I spent the day today using Google Chrome as my browser and I have to say I'm very impressed with it. I like the UI and its so fast! I've always heard that web kit was fast but never tried it so maybe its web kit that should get the credit since Chrome is based on web kit.
When I first tried mojoPortal this morning using Chrome, the FCKeditor wasn't enabled and it was degrading to a plain text area. This turned out to be just a configuration issue in .NET code I had FCKeditor disabled for Safari. FCKeditor has claimed support for Safari for a while now but when I tested it after their initial support announcement it didn't work for me so I disabled it in mojoPortal. Then I kind of forgot about it for a while since I don't use Safari on a regular basis. Its been several upgrades of FCKeditor since I had tested so I tried enableing it again and it worked fine both in Safari and in Chrome.
So then with more poking around testing things in mojoPortal I found a couple of other things that didn't work like my friendly url suggest feature. It turned out that this was easily fixed by upgrading to the new version of Sarissa. Sarissa is a javascript library I use in a few features in mojoPortal and I had not upgraded it in a long time.
My fixes for these things will be in the mojoPortal svn trunk sometime later tonight and I'll be making a new release soon.
I feel a little worried for Mozilla and Firefox. I've been using Firefox for a long time as my main browser but I have to admit Chrome is very appealing and I may not go back to Firefox as my main browser. Of course I'll continue testing in all the major browsers. Some people are complaining that we now have one more browser to test but so far the rendering of mojoPortal has seemed really good so I'm not too concerned about that. I subscribe to the GAWDS (Guild of Accessible Web Designers) mailing list and there was a lot of talk in the last 2 days about accessibility problems with Chrome particulary for assistive technology like screen readers, but word is there will be improvement on that, after all its just a beta.
I'm sure they will be adding more polish to Chrome, but I would say this beta is a great start. The EULA gives me pause and I hope they change that based on feedback but I give them kudos for the first release. My only other concern is whether use of Chrome is making any more information about me available to google than if I use another browser. If using Chrome meeans sacrificing more privacy than other browsers it won't become my main browser. I also hope that since Silverlight works in Safari, it will also work in Chrome.
I made this post in my blog using Chrome.
I recently discovered OpenDNS, a free DNS service that has been around for a couple of years. One of the features of OpenDNS is that it can block unwanted Web sites before they even reach your computer. In case you're not familiar with DNS (domain name service), here is a simple explanation of how it works:
OpenDNS maintains a catergorized list of web sites. When a computer configured to use OpenDNS requests an inappropriate web site (intentionally or by accident), the site is effectively blocked before it ever reaches the computer.
Normally your DNS is automatically assigned to you by your Internet service provider (ISP). However, it's not very difficult to change these settings. And, if you have a high-speed Internet connection that is shared among multiple computers in your home, chances are you can configure your network router to use OpenDNS and every computer on your network will automatically be protected. OpenDNS will step you through the process.
By creating an account and registering your computer or network, you can customize which categories of Web sites are blocked. You can also view activity reports, including a list of Web sites that have been blocked.
OpenDNS can also be used outside of the home. Many businesses, schools, libraries, and other organizations are using OpenDNS to filter and protect users from inappropriate or harmful Web sites.
OpenDNS is not a total solution for Internet security. It can only block "known" Web sites, although the OpenDNS community appears to be very active in keeping the service updated. However, OpenDNS is a very useful service that can go a long way to protect your computers, and more importantly your family, from the dangers of the Internet.
Huge Thanks! to everyone that nominated us.
mojoPortal is a finalist again in the Best Other CMS category in this years CMS Awards sponsored by Packt Publishing ("other" means not based on PHP).
Last year we won this category but we were the only project based on ASP.NET in the group of contenders. This year there are 2 other .NET projects in the finalists including the dominant and much better known DotNetNuke project. I think last year this award was not really on their radar, but since Packt published a book on DotNetNuke skinning I'm sure their project team is paying attention this year. If they rally their community they will trounce us in terms of votes. DotNetNuke is also a finalist in the Best Overall category and to some extent that indicates they have already beat us.
To the extent that the award is based on current popularity it seems not very likely that we can win this year, though we did beat out Plone last year and they are also much better known than mojoPortal. Our best hope is to do as much as we can to get a lot of votes and to do well in the phase of the contest where we will be evaluated by a panel of judges.
So you may ask why is DotNetNuke so well known and so dominant? The answer is they had a 2 year head start and they got a lot of help and continue to get a lot of help from Microsoft. They have their forum integrated into the hugely popular Microsoft ASP.NET site which I'm sure drives a huge amount of traffic to their site and has been very helpful for them in building their brand. Microsoft has also recognized many of their core developers with MVP awards.
I certainly don't begrudge them their success or the support they get from Microsoft. I just want people to consider that popularity doesn't neccessarily mean you have a better product. You can have a better product and still fail to get your message out there, especially if you can't get access to the same valuable promotional mechanisms and support that your competitors have available to them. I hope one day to emulate their success and am glad we made it to the finalist stage again this year. One irony may turn out to be that if DotNetNuke brings a lot of attention to this years award, it may actually help us because some of the people who go to vote for them may read about the other finalists and this may help raise awareness of mojoPortal in the .NET community.
mojoPortal has grown its community organically in spite of not having any love from Microsoft (though we wish we would get some support from them). When I inquired about getting a mojoPortal forum on the ASP.NET site I pretty much got the brush off. Its very difficult for .NET developers to find out about mojoPortal and though we have a growing and supportive community, only a small percent of the huge ASP.NET community has ever even heard of mojoPortal.
I said it last year, and I'll say it again this year, we are the underdog going into this competition. Its going to be very difficult to win and every vote will matter so please vote for us and help us spread the word about mojoPortal!
If you like you can also nominate me for the CMS MVP Award.
Looking to satisfy my own curiosity, I'm wondering how may ASP.NET developers, when developing their web applications, use IIS or the Visual Studio Development Web Server?
Based on my own informal and very un-scientific observations, it seems to be about an even split.
Myself, I prefer to have my development environment mimic my production environment as much as possible. You just eliminate so many deployment issues this way, as you're forced to deal with them as you develop, instead of saving the problems all the way to the end. So, in most cases, for me, that means using Windows Server 2003 and IIS. I've found this to be especially helpful in applications where you're using Windows authentication.
However, lately, for a couple of projects, I have been giving the Visual Studio Development Web Server a try. It seems to be not that bad, if you ask me. It's pretty quick to set up and get going, especially if for some reason you don't have/can't get IIS on your local workstation.
So, if I may so enquire, what do you use: IIS, or the Visual Studio Web Development Server?
These are all the cell phones I've ever had.
I remember when I first got that Samsung clamshell phone on the left, gosh, how long ago was that 1997, 98 99? Somewhere in there I'm sure. I remember being so excited about that phone when I first got it. As a kid I had always fantasized about those communicators they used on Star Trek and when I got this phone it was like the realisation of a childhood dream. I got rid of my land line pretty soon after that and haven't had one since.
I was pretty excited when PocketPC phones first came out. Being a Web Developer, the idea of always having access to the internet wherever my phone worked seemd like a dream. I think I got that phone around 2002 or 2003 and at the time I gave my old phone to my younger brother Frank who lived in North Carolina (I was living in TN at the time). It really wasn't a compelling internet experience, and though I kept it until long after my service contract expired, I got really tired of carrying around that big phone. I mean if you put it in your pocket people were like "hey is that the internet in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?". It was really a phone that needed a belt clip like Batman, but I really wasn't into that belt clip thing.
So then I got the Razr, must have been around 2004 or 2005, again I gave my old PocketPC phone to my younger brother Frank. I was much happier with the Razr, it was slick, it was small, and it was a joy to stop carrying that old boat anchor PocketPC.
Last month I got an iPhone. Its way beyond any phone I ever imagined seeing in my lifetime. Its got a compelling web surfing experience, and yet it fits nicely in your pocket without raising eyebrows. I know a lot of people like a physical keyboard and those folks tend to like Blackberries. I suppose if I was answering a lot of email with my phone I might wish for a real keyboard too. Honestly I haven't yet answered an email with my iPhone. For me its more about knowing whether I have important mail at any time than actually responding to it from my phone. It can usually wait until I'm near a computer again. After all, I'm near a computer about 95% of the time. For me its just another convenient way to service my internet addiction. I work long days and then finally collapse and watch movies at the end of the day when I can no longer keep going. I used to find myself getting up from the couch a lot just to check if any new mail had come in, or see how many people are on mojoPortal.com. Now I don't have to get up off the couch. In some ways I like the Facebook experience better on the iPhone than on a computer. I love having a lot of my music collection in my phone, love the GPS. Its a really great device.
So I thought again whether I should offer my old Razr to my younger brother Frank. The funny thing is, now that I'm living in North Carolina, I find out he never activated or used any of the phones I ever gave him, thats how I'm now able to take a picture of them all together. He hasn't committed to a new phone contract for like eight years now. He's still using this old monstrosity:
We're talking dinosaur phone. Not only that but he relies on this thing for all his communication and he lost the battery charger years ago, so he can only charge it now in his car and he's been doing this for years. I'd say he's way over due for a new phone.
I'm happy to announce the release of Event Calendar Pro version 0.0.0.2
This release adds support for rendering events that span across days, weeks, or months, on the Month View.
From the beginning I felt rendering events that span across days was an important feature and I had hoped to have it working for the initial release, but since it took longer than expected to release this product I didn't want to delay any longer while I worked on this new calendar rendering. It was kind of tricky to achieve it. I struggled with it for about 4 days before finally arriving at a decent solution for rendering the events across days. I hope you like it.
Event Calendar Pro includes 1 year of free upgrades, so anyone who already purchased it can just download it again from their order history to get the new version.
You can also try it out at demo.mojoportal.com
As I was driving home today, I couldn't help notice something. Microsoft's ASP.NET MVC framework is still in beta, and was only announced last October. To my knowledge, there are currently three projects in the Edmonton area based off this framework.
Castle Monorail has been around for much longer, three years or so? It's still listed as a release candidate on it's website, but I'd say Monorail is suitable for production. Currently, I am not aware of any projects in the Edmonton that are based off this framework.
I guess this is anecdotal evidence that you won't get fired for sticking with Microsoft. :)
The two frameworks have quite a few similarities. IIRC, in Austin last fall Scott Guthrie did mention that the ASP.NET MVC framework was influenced to some degree by Monorail.
Regardless, it's good news. Personally, I like both frameworks, and would prefer either of them to Web Forms. YMMV.
DevExpress is giving away more than 60 WinForms and ASP.NET controls. I haven't used them before, but it appears to be a great collection. Registration required.
I'd like to take a break from boring you two readers of my blog about my experience with Linux and VMware, and take a moment to annoy you with a rant. Diversity is the spice of life after all.
This little remonstration of mine is about the Manning Early Access Program (MEAP). Well, specifically just one book. I've got my eye on a couple of other books available with MEAP to see how they pan out before considering the whole "early access" useless. Anyway...
It's almost a year to the day that I "bought" a copy of the book NHibernate in Action. I did so because I want a bit dissatisfied with the documentation for NHibernate 1.2, and thought that the book would help me. I wasn't an NHibernate virgin/noobie, but I did need some help with a couple of things, and I really didn't have a large network of NHibernate masters to turn to for help.
I was disappointed when I saw that the book wasn't in print yet. Then I was happy to see that I could order the book, download a PDF, and the hardcopy would be sent to me when the book went to print. Given that, in the summer of 2007 it was expected NHibernate in Action would be in print in late 2007, I thought it was reasonable to pay the money up front, and get the finished product mailed to me a couple of months later (I like to have hard copies of my books).
Well, here we are now, a year later. At time time of this writing, summer of 2008, NHibernate In Action is schedule to be in print for November, 2008. Since I downloaded my PDF of the book in August of 2007, there has been a total of one updated PDF.
Now, I can understand when deadlines get missed, and stuff is late. But, I think that, with a technology book, being one year late is inexcusable. A lot happens in one year in the programming space: NHibernate 2.0 is now in Alpha. What will be released first, NHibernate 2.0 or the printed copy of a book on NHibernate 1.2? NHibernate 2.0 is now available.
I think the money spent on the PDF was worth it, but I honestly feel I got hosed on the cash I paid out for the hardcopy.
I just can't help but feel that the extra money I paid to get a hardcopy of NHibernate in Action would probably have been better spent using the bills to make little origami swans, ducks, and platypuses and then floating them out to sea.
I will be watching a couple of other books of interest to me on MEAP. But, in all honesty, I don't think I will be buying any more books in this fashion until Manning Publications does something to restore my faith in their Early Access Program. I still my get the PDF's if I have an immediate need for them, but I can't see purchasing a book in this manner anymore.
Updated August 25: NHibernate 2.0 has been released
As the two people who read my blog know, for the past couple of months I've been basically running openSUSE 11 as my primary OS and using VMware to do my daily work in. All in all, as I've documented, I think it went well. You really discover what you use, and what you don't use in the Windows world.
To be sure, there were some hiccups, and Linux isn't without it's own idiosyncrasies, some of which I'm sure the less patient would NOT put up with. The fact that I can't get sound working in my VM's bugs me to no end. And, Windows does handle automounting USB drives much better than Linux, IMHO.
Last week, I got a new HDD for my laptop, a 7200rpm, 200GB drive (replacing a 5400rpm 160GB drive). I've installed that new drive into my laptop, and then installed the old HDD into a USB/eSATA external HDD enclosure. I figured that this might be a good time to contrast setting up a bare-bones Windows XP VMware host with a bare bones Linux VMware host.
Why Windows XP? Why not Vista? Well, primarily because Vista, while pretty, doesn't seem to provide a compelling enough of a reason for me to switch. Windows XP does everything I need.
So, first difference that I can comment on: Installing Windows XP with Service Pack 3 was easily a day (i.e. nearly 8 hours), and that was what I would think of as a pretty lean system. Just the OS, service packs, drivers, updates, virus scanner, and VMware Workstation 6.0. To install all of the software to make my laptop a useful .NET developer box would probably add another 8 ~ 16 hours to this bill. Note that during all of this, I have to baby-sit my laptop, clicking OK in dialogs, swapping CDs, etc.
Installing openSUSE 11 took about two or three hours, and I was rolling. The package manager in openSUSE is pretty good (as are most of the package managers in Linux these days), so to get the software I want to install is a bit simpler. I use YaST to build my shopping list of software, tell it to install, and then walk away. To get an openSUSE box setup to be a .NET box (via Mono) would probably only add a few more hours to that. Plus, there wouldn't be now where near as much baby-sitting on my part.
I really think that Microsoft should sit up, and start paying attention to what is happening in the *nix space with installs. I remember when I first started in Linux, and installing it was sometimes problematic. Now it's pretty slick. I'd say easier/better than installing Windows.
Jim Purbrick (Babbage) from Linden Labs has announced on the SecondLife Blog that they have started the rollout of their Mono-enabled servers.
They are using Mono as an engine that accelerates the execution of user provided scripts by translating LSL scripts into ECMA CIL bytecodes and in turn letting Mono turn that into x86 machine code.
[Read More...].
I'm happy to announce the Grand Opening of the mojoPortal Store!
We actually had a semi-grand opening a few weeks ago, but all you could do in the store until now is buy me a beer. Many Thanks to the kind folks who have bought me a beer since then! I really appreciated the beers and it really helped to be able to test the ecommerce before launching my first real product.
Yo can get a Single Installation License for $99 or a Server License for $299, or an Enterprise License with Full Source Code for $899
Checkout the product detail page for more info and screen shots, or watch this video for a guided tour of features.
I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.2.6.8, available now on the download page.
Actually I released the files yesterday but didn't manage to get to making a release announcement until today because I was still working on some related documentation that I wanted to link to.
As I mentioned in my previous post, we now have Advanced Integration with Google Analytics built in. There was a lot to talk about so I made that its own post yesterday instead of including it all in the release announcement.
For a long time I've been wanting to implement a better avatar system, because the one we had with just a list of little cartoons you could choose from seemed pretty lame and out of date. The other day, while reading Scott Hanselman's blog, I noticed that he was using Gravatars in his blog comments. I looked into the implementation and it was trivial so I implemented support for Gravatars in the mojoPortal forums and profile system. I haven't got it in blog comments yet but will try to get to that in a future version. The idea of Gravatars is that you can have an avatar that follows you whenever you visit any sites that support Gravatar. If you look in the mojoPortal Forums, you'll see my Gravatar.
If you don't have a Gravatar it just displays a generic one:
So, if you are a frequent visitor, go and get yourself a Gravatar. Gravatars are rated like movies G, PG, R, X, by default, mojoPortal is only configured to display Gravatars rated as G, but you can set this in Web.config or user.config: <add key="GravatarMaxAllowedRating" value="G" />
Its just a minor feature but its a social feature that I think can make a community site more appealing.
We've had support for OpenID authentication for quite a while now, but recently I came across ID Selector, an enhancement for the OpenID login box.
It makes it easy for users to sign in or register using their existing open id enabled account. I've created documentation about enabling OpenID selector in mojoPortal here: http://www.mojoportal.com/using-openid.aspx
Using OpenID or Windows Live ID can increase the number of users who register on your site because they don't have to create any new passwords. Everyone hates new passwords and thats probably one of the biggest reasons people resist registering on new sites, so eliminating that issue can increase registration and participation in your site.
Actually, I implemented these a few versions ago but just now got around to documenting them.
These are basically plugin systems that let you build and plugin your own handlers so you can execute your own custom logic whenever a new user is created or a new page is created. I'm always trying to dicourage people from modifying the core of mojoportal and put their custom code in external projects. If you make changes in the core code and those changes don't go back into the project you are basically creating a fork and it will be difficult to upgrade to future versions without losing your custom code, so unless you are working on something that is going to be integrated back into the project you should never change code in the core. If you run into something where you think you are going to need to modify the core, let us know in the developer forum and maybe we can suggest a way to accomplish your goal using external projects, or maybe we will consider integrating your change if its appropriate, or maybe your questions will lead us to add new extension points to make it possible to do what you want without modifying the core.
My first for sale feature will be in the Store sometime next week. The first version is feature complete, and you can try it out on demo.mojoportal.com. I still need to make help files, documentation, training/demo video, marketing text, licensing text, etc etc, so it will take me a few days to get that stuff done. I'll make a detailed post about this feature after its available.
As of version 2.2.6.8, mojoPortal now includes advanced integration with Google Analytics. Google provides you with a basic script that you can use to track page views in your site, it looks like this:
<script type="text/javascript"> var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxxxx-x"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); </script>
Historically, in mojoPortal and in other ASP.NET sites, you could always put this script into the bottom of your masterpage, in mojoPortal, that would be the layout.master file in your skin. This would get you basic tracking and it was very easy to do. Now in the current version of mojoPortal, you just enter this part "UA-xxxxxxx-x" from the script provided by google into your Site Settings under (key icon) Administration Menu > Site Settings > API Keys like this:
of course your code will be different than "UA-xxxxxxx-x", that just represents the format of your tracking code.
If you are using a custom skin, the only other requirement is to put this in the bottom of your layout.master file just before the closing form tag:
<portal:mojoGoogleAnalyticsScript ID="mojoGoogleAnalyticsScript1" runat="server" /> </form>
All the skins included in mojoPortal already have this so if you are using one of those you don't have to do anything other than the site setting above.
mojoPortal will automatically setup the script and it will do a lot more than the basic script.
One of the first advantages, is that it doesn't matter if you change skins or use different skins on different pages, the script will just work as long as the skin has the needed control. So for example in the past, unless you also put your google analytics script into the printerfriendly skin, it wasn't tracking page views when users clicked the printer friendly link, but now it does. THis also helped me with tracking traffic on demo.mojoportal.com, in the past I never bothered tracking that site because users could always change the skin and it was tedious to have to put my tracking code in all the skins. Now I just set it in user.config, you can set it there like this and it will trump the one in site settings : <add key="GoogleAnalyticsProfileId" value="UA-xxxxxxx-x" />. The only reason I use it on the demo site is so that no-one can change it in site settings and affect my tracking. I mean people get to login to the demo site as admin after all. Of course for multi site installations you want to always use the sitesettings.
In addition to the convenience of not having to maintain tracking codes in all your skins, mojoPortal will automatically label your visitors as Members if they are registered on your site, and if they make a purchase in WebStore or the Event Calendar Pro features they will be labelled as Customers. You will see this under the "User Defined" section of reports beneath Visitor reports. mojoPortal will also track ecommerce transactions in Google analytics from WebStore and from Event Calendar Pro features.
Site Search is also tracked, but to take advantage of it you need to configre your settings in google analytics like this:
Note that you just enable it and set "q" as the Query Parameter. Now you will start to capture data in the Site Search Reports beneath the Content Reports.
You can also enable tracking of page load time by setting this in your Web.config or user.config: <add key="TrackPageLoadTimeInGoogleAnalytics" value="true" /> Unfortunately, as of the time of this writing, you won't see this yet in your google analytics reports unless you are in their beta program. But, by starting to capture data now, you will see it later when event reports come out of the beta process.
Another thing you can do is capture the google analytics data into your own IIS or apache web logs by setting this in Web.config or user.config: <add key="LogGoogleAnalyticsDataToLocalWebLog" value="true" /> To get any value out of this data you would need to get google Urchin and use it to analyze your web logs. Another reason to capture this data in your logs is because google analytics only keeps your data for 25 months.
If you have more than one host name that your site responds to like mojoportal.com and www.mojoportal.coom, recommend that you force a preferred host name, to keep your reportng consistent.
Since anyone can view the rendered source of a page and see your tracking code, its possible for someone else to put your code in their site and create bogus data in your reports. To avoid this, after forcing a preferred host name, I recommend that you set a filter on your google analytics profile. Click the Add Filter link:
then configure it like this:
I'm really just learning about all the possibilities for taking full advantage of Google Analytics, I've learned what I have so far from the top book in this picture and hope to learn more ways to make it easy to get good tracking integrated into mojoPortal.
I walk by this sign almost every day when I go for my exercise walks at the park, its always struck me as funny. Today I took this picture with my iPhone.
I got this email this morning which is definitely NOT from Yahoo, but from someone hoping I will send them my password. Its another identity theft scam. The interesting thing is there is no phishing in it, no links to bogus sites and its clever enough I worry whether more naive family members and friends may be taken in by it. It starts with a little marketing about cool new stuff to make it seem legit, but the hook is the fear of losing your account if you don't comply. The fact that there aren't any phishing links also tempts one to think its real. But Yahoo nor any site you have an account with, would never ask you to email them your username and password. Scary to think how many people will probably do what it says.
"The All-New Yahoo! You Must Be A Part Of It To Avoid De-activativation Of Your Yahoo Account.
The All-New Yahoo! Mail Beta Is: Faster: Fewer steps to get things done. Easier: Drag & drop organization. Effortless: Automatically checks email for you.
With the all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta you must fill the Informations Below To Verify Your Account, PleaseThis For Your Benefit. Read Below To Understand More.
Dear Yahoo User,
Due to the congestion of Yahoo users, Yahoo would be shutting down all unused Accounts, You will have to confirm your E-mail by filling out your Login Information below after clicking the reply button, or your account will be suspended within 24 hours for security reasons.
* Username: .................................
* Password: ...................................
* Date of Birth: ................................
* Country Or Territory: .................................
After following the instructions in the above, your account will not be interrupted and will continue as normal. Thanks for your attention to this request. We apologize for any inconveniences.
Warning!!! Whosoever that refuses to update his/her account after two weeks of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.Until then, feel free to visit our online help center at http://help.yahoo.com/ for answers if you have not already done so."
It's been almost two months now since I've started to stick with Linux as my host OS. About the only times I've booted into Windows is to play World of Warcraft, run Quickbooks, and use Google Picassa. Next I might try Dreamweavers Cross-over suite to see how well some Windows apps (i.e. WoW) will work natively under Linux.
I still find it rather annoying that I can't seem to share my soundcard between the host OS and VMware. Windows can handle this no problem, why not Linux? I suspect it might be a KDE issue. When I do an fslock it seems, typically, there is a KDE application (kmixer) that is hogging the sound card.
Also, I do rather like the automount support for USB devices under Windows better.
For the past couple of weeks, I've been using VMware Workstation Beta 6.5. Now, in my old age, I'm not a big fan of using beta software (I don't have as much free time on my hands as I used to), but, the Unity feature of VMware Workstation 6.5 grabbed my attention. Unity is the technology that allows VMware to run your Windows app as a window within the host OS. You still have a guest OS running, but it is in the background. Unity makes it look like you've got a Windows app running under Linux. I will admit, it does seem kind of unholy when I have an IE browser window open in KDE.
Being beta, Unity is somewhat flaky at times, but it does seem to basically work. I think what I need to next is to get my hands on a Macbook Pro, and use VMware Fusion on it for comparison sake. Anybody feel like lending me a MBP for a few weeks?
Well, off to ALT.NET Canada this weekend in Calgary. Going to be making the road trip to Calgary tomorrow afternoon. I plan on skipping the last day, Sunday, in order to head out to Banff to spend a couple of days in the mountains with my family.
If you're interested in a copy of Rod Paddock's FreeDB that he used in his June Silverlight presentation at EDMUG, bring an external HDD or a blank DVD or something. Track me down, and we'll get you a copy of it somehow.
On August 6th, 1945, an American B-29, the Enola Gay, dropped the first atomic weapon used in conflict on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, on August 9th, another B-29, Bock's Car, dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki.
The Japanese formally surrendered on August 15, 1945.
At the last Edmonton Agile Methods User Group meeting, we had a brief discussion around code coverage, and what should be an acceptable number to shoot for. Is it okay when the unit tests cover 80% of the code? Or should 100% be the only acceptable value? After all, how can you be confident in your code knowing that 20% of it isn't tested.
Allow me to go out on a limb here, and state with absolute certainty that the correct answer is "It depends on your situation". Allow me to elaborate.
mojoPortal 2.2.6.7 is now available on the download page.
This is primarily a bug fix release. There was a change in the search engine architecture in recent versions that did not work in Medium Trust hosting environments that has now been fixed.
It seems like a constant battle to avoid medium trust issues, so I started a small document here with some notes for developers about things to avoid that can cause problems under medium trust.
http://www.mojoportal.com/developing-for-medium-trust.aspx
Its not comprehensive so if anyone else has any suggestions for things to list on this page let me know. Sometimes its surprising when seemingly innocuous things don't work under medium trust. The problem we encountered was when we changed the search engine to use a queue for writing/updating the search index to ensure things happen in correct sequence. We were serializing our task object into a row in the database then our little task service would deserialize it and run it on a new thread in the background. As it turned out the SoapFormatter we were using to do the serialization throws a security exception under medium trust so you can't use it. I had to re-work the code to use the XmlSerializer.
Since a lot of people are hosted in medium trust I thought it important to get this fix out quickly.
This release also fixes a few other minor bugs as mentioned in the forums. I was surprised how many people are experimenting with our WebStore feature. Several bug fixes and improvements have been made in WebStore. Most of the bugs were only affecting the MS SQL version, whereas the store on this site is runningunder MySql
UPDATE: I've just uploaded a new set of files versioned 2-2-6-7-b because a significant bug was found today in the task framework. The changes I made to the way we serialize tasks to fix the medium trust issue introduced a bug that allowed multiple instances of the same task to run at the same time and this would use up additional threads from the threadpool, potentially causing hangs and performance problems. I also upgraded to FCKeditor 2.6.3.
Marc Christiensen has announced the release of our first preview for Mono 2.0. You can read our preliminary release notes for this release.
The preview release is available from our preview download directory. The source code for this release is available here.
Please report any bugs that you may find using our Bugs page, AND reply to this thread with the bug numbers so we can track them! http://www.mono-project.com/Bugs
You can see the bugs we're tracking for Mono 2.0 here: https://bugzilla.novell.com/buglist.cgi?bug_file_loc_type=allwordssubstr&bug_file_loc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.go-mono.com%2Farchive%2F2.0%2F&order=bugs.bug_status%20
The earlier you file the bugs and reply to this message, the more likely your bugs will get fixed.
Special attention is given to regressions, so if you can tell us a version of Mono where the bug worked and you tag the summary of the bug with [Regression], then it is much more likely your bug will get fixed.
Please help the Mono team to make 2.0 the best ever.
So the other day, Kyle Baley e-mails me, asking for some advice/help. As it turns out, it wasn't like the advice I find myself giving Don (i.e."Don't eat any more of that yellow snow" or "Fondue is NOT finger food"). Kyle was have some problems with a VMware image being a bit on the slow side, and was wondering what he could do to make it run a bit faster. As my tips actually seemed to help him out, it seemed reasonable to record them so that I can remember what I told Kyle when/if I run into the same problem.
I've been using VMware daily for almost a year now, running first under Windows XP as a host OS, and more and more under Linux as the host OS. My hardware is nothing fancy. I have and ASUS Z96JS whitebox with 2GB of RAM, a 160GB HDD, and an Intel Dual Core 2 T7400 at 2.16GHz that I bought about a year ago. These days I set up a VMware image for each project I'm working on, typically running Server 2008 (or WindowsXP), Resharper 4, and SQL Server or MySQL. Now with this background out of the way, on to some other, more fun, stuff.
(If you're about to start setting up your VM, I strongly suggest reading Keith Elder's blog post on the subject.)
Here are a couple of tips/tricks that I do for my VM's. YMMV.
I think that about sums it up for me. If you've got any VMware performance tips, I'd be more than happy to hear about them.
Update July 30, 2008 @ 8:35AM MDT: Forgot about #8
I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.2.6.6
This is a minor upgrade and bug fix release. There is a new option to show or hide any content instance based on whether the user is signed into the site or not. There is a new Traditional Chinese translation, thanks to Alex Ho!
There are a couple of bug fixes for the MS SQL version of WebStore and a few mnior improvements to a few admin pages in the WebStore.
There is a bug fix for a forums error that would occur if anonymous posting is enabled, though I still don't recommend allowing anonymous posting.
As usual, be sure and backup your site and database before upgrading, and post in the forums if you run into any troubles.
UPDATE: I've released a new set of files versioned 2-2-6-6-b, there was a packaging bug in the first set of files and it was missing some .htm files used by TinyMCE editor. I also fixed a few more bugs in the WebStore that were discovered today.
It's been just over a month now since I made the decision/effort to use openSUSE 11 as my primary OS, running Windows in VMware images. I figured that this might be a good time to mention some of the annoyances that I've encountered since then.
Not that long ago, Microsoft's Developer Division gave the