CSS

Nice CSS examples.
Navigation, tabs menu, shadows, rounds, etc...

53 CSS techniques you couldnt live without

Installshield hangs

I would prefer stay away from Installshield. I will never write my experience in this product in the my resume. But it happens, I must work with it "time after time"
Setup hang after finished whole work, and exited from any of my install script events.
Why?
Because I forgot to call SdShowMsg("", FALSE) in one of cases.
After investigation of the community I found, this problem happens on abort or exit calls as well in different versions. I have latest Installshield 12. Should Macrovision fix their bugs? No answer.

VS 2005 DLL Hell and simple C++ Win32

So many people have problems with C++ on VS 2005 and just released Service pack 1. So many blames, hysterics, and threaths to change development environment. What Microsoft doing for C++ programmer? As they explaining, they trying doing best to avoid DLL Hell.
Come on, enough! Let's move to Linux. Just kidding. :)

Fortunately, since .NET appeared, I am not writing C++ too often. However, yesterday I required to write simple Win32 C++ application and got troubles with running it on computer w/o .NET installed.
Damn, where is old good VS 6.0?
I created empty Win32 application, compiled it and copied to computer without .NET.
Bah!
"Application has failed to start because MSVCR80.dll was not found"

Ok, I copied this runtime DLL to application folder. Bah!

"An application has made an attempt to load C runtime library incorrectly"

Ok, result of the investigation is clear - together with exe, VS 2005 built manifest file. I copied manifest file to application directory. Now... error is same.
Just to check, I installed .NET 2.0 and application started to work. Wow. But wait, I am writing win32 C++ application, why I need this framework?

I get through project properties, disabled any manifest settings, and saw, that project settings were set to not require .NET CLR. No progress. Application doesn't work w/o .NET. As experienced C++ programmer, I think, I am too old for this. :) Where I put CD "Visual Studio 6" ?

At last, I changed to static linking for the runtime library. I choosed using /MT rather than /MD. Yes, Microsoft doesn't recommend it. But... Bingo! Application started to work!
Some explanation of the strange behaviour of VS 2005 is found there.
http://www.itwriting.com/blog/?postid=261
There are also another solutions, but they doesn't seem workable for system w/o .NET
I decided to stay with static linking for now as single way to get win32 exe and run it everywhere. Is there another way? God knows.

BTW, there is another source describing the situation. http://www.grimes.demon.co.uk/workshops/fusWSThirteen.htm
I agree with article that implementing strange ideas in unmanaged programming doesn't look too nice and handy.
"The whole process of manifests and embedding them is topsey-turvey and is a complete mess. This is yet another example of Microsoft losing the plot"

C# free test

Actually I don't think these tests make sense. They check knowledge more then programmer's possibilities. Even erudite person may not give good result on job, because knowledge is not all. Yes, good knowledge may help to code effectively in the clean new project. But in the big existing projects, it doesn't make sense without other things.

We always know ourself very good, but in any moment that we can to get free exam, we going to get it. :) Even if the test is so stupid, like this one.
Free exams

Visual Studio macro - collapse all projects

I have 125 project in solution, and it is hard to manage them without one-click macro. After migration to VS 2005 things are same - Microsoft just doesn't think about it, so I use old good macro again.
This macro collapses on top level only. I think, it is enough, anyway it takes time to collapse all.

Sub CollapseAll() ' Get the the Solution Explorer tree Dim UIHSolutionExplorer As UIHierarchy UIHSolutionExplorer = DTE.Windows.Item( _ Constants.vsext_wk_SProjectWindow).Object() ' Check if there is any open solution If (UIHSolutionExplorer.UIHierarchyItems.Count = 0) Then ' MsgBox("Nothing to collapse. You must have an open solution.") Return End If ' Get the top node (the name of the solution) Dim UIHSolutionRootNode As UIHierarchyItem UIHSolutionRootNode = UIHSolutionExplorer.UIHierarchyItems.Item(1) ' Collapse each project node Dim UIHItem As UIHierarchyItem For Each UIHItem In UIHSolutionRootNode.UIHierarchyItems UIHItem.UIHierarchyItems.Expanded = False Next ' Select the solution node, or else when you click ' on the solution window ' scrollbar, it will synchronize the open document ' with the tree and pop ' out the corresponding node which is probably not what you want. UIHSolutionRootNode.Select(vsUISelectionType.vsUISelectionTypeSelect) End Sub

Setup web application on Windows 2003

Windows 2003 come with NET 1.1 preinstalled. However, ASP.NET web extension may be not installed by default. It is depends on checkbox ASP.NET in the "Windows Components" of the Add/Remove Programs.
Well, I can ask user to prepare the system, before install my web application.
However, I get clear right now, it doesn't help to me. Because it is ASP.NET 1.1 and nothing more. So, I leave user without stupid requirements and do following.

My setup installs .NET 2
My setup registers ASP.NET 2 through aspnet_regiis.exe
But ASP.NET web extension appears in the IIS settings as prohibited
Ok, another day for search/trying/insomnia and my C# application running from the setup, will do things right:

// if windows 2003 if (Environment.OSVersion.Version.Major == 5 && Environment.OSVersion.Version.Minor == 2) { DirectoryEntry folderRoot = new DirectoryEntry("IIS://localhost/W3SVC"); folderRoot.Invoke("EnableWebServiceExtension", "ASP.NET v2.0.50727"); }

Bingo!
User installs my web application setup, and doesn't complain. :)

I found also other usefull methods:
-----------
If we want to check, is ASP.NET installed at all
we should use ListWebServiceExtensions and search for ASP.NET in the returned list of extensions.
System.Array installedObj = (System.Array)folderRoot.Invoke("ListWebServiceExtensions", null);

-----------
Also we can check, is web extension restricted or not. If ASP.NET is restricted, then property WebSvcExtRestrictionList will return list containing ASP.NET:
System.Array restrictedObj = (System.Array)folderRoot.Properties["WebSvcExtRestrictionList"].Value;

Windows User: SID and name

I wasted much time trying to find easy way how in C# .NET get SID by user name and back, w/o writing C++ dll. I already spend two days once for such dll, but I lost it or something. However, I spent two hours in google groups and web search, untill I found so nice article.

Sections import Win32 functions to C#, and two functions.

Import section

private static extern bool LookupAccountSid( [In,MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPTStr)] string systemName, IntPtr sid, [Out,MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPTStr)] StringBuilder name, ref int cbName, StringBuilder referencedDomainName, ref int cbReferencedDomainName, out int use ); [DllImport("advapi32.dll", CharSet=CharSet.Auto, SetLastError=true)] public static extern bool LookupAccountName( [In,MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPTStr)] string systemName, [In,MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPTStr)] string accountName, IntPtr sid, ref int cbSid, StringBuilder referencedDomainName, ref int cbReferencedDomainName, out int use); [DllImport("advapi32.dll", CharSet=CharSet.Auto, SetLastError=true)] internal static extern bool ConvertSidToStringSid( IntPtr sid, [In,Out,MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPTStr)] ref string pStringSid); [DllImport("advapi32.dll", CharSet=CharSet.Auto, SetLastError=true)] internal static extern bool ConvertStringSidToSid( [In, MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPTStr)] string pStringSid, ref IntPtr sid);

GetSid(string name)

public static string GetSid(string name) { IntPtr _sid = IntPtr.Zero; //pointer to binary form of SID string. int _sidLength = 0; //size of SID buffer. int _domainLength = 0; //size of domain name buffer. int _use; //type of object. //stringBuilder for domain name. StringBuilder _domain = new StringBuilder(); int _error = 0; string _sidString = ""; //first call of the function only returns the size //of buffers (SID, domain name) LookupAccountName(null, name, _sid, ref _sidLength, _domain, ref _domainLength, out _use); _error = Marshal.GetLastWin32Error(); //error 122 (The data area passed to a system call is too small) // normal behaviour. if (_error != 122) { throw(new Exception(new Win32Exception(_error).Message)); } else { //allocates memory for domain name _domain = new StringBuilder(_domainLength); //allocates memory for SID _sid = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(_sidLength); bool _rc = LookupAccountName(null, name, _sid, ref _sidLength, _domain, ref _domainLength, out _use); if (_rc == false) { _error = Marshal.GetLastWin32Error(); Marshal.FreeHGlobal(_sid); throw(new Exception(new Win32Exception(_error).Message)); } else { // converts binary SID into string _rc = ConvertSidToStringSid(_sid, ref _sidString); if (_rc == false) { _error = Marshal.GetLastWin32Error(); Marshal.FreeHGlobal(_sid); throw(new Exception(new Win32Exception(_error).Message)); } else { Marshal.FreeHGlobal(_sid); return _sidString; } } } }

GetName(string sid)

public static string GetName(string sid) { IntPtr _sid = IntPtr.Zero; //pointer to binary form of SID string. int _nameLength = 0; //size of object name buffer int _domainLength = 0; //size of domain name buffer int _use; //type of object StringBuilder _domain = new StringBuilder(); //domain name variable int _error = 0; StringBuilder _name = new StringBuilder(); //object name variable //converts SID string into the binary form bool _rc0 = ConvertStringSidToSid(sid, ref _sid); if (_rc0 == false) { _error = Marshal.GetLastWin32Error(); Marshal.FreeHGlobal(_sid); throw(new Exception(new Win32Exception(_error).Message)); } //first call of method returns the size of domain name //and object name buffers bool _rc = LookupAccountSid(null, _sid, _name, ref _nameLength, _domain, ref _domainLength, out _use); _domain = new StringBuilder(_domainLength); //allocates memory for domain name _name = new StringBuilder(_nameLength); //allocates memory for object name _rc = LookupAccountSid(null, _sid, _name, ref _nameLength, _domain, ref _domainLength, out _use); if (_rc == false) { _error = Marshal.GetLastWin32Error(); Marshal.FreeHGlobal(_sid); throw(new Exception(new Win32Exception(_error).Message)); } else { Marshal.FreeHGlobal(_sid); return _domain.ToString() + "\\" + _name.ToString(); } }

links:
http://www.codeproject.com/cs/library/sidtranslator.asp
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/157234

XP Baloons tips

It is great, no more stupid baloons from Win XP systray.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/Advanced
create DWORD value EnableBalloonTips and set it to zero.

How to run program as a different user

“runas /user:myComputer\administrator "explorer /separate"”

http://blogs.msdn.com/florinlazar/archive/2005/09/17/470001.aspx