Here is a gotcha I was hit with this week.  Figured I would share in case anyone else hits it.

I have an application that uses a windows forms control hosted in Internet Explorer using an <OBJECT> tag. We have installed CAS policy so that this control can communicate via remoting to our main application which is a locally running executable.  This control references a configuration file using a tag in the page.  In preparation for .NET 2.0 we had placed a <SUPPORTEDRUNTIME> tag into the configuration.  Little beknownst to us IEHost ignores this tag yet does not throw an error when it is encounterd.  We thought we were all set for .NET 2.0.  Then we installed it and everything stopped working.  Seems we missed this little tidbit:

All managed controls hosted by Internet Explorer use the latest version of the common language runtime installed on the computer. This means that in some instances the control may not run against the version it was built. This applies to any security zone, but does not apply to downloaded managed executables.

at MSDN.  When our control was loaded into .NET 2.0 we lost the CAS policy we had installed to make things work and the control failed to even load. 

The fix was to update the .NET 2.0 CAS Policy but there was no way we could automate this since any code we were running in the browser ran under .NET 2.0 which had no policy installed.  Kind of a chicken and an egg thing.

BTW when we first called support they told us the solution was to create an iexplore.exe.config and use the supportedruntime tag there.  I can't even believe they suggested this.  It would basically bind internet explorer no matter what it was loading to version 1.1 of the framework!  I could unwittingly break other peoples applications.  Needless to say I indicated this was a non-starter.

When drilling into why Internet Explorer always loads the latest version of the framework I was told that an executable can only load one version of the framework.  While technically true there are obviously ways around this.  Take a look at how IIS uses the worker process to load multiple framework versions side by side, each in their own worker process.  The Internet Explorer team could have probably come up with similarly clever solutions.  It just wasn't worth the effort I suspect given the size of the feature.  Too bad ClickOnce wasn't expanded to allow automatic policy elevation for <object> hosted controls.  This would have solved our problem nicely.

Looks like we will have to send out an installer to install new policy and we will have to continue to do this each time Microsoft releases a new version of the framework.  Lucky for us they aren't pumping out new versions every couple of months!

Thursday, November 10, 2005 1:54:03 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)         Comments [1]  

I am preparing to speak next week down in Los Angeles at a user group and am upgrading my demo image from TFS Beta 2 to TFS Beta 3.  After the initial install I couldn't seem to create a project and project creation was taking 20 minutes or more.  On a whim I decided to up the memory on my VM from 512MB to 1GB.  Voila!  I could now create a project and it only took 3-4 minutes.  Big, big difference.

Don't know if this will solve everyone's problem creating projects but it did mine.

Thursday, October 27, 2005 9:09:29 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)         Comments [0]  

I have been an ATTWireless / Cingular Wireless customer now for almost ten years.  They definitely have pulled some bone headed moves in the past but the latest might actually push me to switch carriers.  What is the issue you ask?  Well it is really two fold.

1.  I was an early user of the ATT Wireless Edge and UMTS service.  They continued to work with Cingular until this month when Cingular mentioned that UMTS coverage in Seattle during September would be spotty at best and credited my account the charges for the month of September.  I figured fine.  I will use EDGE in the meantime.

2.  I got a new laptop and had to re-install the software for my PC EDGE/UMTS PC Cards.  I didn't have the old stuff anymore so I grabbed the latest Cingular Communications manager after spending a good hour searching for it on www.cingular.com. Everything appeared to be good until I got to PDC.  I needed to quickly create a web site for the Seattle Code Camp coming up in October. I found however I couldn't create a website anymore in Visual Studio.NET 2003.  In fact I couldn't even request an ASP.NET page off my localhost!  I detailed my travails in a previous post.  Today I hit the cingular forums and come to find out they have known about this for the last couple versions of Communications Manager and still haven't fixed it! There isn't even a response from Cingular to the thread!

I must admit I am more partial to Visual Studio.NET 2003 than Cingular EDGE/UMTS service.  Might be time to start looking at the Verizon EV-DO service my friends have been raving about given the deafening silence coming from Cingular about network upgrades, etc.

The frustrating thing is that Cingular has an entire office building right next to the one I am writing this in.  I have no idea what they do there so I am not about to start accosting the random employees smoking outside the entrance!

Wednesday, September 21, 2005 1:18:43 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)         Comments [3]  

Woohoo!  Code Camp is coming to Seattle. Portland had the first pacific northwest Code Camp back in July.  Now the show is going on the road and we are having one in Seattle.  Save the dates October 22-23 and plan on attending.

More information at http://pacwest.ms/codecamp/sea/1/

Wednesday, September 21, 2005 9:15:40 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)         Comments [0]  

Just before heading down to the PDC I got a new laptop that I did a clean install on.  That of course included ASP.NET 1.1 and Visual Studio.NET 2003.  I didn't get a chance to actually create any projects before I left and as luck would have it once I got down here I had the need to create some Web Projects in preparation for the upcoming Seattle CodeCamp.  I fire up Visual Studio.NET, click Create Project, Select a web project and it just hangs there.  I left it for an hour and it never came back!  I try and request http://localhost/get_aspx_ver.aspx which will usually return the ASP.NET version along with a 404.  The browser just sits there interminably.

I reinstalled IIS.  I repaired and then reinstalled Visual Studio.NET.  My new laptop was getting very close to having some serious gravity problems.

Finally I found an obscure post on http://groups.google.com that solve it for me.  It was the Cingular Connection Manager 4.3.9.0 I use with my GPRS/EDGE/UMTS card for internet access on the road.  Removed the connection manager and all was right with the world once again. 

Why the post?  I am hoping someone else who hits the problem finds this post and it saves them 8 hours of their life that they will never get back.

Wednesday, September 14, 2005 6:19:11 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)         Comments [1]  

We are starting into the planning for VSLive San Francisco (Jan 30-Feb 3) right now. A call for papers should be up very soon at: http://www.ftponline.com/conferences/callforpapers/

I am going to be involved with the ASP.NET track.  Feel free to copy me with your presentations via email to make sure they get considered.  I will forward sessions for other tracks to the representative track chairs.  It looks like we will still have the ASP.NET, Smart Client and SQL tracks that have been the mainstay of VSLive for some time.

If you are not interested in speaking but are an attendee that would like to see a particular topic covered feel free to contact me with your suggestions.  I would love the input!

Thanks,

Chris

Tuesday, August 30, 2005 9:39:52 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)         Comments [1]  

I mentioned on DotNetRocks an application that I showed that I have been working on in my spare time at the Northwest Code Camp. This application, SeattleTraffic, is a desktop, Pocket Pc and SmartPhone live traffic monitoring application that gets it's data from WSDOT.  At one point I thought about selling it but hit some niggling memory leaks in the compact framework that I could not get around. I didn't feel right selling an application that would only run 16 hours before crashing so I have just held onto the code and waited for Compact Framework 2.0.  I mentioned the code in passing to our local DE Jason Mauer and he convinced me to show it at the code camp and release it out into the wild.  So with no further ado here it is.

A few requests. 

• If you make improvements I would love to see them. 
• If you figure out a workaround for the memory leaks I would like to hear about how you did it.

Download SeattleTraffic.zip

Friday, August 12, 2005 1:56:13 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)         Comments [0]  

I had a blast doing it.  I love listening to the shows and can't even imagine the amount of work that goes into putting it together each week. 

Main realization?  I talk way too much.  Get me going and not even Carl can get in a word edgewise.  Well hopefully everyone who listens to it will find it interesting.

Thanks Carl, Richard and Geoff.

Saturday, July 23, 2005 3:55:42 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)         Comments [3]  

Be sure to visit all the options under "Configuration" in the Admin Menu Bar above. There are 16 themes to choose from, and you can also create your own.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005 11:00:00 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)         Comments [0]   dasBlog