Mamanze's Blog

OT: Outlook

2007-12-21T20:31:29Z

First and foremost, Outlook is a tool for accessing information from Exchange. Correct? That's been the old standby definition whenever someone complains of their piss poor IMAP support. Reasonable definition, IMHO. We all know they need to make money. Now, however, I run into the old problem of "You already have a Microsoft Exchange account set up. Outlook supports only one Exchange account at a time." Seriously folks. You want to sell Exchange Server licenses right? Why not open...(read more)

Undoctored screen grab:

2007-11-25T16:18:45Z

Yes, for some time now, my live.com homepage has been picking up the favicon from other sites I've recently visited. This one just seemed extra humorous: If anyone knows why this happens, I'd really love to know. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!...(read more)

Please don't change well established command line parameters

2007-11-15T23:32:07Z

Urgh, sit down this afternoon to play some audio via my home server and get no love. Every attempt I made ended up with the RDP audio driver being used on the server. Now, I always launch a connection via something like this: > mstsc -v:server -console That'll connect me to the console session on the server. When combined with a standard setting to "leave [audio] at remote computer", this lets me control Zune or whatnot remotely and have the audio played from the speakers connected to...(read more)

Someone not check their UI on Vista?

2007-11-12T21:58:51Z

Most useless dialog ever...

2007-11-05T06:18:44Z

WCF JSON output broken? Uninstall SP1!

2007-10-07T17:55:00Z

Yup, that's right. Vista SP1 breaks .NET 3.5 B2. How, you ask? By replacing a 3.0 dll with a newer version which doesn't contain an API that 3.5 b2 expects. It was a long, convoluted road to track this down so I'll spare you all the gory details. Symptom: WCF service returning JSON returns nothing. Cause: Someone had the bright idea that, even in debug mode, that when a WCF data contract serializer fails, the connection is just dropped. At least in the case of the JSON serializer. Symptom:...(read more)

IE Annoyance

2007-09-02T17:17:10Z

Take a look at this fairly standard IE dialog: (Shown in its initial state) K, what's wrong with that dialog? How would you accept that dialog with the keyboard? Try hitting Alt+Y. Alt+E? Alt+S? Nope, there are no access keys defined. How about hitting left and enter? Nope, left here does nothing. If you want to switch from the "No" button to the "Yes" button with the keyboard, you need to hit the right arrow key. Yeah, the right arrow key. To drive home that whoever wrote the dialog didn't know...(read more)

Most annoying uninstall ever!

2007-08-14T23:26:00Z

Alright, let me preface by saying that I love all of the RedGate products. They are great products. If I wasn't such a cheap *** I'd purchase them all. However, their uninstallation process could use some work. Specifically, I installed the SQL Toolkit a couple weeks back to test out the SQL Compare and SQL Data Compare applications. Process was nice and simple, download the installer, run it, choose which applications I want, hit go. Skip forward a couple weeks and I'm cleaning up my installed programs....(read more)

Mozilla: OnKey* Events

2007-07-06T17:40:20Z

This has frustrated me to no end. Why does Mozilla not fire my onkey* event handlers on a div? IE does it, Mozilla ignores me. Searched and searched, no hits. Finally I came up with this link: http://www.xulplanet.com/references/elemref/ref_EventHandlers.html Right, XUL... should have guessed. This doc now adds a bit of insight: onkeydown The keydown event is sent to an element that has the focus and a key is pressed but not released. Note the bolded word there: focus. This is, apparently, crucial....(read more)

WMP Silliness

2007-06-26T00:24:09Z

Ok, what's up with this? I have my task bar on the right side. WMP, when docked to the task bar does this: Why is it vertical? Is it because it might not fit horizontally? Nope. Seriously, did someone test this feature? At least the buttons are all oriented correctly. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!...(read more)

Silverlight: When Single is not enough

2007-06-23T21:14:00Z

As stated here : Numeric Values Stored as Single-Precision Values Silverlight stores all numeric values internally as single-precision values. This means that if a property value is set to a higher precision value, such as a double, the property value that is later retrieved may not be the same, due to truncation or rounding. In most cases this is probably fine. For dimensions though, this is a pain point. Why? I ran into this problem when I created a scrolling container with a long content div:...(read more)

Visual Studio / DevEnv Request 2

2007-06-20T22:20:05Z

While I'm at it: Toggling key strokes for windows. For example, I routinely fat finger the F4 key, which of course brings forward the properties window. I've yet to figure out a way to get rid of it without moving my hand over to the mouse. Why can't I just hit F4 again? Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!...(read more)

Visual Studio / DevEnv Request

2007-06-20T22:17:42Z

K, on all docked windows, when they are in the auto hide mode, please put a button on there to hide immediately. It is one of the most frustrating things ever when you pull it open, do something with it, go back to your doc and then stare at it, willing it to hide but it simply refuses to hide. Usually end up toggling the auto hide. How hard would this be to add through an extension? Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!...(read more)

NTS: Stop Debugging != Detach

2007-06-03T05:40:46Z

I often make the mistake of typing without really paying attention. Simple things like attaching to Cassini: ALT D P W ENTER I don't even think about it anymore. Then, when I need to make a change I hit Shift + F5 to stop the debugger. For Cassini this effectively detaches from the process. Not so for other process it would appear. Turns out, when I went through this cycle rapidly a few minutes ago, Cassini wasn't running. First "W" in the list at the time happened to be winlogin process. Yeah, you...(read more)

Infuriating redundancy

2007-04-16T18:27:47Z

Alright, I realize that nobody will read this but I'm quite annoyed and need to spout again. In my ever evolving quest for information, I've subscribed to a lot of RSS/Atom feeds. I have about 50 feeds that get pulled every couple minutes (Outlook does a lovely job of this, btw). Most of these are centered around .Net development, including the full feed from MSDN and ASP.Net . These are usually quite good, but every now and then, something like the Silverlight announcement comes out. I'll have to...(read more)