All posts by onlyconnect

.net, adobe, internet, microsoft, silverlight, software development, web authoring

WCF Sessions with Silverlight and Flex

I wanted to adapt my Silverlight CRUD sample (which I also ported to Adobe Flex) to fix a glaring weakness, which is that any user can amend any entry.

I decided to add some logic that allows editing or deleting of only those rows created during the current session. The idea is that a user can amend the entry just made, but not touch any of the others.

WCF has its own session management but this is not supported by the BasicHttpBinding which is required by Silverlight.

Fortunately you can use ASP.NET sessions instead. This means setting your WCF web service for ASP.NET compatibility:

[AspNetCompatibilityRequirements(RequirementsMode = AspNetCompatibilityRequirementsMode.Required)]

Then you can write code using the HttpContext.Current.Session object.

This depends on cookies being enabled on the client. In my simple case it worked fine, in both Silverlight and Flex. In a real app you would probably want to use HTTPS.

I’d post the sample but unfortunately my Windows web space doesn’t support WCF.

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general

Free McFly CD in Mail on Sunday shows media powershift

Today’s Mail on Sunday in the UK has McFly’s new CD, Radio:Active, as a free insert. Free CDs and DVDs are like confetti in the weekend press these days; but this one is distinctive in that it is new material and comes from a band not yet in the twilight of its career – insofar as these things can be predicted.

The band has its own label, called Super Records, which gives them the freedom for this kind of experiment.

Not so long ago, the CD was itself the upsell – music companies would give away other stuff in order to promote the CD. Now that’s changed; free exchange of digital music has undermined the value of CDs, and McFly has figured out that promoting the band is more important.

But what is the new upsell? Performances, tat, ringtones, digital audio and video downloads. Trouble is, it’s not going to sum to as much as CD sales did in the old days.

Oh well, there’s always the deluxe CD and DVD package, with four extra tracks and a booklet, coming in September. Perhaps not so much has changed after all (except it has).

And the music? Lightweight pop, compressed to hell. No complaints about the lightweight pop; but the sound quality is much worse than on the first and second CDs, Room on the Third Floor and Wonderland.

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.net, microsoft, silverlight, software development

Testing a web service with IIS 7 on Vista

Not long ago I created a simple CRUD example using Silverlight 2.0 beta 2. I used Visual Studio 2008 and the ASP.NET Development Server. I wanted to test the same WCF web service with a different client (more on that soon), so I decided to deploy it to the instance of IIS 7.0 which comes with Windows Vista. I created a new web site on a different port than the default.

Nothing worked. Reason: although I have installed .NET 3.5 SP1 beta and Vista SP1 – which should do this automatically – the IIS 7 mime types and  handler mappings were not configured for Silverlight and WCF. How to fix the mime type is here and the handler mappings, here.

The web service still didn’t work. I got:

A first chance exception of type ‘System.ServiceModel.ProtocolException’ occurred in System.ServiceModel.dll.

I changed the debug options to break on all managed exceptions, and got this further detail:

The remote server returned an unexpected response: (404) Not Found.

Problem: Silverlight is looking for a cross-domain policy file.  The reason was that at this point I was still running the Silverlight app from the ASP.NET Development server, and it considered IIS to be on a separate domain. The 404 error does not make this obvious; but a quick Google for Silverlight 404 shows that this is a common problem.

Silverlight is designed to support cross-domain policy files in either Microsoft’s format (clientaccesspolicy.xml) or Adobe’s format (crossdomain.xml). If the service is just for Silverlight, use Microsoft’s format; otherwise I suggest adding both.

Nearly there; but I still had to fix SQL Server authentication. I normally use Windows authentication, and if you are using the ASP.NET Development server this just works. Move to IIS though, and it does not work unless you set up ASP.NET impersonation, or create a SQL Server login for the account under which the application pool is running. Oddly, when I tried the app without fixing the SQL Server login I still got a 404 exception; I’m not sure why.

Incidentally, I noticed that if you configure ASP.NET impersonation for a web site, the username and password gets written to web.config in plain text (bad). If you configure the application pool to run under a different account, the password is encrypted in applicationHost.config (better). In the end I decided to use good old SQL Server authentication.

One last tip: when debugging a web service, put the following attribute on the class which implements your ServiceContract:

[ServiceBehavior(IncludeExceptionDetailInFaults = true)]

Otherwise you get generic fault messages that don’t help much with debugging. Remove it though for release builds.

Once I’d fixed the SQL server login, everything was fine.

google, microsoft, search

Why I can’t use Microsoft Live Search for real work

16 Comments

I’ve complained before about the quality of Microsoft’s Live Search vs Google; but today’s example seemed too good an illustration not to mention.

I needed to update Windows XP to SP3. In particular, I wanted what Microsoft calls the “network” download; that is, the entire service pack, not the launcher app that initiates a piecemeal download tailored to the specific machine.

I pulled up Live Search and entered “windows xp sp3 download”.

To my surprise, Live Search offered me only third party download sites in its first page of results. Actually, that’s not strictly true. At number 8 is the download for “Windows XP SP3 RC2 Refresh” (obsolete); and at number 10 the general home page for XP downloads:

Find popular Windows XP downloads, including PowerToys, trial software, tools and utilities

I tried Google. Same search. The official network download is in first place. The official piecemeal download is second.

I know: you can argue that this is just an isolated search, and that some other search might show Google in an equally bad light. However, I find this constantly: Google gets me much better results. Further, this case is particularly telling, since a third-party download site is not what you want when patching Windows. Quite likely those other sites do point you to the correct official download eventually; but getting Microsoft downloads from Microsoft’s site is safer.

I am not surprised Microsoft has a tiny share of the search market; and I don’t believe this is simply because of Google’s clever marketing.

Update PS: The above screen grab still matches what I get today. However, users in different countries may get different results; from the comments below I suspect that US users get better results in this instance. Maybe Live Search is worse in the UK than in the US; I’d be interested to know.

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adobe

Adobe Reader 9 brings AIR to the world

Adobe has released the free Adobe Reader 9. This includes an AIR application to support Acrobat.com, a document management and collaboration site now in beta. Since Reader gets installed on most of the world’s active computers, this strikes me as a significant moment for Adobe’s new desktop runtime.

The actual application is disappointing. It does not do the main thing laptop users would like it to do, which is to synchronize documents for offline use. Nor does it include a desktop version of Buzzword; the link simply opens your web browser. Finally, the obsession with Flash seems silly. I saved a document as RTF and uploaded it to Acrobat.com by drag-and-drop. Then I double-clicked the document in the list, hoping it would open in Word (or whatever editor is registered for RTF). No luck: the app creates a Flash preview, rather slowly.

In other words, to edit a document I have to download it and then open it. If I want to have the revised version in Acrobat.com, I have to save it and re-upload it.

What’s odd is that Buzzword can open RTF files. So why isn’t there an option to “edit in Buzzword”?

Even going first to Buzzword does not help. Click the Buzzword link, Buzzword opens in your web browser. Go to your documents: you get your Buzzword document store, not your Acrobat store. Wait – there’s an option “to access your other Acrobat.com files click here”. Click. Now I’m in Acrobat.com. Open. No luck: it’s still a Flash preview. Do I really have to download, go back to Buzzword, and re-upload to edit this online?

Microsoft’s SharePoint does this much better. I presume Adobe will fix the Acrobat.com – Buzzword integration, though going further and enabling smooth offline editing and saving in native applications such as Word may be too difficult.

Never mind. This is going to get AIR installed everywhere.

iphone, mobile, software

The sad story of the LG Viewty – case study in Web 2.0 failure

1 Comment

The LG Viewty (KU990) is a decent camera phone which came out last year in the wake of the first iPhone; yes it is me-too product but it has a few advantages over Apple’s product, like an 5 MP camera.

The trouble is, there are niggles, some minor, some major – like video recordings losing sound. A little over six months on, and users are posting messages like this:

I have to admit that I hate this phone. I have had mine six months now and I have regretted it for some time. It’s unresponsive, the camera is poor most of the time, it’s really awkward to use. It’s very slow at taking photos. It can’t hold a signal. The battery life is getting poor. It won’t handle many music file types very well. It feels like a Beta phone. The support from LG is non existent. I’m so disappointed. I look at apple, and yes, people did have to fork out for their phones, but look at the level of support and development they’re getting – new stuff is being added all of the time. It almost feels like they built this phone as a test for some of the features to go into other products.
The best thing about this phone is the video, and I love that part of it. I have some real magic moments captured and I’m grateful. But that is it.
I speak for myself, but I will never get another LG phone, period. As soon as I can get bought out of my contract the better.

It is a big change in mood from when the Viewty was released. This huge thread on the What Mobile forum has the story. Early adopters loved it – except for a few niggles which they hoped and expected would be fixed by a firmware update.

There has been no firmware update. Presumably all the software folk at LG have moved on to the next shiny device. Viewty users feel abandoned.

This seems like a good case study about not getting Web 2.0. Ironically LG made an effort to exploit social networking when the Viewty was launched. LG contacted bloggers and and offered phones for review; I reviewed it here. There is an official LG UK Blog – which sadly is pure marketing fluff and has done nothing to engage with the community over the issues which have been raised. There is an official Viewty website that has lots of Flash multimedia but little substance.

Yesterday I wrote about purchase decisions that begin with a Google search. Mobile phones are a good example. Anyone who does their Web homework will be put off the Viewty; and indeed deterred from newer LG models because the same thing will likely happen again. Network effects work both ways; even those who do not live on the Web will be influenced by opinion-formers who do.

It seems to me that a relatively small investment in communication and post-release software update and support would yield significant improvement in sales.

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apple, microsoft, vista, windows

Lively attack on Microsoft’s poor marketing – from within

3 Comments

Microsoft employee Kirk Allen Evans has a go at Microsoft’s marketing efforts:

I am so completely and utterly sick, as an employee and a Microsoft shareholder, of seeing empty spending on crap like "People_Ready".  Remember the completely ridiculous Office Dinosaur spots?  C’mon, marketing, grow a pair… let’s see some results.  No, I don’t want to see a retort ad making fun of the "I’m a Mac, I’m a PC" goons.  That ship has long since sailed.  Let’s see what all that Microsoft money and some of the smartest people in the world can come up with.

He’s right. So are the comments to his post, observing that marketing isn’t the only problem, or even the core problem.

Still, Vista is now actually better than its reputation. That’s a marketing issue.

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