Gobbledygooks by Richard Hallgren

Today someone complained about Windows XP’s lack of virtual desktops and that Mac had the possibility to have several desktops active with different content. I remembered that had tried something like that a couple of years ago and after a while I found Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP again.

The PowerToys package contains several small XP add-ins. For example the Virtual Desktop Manager! 

As the image above show the manager makes it possible to have four separate desktops running at one - nice! A few configurations tips that I found useful was turn of the shared desktops option and to set the shortcut for showing the desktops to alt-§ (that’s close to the alt-tab option).

An other cool application in the PowerToys package is the Alt-Tab Replacement that shows a small preview of the different windows one is multi tasking between (as shown in the image above).

I’ve realized that I never understood the full potential of the Visual Studio Database Project. None of the projects I’ve worked on has had a effective process on handling changes and versioning of the database schema. Test data, build scripts, changes to the local development database versus the test and production base has also been a bit bumpy. I’ve haven’t understood that working with the Database Project potentially could solves a lot of these challenges .

A chapter from the Database Access with Visual Basic® .NET book describes some features in the Database Project.

A while ago Microsoft released the CSS Control Adapter Toolkit for ASP.NET 2.0. It finally makes it possible to use all the time saving ASP.NET controls in 2.0 without all the horrible HTML they used to produce. The toolkit gives access to the now improved source of the following adapter controls:

• Menu
• TreeView
• GridView
• DetailsView
• FormsView
• DataList
• Login
• ChangePassword
• CreateUser
• PasswordRecovery
• LoginStatus

Make sure to have the latest update. The update fixed a few things in the old controls and added a couple more.

One can almost think of the this toolkit as a patch for ASP.NET and when creating a public website this really is a must!

I’ve just started reading the new BizTalk Server 2006 Troubleshooters Guide, it’s basically 133 pages packed with best practices and common pitfalls to avoid. It’s seems to be a great resource and I’ll try to use this blog to summarize some of the different parts - just have to get some more time!

I just found the FileSystemWatcher class in the System.IO namespace. It provides the functionality to listen on the file system for changes on a file or directory. The class fires a couple of events: Changed, Created, Deleted and Renamed.

I didn’t know of this class until now. I always thought one had to write a service to accomplish something like this! Definitely very useful!

I found a couple of really good webcasts here!

As most people know the web project that are created and tested in VS 2005 run on an internal web server (called Cassini).

In some situations this is useful as it enables one to quickly get the project up and running and start testing. But as the sites usually are going to run on an IIS in production I usually like to test it and develop it on one as well (for other reasons, check this out).

Here’s a good article on how to change the setting that makes VS behave as it it used to (put it on an URL and create a virtual directory for it).

The only drawback I can think of is that it becomes a bit more complicated when it comes to deleting a project …

FarPoint just released a pipeline disassembler component for Excel documents (called “FarPoint Spread for Microsoft® BizTalk® Server 2006″). It looks pretty cool! It comes with a “Spreadsheet Schema wizard” that integrates with Visual Studio 2005. It could potentially save a lot of work.

I guess the reason that Microsoft hasn’t released anything like this is that they like to push the use of Infopath. Basically everything would be much easier if one uses Infopath, but there might be situations where this isn’t possible.

Before writing a new user or custom control read this article about Viewstate!

I’m not sure of how many know of these Webcasts that Microsoft keep publishing. I didn’t know of them until recently and that I’ve learnt a lot by viewing them. I find it a excellent way of learning new things and tips from some of the most skilled people working with BizTalk.

I recommend the following:

• Design Human Workflow Solutions with BizTalk Server 2004 (medium)
  This is a absolute must to watch. The demo is this presentation is a killer! It’s a complete workflow system build in four days that really shows the strengths of BizTalk. It’s also emphasizes some important architecture best practices in BizTalk. 
• BizTalk Web Services and WSE (medium)
• Getting up to speed with BizTalk Server 2004 for the Visual Studio .NET Developer (basic)
• Biztalk Server 2004 Architecture (basic)
• Biztalk Server 2004 Orchestration for the Visual Studio .NET Developer (basic)