Some useful FAQ about Click Once
Like all the new technology, Click Once Deployment can be confusing to some. Here a good link that contains a lot of FAQ for you to learn more about
Click Once Deployment.
Visual Basic .Net 2005 is to back to the basic ... and much better!
AFter listening to dotnetrocks about the new features in Visual Basic .Net 2005, I gave it a try with VB Express 2005 Beta 2, and man what a thrill ride. The VB 2005 IDE really works like Visual Basic 6, but with all the .Net Framework power. I particularly enjoy all the instant online help/advice, the My and Me namespace, the say just a few. Looks like I need to get back to VB 2005 to play some more!!
Everything about LINQ
Everything you
need to know about LINQ is here.
Tried out Vista Beta 2 Build 5219. Does NOT like it
I tried out Vista Beta 2 on my work machine. Really does not like it:
- Install WinFX "\WinFX Runtime Components - September CTP\Setup" does NOTHING to my installation. Not fancy UI on screen. Very disappointed.
- Still a lot of app does NOT work on Vista Beta 2, including Splash ID Desktop.
- VMWare 4.x.x has some problem running. This time not only I have to set Compability mode to WinXP, I also have to set run level (check the checkbox). And the damn network in VMWare is still failing. This makes it totally useless.
- Encountered not of "no priviledge" problem, which is stupidly strange because I logged in as ADMINISTATOR!!!
- Still not allow setting Outlook Express Storage file.
All in all. I hate this shit. Thank goodness I still have my WinXP to fall back to.
Books to download
Here's several sites for downloading software development related books:
-
http://www.xpbook.com/sort/14_1.htm-
http://www2.fixdown.com/en/eall_1.htm
ASP.Net Path
If you like me, you always forget the mean the different ASP.Net path.
Here's a good reminder article.
PDC 05 is there, and here's the keynote video
This years PDC 05 keynotes speech is about Vista and Office 12. You can download the high resolution video at
mms://pdcmsftwm.fplive.net/pdcmsft/ms_pdc_20050913_300.wmv. Make sure you use FlashGet so that you can save the file on your PC, move it to Pocket PC, and watch the video everywhere you go, like what I did :-D .
Too bad there's only one PDC video to download though :-< .
That SmartNavigation bastard ....
Finally figured out why the hell so many of the Layer based popup calendar failed, including the one I tried yesterday. It's because of the Smart Navigation feature we have on our custom based class ASP.Net Page. Now I need to implement the work around to does the Smart Navigation thing without using the SmartNaviagation function. Darn....
Another failed calendar control ....
Tried another Day Picker control at
http://www.salimnaim.com/DatePicker.htm. This one doesn't work because it does not support editing text.
Shoot. Now I am back to the Javascript code that my coworker gave me ...
Macromedia 8 finally released
The new Macromedia product line has been released! You can
download the trial version here. You need to register first, but the heck, you have quite some junky email that you can use, right?
One thing I am not too happy about the new version is that it doesn't support running .exe without installation. With MX 2004 products, I can simply grab the whole Macromedia directory and run the Flash.exe inside it, and I will get 97% of the function. Under 8 series, if I do the same thing, I will get an error message with forced me reinstall the app.
So as of now I will stay with MX 2004 until I really have to move to series 8.
Control Printing (To printer) on web page
I need to find way to control printing from the Javascript (or VBScript) within a web page. Since our project only have to support Internet Explorer 5.5 and above, I can feel free to use some Microsoft specific solution like ActiveX and VBScript.
So far I found two soluitions:
(1) Use CSS to control the rendering of the screen. By adjusting the rendering of the page, the page output may look better when printing to the printer. In fact, someone even mentioned that there are
specific CSS tag that control printing layout. However, others instantly pointed out that those tag were not implemented in any popular web browser because those tag violates certain browser rules.
(2) Another solution is using a freeware from
MeadCo. Here's how to use the
free version ActiveX control to control the printing from the web browser.
In addition there are other web sites talking about how to use this ActiveX control to control browser printing:
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WEB打印設置解決方案二（利用ScriptX.cab控件改變IE打印設置）-
ASP開發必備:WEB打印代碼大全-
javascript小技巧-
WEB打印大全
Continue My Journey to find perfect Date Picker
I pretty much concluded with the fact that none of the layer based date picker does what I need. So I started to find solution based on popupp window. I found this one called
ASP.NET Pop-Up Date Picker Control and it seems to be very promising. There's some code I need to change here and there, but at least it's open source. I can change in whatever way that I see fit.
By the way this site has a list of control that
I may take a look later.
I also have another pop-up calendar pending to test. This one is called
WebToolBox.DatePicker. I have it
installed on my office machine, and will test it once I finished some boring documentation.
Journey to find a free date picker solution for ASP.Net 1.1
Our ASP.Net intranet applicaiton project needs a data picker for all the date field. At first I thought this was just a simple task, since:
- There are some freeware (or even open source) day picker on the market.
- The function I looked for seems to be simple and straight forward. I just need a way to pick a date. No additional require on how the calendar should be presented.
However, the seraching was more trouble than I expected. I tried more than several day pickers and they failed me one way or the other:
- IGERSoft Datepicker
[Link]* Failed to work properly in FireFox.
* Something wrong when using the control with PostBack. DOUBLE control was created! ACtually the problem is kind of
well known And the solution can be as simply as disabling SmartNavigation ("this.SmartNavigation = true" in formload of our custom Page class), but doing so I have to give up SmartNavigation (which brings to user back to the previous edited point.
* Not open source
* Editbox cannot be modified.
* Changing text style in property page doesnt' seem to have any effect on the rendered calendar.
-
Cool CalendarPros:
* Open Source
Cons:
* Have serious problem with year and month navigation. When there's 2 controls on the screen, clicking the year navigation on one control may trigger the month control on of the ANOTHRE control!
DateTimePicker Web Control
[Link]Pros
* Open Source
Cons
* Just like IGERSoft Datepicker, SmartNavigation needs tp be turned off in order to work properly.
* Does not work consistantly/
* Serious problem embedding on my project pages. I got "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" on "string[] con=style.Split(delim.ToCharArray());".
ObjectGraph OGDatePicker
[Link]* When I tried to bring up the calendar by clicking on the calendar button, the calendar showed up at some very obscurre place, like at the very low right hand corner.
* AFter I tried closed the calendar, instead of making the calendar disappear, it shows up at some other obsure place.
Pop-up Calendar 1.2
[Link]* It uses layer, meaning that it will have problem with out table centric page design.
* It creates timeout problem when loading the control.
* The style of the pop-up calendar was totally messed up after POST BACK.
So, what is my solution? Well, I decided to use IGERSoft Datepicker, change the EvisPage so that SmartNavigation is not turned on by default, and finally use this control
[code] to do the smart navigation thing.
Additional information about why SmartNavigation is a bad idea:
-
http://blog.joycode.com/microhelper/articles/1317.aspx-
http://weblogs.asp.net/ksamaschke/archive/2003/04/27/6085.aspx-
http://www.codeproject.com/aspnet/lili2.asp-
http://www.codeproject.com/aspnet/lili.asp-
http://blogs.msdn.com/conrad/archive/2004/09/02/225091.aspx-
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