Galin Iliev [Galcho]

The consulting company Wintellect  known in relation with world class experts like Jeff Prosise, Jeffrey Richter and John Robins are providing tech series that looks very promising. From the short description on http://www.wintellect.com/TechFocusSilverlight/ looks interesting.

BenP created a nice compilation of PowerShell resources that can be very useful. It is so good that I am reposting here so I won’t lose it and know where to look when I need it :)

I’ve just found a nice and *very* detailed article how to work with Windows 7 taskbar buttons similar to Windows Media Player and Zune app.

Check out Pete Brown’s blog post “Working with Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnail Buttons with WPF 4 ”

At annual professional developer conference (PDC) in LA, CA was unveiled a Beta version Silverlight 4. After v3 added many new features and control v4 doesn’t change the pace and releases many new features.

Not only the new version produces 200% faster apps than v3 but continue to invest in Out-of-browser support which will be game changer in the way desktop applications are built. Now trusted applications has access to MyDocuments, MyMusic, MyPictures and MyVideos folder (or equivalent for non-windows platforms) but also has access to external programs as word processor or e-mail client as well as COM components.

Thus the programming mantra – “write/compile once and run everywhere” is getting close to the reality.

via http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight-4-beta/

Today Microsoft put live latest release of the Facebook .NET SDK  that supports the newest Facebook services delivered through the Facebook Open Stream API and can be used in any of your favorite Microsoft development platforms; Silverlight, WPF, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, and Windows Forms.

Get started today at www.microsoft.com/facebooksdk.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 is here with a new logo. It can be downloaded from here .

There are many walkthroughs that can help you reveal new features in your favorite programming IDE

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 Walkthroughs

• SharePoint Development
• Silverlight and WPF Data Binding
• Core Coding Experience
• Native Development

• Parallel Computing
• Visual Studio Extensibility
• Office Development
• Workflow Foundation

Enjoy!

Just found very useful command from TFS Power Toys: tfpt unshelve. It’s capable of migrating a shelveset from a branch to another, it does that by performing a baseless merge, so you will need to resolve the conflicts produced. The syntax of the command looks like the following:

   1: tfpt unshelve shelvsetName /migrate /source:$/SourceBranch /target:$/TargetBranch

There are several articles showing how to host non-http protocols on IIS7. Some steps are like black box while others could easily be misconfigured. 

The tasks is complicated additionally by obscured error messages returned in the browser :)

So let’s started (the example below is in Windows Server 2008. In Vista/Windows7 is similar but not exactly same):

Phase 1: Prepare server (prerequisites)

1. Add Web Server Role

• Select following features as a minimum:
• Common HTTP Features - all
• Application Development
• ASP.NET
• .NET Extensibility
• ISAPI extensions
• ISAPI Filters
• Security – all

2. Add Application Role

Add Application Server role and select all features (confirm all dependencies):

With this Phase 1 is complete. We should be able to navigate to Internet Information Services (IIS) Manage console in Administrative tools.

Phase 2: Deploying WCF application

1. Build WCF application with netTcpBinding :) (kindda obvious). For service endpoints leave address relative or empty.

   1: <services>

   2:   <service name="Microsoft.Test.Service" behaviorConfiguration="Service.ServiceBehavior">

   3:     <!-- Service Endpoints -->

   4:     <endpoint name="netTcp" address="" binding="netTcpBinding" bindingConfiguration="bigMessages" contract="Microsoft.Test.IService" />

   5:     <endpoint name="mexNetTcp" address="mex" binding="mexTcpBinding" contract="IMetadataExchange"/>

   6:   </service>

   7: </services>

2. Create website that will host it in IIS

Since it is not a challenge to create it via IIS Manager here is how it can be achieved via script (JS). This can be used as custom action in WiX/MSI as well

   1: var adminManager = new ActiveXObject('Microsoft.ApplicationHost.WritableAdminManager');

   2: adminManager.CommitPath = "MACHINE/WEBROOT/APPHOST";

   3:  

   4: var sitesSection = adminManager.GetAdminSection("system.applicationHost/sites", "MACHINE/WEBROOT/APPHOST");

   5:  

   6: var sitesCollection = sitesSection.Collection;

   7:  

   8: var siteElement = sitesCollection.CreateNewElement("site");

   9: siteElement.Properties.Item("name").Value = "WcfNetTcp";

  10: siteElement.Properties.Item("id").Value = 7;

  11:  

  12: var bindingsCollection = siteElement.ChildElements.Item("bindings").Collection;

  13:  

  14: var bindingElement = bindingsCollection.CreateNewElement("binding");

  15: bindingElement.Properties.Item("protocol").Value = "http";

  16: bindingElement.Properties.Item("bindingInformation").Value = "*:80:";

  17: bindingsCollection.AddElement(bindingElement);

  18:  

  19: var siteCollection = siteElement.Collection;

  20:  

  21: var applicationElement = siteCollection.CreateNewElement("application");

  22: applicationElement.Properties.Item("path").Value = "D:\\Hosting\\WcfApp";

  23: applicationElement.Properties.Item("applicationPool").Value = "DefaultAppPool";

  24: siteCollection.AddElement(applicationElement);

  25:  

  26: sitesCollection.AddElement(siteElement);

  27:  

  28: adminManager.CommitChanges();

  29:  

3. Add net.tcp protocol:

Here is how it should look from GUI:

And the script for it

   1: var adminManager = new ActiveXObject('Microsoft.ApplicationHost.WritableAdminManager');

   2: adminManager.CommitPath = "MACHINE/WEBROOT/APPHOST";

   3:  

   4: var sitesSection = adminManager.GetAdminSection("system.applicationHost/sites", "MACHINE/WEBROOT/APPHOST");

   5:  

   6: var sitesCollection = sitesSection.Collection;

   7:  

   8: var siteElementPos = FindElement(sitesCollection, "site", ["name", "WcfNetTcp"]);

   9: if (siteElementPos == -1) throw "Element not found!";

  10: var siteElement = sitesCollection.Item(siteElementPos);

  11:  

  12:  

  13: var bindingsCollection = siteElement.ChildElements.Item("bindings").Collection;

  14:  

  15: var bindingElement = bindingsCollection.CreateNewElement("binding");

  16: bindingElement.Properties.Item("protocol").Value = "net.tcp";

  17: bindingElement.Properties.Item("bindingInformation").Value = "809:*";

  18: bindingsCollection.AddElement(bindingElement);

  19:  

  20: adminManager.CommitChanges();

4. Enable net.tcp for website (Virtual Application) that hosts Wcf Service – in this example we’re hosting in the root of website

And of course the script:

   1: var adminManager = new ActiveXObject('Microsoft.ApplicationHost.WritableAdminManager');

   2: adminManager.CommitPath = "MACHINE/WEBROOT/APPHOST";

   3:  

   4: var sitesSection = adminManager.GetAdminSection("system.applicationHost/sites", "MACHINE/WEBROOT/APPHOST");

   5:  

   6: var sitesCollection = sitesSection.Collection;

   7:  

   8: var siteElementPos = FindElement(sitesCollection, "site", ["name", "WcfNetTcp"]);

   9: if (siteElementPos == -1) throw "Element not found!";

  10: var siteElement = sitesCollection.Item(siteElementPos);

  11:  

  12: var siteCollection = siteElement.Collection;

  13:  

  14: var applicationElementPos = FindElement(siteCollection, "application", ["path", "/"]);

  15: if (applicationElementPos == -1) throw "Element not found!";

  16: var applicationElement = siteCollection.Item(applicationElementPos);

  17:  

  18: applicationElement.Properties.Item("enabledProtocols").Value = "http,net.tcp";

  19:  

  20: adminManager.CommitChanges();

Warning: Do not put any spaces in “Enabled Protocols” field. Although it might works for HTTP it doesn’t for net.tcp.

5. (Optional) Run in elevated mode (As Administrator):

   1: “%WINDIR%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.0\Windows Communication Foundation\ServiceModelReg.exe" –i

I will cover why it is optional in next posts.

Note: Scripts are generated using IIS 7.5 IIS Management console and Windows 7

Hope that helps.

P.S. Here is the helper js function FindElement(). It is slightly modified from original generated by IIS Manager so it will compare values in case insensitive way.

Tim Heuer posted a great series of articles targeted a new Silverlight developers. These can be used to ramp up with new things in v3 as well as Silverlight concepts.

• Part 1: Really getting started – the tools you need and getting your first Hello World
• Part 2: Defining UI Layout – understanding layout and using Blend to help
• Part 3: Accessing data – how to get data from where
• Part 4: Binding the data – once you get the data, how can you use it?
• Part 5: Integrating additional controls – using controls that aren’t a part of the core
• Part 6: Polishing the UI with styles and templates
• Part 7: Taking the application out-of-browser

Original post here.