Answer to the Internet??

It is possible that this would clear up a huge amount of dross from The Internet...

However, I do have my reservations:

A lot of the comments that get posted on various websites are there because the poster likes the sound of their own voice - this is not going to combat that!

Open CHM Files from Network drive

I experienced a problem recently when trying to open a .CHM help file from a network drive.

The file opened, and I could navigate the topic tree, but I just got a "Page could not be displayed" IE page in the right pane.

I found the solution to my problem at http://www.nik.com.au/archives/2005/04/06/chm-help-files-error-the-page-cannot-be-displayed, in comments left by Anish and Jordan Wiseman

I have repeated this info here:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2. Locate and then click the following subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\HTMLHelp\1.x\ItssRestrictions
Note If this registry subkey does not exist, create it by using Steps 2a and 2b in Method 1.
3. Right-click the ItssRestrictions subkey, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
4. Type MaxAllowedZone, and then press ENTER.
5. Right-click the MaxAllowedZone value, and then click Modify.
6. In the Value data box, type a number from 0 and 4, and then click OK.
7. Quit Registry Editor.

Value Setting
——————————
0 My Computer
1 Local Intranet Zone
2 Trusted sites Zone
3 Internet Zone
4 Restricted Sites Zone

For most CHM files, the value of 1 should be enough to allow use without opening up access from/to remote CHM files in email/internet locations.

Easy, peasy!

The Vista Game

David Ing has managed to successfully splice together 8-bit and 64-bit technology...

Vista the Adventure Game

It makes me want to get my trusty rubber keyed Spectrum 48k out of the attic and fire up 'The Hobbit'! But I guess it would be harder for me to locate a cassette player to load the game from than the actual computer itself.

Pet Hate #458

(A.K.A. First signs that the company you're dealing with haven't got a clue)

Ok, so this is just a quick one.

Why, oh why, would you give a customer that may be calling you over the phone, a customer code that includes 0, O, 1 and I (in a font where 1 and I look the same)?

Is it not going to be more productive when the teleoperator does not have to say "Is that the letter O or the number zero?" on every single occurrence of the letter/number.

It's common sense really...

C# 2.0 Settings Quirk

One of the nice new features in C# 2.0/VS2005 is the visual settings editor for persisting application and user settings between sessions.

This post is not a discussion about this facility, it is an observation of a problem that can occur and a way to solve it.

If you have a custom class in your project, and you want to persist an instance of this, you would do the following:

In the Settings tab in project properties :-

• Enter a Name (e.g. SavedMyClass)
• Choose Browse... in the Type column
• In the 'Select a Type' dialog, type your fully qualified class name (e.g. WindowsApplication1.MyClass)
• Set Scope to 'User'

And you have now created a strongly typed setting in Properties.Settings.Default.SavedMyClass that you can access on application startup and will be saved during a call to Properties.Settings.Default.Save().

The problem occurs when you build the app. All being well, the build will succeed; but you should see many warnings like the following:

The type 'WindowsApplication1.MyClass' in 'C:\Documents and Settings\carlw\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\WindowsApplication1\Form1.cs' conflicts with the imported type 'WindowsApplication1.MyClass' in 'C:\Documents and Settings\carlw\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\WindowsApplication1\bin\Debug\WindowsApplication1.exe'. Using the one in 'Form1.cs'

The reason for this is that the output exe from this project is automatically added to the References for the project, thus creating the conflict.

This is easily solved by just removing this reference (e.g. WindowsApplication1) from the references in the project, although this may not be an immediately obvious solution as you would (or at least I did) expect this reference to be recognised is local.

Just incase anyone comes across this.

Auto-update update...

I posted some time ago about the problems with Microsoft Windows XP auto-update (link). It appears that Guy Kewney from Newswireless.net has had a similar problem, as he posted in an article on TheRegister.

Just an update....

ToolStripMenuItem shortcuts remain active

Frans Bouma blogged the other day about a bug that he had found within the ToolStripMenu in .NET 2.0.

When a top level menu on the strip is set to Enabled = false, pressing the shortcut key for any of the child menu items still causes the event for that item to be fired.

He also updated this article with a link to a workaround that Jfo posted

Thanks guys, that's the sort of problem that drives you mad!

Pet Hate #457

Google.

Well, not really Google, just the quality of some of the results that get returned. In particular, there are two types of return that should, in my opinion, be restricted in some way.

Time limited results

These are the results where the linked page is one that contains a 'Latest News/Articles' type section. There is little worse than following a link that seems to relate to exactly what you are looking for, only to be presented with a list of recently posted articles that has obviously changed since the last time Google came a-calling.

Log-in

Many a time, I have followed a link from the results where the abstract contains what seems like just what I'm looking for, only to be presented with a 'To access this page, you must be logged in first'.

Frankly, I don't care whether it is a free registration and the process only takes a minute to gain access to this and 50,000,000 other articles; if it's good enough for Google, it should be good enough for me.

Google seems to be slowly loosing it's grip on the most useful search results - if they're not careful, by the time they hand over search details to anyone that wants them, the data will be crap anyway.

</rant>