Posts

Today I got round to upgrading our TFS 2008 (dual server setup) with Team Server 2008 SP1. I tried it first on my demo VPC I use for presentations (reminder I am at VBug Coventry at the end of the talking about TFS, a free event open to all). Anyway, this update went fine and did not take too long, 5 or 10 minutes. On the main system all seemed to go OK, but it did take around 45 minutes. I assumed the time it takes is dependant on volume of data in the DB, some sort of schema update I guess. ...

I have had a nightmare getting this going. Adding the ModalPopupExtender to a form is easy, you drop it on and tell it the two required controls parameters PopupControlID=“MyModalPanel” TargetControlID=“ButtonToLoadIt” And it just works fine, but is triggered by a client side click of the Target Control. If you want to do some server side code behind first you are meant to set the TargetControlID to a fake control that is visible on form e.g. “FakeButtonToLoadIt” IT IS VITAL THIS CONTROL IS VISIBLE AND HENCE RENDERED, but the control can be effectively hidden via CSS styling with something like Style=“display: none” In the code behind after your own processing you are just meant to call this.MPE.Show(); where MPE is the ID of your extender Well this did not work for me. If I clicked my fake control (when it was not hidden obviously) it all worked by the server side call just displayed my panel where it was in the underlying HTML flow - the extension never kicked in. ...

I am speaking at VBug Coventry on the 24th of September about Visual Studio Team System. For details have a look at the [VBug events](Elmbank Training, Juniper Room (Ground Floor), Mill Lane, Coventry, CV1 2LQ, GB) site, look forward to seeing you there.

For those who have not seen it eScrum 1.1 is now available. This basically a update for the installer so it works on VS2008 so you don’t have to go through all the manual fiddling you had to in the past. So if you want a nice simple agile team project process, with a nice web site to give progress visibility, give it a look.

When you are using a VSTO enabled Word Template inside a SharePoint custom content type you have to be careful which actual .DOTX file you use within the SharePoint custom content type. DO NOT - use the .DOTX from your VSTO Visual Studio project directory DO USE - the .DOTX from the the project’s ClickOnce publish location. The key point here is that until you have published the VSTO project via ClickOnce the .DOTX template does not know where to find the deployment of the associated assemblies. The copy in the project directory never actually knows this location as it is just a source file not a deliverable. ...

I posted about NBC Olympic coverage - today I discovered I cannot stream BBC provided media content from the Olympics on my Windows PDA using Opera via the Vodafone 3G service. Seems the BBC does not think I am in the UK. I know Yorkshire assumes it should be independent, but I don’t think it has happened yet. I suppose this is all to be expected, technology that allows reasonable media delivery over a mobile network at a vaguely sane price is new; especially when roaming between countries/networks. I doubt we will see this problem disappear soon unless the media rights are more commonly picked up by the telco providers such as Vodfone as opposed to the broadcast media companies like NBC and the BBC. ...

After the announcement at Mix of the NBC Silverlight Olympic streaming service I was looking forward to have a look at what had been created. Turns out you have to be in the USA to watch it, I assume due to media rights issues, a bit of a shame. I hope something can be worked out with a small fraction of the 2200 hours of content so we can all see what Silverlight can do for such a major event. ...

My blog is now being mirrored at http://msmvps.com/blogs/rfennell/Default.aspx as well as being available in it’s real location http://blogs.blackmarble.co.uk/blogs/rfennell To quote MSMVPS it is The Ultimate Destination for Blogs by Current and Former Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals.

I have at last got round to moving the location of the WSS sites used by our TFS server from the WSS instance running on our TFS Application Tier (AT) to our main 64bit MOSS 2007 server farm. A job I have been putting off for ages. I decided that there was nothing on the TFS WSS sites of importance, other than documents (which I could easily copy) so decided to create new WSS sites as opposed to trying a backup and restore model. ...

Over the past few days I have been travelling around the country by car, something I have not done for a while, preferring the train. It was a good chance to try out a couple of gadgets. One I have had a for a while, my HTC Touch Cruise phone, but the other was new a Pure Highway DAB car radio. So what did I learn? The phone I have recently set my phone to use push email (so constantly sync’ing with Exchange during office hours). This seems to have had a serious adverse effect on battery life. I had not noticed this before as I usually connect my phone to my PC via USB when in the office thus keeping it charged and up to date. Whilst away, without really thinking about it, I had expect my usual (pre push email) 3 day battery life, but the constant sync and using the phone as a camera knocked this down to about 8 hours! The simple solution seems to be to set the sync to every hour, thus reducing the data calls. ...