Self References

Moving primary posting - blog.vijay.name

CodeCanvas — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 19:48:00 GMT

Hi GWB,

It has been a exciting 2 years of blogging here, GWB was the first technical blog I started and it has come a long way. Now since there are more than technical posts I am concentrating on that and also because of the flexibility that I require; I will be using my personal domain blog as the primary (http://blog.vijay.name) , I will sure be cross-posting my technical posts here at GWB so my current subscribers will still continue getting content.

Thanks Jeff for the initial help and oppurtunity. All the best for you guys.

Regards,

Vijay shankar ganesh K

The One with the Bad DataSet/XSD day

CodeCanvas — Sun, 21 May 2006 16:50:00 GMT

Original post at my blog

As if usual problems arent complex enough my Visual Studio 2005 stopped displaying DataSet's that were designed and were working very recently. When I open my visual studio solution / project which already has an DataSet open I will get the following error dialog

[
Load DataSet Error
Failed to load dataset because of the following error:

Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: project
]

and the following error message

	One or more errors encountered while loading the designer. The errors are listed below. Some errors can be fixed by rebuilding your project, while others may require code changes.
Value cannot be null. Parameter name: project Hide
at Microsoft.VSDesigner.VSDesignerPackage.GlobalConnectionService.Microsoft.VSDesigner.VSDesignerPackage.IGlobalConnectionService.GetConnections(IServiceProvider serviceProvider, Project project) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.DesignConnection.GetConnectionFromAppSettings(String objectName, String propertyName) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.DesignConnection.get_ConnectionStringObject() at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.DbSource.set_Connection(IDesignConnection value) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.DesignDataSource.SetConnectionProperty(Source source) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.DesignDataSource.ReadXmlSchema(DataSourceXmlTextReader xmlReader) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.DesignDataSource.ReadXmlSchema(TextReader textReader) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.Designer.DataSourceSerializationService.DeserializeToDataSource(String filePath, Object serializationData) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.ProjectDataSourceDescriptor.LoadDataSource() at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.ProjectDataSourceDescriptor.Init(IServiceProvider provider, IVsHierarchy primaryHierarchy, UInt32 primaryItemId, Object primaryDocDataObject, UInt32 docCookie, IVsInvisibleEditor invisibleEditor, IDesignerHost host) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.ProjectDataSourceStorage.EnsureInvisibleEditor(ProjectItem dsProjectItem, Boolean ensureWritable, Boolean createInvisibleEditor) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.ProjectDataSourceStorage.GetDataSourceInternal(Object caller, ProjectItem dsProjectItem, Boolean ensureWritable, Boolean createInvisibleEditor) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.Designer.DataSourceDesignerLoader.HandleLoad(IDesignerSerializationManager serializationManager)

Occording to SOP, first I closed the dataset file (xsd) and tried opening it again in the editor, at which time I would get another error message in the following format:

[
Load DataSet Error
Failed to load dataset because of the following error:

Object reference not set to an instance of an object
]

and the following error message

	One or more errors encountered while loading the designer. The errors are listed below. Some errors can be fixed by rebuilding your project, while others may require code changes.
Object reference not set to an instance of an object. Hide
at Microsoft.VisualStudio.DataTools.Providers.OleDB.OleDBUtilities.GetRegisteredProviders() at Microsoft.VisualStudio.DataTools.Providers.OleDB.OleDBUtilities.ExpandProvider(String provider) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.DataTools.Providers.OleDB.OleDBUtilities.GetDataSource(String provider) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.DataTools.Providers.OleDB.OleDBDataSourceSpecializer.DeriveDataSource(String connectionString) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.DataTools.DataServices.DataProvider.DeriveDataSource(String connectionString) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.Data.ProviderManager.GetVsDataSource(String invariantName, String connectionString, Boolean encrypted) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.Data.ConnectionString..ctor(String providerName, String connectionString) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.VSDesignerPackage.AppSettingsHelper.GetConnectionsViaDataEnvironment(IDataEnvironment dataEnvironment) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.VSDesignerPackage.GlobalConnectionService.Microsoft.VSDesigner.VSDesignerPackage.IGlobalConnectionService.GetConnections(IServiceProvider serviceProvider, Project project) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.DesignConnection.GetConnectionFromAppSettings(String objectName, String propertyName) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.DesignConnection.get_ConnectionStringObject() at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.DbSource.set_Connection(IDesignConnection value) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.DesignDataSource.SetConnectionProperty(Source source) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.DesignDataSource.ReadXmlSchema(DataSourceXmlTextReader xmlReader) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.DesignDataSource.ReadXmlSchema(TextReader textReader) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.Designer.DataSourceSerializationService.DeserializeToDataSource(String filePath, Object serializationData) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.ProjectDataSourceDescriptor.LoadDataSource() at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.ProjectDataSourceDescriptor.Init(IServiceProvider provider, IVsHierarchy primaryHierarchy, UInt32 primaryItemId, Object primaryDocDataObject, UInt32 docCookie, IVsInvisibleEditor invisibleEditor, IDesignerHost host) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.ProjectDataSourceStorage.EnsureInvisibleEditor(ProjectItem dsProjectItem, Boolean ensureWritable, Boolean createInvisibleEditor) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.ProjectDataSourceStorage.GetDataSourceInternal(Object caller, ProjectItem dsProjectItem, Boolean ensureWritable, Boolean createInvisibleEditor) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.Designer.DataSourceDesignerLoader.HandleLoad(IDesignerSerializationManager serializationManager)

On the quest to solve this headache I hit google and came up with the following pages which kind of had content related to the problem:

http://www.darrellhawley.com/2006/05/value-cannot-be-null-parameter-name.html - He was lucky to have the problem sorted out on the first step of SOP, but as you know our problems never are that easy to solve, are they? :)

http://www.kbalertz.com/kbNamed_894438/Describes.problem.that.occurs.Microsoft.Visual.Studio.When.open.project.that.contains.inherited.user.receive.error.aspx - Even though this page had a similar error message tackled, it was not the same as the current one.

Then finally hit on this forum post http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=133896&SiteID=1 it is quite long (4 pages), but was worth it. After a to and forth conversation which spanned 3 pages Stephen Provine had nailed the problem to a missing registry key value.

The culprit was Windows Live Safety Scanner - "Clean Up Scan", yup! the safety centre had cleaned out the unwanted registry keys, which is usually good for the system in most cases but this time it was not one of those "most" cases.

To fix the problem please follow the following steps:

To examine the registry:

1) Run regedit.exe;
2) Browse to the location "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{F9AE8980-7E52-11d0-8964-00C04FD611D7}" in the tree;
3) If there is a child node in the tree called "ProgID", then you are indeed experiencing a different problem - let me know if this is the case.

Otherwise, follow these steps to modify the registry:

1) Right click the node and select "New > Key";
2) Enter "ProgID" as the name;
3) Go to the main window and double click "(Default)";
4) Enter the value "MSIDXS.1";

Now if you run Visual Studio, it should be working.

Hope this helps out a fellow developer who is on his way to becoming a hairless monk!

Update: Because of the use of tables and stylesheets the article was not showing up properly, now I have fixed them and updated the post, hopefully this works good.

Note for self : Attribute not recognized 'minRequiredNonAlphanumericCharacters'

CodeCanvas — Sat, 13 May 2006 17:49:00 GMT

Change the minRequiredNonAlphanumericCharacters to minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters. Local MSDN document not up-to-date!

OWA 440 Authentication Timeout

CodeCanvas — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 04:30:00 GMT

When recently doing a novell to AD / Exchange migration everything was going smooth except for one glitch which came in the end when enabling the OWA's. Out of all the front and backend clusters one front-end webserver started giving this strange “440 Authentication Timeout” error. Its partly strange because I never actually authenticated in the first place to get it expired! Anyway, after googling around I came across a wonderful post at http://msmvps.com/blogs/cgross/archive/2004/08/08/11472.aspx which seemed to tackle the issue. But even after doing the given steps in the post, the problem was continuing.

So after digging the mud for some more time I hit on another forum post at http://forums.asp.net/1164338/ShowPost.aspx which was mentioning about enabling and disabling the Integrated Authentication in exchange system manager. As you would already know, there is no option to do that from ESM, but can be done in the IIS mmc. So, I first enabled the integrated authentication saved the settings, and then again took off the integrated authentication and voila! there came the OWA login page. Quite strange, but it works! Hope this helps some poor soul looking for a chicken soup.

Link for Qbasic and other old dos stuff

CodeCanvas — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 16:16:00 GMT

Link for QBasic and other old dos stuff http://download.microsoft.com/download/win95upg/tool_s/1.0/W95/EN-US/olddos.exe

Top 10 usability features I would like in a browser

codecanvas — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 00:06:00 GMT

After working on net for almost 5 years, I think the key to success of any browser is based on the usability features and improvements done for making them comfortable to users. After thinking over what I have liked in the browsers I have used so far, below is the top 10 key features I would prefer to have in a single browser. Most notably I think these would be a preferred feature for any internet browser user, do let me know your list through feedback

10. Developer tools {Developer’s developer’s developer’s…}
Preferred browser for the feature: Internet Explorer with Developer Toolbar / FireFox with WebDeveloper extension

A developer tool is one thing that's missing greatly from the browser guys. Yea sure there are lot of third party plug ins, but wouldn't it be great if it came directly form them who know the browser better? I appreciate the release of Developer Toolbar for internet explorer and Fiddler by Microsoft; it is a good direction to move on.

9. Look and Feel {Mood simple or not-simple ;)}
Preferred browser for the feature: Firefox

Common guys, we are not in the same mood always. We would need a light-weight skin which is tremendously responsive with least features during the time of work and development. But would need a skin which extends the browser functionality as and when we are in a 'experimenting/exploring' mood. Something like selecting a option like 'Keep it simple' or 'Make it cool' ;)

8. Browsing Session Resume
Preferred browser for the feature: Opera

My regards goes to Opera guys for coming up with the idea / or at least listening to users feedback and implementing it in the product. Resuming a browsing session which consists of more than one window is really a handy feature. Think about this situation; you are at the end of the day and you have opened some pages which are related to what you are hunting and as of yet you don't know which is the exact page that contains the information you need. Now you have to shutdown the system due to some compulsion. What would have been the solution if you don't have session resume? you can either jot down the url's in a text file or make them a bookmark which you need to erase off after verifying, now enter Opera's session resume option where you just close the browser and shut down the system, when you have again started working you can just open the Opera browser and you get an option to resume your previous session! Voila! You get all the sites open for you at the very same page you left them!

7. TLD filling through shortcut {Shift, Ctrl, Enter}
Preferred browser for the feature: Firefox

This is really a necessity now with the amount of browsing anybody is doing on a daily basis. Nobody would be willing to type the mundane "http://" and ".com"or".net" or whatever TLD for browsing these days. Internet explorer introduced this nifty shortcut where you use the Ctrl+Enter to fill in on the needed stuff for ".com" domains, Firefox went ahead and introduced extended shortcuts for some more (Ctrl+Enter -> .com, Shift+Enter -> .net, Shift+Ctrl+Enter -> .org)

6. Disabling Images / Multimedia Items {Movies on advertisement??? sheeez}
Preferred browser for the feature: Netscape

My most hated stuff while browsing is some site using up your bandwidth for unwanted ads! When you are browsing a site text ads are fine, image ads.... well, that is fine unless it hinders with the purpose of visit, flash ads with movies in them?? Common people, this is not going to suit me and that's the main reason I select to disable images, java applets and other multimedia plug-ins until unless I need them. This feature is kind of half implemented in the current browsers. The main problem in mentioning that images are not to be loaded is fine, but there are some sites for which images are required. For viewing images on those sites the only option with the current browsers is to enable images at browser level, which is not convenient. I love Netscape on this matter that they allow you to set the images / JavaScript’s to be enabled and disabled on the fly when visiting a site.

5. Smart Pop-up blocking and download management
Preferred browser for the feature: Firefox

Pop-up blocking is almost a standard feature in all the current version of the browsers; even then there is some area for improvement. I have come across sites which have effectively bypassed the blockers and have opened pop-ups and pop-under [I forgot the link, will post them. I think it was a movie review site, which I reached through Google search]. And the current pop-up blocking mechanism in Netscape is bit old fashioned, wherein you don't have any option to open a blocked window, and moreover if you are browsing your hotmail junk folder (in IE Rendering Mode) with Netscape it blocks the "Empty" commands pop-up screen (I also tried with Ctrl, Shift keys pressed down).

4. Paste and Go {Well, you paste something on the address bar to actually go there!!}
Preferred browser for the feature: Opera

This feature is so obvious in its level of usage; I wonder why most of the browsers have not implemented it yet. Well, consider this; you paste something in the address bar of a browser to actually visit that address right? Then why don't they give an option (KB shortcut or right-click menu item) to actually paste and go the address in one command? This feature is one of those usability gems from Opera.

3. Tabbed Browsing
Preferred browser for the feature: Mostly all browsers have opted in on this feature

Even though most of the browsers have opted in on this feature there is still some area for improvement on most of them. For example there is tab functionality that is available on Netscape that are not available with Firefox and Opera (double click closing).

2. Multi-level form information storing / submiting {Not another login screen}
Preferred browser for the feature: Netscape

More or less all browsers support automatic form filling either as built-in feature or through extensions. But where Netscape stands out is the amount of flexibility it gives you in form information saving. The user can choose to just save the information or save the information and auto-fill it whenever we come to the form on the web site or if it’s a login screen you can ask it to automatically fill the form and then submit the form too. And this kind of information saving is done through two level of visibility, either for a particular web site or for a default profile which will be available for all the websites. But even Netscape lacks one functionality, you can save only one set of login information for any website, so if you have different email ids for personal and professional use with the same email service provider, then you will have determine which one you are going to save in the browser for auto-login.

The main reason this feature has come up on the ladder is because how easy it makes you to use various online service with minimum typing :)

1. Response and True Status {Click ... click ... hmmmm .. i think its connecting...!!??}
Preferred browser for the feature: Opera (kind of)

This is one area where most browsers have to work extra. As far as I know still there are some glitches in the existing browsers where you get into response issues, I understand it may be associated with scripts running on a page or any other resource hog up. But at the end of it this is the one feature which will either create a smile or a frown on a users face.

As such I use/experience IE, Firefox, Opera and Netscape one daily basis for my development and testing, so my opinions are based on the experience I have gained out of these browsers. There maybe better alternatives which the users like me may not be aware of, in such cases please do let me know about them through the feedback section.

IIS Documentation - Self Reference

codecanvas — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 15:16:00 GMT

IIS documentation - link for self reference

Flash 8 File Upload and Download

codecanvas — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 12:32:00 GMT

This is cool! Macromedia Flash 8 has introduced built-in support for downloading and uploading (with help of server side script) files with server. It is notable that the the player will be able to support uploading more than one file to the server, you can check out the worked out examples at Oniam Software Blog.

Advantage is that now displaying a progress of file upload will be easier. I am not sure if the post-back can be avoided with the help of asp.net 2, will have to check that out.

Gmail 'Unread' label tip

codecanvas — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 16:16:00 GMT

I was recently going through a nice list of Gmail Tips maintained by Jim Barr, it has a lot of useful tips out of which tip 25 tells you how you can create a label named "Unread" which automatically displays all the mails which are not yet read by you (not just in inbox or just in one label, but in your full email account). But when I tried creating such a label gmail didn't allow me, so I tried creating a label named "Unread2" and then tried renaming it to "Unread" that's when I got a message saying "System specific label names are not allowed. Please try another label".

Workaround for this problem at present would be to just type "label:Unread" in your gmail search box and hit enter. This will give you the complete list of emails which you have not read till now.

It would be a lot convenient if Gmail guys add such a link near the system folders / labels (I mean near Inbox, Sent Mail).

Scene jumping problem with gotoAndPlay / gotoAndStop

codecanvas — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 14:38:00 GMT

Flash has an nice concept called 'Scene', using which you separate a full movie into various scenes logically and then work on them. This enables the developer from going insane over the countless layers and frames that they have to jump to. One problem I faced with scene jumping with the recent work is that, when you are gotoAndPlay'ing to a scene from the topmost scene it works pretty well, but the problem arises when you have to jump to a different scene from inside of some object placed somewhere else in the movie it simply doesnt work.

After doing some googling I found this FAQ section which explained about the concept of scenes and a way to overcome the drawback. To put a long story short, hen exporting your fla into swf flash just concatinates all scenes one after another into a full length movie. So after exporting there isnt anything called a 'scene' present in the swf and thats the reason objects at innermost level are not able to execute the gotoAndPlay or gotoAndStop functions for scene based jumping. To overcome this drawback we just have to place a label frame to where it has to jump (basically I name it same as the scene itself) and then call the gotoAndPlay("<labelName>") to move the player head.

In flash 2004 macromedia has introduced new concepts named Screens and Forms which dont have the above mentioned drawback, but as I was working on a older file I had to come across this issue.