Rick Strahl's Web Log

Weblog Posts in August 2005

Message Board RSS Feed doubling up
August 29, 2005 @ 9:20 pm

My message board RSS feed is doubling up messages in readers, presumably due to the same title appearing frequently more than once and the readers getting confused on which entries have been received.

4 comments

Problems with opening CHM Help files from Network or Internet
August 27, 2005 @ 12:02 pm

Opening CHM files from a non-local location is no longer supported. Conveniently there's no decent error information displayed for this error so your first thought goes that there's something wrong with your help file. Here's an overview of the issue and some solutions on how to deal with it.

80 comments

Too much bitching and moaning
August 26, 2005 @ 6:08 pm

My blog has a lot of 'problem' content, but this is not necessarily a reflection on how I feel about development or the tools I use.

6 comments

Script Callbacks still broken in July CTP
August 23, 2005 @ 11:52 pm

Script Callbacks in the July CTP still seem to have a few problems with the data posted back from the server. The idea (I think anyway) is that ASP.NET should post back all the form data and populate the controls with the posted back data. But apparently this is not working correctly as I see the original static values posted back, rather than the user changed values.

11 comments

Terminal Server to the server's active Console
August 23, 2005 @ 5:50 pm

This week I feel a little behind the times. I keep running into obvious information that wasn't obvious to me, in fact I'd been running under complete misinformation. I didn't know that you can connect to Terminal Services and access the active logged on desktop of the machine. Well, turns out you can do this easily...

7 comments

I’m a RegEx Weenie
August 22, 2005 @ 9:42 pm

I understand the power of RegEx, but heck, I dread the times when I need to use it to accomplish some text parsing. I’m not cut out for cryptic code like RegEx, Perl or XSLT for that matter. Today I need to parse an HTML document and I'm running into one little snag, which seems the be my eternal problem with RegEx - how to handle those exceptions to the simple rules that RegEx works so well for.

13 comments

Video Games as high culture???
August 18, 2005 @ 11:41 am

A General Manager from Electronic Arts made some rather lame statements about video games at a conference in Germany, not only insulting Germans, but his companies grasp of social issues as well.

11 comments

Interesting Wiki Spam
August 17, 2005 @ 10:43 am

Ran into some Wiki spam today on my wiki that seemed clever: The poster actually posted useful content but obviously embedded links to their site as the examples.

5 comments

The problem with posting demos...
August 15, 2005 @ 12:39 pm

Last night I posted an AJAX demo of my Specials Sorter for my store for people to check out. Well, it turns out that doing that wasn’t the most optimal idea as people started playing with the sorter simultaneously for a feature that was really meant for a single user - yielding, uh, unpredictable results. A few smart asses also decided it'd be neat to wipe out all Specials so a few workarounds were required.

1 comment

Building an AJAX based Specials Sorter
August 15, 2005 @ 12:52 am

In light of Tim Haines BlogConversation on AJAX uses in Web Store situations I built sorter for Specials that display on the main page of the store. Here are few thoughts on the process and the results...

4 comments

Another ASP.NET Pre-Compiler Feedback Center Suggestion
August 14, 2005 @ 7:22 pm

The ASP.NET Pre-compiler when run in updateable mode doesn't keep the original file timestamps intact when writing out ASPX/ASCX/etc. files into the deployment directory which makes it really difficult to see at a glance what's changed recently.

3 comments

Web Store Sandbox: Bitten by Google
August 14, 2005 @ 6:51 pm

Google got into my Web Store Sandbox's Admin interface and promptly wiped out all inventory by running through all of the delete links.

2 comments

ASP.NET 2.0 Compiler and SmartPhone Suggestions for Feedback Center
August 10, 2005 @ 11:25 am

I posted a couple of Feedback center suggestions regarding ASP.NET 2.0 pre-compilation and SmartPhone usage with .NET 2.0.

4 comments

Anti-MS Group aims to Block Vista
August 10, 2005 @ 10:02 am

A 'public interest group' is advocating sanctioning Microsoft and preventing the release of Vista 'asking Microsoft for an unconditional warranty that the operating system is free of bugs that could result in security vulnerabilities.' Yeah right...

2 comments

Rick at Southern Calfornia Fox User Groups this week
August 08, 2005 @ 8:39 am

I'll be in Southern California speaking at the various SouCal Fox user groups with LAFOX on Tuesday, OCFox on Wednesday and San Diego Fox on Thursday...

1 comment

IIS bombed again
August 05, 2005 @ 8:54 am

IIS took a crap again last night crashing apparently hard to the point of not being able to restart the Web service. A reboot brought the server back up but this is the second time in the last three months or so that I've seen this mysterious failure happen without any indication whatsoever of what's failing.

2 comments

I don't get the visual Copy Web Site feature in Visual Studio .NET 2005
August 04, 2005 @ 1:12 pm

I admit it: I don't get the Copy Web dialog in VS.NET. The thing doesn't allow you access to the precompiled assemblies, so as far as I can tell you can't copy an entire Web site to the server. If you can't do that, then why bother with this tool at all?

11 comments

MSDN Feedback Center broken?
August 04, 2005 @ 11:43 am

I can't log in to Feedback Center - anybody else seeing this?

2 comments

Past the AJAX Hype - Some things to think about
August 03, 2005 @ 9:55 pm

Tim Haines is running an interesting 'contst' asking for suggestions to AJAX enable his Web Store application. There are some interesting suggestions, but more than anything some of the suggestions really show some of the issues and open questions that exists with AJAX technology today.

35 comments

Putting up a Web Store SandBox with ASP.NET 2.0
August 03, 2005 @ 1:29 am

Last night I put together another ASP.NET 2.0 Web Store site to put out as a SandBox for people to play around with. I'm getting the process down, but this was a little different install in that it's suposed to open everything up including the backend yet without blowing security. This post discusses a few of the thoughts that went into this and also touches on some ASP.NET 2.0 deployment issues once again.

11 comments

Another update to the ASP.NET 2.0 Compiler Utility
August 02, 2005 @ 12:04 am

Here's another update of the free ASP.NET 2.0 Compiler GUI front end that fixes a few silly bugs.

3 comments