Web rules!

系统自动更新后IE6只要打开Office文件就崩溃

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:06:00 +0000

我们公司的电脑都会通过SMS自动更新.结果前几天系统自动打过一个补丁以后，再也不能打开SharePoint上的文件了。总是报告"An unhandled exception occurred in IEXPLORE.EXE[616]。我卸载了所有那一天的补丁，又找系统组的同事，结果依旧。

开始以为所有的电脑都会受影响，后来发现就只有我们几个同事安装了Office 2003 和Office 2007的有问题，即使只是安装了MS Office 2007 Compatibility Pack也有问题。他们把Office 2007卸载果然就好了。

但我想找出来为什么，在这里终于找到了解决办法：

Start

Programs

Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office Tools

Run Microsoft Office Diagnostics.

This application found an error and corrected it. Sharepoint files now all open fine.

在另外一个blog中有更详细的说明，

The problem happens when you have, or had, two versions of office installed. You have to go into your program files directory and delete the version of owssupp.dll you're not using (for example if you upgraded to office 2007 and then downgraded back to office 2003 you delete owssupp.dll in the office12 directory). IE 7's manage addons you can see two versions of the owssupp dll registered so IE gets confused and you have to forcefully remove the version you're not using anymore.

Make Ankh work within Visual Studio .Net 2005

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 03:34:00 +0000

It used to work but not these days. The installation itself was always smooth. But there was no context menu for Ankh.

Finally I realized why. It seems Ankh needs to have a solution file. If I open a web site, it won’t work. So what I did was to save it as a solution then open it. Now peace is coming back.

How to open a window in full screen mode with Javascript

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 06:35:00 +0000

In one of our applications we need to open a window in full screen mode then close the launching window automatically. Here is what I googled.

1. To open in full screen (tests passed on IE 6.0, 7.0, but Firefox doesn't support it at all)
var newWin = window.open('NewWindow.aspx','fullscreen','fullscreen,scrollbars');

2. To close the launching window without a warning message
newWin.focus();
window.open('','_parent','');
window.close();

And if full screen is not allowed by users, e.g. IE 6.0 SP2 (link), we can set the window to take the maximum possible client screen with following code,
var newWin = window.open('Main2.aspx', '',
'toolbar=no,menubar=no,titlebar=no,directories=no,
location=no,resizable=yes,status=no,fullscreen=no,
top=0,left=0,width=900,height=700');
newWin.moveTo(0,0);
newWin.resizeTo(screen.availWidth,screen.availHeight);\

However, there is a known issue. IE 7.0 will always display the address bar in the above window due to phishing detection concern. And Firefox is considering to join it as well.

How do you say this in English?

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 01:00:00 +0000

这没什么奇怪的
It is not surprising.
Not surprisingly.
It is no surprise to me.
I am not surprised.

Simulate a button click event on an asp.net page

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 02:33:00 +0000

Googled and found this, in other words, use "javascript:" + Page.GetPostBackEventReference(btnBack) + ";"

Google Desktop Search sucks on Outlook

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 08:29:00 +0000

I have been installing and uninstalling Google Desktop Search, its latest version, for many times these days. At first it failed to see my archived mails, well, after many reinstall, here many>=6, it finnally waked up. But, I hate buts, most time it returned nothing on my search request even though sometimes it found a little even though its index status had been set to completed for long.

I had to wipe this damn thing from my hard drive and reinstalled Windows Destkop Search though the latter use 4 times more memory, and Microsoft didn't disapoint me, it works perfect.

Shrink large database log files on our development server

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 07:40:00 +0000

Even though we have a 300GB hard disk, it is running out of space when we host more and more development databases. This morning one of my program failed because its back end database log file had reached the upper limit.

All my attempt faield as recorded as following,

1. Delete the log files directly
2. Add another log file and then try to delete the primary log file
3. Detach the database, delete those log files, then tried to attach the MDF file. It failed because MS refused to attach it when certain files are missing.

In the end I changed the recovery mode of the database to Simple instead of Full as this is a development server we don't need to restore it to the point of failure, lots of space were reclaimed.

Sometimes values missing from an Excel worksheet

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 07:32:00 +0000

This usually happens when that column is mixed with strings and numbers, Microsoft recognized it was a bug but provided no decent solution to it.

I tried to use SQL Server import, it has the issue. Tried ADO.Net, no luck either. Finnally came across a MS suggestion to add "IMEX=1" to the Excel connection string, and it worked.

Write an Internet Explorer plugin to remove Ads of Windows Live Mail Beta

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 15:57:00 +0000

I have been using Windows Live Mail Beta for quite a while and found its ads were pretty annoying. My favorite browser is Firefox which can removed ads without any hassel, however Microsoft has not proviede fully support for it so have to stick to Internet Explore for the time being.

I tried to use Maxthon, even though ads were gone but their used space were still there, so ugly. In the end I begin to write my own plugin, well, I'll say I am having a good start.

The first thing I did is to add a contect menu says Leave Me Alone implemented via adding this registry,
My Computer
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER
      Software
         Microsoft
            Internet Explorer
               MenuExt
                  Leave Me &Alone

There will be a Default string field for the Leave Me &Alone node, set its content to, in my case, files://f:\LeaveMeAlone.htm

The rest work is to create a LeaveMeAlone.htm and let it contains these below lines,

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript" defer>
   var parentwin = external.menuArguments;
   var doc = parentwin.document;

   var banner = doc.all.RadAd_Banner ;
   banner.style.display = "none";

   var nextFrame = doc.all.RadAd_SkyScraper; //RadAd_SkyScraper
   nextFrame.style.display = "none";

   var nextFrame = doc.all.RadAd_SMC600;
   nextFrame.style.display = "none";

   var nextFrame = doc.all.CustComm_120x30;
   nextFrame.style.display = "none";

   var nextFrame = doc.all.RadAd_SkyScraper_InMessage;
   nextFrame.style.display = "none";

   var nextFrame = doc.all.RadAd_Today300;
   nextFrame.style.display = "none";

   var nextFrame = doc.all.CustComm_300x125_TodayPage;
   nextFrame.style.display = "none";

   var nextFrame = doc.all.CustComm_300x125_SMCPage;
   nextFrame.style.display = "none";

</SCRIPT>

That's all, now when you right click in your IE window and select Leave Me Alone, all the annoying MS ads will be gone.

This has been tested on Internet Explorer 7.0 public beta only.

I hate VS.Net 2002 so much

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 09:00:00 +0000

It took me two whole days to get my VS.Net 2002 back to work again, I can't hate it more.

Yesterday when I came back to office and, suddenly, VS.Net refused to start debugger. I tried everything on http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/html/vsdebug.asp which is a very detailed article on how to solve the issue but it was not helpful.

I reinstalled VS.Net suite, not help, reinstalled IIS and FrontPage server extension, not help either. After a few exhausted hours I finally decided to reinstall a clean Windows XP, oh my, that's a whole day's work.

And to my most furious anger, VS.Net didn't work either on the newly installed Windows, holy sheet MS! I tried everything on the MSDN article again and again but yields no progress. In the end I ran into a comment via Google says installing .Net Framework 1.1 solved his issue. Even though I was suspicious as VS.Net was designed to work with .Net framework 1.0 I installed it anyway. And you know, it worked! And this was never mentioned by Microsoft while I wasted two precious days in my life.

a very useful macro for VS.Net

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 06:55:00 +0000

I stumbled it upon
http://radio.weblogs.com/0104813/stories/2002/06/19/vsnetGoogleMacro.htm
l.

Duplicated from its original site:

Imports EnvDTE

Imports System

Imports System.Windows.Forms

Public Sub SearchGoogleForSelectedText()

Dim ActiveDocument As Object = DTE.ActiveDocument

If Not ActiveDocument Is Nothing Then

Dim Selection As TextSelection = CType(ActiveDocument.Selection,
TextSelection)

Dim SelectedText As String = Selection.Text

If SelectedText.Length > 0 Then

Dim GoogleUriBuilder As UriBuilder = New UriBuilder()

GoogleUriBuilder.Scheme = Uri.UriSchemeHttp

GoogleUriBuilder.Host = "www.google.com"

GoogleUriBuilder.Path = "/search"

GoogleUriBuilder.Query = "q=" & SelectedText

DTE.ItemOperations.Navigate(GoogleUriBuilder.Uri.ToString())

Else

MessageBox.Show("No text selected.", "Google Search",
MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error,
MessageBoxDefaultButton.Button1, MessageBoxOptions.DefaultDesktopOnly)

End If

Else

MessageBox.Show("No active document.", "Google Search",
MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error,
MessageBoxDefaultButton.Button1, MessageBoxOptions.DefaultDesktopOnly)

End If

End Sub

Open a VS.Net 2003 project in Vs.Net 2002

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 01:44:00 +0000

The company I worked only have licensed copy of Visual Studio .Net 2002 while now most projects on Web are based on VS.Net 2003. For example, FileDisassembly, an addin for File Reflector, generates project file based on 2003 format.

Even though I can manually add those source files and make them a new 2002 project, I found it will work if we change two attributes, ProductVersion and SchemaVersion,

Before:

<CSHARP ProjectType="Local" ProductVersion="7.10.3077" SchemaVersion="2.0"

After:

<CSHARP ProjectType="Local" ProductVersion="7.0.9466" SchemaVersion="1.0"

Productivity on Outlook with tags/labels

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 07:48:00 +0000

A quich scratch down in case I forget it later,

1. Copy a Day/Week/Month calendar view, and filter it with label='your condition'. For example, I need to monitor automatic server rebooting record, but they are just too many and mess with my existing appointments. So I created two customized views, one is to display server rebooting event only, one is to display others.

2. Normally, you will need to go View\Arrange By\Current View\... to select the view you need, it's cumbersome. I customized the toolbar to let them show a listbox in Advanced\Current View. Now it is just a click away.

Assign a key as Windows key on IBM ThinkPad T41

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 05:12:00 +0000

There is no Windows key on my T41 notebook while the key in my eyes is so convenient. After searching for some time and I finnally got a Remapkey.exe in Windows Resource Kit Tools which is provided by Microsoft. I assigned right CTRL as Windows key and the world is back to peace:)

When Excel formulas don't work

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 06:46:00 +0000

Today one of my colleague asked me why formulas in an Excel worksheet did not work, as shown below,
Somehow I remember there is a SHIFT+F9 to rescue even though I don't know why. After half of an hour of Googling I realized it was because automatic calculation was disabled. To make it worse, the automatic calculation settings are carried from original Excel workbook when you copy its content into a new one.

How to resize a Visio Cross Functional Workchart

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 06:39:00 +0000

We can't change it directly, need to resize a band instead. We might need to unlock its height property in advance.

To use identity column in MS SQL Server or not

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Mon, 26 Dec 2005 01:03:00 +0000

Many of my colleagues always avoid to use identity column, this I mean things like identity(1,1) column, in their database design. One of their point is copying a table with such a column will fail as MS SQL Server doesn't support. Well, I also knew the point as I encounter so many failures in importing/exporting tables while having no idea such a column is involved.

However, if we are copying data between two databases, identity column is not a problem at all as I tested this morning. There is a copying objects function in the data import/export wizard, selecting this will always work regardless of your column types.

One more thing, SQL Server prompted an error of BACKUP LOG on the destination database when a normal database user is used to executed the duplication. The issue was gone when I used "sa" instead.

Transfer objects between asp.net pages

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 06:28:00 +0000

There are four kinds of objects transferring between asp.net pages.

1. Front end to front end

This is the most common one, you use javascript to manipulate another page, or append certain string to call another page.

2. Front end to back end

In other words, a form submission,

3. Back end to front end

Everything thing you tell the Response object to do falls into this category.

You can also use the ViewState object to store variable values.

3. Back end to back end

Using Server.Transfer and Context.Handler you can query everything in the previous page object.

Using the src Attribute to Reference a Code-Behind File

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 07:26:00 +0000

As an alternative to precompiling the code-behind file, you can use the src attribute, as shown in Listing 1-7. Any file referenced with the src attribute of the Page directive is compiled into a separate assembly and added to the list of referenced assemblies when the page is compiled. The advantage of using the src attribute for your code-behind files is that you can update a code-behind file just by replacing the file, and the next request that comes in causes ASP.NET to recompile the referenced file. This saves the step of compiling the code into an assembly yourself and updating the physical assembly in the /bin directory. It also ensures that the file will be compiled with the correct version of the .NET libraries, if for some reason you have different versions installed on different machines. On the other hand, if you have a compilation error in your source file, it will not be detected until you deploy the file and the page is accessed again. Precompiling the assembly beforehand guarantees that you will catch all compilation errors before deployment.

Tell Internet Explorer not to close a pop-up dialog automatically

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 05:40:00 +0000

I have Windows XP SP2 installed which carries a very annoying feature,
that is automatic pop-up killer. Well, it sounds good, however, even
though I turned it off all the time, IE still kills my needed pop-ups.
After many frustrated tries, I added my site to the trusted site and
the damn issue is gone.

Misconducted by my VB experience on Substr

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 02:55:00 +0000

There is a Substr funciton in Oracle as well as in Visual Basic. To have the first 4 characters of a string in VB I usually write code like
first_4_char = Substr(some_string, 4)
and I followed this approach in PL/SQL programming, what a big mistake.

It should be
first_4_char = Substr(some_string, 1, 4)
in Oracle PL/SQL.

SQL*Loader prompted nothing when executed in TOAD

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 02:47:00 +0000

I uninstalled Oracle 8i Server from my own laptop yesterday because of company policy even though it is permitted by Oracle for development purpose based on my understanding. And I installed Oracle 9.2 client soon after.

But something with SQL*Loader went wrong, it prompted me nothing in Toad 7.3 when using SQL*Loader wizard. There was no such error before yestoday.

I tried to execute that sqlldr.exe at the command prompt, it was fine. So the problem should be with Toad. I logged into Toad while having no idea where to change. I opened the Option dialog, changed nothing, then clicked OK to exit. Toad told me that executable file for SQL*Loader was missing then. All right, I got it and fixed it.

Trim a spaces only string in Oracle

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 03:49:00 +0000

Suppose we have a spaces only string ' ',

In MS SQL Server,
Trim(' ') =''
Length(Trim(' ')) =0

However, in Oracle,
Trim(' ') is null
Length(Trim(' ')) is null

Debugging Oracle PL/SQL stored procedures

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 06:11:00 +0000

It is my first to write and debug an Oracle PL/SQL stored procedure
though I was quite experienced in its MS counterpart. It took me some
time to understand how to configure Toad to do this for no one in the
office has tried it.

Here is what I learned from Toad manual,
1. Copy source to Proc Editor window
2. Save it.
3. Compile it.
4. Set breakpoints and/or watches.
5. Go

We can also load stored procedure from Oracle Objects, there is a
toolbar button says "Load source from existing objects" on the second
row (by default) could be used.

And if the stored procedure is located in SYS database which is
unfortunatly my case, we have to enable "Step through SYS/SYSTEM
procs" under the View/Options/Debugging menu item.

Making use of Macro

noreply@blogger.com (zou) — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 01:08:00 +0000

I have certain performance analysis work to do everywork, one is to
reading from a IIS log file in W3C format, the other is a Windows
performance monitoring log in CSV format.

For the first one, I need to open it in Excel, delete its first 3
lines, then delete a few more words, and then divide the bulk text
into columns by spaces using "Text to Column" function, filter the
Excel file etc., and find out the top 10 time consuming request. I did
these every day for almost year before finally realized there is an
easier way.

The other one is simpler, first I need to format the first cells in
time format, select two columns, then insert a chart. This could also
be done by Macro.

As for plain text file, I can use Visual Studio 2002 which supports
temporary macros.