Search Results

Search found 4886 results on 196 pages for 'geeks on hugs'.

Page 184/196 | < Previous Page | 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 | Next Page >

O'Reilly Deal of the day - 5/JSep/2012 - Programming Windows 8 Applications with C#

- by TATWORTH

Today's deal of the day from O'Reilly at http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920024200.do?code=DEAL is Programming Windows 8 Applications with C# ."With Early Release e-books, you get books in their earliest form — the author's raw and unedited content as he or she writes — so you can take advantage of these technologies long before the official release of these titles. You'll also receive updates when significant changes are made, new chapters as they're written, and the final e-book bundle. If you want to build Windows 8 applications for desktops and the forthcoming Microsoft Surface tablet PC, this book will show you how to work with the Metro design language and the Windows RT operating system. You’ll learn this new landscape step-by-step, including the minute system details and design specifications necessary to innovate and build a variety of Windows 8 apps. It’s ideal for .NET developers who use C#."

Read the article
Redesigning an Information System - Part 1

- by dbradley

Through the next few weeks or months I'd like to run a small series of articles sharing my experiences from the largest of the project I've worked on and explore some of the real-world problems I've come across and how we went about solving them. I'm afraid I can't give too many specifics on the project right now as it's not yet complete so you'll have to forgive me for being a little abstract in places! To start with I'm going to run through a little of the background of the problem and the motivations to re-design from scratch. Then I'll work through the approaches taken to understanding the requirements, designing, implementing, testing and migrating to the new system. Motivations for Re-designing a Large Information System The system is one that's been in place for a number of years and was originally designed to do a significantly different one to what it's now being used for. This is mainly due to the product maturing as well as client requirements changing. As with most information systems this one can be defined in four main areas of functionality: Input – adding information to the system Storage – persisting information in an efficient, searchable structure Output – delivering the information to the client Control – management of the process There can be a variety of reasons to re-design an existing system; a few of our own turned out to be factors such as: Overall system reliability System response time Failure isolation and recovery Maintainability of code and information General extensibility to solve future problem Separation of business and product concerns New or improved features The factor that started the thought process was the desire to improve the way in which information was entered into the system. However, this alone was not the entire reason for deciding to redesign. Business Drivers Typically all software engineers would always prefer to do a project from scratch themselves. It generally means you don't have to deal with problems created by predecessors and you can create your own absolutely perfect solution. However, the reality of working within a business is that the bottom line comes down to return on investment. For a medium sized business such as mine there must be actual value able to be delivered within a reasonable timeframe for any work to be started. As a result, any long term project will generally take a lot of effort and consideration to be approved by those in charge and therefore it might be better to break down the project into more manageable chunks which allow more frequent deliverables and also value within a shorter timeframe. As the only thing of concern was the methods for inputting information, this is where we started with requirements gathering and design. However knowing that there might be more to the problem and not limiting your design decisions before the requirements is key to finding the best solutions.

Read the article
XPath execution utility

- by TATWORTH

I have written an XPath test utility at http://commonxpath.codeplex.com/releases/view/96687This is a WPF application that allows you to enter some test XML and and an XPath expression. When writing such expressions it is important to get the XPath expression correct before embedding it into a program.The program is available as source under LGPL so you can run it both on your office and home PCs. There is a link to help on XPATH syntax.

Read the article
Running CopySourceAsHtml Add-in under Visual Studio 2010

- by Marko Apfel

Until now CopySourceAsHtml only supports Visual Studio 2008 out of the box. But it is no problem to pimp up the config-file for supporting Visual Studio 2010. Copy all three files to "%userprofile%\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Addins" Open CopySourceAsHtml.AddIn in a text editor and change both lines with <Version>9.0</Version> to <Version>10.0</Version> Run Visual Studio 2010 and CopySourceAsHtml works fine

Read the article
Need suggestions on what you regard as “security”

- by John Breakwell

I’m currently writing a large piece on MSMQ security and wanted to check I was covering the right areas. I have some doubts as I’ve seen the occasional MSMQ forum question where a poster has used the word “security” in different contexts to what I was expecting. So here are the areas I plan to cover: Message security encryption on the wire (SSL and IPSEC) encryption of the message (MSMQ encryption) encryption of the payload (data encryption) signing and authentication Queue security SIDs and ACLs Discoverability Cross-forest issues Storage security NTFS permissions unencrypted data Service security Ports and Firewalls DOS attacks Hardened mode (HTTP only) RPC secure channel requirement authenticated RPC requirement Active Directory object permissions Setup Administrator requirements What else would you want to see?

Read the article
“Why do transactional messages all have the same priority?”

- by John Breakwell

I answered this question on the MSMQ forum on MSDN and thought it worth sharing here. The poster wanted to know why all transactional messages have a fixed priority of zero (instead of 0 through 7). They wanted the guaranteed delivery of messages to a queue but wanted to assign different levels of priority. Some aspects of MSMQ were defined way back in the last century and this is one of them. If I remember right, the reason was to avoid the following scenario: You have a single transaction of 3 messages (a, b and c) with priorities 5, 3 and 4 respectively. The messages are sent in order a,b,c The messages arrive in the queue and are arranged in order a,c,b to reflect priority order This breaks the guaranteed order part of the transaction. I know that very few people send more than one message in a transaction but that is a scenario that MSMQ has to be able to handle; for the majority, including yourself, this scenario is irrelevant which is why you are surprised by the absence of transactional priorities. The options, therefore, available to the Microsoft developers were to: Implement code that allowed you to send messages with variable priority as long as any messages within the same transaction were the same priority, or Define a set priority for all transactional messages As you can understand, option 1 would be a complicated arrangement with all the necessary enforcement, error handling, user education and documentation, etc. Sure, it would have been possible to implement option 1 but I expect the product group decided to invest the development time in some other aspect of MSMQ. Now, with five versions out there, it would be confusing to change how the product operates, in addition to potentially breaking exisiting systems that have been working fine for years. So, balancing cost and risk against customer demand, I would not expect this feature to ever change.

Read the article
Runnin Framework 4.0 with Powershell

- by Mike Koerner

I had problems running scripts with Framework 4.0 assemblies I created. The error I was getting was Add-Type : Could not load file or assembly 'file:///C:\myDLL.dll' or one of its dependencies. This assembly is built by a runtime newer than the currently loaded runtime and cannot be loaded. I had to add the supported framework to the powershell.exe.config file.<supportedRuntime version="v4.0.30319"/>I still had a problem running the assembly so I had to recompile and set "Generate serialization Assembly" to off.

Read the article
Cancelling WPF Application.Shutdown

- by MarkPearl

Today I spent the better part of an hour trying to figure out what I had had done wrong. I had an application that when the user click’s “exit”, it should prompt if they want to save the last unsaved file, or cancel the exit. If the select cancel it should not exit the application. Everything seemed fine in my code, all I was doing was calling Application.Current.Shutdown(); And then capturing the Closing event and setting cancel to true.. (see SO question here) Long story short, If should not have been calling Application.Current.Shutdown() but rather Application.Current.MainWindow.Close(). grrrr… <I must read documentation properly>

Read the article
The new direction of the gaming industry

- by raccoon_tim

Just recently I read a great blog post by David Darling, the founder of Codemasters: http://www.develop-online.net/blog/347/Jurassic-consoles-could-become-extinct. In the blog post he talks about how traditional retail games are experiencing a downfall thanks to the increasing popularity of digital distribution. I personally think of retail games as being relics of the past. It does not really make much sense to still keep distributing boxed games when the same game can be elegantly downloaded and updated over the air through a digital distribution channel. The world is not all rainbows, however. One big issue with mixing digital distribution with boxed retail games is that resellers will not condone you selling your game for 10€ digitally while their selling the same game for 70€. The only way to get around this issue is to move to full digital distribution. This has the added benefit of minimizing piracy as the game can be tightly bound to the service you downloaded the game from. Many players are, however, complaining about not being able to play the games offline. Having games tightly bound to the internet is a problem when games are bought from a retailer as we tend to expect that once we have the product we can use it anywhere because we physically own it. The truth is that we don’t actually own the product. Instead, the typical EULA actually states that we only have a license to use the product. We’re not, for instance, allowed to disassemble the product, which the owner is indeed permitted to do. Digital distribution allows us to provide games as services, instead of selling them as standalone products. This means that for a service to work you have to be connected to the internet but you still have the same rights to use the product. It’s really straightforward; if you downloaded a client from the internet you are expected to have an internet connection so you’re able to connect to the server. A game distributed digitally that is built using a client-server architecture has the added benefit of allowing you to play anywhere as long as you have the client installed and you are able to log in with your user information. Your save games can be backed up and your game can continue anywhere. Another development we’re seeing in the gaming industry is the increasing popularity of free-to-play games. These are games that let you play for free but allow you to boost your gaming experience with real world money. The nature of these games is that players are constantly rewarded with new content and the game can evolve according to their way of playing and their wishes can be incorporated into the product. Free-to-play games can quickly gain a large player basis and monetization is done by providing players valuable things to buy making their gaming experience more fun. I am personally very excited about free-to-play games as it’s possible to start building the game together with your players and there is no need to work on the game for 5 years from start to finish and only then see if it’s actually something the players like. This is a typical problem with big movie-like retail games and recent news about Radical Entertainment practically closing its doors paints a clear picture of what can happen when the risk does not pay off: http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/25874/Prototype-Developer-Radical-Entertainment-Closes/.

Read the article
New Workstation – Lenovo W530 Core i7 32GB 256GB SSD Win8Pro

- by Brian Lanham

So I pretty-much have my new machine up and running full-time. I am still going to have to hit my old workstation for some things but am more-or-less working on my new machine. It’s really fast. And Bret was right, I’m not so far using all the RAM. 16 would have been enough but as @CodeMonkeyJava “go big or go home”. Windows 8 is…interesting. So far I still seem to do most of my work in the “Desktop”. However, I like the Store concept and I like the Metro UX. Live tiles are also nice. I really like how I can switch between Desktop and Metro easily. Overall I think Microsoft has done a great job of combining the needed experience for touch and mouse. My overall Windows 8 rating is 5.9 because of the video card. Otherwise I’m hitting 7.8. The system boots from cold in about 11 seconds and performs complete shutdown in 4.7 seconds. It wakes from sleep in less than 1 second. VS 2012 starts and restarts almost instantly. In fact, I find myself staring at the start page without realizing it. Build time doesn’t seem to be significantly increased but it is faster. I seem to already be reinvigorated for work with this new machine. I’m looking forward to the performance.

Read the article
Windows W8, L8 and now H8

- by raccoon_tim

Windows 8 is having to endure with a lot of headwind at the moment. The weather forecast doesn’t appear to improve in the near future either with prominent game developers and publishers taking to the barricades accusing Microsoft of building a closed ecosystem. I am forced to side with this opinion as I too see services the likes of Steam as playing an important role in the gaming world, which just happens to be an industry that cannot be sidelined. What Microsoft is attempting to do is merge the PC and mobile markets. The Windows Marketplace is to be the only place where you can purchase Windows applications in the future starting now with Metro apps. This is what Apple, Google and Microsoft have been doing with mobile devices for some time now and it’s what we have all come to expect. The PC market is different, however. It has always been open, which has resulted in a diverse market allowing for third parties to build successful distribution and marketing networks. You could argue that Microsoft is just doing something that Steam has been doing for a long time now but the difference is that Microsoft would own both the marketplace AND that operating system, which would eventually give it dominance over the whole Windows application distribution network. Currently there is no real alternative to Windows in the PC gaming world but I would expect to see Mac OS and Linux getting more popular if Microsoft does not notice the signals coming from the gaming industry and choose to once again open up the markets on the PC.

Read the article
RadGrid Column Sizing

- by Bunch

I came across this column sizing weirdness the other day. Using a RadGrid the headers looked great. The rows with the data however sized however they felt like it, usually way too small. After looking around I came across this that solved my problem. Adding the meta tag of <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" /> in the head section of my aspx page was what I needed. My issue was pretty specific since I had to target IE8 for the app I was working on but it may apply to other scenarios as well. Tags: ASP.Net

Read the article
O'Reilly deal of the day 25/June/2012 - The Art of SEO, 2nd Edition

- by TATWORTH

Today's deal of the day from O'Reilly at http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920019091.do?code=DEAL is The Art of SEO, 2nd Edition"Four acknowledged experts in search engine optimization share guidelines and innovative techniques that will help you plan and execute a comprehensive SEO strategy. This second edition brings you up to date on recent changes in search engine behavior—such as new ranking methods involving user engagement and social media—with an array of effective tactics, from basic to advanced." You should note that this is the second edition published March 2012

Read the article
IE9

- by xamlnotes

Hot dog. IE 9 just hit the download sites this week. I have been running it for a few days and its really sweet. It seems much faster than IE 8 and many other browsers and its got lots of cool features. Some of the ones I really like are: New tab format with one click creation and putting them up top. Cleaner UI Ability to drag a tab off the tab bar and have a new window created Integrated address / search box Support for HTML 5 check out http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/ to see some of the cool features. Pay attention to the HTML 5 samples too. And theres lots more as its just getting off the ground. You can download it from Microsoft. Or you can get the version with hooks into bing and msn. Enjoy.

Read the article
UK Connected Systems User Group - Update and next meeting

- by Michael Stephenson

For those in the UK Connected Systems User Group, the content from our last meeting is in the below linked skydrive folder: http://cid-40015ea59a1307c8.office.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public/SBUG/SBUG%20Meetings/2010%20December We are currently preparing the next event for Tuesday 15th Febuary to again be at EMC in London Bridge. We are still formalising the details of the event but it is now open for registration. http://ukcsugfeb2011.eventbrite.com/

Read the article
Turning off the Visual Studio “Attach to process” security warning…

- by Shawn Cicoria

When you’re urnning under x64 you have to affect 1 addition spot in the registry to disable this warning – which clearly should only be done by folks that know what they’re doing. NOTE: affecting the registry can be harmful – do so at your own risk. Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Debugger] "DisableAttachSecurityWarning"=dword:00000001 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Debugger] "DisableAttachSecurityWarning"=dword:00000001

Read the article
Biztalk :Tagidentifier for optional records

- by Mchandak

I am sure many of us must have faced this issue.Problem:My flat file schema has an optional record and marked with a tagidentifier. we would think that the input message without that optional record will pass the schema validation. But by default Biztalk throws an error about the missing record if we try to 'Validate the instance' in the Biztalk mapper.Resolution:On the schema node, set Parser Optimization to “Complexity” instead of thedefault "Speed" optimization.

Read the article
Change AccountName/LoginName for a SharePoint User (SPUser)

- by Rohit Gupta

Consider the following: We have an account named MYDOMAIN\eholz. This accounts Active Directory Login Name changes to MYDOMAIN\eburrell Now this user was a active user in a Sharepoint 2010 team Site, and had a userProfile using the Account name MYDOMAIN\eholz. Since the AD LoginName changed to eburrell hence we need to update the Sharepoint User (SPUser object) as well update the userprofile to reflect the new account name. To update the Sharepoint User LoginName we can run the following stsadm command on the Server: STSADM –o migrateuser –oldlogin MYDOMAIN\eholz –newlogin MYDOMAIN\eburrell –ignoresidhistory However to update the Sharepoint 2010 UserProfile, i first tried running a Incremental/Full Synchronization using the User Profile Synchronization service… this did not work. To enable me to update the AccountName field (which is a read only field) of the UserProfile, I had to first delete the User Profile for MYDOMAIN\eholz and then run a FULL Synchronization using the User Profile Synchronization service which synchronizes the Sharepoint User Profiles with the AD profiles.

Read the article
Create Custom Speech Bubbles in Silverlight.

- by mbcrump

I had a reader email me the following question: “How do you create Speech Bubbles in Silverlight/WPF without adding any extra .dlls? Right off the bat, I know at least two ways to create the speech bubbles that look just like the ones in comic books. Using the Callout Shapes included with Blend 4. Using the free 3rd party control named FreeBubbles (I used this before Blend 4). Unfortunately, we cannot use either of these as they will both add extra .dll’s to the project. So why wouldn’t you want to use one of those? I can think of a few reasons: You do not want to increase the size of your .XAP by including extra .dll’s. You do not have Expression Blend or the license to the use the .dll’s. You want a custom Speech Bubble that is not included in the four “Callout” Controls with Blend. Instead of using one of these methods, we will create a Speech Bubble in Blend 4 using Path element and a TextBlock. Before we get started, lets look at the Callout Shapes included with Blend 4. Using Blend 4 you can simply drag/drop these controls onto your Silverlight application and you are ready to go. We can create all of these Speech Bubbles and even some of the modern bubbles used in recent comic books. Lets get started. Start up Expression Blend 4 and select the Pen Tool. On the Art Board, start connecting the dots like I did below. You can add a color if you wish. …keep going …complete Let’s go ahead and add some text to the Speech Bubble. Drag a TextBlock from the Panel and put it directly inside the Speech Bubble. Go ahead and set the TextAlignment to Center for the TextBlock. and give it some text. At this point, you could go ahead and create a user control if you want to reuse the Speech Bubble you created. Select both the Path and the TextBlock by clicking then while holding down CTRL and then Right Click them. Select Make Into User Control. Give it a name and then Build your project. Lets create another one using the Ellipse for the older comic book style of Speech Bubbles. Drag an Ellipse to the Artboard and give it a color. Now, grab the Pen and drag a triangle like I did below. Simply drag it over a corner of the Ellipse. Select Combine then Unite and you will have a Path. At this point, you can go ahead and add a TextBlock like we did earlier. Lets go ahead and create a rounded rectangle one by adding a Rectangle to the Artboard. Go ahead and set the RadiuX and RadiusY to 25 to give it rounded edges. Let’s create another path and drag it right on top of our rounded rectangle like we did earlier. …looking good Select Combine then Unite and you will have a Path. At this point, you can go ahead and add a TextBlock like we did earlier. So let’s look at what we’ve created today using the path element and TextBlock. As you can tell, it required more work but meets the requirements. This was actually fun to do and I encourage anyone that visits my blog to send in request like this. Subscribe to my feed

Read the article
How to disable pdf.js in Firefox !

- by Anirudha

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/anirugu/archive/2013/06/27/how-to-disable-pdf.js-in-firefox.aspxFrom last few version Firefox natively have integration of Pdf.js. Sometime you (maybe) feel that it’s run very slow. very slow to scroll down the PDF. Now you want to disable it. How you can do it. Here is the settings In my system I have installed Adobe Reader. First option is going to open the file in Adobe reader and second (that I selected) is about to open in firefox itself. Now Slow performed pdf.js problem is gone

Read the article
Garage Sale Code – Everything must go!

- by mbcrump

Garage Sale Code The term “Garage Sale Code” came from a post by Scott Hanselman. He defines Garage Sale Code as: Complete – It’s a whole library or application. Concise – It does one discrete thing. Clear – It’ll work when you get it. Cheap – It’s free or < 25 cents. (Quite Possibly) Crap – As with a Garage Sale, you’ll never know until you get it home if it’s useless. With the code I’ve posted here, you’ll get all 5 of those things (with an emphasis on crap). All of the projects listed below are available on CodePlex with full source code and executables (for those that just want to run it). I plan on keeping this page updated when I complete projects that benefit the community. You can always find this page again by swinging by http://garagesale.michaelcrump.net or you can keep on driving and find another sale. Name Description Language/Technology Used WPF Alphabet WPF Alphabet is a application that I created to help my child learn the alphabet. It displays each letter and pronounces it using speech synthesis. It was developed using WPF and c# in about 3 hours (so its kinda rough). C#, WPF Windows 7 Playlist Generator This program allows you to quickly create wvx video playlist for Windows Media Center. This functionality is not included in WMC and is useful if you want to play video files back to back without selecting the next file. It is also useful to queue up video files to keep children occupied! C#, WinForms Windows 7 Automatic Playlist Creator This application is designed to create W7MC playlist automatically whenever you want. You can select if you want the playlist sorted Alphabetical, by Creation Date or Random. C#, WinForms, Console Generator Twitter Message for Live Writer This is a plug-in for Windows Live Writer that generates a twitter message with your blog post name and a TinyUrl link to the blog post. It will do all of this automatically after you publish your post. C#, LiveWriter API

Read the article
Channel Factory Support

- by samkea

http://silverlight.codeplex.com/WorkItem/View.aspx?WorkItemId=5008&ProjectName=Silverlight

Read the article
UK Data Breaches Up by 10 fold in 10 years.

- by TATWORTH

At http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2201863/uk-data-breaches-rocket-by-1-000-percent-over-past-five-years there is an interesting report on the increase in data breaches reported in the UK.A lot of this increase may simply a change in legislation that has made reporting a statutory obligation.Some questions to ask yourself:Are server logs checked for untoward activity?Do you have a reporting policy if something is amiss?Did you design security in for the start of your application design?Do you log for example failed logons?Do you run tools to check for code integrity?Is my defense, a strategy of defense in depth?Do you realise that 60% of hack attacks are internal?Whilst SQL Injection is a problem that affects practically all application code platforms, within Microsoft Applications do you run FXCOP? Do you run any of the other free tools for checking?

Read the article
More Win 8 Education is Needed

- by D'Arcy Lussier

“My mail doesn’t work”. That’s what a colleague running Windows 8 said to me the day after he installed Windows 8 on his work laptop. “When I click my email, nothing comes up.” I took a look and realized what was going on – he was clicking the Windows 8 UI Mail app and assumed that this was somehow connected to his Outlook which was installed as a desktop app. And so highlights a major educational challenge that Windows 8 will encounter – millions of users used to one style of interface now being introduced to a new one that runs side-by-side with their desktop. At work we had an internal tech user group meeting, and we were showing new features of VS.NET 2012 and Windows 8. When we started talking about the difference between Windows 8 UI Apps (AKA Windows Store Apps), people started asking some good questions: - Can we share a codebase between desktop and Windows Store Apps? - What’s the difference between WinRT and .NET? - Why would we create a Windows Store App and not just a Desktop app? Of course, people are looking at this from a traditional desktop point of view and not a tablet platform, which is really the market that Windows Store Apps will shine on. Still, for developers who not only need to educate themselves but also educate their clients, we’re going to need a better understanding of Windows 8 to see it get real traction within the business/enterprise market. D

Read the article
From the Coalface - 2 - Work as hard as you can to be as lazy as you can

- by TATWORTH

On one project, the standard build involved building the database from scratch producing a build log that was about 100,000 lines long. Manually paging throught this log took hours and it was very easy to miss any errors. The solution was to write a filter that read the log file and output a summary file with each output line pepended with the line number in the original file. Sucessive iterations eliminated more noise lines. Diagnostic displays required escaping. The final output was just a few hundred lines long and the errors were easy to spot. The filter program took less time to to write than one manual pass reading the log file. The utility digested the log file in about 1 second. Now database build errors could be identified quickly instead of after hours of manual examination or lengthy system testing. A few minutes consideration of the task led to a tremendous improvement in quality.

Read the article

< Previous Page | 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 | Next Page >