At some point you need to stop polishing and let it go already – so I did just that today: SubSonic 3.0 is released. This thing took me just about a year to finish up, and a lot of work has gone into it.

So, what’s new? Well…

• A nice Linq engine which parses IQueryable “stuff” into SQL (thanks to Matt Warren’s excellent work with the IQToolkit, which we stole mercilessly).
• A templating system which allows you to use ActiveRecord, good old Linq in Linq to SQL style, or whatever floats your boat.
• A SimpleRepository which is just about zero-drag and even builds your database for you
• A brand-new project site that will hopefully answer the question “is SubSonic dead”? Or probably not
• A new docs site that has permanently crushed my ability to type. It’s a wiki so if you feel like being helpful and like SubSonic and want to help… nudge… nudge

Should You Care?
That’s a tough question – so it’s the first I’ll address.

• If you like Linq and you’re not working with SQL Server and EF is a bit much for you – yes.
• If you like Linq and you are working with SQL Server… well nobody ever got fired for using Microsoft so “maybe”. Linq to SQL is awesome and it’s not dead .
• If you like a “low-friction” approach from a helper framework – then yes. You can’t get much lower-friction then SimpleRepository.
• If you like SubSonic to begin with, then yes. There’s still the same grooviness here.

Should You Be Afraid?
Hopefully not – I’ve really tried to test the tar out of this thing before letting it go (that’s why this took me so long). I’ve had a lot of help with this (many thanks to Eric, Paul, George Capnias, and Jim Zimmerman) and a lot folks reporting bugs (and a TON) of patches so hopefully it’s solid. That said – this is a major release and it’s also Open Source. You will need to be a bit flexible and hopefully you won’t mind helping us out. Which brings me to my final point…

Our Repo Has Moved. Yes, Again
All was going very well until 3 things happened:

1. I needed to put the 3.0 repo together with the 2.0 repo. It’s not a branch – it’s its own repo for sure. 2.2 is not a “tag” so… what to do? The only thing to do is to have the trunk split into versions which is ALL kinds of messy. I needed another repo for my project, and Google doesn’t let you do that.
2. I needed a really cool, collaborative system for our template sharing, which also should have its own repo.
3. Google SVN began to crumble and crash on me, causing me to drop/reload every week or so.

I’ve been using GitHub for a while and I absolutely LOVE it (more on that later) so with this release, we’ve moved to GitHub. I’ve kept the Google site open so we can work on existing issues, etc but I’ll be closing it in the coming month or so.

The Goods

• The new project site is here
• The new docs site is here
• The new Source site is here.

I’m going to go have a beer or five and then go blow stuff up for the 4th like a good Amrrrcan.

***Disclaimer: This information applies to Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 only.***

 

This post applies to the following Visual Studio 10 Beta 1 extensions:

1. MEF component
2. VSPackage

 

Visual Studio looks for extensions in the following folders:

• %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Extensions (user extension)
• %VS10_Install_Dir%\Common7\IDE\Extensions  (VS trusted extension)
• %VS10_Install_Dir%\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions (VS trusted extension)

 

Depending on where we deploy our extension, it will be an user extension or a VS trusted extension.

User extension

• It can be enabled / uninstalled from the extension manager window

• Visual Studio will only load the extension if it is enabled in the extension manager
  • HKCU\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\ExtensionManager\EnabledExtensions

VS trusted extension

• It cannot be enabled / uninstalled from the extension manager window

 

• Visual Studio will always load it

 

Pablo

***Disclaimer: This information applies to Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 only.***

 

Quan already wrote a great post that explain what VSIX is. In this post I will covered the details of VSIX deployment.

 

When we double click a VSIX file from windows explorer the following dialog is shown:

 

 

This is because the .vsix extension is registered within the windows shell. As part of that registration there is also information about which program to launch when we double click a VSIX file. And that executable is the VSIXInstaller and it is located under %VS10_Install_Dir%\Common7\IDE\VSIXInstaller.exe

The VSIXInstaller tool uses the Microsoft.VisualStudio.ExtensionManager.IVsExtensionManager service to install the extension, which perform the following steps:

• It unzips the content of the VSIX file under %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Extensions\%Extension_Author%\%Extension_Name%\%Extension_Version%.
• It adds registry information under HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\ExtensionManager\EnabledExtensions to enable the extension in Visual Studio. 

Depending on the extension content type a Visual Studio restart will be needed. This is the case for MEFComponent and VSPackage content types.

 

Stay tuned,

Pablo

***Disclaimer: This information applies to Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 only.***

 

The first that you notice when compiling a VS package project is that the compilation is really *fast*. Really much faster than compiling an VS 2008 VS package.

This is mainly because of two important changes in a VS package registration:

1. There is no package registration with the regpkg utility
2. There is no devenv /setup execution

 

The updated VS SDK msbuild targets now include the following list of actions in order to support the F5 experience:

• If a VSCT is present in the VS package project
  • Compile VSCT
  • Embed CTO
• Create pkgdef file
• Create VSIX manifest file
• Create VSIX file which includes
  • Project assembly
  • Project references
  • pkgdef file
  • VSIX manifest
  • All items with build action set to “Content”
• Deploy VSIX to user extensions
  • It is deployed under %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0Exp\Extensions\%Company%\%Package_Name – Package_Guid%\%Package_Version%
• Enable the extension
  • The key HKCU\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0Exp\ExtensionManager\EnabledExtensions\%Company%\%Package_Name – Package_Guid%\%Package_Version% is written

 

After the VS project is compiled you can hit F5 within VS and another instance of VS (pointing to the experimental hive) will start and our extension will be there, enabled and ready to run.

 

Pablo

It was very warm and humid last night in Manchester, UK and so I sat up late catching up on a whole bunch of blog-reading that I haven’t done for a few weeks. I tend to use my blog-reader ( FeedDemon ) in the same way that I use Outlook. I go through everything, delete anything I’m less interested in and then revisit the other stuff at a later point and I thought I’d spend some time today visiting all those posts I’d flagged as interesting. Whilst doing that, I thought I’d share what they were here – note that some of this stuff is a little old now as I’ve not been reading those blogs as frequently as I used to. I’m sure I was meant to be doing something else but I found a day mostly made up of reading other people’s posts really useful and enjoyable so I reckon it was a day well spent. WPF Multi-touch in WPF 4 Beta 1 – this seemed particularly relevant to me based on my recent experiments with multi-touch Workflow 10-4 Good Buddy, First Look at WF 4 Learning by Example with 4 Introducing the WF4 Designer Introduction...(read more)

***Disclaimer: This information applies to Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 only.***

 

Visual Studio 2010 no longer requires you to create a Package Load Key (PLK) for deploying a VSPackage extension.

For Isolated Shell applications the Shell Load Key (SLK) requirement has also been removed.

 

Great news and less pain debugging PLKS!!!

Pablo

***Disclaimer: This information applies to Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 only.***

 

Visual Studio look and monitors the following folders for pkgdef files:

%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Extensions

%VS10_Install_Dir%\Common7\IDE\Extensions

%VS10_Install_Dir%\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions

These locations are defined in the %VS10_Install_Dir%\Common7\IDE\devenv.pkgdef file.

Every time that Visual Studio starts, it looks for pkgdef files in these folders and merges them in the registry automatically. The last thing that happens is a devenv / setup (if needed). All of this is being done behind the scenes and it is completely transparent to the user.

 

Pablo

Many of the web applications I build make use of e-mail somehow. Whether it's the ASP.NET Membership services that send out account confirmations or reset passwords, or some custom logic that sends out e-mail, I typically used an SMTP server on my local network or one from an ISP. However, using a remote server isn't the fastest nor most secure way to send mail.

In this article I will explain you about method overloading i.e. compile time polymorphism.

During our last deployment, we added the ability to insert code snippets into the discussion boards.

This will display a window for you to post in your code and to preview with syntax highlighting.

Technorati Tags: CodePlex Tips

In this article I am going to show how we can export data grid in excel, word and notepad file.

The battery life on my iPhone is laughable. If I want to actually use it, like make use of it, then it's dead by after lunch. With 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, work and personal mail, yada yada, it's a joke.

Here's a picture of me with my first external battery pack. This got me through the day, but it wasn't very convenient.

When the Mophie Juice Pack Air was announced, I was thrilled. Over the moon. A battery pack that was also a case? Sleek and doubled your battery life? Brilliant.

I ordered one immediately on Amazon. When it showed up, I learned that there's actually a "Juice Pack" and the "Juice Pack Air." This distinction had escaped me...turns out I ordered the original Juice Pack, rather than the more sleek and form-fitting Juice Pack Air.

I did some research, and found out that there's basically three differences between the Juice Pack and Juice Pack Air.

Juice Pack Juice Pack Air Chunky and only covers 7/8ths of the back of the phone. Sleek and covers the entire phone. 1800 mAh 1200 mAh Always on (always trying to charge) On/Off switch lets you decide when it's charging

I liked the slim idea of the Air, but I figured 50% more mAh was better for me as a power-user, so I stuck with the standard Mophie Juice Pack, not the Air.

Now, let me say, I really want to like the Mophie Juice Pack. Truly. I hate being negative because I realize there's a company and actual humans behind this product.  However, it just doesn't live up to real world usage.

Wear

I've had the Juice Pack for just about 60 days. I don't work in construction and I don't throw my phone around. Still, the surface of the Juice Pack is rubbing away in a really unattractive way.

See the picture at right? The shiny patches on the corners are where it's wearing away. This is after 2 months.

The sides of the pack have, for some reason, (perhaps grippy-ness?) rubber strips about 2 inches long. On both sides it's wearing away. On the one side it's sliding off and the adhesive/glue stuff is showing. It's very frustrating to see such poor construction around my little phone Star Trek Data Pad.

Charging Behavior

I use the pack all day and so far, it DOES get me through the day, from 8 am to about 6pm before I need to start worrying. I have the brightness of the phone at 30%, Wi Fi on, Bluetooth on, GPS off. I figured with 1800 mAh would get me 12+ hours of normal usage, as the specifications talk about numbers like 28 hours of audio playback and 12 hours of 2G (Edge) talk time, but still, 10 hours is not bad.

The Mophie Juice Pack has 4 small LEDs on the back that tell you how much charge the pack has left. The features page says it has "Smart Battery Technology [that] instructs the iPhone to always drain out the juice pack first." As a technologist, I think this statement isn't really fair, as the iPhone thinks it's plugged-in when the batter is attached. When the "plug power" (in this case, the battery) stops, then the iPhone's battery stars. This is the same behavior as my old $10 4 AA battery charger.

The Juice Pack doesn't have an on-off switch, so it tries to charge the iPhone immediately, even if it doesn't need it, which appears to use power. For me, this means that the Juice Pack's battery is dead for me by around 1pm, which means I'm on my own by the early afternoon. I'd prefer to have the opposite behavior, which is enabled by the switch on the Juice Pack Air. I'd like to drain the iPhone's own battery first, then have the Juice Pack kick in.

Weird Behavior

A nice feature of the battery is that the charging cable is a standard mini-USB, which is more standard than the iPhone cable. However, one oddity is that sometimes I'll have the phone inside the battery and a charging cable attached to the battery and both are discharging. I'd expect the battery to always charge when plugged in. In these cases I have to separate the battery from the phone in order to charge the former. It's odd, as it's caused me to end up with a dead phone battery even while the external one was plugged in, just not charging.

Power Drop Off

After only 2 months, even though I discharge the battery fully (via normal use) every day, and charge it overnight, its lifetime had dropped already. This is after about 60 full cycles. When the battery light indicator reaches 2 out of 4 LEDs, it drops off dramatically within an hour. Basically 4 LEDs to 2 LEDs is 3 hours and 2 LEDs to 1 LED is an hour. This is anecdotal, to be sure, but it's everyday and it's dramatic to the point of pissing me off.

Unreasonable Expectations? Maybe.

The specs say 350 hours of standby?  I can't see how, unless EVERYTHING is turned off...perhaps 350 hours of airplane mode. I'd like a single 18 hour day of normal usage. Or, even a reliable 12.

It's so bad that I have purchased car chargers for both cars and I'm forced to top-up at least once, sometimes twice a day.

It was US$100, which is a lot for anything, including a battery. It's now ugly after two months and at this rate, I'll  be surprised if the charge lasts the rest of the year.

If you have this battery, leave a comment here. Did I get a dud? We'll see and I'll keep this review updated.

© 2009 Scott Hanselman. All rights reserved.

"But it’s the same laptop!" my wife said. I've been using a Lenovo T60 or T60p for a very long time. Since it came out, in fact. I had a T60 at my last job for years, and a T60p all the while at Microsoft. I have happily running 64-bit operating systems on my T60p with 4gigs of RAM…unfortunately with the caveat that the T60p can only address 3gigs, no matter what. (Unlike its smarter cousin the T61.)

I've been at Microsoft almost 2 years (it'll be 2 years in October, I think) and I've been begging my boss for a "hardware refresh." That's Microsoft speak for giving your laptop back and getting a better one. You're better off if the laptop you want is "MSIT Supported." Folks have been known to order all sorts of crazy stuff, but they're responsible for keeping it running if things go south.

My budget was limited and I wasn't able to get an SSD (Solid State Disk, vs. a regular hard drive) in my new laptop, but I would have needed at least a 160gig version anyway, so I'm not too sad.

I've been trying out two Lenovo laptops and settled on one. The other gets sent back to Lenovo.

First, The Beast, then Ultimate Winner. Note that all of this is just my opinion, and I didn't get any free stuff or whatever. I'm just writing a review because I felt like it.

The Beast - Lenovo ThinkPad W700

I was on-site working for a week recently at a large NW company that does business online. I took the W700 with me for a trial run. During the final presentation of the code I had written for this client, it was noticed I'd forgotten to remove a reference in the code to a proxy server I'd been running, so the Senior VP saw "http://bigasslaptop:8080" on his conference room screen. At least it wasn't a proper cuss word, but I felt I needed to explain myself to the room. I pulled out the ThinkPad W700 and the VP I thought I'd offended said "Holy s***, that's a big ass laptop. Ok, I get it now. Continue."

There's nothing else it could be called. This laptop is only a laptop if your lap is two-laps wide. This laptop could be considered a deadly weapon and beat a man to death. This laptop has its own gravitational pull with netbooks and smaller laptops orbiting around it.

it's truly awesome. It is a quad-proc machine with an amazing 1920x1200 17" screen and a second 1280x768 pull out side-car monitor. What's that extra monitor for? Toolboxes, the Solution Explorer, your Email, whatever. It's brilliant, and don't knock it until you've tried it.

If you're looking for a luggable, this is the pinnacle. My #1, and really ONLY problem with the laptop is that it's just too big for my bag. In fact, i was unable to find a bag, backpack or briefcase (even my beloved Zero Haliburton aluminum case) that could hold it.

However, if you want a desktop machine that you can really easily move around, look no further. It's a portable machine, but not a machine you move lightly, or without a buddy assist and strong back.

The WEI scores speed for themselves. A 7.2 on the processor out of a max of 7.9, that's crazy on a laptop. Notice the 5.8 for 3D graphics. It's a great gaming machine (Half-Life looks great) and it'd be excellent for 3D modeling. Interestingly, only the Hard Drive suffers compared to the W500.

The Perfect Laptop - Lenovo ThinkPad W500

The W500 is EXACTLY like my T60p. But with more awesome. It basically fixes every tiny thing that was wrong with the T60p, which was very little. It weighs the same and looks exactly like the T60p. It adds an integrated webcam in the bezel, which means one less thing to carry on trips. It also adds a built-in card reader in the front, which is nice as I've got a half-dozen SD Cards lying around. There's 3 USB ports, a VGA port and a Display Link port and a nice ATI card with a half-gig of RAM. It'll run my big monitors no problem. The screen on the W500 is amazing, running at 1920x1200, but the same size as the T60p.

It's got Bluetooth, WiFi with an external switch (thanks!) as well as WiMax built-in, which is rolling out through my town.

There's a standard PC Card and an Express Card slot. It's got Gigabit Ethernet, which is nice as the whole house is wired. There's also a FireWire port in front. The only thing it's missing is an External SATA slot.

The W500 isn't the big powerhouse that the W700 is, but it's no slouch for a laptop. Notice that you'd have a 5.9 WEI if you drop out the 3D score. I wish I could have put in a SSD but budgets are what they are.

I love this W500 because it's exactly the same size as the T60p. It's the T60p, but updated with everything new, fast and wonderful. It's a nice, normal-looking laptop that is so powerful I can use it as my main machine. There's lots of giant laptops, but the W500 isn't. I can totally use it on a plane without trouble.

To be clear, I've got a MacBook, I've got a Dell Mini 9, a Dell Studio, and a Toshiba. I've used every brand under the sun and I realize that everyone's got their own opinion. Everyone's had a laptop fail and decided that THAT brand sucks.

I've personally had great success with Lenovo ThinkPads for work. They are the tuxedos of laptops. I'd buy a Mac for a personal machine and run Win7 on it (I do) but for work, as a developer, the ThinkPad W500 is rocking my world. I'm running Windows 7 happily on it as well as booting into a Windows 7 VHD with Dev10 installed.

Size Difference Photos

Here's the W700 under a 17" MacBook Pro under a W500.

 

 

Related Links

• Wiring the new house for a Home Network
• Wiring the new house for a Home Network - Part 2 - Design Q&A
• Wiring the new house for a Home Network - Part 3 - ISP Hookup
• Wiring the new house for a Home Network - Part 4 - Thank You Cat 6 Gigabit Ethernet
• Wiring the new house for a Home Network - Part 5 - Gigabit Throughput and Vista
• New Job, New House, New Baby, and Designing a Totally New Home Office

© 2009 Scott Hanselman. All rights reserved.

All licenses are 10% off for the duration of the sale.  If you contact us after the sale, sorry, you missed it.

You want to the source code added on to your Small Business or Corporate account we are offering it for 50% off these same two days.  Open a ticket with your information request and we will take care of you.

 Visit the online pricing page for more information.

No, this is not a pricing change.  This is a short and sweet 4th of July Fireworks sale.

Recently I deployed a WCF service using NTLM transport authentication.

  

An issue arose when calling the service from a remote server where Kerberos authentication was not working correctly.

 After contacting the infrastructure team, I was informed to use NTLM and not Kerberos as the authentication provider.

By default, IIS uses Kerberos and NTLM for network authentication.  It will choose to use Kerberos if the client is thought to support Kerberos as in this case.  To force IIS to use NTLM only is relatively simple.

First, open IIS to determine the website identify.  This can be done by navigating to the Websites folder:

The adsutil.vbs admin script can be used to set the authentication provider.  The screenshot below illustrates:

Also, different virtual folders can have different NTAuthenticationProviders settings.  For example, if the virtual folder “HelloWorld” was to be modified only, the command would be:

C:\>cscript c:\inetpub\adminscripts\adsutil.vbs //nologo SET "W3SVC/1/Root/HelloWorld/NTAuthenticationProviders" "NTLM"

Notes:

Related Knowledge Base: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/215383

Recently I deployed a WCF service using NTLM transport authentication.

  

An issue arose when calling the service from a remote server where Kerberos authentication was not working correctly.

 After contacting the infrastructure team, I was informed to use NTLM and not Kerberos as the authentication provider.

By default, IIS uses Kerberos and NTLM for network authentication.  It will choose to use Kerberos if the client is thought to support Kerberos as in this case.  To force IIS to use NTLM only is relatively simple.

First, open IIS to determine the website identify.  This can be done by navigating to the Websites folder:

The adsutil.vbs admin script can be used to set the authentication provider.  The screenshot below illustrates:

Also, different virtual folders can have different NTAuthenticationProviders settings.  For example, if the virtual folder “HelloWorld” was to be modified only, the command would be:

C:\>cscript c:\inetpub\adminscripts\adsutil.vbs //nologo SET "W3SVC/1/Root/HelloWorld/NTAuthenticationProviders" "NTLM"

Notes:

Related Knowledge Base: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/215383

In this article we will start with a basic LINQ to SQL example and then see how we can implement one-many and one-one relationship using ‘Entityref’ and ‘EntitySet’. We have also attached a source which demonstrates the same in a practical manner.

This article will show how to add new functionality in HtmlHelper class using Extension method. This will give step by step explanation of, how to create or add MENU functionality n Html helper class and then use that in view of ASP.Net MVC application.

Using PopUp Control In Silverlight

Yeah, title says all. Mindsharp, Nintex, and Combined Knowledge are sponsoring a Global SharePoint Survey. This is an independent survey that you can fill out to let them know about your experience with adoption and usage of SharePoint from your perspective. The survey is quick (only 15 questions) and most questions are multiple choice. You could probably let your cat or two year old fill it out (I did) but also consider taking a few minutes to put some thought behind it (unlike what I did).

In the end, you get a chance to win a conference pass to the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009 (October 19-22) in Las Vegas. This pass is worth $1,119 USD if purchased with real money. A winner will be drawn randomly after the closing of the survey July 17th then notified by email and/or phone. Note the contest is *only* for the conference pass. You still need to provide a way to get there and pay for your hotel, mini-bar, and pub crawl expenses (and trust me, when you hang with SharePoint dudes, the bar bill can get pretty hefty). Still, it’s a short slice out of your life for a chance to make it big in the city that never sleep.

You can fill out the survey here. Enjoy and good luck!