November 2006 - Posts
I just lost 20 minutes worth of work because of a problem I've had with IE for the longest time. I fully understand that some people use the backspace key as the back button when navigating the Internet, but I have never wanted to use it that way. I've hit the backspace many, many, many times, but never, ever, ever wanted it to go "back".
I was filling out my Time card for last week (yes it was Due on Monday) and was half way through with it. I clicked inside the hour box to change one of my tasks and hit backspace. You can save me the lecture on only use delete; I use them both interchangeably. I must not have clicked inside the textbox because when I hit backspace my browser flashed and it went back to the previous page.
I clicked forward, strange the forwardspace key doesn't move forward...oh wait, that moves you down the page. That is another great and usable feature. Scoff! When the page reloaded from me hitting forward, all of my changes were lost. I'm sure the web developers could do something to keep my changes when the page reloaded, but damn...I'm the dolt that left the page.
Please oh please IE team, enable as an option to TURN OFF the backspace as a back button bug feature with IE. There is already a keyboard shortcut for moving back. alt->[left arrow]. At least that one makes sense because the inverse operation alt->[right arrow] moves forward and not down the page...
[Update: Thanks for Bob's constructive criticism, I actually had to look at the keyboard to see what key my mental memory was pressing.]
I added a manual ScriptReference to an embedded resource but was receiving a client side error:
Error: Sys.ScriptLoadFailedException: The script <url for script> could not be loaded or does not contain the Sys.Application.notifyScriptLoaded() callback.
I found this post to help with the problem. Ajax now loads the various script files in an asynchronous manner, and it is the responsibility of the script file, when completed to call execute code similar to the following:
if( Sys && Sys.Application ){
Sys.Application.notifyScriptLoaded();
}
The if block might not be required, but if you are using a javascript file outside of Atlas you probably should protect it. However on Luis's site, he missed a casing on the method call notifyScriptLoaded. I'm sure he will get that fixed, but just be aware if you copy and paste. :)
Outlook has always crawled when searching for emails. It probably would be faster to export mail to a .csv file, open it in notepad, and find what you are looking for then using the built in Search mistake feature. I came across Lookout. It was an outlook plug-in that worked amazing well. Search a year worth of emails in about a second, great!
Lookout was such a great tool and I have been using it for 3 years now, I went to their site to see if it was open source(ish) or had a plug in model. One of the problems I have up at work is most of my older emails are sitting on a PST file on my computer. When I am at home and need to jump on a production server, I go to my emails to look for the credentials.
However, I don't have access to the emails. I wanted to create a extension to Lookout so I could search from my home computer (using the fancy web services) and return a list of mail items to me so I could get the information from my PST. Of course I google for the site because I know what it is called and clicked on the first item returned. Next thing I know I'm looking at the Windows Desktop Search page.
Whoa, that's horrible. Finally I've experienced a case where Microsoft purchases a good piece of software and buries it. I've heard the rumors of this happening where highly useful software disappears into the Vault at Microsoft. It appears Microsoft bought lookout so they could use them to integrate into the Desktop search.
Well, that isn't going to work for me. As all good computer geeks do, it is coming close to time for me to reinstall my machine. That has been put on hold until I can find the Lookout plug in. I'm not going to redo my machine and loose the ability to search emails. Yes, that software is that good. I'll trade the slow boot up time for the impossibly slow Outlook searching.
I just want simple software that will search my emails. I don't yet want a Microsoft worm crawling my machine indexing all my documents. That day will probably come, but there is no need for it yet. I just want to search emails.
Xander up at work was kind enough to send me his old zip file for the install, but I found out that Outlook 2007 specifically prohibits Lookout from being installed on top of Outlook. I have since saved it for posterity, so if anyone is looking for it, shoot me a message.
Bad Microsoft...if you are going to take away a feature, then you should at least offer a compatible replacement.
Download from Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=cd7c6e48-e41b-48e3-881e-a0e6e97f9534&DisplayLang=en
Microsoft has just dropped a set of Visual Studio 2005 PowerToys. Here's what you get:
Source Code Outliner : The Source Outliner tool is a Visual Studio extension that provides a tree view of your source code's types and members and lets you quickly navigate to them inside the editor.
Visual C++ Code Snippets:The Visual C++ Code Snippets tool lets you insert snippets in your code by using a pop-up menu that contains programming keywords. VB.NET and C# languages have this functionality in Visual Studio 2005.
Indexed Find : The Indexed Find tool is a Visual Studio extension that uses the Microsoft Indexing Service to provide improved Search capabilities to the integrated development environment (IDE). It sends the results of a search to the Output Window.
Super Diff Utility: The Super Diff Find tool is a Visual Studio extension that compares text files. It uses color coding and graphics to show the difference between the files in deleted text (red), changed text (blue), inserted text (green).
Event Toaster Utility: The Event Toaster tool is a Visual Studio extension that notifies users about specific events within the Visual Studio IDE.
I attended a Orcas Preview at DevConnections. Orcas is the "codename" for the next visual studio. They had several important features. The speaker wasn't exactly the best speaker I've seen at this conference, but I wanted to share some of the insight he provided.
Framework targetting -- Orcas will have a switch that will enable you to target a specific framework version. You will be able to create applications that run on 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5 (orca) and the UI and intellisense will be modified to the framework you are targetting. I asked about 1.1 support, and he said it wasn't planned and no one should still be developing 1.1 apps.
Improved Ajax control support -- I really didn't see anything that would be beneficial in his demo, but it was something he mentioned.
Improved CSS Support -- Yes, CSS support is much improved and I can't want to get some feedback from some of the design guys up at work about how good this really is. Style attributes won't be placed on the control declaration anymore and will be placed in a style block on the page. I'm sure the design guys will really like this feature. They showed some cascading of the style and from the IDE you can determine exactly what rules are applying to a specific element on the page so you know exactly what you need to edit.
Javascript Intellisense -- This is the coolest feature and something I have wished for. It works with custom libraries and such. I create javascript objects and seeing it in action where an end user could use my controls and javascript objects and have intellisense is amazing and should highly increase developer productivity. The bits I saw use XML comment declaration and it shows up. Amazing stuff!
I left for the DevConnection conference in Vegas this week. I was carrying some Codesmith Tools literature and wasn't able to board my first plane with US Airways. I want to give them a compliment. I basically missed my flight and my "punishment" was to fly first class on a later flight. The ticket agent, I don't recall her name, upped me without even mentioning it. I don't want to get her in trouble or anything, but it was great. I enjoyed first class treatment and was highly impressed with US Airways as an airline.
I was looking at my ticket and it was seat 1D. I figured first class was some other numbering scheme but it wasn't. I was pleasantly surprised when I boarded the plane and was in the first row. There were three of us in first class and I can't speak highly enough of the service I received and the handling of the missed flight treatment. I will definitely be looking at using US Airways first for any future travel plans I have.
On a side note, I had a horrific experience with the TSA that I won't blog about here, but will mention it on my personal blog. In hindsight, I guess I should consider myself lucky I didn't get put in jail for assaulting a Federal Agent, but he touched me first and honestly that Nazi had it coming to him.
More Posts