Entries for twoelfer

what i hate about help ... [what i hate about help ...]

twoelfer — Sun, 30 May 2004 14:38:10 GMT

... is its 'speed' (if thats the correct term to use here)

ok, i admit its ok for help to initially load for some time. (although this sucks too.)

but why is it, that although i have everything installed locally to my hard disk, that searching for anything is _much_ ___MUCH__ slower in the help system that is installed on my maching than in google? (or even msdn online !)

its so slow, the help browser sometimes even gets a timeout and displays an 'resource currently not available page' !

man, that sucks.

WM_FRUSTRATED
thomas woelfer

in reply to what i hate about help ...

fyi: passport mail system is blacklisted [fyi: passport mail system is blacklisted]

twoelfer — Fri, 14 May 2004 15:43:01 GMT

fyi:

the mail server microsoft uses to send out email confirmations when mail adresses of passport users are change is blacklisted.

the server is profile.microsoft.com [207.46.248.71],
and it is listed on bl.spamcop.net

this makes it impossible to change ones mail adress in passport incase a spam filter using spamcop is inplace on the passport users side.

it really would be nice if you did something about this.

and btw: the server that is used to send out login information for webcasts [ 207.46.248.70 ] is also blacklisted at spamcop. that makes it impossible to join a webcast incase one is using spamcop :(

WM_FYI
thomas woelfer

in reply to fyi: passport mail system is blacklisted

msdn managed newsgroups [msdn managed newsgroups]

twoelfer — Fri, 14 May 2004 11:45:59 GMT

this is the second time this happens; thus this 'complaint'.

as a part of developer support, there are managed newsgroups where according to msdn, a subscriber will receive answers within two business days. (which, imho, isn't very fast but better than nothing of course... :)

well, i am a subscriber and i have been for quite some time.
however, i only used the managed newsgroups twice. the first time, it took almost 14 days for an answer to drop in.

this time, the first answer came almost emmediately from another developer. sadly, his answer did not solve the problem.

( Cannot open form in forms editor anymore, [ http://msdn.microsoft.com/newsgroups/managed/default.aspx?so=1&pg=2&dg=microsoft.public.vsnet.ide&lang=en&cr=US

posted on 5/7/2004 - sorry, i don't think theres a way to post a url that points directly to that post.

])

however, i did receive a mail from some guy with an microsoft mail-adresse ( Gary Chang [Intl Vendor]). from the tone of the mail i assume this guy acutally is some kind of robot.

anyhow, gary said there was an answer up in the managed newsgroups and if could be so nice as to post another message indicating if the answer was helpful.

well, thats what i did. that happend eight days ago.

yesterday, along came another mail from gary.

it has almost exactly the same content. there was an answer bla bla bla if i could be so nice as to post another message indication if the answer was helpful bla bla bla.

this is _my_ post he's telling me about. and its absolutely clear from the content of my post that the previous answer did _not_ help. this is why i think that gary character is some kind of robot: obviously he/it didn't even read the post.

this sucks big time. especially in this context:

'an answer from the newsgroup community or a Microsoft support professional within 2 business days'

( from here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/newsgroups/ )

WM_CHEERS
-thomas woelfer

in reply to msdn managed newsgroups

this absolutely, totally sucks: vs error messages [this absolutely, totally sucks: vs error messages]

twoelfer — Thu, 06 May 2004 18:15:08 GMT

i dont know how often i've seen this in the last 12 months.

i'm trying to open a form in the forms editor and receive the following message:

'An error occured while loading the document. Fix the error, and the try loading the document again. The error message follows: ?'

yeah. sure. error message is: ?.

of course i haven't even touched the form before. and i have absolutely no idea whats causing this. i was working on a completely different project.

i think this one problem alone has used up more of my time than all the other productivity improvements in vs haven given me.

note: the XmlSerializer also tends to throw exceptions with the wonderful message '?'.

guys, this really needs to be fixed. and not with some code that might or might not ship in 2005.

WM_ANGRY
thomas woelfer

in reply to this absolutely, totally sucks: vs error messages

whats wrong with .net debugging [whats wrong with .net debugging]

twoelfer — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 15:17:15 GMT

just stumbled accross this, so while i'm at it, here's another one...

the one single issue i hate a lot is that there's no way to make the clr 'run' 'as if' it was running on a different platform.

that is, i'd like to debug my app running inside the vs debugger ontop of xp pro while the underlying version of the net clr and framework thinks i'm running it ontop of w98.

here's why: not everything in the .net framework is supported on all platforms. and yes, this stuff is documented, but unsupported stuff still kinda turns up in the code... which means: you need to code on xp, and still test against installations on 98 (at least) nt and w2k as well.

it would be _much_ better to just tell the environment to behave as if one was running ontop of an 'older' platform.

WM_MY0.02$
thomas woelfer

in reply to whats wrong with .net debugging

whats wrong with internationalization [whats wrong with internationalization]

twoelfer — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 13:59:37 GMT

well, one more... :)

so just imagine.... you're in a strange foreign country like that one. folks have a strange language, umlauts and stuff... so - you're working with vs running ontop of a german language xp, debugging a .net app running ontop of a localized version of net framework.

somethings just plain wrong with that app, cause from time to time you end up in the debugger with an exception that was thrown somewhere deep inside windows forms, possible because of some strange interop behaviour... and guess what: the exception-message has be localized to german.

and whats more: there isn't any way to find out what the original message (the english one, that is) ever was. however, the only way to find out what that exception is all about is to go ask google - but this is kind of hard if all you'Ve got is a damned translated message that (almost allways) return zero search results.

this has to stop. the original exception text (or id, whatever) absolutely needs to be available for debugging purposes, no matter what locale you're in. if its not, you're making it really hard for developers outside the us to track down problems.

WM_MY0.02$
thomas woelfer

in reply to whats wrong with internationalization

whats wrong with msdn? [whats wrong with msdn?]

twoelfer — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 13:44:14 GMT

its not only windows that needs some things fixed... :) - pls. be so kind and take a look at msdn. i think theres two major issues that need attention; and one of them has been an issue for _quite_ some time now.

1.) search sucks big time. for example, go to msdn.microsoft.com and enter 'userdata behaviour' in the search box. ( and yes, i _know_ its spelled 'behavior'. that is, _now_ i know. ). thats what you'd do incase you were searching: you know this stuff is there somewhere, but you don't know the exact spelling of it. (and you sure gonna misspell things incase us english isn't your native language in the first place.). so - guess what: search leaves you with zero results. zilch. none. now, switch over to our friends at google and type in: 'userdata behaviour site:microsoft.com'. guess what? _they_ _do_ get a result. well, two actually. at least its a start. from there, you'll finally end up at the right page on msdn, after you figured out how to spell that word... <sigh>. i can come up with more search related stuff like that...

2.) vs2005 and longhorn isn't here yet. but still, tons of stuff is beeing published thats related to vs2005, longhorn, yukon - and other technologies that simply aren't here yet. infact: its so much stuff that its getting hard to find information on technology that is available right now. you know, the tools that i'm working with to build applications that my users can use today.

WM_THXLISTENING
thomas woelfer

in reply to whats wrong with msdn?