Thursday, May 28, 2009

Debugging a Silverlight App on a Mac

Here's some good information.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Windows Explorer opens a new window every time I click on a folder

I made the terrible mistake of installing Windows updates this morning.  Got to work and found that ever single time I open a folder in explorer, it launches a new explorer window.  Hunted around and didn't find a satisfactory solution.  Tried to post my fix on stackoverflow, but the issue was closed.  My solution:
  1. From command prompt, regedit.
  2. Go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\explore\command
  3. Change (Default) from: %SystemRoot%\Explorer.exe /seperate, /e,/idlist,%I,%L
  4. To: %SystemRoot%\Explorer.exe /e,/idlist,%I,%L

Sigh ... Windows ... bless its heart.

Friday, May 8, 2009

Short Paths

Digging into Jellyfish today. A step in their documentation says, "Please do not place these files into path that includes spaces. for example, "visual studio 2008". We are fixing this problem, but not yet fixed." I happen to use the default C:\Users\FirstName LastName\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects and similar paths. I am not terribly keen on putting development projects in weird places that I will forget later. So a little poking around showed me how to make simple, short paths for all this stuff. You can jimmy with these scripts to suite your taste, but I ended up happiest with a new drive letter, B, under which I could easily get to my Visual Studio projects (B:\vs\Projects), SQL Server projects (B:\sql\Projects), documents (B:\doc), etc..

  1. To get started, create a new folder to which you will map your new drive.
    1. (optional) Create a folder called link under C:\Users\FirstName LastName\.
    2. If you like, you can just use C:\Users\FirstName LastName\Documents, but I prefered to use a seperate folder so that it doesn't appear to clutter my real Documents folder with the new shortcuts (vs, sql, etc.)
  2. Open a command prompt with Administrator privileges and map your folder to a drive:
    1. subst B: "C:\Users\FirstName LastName\link"
    2. You will also want to open another command prompt without Administrator privileges and do this one same command there.
  3. Now create your links
    1. DeepZoom: mklink B:\dz /d "C:\Users\FirstName LastName\Documents\Expression\Deep Zoom Composer Projects"
    2. SQL Server: mklink B:\sql /d "C:\Users\FirstName LastName\Documents\SQL Server Management Studio"
    3. Visual Studio: mklink B:\vs /d "C:\Users\FirstName LastName\Documents\Visual Studio 2008"
    4. Documents: mklink B:\doc /d "C:\Users\FirstName LastName\Documents"
Now, from command prompts, Explorer or wherev, you can use that B drive and its sub-folders as if they were "real" paths.

If you want to delete all this stuff:
  1. Open a command prompt (with or without Administrator privileges) and remove each of the links
    1. DeepZoom: rd B:\dz
    2. SQL Server: rd B:\sql
    3. Visual Studio: rd B:\vs
    4. Documents: rd B:\doc
  2. Open a command prompt with Administrator privileges and remove your mapped drive:
    1. subst /D B:
    2. You will also want to open another command prompt without Administrator privileges and do this one same command there.
  3. Delete the link folder, if you created it.