What's the difference between Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 and Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007?

The answer lies in a very detailed Excel sheet:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointtechnology/HA101978031033.aspx?pid=CL100636421033

(Thanks to Richard for pointing me to it)

Enabling or disabling Large Fonts for Internet Explorer

As documented here [1] you need to change this following registry value to 1 (= enabled) or 0 (=  disabled) and restart IE.

• HKEY_CURRENT_USER

  • Software
    • Microsoft
      • Internet Explorer
        • Main
          UseHR = dword:00000001

 

[1] http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa770067.aspx

FIX: Performance too slow when doing web development with Visual Studio 2008?

Microsoft released a hotfix [1] for Visual Studio 2008 (also targeting Visual Web Developer Express) that corrects several issues with the web development features.

At this time the hotfix is only available for the English and Japanese versions.

List of things that were corrected according to this post [2] by Vinaya Reddy:

HTML Source view performance

• Source editor freezes for a few seconds when typing in a page with a custom control that has more than two levels of sub-properties.
• “View Code” right-click context menu command takes a long time to appear with web application projects.
• Visual Studio has very slow behavior when opening large HTML documents.
• Visual Studio has responsiveness issues when working with big HTML files with certain markup.
• The Tab/Shift-Tab (Indent/Un-indent) operation is slow with large HTML selections.

Design view performance

• Slow typing in design view with certain page markup configurations.

HTML editing

• Quotes are not inserted after Class or CssClass attribute even when the option is enabled.
• Visual Studio crashes when ServiceReference element points back to the current web page.

JavaScript editing

• When opening a JavaScript file, colorization of the client script is sometimes delayed several seconds.
• JavaScript Intellisense does not work if an empty string property is encountered before the current line of editing.

Web Site build performance

• Build is very slow when Bin folder contains large number of assemblies and .refresh files with web-site projects.

Make sure to read the installation instructions at [2].

Enjoy!

[1] https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=10826

[2] http://blogs.msdn.com/webdevtools/archive/2008/02/09/downloadable-hotfix-performance-and-editor-fixes-for-microsoft-visual-studio-2008-and-visual-web-developer-express-2008.aspx

PRB: Dell Dimension freezes periodically for approx 30 seconds on Vista

Usually I try to blog things that interest many people, but there are some cases where the audience is knowingly extremely small, but nevertheless these people will be very glad to have found a solution to their problem.

If you own a Dell Dimension 9xxx and install Windows Vista, which at least in my case is not officially supported, but Dell Support did a very good job in helping me out, and your system periodically freezes (music stops etc.) and after approximately 30 seconds it's like is has never happened and after 2 or even 10 minutes it starts over.

There can be different reasons for this behavior, I can name two of them:

1. Install the firmware for your Philips DVD 6316 [1]
   
2. Install Intel Matrix Storage Software (this one solved it in my case). [2]

I'm looking forward to hearing success stories. :-)

 

[1] http://ftp.us.dell.com/rmsd/DROM6316_ODFN.zip

[2]ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/SATA/R139843.EXE

PRB: Windows DreamScene reappearing under Windows Update

Do you happen to know the situation as well? No matter how often you install Windows DreamScene it keeps reappearing as a "new" update?

However the solution is easy: first uninstall it (Control Panel > Software > Installed Updates) and rerun Windows Update.

Now install it once more and it should not appear again (but instead you'll see the content packs with more "dream scenes" [2]).

Enjoy!

[1] http://windowsultimate.com/blogs/extras/archive/2007/03/14/windows-dreamscene.aspx

[2] http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931133

[WinDays 2007] What's in a conference bag?

I've really seen a quite few conferences so far - from small INETA events at local pubs to large-scale Microsoft conference like the PDC in Los Angeles.

But every year I visit the Microsoft WinDays conference [1] in Croatia I'm really impressed.

Why I am impressed, you ask?

Maybe...

• ... because of the fact that a country with ~ 4.5 million residents organizes a 5-day Microsoft conference with 8 (and at some points 10 parallel tracks) and attracts more attendees than we usually have here in Germany (and the conference is mostly held in Croatian).
  
  
  
• ... it's held in Opatija [2] where other people (mostly older people, to be honest) go on vacation. Maybe that's the reason why WinDays attracts many international, well-known and top-ranked speakers like Rafal Lukawiecki [3], Damir Tomicic [4] and my Thinktecture fellow Christian Weyer [5].
  
  
  
• ... WinDays is probably the only Microsoft conference world wide which offers two warm meals every day to its attendees. First around 1 pm, and later at 7 pm.
  
  
  
• ... that there is a official Microsoft Party every day, accompanied by one or two sponsor parties (you would have loved the HP girls) and the famous Heming Way [6] pub down in the harbor right next to the see where you could find mostly all technicians and Microsoft officials until late in the night (and greet them at the conference at 8 am next morning).
  
  
  
• ... or was it "just" the conference bag? Indeed, the topic of conference bags doesn't sound too exciting. It has developed to a common for conferences to hand them out, so today a conference without it is unimaginable, but the contents is mostly very boring. Well, not at WinDays!

The conference bag

Yes, that's not the "usual conference crap", but an original, high-quality Samsonite laptop bag! The past two years I had one (got at WinDays 2005 obviously) and I'm very happy with it since it's very robust.

Contents of this year's conference bag

Some highlights (besides the amount of party invitations) include:

• Webcam & Headset
• 4 port USB hub with cup warmer
• sun cream (very important since the venue, Opatija, is located directly at the Adriatic see and we had sunny 24 °C)
• Survival Kit (containing coffee and juice)
• ... and more.

The speaker's gift

And the speakers got a handy USB Powered Vacuum cleaner:

The conference shirt

The shirt showing this year's WinDays motive (it's the 7th WinDays).

--

Summing it up, WinDays 2007 continues the tradition and will certainly remain exceptional: this conference is really different!

Thanks to Luka Abrus [7] & the rest of the WinDays team for organizing it and making it that different.

[1] www.microsoft.com/croatia/windays/english/

[2] http://www.opatija.hr

[3] http://www.projectbotticelli.co.uk/

[4] http://www.tomicic.de

[5] http://www.thinktecture.com/staff/christian

[6] http://www.discoseven.hr/hemingwaygallery/

[7] http://luka.dizzy.hr/

FW: Outlook 2007 Update Available

Forwarded this great news from the Official SBS Blog:

[Today's post comes to us courtesy of Mark Stanfill]

There is a new patch available for Outlook 2007 that fixes performance issues with large PSTs/OSTs.  We highly recommend applying this patch on all systems with Outlook 2007 installed.  If you are preparing a new installation, this patch should be applied in addition to the steps outlined in http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;926505 .

Direct Download:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c262bcfd-1e09-49b6-9003-c4c47539df66&DisplayLang=en

KB article:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=933493

Don't like the vshost.exe? You can turn it off!

Dominick [1] pointed me a great tip today how to turn of the hosting process (vshost.exe) [2]. This might be interesting for those of you who are debugging applications on Windows Vista with UAC manifests, which sometimes has strange side effects.

[1] http://www.leastprivilege.com/

[2] http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms185330(VS.80).aspx

You are looking for a not-too-expensive code-signing certificate?

I was looking for one recently and I found this:

"Comodo (www.instantssl.com - a great, cheaper alternative that has its root issuer already installed as a trusted root certification authority)."

Source: http://www.softinsight.com/bnoyes/CommentView.aspx?guid=78d107d1-3937-4d8d-81d9-73cb6ae18eee

Of course, Code Signing certificates are available from several other vendors as well.

Microsoft maintains of trusted third-party commercial certificate authorities at: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms995347.aspx

Happy signing!

-Neno

WPF/XAML in Action: Showcases

The powerful combination of WPF and XAML is finally showing up as real and quite useful applications. See a few examples I've found so far:

• Electric Rain STANDOUT
• OTTO-Store (German)
• "Doninoken" (found via scorbs.com...)
• British Library: Turning the Pages 2.0 (found via scorbs.com)
• The New York Times Reader
• DENOUNCE - Podcast Listener and Blog Reader
• NOSTALGIA - Yahoo! Flickr Browser and Photo Manager
• DA.CODE - Interactive Trivia Game
• HARMONY
• CINE.VIEW
• 90 Degree's Radius - Report Designer for SSRS (trial must be requested; found via Tim Sneath's blog)
• Interknowlogy C-ME (Collaborative Molecular Modeling Environment) (found via Tim Sneath)
• Interknowlogy 3D Collaborator (same as above)
• Notescraps (Shareware; found via Tim Sneath)
• FNAC (French online shop for electronics; found via Tim Sneath)
• TF1 (French television; found via Tim Sneath)
• Weather News (via Somasegar)
• iBloks (via windowsvistablog.com)

Know more impressing real-life-examples of WPF/XAML usage? Drop me a line.

Have fun exploring!

XNA: The new way of creating DirectX applications with .NET (2.0)

If you build DirectX applications or serious games using DirectX and want to use the benefits of the .NET Framework, then XNA is the way to go.

The XNA Framework is a class library built upon the .NET Framework 2.0. Right now only the Express Edition of the Developer IDE is available. XNA can target Windows as well as XBox.

(Note: the previous Managed DirectX class library was depricated by Microsoft.)

• Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express 1.0
  XNA Game Studio Express enables hobbyists, academics, and small, independent game developers to easily create video games for Windows and the Xbox 360 console. Requires an Express Edition of Visual Studio.
• Microsoft XNA Framework Redistributable 1.0
  The XNA Framework Redistributable provides game developers with the XNA Framework runtime libraries that they can include with their product for redistribution on Windows XP.

Multi-Tasking: Good or Evil? or: Do one single thing at a time!

Well, I guess we all knew it somehow that we waste time when working on more than one project.  Jeff Atwood has the proove and some interesting figures on his blog [1].

[1] http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000691.html

WPF: Build true 3D user interfaces

As Tim Sneath puts it [1], the WPF team made a very special announcement in their WPF3D Team Blog [2] and released the 3D Tools for the Windows Presentation Foundation [3] as a free, open-source download on CodePlex.

These tools allow you to create WPF applications with 3D user interfaces - where you can use the well-known controls like sliders, text boxes, etc. and hit testing, hovering etc. just works!

Hopefully people we will not get the same effect which appeared after the first version of Visual Basic where all buttons got pink just because all of a sudden it was extremly easy to specifiy a color for it...

So use the new feature set wisely and in a decent manner!

[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2006/12/13/new-in-wpf-build-a-true-3d-application.aspx

[2] http://blogs.msdn.com/wpf3d/archive/2006/12/12/interacting-with-2d-on-3d-in-wpf.aspx

[3] http://www.codeplex.com/3DTools

Vista: Keyboard Shortcuts for more Productivity

Noah Coad [1] posted some new Vista keyboard shortcuts [2]:

New Vista Commands

• ALT + Up Arrow
  Move up a folder (to the parent folder)
• ALT + Left Arrow
  Move back in history
• ALT + Right Arrow
  Move forward in history
• Backspace
  Move back in history
  (was move up a folder in WinXP)
• CTRL+N
  Open new explorer (a file must be selected)
• ALT+Drag&Drop
  Link to item (creates a shortcut)

More Vista-specific shortcuts can also be found at [3].

[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/noahc/default.aspx

[2] http://blogs.msdn.com/noahc/archive/2006/11/14/vista-keyboard-shortcuts-for-windows-explorer.aspx

[3] http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/2503b91d-d780-4c80-8f08-2f48878dc5661033.mspx

Windows Vista: Keyboard Shortcuts for more Productivity

Noah Coad posted some new Vista keyboard shortcuts:

New Vista Commands

• ALT + Up Arrow
  Move up a folder (to the parent folder)
• ALT + Left Arrow
  Move back in history
• ALT + Right Arrow
  Move forward in history
• Backspace
  Move back in history
  (was move up a folder in WinXP)
• CTRL+N
  Open new explorer (a file must be selected)
• ALT+Drag&Drop
  Link to item (creates a shortcut)

More Vista-specific shortcuts can also be found here.

Wanna print this? A printable version can be found here.

Update (Aug 12 2009): All Windows 7 shortcuts can be found here.