Windows Live Writer 1.0 Beta Update

Writer Zone - New Release! Windows Live Writer 1.0 (Beta) Update with Windows Live Gallery

"...

The following is a summary of the changes in the Writer 1.0 (Beta) Update:

• Tagging support
• Support for Blogger Beta
• Categories are sorted by name and support scrolling, plus improved support for reading categories from your blog
• Improved startup performance
• Paste is enabled for Title region and TAB/SHIFT+TAB navigation between title and body supported
• Insert hyperlink added to context menu when text is selected
• Title attribute in Insert Link dialog
• Custom date support for Community Server
• Improved keyboard shortcuts for switching views
• Change spell-check shortcut key to F7
• Add ‘png’ to insert image dialog file type filter
• More robust image posting to Live Spaces
• Improved style detection for blogs 
• Fixed issues with pasting URLs and links
• Remember last window size and position when opening a new post
• Open post dialog retrieves more than 25 old posts

..."

An update to the WLW 1.0 Beta has been released. Posting with it now...

Install was smooth, upgrading my existing install in-place, and best of all my plugin still works (yeah!).

BTW, This weekend I plan on finishing up v1.2 of my plugin (addressing remaining Code Analysis items, adding an About box, etc) and submitting it to the WLW Gallery.  ;)

Biggest thing I like so far in this WLW update? The ability to cut-n-paste in the Title region... It's always the little things isn't it?

Things I need to submit as feedback;

• When inserting a Link, if the Clipboard contains a URL, prepopulate the Link URL: field.
• Add a Paste Special or Paste as Plain Text option
• Provide real time spell and grammar checking (i.e. like Word)(I'd bet big this is already on their list...)

VSTS/TFS Resource List (MS Dogfooding Stat's, Tools, Books, URL's, News, etc)

adamga's WebLog - Team system resources list, updated September 27, 2006

Adam Gallant just posted a cool list of VSTS/TFS resources.  From info on MS's dogfooding on TFS, to Blogs/Websites, Third party utilities, tools, whitepapers and more.

If you're getting into TFS, this is a good place to start...

Real VML Patch is Out

F-Secure - Real VML patch is out

"Microsoft has released a patch against the VML vulnerability outside of their normal update cycle. Which is great.

The patch is available right now via update.microsoft.com.

Get It" [Post Leached In Full]

From Update.Microsoft.com;

"A security issue has been identified in the way Vector Markup Language (VML) is handled that could allow an attacker to compromise a computer running Microsoft Windows and gain control over it. You can help protect your computer by installing this update from Microsoft. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.  Details... "

I sure you'll be seeing this everywhere, so consider this a "Note to Self" post...  ;)

In my case, on two machines, it installed easily but did need to reboot one (on the machine I hadn't yet unregistered the DLL).

Related Past Post XRef:
IE/Windows VML Exploit - Short Term Fix

Lazy Load Property Example/Snippet

Vault of Thoughts - Lazy Load Property Snippet

"I have written an article on Visual Studio Code Snippets - how to use them, and how to create your own. I have provided there a couple of snippets that I use on daily basis. You can also check Mads Kristensen's blog where he provides a snippet for "safe events". Today I have thought of yet another useful snippet...

...

If using 2.0 version of the .NET Framework, you can do better and use the Nullable type for the field. And that is exactly the code snippet I provide. With it you can create such a lazy initialized property very quickly.

..."

I'm about to begin work on an API where I want to implement lazy property loading...

The nullable approach discussed above seems smart, simple and easy to maintain. Something to look at/think about anyway...

Online IE7 Search Provider Creator

EnhanceIE - IE7 Search Provider Builder Tool

"You can use this page to easily add a new search provider to your list of available IE7 search providers.  Search providers appear in the dropdown next to the search box inside of the new IE7.

"

This is a very cool service/utility...

There's a place to enter the search URL and what you want to name it. Then click on the Install button and now you have a new IE Search Provider.

Make sure you read the instructions on the form though (I clicked on it a couple times, getting a warning/error before I read the big bold instructions to use the search term "TEST"... dugh).

(via Digital Thoughts - EnhanceIE.com - IE7 Search provider builder)

CodePlex Project for the Text Template WLW Plugin

The CodePlex project is up for my Text Template Windows Live Writer Plugin...

The latest 1.2 beta (1.2.2.2, the same as was put on GotDotNet) has been uploaded as a Beta Release. v1.1 Production release is also available.

I'm still moving in, updating the wiki, adding the source, etc...

This CodePlex project will be the official home now for the Plugin, but of course as I make changes/releases/etc I'll still be talking about it here. ;)

Again, any suggestions, comments, feature requests, etc would be appreciated... (If you don't I'll just keep adding stuff I think is cool...  :)

Related Past Post XRef:
WLW Text Template v1.2 Beta Released to GotDotNet
Text Template Plugin v1.1 for Windows Live Writer Released (and a Preview of v1.2)
WLW Text Template v1.1 Beta Test
WLW - Text Templates Plugin on WLWPlugins.com
My Windows Live Writer Plugin - Text Template

WLW Text Template v1.2 Beta Released to GotDotNet

I've released v1.2 beta to GotDotNet for your downloading and such...

Download (as download link, just updated file)

In this version/zip is the VB.Net source, manual setup instructions and new to this release, a "normal" setup (i.e. setup.exe and an MSI).

Nothing much has changed since 1.2 Preview Post, but to keep you from having to click over, I've included the feature list and screenshots below.

Due to the release delay when posting to GotDotNet (and because I want to play there), I'm in the process of getting this into a CodePlex project. I'll update the GotDotNet Sample with stable releases in the future, but the CodePlex project will be the one stop shop for this Plugin (applied this weekend, so it should be up "real soon" ...)

v1.2 Feature List:

• Replacement of the listbox on the Select Template dialog with a grid, which allows sorting, filtering, etc of Templates.
• Added Categories to Text Templates, which allow for cooler sorting and filtering
• Added Icons to Text Templates, which let you associate an icon with a given template making it easier to identify and select a given template
• Added a Preview feature to the Add and Select dialogs, which let you see your inserted HTML in its full HTML glory.
• Added Filtering to Select Template dialog
• Added a Setup.

Screenshots:

Here's a preview of the new Select dialog. Much prettier isn't it?

The updated Add dialog, showing off the Category feature.

Selecting an Icon for your new Template...

A preview of your new Template

The Categories are "smart" in that if you type in a new, non-existing category you'll be asked if you want to add it to your list (so you can use it again in the future)

The newly added Template

Showing off the sorting... Like most features of this plugin, the sort column and direction is remembered between sessions, so if you like to sort by Category, the next time you Select a Template the grid will already be sorted.

The Filter works much the sample way. The last entered Title and Category used to Filter will auto-magically filled in for you, but will not be applied...

The Filter feature is one that might change based on your feedback. For example, after you have "Apply" a filter, as soon as you type in the Title field or select a new Category, the filter is cleared. I thought this a less confusing operation, but you may tell me otherwise...

Also I'm thinking about real time filtering, i.e. doing away with the Apply button and as you type, auto-magically apply the filter. I didn't do that this round as I was worried about performance for those with a large number of templates.

This current version works quite well with over 1,000 templates...  ;)

 

Please let me know if you have any questions, comments or suggestions!

Sync Outlook with Google Calendar and more...

Chris Pirillo - Syncing Outlook, OS X, Google with Ease

"Not sure how it happened, but I ran into The Holy Grail of Synchronization - how to synchronize Microsoft Outlook (multiple locations), Google Calendar, Gmail, iPod, and mobile phone with Funambol, ScheduleWorld....

...

Standards to the rescue! Engtech, as described, pointed me to ScheduleWorld: “An experiment in a new kind of rich Internet application, built on the foundations of open standards that enables you to access your data from virtually anywhere using a growing number of interoperable devices and software.” Yes, it’s absolutely free - and absolutely 100x more useful than you may realize..."

Interesting... Just yesterday I was looking for a cheap and easy way to sync some calendars...

RTFI (Read The Fine Instructions!) or How NOT To Use Bug Bombs (Gee... if 1 is good, then 15 MUST be great!)

LAFD News & Information - North Hollywood Explosion: Failure To Follow Instructions

"On Sunday, September 24, 2006 at 10:06 AM, three Companies of Los Angeles Firefighters, two LAFD Rescue Ambulances, one Rehab/Air Tender Unit, one EMS Battalion Captain and one Battalion Chief Officer Command Team under the direction of Battalion Chief Peter Benesch responded to an explosion at 5505 Bonner Avenue in North Hollywood.

Firefighters arrived quickly to discover residents streaming from a two story garden style apartment building on the southwest corner of Cumpston Street and Bonner Avenue.

...

There was no fire, but structural damage was evident.

Firefighters soon determined that fifteen full-release aerosol insecticide 'bug bombs' had been used contrary to instructions within one upstairs apartment in an effort to exterminate pests.

An adult male occupant of the apartment below was the sole injury. He sustained a minor head laceration and following on-site treatment, declined transportation to the hospital.

..."

And you only thought it an urban legend or Myth Busters episode (episode 23)...

Recursive Hierarchies to XML with SQL Server 2005

Christian Wade's Blog - SQL Server Standard - Recursive Hierarchies to XML

"I wrote an article for the September issue of SQL Server Standard magazine:

The version that was finally published was a very cut down version with minimal code snippets. This was for obvious reasons; they had to fit the content onto small columns in the magazine. For the readers who would prefer the more verbose version, here it is! I guess this is further reference material for the published article; I’m sure my friends at SQL Server Standard won’t mind.

Suppose we have a sizeable recursive hierarchy in our SQL Server 2005 relational database. We want to export it to XML. This could be for a variety of reasons....

On the face of it, this seems like a simple nut to crack. However, there are various design options available to us. This article explores some of the options. Performance is deemed the overriding factor when evaluating the optimal approach.

..."

This is a cool article which looks at two approaches to providing hierarchal XML from a self-referencing SQL Server 2005 table (fish hook reference, parent - child keys, etc).

".Net 2 Solution to Serialization of Objects that Raise Events"

Rockford Lhotka - .NET 2.0 solution to serialization of objects that raise events

"In .NET 1.x there's a problem serializing objects that raise events when those events are handled by a non-serializable object (like a Windows Form). In .NET 2.0 there's at least one workaround in the form of Event Accessors.

The issue in question is as follows.

I have a serializable object, say Customer. It raises an event, say NameChanged. A Windows Form handles that event, which means that behind the scenes there's a delegate reference from the Customer object to the Form. This delegate that is behind the event is called a backing field. It is the field that backs up the event and actually makes it work.

When you try to serialize the Customer object using the BinaryFormatter or SoapFormatter, the serialization automatically attempts to serialize any objects referenced by Customer - including the Windows Form. Of course Windows Form objects are not serializable, so serialization fails and throws a runtime exception.

...

The end result is that we have declared an event that doesn’t cause problems with serialization, even if the target of the event isn’t serializable.

..."

Sigh... I SO could have used this just a few weeks ago.

(via del.icio.us/tag/.net - del.icio.us/burn_process/.net/)

IE/Windows VML Exploit - Short Term Fix

F-Secure Weblog : News from the Lab - VML Exploit - Internet Explorer

"...

It was discovered in the wild by Sunbelt. Microsoft published Microsoft Security Advisory (925568) yesterday regarding the issue. The update is currently scheduled for October 10th - the next regular patch Tuesday.

Like the WMF exploit it is advised to unregister the susceptible dll from the system as a workaround for the vulnerability.

To unregister the dll you should execute from Start, Run:
regsvr32 /u "%CommonProgramFiles%\Microsoft Shared\VGX\vgx.dll"

This differs slightly from Microsoft's recommendation - so as to include localized versions of Windows.

The vgx.dll component solely handles Vector Markup Language (VML). ..."

Note To Self: Do this on my all machines...

EAN-13 (and ISBN) Barcode Generation in C#

B# .NET Blog - EAN-13 barcodes in C#

"A couple of days ago I posted about Code 39 barcode generation in C# (and here). Today another more famous barcode is the subject of my blogpost: EAN-13. EAN stands for European Article Number and is a way to number products. It's an extension of UPC (Universal Product Code). More information over here.

One particular interesting application of EAN-13 is the fact that ISBN (International Standard Book Number) codes are also represented as EAN-13 codes. I'll blog about this too.

Mission goal

As we did with Code 39, we want to be able to do something like this:

Ean13 barcode = new Ean13("9780201734843", null);
barcode.Paint().Save("c:\\temp\\test.png", ImageFormat.Png);

The second parameter to the Ean13 constructor is an optional title to display on top of the barcode (will be handy for ISBN numbers).

..."

Another cool barcode generation example from Bart De Smet.

The ISBN reference is this reference that caught my eye (related to my long standing, yet uber lower low priority/paused background thread "My Bookshelf" project...).

Related Past Post XRef:
Creating Code 39 Barcodes in C#

Default Admin Passwords and Hacking ATM's

Peter Bromberg's UnBlog - Security WHAT? 75,000250,000 Hackable ATM's- and the manuals are ONLINE

"I just had to laugh at how incredibly stupid people can be after reading this Wired story about how some schmuck got the "Administrator" Keypad password (which you can get right out of the PDF manual, which you can search for, find, and download online -- and that's not the only ATM model you can do this with).

The password basically allows you to reconfigure the machine to think it is holding $5 bills instead of twenties and dispense four times the amount of money you ask for ..."

Sometimes I get bugged by systems/applications/web sites that require me to enter strong passwords or to choose a strong password on first use.

But there's a method to their madness. Some (some?) people seem to be pretty lazy, (err... um... I mean... very thrifty with their upfront time... um... yeah...) the above post helping prove that point.

If it's to hard to use a system, then don't. If you have to use it, understand its operation. And RTFM!

As a software developer, this is as much a "Note to Self" as a rant...  ;)

PrintForm Component 1.0 - Directly Print a WinForm

Microsoft Downloads - Microsoft PrintForm Component 1.0

"The PrintForm component is designed to bring back the ability to easily print a Windows Form. With this the new PrintForm component you can once again layout the Windows Form exactly as you want it and allow your users to print the form as a quick report."

Might be useful...

There have been times past where VB1-6's PrintForm did the trick for me...

TFS (and many more) Posters

DRP - developer readiness program - Posters

"Below is a list of posters in PDF.  These are suitable for screen-reading.  ..."

8 pages (at 10 per page) of PDF printable posters.

Here is what is on just the first page of posters (sorted by date)...

• 0202 Microsoft Team System Project Panning
• 0202 Microsoft Team System Project Source Migration
• 3002 SDLC smartProcess
• 3004 SDLC Unified Process
• 3006 SDLC Scrum
• 3010 SDLC MSF Design
• 0000 PosterMap
• 0000 System_NameSpace
• 0001 Modeling Poster
• 0002 Architecture

More than enough CuArt (Cubicle Art) for a while... ;)

(via Rob Caron - Decorate Your Cubicle or Office with Team System Posters)

Krypton Toolkit 2.2 Released

Component Factory Blog - Krypton 2.2 Released

"This release contains many new features including...

- New KryptonBorderEdge control
- Optional drawing of each border edge
- New gradient drawing styles
- 8 New Navigator Modes
- Various bug fixes and other minor improvements" [Post leached in full]

The cool and still free (but valid email address required for download) Krypton Toolkit UI component library has rev'ed to 2.2.

I think I'm still using 1.0. Dogh! Time to upgrade I think... ;)

Related Past Post XRef:
Krypton Toolkit (Free WinForm UI Controls) 2.0 Released
Krypton Toolkit 1.0.0 Released
Krypton Toolkit 0.9.0 (Free Office-Like UI Controls)

Creating Code 39 Barcodes in C#

B# .NET Blog - Code 39 barcodes in C#

"Introduction

Code 39 is a specification for barcodes that allows coding of the following symbols: A-Z 0-9 - . $ / + % * space. The goal of this small project is to allow generation of barcodes using System.Drawing in .NET, with C#.

..."

In the far past (a few years ago) I was involved in a project that required barcode generation. One of the things I remember most is what a pain it was to deploy. Yes, deploy. Because it was done with the "simple" method of using a barcode font.

There wasn't time to create a setup, so the font had to be manually installed... OMG, never again. Either a setup (I know, I know... they don't take long...) or another method of barcode generation.

The font method is "okay" and easy at the time, but now it feels.. icky. It's an external moving part that I'd just rather not have to worry about. That is besides the price and licensing pain of a barcode font...

Which is why this article caught my eye...

If/when I play in barcode generation land again, I want to take a look at this approach.

SolutionZipper - VS2005 Addin to Clean and Zip in One Step

CodeProject - SolutionZipper: VS2005 Addin Cleans and Zips a Solution in One Step

"The code described in this article provides a simplified version of these add-ins. Specifically, SolutionZipper has a single-click-does-everything interface, which is what automation is all about -- saving time. There are no dialogs that present file lists, file names to be chosen, or user options to select. SolutionZipper does the following in a single step:

1. Saves all unsaved project files.
2. Cleans all available solution configurations (Debug, Release, etc.).
3. Cleans all Deployment Projects.
4. Zips all files in the entire solution:
   • The zip file is uniquely named: SolutionName_YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.zip
   • The paths for all files are solution directory relative.
   • The zip file is placed at the same level as the solution directory.

..."

Nice.

(BTW this project is at v1.2 which was released yesterday, 9/17)

Now that I'm been able to start releasing some of my private/personal projects (like my WLW Text Template Plugin, etc) this will come in handy.

I'm currently playing the "Build/Clean/etc" game prior to zipping and releasing and it's just one thing I'd rather not have to remember. One click sounds cool... 

And if this one doesn't float your boat, check out the other two similar projects that Robert mentioned;

ProjectZip 1.6 - Zip up the source code for your latest CodeProject article

ZipStudio - A versatile Visual Studio add-in to zip up Visual Studio solutions and projects

(via .Net Adventures - A convenient tool for quick solution back-ups.)

Text Template Plugin v1.1 for Windows Live Writer Released (and a Preview of v1.2)

V1.1 of my Text Template Plugin for WLW is now available on GotDotNet, WLW Text Template Download

Nothing changed between the beta and the release, so please check out my v1.1 Beta post for details on this release.

I'm now working on v1.2, which will include a number of refinements and suggested features (thank you Cynthia).

v1.2 Feature List:

• Replacement of the listbox on the Select Template dialog with a grid, which allows sorting, filtering, etc of Templates.
• Added Categories to Text Templates, which allow for cooler sorting and filtering
• Added Icons to Text Templates, which let you associate an icon with a given template making it easier to identify and select a given template
• Added a Preview feature to the Add and Select dialogs, which let you see your inserted HTML in its full HTML glory.

There's still a bit of coding yet to do on it (like actually implementing the Filtering  ;) so it's not quite ready for beta, but I'm thinking the coming week'ish.

Here are some screenshots of v1.2;

Here's a preview of the new Select dialog. Much prettier isn't it?

The updated Add dialog, showing off the Category feature.

Selecting an Icon for your new Template...

 

A preview of your new Template

The Categories are "smart" in that if you type in a new, non-existing category you'll be asked if you want to add it to your list (so you can use it again in the future)

The newly added Template

Showing off the sorting... Like most features of this plugin, the sort column and direction is remembered between sessions, so if you like to sort by Category, the next time you Select a Template the grid will already be sorted.

The Filter will work much the sample way. The last entered Title and Category used to Filter will auto-magically filled in for you, but will not be applied...

 

That's it for now... back to coding.  ;)

Related Past Post XRef:
WLW Text Template v1.1 Beta Test
WLW - Text Templates Plugin on WLWPlugins.com
My Windows Live Writer Plugin - Text Template