I’m jealous. Roy Osherove has a DBA coming to his office tomorrow to go over his database with him. I actually tried to get Roman Rehak to do this – but he can’t do any moonlighting. Roman is a pal, lives right here in Burlington and is a real live SQL Server guru. Unfortunately, I’m spoiled by knowing him and nobody else (that I have easy access to) will do. I even asked Stephen Forte if he could recommend someone in NYC since my client is about 90 miles north, but he couldn’t come up with someone who would be willing to make the trip for a day. It is something I would REALLY love to happen with my client’s database. But I’m very very picky now.
Daily Archives: August 23, 2004
Christian Weyer’s WS-ContractFirst tool
Christian’s been putting some teaser’s up about something related to WSDL and I thought his “announcement” post was another teaser! Geesh. Ben Miller mentioned that it was available (and that he likes it!) and I kind of did a double take – wondering how I had missed it.
THIS IS A LINK TO THE TOOL (so that there’s no mistake…)
Hopefully, I can get thorugh what I need to do tonight and can check it out. It looks loverly, Christian.
Some Common Issues in Tablet PC Web Application Development and Deployment
1) Make sure that you using the RTM (release) version of the Tablet PC SDK 1.7 when you are compiling your component if you want your control to work on the final bits of Windows XP SP2.
The SDK is v1.7.2600.2180 and can be downloaded at msdn.microsoft.com/tabletpc or www.tabletpcpost.com.
2) Link the object, not it’s handle, to the InkOverlay/InkCollector.
One of the special things about version 1.7 is that it the ink controls can work in partial trust scenarios, but you need to construct your InkOverlay as
myinkOverlay= new inkOverlay(mycontrol)
rather than the normal way:
myinkOverlay= new inkOverlay(mycontrol.Handle)
This way, the end user no longer needs to designate your website as “fully trusted“, however it is still necessary to list the site as a “trusted site“ in i.e. and that’s enough. My “trusted sties“ are set in .net 1.1 as “low trust“ and it does the trick – the component is pulled down into the GAC and you can ink away.
3) When deploying, place the dll for the control into the same folder as the aspx page that is calling it.
Maybe this is the norm for any windows control that is used on a web page – though this is my first time doing such a thing. My instinct was to put it in the bin with everything else, but my page did not work with it in the bin. It was happy when I put the dll alongside the aspx file. (Shawn van Ness explains that since this is not an ASP.NET dll, it does not go in the bin with the others. It is more akin to a jpeg in this use and needs to be in a folder that IIS will allow downloads from. I will to experiment with explicitly placing it in another folder. Of course, this is not special to TabletPC development. It just happens to be my first experience with embedding windows forms controls in i.e.)
4) Don’t expect to do any code-behind in working with the Windows Control.
The <OBJECT> tag cannot be set to runat=server. I got stuck having to do a lot of client side interaction with the inkable control in the doodle test page I put up the other day.
[Thanks to Stefan Wick (MS) and Casey Chesnut for some clarification on the first two problems]
Wintellect’s John Robbins’ Tablet PC Development Article
Did you know that John Robbins is a Tablet PC geek? Here is his latest article on Tablet PC Development in the MSDN Tablet PC Developer Center: Optimizing Applications for Tablet PC
Our local .net geek bicycle racing star
While I sit on my butt doing .NET, Andrew Knight, who is also a local web programmer, a VTdotNET member and used to host our user group meetings when he worked at Burton Snowboards, uses his spare time for much better use. I am always so thrilled to read about his accomplishments. This past weekend, he placed 3rd in the Mt. Washington road race. (photo) I believe he was 4th last year. I hope that he’s sporting a red polka dot shirt this week!
From the FAQ page on the race site:
The Mount Washington Hill Climb is quickly becoming known as the toughest hill climb in the world and as Dick Devellian, past Race Director, says “This is the World Championship of hill climbing. If someone wants to say they are the best climber in the world then they need to prove it here on Mount Washington.”
The Mt Washington Auto Road is 7.6 miles in length, has an average grade of 12% with extended sections of 18% and the last 50 yards is an amazing 22%!
Icon Frustration
In the UI for BLInk! I want to have my icons for formatting be large enough for clicking on with a stylus. Most of the format graphics provided in microsoft development apps (eg Visual Studio) that match the typical MS UI are bmps which don’t resize (upsize to eg 32×32 or 24×24) well. I know we’ve all been there done that. I found Wesner Moise’s good blog post on this problem and may just have to go ahead and buy some myself. Ugh … for a tool I plan to give away.
Update: I did look at Tim Dawson’s gorgeous SandBar toolbar is free if you are using it for freely distributed apps, but it’s using the same 1616bit bmps…Posted from BLInk!