October 14, 2008
August 6, 2008
Vista - Setting color for desktop icon text
Earlier today I modified the desktop background picture on my Vista machine and realized that the light tone of the image, caused the text of desktop icons to become unreadable due to their default white color. This I thought was easily fixed by modifying the font color, but i was surprised to not find any option to do that within my Aero theme. This was something I could easily do in XP.
Some of the online solutions seemed to point to revert to classic theme and that this text color change wasn't possible in Aero. This was very disappointing. Then I found this. The suggestion here worked. I initially set the desktop background to solid White color. This caused the text color of desktop icons to become black and I then set the picture i had set earlier. Not a very elegant way, but this did get me to the state I wanted to be in.
July 10, 2008
WPF - Text clips on some Vista machines
I love mysteries. So when a project team approached me the other day with an issue with their WPF application, I immediately jumped into it. The issue they were facing was really mysterious. Their WPF application was working and looking fine on all their Vista machines, but when shared with Client, it started to have problems. Text in some controls was clipping.
After trying on multiple machines locally, they found 1 Vista machine where the problem was reproduced. The mystery was that all these machines were using same resolution (1024x768), same dpi (96) and same theme, but text would clip on that 1 machine and work fine on all others. They were about to write this off claiming some issue with Vista.
Continue reading "WPF - Text clips on some Vista machines" »
June 12, 2008
Migrating Comparis Silverlight Challenge App to Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2
With the Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2 now available, I finally decided to take the plunge. So far, I had been focusing on WPF, but knowing that Silverlight is the next big wave for RIA development, I could not stay away longer.
A few fellow colleagues have been working with Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 and I heard from them that Beta 2 has been a bit of a challenge considering the various breaking changes from Beta 1 to Beta 2. Fortunately these were mostly functional/API issues with Silverlight controls and not like the interesting issue faced by my colleague Kishore with his attempt to work with .net 3.5 SP1 beta. Since I was new, I started with the Comparis Silverlight Challenge Application and the HOL created by Swiss MSDN Team.
Continue reading "Migrating Comparis Silverlight Challenge App to Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2" »
March 18, 2008
Expression Blend issue with WPF Data binding debugging
Some days back I had pointed to the blog by Beatriz on how to debug WPF data binding errors. I have been using the PresentationTraceSources.TraceLevel feature (available with .NET 3.5) since then and have found it very easy to use and very effective in resolving my data binding errors.
However recently when I opened a XAML, which had this debugging feature enabled, in Expression Blend 2.5 March Preview, I got an error. The XAML won't open in designer and showed "Invalid XAML" with details as 'The member "TraceLevel" is not recognized or is not accessible'.
Continue reading "Expression Blend issue with WPF Data binding debugging" »
February 29, 2008
Expression Blend issue with Globalized WPF Application
Recently while supporting a project on converting their WPF application for globalization and localization support, we faced an issue in being able to work with Expression Blend 2 Dec preview. We used the recommended approach for globalization and localization and after doing all that Expression Blend failed to load the user controls in design view.
You would get an error like this - "MissingSatelliteAssemblyException: The satellite asembly named yourassemblyname for fallback culture 'en-US' either could not be found or could no be loaded. This is generally a setup problem. Please consider reisntalling or repariring the application."
Continue reading "Expression Blend issue with Globalized WPF Application" »
January 23, 2008
Unit Test Trust Issue on Vista
Further to my unit testing experiments that I have been blogging about in the last few days, I was playing around with the DashCommerce starter kit. After installing and configuring the site, I started by creating some tests for the code in the App_code folder.
The test creation was successful and I was all set to run. But luck was against me and I got compilation errors regarding missing namespace. As I had mentioned in my earlier blog, the testing happens via private accessor and since its creation happened successfully, ideally I shouldn't have had a need for adding explicit references and namespaces to my test project.
October 4, 2007
BizTalk Server 2006 R2 on Vista
BizTalk Server 2006 R2 is now available. Introduction paper to this version is available here. Get a trial version of it from here. MSDN Subscribers can download it from the MSDN Subscribers download site. The latest documentation for this version is available here.
I had earlier blogged about getting BizTalk Server 2006 to work in Vista. At that time BizTalk wasn't officially supported on Vista, but I had wanted to test if it worked or not. The current R2 release is now officially supported on Vista. So I decided to give it a try again. I used BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Developer Edition and worked on Windows Vista Ultimate.
September 13, 2007
Webinar: Leap Ahead with Windows Vista
August 10, 2007
VS 2005 Debugging Issue with AJAX Applications on IIS7 on Vista
I wanted to play around with AJAX and hence downloaded the Extensions and the ToolKit. I created a new ASP.NET AJAX Enabled Web Site and after adding the Update Panel to update a label control, I hit F5. Surprisingly, I got an error when trying to debug.
Continue reading "VS 2005 Debugging Issue with AJAX Applications on IIS7 on Vista" »
April 20, 2007
Inside Vista Kernel
Most people, when hear Vista, think about Aero glass affect, great new set of icons and wallpapers and UAC. However there is more to Vista than this. Mark Russinovich in 3 part series on Technet Magazine covers key features of Vista Kernel. Gives good insight into the features and make really interesting reading. Check them out
April 19, 2007
Vista Security - Paranoid, but Indispensable
One argument why some consider Linux to be more secure than Windows is that – hacking attempts on Linux are far lesser than Windows. Well, you are only true, until you are proved otherwise. And there is nothing in this world as “Completely Secure”. Everything is only secure until it is broken.
Continue reading "Vista Security - Paranoid, but Indispensable" »
April 12, 2007
Session 0 and 1 in Vista
Earlier today a colleague asked how do Services and Applications talk to each other in Vista and I said, "the way they used to earlier". I wasn't aware of Session 0 and Session 1 concept till now. He pointed me to this MSDN article that explains what this new concept of Session 0 in Vista is all about.
This essentially is to prevent direct access to services from applications and thus prevent hacker to elevate their own security priviledges. Some information around this is here and on this Channel 9 video. A white paper on impact of session 0 on services and drivers is also available.
[Edited April 16, 2007] Found some tips to communicating with Session 0 services here.
March 13, 2007
"Access Denied" error whuile launching a Softgrid virtualized application on Vista
I am trying to launch an application on Windows Vista which was virtualized previously for Windows XP. However when I launch the deployed shortcut , Softgrid throws following error -
The Softgrid Client could not launch <Application Name>. Access is Denied. Error Code: 410038-0060922C-80070005
Has anyone experienced this error before?
ZTI of Vista over WAN
March 1, 2007
IIS 7 hosted sites not accessible from remote machines
Recently while working on my Vista machine, I was was working on a ASP.NET Web site and I wanted to have a colleage of mine have a look. Like always, I mailed him the URL and waited for him to view it and get back. To my surprise, he reverted stating he can't view it.
The error he was getting was "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage". This was surprising since I was able to view the site locally on the Vista machine without any issues. This meant that IIS was configured and running properly.
Continue reading "IIS 7 hosted sites not accessible from remote machines" »
February 26, 2007
Roaming Profiles Implementation for SoftGrid-II
In the "Roaming Profiles Implementation for SoftGrid-I" we discussed the concept of Softgrid roaming profiles for applications and it's contribution in achieving a true roaming user profile.
I will continue the discussion further and discuss a simple procedure to implement Softgrid Roaming profile in a test lab.
Continue reading "Roaming Profiles Implementation for SoftGrid-II" »
Addressing User Security Elevation on a locked down PC using SoftGrid Virtualized Applications
Normally in a locked down environemnt in order to enable End Users (EU) to customize application specific settings and other customizations application packagers identify and elevate security permissions to secure NTFS and Registry areas. This is often considered as a security risk and also contributes to effort in troublershooting and identifying such areas on the local system.
SoftGrid eliminates the requirement of elevating security permissions to the restricted area. As Softgrid virtualized applications execute within a virtual environement the user has complete access to the virtual environemnt while executing the application. The advantage is that the users have access to the desired functionality withoutaffecting the state of the host system.
Microsoft Vista: Best Practices recommendation for Zero Touch Deployment using SMS and BDD-II
User State Migration Tool (USMT) is a small command line utility provided to capture and restore the user’s data and settings from a machine
Best Practices recommendation for creation and customization of Vista image to be used in Zero Touch Deployment using SMS and BDD - I
While capturing the base image, extreme care has to be taken as this image will be replicated across all machines in the enterprise. Based on past experiences, the following recommendations are provided:
Software to install
· Before capturing the image, ensure that all enterprise wide software is installed in the core image.
· The base image should contain the enterprise standard firewall and anti-virus clients to ensure that the image starts up with the requisite security configuration pre-installed.
· Try to include as many base packages into the image as possible to limit the time required during the deployment. It is generally noted that installing an image with the software pre-installed is a lot faster than installing the image and then installing the software separately.
· Include the SMS Advanced Client in the base image.
Roaming Profiles Implementation for SoftGrid-I
This challenge is addressed in Softgrid by maintaining Softrgid Application Profiles. In this topic I will discuss how softgrid helps in implementing a true roaming profile
Continue reading "Roaming Profiles Implementation for SoftGrid-I" »
Sequencing MS Office 2003
While sequencing office 2003 I came around an error that says “This action is only valid for products that are currently installed”.The error occurred when I tried running the applications from the shortcuts placed in Start menu of the local machine instead of launching the shortcuts from Softgrid Sequencer.
February 22, 2007
Configuring Custom Http Handler in IIS 7
Recently when working on an application, I was playing around with writing custom http handlers. There is nothing new in that lots has been written about how to build and configure custom http handlers. So when after writing this I decided to configure it in IIS 7 on my Vista machine, I was pleasently surprised to see that I was lost !
IIS 7 UI has changed noticeably from its earlier versions and when I wanted to configure the file extension I wanted my custom handler to work with, I didn't know what to do.
Continue reading "Configuring Custom Http Handler in IIS 7" »
Follow us on
Infosys on Twitter
Recent Posts
Categories
- .NET 2.0
- .NET Fwk 3.0
- .NET Fwk 3.5
- .NET MicroFramework
- .net 4.0
- ASP .NET
- Big Data
- Cloud Computing
- Collaboration
- Expression Blend
- General
- HPC
- Infrastructure Optimization
- Kinect
- Legacy Modernization
- Microsoft Business Intelligence
- Microsoft Design Technologies
- Microsoft Dynamics
- Microsoft Products & Technologies
- NUI
- Orcas
- Phone 7
- SharePoint Technologies
- Silverlight
- Software Factory
- Solution Accelerators
- Testing
- Unified Communications
- VS2008
- Vista
- Win 7
- Windows 8
Archives
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006