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Windows Live Writer

Written by jf on September 19, 2008 – 7:33 pm -

It’s been not nearly a year since I last used Windows Live Writer, there seems to have been a lot of enhancement and changes compared to the first version that i have tried up. Today, I’ll be giving a try to the beta version (Build 14.0.5025.904). The setup was quiet easy and straight forward, warning me that I must enable XML-RPC on my blog before I can continue.

The first thing I installed is the S3 Object plug-in, to be able to upload images directly to my Amazon S3 account and use them on this post.

This image comes from my S3 bucket.

There are many feature such as the Insert Map: Let’s try it out and point out Mauritius for example

Where i live.

Nice. I have also created a Marker (Push Pin). Which does not seem to appear, When you create a map on Windows Live Messenger, it’s not the actual map that appears but an image with a link to the actual map…

Some other comment: There is to a problem, when there are connection cuts. The application just hangs during an operation. It was the case for my first post. Hope that is will be happen.

Conclusion a very nice and elaborated tool for blogging. I’ll will be trying it for a fews days and will send some feedback on this post. Or create a new one if need be.

My previous article to Windows Live Writer can be found here

Tags: Blog, Windows Live Writer
Posted in Bloggers, Software, Web | No Comments »

backup and share files using MozyHome and Dropbox

Written by jf on September 18, 2008 – 8:00 pm -

If you are wondering what are the choices you have to make share and backup your files, you might easily be able to find hundreds of alternative on the web today. Each one with their different features and technologies.

I came across 2 free tools that i use for my backup and file sharing:

MozyHome Remote Backup

MozyHome is a small application that runs on background and backups any folder that you configure it to. It will encrypt and then upload your files to your 2 GB free space. You have several tools to enable you to them restore any lost files. Nice for uploading document, project files. You have also the paid version with unlimited space.

Dropbox

Dropbox is a new tool, that just got public last week. It’s similar to Mozybackup with 2 GB free space and the posibility of backup your files. With some extra features such as file sharing and automatic sync. Personally I use it to share files only. Since your files need to be in the DropDox folder (Similar concept and LiveMSN sharing folder) to be able to share.

It also allows sharing of files and give you a nice public URL that you can easily send to the person you want to share your files with. The only lacking features i might see here, is that you can’t share an entire folder with files inside. i.e When you want to share several photos you can’t directly get a link to the folder. You must share it with someone that already has Dropbox. A feature that would enable a link to a zip version of an entire folder could be nice.

Tags: Backup, Dropbox, Mozy, Storage, Web 2.0
Posted in Software, Tech, Web | 1 Comment »

ASP.NET: HyperLink and Label without Id attribute

Written by jf on August 4, 2008 – 6:00 am -

Today, I’ll talk a bit about how ASP.NET handles HTML rendering of controls such as <asp:HyperLink> and <asp:Label>. If you have developed using ASP.NET you must have noticed that when an <asp:Hyperlink> or <asp:Label> is rendered you will find something like that:

<html>

<a id="ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_rptShoppingCart_ctl00_lnkGotoCheckout" href="#" class="someCss">delete</a>

</html>

From an ASP.NET point of view, this is fine, since all object rendered should be identified uniquely on the client side. But many a time these are useless, since these hyperlinks are not used to trigger any server side events. Thus the id attributes just takes up a lot of space on your HTML and Page Size when you have many links like that. If you don’t want to have those, here is a solution I came up with, you can create custom server controls that inherits from the control that you want to remove the id attribute tag from.

Here is sample of the code that i used to remove the id attribute from the Hyperlink Control, without basically removing all the features provided by the Hyperlink control such as being able to handle Resource files for globalization.

[ToolboxData("<{0}:HyperLinkEx runat=server></{0}:HyperLinkEx>")]
public class HyperLinkEx: System.Web.UI.WebControls.HyperLink
{
private string rel;

/// <summary>
/// Gets or sets the rel.
/// </summary>
/// <value>The rel.</value>
public string Rel
{
get { return rel; }
set { rel = value; }
}

/// <summary>
/// Renders the control to the specified HTML writer.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="writer">The <see cref="T:System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter"></see> object that receives the control content.</param>
protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter writer)
{
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

sb.Append("<a");

if (this.NavigateUrl.StartsWith("~"))
this.NavigateUrl = ResolveClientUrl(this.NavigateUrl);
sb.Append(" href=\"" + this.NavigateUrl + "\"");

if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(rel)) sb.Append(" rel=\"" + rel + "\"");
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.CssClass)) sb.Append(" class=\"" + this.CssClass + "\"");
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.Target)) sb.Append(" target=\"" + this.Target + "\"");
if (this.Attributes["onclick"] != null) sb.Append(" onclick=\"" + this.Attributes["onclick"] + "\"");

sb.Append(">");

if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.ImageUrl)) //Some image were found
{
if (this.ImageUrl.StartsWith("~"))
this.ImageUrl = ResolveClientUrl(this.ImageUrl);
sb.Append("<img src=\"" + this.ImageUrl + "\" alt=\"" + this.Text + "\" title=\"" + this.Text + "\" border=\"0\" />");
}
else
{
sb.Append(this.Text);
}

sb.Append("</a>");
writer.Write(sb.ToString());
}

}

In this source code, i have overridden the render method of the control and outputted a cleaner HTML anchor with no Id attributes. I have also added support for ImageURL attribute of the hyperlink server control, thus maintaining the most of the asp:Hyperlink features.

I have also created a tiny library with some controls: <asp:HyperLink>, <asp:Label>, <asp:Image> which i think are the controls that need not have the id attribute in every scenario.

You can find it for download under GNU Public Licence here.

Tags: ASP.NET, SEO
Posted in .NET, ASP.NET, C#, SEO, Software, Web | No Comments »

Virtualization using VirtualBox

Written by jf on June 6, 2008 – 6:00 am -

Microsoft Virtual PC, which is a quiet efficient tool but needs licences to work with. Today while browsing the web i came to get accross a free open source alternative: VirtualBox

I installed it, had a copy of Linux Ubuntu and created it new virtual guest OS, it took me about 1 hour to set everything up.
From VirtualBox website:

VirtualBox is a family of powerful x86 virtualization products for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). See “About VirtualBox” for an introduction.

Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), and OpenBSD.

VirtualBox is being actively developed with frequent releases and has an ever growing list of features, supported guest operating systems and platforms it runs on. VirtualBox is a community effort backed by a dedicated company: everyone is encouraged to contribute while Sun ensures the product always meets professional quality criteria.

That said, I seriously encourage any developer, who needs Virtual OS to run, to either to make a development platform or doing test.

Here are some screen shots of running Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux.

Tags: VirtualBox, Virtualization
Posted in Cool Stuff, Software, Web, Work | No Comments »

Goodbye Netscape Navigator

Written by jf on January 12, 2008 – 3:52 pm -

10 years have now gone since the first apparition of Netscape Navigator and now it is time to say goodbye to this browser. As announced by AOL, the netscape browser support will end on the 1st of February 2008.

I still remember during my first days using internet i have been playing around with Navigator 3 or 4 i may think. It was kind of the impressive i may say the first time, but afterwards i switched to Internet Explorer, and now i am using both Internet Explorer and FireFox.

Tags: Browser, Netscape, Software, Web
Posted in Software, Tech, Web | No Comments »

IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition 8.4.2

Written by jf on December 14, 2007 – 10:20 am -

Quoted from OmniFind website.

IBM and Yahoo! make information actionable with a simple,
no-charge enterprise search solution.

I have been able to play a few month with the OmniFind Yahoo! Edition from IBM, it’s quiet some powerful tool offered for free compared to the other search engines that are offered on the net such as Google Custom Search Business, Google Mini, ISYS Web, Mondo Search, and some other tools that are listed here(http://www.searchtools.com).

Here are the features of OYE (OmniFind Yahoo! Edition)

Search internal web sites, local and remote file systems, and the public web

Search up to 500,000 documents and 5 separate collections
Support for 200+ file types
Search in 30+ languages
Translated into 15 languages View Screen Shot

Intuitive out-of-the-box user interface with advanced features

Based on Yahoo! Search UI View Screen Shot
Easily customized with graphical tools to configure look-and-feel, UI elements, branding View Screen Shot
Spell suggestion
Full wildcard support

Increased relevancy of results

Configurable synonyms and featured links View Screen Shot
Tunable relevancy controls View Screen Shot
Top queries, no results, and result click through reporting to enable fine-tuning View Screen Shot

Easy to deploy, configure, and maintain

No prerequisites
3-click installer
1-click startup
Go from the installer to searching in minutes

Open and extensible

Built on Apache Lucene
Open URL-based APIs (REST)
Define, populate and search your own custom fields
Easily embeddable and customizable UI output (XML/XSTL/HTML, HTML snippets)

From my point of view the only inconvenience with this tool is that is not open for any plug in or add in functionalities. That could really help make it much much better for users. But again, this tool is complete and contains all the needed functionalities for an Entry Level Enterprise Search Engine.

Here are some screen shot of the new version of the new version of OmniFind that i just upgrade from the 8.4.1

Tags: OmniFind, Search Engine
Posted in Cool Tools, Search Engine, Software, Web | No Comments »

Web Stress Tool

Written by jf on June 14, 2007 – 1:53 pm -

Today I have been trying to web stress my development website using ACT from Microsoft. I am using Visual Studio 2005 Professional, and while taking a look to find this precious tool that was readily available in the previous version VS.NET 2003. I couldn’t find it. (uh!!! did i forget to install it ???? ) checked out but nothing done, checked on the web and reach a forum post which said. Application Test Center is no more available on VS.NET 2005, you can buy a new licence of VS.NET Team tester to to be able to use some stress tool. Ok how nice marketing strategy…

Anyway, i have been wandering around the web to find a proper web stress/load tool to be able to test my web developments. results have been pretty deceiving… could not find a proper tool for testing ASP.NET Websites. After some time i came up on sourceforge. to find this tool : WEBLOAD (Open source performance testing) which is the open source version of the recognised Radview Webload.

I’ll be now trying this tool and then give some feedback soon after.