Mix07 a 72 Hour Conversation

I'm in Las Vegas this week for the Mix07 conference. It is being billed as a 72 hour conversation but I'm learning that they want to sleep. It's now 2:50 AM and there's nobody left to converse with. I wonder if I should feel cheated...

What's in store for the week? Well it looks like it's going to be three days of learning about SilverLight. Silverlight is Microsoft's answer to Flash. Why do they need an answer to Flash? Well, if you are as dedicated to Microsoft technologies as I am, you have spent a lot of time learning WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation). Why should I have to learn something else to make dynamic content for the web? Silverlight will enable you and I to use our knowledge of WPF for use in the web in a cross browser manner.

Okay, that sounded like a lot of hype, and maybe that's all it is. We will see this week how things turn out. I'll try to keep you updated on what's going on.

Enable Terminal Services on Longhorn Server Core Beta 3

Longhorn Server Beta 3 finally arrived this week. I'm currently in the process of replacing all of my Longhorn Servers with Beta 3. I started with my Server Core install.

The guidance documents that I've seen are all based on beta 2, and a lot has changed since beta 2. To enable terminal services on server core follow these steps:

1. Enable Terminal Services with this command:
• Cscript C:\Windows\System32\SCregEdit.wsf /ar 0
• if you need to connect from a non 6.0 Remote Desktop Client also run this command:
• Cscript C:\Windows\System32\SCregEdit.wsf /cs 0
2. Open the firewall with this command:
• netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="TS" protocol=TCP dir=in localport=3389 action=allow

Remote Desktop should now work.

.NET Framework 2.0, I hardly knew ya...

Well I have been really excited about the upcoming WinFX release and I've been learning all I can about WPF, WCF, and WF. There's been some confusion in the marketplace about .NET Framework's role in WinFX so Microsoft decided to change it's name. The combination of the .NET Framework 2.0 and WinFX will be known as...

.NET Framework 3.0

I guess this finally explains the 3.x version numbers on all of the dll's in WinFX.

Here's a link to more information on the name change:

http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2006/06/09/624300.aspx

Microsoft Update

Most people, hopefully, know that to update their Windows computer they go to Windows Update. Some people know that to update Microsoft Office they go to Office Update. What if you wanted to update both of them from one location? Go to the new Microsoft Update. This has just been released, and the link can be found right here:

Quote

Microsoft TechNet: Microsoft Update

Moving the Outlook 2003 OST File

One of the partners in the firm that I work at asked me how he could move the location of his offline mail store (OST) from the C drive to the D drive. It wasn't clear, but it looks like you have to first disable the offline caching mode of Exchange and then restart Outlook. Then shut down Outlook and then reapply the offline caching, but go into the advanced properties to set the location of this new ost file. Once done the file was "moved" (more accurately it was recreated) on his D drive. If anyone is looking for detailed instructions, let me know and I'll type them up.

WPF/E

Windows Presentation Foundation has obvious benefits both for creating rich user experiences in Windows and for ease of development, but how do those advantages translate to the web? Most people would give the answer that WPF is just Flash for Windows. Just take the application in Windows and rewrite it in Flash. Now let’s say that we’ve invested a lot of time training you and me on how to write WPF applications, and a customer comes back and says they want the same quality of user experience in a web app. We’d say that a different team of people would need to come up to speed on Flash and build it out in Flash. This would effectively duplicate our efforts. Do you think they will pay us double? They probably would not. What would be great is if there was some way to leverage our expertise in WPF for the web. This is where Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere (WPF/E) fits into the picture.

Microsoft today announced the availability of the development center for WPF/E on MSDN. It is currently only a Community Tech Preview, but by the end of 2007 there will finally be a viable competitor to Flash.

More information can be found here:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/asp.net/bb187358.aspx

Multi-multi Monitor

People at work ask me, "Could you have more monitors on your desk?" Then they give me more work to do. What do you think? Is this too much?

Hey Michael, What did you do to IntelliSense here?

I inherited a machine here at work that had ReSharper installed on it. I didn't want to have to pay for it so I removed it. That was in February. Since then I haven't had any IntelliSense in Visual Studio.NET 2003. Being the piss poor programmer that I am, I rely too heavily on IntelliSense and I've been lost since then. However, I finally got frustrated today when I was trying to work with a DataGrid and I decided to do some heavy searching for a solution. The answer came rather quickly from the JetBrains web site (they made ReSharper).

The answer is this (takes directly from this address: http://support.jetbrains.com/kb/entry.jspa?categoryID=28&externalID=141):

Sometimes when uninstalling ReSharper, it fails to restore original Visual Studio's intellisense. To restore it, go to Tools > Options > Text Editor > C# > General and check "Auto list members" and "Parameter information" checkboxes.

Now I have my IntelliSense back.

More Vista and RSS Stuff

Last time I visited this topic I was miffed that the platform SDK that I had access to at the time did not include the RSS API's. They now exist and are called Web Feeds API. The problem is that they are in native COM only. There isn't a managed version of them. So I get to use interop by calling the Type Library Importer on the msfeeds.dll. Didn't they learn their lesson from DirectX that forcing developers to use a shim to the native code is a bad idea? At least I know where it is now. Perhaps I should take this opportunity to dust off my C++ skills. Why though? All the other apps I have written that I'm hoping to make use of RSS are in Managed Code.

Critical Windows Update

It's not "Rushed" and it's not "early", but it is the most important thing you can do today. There is a critical Windows update available on Windows Update. Anyone reading this should immediately go update your computer.

I say it's not rushed because Microsoft did all of their normal testing and it is safe to install. Also it isn't Early in the same sense. Microsoft has just been holding on to it until "Patch Tuesday", but because some people have no morals and decided to publish details on how to exploit this vulnerability Microsoft released the patch 5 days before it was to be released.

Patch Tuesday is the second Tuesday of every month. This is the day that Microsoft releases patches for their operating systems. Several years ago there were a lot of press and IT professionals complaining that Microsoft needed to release patches on a more regular schedule. This would help IT in planning for rollout and testing of these new patches, and it would allow the press a particular day to once again rip into Microsoft. However, it would appear that these same people are now complaining that Microsoft waited too long to release this patch. The press even went so far as to recommend people use an unofficial patch written by someone else. Please, don't do this. Microsoft's official patch is out. Use that one.

Now stop reading this and go update your computer.