Tolsdorf.NET

Windows 7 is due out next week, but I have access to download it now from MSDN (thanks to my most excellent company’s subscription!).  I’m very tempted to try it and am curious about changes from Vista to 7.  I have too much “stuff” on my work machine to format it, but I could probably clear off my laptop enough to format it.

We’ve had a couple of guys around the office running Windows 7 previews for awhile now and they love it.  Our network admin has been trying it out and hasn’t had any real complaints, although we’re not going to convert everyone from Vista to 7 right away.  Our migration to Vista was slow and painful, done mostly as we replaced or upgraded hardware, and we don’t care to do that again.

For all of it’s shortcomings, I have grown to live with Windows Vista.  I still believe that Windows XP (SP2) has been Microsoft’s best OS ever.  We still have a few XP machines (some virtual, some physical) in our network for various reasons.  Some users grew up with Windows XP, it has great application compatibility and is very stable.

But Vista brought a slick new interface, the Windows Sidebar and User Access Control.  It also brought multiple versions, just like Microsoft did with Office.  I run Ultimate at the office and Business on my laptop.  Relatives have either Home or Home Premium, and I’ve been fortunate enough to avoid support situations that were version specific.

Windows 7 is Microsoft’s attempt to appease those XP users that didn’t want Vista forced into their faces.  They even include an “XP Mode” for any applications that can’t run on 7, although I imagine you’ll need a decent amount of resources to run what amounts to a VM within the Windows 7 environment.  Windows 7 also allows Microsoft to end-of-life Windows XP, which it had to continue selling and supporting during the Vista backlash.  Large networks will now have to seriously evaluate their XP nodes to decide if it’s worth supporting an old OS rather than upgrading.

I’d like to install 7 on my laptop when I get a chance.  If nothing else, it’s supposed to significantly improve battery life which would be great!

We are about to take a family vacation to Disney World, and I’m not sure whether to be excited or not.  I haven’t been to Disney World in 20 years, so it will be quite an experience since this one will be with 3 kids!  My girls are very excited, especially since we booked a Princess Breakfast for one morning, and my son can’t wait to meet Lightning McQueen.

One of my best friends has made several recent Disney trips, both with and without kids, so I was able to pickup some valuable pointers and resources.  These sites have been great:

• http://allears.net/
• http://pscalculator.net/pscalc.php – Book your activities as early as possible!
• http://www.wdwinfo.com/
• http://www.mouseplanet.com/

The main point to keep in mind is, if you plan to do any activities that require a reservation…make the reservation the earliest possible date.  The PS Calculator site can generate a list of activities, phone numbers and dates to call.  It can mean the difference between breakfast with Cinderella or breakfast at the hotel!

One of my friend’s recent comments was that “there is no wrong way to “do” Disney…but there is no right way, either.”  Simply put, there are an overwhelming number of activities, rides and shows.  Your best bet is to do some research, decide what key activities you (and your kids) want to do and plan around those.

With that in mind, another great resource is Touring Plans (http://www.touringplans.com/).  They are a subscription service, but well worth the price of admission.  You can choose which park, how long you’re there and what type of tour you want (young kids, teens or adults), and they show you a suggested plan.  The plan is complete with a ride schedule, when to grab (and use) a Fast Pass and even meal suggestions.  They help you hit the highlights and popular rides without standing in line for hours.

We’re starting to pack, my TripIt itinerary is updated and we’re looking through touring plans.  I am excited about the trip, any chance to spend time with the family is great.  Traveling always brings surprises (especially with kids), and those are sometimes the best memories.

About a year ago, one of my best friends introduced me to an awesome travel web application…TripIt (http://www.tripit.com/).  The service is free and really amazing.  They provide a single resource for all of your travel information.  Simply forward your confirmation emails to them and they scrape important information and automatically import it to your itinerary.  It’s just awesome.

I used to print my confirmations just before we left, which worked fine until I lost them.  Then I would decided to save all of my emails re-forward them to myself before leaving, so I’d have them on my mobile device.  But sifting through emails while traveling is not a fun task.  Now I simply forward the confirmations as they come in, and TripIt handles the rest.  They make it easy to share information as well, so my wife can see (and modify, of course) our plans.

While TripIt is great at importing your confirmation information, they also provide an easy way to setup your own events.  This allows you to add any activities you want, complete with time, date and location.  They even integrate with Google Maps, so you can find your way without having to rely on someone else’s directions.

One of the best features of their service is the iPhone application.  Like the Trip It service, it’s amazing.  You can access your itineraries at any time, and view all of the information.  Checking into the hotel and need your confirmation number?  It’s right there.  Trying to remember how to get from your hotel to an activity?  Just use the Google Maps integration.  It’s view only, but gives you all of your travel information at your fingertips.  Plus you can use it as a reminder of your upcoming trips!

Don’t just travel, TripIt!

I do a substantial amount of development with a Comet application, and utilize iframes for communication.  Most web developers hear “frames” and their eyes immediately glaze over and they just look at you as if you’re nuts.  ”No, not FRAMES…IFRAMES!”  Iframes are used more than you realize, and, when used correctly, can be very beneficial to the user experience.

When using iframes, you have to be aware of their security model.  Any modern browser prevents iframes from interacting with each other unless they are from the same domain.  This is in place for obvious reasons, I wouldn’t want an advertising banner hosted in an iframe to access the parent page’s DOM or cookies.

However, there are times when you want to use iframes within your site, but pointed to different subdomains.  Perhaps you have a content iframe hosted at data.mydomain.com feeding information to your parent page accessed via www.mydomain.com.  The default iframe security model will prevent interaction between them because it is limited to the fully qualified domain name as specified in the src attribute.  You can relax this to simply be the primary hostname, in this case mydomain.com.  To do so, add a single line of javascript code to the top of your page:

document.domain = 'mydomain.com';

That single line, added to both the parent and iframe source page, will allow them to interact without restriction.  Use at your own risk, always be aware of what is happening when your frames are interacting and avoid confusing the user.

In my Comet application, I needed to dynamically add an iframe and then tear it down when it’s processing was complete.  I could have left it hanging out in the DOM, but that’s just not clean and efficient programming.  After some research, I found this which explained exactly what was going on, and what I needed to do about it:

• http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2009/09/15/iframes-onload-and-documentdomain/

Thanks and kudos to Nicholas for the great and in-depth article, he addressed cross-browser compatibility and gave a very complete (and workable) solution!

I’ve been hunting an elusive error message for some time now.  Every now and then, one of my web applications will throw an error: “Padding is invalid and cannot be removed.”  It seemed to be random, and always linked to a web resource (AXD) file.  If I clicked the URL referenced in my Event Viewer message I would see the nasty Yellow Screen of Death.  But how in the world was it being generated?

I added more logging to my application events, and after some Googling I found this forum post:

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/617782/is-this-an-attempt-to-break-my-asp-net-sites-security/617940#617940

When an application pool is recycled and the web.config doesn’t contain a machine key configuration setting, a new unique security identifier is generated to mask information regarding your web resource files.  If a request comes in after this recycle, IIS cannot decrypt it using the old security identifier and throws an error.

The solution is to generate a static machine key setting and save it in your web.config file.  Since the security identifier does not change, IIS can decrypt and serve the correct resource after an application pool recycle.

This page provides a simple way to generate the key / value pair, and even shows how to use it in your web.config.

• http://www.orcsweb.com/articles/aspnetmachinekey.aspx

I received a notice today that my Outlook mailbox was almost full.  I send and receive a lot of email, but I was still amazed that my mailbox was THAT large!  This article shows you how to search for large attachments within your mailbox, you probably have more than you realize.

I was able to delete most of my large attachments, I didn’t really need to keep them.  A few were still important, so I saved the attachment to a secure spot and forwarded the email back to myself (without the attachment, of course!) with a note reminding me where I saved the attachment.

Simple but handy:

• http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA010565171033.aspx

I have used the built in “Photos” screensaver with Vista for quite some time, and enjoy returning to my desk to see pictures from a recent family trip or other fun event.  However, my monitor was never powering off.  I could lock my laptop and walk away for hours, and neither the laptop screen nor the attached monitor would ever go to sleep.

I finally decided to dig into why, and thanks to Google one of the first hits was the following article:

• http://www.vistax64.com/vista-general/199086-screensaver-does-not-let-monitor-turn-off.html

It seems that there is a bug in the Photos screensaver where, since it is capable of playing videos, an audio component is loaded which causes the monitor to remain on.  Even though no audio is ever played during the Photos screen saver, the component is still loaded.  Unfortunately there is no fix for it, other than to choose another screen saver.

I miss my photos, but it gave me an excuse to pick up a nice digital photo frame…so I can still see my pictures whenever I want!

When it comes to development, I typically treat 3rd party tools and libraries like the plague.  Sure they might something cool, but if you account for the time debugging their implementation you could sometimes write them yourself.  Or worse yet, you cannot upgrade the parent application without breaking the 3rd party add-on!  When it comes to mission critical applications (database, web server, etc), I champion native, fully supported solutions only.

Much like any piece of code, there are occasional exceptions.  Recently I wanted to add tooltip functionality to several web screens.  I wanted something beyond the native browser tooltips, those always feel junky and unreliable.  In the process of writing a small library, I stumbled on to Walter Zorn’s tooltip library.  I scanned the documentation, then paused.  On the surface it looked great, it had the tweaks I really wanted: cross-browser support, delay for opening and closing and HTML support.  But would it really work?

Implementation was simple enough, download the javascript files, reference them and call a single function.  Ok, I like simplicity, I like the way he passes parameters to his functions and the script files were small enough.  So I decided to give it a try…and was very impressed!  Sure enough, it worked as advertised the first time.  I tested in a few browsers (FF 3 and 3.5, IE 7 and 8 and Chrome) and the tooltips worked and looked great.  They even have drop shadows, a very nice touch.

So I must say that this library is an exception to my rule, I am very impressed and plan to use it more throughout my sites.  Tooltips are a small but elegant addition to a quality site, they provide necessary but unobtrusive help to the user.  This library gives you the ability to add them quickly and easily…download and try it today.  He has several other javascript libraries, I hope to find time to experiment with them sometime soon.  Highly recommended!

I must admit, I have a Facebook account.  I also must admit that I don’t do much with it.  I log into it from time to time to see what my friends are up to, but I just don’t “get it”.  All the games and quizzes and lists…it just feels like a time killer.  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy relaxing and surfing the Internet, it’s just that Facebook feels strange.  Of course, writing a blog seems strange to me, too, but here I am.  And Twitter…well, I haven’t braved those waters yet.  And I really don’t see a benefit there, but that’s a whole other story.

The privacy implications with Facebook have always irked me.  People put their entire life history on display, from school to professional to personal life.  It’s staggering how much information some people put in their profiles, and it’s all at Facebook’s disposal.  As a free service, you expect it to be ad driven…they’re not exactly an altruistic company.  As Google has taught us, targeted advertising is effective advertising.  However, using members’ information and photos in targeted advertising is going too far.

As an example of targeted advertising gone awry, check out this article: http://redtape.msnbc.com/2009/07/hey-peter-the-ad-said-hot-singles-are-waiting-for-you-he-might-have-dismissed-the-advertisement-which-appeared-on-his-fa.html

If I had seen that ad with a friend’s photo (married or not), my ears would certainly perk up.  And if I saw my wife’s photo, well that would certainly prompt a few questions!  According to Facebook, a third-party application is the root cause, but it sure seems fishy to me.

There is a security setting to (supposedly) prevent your photo from appearing in these “third-party application” ads, just go to: Settings -> Privacy Settings -> News Feed and Wall -> Facebook Ads.  After closing the propaganda-esque warning box, you’ll see the option regarding ads on platform pages showing your information.  Just choose “No One” in the drop down list, unless you want your likeness used to endorse products without your knowledge or approval.  Be sure to scroll to the bottom and choose No one for the social action ads as well.

Now I could swear that I modified this setting a week or so ago, thanks to a friend’s request, but when I returned this morning it was back to “Only my friends.”  A bit strange to say the least.  Maybe I’m just a private person, but if I’m going to be promoting a product or service, I would like to know about it.

We are planning our first family pilgrimage to Disney World this October. We are also going next June, so my original thought was to purchase annual passes. The cost/benefit ratio seemed high enough, there were discounts and other perks for annual passholders.  Plus the convenience of not having to mess with tickets every time is worth something.

I was on the Disney World website last Saturday night (8/1), ready to purchase 5 annual passes. I had them in my cart and went to check out, but lo, I need an account. No surprise, this is the marketing engine that is Disney. So I dutifully filled out the form and clicked submit…only to learn that something I entered was considered “filthy”. Hmm, that’s strange, I didn’t enter anything naughty, yet the form is telling me it’s either my first or last name.

Surely it’s not Jeremy, which leaves only Tolsdorf. Well, almost there…the only catch now is my email address. It’s tolsdorf.com, and apparently it’s filthy, too! When all else fails, reach for the telephone, right? Wrong. It’s Saturday night, do you really think there are Disney ticket agents available?

I was finally able to register with Smith as my last name, and somehow managed to find a form that allowed me to use tolsdorf.com in my email address, so now I’m set, right? Well, not exactly. Disney traditionally updates their pricing the first Sunday in August…which means those annual passes are about to go up by about 5%. Sure enough, by the time I can get back to them, new pricing has been loaded and the grand total just went up by $94!  This all happened prior to midnight as well, which is when new pricing is supposed to begin.

The entire ordeal necessitated a friendly email to ticket services, which I am sure will be faithfully read and acted upon. My calls to Disney the next morning were useless. All of their ticket agents were told in no uncertain terms that new pricing was in effect, period, and my filthy name wasn’t going to change their mind.

In the end it actually worked out for the best. I’ve revisited our ticket needs, and I don’t think I’ll spend the extra money for those annual passes after all.  I would rather spend the money on activities with the kids while we’re there, a trip to Disney is all about making memories anyway.  I suppose Disney still gets the money, but at least I’ll have more fun this way. As long as I’m allowed in the park with such a filthy name.