SuperWasp

Productivity tips, reviews, tools, software and gadgets.

Microsoft Web Platform Installer

Microsoft has released a new tool aimed at web developers: Microsoft Web Platform Installer. Although it’s still a beta, it’s already a one-stop shop to install all necessary tools, service packs and extensions, including IIS, ASP.NET, SQL Server 2008, Visual Web Developer 2008, all of the current IIS Extensions and more!

 

 
Once installed, this tool automatically discovers new additions and updates to the platform, keeping you up to date.

Additionally, Microsoft has launched a new website for web professionals (designers and developers): microsoft.com/web 

Go to: Microsoft Web Platform Installer site, or download wpilauncher.exe immediately.

Labels: .NET, 2008, asp.net, C#, developer, download, Express, install, installation, installer, Microsoft, Vista, Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studion 2008, vs2005, vs2008, web development, webdev, Windows, Windows Vista

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  Posted by oVan on Wednesday, October 08, 2008 | PermaLink | 0 comments

FIX: GoogleBot produces "Cannot use a leading .. to exit above the top directory" in ASP.NET

I found numerous "Cannot use a leading .. to exit above the top directory" errors in my Elmah-logs lately, all of them generated by the ASP.NET engine after a visit from GoogleBot. It is caused by using URL rewriting in your aspx-pages in order to have more readable URL's and better search engine rankings.

Funnily, this only started after I submitted dynamically generated sitemaps to the Google Webmaster Tools for my clients websites. Instead of improved ranking and indexing, however it resulted in exclusion of all failing URL's.

For more background information about this error, which is generated only for certain user agents including GoogleBot and Yahoo! Slurp, you can do a simple Google search. There are a few solutions to fix this, but most involve using a custom base page class or creating different .browser files for each problematic user-agent in the App_Browser directory. Having done custom browser.ini solutions with Browserhawk years ago, I did not feel like starting all over again with googlebot.browser, yahooslurp.browser etc.

By far the easiest solution is a simple change in your web.config:

Find the <authentication> section, then change the <forms> line by adding:

cookieless="UseCookies"

Voila, the problem is fixed. Note that this disables cookieless functionality for forms, so if you really need that you should use a different solution.

Labels: .NET, asp.net, browser, bug, Google, Microsoft, problem, Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studion 2008, vs2005, vs2008

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  Posted by oVan on Sunday, April 06, 2008 | PermaLink | 0 comments

Fix: Localhost unavailable with ESET NOD32

Developers using Visual Studio will probably encounter this problem after installing ESET NOD32 antivirus or ESET Smart Security Antivirus+Firewall: browsing the web with Internet Explorer works fine except for websites you develop yourself (localhost).

Disabling the firewall or antivirus features doesn't solve this problem, however replacing localhost with 127.0.0.1 (or using FireFox) does solve it.

The real problem is easily fixed though.

Windows Vista:

In the start menu, type "notepad %system%\drivers\etc\hosts" and instead of pressing enter, right-click on the notepad icon in the top of the list (see screenshot). In the context menu you must click on "Run as administrator".

Windows XP and 2000:

Open a command prompt (cmd.exe) and type these commands:

cd %system%\drivers\etc

attrib -r -h -s hosts

notepad hosts

You will then see the following file in notepad:

The last line contains the problem. It reads:

::1             localhost

You can either remove this line and save the file, or comment it out with a pound/hash character #. Voila, fixed!

Labels: Administrator, fix, IE, IE6, IE7, Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft, problem, Vista, Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studion 2008, vs2005, vs2008, web develoment, Windows, Windows Vista

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  Posted by oVan on Friday, March 21, 2008 | PermaLink | 2 comments

Free Preview Handlers for Outlook 2007 and Vista

Both Windows Vista and Outlook 2007 offer you file previewing functions. Unfortunately, not all file types are handled and this Microsoft webpage simply mentions "Available File Previewers: Check back soon for updates. We are currently working with previewer developers to list previewers on this page."

Subjectively the most needed previewers are PDF-files and code files, simply because it still takes ages to load Adobe Acrobat Reader, or Visual Studio 2005 respectively.

Here are two free PDF-previewers:

• Foxit PDF file Preview Handler | does not require Adobe Reader


• PDF Preview Handler for Outlook/Vista by Ryan Gregg | does require free Adobe Reader 8

You can read more blog posts about these great tools here, here, here and here.

And here's the free Code Preview Handler from Tim Heuer:

• Code Preview Handler (source code)


• Code Preview Handler (msi installer)

To finish this post, here's a link to the post about the preview handler article by Stephen Toub from MSDN Magazine. You can also download his free utility directly here:

• Preview Handler Association Editor

Labels: 2007, Acrobat, Adobe Reader, download, Foxit, Foxit Reader, free, magazine, Microsoft, MSDN, MSO2007, Office, OL2007, Outlook, Outlook 2007, preview handler, Vista, Visual Studio 2005, vs2005

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  Posted by oVan on Thursday, April 05, 2007 | PermaLink | 0 comments

VS2005 SP1 Update for Vista

Microsoft has made available the final version of Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Vista for download.

You can read the Release Notes here: Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista release notes

More details from the download page:

Overview
If the machine participated in the Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista Beta, please be sure to uninstall the beta first.

During the development of Windows Vista, several key investments were made to vastly improve overall quality, security, and reliability from previous versions of Windows. While we have made tremendous investments in Windows Vista to ensure backwards compatibility, some of the system enhancements, such as User Account Control, changes to the networking stack, and the new graphics model, make Windows Vista behave differently from previous versions of Windows. These investments impact Visual Studio 2005. The Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista addresses areas of Visual Studio impacted by Vista enhancements.
Many of the Windows Vista enhancements are documented at the Windows Vista Development Center.

This download installs the Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista for the following Visual Studio SKUs:


Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office
Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition
Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition
Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition
Microsoft Visual J# 2005 Express Edition (English Only)
Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Premier Partner Edition
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Architects
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Developers
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Testers
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Test Load Agent
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Test Load Controller
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Code Profiler
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Explorer

Labels: beta, Microsoft, SP1, update, Vista, Visual Studio 2005, vs2005

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  Posted by oVan on Wednesday, March 07, 2007 | PermaLink | 0 comments

Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista Beta

Yes, you can download the Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista Beta if you hate that message box of VS2005 telling you it needs an update that is not yet available to run on Vista. The title of this package is a bit misleading, though. It is not an update for Windows Vista Beta, it's a Beta Update for Windows Vista. In fact, they'd better named it Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update Beta for Windows Vista.
The final version of this update is expected in Spring 2007 if I remember correctly.

Labels: 2007, beta, download, install, Microsoft, RTM, update, Vista, Visual Studio 2005, vs2005, Windows

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  Posted by oVan on Thursday, December 21, 2006 | PermaLink | 0 comments

Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Finally Released

The long awaited Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2005 is finally here, so I'm not going to waste your time further... get it here:
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 SP1

Labels: download, Microsoft, Pack, Service, SP1, Visual Studio 2005, vs2005

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  Posted by oVan on Friday, December 15, 2006 | PermaLink | 0 comments