Upgrading a Visual Studio 2008 solution to 2010

God bless me...

Windows 7 display

Sometimes my customer asked why the software product that I am working on display well on Windows XP but Windows 7? I guess screenshot below illustrated using Office Excel and Task Manager is self-explanatory.

When Windows task bar meet Metro...

When the Windows task bar meet Metro style application icons, the squarish block is what we would be expecting.

Well, I still like it when it is not too Metro, like those at the right. Too metro could be a bit too much. Not every building in the city is square in shape. Not every car is  square in shape . Not every sign board has square corner, some is rounded.

So do you like Metro?

Winamp got 'shocked' in Windows 7

While winamp is playing music files, if I go to copy some huge files (> 500M I think) then there will be a very short period of special sound effect in the song. It happended when the copy operation first started, probably when Windows preparing the buffer or what. It sounds like Winamp got 'shocked' when copying large file ;)

Not sure if it will happened on Windows Media Player (WMP). It never is my favorite player and do not bother to find out.

Well, there is also special sound effect when sign-in to msn sometimes. The muted speaker will be un-muted for a very short moment. Can't remember the details now.

Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit with SP1.

Sometimes this will drive you crazy when using Visual Studio 2010

This came out more frequent than Visual Studio 2008. Well, new version of the software doesn't mean it is more reliable although it has more features. How will the Visual Studio 2012 perform?

programming's abcdefg....

When you make any phone call which requires to spell out word alphabet by alphabet, what word do you usually used for an alphabet? I've used to use country name for that. But if I will be calling to software company, let's try to have fun by using software/programming term :)

A - array
B - boolean
C - character
D - decimal
E - event
F - false
G - goto
H - heap
I - integer
J - java
K - kernel
L - long
M - module
N - null
O - object
P - pointer
Q - query
R - return
S - string
T - true
U - unsigned
V - void
W - while
X - XOr
Y - yield
Z - zcat

Finally the gaps are filled. Thanks for the feedback!

Make a call using gmail

If it is free for Malaysia, I will try for sure :p

Continuous innovation

When I log in to google reader today, there is a reminder on updating my profile, including this.



I am not sure if any other company did this, I am impressed.

Let's find bug

http://www.itechmax.com/2010/07/23/google-also-paying-users-3000-for-identifying-bugs/

http://www.itechmax.com/2010/07/17/mozilla-paying-users-3000-for-finding-bugs/

What a good tactic of encourage people to use your software by this. The software need to be quite stable, or the company will bankrupt :p

Do you goojie?

Well, almost everyone know google, but do you know goojie? *chuckle* Saw this from a friend buzz http://www.goojje.com// It is a very creative name. 谷歌（哥） then 谷姐。

Hope goojie search result is not filtered :p

Visual Studio 2010 is slower than Visual Studio 2008?

If you need to use Visual Studio, have you tried Visual Studio 2010?
I just got the Ultimate version installed and browsing through.

On first sight, the darker background color make it looks 'smaller'. For example, words like Solution Explorer. I compared it with Visual Studio 2008, the font size are actually the same. It looks smaller due to the dark color. Well, illusion...

I created a simple Windows application project, add a button and do some simple operation. Well, I felt Visual Studio 2010 run slower than Visual Studio 2008. It took slightly longer time in creating a project, building the project and also run the project. The intellisense seems to be slightly different and a little slower too. From google results, seems like I am not alone. Anyway, let's see how it goes when I get a chance to use it more later. I am comparing Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with Visual Studio 2008 Team System. I am not sure if this is an apple-to-apple comparison, but I assume those are compatible version, just named differently.

This is Visual Studio 2010 start up page. Enjoy coding :)



[Jul 15 comment] It load slightly faster now after I changed the Start up options to Show empty environment.

Using blogspot with Google Chrome

Haven't heard of google chrome? Another web browser.


I'd just recently install it, I quite like it, quite fast and slim, with just what I need.



Unfortunately I can't use it to write my blog post. Unlike Firefox, I can't find a way to resize my picture easily. Whenever I click on the picture I uploaded, the resize cursor just never come out.



In firefox, the resize cursor is like below, which I can drag to make it larger very easily.



If you find out a way to resize a picture easily in blogspot editor using google chrome , please let me know :)

*Forget about IE, my least preferences :p

How do you like Windows 7

Not to promote Microsoft Windows 7 :p Just some initial sharing on using it. Every time I see this 7, it will reminded me of Stephen Chow's movie CJ 7 长江7号 :p

From a user standpoint, the graphic is nice, and it is much faster compared to Vista. The user access security is less annoying compared to Vista also. I actually have not explore Vista much, just once or twice. One thing I found a bit frustrated is during user log in, I have to type the domain name by myself. Maybe this is done for security purpose, but if your PC name is not meaningful e.g. PSY12MB04 (could be assigned by your company IT :p ).

I saw some improvement on MS Paint, and the Snip Tool seems useful for me, I don't have to worry to run PrintKey in Windows 7 now. But I still prefer PrintKey, easier to use.

If running 32 bit application on 64 bit system, if your program failed to be installed, right click on the installer package and set the compatibility setting, let it run in older OS version e.g. XP.

From a programmer or software engineer perspective, it is just too troublesome to programming in 64 bit in terms of file system and registry view. The code posted by Microsoft doesn't seems to work at all :( Microsoft...

More to come, after I explore more.

Outlook email read notification

If you are an Microsoft outlook user, if you are not known about this.

A: MK, why you never read my email?
MK: I read, why you said I never read?
A: The read receipt you sent to me said you didn't read.
MK: Read receipt?

Then I went to play with Outlook options. Then I found out the reason.

I like to have reading pane in my Outlook as below:



After finish reading email 1, if I do not need keep it, I will just hit delete. The same for email 2 and 3. Take note the icon is a closed envelope when I delete the email, which if the email sender requested a read receipt, by default, a not-read receipt will be send, although I actually read it using the reading pane. To have a read notification sent, I have to double click (or scroll up and down to another email) to have an open envelope icon, then the read receipt will be a Read notification.

If you have a question, why am I not aware if a read receipt ever been sent? To customize to your needs, go to Tools | Options | Email Options | Tracking Options. Change it according to your needs.



Go through after email options if possible, to let the tool help you better. Enjoy emailing ;)

Standardize Words 2007 docx header quickly

Engineers cannot be exempted from documentation life as well. Although you are not engineers, but if you do have a needs to update single Header format to multiple Microsoft 2007 Words document (.docx), can try this : How to: Manipulate Office Open XML Formats Documents (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa982683.aspx).

I tried and updated few documents to have same header format quickly. Since this is just one time job, I do not write any program to do so. I browse the programming samples in given link and it doesn't looks difficult.

If you are still interested to read and if you know 7-zip. Before trying the steps above, I know .docx is in compress format and styling information is excluded from document body. Thus I just wish to try to figure out on my own first. I tried steps below but unfortunately it doesn't work, although it looks similar the steps in given URL.
1. Right click on .docx document which you have the header format ready. Select 7-zip | Open Archive and extract the header1.xml, copy headerl1.xml to somewhere else e.g. Desktop.
2. Right click on .docx doc which you want the header to be updated. Select 7-zip | Open Archive and replace its header1.xml with header file in Step 1, e.g. header1.xml on Desktop.
3. Open doc in step 2, the header information is not updated :(

How to perform resgen in VS post-build command

In my VS 2008 projects, I need to generate resource file from .resx file after each build (in case there were changes on the .resx file). Of cource I can do it manually but it is just not efficient at all.

To solve this, it is simple, go to project's properties page, at Build Events's post-build command box, type this:

"$(VS80COMNTOOLS)..\..\SDK\v2.0\Bin\resgen.exe" "{ResourceDirectory}\{ResourceName}.resx" "{OutputDirectory}\{ResourceName}.resources"

For example:
"$(VS80COMNTOOLS)..\..\SDK\v2.0\Bin\resgen.exe" "$(ProjectDir)Resource\MyResource.resx" "$(OutDir)Resources\MyResource.resources"

Remember to put the quote " in the parameter. At the very first time, I do not realize the quotes are needed, and always get error "The command $(VS80COMNTOOLS)..\..\SDK\v2.0\Bin\resgen.exe {ResourceDirectory}\{ResourceName}.resx {OutputDirectory}\{ResourceName}.resources" failed and exited with code 9009.

Hope this helps.

MS outlook 2003 vs MS outlook 2007

After using MS outlook 2007 for few months, personally, I still prefer MS outlook 2003:
1. 2003 version is faster in start-up time
2. 2003 version is faster in personal data file (.pst) file password verification
3. 2003 version has Advanced Search feature, which I can specify few options, I can't find those in 2007 version except a simple find text box.