Entries for sysrpl

Windows 7 Alt-Tab Bug

sysrpl — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:25:48 GMT

Okay, here is a bug I don't think is too obsure, but it is biting me today. It has to do with alt-tab on Windows 7 and aero-peek.

The situtation (common for developers):

I have many opened top level windows on the task bar: 3 explorer windows, dos window, textpad, browser, download window, msdn offline help, visual studio, reflector, paintshop, sync framework 2.0 sdk chm

What normally happens:

When alt-tabbing you get a task list with iconic repsentations of the available top level windows. This is important because it shows when you press tab or shift tab which window is next or prior.

Example:

http://imagebot.org/snapshops/alt-tab-win7.jpg

The bug:

On Windows 7 with areo peek enabled, if you pause (release the tab key) for just a second while alt tabbing, the iconic task list moves from always on top, to always on bottom and stays on the bottom.

Reason for pausing ... pausing allow us to visually determine which thumbnail/application is selected. It might take your brain a second (I know mine does) to process the iconic window, expescially when you keep as many windows open as me. Pausing also allows us to think about the next window (continue with alt tab) and what is the prior window (shift-alt-tab).

I have tested in XP, the icon task list is always on top when you alt-tab, no matter how often or how long you pause.

Help Files [Help Files]

sysrpl — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:47:09 GMT

When viewing a chm (I'm looking at the Sync Framework 2.0 chm) is there any possible way to make it so that the language filter is *always* restricted to c#?

To me it seems useless to even have a language filter in help if every time you visit that page again or any other page it is reset.

in reply to Help Files

iphone + gphone = death of windows mobile [iphone + gphone = death of windows mobile]

sysrpl — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:08:02 GMT

The past few weeks tech news sites have been saturated with talk about new droid phones and reactions from iphone ardents. The avalanche of tech buzz is deafening.

Now I am beginning to wonder, in the future is anyone going to want a hand held mobile device which isn't also a phone, a browser, and an app platform? I think not.

Where does this leave windows mobile devices and its associated .net compact framework? Is there any room left in the smart phone market for windows mobile phones? Will windows mobile powered devices fade away, or will Microsoft boldly step forward with a competitor to droid and the iphone?

Enquiring minds would like to know...

in reply to iphone + gphone = death of windows mobile

OMG ... Win 7 = Such a Piece of S* [OMG ... Win 7 = Such a Piece of S*]

sysrpl — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 01:06:11 GMT

To be fair, some of the following rant is based on my experience on one computer. This week I will test some of the problems outlined below on other computers and determine if they are reproducible.

OMG, Windows 7 is such a piece of horse sh*t. I swear the OS is so borked beyond my ability to explain in words.

To start with, both Vista (my sister's laptop) and Windows 7 (my laptop) have horrible problems with wireless networking. We both have the same problem on two different networks (my house Linksys router, her house Netgear). Each time we visit each other's house (bringing our laptops) the other's laptop flat out refuses to work with the wireless network. We are able to connect, but the network has a limited availability icon, and is unable to browse the Internet. The *only* solution I have found to resolve this problem is to reboot the pc, which is retarded.

Normally I run XP, and runs Vista. She always has had this problem when she bringz her laptop to my house. I tell her rebooting isn't the proper way to fix this problem, but guess what? It's impossible (as far as I can tell) to fix it any other way. It's worth noting that I've never had this problem with XP. While visiting her this weekend (with my Windows 7 laptop in tote) the situation was reversed. I could not connect to her wireless. But once I rebooted the wireless worked fine. Ridiculous!

Today, when I got home, I and tried to connect to my network. Guess what happened? I received the "limited availability" problem once again. I decide to investigate further, and proceed to become completely annoyed to sh*t with Microsoft redesign of everything configuration related.

Allow me to explain this annoyance, breaking it two parts. First, how things used to be (in XP) and then how life is screwed up in Windows 7 (and probably Vista too ... I didn't use it enough to know what has changed between the two).

How XP does it:

Control Panel has a bunch of icons (once you turned off that annoying common tasks view), and each icon either led to a folder (administrative tools, fonts, network connections), or opened an applet. An applet was almost always (unless it was a third party applet or the gayness that was security center) was a dialog with ok and cancel buttons, and optionally property pages and an apply button. -- Simple, direct, nuff said

How Windows 7 does it:

Sometimes you get old style applets, other times you get something which mimics a rich web page like document view (with bread crumbs), and even other get new windows popups, which mimic web page like documents, and a lot of time sh*t just isn't accessible except through text links in a bar docked to the left. [1. see note at the bottom about icons]

What do I mean by some stuff isn't accessible? I mean Windows 7 bread breadcrumb bar tells me some control panel screen I am in, let's call it Y, is under path X. I click path X to go up one level, then click the chevron next to X hoping to see Y in the drop down list of X's sub items. But us what? X is not there. No that would be too logical, to have Y appear in that list. Scanning the entire screen presented by X I see no way to get back to Y. There is no way to get to Y from X even though Y first appeared as a child of X.

Now I know what you are thinking. Hit back to get to Y. Yes that works, but that's not the point. The point is how do I get to Y ever again? To that you might say same way you got to it in the first place. And how did I get to Y in the first place? Well through a link on a Microsoft property page in a Dialog launched from button attached to another web type applet which was launched from a popup list in the system tray of course!

Summary: WTF Microsoft?

And then is a weird behavior with those text labels in the web mimic's applets. This I need to verify, because it is totally borked and I have to believe it was just a weird glitch, but I'll mention it because maybe someone else has experienced this behavior.

The behavior: Sometimes clicking the text links on the left side of type web type control panel applets leads to the wrong place. What do I mean? I mean the text says one thing, clicking it goes somewhere entirely wrong. For example I clicked manage wireless networks and it brings my to the power settings applet. This has happened a few times, and I was able to reproduce it, but it doesn't happen every time. Needs further confirmation.

So then, I reboot my laptop only find my wireless Internet runs dog slow. I change some of my router settings (make it G only) and retry my laptop connection speed. Now for whatever reason I can't get to websites, but can ping google.com and microsoft.com. I add and remove my wireless (where did the repair option go? WTF). I get a limited availability icon again. I think, "Okay let’s have take up Microsoft's little offer to diagnose the problem." The diagnosis takes about 2 minutes and tells me how to solve my problem by describing what an ethernet cable looks like and recommending that I plug that cable into my PC. Great work there Microsoft! Plugging an ethernet cable into my computer to fix my wireless connection, why didn't I think of that? /sarcasm

I could go on for a few pages, but you get the idea. I'm not happy with Windows 7.

Notes:

1. Icons

Who the f*ck at Microsoft decided icons were bad and should be removed where ever possible? What do I mean by removed? The start menu icons for computer, control panel, documents are gone. They are just text in Windows 7. Explorer removed to ability to add or remove icons from the toolbar, and the any toolbar buttons are now just text. Gone are the up, copy, cut, paste, properties, full screen and more icons. In the control panel, the links on the "always visible left panel" are text only, not icons.

I prefer to look at icons glyphs with a distinctive (cartoonish) silhouette that tells me at a glance what something does without having to read. And so does everyone else. This is why our road signs are red octagons, red triangles, yellow diamonds, and yellow pentagons. Because when people are busy and want to keep their minds on a task (like not running someone over, or trying to get some work done), we don't want to stop to read a bunch of words for a common notification we might expect at time X (where X is when your are approaching a four way intersection).

I don't want a big wordy dialog taking up my entire field of view when copying a file (ahem, do you want to copy and overwrite this file, or copy and backup the old file, or do not copy at all? oh and btw, for how many conflicts would you like to handle with you answer? this one or the next 563? barf!)

I'd also like to write about two or three paragraphs about the Microsoft’s craptastic "realistic" icons ... but I won’t.

in reply to OMG ... Win 7 = Such a Piece of S***

WinForms Graphic Controls Question [WinForms Graphic Controls Question]

sysrpl — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:20:54 GMT

Hi, I mostly do Delphi development but would like to start my next small work project in Visual Studio using C# and Winforms.

Right away I see that there is something so easy to do in Delphi and potentially difficult to do in WinForms. I am hoping maybe someone could explain to me how this UI design task could be accomplished easily with WinForms.

Here is my design goal:

I would like to design screens with graphical elements (controls positioned at design time) which overlap each other. These graphical elements do not accept user input, but usually convey some text, image, background, shape, or other drawn item. The key though is this: these items are not rectangles, they are words or shapes and colors that may overlap one anther.

Here is a screenshot from my Delphi prototype which uses GraphicControl classes (standard in Delphi) to accomplish my goal:

Above we have an image control, two text label control, and a infobox control (rounded edged, interior gradient fill). Notice that the infobox is in the back, the text on top of it, and the image (globe with people) is to the left.

Now I can easily create these layouts in the form design using Delphi, but with Winforms there is a problem, all controls are windows and thus rectangular. They will clip the drawing of the controls behind them and not give me the compisited per pixel transparency I am going for. See a closer look of of the screen above an notice the controls are blended together:

Notice the variable per pixel level alpha blending. So my question is, how can I create this same layout in the Winforms visual designer where controls have variable levels of alpha blending per pixel and are all layered together on on top of another?

I can think of one solution, which is to have a control that requests controls underneath it to paint themselves in it (typically by sending WM_PAINT with your DC and the origin offset).

Is this already handled by the Winforms framework?

Is there a simple method I can call to compisite controls together?

Have other people tackled this problem and solved it in a form that can be downloaded?

in reply to WinForms Graphic Controls Question

Windows 7: A First Time in Microsoft History [Windows 7: A First Time in Microsoft History]

sysrpl — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:50:50 GMT

Please correct me if I am wrong, but is Windows 7 Microsoft's first OS released which has a lower system requirement than their prior OS release?

in reply to Windows 7: A First Time in Microsoft History

MSDN Online Facelift [MSDN Online Facelift]

sysrpl — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:18:15 GMT

When did Microsoft give msdn.microsoft.com a facelift? Go check it out.

in reply to MSDN Online Facelift

Another MS Lie: Windows 7 [Another MS Lie: Windows 7]

sysrpl — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:05:49 GMT

Big surprise here, Windows 7 isn't really version 7.

It's really Version 6.1.7600

Another MS lie.

in reply to Another MS Lie: Windows 7

Busted Laptop? Help! [Busted Laptop? Help!]

sysrpl — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:42:08 GMT

I need some advice here, because I am not too sure what is going on with my laptop. It is exhibiting some very strange behaviour and I'd like to know if anyone recognizes these symptoms and perhaps relay more information about the root problem if possibly.

The symptoms: Occasional problems include mouse clicks being ignored, menu items from all apps system wide are megred into a single menu, cannot drag windows, keyboard cannot be used to change the focused control. Alt tabbing to different app, and back to the same app seems to fix the problem, but sometimes it reoccurs again very soon.

Possible causes: I installed the beta nvidia driver for xp to experiment with opencl. I wrote an application which froze my video and the computer got really hot, at which point i had to reset. This happened over the weekend, and now I am experiencing the problems occasionally, and sometimes often.

What I've tried: Using the touchpad instead of the mouse. Uninstalling the video driver, installing the old video driver. Shutting down startup services and programs through msconfig. Installing a new version of Windows.

OS: Windows XP 32 bit SP3

Hardware: Vostro 1500 laptop, 4GB RAM, Intel Core Duo 2GHz, nVidia 8600m GS

Yup, and I tried installing Windows 7 to fix these problem, but they are still happening (albiet a bit more infrequently). The weird things is, I even encountered the same problems during windows setup.

Has anyone ever heard of a hardware failure causing problems like the ones I've described? I am wondering if my laptop is essentially toast.

in reply to Busted Laptop? Help!

Sync Services Question [Sync Services Question]

sysrpl — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:12:52 GMT

I am looking for an answer from someone experienced with MS Sync Services.

I'd like to know if it can synchronize an occasionally connected client using specific records from a table. For example, sending to a specific client only the updated customers from the southeast region, where the sync server maintains a customer table holding customers from all regions? Or does Sync Services only handle full table syncrhonization, that is to say, sending all customer record changes to all clients?

in reply to Sync Services Question

WPF LineGeometry Fill Problem [WPF LineGeometry Fill Problem]

sysrpl — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:17:43 GMT

Hi,

I am trying to write/design a ui in WPF where I display visual elements connected with lines something like in this article and seen in this screen shot from the sample article (differences below).

The difference is in my ui I'd like the draggable node elements to be colored, and have the lines (LineGeometry) blend from on color to another as it connects one colored node circle to another:

The problem is come into play in that you cannot specify the gradient in realtion to the start and end points of the LineGeometry, only in relation to the bounding rectangle of the containing Path. As the red, green, and blue circles are to be dragged around, it then becomes necessary to put each LineGeometry in its own Path, and perform somewhat involed calculations to determine the gradient start and end points which are recomputed whenever a circle node is dragged or moved.

My question is: Is there a more easier way to achieve the ui result I've described where the circle nodes can be dragged, which is different than the method I outlined in the paragraph above?

in reply to WPF LineGeometry Fill Problem

Online IDE [Online IDE ]

sysrpl — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:00:28 GMT

This is interesting:

http://www.coderun.com/

in reply to Online IDE

Orange Clear Type? [Orange Clear Type?]

sysrpl — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:37:58 GMT

in reply to Orange Clear Type?

Reset Blend Trial [Reset Blend Trial]

sysrpl — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 15:16:26 GMT

hello. does anyone know a simple way to reset the expression blend 90 day trial limit? i'm beyond my 90 days and would like to reset the trial counter ... uninstall and reinstall + deleting directories and registry keys didn't work :(

before anyone accuses me of stealing, i'll tell you i use blend for my personal education and to post examples to the silverlght community gallery. i will not pay for blend just to learn about xaml as applied to wpf or silverlight. if i was going to write silverlight or wpf software for commercial purposes, then of course i'd pay for a license.

in reply to Reset Blend Trial

HD Gaming w/Zune HD? [HD Gaming w/Zune HD?]

sysrpl — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 02:11:50 GMT

question (not an xna dev here): if i were to get a zune hd and write an xna app/game for that device, would it be possible to hook the zune hd up to a hdtv and get a 720p gaming experience?

or is the hdtv out on the zune hd restricted to videos only?

in reply to HD Gaming w/Zune HD?

New Dell Laptop: Fun or Folly? [New Dell Laptop: Fun or Folly?]

sysrpl — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:22:03 GMT

Yesterday morning I went to dell.com to track the status of a monitor I ordered, and I decided to play with their system builder for a new laptop (which I do every so often). I came across this:

Subtract $185 for a faster better CPU? Was this a mistake? With this option (the third on down) the price of the laptop was reduced to $325 shipped. I googled "vostro 1520 P8600" to find other prices online and found they were in the range of $800-$950. I upgraded the graphics to the nvidia 9300 and submitted an order for a total of $440 plus tax.

About an hour later I checked the dell system builder again for that same model and dell had removed the CPU upgrades other than the first two items. Then I checked my order and it was still valid.

This morning I checked the dell system builder and found this:

It looks like they corrected the error, but my order status still reflects the my deal price of $440. My question is, has this ever happened to anyone else when hsoppign at dell or any other online retailer, and what is dell policy towards these things? do they let the slip through or will they cancel my order?

in reply to New Dell Laptop: Fun or Folly?

Why I still prefer Delphi over C# WinForms [Why I still prefer Delphi over C# WinForms]

sysrpl — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 02:36:36 GMT

I've been using C# and Visual Studio at work, but I still keep coming back to Delphi. Here what I think Delphi has over C# and VS.

Some features I prefer/need:

sets and set operations
virtual constructors
deterministic and virtual destructors
virtual static methods
messaged based method and DefaultHandler
implementation through delegation
assign and assignto
property promotion
published section
access to source code examples of property editors, component editors, experts, design time support
full library source code
interface and implementation sections
design time binary/string properties, easy support to stream to/from dfm
class types
global level procedures and functions
block declarations
better com support
better windows api support
better visual control library
both graphic and windowed controls
onevents rather than method sounding events (click in c# vs onclick in delphi)
native code, no runtimes
asm, mmx, sse, sse2, sse3

Importantly from above organization

Block delcaration and interface/imeplementation sections really make a difference in organizing code. With the interface section I get to see the outline of the class/types, and with block declaration I see everything organized in a strict order.

class
private
    field
    field
    field
    method
    method
    method
protected
    method
    method
    method
    property
    property
    property
public
    constructor
    destructor
    method
    method
    property
    property
published
    promoted property
    promoted property
    promoted event
    promoted event

I love the above. Delphi forces you to place fields before methods, methods before, properties, properties before events. Delphi does not put the implemenation and declaration together, C# is nowhere near this organized. C# is a bunch of implemenation code rolled into declaration code, usually appearing in no organized pattern (ie.e things come in any order).

With C# you cannot block declare things such as:

const
WM_A = WM_USER;
WM_B = WM_A + 1;
WM_C = WM_B + 1;

WM_D = WM_C + 1;

Regarding class types, you can't do this in C#:

procedure ExecuteForm(FormClass: TFormClass): Boolean;
begin
with FormClass.Create(Appllication) do
try
Result := ShowModal = mrOk;
finally
Free;
end;

end;

To me, property promotion is also a big deal. I wrote a winform control in C# recently and was quite disappointed to learn of all the derived properties which were exposed as public which I would preferred to have hidden.

The windows control section of is also much more powerful. The base control, graphic control, custom control classes have so many more methods.

Event naming in C# irks me to no end. I really want to know if something is an event by looking a it. OnClick to me automatically tells me, "Hey, I'm a click event", whereas Click seems to me like an action (method) "Click the button". Then c# messes up events further with their virtual names using On (it's Do in Delphi).

Oh, and I'm not totally sold on EventArgsTypes. It is so annoying in VS to break open the help, searching for the an event to see the type, clicking the type to get to the about page for the type, clicking the EventArgsTypes, then click members, and finally learning what the parameters actually are. In case that want click, here it is in diagram form:

In VS highlight MouseDown in the property grid -> F1 help pops up
public event MouseEventHandler MouseDown -> click MouseEventHandler
public delegate void MouseEventHandler(Object sender, MouseEventArgs e) -> click MouseEventArgs
public class MouseEventArgs : EventArgs -> click members
MouseEventArgs Members -> scroll down past the constructor and methods inherited from system.object
Ah what type is "Button"? -> click "Button" to find public MouseButtons Button { get; }

In Delphi (using version 7 here) highlight MouseDown in the object inspector -> F1

type

TMouseEvent = procedure (Sender: TObject; Button: TMouseButton; Shift: TShiftState; X, Y: Integer) of object;

Boom! Now that was a lot easier. The event has 5 parameters, and Button is type TMouseButton.

That's enough for now. You get the idea.

in reply to Why I still prefer Delphi over C# WinForms

A Small Demo [A Small Demo]

sysrpl — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 01:13:00 GMT

I was asking about how to implement advanced word wrapping in this thread the other day. I've since written an implementation, and waned to share. Here is a short video screencast. I'm seeking opinions/feedback:

The video is hosted here

Screenshot:

in reply to A Small Demo

These forums stink [These forums stink]

sysrpl — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:11:39 GMT

I just wanted to post an observation: The channel9 forums reflect poorly on Microsoft's tools (.net/web forms) and the ability of Microsoft employees.

These forums have been awkward, slow, and just plain awful for too long. I can imagine Microsoft employees have been working on the backend of this site for quite a while, long enough that it's fair to give them a grade. I give them a D.

Allow me to enumerate the problems (remember, they've had plenty of time to address these problems):

First, the site is incredible slow from all the different computers and networks I've tried to while accessing it.
Navigation between pages on the site sometimes takes up to 30 seconds to load.
Occasionally while posting new messages or edits the server times out.
Using ajax to post messages to a web forum just does not work very well (I have lost many messages to ajax).
After I sucessfully sumbit an edit, I am taken to a page which does not reflect that that edit.
When it does load on Firefox I always receive a warning when ake to a page which entering the page.
Sometimes when posting a message and using the link or image command the popup appears without a form to fill out.
There is no text alignment function in the message edit.
The forum allows people to endlessly necro threads.

in reply to These forums stink

GDI/GDI+ Text Output [GDI/GDI+ Text Output]

sysrpl — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 15:59:27 GMT

Question: What do you think is the best method to wrap drawn text using gdi/gdi+ to acheive this type of text wrapping? I have a basic idea idea of how to tackle the the problem, which is do it through DrawTextEx and single lines, while caclulating the character index of the word break and adjusting the rect to move below and repeating until all the characters have been draw or the original drawing rect area clips.

Example of the kind of wrapping I am interested in:

I just thought that the problem would be *so common* that someone here may have tackled it previously and have some advice to dish. It's just difficult enough to warrant an question on these forums. TI

in reply to GDI/GDI+ Text Output

Gui Math [Gui Math]

sysrpl — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:31:21 GMT

I was working on something today and came across a gui element I wanted to render which involved a small bit of math. Usually I'm pretty good with basic trigonometry, but for some reason I could't solve it on paper. I may have wasted too much time thinking about the problem, but don't condsider it a total waste to refresh some of my basic math skills.

Anyhow, I created a diagram and figured I might as well share it. The problem is below:

Here is inspiration of this problem and my final gdi+ solution (minus my work) side by side. I'd be curious if anyone finds thinking about this sort of stuff while programming useful or wasteful:

in reply to Gui Math

How do you hide properties? [How do you hide properties?]

sysrpl — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:47:12 GMT

When using SWF (System.Windows.Forms), how can I remove a property of a control?

I wrote my own progress control which does not make sense to recieve input focus. As a result, I do not want the tabstop property exposed to others, but this property is public in SWF.Control.

I noticed SWF.Label descends from control, yet it doesn't show a tabstop property. Looking at SWF.Label with reflector I see nothing supressing the tabstop property. How is this done (SWF.Label removing access to its TabStop property)?

Here is the listing for SWF.Label from reflector:

http://pastebin.com/m17e41790

in reply to How do you hide properties?

This is weird [This is weird]

sysrpl — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 19:35:12 GMT

I was going through some of my old old code and came across a type called Variant I'd written back in 2002. I'd love to read your reaction to this:

Obviously, I'm asking for your reaction to my defining a variant type capable of converting to-from types and capable of working with late bound dispatch objects in the manner shown above ... I'm not asking about what you think about MSAgent :p

in reply to This is weird

Silverlight and WPF ... Poll? [Silverlight and WPF ... Poll?]

sysrpl — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:59:52 GMT

I noticed some people bashing Silverlight in another thread and was inspired to ask a few simple questions. Please answer honestly.

Have you taken the time to learn and understand all (or nearly all) the major relevant bits of WPF?

For those of you who answered no to the above question, what opinion do you have about WPF and do you want to switch (possibly sometime in the near future) to delivering WPF applications when targeting desktop applications?

in reply to Silverlight and WPF ... Poll?

Programmers are not immune to "The Stupid" [Programmers are not immune to "The Stupid"]

sysrpl — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:16:46 GMT

This is why I hardly ever use irc as a resource for sharing programming questions and answers. Link to formatted chat log for easier reading:

http://imagebot.org/chat/

in reply to Programmers are not immune to "The Stupid"