C# Snippets

jQuery Mobile swiperight too sensitive

2011-12-29T14:33:00.001+08:00

While adding functionalities that triggers when the jQuery Mobile swiperight event is fired, I met the same problem as ade_cd, where the swiperight event gets triggered even when I am scrolling a page. On examining the jQuery Mobile 1.0 source code, I realized that the jQuery Mobile team has taken his suggestion and made the previously hardcoded values into parameters. The parameters should be

Getting the DayOfWeek in Linq to Entities

2011-12-08T13:23:00.001+08:00

Entity Framework has several pros and cons. The pros of strongly typed objects and shorter code compared to the equivalent SQL kept me from going back to using SqlCommand directly. However, I met another cons of Entity Framework today — that is the lack of support for DateTime.DayOfWeek. I have a table [Booking] with a column [StartDateTime]. Using the following code results in an error. var

Enkompass 11.30 unfit for ASP.NET hosting

2011-11-22T10:20:00.001+08:00

After facing various issues with Enkompass, I’m giving up on it and moving to Plesk. I shall document the issues to remind myself not to go back to Enkompass until the issues are resolved. Hopefully, this also serves as a guide to those evaluating whether Enkompass caters to their needs. Enkompass supports only one ASP.NET application. There is no way to configure virtual directories or new

Recovering DotNetNuke Host menu after unchecking Include in Menu

2011-05-10T21:02:00.001+08:00

The Admin and Host pages in DotNetNuke can be hidden from the menu, just like other pages. However, a bug in DotNetNuke causes the Host page to lose its connection to its subpages. Luckily, it is reversible, as mentioned in http://www.dnncreative.com/Forum/tabid/88/aft/31023/Default.aspx. Just type the following UPDATE {databaseOwner}[{objectQualifier}Tabs] SET PortalID = NULL WHERE TabID = 7

Prevent getting disconnected/blocked from school network when running virtual machine

2011-04-20T12:15:00.001+08:00

In Nanyang Technological University’s (NTU) Local Area Network (LAN), whenever one plugs a personal router into a LAN port, the port will be blocked for 10 minutes. If the router is still present after 10 minutes, it gets blocked again. This is probably to ensure that nobody connects a wireless router/access point and turn the non-password secured physical port into a wireless one. However, this

Bing Maps 7 API bug in MouseEventArgs.getX and getY

2011-02-27T14:45:00.001+08:00

The new Bing Maps is a lot more lightweight, and the changes in event handling makes more sense. For example, it is now possible to detect viewchangeend event instead of using an assortment of onendpan, timers and getCenter to detect whether the view has changed. However, I ran into the same problem mentioned here http://www.ms-windows.info/Help/map-control-v7-mouse-wheel-double-29660.aspx. The

Oddities of Facebook events API

2011-02-08T09:19:00.001+08:00

Using the the Graph API of https://graph.facebook.com/[userId]/events, one can retrieve the events that the user is attending. The same applies to page, using https://graph.facebook.com/[pageId]/events. However, what does it mean by the event attended by a page? It is not the same as the events created by the page, as the API returns less results that what you would see in the events tab of the

Oddities of Facebook event date/time

2011-02-07T23:55:00.001+08:00

Facebook is very popular globally, crossing several time zones. Yet to my surprise, it has no concept of time zones. Quote from the Legacy REST API Note that the start_time and end_time are the times that were inputted by the event creator. Facebook Events have no concept of timezone, so, in general, you can should not treat the value returned as occurring at any particular absolute time.

A comparison of DjVu and JPEG2000 in PDF

2010-10-18T16:27:00.001+08:00

Some time ago, I stumbled upon DjVu, a document archiving format. I have previously scanned several printed documents into JPEG and compiled them in ZIP archive. The method is sub-optimal, producing large JPEG files and creating non-viewable files, unless uncompressed. Placing the JPEG files in PDF, while making it viewable, increases the file size further. DjVu presented a much better

Downloading Facebook Profile Pictures to Outlook Contacts

2010-09-03T22:41:00.001+08:00

Microsoft Office 2010 introduced the Social Connectors. With the Facebook Connector, emails now come with faces, thanks to the connector downloading profile pictures from Facebook. Opening contact items shows faces as well. The next logical step is to use that contact item’s profile picture as the business card picture. However, no matter how I click-and-drag the picture over to the placeholder,

Restoring Windows 7 Image Backup to any partition

2010-08-30T11:07:00.001+08:00

With my C: running out of space, I deleted the recovery partition on my hard disk. However, as the recovery partition occupied the space before C:, Windows was unable to expand C: to take the space. To move C:, I used GParted Live USB. However, GParted only created the partition, totally wrecking the data and Windows can no longer boot (WinRE cannot even recognize that I had Windows 7 installed).

Red Black Tree Tutorial

2010-03-29T09:20:00.001+08:00

On examining the red black tree used for the SortedDictionary class, I realized Microsoft did not use any recursion for insertion and deletion. This seems weird, because I have never come across a top-down tree balancing method. Then I found the Eternally Confuzzled - Red Black Tree Tutorial, which clearly explains how it is done. Thanks Julienne!

Runtime Complexity of .NET Generic Collection

2010-03-28T12:44:00.001+08:00

I had to implement some data structures for my computational geometry class. Deciding whether to implement the data structures myself or using the build-in classes turned out to be a hard decision, as the runtime complexity information is located at the method itself, if present at all. So I went ahead to consolidate all the information in one table, then looked at the source code in Reflector

Programmers are Tiny Gods

2009-10-10T22:54:00.001+08:00

Derek Powazek says Programmers are Tiny Gods. Maybe this explains why some people call me god? =P

Rasterizing a vector brush for fast scaling animation

2009-10-10T20:55:00.003+08:00

When animating (scaling) a complex WPF vector brush, 100% of my CPU is used. The animation also looks jerky. To speed things up, I rasterized the vector brush into a bitmap brush. The CPU load decreases below 30% and the animation became much smoother. So how do I create a bitmap brush? There is no meaningful properties or methods to override in the Brush class, as most of the workings of brush

Creating Shortcut to Application Inside Windows XP Mode

2009-09-23T21:02:00.001+08:00

The easiest way to get a Windows 7 shortcut to an application inside XP Mode is to load up the Virtual Machine and within the guest Windows XP, create a shortcut in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu. This method can be used to create shortcut for Internet Explorer 6 and Outlook Express. However, when I use the same method to create a shortcut to Pinball Space Cadet, the Windows 7

Office 2010 CTP compatibility with Nokia PC Suite and Visual Studio 2008

2009-09-22T17:38:00.001+08:00

I use the Nokia PC Sync feature to get my handphone calendar and Outlook calendar in sync. A clean install of Windows 7 Professional, Office 2010 64-bit edition and Nokia PC Suite 7.1.30.9 didn’t work out well—the PC Sync could not detect Outlook and thus cannot synchronize. Apparently, Nokia PC Sync can only detect the 32-bit version of Office 2010. So I uninstalled the 64-bit version and

Getting Chinese Handwriting Recognition on Windows 7 Professional

2009-09-21T23:16:00.005+08:00

Installing Language Pack To have Chinese Handwriting Recognition, the Chinese Language Pack needs to be installed. According to Microsoft Help and Support, Windows 7 language packs are available for computers that are running Windows 7 Ultimate. Implicitly, it means that other editions of Windows do not have language packs. To verify that, the instruction from Windows 7 Center showed the

Virtual Box Seamless Mode

2009-07-01T22:11:00.000+08:00

Just discovered Virtual Box had seamless mode. Virtual PC has a lot to catch up! The latest version with seamless mode is still in beta… Here, I’m running Fedora 11 in virtual machine, sharing the same desktop as Windows 7 RC. Cool, isn’t it? Some minor problems though. All the Linux applications, including the panels, appear as a window on Windows, so clicking on any Linux app will bring

LUA bug for Windows 7 XP Mode setup

2009-06-29T20:53:00.002+08:00

There are 2 files that need to be installed for XP mode. Installation of Windows6.1-KB958559-x64.msu went OK, but VirtualWindowsXP.msi gave an error – your administrator prevented the installation. To install correctly, I had to Shift+Right Click on the VirtualWindowsXP.msi, and click Run as a different user. Once it is installed, clicking on Start>Programs>Windows Virtual PC>Virtual Windows

ASP.NET Label with DropDownList functions to reference another data source

2009-06-23T16:00:00.001+08:00

I often encounter the following situation in ASP.NET when using a DetailsView to display a row that contains a reference to a table

10 Useful Firefox Extensions to Supercharge Firebug

2009-06-21T22:51:00.001+08:00

I often find Firebug lacking in certain areas, such as finding where a certain html tag is used. Jacob Gube came out with a list of add ons for Firebug (which itself is a Firefox add on), that I find very useful.

To support long file name (>260 char), get a wider (>260 columns across) monitor

2009-05-20T23:26:00.002+08:00

Though Windows Explorer has gotten flasher with each version of Windows, it still stumbles on the long file name that NTFS supports…

WinForms cue/prompt/watermark/placeholder TextBox and other controls

2009-05-17T18:00:00.001+08:00

I thought writing the placeholder text box was much easier in WPF than WinForms, since WPF allows graphical elements to be overlaid easily. I was wrong! For WinForms, a P/Invoke can achieve that function since XP and Vista had it built-in. Thanks to Aaron for the source. Aaron Lerch » Blog Archive » Watermarked edit controls

The “Coolest” DHTML Calendar

2009-05-03T12:58:00.001+08:00

Searching for a JavaScript calendar returned a lot of results. However, most calendar implementations out there are buggy. They are also written in the old JavaScript ways without all the prototyping stuff, causing conflicts with my own variables and functions. After trying out some of the calendars, I found this calendar to be the best—stable, prototyped and has few side-effects. Only worry is

Start Menu - Enable Folder and Library Pin to Start Menu

2009-04-28T23:29:00.001+08:00

Dragging the Computer link in the start menu to the Pin area creates a pin for Computer. However, while it is easy to pin, it is impossible to remove! Luckily, by just adding a new registry key, the context menu will show the “Unpin from Start Menu” item. Instructions at Start Menu - Enable Folder and Library Pin to Start Menu - Windows 7 Forums

Why no more 16-bit support in Windows 64-bit?

2009-04-23T15:44:00.001+08:00

It seems kind of weird that Microsoft removed support for running 16-bit programs on 64-bit Windows. Even in Windows 7 32-bit, 16-bit programs are still supported. How different can the code be? Why is the 32-bit version written but not ported to 64-bit? The following article explains why Virtual 8086 mode It is AMD and Intel who removed support for 16-bit on 64-bit. Code for 16-bit support on

Confused by news titles

2009-04-21T16:37:00.001+08:00

Windows: 'Life Without Walls' Microsoft: Walls will become computers of the future So are there Walls or no Walls?

Ten Ways to Ensure RIA Failure - MIX Videos

2009-04-04T21:32:00.001+08:00

How to make a project fail. Ten Ways to Ensure RIA Failure - MIX Videos

Mod your Visual Studio Professional

2009-03-21T19:01:00.001+08:00

Here's my list of developer tools for Visual Studio Professional. Dreamspark only provides Professional Edition, so I'll be listing the alternatives for the missing features that are only available for Team Foundation. All software listed are free unless otherwise stated. Client-side Code templates and refactoring SlickEdit Gadgets generates methods to retrieve data from clipboard,

CSS Centering: Auto-width Margins

2009-03-20T21:31:00.001+08:00

has been deprecated in XHTML 1.1. Replacing it with

did not work. The correct replacement is

on the child element and a text-align:center on the parent element. Credit to CSS Centering: Auto-width Margins for example.

Windows 7 and Life Without Walls

2009-03-11T09:21:00.001+08:00

A demonstration of web and networking functionalities in Windows 7. RAZORTV - R.age: The Bonus Stage (Pt 2)

ASP.NET Supervising Controller (Model View Presenter) From Schematic To Unit Tests to Code

2009-02-23T22:59:00.001+08:00

A very practical way of implementing MVP for ASP.NET: ASP.NET Supervising Controller (Model View Presenter) From Schematic To Unit Tests to Code

Useful blogs about installing Windows 7 Beta 1

2009-01-20T21:29:00.001+08:00

Download site http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/01/10/windows-7-beta-official-direct-download-links/ http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/12/27/windows-7-beta-1-build-7000-dvd-iso-image-torrent-and-namipan-download/ Getting a product key http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/01/10/hack-to-get-windows-7-beta-product-key-instantly/ Installing Windows 7 on a VHD and coexisting with other OS. http://

Fujitsu T5010 Drivers for Windows 7 64-bit

2009-01-17T23:05:00.017+08:00

While Fujitsu does not officially support Windows Vista or Windows 7 64-bit, there are already drivers available for most devices. Here are what I have found. Agere Systems HDA Modem - 2.1.87 http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/win/163452 Wacom Penabled Tablet http://www.wacom.com/tabletpc/driver.cfm Intel GM45 Chipset INF Update Utility - Zip Format http://downloadcenter.intel.com/

How to recover from an accidental deletion of linux boot partition (Part 3 of 3)

2009-01-06T23:02:00.002+08:00

Again, life didn't go so smoothly. Before resorting to using VirtualBox to recreate the files in the boot partition, I chose the Install or Upgrade option of the Fedora DVD. I tried to do an upgrade on the existing partition, namely /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00. The installation failed with an exception thrown. Then I resorted to VirtualBox and doing everything in Part 2. Upon rebooting, all went

How to recover from an accidental deletion of linux boot partition (Part 2 of 3)

2009-01-06T22:59:00.004+08:00

Continuing from the previous post. Everything would have been up and running again if I had did exactly as said in the previous post. However, I did an extra step. As suggested in forums, to create a partition, I would first fdisk and then mkfs.ext3. So I went to type this instead. sda7 is the newly created partition. #fdisk /dev/sda n p 1 w #mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda7 #reboot Again

How to recover from an accidental deletion of linux boot partition (Part 1 of 3)

2009-01-06T20:25:00.013+08:00

Being new to Linux, I made a big mistake in deleting the boot partition. The story goes like this. A hard disk supports at most 4 partitions. I had Windows Vista and Fedora 10 installed. My system has 2 partitions taken up by the system recovery image. Windows Vista's Disk Management reports the partitions as follows 6 partitions? Hmm, I thought it could have been that the recovery partitions

Placeholder text using Adorner, improved

2008-10-25T21:43:00.003+08:00

Previously, my adorner only supports TextBox, RichTextBox and PasswordBox. I found it limiting, as there are so many controls out there that supports editing text. One such case is the ComboBox with the IsEditable property set to true. After trying to add a new code brunch to support the case of ComboBox, I bumped into a wall. The IsFocused property of ComboBox is not reporting the right thing!

Radial Panel

2008-10-04T20:31:00.004+08:00

In Applications = Code + Markup: A Guide To The Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation, Charles Petzold showed us how to create a radial panel. A radial panel presents its children elements around the circumference of a circle. While good, the code did not address the case when there is only 1 child, causing it to behave oddly. There are also some bugs in painting the pie lines, with the

Fujitsu T5010 Tablet PC

2008-08-12T19:03:00.011+08:00

Got my hands on the brand new, not in the market T5010! Designed as a successor to T4220, the T5010 comes with a Centrino 2 chipset and a processor from the P family. The Centrino 2 chipset features a faster integrated graphics (Intel GMA X4500HD) and support for Wi-Fi a/g/n. The P family of processors is the newest from Intel, consuming less power than the T series of processors. Mine comes

Placeholder text using Adorner

2008-01-13T18:17:00.006+08:00

In the previous post, I subclassed TextBox in order to introduce a placeholder text. I realised that there is a better way - one that allows me to use only 1 class to add placeholder text to a TextBox, RichTextBox and PasswordBox - and that is using an adorner.To use it in xaml, simply addxmlns:src="clr-namespace:Huan.WhiteDwarf.UI"to the root element, e.g. Window, and addsrc:Placeholder.Text="

TextBox with Placeholder Text

2007-12-28T18:47:00.001+08:00

After seeking high and low for a WPF TextBox that will display placeholder text when the text is empty and has no focus, I came across allsorts46's implementation for WinForms. I cannot find a WPF version, so I seek to implement one that intercepts TextBox.OnRender event to draw the placeholder text. However, when drawing text in the OnRender event, the text always appears behind the textbox,

WPF Interop with ExceptionMessageBox

2007-06-18T21:13:00.003+08:00

Update: Apparently there is a better way to do it, as explained at IEnumerable I've been porting part of a Windows Forms project to Windows Presentation Foundation. I've been using ExceptionMessageBox to show error messages. Its Show method takes an IWin32Window argument. However, WPF forms does not implement the IWin32Window, so there is no way to directly pass System.Windows.Window into

Bootstrapper for MS SQL Server 2005 Express SP2

2007-06-07T18:17:00.001+08:00

While trying to find out why Visual Studio 2005 Setup and Deployment Project fails to compile when I added MS SQL Server 2005 Express as the prerequisite, I came across SQL Server 2005 SP2 has been released and Bootstrapper for SQL Server 2005 Express Edition Service Pack 2. In the former article, Mike, developer for the SQL Server 2005 Express, said that his team is going to release a

Windows usability dropping

2007-04-06T17:59:00.000+08:00

Windows Vista, Office 2007 and IE 7 all had their user interface revamped. However, I find the new interface harder to use. In Vista, the Start button is gone. The button had been named Start so as to let new computer users know what to do after they switched the computer on. I had tried Fedora Core 2 before. The first time I started it up, I was lost on how do launch programs. There is no Start

Printing Documents

2007-03-26T12:24:00.000+08:00

There are times when a program needs a printing function. However, the PrintDocument class provided in .NET seems to raw, requiring one to measure of each word in a string, and lay it out on the page. There must be a better way, and after some searches, I found the gem below. How to print the content of a RichTextBox control by using Visual C# .NET or Visual C# 2005 http://support.microsoft.com/

Unpaid to Learn

2007-03-18T23:00:00.000+08:00

I am currently working as a freelance programmer. My employer has this policy that he will not pay me for the time taken for me to learn. This might sound reasonable at first, however, as days into the project, I felt an eerie connection with the programmer who is paid per-line-of-code. I could not rationalise such a connection until now. Programming is a very vast skill set by nature. No matter

Preparing Dataset for XSLT

2007-02-23T21:45:00.000+08:00

To apply XSLT on XML, the xsi namespace needs to be set. This is a way to set the namespace for an XML generated from Dataset.GetXml string xmlnsNS = "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/"; string xsiNS = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"; XmlDataDocument xmlDocument = new XmlDataDocument(); xmlDocument.LoadXml(ds.GetXml());