May 2007 Entries
I hit a weird error when trying install the Orcas Beta 1 on Vista today. After some searching, I found this entry from Aaron Stebner with a simple fix. It turns out that there's a bug in the .NET 3.5 installer. If your installation path includes spaces, it will fail. The error isn't at all clear, and certainly spaces should be fine, but a lack of quotes in the installer script causes the failure. Simple fix, but it sure wouldn't have been easy to find! Thanks Aaron! I am very pumped about Orcas. If this ever finishes installing it will...
In previous posts, I've been telling people to use the System.ItemDisplayPath and System.Filename to create the full filename. I also complained about some anomalies I had come across with the file paths. You see, there is no field that just contains the filename with path. My guess as to why this is the case, is that WDS is not just files -- it's also email, journal entries, contacts, and more. So the universal scheme is the URI, stored in the System.ItemUrl property. This is fine for the Windows Shell. I can invoke Shell.Execute on a URL and it launches perfectly...
I tried out something new and interesting today. The Office Web Controls (OWC) let you embed interactive Office documents into HTML documents. These are installed with Office 2000+, or can be downloaded separately if you don't have Office installed. I had assumed that OWC just let you embed a document in Internet Explorer, something already possible since the Office tools can site in within any ActiveX container, but these are completely different. My example contained an XML schema, the XML document mapped to a workbook, a PivotTable, and a corresponding PivotChart. Exposing the chart via interactive HTML worked great --...
OK. Now I'm curious. The Joost streaming video service sounds really cool. If I remember right, it's from the same people that made Kazaa, then Skype. TV-like features in streaming form. Of course there have been similar efforts before, but they're never all that great in the end. If anyone has any invites, I'd be grateful if you sent one my way! UPDATE: Thanks a million to Matt who set me up with an invite! After I have some time to play with it I'll blog about the experience. So far, it's pretty cool. Definitely avoid full-screen though for now...
Starting with my most recent Coding 4 Fun article (Photo Screensaver), you may notice that I now have an avatar in my bio. This is courtesy of Matt Van Dinter, and is very cool. It captures me perfectly, and lets me include a a visual without scaring anyone! I've always had to settle for stock avatars before, but now I join the elite with my own custom one. Thanks Matt!
My latest Coding 4 Fun article went live today. It uses GDI+ to create a screensaver showing your photos with a Polaroid-style frame. It was more work than I thought it would be, but I'm pretty pleased with the result. You can locate images based on a folder (with or without subfolders), or using keywords from Desktop Search. It works well and looks pretty cool! Link to Coding4Fun : Photo Screensaver
I've been saying to get the filename from Windows Desktop Search queries by combining the System.ItemFolderPathDisplay and System.ItemNameDisplay. This worked fine on my system, but I didn't realize that it might not work if you hide file extensions in Explorer. Apparently, ItemNameDisplay returns the filename minus the extension in this case (or at least I found this to be the case on Vista). The better choice is to use System.FileName. This returns the filename with extension regardless. You still don't get the path though -- for that, continue to use ItemFolderPathDisplay. So how do you combine them? Definitely don't just...
Well, the Code Camp in Minneapolis last Saturday went really well. I would have been happy with a larger turnout, but those who attended were interested and there was pretty good participation. My talk was about leveraging Windows Desktop Search in your applications. As discussed at the session, I'm posting my sample code and PowerPoint deck here. The code is only demo-quality! Feel free to ask any questions. If you don't have PowerPoint 2007, remember that you can download the Microsoft Office File Converter Pack for earlier versions to open the pptx file. It's free! Windows Desktop Search Presentation Windows...