Rick Strahl's Web Log

Weblog Posts in March 2007

The server committed a protocol violation with WebRequest
March 29, 2007 @ 7:03 pm

I've been working with a host of different OFX financial services to retrieve data from remote servers and merge them into one of my client's systems. These servers are a wide variety of different Web Servers and using various versions of the OFX protocols which has been nothing short of a...

5 comments

Nested Item Templates for custom script extensions in Visual Studio
March 27, 2007 @ 7:01 pm

I'm working on an application that's using custom HTTP handlers to handle inbound Web requests where each script request is pointing at an HTTP handler. In this case the handlers need to be individual files so I have a script map configured in IIS with a special extension and then mapped to my...

3 comments

Using Project Template Export to create a generic WAP Template
March 26, 2007 @ 5:35 am

I have a customer coming out tomorrow for a week long gig and as I was preparing for tomorrow's session I needed to set up new project. Starting up a new project and getting all the pieces into place for a Web application involves a fair amount of setup for me usually as I typically startup with a...

3 comments

System.Argument Exceptions in W3wp.exe and the VS Just-in Time Debugger
March 25, 2007 @ 2:16 pm

I've been noticing that on my server quite frequently I get managed exceptions bubbling up to the Dr. Watson and/or the Visual Studio Just In Time Debugging dialog on the desktop. Now this being a server machine I'm not happy about this happening of course because it clutters the desktop the next...

2 comments

LINQ and dynamic Query Results?
March 22, 2007 @ 1:03 am

I've been mostly watching LINQ take shape and only recently started in looking at it a bit more closely.I've been pretty excited about the prospect of LINQ in general and the database connectivity in particular - after all I come from an XBase background where a built in Data Definition Language...

25 comments

Fun with List Types for Caching Data
March 20, 2007 @ 8:30 pm

I often find myself using various collection types for 'cached' storage in Web applications. For example, in some applications there are lists of countries, lists of states, various other lookup lists that are initially stored in a database, but then are constantly reused. There's little point in...

7 comments

Building a SnagIt Screen Capture Plugin for Live Writer
March 19, 2007 @ 12:35 am

I spent a few hours a couple of days ago creating a plugin for Windows Live Writer that allows for easy screen captures. I've long been a huge fan of SnagIt from Techsmith and since SnagIt's capture functionality is available as a COM interface it's quite easy to expose the functionality in other...

11 comments

Scare Tactics
March 17, 2007 @ 2:55 pm

I love companies who are going through the effort of scare tactics to take advantage of users. Check out this dialog thrown up by Quickbooks 2006 when it starts: While I can understand that there may be incompatibilities, this kind of dialog that can't be turned off is a major annoyance. And...

7 comments

BinaryFormatter.Deserialize not finding a type of a Plugin
March 17, 2007 @ 12:15 am

I'm working on a plug in for LiveWriter that does screen captures with SnagIt and embeds the content directly into the post. Works great, but now I'm to the point that I want to set up some configuration options and serialize them. I use a few simplified serialization functions in my utility...

4 comments

The Type Initializer for System.Drawing.ToolboxBitmapAttribute threw an exception
March 11, 2007 @ 11:23 pm

Here's a fun exception that popped up in my admin error mail box today:/wwStore/item.aspx?sku=wconnectThe type initializer for 'System.Drawing.ToolboxBitmapAttribute' threw an exception. on 3/11/2007 10:34:49 pm--- Stack Trace --- at System.Reflection.CustomAttribute._CreateCaObject(Void*...

5 comments

Heading off to MVP Summit
March 11, 2007 @ 3:25 pm

Ah, it's that time of year again - I'm heading off to the MVP summit later tonight. I've had issues getting a flight out of here so I'm a little late taking the red-eye out of here getting there tomorrow around noon. The Summit is always a fun event, as much of a social, schmoozing thing as...

3 comments

MetaWebLog API and Blog Writers
March 10, 2007 @ 11:36 pm

Got a little time last night to add MetaWebLogApi to my Blog in hopes of being able to start using slightly more favorable HTML in my posts. I've been using Word for all of my blogging over the years and while I've tried various tools for publishing posts I've always come back to the convenience of...

14 comments

Generate Scripts in Sql Management Studio
March 08, 2007 @ 8:30 pm

Sql 2005 Management studio's Generate Scripts iritates the hell out of me with its Wizard based approach and no way to step through the choices after generation again.

8 comments

nVidia Vista Drivers and Dual Monitor Support
March 08, 2007 @ 5:34 pm

Since I've had my replcaed nVidia video card in my Dell Laptop I haven't been able to get dual monitor support to work on Vista, even with drivers that previously worked.

71 comments

Medium Trust - WebPermissions and SmtpPermissions
March 06, 2007 @ 3:36 pm

I'm putting the final touches on generic application that will be redistributed and one issue that I'm fretting over is dealing with some medium trust limitations in relation to Web access.

6 comments

I got my Laptop back finally
March 05, 2007 @ 8:32 pm

Got my laptop back after a tech came out today to replace the video card. Long battle but it looks like I'm finally back in business.

Mulling over WPF/E
March 03, 2007 @ 2:52 am

Spent the last few days looking over WPF/E finally and started to think about some of the implications or how it might fit into the Web dev platform for what I do. Answer - I'm not quite sure. There's some nice stuff, but it's also pretty limited and in a way not quite what I expected. This post is a mini walk through and some thoughts on the matter.

15 comments

RSS Redux
March 02, 2007 @ 11:50 am

It seems that for the most part the duplication issues with my RSS feed have subsided. For me at least Outlook and FeedDemon no longer double up, but I still get an occasional note that Google Reader is duplicating.

16 comments

Alternate Machine while waiting on Dell
March 01, 2007 @ 12:37 pm

While Dell is deciding whether they'll give me support on my laptop, I'm running on a secondary machine. This is usually my back test machine to test installations on and even though it's fairly old it's still holding up pretty good even running Vista. Still there are a few quirks that I haven't seen on the laptop...

9 comments

Some thoughts on Xml parsing with XPathNavigator
March 01, 2007 @ 1:56 am

I've been working on XML Parsing for a few weeks now and in the process got to know the XPathNavigator a bit better than I did. Here are a few notes and some helpers that I used to simplify my parsing.

3 comments