September 2009 Entries
So I’m typing a document, and suddenly I realize that I must have just hit the CAPS LOCK key. I noticed this right after typing “lOCATION” when all of a sudden Word autocorrected it to the right case *and* turned off the CAPS LOCK key! Very cool. I tried again with just typing it with CAPS LOCK on and getting LOCATION but it didn’t do it. It’s smart enough to realize that if I type in reverse sentence case I probably didn’t mean it. This is a welcome feature.
Have you ever been plagued with an exception that didn’t show you any details? One example would be in a WPF application with XAML markup. If you are declaring resources, and said resources through an exception upon creation, you’ll probably crash when the application starts up, but there won’t be any detailed exception information to see: You can always click View Detail and go to the InnerException property, but that’s not always so helpful either: If you really want to see the cause of the error, you’ll need to see the exception at...
My latest MSDN Coding 4 Fun article, Windows 7 Taskbar, has been published. I’m a bit behind the times actually, since it’s already been out a week or two! In case you haven’t seen it though, it’s an introduction to using the Windows API Code Pack to take advantage of new Taskbar goodness in Windows 7. Hopefully some good info there with Windows 7 release coming up soon! Link: http://blogs.msdn.com/coding4fun/archive/2009/08/25/9874533.aspx
I’ve blogged before about the product Pismo Mount. This great tool lets you mount an ISO (CD image), ZIP, and a number of other archive formats. Once mounted, it looks like a folder and you can just work with it like any other folder. I’ve discovered some limitations that surprised me. Specifically, one limitation that has affected me several times. For some reason, I can’t always install from a mounted ISO image. I tried installing the Office 2010 CTP and the Visual Studio 2010 beta and neither would install. The errors don’t even make sense (it’s not like it’s...
I do a lot of math work at home with my boys, and creating random problems for them to solve can be challenging. I just discovered a Microsoft Education Labs project that generates worksheets based on a sample problem. Kind of like Pandora (music), give it a problem you “like” and it comes back with more, with a similar difficulty. The problems are embedded directly into Word with solutions on the last page. You can do basic math, algebra solving, and more. Use the Math Input Panel in Windows 7, or use their specialized syntax. Very easy! App in...