Search Results

Search found 20021 results on 801 pages for 'click'.

Page 619/801 | < Previous Page | 615 616 617 618 619 620 621 622 623 624 625 626  | Next Page >

• JQuery mobile handling links (return false)

  - by shinax

  I'm planning on using JQM to make a simple mobile web app, and I'm having problems getting this simple functionality to work: when I click on some links (not all of them), I want to be able to first process some data, and then depending on that outcome, sometimes continue the link action (I like the whole transitions and ajax things), and sometimes don't. The important part is that I want to preserve the normal JQMobile transitions and stuff for the links, just sometimes prevent them (for example for validation and things like that). I've tried with: return false, preventDefault (and in combination with stopPropagation), and data-ajax="false", and none hav worked, they all redirect. Could somebody tell me the correct way to to this in JQMobile? Just in case it's important: I'm using anchor links, using this to test. Thank you in advance, Jennifer.

  Read the article

• AsyncTask not do onPostExecute()

  - by brian

  I write a AsyncTask as below: class Load extends AsyncTask<String, String, String> { @Override protected void onPreExecute() { super.onPreExecute(); } @Override protected String doInBackground(String... aurl) { //do job seconds //stop at here, and does not run onPostExecute } @Override protected void onPostExecute(String unused) { super.onPostExecute(unused); wait = false; new Load().execute(); } } And the other method as below: public void click() { new Load().execute(); while(wait) { ; } } The wait is a global boolean value.

  Read the article

• How to set ID of item when the item is not yet created..?

  - by hoppl

  I'll try to make myself clear with an example: Imagine an admin page to add a product to a database (product list). When I open the ADD ITEM page, the item is not yet created (not until I click the submit button), but let's say I want to add categories this product will appear in (with AJAX for example). When I run the AJAX script, i need to tell it which ID (my product) to put these categories in... How should I do this.? Is inserting a blank item in the database (to get mysql_insert_id) when the page opens a good way to do this.? Is it prone to conflicts or errors..? How do you guys do it.?

  Read the article

• call .js file after ajax load

  - by asovgir

  I am trying to apply a .js file to a page I loaded via ajax (since ajax automatically strips the content of all the javascript). var url; var textUrl = 'local/file.js'; $('a').click(function() { url = $(this).attr('href'); $('.secondaryDiv').load(url, function() { $.getScript(textUrl, function(data, textStatus, jqxhr) { console.log(data); //data returned from getScript console.log(textStatus); //return "success" console.log(jqxhr.status); //200 }); }); return false; }); Am I approaching this the right way? I tried everything I could think of and I can't get it to work

  Read the article

• "pay if you want to" using in app purchases (iphone)

  - by Jonathan

  I realise that you can't use in app purchases for real things. But does an in app purchase actually have to give extra functionality in the app. Can it be used to have optional paying? I've made an app that really should be free but I'd like to make a little money even if it's only one 59p. So could I have an in app purchase which users can click to pay if they want to. it might sound stupid but I'm betting there is at least one person who would becase they are nice :)

  Read the article

• Load the main page if user visits a page meant for an ajax request?

  - by QAZ

  Hello, I am using jQuery for a simple website and have a main page 'index.html' which can load some content (e.g. 'info1.html' or 'info2.html') via jQuery ajax requests, and display the result of these requests inside an element in the 'index.html' page. If a user somehow visits say 'info1.html' directly, is their a way to redirect or load the main 'index.html' page? (or what's best practice for this type of thing) as Google is indexing all the small html files used for the ajax requests and sometimes a user can click into the site via these pages. Thanks.

  Read the article

• [Flash Builder Profiler] Why some function have been called

  - by HarryWang

  1 Create a project use flex sdk 3.4 2 Create a new mxml app Testadd.mxml 3 Add a source jpg Any.jpg content of Testadd.mxml just two line. [Embed(source="Any.jpg")] public var NotUsedSource:Class; I think this just defined a class which represent some data. And I never use it or initialize any instance of it in this app. 4 Profile this app, when it is profiling I click the resize button of IE servral times. 5 From the profiled data a function named Testadd_NotUsedSource.flash.events:IEventDispatcher:dispatchEvent is been called 6 My question is why this function has been called. I have the screenshot but can't add to this post.

  Read the article

• prettyPhoto not working in my wordpress theme

  - by codemanic

  So friends I am trying to use prettyPhoto in my wordpress theme but its not working at all. Both of its files - prettyPhoto.css and jquery.prettyPhoto.js are correctly linked in header.php file. This is the linking of the files in my header.php file - <link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/js/prettyPhoto/css/prettyPhoto.css" type="text/css" media="screen" title="prettyPhoto main stylesheet" charset="utf-8" /> <script src="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/js/prettyPhoto/js/jquery.prettyPhoto.js" type="text/javascript"></script> Please let me know if this problem is due to not using wp_enqueue_script(). And this is how I link the image to be used with prettyPhoto - <a title="test image" href="images/new-image.png" rel="prettyPhoto[]"><img src="images/new-image.png" alt="Some Alternate Text" /></a> When I click on image, it doesn't open in prettyPhoto.

  Read the article

• Hide div when clicking outside

  - by scferg

  I've searched and search not only google but also here and still have to find a solution that will work. I have a div that is hidden by default, then toggled by clicking on a link. I also want it to hide when you click outside of the div. Simple, I thought, but nothing I've tried had worked yet. This is the jquery: <script type="text/javascript"> function toggleDiv(divID) { $("#"+divID).fadeToggle(200); } </script> And the link that toggles it: <a onclick="toggleDiv('myDiv');">Link</a> And then the div: <div id="myDiv"> stuff </div> If anyone has any advice, I would really appreciate it.

  Read the article

• Load the main page if user visits a page ment for an ajax request?

  - by QAZ

  Hello, I am using jQuery for a simple website and have a main page 'index.html' which can load some content (e.g. 'info1.html' or 'info2.html') via jQuery ajax requests, and display the result of these requests inside an element in the 'index.html' page. If a user somehow visits say 'info1.html' directly, is their a way to redirect or load the main 'index.html' page? (or what's best practise for this type of thing) as Google is indexing all the small html files used for the ajax requests and sometimes a user can click into the site via these pages. Thanks.

  Read the article

• AJAX or full page reload

  - by wh0

  I have a simple web page with top navigation and the content, on click of a certain link in top navigation content changes accordingly. Now my question is should do it using AJAX call and load the HTML it into content or should i reload the entire page.It is small page fetching data does not take much of the time but i wonder approach is better suited and why ? My opinion is AJAX way, but some of the web pages that i have seen goes for full page reload i wonder why. i'm not sure AJAX method it has any cons in it. Can someone please elaborate this for me.

  Read the article

• Submit form with our page refresh in Servlet

  - by John

  <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function() { $('.ibutton').click(function() { var ajaxdata=$("#country").val(); var value = "country="+ajaxdata; $.ajax({ url: "saveIt", type: "POST", data: value, cache: false, success: function(data){ alert("load success"); } });return false; }); }); </script> Friends, i followed every thing but its not working, upon submit, am unable to send the servlet request, saveIt is my url pattern,pls help me.

  Read the article

• php mysqli help, first line in DB not being returned?

  - by williamsongibson

  Here is my code <?php require_once 'connect.php'; $sql = "SELECT * FROM `db-pages`"; $result = $mysqli->query($sql) or die($mysqli->error.__LINE__); while ($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) { echo($row['pagetitle'].' - To edit this page <a href="editpage.php?id='.$row['id'].'">click here</a><br>'); } } ?> I've added a couple more rows to the Database and it's returning them all, apart from id=1 in the DB. Any idea why?

  Read the article

• Why does SQL 2005 SSIS component install fail?

  - by Ducain

  I am trying to install SSIS on our production SQL 2005 SP2 box. Each time I try, the install/setup screen results in failure, starting with the native client, and moving on down. Screen shots below show what I see: Here is the result of clicking on the status link to the right of the native client after the install failed: === Verbose logging started: 3/28/2012 16:38:08 Build type: SHIP UNICODE 3.01.4000.4042 Calling process: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Setup Bootstrap\setup.exe === MSI (c) (DC:00) [16:38:08:875]: Resetting cached policy values MSI (c) (DC:00) [16:38:08:875]: Machine policy value 'Debug' is 0 MSI (c) (DC:00) [16:38:08:875]: ******* RunEngine: ******* Product: {F9B3DD02-B0B3-42E9-8650-030DFF0D133D} ******* Action: ******* CommandLine: ********** MSI (c) (DC:00) [16:38:08:875]: Client-side and UI is none or basic: Running entire install on the server. MSI (c) (DC:00) [16:38:08:875]: Grabbed execution mutex. MSI (c) (DC:00) [16:38:08:875]: Cloaking enabled. MSI (c) (DC:00) [16:38:08:875]: Attempting to enable all disabled priveleges before calling Install on Server MSI (c) (DC:00) [16:38:08:875]: Incrementing counter to disable shutdown. Counter after increment: 0 MSI (s) (90:F0) [16:38:08:875]: Grabbed execution mutex. MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:08:875]: Resetting cached policy values MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:08:875]: Machine policy value 'Debug' is 0 MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:08:875]: ******* RunEngine: ******* Product: {F9B3DD02-B0B3-42E9-8650-030DFF0D133D} ******* Action: ******* CommandLine: ********** MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:08:875]: Machine policy value 'DisableUserInstalls' is 0 MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:08:890]: Warning: Local cached package 'C:\WINDOWS\Installer\65eb99.msi' is missing. MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:08:890]: User policy value 'SearchOrder' is 'nmu' MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:08:890]: User policy value 'DisableMedia' is 0 MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:08:890]: Machine policy value 'AllowLockdownMedia' is 0 MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:08:890]: SOURCEMGMT: Media enabled only if package is safe. MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:08:890]: SOURCEMGMT: Looking for sourcelist for product {F9B3DD02-B0B3-42E9-8650-030DFF0D133D} MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:08:890]: SOURCEMGMT: Adding {F9B3DD02-B0B3-42E9-8650-030DFF0D133D}; to potential sourcelist list (pcode;disk;relpath). MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:08:890]: SOURCEMGMT: Now checking product {F9B3DD02-B0B3-42E9-8650-030DFF0D133D} MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:08:890]: SOURCEMGMT: Media is enabled for product. MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:08:890]: SOURCEMGMT: Attempting to use LastUsedSource from source list. MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:08:890]: SOURCEMGMT: Trying source C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Setup Bootstrap\Cache\. MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:08:890]: SOURCEMGMT: Source is invalid due to invalid package code (product code doesn't match). MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:08:890]: Note: 1: 1706 2: -2147483646 3: sqlncli.msi MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:08:890]: SOURCEMGMT: Processing net source list. MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:08:890]: Note: 1: 1706 2: -2147483647 3: sqlncli.msi MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:08:890]: SOURCEMGMT: Processing media source list. MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:09:921]: SOURCEMGMT: Trying media source F:\. MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:09:921]: Note: 1: 2203 2: F:\sqlncli.msi 3: -2147287038 MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:09:921]: SOURCEMGMT: Source is invalid due to missing/inaccessible package. MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:09:921]: Note: 1: 1706 2: -2147483647 3: sqlncli.msi MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:09:921]: SOURCEMGMT: Processing URL source list. MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:09:921]: Note: 1: 1402 2: UNKNOWN\URL 3: 2 MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:09:921]: Note: 1: 1706 2: -2147483647 3: sqlncli.msi MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:09:921]: Note: 1: 1706 2: 3: sqlncli.msi MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:09:921]: SOURCEMGMT: Failed to resolve source MSI (s) (90:D4) [16:38:09:921]: MainEngineThread is returning 1612 MSI (c) (DC:00) [16:38:09:921]: Decrementing counter to disable shutdown. If counter >= 0, shutdown will be denied. Counter after decrement: -1 MSI (c) (DC:00) [16:38:09:921]: MainEngineThread is returning 1612 === Verbose logging stopped: 3/28/2012 16:38:09 === Here is the log visible when I click the failed status for MSXML6: === Verbose logging started: 3/28/2012 16:38:12 Build type: SHIP UNICODE 3.01.4000.4042 Calling process: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Setup Bootstrap\setup.exe === MSI (c) (DC:58) [16:38:12:250]: Resetting cached policy values MSI (c) (DC:58) [16:38:12:250]: Machine policy value 'Debug' is 0 MSI (c) (DC:58) [16:38:12:250]: ******* RunEngine: ******* Product: {56EA8BC0-3751-4B93-BC9D-6651CC36E5AA} ******* Action: ******* CommandLine: ********** MSI (c) (DC:58) [16:38:12:250]: Client-side and UI is none or basic: Running entire install on the server. MSI (c) (DC:58) [16:38:12:250]: Grabbed execution mutex. MSI (c) (DC:58) [16:38:12:250]: Cloaking enabled. MSI (c) (DC:58) [16:38:12:250]: Attempting to enable all disabled priveleges before calling Install on Server MSI (c) (DC:58) [16:38:12:250]: Incrementing counter to disable shutdown. Counter after increment: 0 MSI (s) (90:58) [16:38:12:265]: Grabbed execution mutex. MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:265]: Resetting cached policy values MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:265]: Machine policy value 'Debug' is 0 MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:265]: ******* RunEngine: ******* Product: {56EA8BC0-3751-4B93-BC9D-6651CC36E5AA} ******* Action: ******* CommandLine: ********** MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:265]: Machine policy value 'DisableUserInstalls' is 0 MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:265]: Warning: Local cached package 'C:\WINDOWS\Installer\ce6d56e.msi' is missing. MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:265]: User policy value 'SearchOrder' is 'nmu' MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:265]: User policy value 'DisableMedia' is 0 MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:265]: Machine policy value 'AllowLockdownMedia' is 0 MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:265]: SOURCEMGMT: Media enabled only if package is safe. MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:265]: SOURCEMGMT: Looking for sourcelist for product {56EA8BC0-3751-4B93-BC9D-6651CC36E5AA} MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:265]: SOURCEMGMT: Adding {56EA8BC0-3751-4B93-BC9D-6651CC36E5AA}; to potential sourcelist list (pcode;disk;relpath). MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:265]: SOURCEMGMT: Now checking product {56EA8BC0-3751-4B93-BC9D-6651CC36E5AA} MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:265]: SOURCEMGMT: Media is enabled for product. MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:265]: SOURCEMGMT: Attempting to use LastUsedSource from source list. MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:265]: SOURCEMGMT: Trying source d:\2a2ac35788eea9066bae01\. MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:265]: Note: 1: 2203 2: d:\2a2ac35788eea9066bae01\msxml6.msi 3: -2147287037 MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:265]: SOURCEMGMT: Source is invalid due to missing/inaccessible package. MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:265]: Note: 1: 1706 2: -2147483647 3: msxml6.msi MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:265]: SOURCEMGMT: Processing net source list. MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:265]: Note: 1: 1706 2: -2147483647 3: msxml6.msi MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:265]: SOURCEMGMT: Processing media source list. MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:296]: SOURCEMGMT: Trying media source F:\. MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:296]: Note: 1: 2203 2: F:\msxml6.msi 3: -2147287038 MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:296]: SOURCEMGMT: Source is invalid due to missing/inaccessible package. MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:296]: Note: 1: 1706 2: -2147483647 3: msxml6.msi MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:296]: SOURCEMGMT: Processing URL source list. MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:296]: Note: 1: 1402 2: UNKNOWN\URL 3: 2 MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:296]: Note: 1: 1706 2: -2147483647 3: msxml6.msi MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:296]: Note: 1: 1706 2: 3: msxml6.msi MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:296]: SOURCEMGMT: Failed to resolve source MSI (s) (90:DC) [16:38:12:296]: MainEngineThread is returning 1612 MSI (c) (DC:58) [16:38:12:296]: Decrementing counter to disable shutdown. If counter >= 0, shutdown will be denied. Counter after decrement: -1 MSI (c) (DC:58) [16:38:12:296]: MainEngineThread is returning 1612 === Verbose logging stopped: 3/28/2012 16:38:12 === When I click on the failed status for SSIS, no log file appears at all. To be honest, I'm not even sure where to start on this one - never guessed it would be so much trouble to add a component right from the disk. Any help or pointers whatsoever would be greatly appreciated. If any more details are needed, please ask - I'd be glad to add them.

  Read the article

• Python CGI on Amazon AWS EC2 micro-instance -- a how-to!

  - by user595585

  How can you make an EC2 micro instance serve CGI scripts from lighthttpd? For instance Python CGI? Well, it took half a day, but I have gotten Python cgi running on a free Amazon AWS EC2 micro-instance, using the lighttpd server. I think it will help my fellow noobs to put all the steps in one place. Armed with the simple steps below, it will take you only 15 minutes to set things up! My question for the more experienced users reading this is: Are there any security flaws in what I've done? (See file and directory permissions.) Step 1: Start your EC2 instance and ssh into it. [Obviously, you'll need to sign up for Amazon EC2 and save your key pairs to a *.pem file. I won't go over this, as Amazon tells you how to do it.] Sign into your AWS account and start your EC2 instance. The web has tutorials on doing this. Notice that default instance-size that Amazon presents to you is "small." This is not "micro" and so it will cost you money. Be sure to manually choose "micro." (Micro instances are free only for the first year...) Find the public DNS code for your running instance. To do this, click on the instance in the top pane of the dashboard and you'll eventually see the "Public DNS" field populated in the bottom pane. (You may need to fiddle a bit.) The Public DNS looks something like: ec2-174-129-110-23.compute-1.amazonaws.com Start your Unix console program. (On Max OS X, it's called Terminal, and lives in the Applications - Utilities folder.) cd to the directory on your desktop system that has your *.pem file containing your AWS keypairs. ssh to your EC2 instance using a command like: ssh -i <<your *.pem filename>> ec2-user@<< Public DNS address >> So, for me, this was: ssh -i amzn_ec2_keypair.pem [email protected] Your EC2 instance should let you in. Step 2: Download lighttpd to your EC2 instance. To install lighttpd, you will need root access on your EC2 instance. The problem is: Amazon will not let you sign in as root. (Not straightforwardly, at least.) But there is a workaround. Type this command: sudo /bin/bash The system prompt-character will change from $ to #. We won't exit from "sudo" until the very last step in this whole process. Install the lighttpd application (version 1.4.28-1.3.amzn1 for me): yum install lighttpd Install the FastCGI libraries for lighttpd (not needed, but why not?): yum install lighttpd-fastcgi Test that your server is working: /etc/init.d/lighttpd start Step 3: Let the outside world see your server. If you now tried to hit your server from the browser on your desktop, it would fail. The reason: By default, Amazon AWS does not open any ports to your EC2 instance. So, you have to open the ports manually. Go to your EC2 dashboard in your desktop's browser. Click on "Security Groups" in the left pane. One or more security groups will appear in the upper right pane. Choose the one that was assigned to your EC2 instance when you launched your instance. A table called "Allowed Connections" will appear in the lower right pane. A pop-up menu will let you choose "HTTP" as the connection method. The other values in that line of the table should be: tcp, 80, 80, 0.0.0.0/0 Now hit your EC2 instance's server from the desktop in your browser. Use the Public DNS address that you used earlier to SSH in. You should see the lighttpd generic web page. If you don't, I can't help you because I am such a noob. :-( Step 4: Configure lighttpd to serve CGI. Back in the console program, cd to the configuration directory for lighttpd: cd /etc/lighttpd To enable CGI, you want to uncomment one line in the < modules.conf file. (I could have enabled Fast CGI, but baby steps are best!) You can do this with the "ed" editor as follows: ed modules.conf /include "conf.d\/cgi.conf"/ s/#// w q Create the directory where CGI programs will live. (The /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf file determines where this will be.) We'll create our directory in the default location, so we don't have to do any editing of configuration files: cd /var/www/lighttpd mkdir cgi-bin chmod 755 cgi-bin Almost there! Of course you need to put a test CGI program into the cgi-bin directory. Here is one: cd cgi-bin ed a #!/usr/bin/python print "Content-type: text/html\n\n" print "<html><body>Hello, pyworld.</body></html>" . w hellopyworld.py q chmod 655 hellopyworld.py Restart your lighttpd server: /etc/init.d/lighttpd restart Test your CGI program. In your desktop's browser, hit this URL, substituting your EC2 instance's public DNS address: http://<<Public DNS>>/cgi-bin/hellopyworld.py For me, this was: http://ec2-174-129-110-23.compute-1.amazonaws.com/cgi-bin/hellopyworld.py Step 5: That's it! Clean up, and give thanks! To exit from the "sudo /bin/bash" command given earlier, type: exit Acknowledgements: Heaps of thanks to: wiki.vpslink.com/Install_and_Configure_lighttpd www.cyberciti.biz/tips/lighttpd-howto-setup-cgi-bin-access-for-perl-programs.html aws.typepad.com/aws/2010/06/building-three-tier-architectures-with-security-groups.html Good luck, amigos! I apologize for the non-traditional nature of this "question" but I have gotten so much help from Stackoverflow that I was eager to give something back.

  Read the article

• How to get full control of umask/PAM/permissions?

  - by plua

  OUR SITUATION Several people from our company log in to a server and upload files. They all need to be able to upload and overwrite the same files. They have different usernames, but are all part of the same group. However, this is an internet server, so the "other" users should have (in general) just read-only access. So what I want to have is these standard permissions: files: 664 directories: 771 My goal is that all users do not need to worry about permissions. The server should be configured in such a way that these permissions apply to all files and directories, newly created, copied, or over-written. Only when we need some special permissions we'd manually change this. We upload files to the server by SFTP-ing in Nautilus, by mounting the server using sshfs and accessing it in Nautilus as if it were a local folder, and by SCP-ing in the command line. That basically covers our situation and what we aim to do. Now, I have read many things about the beautiful umask functionality. From what I understand umask (together with PAM) should allow me to do exactly what I want: set standard permissions for new files and directories. However, after many many hours of reading and trial-and-error, I still do not get this to work. I get many unexpected results. I really like to get a solid grasp of umask and have many question unanswered. I will post these questions below, together with my findings and an explanation of my trials that led to these questions. Given that many things appear to go wrong, I think that I am doing several things wrong. So therefore, there are many questions. NOTE: I am using Ubuntu 9.10 and therefore can not change the sshd_config to set the umask for the SFTP server. Installed SSH OpenSSH_5.1p1 Debian-6ubuntu2 < required OpenSSH 5.4p1. So here go the questions. 1. DO I NEED TO RESTART FOR PAM CHANGS TO TAKE EFFECT? Let's start with this. There were so many files involved and I was unable to figure out what does and what does not affect things, also because I did not know whether or not I have to restart the whole system for PAM changes to take effect. I did do so after not seeing the expected results, but is this really necessary? Or can I just log out from the server and log back in, and should new PAM policies be effective? Or is there some 'PAM' program to reload? 2. IS THERE ONE SINGLE FILE TO CHANGE THAT AFFECTS ALL USERS FOR ALL SESSIONS? So I ended up changing MANY files, as I read MANY different things. I ended up setting the umask in the following files: ~/.profile -> umask=0002 ~/.bashrc -> umask=0002 /etc/profile -> umask=0002 /etc/pam.d/common-session -> umask=0002 /etc/pam.d/sshd -> umask=0002 /etc/pam.d/login -> umask=0002 I want this change to apply to all users, so some sort of system-wide change would be best. Can it be achieved? 3. AFTER ALL, THIS UMASK THING, DOES IT WORK? So after changing umask to 0002 at every possible place, I run tests. ------------SCP----------- TEST 1: scp testfile (which has 777 permissions for testing purposes) server:/home/ testfile 100% 4 0.0KB/s 00:00 Let's check permissions: user@server:/home$ ls -l total 4 -rwx--x--x 1 user uploaders 4 2011-02-05 17:59 testfile (711) ---------SSH------------ TEST 2: ssh server user@server:/home$ touch anotherfile user@server:/home$ ls -l total 4 -rw-rw-r-- 1 user uploaders 0 2011-02-05 18:03 anotherfile (664) --------SFTP----------- Nautilus: sftp://server/home/ Copy and paste newfile from client to server (777 on client) TEST 3: user@server:/home$ ls -l total 4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 user uploaders 3 2011-02-05 18:05 newfile (777) Create a new file through Nautilus. Check file permissions in terminal: TEST 4: user@server:/home$ ls -l total 4 -rw------- 1 user uploaders 0 2011-02-05 18:06 newfile (600) I mean... WHAT just happened here?! We should get 644 every single time. Instead I get 711, 777, 600, and then once 644. And the 644 is only achieved when creating a new, blank file through SSH, which is the least probable scenario. So I am asking, does umask/pam work after all? 4. SO WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO UMASK SSHFS? Sometimes we mount a server locally, using sshfs. Very useful. But again, we have permissions issues. Here is how we mount: sshfs -o idmap=user -o umask=0113 user@server:/home/ /mnt NOTE: we use umask = 113 because apparently, sshfs starts from 777 instead of 666, so with 113 we get 664 which is the desired file permission. But what now happens is that we see all files and directories as if they are 664. We browse in Nautilus to /mnt and: Right click - New File (newfile) --- TEST 5 Right click - New Folder (newfolder) --- TEST 6 Copy and paste a 777 file from our local client --- TEST 7 So let's check on the command line: user@client:/mnt$ ls -l total 8 -rw-rw-r-- 1 user 1007 3 Feb 5 18:05 copyfile (664) -rw-rw-r-- 1 user 1007 0 Feb 5 18:15 newfile (664) drw-rw-r-- 1 user 1007 4096 Feb 5 18:15 newfolder (664) But hey, let's check this same folder on the server-side: user@server:/home$ ls -l total 8 -rwxrwxrwx 1 user uploaders 3 2011-02-05 18:05 copyfile (777) -rw------- 1 user uploaders 0 2011-02-05 18:15 newfile (600) drwx--x--x 2 user uploaders 4096 2011-02-05 18:15 newfolder (711) What?! The REAL file permissions are very different from what we see in Nautilus. So does this umask on sshfs just create a 'filter' that shows unreal file permissions? And I tried to open a file from another user but the same group that had real 600 permissions but 644 'fake' permissions, and I could still not read this, so what good is this filter?? 5. UMASK IS ALL ABOUT FILES. BUT WHAT ABOUT DIRECTORIES? From my tests I can see that the umask that is being applied also somehow influences the directory permissions. However, I want my files to be 664 (002) and my directories to be 771 (006). So is it possible to have a different umask for directories? 6. PERHAPS UMASK/PAM IS REALLY COOL, BUT UBUNTU IS JUST BUGGY? On the one hand, I have read topics of people that have had success with PAM/UMASK and Ubuntu. On the other hand, I have found many older and newer bugs regarding umask/PAM/fuse on Ubuntu: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gdm/+bug/241198 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fuse/+bug/239792 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pam/+bug/253096 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sudo/+bug/549172 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=314796 So I do not know what to believe anymore. Should I just give up? Would ACL solve all my problems? Or do I have again problems using Ubuntu? One word of caution with backups using tar. Red Hat /Centos distributions support acls in the tar program but Ubuntu does not support acls when backing up. This means that all acls will be lost when you create a backup. I am very willing to upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04 if that would solve my problems too, but first I want to understand what is happening.

  Read the article

• Why are my hard drives failing?

  - by WishCow

  I have a small Ubuntu server running at home, with 2 HDDs. There are two software raids (raid1) on the disks, managed by mdadm, which I believe is irrelevant, but mentioning it anyway. Both of the HDDs are Western Digital, and have been used for around 2 years, when one of them started making clicking noises, and died. I figured that maybe it's natural after 2 years, so I bought a new one, and resynced the raid arrays. After about a month, the other drive also died. I didn't get suspicious, since both drives have been bought at the same time, it's not that surprising to see both of them near each other, so I bought another one. So far, 2 old drives failed, and 2 brand new in the system. After one month, one of the new drives died. This is when it started getting suspicious. Since the PC was put together from some really old parts (think AthlonXP), I figured that maybe the motherboard's SATA controller is the culprit. Of course you can't switch parts easily in an old PC like this, so I bought a whole system, new MB, new CPU, new RAM. Took the just failed drive back, since it was under warranty, and got it replaced. So it is up to 2 failed drives from the old ones, and 1 failed drive from the new ones. No problems, for 1 month. After that errors were creeping up again in /var/log/messages, and mdadm was reporting raid array failures. I started tearing my hair out. Everything is new in the system, it's up to the third brand new HDD, it's simply not possible that all of the new drives that I bought were faulty. Let's see what is still common... the cables. Okay, long shot, let's replace the SATA cables. Take HDD back, smile to the guy at the counter and say that I'm really unlucky. He replaces the HDD. I come home, one month passes and one of HDDs fails, again. I'm not joking. Two of the brand new HDDs have failed. Maybe it's a bug in the OS. Let's see what the manufacturer's testing tool says. Download testing tool, burn it to a CD, reboot, leave HDD testing overnight. Test says that the drive is faulty, and I should back up everything, if I still can. I don't know what's happening, but it does not look like a software problem, something is definitely thrashing the HDDs. I should mention now, that the whole system is in a shoebox. Since there are a load of "build your own ikea case" stuff, I thought there shouldn't be any problems throwing the thing in a box, and stuffing it away somewhere. The box is well ventilated, but I thought that just maybe the drives were overheating. There is no other possible answer to this. So I took the HDD back, and got it replaced (for the 3rd time), and bought HDD coolers. And just now, I have heard the sound of doom. click click whizzzzzzzzz. SSH into the box: You have new mail! mail r 1 DegradedArrayEvent on /dev/md0 ... dmesg output: [47128.000051] ata3: lost interrupt (Status 0x50) [47128.000097] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 58588863 [47128.000134] md: super_written gets error=-5, uptodate=0 [48043.976054] ata3: lost interrupt (Status 0x50) [48043.976086] ata3.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen [48043.976132] ata3.00: cmd c8/00:18:bf:40:52/00:00:00:00:00/e1 tag 0 dma 12288 in [48043.976135] res 40/00:00:00:4f:c2/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout) [48043.976208] ata3.00: status: { DRDY } [48043.976241] ata3: soft resetting link [48044.148446] ata3.00: configured for UDMA/133 [48044.148457] ata3.00: device reported invalid CHS sector 0 [48044.148477] ata3: EH complete Recap: No possibility of overheating 6 drives have failed, 4 of those have been brand new. I'm not sure now that the original two have been faulty, or suffered the same thing that the new ones. There is nothing common in the system, apart from the OS which is Ubuntu Karmic now (started with Jaunty). New MB, new CPU, new RAM, new SATA cables. No, the little holes on the HDD are not covered I'm crying. Really. I don't have the face to return to the store now, it's not possible for 4 drives to fail under 4 months. A few ideas that I have been thinking: Is it possible that I fuck up something when I partition and resync the drives? Can it be so bad that it physicaly wrecks the drive? (since the vendor supplied tool says that the drive is damaged) I do the partitoning with fdisk, and use the same block size for the raid1 partitions (I check the exact block sizes with fdisk -lu) Is it possible that the linux kernel or mdadm, or something is not compatible with this exact brand of HDDs, and thrashes them? Is it possible that it may be the shoebox? Try placing it somewhere else? It's under a shelf now, so humidity is not a problem either. Is it possible that a normal PC case will solve my problem (I'm going to shoot myself then)? I will get a picture tomorrow. Am I just simply cursed? Any help or speculation is greatly appreciated. Edit: The power strip is guarded against overvoltage. Edit2: I have moved inbetween these 4 months, so the possibility of the cause being "dirty" electricity in both places, is very low. Edit3: I have checked the voltages in the BIOS (couldn't borrow a multimeter), and they are all seem correct, the biggest discrepancy is in the 12V, because it's supplying 11.3. Should I be worried about that? Edit4: I put my desktop PC's PSU into the server. The BIOS reported much more accurate voltage readings, and also it has successfully rebuilt the raid1 array, which took some 3-4 hours, so I feel a little positive now. Will get a new PSU tomorrow to test with that. Also, attaching the picture about the box: (disregard the 3rd drive)

  Read the article

• Oracle Insurance Unveils Next Generation of Enterprise Document Automation: Oracle Documaker Enterprise Edition

  - by helen.pitts(at)oracle.com

  Oracle today announced the introduction of Oracle Documaker Enterprise Edition, the next generation of the company's market-leading Enterprise Document Automation (EDA) solution for dynamically creating, managing and delivering adaptive enterprise communications across multiple channels. "Insurers and other organizations need enterprise document automation that puts the power to manage the complete document lifecycle in the hands of the business user," said Srini Venkatasanthanam, vice president, Product Strategy, Oracle Insurancein the press release. "Built with features such as rules-based configurability and interactive processing, Oracle Documaker Enterprise Edition makes possible an adaptive approach to enterprise document automation - documents when, where and in the form they're needed." Key enhancements in Oracle Documaker Enterprise Edition include: Documaker Interactive, the newly renamed and redesigned Web-based iDocumaker module. Documaker Interactive enables users to quickly and interactively create and assemble compliant communications such as policy and claims correspondence directly from their desktops. Users benefits from built-in accelerators and rules-based configurability, pre-configured content as well as embedded workflow leveraging Oracle BPEL Process Manager. Documaker Documaker Factory, which helps enterprises reduce cost and improve operational efficiency through better management of their enterprise publishing operations. Dashboards, analytics, reporting and an administrative console provide insurers with greater insight and centralized control over document production allowing them to better adapt their resources based on business demands. Other enhancements include: enhanced business user empowerment; additional multi-language localization capabilities; and benefits from the use of powerful Oracle technologies such as the Oracle Application Development Framework for all interfaces and Oracle Universal Content Management (Oracle UCM) for enterprise content management. Drive Competitive Advantage and Growth: Deb Smallwood, founder of SMA Strategy Meets Action, a leading industry insurance analyst consulting firm and co-author of 3CM in Insurance: Customer Communications and Content Management published last month, noted in the press release that "maximum value can be gained from investments when Enterprise Document Automation (EDA) is viewed holistically and all forms of communication and all types of information are integrated across the entire enterprise. "Insurers that choose an approach that takes all communications, both structured and unstructured data, coming into the company from a wide range of channels, and then create seamless flows of information will have a real competitive advantage," Smallwood said. "This capability will soon become essential for selling, servicing, and ultimately driving growth through new business and retention." Learn More: Click here to watch a short flash demo that demonstrates the real business value offered by Oracle Documaker Enterprise Edition. You can also see how an insurance company can use Oracle Documaker Enterprise Edition to dynamically create, manage and publish adaptive enterprise content throughout the insurance business lifecycle for delivery across multiple channels by visiting Alamere Insurance, a fictional model insurance company created by Oracle to showcase how Oracle applications can be leveraged within the insurance enterprise. Meet Our Newest Oracle Insurance Blogger: I'm pleased to introduce our newest Oracle Insurance blogger, Susanne Hale. Susanne, who manages product marketing for Oracle Insurance EDA solutions, will be sharing insights about this topic along with examples of how our customers are transforming their enterprise communications using Oracle Documaker Enterprise Edition in future Oracle Insurance blog entries. Helen Pitts is senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance.

  Read the article

• Integrating HTML into Silverlight Applications

  - by dwahlin

  Looking for a way to display HTML content within a Silverlight application? If you haven’t tried doing that before it can be challenging at first until you know a few tricks of the trade.  Being able to display HTML is especially handy when you’re required to display RSS feeds (with embedded HTML), SQL Server Reporting Services reports, PDF files (not actually HTML – but the techniques discussed will work), or other HTML content.  In this post I'll discuss three options for displaying HTML content in Silverlight applications and describe how my company is using these techniques in client applications. Displaying HTML Overlays If you need to display HTML over a Silverlight application (such as an RSS feed containing HTML data in it) you’ll need to set the Silverlight control’s windowless parameter to true. This can be done using the object tag as shown next: <object data="data:application/x-silverlight-2," type="application/x-silverlight-2" width="100%" height="100%"> <param name="source" value="ClientBin/HTMLAndSilverlight.xap"/> <param name="onError" value="onSilverlightError" /> <param name="background" value="white" /> <param name="minRuntimeVersion" value="4.0.50401.0" /> <param name="autoUpgrade" value="true" /> <param name="windowless" value="true" /> <a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=149156&v=4.0.50401.0" style="text-decoration:none"> <img src="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=161376" alt="Get Microsoft Silverlight" style="border-style:none"/> </a> </object> By setting the control to “windowless” you can overlay HTML objects by using absolute positioning and other CSS techniques. Keep in mind that on Windows machines the windowless setting can result in a performance hit when complex animations or HD video are running since the plug-in content is displayed directly by the browser window. It goes without saying that you should only set windowless to true when you really need the functionality it offers. For example, if I want to display my blog’s RSS content on top of a Silverlight application I could set windowless to true and create a user control that grabbed the content and output it using a DataList control: <style type="text/css"> a {text-decoration:none;font-weight:bold;font-size:14pt;} </style> <div style="margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px;margin-right:5px;"> <asp:DataList ID="RSSDataList" runat="server" DataSourceID="RSSDataSource"> <ItemTemplate> <a href='<%# XPath("link") %>'><%# XPath("title") %></a> <br /> <%# XPath("description") %> <br /> </ItemTemplate> </asp:DataList> <asp:XmlDataSource ID="RSSDataSource" DataFile="http://weblogs.asp.net/dwahlin/rss.aspx" XPath="rss/channel/item" CacheDuration="60" runat="server" /> </div> The user control can then be placed in the page hosting the Silverlight control as shown below. This example adds a Close button, additional content to display in the overlay window and the HTML generated from the user control. <div id="RSSDiv"> <div style="background-color:#484848;border:1px solid black;height:35px;width:100%;"> <img alt="Close Button" align="right" src="Images/Close.png" onclick="HideOverlay();" style="cursor:pointer;" /> </div> <div style="overflow:auto;width:800px;height:565px;"> <div style="float:left;width:100px;height:103px;margin-left:10px;margin-top:5px;"> <img src="http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/dwahlin/dan2008.jpg" style="border:1px solid Gray" /> </div> <div style="float:left;width:300px;height:103px;margin-top:5px;"> <a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/dwahlin" style="margin-left:10px;font-size:20pt;">Dan Wahlin's Blog</a> </div> <br /><br /><br /> <div style="clear:both;margin-top:20px;"> <uc:BlogRoller ID="BlogRoller" runat="server" /> </div> </div> </div> Of course, we wouldn’t want the RSS HTML content to be shown until requested. Once it’s requested the absolute position of where it should show above the Silverlight control can be set using standard CSS styles. The following ID selector named #RSSDiv handles hiding the overlay div shown above and determines where it will be display on the screen. #RSSDiv { background-color:White; position:absolute; top:100px; left:300px; width:800px; height:600px; border:1px solid black; display:none; } Now that the HTML content to display above the Silverlight control is set, how can we show it as a user clicks a HyperlinkButton or other control in the application? Fortunately, Silverlight provides an excellent HTML bridge that allows direct access to content hosted within a page. The following code shows two JavaScript functions that can be called from Siverlight to handle showing or hiding HTML overlay content. The two functions rely on jQuery (http://www.jQuery.com) to make it easy to select HTML objects and manipulate their properties: function ShowOverlay() { rssDiv.css('display', 'block'); } function HideOverlay() { rssDiv.css('display', 'none'); } Calling the ShowOverlay function is as simple as adding the following code into the Silverlight application within a button’s Click event handler: private void OverlayHyperlinkButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { HtmlPage.Window.Invoke("ShowOverlay"); } The result of setting the Silverlight control’s windowless parameter to true and showing the HTML overlay content is shown in the following screenshot:   Thinking Outside the Box to Show HTML Content Setting the windowless parameter to true may not be a viable option for some Silverlight applications or you may simply want to go about showing HTML content a different way. The next technique I’ll show takes advantage of simple HTML, CSS and JavaScript code to handle showing HTML content while a Silverlight application is running in the browser. Keep in mind that with Silverlight’s HTML bridge feature you can always pop-up HTML content in a new browser window using code similar to the following: System.Windows.Browser.HtmlPage.Window.Navigate( new Uri("http://silverlight.net"), "_blank"); For this example I’ll demonstrate how to hide the Silverlight application while maximizing a container div containing the HTML content to show. This allows HTML content to take up the full screen area of the browser without having to set windowless to true and when done right can make the user feel like they never left the Silverlight application. The following HTML shows several div elements that are used to display HTML within the same browser window as the Silverlight application: <div id="JobPlanDiv"> <div style="vertical-align:middle"> <img alt="Close Button" align="right" src="Images/Close.png" onclick="HideJobPlanIFrame();" style="cursor:pointer;" /> </div> <div id="JobPlan_IFrame_Container" style="height:95%;width:100%;margin-top:37px;"></div> </div> The JobPlanDiv element acts as a container for two other divs that handle showing a close button and hosting an iframe that will be added dynamically at runtime. JobPlanDiv isn’t visible when the Silverlight application loads due to the following ID selector added into the page: #JobPlanDiv { position:absolute; background-color:#484848; overflow:hidden; left:0; top:0; height:100%; width:100%; display:none; } When the HTML content needs to be shown or hidden the JavaScript functions shown next can be used: var jobPlanIFrameID = 'JobPlan_IFrame'; var slHost = null; var jobPlanContainer = null; var jobPlanIFrameContainer = null; var rssDiv = null; $(document).ready(function () { slHost = $('#silverlightControlHost'); jobPlanContainer = $('#JobPlanDiv'); jobPlanIFrameContainer = $('#JobPlan_IFrame_Container'); rssDiv = $('#RSSDiv'); }); function ShowJobPlanIFrame(url) { jobPlanContainer.css('display', 'block'); $('<iframe id="' + jobPlanIFrameID + '" src="' + url + '" style="height:100%;width:100%;" />') .appendTo(jobPlanIFrameContainer); slHost.css('width', '0%'); } function HideJobPlanIFrame() { jobPlanContainer.css('display', 'none'); $('#' + jobPlanIFrameID).remove(); slHost.css('width', '100%'); } ShowJobPlanIFrame() handles showing the JobPlanDiv div and adding an iframe into it dynamically. Once JobPlanDiv is shown, the Silverlight control host has its width set to a value of 0% to allow the control to stay alive while making it invisible to the user. I found that this technique works better across multiple browsers as opposed to manipulating the Silverlight control host div’s display or visibility properties. Now that you’ve seen the code to handle showing and hiding the HTML content area, let’s switch focus to the Silverlight application. As a user clicks on a link such as “View Report” the ShowJobPlanIFrame() JavaScript function needs to be called. The following code handles that task: private void ReportHyperlinkButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { ShowBrowser(_BaseUrl + "/Report.aspx"); } public void ShowBrowser(string url) { HtmlPage.Window.Invoke("ShowJobPlanIFrame", url); } Any URL can be passed into the ShowBrowser() method which handles invoking the JavaScript function. This includes standard web pages or even PDF files. We’ve used this technique frequently with our SmartPrint control (http://www.smartwebcontrols.com) which converts Silverlight screens into PDF documents and displays them. Here’s an example of the content generated:   Silverlight 4’s WebBrowser Control Both techniques shown to this point work well when Silverlight is running in-browser but not so well when it’s running out-of-browser since there’s no host page that you can access using the HTML bridge. Fortunately, Silverlight 4 provides a WebBrowser control that can be used to perform the same functionality quite easily. We’re currently using it in client applications to display PDF documents, SSRS reports and standard HTML content. Using the WebBrowser control simplifies the application quite a bit since no JavaScript is required if the application only runs out-of-browser. Here’s a simple example of defining the WebBrowser control in XAML. I typically define it in MainPage.xaml when a Silverlight Navigation template is used to create the project so that I can re-use the functionality across multiple screens. <Grid x:Name="WebBrowserGrid" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" Visibility="Collapsed"> <StackPanel HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch"> <Border Background="#484848" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" Height="40"> <Image x:Name="WebBrowserImage" Width="100" Height="33" Cursor="Hand" HorizontalAlignment="Right" Source="/HTMLAndSilverlight;component/Assets/Images/Close.png" MouseLeftButtonDown="WebBrowserImage_MouseLeftButtonDown" /> </Border> <WebBrowser x:Name="JobPlanReportWebBrowser" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" /> </StackPanel> </Grid> Looking through the XAML you can see that a close image is defined along with the WebBrowser control. Because the URL that the WebBrowser should navigate to isn’t known at design time no value is assigned to the control’s Source property. If the XAML shown above is left “as is” you’ll find that any HTML content assigned to the WebBrowser doesn’t display properly. This is due to no height or width being set on the control. To handle this issue the following code is added into the XAML’s code-behind file to dynamically determine the height and width of the page and assign it to the WebBrowser. This is done by handling the SizeChanged event. void MainPage_SizeChanged(object sender, SizeChangedEventArgs e) { WebBrowserGrid.Height = JobPlanReportWebBrowser.Height = ActualHeight; WebBrowserGrid.Width = JobPlanReportWebBrowser.Width = ActualWidth; } When the user wants to view HTML content they click a button which executes the code shown in next: public void ShowBrowser(string url) { if (Application.Current.IsRunningOutOfBrowser) { JobPlanReportWebBrowser.NavigateToString("<html><body><iframe src='" + url + "' style='width:100%;height:97%;' /></body></html>"); WebBrowserGrid.Visibility = Visibility.Visible; } else { HtmlPage.Window.Invoke("ShowJobPlanIFrame", url); } } private void WebBrowserImage_MouseLeftButtonDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e) { WebBrowserGrid.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed; }   Looking through the code you’ll see that it checks to see if the Silverlight application is running out-of-browser and then either displays the WebBrowser control or runs the JavaScript function discussed earlier. Although the WebBrowser control’s Source property could be assigned the URI of the page to navigate to, by assigning HTML content using the NavigateToString() method and adding an iframe, content can be shown from any site including cross-domain sites. This is especially handy when you need to grab a page from a reporting site that’s in a different domain than the Silverlight application. Here’s an example of viewing  PDF file inside of an out-of-browser application. The first image shows the application running out-of-browser before the user clicks a PDF HyperlinkButton.  The second image shows the PDF being displayed.   While there are certainly other techniques that can be used, the ones shown here have worked well for us in different applications and provide the ability to display HTML content in-browser or out-of-browser. Feel free to add a comment if you have another tip or trick you like to use when working with HTML content in Silverlight applications.   Download Code Sample   For more information about onsite, online and video training, mentoring and consulting solutions for .NET, SharePoint or Silverlight please visit http://www.thewahlingroup.com.

  Read the article

• SimpleMembership, Membership Providers, Universal Providers and the new ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC 4 templates

  - by Jon Galloway

  The ASP.NET MVC 4 Internet template adds some new, very useful features which are built on top of SimpleMembership. These changes add some great features, like a much simpler and extensible membership API and support for OAuth. However, the new account management features require SimpleMembership and won't work against existing ASP.NET Membership Providers. I'll start with a summary of top things you need to know, then dig into a lot more detail. Summary: SimpleMembership has been designed as a replacement for traditional the previous ASP.NET Role and Membership provider system SimpleMembership solves common problems people ran into with the Membership provider system and was designed for modern user / membership / storage needs SimpleMembership integrates with the previous membership system, but you can't use a MembershipProvider with SimpleMembership The new ASP.NET MVC 4 Internet application template AccountController requires SimpleMembership and is not compatible with previous MembershipProviders You can continue to use existing ASP.NET Role and Membership providers in ASP.NET 4.5 and ASP.NET MVC 4 - just not with the ASP.NET MVC 4 AccountController The existing ASP.NET Role and Membership provider system remains supported as is part of the ASP.NET core ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms does not use SimpleMembership; it implements OAuth on top of ASP.NET Membership The ASP.NET Web Site Administration Tool (WSAT) is not compatible with SimpleMembership The following is the result of a few conversations with Erik Porter (PM for ASP.NET MVC) to make sure I had some the overall details straight, combined with a lot of time digging around in ILSpy and Visual Studio's assembly browsing tools. SimpleMembership: The future of membership for ASP.NET The ASP.NET Membership system was introduces with ASP.NET 2.0 back in 2005. It was designed to solve common site membership requirements at the time, which generally involved username / password based registration and profile storage in SQL Server. It was designed with a few extensibility mechanisms - notably a provider system (which allowed you override some specifics like backing storage) and the ability to store additional profile information (although the additional  profile information was packed into a single column which usually required access through the API). While it's sometimes frustrating to work with, it's held up for seven years - probably since it handles the main use case (username / password based membership in a SQL Server database) smoothly and can be adapted to most other needs (again, often frustrating, but it can work). The ASP.NET Web Pages and WebMatrix efforts allowed the team an opportunity to take a new look at a lot of things - e.g. the Razor syntax started with ASP.NET Web Pages, not ASP.NET MVC. The ASP.NET Web Pages team designed SimpleMembership to (wait for it) simplify the task of dealing with membership. As Matthew Osborn said in his post Using SimpleMembership With ASP.NET WebPages: With the introduction of ASP.NET WebPages and the WebMatrix stack our team has really be focusing on making things simpler for the developer. Based on a lot of customer feedback one of the areas that we wanted to improve was the built in security in ASP.NET. So with this release we took that time to create a new built in (and default for ASP.NET WebPages) security provider. I say provider because the new stuff is still built on the existing ASP.NET framework. So what do we call this new hotness that we have created? Well, none other than SimpleMembership. SimpleMembership is an umbrella term for both SimpleMembership and SimpleRoles. Part of simplifying membership involved fixing some common problems with ASP.NET Membership. Problems with ASP.NET Membership ASP.NET Membership was very obviously designed around a set of assumptions: Users and user information would most likely be stored in a full SQL Server database or in Active Directory User and profile information would be optimized around a set of common attributes (UserName, Password, IsApproved, CreationDate, Comment, Role membership...) and other user profile information would be accessed through a profile provider Some problems fall out of these assumptions. Requires Full SQL Server for default cases The default, and most fully featured providers ASP.NET Membership providers (SQL Membership Provider, SQL Role Provider, SQL Profile Provider) require full SQL Server. They depend on stored procedure support, and they rely on SQL Server cache dependencies, they depend on agents for clean up and maintenance. So the main SQL Server based providers don't work well on SQL Server CE, won't work out of the box on SQL Azure, etc. Note: Cory Fowler recently let me know about these Updated ASP.net scripts for use with Microsoft SQL Azure which do support membership, personalization, profile, and roles. But the fact that we need a support page with a set of separate SQL scripts underscores the underlying problem. Aha, you say! Jon's forgetting the Universal Providers, a.k.a. System.Web.Providers! Hold on a bit, we'll get to those... Custom Membership Providers have to work with a SQL-Server-centric API If you want to work with another database or other membership storage system, you need to to inherit from the provider base classes and override a bunch of methods which are tightly focused on storing a MembershipUser in a relational database. It can be done (and you can often find pretty good ones that have already been written), but it's a good amount of work and often leaves you with ugly code that has a bunch of System.NotImplementedException fun since there are a lot of methods that just don't apply. Designed around a specific view of users, roles and profiles The existing providers are focused on traditional membership - a user has a username and a password, some specific roles on the site (e.g. administrator, premium user), and may have some additional "nice to have" optional information that can be accessed via an API in your application. This doesn't fit well with some modern usage patterns: In OAuth and OpenID, the user doesn't have a password Often these kinds of scenarios map better to user claims or rights instead of monolithic user roles For many sites, profile or other non-traditional information is very important and needs to come from somewhere other than an API call that maps to a database blob What would work a lot better here is a system in which you were able to define your users, rights, and other attributes however you wanted and the membership system worked with your model - not the other way around. Requires specific schema, overflow in blob columns I've already mentioned this a few times, but it bears calling out separately - ASP.NET Membership focuses on SQL Server storage, and that storage is based on a very specific database schema. SimpleMembership as a better membership system As you might have guessed, SimpleMembership was designed to address the above problems. Works with your Schema As Matthew Osborn explains in his Using SimpleMembership With ASP.NET WebPages post, SimpleMembership is designed to integrate with your database schema: All SimpleMembership requires is that there are two columns on your users table so that we can hook up to it – an “ID” column and a “username” column. The important part here is that they can be named whatever you want. For instance username doesn't have to be an alias it could be an email column you just have to tell SimpleMembership to treat that as the “username” used to log in. Matthew's example shows using a very simple user table named Users (it could be named anything) with a UserID and Username column, then a bunch of other columns he wanted in his app. Then we point SimpleMemberhip at that table with a one-liner: WebSecurity.InitializeDatabaseFile("SecurityDemo.sdf", "Users", "UserID", "Username", true); No other tables are needed, the table can be named anything we want, and can have pretty much any schema we want as long as we've got an ID and something that we can map to a username. Broaden database support to the whole SQL Server family While SimpleMembership is not database agnostic, it works across the SQL Server family. It continues to support full SQL Server, but it also works with SQL Azure, SQL Server CE, SQL Server Express, and LocalDB. Everything's implemented as SQL calls rather than requiring stored procedures, views, agents, and change notifications. Note that SimpleMembership still requires some flavor of SQL Server - it won't work with MySQL, NoSQL databases, etc. You can take a look at the code in WebMatrix.WebData.dll using a tool like ILSpy if you'd like to see why - there places where SQL Server specific SQL statements are being executed, especially when creating and initializing tables. It seems like you might be able to work with another database if you created the tables separately, but I haven't tried it and it's not supported at this point. Note: I'm thinking it would be possible for SimpleMembership (or something compatible) to run Entity Framework so it would work with any database EF supports. That seems useful to me - thoughts? Note: SimpleMembership has the same database support - anything in the SQL Server family - that Universal Providers brings to the ASP.NET Membership system. Easy to with Entity Framework Code First The problem with with ASP.NET Membership's system for storing additional account information is that it's the gate keeper. That means you're stuck with its schema and accessing profile information through its API. SimpleMembership flips that around by allowing you to use any table as a user store. That means you're in control of the user profile information, and you can access it however you'd like - it's just data. Let's look at a practical based on the AccountModel.cs class in an ASP.NET MVC 4 Internet project. Here I'm adding a Birthday property to the UserProfile class. [Table("UserProfile")] public class UserProfile { [Key] [DatabaseGeneratedAttribute(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)] public int UserId { get; set; } public string UserName { get; set; } public DateTime Birthday { get; set; } } Now if I want to access that information, I can just grab the account by username and read the value. var context = new UsersContext(); var username = User.Identity.Name; var user = context.UserProfiles.SingleOrDefault(u => u.UserName == username); var birthday = user.Birthday; So instead of thinking of SimpleMembership as a big membership API, think of it as something that handles membership based on your user database. In SimpleMembership, everything's keyed off a user row in a table you define rather than a bunch of entries in membership tables that were out of your control. How SimpleMembership integrates with ASP.NET Membership Okay, enough sales pitch (and hopefully background) on why things have changed. How does this affect you? Let's start with a diagram to show the relationship (note: I've simplified by removing a few classes to show the important relationships): So SimpleMembershipProvider is an implementaiton of an ExtendedMembershipProvider, which inherits from MembershipProvider and adds some other account / OAuth related things. Here's what ExtendedMembershipProvider adds to MembershipProvider: The important thing to take away here is that a SimpleMembershipProvider is a MembershipProvider, but a MembershipProvider is not a SimpleMembershipProvider. This distinction is important in practice: you cannot use an existing MembershipProvider (including the Universal Providers found in System.Web.Providers) with an API that requires a SimpleMembershipProvider, including any of the calls in WebMatrix.WebData.WebSecurity or Microsoft.Web.WebPages.OAuth.OAuthWebSecurity. However, that's as far as it goes. Membership Providers still work if you're accessing them through the standard Membership API, and all of the core stuff  - including the AuthorizeAttribute, role enforcement, etc. - will work just fine and without any change. Let's look at how that affects you in terms of the new templates. Membership in the ASP.NET MVC 4 project templates ASP.NET MVC 4 offers six Project Templates: Empty - Really empty, just the assemblies, folder structure and a tiny bit of basic configuration. Basic - Like Empty, but with a bit of UI preconfigured (css / images / bundling). Internet - This has both a Home and Account controller and associated views. The Account Controller supports registration and login via either local accounts and via OAuth / OpenID providers. Intranet - Like the Internet template, but it's preconfigured for Windows Authentication. Mobile - This is preconfigured using jQuery Mobile and is intended for mobile-only sites. Web API - This is preconfigured for a service backend built on ASP.NET Web API. Out of these templates, only one (the Internet template) uses SimpleMembership. ASP.NET MVC 4 Basic template The Basic template has configuration in place to use ASP.NET Membership with the Universal Providers. You can see that configuration in the ASP.NET MVC 4 Basic template's web.config: <profile defaultProvider="DefaultProfileProvider"> <providers> <add name="DefaultProfileProvider" type="System.Web.Providers.DefaultProfileProvider, System.Web.Providers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" connectionStringName="DefaultConnection" applicationName="/" /> </providers> </profile> <membership defaultProvider="DefaultMembershipProvider"> <providers> <add name="DefaultMembershipProvider" type="System.Web.Providers.DefaultMembershipProvider, System.Web.Providers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" connectionStringName="DefaultConnection" enablePasswordRetrieval="false" enablePasswordReset="true" requiresQuestionAndAnswer="false" requiresUniqueEmail="false" maxInvalidPasswordAttempts="5" minRequiredPasswordLength="6" minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="0" passwordAttemptWindow="10" applicationName="/" /> </providers> </membership> <roleManager defaultProvider="DefaultRoleProvider"> <providers> <add name="DefaultRoleProvider" type="System.Web.Providers.DefaultRoleProvider, System.Web.Providers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" connectionStringName="DefaultConnection" applicationName="/" /> </providers> </roleManager> <sessionState mode="InProc" customProvider="DefaultSessionProvider"> <providers> <add name="DefaultSessionProvider" type="System.Web.Providers.DefaultSessionStateProvider, System.Web.Providers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" connectionStringName="DefaultConnection" /> </providers> </sessionState> This means that it's business as usual for the Basic template as far as ASP.NET Membership works. ASP.NET MVC 4 Internet template The Internet template has a few things set up to bootstrap SimpleMembership: \Models\AccountModels.cs defines a basic user account and includes data annotations to define keys and such \Filters\InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute.cs creates the membership database using the above model, then calls WebSecurity.InitializeDatabaseConnection which verifies that the underlying tables are in place and marks initialization as complete (for the application's lifetime) \Controllers\AccountController.cs makes heavy use of OAuthWebSecurity (for OAuth account registration / login / management) and WebSecurity. WebSecurity provides account management services for ASP.NET MVC (and Web Pages) WebSecurity can work with any ExtendedMembershipProvider. There's one in the box (SimpleMembershipProvider) but you can write your own. Since a standard MembershipProvider is not an ExtendedMembershipProvider, WebSecurity will throw exceptions if the default membership provider is a MembershipProvider rather than an ExtendedMembershipProvider. Practical example: Create a new ASP.NET MVC 4 application using the Internet application template Install the Microsoft ASP.NET Universal Providers for LocalDB NuGet package Run the application, click on Register, add a username and password, and click submit You'll get the following execption in AccountController.cs::Register: To call this method, the "Membership.Provider" property must be an instance of "ExtendedMembershipProvider". This occurs because the ASP.NET Universal Providers packages include a web.config transform that will update your web.config to add the Universal Provider configuration I showed in the Basic template example above. When WebSecurity tries to use the configured ASP.NET Membership Provider, it checks if it can be cast to an ExtendedMembershipProvider before doing anything else. So, what do you do? Options: If you want to use the new AccountController, you'll either need to use the SimpleMembershipProvider or another valid ExtendedMembershipProvider. This is pretty straightforward. If you want to use an existing ASP.NET Membership Provider in ASP.NET MVC 4, you can't use the new AccountController. You can do a few things: Replace  the AccountController.cs and AccountModels.cs in an ASP.NET MVC 4 Internet project with one from an ASP.NET MVC 3 application (you of course won't have OAuth support). Then, if you want, you can go through and remove other things that were built around SimpleMembership - the OAuth partial view, the NuGet packages (e.g. the DotNetOpenAuthAuth package, etc.) Use an ASP.NET MVC 4 Internet application template and add in a Universal Providers NuGet package. Then copy in the AccountController and AccountModel classes. Create an ASP.NET MVC 3 project and upgrade it to ASP.NET MVC 4 using the steps shown in the ASP.NET MVC 4 release notes. None of these are particularly elegant or simple. Maybe we (or just me?) can do something to make this simpler - perhaps a NuGet package. However, this should be an edge case - hopefully the cases where you'd need to create a new ASP.NET but use legacy ASP.NET Membership Providers should be pretty rare. Please let me (or, preferably the team) know if that's an incorrect assumption. Membership in the ASP.NET 4.5 project template ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms took a different approach which builds off ASP.NET Membership. Instead of using the WebMatrix security assemblies, Web Forms uses Microsoft.AspNet.Membership.OpenAuth assembly. I'm no expert on this, but from a bit of time in ILSpy and Visual Studio's (very pretty) dependency graphs, this uses a Membership Adapter to save OAuth data into an EF managed database while still running on top of ASP.NET Membership. Note: There may be a way to use this in ASP.NET MVC 4, although it would probably take some plumbing work to hook it up. How does this fit in with Universal Providers (System.Web.Providers)? Just to summarize: Universal Providers are intended for cases where you have an existing ASP.NET Membership Provider and you want to use it with another SQL Server database backend (other than SQL Server). It doesn't require agents to handle expired session cleanup and other background tasks, it piggybacks these tasks on other calls. Universal Providers are not really, strictly speaking, universal - at least to my way of thinking. They only work with databases in the SQL Server family. Universal Providers do not work with Simple Membership. The Universal Providers packages include some web config transforms which you would normally want when you're using them. What about the Web Site Administration Tool? Visual Studio includes tooling to launch the Web Site Administration Tool (WSAT) to configure users and roles in your application. WSAT is built to work with ASP.NET Membership, and is not compatible with Simple Membership. There are two main options there: Use the WebSecurity and OAuthWebSecurity API to manage the users and roles Create a web admin using the above APIs Since SimpleMembership runs on top of your database, you can update your users as you would any other data - via EF or even in direct database edits (in development, of course)

  Read the article

• Tools and Utilities for the .NET Developer

  - by mbcrump

  Tweet this list! Add a link to my site to your bookmarks to quickly find this page again! Add me to twitter! This is a list of the tools/utilities that I use to do my job/hobby. I wanted this page to load fast and contain information that only you care about. If I have missed a tool that you like, feel free to contact me and I will add it to the list. Also, this list took a lot of time to complete. Please do not steal my work, if you like the page then please link back to my site. I will keep the links/information updated as new tools/utilities are created.  Windows/.NET Development – This is a list of tools that any Windows/.NET developer should have in his bag. I have used at some point in my career everything listed on this page and below is the tools worth keeping. Name Description License AnkhSVN Subversion support for Visual Studio. It also works with VS2010. Free Aurora XAML Designer One of the best XAML creation tools available. Has a ton of built in templates that you can copy/paste into VS2010. COST/Trial BeyondCompare Beyond Compare 3 is the ideal tool for comparing files and folders on your Windows or Linux system. Visualize changes in your code and carefully reconcile them. COST/Trial BuildIT Automated Task Tool Its main purpose is to automate tasks, whether it is the final packaging of a product, an automated daily build, maybe sending out a mailing list, even backing-up files. Free C Sharper for VB Convert VB to C#. COST CLRProfiler Analyze and improve the behavior of your .NET app. Free CodeRush Direct competitor to ReSharper, contains similar feature. This is one of those decide for yourself. COST/Trial Disk2VHD Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk - Microsoft's Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). Free Eazfuscator.NET Is a free obfuscator for .NET. The main purpose is to protect intellectual property of software. Free EQATEC Profiler Make your .NET app run faster. No source code changes are needed. Just point the profiler to your app, run the modified code, and get a visual report. COST Expression Studio 3/4 Comes with Web, Blend, Sketch Flow and more. You can create websites, produce beautiful XAML and more. COST/Trial Expresso The award-winning Expresso editor is equally suitable as a teaching tool for the beginning user of regular expressions or as a full-featured development environment for the experienced programmer or web designer with an extensive knowledge of regular expressions. Free Fiddler Fiddler is a web debugging proxy which logs all HTTP(s) traffic between your computer and the internet. Free Firebug Powerful Web development tool. If you build websites, you will need this. Free FxCop FxCop is an application that analyzes managed code assemblies (code that targets the .NET Framework common language runtime) and reports information about the assemblies, such as possible design, localization, performance, and security improvements. Free GAC Browser and Remover Easy way to remove multiple assemblies from the GAC. Assemblies registered by programs like Install Shield can also be removed. Free GAC Util The Global Assembly Cache tool allows you to view and manipulate the contents of the global assembly cache and download cache. Free HelpScribble Help Scribble is a full-featured, easy-to-use help authoring tool for creating help files from start to finish. You can create Win Help (.hlp) files, HTML Help (.chm) files, a printed manual and online documentation (on a web site) all from the same Help Scribble project. COST/Trial IETester IETester is a free Web Browser that allows you to have the rendering and JavaScript engines of IE9 preview, IE8, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Windows 7, Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process. Free iTextSharp iText# (iTextSharp) is a port of the iText open source java library for PDF generation written entirely in C# for the .NET platform. Use the iText mailing list to get support. Free Kaxaml Kaxaml is a lightweight XAML editor that gives you a "split view" so you can see both your XAML and your rendered content. Free LINQPad LinqPad lets you interactively query databases in a LINQ. Free Linquer Many programmers are familiar with SQL and will need a help in the transition to LINQ. Sometimes there are complicated queries to be written and Linqer can help by converting SQL scripts to LINQ. COST/Trial LiquidXML Liquid XML Studio 2010 is an advanced XML developers toolkit and IDE, containing all the tools needed for designing and developing XML schema and applications. COST/Trial Log4Net log4net is a tool to help the programmer output log statements to a variety of output targets. log4net is a port of the excellent log4j framework to the .NET runtime. We have kept the framework similar in spirit to the original log4j while taking advantage of new features in the .NET runtime. For more information on log4net see the features document. Free Microsoft Web Platform Installer The Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 (Web PI) is a free tool that makes getting the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform, including Internet Information Services (IIS), SQL Server Express, .NET Framework and Visual Web Developer easy. Free Mono Development Don't have Visual Studio - no problem! This is an open Source C# and .NET development environment for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X Free Net Mass Downloader While it’s great that Microsoft has released the .NET Reference Source Code, you can only get it one file at a time while you’re debugging. If you’d like to batch download it for reading or to populate the cache, you’d have to write a program that instantiated and called each method in the Framework Class Library. Fortunately, .NET Mass Downloader comes to the rescue! Free nMap Nmap ("Network Mapper") is a free and open source (license) utility for network exploration or security auditing. Many systems and network administrators also find it useful for tasks such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime. Free NoScript (Firefox add-in) The NoScript Firefox extension provides extra protection for Firefox, Flock, Seamonkey and other Mozilla-based browsers: this free, open source add-on allows JavaScript, Java and Flash and other plug-ins to be executed only by trusted web sites of your choice (e.g. your online bank), and provides the most powerful Anti-XSS protection available in a browser. Free NotePad 2 Notepad2, a fast and light-weight Notepad-like text editor with syntax highlighting. This program can be run out of the box without installation, and does not touch your system's registry. Free PageSpy PageSpy is a small add-on for Internet Explorer that allows you to select any element within a webpage, select an option in the context menu, and view detailed information about both the coding behind the page and the element you selected. Free Phrase Express PhraseExpress manages your frequently used text snippets in customizable categories for quick access. Free PowerGui PowerGui is a free community for PowerGUI, a graphical user interface and script editor for Microsoft Windows PowerShell! Free Powershell Comes with Win7, but you can automate tasks by using the .NET Framework. Great for network admins. Free Process Explorer Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded. Also, included in the SysInterals Suite. Free Process Monitor Process Monitor is an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity. Free Reflector Explore and analyze compiled .NET assemblies, viewing them in C#, Visual Basic, and IL. This is an Essential for any .NET developer. Free Regular Expression Library Stuck on a Regular Expression but you think someone has already figured it out? Chances are they have. Free Regulator Regulator makes Regular Expressions easy. This is a must have for a .NET Developer. Free RenameMaestro RenameMaestro is probably the easiest batch file renamer you'll find to instantly rename multiple files COST ReSharper The one program that I cannot live without. Supports VS2010 and offers simple refactoring, code analysis/assistance/cleanup/templates. One of the few applications that is worth the $$$. COST/Trial ScrewTurn Wiki ScrewTurn Wiki allows you to create, manage and share wikis. A wiki is a collaboratively-edited, information-centered website: the most famous is Wikipedia. Free SharpDevelop What is #develop? SharpDevelop is a free IDE for C# and VB.NET projects on Microsoft's .NET platform. Free Show Me The Template Show Me The Template is a tool for exploring the templates, be their data, control or items panel, that comes with the controls built into WPF for all 6 themes. Free SnippetCompiler Compiles code snippets without opening Visual Studio. It does not support .NET 4. Free SQL Prompt SQL Prompt is a plug-in that increases how fast you can work with SQL. It provides code-completion for SQL server, reformatting, db schema information and snippets. Awesome! COST/Trial SQLinForm SQLinForm is an automatic SQL code formatter for all major databases  including ORACLE, SQL Server, DB2, UDB, Sybase, Informix, PostgreSQL, Teradata, MySQL, MS Access etc. with over 70 formatting options. COST/OnlineFree SSMS Tools SSMS Tools Pack is an add-in for Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) including SSMS Express. Free Storm STORM is a free and open source tool for testing web services. Free Telerik Code Convertor Convert code from VB to C Sharp and Vice Versa. Free TurtoiseSVN TortoiseSVN is a really easy to use Revision control / version control / source control software for Windows.Since it's not an integration for a specific IDE you can use it with whatever development tools you like. Free UltraEdit UltraEdit is the ideal text, HTML and hex editor, and an advanced PHP, Perl, Java and JavaScript editor for programmers. UltraEdit is also an XML editor including a tree-style XML parser. An industry-award winner, UltraEdit supports disk-based 64-bit file handling (standard) on 32-bit Windows platforms (Windows 2000 and later). COST/Trial Virtual Windows XP Comes with some W7 version and allows you to run WinXP along side W7. Free VirtualBox Virtualization by Sun Microsystems. You can virtualize Windows, Linux and more. Free Visual Log Parser SQL queries against a variety of log files and other system data sources. Free WinMerge WinMerge is an Open Source differencing and merging tool for Windows. WinMerge can compare both folders and files, presenting differences in a visual text format that is easy to understand and handle. Free Wireshark Wireshark is one of the best network protocol analyzer's for Unix and windows. This has been used several times to get me out of a bind. Free XML Notepad 07 Old, but still one of my favorite XML viewers. Free Productivity Tools – This is the list of tools that I use to save time or quickly navigate around Windows. Name Description License AutoHotKey Automate almost anything by sending keystrokes and mouse clicks. You can write a mouse or keyboard macro by hand or use the macro recorder. Free CLCL CLCL is clipboard caching utility. Free Ditto Ditto is an extension to the standard windows clipboard. It saves each item placed on the clipboard allowing you access to any of those items at a later time. Ditto allows you to save any type of information that can be put on the clipboard, text, images, html, custom formats, ..... Free Evernote Remember everything from notes to photos. It will synch between computers/devices. Free InfoRapid Inforapid is a search tool that will display all you search results in a html like browser. If you click on a word in that browser, it will start another search to the word you clicked on. Handy if you want to trackback something to it's true origin. The word you looked for will be highlighted in red. Clicking on the red word will open the containing file in a text based viewer. Clicking on any word in the opened document will start another search on that word. Free KatMouse The prime purpose of the KatMouse utility is to enhance the functionality of mice with a scroll wheel, offering 'universal' scrolling: moving the mouse wheel will scroll the window directly beneath the mouse cursor (not the one with the keyboard focus, which is default on Windows OSes). This is a major increase in the usefulness of the mouse wheel. Free ScreenR Instant Screencast with nothing to download. Works with Mac or PC and free. Free Start++ Start++ is an enhancement for the Start Menu in Windows Vista. It also extends the Run box and the command-line with customizable commands.  For example, typing "w Windows Vista" will take you to the Windows Vista page on Wikipedia! Free Synergy Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It's intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s). Free Texter Texter lets you define text substitution hot strings that, when triggered, will replace hotstring with a larger piece of text. By entering your most commonly-typed snippets of text into Texter, you can save countless keystrokes in the course of the day. Free Total Commander File handling, FTP, Archive handling and much more. Even works with Win3.11. COST/Trial Available Wizmouse WizMouse is a mouse enhancement utility that makes your mouse wheel work on the window currently under the mouse pointer, instead of the currently focused window. This means you no longer have to click on a window before being able to scroll it with the mouse wheel. This is a far more comfortable and practical way to make use of the mouse wheel. Free Xmarks Bookmark sync and search between computers. Free General Utilities – This is a list for power user users or anyone that wants more out of Windows. I usually install a majority of these whenever I get a new system. Name Description License µTorrent µTorrent is a lightweight and efficient BitTorrent client for Windows or Mac with many features. I use this for downloading LEGAL media. Free Audacity Audacity® is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. Learn more about Audacity... Also check our Wiki and Forum for more information. Free AVast Free FREE Antivirus. Free CD Burner XP Pro CDBurnerXP is a free application to burn CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. It also includes the feature to burn and create ISOs, as well as a multilanguage interface. Free CDEX You can extract digital audio CDs into mp3/wav. Free Combofix Combofix is a freeware (a legitimate spyware remover created by sUBs), Combofix was designed to scan a computer for known malware, spyware (SurfSideKick, QooLogic, and Look2Me as well as any other combination of the mentioned spyware applications) and remove them. Free Cpu-Z Provides information about some of the main devices of your system. Free Cropper Cropper is a screen capture utility written in C#. It makes it fast and easy to grab parts of your screen. Use it to easily crop out sections of vector graphic files such as Fireworks without having to flatten the files or open in a new editor. Use it to easily capture parts of a web site, including text and images. It's also great for writing documentation that needs images of your application or web site. Free DropBox Drag and Drop files to sync between computers. Free DVD-Fab Converts/Copies DVDs/Blu-Ray to different formats. (like mp4, mkv, avi) COST/Trial Available FastStone Capture FastStone Capture is a powerful, lightweight, yet full-featured screen capture tool that allows you to easily capture and annotate anything on the screen including windows, objects, menus, full screen, rectangular/freehand regions and even scrolling windows/web pages. Free ffdshow FFDShow is a DirectShow decoding filter for decompressing DivX, XviD, H.264, FLV1, WMV, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, MPEG-4 movies. Free Filezilla FileZilla Client is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive graphical user interface. You can also download a server version. Free FireFox Web Browser, do you really need an explanation? Free FireGestures A customizable mouse gestures extension which enables you to execute various commands and user scripts with five types of gestures. Free FoxIt Reader Light weight PDF viewer. You should install this with the advanced setting or it will install a toolbar and setup some shortcuts. Free gSynchIt Synch Gmail and Outlook. Even supports Outlook 2010 32/64 bit COST/Trial Available Hulu Desktop At home or in a hotel, this has replaced my cable/satellite subscription. Free ImgBurn ImgBurn is a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application that everyone should have in their toolkit! Free Infrarecorder InfraRecorder is a free CD/DVD burning solution for Microsoft Windows. It offers a wide range of powerful features; all through an easy to use application interface and Windows Explorer integration. Free KeePass KeePass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. Free LastPass Another password management, synchronize between browsers, automatic form filling and more. Free Live Essentials One download and lots of programs including Mail, Live Writer, Movie Maker and more! Free Monitores MonitorES is a small windows utility that helps you to turnoff monitor display when you lock down your machine.Also when you lock your machine, it will pause all your running media programs & set your IM status message to "Away" / Custom message(via options) and restore it back to normal when you back. Free mRemote mRemote is a full-featured, multi-tab remote connections manager. Free Open Office OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose. Free Paint.NET Simple, intuitive, and innovative user interface for editing photos. Free Picasa Picasa is free photo editing software from Google that makes your pictures look great. Free Pidgin Pidgin is an easy to use and free chat client used by millions. Connect to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and more chat networks all at once. Free PING PING is a live Linux ISO, based on the excellent Linux From Scratch (LFS) documentation. It can be burnt on a CD and booted, or integrated into a PXE / RIS environment. Free Putty PuTTY is an SSH and telnet client, developed originally by Simon Tatham for the Windows platform. Free Revo Uninstaller Revo Uninstaller Pro helps you to uninstall software and remove unwanted programs installed on your computer easily! Even if you have problems uninstalling and cannot uninstall them from "Windows Add or Remove Programs" control panel applet.Revo Uninstaller is a much faster and more powerful alternative to "Windows Add or Remove Programs" applet! It has very powerful features to uninstall and remove programs. Free Security Essentials Microsoft Security Essentials is a new, free consumer anti-malware solution for your computer. Free SetupVirtualCloneDrive Virtual CloneDrive works and behaves just like a physical CD/DVD drive, however it exists only virtually. Point to the .ISO file and it appears in Windows Explorer as a Drive. Free Shark 007 Codec Pack Play just about any file format with this download. Also includes my W7 Media Playlist Generator. Free Snagit 9 Screen Capture on steroids. Add arrows, captions, etc to any screenshot. COST/Trial Available SysinternalsSuite Go ahead and download the entire sys internals suite. I have mentioned multiple programs in this suite already. Free TeraCopy TeraCopy is a compact program designed to copy and move files at the maximum possible speed, providing the user with a lot of features. Free for Home TrueCrypt Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows 7/Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux Free TweetDeck Fully featured Twitter client. Free UltraVNC UltraVNC is a powerful, easy to use and free software that can display the screen of another computer (via internet or network) on your own screen. The program allows you to use your mouse and keyboard to control the other PC remotely. It means that you can work on a remote computer, as if you were sitting in front of it, right from your current location. Free Unlocker Unlocks locked files. Pretty simple right? Free VLC Media Player VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player and multimedia framework capable of reading most audio and video formats Free Windows 7 Media Playlist This program is special to my heart because I wrote it. It has been mentioned on podcast and various websites. It allows you to quickly create wvx video playlist for Windows Media Center. Free WinRAR WinRAR is a powerful archive manager. It can backup your data and reduce the size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format. COST/Trial Available Blogging – I use the following for my blog. Name Description License Insert Code for Windows Live Writer Insert Code for Windows Live Writer will format a snippet of text in a number of programming languages such as C#, HTML, MSH, JavaScript, Visual Basic and TSQL. Free LiveWriter Included in Live Essentials, but the ultimate in Windows Blogging Free PasteAsVSCode Plug-in for Windows Live Writer that pastes clipboard content as Visual Studio code. Preserves syntax highlighting, indentation and background color. Converts RTF, outputted by Visual Studio, into HTML. Free Desktop Management – The list below represent the best in Windows Desktop Management. Name Description License 7 Stacks Allows users to have "stacks" of icons in their taskbar. Free Executor Executor is a multi purpose launcher and a more advanced and customizable version of windows run. Free Fences Fences is a program that helps you organize your desktop and can hide your icons when they are not in use. Free RocketDock Rocket Dock is a smoothly animated, alpha blended application launcher. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization. With each item completely customizable there is no end to what you can add and launch from the dock. Free WindowsTab Tabbing is an essential feature of modern web browsers. Window Tabs brings the productivity of tabbed window management to all of your desktop applications. Free

  Read the article

• Xubuntu 13.10 64bit - Slow and buggy "log out" process?

  - by MrKatSwordfish

  I'm a Windows convert who has done only a little bit of dabbling in Ubuntu in the past (back in Dapper Drake a few years back). A lot has changes since then, and I've been yearning to jump back into linux again! So, having just bought a new SSD, I felt that this would be as good of a time as any to set up a dual-boot system again. I've messed around with Ubuntu 13.10 a bit, and while Unity has its issues, I think that it still needs some time to develop. I looked into XFCE and liked it a lot, so I went with Xubuntu. I've installed Xubuntu, and for the most part it's running smoothly and it a pleasure to work with. The customization is great and the minimalistic look and feel is really nice! But here's my problem, whenever I select the "Log Out" option from either the application menu, or the user profiles menu, my PC comes to a crawl, and the dialog box with all the options (shut down, restart, log out, etc.) takes maybe a minute or more to appear. I click the log out button, my PC is brought to a snail's pace, and I have to wait for what seems like an eternity for the logout options to appear! If i try to open something else (even a terminal window) while it's loading the logout options, that other program won't finish loading until the logout screen finally appears. Keep in mind, this is a pretty much vanilla install of Xubuntu 13.10 64bit, on a PC with an intel i7, an SSD, 6gb DDR3 RAM, and a new AMD 7770 gpu (drivers haven't been installed yet, though). Everything else runs fast, most applications open near-instantly! It must be an issue with how the logout options screen initializes or something, but I'm not sure exactly how I can fix it.. Edit - Extra Info: This problem is very consistent when using the "Log Out" buttons in Xubuntu. However, I've found that I'm able to reboot and shutdown much more quickly by going through the "Switch User" screen, and using the reboot or shutdown buttons on that screen. I'm nearly certain that it has something to do with the little Log Out options screen that appears when I select Log Out from the menu, and not the actual process of shutting down.. So what should I do? I really like XFCE so far, and I've never tried a non-ubuntu based distro before, but should I just switch to something else? Is there any known fix for this issue? Are there any work-arounds for logging out/shutting down/rebooting via the terminal so that I can avoid this irritating bug? Is there any that I can monitor the progress of the log out via terminal, allowing me to see which parts are causing the slow-down? What is the best way to report this bug to someone?

  Read the article

• Uninstalling Reporting Server 2008 on Windows Server 2008

  - by Piotr Rodak

  Ha. I had quite disputable pleasure of installing and reinstalling and reinstalling and reinstalling – I think about 5 times before it worked – Reporting Server 2008 on Windows Server with the same year number in name. During my struggle I came across an error which seems to be not quite unfamiliar to some more unfortunate developers and admins who happen to uninstall SSRS 2008 from the server. I had the SSRS 2008 installed as named instance, SQL2008. I wanted to uninstall the server and install it to default instance. And this is when it bit me – not the first time and not the last that day . The setup complained that it couldn’t access a DLL: Error message: TITLE: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Setup ------------------------------ The following error has occurred: Access to the path 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\perf-ReportServer$SQL2008-rsctr.dll' is denied. For help, click: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?LinkID=20476&ProdName=Microsoft+SQL+Server&EvtSrc=setup.rll&EvtID=50000&ProdVer=10.0.1600.22&EvtType=0x60797DC7%25400x84E8D3C0 ------------------------------ BUTTONS: OK This is a screenshot that shows the above error: This issue seems to have a bit of literature dedicated to it and even seemingly a KB article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956173 and a similar Connect item: http://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/363653/error-messages-when-upgrading-from-sql-2008-rc0-to-rtm The article describes issue as following: When you try to uninstall Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services from the server, you may receive the following error message: An error has occurred: Access to the path 'Drive_Letter:\WINDOWS\system32\perf-ReportServer-rsctr.dll' is denied. Note Drive_Letter refers to the disc drive into which the SQL Server installation media is inserted. In my case, the Note was not true; the error pointed to a dll that was located in Windows folder on C:\, not where the installation media were. Despite this difference I tried to identify any processes that might be keeping lock on the dll. I downloaded Sysinternals process explorer and ran it to find any processes I could stop. Unfortunately, there was no such process. I tried to rerun the installation, but it failed at the same step. Eventually I decided to remove the dll before the setup was executed. I changed name of the dll to be able to restore it in case of some issues. Interestingly, Windows let me do it, which means that indeed, it was not locked by any process. I ran the setup and this time it uninstalled the instance without any problems:   To summarize my experience I should say – be very careful, don’t leave any leftovers after uninstallation – remove/rename any folders that are left after setup has finished. For some reason, setup doesn’t remove folders and certain files. Installation on Windows Server 2008 requires more attention than on Windows 2003 because of the changed security model, some actions can be executed only by administrator in elevated execution mode. In general, you have to get used to UAC and a bit different experience than with Windows Server 2003. Technorati Tags: SQL Server 2008,Windows Server 2008,SRS,Reporting Services

  Read the article

• Friday Fun: Favorite Games to Play in Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  Online games can provide a perfect break while you are working and being able to choose from a multitude of games makes it even better. If you are a game addict then you will definitely want to have a look at the Game Button extension for Chrome. Game Button in Action Once the extension has finished installing you are ready to enjoy all that gaming goodness. To get started just click on the “Toolbar Button” and choose a game category. For our example we chose “Shooting Games”. Once you select a game category a new window will open. Towards the lower right corner you will be able to access a scrollable drop-down menu and choose the game that you would like to play. Note: Some of these games come with sounds that can not be turned off so you may want to have the volume lowered all the way or your speakers temporarily turned off if you are at work. For our first game we chose “Snowball Throw”. Notice that there is a nice variety such as “DinoKids – Archery” to games like “Secret Agent”. You can see that our game was nicely sized…not too small and not too large. Go go snowballs! This is definitely a fun one to try…the best approach for this one is to use one hand for clicking the mouse and the other hand for moving it at the same time. If desired you can post your score and see other high scores afterwards. For our second game we decided to try “Target Shooter Firing Range”. This one is definitely a little harder because you have to be extremely precise while moving as quickly as possible. Not too bad for the score but that is ok. You will certainly be able to have fun finding the games that will become your favorites while enjoying the nice variety. Conclusion If you love online games and want a good variety to choose from then the Game Button extension will make a nice addition to your browser. Links Download the Game Button extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Play a New Random Game Each Day in ChromeFriday Fun: Get Your Mario OnFriday Fun: Go Retro with PacmanFriday Fun: Play Air Hockey in Google ChromeFriday Fun: Five More Time Wasting Online Games TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Recycle ! Find That Elusive Icon with FindIcons Looking for Good Windows Media Player 12 Plug-ins? Find Out the Celebrity You Resemble With FaceDouble Whoa ! Use Printflush to Solve Printing Problems

  Read the article

• Ask the Readers: Do You Use the Command Line?

  - by Asian Angel

  Most people have heard of it but not everyone is familiar or comfortable with how to use this bastion of geekdom. This week we would like to know if you use the command line or not. The command line…the bastion of ultimate geekery in many peoples’ eyes. You often hear people referring to doing things using the command line, so there must be something to it, right? For some people using the command line is the best, most efficient, and easiest way to do things on their systems. These are the people that many of us wish we were like. Next you have those who are proficient at using the command line but do not rely on it for everything they do on their systems. Then there are people who know how to perform some tasks or hacks using the command line but may not be as comfortable or knowledgeable as they wish to be using it. Moving on you find those who are interested in learning how to use the command line and just need a small push to get started.  Perhaps you feel too intimidated to learn it and just need the right opportunity to come along. And maybe you do not care one way or the other so long as you get done what you want to do on your system. Or you may prefer to simply use a graphical interface since that is quicker and easier for you (along with being familiar). You can find the whole range of people when it comes to using the command line… This week we would like to know if you use the command line or not. What command line category do you fit into? Power user? Casual usage? Totally lost? Let us know in the comments! How-To Geek Polls require Javascript. Please Click Here to View the Poll. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor Our Favorite Tech: What We’re Thankful For at How-To Geek The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 7: Design and Typography Fun and Colorful Firefox Theme for Windows 7 Happy Snow Bears Theme for Chrome and Iron [Holiday] Download Full Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun Game for Free Scorched Cometary Planet Wallpaper Quick Fix: Add the RSS Button Back to the Firefox Awesome Bar Dropbox Desktop Client 1.0.0 RC for Windows, Linux, and Mac Released

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 615 616 617 618 619 620 621 622 623 624 625 626  | Next Page >