The Journal of an Xbox InfoPath Nut

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

SnagIt 8 Brag-A-Thon

Calling all people who are sick and tired of getting screen shots then using Paint to crop the image down.
I recently received a copy of a tool called Snagit 8 from TechSmith in exchange for some free advertising. Now usually I wouldn't do this but I've been using snagit since version 6 and I have to say it's a pretty awesome utility.
This tool allows you to capture different areas of your screen and then save the outputs to different file formats e.g. jpg, gif et...
now I know this is nothing special but the coolness lies in the detail in addition to simply capturing your entire desktop snagit also allows you to capture

  • Window Regions
  • Full Windows
  • Scrolling windows
  • Web pages (while maintaining all the links on that page)
  • scrolling web pages
  • scrolling PDF documents
  • Menus that have a delay before being shown
  • Individual objects on a windows
  • All images from a selected webpage
  • All text from a selected window
  • and finally it also lets you highlight a region of your desktop and record a movie of everything that happens within that region (awesome for demo movies)

In addition to all of these capture options it also contains a very full featured image editing tool, and a bulk file format converter utility.

Now I know this sounds like a bad Demtel ad at the moment and I know your probably all wondering when I'm going to whip out the steak knives. Sorry to say that the steak knives that can cut through a shoe haven't been bundled with the product but you can download a free 30 day trial version from here http://www.techsmith.com/download/trials.asp

Enjoy

New MVP Blog

Just a quick post here to let you all know that I have a new blog, http://msmvps.com/blogs/benwalters/
I'll continue to update this account though so no need to frett.
My new blog will contain posts specific to either my MVP life or to any of my cool findings with Microsoft products. Feel free to swing by and check it out.

I'm an Xbox 360 Owner

OK So I don't actually have the console yet but last week I made the trip down to my local EB games to make the final payment on my Xbox 360, now all I have to do is wait until the 23rd to pick up my precious.
I also managed to register for a special Xbox 360 VIP event where I get to go and play the new games in a cool 2 hour gaming session. Bring on March this is going to be fun.

Monday, February 20, 2006

XBox360 Demo Consoles are here !

Very eventful weekend for me, I decided to wander into my local JB-HiFi and imagine my exchitement to see an Xbox 360 Demo stand, all decked out with PGR3 ready to play. Of course I was limited to 5 minutes but that was more than enough time to see how great the graphics are on this new machine.
Looks like I'm going to have to make regular visits to JB at least 2-3 times a week for a fix, only 30 days to go until I have my own pretty white box :o)

Friday, February 17, 2006

It's Official Office 12 is shall be forever known as Office 2007

Well we can now all stop wondering what the next version of Microsoft Office will be called, I received word this morning that it has been officially dubbed Office 2007, to find out more about Office 2007 check out this link
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/default.mspx

Friday, February 10, 2006

RegForm Update in VSTO

Howdy loyal readers, I've been having some problems recently with my favourite app InfoPath, until recenlty I have been developing all my forms using Visual Studio 2003 and the InfoPath tool kit. In addition to this with one of my clients I have been using the RegForm utility to package the form into an MSI. So lets jump forward to today, being the Developer I am I feel obliged to install Visual Studio 2005 (as was the standard with the rest of the company) so off I go and run the installer which worked fine (and to my surprise played quite happily alongside Visual Studio 2003). I then proceeded to install the InfoPath Toolkit for Visual Studio 2005, so now I have the ability to develop forms with either .net framework 1.1 or 2.0.
This was all working fine until I attempted to create an MSI for my client using the RegForm included in the InfoPath SDK, I recieved the following error message from the RegForm utility "Error: RegForm does not support Microsot Visual Studio version number 8.0.50727.42"
So off I trundled to google to see what he had to say about it, and for a first time it was rather quiet on resolutions.
Eventually I succumbed to using my MVP influence and contacted a friend on the VSTO team, turns out there is a new version of the RegForm utility installed with the Visual Studio 2005 InfoPath toolkit. This new version of the RegForm util is found in C:\Program Files\Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office\InfoPath\
Re-Ran the package with the new RegForm utility and all is well with the world once more.
As for the out of date version of the SDK up on the Microsoft site I have been assured this will be updated so no more need for confusion.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Debugging InfoPath forms in VS2003 with .net Framework 2.0 instaled

So today I attempted to open an older InfoPath Solution I had developed in Visual Studio 2003, once I had the app open I found that I could not debug the form. Did some searching and I found that this is due to VS2003 being unable to connect to the InfoPath process as I had installed .net Framework 2.0 I did some trawling through the wonderful ether and here is what I found.
(Note: yes I poached this solution from someone else check here for the original. but I figure the more people who have it posted somewhere the easier it will be for someone else to find)

  1. Create a new file in the same directory as the InfoPath.exe called InfoPath.exe.Config

  2. add the following to this file
<StartUp> <requiredRuntime imageVersion="v1.1.4322" version="v1.1.4322"/> <supportedRuntime version="v1.1.4322"/></StartUp>
 
  1. This will force InfoPath to start up using the .Net Framework 1.1, once you've added this file save your changes then attempt to debug your project once more.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Validate your Input

Validate your Input

Well everyone here I am again, ready to share with you what I think is a great pearl of wisdom. Whether you agree with me or not is your problem :o)
So we all know that InfoPath is a great way of entering data, we also know that you can use Regular Expressions to ensure that a user enters the values we want. The only thing we (I) struggle with is writing the damn things. So I found this site http://www.regular-expressions.info
This is a great resource for anyone wanting to use RegEx in their applications. It provides great explanations on the syntax and how it’s constructed.
So next time someone asks you to simply use regex you no longer have to shudder.

Enjoy :o)

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Internet Explorer 7 Beta2 Released to the Public

Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Released     

So here I am reading through my blogs this morning and it turns out Microsoft have released Beta 2 of IE7 to the public. Off I trundle to download my new window into the net and I have to say it’s pretty sexy, tabbed browsing, integrated RSS feeds. All in all a pretty nice upgrade, if you want to check it out you can download the beta from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie7/tour/default.mspx