I’m currently working on a project where I’m implementing the awesomeness that is the DevExpress ASPxScheduler component.  While getting it up and running,  I ran up again an issue getting the basic functionality out of the control working.

Using v8.1.2 (latest as of this posting), when I added an appointment to the seemingly simple control, I received the error message, "The appointment has been deleted by another user."  I quickly scanned the office for another user that’s was deleting my appointments, but since I was working from my kitchen and on a local database, I quickly came to the conclusion that perhaps I was being lied to (I briefly thought, "Perhaps it was the cat, he’s always trying to divert my attention"..  but no, the cat was asleep).

Before upgrading to v8.1.2 I was using v7.3.6. The error message I was receiving was for that version a little more detailed, yet still confusing.  "’null’ is not a valid value for ‘apt’.  What?  You mean I can’t have a null value for my appointment? Ok, fine then.

After much fighting, some colorful statements, and at least a few hours lost of productivity and sleep, I’ve come across a beautifully simple solution to this very frustrating issue.  If you’ve ever tried implementing ASP.NET AJAX on a site that originally started out on ASP.NET 1.1, you may have come across this before.  ASP.NET AJAX will not work if your web.config contains the line <xhtmlConformance mode="Legacy"/>.  This fun little line gets added when you migrate a VS.NET 2003 project to a VS.NET 2005 project.  The reason being, as ScottGu explained back in Dec 06, is that ASP.NET 1.1 didn’t generate XHTML compliant markup, which allows ASP.NET to render server controls in legacy mode.  So, knowing that the controls from DevExpress are built on AJAX technology, I quickly realized after scanning my web.config for possible issues that this line had to be the culprit - and sure enough, my ASPxScheduler control is now working as promised.  Awesome, now I’m back in business.

I keep forgetting this, and have to load up a test web application every time I need to know the answer.. so for my own reference, and for anyone else who just needs to know really quick:

In ASP.NET, Server.MapPath does not return a backslash at the end of the result.

So, if I call Server.MapPath("."), I’ll get

C:\Users\(username)\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\WebApplication1\WebApplication1

instead of

C:\Users\(username)\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\WebApplication1\WebApplication1\

I don’t know why it’s hard for me to remember this little detail, but it’s frustrating that the examples in the MSDN documentation don’t point out this little detail.

The crew of the HMS Ophelia has done it again!  Damn those Airship Pirates!  Once more, Dread Captain Robert and his band of miscreants have stolen something from the likes of this poor scientist - my attention. :)  Just announced yesterday, Abney Park has release three new songs off their highly anticipated (amongst us, the expendable crew) upcoming album, “Lost Horizons”.

To strike fear into your hearts (and for your listening pleasure):

• The Secret Life of Dr. Calgori
• Sleep Isabella (possible named after one of Ophelia’s stow-away’s. When I asked the Captain, he gave me an evil eye, grunted, and walked away…)
• Airship Pirate

I’ve been a fan boy big supporter of Abney Park since I first heard their names screamed by peasants running down the street as the HMS Ophelia raided my town five years back (never did like those peasants, always throwing rocks and the like).  Now, Airship Pirate has fast become my favorite tune - and ever more so after I read the lyrics.

Bravo my dear pirates!  Once again you’ve outwitted Her Majesty and and secured your place in the sky.

Ran across an amusing little bit of code today.  See if you can figure out what it’s trying to do.

I think I like this code, it’s ’special’.

So I have a project that I’m working on, requires the latest and greatest of Flash, be that version CS3 (v 9) Pro. I’ve used Flash in the past, so I knew what I was getting into. However, the version that I had worked on before was 5. No big deal I thought, I’ll just upgrade to version CS3.

Per Adobe’s web site for upgrade eligibility:

Yep, you’ve read that correctly, if you have Flash 5, no upgrade for the likes of you! I just couldn’t believe it (well I could, I just didn’t want to), so I chatted with a customer service rep.. who confirmed that people who own Flash 5 are screwed if they want to upgrade.

Crap.

So now my options are clear:

1. Pay $700 for the full version of Flash CS3 Professional
2. Develop in Flash 5 (oh please no)
3. Try to do all of the work in the free SDK version of Flex (yeah - but then the existing Flash app is worthless. Still, Flex is appealing.)
4. Move it all over to Silverlight. (Again, I have to recreate everything. Ugh.)

Thank you Adobe - you’ve really made my day. Jerks.

It seems that many people are busy being upset with the Yahoo Messenger developers over the lack of features in the beta of the Messenger for Vista. I think people (non-developers) should understand they are rewriting the messenger application from scratch. There are most likely 50,000+ (I’m assuming) lines of code alone in Yahoo Messenger 8. While I’m not impressed with the performance (even on a quad core machine), I think it’s nice that Yahoo is moving in the WPF direction.

And… WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) is not an easy concept to grasp. Scott Stanfield said that even for a seasoned person, getting up to speed with WPF can take two months, just because it’s SO different from how things were done before.

Having said that, I was excited to see that Yahoo decided to deal with the 64-bit issues that people were experiencing with the beta of the Messenger for Vista, and it appears to run… but, it’s still running under 32-bit mode.

Corflags confirms that 32-bit mode is being forced. Why would they do this? I’m not exactly sure, but it’s possible that they’re pinvoking something from 32-bit land, or using another control that’s requiring 32-bittness.

Oh well. While I’m happy that the application runs in my 64-bit Vista, I’m not too thrilled that they’re forcing 32-bit mode. Then again, this is BETA software people, let’s give them a break. If the final release still has all the issues people are whining, well, then I’ll start complaining.

A little tip for those trying to install SQL Server 2005 Management Studio after installing Visual Studio 2008 with SQL Server Express Edition.  When you try to run the setup, you might see an error message that says

“None of the selected features can be installed or upgraded.”

To get around this issue, run the setup.exe from the SQL installation source from your Run command with the parameter SKUUPGRADE=1.  More information from MSN.

I came across this gem today when setting up Team Build, Atwood’s adaptation of Khushboo’s CI app continuous integration with Team Foundation Server and Team Build.  This app works beautifully.  It includes Cazzulino’s page to ease the modification of the web.config file for adding CI projects.  One important step that was not mentioned is ensuring that the account your Team System site (in IIS) is running under has access to modify the web.config file for the CI application.  Otherwise, you cannot save the CI setup and will be forced to edit the web.config file yourself (yuck.)

I found out yesterday that if you’re upgrading from Visual Studio 2005 Team System for Developers (or Database Administrator, or Testers, or Architects, etc), to VS2005 Team Suite (the all in one package), the full functionality won’t be available until you reinstall SP1 for VS2005.  After doing so, all of the Team Suite features will be available.

Reinstalling SP1 for VS2005 is frustrating though, because when you run the installer, depending on the products you have installed, the installation process will run several times, for each applicable product.  Today, mine ran for the Partners Suite, the Team System Suite, and the Team Explorer component, taking about an hour to complete (translate - wasted time.)  Even if you have the Express editions installed, say C#, Visual Basic, and Web Dev, the SP1 install will run THREE times.

Back in April, I posted about a Firefox IFRAME bug that I was trying to track down. I went as far as to duplicate the bug on three machines, different version of Firefox, and even tested the problem on the beta of Firefox 3 (Minefield). Convinced that I had found a bug in the Firefox application, I filed a bug report with the Firefox dev team, complete with instructions on recreating the problem, and even a test page on my site so other people could see what was happening.

The Firefox team responded quickly, but to my dismay said “Works on my machine!” DRAT!

I didn’t understand, how could it be working on their end when I was able to duplicate this problem on three machines? Was it that my computers are all running Windows and they’re running Linux? No way I thought, the code base is still pretty much the same.

So now I had to dig back into the problem, what else could be causing this? One Firefox developer suggested that it might be an Add-On causing the problem. No way I thought, I’m not THAT stupid!

Well, sometimes we’re all THAT stupid. As it would happen, AdBlock Plus was causing the issue in the first place. I was able to duplicate the problem on three different computers though! But alas, all three computers were MY computers, each with AdBlock Plus installed into Firefox (it really is an awesome Add-On.) To make myself seem stupider, during my initial research and debugging, I neglected to realize that the problem I was having was related to a subfolder called…. wait for it…. ‘Ads’. DUH!

So next time, hopefully I’ll remember to Google myself and recall that Add-Ons can cause problems too.