Recently I had been unable to view µTube videos on full screen and I'd been at loss as to why.  It turns out the cause was the new version of flash, 9, which for some reason would play the standard µTube size fine but fail to properly play on full screen.  I realize that most people would prefer to watch that standard size since uTube is greatly lacking in video quality and it appears decent standard player.  However, I discovered via a helpful message board that all I needed to do was right click on the player, go to settings and uncheck the hardware acceleration.  Now I'm free to properly watch poor quality videos on the big screen. 

In .Net 2.0 your supposed to use the Configuration manager instead of the old depreciated ConfigSettings class.  However, your code if you only add a using statement to the System.Configuration namespace you will only have access to the deprecated ConfigSettings class. When I was studying for my MCTS, the core book really pushed using the Configuration Manager, but when I actually try and apply it on the job, I couldn't get it to work. Thanks to Kieran Lynam I finally figured out why I can never find the ConfiurationManager class.

What you need to do is actually add (not just a using/imports statement) a reference to the System.Configuration dll to your project and then you'll magically have access to all the new features of .Net 2.0 configuration.

I have no idea why they make you go through this extra step, unless it was for backwards compatibility. You'd think that without the reference you wouldn't get access to anything in the Configuration namespace, but for some strange reason Microsoft has not chosen this all or nothing approach. In fact you'd expect that they'd want you to use the new versions and include that by default and make you hunt for the old depreciated versions, but then we'd live in a world that makes sense.

I passed the second and final MSTS Web certification test on Wednesday and now I'm certifiably a Microsoft Technology Specialist in Web.  It was harder than I expected, covering Web Deployment, ADO.Net, WebParts and the new Authentication controls in .Net .  I also had several Mobile control questions, but they couldn't have been worth very much since I missed several of them and still came through with a 753 score.

Now I can rest upon my laurals for rest of the year and sometime in the near future I can contemplate moving on to the distributed test. Since it only covers Web Services and Remoting I imagine it wouldn't be so bad.

After studying for another month I retook and passed the annoying .Net Framework Test.  It helped that I had a completely different test with easier subjects.  Lots of Globalization, hashing, App Domain questions with a leavening of Sterilization and services.  Even granting that I only received a 775,while respectable isn't what anyone would claim as stellar.

I think practicing the strategy of throwing the two stupid answers and reasoning out the proper choice from the remaining was the best choice. Anyhow I can say is I'm glad I'm through with it, and now I look forward to taking the much easier Web test and acquiring my MCTS in Web

Since I constantly keep forgetting how to do this I'll write it down here and then I'll know where to find it just like my  Regular Expressions post.

In web development you often need to allow the customer/user to choose options and often they'll have need to select a type of something. An example would be to choose what type of account and on the back end the accounts types are stored in and enum. Since I don't want to change every page where I've got a control with type information when I add or remove an item from the enum, it's best to just bind the control to the enum in the first place.

  //Create an enum enum AccountType
  {
    Checking,
    Savings
  }
  //Assume we've got some methods on a page.
  protected void Page_Load(object o, EventArgs e)
  {
    if(!Page.IsPostBack)//Only do it on the intitial load.
    {
      //DropDownList ddl will hold our data
      ddl.DataSource = Enum.GetNames(typeof(AccountType));
      ddl.DataBind();
    }
  }
  protected void ddl_SelectedIndexChanged(object o,EventArgs e)
  {
    //Now get the selected Value out of the control and back into an enum
    AccountType acc = (AccountType)Enum.Parse(ddl.SelectedValue);
    //Do stuff
   }
source: How to Bind Enum Types to bindable Controls in ASP.Net....  on Geeks with Blogs

 

I failed Microsoft's 70-536 Exam today.  I'm extremly frustrated since I received a 675 score which appears to have been one question short of a passing. (700 is a passing score). I used the standard Traning Kit book as well as Trancender Preparation exams and I even attended a training course provided by my work.  Although I'd be the first admit the training class was completely useless since we just went through the book,(far to slowly),  In fact I can't recall the last time the class actually met... I've been working on my own and I felt I'd covered the book quite well.  Still when the test is seemly independent of the book what can you do.

The test itself was filled with far too many questions about AppDomains, COM (is this a .Net exam?) and CAS questions, stuff that I'm highly unlikely to ever use and am very week on.  If there had been even one more question on Generics or Collections or Cryptography or Serialization or Mail or even Graphics (my strong points) I'd have passed.  I know there are different tests, and the C Trancender test I took seemed slightly similar at least in general content (a truly godless amount of App Domains questions).  I always found that test to be the most difficult of the three pre-set test exams, so there's a little hope that the retake will be easier...

Another irritation is the result sheet which breaks down the test generally by a very general section( such as drawing, Globalization, and Text Manipulation)  as a bars running across the page.  On the left is Needs improvement and on the right is Strong.  Naturally you have no idea how many questions are in each category, or even if Microsoft weighs each sections equally. All I'm left with is an apparently arbitrary score since I don't even know how many I got wrong. Is this test scored out of 1000? 900? 950? Who knows.

I'm taking these stupid tests since it's required by my company and I'd like to get a raise this year, but my time is running out.  It would be nice if I could take the test again next week but the next opening at the Test Center isn't until November!!! It would be much easier if Microsoft was still offering Test through Vue, it would double the number of places I could go and maybe I'd get a test in on time.  I'd actually hoped to spend more time studying but today was the only opening at the Test Center this month.   thus there not much chance of passing two tests this year, but the only ray of hope is that I really only have to pass one.

If you are someone like me, you find Regular expressions to be a pain to wright, due to their arcane syntax.  It might as well as be Greek based up the amount of time I spend pondering each character in the expression. Which is why it's usually much more convenient to look up from the internet, which is why I'm placing a link to the Regular Expression Library. This site has hundreds of regular expression for your everyday validation needs, from phone numbers to Urls to html tags to email addresses.

Now if the above library doesn't work or you feel that you're manly enough to conjure your own expressions, you can use This javascript based test site to help with the incatnations.

Extremely useful add-on (extension) for Firefox. Simply put, it enables you to run Internet Exploder(IE) in a tab within Firefox. So that you can easily switch between the two browsers in the same window. This naturally allows you to check on how a page looks in each browser for testing purposes. Of course the big win is that much more convenient to surf with firefox since those pages that you just need to view in IE are now viewable with the click of a button. Another notable feature is that the add-on allows you to set pages to always open in IE, which is good for repeat viewings of the aforementioned IE only pages Install it now IE Tab home page

Today, while attempting to trouble shoot a website for IE6 I found this a useful tool Multiple IE's from Tredosoft. It allows you to run IE's 4-6 on concurrently with IE 7 so you can make sure your site is viewable for those people who hate new technology.  Unfortunetly as of writing this doesn't work on Visa.