Finally article about SOA design patterns with Windows Azure got published. Some of the coolest part with REST implementation (WCF REST starter kit preview 2, idempotent capability with etag,..) was left out but I will blogg try to about it and there is also REST implementation in the source code for the article which can be downloaded here.

Whole article can be found http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee335719.aspx.

Finally, it is here, VE map for Silverlight. It has bean rumors and talk about it for more about year, last thing I heard was that it will be released after the summer 2008 but nothing happened, so I thought it was just a rumor or MS team drop it. I have tested as it was releasd and its performance is much better than all others earlier SL maps I tested.
To download it or to see interactive SDK go to http://connect.microsoft.com.
Enjoy…

Wow this was the thing I was waiting for but not so sone, as it was not a long ago it was added to WPF.

• Check out this video for introduction.
  http://silverlight.net/learn/learnvideo.aspx?video=187303
• Tutorial how to build own shader.
  http://www.andybeaulieu.com/Home/tabid/67/EntryID/145/Default.aspx
• Converted WPF Pixel Shader Library for Silverlight 3 (Thanks Morten!)
  http://www.sharpgis.net/post/2009/03/18/Silverlight-30-Pixel-shaders.aspx
• Pixel Shaders Effects Introduction- How to.
  http://dedjo.blogspot.com/2008/06/hlsl-pixel-shader-effects-tutorial.html.

 

Also the news, YouTube using Silverlight to stream High Quality video check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/marchmadness

In some cases when opening documents (for example documents from SharePoint document library) and when client machine is running Windows XP (in my case) you will open document directly in web browser.
That is fine but what if you want to use full power of the client application like Word or Excel when working with that document?
There is simple solution for that.There are two ways. One is to change the registry key int the Windows registry, which is not recommended if you are helping someone to do it by him self and with little knowledge with Windows. Another one goes like this.

For each file type you want to open in client application you have to do small modification.

1. Open Windows File Explorer.
2. Select Tools, Folder Options.


Folder Options

3. On the Folder Options window select File Type tab.


File Type

4. Find file type you want to open in client application (for example DOC for Word or XLS for Excel).
5. Unselect option Browse in same window.


Browse in same window

6. Press OK.

Mobile market is emerging and yet again Microsoft is failing to deliver. I came across post by Cringley stating that Windows Mobile will die and I totally agree but with correction: “Windows mobile is on the death-bed”.

Developers are fleeing Windows Mobile which is true as I have noticed that on mobile blogs that I follow.
Windows Mobile is ugly, it is slow, IE on the windows mobile!?! (I am using Opera mini),…

Before IPhone and Android, Windows Mobile (CE) was competing with Symbian (for how many years now?) and they could not win, so please can someone tell me how will the win now against IPhone with killer design and Googles Android. No chance.

Instead of laying off employees today Microsoft should invest and reallocate these people to work with new Mobile platform, because Mobile platform and mobile devices ARE the future. Do it now, or not now it is to late do it yesterday. Time is running out for Microsoft and I do not believe they are going to win here, especially not after building crappy mobile platform like they have now.

IPhone and Android are attracting people (read developers) and even I (hardcore MS dude) am looking how to, or which mobile platform to invest my time on. As I see now Android is the best choice.
It is open, it is also possible to run Mono on the Android (see the video), and I also saw earlier post of how to use Mono with ahead of time compilation to run application on the IPhone, and also I was quite surprised when I read that there was about 40 application, most games that was build with C# and available for IPhone using Mono, nice.

It is time to go to the basement and find my old C/C++, Java and Linux books blow the dust of and start developing Android. I can not afford more time waiting for Microsofts new mobile platform.

Check out GREAT comment by Sebastian (first one) on the Windows Embedded blog.

And here news about the new Windows Mobile User Interface

Microsoft released new beta product which I think I saw on the Microsoft research home page for about one year or six months.

It is like bar code but version 2, with different colors and shapes where tag can be identified by for example mobile devices.

Physical media can be identified by and translated to live link for accessing information. Imagine printing color tag on your T-shirt with URL to you page, and when someone is using mobile device it can browse to tag defined URL and get necessary information. I have to buy some T-Shirt transfer paper now .

More  information can be found on http://www.microsoft.com/tag.

To download software for mobile device browse with you mobile device to this address:  http://gettag.mobi/.

On my HTC mobile I was browsing to the mobile page using Opera Mobile Browser and when accessed page my mobile was recognized as an J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition), nothing strange because Operas browser was an Java application.

No comment on that .

microsoft tag

I was trying to install latest version of the Enterprise library (4.1) and I was constantly receiving this error.

My previous version of the Enterprise Library was uninstalled (4.0) so I did not have any idea what it went wrong. On the Patterns and Practices codeplex page under discussion, I found resolution to this problem.

Remove the key “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Enterprise Library v4“.

The issue with the MSIs for 3.1 and 4.0 is that there are some duplicate component IDs. When uninstalling, reference counting kicks in and some components, like this registry key, are not deleted and must be manually cleared.

Ever tried to modify table using Managment Studio? and received this error.

Here is an simple fix.

In Management Studio (2008 ) click on:
Tools -> Options -> Designers, and uncheck the option “Prevent saving changes that require table re-creation”.

This post was resting on my unfinished blog list for more than one month now and it is time to finish it. It is also my first SharePoint post (I think ).

If you ever tried to open SharePoint document from SharePoint document library and you have Microsoft XP and Office 2003 installed on your machine, you may have discovered that file in SharePoint which you click, to open is always open in “Read Only” mode (read only permission) and you cannot make changes to the document.

If you click on an Office document in SharePoint to open it – it loads it in the relevant application (if you have configured client to open it in the client application), but in Read-Only mode.

In my case I had list of files in Web Application which represented list of SharePoint documents that specific user had permission to Read and Edit. This list was retrieved using custom SharePoint web service which I will cover in my next SharePoint posts (creating custom SharePoint web service).

Because I have tested this Web application using my virtual machine (SharePoint, WSS 3.0) with my computer using Vista and Office 2007 I have received nice pop up message with choice to open file in Read Or Edit mode, like the image below.

SharePoint Document Open Choice

But what I have learned is that ActiveX which Internet Explorer 6 is using on the machine where you have Office 2003 is not the same as on my Vista machine (with Office 2007 and IE7).

To save document user needed to know which document library filed belongs to and then manually navigate to it. That was not acceptable.

After searching the web I found workaround that should work http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=870853. According this article:

1. Quit all running Office 2003 programs.
2. Open register (regedit.exe)
3. Locate and then right-click the following registry subkey: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\Internet
4. Point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
5. Type OpenDocumentsReadWriteWhileBrowsing, and then press ENTER.
6. Right-click OpenDocumentsReadWriteWhileBrowsing, and then click Modify.
7. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
8. On the File menu, click Exit to quit Registry Editor.

But, what if you are working in large corporation and you can not so easy push this registry change to all machines?

Or like in my case what if there are some other web based applications that do not permits opening documents in Edit Mode, but just Read Only mode?

And you can not make changes to this applications or even do not have access to those.
So it seems like a dead end, registry fix is needed to fix the problem but you are not allowed to make it or it mess up something else.

There is an workaround to open document from SharePoint in Edit mode.

If you “pull down” menu for the item in the SharePoint document library there is one menu item “Edit In Microsoft Word/Excel,…” like the image bellow.

Edit in Microsoft Word

After clicking on the item you are able to open file in Edit mode!, aha we are close.

There is also some javascript on work here behind the scenes that calls the right function to open the file.

My solution was to open SharePoint document library using Firefox and using the Firebug search for text (in this case) Edit in Microsoft Word.

The result of that search was call to function editDocumentWithProgID2 with correct in arguments for that file. See image bellow.

FireBug Edit in MS Word result

After further searching for this function in the SharePoint javascript files on the SharePoint server I found most of the needed functionality in Core.js.

I have extracted function needed to separated file and created simple web application with this reference to this script to test this functionality.
Here is the HTML of the page:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebApplication1._Default" %>

 <title></title>

 <form id="form2" runat="server">
<div>
 <a href="http://demo-1/blankpage/Newdoclib/fold1/fold2/BLLayer.doc">link to file</a>
 <a href="" onclick="editDocumentWithProgID2('http://demo-1/blankpage/Newdoclib/fold1/fold2/BLLayer.doc', '', 'SharePoint.OpenDocuments', '0', 'http://demo-1/blankpage', '0')">Edit onclick</a></div>
</form>
 <script src="sp.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
 

After testing I was able to open file in the Edit mode without using registry fix.

Main web application was modified to use this script when user clicks on the SharePoint link and all worked like a charm.

Crunched Javascript file needed for this test can be found here.

Congratulations to me as I’m entering new year as a MCTS WCF 3.5.
I passed test 30. December. I was prepared with a lot of questions about WCF configuration as I read earlier in Patrik L. blog but those questions was quite simple (maybe because I was really prepared for those).
I was surprised that it was only one question about new System.ServiceModel.Web, i was excepting(read hoping) more about this. Some of the questions was really simple and other harder questions have I tried to answer by elimination method.