Cumps Consulting

Posted on 2004.02.22 | No comments | Longhorn

This post has been imported from the old blog and has not yet been converted to the new syntax yet.

Well, here I am, playing mini-Evangelist in my class, telling about all nice .NET things.

And now with Longhorn installed, I wanted to show some screenies, and also prove that Pre-Alpha does not mean "If you touch it, it'll destroy your pc" ;)

I know you can find these anywhere, but these are *my* screenies, my personal sweeties, my preciousssss :)

First The Desktop.

Followed by hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del.

And don't worry, all your great software is still there, like Paint, Calculator and Notepad ;)

Here you got the proof that the IE team actually does add new things, and that it still exists. One of the features is to Clear Browsing Records. And in the back you see Visual Studio .NET Whidbey, with the nice yellow/green indicators to show which unsaved changes there are and which changes already have been saved.

And the end of this screenie round is during the Logoff, after which Remote Desktop closed.

I really like the default look, no kiddie look as in IE. But also not the Win98 look. Very nice black, stylish.

Regarding layout, Explorer doesn't seem to like me, it doesn't want to set my preferred settings for every map, even if I have told it to do so on every occasion.

I'm On Longhorn - Download Manager == Evil!

Posted on 2004.02.21 | No comments | Longhorn

This post has been imported from the old blog and has not yet been converted to the new syntax yet.

I got Longhorn installed!

I'm guessing the .iso got corrupted during my download.

It didn't took as long as I expected to install, no 5 hours like some blogs say. But more something like one hour. I didn't use Virtual PC though, got my laptop running on LH.

No 4-bit mode on first boot, and after I used my gfx drivers (which installed without any problem) I got it back on 1024x768 on 32-bit.

First did all the tweaks posted on the net, disable the right dockingbar, disable services, ...

Everything was running smooth when I rebooted after those changes. Not so terribly slow, althou shutting down takes some time ;)

It doesn't like Winamp 5, gets closed immediately after it's started. Winamp 2 works great though. Trillian Pro going fine as well.

Then I installed VS.NET Whidbey. Which gave me about 3 BSOD. but in the end I managed to install it using the 'Repair' function. Going to look at the dump file later on. Could be that my laptop got to warm and that the hardware went crazy.

Made my first HelloWorld in Whidbey, I already love the green/yellow status on the side. As well as the great 'Format Document' together with all the new settings about braces and indenting.

Also did my first XAML file. Then I noticed that I'm missing the Longhorn SDK. Everybody is talking about the PDC DVD. But I only have a CD with Longhorn?

Anyway, after setting the PATH var to include the 1.2 Framework and setting the LAPI var as well, MSBuild works and everything compiles. Next thing I'm going to look for is how to make XAML files with C# codebehind in VS.NET and compile them there.

One big annoyance I'm having: the Download Manager is evil!

I have 2 files in there always saying 'Connecting' and I can't delete or pauze them. If I dare to do that, it doesn't respond anymore, killing explorer doesn't help, logging on again doesn't help either. Only thing I can do is reboot.

Well, I'm running on LH now. When I have some free time and am somewhat familiar with it, expect some comments on it from me.

Update: Apparently I can get the SDK anyway, must have looked over it, another 574.1 MB to download.

Update 2: I can NOT get Longhorn for you, do NOT request it in the comments, I won't give it to you, you have to get it yourself. There's no warez here...

Longhorn installation failing - 'An error occurred while copying files'

Posted on 2004.02.16 | No comments | Longhorn

This post has been imported from the old blog and has not yet been converted to the new syntax yet.

I wanted to install Longhorn today. The 'Longhorn Pre-Alpha Client Preview' version.

So here I go, I format my laptop (which is a test pc) and insert the cd.

After entering the key, choosing where to install and clicking continue, when the timer jumps to "13 minutes left" I get an error.

"An error occurred while copying files". That's it, nothing I can do about this.

I looked on Google for help, but nobody got it, except for one person who fixed it by using another machine.

Then, I installed Virtual PC 2004 on my main computer and decided to install it there. That must work, after all it's a virtual pc, and everyone else already got it to run on Virtual PC.

No luck thou, same error message.

Does anyone have any advice in what I can do? I even don't know where it goes wrong, can I get some debug info here to pass on to the MS team?

There goes my plan to install Longhorn and Whidbey on my test pc :(

Love to hear from someone.

Update: I got some additional info, I mounted the .iso in Virtual PC now, same error. Happens when it has written 424.4MB.

Update 2: When I install Windows 2000, run the Setup from there it starts saying "18 minutes left", the progress bar goes a bit further, until the reboot message comes. Then it continues installing with "14 minutes left", and a bit after it goes to 13 it gives the same error again. I'm at a dead end now.

Javascript Open Directory Image Viewer

Posted on 2004.02.13 | No comments | Tweaks

This post has been imported from the old blog and has not yet been converted to the new syntax yet.

You all know those open directories with pictures in it.

And you all know how annoying it can be to view them all by clicking them, or downloading them all to your hd and viewing them there.

Well, here's another way:

Add this .url to your favorites. And when you're on such an open dir, just hit the url and it will show all the .jpg, .gif, .png and .bmp's on that page.

All this actually is, is a javascript as url. This has been tested in IE6, I don't garantee it'll work in other browsers, you can try.

Here's the actual script that's in the link:

[javascript]
var sHTML = 'Fotoviewer\n\n\t\n';
for (x = 0; x < document.links.length; x++) {
link = document.links(x).href.toLowerCase();
if ((link.indexOf('.jpg') != -1) || (link.indexOf('.gif') != -1) || (link.indexOf('.png') != -1) || (link.indexOf('.bmp') != -1)) {
sHTML += '\t\t

\n'
}
}
sHTML += "\t

\n";
document.body.innerHTML=sHTML;
[/javascript]

Or in a compact one line version:

javascript:var%20sHTML='<html><head><title>Fotoviewer</title></head>\n<body>\n\t<div%20align="center">\n';for(x=0;x<document.links.length;x++){link=document.links[x].href.toLowerCase();if((link.indexOf('.jpg')!=-1)||(link.indexOf('.gif')!=-1)||(link.indexOf('.png')!=-1)||(link.indexOf('.bmp')!=-1)){sHTML+='\t\t<img%20src="'+document.links[x].href+'"/><br/><br/>\n'}}sHTML+="\t</div>\n</body></html>";document.body.innerHTML=sHTML;

Update: Added the .toLowerCase() to link.

Update #2: Changed links(x) to links[x] to make it work in other browsers ;)

DevDays 2004 Belgium - Day 2 - One API To Rule Them All

Posted on 2004.02.11 | No comments | Community, DevDays 2004

This post has been imported from the old blog and has not yet been converted to the new syntax yet.

Welcome back! DevDays 2004 Belgium, Day 2 is over, and that also concludes the entire DevDays over here.

The day starts with an opening keynote by David Chappell about The Road to Longhorn.

This dude is amazing, he comes on stage, and as an introduction he starts taking of his jacket, tie and shirt, and what's under that? Our national football shirt, from the Red Devils.

Check the picture for (unclear) details :)

Oh, and he got some red socks as well. ;)

He compared musicians to developers, only developers get better hotels. They travel around the world and play for audiences.

His session was basically about what Longhorn is and will be. I'm very impressed by the 'One API to rule them all', or WinFX :p

The main message was 'write managed code!'. And preferably one of the new languages. Managed C++ is for people who love pain.

There was also a story about where the codename came from. Above Redmond lies Canada, with a ski-resort there that's very loved with MS folks. There are two mountains there, Whistler and Blackcomb. Now you all know what those code-names are for. But then Blackcomb got set back and something got in between, so they returned to their ski-resort and looked around. What is between these two mountains? And they found a bar, called Longhorn. And there it was, it got called after a bar in Canada.

He kinda told in big lines everything of the Longhorn track of that day.

XAML is the next thing in designing UI's. The designer creates a UI in XAML, and gives it to the dev, who wires up the events.

There was also a comparison between Google and Windows. Google searches in about 4 billion pages, and how long does it take to get a result back? Almost instantly. Now, open up your search in Windows.... This has to improve! This is all about WinFS.

I won't make so many different posts about this day, going to summarize them all in here.

First there was Avalon.

It's amazing what you can do with it! Images in buttons, video in buttons, buttons, images, moving buttons in listboxes, checkboxes in buttons, the whole lot. Gradient buttons, disappearing buttons, everything. XAML is great!

The only question I got about this is, if XAML doesn't get compiled, does that mean that everyone who gets an app can change the UI to what he likes? Or does it get compiled in your final product after all?

One thing to remember thou, Avalon gives you all these neat features, but you don't have to use all of them!. There was a demo app of the worst app ever, with moving things, disappearing, resizing, etc.

There were a lot of people again today.

Then was Indigo. It's great to have all communications under one section, webservices, remoting, enterprise services, ... all in Indigo.

I don't have a pic of this, he moved too much ;)

After that was WinFS.

It's amazing what you can do with this. Searching goes so much faster, and with the nice stack based view, which decreases as you enter a query, it's lovely.

Some questions I got on this matter are:

If your drop all your files in a WinFS store and you got only maps like 'Documents', 'Images', etc.. When you drop 2 or more files in there with the same filename (but actually a different image), how will you keep them apart? Now it's easy, they're in a separate folder, but we can't think in terms of folders anymore.

Something else I want to know. If WinFS stores all the meta-data, is there a way to have the browsing way like we have now, with files and folders, but with the power of WinFS? So that during your everyday work you keep using NTFS and the classic way, but when you go to Search, you get everything nicely cataloged.

And last for today was Whidbey.

Strange picture? Yeah :p

This session actually took 25 minutes longer then planned, he kept giving demo's, incredible. We saw some things about Whitehorse, also some of the stuff I saw on day one. A demo of ObjectSpaces, OneClick, Yukon stored procedures and SpaceInvaders in old console style :)

That was DevDays 2004 Belgium. It was a great experience for me. Hope to go to some more of these things.

Here's a decent picture btw:

In a couple of days I'll tell about the goodies. Got to get some sleep first.

You know, this is actually the first time in my life I had to get up so early to take the train. (Excluded from the times I don't sleep) And boy it's cold outside in the morning.

I hope you liked this feedback, I know it might not been very technically detailed, but you can read all about that in the slides which will become available (or are already?). This was more my view as a student going for the first time.

Oh, and I spoke at DevDays as well:

Don't believe me? Well, you're right, I only took a picture ;) It looks nice thou, doesn't it?

Thanks MS for inviting me!

«« Older Posts

Newer Posts »»