Walt Ritscher: Thinking about code

2007 is going to the year of WPF for me.   I've got a lot of projects pending, I'll tell you more about them as I get the details worked out.   But  I can tell you this....

I started a new blog at wpfwonderland.wordpress.com that's dedicated to WPF topics.  I'll have a companion website up and running sometime this month too.(www.wpfwonderland.com )

Please check it out.  I'm really excited about WPF.  Can't wait to talk to you about all the cool bits.

Walt

Hooray! Microsoft released the service packs for Visual Studio today.  These are a MUST INSTALL for anyone using VS.  There are plenty of bug fixes.  The two that I'm most excited about are the Visual Basic background compiler fix and the performance fix for compiling large projects.  Both of these issues have slowed my daily development consistently during the last year.

If you are an ASP.NET developer you'll be happy that the Web Deployment and Web Application projects are now included.

Microsoft has added some interesting new features in the SP too.

• Multicore support for profiling
• Multicore support for code gen
• Team Server performance improvements
• See the Microsoft website for more details

There are several version of the SP. Pick the one that matches your version of Visual Studio.

• Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite SP1 (includes SP1 updates for Standard, Professional, and Team Editions of Visual Studio 2005)
• Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server SP1
• Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions SP1
• Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Update for Windows Vista Beta

Seriously, if you are using Visual Studio 2005 you should install this SP as soon as possible.

Would you like a free copy of Windows Vista?  You have to spend a few hours looking at some webcasts and fill out some information.  Doesn't seem like much work for $300 worth of software.

Wait, there's more.  A free copy of Office 2007 Pro ($500) if you watch some marketing videos for Office.  So far I haven't seen the catch, unless it's a fake site.

I don't understand the reasoning behind the offer or the odd marketing videos on YouTube.com but do you care?  Nah, it free.  If you haven't tried Vista you really should.  This just makes it easier.  

Offer expires the end of February 2007

Legal description below

• The Power Together Campaign consists of two (2) offers, the Windows Vista Business Offer and the Microsoft Office Professional 2007 Offer, and is open only to legal residents of the 50 United States (includes District of Columbia) 18 years of age or older.
• You are not eligible to receive these offers if you or your employer is a participant in the Microsoft Partner Program or the Microsoft Developer Network.
• To be eligible to receive Windows Vista Business, you must register at www.powertogether.com and participate in at least three (3) qualifying web casts and/or virtual lab sessions within 30 days of registration.
• To be eligible to receive Microsoft Office Professional 2007, you must register at www.powertogether.com and participate in at least three (3) qualifying web casts and/or virtual lab sessions within 30 days of registration.
• In order to register at www.powertogether.com, you may be asked to provide personal information including name, telephone, and address. All personal information gathered during registration will be subject to Microsoft’s privacy policy.
• Limit one gift per person per Offer.
• These offers are non-transferable.
• These offers expire on February 28, 2007, or while supplies last, and are not redeemable for cash.
• Taxes, if any, are the sole responsibility of the recipient. If you are eligible for and register to receive both gifts, you must complete a W-9 (Request for Taxpayer Identification Number and Certification) form prior to receipt of the second gift.
• Any gift returned as non-deliverable will not be re-sent. Please allow 6 - 8 weeks for shipment of your gift(s).

 

• Government Customers: Microsoft intends that use of the services and products offered as part of this promotion comply with applicable federal, state, provincial, and local government gift and ethics rules.
• If you are a government employee (including an employee of a public education institution), these services and products may be used for evaluation purposes only, solely for the benefit of your agency or institution, and not for the personal use or benefit of any individual.
• You should consult with your agency or institution counsel or ethics officer prior to use of these services or products. You may return the products to Microsoft at its expense.

I installed Office 2007 a couple weeks ago.  Sorry, I'm not going to call it by its new name (2007 Office System).  That name seems backwards to me.

If you are using Office 2007 you've undoubtedly said “where did they put that?' a time or two. Tech-Net has a nice overview of all the changes you'll need to learn. 

WPF shipped last week as a part of .NET 3.0.  I'm really excited about WPF as I think it is a much needed upgrade in Microsoft graphics programming tools.  GDI is not going to disappear overnight of course and DirectX is still viable for many companies needs.

There is another version of WPF coming soon.  It's called Windows Presentation Foundation everywhere, or WPFe, and it's suffering from an inferiority complex when compared with its older sibling.

What is WPFe?

WPFe is a subset of the WPF functionality.  It runs via a browser plug-in and is targeted to work with Linux, Mac and Windows browsers.  It does nearly everything the WPF does with the exception of 3D and advance page layout and pagination.

Supported systems

• Windows XP, 2000, 2003  and  Vista
• Mac OSX
• Linux
• Solaris

Supported Browsers

• IE 5-7
• Safari
• Firefox
  

I'm a big advocate of Virtual Machines.  I've been using VM's for a number of years, starting with VMwares great offerings back in 2000.  The last few years I've used both VMWare and Microsoft Virtual PC and Virtual Server.  My friend know that I'm always trying to convince Microsofties to ship trial/beta software as VPC images.  I won't say that I'm responsible for this :).  I'm sure that pressure from VMWare had more to do with it.  But I'm still happy!

In the last year Microsoft has started releasing beta software preconfigured on VHDs(Virtual Hard Drives).

Recently Microsoft announced the same VHD support for more current products.

The VHD Test Drive program is a first for Microsoft software and the more than 7,000 software vendors who can now deliver pre-configured mainstream applications within Windows Server-based virtual machines to their customers. Microsoft partners can now offer their prospective/current customers greater choice during the software evaluation process for mainstream applications and make it easier to evaluate complex solutions through the distribution of pre-configured virtual machines that can run on Virtual Server 2005 R2. You can also use System Center Virtual Machine Manager, now available as a beta, to manage all the virtual machines in your environment.

I think that they'll only be offering trial versions, but that is still a great deal.  The best part, at least for me, is that it takes only  a few minutes to setup the VHD on my system.  Download the file, open VPC manager, add new Virtual PC, use the VHD provided.  Done!

Contrast that 3 minute scenario with your scenarios of the past.  Have you ever tried to setup an Exchange Server?

Tonight I was converting an ASP.NET 2.0 Website to a Web Application Project.  There is a nice step-by-step guide that I was using to walk me through the process.   I ran into troubles as soon as I ran the “Convert to Web Application” menu. 

I tracked  the trouble down to four files in the project.  All of them were failing with this message.

Generation of designer file failed:  The expression prefix “ConnectionStrings” was not recognized.  Please correct the prefix or register the prefix in the <expressionBuilders> section of configuration.

The first place I looked was a dead end.  I looked in the web.config, thinking that was the configuration file in the error message.  Wrong!

Next I looked at the html on one of the problem pages.

There was the ConnectionStrings text!

The Fix

1. Cut everything between the quotes for value of the ConnectionString attribute.
2. Do the same for any other ConnectionString attributes on the same page.
3. Run the  “Convert to Web Application” for the current page.
4. Restore the ConnectionString value and save the file.

It's only three weeks away and coming to Seattle.  That's right, the Seattle Code camp is looking for camp counselors (speakers).   If you want to talk tech to a room full of eager participants this is the event you've been waiting for.

Last year we had over 50 presenters and 250+ attendees. 

Sign up to speak or attend

http://seattle.techevents.info/codecamp/2/default.aspx

Fall started last week of course.  Here in the Puget Sound region we don't have the vivid fall colors on our trees.  Some of the vine maples are pretty, most deciduous trees haven't started turning color yet.  The days have been bright and glorious this week. Temperatures in the 70's every day.   I spent most of the week indoors, teaching and programming ,but I did walk outside everyday for a few minutes.

This weekend it hit me that summer is over.  Why? Because I put away the lawn furniture.  We have a lot of outdoor furnishing scattered about the property.  There are so many places in our yard to enjoy the view of Liberty Bay.  We have huddles of chairs in some areas, benches and porch swings at other vantage points.  Putting them away was sad.  There won't be anywhere to sit.  I was quite melancholy this morning.  Bleak thoughts of rain and cold weather for the next 5 months sifted through my head.

All was not dreary though.

Taking my three year old to the pumpkin patch this afternoon helped.  She ran around the corn-maze for an hour, chatting and singing.  Telling me every 5 steps about something new she had discovered. The farmer and his wife are wonderful, down home folks.  We chatted with them for an hour, ate fresh dark purple grapes ( the heirloom types - small, sweet and tasty) . We watched them unload their new goats from the neighbors truck.

 It was a nice afternoon.

I really like the Visual Studio 2005 intellisense (See here) . There is a bug in the VS however that can stop it from working.  I believe it will be fixed in the VS 2005 service pack coming in December but in the meantime here are some things to help fix the problem.  Thanks to ScottGu and others for the ideas.  I'm posting here so I don't forget.

Configuration Element troubles

The main thing that causes the intellisense to stop working is adding a xmlsn attribute to the root <config> element.

From Scott

There is one gotcha to be aware of, though, that can sometimes cause intellisense for the web.config file to stop working in the IDE.  This happens when a default namespace is added to the root <configuration> element.  For example, like so:

 

            <configuration xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/.NetConfiguration/v2.0">

           

This doesn’t cause any runtime problems – but it does stop intellisense completion happening for the built-in .NET XML elements in the web.config file. 

 

The bad news is that the built-in web admin tool (launched via the WebSite->ASP.NET Configuration menu item in VS 2005 and Visual Web Developer) always adds this xmlns namespace when it launches – so if you use this tool to manage users/roles you’ll end up having it added to your web.config file for you.

 

To get intellisense back when you are editing the web.config file in the IDE, just delete the xmlns reference and have the root configuration element look like so:

 

<configuration>

 

Everything will then work fine again.

Changing WebAdmin  Tool

A quick fix to the WebAdmin tool will prevent your config file from getting hammered.

1. Go to  %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\ASP.NETWebAdminFiles\App_Code
2. Open the WebAdminPage.cs file
3. Edit the config.NamespaceDeclared line.

Thanks to Massimo Prota

Visual Studio 2005 improves on the intellisense in many file-types.   One of my favorites is the support for intellisense in XML and .config files.  You get a listing of what elements and attributes are available for the current config section.

It's also smart enough to know when you've used a element and not show it in the list (if it is restricted to one instance in the schema).

First Time

Second Time

It seems that a lot of my colleagues are intrigued with Ruby and it's web cousin Ruby on Rails.  I have to admit I'm intrigued with the language, I just haven't had the time to look into the benefits of Ruby first hand.

A couple of people/companies are working on .NET implementations for Ruby.  Last week at the Portland Code Camp I sat in on IronRuby session.  A very interesting look at how Wilco Bauwer is building a version of Ruby that runs on the .NET CLR.   Wilco is an intern on the ASP.NET team and still finds spare time to work on the Iron Ruby project.

Another interesting find is Ruby in Steel.  This is a Visual Studio implementation of Ruby on Rails from a company name SapphireSteel.  You can use all the tools you know and love from Visual Studio to build, modify and test Ruby on Rails code.  They're still in early beta releases but it looks very interesting to me.  According to their web site SapphireSteel will release a commercial version and a free standard edition.

I might be learning Ruby on Rails sooner than I thought.

For anyone at the Portland Oregon Code Camp

I updated my ASP.NET tips code this week and uploaded to my website. Thanks for coming to my talk.

Get the code. 

Paul Sheriff is always thinking of new ways to share his enormous knowledge of .NET and other programming skills with the world.  Every-time I have dinner with him or see him at a conference he's bubbling with energy and enthusiasm over some new idea.  I'm always probing and mulling new ideas too, my wife will tell you that she can't get me to shut up , but I have a hard time keeping up with Paul.

His latest idea sound exciting.  He has started a subscription website that shares his catalog of tools, utilities, books, articles and web-casts. It's called Paul Sheriff's Inner Circle and it launched today.  For as little as $9.00 a month you can tap into a wealth of knowledge. 

I've previewed the site and I think you'll like it. Check it out.

Oh my....

I love the Sysinternals tools.  I use some of them almost everyday.   They are wonderfully useful tools, that solve a real problem and many of them are free.

Mark Russinovich has just announced that Microsoft is buying his company. Oh my...

I'm torn.  One the one hand Microsoft is getting some great software.  If they bundle these tools with Windows and continue to offer them for free then it will be a good addition to the Windows world.

On the other hand, if they get sucked into the black void of lost software at Microsoft then it is a sad day.  Time will tell. 

I can tell you one thing though.  I'm going to go to Sysinternals site today and download all the latest builds and burn them on a DVD.  Just in case!