Software Development Toolbox

Scripting Support in the .Net Applications

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 22:17:00 +0000

I was reviewing integrating Scripting Support into .Net Applications. In the current .Net Frameworks from version 1.0 to 4.0 Microsoft provided the following namespaces for enabling Scripting support.

Microsoft.JScript
MSScriptControl
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Vsa (obsolete)
Microsoft.Vsa (obsolete)

The last two Microsoft.VisualBasic.Vsa and Microsoft.Vsa are now obsolete as Microsoft is stopping their support for VB6.

In Visual Studio 2010 Microsoft extended their support for JScripts by adding debugging capability and making developer’s work easier.

MSScriptControl is an ActivX Windows Scripting Control can be used to handle VBScripts and JScripts by specifying ScriptControl.Language property as “VBScript" or “JScript”. For more information on the .Net Scripting Support follow references below.

References

JScript on MSDN
Windows Scripting
Script Happens .NET

Install Joomla! 1.6 on IIS 7

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 21:59:00 +0000

In the previous post Joomla! Installing XAMPP on Vista I described installation of the XAMPP package for Windows 7 and Vista. XAMPP package installs Apache web server, MySQL database, phpMyAdmin, FileZilla FTP Server and many more. With XAMPP it is really easy to install and configure Joomla!.

In this post I will show how to install Joomla! 1.6 on IIS7 on Vista or Windows 7. I will be performing installation on Windows 7 with no IIS installed. We will install PHP support for IIS 7, MySQL database (I will not be covering installation of Joomla! with SQL Server just yet), phpMyAdmin for maintaining databases.

In my first attempts. I tried to install Joomla! using Windows Platform installer from Microsoft/web site, which did not work completely. Installer did not install properly IIS, failed to register PHP with IIS 7, did not configure MySQL and I got mixed up with credentials for Joomla! and MySQL. My decision was to start over and install all required components manually.

Before we begin

In my explanations of the steps below I will assume that you are familiar with installation of basic windows components. I will only note most important points of the installation. If you require detailed explanation of the some of the installs I will provide reference section with links to sites with more detailed steps.

Install IIS 7

In this step we will perform basic installation of IIS 7. Open Control Panel>Programs>Program and Features>Turn Windows Features on or off.

Navigate to Internet Information Services and make sure you tick it first. It will select all required modules to run IIS7. Then expand tree to navigate to Application Development Features and tick CGI. I will be also doing ASP.NET development so I ticked ASP.NET Development and this also selected .Net Extensibility and other required modules. If you do not need any of the .Net features, don’t tick it. CGI component is needed to use FastCGI module of the PHP package, which we will be installing in the step below. Click OK.

When installation is complete open http://localhost to see if it installed OK. You should see similar screen to one below.

Installing PHP support for IIS7

Now we are going to install PHP support for IIS 7. Download latest PHP windows package from php.net site.

Now follow installation Wizard steps.

In the Web Server Setup select IIS FastCGI module. Click Next.

I selected to install all items including Register *.php to open automatically with PHP.

Click Finish.

I would also suggest installing PHP Manager for IIS package. It will add PHP configuration module into IIS Console.

This is an example PHP configuration screen. I find it is handy when you need to do some tweaks to PHP configuration.

Copy Joomla! CMS files to ISS 7

In this step we are going to copy Joomla! package files into C:\inetpub\wwwroot folder and create JoomlaDev Web Application to see if we can run PHP web sites. Configuration of Joomla! site will be done after completing of the MySQL database server installation. Download Joomla! CMS package from the joomla.org site. Unzip it and copy folder to ISS7 directory C:\inetpub\wwwroot. I named folder as JoomlaDev. Open IIS Management Console. Right click Default Web Site and select Add Application.

Enter fields as shown above if you are using the same names. Click OK.

JoomlaDev Application is created. Use Browse to open the site. If everything OK you should see the screen below.

Install MySQL on Windows 7 or Vista

Congratulations if you got that far, but don’t get too excited as we got a little be more work to do. Now we are going to install MySQL server. I am not going to cover using Joomla! with SQL Server here. This can be a topic for future posts. We need to download, install and configure MySQL database and phpMyAdmin package for managing databases. Get MySQL Community Server from mysql.com site. PhpMyAdmin can be downloaded from phpmyadmin.net site.

Run MySQL Installation Wizard.

Run through wizard steps and click Install at the end.

Leave Launch the MySQL Instance Configuration Wizard tick box on and click Finish.

This will open MySQL Server Instance Configuration Wizard.

We will go through the Detailed Configuration steps. Click Next.

This is a Development Machine, so this option is what we need.

Leave as it is on Multifunctional Database and click next.

Installation Path as a location for database files will be fine.

I do not expect a lot of connection during development work, but I like to have more options at hand so I selected Online Transaction Processing Option. You can select what is more suitable in your case.

All looking good. Tick Add firewall exception for this port to enable access for phpMyAdmin. phpMyAdmin uses TCP/IP connection by default. If you are worried about security you can setup phpMyAdmin to use socket connection. It is possible in our case to use socket as we are installing MySQL server on the same machine as IIS 7 web server.

I am developing website in English and Russian Languages so the second option is the best one for me. Click Next.

We will set our Database Instance Name as MySQL. I like to perform some commands in the command prompt so I also ticked Include Bin Directory in the Windows PATH.

Enter a password for root. This is a development database and will not be accessed outside development machine. So I did not ticked Enable root access from remote machine or Create An Anonymous Account. For build and testing servers I will use a different installation of MySQL and IIS 7. Click Next.

Excellent! Click Execute when you are ready.

We are done! Click Finish.

Install and Configure phpMyAdmin

Installation of MySQL Server is done. Now we are going to configure phpMyAdmin package, which will help us to manage MySQL Databases. If you haven’t downloaded phpMyAdmin from previous step download it from phpmyadmin.net site. Unzip package and copy it to C:\inetpub\wwwroot directory. Open IIS 7 Management Console and create new web application in a similar way how we created web application for our Joomla! install.

I named folder and Web Application as phpMyAdmin. After clicking OK use browse to open http://localhost/phpMyAdmin/. You will get the screen below.

Enter root as username and your root password, Click Go.

I got in! I was really impressed that without any additional configuration phpMyAdmin detected local MySQL Server and the setup is done!

Conclusion

Congratulations ones more time on the going through this rather lengthy post. Don’t get disappointed that you do not see Joomla! configuration steps here. There are very easy and straightforward. I am planning to post Joomla! configuration steps in the future post. This and the other posts will be part of the Creating Joomla! Development Environment series. Don’t forget to check out some references for more information.

References

Installing IIS 7 on Windows Vista and Windows 7
MySQL
phpMyAdmin
php.iis.net from Microsoft
PHP on Windows - Microsoft Web Platform
php.net
PHP Manager for IIS

Configure Joomla! 1.6 in IIS 7

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 21:47:00 +0000

Recently I published a blog about installing Joomla! 1.6 on IIS 7. We installed PHP support for IIS and MySQL Server on WIndows 7 development machine. In this post I will show how to configure installed Joomla! 1.6 site.

Running Joomla! configuration wizard

If you followed the same naming for directories and site names open http://localhost/JoomlaDev.

You will be presented with Choose Language step. Select your main language and click Next.

Configuration wizard performs checking and detected that configuration.php file is not writable. It is good idea to check permissions on the files and directories to avoid hand writing configuration settings. Browse to C:\inetpub\wwwroot directory and open properties of the JoomlaDev folder.

Select IIS_IUSRS and click edit. Tick Full Control and Click OK. After that click Check Again on the Joomla! Wizard. Now Wizard should display green Yes. If not, try adding Everyone and allowing Full Control. You can remove this permission once configuration is complete. If you can suggest other options of solving this, please leave a note in the comments. Click Next.

This is a License page. Click Next.

Enter Username as root, your password, Database name. Click Next.

This is a development machine and no remote access is needed. I skiped FTP Configuration. Click Next.

Enter Site name, your e-mail, admin username and password. If you like you can install sample data. Click Next.

In this version of Joomla! configuration Wizard lets you to click a button to remove installation folder automatically. It could be a good idea to rename this folder to keep it handy if you will ever want to run this wizard again. Click Administrator or Site to view configured Joomla! Site.

Congratulation. Joomla! 1.6 is installed and configured. As you can see this was pretty easy and straightforward. In the future posts I will be covering creation of the Development Environments for Joomla! Development.

Free Joomla! Extensions

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 20:08:00 +0000

These who ever worked with Content Management Systems will know about Joomla! CMS. Personally, what I like about Joomla! is availability of the vast number of extensions and templates and many of them are available for free. One of the popular sites where you can find Joomla! extensions is extensions.joomla.org. There are a lots of extensions for all sort of tasks. Here I am listing the ones I am using in my projects, which are tried and tested.

joomla eXtplorer

joomla eXtplorer is a File- and FTP - Manager. It allows you to edit files, delete, copy, rename, archive and unpack files/directories directly on your server. You can - Browse Directories & Files - Edit, Copy, Move and Delete files - Search, Upload and Downloading files - Create new files and directories - Change file permissions (chmod) and much more. I am mainly use this extension for changing file permissions and editing configuration files.

Linkr - The Article Linker and Link Creator

This extension lets you quickly link to articles in your Joomla! site when you are creating content. You can either search for your article with the search box, or find it by selecting the section and category. Finally, the link class, title, relation and url are completely customizable, making Linkr the perfect linking extension for Joomla! I like the nice user interface allowing easy article categories browsing and article preview.

Xmap

Xmap is a Site map generator component for Joomla, it's based on the popular Joomap component. Xmap allows you to create a map of your site using the structure of your menus. In the Preferences Page under Options there are links to html sitemap page and xml sitemap document which can be submitted to Google webmaster tools.

Commercial Extensions

sh404SEF

sh404sef is one of the commercial extensions I would highly recommend if you are serious about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). This extension make it very easy to control page titles and meta tags and automatically converts Joomla links to search engine and human friendly links. By itself it has a lot of extensions that optimise this component for other Joomla systems like VirtueMart, Xmap, Book or Media libraries. Check these extensions at sh404SEF extensions.

I will be happy for your comments about what extension you use and would recommend to others.

Creating project code coverage with PartCover and NUnit

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 11:22:00 +0000

Since my last posts ‘Integrating PartCover with Visual Studio 2005’ and ‘Integrating PartCover with Visual Studio 2008’ a lot of things changed and improved. PartCover project got itself a new home and now targeting .Net 4.0 Framework. NUnit testing framework also made a lot of improvements. In this post I am going to show how to run code coverage for a test project with NUnit console runner and PartCover browser. I will base it on my EnvMan project.

Getting PartCover and Nunit to run

First of all you need to download and install PartCover from Github project server. After installation you will find PartCover browser manual and PartCover console manual, which are very useful for understanding of rules creation and PartCover parameters.

Start PartCover Browser.

Select File>Run Target. It will open ‘Run Target Settings Window’

Click Browse buttons to select nunit-console.exe and working directory for running NUnit. Working arguments should have “/noshadow” and a full path with the test project name or NUnit project name. “/noshadow” will make NUnit not to create shadow copies of the files and will allow PartCover to load source files in the browser. In EnvMan project I have NUnit project file which has two assemblies in it. In the rules window enter

+[*EnvMan*]*

which means (+) add rule where include any assembly which has EnvMan in its name and any namespace in these assemblies. After this you can click start to run tests. Don’t forget to save xml configuration file for future use.

Inspecting code coverage

Congratulations! You can now inspect the results by using Views>View Coverage Details.

Free Internet Resources for Joomla! Template Developers

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 19:00:00 +0000

I was working on design of the custom Joomla! template and came across several excellent Internet resources I will list below.

Internet Resources

Books

Joomla! 1.5 Template Design by Tessa Blakeley Silver (ISBN 978-1-84719-716-0)

Free Light Bulb Icon

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 07:01:00 +0000

Free Light Bulb icons available for download.

Please visit “Recent Work” pages on SETCHIN Freelance Consulting site to download. Enjoy!

Free Clock Icons

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 06:12:00 +0000

Free clock icons available for download.

Please visit “Recent Work” pages on SETCHIN Freelance Consulting site to download. Enjoy!

Free Candle in the dark Icons for Download

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 08:24:00 +0000

Another free icons of the candle in the dark with bonus free New Year Postcard.

Please visit “Recent Work” pages on SETCHIN Freelance Consulting site. Enjoy!

Free Coffee Cup Icons for Download

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 21:04:00 +0000

I recently published different size PNG and ICO icons of the Coffee Cup image I created in Inkscape.

Please visit “Recent Work” pages on SETCHIN Freelance Consulting site. Enjoy!

Create icon with Inkscape and IcoFX

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 10:29:00 +0000

Inkscape and IcoFX are two open source and freeware graphical programs. Inkscape is a powerful vector based program, similar to Adobe InDesign or Corel Draw. It can be used to create an image. IcoFX does work of importing these images created with Inkscape and saving them as ICO files. In this post I will show how to create ICO files of different sizes based on the image below I created in Inkscape.

Step 1: Create a 64x64 Inkscape document

Open SVG source file of the image in Inkscape. Select the whole image you want to make an ICO from and group all selected objects of the image with (Ctrl+G). Copy grouped image and create a new Inkscape document from File menu. For this example I selected File>New>icon_48x48. Paste copied image into new Inkscape Window. With my image I had to zoom out and resize copied object to fit icon size page. Make sure you lock the width and height to make scaling of the image same. Also it is handy to use Align and Distribute tool to set object in the centre of the icon. In the result you should get something like shown below.

Step 2: Export Inkscape Icon into PNG file.

Now we can save our icon as PNG image. Select File>Export Bitmap (Shift+Ctrl+E). In the Export Bitmap dialog click Export area Page, Bitmap size change to 64x64 pixels for width and height. Give it a name and the path where to save a file. Click Export.

Step 3: Create ICO file with IcoFx

Start IcoFX and Open our icon in PNG file. Make sure you tick 48x48 size of the image in the New Image dialog as shown below.

The image will be imported and we will be able to save it as in icon. Click File>Save As and save it as an ICO.

Finish

Congratulations! We created our icon with the two powerful programs Inkscape and IcoFX.

To practice a bit more, try creating icons of different sizes. Enjoy!

References

	An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.
	IcoFX is an award winning freeware icon editor. It is an all-in-one solution for icon creation, extraction and editing.
Joomla Web Designer	Create your own custom Joomla favicon using Inkscape
Inkscape Tutorials	Creating a Coffee Cup with Inkscape

Using Twitter for Business

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 09:44:00 +0000

We all know that success of any business is in its people. The wider network of contacts business has, the more people will know about it and the greater chances some of them will use services business offer. With raise of networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. more companies are trying to workout if these sites are suitable for use in the business marketing, increasing level of support, and getting better connections with their customers. In this post I am listing some popular sources from Internet about using Twitter social networking site for business.

Internet Sites about Using Twitter for Business

Twitter 101 for Business — A Special Guide - This is a very interesting site providing a lot of useful information like guides, best practices, case studies and handful references to many other resources like books, tips and tricks, and links to other related sites

Using Twitter for Business – a free e-book from Duct Tape Marketing

50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business – This is an excellent post listing the steps to get started in ides about what to tweet and how to survive in the information overload.

4 Ways Companies Use Twitter for Business – another post with business ideas for Twitter

How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business – one more if not enough

Twitter Tools and Applications

10 valuable Twitter utilities for business users

Twitter Fan Wiki / Apps – a very long list of Twitter applications for any platform

How To Backup Your Twitter Archive

Free Portable Applications

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 21:22:00 +0000

Below is a list of Portable Applications I use.

Notepad++ - is the handy Notepad++ text editor.

Large Text File Viewer – program for viewing very large text files.

Everything Search Engine - locate files and folders by name instantly.

TrueCrypt - free open-source disk encryption software for Windows.

PDF-XChange Viewer – is smaller, faster and more feature rich than the Adobe Rea.

Recuva - deleted file recovery.

TeraCopy - is a free utility designed to copy/move files faster and more secure.

CClearner - is the number-one tool for cleaning your Windows PC.

WinMerge - is an Open Source differencing and merging tool for Windows.

7-Zip - the portable file archiver.

Revo Uninstaller – Application Uninstaller.

Windows Sysinternals Suite - the Sysinternals Troubleshooting Utilities have been rolled up into a single Suite of tools.

Free Commander - is an easy-to-use alternative to the standard windows file manager with lots of advanced and helpful features.

GIMP - is the popular image editor.

KeePass - is the popular KeePass Password Safe.

OpenOffice.org - is the complete OpenOffice.org office suite including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, drawing package and database.

PuTTY - is the popular telnet and SSH client.

winMd5Sum - is a simple MD5 sum checker that allows you to check and compare the md5 sums of files.

WinSCP - is an open source free SFTP client and FTP client for Windows.

Ultimate Windows Tweaker - is a freeware Tweak UI Utility for tweaking and optimizing Windows Vista, 32-bit & 64-bit.

Quicksys RegDefrag - is a small, clear and easy freeware utility to defrag and compact Windows registry.

Neo’s SafeKeys – on screen keyboard.

InfraRecorder - is the popular InfraRecorder CD/DVD burning program.

Portable APPLICATIONS SUITeS

PortableApps.com
LiberKey
Lupo PenSuite
Pendriveapps
winPenPack
What’s My Pass? » Tech Toolkit 2.0
The Portable Freeware Collection
App-Stick

References

Lexar tool makes creating bootable USB flash drives easy - DownloadSquad.com
Encrypt Your USB Stick With Truecrypt 6.0 - Makeuseof.com
100 Portable Apps for your USB Stick (for Mac and Win) - Makeuseof.com
How to run Skype from a USB flash drive - DownloadSquad.com
Use Your USB Stick As a Key to Boot Your Windows PC – Makeuseof.com
Flash Drive Reminder reminds you to unplug your flash drive – DownloadSquad.com
Make Microsoft Remote Desktop A Portable App - Makeuseof.com
How To Make Windows Live Writer A Portable USB App – Makeuseof.com
CD Burner XP – free disk burning app for Windows
Put your portable apps on a diet with AppCompactor
Looking for a portable hotkey app? Try QOpen!

Free Mozilla Add-ons

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 02:07:00 +0000

Below is a list of Mozilla add-ons I use.

Add-ons for better work with Google SERVICES

Better Gmail 2 - Enhances the new Gmail interface with Greasemonkey user scripts. Only compatible with the NEW Gmail interface.

Better GReader - Enhances Google Reader with Greasemonkey user scripts.

Better GCal - Enhances Google Calendar with Greasemonkey user scripts.

Better YouTube - A compilation of some of the best Greasemonkey user scripts for YouTube in one interface

Google Toolbar for Firefox - Take the power of Google with you anywhere on the Web

GMarks - helps you sync & manage your bookmarks with Google Bookmarks.

Google Shortcuts - Display all of your Google Services as buttons just next to your address bar or anywhere you like it.

Google Gears - is an open source project that enables more powerful web applications, by adding new features to your web browser.

Designer and Web Developer Tools

ScribeFire Blog Editor - is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog.

Dummy Lipsum - Generate "Lorem Ipsum" dummy text.

Web Developer - adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.

Firebug - the most popular and powerful web development tool.

FFClickOnce - Allows Firefox to run a .NET ClickOnce application.

Misc Tools

Forecastfox Enhanced - Enhanced version of the popular Forecastfox extension (forecastfox.mozdev.org) by Jon Stritar and Richard Klien.

Friendbar - The Twitter and Facebook Toolbar.

Power Twitter – makes Twitter Better.

eBayBuddy Australia - is a small eBay extension for quick navigation of eBay.com.au The Australian eBay, and other related tools through the right-click context menu or a single toolbar button you can add from the customize menu. It includes lots of advanced search features, category browsing, discussion boards, a full site map of eBay, PayPal, comparison price shopping and more.

Firefox Companion for eBay - Be a better bidder! You’re always securely signed in so you can check out your progress whenever you like. Customise your alerts so you stay on top of your bids. Be told when an auction style format listing you’re bidding on is about to end.

TOOLS for better browsing

GUI:Config - makes it easier to change preferences that can only be found in the “about:config”.

Configuration Mania - More Advanced (hidden) configures.

DownThemAll! - The first and only download manager/accelerator built inside Firefox!

IE Tab Plus - An enhanced version of IE Tab which supports Adblock Plus in IE, and can sync cookies between IE and Firefox.

WOT - Warns users about risky websites that try to scam visitors, deliver malware, or send spam.

Fox Splitter - splits the content area of the browser window as you like.

ErrorZilla - Implements a useful error page when a website cannot be reached. Will add Try Again, Google Cache, Coralize, Wayback, Ping, Trace, and Whois buttons, along with the Firefox logo to the error page when a website isn't found or a web server is down.

Resurrect Pages - Searches through five big page cache/mirrors and shows lost pages.

Google chrome extensions manager - will allow you to use Google chrome extensions inside Firefox.

Ctrl-Tab - Ctrl+Tab navigation and "All Tabs" panel.

Greasemonkey Add-on and Scripts

Greasemonkey Add-on - Allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript. Hundreds of scripts, for a wide variety of popular sites, are already available at http://userscripts.org.

Mozilla Themes

Below are the Mozilla Themes I am using.

Noia 2.0 (eXtreme) - This is a fully skinned version. This theme is based on the Noia 2.0 icon set by Carlitus( http://carlitus.deviantart.com/ ).

References and Tips

These are links to useful Mozilla Internet resources.

Ultimate GMail Collection: over 80 Tools and Tips from MakeUseOf.com
How to eliminate speling mistakes in Firefox text boxes - Download Squad
Make Your Own Printer-Friendly Pages in Firefox - MakeUseOf.com
Power User's Guide to Firefox 3 - lifehacker.com
Mozilla Firefox About:config
Firefox Tweak Guide
Keeping Safe on the Web 8 Firefox Add-ons - MakeUseOf.com
Firefox 3 Memory Usage
Mozilla Problematic Extensions
Tips to Reduce Mozilla Firefox Memory Usage
Another 16 Firefox Add-ons For Web Designers

Joomla! Internet Resources

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Tue, 04 May 2010 13:38:00 +0000

I started to work with Joomla! Content Management System. There were few reasons why I choose Joomla! out of many popular systems. One of them is it’s popularity and availability of learning material, templates, extensions and easy to setup and use. Below I listed links to some of these resources.

Joomla! – Official Joomla! site.
XAMPP - apache friends. Package to install Apache, MySql, FileZilla, and Mercury Servers to work with Joomla!
Joomla! Installing XAMPP on Vista
Extensions
Help Site
Forum

Joomla! in Russian

Joomla.ru – Russian translation for Joomla!
Joomla! Russian Portal
Languages - Joomla! Extensions Directory – Select Russian Language Extensions

Joomla! Extensions

JoomGallery - is a gallery component completely integrated into Joomla.

Joomla! Internet Resources

Joomla 1.5 Tutorial: Why use Joomla 1.5? Building a simple website with Joomla
Joomla Developer’s Toolbox | Smashing Magazine
JoomlaJunkie - Free and commercial Joomla templates club
Best of Joomla! The #1 joomla templates, resources and extensions
Joomla24 - More Than 2700 Free Joomla CMS Templates
Design for Joomla - Joomla Templates, Joomla Extensions for the Joomla CMS
Joomla 1.5 Blog and Free Joomla 1.5 Templates
Joomla! Downloads - Free Joomla Templates
Free Joomla Templates, Themes and Styles - themesBase.com
Free Joomla Templates - Joomla Themes
Joomla Shine – Free Joomla Templates
Joomlashack – Free Joomla Templates
Free Joomla templates themes

References

List of content management systems – Wikipedia
Top 12 Free Content Management Systems (CMS) | Spyre Studios
Top 10 Most Usable Content Management Systems - Nettuts+

VMWare Server Temporary Files That are Safe to Remove

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 13:04:00 +0000

I have a laptop that runs Windows Vista Home Ultimate. This version is like Windows XP Home Edition and does not allow installation of any servers like IIS, Virtual PC, SQL Server, etc. that I need for my development. I am using VMWare Server to run Windows XP as my primary development environment. Also I have another Windows XP VMWare image that is used for deployment testing. Both of them are located on 80GB logical partition. Each virtual machine has two 20GB expandable drives, but at the moment only 20GB used by each machine. Looks like I had plenty of room to run both virtual machines. I was surprised to see one day that I was not able to pause a machine because there was no any space left on the disk. I shut down virtual machine and had a look at VMWare files. Each Virtual Machine had several copies of *.vmem and *.vmsn files in the directory. These files are used to store paging memory files and created when Virtual Machine is running. Looks like they were left when VMWare Server crashed a couple of times. To clean up the mess I had to remove the following files:

.VMEM – VMWare Server paging memory file. It will only appear if the virtual machine is running and will be left it if it has crashed.
.LOG – Log files that keep a record of VMWare Server activity
.NVRAM file
.VMSD - This is a centralized file for storing information and metadata about snapshots

Also I found a couple of snapshot files are no longer used. The following files can be removed:

.VMSN - This is the snapshot state file, which stores the running state of a virtual machine at the time you take that snapshot
.LCK – indicating that certain files are locked

Once I removed these files disk had nearly 50GB of free disk space.

Don’t Remove:

.VMX - This is the primary configuration file, which stores settings chosen in the New Virtual Machine Wizard or virtual machine settings editor.
.VMDK or .#.VMDK - this is a virtual disk file, which stores the contents of the virtual machine's hard disk drive.

References:

What Files Make Up a Virtual Machine?

Cleaning Up After Incomplete Uninstallation on a Windows Host

Building a VMware Shared Disk

Understanding VMware VMX Configuration Files - Learn How To Create and Edit VMX Files

Free Multimedia Applications

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 11:21:00 +0000

This is a list of the Multimedia Applications that help us to play, create, edit video, DVD, images, music and other file formats.

XP Codec pack - is one of the most completed codec packs for XP which helps you to play all major audio and video formats.

Windows 7 and Vista Codec Package - is one of the most completed codec packs for Vista which helps you to play all major audio and video formats.

DVD Shrink - is a freeware tool for fitting a DVD-Video disc on a single DVD-R.

Paint.Net - is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows.

GimPhoto - GIMP modification together with GimPad a free Photoshop alternative.

IcoFx - is an award winning freeware icon editor.

Bug Shooting - is a free screenshot utility that was developed for software testers who use bug tracking systems including FogBugz, Gemini, Ontime and BugTracker.NET.

MPlayer for Windows - The award-winning Open Source media player available for Windows now!

PNGOUT - is a freeware command line optimizer for PNG images written by Ken Silverman.

Creative Docs .Net - is a vector-based graphic design tool with support for rich text, ideal to quickly write short documents, manuals, posters, illustrations, schemas, plans, flow charts, and much more.

VirtualDub - is a video capture/processing utility. An easy way to join AVI files into one.

Google SketchUp - You can use Google SketchUp to create, modify and share 3D models.

Picasa – Organise, Edit, Create and Share Photos.

Free Multimedia Converters

FormatFactory - is a multifunctional media converter.

Free Multimedia Internet Services

TextAnim - Generate an animated text picture (gif) with texture in 10 seconds.
SplushUp - is a powerful editing tool and photo manager.
iConvert - Convert ico, icns, and png icons online for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

References

Top Free Media Converters for Windows | MakeUseOf.com
An Introduction To Codecs, Converters and Rippers | MakeUseOf.com
How To Repair Broken AVI Files That Won’t Play | MakeUseOf.com
Say Goodbye to Adobe Creative Suite | MakeUseOf.com

Free Windows System Software

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:33:00 +0000

During lifetime of my work with computers I collected a number of software tools. Keeping a downloaded copy of these programs is really a waste of space. Software quickly get outdated as new version released, so Windows Software Toolbox is a collection of links to websites where latest versions of applications can be downloaded. This list will be updated as I add/remove tools from my toolbox.

System

TaskSwitchXP - is an advanced task management utility that picks up where the standard Windows Alt+Tab switcher leaves off.

TrueCrypt - Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Java Runtime - Download Java for your desktop computer now!

Quicksys RegDefrag - (Freeware) Defrag, Optimise and Compact Windows Registry.

Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP - (Freeware) are additional programs that developers work on after a product has been released.

7-Zip - (Freeware) is a file archiver with a high compression ratio.

SVS Client Personal - (Freeware) is an Altiris Software Virtualization Solution Personal Edition. Allows to run applications in isolated environment.

DAEMON Tools Lite - (Freeware) is a virtual cd/dvd-rom emulator.

Notepad++ - is a generic source code editor (it tries to be anyway) and Notepad replacement written in C++ with the win32 API.

Glary Utilities - free, powerful and all-in-one utility featuring

Disk Cleaner
Registry Cleaner
Shortcut Fixer
Uninstall Manager
Start-up Manager
Memory Optimizer
Context Menu Manager
Tracks Eraser
File Shredder
File Undelete
File Encryption and Decryption
Disk Analyzer
Duplicate Files Finder
Empty Folders Finder
File Splitter Joiner
Process Manager
Internet Explorer Assistant
Windows Standard Tools

FreeCommander - (Freeware) is an easy-to-use alternative to the standard windows file manager

WinCalendarTime - replaces the standard Windows clock with an enhanced clock, if you click on it a calendar is displayed.

SmartDefrag - is a powerful and free Diskeeper® alternative.

GMail Drive - (Freeware) is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual file system around your Google Mail account, allowing you to use Gmail as a storage medium.

EnvMan - Environment Variables Manager (EnvMan) is a tool written in C# .Net intended to handle the administration of Windows Shell Environment Variables. It is designed to replace Control Panel System Environment Manager and easily manage long variable values.

Sysinternals Suite - The Sysinternals Troubleshooting Utilities have been rolled up into a single Suite of tools.

PDF-XChange Viewer - is smaller, faster and more feature rich than the Adobe Reader. Portable version is also available.

Firefox Web Browser - award-winning Web browser. See my Top used Firefox Add-ons.

kbdru_ZH - Русская фонетическая клавиатура (Russian Phonetic Keyboard) - Instructions for Windows and Internet in Russian.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 - Network Installation Package for IT Professionals and Developers. Get this one for free from Microsoft if you need to install on multiple computers.

Everything - is a Windows search engine, Locate files and folders by name instantly.

CClearner - (Freeware) system optimisation and privacy tool.

Blogger Backup Utility - (Freeware) utility to backup to local disk your Blogger posts.

Windows Defender - Spyware Protection for Free.

Avast! 4 Home Edition - is a full-featured Antivirus and Anti-Spyware package. Requires Free Registration.

Malwarebytes - an easy-to-use, simple, and effective anti-malware application.

Revo Uninstaller - innovative freeware uninstall utility. Uninstall, delete, remove programs and solve uninstalling problems.

KeePass Password Safe - the free, open-source, light-weight and easy-to-use password manager.

SyncToy - helps you copy, move, rename, and delete files between folders and computers quickly and easily.

TeraCopy - is a compact program designed to copy and move files at the maximum possible speed.

Sandboxie - creates virtual space to run program in.

HashTab - is a Windows shell extension which adds a tab called "File Hashes" to the Windows Explorer file properties. The tab contains the MD5, SHA1 and CRC-32 file hashes.

Macrium Reflect - is a fastest disk imaging software.

nCleaner - contains an advanced system and application cleaner with over 90 cleaning items available

WSCC - is a free, portable program that allows you to view, execute and organize the utilities from various system utility suites.

PDF Creator - is a free tool to create PDF files from nearly any Windows application.

EASEUS Partition Manager - is a Partition Magic alternative, a FREE comprehensive hard disk partition management software.

Toonel - compress all the data traffic transferred to and from our machine and minimise the use of the bandwidth.

Free ISO Creator - easily create ISO image from any files and folders (with the subfolders).

Unlocker - kill processes that prevent a file to be deleted.

HijackThis – TrendMicro™ HijackThis™ is a free utility which quickly scans your Windows computer to find settings that may have been changed by spyware, malware or other unwanted programs. HijackThis™ creates a report, or log file, with the results of the scan.

Software Updates Checkers

FileHippo.com Update Checker - will scan your computer for installed software, check the versions and then send this information to FileHippo.com to see if there are any newer releases.These are then neatly displayed in your browser for you to download.

Secunia (PSI) - Personal Software Inspector.

DriverMax - a free tool to backup, restore, update Windows XP or Vista system drivers.

Anti-Rootkits

GMer - is an application that detects and removes rootkits.

Trend Micro RootkitBuster - is a rootkit scanner that scans hidden files, registry entries, processes, drivers, and Master Boot Record (MBR) rootkits.

References

Below are the references to other web resources.

Temporarily turn off Windows Update restart nags using Leave Me Alone! - Download Squad

Utilizing Windows Search 4.0 (Part 1) - MakeUseOf.com

Nirsoft Freeware Tools and Utilities for Windows

Free CD/DVD File Recovery Tool - CD Recovery Toolbox - MakeUseOf.com

24 Great Open Source Apps for Admins & Technicians - Download Squad

50 Tools to Speed Up or Otherwise Enhance Your PC – CIO.COM

37 Essential Windows Utilities

100+ Download Sites – Daily Blog Tips

Joomla! Installing XAMPP on Vista

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:16:00 +0000

Currently I am working on installing Joomla! content management system and as a first step it requires to install XAMPP package. After some time of tweaking I finally managed to install and run XAMPP package on Vista. XAMPP installation completed fine and basic configuration steps made no problems. All services except Apache started.

Turned out that service was unable to start, because Apache process had no access to “C:\Program Files\xampp” directory. I decided to give SYSTEM account access to it and run Apache, MySql and FileZilla as windows services. To give access to SYSTEM account open properties of the directory and Security Tab.

Check that it has full access rights assigned. If not, use Edit button to assign access rights.

After trying to start Apache service again it still was failing to start. Apache log in C:\Program Files\xampp\apache\logs\error.log showed the following error.

“(OS 10013)An attempt was made to access a socket in a way forbidden by its access permissions. : make_sock: could not bind to address [::]:80”

This error happens when some process already uses port 80. My solution was to change “C:\Program Files\xampp\apache\conf\httpd.conf” file and set port to something else like 8080 or any other number. Edit lines “Listen 80” and “ServerName localhost:80” to be “Listen 8080” and “ServerName localhost:8080”. Start Apache service. Success!

The next step will be to install Joomla! I will publish another post if there will be problems that required solution during install.

ASP.NET Grid View Hidden Column Binding Problem

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 05:51:00 +0000

When I was using Grid View in my Web Application I run into problem where hidden column would not bind data. After searching I found a simple solution to this problem. Let’s have a look at example. We have a table called Person with columns ID, FirstName, Surname. In our page we want to show only FirstName and Surname columns and have ID column loaded but hidden.

For a Grid View component create RowCreated event handler with the code:

protected void GvRowCreated(object sender, GridViewRowEventArgs e)    
{     
    // Hide ID Column     
    e.Row.Cells[0].Visible = false;     
}

The code above will hide all cells in column Cells[0], which is ID column. If Grid View has paging enabled we need to check e.Row.RowType == DataControlRowType.DataRow to hide only Cells that contain data.

CSS References and Tools

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:24:00 +0000

Every web designer and developer knows how powerful Cascading Style Sheets are and how much they can save in HTML coding.

I put together several links to CSS tutorials, samples and Internet resources.

CSS Books

The Ultimate CSS Reference

CSS Tutorials

CSS Templates and Samples

Sample CSS Page Layouts – Max Design
CSS Layout Templates - SSI-Developer.net
Layout Gala: a collection of 40 CSS layouts
CSS Zen Garden
CSSPlay
Solucija − Free CSS Templates
Faux Column CSS Layouts - Code-Sucks.com

Web Designer Tools

Rounded Graphics for CSS Box Corners - Cornershop

Resources

50 Extremely Useful And Powerful CSS Tools | Smashing Magazine
11 Useful Tools To Check, Clean & Optimize Your CSS File | MakeUseOf.com
50 Useful Design Tools For Beautiful Web Typography | Smashing Magazine
7 Principles Of Clean And Optimized CSS Code | Smashing Magazine
CSS Tools That Compress & Strip Unused Styles From Your CSS Files | Labnol
Everything You Know About CSS Is Wrong | Digital Web Magazine
15 Must Read Articles for CSS Beginners | Line25.com
Ask SM: CSS Quick-Question Edition | Smashing Magazine
130+ New Tools to Make You a Better and Faster Designer | mashable.com
53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn't Live Without | Smashing Magazine
40+ Essential Front End Web Developer Cheat Sheets | tripwire magazine

How to get Virtually unlimited online backup storage with Live Mesh

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:39:00 +0000

As you may already know Live Mesh Online Storage currently offers 5GB of online storage. This amount of data is enough if you are backing up documents as DOCs or plain text files, but if you want to store music, photos, large multimedia files, storing them into one account will quickly add-up to the limit. To expand this 5GB limitation we will use an excellent sharing functionality of Live Mesh.

Lets looks at the example. We want to setup backup for our Photos, Music, Documents. We will need to create a separate live or hotmail accounts for each of them, say my_photos@live.com, my_music@live.com, and my_docs@live.com. All these accounts will need to link with main account say my_mesh@hotmail.com.

After creating my_docs account login into www.livemesh.com using it and connect to Live Desktop.

Double click on ‘Create new folder’ Icon and enter ‘Documents’ in the name field.

Once folder is created double click it to open it and click Members and then Invite to enter address of your main account.

After clicking OK Email will be sent to my_mesh@hotmail.com account which will have a link to accept an invitation. After that ‘Documents’ folder will be linked to your main mesh account and will be visible in the list of folders.

These steps need to be repeated for photos and music and add virtually unlimited number of folders.

Free ASP.NET Learning Resources

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:13:00 +0000

In this post I would like to put together a list of ASP.NET learning resources.

Basic ASP.NET Walkthroughs

Advanced ASP.NET Walkthroughs

Visual Web Developer

ASP.NET Settings Schema – Reference for ASP.NET configuration section schema

ASP.NET Deployment

Additional Resources

ASP.NET FAQ's: Part I, Part II

ASP.NET MVC - is a free and fully supported Microsoft framework for building web applications that use a model-view-controller pattern.

Building a Great Ajax application from Scratch by Brad Abrams : AjaxWorld Talk

Web Deployment Projects - provide additional functionality to build and deploy Web sites and Web applications in Visual Studio 2008.

Free Windows Software Development Tools

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 13:02:00 +0000

Here is a list of free development tools I found useful and also popular in Software Development.

Large Text File Viewer - this program was designed for viewing large (>1GB) text files.

KompoZer - is a complete web authoring system that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing.

UMLet - is an open-source UML tool with a simple user interface.

OpenProj - is a free, open source desktop alternative to Microsoft Project. It's available on Linux, Unix, Mac or Windows.

WinSCP - free SFTP and FTP client for Windows.

VMWare Server – run other operating systems on the same computer.

Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express - is a free, easy-to-use graphical management tool for managing SQL Server 2005 Express Edition and SQL Server 2005 Express Edition with Advanced Services.

Liquid XML Studio Free - XML Developers Toolkit and IDE.

ToDoList - A simple but effective way to keep on top of your tasks.

Microsoft Visual Studio

Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition - Easy way to start development with Microsoft tools.

Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition - Easy way to start development with Microsoft tools.

Subversion Tools

TortoiseSVN - A Subversion client, implemented as a windows shell extension.

Commit Monitor - is a small tool to monitor Subversion repositories for new commits.

SVN (Subversion) - version control system that is a compelling replacement for CVS in the open source community.

SVN Notifier - is a simple and useful tool to monitor your Subversion project repository for changes.

Free Windows Security Tools and Online Security Scanners

noreply@blogger.com (Vlad) — Sat, 23 May 2009 03:24:00 +0000

In this post I want to list different windows Security tools and online Security Scanners that can be used to check and fix windows.

Free Online Security Services

Below is a list of available Online Security Scanners. It is recommended to run them in Internet Explorer and under Vista IE should be run in Administrative mode.

Free Windows Live OneCare Online Services

Below is a list of free Services provided by Live OneCare. The only problem I run into is I selected to delete 2GB of Hibernation data and Hibernate option was no longer available under Vista. If you get the same problem have a look at Re-Enable Hibernate Option in Windows Vista from the How-To Geek.

Other Free Online Virus and Spyware Scanners

Free Online Virus and Malware Scanners

Free Desktop Security Tools

CClearner - (Freeware) system optimisation and privacy tool.

Windows Defender - Spyware Protection for Free.

Avast! 4 Home Edition - is a full-featured Antivirus and Anti-Spyware package. Requires Free Registration.

Malwarebytes - an easy-to-use, simple, and effective anti-malware application.

KeePass Password Safe - the free, open-source, light-weight and easy-to-use password manager.

Sandboxie - creates virtual space to run program in.

nCleaner - contains an advanced system and application cleaner with over 90 cleaning items available

Secunia (PSI) - Personal Software Inspector.

Password Meter - Checking the strength of the passwords.

TrueCrypt - Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Anti-Rootkits

GMer - is an application that detects and removes rootkits.

Trend Micro RootkitBuster - is a rootkit scanner that scans hidden files, registry entries, processes, drivers, and Master Boot Record (MBR) rootkits.

Additional Resources

IIA Security Portal

Norton Safe Web, from Symantec

Comparatives of Anti virus Software

3 Tools to Test Run your AntiVirus/Spyware Program

Best Free Ways to Protect Your Private Files