eWorld.UI - Matt Hawley

Ramblings of Matt

Scott Likes Me, or WebDeploy

July 15, 2004 22:30 by matthaw
Scott Watermasysk likes WebDeploy! Good! BTW - I've you've not seen or used WebDeploy, now is the time. I'm working on version 1.2 which is slated for a 1.2 release. If you follow to scott's post, you'll see some previews.

Categories: Unleash It
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Check out Before Find & Replace

July 14, 2004 19:45 by matthaw

So I had to make a change to a demo at work today, which is checked into VSS. This change basically was to modify the color of an element in CSS (which happens to be on every page, thats about 250 demo HTML pages).

Ohh, stupid me...I didn't check the files out before doing the Find & Replace, so now I'm having to click "Check Out" 250+ times everytime this value is found and replaced.

Word of the wise, make sure you do a check out of all files if doing this type of find & replace.

Well, back to it, about another 15 min of hitting "Check Out"...

Update: After 5 min. I just realized that I should open up VSS manually and check out the files there...ahh much better. BTW - it was 553 files, not 250...I would have been doing this for 30 min.

Update 2: Another good way to render VS.NET useless is to have 550 documents open at 1 time. Also, closing the windows takes about 5 minutes.



Categories: .NET | General
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New Utility: TiVo Reader

July 12, 2004 04:57 by matthaw

Who want's to read your news on your TiVo? I'll wait while you think for a second...okay, thats enough. So, for those of you who have your hand raised right now, or those that don't read on...

So, for those that have been wondering what happened to my TiVo Reader announcement back in May, its great to announce that version 0.1 of TiVo Reader has been launched. TiVo Reader works in conjunction with the TiVo Desktop Software or JavaHMO by simply sharing the base news folder. TiVo Reader, which can be fully customizable, will download your news at a set interval, create images of that news post, then store it in its feeds folder.

TiVo Reader allows you to automatically download new news, all news, delete old news, start minimized, and even start with windows. Images are stored at 1024x768 pixels, but you have the option to choose your own font, size and colors that best suits you.

Currently there is only support for RSS, however Atom may work (no testing has been done with this). However, if you've got a nice blogroll in OPML format (or use NewsGator - by exporting your feeds to OPML), you can easily import all of your feeds with just a few clicks. Otherwise, your able to individually add feeds yourself. Lastly, this version has only been tested on Windows XP SP1, but please let me know of any problems by submitting bugs through the user interface.

Like always, my utilities are free, but the source code is not. You'll need .NET framework 1.1 to run TiVo Reader, so what's stopping you. Download your copy now!

PS: I'm in no way affiliated with TiVo.



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My Own WTF

July 8, 2004 22:30 by matthaw

Today I was visiting a client site doing some data mining on a third party product that they own. Ultimately we will be building reports off of their data using SQL Reporting Services. Well, as I was going through the tables, I kept seeing date fields that didn't look like a normal date field. Much to my dismay, this third party company (who uses SQL Server 2000 as a back end database) doesn't believe that the SQL DateTime field is appropriate for storing dates. No, instead they use a long integer data type and store the date as YYYYMMDD.

Not to be out-done, they did this for times too... HHMMSS, ohh, and sometimes they combined the 2 fields... YYYYMMDDHHMMSS... is that not a mess or what. So, for us to do any date comparisons for reporting services, we have to build a view and in that view convert those crappy long integer fields into proper date time fields, well except for when their not NULL!



Categories: .NET | General
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Halo2 Beta

July 8, 2004 00:04 by matthaw
How lucky are MajorNelson and others that work at MS and got the Halo2 beta disk. I envy them.

Categories: General
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What is Microsoft .NET?

July 7, 2004 23:03 by matthaw

Crazy, isn't it. I thought so too as I was reading an article about how a China based company will be building .NET-based enterprise and e-government packages for the Chinese market. Towards the end of the article, it had a link to an older article about Microsoft's .NET initiative.

Since this article was written in 2001, its quite obvious that a lot has changed since then. Its just kind of funny to look back at the ".NET Initiative" that Microsoft went forth with to make anything and everything ".NET." Lets not forget the big kicker of the the ".NET Initiative" were Web Services, and how they had to be integrated with everything. Then there was #4 listed, rebranding their servers to .NET Enterprise Servers, boy am I glad that didn't go through.

Ohh, how things have changed.



Categories: .NET
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Excellent ASP.NET 2.0 Resource Blog

July 7, 2004 18:30 by matthaw

I just ran across a great ASP.NET 2.0 Resource Blog by Fredrik Normen. The stuff he posts is just amazing, make sure to check it out.

Subscribed!



Categories: .NET | Whidbey
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Review: Avant Browser

July 6, 2004 23:23 by matthaw

I was pointed towards Avant Browser earlier via a Blog Post and I must have to admit that I've pretty much fell in love with this.

Avant Browser, is in my own opinion, Internet Explorer on steroids. This very popular browser package incorporates Internet Explorer without a hitch, but adds an array of useful items. Such items include:

  • Flash Animation Filters
  • Built-in Popup-up stopper
  • Additional Mouse Functions
  • Multi-Window Browsing
  • Real Full Screen Mode / Alternative Desktop mode
  • Built in Yahoo/Google searching
  • Full IE compatibility
  • Skins

Okay, okay, so some of these are no brainers and can be easily used with the current Internet Explorer, or are already built in with FireFox / Mozilla, Opera, the one item that stands out to me is the Multi-Window Browsing. This takes surfing the internet to a MDI level (Yes, I know Opera can do this too). However, I'm a IE fanatic, and the huge differences between the alternative browsers listed above is in how things are presented to me.

At the time of this writing, Avant Browser is at version 9.02, Build 033, and it is stable as heck. The UI is a bit hard to get used to at first, but with the tool tips and customized skins, it makes it easy to get that IE feeling. With the price that cannot be overlooked (free!), Avant Browser is definately a must look for all.



Central IL Dot Net: Eric Sink

July 1, 2004 17:31 by matthaw

Last night, Eric Sink from SourceGear paid our user group meeting a visit last night. It was truly an awaited presentation by all, especially after we had to postpone the initial meeting the first week of this month.

Eric is such a great guy and and awesome and entertaining speaker. He discussed how SourceGear made the transition to using Web Services and IIS to host their latest application, Vault. He also discussed some of the major technical support questions that they've been facing ever since a 1.0 release. What got me the most, were that some of the problems that they experienced, I had either come across them personally or solved much of the same for some of the applications at my workplace. In that sense, it was great to know that we weren't alone in facing some of the problems that .NET posed to us.

I'm sure Eric will be posting his slides sometime in the near future, and when he does, I'll make sure to link to them.

Thanks again Eric! It's just too bad Bill Hoffman (from Microsoft) took home your 5 license giveaway for Vault...I know I definately could have used it for work or home. Oh well, ya win some, ya loose some.





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