select the local certificate file and the password to install it into this azure service.   The final step would be back to our Visual Studio and in the pulish dialog just click the OK button. The Visual Studio will upload our package and the configuration into our service with the remote desktop settings.   Remote Desktop Access to Azure Virtual Machine All things had been done, let’s have a look back on the Windows Azure Development Portal. If I selected the web role that I had just published we can see on the toolbar there’s a section named “Remote Access”. In this section the Enable checkbox had been checked which means this role has the Remote Desktop Access feature enabled. If we want to modify the access cerdentals we can simply click the Configure button. Then we can update the user name, password, certificates and the expiration date.   Let’s select the instance node under the web role. In this case I just created one instance for demo. We can see that when we selected the instance node, the Connect button turned enabled. After clicked this button there will be a RDP file downloaded. This is a Remote Desctop configuration file that we can use to access to our azure virtual machine. Let’s download it to our local machine and execute. We input the user name and password we specified when we published our application to azure and then click OK. There might be some certificates warning dislog appeared. This is because the certificates we use to encryption is not signed by a trusted provider. Just select OK in these cases as we know the certificate is safty to us. Finally, the virtual machine of Windows Azure appeared.   A Quick Look into the Azure Virtual Machine Let’s just have a very quick look into our virtual machine. There are 3 disks available for us: C, D and E. Disk C: Store the local resource, diagnosis information, etc. Disk D: System disk which contains the OS, IIS, .NET Frameworks, etc. Disk E: Sotre our application code. The IIS which hosting our webiste on Azure. The IP configuration of the azure virtual machine.   Summary In this post I covered one of the new feature of the Azure SDK 1.3 – Remote Desktop Access. We can set the access per service and all of the instances of this service could be accessed through the remote desktop tool. With this feature we can deep into the virtual machines of our instances to see the inner information such as the system event, IIS log, system information, etc. But we should pay attention to modify the system settings. 2 reasons from what I know for now: 1. If we have more than one instances against our service we should ensure that all system settings we modifed are applied to all instances/virtual machines. Otherwise, as the machines are under the azure load balance proxy our application process may doesn’t work due to the defferent settings between the instances. 2. When the virtual machine encounted some problem and need to be translated to another physical machine all settings we made would be disappeared.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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  • Master Page: Dynamically Adding Rows in ASP Table on Button Click event

    - by Vincent Maverick Durano
    In my previous post here, I wrote an example that demonstrates how are we going to generate table rows dynamically using ASP Table on click of the Button control. Now based on some comments in my previous example and in the forums they wanted to implement it within Masterpage. Unfortunately the code in my previous example doesn't work in Masterpage for the following main reasons: The Table is dynamically added within the Form tag and so the TextBox control will not be generated correcty in the page. The data will not be retained on each and every postbacks because the SetPreviousData() method is looking for the Table element within the Page and not on the MasterPage. The Request.Form key value should be set correctly since all controls within the master page are prefixed with the naming containter ID to prevent duplicate ids on the final rendered HTML. For example the TextBox control with the ID of TextBoxRow will turn to ID to this ctl00$MainBody$TextBoxRow. In order for the previous example to work within Masterpage then we will have to correct those three main reasons above and this post will guide you how to correct it. Suppose we have this content page declaration below:   <asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainHead" Runat="Server"> </asp:Content> <asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainBody" Runat="Server"> <asp:PlaceHolder ID="PlaceHolder1" runat="server"> <asp:Button ID="BTNAdd" runat="server" Text="Add New Row" OnClick="BTNAdd_Click" /> </asp:PlaceHolder> </asp:Content> As you notice I've added a PlaceHolder control within the MainBody ContentPlaceHolder. This is because we are going to generate the Table in the PlaceHolder instead of generating it within the Form element. Now since issue #1 is already corrected then let's proceed to the code beind part. Here are the full code blocks below:     using System; using System.Web.UI; using System.Web.UI.WebControls; public partial class DynamicControlDemo : System.Web.UI.Page { private int numOfRows = 1; protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { //Generate the Rows on Initial Load if (!Page.IsPostBack) { GenerateTable(numOfRows); } } protected void BTNAdd_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (ViewState["RowsCount"] != null) { numOfRows = Convert.ToInt32(ViewState["RowsCount"].ToString()); GenerateTable(numOfRows); } } private void SetPreviousData(int rowsCount, int colsCount) { Table table = (Table)this.Page.Master.FindControl("MainBody").FindControl("Table1"); // **** if (table != null) { for (int i = 0; i < rowsCount; i++) { for (int j = 0; j < colsCount; j++) { //Extracting the Dynamic Controls from the Table TextBox tb = (TextBox)table.Rows[i].Cells[j].FindControl("TextBoxRow_" + i + "Col_" + j); //Use Request object for getting the previous data of the dynamic textbox tb.Text = Request.Form["ctl00$MainBody$TextBoxRow_" + i + "Col_" + j];//***** } } } } private void GenerateTable(int rowsCount) { //Creat the Table and Add it to the Page Table table = new Table(); table.ID = "Table1"; PlaceHolder1.Controls.Add(table);//****** //The number of Columns to be generated const int colsCount = 3;//You can changed the value of 3 based on you requirements // Now iterate through the table and add your controls for (int i = 0; i < rowsCount; i++) { TableRow row = new TableRow(); for (int j = 0; j < colsCount; j++) { TableCell cell = new TableCell(); TextBox tb = new TextBox(); // Set a unique ID for each TextBox added tb.ID = "TextBoxRow_" + i + "Col_" + j; // Add the control to the TableCell cell.Controls.Add(tb); // Add the TableCell to the TableRow row.Cells.Add(cell); } // And finally, add the TableRow to the Table table.Rows.Add(row); } //Set Previous Data on PostBacks SetPreviousData(rowsCount, colsCount); //Sore the current Rows Count in ViewState rowsCount++; ViewState["RowsCount"] = rowsCount; } }   As you observed the code is pretty much similar to the previous example except for the highlighted lines above. That's it! I hope someone find this post usefu! Technorati Tags: Dynamic Controls,ASP.NET,C#,Master Page

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  • Alternatives to the Singleton Design Pattern

    The Singleton Design Pattern is one of the simplest and most widely known design patterns in use in software development. However, despite its simplicity, it is very easy to get wrong and the consequences of its use even when properly implemented can outweigh its benefits. It turns out there are other ways to achieve the goals of the Singleton pattern which will often prove to be simpler, safer, and more maintainable.

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  • Announcing the ASP.NET MVC 3 Release Candidate

    In this article, Scott provides a detailed overview of the features included with ASP.NET MVC 3 Release Candidate. He examines some of the key features such as Razor Intellisense within Visual Studio, NuGet Package Manager, Partial Page Output Caching, Unobtrusive JavaScript and Validation, Remote Validator and Granular Request Validation. He also provides the links to the PDC Talk rendered by Scott Hanselman regarding ASP.NET MVC 3 including new improvements shipped with the ASP.NET MVC 3 Release Candidate.

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  • Book Review: Murach's HTML, XHTML, and CSS

    HTML is the basic language that every web developer should master (in addition to JavaScript and XHTML) in order to get started with web development. For this purpose, a good learning material is essential as developers should practice the theories that they have mastered. Murach's HTML, XHTML, and CSS attempts to explain all the essential aspects related to basic web development in a consise manner. In this review, Anand examines the contents covered in the book and points out whether the book meets the expectations of developers.

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  • We Convert your PSD into Xhtml

    - by Aditi
    From last few months we have been receiving a lot of inquires for  Psd into Xhtml projects, while we were majorly focusing on custom WordPress, Magento, Drupal & Joomla Projects. Now we are offering PSD into Xhtml/CSS service at an affordable price looking at its demand. We also will cater PSD into any CMS, like wordpress, Drupal, Magento or Joomla. Our custom services will continue as it is. It is very convenient to get your design converted by our Xhtml & CSS experts. We assure 24 hour delivery time. At JustSkins, we have a structured conversion model that works well for any kind of potentially enriched web business solution. Our customized slicing guidelines, besides, W3C approved XHTML and CSS code naming conventions makes us stand distinct from the competitors. Why Should You Let us do it for you? W3C Compliant HTML/XHTML and CSS Codes Well Structured and Written Code. Clean and Hand Coded Mark up no use of WYSIWYG. We offer Fast turn around timeDesign converted into Xhtml/CSS just in one business day. Multi- Browser Accessible Websites Cross-Platform Support. Excellent Customer Service. Affordable We at JustSkins are team of efficient programmers with vast experience in templating for   content management systems (CMS),  Joomla, Drupal, WordPress and other Open Source technologies. Contact us today for your requirement!

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  • Important Tips to make a user friendly Homepage

    - by Aditi
    We have done a lot of redesign work lately for many online businesses.. There are some basic things we want to stress into any web design which make it usable! Unfortunately most designers care about the graphic elements, clean code & navigation only. Most designers do not realize that a design they did could be a masterpiece to them but for a layman it could be tough to use. It is so very important to understand usability & call to action for any business and then implemented on their website Homepage. Showcase Offering The sole purpose of their websites needs to be mentioned on the homepage, what they are offering, why should one do business with them and why they are better than other competitors. Include a tag line under your logo that explicitly summarizes what the site or company does. Ease of Navigation Make it easier for your user to find what they are looking for, some archives, articles, services etc. A visible and easy to use Navigation allows just that. You may also want to feature some of the most visited content on the homepage itself. Search Form Let your users take advantage of a search form from your homepage, keep it visible enough so if they have trouble locating certain content using your navigation. The Search Bar will come handy in such situation. Especially if you have thousands and thousands of web pages. Liquid Layout There was a time when people used standard resolution, not any more. People have different screen sizes and most people now browse on handhelds. Try keeping liquid width so people can adjust as per their choice. First impression is last impression, leaving one through your perfect homepage can do wonders for your business.

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  • How to Create a Realistic Timeline for your Projects

    - by Aditi
    Developing a Realistic project time line is a biggest and most challenging task of any team. We here at JustSkins, have learned over time that developing and adhering to a timeline isn’t easy but is not impossible. Keeping in consideration from any technical glitches to a human resource issue, unexpected complications can come up at any time during the entire project life cycle, How ever there are many things you can do in order to save the project from going off-track there. A specific timeline is very important statistic for time management planning and keeping your client informed of the progress. Have a rigid time tracking assures the client, that you are committed to achieving specific project milestones in time. The more you work on varied IT projects, the more you know about the aspects of project and you get to better develop future estimates and timelines. Make a Structure When estimating the time required to accomplish each task, consider which all team members will be involved, also assign the amount of time each individual must put in to the project. Define Scope & dependability and set deadlines for accomplishing them. Sometimes Working in Phases or modules help in doing more in lesser time. One must use a Project management tool in order to systematize the collaboration between the team members. Realistic Goal Setting One approach is to keep a bandwidth of few days to deal with delay, errors & incorrect coding issues you are likely to have in the course. It is very realistic to keep delivery date to client different then internal delivery timeline. If your resource is having hard time finishing this task in the time specified, keep some room to give him a day or two extra to accomplish his task. This does not upset client delivery and is the safe way of doing projects. Keep and Insightful Approach Identify potential problems before they delay your project. To be a great IT manager you have to be honest & diplomatic at the same time, it is essential for you to give earlier notice of potential delays or scope changes to your clients. In situation where delay is inevitable you should be in a position to provide immediate, on-demand status progress reports. Learning from past experiences if very important one must keep a track of actual time spent on all aspects of the projects, this will help you create better future estimates and timelines.

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  • WordPress SEO Plugins to make your Blog Search Engine Friendly

    - by Vaibhav
    WordPress is the most common blogging system in use today and its use as a CMS is also wide spread. With hundreds of millions of sites using wordpress, getting correct SEO for your WordPress based Blog or Site is very important. We get regular queries from people who want Search Engine Optimisation for their site or blog which is made using wordpress. Here is a list of 16 of the best WordPress Plug-ins That can help you achieve better rankings: All in one SEO Pack This is most popular plugin among all SEO plugins for WordPress. It is easy to use and is compatible with most of the WordPress plugins. It works as a complete package of SEO plugin – automatically generating META tags and optimizing search engines for your titles and avoiding duplicate content. You can also include META tags manually (Met title, Meta description and Met keywords) for all pages and post in your website. HeadSpace2 HeasSpace2 is available in different languages , you can manage a wide range of SEO Tasks related with meta data, you can tag your posts, Custom descriptions and titles. So your page can rank the created relevancy on Search engines and you can load different settings for different pages. Platinum SEO plugin Automatic 301 redirects permalink changes, META tags generation, avoids duplicate content, and does SEO optimization of post and page titles and a lots of other features. TGFI.net SEO WordPress Plugin It’s a modified version of all-in-one SEO Pack. It has some unique feature over All-in-one SEO plugin, It generate titles, meta descriptions and meta keywords automatically when overrides are not present. Google XML Sitemaps Sitemaps Generated by this tool are supported by  Google,  Yahoo,  Bing, and Ask. We all know Sitemaps make indexing of web pages easier for web crawlers. Crawlers can retrieve complete structure of site and more information by sitemaps. They notify all major search engines about new posts every time you create a new post. Sitemap Generator You can generate highly customizable sitemap for your WordPress page. You can choose what to show and what not to show, you can list the items in your choice of orde. It supports pages and permalinks and multi-level categories. SEO Slugs They can generate more search engine friendly URLs for your site. Slugs are filename assigned to your post , this plugin removes all  common words like ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘in’, ‘what’, ‘you’ from slug which are assigned automatically to your post. SEO Post Links This is a similar plugin to SEO Slug, it removes unnecessary keywords from slug to make it short and SEO friendly and you can fix the number of characters in your post. Automatic SEO links With this tool you can create auto linking in your post. You can use this tool for inter linking or external linking too. Just select your words, anchor text target URL nature of links ( Do fallow / No follow ). This plugin will replace the matches found in post, WP Backlinks A helpful plugin for link exchange , whenever any webmaster submits a link for link exchange, the plugin will spider webmasters site for reciprocal link, and if everything is found good , your link will be exchanged. SEO Title Tag You can optimize your Title  tags of  Word press blog through this plugin . You can also override the title tag with custom titles , mass editing and title tags for 404 pages which are the main feature of this plugin. 404 SEO plugin With this Plugin you can customize 404 page of your site; you can give customized error message and links to relevant pages of your site. Redirection A powerful plugins to manage 301 redirection and logs related with redirection, with this plugin you can track 404 errors and track the log of all redirected URLs , this plugin can redirect  post automatically when URL changes for that post. AddToAny This plugin helps your readers to share, save, email and bookmark your posts and pages. It supports more than a hundred social bookmarking , networking and sharing sites. SEO Friendly Images You can make SEO friendly images available on your site with the help of this tool. It updates images with proper titles and ALT tags. Robots Meta A plugin which prevents Search engines to index comments on your post, login and admin pages. It also allows to add tags for individual pages.

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  • Photoshop Retro Vintage Design Tutorials

    - by Aditi
    Gone are the days when designers only wanted to create high glossy web2.0 gradient rich website designs. Now a days designers are coming up with rugged, retro & vintage themes for their website designs. Colorful or subtle with that worn out look the website seems like a masterpiece. It is not hard to pick up on such Photoshop techniques to master the art of making themes that are retro & vibrant. We have complied a list of tutorials you would like to learn from..rest is in your hands & creativity. Photochrom Vintage Postcard effect Turn your high definition photos into vintage postcards and use them in your website concepts. Learn More Add Retro Look to your Images Give that 1970’s retro look to your images and web concepts. It’s a very easy process using either patterns, brushes, colors or gradients, layer modes and variable opacity. Learn More Brushed metal effect, Just like World War Airplanes texture This is one of a kind photoshop tutorial that teaches how to use  noise and blur filters to create a brushed metal effect unlike other gradient based effects, Also it covers a few layer styles to create airplane graphic. Learn More Transform a New Image into Illustration, Retro Poster Style With the help of this tutorial you can create brilliant poster style or illustrative images and concepts for your new website. This tutorial is superb example of image enhancement & creative use of blending options in photoshop. Learn More Retro Neon Style Text Tutorial Just like the old days, the rainbow neon curvy text format that can be seen on many posters etc, can now be made for your use on website. This tutorial gives you a easy step by step procedure. Learn More Retro Dotted Photo Tutorial Find how to make a dotted poster of your image, pure retro feel. Learn More

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  • Tips to Make Your Website Cell Phone Friendly

    - by Aditi
    Working on a new website design? or Redesigning your website? There is a lot more to consider now a days not just user experience, clean code, CSS etc. one of the important attribute one must not miss, which is making them mobile friendly! With the growing use of handhelds & unlimited data plans, people browse on their cellphones! and All come in different sizes! it is tough to make a website that would look great not just on a high resolution widescreen monitor/LCD, but also should look equally impressive on the low resolutions of cellphones. We are today going to discuss about such factors that can help you make a website Cellphone Friendly. Fluid Width Layouts As we start discussing about this, Most people speak of the Fluid Width Layouts as vital step in moving your website to be mobile friendly. Fluid width allows the width of your website stretch or shrink depending on the browser size. However, having a layout which flows with the width of the screen’s resolution is certainly convenient, more often than not the website was originally laid out for a desktop in mind. Compressing a fluid layout to 320 pixels can do some serious damage to layout, Thus some people strongly believe it is far better to have a mobile style sheet and lay out the content specifically for that screen and have more control on the display. The best thing to do is to detect the type of platform that is connected to your website and disabling or changing some tools and effects to make it look better if not perfect. Keep Your Web Pages Short length One must avoid long pages on their website, a lot of scroll makes it very non user friendly for people, especially on mobile devices this is a huge draw back because of the longer load time it takes to download the webpage. Everyone likes crisp & concise content such pages are easier to load & browse. This makes your website accessible across all platforms. Also try to keep shorter urls, if they have to type..save them from that much work especially if someone is using a cellphone with no QWERTY keyboard it can be tough. Usable Navigation & Search Unlike Desktops, your website’s Navigation won’t super work on a cellphone. Keep in mind the user experience for cellphone users as you design your Navigation. Try to keep your content centered as they do have difficulty in reading the webpage. I always look upto Google and their pages as available on mobile as a great example. Keeping a functional & very visible search bar helps mobile users navigate by searching. Understanding Clean Website Code : Evolved for Mobile Clean code is important when you consider the diversity out there for handheld devices. Some cell phones may only understand WAP. More capable phones may understand WAP2, which allows rendering websites with XHTML and CSS. Most mobiles won’t display tables, floats, frames, JavaScript, and dynamic menus. Most cellphone will not support cookies. Devices at the high end of the mobile market such as BlackBerry, Palm, or the upcoming iPhone are highly capable and support nearly as much as a standard computer..but masses still do not have such phones. You can use specific emulators to test your website on mobile devices. Make sure your color combinations provide good contrast between foreground and background colors, particularly for devices with fewer color options.

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  • Drupal Modules for SEO & Content

    - by Aditi
    When we talk about Drupal SEO, there are two things to consider one is about the relevant SEO practices and about appropriate Drupal Modules available. Optimizing your website for search engines is one of the most important aspect of launching & promoting your website especially if ranking matters to you. Understanding SEO For starters, you have begin with Keyword research and then optimize your content according to your findings by tagging, meta tags etc, Drupal modules once installed help you manage a lot of such parameters. Identifying the target keywords Using the Page Title and Token modules PathAuto configuration <H1> heading tags Optimizing Drupal’s default robots.txt file Etc. While Drupal gives you a lot of ability to make your website content worthy & search engine friendly it is important for you to make sure you are not crossing the line or you could get penalized. Modules Overview Drupal Power is at its best when you have these modules & great brain working together. The basic SEO improvements can be achieved easily with the modules enlisted below, but you can win magical rankings if you use them logically & wisely. Understanding your keyword competition & enhancing your content is the basic key to success and ofcourse the modules: Pathauto Automatically create search enging friendly readable URLS from tokens. A token is a piece of data from content, say the author’s username, or the content’s title. For example mysite.com/an-article, rather than mysite.com/node/114 for every node you make. NodeWords Amazingly useful drupal module that allows you to create custom meta tags and descriptions for your nodes, which gives you the ability to target specific keywords and phrases. Page Title Enables you to set an alternative title for the <title></title> tags and for the <h1></h1> tags on a node. Global Redirect Manage content duplication, 301 redirects, and URL validation with this small, but powerful module. Taxonomy manager Make large additions, or changes to taxonomy very easy. This module provides a powerful interface for managing taxonomies. A vocabulary gets displayed in a dynamic tree view, where parent terms can be expanded to list their nested child terms or can be collapsed. robotstxt A robots.txt file is vital for ensuring that search engine spiders don’t index the unwanted areas of your site. This Drupal module gives you the ability to manage your robots.txt file through the CMS admin. xmlsitemap An XML Sitemap lets the search engines index your website content. This module helps in generating and maintaining a complete sitemap for your website and gives you control over exactly which parts of the site you want to be included in the index. It even gives you the ability to automatically submit your sitemap to Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com and Windows Live every time you update a node or at specific interval. Node Import This module allows you to import a set of nodes from a Comma Seperated Values (CSV) or Tab Seperated Values (TSV) text file. Makes it easy to import hundreds-thousands of csv rows and you get to tie up these rows to CCK fields (or locations), and it can file it under the right taxonomy hierarchy. This is Super life saver module.

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  • Drupal CMS most Stable for High Traffic

    - by Aditi
    Drupal users have high satisfaction with Drupal compared to the Joomla users, for a number of reasons. If you are thinking of  choosing a high performance platform to run your high traffic website.. Drupal Installation is your forte! Overload Scenario Drupal is scalable high performance CMS and is stable under heavy load. If your server is pushed beyond its capacity, Drupal shuts off gracefully and doesn’t crash. As soon as the server is back within its traffic capability, Drupal handles all requests smoothly again. For example if your dedicated server can handle a maximum of 50,000 visits a day, and on lucky days when your news created the buzz in social media and your traffic rose to 70,000 on one day, then your server will be overloaded and usually it crashes causing permanent damage to your database at times.. But if you have used Drupal CMS it closes down gracefully an as soon as traffic goes down to within the server’s capacity, the Drupal running site accepts all requests again. Extensibility Drupal users know that their add-ons integrate better with the core, and their framework makes it easier to extend their CMS’s capabilities.. which makes an extended version of it quite stable unlike Joomla, which loses its strength if you have plenty of plugins & heavy customizations running. Any CMS with number of plugins makes the content complex and reduces your ability to handle high traffic requests. Accessibility Management or ACL Chances are if you are high traffic website, you may have various users & content contributors. ACL means group roles that is assigning people out of the various registered user levels and allocating many kinds of privileges. The most common example is the ability to see or edit a section or selected pages. This efficient feature of Drupal makes it a class apart than other CMSs out there.

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  • Commercial Drupal Modules & Themes

    - by Ravish
    A discussion at Drupal.org forums prompted me to give my input about commercial ecosystem around Open Source Content Management Systems. WordPress and Joomla have been growing rapidly since past few years. But, growth rate of Drupal seems to be almost flat. Despite being the most powerful CMS around, Drupal is still not being adopted by masses. Many people will argue that Drupal is not targeted towards masses, but developers. I agree, Drupal is more of a development platform than a consumer CMS. Drupal is ‘many things to many people’, and I can build almost any type of website with it. Drupal is being used for building blogs, corporate websites, Intranet portals, social networking and even a project management system. Looking at the wide array of Drupal implementations, it deserves to be the most widely adopted CMS. I believe there are few challenges that Drupal community needs to overcome. To understand these challenges, I surveyed some webmasters who use Joomla or WordPress but not Drupal. I asked them why they don’t want to use Drupal, following are the responses I got from them: Drupal is too complicated, takes time to learn. Drupal is great, but its admin panel is overwhelming. I couldn’t find any nice themes for Drupal. There is no WYSIWYG editor in Drupal. Most Drupal modules do not work out of the box. There aren’t enough modules like Ubercart which provides any out of the box functionality. I tried modules like CCK, Views and Panels. After wasting several hours struggling with them, I decided to give up on Drupal. I don’t use Drupal because of pushbutton and Garland theme. I had hard time trying to customize Garland and it messed up the whole layout. There are no premium modules and themes for Drupal. Joomla has tons of awesome themes and modules. I don’t want a million hacks like CCK, Views, Tokens, Pathauto, ImageCache and CTools just to run a simple website. Most of the complaints from users are related to the learning and development curve involved with Drupal, and the lack of ecosystem. While most of the problems will be gone in Drupal 7, ecosystem is something that needs to be built by the Drupal community. Drupal distributions are a great step forward. There are few awesome Drupal distributions available like Open Publish, Open Atrium and Drupal Commons. I predict, there will be a wave of many powerful Drupal distributions after Drupal 7 release. Many of them will be user-friendly and commercial supported. Following is my post at Drupal.org forums: Quote from: http://drupal.org/node/863776#comment-3313836 Brian Gardner (StudioPress) and Woo Themes launched premium WordPress themes in 2007, the developer community did not accept it at first. Moreover, they were not even GPL licensed. There was an outcry in WordPress community against them. Following that, most premium theme providers switched to GPL licensing. Despite controversies, users voted for premium theme and plugins by buying them. Inspired by their success, hundreds of other developers started to sell premium themes and plugins. It is now the acceptable and in fact most popular business model among WordPress community. Matt Mullenweg once told me, they would not support premium themes. If he supported, developers would no more give out free GPL themes & plugins. He pointed me towards Joomla, there were hardly any nice free themes & modules available. Now two years forward, premium products are not just accepted but embraced by the WordPress community – http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/commercial/ The quality and number of themes & modules has increased, even the free ones. This also helped to boost the adoption and ecosystem of WordPress. Today, state of Drupal is like WordPress was in 2007. There are hardly any out of the box solutions available for Drupal. Ubercart, Open Publish and Open Atrium are the only ones I can think of. Many of the popular Drupal modules are patches and hole-fillers. Thankfully, these hole-filler modules are going to be in Drupal 7 core. Drupal 7 and distributions will spawn a new array of solutions built upon Drupal. Soon, we will have more like Ubercarts and Open Atriums. If commercial solutions can help fuel this ecosystem and growth, Drupal community will accept them eventually. This debate will not stop your customers from buying your product. If your product is awesome, they will vote for you by buying your product.

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