Entries Tagged 'Microsoft' ↓

SkyDrive without Germany?

I just read about the bigger, better and faster SkyDrive Release on the SkyDrive Team Blog.

SkyDrive is also available now in 38 countries/regions. In addition to Great Britain, India, and the U.S., weÒ€ℒre live in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Finland, France, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Turkey.

Now seriously guys, Microsoft is pretty big in Germany, why are we always missing cool stuff? Ok, we can use GMail as free Online Storage, but maybe we’d like to stick to Microsoft stuff, too. We can’t use AdCenter and we can’t use SkyDrive in Germany and there are probably lots of other Microsoft Services we can’t use in Germany. Anyone has an explanation for this? I’m clueless.

Blog Redesign / ASP.NET AJAX RC1 / VS SP1

I wanted to do this a long time ago already, now, finally, I finished redoing it. Hope you like it πŸ™‚

ASP.NET AJAX RC1 has been released, the latest release before the fully supported final version

And Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Final is out now: VS 2005 SP1 Final

Enjoy πŸ˜‰

.NET Framework 3.0 Final download

If you haven’t noticed yet.. .NET Framework 3.0 final has been released! That’s a bit surprising for me I didn’t expect it that early.

Read more and download it here: .NET Framework Developer Center

Windows Live Custom Domains

Windows Live Custom DomainFinally Microsoft is offering a simliar service to Google’s gmail hosted service. You can sign up every kind of domain you own and use the Microsoft Live Mail Interface for it. Although, you need to have the ability to change the DNS records of the domain. One advantage is that you don’t have to wait for an invitation, your account opens up immediately instead of gmail’s hosted service.

I just signed up one of my domains, as soon as my DNS settings are being upgraded I’ll post some experiences with the Live Mail Interface.

Link: http://domains.live.com/

.NET beats Java

Microsoft is leaving Java in the dust, but the company still has room to grow in the developer arena, a key executive said. Speaking at the Microsoft FAM (Financial Analyst Meeting) on July 27 in Redmond, Wash., Bob Muglia, Microsoft’s senior vice president of Server and Tools business, said Microsoft’s .Net platform has outpaced Java, particularly the Java Enterprise Edition, over the past five years to become the development platform of choice for enterprise development.

“Five years ago we had problems with J2EE [Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition],” Muglia said. However, “We’ve grown from having a quarter of the market to, now, 60 percent,” he said. Microsoft displayed the FAM presentations via Webcast. “J2EE has run its course,” Muglia said.

.. as expected! Along with the .NET Framework 3.0, Java will be far behind.

IE7 will be installed on XP via Automatic Updates

Internet Explorer 7Internet Explorer 7 contains numerous security upgrades. Microsoft plans to recommend that all Windows customers install IE7, but the upgrade will be optional. Automatic Updates will notify users when IE7 is ready to install, displaying a welcome screen with the choices “Install,” “Don’t Install” and “Ask Me Later.”

That’s exactly what I’ve been expecting:

Microsoft announced today that it will release Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) as a “high-priority” security update via Windows XP’s Automatic Updates as soon as the browser package is ready. The release of IE7 is planned for the fourth quarter of this year.

In my opinion that’s the right decision. By spreading IE7 via Automatic Updates almost every usual Windows Customer will use IE7 automatically. That’s good news for all Web Designers or Developers out there because it’s pretty safe to develop for IE7 then. As we all hope, CSS compatibility will be much better with IE7.

I’m looking forward to this `high-priority` security update πŸ˜‰

Microsoft Buys Winternals and Sysinternals

Microsoft announced on July 18 that it has purchased for an undisclosed sum Winternals Software, a privately held company that provides security, recovery and management tools for Windows. As part of the deal, Microsoft also gets the two Winternals founders, Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell. Russinovich becomes a technical fellow (one of about 15 or so throughout all of Microsoft), and will be part of the Platforms and Services division. Cogswell will join the Windows Component Platform team as a software architect. Microsoft’s plan is to integrate Winternals various products and technologies into existing Microsoft products (not just Windows, either).

Now these are some stunning news. Microsoft bought a big know-how company in this case. Marc Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell are big names in the Windows scene for a long time already. They developed worldwide known tools like TCPView, Regmon, Filemon and many others.

Pretty good deal for Microsoft if you ask me.

CommunityServer bug with URL Rewriting?

There might be some kind of problems with the URL Rewriting in ASP.NET v2. CommunityServer is affected by this as you can see on this Screenshot:

click for img

This screenshot also shows you where to get this Tool – Fiddler ;).

First I made some tests with a site developed by us, we use custom URL Rewriting in the global.asax and everything runs fine, that’s why I’m not sure if this is really an ASP.NET v2 issue as it’s being claimed to be one by a couple of people.

Later on you see the CommunityServer Request and the possible bug: A 302 redirect instead of a 200 redirect which is very bad for SearchEngines. Due to this fact your site may drop out of most SearchEngines. Matt Cutts blogged on this, too: ASP.NET 2 + url rewriting considered harmful in some cases.

Anyone else got problems with a 302 Redirect when using URL Rewriting?

We are using Context.RewritePath to perform our URL Rewriting and didn’t run into any problems so far.

ASP.NET on Apache

This is a quick and dirty HowTo ASP.NET on the popular Apache Webserver. It works with ASP.NET v1 and ASP.NET v2!


1) Download and install mod_AspDotNet

2) At the end of your httpd.conf file add the following lines:

#asp.net 
LoadModule aspdotnet_module "modules/mod_aspdotnet.so" 

AddHandler asp.net asax ascx ashx asmx aspx axd config cs csproj licx rem resources resx soap vb vbproj vsdisco webinfo 

<IfModule mod_aspdotnet.cpp> 
  # Mount the ASP.NET /asp application 
  AspNetMount /SampleASP "c:/SampleASP" 
  #/SampleASP is the alias name for asp.net to execute 
  #"c:/SampleASP" is the actual execution of files/folders  in that location 

  # Map all requests for /asp to the application files 
  Alias /SampleASP "c:/SampleASP" 
  #maps /SampleASP request to "c:/SampleASP" 
  #now to get to the /SampleASP type http://localhost/SampleASP 
  #It'll redirect http://localhost/SampleASP to "c:/SampleASP"

  # Allow asp.net scripts to be executed in the /SampleASP example 
  <Directory "c:/SampleASP"> 
    Options FollowSymlinks ExecCGI 
    Order allow,deny 
    Allow from all 
    DirectoryIndex index.htm index.aspx 
   #default the index page to .htm and .aspx 
  </Directory> 

  # For all virtual ASP.NET webs, we need the aspnet_client files 
  # to serve the client-side helper scripts. 
  AliasMatch /aspnet_client/system_web/(\d+)_(\d+)_(\d+)_(\d+)/(.*) "C:/Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v$1.$2.$3/ASP.NETClientFiles/$4" 
  <Directory "C:/Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v*/ASP.NETClientFiles"> 
    Options FollowSymlinks 
    Order allow,deny 
    Allow from all 
  </Directory> 
</IfModule> 
#asp.net

3) Continue with creating C:\AspNetTest.
4) Create a file “index.aspx” and add the following lines to it:

<%@ Page Language="C#" %> 
<html> 
   <head> 
      <link rel="stylesheet"href="example.css"> 
   </head> 
   <body>        
<form>
           <% for (int i=0;i<5;i++= { %> 
              <font size="<%=I%>"> Sample ASP.NET TEST</font> <br> 
           <% } %> 
       </form> 
   </body> 
</html>

5) Restart Apache and visit http://localhost/AspNetTest – it should be working!

Hope that helps..

Atlas features Dynamic UpdatePanels

The new June CTP of the Atlas Framework (internally known as build M2.2) finally features Dynamic UpdatePanels. Additional several bug fixes have been included. UpdatePanels can now be added dynamically into the page at runtime! This opens up a number of scenarios including UpdatePanels inside templates of data-bound controls, UpdatePanels in user controls used as WebParts etc.

Nikhil Kothari posted an great entry about the new Atlas build here, check it out!

MySQL and Microsoft Visual Studio Integration

For all you MySQL lovers out there, your dream has come true! Expect the possibility to integrate MySQL directly into your Visual Studio environment very soon. According to MySQL it will be released as plugin in the near future.

The company has paid $3,000 to become a member of Microsoft’s Visual Studio Industry Partner (VSIP) program in a move that will help cement the database’s use on Windows. MySQL joins more than 240 other ISVs also working with Microsoft. MySQL says 40 per cent of its downloads are for Windows, and VSIP membership will provide greater integration between the database and Microsoft’s development environment.

Following the statistics, 40 per cent of the MySQL downloads are for Windows. The new partnership improves the integration of the database in existing Microsoft products.

I’m still using MySQL for some of my projects so these are great news!


Source: The Register