You may have noted that even if you have told Windows 7 to use your favorite media player (which I’ll hope in most cases is anything but QuickTime), QuickTime still starts to play links you click on on the web.

Even when you have done everything possible, going to a web site that has a link to a MP3 file, an embedded QuickTime player will start:

As it turns out, most MP3 links are returned with a content type of audio/mpeg, which QuickTime associates itself with at installation.

Here’s the solution:

1. Start the Registry Editor by pressing WinKey+R and then Regedit. Press enter.

2. Browse to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\Content Type\audio/mpeg

3. Double click the CLSID string value

4. Replace the string with this (if you want the Windows Media Player): {cd3afa76-b84f-48f0-9393-7edc34128127}

You can also do this for .mp4 audio and video files, which have the content type audio/mp4 and video/mp4 respectively.

So what to do?

Well, just create you own bootstrapper package, and here I will guide you through the steps.

First, create a new folder in the package install location for the bootstrapper. The default location is C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bootstrapper\Packages. Create a folder named vcredist_2008SP1_x86. Download the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Service Pack 1 Redistributable Package ATL Security Update and save the vcredist_x86.exe  into this new folder.

Create a product.xml file in the new location and enter the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> 

<Product
  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/2004/01/bootstrapper"
  ProductCode="Microsoft.Visual.C++.9.0.x86"
>

  <!-- Defines list of files to be copied on build -->
  <PackageFiles>
    <PackageFile Name="vcredist_x86.exe" HomeSite="VCRedistExe"/>
  </PackageFiles>
  <InstallChecks>
    <MsiProductCheck Property="VCRedistInstalled" Product="{1F1C2DFC-2D24-3E06-BCB8-725134ADF989}"/>
  </InstallChecks>

  <!-- Defines how to invoke the setup for the Visual C++ 10.0 redist -->
  <!-- TODO: Needs EstrimatedTempSpace, LogFile, and an update of EstimatedDiskSpace -->
  <Commands Reboot="Defer">
    <Command PackageFile="vcredist_x86.exe"
         Arguments=' /q:a '
         >

      <!-- These checks determine whether the package is to be installed -->
      <InstallConditions>
        <BypassIf Property="VCRedistInstalled" Compare="ValueGreaterThanOrEqualTo" Value="3"/>
        <!-- Block install if user does not have admin privileges -->
        <FailIf Property="AdminUser" Compare="ValueEqualTo" Value="false" String="AdminRequired"/>

        <!-- Block install on Win95 -->
        <FailIf Property="Version9X" Compare="VersionLessThan" Value="4.10" String="InvalidPlatformWin9x"/>

        <!-- Block install on NT 4 or less -->
        <FailIf Property="VersionNT" Compare="VersionLessThan" Value="5.00" String="InvalidPlatformWinNT"/>

      </InstallConditions>

      <ExitCodes>
        <ExitCode Value="0" Result="Success"/>
        <ExitCode Value="3010" Result="SuccessReboot"/>
        <DefaultExitCode Result="Fail" FormatMessageFromSystem="true" String="GeneralFailure" />
      </ExitCodes>

    </Command>
  </Commands>
</Product>

Create a new folder inside vcredist_2008SP1_x86 and name it en. In the en folder, create a package.xml, and copy paste the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<Package
  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/2004/01/bootstrapper"
  Name="DisplayName"
  Culture="Culture"
>

    <!-- Defines a localizable string table for error messages-->
    <Strings>
        <String Name="DisplayName">Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Runtime Libraries (x86)</String>
        <String Name="Culture">en</String>
        <String Name="AdminRequired">You do not have the permissions required to install Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Runtime Libraries (x86). Please contact your administrator.</String>
        <String Name="InvalidPlatformWin9x">Installation of Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Runtime Libraries (x86) is not supported on Windows 95. Contact your application vendor.</String>
        <String Name="InvalidPlatformWinNT">Installation of Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Runtime Libraries (x86) is not supported on Windows NT 4.0. Contact your application vendor.</String>
        <String Name="GeneralFailure">A failure occurred attempting to install Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Runtime Libraries (x86).</String>
        <String Name="VCRedistExe">http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/7/7/977B481A-7BA6-4E30-AC40-ED51EB2028F2/vcredist_x86.exe</String>
    </Strings>

</Package>

Now, when you restart Visual Studio 2010, you should have a new package for the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Service Pack 1 Redistributable Package ATL Security Update:

And when the end user runs the ClickOnce setup, it will automatically install the VC++ redist if it’s not installed already.

I recommend you to extract the files to the same location were you installed the WTL files. In my case this would be c:\WTL.  Double click the setup100.js file (or setp100x.js for Visual Studio 2010 Express) to install the WTL Project Wizard.

Add the WTL include path to the default include directories

One thing you may have noticed in VS2010 (compared to earlier versions) is that there is no way to set the global paths of VC++ directories in Tools->Options:

Bummer. How to solve that? You really don’t want to have to include the WTL include path in every VC++ project. Here’s how to set the global paths and include the WTL include path. It’s really not that intuitive, if I would say.

First you will need to have a project open in VS 2010. Then go to View->Other Windows->Property Manager. In the Property Manager, expand the project and the platforms nodes. Multi-select the two Microsoft.Cpp.Win32.user items. (By holding down the Ctrl key and select them each by the mouse).

Right click and select properties

Now you finally can set the global default search paths for the VC++ include directories. In my case I have added the C:\WTL\Include path. Save the properties settings restart Visual Studio.

If you open one of the samples in the WTL folders, you may stumble upon a peculiar error that says: error CVT1100: duplicate resource.  type:MANIFEST, name:1, language:0×0409

This is because the way manifest files are handled in VS 2010 has changed. What you can do is to open the resource file (.rc), edit it by selecting “View Code” and remark out the line

//CREATEPROCESS_MANIFEST_RESOURCE_ID RT_MANIFEST "res\\BmpView.exe.manifest"

Now, happy WTL’ing in Visual Studio 2010.

var isLightTheme = (Visibility)Application.Current.Resources["PhoneLightThemeVisibility"];
var imageBrush = new ImageBrush();
var imageUri = new Uri(isLightTheme == Visibility.Visible ? "background-light.jpg" : "background-dark.jpg", UriKind.Relative);
imageBrush.ImageSource = new System.Windows.Media.Imaging.BitmapImage(imageUri);
MainPanorama.Background = imageBrush;

There’s currently no simple way of detecting which theme and accent color that the user has selected his or her device. However, since the colors of the current theme is injected into to applications resources, one can at least read out the various colors from there.

The background color can be determined using this piece of code:

Color backgroundColor = (Color)Application.Current.Resources["PhoneBackgroundColor"];

And in a similar fashion the foreground and accent colors can be determined like this:

Color foregroundColor = (Color)Application.Current.Resources["PhoneForegroundColor"];
Color accentColor = (Color)Application.Current.Resources["PhoneAccentColor"];

All the various resource names are described here; Theme Resources for Windows Phone.

Accent color	Value
	#FFFF0097
	#FFA200FF
	#FF00ABA9
	#FF8CBF26
	#FFA05000
	#FFE671B8
	#FFF09609
	#FF1BA1E2
	#FFE51400
	#FF339933

NuGet is an utility that helps you install and reference open source packages into your Visual Studio 2010 project. It helps you to solve the pain points  of doing the boring steps of :

1. Browse to the home page of the open source project binaries/files.
2. Download the latest version
3. Right click on properties for the downloaded zip package and select un-block.
4. Unzip to a temporary/specific folder
5. Add reference to the assemblies on your Visual Studio project.

Imagine how easy it would be if you just could select Add Package –> MVVM Light to your new or existing project. Well, that is exactly what NuGet and this post is all about.

MVVM Light is an excellent MVVM framework toolkit developed by Silverlight MVP Laurent Bugnion.

Install NuGet

You will need to download and install the latest NuGet from the CodePlex project site: http://nuget.codeplex.com/ . Go to the Downloads page and click on the NuGet.Tools.vsix link.

Download the MVVM Light NuGet packages

I have created NuGet packages for the following MVVM Light project types, which at this time of writing was version 3.0 SP1:

MVVM Light NuGetPackages

Or separately:

MVVM Light Silverlight 3

MVVM Light Silverlight 4

MVVM Light Windows Phone 7

MVVM Light WPF 3.5 SP1

MVVM Light WPF 4

Add a package to an existing or new project

Download any of the above packages for the targeted project type to a folder of your choice, let’s say c:\NuPackages. Bring the NuPack console up be selecting View->Other Windows->Package Manager Console. In the NuPack console, select the Manage package sources button:

And select the path to where you downloaded the MVVM Light NuPackages and click Add:

Going back to the console, select the new package path in the dropdown, also make sure that you have a project selected:

Type in the command to add your desired MVVM Light package, in this case the Windows Phone 7 package:

Hopefully, everything will work and you have added the MVVM Light dependencies in your project:

Alternatively, you can use the GUI as well, right click on the Reference node in the project and select Add Package Reference.

And select the desired package:

Happy MVVM Light Coding!

So the question is, how do you get your markup that normally may look something like this:

to look something like this on your production server:

When you are developing using the local web server (Cassini), you don’t want the CDN links in your code, but after you have published the page to prod, you want it to use the CDN link. One way to make this work is to make an extension helper method that creates the correct link based on if you run in dev or prod. Here is my suggestion:

public static MvcHtmlString CDNLink(this HtmlHelper html,
string tagName,
string contentTag,
string contentUrl,
object htmlAttributes)
{
var contentLink = new TagBuilder(tagName);
var contentServerUrl = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ContentServerUrl"];
contentServerUrl = string.IsNullOrEmpty(contentServerUrl) ? "{0}" : contentServerUrl;
contentLink.MergeAttribute(contentTag, string.Format(contentServerUrl, contentUrl));
contentLink.MergeAttributes((IDictionary)htmlAttributes, true);
return MvcHtmlString.Create(contentLink.ToString());
}

It is pretty straightforward to use:

<%=html.cdnlink("link", new="" string="">
{
{"rel", "stylesheet"},
{"type","text/css"}
}) %>

<%=html.cdnlink("link", new="" string="">

<%=html.cdnlink("link", new="" string="">

Pass the tag name (“link”), the content attribute (“href”), the actual content link (“file.css”) and optional HTML attributes. In your web.config file, add an application settings for the content server url like this in dev

And in prod, use something like this:

There you go, hope you will find it useful.

1. Go to Control Panel –> Programs and Features –> Turn Windows features on or off.

2. Put a checkmark in the World Wide Web Services. This will select the most common features for the web server. In my case, I also have selected the ASP.NET, and Basic and Windows Authentication features. Some features may not be available depending on which edition of Windows 7 you have. This article will give an overview on Available Web Server (IIS) Role Services in IIS 7.5 for the various editions.

3. Click Ok and Windows will install the selected features.

4. Verify that the installation succeeded by browsing to http://localhost. This should display the IIs logo.

5. If you have done this after installation Visual Studio 2010 (and .NET Framework v4) you will only have the default .NET v2 application pools:

so in order to get the .NET Framework v4 integration and application pools, you will have to register the .NET Framework v4 with IIS. Open an elevated command prompt change directory to C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319

and type: aspnet_regiis.exe -i

Now, the .NET Framework v4 application pools are available: