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• Finally, upgrade from Nokia X3 to Samsung Galaxy S III

  This time, something slightly different but nonetheless not less interesting, hopefully. Living on a remote island like Mauritius, ill-praised 'Cyber Island' in the Indian Ocean, has its advantages in life style and relaxed environment to life in but in terms of technological aspects it can be quite a nightmare. Well, I guess this might be different story to report about... one day. Cyber Island Mauritius Despite it's shiny advertisement as Cyber Island and business in ICT hub to Africa, Mauritius is not on the latest track of available models in computer hardware or, in the context of this article, cellulars or smart-phone, or communication technology in general. Okay, I have to admit that this statement is only partly true. Money can buy, even here in Mauritius. Luckily, there are ways and ways to deal with this outcry of modern, read: technological, civilisation issues. Online shopping you might think? Yes, for sure, until you discover in your checkout procedure that a small island in the Indian Ocean isn't a preferred destination for delivery and the precious time you spent on putting your items into your cart and feeding your personal level of anticipation gets ruined on the last stint. Ordering from abroad saves you money Anyway, I got in touch with my personal courier and luckily there were some extra-kilos left in the luggage. First obstacle sorted, we have a Transporter! Okay, on the next occasion off to Amazon online and using their Prime service for fast delivery. Actually, the order was placed on Saturday evening and everything got delivered on Tuesday morning - nice job in less than 72 hours. Okay, among the items of that shopping rush I ordered a shiny Samsung Galaxy S III 16GB in oceanic blue - did I mention, that you hardly get a blue model in Mauritius? - for my BWE. Interesting side-notes: First, Amazon Germany dropped the prices for roughly 30% on the S3, and we got the 16GB model for less than 500 Euro (or approx. Rs. 19.500,-) compared to the usual Rs. 27.000,- on the local market. It even varies whether the local price is inclusive or exclusive VAT (15%). Second, since a while she was bothering me to get an iPhone and an iPad for her, fair enough I thought, decent hardware, posh design and reliable services. Until we watched the 'magical' introduction of Samsung's new models at the IFA exhibition, she read the bashing comments on Google+ on the iPhone 5 and I gave her a brief summary on the law suit between Apple and Samsung in the USA. So, yes, Samsung USA is right, the next big thing is already here - literally. My BWE loves the look and touch of the Galaxy S3. And for me it was more cost-effective in terms of purchases done at the App Store, ups, Play Store. Transfer of contacts, text messages and media files Okay, now that the hardware is in place, how to transfer all those contacts, text messages, media files, etc. between those two devices? In the past, I used to use the Nokia Communication Suite between various models but now for Android? Well, as usual Google and Bing are reliable friends and among the first hits I came across an article about How to Transfer Contacts from Nokia to Android. Couldn't be easier, right? Well, sort of... my main Windows systems are already running on Windows 8, and this actually caused problems with the mobile/smart-phone device drivers. The article provides the download for an older version 1.10 which upgrades to 2.11 (as time of writing this entry) but both couldn't get the Galaxy S3 and the Nokia connected. Shame on me... the product page clearly doesn't mention Windows 8 (for now) and Windows 8 isn't available for the general audience at all... After I took a spare machine running on Windows Vista everything went smooth. Software installed, upgrade done, device drivers for Android automatically downloaded and installed, and the same painless routine for the Nokia part. I think, I rebooted the system twice during the whole setup procedure but hey, it was more or less a distraction while coding some stuff in ASP.NET MVC and Telerik Kendo UI. The transfer of contacts and text messages was done via Wondershare MobileGo for Android, and all media files by moving the additional microSD card from one device to the other. But even without an external SD card, it would have been very easy to copy the files via Windows Explorer directly. Little catch and excellent service Fine, we are almost done and the only step left is to shift the SIM card... Ouch, gotcha! The X3 uses a standard size SIM card while the S III only accepts microSIM form factor. What an irony, bigger smartphone needs smaller SIM card. Luckily, the next showroom of Emtel is just 5 mins away up the road, and the service staff over there know their job. Finally, after roughly 10 mins of paper work, activation and small chit-chat, the S3 came to life on the mobile network. Owning a smart-phone now and knowing that my BWE would like to interact more on social networks away from home, especially to upload pictures and provide local 'check-ins', I activated a data package for her in advance, too. Even that it is Saturday, everything was already done and ready to be used. Nice bonus: The Emtel clerk directly offered me to set up the configuration for the Emtel data services, yes sure, go ahead, this saves me to search for that in the settings. Okay, spoiler-alert here, setting a static APN to access the Emtel network and the internet wouldn't be a challenge. But hey, she already had the phone in her hands and I could keep my eyes on the children. Well done, Emtel! Resume Thanks to the useful software package by Wondershare is was a hands-free experience to transfer all the data from a Nokia mobile on Symbian S60 to a Samsung Galaxy S III on Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). In the future, this wont be a serious issue at all anymore thanks to synchronisation services and cloud storage. And for now, I'm only waiting for the official upgrades for Jelly Bean.

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• To detect if the user is closing the IE browser apart from onunload event, as it is triggerred when

  - by AndAars

  hi, After being through numerous forums available on the net for last 5 days, I am still not able to completely track down the browser close event. My requirement is to generate a popup message, when user tries to close the browser. I have called my javascript function on body 'onbeforeunload' event. And I have hardcoded the conditions to check the mouse-coordinates for the red 'X' buton of browser, refresh, File-close or Alt-F4. My code works fine when browser window is Maximized, but fails if we shrink it after a limit. Please help me, if some body has already found the solution to a similar problem. Thank you. Aggregated Responses of OP Ok, just tell me if it is possible to detect if a user has clicked on the Refresh button of the browser. Also, Refresh can be triggered by Right-click - Refresh or Ctrl-R. My requirement is to make a variable false on Refresh. I am just able to do it on F5, but all other ways are still out of my reach. The same would be applied to Back buton. Hi ppl, Thanks for all who replied atleast. I have talked to my seniors regarding this and they have now understood and have compromised with the browser menu buttons. So now my task has become easy. Now, I am using a variable and making it true by default. As, I mentioned earlier I just have to catch the onbeforeunload and popup a message when user tries to leave. The message will not popup when user is navigating to other pages, as I have made the variable as false on all the links of my page using following piece of code: document.onclick = function() { //To check if user is navigating from the page by clicking on a hyperlink. if (event.srcElement.tagName == 'A') blnShowMsg = false; //To not popup the warning message else blnShowMsg = true; //To popup the warning message } In my case still the message is shown when user does Refresh, back or goes to any link in Favorites, etc. Thanks buddy, but I have already gone through that and didn't find much help there too. My seniors are not happy with that solution as putting a flag on evry link of my application is a complicated job and they fear of breaking the application. Any other suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks once again. Is there no one who can think of a solution here!!! where are all the experts???

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• Exclude one or more elements from being connected (using connectWith) in jQuery's sortable lists

  - by Lev

  I have two lists, one with an ID of "vlist" and one with an ID of "hlist". The "vlist" holds elements which should be visible, while the "hlist" holds items that should remain hidden. The idea here is to allow the administrator of the system to specify which elements/fields should be shown on a sign-up page, and which shouldn't. The two lists are connected using "connectWith", so the administrator can drag items from the visible list to the hidden list (or vice versa). My dilemma is that there are a few fields I want locked into the visible list, but still sortable within that one list. For example, the "username", "email" and "password" fields should be locked within the visible list (as they always need to be used for registration). Is this even possible? Perhaps it is a no-brainer that I simply haven't discovered yet. I've looked around through jQuery's documentation for a while and can't seem to find anything related to this scenario. I have found how you can "cancel" specific elements in the list from being sortable altogether or even disabled from being a dropable target, but this doesn't do it. The user should still have the ability to drag these items within the "visible" list, in case they want to adjust the ordering of the locked fields. I'm also aware that you can contain sortable elements within a specific element or DOM object, but this also can't be used as this only seems to apply to the whole sortable list, and not specific elements of that list. I've even tried to see if something like this would work after I built the sortable listing(s): $('#vlist > #slist-li-username').sortable('option', 'containment', '#vlist'); Obviously, that didn't work either or I wouldn't be posting this. In case it might help, I thought I'd throw in the code I'm using now; here is the jQuery code: $(function() { $('#vlist, #hlist').sortable ({ connectWith: '.signup-set_flist', forcePlaceholderSize: true, receive: function (event, ui) { var itemID = ui.item.attr('id'); var fID = itemID.replace(/slist-li-/g, ''); var hID = 'slist-' + fID; if (ui.sender.attr('id') == 'vlist') { $('#'+hID).val(''); } else { $('#'+hID).val(fID); } } }).disableSelection(); $('#vlist > #slist-li-username').sortable('option', 'containment', '#vlist'); }); And as for the HTML, I'll upload it to here (since StackOverflow seems to break when I paste it in here - even in code mode): http://sikosoft.net/jquery-sort-connect.html Any help would greatly be appreciated! :) Oh, and be gentle as this is my first question here. ;)

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• why my code does not load the kml file ..(it is the simplest way)

  - by zjm1126

  this is my google-map code: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.0//EN" "http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/xhtml-mobile10.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" > <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,minimum-scale=0.3,maximum-scale=5.0,user-scalable=yes"> </head> <body onload="initialize()" onunload="GUnload()"> <style type="text/css"> *{ margin:0; padding:0; } </style> <!--<div style="width:100px;height:100px;background:blue;"> </div>--> <div id="map_canvas" style="width: 500px; height: 300px;"></div> <script src="http://maps.google.com/maps?file=api&amp;v=2&amp;key=ABQIAAAA-7cuV3vqp7w6zUNiN_F4uBRi_j0U6kJrkFvY4-OX2XYmEAa76BSNz0ifabgugotzJgrxyodPDmheRA&sensor=false"type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var aFn; //********** function initialize() { if (GBrowserIsCompatible()) { var map = new GMap2(document.getElementById("map_canvas")); var g = new GGeoXml("b.kml"); map.addOverlay(g); var center=new GLatLng(37.42228990140251,-122.0822035425683); map.setCenter(center, 0); } } //************* </script> </body> </html> and this is my b.kml file: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <kml xmlns="http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2"> <Placemark> <name>Simple placemark</name> <description>Attached to the ground. Intelligently places itself at the height of the underlying terrain.</description> <Point> <coordinates>-122.0822035425683,37.42228990140251,0</coordinates> </Point> </Placemark> </kml> why cann't show the point .. thanks

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• How do you stop a user-instance of Sql Server? (Sql Express user instance database files locked, eve

  - by Bittercoder

  When using SQL Server Express 2005's User Instance feature with a connection string like this: <add name="Default" connectionString="Data Source=.\SQLExpress; AttachDbFilename=C:\My App\Data\MyApp.mdf; Initial Catalog=MyApp; User Instance=True; MultipleActiveResultSets=true; Trusted_Connection=Yes;" /> We find that we can't copy the database files MyApp.mdf and MyApp_Log.ldf (because they're locked) even after stopping the SqlExpress service, and have to resort to setting the SqlExpress service from automatic to manual startup mode, and then restarting the machine, before we can then copy the files. It was my understanding that stopping the SqlExpress service should stop all the user instances as well, which should release the locks on those files. But this does not seem to be the case - could anyone shed some light on how to stop a user instance, such that it's database files are no longer locked? Update OK, I stopped being lazy and fired up Process Explorer. Lock was held by sqlserver.exe - but there are two instances of sql server: sqlserver.exe PID: 4680 User Name: DefaultAppPool sqlserver.exe PID: 4644 User Name: NETWORK SERVICE The file is open by the sqlserver.exe instance with the PID: 4680 Stopping the "SQL Server (SQLEXPRESS)" service, killed off the process with PID: 4644, but left PID: 4680 alone. Seeing as the owner of the remaining process was DefaultAppPool, next thing I tried was stopping IIS (this database is being used from an ASP.Net application). Unfortunately this didn't kill the process off either. Manually killing off the remaining sql server process does remove the open file handle on the database files, allowing them to be copied/moved. Unfortunately I wish to copy/restore those files in some pre/post install tasks of a WiX installer - as such I was hoping there might be a way to achieve this by stopping a windows service, rather then having to shell out to kill all instances of sqlserver.exe as that poses some problems: Killing all the sqlserver.exe instances may have undesirable consequencies for users with other Sql Server instances on their machines. I can't restart those instances easily. Introduces additional complexities into the installer. Does anyone have any further thoughts on how to shutdown instances of sql server associated with a specific user instance?

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• How can I call VC# webservice methods without ArgumentException?

  - by Zarius

  Currently, I'm trying to write a small tray application that will show the status and provide control of a server-side application exposed over webservice. The webservice only has 3 operations: start, stop and status. When I call any of these operations in code, they throw an ArgumentException citing "An item with the same key has already been added". I am compiling the webservice on Visual C# Express 2008, and .NET 3.5. The Code: private TelnetConnClient Conn { get { return new TelnetConnClient(); } } private bool Connected //call webservice operations { get { return Conn.Status(); } set { if(value) Conn.Start(); else Conn.Stop(); } } The Stacktrace: A first chance exception of type 'System.ArgumentException' occurred in mscorlib.dll at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentException(ExceptionResource resource) at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2.Insert(TKey key, TValue value, Boolean add) at System.ServiceModel.TransactionFlowAttribute.ApplyBehavior(OperationDescription description, BindingParameterCollection parameters) at System.ServiceModel.TransactionFlowAttribute.System.ServiceModel.Description.IOperationBehavior.AddBindingParameters(OperationDescription description, BindingParameterCollection parameters) at System.ServiceModel.Description.DispatcherBuilder.AddBindingParameters(ServiceEndpoint endpoint, BindingParameterCollection parameters) at System.ServiceModel.Description.DispatcherBuilder.BuildProxyBehavior(ServiceEndpoint serviceEndpoint, BindingParameterCollection& parameters) at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannelFactory.BuildChannelFactory(ServiceEndpoint serviceEndpoint) at System.ServiceModel.ChannelFactory.CreateFactory() at System.ServiceModel.ChannelFactory.OnOpening() at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout) at System.ServiceModel.ChannelFactory.EnsureOpened() at System.ServiceModel.ChannelFactory`1.CreateChannel(EndpointAddress address, Uri via) at System.ServiceModel.ChannelFactory`1.CreateChannel() at System.ServiceModel.ClientBase`1.CreateChannel() at System.ServiceModel.ClientBase`1.CreateChannelInternal() at System.ServiceModel.ClientBase`1.get_Channel() at KordiaConnect.ferries.TelnetConnClient.Start() in C:\My Dropbox\Coding\RTF\KordiaConnect\KordiaConnect\Service References\ferries\Reference.cs:line 86 at coldshark.ferries.Main.set_Connected(Boolean value) in C:\My Dropbox\Coding\RTF\KordiaConnect\KordiaConnect\Main.cs:line 22 at coldshark.ferries.Main.<.ctor>b__0(Object sender, EventArgs e) in C:\My Dropbox\Coding\RTF\KordiaConnect\KordiaConnect\Main.cs:line 43 at System.Windows.Forms.NotifyIcon.OnClick(EventArgs e) at System.Windows.Forms.NotifyIcon.WmMouseUp(Message& m, MouseButtons button) at System.Windows.Forms.NotifyIcon.WndProc(Message& msg) at System.Windows.Forms.NotifyIcon.NotifyIconNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.DebuggableCallback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam) at System.Windows.Forms.UnsafeNativeMethods.PeekMessage(MSG& msg, HandleRef hwnd, Int32 msgMin, Int32 msgMax, Int32 remove) at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ComponentManager.System.Windows.Forms.UnsafeNativeMethods.IMsoComponentManager.FPushMessageLoop(Int32 dwComponentID, Int32 reason, Int32 pvLoopData) at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ThreadContext.RunMessageLoopInner(Int32 reason, ApplicationContext context) at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ThreadContext.RunMessageLoop(Int32 reason, ApplicationContext context) at System.Windows.Forms.Application.Run() at coldshark.ferries.Main..ctor() in C:\My Dropbox\Coding\RTF\KordiaConnect\KordiaConnect\Main.cs:line 55 I can just call the webservice from the web interface, but this application will give me a handy status notification icon, and I'd really love to know why the out-of-the-box auto-generated code fails for no particular reason.

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• Using VCL for the web (intraweb) as a trick for adding web interface to a legacy non-tiered (2 tiers

  - by user193655

  My team is maintaining a huge Client Server win32 Delphi application. It is a client/server application (Thick client) that uses DevArt (SDAC) components to connect to SQL Server. The business logic is often "trapped" in Component's event handlers, anyway with some degree of refactoring it is doable to move the business logic in common units (a big part of this work has already been done during refactoring... Maintaing legacy applications someone else wrote is very frustrating, but this is a very common job). Now there is the request of a web interface, I have several options of course, in this question i want to focus on the VCL for the web (intraweb) option. The idea is to use the common code (the same pas files) for both the client/server application and the web application. I heard of many people that moved legacy apps from delphi to intraweb, but here I am trying to keep the Thick client too. The idea is to use common code, may be with some compiler directives to write specific code: {$IFDEF CLIENTSERVER} {here goes the thick client specific code} {$ELSE} {here goes the Intraweb specific code} {$ENDIF} Then another problem is the "migration plan", let's say I have 300 features and on the first release I will have only 50 of them available in the web application. How to keep track of it? I was thinking of (ab)using Delphi interfaces to handle this. For example for the User Authentication I could move all the related code in a procedure and declare an interface like: type IUserAuthentication= interface['{0D57624C-CDDE-458B-A36C-436AE465B477}'] procedure UserAuthentication; end; In this way as I implement the IUserAuthentication interface in both the applications (Thick Client and Intraweb) I know that That feature has been "ported" to the web. Anyway I don't know if this approach makes sense. I made a prototype to simulate the whole process. It works for a "Hello world" application, but I wonder if it makes sense on a large application or this Interface idea is only counter-productive and can backfire. My question is: does this approach make sense? (the Interface idea is just an extra idea, it is not so important as the common code part described above) Is it a viable option? I understand it depends a lot of the kind of application, anyway to be generic my one is in the CRM/Accounting domain, and the number of concurrent users on a single installation is typically less than 20 with peaks of 50. EXTRA COMMENT (UPDATE): I ask this question because since I don't have a n-tier application I see Intraweb as the unique option for having a web application that has common code with the thick client. Developing webservices from the Delphi code makes no sense in my specific case, so the alternative I have is to write the web interface using ASP.NET (duplicating the business logic), but in this case I cannot take advantage of the common code in an easy way. Yes I could use dlls maybe, but my code is not suitable for that.

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• Connected host failed to respond (internal NAT address)

  - by MostRandom

  I'm writing my first C# web application that connects to an XML based service. It requires that I present a certificate and feed the XML stream. It seems to authenticate properly but then it gives the following error: A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond 10.1.10.4:3128 The funny thing is that I'm not on a proxy or anything like that. I'm connecting directly to the internet. At one point I we did use a proxy that with internal NAT address. So my question is: Does Visual Studio have some sort of default proxy setting that I need to change? This IP is no longer used for anything, so I know that I don't need to use any proxy authentication code. using System; using System.Data; using System.Configuration; using System.Collections; using System.Web; using System.Net; using System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates; using System.Web.Security; using System.Web.UI; using System.Web.UI.WebControls; using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts; using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls; namespace WebApplication1 { public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page { protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { Uri requestURI = new Uri("*site omitted*"); //Create the Request Object HttpWebRequest pageRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(requestURI); //After installing the cert on the server export a client cert to the working directory as Deluxe.cer string certFile = "*certificate omitted*"; X509Certificate cert = X509Certificate.CreateFromCertFile(certFile); //Pull in your Data, if it is from an external xml as below or create an xml string with variables if a dynamic post is required. string xmlPath = "*XML omitted*"; System.Xml.XmlDocument passXML = new System.Xml.XmlDocument(); passXML.Load(xmlPath); //XML String with the data needed to pass string postData = passXML.OuterXml; //Set the Request Object parameters pageRequest.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"; pageRequest.Method = "POST"; pageRequest.AllowWriteStreamBuffering = false; pageRequest.AllowAutoRedirect = false; pageRequest.ClientCertificates.Add(cert); postData = "xml_data=" + Server.UrlEncode(postData); pageRequest.ContentLength = postData.Length; //Create the Post Stream Object System.IO.StreamWriter postStream = new System.IO.StreamWriter(pageRequest.GetRequestStream()); //Write the data to the post stream postStream.Write(postData); postStream.Flush(); postStream.Close(); //Set the Response Object HttpWebResponse postResponse = (HttpWebResponse)pageRequest.GetResponse();

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• web.config 1.0 and 3.5

  - by KareemSaad

  I had aproblem I had two web site one of them with .net 3.5 and other with 1.0 and I want to run 1.0 in 3.5 but I couldnot and i tried to copy some section from 1.0 to 3.5 as I copied this section <add key="ConnectionString" value="data source=.;persist security info=True;user id=Sharp;Password=#Sharp;initial catalog=Sharp" /> <add key="ACProduct_Upload" value="SiteUploads/ACProducts/" /> <add key="ACPDF_Upload" value="SiteUploads/ACPDF/" /> <add key="ACCertifications_Upload" value="SiteUploads/ACCertifications/" /> <add key="Certifications_Upload" value="SiteUploads/Certifications/" /> <add key="flash" value="flash/" /> <add key="Product_Upload" value="SiteUploads/Products/" /> <add key="PDF_Upload" value="SiteUploads/PDF/" /> <add key="HTML_Upload" value="SiteUploads/HTML_Uploads/" /> <add key="WallPaper_Upload" value="SiteUploads/WallPapers/" /> <add key="News_Upload" value="SiteUploads/News/" /> <add key="mailserver" value="111.111.1.1" /> <add key="fromEmail" value="[email protected]" /> to 3.5 here <add key="ACProduct_Upload" value="SiteUploads/ACProducts/" /> <add key="ACPDF_Upload" value="SiteUploads/ACPDF/" /> <add key="ACCertifications_Upload" value="SiteUploads/ACCertifications/" /> <add key="Certifications_Upload" value="SiteUploads/Certifications/" /> <add key="flash" value="flash/" /> <add key="Product_Upload" value="SiteUploads/Products/" /> <add key="PDF_Upload" value="SiteUploads/PDF/" /> <add key="HTML_Upload" value="SiteUploads/HTML_Uploads/" /> <add key="WallPaper_Upload" value="SiteUploads/WallPapers/" /> <add key="News_Upload" value="SiteUploads/News/" /> <add key="mailserver" value="192.168.6.3" /> <add name="Sharp" connectionString="Data Source=.;Initial Catalog=SharpHA;User ID=SharpHA;Password=#SharpHA;" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/> but this problem apear Only one element allowed per config file and if present must be the first child of the root element. please any one help me

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• Thoughts on Build 2013

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/dlussier/archive/2013/06/30/153294.aspxAnd so another Build conference has come to an end. Below are my thoughts/perspectives on various aspects of the event. I’ll do a separate blog post on my thoughts of the Build message for developers. The Good Moscone center was a great venue for Build! Easy to get around, easy to get to, and well maintained, it was a very comfortable conference venue. Yeah, the free swag was nice. Build has built up an expectation that attendees will always get something; it’ll be interesting to see how Microsoft maintains this expectation over the next few Build events. I still maintain that free swag should never be the main reason one attends an event, and for me this was definitely just an added bonus. I’m planning on trying to use the Surface as a dedicated 2nd device at work for meetings, I’ll share my experiences over the next few months. The hackathon event was a great idea, although personally I couldn’t justify spending the money on a conference registration just to spend the entire conference coding. Still, the apps that were created were really great and there was a lot of passion and excitement around the hackathon. I wonder if they couldn’t have had the hackathon on the Monday/Tuesday for those that wanted to participate so they didn’t miss any of the actual conference over Wed/Thurs. San Francisco was a great city to host Build. Getting from hotels to the conference center was very easy (well especially for me, I was only 3 blocks away) and the city itself felt very safe. However, if I never have to fly into SFO again I’ll be alright with that! Delays going into and out of SFO and both apparently were due to the airport itself. The Bad Build is one of those oddities on the conference landscape where people will pay to commit to attending an event without knowing anything about the sessions. We got our list of conference sessions when we registered on Tuesday, not before. And even then, we only got titles and not descriptions (those were eventually made available via the conference’s mobile application). I get it…they’re going to make announcements and they don’t want to give anything away through the session titles. But honestly, there wasn’t anything in the session titles that I would have considered a surprise. Breakfasts were brutal. High-carb pastries, donuts, and muffins with fruit and hard boiled eggs does not a conference breakfast make. I can’t believe that the difference between a continental breakfast per person and a hot breakfast buffet would have been a huge impact to a conference fee that was already around $2000. The vendor area was anemic. I don’t know why Microsoft forces the vendors into cookie-cutter booth areas (this year they were all made of plywood material). WPC, TechEd – booth areas there allow the vendors to be creative with their displays. Not so much for Build. Really odd was the lack of Microsoft’s own representation around Bing. In the day 1 keynote Microsoft made a big deal about Bing as an API. Yet there was nobody in the vendor area set up to provide more information or have discussions with about the Bing API. The Ugly Our name badges were NFC enabled. The purpose of this, beyond the vendors being able to scan your info, wasn’t really made clear. An attendee I talked to showed how you could get a reader app on your phone so you can scan other members cards and collect their contact info – which is a kewl idea; business cards are so 1990’s. But I was *shocked* at the amount of information that was on our name badges! Here’s what’s displayed on our name badge: - Name - Company - Twitter Handle I’m ok with that. But here’s what actually gets read: - Name - Company - Address Used for Registration - Phone Number Used for Registration So sharing that info with another attendee, they get way more of my info than just how to find me on Twitter! Microsoft, you need to fix this for the future. If vendors want to collect information on attendees, they should be able to collect an ID from the badge, then get a report with corresponding records afterwards. My personal information should not be so readily available, and without my knowledge! Final Verdict Maybe its my older age, maybe its where I’m at in life with family, maybe its where I’m at in my career, but when I consider whether a conference experience was valuable I get to the core reason I attend: opportunities to learn, opportunities to network, opportunities to engage with Microsoft. Opportunities to Learn:  Sessions I attended were generally OK, with some really stand out ones on Day 2. I would love to see Microsoft adopt the Dojo format for a portion of their sessions. Hands On Labs are dull, lecture style sessions are great for information sharing. But a guided hands-on coding session (Read: Dojo) provides the best of both worlds. Being that all content is publically available online to everyone (Build attendee or not), the value of attending the conference sessions is decreased. The value though is in the discussions that take part in person afterwards, which leads to… Opportunities to Network: I enjoyed getting together with old friends and connecting with Twitter friends in person for the first time. I also had an opportunity to meet total strangers. So from a networking perspective, Build was fantastic! I still think it would have been great to have an area for ad-hoc discussions – where speakers could announce they’d be available for more questions after their sessions, or attendees who wanted to discuss more in depth on a topic with other attendees could arrange space. Some people have no problems being outgoing and making these things happen, but others are not and a structured model is more attractive. Opportunities to Engage with Microsoft: Hit and miss on this one. Outside of the vendor area, unless you cornered or reached out to a speaker, there wasn’t any defined way to connect with blue badges. And as I mentioned above, Microsoft didn’t have full representation in the vendor area (no Bing). All in all, Build was a fun party where I was informed about some new stuff and got some free swag. Was it worth the time away from home and the hit to my PD budget? I’d say Somewhat. Build is a great informational conference, but I wouldn’t call it a learning conference. Considering that TechEd seems to be moving to more of an IT Pro focus, independent developer conferences seem to be the best value for those looking to learn and not just be informed. With the rapid development cycle Microsoft is embracing, we’re already seeing Build happening twice within a 12 month period. If that continues, the value of attending Build in person starts to diminish – especially with so much content available online. If Microsoft wants Build to be a must-attend event in the future, they need to start incorporating aspects of Tech Ed, past PDCs, and other conferences so those that want to leave with more than free swag have something to attract them.

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• Finally, upgrade from Nokia X3 to Samsung Galaxy S III

  This time, something slightly different but nonetheless not less interesting, hopefully. Living on a remote island like Mauritius, ill-praised 'Cyber Island' in the Indian Ocean, has its advantages in life style and relaxed environment to life in but in terms of technological aspects it can be quite a nightmare. Well, I guess this might be different story to report about... one day. Cyber Island Mauritius Despite it's shiny advertisement as Cyber Island and business in ICT hub to Africa, Mauritius is not on the latest track of available models in computer hardware or, in the context of this article, cellulars or smart-phone, or communication technology in general. Okay, I have to admit that this statement is only partly true. Money can buy, even here in Mauritius. Luckily, there are ways and ways to deal with this outcry of modern, read: technological, civilisation issues. Online shopping you might think? Yes, for sure, until you discover in your checkout procedure that a small island in the Indian Ocean isn't a preferred destination for delivery and the precious time you spent on putting your items into your cart and feeding your personal level of anticipation gets ruined on the last stint. Ordering from abroad saves you money Anyway, I got in touch with my personal courier and luckily there were some extra-kilos left in the luggage. First obstacle sorted, we have a Transporter! Okay, on the next occasion off to Amazon online and using their Prime service for fast delivery. Actually, the order was placed on Saturday evening and everything got delivered on Tuesday morning - nice job in less than 72 hours. Okay, among the items of that shopping rush I ordered a shiny Samsung Galaxy S III 16GB in oceanic blue - did I mention, that you hardly get a blue model in Mauritius? - for my BWE. Interesting side-notes: First, Amazon Germany dropped the prices for roughly 30% on the S3, and we got the 16GB model for less than 500 Euro (or approx. Rs. 19.500,-) compared to the usual Rs. 27.000,- on the local market. It even varies whether the local price is inclusive or exclusive VAT (15%). Second, since a while she was bothering me to get an iPhone and an iPad for her, fair enough I thought, decent hardware, posh design and reliable services. Until we watched the 'magical' introduction of Samsung's new models at the IFA exhibition, she read the bashing comments on Google+ on the iPhone 5 and I gave her a brief summary on the law suit between Apple and Samsung in the USA. So, yes, Samsung USA is right, the next big thing is already here - literally. My BWE loves the look and touch of the Galaxy S3. And for me it was more cost-effective in terms of purchases done at the App Store, ups, Play Store. Transfer of contacts, text messages and media files Okay, now that the hardware is in place, how to transfer all those contacts, text messages, media files, etc. between those two devices? In the past, I used to use the Nokia Communication Suite between various models but now for Android? Well, as usual Google and Bing are reliable friends and among the first hits I came across an article about How to Transfer Contacts from Nokia to Android. Couldn't be easier, right? Well, sort of... my main Windows systems are already running on Windows 8, and this actually caused problems with the mobile/smart-phone device drivers. The article provides the download for an older version 1.10 which upgrades to 2.11 (as time of writing this entry) but both couldn't get the Galaxy S3 and the Nokia connected. Shame on me... the product page clearly doesn't mention Windows 8 (for now) and Windows 8 isn't available for the general audience at all... After I took a spare machine running on Windows Vista everything went smooth. Software installed, upgrade done, device drivers for Android automatically downloaded and installed, and the same painless routine for the Nokia part. I think, I rebooted the system twice during the whole setup procedure but hey, it was more or less a distraction while coding some stuff in ASP.NET MVC and Telerik Kendo UI. The transfer of contacts and text messages was done via Wondershare MobileGo for Android, and all media files by moving the additional microSD card from one device to the other. But even without an external SD card, it would have been very easy to copy the files via Windows Explorer directly. Little catch and excellent service Fine, we are almost done and the only step left is to shift the SIM card... Ouch, gotcha! The X3 uses a standard size SIM card while the S III only accepts microSIM form factor. What an irony, bigger smartphone needs smaller SIM card. Luckily, the next showroom of Emtel is just 5 mins away up the road, and the service staff over there know their job. Finally, after roughly 10 mins of paper work, activation and small chit-chat, the S3 came to life on the mobile network. Owning a smart-phone now and knowing that my BWE would like to interact more on social networks away from home, especially to upload pictures and provide local 'check-ins', I activated a data package for her in advance, too. Even that it is Saturday, everything was already done and ready to be used. Nice bonus: The Emtel clerk directly offered me to set up the configuration for the Emtel data services, yes sure, go ahead, this saves me to search for that in the settings. Okay, spoiler-alert here, setting a static APN to access the Emtel network and the internet wouldn't be a challenge. But hey, she already had the phone in her hands and I could keep my eyes on the children. Well done, Emtel! Resume Thanks to the useful software package by Wondershare is was a hands-free experience to transfer all the data from a Nokia mobile on Symbian S60 to a Samsung Galaxy S III on Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). In the future, this wont be a serious issue at all anymore thanks to synchronisation services and cloud storage. And for now, I'm only waiting for the official upgrades for Jelly Bean.

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• Servlet IOException when streaming a Byte Array

  - by MontyBongo

  I occasionally get an IOException from a Servlet I have that writes a byte array to the outputstream in order to provide a file download capability. This download servlet has a reasonable amount of traffic (100k hits a month) and this exception occurs rarely, around 1-2 times a month. I have tried recreating the exception by using the exact same Base64 String and no exception is raised and the Servlet behaves as designed. Is this IO Exception being caused by something outside my applications control? For example a network issue or the user resetting the connection? I have tried to google the cause of an IOException at this point in the stack but to no avail. The environment is running Tomcat 5.5 on CentOS 5.3 with an Apache HTTP Server acting as a proxy using proxy_ajp. ClientAbortException: java.io.IOException at org.apache.catalina.connector.OutputBuffer.realWriteBytes(OutputBufferjava:366) at org.apache.tomcat.util.buf.ByteChunk.append(ByteChunk.java:352) at org.apache.catalina.connector.OutputBuffer.writeBytes(OutputBuffer.java:392) at org.apache.catalina.connector.OutputBuffer.write(OutputBuffer.java:381) at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteOutputStream.write(CoyoteOutputStream.java:89) at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteOutputStream.write(CoyoteOutputStream.java:83) at com.myApp.Download.doPost(Download.java:34) at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:710) at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:803) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:269) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:188) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationDispatcher.invoke(ApplicationDispatcher.java:691) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationDispatcher.processRequest(ApplicationDispatcher.java:469) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationDispatcher.doForward(ApplicationDispatcher.java:403) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationDispatcher.forward(ApplicationDispatcher.java:301) at com.myApp.EntryServlet.service(EntryServlet.java:278) at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:803) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:269) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:188) at com.myApp.filters.RequestFilter.doFilter(RequestFilter.java:16) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:215) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:188) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:210) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:172) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:127) at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:117) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:108) at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:151) at org.apache.coyote.ajp.AjpAprProcessor.process(AjpAprProcessor.java:444) at org.apache.coyote.ajp.AjpAprProtocol$AjpConnectionHandler.process(AjpAprProtocol.java:472) at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.AprEndpoint$Worker.run(AprEndpoint.java:1286) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:636) Caused by: java.io.IOException at org.apache.coyote.ajp.AjpAprProcessor.flush(AjpAprProcessor.java:1200) at org.apache.coyote.ajp.AjpAprProcessor$SocketOutputBuffer.doWrite(AjpAprProcessor.java:1285) at org.apache.coyote.Response.doWrite(Response.java:560) at org.apache.catalina.connector.OutputBuffer.realWriteBytes(OutputBufferjava:361) And the code in the Download Servlet: @Override protected void doPost (HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, java.io.IOException { try { response.setContentType("application/pdf"); response.setHeader("Pragma", ""); response.setHeader("Cache-Control", ""); response.setHeader("Content-Disposition", "Inline; Filename=myPDFFile..pdf"); ServletOutputStream out = response.getOutputStream(); byte[] downloadBytes = Base64.decode((String)request.getAttribute("fileToDownloadBase64")); out.write(downloadBytes); } catch (Base64DecodingException e) { e.printStackTrace(); response.getOutputStream().print("An error occurred"); } }

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• Pass HTML-DOM to Flex's actionscript.

  - by raj

  Hi, All i want is to pass a HTML-Form (DOM object) from javascript to Actionscript. i saw this article on the net and tried a similar code. But when i execute the code in IE, it alerts : "Out of memory at line 18". I'm stuck here from yesterday. i'll post the mxml and html here.. The MXML : <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute" creationComplete="init()"> <mx:Script> <![CDATA[ public function init() : void { if (ExternalInterface.available) { try { ExternalInterface.addCallback("populateFlashFile", populateFlashFile); } catch (error:SecurityError) { } catch (error:Error) { } } } public function populateFlashFile(window:*) : void { log.text = window.toString(); // just for checking if window has come to the function. window.document.write("Hello"); } ]]> </mx:Script> <mx:TextArea x="10" y="23" width="712" height="581" id="log"/> </mx:Application> The HTML : <html lang="en"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> </head> <body scroll="no"> <input type="button" onclick="document.getElementById('Test').populateFlashFile(window);"/> <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" id="Test" width="100%" height="100%" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/swflash.cab"> <param name="movie" value="Test.swf" /> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <param name="bgcolor" value="#869ca7" /> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /> </object> </body> </html> The problem occors only when i pass some DOM object, if i pass some String it works.!!! i.e : <input type="button" onclick="document.getElementById('Test').populateFlashFile('some text here');"/> works great!

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• How can I use this downloaded Class(es) on my Prototype Routine?

  - by O.C.

  I'm a newbie and I'm in need of some help. I'm working on a prototype for an app, but I'm learning at the same time. I want to display a popup image over a given UIView, but I would like it to behave like the UIAlertView or like the Facebook Connect for iPhone modal popup window, in that it has a bouncy, rubbber-band-like animation to it. I was able to find the following class(es) on the net, from someone who was trying to do something similar. He/she put this together, but there was no Demo, no instructions nor a way to contact them. Being that I am so new, I don't have any idea as to how to incorporate this into my code. This is the routine where I need the bouncy image to appear... //======================================================== // // productDetail // - (void) showProductDetail { _productDetailIndex++; if (_productDetailIndex > 7) { return; } else if (_productDetailIndex == 1) { NSString* filename = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"images/ICS_CatalogApp_0%d_ProductDetailPopup.png", _productDetailIndex]; [_productDetail setImageWithName:filename]; _productDetail.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeScale(0.1,0.1); [UIView beginAnimations:nil context:NULL]; [UIView setAnimationDuration:0.5]; // other animations goes here _productDetail.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeScale(1,1); // other animations goes here [UIView commitAnimations]; } NSString* filename = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"images/ICS_CatalogApp_0%d_ProductDetailPopup.png", _productDetailIndex]; [_productDetail setImageWithName:filename]; _productDetail.x = (self.width - _productDetail.width); _productDetail.y = (self.height - _productDetail.height); } and here is the code I found... float pulsesteps[3] = { 0.2, 1/15., 1/7.5 }; - (void) pulse { self.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeScale(0.6, 0.6); [UIView beginAnimations:nil context:nil]; [UIView setAnimationDuration:pulsesteps[0]]; [UIView setAnimationDelegate:self]; [UIView setAnimationDidStopSelector:@selector(pulseGrowAnimationDidStop:finished:context:)]; self.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeScale(1.1, 1.1); [UIView commitAnimations]; } - (void)pulseGrowAnimationDidStop:(NSString *)animationID finished:(NSNumber *)finished context:(void *)context { [UIView beginAnimations:nil context:NULL]; [UIView setAnimationDuration:pulsesteps[1]]; [UIView setAnimationDelegate:self]; [UIView setAnimationDidStopSelector:@selector(pulseShrinkAnimationDidStop:finished:context:)]; self.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeScale(0.9, 0.9); [UIView commitAnimations]; } - (void)pulseShrinkAnimationDidStop:(NSString *)animationID finished:(NSNumber *)finished context:(void *)context { [UIView beginAnimations:nil context:NULL]; [UIView setAnimationDuration:pulsesteps[2]]; self.transform = CGAffineTransformIdentity; [UIView commitAnimations]; } My routine is based on the Prototyping class given by Apple during WWDC 09. It may not be "correct" but it works as is. I just would like to add the animation to this image/screen to really make the concept clear.

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• The Sensemaking Spectrum for Business Analytics: Translating from Data to Business Through Analysis

  - by Joe Lamantia

  One of the most compelling outcomes of our strategic research efforts over the past several years is a growing vocabulary that articulates our cumulative understanding of the deep structure of the domains of discovery and business analytics. Modes are one example of the deep structure we’ve found.  After looking at discovery activities across a very wide range of industries, question types, business needs, and problem solving approaches, we've identified distinct and recurring kinds of sensemaking activity, independent of context.  We label these activities Modes: Explore, compare, and comprehend are three of the nine recognizable modes.  Modes describe *how* people go about realizing insights.  (Read more about the programmatic research and formal academic grounding and discussion of the modes here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235971352_A_Taxonomy_of_Enterprise_Search_and_Discovery) By analogy to languages, modes are the 'verbs' of discovery activity.  When applied to the practical questions of product strategy and development, the modes of discovery allow one to identify what kinds of analytical activity a product, platform, or solution needs to support across a spread of usage scenarios, and then make concrete and well-informed decisions about every aspect of the solution, from high-level capabilities, to which specific types of information visualizations better enable these scenarios for the types of data users will analyze. The modes are a powerful generative tool for product making, but if you've spent time with young children, or had a really bad hangover (or both at the same time...), you understand the difficult of communicating using only verbs.  So I'm happy to share that we've found traction on another facet of the deep structure of discovery and business analytics.  Continuing the language analogy, we've identified some of the ‘nouns’ in the language of discovery: specifically, the consistently recurring aspects of a business that people are looking for insight into.  We call these discovery Subjects, since they identify *what* people focus on during discovery efforts, rather than *how* they go about discovery as with the Modes. Defining the collection of Subjects people repeatedly focus on allows us to understand and articulate sense making needs and activity in more specific, consistent, and complete fashion.  In combination with the Modes, we can use Subjects to concretely identify and define scenarios that describe people’s analytical needs and goals.  For example, a scenario such as ‘Explore [a Mode] the attrition rates [a Measure, one type of Subject] of our largest customers [Entities, another type of Subject] clearly captures the nature of the activity — exploration of trends vs. deep analysis of underlying factors — and the central focus — attrition rates for customers above a certain set of size criteria — from which follow many of the specifics needed to address this scenario in terms of data, analytical tools, and methods. We can also use Subjects to translate effectively between the different perspectives that shape discovery efforts, reducing ambiguity and increasing impact on both sides the perspective divide.  For example, from the language of business, which often motivates analytical work by asking questions in business terms, to the perspective of analysis.  The question posed to a Data Scientist or analyst may be something like “Why are sales of our new kinds of potato chips to our largest customers fluctuating unexpectedly this year?” or “Where can innovate, by expanding our product portfolio to meet unmet needs?”.  Analysts translate questions and beliefs like these into one or more empirical discovery efforts that more formally and granularly indicate the plan, methods, tools, and desired outcomes of analysis.  From the perspective of analysis this second question might become, “Which customer needs of type ‘A', identified and measured in terms of ‘B’, that are not directly or indirectly addressed by any of our current products, offer 'X' potential for ‘Y' positive return on the investment ‘Z' required to launch a new offering, in time frame ‘W’?  And how do these compare to each other?”.  Translation also happens from the perspective of analysis to the perspective of data; in terms of availability, quality, completeness, format, volume, etc. By implication, we are proposing that most working organizations — small and large, for profit and non-profit, domestic and international, and in the majority of industries — can be described for analytical purposes using this collection of Subjects.  This is a bold claim, but simplified articulation of complexity is one of the primary goals of sensemaking frameworks such as this one.  (And, yes, this is in fact a framework for making sense of sensemaking as a category of activity - but we’re not considering the recursive aspects of this exercise at the moment.) Compellingly, we can place the collection of subjects on a single continuum — we call it the Sensemaking Spectrum — that simply and coherently illustrates some of the most important relationships between the different types of Subjects, and also illuminates several of the fundamental dynamics shaping business analytics as a domain.  As a corollary, the Sensemaking Spectrum also suggests innovation opportunities for products and services related to business analytics. The first illustration below shows Subjects arrayed along the Sensemaking Spectrum; the second illustration presents examples of each kind of Subject.  Subjects appear in colors ranging from blue to reddish-orange, reflecting their place along the Spectrum, which indicates whether a Subject addresses more the viewpoint of systems and data (Data centric and blue), or people (User centric and orange).  This axis is shown explicitly above the Spectrum.  Annotations suggest how Subjects align with the three significant perspectives of Data, Analysis, and Business that shape business analytics activity.  This rendering makes explicit the translation and bridging function of Analysts as a role, and analysis as an activity. Subjects are best understood as fuzzy categories [http://georgelakoff.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/hedges-a-study-in-meaning-criteria-and-the-logic-of-fuzzy-concepts-journal-of-philosophical-logic-2-lakoff-19731.pdf], rather than tightly defined buckets.  For each Subject, we suggest some of the most common examples: Entities may be physical things such as named products, or locations (a building, or a city); they could be Concepts, such as satisfaction; or they could be Relationships between entities, such as the variety of possible connections that define linkage in social networks.  Likewise, Events may indicate a time and place in the dictionary sense; or they may be Transactions involving named entities; or take the form of Signals, such as ‘some Measure had some value at some time’ - what many enterprises understand as alerts.   The central story of the Spectrum is that though consumers of analytical insights (represented here by the Business perspective) need to work in terms of Subjects that are directly meaningful to their perspective — such as Themes, Plans, and Goals — the working realities of data (condition, structure, availability, completeness, cost) and the changing nature of most discovery efforts make direct engagement with source data in this fashion impossible.  Accordingly, business analytics as a domain is structured around the fundamental assumption that sense making depends on analytical transformation of data.  Analytical activity incrementally synthesizes more complex and larger scope Subjects from data in its starting condition, accumulating insight (and value) by moving through a progression of stages in which increasingly meaningful Subjects are iteratively synthesized from the data, and recombined with other Subjects.  The end goal of  ‘laddering’ successive transformations is to enable sense making from the business perspective, rather than the analytical perspective.Synthesis through laddering is typically accomplished by specialized Analysts using dedicated tools and methods. Beginning with some motivating question such as seeking opportunities to increase the efficiency (a Theme) of fulfillment processes to reach some level of profitability by the end of the year (Plan), Analysts will iteratively wrangle and transform source data Records, Values and Attributes into recognizable Entities, such as Products, that can be combined with Measures or other data into the Events (shipment of orders) that indicate the workings of the business.  More complex Subjects (to the right of the Spectrum) are composed of or make reference to less complex Subjects: a business Process such as Fulfillment will include Activities such as confirming, packing, and then shipping orders.  These Activities occur within or are conducted by organizational units such as teams of staff or partner firms (Networks), composed of Entities which are structured via Relationships, such as supplier and buyer.  The fulfillment process will involve other types of Entities, such as the products or services the business provides.  The success of the fulfillment process overall may be judged according to a sophisticated operating efficiency Model, which includes tiered Measures of business activity and health for the transactions and activities included.  All of this may be interpreted through an understanding of the operational domain of the businesses supply chain (a Domain).   We'll discuss the Spectrum in more depth in succeeding posts.

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• Communities - The importance of exchange and discussion

  Communication with your environment is an essential part of everyone's life. And it doesn't matter whether you are actually living in a rural area in the middle of nowhere, within the pulsating heart of a big city, or in my case on a wonderful island in the Indian Ocean. The ability to exchange your thoughts, your experience and your worries with another person helps you to get different points of view and new ideas on how to resolve an issue you might be confronted with. Benefits of community work What happens to be common sense in your daily life, also applies to your work environment. Working in IT, or ICT as it is called in Mauritius, requires a lot of reading and learning. Not only during your lectures at the university but with your colleagues in a project assignment and hopefully with 'unknown' pals in the universe of online communities. At least I can say that I learned quite a lot from other developers code, their responses in various forums, their numerous blog articles, and while attending local user group meetings. When I started to work as a professional software developer (or engineer some may say) years ago I immediately checked the existence of communities on the programming language, the database technology and other vital information on software development in general. Luckily, it wasn't too difficult to find. My employer had a subscription of the monthly magazines and newsletters of a national organisation which also run the biggest forum in that area. Getting in touch with other developers and reading their common problems but also solutions was a huge benefit to my growth. Image courtesy of Michael Kappel (CC BY-NC 2.0) Active participation and regular contribution to this community gave me some nice advantages, too. Within three years I was listed as a conference speaker at the annual developer's conference and provided several sessions on different topics during consecutive years. Back in 2004, I took over the responsibility and management of the monthly meetings of a regional user group, and organised it for more than two years. Furthermore, I was invited to the newly-founded community program of Microsoft Germany (Community Leader/Insider Program - CLIP). My website on Active FoxPro Pages was nominated in the second batch of online communities. Due to my community work and providing advice to others, I had the honour to be awarded as Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) - Visual Developer for Visual FoxPro in the years 2006 and 2007. It was a great experience to meet with other like-minded people and I'm really grateful for that. Just in case, more details are listed in my Curriculum Vitae. But this all changed when I moved to Mauritius... Cyber island Mauritius? During the first months in Mauritius I was way too busy to think about community activities at all. First of all, there was the new company that had to be set up, the new staff had to be trained and of course the communication work-flows and so on with the project managers back in Germany had to be sorted out, too. Second, I had to get a grip of my private matters like getting the basics for my new household or exploring the neighbourhood, and last but not least I needed a break from the hectic and intensive work prior to my departure. As soon as the sea literally calmed down, I started to have conversations with my colleagues about communities and user groups. Sadly, it turned out that there were none, or at least no one was aware of any at that time. Oh oh, what did I do? Anyway, having this kind of background and very positive experience with off-line and on-line activities I decided for myself that some day I'm going to found a community in Mauritius for all kind of IT/ICT-related fields. The main focus might be on software development but not on a certain technology or methodology. It was clear to me that it should be an open infrastructure and anyone is welcome to join, to experience, to share and to contribute if they would like to. That was the idea at that time... Ok, fast-forward to recent events. At the end of October 2012 I was invited to an event called Open Days organised by Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands together with other local partners and resellers. There I got in touch with local Technical Evangelist Arnaud Meslier and we had a good conversation on communities during the breaks. Eventually, I left a good impression on him, as we are having chats on Facebook or Skype irregularly. Well, seeing that my personal and professional surroundings have been settled and running smooth, having that great exchange and contact with Microsoft IOI (again), and being really eager to re-animate my intentions from 2007, I recently founded a new community: Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community - #MSCC It took me a while to settle down with the name but it was obvious that the community should not be attached to one single technology, like ie. .NET user group, Oracle developers, or Joomla friends (these are fictitious names). There are several other reasons why I came up with 'Craftsmanship' as the core topic of this community. The expression of 'engineering' didn't feel right with the fields covered. Software development in all kind of facets is a craft, and therefore demands a lot of practice but also guidance from more experienced developers. It also includes the process of designing, modelling and drafting the ideas. Has to deal with various types of tests and test methodologies, and of course should be focused on flexible and agile ways of acting. In order to meet and to excel a customer's request for a solution. Next, I was looking for an easy way to handle the organisation of events and meeting appointments. Using all kind of social media platforms like Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook, Xing, etc. I was never really confident about their features of event handling. More by chance I stumbled upon Meetup.com and in combination with the other entities (G+ Communities, FB Pages or in Groups) I am looking forward to advertise and manage all future activities here: Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community This is a community for those who care and are proud of what they do. For those developers, regardless how experienced they are, who want to improve and master their craft. This is a community for those who believe that being average is just not good enough. I know, there are not many 'craftsmen' yet but it's a start... Let's see how it looks like by the end of the year. There are free smartphone apps for Android and iOS from Meetup.com that allow you to keep track of meetings and to stay informed on latest updates. And last but not least, there will be a Trello workspace to collect and share ideas and provide downloads of slides, etc. Sharing is caring! As mentioned, the #MSCC is present in various social media networks in order to cover as many people as possible here in Mauritius. Following is an overview of the current networks: Twitter - Latest updates and quickies Google+ - Community channel Facebook - Community Page LinkedIn - Community Group Trello - Collaboration workspace to share and develop ideas Hopefully, this covers the majority of computer-related people in Mauritius. Please spread the word about the #MSCC between your colleagues, your friends and other interested 'geeks'. Your future looks bright Running and participating in a user group or any kind of community usually provides quite a number of advantages for anyone. On the one side it is very joyful for me to organise appointments and get in touch with people that might be interested to present a little demo of their projects or their recent problems they had to tackle down, and on the other side there are lots of companies that have various support programs or sponsorships especially tailored for user groups. At the moment, I already have a couple of gimmicks that I would like to hand out in small contests or raffles during one of the upcoming meetings, and as said, companies provide all kind of goodies, books free of charge, or sometimes even licenses for communities. Meeting other software developers or IT guys also opens up your point of view on the local market and there might be interesting projects or job offers available, too. A community like the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community is great for freelancers, self-employed, students and of course employees. Meetings will be organised on a regular basis, and I'm open to all kind of suggestions from you. Please leave a comment here in blog or join the conversations in the above mentioned social networks. Let's get this community up and running, my fellow Mauritians!

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• Top 10 Browser Productivity Tips

  - by Renso

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/renso/archive/2013/10/14/top-10-browser-productivity-tips.aspxYou don’t have to be a geek to be a productive browser user. The tips below have been selected by actions users take most of the time to navigate a web-site but use long-standing keyboard or mouse actions to get them done, when there are keyboard short-cuts you can use instead. Since you hands are already on the keyboard it is almost always faster to sue a keyboard shortcut to get something done that you usually used the mouse for. For example right-clicking on something to copy it and then doing to same for pasting something is very time consuming, keyboard shortcuts have been created that simplify the task. All it takes are a few memory brain cells to remember them. Here are the tips, in no particular order:   Tip 1 Hold down the spacebar on your keyboard to page to the end of your web page rather than using your mouse. This is really a slow way of doing it. If you want to page one page at a time, hit the spacebar once, and again to page again. But if you want to page all the way to the end of the web page simply hit Ctrl+End (that is hold down the Ctrl key and hit the End button on your keyboard). To get to the top of your web page, simply hit Ctrl + Home to go all the way to the top of your web page. Tip 2 Where are my downloads? Some folks run downloads again-and-again because they do not know where the last one went and they do not see the popup, or browser note on their web page in the footer, etc. Simply hit Ctrl+J. Works in most browsers. Tip 3 Selecting a US state from a drop down box. Don’t use the mouse, takes just way too long to scroll. When you tab to the drop down box or click on it with your mouse, simply hit the first character of the state and it will be selected. For Texas for example hit the letter “T” twice on your keyboard to get to it. The same concept can be applied to any drop down box that is alphabetical or numerically sorted. Tip 4 Fixing spelling errors. All modern-day browsers support this now. You see the red wavy lines underscoring a word, yes it is a spelling error. How do you fix it? Don’t overtype it or try and fix it manually, fist right-click on it and a list of suggestions comes up. If it does not show up, like my name “Renso” and you know how to spell your name as in this example, look further down the list of options (the little window popup that appears when you right click) and you should see an option to “Add to Dictionary”. Be warned, when you add it, it only adds it to the browser you’re using’s dictionary. If you use Google Chrome, Firefox and IE, each one will have their own list. Tip 5 So you have trouble seeing the text on the screen. Or you are looking at a photo, for example in Facebook. You want to zoom in to read better or zoom into a photo a bit more. Hit Ctrl++ (hold down Ctrl key and hit the plus key – actually it’s the equal key but it is easier to remember that it is plus for bigger). Hit the minus to zoom out. Now you can’t remember what the original size was since you were so excited to hit it 20 times, or was that 21… Simply hit Ctrl+0 (that is zero) and it will reset it to the default. Tip 6 So you closed a couple of tabs in your browser. Suddenly you remember something you wanted to double-check something on one of the tabs, you cannot remember the URL ad the tab is gone forever, or is it? Simply hit Ctrl+Shift+t and it will bring back your tabs one by one each time you click the T. This has also been a great way for me to quickly close some tabs because I don’t want my boss to see I’m shopping and then hitting Ctrl+Shift+t to quickly get it back and complete my check-put and purchase. Or, for parents, when you walk into your daughter’s room and you see she quickly clicks and closes a window/tab in here browser. Not to worry my little darling, daddy will Ctrl+Shift+t and see what boys on Facebook you were talking too… Tip 7 The web browser is frozen on your PC/Laptop/Whatever, in this example it may be your Internet Explorer browser. I don’t mention Firefox or Chrome here because it probably never happens in their world. You cannot close it, it won’t respond to anything you have done s far except for the next step you are about to take, which is throw your two-day old coffee on your keyboard. This happens especially on sites that want to force you to complete a purchase order. Hit Ctrl+Alt+Del on your keyboard on any version of windows, select TASK MANAGER. In the  First Tab, which is the Process Tab, look for the item in question. In this example you should see Internet Explorer. Right-click it and select “End Task”. It will force the thread out of memory and terminate that process. You can of course do this with any program running under your account. Tip 8 This is a personal favorite of mine. To select words in the paragraph without using the mouse. You don’t want to select one character at a time like when you use the Ctrl+arrows as it can be very slow if you want to select a lot of text. You also want to select whole words. Simply use the Ctrl+Shift_arrow (right or left depending which direction you want to go. Tip 9 I was a bit reluctant to add this one, but being in the professional services industry still come across many-a-folk that simply can’t copy-and-paste them-all text or images that reside on them screens, y’all. Ctrl+c to copy and Ctrl+v to paste it. Works a lot faster than using the mouse. You may be asking: “Well why in the devil did they not use Ctrl+p for paste…. because that is for printing. This is of course not limited to the browser world, it applies to almost any piece of software running on PC or Mac. Go try it on an image on your browser, right-click it and select copy. Open a word document and Ctrl+v to paste the image in there. Please consider copyright laws. Tip 10 Getting rid of annoying ads. Now this only works when you load a web page, meaning when you get back to the same page later you will have to do this again and you will need to learn a tool to do it, WELL WORTH IT. For example, I use GrooveShark to listen to music but I don’t like the ads they show. Install a tool like Firebug for Firefox or use the Ctrl+Shift+I on Chrome to bring up the developer toolbar. Shows at the bottom of the page. With Firefox, once you have installed Firebug as an add-on, a yellow bug should appear on the top right-hand-side of your browser, click on it to display the developer toolbar. You will need to learn how to use it, but once you know how to select an item/section on the window (usually just right-click the add you don’t want to see and select “Inspect Element”, the developer toolbar will appear (if not already there)) and then simply hit delete and it will remove the add from the screen. If you don’t know HTML you may need to play with it a bit, but once you understand how it works can open up a whole new world for you on how web pages actually work. If you can think of any others that have saved you a ton of time please let me know so I can add them to a top 99 list.

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• MVC Portable Area Modules *Without* MasterPages

  - by Steve Michelotti

  Portable Areas from MvcContrib provide a great way to build modular and composite applications on top of MVC. In short, portable areas provide a way to distribute MVC binary components as simple .NET assemblies where the aspx/ascx files are actually compiled into the assembly as embedded resources. I’ve blogged about Portable Areas in the past including this post here which talks about embedding resources and you can read more of an intro to Portable Areas here. As great as Portable Areas are, the question that seems to come up the most is: what about MasterPages? MasterPages seems to be the one thing that doesn’t work elegantly with portable areas because you specify the MasterPage in the @Page directive and it won’t use the same mechanism of the view engine so you can’t just embed them as resources. This means that you end up referencing a MasterPage that exists in the host application but not in your portable area. If you name the ContentPlaceHolderId’s correctly, it will work – but it all seems a little fragile. Ultimately, what I want is to be able to build a portable area as a module which has no knowledge of the host application. I want to be able to invoke the module by a full route on the user’s browser and it gets invoked and “automatically appears” inside the application’s visual chrome just like a MasterPage. So how could we accomplish this with portable areas? With this question in mind, I looked around at what other people are doing to address similar problems. Specifically, I immediately looked at how the Orchard team is handling this and I found it very compelling. Basically Orchard has its own custom layout/theme framework (utilizing a custom view engine) that allows you to build your module without any regard to the host. You simply decorate your controller with the [Themed] attribute and it will render with the outer chrome around it: 1: [Themed] 2: public class HomeController : Controller Here is the slide from the Orchard talk at this year MIX conference which shows how it conceptually works:   It’s pretty cool stuff.  So I figure, it must not be too difficult to incorporate this into the portable areas view engine as an optional piece of functionality. In fact, I’ll even simplify it a little – rather than have 1) Document.aspx, 2) Layout.ascx, and 3) <view>.ascx (as shown in the picture above); I’ll just have the outer page be “Chrome.aspx” and then the specific view in question. The Chrome.aspx not only takes the place of the MasterPage, but now since we’re no longer constrained by the MasterPage infrastructure, we have the choice of the Chrome.aspx living in the host or inside the portable areas as another embedded resource! Disclaimer: credit where credit is due – much of the code from this post is me re-purposing the Orchard code to suit my needs. To avoid confusion with Orchard, I’m going to refer to my implementation (which will be based on theirs) as a Chrome rather than a Theme. The first step I’ll take is to create a ChromedAttribute which adds a flag to the current HttpContext to indicate that the controller designated Chromed like this: 1: [Chromed] 2: public class HomeController : Controller The attribute itself is an MVC ActionFilter attribute: 1: public class ChromedAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute 2: { 3: public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext) 4: { 5: var chromedAttribute = GetChromedAttribute(filterContext.ActionDescriptor); 6: if (chromedAttribute != null) 7: { 8: filterContext.HttpContext.Items[typeof(ChromedAttribute)] = null; 9: } 10: } 11:   12: public static bool IsApplied(RequestContext context) 13: { 14: return context.HttpContext.Items.Contains(typeof(ChromedAttribute)); 15: } 16:   17: private static ChromedAttribute GetChromedAttribute(ActionDescriptor descriptor) 18: { 19: return descriptor.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(ChromedAttribute), true) 20: .Concat(descriptor.ControllerDescriptor.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(ChromedAttribute), true)) 21: .OfType<ChromedAttribute>() 22: .FirstOrDefault(); 23: } 24: } With that in place, we only have to override the FindView() method of the custom view engine with these 6 lines of code: 1: public override ViewEngineResult FindView(ControllerContext controllerContext, string viewName, string masterName, bool useCache) 2: { 3: if (ChromedAttribute.IsApplied(controllerContext.RequestContext)) 4: { 5: var bodyView = ViewEngines.Engines.FindPartialView(controllerContext, viewName); 6: var documentView = ViewEngines.Engines.FindPartialView(controllerContext, "Chrome"); 7: var chromeView = new ChromeView(bodyView, documentView); 8: return new ViewEngineResult(chromeView, this); 9: } 10:   11: // Just execute normally without applying Chromed View Engine 12: return base.FindView(controllerContext, viewName, masterName, useCache); 13: } If the view engine finds the [Chromed] attribute, it will invoke it’s own process – otherwise, it’ll just defer to the normal web forms view engine (with masterpages). The ChromeView’s primary job is to independently set the BodyContent on the view context so that it can be rendered at the appropriate place: 1: public class ChromeView : IView 2: { 3: private ViewEngineResult bodyView; 4: private ViewEngineResult documentView; 5:   6: public ChromeView(ViewEngineResult bodyView, ViewEngineResult documentView) 7: { 8: this.bodyView = bodyView; 9: this.documentView = documentView; 10: } 11:   12: public void Render(ViewContext viewContext, System.IO.TextWriter writer) 13: { 14: ChromeViewContext chromeViewContext = ChromeViewContext.From(viewContext); 15:   16: // First render the Body view to the BodyContent 17: using (var bodyViewWriter = new StringWriter()) 18: { 19: var bodyViewContext = new ViewContext(viewContext, bodyView.View, viewContext.ViewData, viewContext.TempData, bodyViewWriter); 20: this.bodyView.View.Render(bodyViewContext, bodyViewWriter); 21: chromeViewContext.BodyContent = bodyViewWriter.ToString(); 22: } 23: // Now render the Document view 24: this.documentView.View.Render(viewContext, writer); 25: } 26: } The ChromeViewContext (code excluded here) mainly just has a string property for the “BodyContent” – but it also makes sure to put itself in the HttpContext so it’s available. Finally, we created a little extension method so the module’s view can be rendered in the appropriate place: 1: public static void RenderBody(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper) 2: { 3: ChromeViewContext chromeViewContext = ChromeViewContext.From(htmlHelper.ViewContext); 4: htmlHelper.ViewContext.Writer.Write(chromeViewContext.BodyContent); 5: } At this point, the other thing left is to decide how we want to implement the Chrome.aspx page. One approach is the copy/paste the HTML from the typical Site.Master and change the main content placeholder to use the HTML helper above – this way, there are no MasterPages anywhere. Alternatively, we could even have Chrome.aspx utilize the MasterPage if we wanted (e.g., in the case where some pages are Chromed and some pages want to use traditional MasterPage): 1: <%@ Page Title="" Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Site.Master" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage" %> 2: <asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server"> 3: <% Html.RenderBody(); %> 4: </asp:Content> At this point, it’s all academic. I can create a controller like this: 1: [Chromed] 2: public class WidgetController : Controller 3: { 4: public ActionResult Index() 5: { 6: return View(); 7: } 8: } Then I’ll just create Index.ascx (a partial view) and put in the text “Inside my widget”. Now when I run the app, I can request the full route (notice the controller name of “widget” in the address bar below) and the HTML from my Index.ascx will just appear where it is supposed to.   This means no more warnings for missing MasterPages and no more need for your module to have knowledge of the host’s MasterPage placeholders. You have the option of using the Chrome.aspx in the host or providing your own while embedding it as an embedded resource itself. I’m curious to know what people think of this approach. The code above was done with my own local copy of MvcContrib so it’s not currently something you can download. At this point, these are just my initial thoughts – just incorporating some ideas for Orchard into non-Orchard apps to enable building modular/composite apps more easily. Additionally, on the flip side, I still believe that Portable Areas have potential as the module packaging story for Orchard itself.   What do you think?

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• DRY and SRP

  - by Timothy Klenke

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TimothyK/archive/2014/06/11/dry-and-srp.aspxKent Beck’s XP Simplicity Rules (aka Four Rules of Simple Design) are a prioritized list of rules that when applied to your code generally yield a great design.  As you’ll see from the above link the list has slightly evolved over time.  I find today they are usually listed as: All Tests Pass Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) Express Intent Minimalistic These are prioritized.  If your code doesn’t work (rule 1) then everything else is forfeit.  Go back to rule one and get the code working before worrying about anything else. Over the years the community have debated whether the priority of rules 2 and 3 should be reversed.  Some say a little duplication in the code is OK as long as it helps express intent.  I’ve debated it myself.  This recent post got me thinking about this again, hence this post.   I don’t think it is fair to compare “Expressing Intent” against “DRY”.  This is a comparison of apples to oranges.  “Expressing Intent” is a principal of code quality.  “Repeating Yourself” is a code smell.  A code smell is merely an indicator that there might be something wrong with the code.  It takes further investigation to determine if a violation of an underlying principal of code quality has actually occurred. For example “using nouns for method names”, “using verbs for property names”, or “using Booleans for parameters” are all code smells that indicate that code probably isn’t doing a good job at expressing intent.  They are usually very good indicators.  But what principle is the code smell of Duplication pointing to and how good of an indicator is it? Duplication in the code base is bad for a couple reasons.  If you need to make a change and that needs to be made in a number of locations it is difficult to know if you have caught all of them.  This can lead to bugs if/when one of those locations is overlooked.  By refactoring the code to remove all duplication there will be left with only one place to change, thereby eliminating this problem. With most projects the code becomes the single source of truth for a project.  If a production code base is inconsistent with a five year old requirements or design document the production code that people are currently living with is usually declared as the current reality (or truth).  Requirement or design documents at this age in a project life cycle are usually of little value. Although comparing production code to external documentation is usually straight forward, duplication within the code base muddles this declaration of truth.  When code is duplicated small discrepancies will creep in between the two copies over time.  The question then becomes which copy is correct?  As different factions debate how the software should work, trust in the software and the team behind it erodes. The code smell of Duplication points to a violation of the “Single Source of Truth” principle.  Let me define that as: A stakeholder’s requirement for a software change should never cause more than one class to change. Violation of the Single Source of Truth principle will always result in duplication in the code.  However, the inverse is not always true.  Duplication in the code does not necessarily indicate that there is a violation of the Single Source of Truth principle. To illustrate this, let’s look at a retail system where the system will (1) send a transaction to a bank and (2) print a receipt for the customer.  Although these are two separate features of the system, they are closely related.  The reason for printing the receipt is usually to provide an audit trail back to the bank transaction.  Both features use the same data:  amount charged, account number, transaction date, customer name, retail store name, and etcetera.  Because both features use much of the same data, there is likely to be a lot of duplication between them.  This duplication can be removed by making both features use the same data access layer. Then start coming the divergent requirements.  The receipt stakeholder wants a change so that the account number has the last few digits masked out to protect the customer’s privacy.  That can be solve with a small IF statement whilst still eliminating all duplication in the system.  Then the bank wants to take a picture of the customer as well as capture their signature and/or PIN number for enhanced security.  Then the receipt owner wants to pull data from a completely different system to report the customer’s loyalty program point total. After a while you realize that the two stakeholders have somewhat similar, but ultimately different responsibilities.  They have their own reasons for pulling the data access layer in different directions.  Then it dawns on you, the Single Responsibility Principle: There should never be more than one reason for a class to change. In this example we have two stakeholders giving two separate reasons for the data access class to change.  It is clear violation of the Single Responsibility Principle.  That’s a problem because it can often lead the project owner pitting the two stakeholders against each other in a vein attempt to get them to work out a mutual single source of truth.  But that doesn’t exist.  There are two completely valid truths that the developers need to support.  How is this to be supported and honour the Single Responsibility Principle?  The solution is to duplicate the data access layer and let each stakeholder control their own copy. The Single Source of Truth and Single Responsibility Principles are very closely related.  SST tells you when to remove duplication; SRP tells you when to introduce it.  They may seem to be fighting each other, but really they are not.  The key is to clearly identify the different responsibilities (or sources of truth) over a system.  Sometimes there is a single person with that responsibility, other times there are many.  This can be especially difficult if the same person has dual responsibilities.  They might not even realize they are wearing multiple hats. In my opinion Single Source of Truth should be listed as the second rule of simple design with Express Intent at number three.  Investigation of the DRY code smell should yield to the proper application SST, without violating SRP.  When necessary leave duplication in the system and let the class names express the different people that are responsible for controlling them.  Knowing all the people with responsibilities over a system is the higher priority because you’ll need to know this before you can express it.  Although it may be a code smell when there is duplication in the code, it does not necessarily mean that the coder has chosen to be expressive over DRY or that the code is bad.

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• How to communicate between Client and Server in a Client-Server Application?

  - by Sanoj

  I would like to implement an Client-Server Application, where the business-logic, security validations and a database are at the server and the user interface are at the client. I would like to implement clients in different languages i.e. one in WPF/.NET, one Swing/Java , one in Android/Java and maybe one HTML/JavaScript client. The server will be on Internet, so I would like to be able to have encrypted communication. The client will send some lists of items to be added to the database, or update items, and do some transactions. The server will check if the items are already updated by another client, or update the item, add new items or delete items. How do I solve the communication between clients and the server in such a system? I have been thinking about: http/https webserver, and sending messages in JSON or XML and use Web Sockets for bi-directional communication. Use http in a RESTful way, except when WebSockets are needed. But I guess there are better solutions for native desktop applications than http? CORBA - I have just heard about it, and it's old and complex. Not much talk about it these days. XMPP/Jabber - I have just heard about it and I don't know if it fits me at all. EJabberd seams to be a popular implementation. AMQP - I have just heard about it and I don't know if it fits me at all. RabbitMQ seams to be a popular implementation. Windows Communication Foundation, Java RMI, Java Message Service - but are they language independent? I guess some of these alternatives are on different levels, maybe I can have i.e xmpp or amqp in web sockets over https? What technologys are used for this problem in companies today? and what is recommended to use? I have no experience of them other than webservers and http. Please give me some guidance in this jungle. What are the pros and cons of these technologies in my situation?

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• Saxon XSLT-Transformation: How to change serialization of an empty tag from <x/> to <x></x>?

  - by Ben

  Hello folks! I do some XSLT-Transformation using Saxon HE 9.2 with the output later being unmarshalled by Castor 1.3.1. The whole thing runs with Java at the JDK 6. My XSLT-Transformation looks like this: <xsl:transform version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:ns="http://my/own/custom/namespace/for/the/target/document"> <xsl:output method="xml" encoding="UTF-8" indent="no" /> <xsl:template match="/"> <ns:item> <ns:property name="id"> <xsl:value-of select="/some/complicated/xpath" /> </ns:property> <!-- ... more ... --> </xsl:template> So the thing is: if the XPath-expression /some/complicated/xpath evaluates to an empty sequence, the Saxon serializer writes <ns:property/> instead of <ns:property></ns:property>. This, however, confuses the Castor unmarshaller, which is next in the pipeline and which unmarshals the output of the transformation to instances of XSD-generated Java-code. So my question is: How can I tell the Saxon-serializer to output empty tags not as standalone tags? Here is what I am proximately currently doing to execute the transformation: import net.sf.saxon.s9api.*; import javax.xml.transform.*; import javax.xml.transform.sax.SAXSource; // ... // read data XMLReader xmlReader = XMLReaderFactory.createXMLReader(); // ... there is some more setting up the xmlReader here ... InputStream xsltStream = new FileInputStream(xsltFile); InputStream inputStream = new FileInputStream(inputFile); Source xsltSource = new SAXSource(xmlReader, new InputSource(xsltStream)); Source inputSource = new SAXSource(xmlReader, new InputSource(inputStream)); XdmNode input = processor.newDocumentBuilder().build(inputSource); // initialize transformation configuration Processor processor = new Processor(false); XsltCompiler compiler = processor.newXsltCompiler(); compiler.setErrorListener(this); XsltExecutable executable = compiler.compile(xsltSource); Serializer serializer = new Serializer(); serializer.setOutputProperty(Serializer.Property.METHOD, "xml"); serializer.setOutputProperty(Serializer.Property.INDENT, "no"); serializer.setOutputStream(output); // execute transformation XsltTransformer transformer = executable.load(); transformer.setInitialContextNode(input); transformer.setErrorListener(this); transformer.setDestination(serializer); transformer.setSchemaValidationMode(ValidationMode.STRIP); transformer.transform(); I'd appreciate any hint pointing in the direction of a solution. :-) In case of any unclarity I'd be happy to give more details. Nightly greetings from Germany, Benjamin

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• Jboss logging issue

  - by balaji

  I'm Working as deployer and server administrator. We use Jboss 4.0x AS to deploy our applications. The issue I'm facing is, Whenever we redeploy/restart the server, server.log is getting created but after sometime the logging goes off. Yes it is not at all updating the server.log file. Due to this, we could not trace the other critical issues we have. Actually we have two separate nodes and we do deploy/restarting the server separately on two nodes. We are facing the issue in both of our test and production environment. I could not trace out where exactly the issue is. Could you please help me in resolving the issue? If we have any other issues, we can check the log files. If log itself is not getting updated/logged, how can we move further in analyzing the issues without the recent/updated logs? Below are the logs found in the stdout.log: 18:55:50,303 INFO [Server] Core system initialized 18:55:52,296 INFO [WebService] Using RMI server codebase: http://kl121tez.is.klmcorp.net:8083/ 18:55:52,313 INFO [Log4jService$URLWatchTimerTask] Configuring from URL: resource:log4j.xml 18:55:52,860 ERROR [STDERR] LOG0026E The Log Manager cannot create the object AmasRBPFTraceLogger without a class name. 18:55:52,860 ERROR [STDERR] LOG0026E The Log Manager cannot create the object AmasRBPFMessageLogger without a class name. 18:55:54,273 ERROR [STDERR] LOG0026E The Log Manager cannot create the object AmasCacheTraceLogger without a class name. 18:55:54,274 ERROR [STDERR] LOG0026E The Log Manager cannot create the object AmasCacheMessageLogger without a class name. 18:55:54,334 ERROR [STDERR] LOG0026E The Log Manager cannot create the object JACCTraceLogger without a class name. 18:55:54,334 ERROR [STDERR] LOG0026E The Log Manager cannot create the object JACCMessageLogger without a class name. 18:55:56,059 INFO [ServiceEndpointManager] WebServices: jbossws-1.0.3.SP1 (date=200609291417) 18:55:56,635 INFO [Embedded] Catalina naming disabled 18:55:56,671 INFO [ClusterRuleSetFactory] Unable to find a cluster rule set in the classpath. Will load the default rule set. 18:55:56,672 INFO [ClusterRuleSetFactory] Unable to find a cluster rule set in the classpath. Will load the default rule set. 18:55:56,843 INFO [Http11BaseProtocol] Initializing Coyote HTTP/1.1 on http-0.0.0.0-8180 18:55:56,844 INFO [Catalina] Initialization processed in 172 ms 18:55:56,844 INFO [StandardService] Starting service jboss.web

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• Real World Nuget

  - by JoshReuben

  Why Nuget A higher level of granularity for managing references When you have solutions of many projects that depend on solutions of many projects etc à escape from Solution Hell. Links · Using A GUI (Package Explorer) to build packages - http://docs.nuget.org/docs/creating-packages/using-a-gui-to-build-packages · Creating a Nuspec File - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vs2010trainingcourse_aspnetmvcnuget_topic2.aspx · consuming a Nuget Package - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vs2010trainingcourse_aspnetmvcnuget_topic3 · Nuspec reference - http://docs.nuget.org/docs/reference/nuspec-reference · updating packages - http://nuget.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Updating%20All%20Packages · versioning - http://docs.nuget.org/docs/reference/versioning POC Folder Structure POC Setup Steps · Install package explorer · Source o Create a source solution – configure output directory for projects (Project > Properties > Build > Output Path) · Package o Add assemblies to package from output directory (D&D)- add net folder o File > Export – save .nuspec files and lib contents <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?> <package > <metadata> <id>MyPackage</id> <version>1.0.0.3</version> <title /> <authors>josh-r</authors> <owners /> <requireLicenseAcceptance>false</requireLicenseAcceptance> <description>My package description.</description> <summary /> </metadata> </package> o File > Save – saves .nupkg file · Create Target Solution o In Tools > Options: Configure package source & Add package Select projects: Output from package manager (powershell console) ------- Installing...MyPackage 1.0.0 ------- Added file 'NugetSource.AssemblyA.dll' to folder 'MyPackage.1.0.0\lib'. Added file 'NugetSource.AssemblyA.pdb' to folder 'MyPackage.1.0.0\lib'. Added file 'NugetSource.AssemblyB.dll' to folder 'MyPackage.1.0.0\lib'. Added file 'NugetSource.AssemblyB.pdb' to folder 'MyPackage.1.0.0\lib'. Added file 'MyPackage.1.0.0.nupkg' to folder 'MyPackage.1.0.0'. Successfully installed 'MyPackage 1.0.0'. Added reference 'NugetSource.AssemblyA' to project 'AssemblyX' Added reference 'NugetSource.AssemblyB' to project 'AssemblyX' Added file 'packages.config'. Added file 'packages.config' to project 'AssemblyX' Added file 'repositories.config'. Successfully added 'MyPackage 1.0.0' to AssemblyX. ============================== o Packages folder created at solution level o Packages.config file generated in each project: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <packages>   <package id="MyPackage" version="1.0.0" targetFramework="net40" /> </packages> A local Packages folder is created for package versions installed: Each folder contains the downloaded .nupkg file and its unpacked contents – eg of dlls that the project references Note: this folder is not checked in UpdatePackages o Configure Package Manager to automatically check for updates o Browse packages - It automatically picked up the updates Update Procedure · Modify source · Change source version in assembly info · Build source · Open last package in package explorer · Increment package version number and re-add assemblies · Save package with new version number and export its definition · In target solution – Tools > Manage Nuget Packages – click on All to trigger refresh , then click on recent packages to see updates · If problematic, delete packages folder Versioning uninstall-package mypackage install-package mypackage –version 1.0.0.3 uninstall-package mypackage install-package mypackage –version 1.0.0.4 Dependencies · <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?> <package xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/packaging/2012/06/nuspec.xsd"> <metadata> <id>MyDependentPackage</id> <version>1.0.0</version> <title /> <authors>josh-r</authors> <owners /> <requireLicenseAcceptance>false</requireLicenseAcceptance> <description>My package description.</description> <dependencies> <group targetFramework=".NETFramework4.0"> <dependency id="MyPackage" version="1.0.0.4" /> </group> </dependencies> </metadata> </package> Using NuGet without committing packages to source control http://docs.nuget.org/docs/workflows/using-nuget-without-committing-packages Right click on the Solution node in Solution Explorer and select Enable NuGet Package Restore. — Recall that packages folder is not part of solution If you get downloading package ‘Nuget.build’ failed, config proxy to support certificate for https://nuget.org/api/v2/ & allow unrestricted access to packages.nuget.org To test connectivity: get-package –listavailable To test Nuget Package Restore – delete packages folder and open vs as admin. In nugget msbuild: <Import Project="$(SolutionDir)\.nuget\nuget.targets" /> TFSBuild Integration Modify Nuget.Targets file <RestorePackages Condition="  '$(RestorePackages)' == '' "> True </RestorePackages> … <PackageSource Include="\\IL-CV-004-W7D\Packages" /> Add System Environment variable EnableNuGetPackageRestore=true & restart the “visual studio team foundation build service host” service. Important: Ensure Network Service has access to Packages folder Nugetter TFS Build integration Add Nugetter build process templates to TFS source control For Build Controller - Specify location of custom assemblies Generate .nuspec file from Package Explorer: File > Export Edit the file elements – remove path info from src and target attributes <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?> <package xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/packaging/2012/06/nuspec.xsd">     <metadata>         <id>Common</id>         <version>1.0.0</version>         <title />         <authors>josh-r</authors>         <owners />         <requireLicenseAcceptance>false</requireLicenseAcceptance>         <description>My package description.</description>         <dependencies>             <group targetFramework=".NETFramework3.5" />         </dependencies>     </metadata>     <files>         <file src="CommonTypes.dll" target="CommonTypes.dll" />         <file src="CommonTypes.pdb" target="CommonTypes.pdb" /> … Add .nuspec file to solution so that it is available for build: Dev\NovaNuget\Common\NuSpec\common.1.0.0.nuspec Add a Build Process Definition based on the Nugetter build process template: Configure the build process – specify: · .sln to build · Base path (output directory) · Nuget.exe file path · .nuspec file path Copy DLLs to a binary folder 1) Set copy local for an assembly reference to false 2)  MSBuild Copy Task – modify .csproj file: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/3e54c37h.aspx <ItemGroup>     <MySourceFiles Include="$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\..\SourceAssemblies\**\*.*" />   </ItemGroup>     <Target Name="BeforeBuild">     <Copy SourceFiles="@(MySourceFiles)" DestinationFolder="bin\debug\SourceAssemblies" />   </Target> 3) Set Probing assembly search path from app.config - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/823z9h8w(v=vs.80).aspx -                 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <configuration>   <runtime>     <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">       <probing privatePath="SourceAssemblies"/>     </assemblyBinding>   </runtime> </configuration> Forcing 'copy local = false' The following generic powershell script was added to the packages install.ps1: param($installPath, $toolsPath, $package, $project) if( $project.Object.Project.Name -ne "CopyPackages") { $asms = $package.AssemblyReferences | %{$_.Name} foreach ($reference in $project.Object.References) { if ($asms -contains $reference.Name + ".dll") { $reference.CopyLocal = $false; } } } An empty project named "CopyPackages" was added to the solution - it references all the packages and is the only one set to CopyLocal="true". No MSBuild knowledge required.

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• My vertex shader doesn't affect texture coords or diffuse info but works for position

  - by tina nyaa

  I am new to 3D and DirectX - in the past I have only used abstractions for 2D drawing. Over the past month I've been studying really hard and I'm trying to modify and adapt some of the shaders as part of my personal 'study project'. Below I have a shader, modified from one of the Microsoft samples. I set diffuse and tex0 vertex shader outputs to zero, but my model still shows the full texture and lighting as if I hadn't changed the values from the vertex buffer. Changing the position of the model works, but nothing else. Why is this? // // Skinned Mesh Effect file // Copyright (c) 2000-2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. // float4 lhtDir = {0.0f, 0.0f, -1.0f, 1.0f}; //light Direction float4 lightDiffuse = {0.6f, 0.6f, 0.6f, 1.0f}; // Light Diffuse float4 MaterialAmbient : MATERIALAMBIENT = {0.1f, 0.1f, 0.1f, 1.0f}; float4 MaterialDiffuse : MATERIALDIFFUSE = {0.8f, 0.8f, 0.8f, 1.0f}; // Matrix Pallette static const int MAX_MATRICES = 100; float4x3 mWorldMatrixArray[MAX_MATRICES] : WORLDMATRIXARRAY; float4x4 mViewProj : VIEWPROJECTION; /////////////////////////////////////////////////////// struct VS_INPUT { float4 Pos : POSITION; float4 BlendWeights : BLENDWEIGHT; float4 BlendIndices : BLENDINDICES; float3 Normal : NORMAL; float3 Tex0 : TEXCOORD0; }; struct VS_OUTPUT { float4 Pos : POSITION; float4 Diffuse : COLOR; float2 Tex0 : TEXCOORD0; }; float3 Diffuse(float3 Normal) { float CosTheta; // N.L Clamped CosTheta = max(0.0f, dot(Normal, lhtDir.xyz)); // propogate scalar result to vector return (CosTheta); } VS_OUTPUT VShade(VS_INPUT i, uniform int NumBones) { VS_OUTPUT o; float3 Pos = 0.0f; float3 Normal = 0.0f; float LastWeight = 0.0f; // Compensate for lack of UBYTE4 on Geforce3 int4 IndexVector = D3DCOLORtoUBYTE4(i.BlendIndices); // cast the vectors to arrays for use in the for loop below float BlendWeightsArray[4] = (float[4])i.BlendWeights; int IndexArray[4] = (int[4])IndexVector; // calculate the pos/normal using the "normal" weights // and accumulate the weights to calculate the last weight for (int iBone = 0; iBone < NumBones-1; iBone++) { LastWeight = LastWeight + BlendWeightsArray[iBone]; Pos += mul(i.Pos, mWorldMatrixArray[IndexArray[iBone]]) * BlendWeightsArray[iBone]; Normal += mul(i.Normal, mWorldMatrixArray[IndexArray[iBone]]) * BlendWeightsArray[iBone]; } LastWeight = 1.0f - LastWeight; // Now that we have the calculated weight, add in the final influence Pos += (mul(i.Pos, mWorldMatrixArray[IndexArray[NumBones-1]]) * LastWeight); Normal += (mul(i.Normal, mWorldMatrixArray[IndexArray[NumBones-1]]) * LastWeight); // transform position from world space into view and then projection space //o.Pos = mul(float4(Pos.xyz, 1.0f), mViewProj); o.Pos = mul(float4(Pos.xyz, 1.0f), mViewProj); o.Diffuse.x = 0.0f; o.Diffuse.y = 0.0f; o.Diffuse.z = 0.0f; o.Diffuse.w = 0.0f; o.Tex0 = float2(0,0); return o; } technique t0 { pass p0 { VertexShader = compile vs_3_0 VShade(4); } } I am currently using the SlimDX .NET wrapper around DirectX, but the API is extremely similar: public void Draw() { var device = vertexBuffer.Device; device.Clear(ClearFlags.Target | ClearFlags.ZBuffer, Color.White, 1.0f, 0); device.SetRenderState(RenderState.Lighting, true); device.SetRenderState(RenderState.DitherEnable, true); device.SetRenderState(RenderState.ZEnable, true); device.SetRenderState(RenderState.CullMode, Cull.Counterclockwise); device.SetRenderState(RenderState.NormalizeNormals, true); device.SetSamplerState(0, SamplerState.MagFilter, TextureFilter.Anisotropic); device.SetSamplerState(0, SamplerState.MinFilter, TextureFilter.Anisotropic); device.SetTransform(TransformState.World, Matrix.Identity * Matrix.Translation(0, -50, 0)); device.SetTransform(TransformState.View, Matrix.LookAtLH(new Vector3(-200, 0, 0), Vector3.Zero, Vector3.UnitY)); device.SetTransform(TransformState.Projection, Matrix.PerspectiveFovLH((float)Math.PI / 4, (float)device.Viewport.Width / device.Viewport.Height, 10, 10000000)); var material = new Material(); material.Ambient = material.Diffuse = material.Emissive = material.Specular = new Color4(Color.White); material.Power = 1f; device.SetStreamSource(0, vertexBuffer, 0, vertexSize); device.VertexDeclaration = vertexDeclaration; device.Indices = indexBuffer; device.Material = material; device.SetTexture(0, texture); var param = effect.GetParameter(null, "mWorldMatrixArray"); var boneWorldTransforms = bones.OrderedBones.OrderBy(x => x.Id).Select(x => x.CombinedTransformation).ToArray(); effect.SetValue(param, boneWorldTransforms); effect.SetValue(effect.GetParameter(null, "mViewProj"), Matrix.Identity);// Matrix.PerspectiveFovLH((float)Math.PI / 4, (float)device.Viewport.Width / device.Viewport.Height, 10, 10000000)); effect.SetValue(effect.GetParameter(null, "MaterialDiffuse"), material.Diffuse); effect.SetValue(effect.GetParameter(null, "MaterialAmbient"), material.Ambient); effect.Technique = effect.GetTechnique(0); var passes = effect.Begin(FX.DoNotSaveState); for (var i = 0; i < passes; i++) { effect.BeginPass(i); device.DrawIndexedPrimitives(PrimitiveType.TriangleList, 0, 0, skin.Vertices.Length, 0, skin.Indicies.Length / 3); effect.EndPass(); } effect.End(); } Again, I set diffuse and tex0 vertex shader outputs to zero, but my model still shows the full texture and lighting as if I hadn't changed the values from the vertex buffer. Changing the position of the model works, but nothing else. Why is this? Also, whatever I set in the bone transformation matrices doesn't seem to have an effect on my model. If I set every bone transformation to a zero matrix, the model still shows up as if nothing had happened, but changing the Pos field in shader output makes the model disappear. I don't understand why I'm getting this kind of behaviour. Thank you!

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• WP7 silverlight custom control using popup

  - by Miloud B.

  Hi guys, I'm creating a custom datepicker, I have a textbox, once clicked it opens a calendar within a popup. What I want to do is change the size of the popup so it shows my whole calendar, but I can't manage to change it..., I've tried using Height, Width, MinHeight, MinWidth... but it doesn't work, the popup keep showing with a fixed size. The thing is that my popup's parent property isn't evaluated since it has expression issues (according to debugger), so I'm sure my popup's parent isn't the main screen( say layout grid). How can I for example make my popup open within a specific context ? This part of my code isn't XAML, it's C# code only and it looks like: using System; using System.Net; using System.Windows; using System.Windows.Controls; using System.Windows.Documents; using System.Windows.Ink; using System.Windows.Input; using System.Windows.Media; using System.Windows.Media.Animation; using System.Windows.Shapes; using System.Windows.Controls.Primitives; namespace CalendarBranch.components { public class wpDatePicker:TextBox { private CalendarPopup calendar; private Popup popup; public wpDatePicker() { this.calendar = new CalendarPopup(); this.popup = new Popup(); this.popup.Child = this.calendar; this.popup.Margin = new Thickness(0); this.MouseLeftButtonUp += new MouseButtonEventHandler(wpDatePicker_MouseLeftButtonUp); this.calendar.onDateSelect += new EventHandler(onDateSelected); this.IsReadOnly = true; } protected void wpDatePicker_MouseLeftButtonUp(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e) { this.popup.Height = this.calendar.Height; this.popup.Width = this.calendar.Width; this.popup.HorizontalAlignment = HorizontalAlignment.Center; this.popup.VerticalAlignment = VerticalAlignment.Center; this.popup.HorizontalOffset = 0; this.popup.VerticalOffset = 0; this.popup.MinHeight = this.calendar.Height; this.popup.MinWidth = this.calendar.Width; this.popup.IsOpen = true; } private void onDateSelected(Object sender, EventArgs ea) { this.Text = this.calendar.SelectedValue.ToShortDateString(); this.popup.IsOpen = false; } } } PS: the class Calendar is simply a UserControl that contains a grid with multiple columns, HyperLinkButtons and TextBlocks, so nothing special. Thank you in advance guys ;) Cheers Miloud B.

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