Marten’s blog

‘Ok. Who changed this part!? Who can I blame?’

Some time ago I was looking for possibility to have functionality similar to ‘Blame’ - in Subversion - into Visual Studio for Source control. After some time just found what I’m looking for. It’s called Team Foundation Server Power Tools. It doesn’t contains only functionality for blaming your colegues, there is a lot more.

Unshelve Command

Use the unshelve command to unshelve and merge the changes in the workspace.

Rollback Command

Use the rollback command to roll back changes that have already been committed to Team Foundation Server.

UU Command

Use the UU (Undo Unchanged) command to undo unchanged files, including adds, edits, and deletes.

Annotate Command

Use the annotate command to download all versions of the specified files and show information about when and who changed each line in the file.

Review Command

Use the review command to optimize the code review process to avoid checking in or shelving.

History Command

Use the history command to display the revision history for one or more files and folders. The /followbranches option returns the history of the file branch’s ancestors.

TweakUI Command

Use the tweakUI command to modify Team Explorer client connection values. This command enables you set various connection settings. In addition, this command enables you to define the client certificate needed to connect to a Team Foundation Server that has been configured to require client-side certificates.

… and more.

To be honest, I still think that is better to use SVN as source control, many times we have problem with MS source control. Some files is not possible to get from repository with ‘Get latest version’ command, it doesn’t recognize files which are not modified but were saved.

Power Toys for Visual Studio Pack Installer

Power Toys

Power Toys for Visual Studio are small tools that provide aid to developer pain-points or assist in diagnosing development-related issues. In addition to providing support, the power toys are released as Microsoft Shared Source to provide sample code to real-world solutions and allow for collaborative-development.

The Pack Installer is your one-and-only tool for staying up-to-date with all community releases for Visual Studio and development. The 1.0 version is now available as a Shared Source Release on CodePlex. Last release includes new UI improvements, file download verification, and the availability of the Pack Installer specification and test plan.

Visual Studio Visual Studio

I was lately on Google developer day which is really great. The only disadvantage was that it’s not possible to be on all presentations, luckily Google provide videos for all presentations. Few days before this event I started experimenting with Google Website Optimizer.

The Website Optimizer allows you to test changes in the website content of your pages in order to determine what will be most effective in getting conversions. You choose what parts of a page you’d like to test — headline, image, promo text – and we’ll run an experiment on a portion of your site traffic to determine which content on your site users respond to best. When we’ve collected enough data, we’ll provide you with reliable reports and a suggested course of action in order to optimize your site for maximum business results.

One week after the developer day I found one book I shelf at work. I was just what I need to dive deeper into this problematic. Not even written in nice style, but with lots of best practices and comparison them to what will really increase your conversion rate and salary. This can be done be testing your site.

Websites testing

Internet Retailer reports that 76% of online retailers are not testing their websites. Have you taken the plunge yet?

Maybe you still have questions over your head like:

• How long does testing take?
• What’s multivariate testing?
• How much can I test at a time?
• What if I don’t get much traffic?

Or you’ve dismissed the idea because:

• Testing sounds hard.
• Testing sounds expensive.
• We don’t have time to test.
• We spent $60K on web design already!
• I’m not technical!
• I’m not a statistician!

Always Be Testing by Bryan Eisenberg, John Quarto-vonTivadar and Lisa T. Davis of Future Now / GrokDotCom addresses each one of these questions and excuses. After reading it, you’ll come away with an understanding of testing (even if you’re technically or mathematically challenged), types of tests, the testing process, how to use Google Website Optimizer and how to read its reports. Plus, how to determine your test length/quantity, what elements to test and how to prioritize your laundry list of testing ideas.

With over 250 ideas for testing, Always Be Testing will be a book you can constantly refer to for ideas in crafting your ecommerce marketing strategy.

You can check out a sample chapter (PDF), buy a copy from Amazon.com or download webinar with Bryan Eisenberg. The last think which can persuade you to buy this book is that you will get $25 AdWords free voucher when you buy the book for price less than $20.

Uncategorized books, google, testing, web optimization

I do all development stuff on virtual machine. Mainly because of trying new software and to have installation which I can always restore without any problem. Today I made update of Windows Vista and reboot problem where it gives the “configuring updates stage 3 of 3″ then reboots ad infinity. What I need to do as one of the steps is to boot from the original CD.

When you restart the virtual machine you will see vmware splash screen. Hit F2 right away to get into the VM’s BIOS settings. It can show only for really short time.

After that you will be in vmware BIOS. Use the right arrow key three times to move over to the “BOOT” menu selection. Use the UP/DOWN arrow key and the +/- keys to toggle the boot order such that “Removable Devices” is the very first (top) in the boot order. Removable Devices includes Legacy Floppy Drives.

Hit F10 to save and exit

Uncategorized VMWare

We have one problem in work, we spend with that two days without any solution, all we found cause some another problem. This is what help us when the page is not making second postback in update panel when the first postback is fired by element in UpdatePanel and refresh only update panels on the page.

Taken from Mike Ammerlaan’s Blog

Windows SharePoint Services JavaScript has a “form onSubmit wrapper” which is used to override the default form action.  This work is put in place to ensure that certain types of URLs, which may contain double byte characters, will fully work across most postback and asynchronous callback scenarios.  However, if your scenarios do not involve double byte character URLs, you may successful disable this workaround and gain the ability to use ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanels.

To do this, you may need to register a client startup script which disables this workaround, in addition to resetting the default form action:

<script type='text/javascript'>
  _spOriginalFormAction = document.forms[0].action;
  _spSuppressFormOnSubmitWrapper=true;
</script>

This script may be directly embedded in the page, or could be emitted by a control that uses the UpdatePanel. The following is an example of a very simple method which will fix this issue:

private void EnsureUpdatePanelFixups()
{
  if (this.Page.Form != null)
  {<br />
    string formOnSubmitAtt = this.Page.Form.Attributes["onsubmit"];
    if (formOnSubmitAtt == "return _spFormOnSubmitWrapper();")
    {
      this.Page.Form.Attributes["onsubmit"] = "_spFormOnSubmitWrapper();";
    }
  }
  ScriptManager.RegisterStartupScript(this, typeof(AjaxUpdatePanelPart), "UpdatePanelFixup", "_spOriginalFormAction = document.forms[0].action; _spSuppressFormOnSubmitWrapper=true;", true);
}

Sharepoint Ajax, Sharepoint, UpdatePanel

Today I found, that storing connection strings were little bit changed between .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.5.

Here is an example of how to store a database connection string in the application’s Web.Config file for .NET 2.0. The code for accessing the connection string is located in the C# code below.

.NET 2.0

<appSettings>
<add key="ConnectionString" value="server=localhost;database=TestDB;uid=sa;password=secret;" />
</appSettings>

And here is the C# code how to get it.

using System.Configuration;

public class TestGetConnection
{
  public TestGetConnection()
  {
    try
    {
      // Get connection string from Web.Config
      string strConnection = ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings("ConnectionString");
    }
  }
}

.NET 3.5

ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings is now deprecated.

<connectionStrings>
  <add name="YourConnectionString" connectionString="server=localhost;database=TestDB;uid=sa;password=secret;" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
  <add name="NewString" connectionString="server=localhost;database=TestDB;uid=sa;password=secret;" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
</connectionStrings>

And here is the C# code how to get it.

using System.Configuration;

public class TestGetConnection
{
  public TestGetConnection()
  {
    try
    {
      // Get connection string from Web.Config
      string strConnection = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["YourConnectionString"].ConnectionString;
    }
  }
}

You can use <remove /> to delete connection setting from web.config.

<connectionStrings>
  <remove name="YourConnectionString"/>
  <add name="YourConnectionString" connectionString="server=localhost;database=TestDB;uid=sa;password=secret;" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
</connectionStrings>

Connection String Syntax Notes

• Values may be delimited by single or double quotes, (for example, name=’value’ or name=”value”). Either single or double quotes may be used within a connection string by using the other delimiter, for example, name=”value’s” or name=’value”s’,but not name=’value’s’ or name=”"value”". The value type is irrelevant.
• All blank characters, except those placed within a value or within quotes, are ignored.
• Keyword value pairs must be separated by a semicolon ( ; ). If a semicolon is part of a value, it also must be delimited by quotes.
• Names are not case sensitive. If a given name occurs more than once in the connection string, the value associated with the last occurence is used.
• No escape sequences are supported.

If you need to connect to SQL Express, you shold use connection string with specifying the file you want to attach.

connectionString="Server=.\SQLExpress;AttachDbFilename=c:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\DATA\SpamTestimonial.mdf;Database=SpamTestimonial;Trusted_Connection=Yes;"

If you need to find all possible connection string, go to web page dedicated to them for more databases than you can image. http://www.connectionstrings.com/

.NET .NET, C#, Connection String, Database, SQL