So Microsoft is about to sell its own hardware running Windows.    And Acer is unhappy, because Microsoft is effectively competing with its own partners.

Now, working for a Microsoft Partner, I can understand the feeling.  I have my beefs with Microsoft, like how they’ve just disenfranchised Small Business Specialists and cut down Small Business Server at the knees. 
(The 30-day discontinuation of SBS on SA is really throwing us for a loop now, since we relied on TechSoup to provide affordable solutions to non-profits, and Techsoup only has SA software, not OEM).

But consider this:

Acer and their ilk have been making Windows suck.

How so?   What do you think you should get to do after first powering up your brand-new computer?   Hours manually uninstalling paid Norton or McAfee trials, a dozen manufacturer addons, and a dozen more partner promotions?   Me either.    Here’s our experience:

• Once upon a time, we manually removed the junk, as a labor of love. 
• A few years ago we started using PC-Decrapifier to help automate the process, followed by CCleaner for the remnants.  Down to an hour or so…
• Last year, we started wiping the (brand new) systems, and scratch installing from Microsoft’s own media.   It’s some upfront work, but actually faster, and the result is so much better.  (The only downside is tracking down weird laptop drivers).

Last week we bought an Acer netbook, and (for some crazy reason) gave their install a shot.   After powering up and doing some standard Windows configuration, Acer started their first-run customization process .   Now I’ve done this a LOT, and know this process should take about minute or two.  

Instead, it took 45 minutes, and crashed with a BSOD.

Then, after finally getting past “buy me” promos, it was sluggish.   Task Manager showed 35% CPU gone to a McAfee trial, and 67% RAM used overall, when I HAD RUN NO PROGRAMS YET.   Did we buy a pet to run for our amusement, and do nothing useful?

Dear Acer, I don’t like the idea of Microsoft taking their ball back either, but you dropped it, and someone’s gotta run the bases.  

P.S.  Also noteworthy about the Microsoft shift is that’s how Apple sells:  unified software AND hardware.  Other criticisms aside, Apple delivers a pretty tight package. 

Server geeks, read and gasp:  One of Windows Server 2012's secret weapons: Hyper-V Replica

This is huge, and will change how Slingshot does servers:

• Just use 2 cheap boxes?  Sure!
• Replicate your server to my place?  Okay!

Naturally, I’m downloading the RC from Technet now :>

via Susan Bradley

With SBS 2008, if try to open Outlook Web Access at http://remote.example.com/owa, you’ll get “Error 403 – Forbidden: Access is denied…”, because SSL is required in IIS.   The proper URL is https://remote.example.com/owa, but most users don’t remember that little “s”.

As a note, SBS 2011 already redirects this for you.  But if you’re stuck with SBS 2008, there are tons of articles that show how to automatically redirect users :

• How to redirect requests from HTTP to HTTPS or to the OWA virtual directory in IIS 7
• How to redirect an HTTP connection to HTTPS for Outlook Web Access clients
• Simplify the Outlook Web App URL
• How to Simplify the Outlook Web Access URL
• Exchange 2010 HTTP Redirection Issue
• HTTP to HTTPS redirect
• RWW SBS2008 "403 - Forbidden: Access is denied..." when connecting

Microsoft has 4 different articles on the topic, but the forums are still covered with it.  The solutions vary on a few themes:

• Redirect in IIS on the Default website (doesn’t work since that site doesn’t actually answer those HTTP requests in SBS).
• Disable Require SSL, and edit OWA’s default.aspx to Response.Redirect (doesn’t work because it’s precompiled and handled by DLL).
• Set a redirect or custom 403 page on the actual OWA directory to a custom SSLRedirect.html with a Meta redirect (might work, but clunky & straight outta 1998!)

Other solutions either forget you can’t get past “Require SSL” to reach the redirect, or they don’t know you’ve already been redirected (creating an infinite redirect loop and “Too many Redirects” error).

I think I have a much simpler solution -- Just set the OWA directory’s 403 error to redirect to the right URL.  Here’s how:

1. Start the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager snap-in. 

2. Expand the local computer, expand Sites, and then click SBS Web Applications.

3. At the bottom of the SBS Web Applications Home pane, click Features View if this option is not already selected.

4. In the IIS section, double-click Error Pages, and double-click 403 in the list.

5. In the Edit Custom Error Page dialog, select Respond with a 302 redirect.

6. Type the Absolute URL of the /owa virtual directory. For example, type https://mail.contoso.com/owa.

OWA’s Error Pages list should look like this when you’re done:

Hope it helps someone.

So I've been happily using Windows 7 for a couple years (since the beta), but just finally moved my family into it, and discovered a new issue in the process:

Like XP, the "Win+L" key combination locks your profile so the next person won't "be you." But instead of the main Welcome screen with the list of accounts, you get the Switch User screen, with a button to take you to the real Welcome screen. This a confusing extra step when you're the next guy just looking to login.

I did some research, and it looks like a LOT of folkshave wonderedhow to skip the Switch User screen, but without luck.

Not sure, but I may be the first with a decent solution. The ingredients are tsdiscon.exe (which does the "Switch User"), and Task Scheduler (which hooks it up to the Win+L combination), both of which are built into Windows. Here's how:

1. Click Start, type taskschd.msc, enter. Confirm any UAC prompts you get, and Task Scheduler will open.
2. In the Action menu, click Create Task.
3. In the Create Task dialog > General tab, type a meaningful Name like "Lock » Switch User"
4. In the Security options section, click the "Change User or Group" button, type _Users_ in the dialog and click OK.
5. On the Triggers tab, click the "New..." button. In the New Trigger dialog > "Begin the task" list, choose "On workstation lock" and click OK. This takes you back to the Create Task dialog.
6. In the Actions tab, click the "New..." button. In the New Action dialog > "Program/script" field, type tsdiscon.exe and click OK. This takes you back to the Create Task dialog.
7. Click OK again and enter the password for the administrative account it offers.
8. Test it! Press Win+L and you should see the Switch User screen for a moment, then the main Welcome screen.

2011-02-17 UPDATE: As I was setting up this tweak on a new system, I noticed Windows 7 HOME doesn't include tsdiscon.exe. It's easy enough to copy from a Win7 Pro machine (from/to %windir%\System32), and then works as I described.

If you do anything on the web, you should read this great article on URL Design by Kyle Neath.

(hat-tip to Trevor Davis for sharing)

A few years ago, I noticed an orange chromatic theme in application icons.   Seems things really have “gone green” since then:

Left to right that’s uTorrent, Update Checker, Windows Home Server, Hamachi, a network (oddball), and MS Security Essentials.

Why doesn’t anyone like purple?

I've been making this web stuff long enough that some is well past its expiration date.

Memoriam for ScriptConverter

I finally took some of that new web tech I was talking about here and used it here.  I couldn’t stand the “brick” look anymore, so it’s mostly border-radius and box-shadow, but there’s also an RGBA background color and a webkit transition.  None of this gives joy for IE, though – perhaps I should Chrome Frame it?   …I did also tighten up the Reader feed and search box. 

I realize how long it’s been here, and that Facebook’s walled garden has been catching the vast amount of my sharing.  I’d like to “get out” here more, but til I do, don’t miss me there.

~r

I recently stumbled on FindMeByIP.com, and thought “yet another IP lookup / geolocation site”.   Then I noticed the “Modernizr Support” section, detailing my browser’s support for new standards. 

I was impressed both by the graph and my browser’s support.  Here’s how it looked with Google Chrome:

It reminded me that last week I was experimenting with HTML5, CSS3, and Chrome Frame, and had whipped together an ugly(!) demo.  I figured I’d line up the current browsers here and run them through both exercises.  To be clear, my demo is NOT fair because it uses several Webkit-specific extensions, but I thought it worth seeing.

The Downward Spiral

Chrome 3.0 (and Safari 4.0)
 
Yes, it’s tilted on purpose. Interesting bit: the black background is the abyss behind the rounded <HTML>.  Who knows what lurks there?  (Bizarre video artifacts when I resize the browser, actually).

Firefox 3.5
 
@font-face worked on my header, but no gradients, and I don’t know why border-radius failed.  (It’s worked on other sites).

Opera 10

Why is the standards-nazis’ browser so sucky here? 

Internet Explorer 8

The bottom of the suck, and what we’ve all come to know and loathe.  (To be fair though, IE has supported much of this since v4, but in a non-standard way.  Pragmatically, I’d grant it Box-shadow, Opacity, Gradients, 2D Transforms, and Transitions thanks to its CSS Visual Filters and Transitions.)

A Testing Crisis

Currently I test my sites with SIX web browsers: Safari/Chrome, Firefox, Chrome, IE6, IE7, and IE8.  This is a testing crisis for me, and IE6 has no give (with a stubborn 33% market share), so I’ve been forcing IE8 into downgraded IE7 mode for a slight reprieve.  Yes, I downgrade an already-behind browser! 

Sure, I could try to encourage users to upgrade their browsers, but apparently most people have no idea what that means! 

Aagh, there’s no way out!  With apologies to Mr. Folds:

IE is a brick and I’m drowning slowly.

It’s really more like three bricks drowning the web.  If we could drop one or two versions, IE8 could be survivable, but how?

Hope We Can Hope For?

This is where Chrome Frame wants to come to the rescue.  With it, I can use Chrome as an IE plugin, just like Flash, Java, AIR, or Silverlight.  Sure it’s cheating, but in a good way – it still uses the original native web code (so it is NOT the Un-web like those other plugins).

IE8 with Chrome Frame:

Perfect!  And the same results in IE6 and IE7!

If a plugin story is acceptable (widespread use of the Chrome Frame plugin would help), this means only 3 browser engines to test.  I haven’t used it in production yet, but I’ll be carefully considering it for new projects. 

~

Kevin Pang’s 10 Programming Proverbs Every Developer Should Know

Great stuff there.  You got that?

Business has been good.  Unfortunately, it has been so busy that the smelly old Slingshot Solutions website stuck around way too long.

When I say smelly, think:

• IE-only (in 2002, IE was 95%+, and Firefox was still a glimmer)
• IE6-only -- IE7 often crashes (why can browsers still be crashed by web code these days?)
• Outdated in various ways (6.5yrs)
• Kinda ugly
• Over-complicated
• Wordy -- can there be too little horn-tooting?
• Did I mention IE-only?

So my goals for a new site were focused on simplicity and compatibility.  I started designing building it when I started back to Slingshot Solutions full-time, and have been alternating between false starts, second-guessing, and neglect ever since. 

It's finally done now, though.  Please meet the slim and trim new "slingfive.com 2.0":

It works on any modern browser, plus IE6 (kicking and screaming).  Some other geeky goodness:

• It's Javascript-heavy, but it's all non-obtrusive and progressively-enhanced, so it still works with Javascript disabled.
• JQuery greatly helped simplify the visuals by hiding less important stuff until it's needed.  Rather than a second page just for a contact form, Contact Us is just a popup.  Similarly, I built a hide/show toggle for less-important content details.
• FONTS!  Every web designer hates the fact that you have to choose fonts based on lowest-common denominators (not everyone has your font on their system).  Alternatively, you can use images or Flash to get around this (carefully!).  I certainly wanted automatic as possible, so I tried SIFR (implementation stinks), then settled on DotIR.  Unfortunately v3 only outputs non-transparent GIFs, but with the wonders of open source, I've improved it to output anti-aliased transparent PNGs (including IE6 compatibility), and made it medium-trust compatible (for web hosts).  Hopefully my changes will reach the next version.

Weaknesses / to-do:

• Still way too wordy, this time with TLAs ("acronymy"?).
• I pulled over my old code section for developers.  I've tested none of it though, and will surely need to fix several server-side settings.
• The layout wrecks at less than 1024x768.  Stats say that covers 90% of the world, but that's hollow comfort.

For now I'm just happy it's out and not killing anyone.  Hurrah!

I won't say it's "finally" coming, because it might be one of Internet Explorer's fastest major upgrades.  But IE8 is coming, and better yet, I think it is "finally" catching up with the competition.

The news is all over the place, and this time I won't dig into the tech like I did with the IE7 beta.  I have installed the developer beta for a little testing, and it looks pretty similar to IE7.  Since the UI isn't changing much, I think it's a comparatively developer-heavy release (yum!). 

Here are some good official links:

• IE8 home page
• IE8 Readiness Toolkit
• IE8 Developer Highlights
• IE8 Release Notes

And the interesting progress & commentary:

• IE8 passes Acid2 test (Acid2 is a CSS Rendering test)
• IE Team says IE8 will have to opt-in to its own new standards-support, and then changes their minds (hooray!)
• Ajaxian on IE 8: Better Ajax, CSS, DOM, and new features
• John Resig (JQuery) applauds IE8's great Javascript (and other) progress

My own/other thoughts:

New Direction: A lot of the most interesting new stuff is neither UI/security improvements nor core web technology improvements, but Web 2.0-type stuff like Activities and WebSlices which seem to be targeting easier mashups and 3rd-party browser extensions.

Bad Chrome: A later IE7 release added back the Classic file menu.  Now they've added the crap links bar back in, sacrificing that much more viewport to the biggest waste of browser chrome.  Those plus the infobar warning I got right away doubles the 3 rows it should be, meaning if it goes live this way, my various inattentive relatives are gonna be scrolling way too much:

Developer's Browser Ecosystem: IE7 usage is still roughly even with IE6, and seems to have leveled off.  It's frustrating that IE6 is still hanging on so much.  Let's get IE8 in and IE6 gone!

Microsoft just published an interesting Windows Vista One Year Vulnerability Report

I especially like this graph:
 

I mentioned a few days ago that Vista seems to have picked up at XP's current level of stability.  From this it looks like it's done the same with security. 

I think what's remarkable is that they've accomplished this while increasing the amount of Windows code (because of new features).  Normally more code creates more ways for it to fail and to get hacked, but the Vista team has done the opposite.  That's impressive.

For bonus points, read through the report's comments (pretty fun on its own) and then read this response on the MS Software Development Lifecycle team blog.

I've been using Vista Business for about a year.  I've had it on a secondary work machine since around May, and as my primary work machine since November. Overall, it's quite nice.

But it's definitely had its quirks, mostly with waking from standby or hibernation. I put a couple hotfixes on, and they definitely helped, but it still did have an occasional strangeness. That said, in almost a year's time, I only remember needing to hard-reset it perhaps 3 times, and needing to reboot it maybe 5.

Now, I think that's great, considering these machines belong to a tweaker like me (read: not a grandma or Mac-type user who doesn't try new things).  I'd say it's comparable reliability to a current stable XP system. This is an important comparison -- XP has been maturing since 2001, but Vista started out at the same level of reliability.

As an aside, I've had several non-technical folks ask me "is Vista as bad as they say?" and I've only been able to respond "as who says?"  The only negative reviews I've seen were some journalists who must have put Vista on old hardware without current drivers.  But IT professionals I've talked to who've used Vista for a while seem to like it.

So anyway, I still didn't want that occasional quirk, so I tracked down hot-off-the-presses Service Pack 1, and applied it last night.  It took about 45 minutes, and went flawlessly.  Hooray for that, and hopefully it sails even smoother now...

A comment I just posted at http://datamining.typepad.com/data_mining/attensa/ :

I've been using intraVnews for several years, liking Outlook's sorting power to manage info, but I'm not at one machine long enough lately to keep current. So I went shopping for an online reader, and found your post and the RSS Reader Survey .

Based on those, I tried (or at least looked at) Bloglines, Rojo, NetNewsWire and Great News. I mostly didn't like the UIs (too weak or clunky compared to Outlook), and most just didn't work on my Windows Mobile phone' Pocket IE.

I ended up using Google Reader instead -- sure it's not as powerful as intraVnews/Outlook (no search folders, no deactivating feeds), but I don't think I need that power since the "reading flow" is so smooth (aka "UX", or User Experience in Microsoft's new lingo). I don't Need to filter out the "junk" since it's easy to just ignore it.

Granted, it's only been 2 weeks, but I've been successfully keeping up on 296 feeds pretty easily.

I should mention I was actually looking for an Outlook/online combo.  Apparently Newsgator and Attensa both do this, but Newsgator ain't free (and I'm a tightwad), and I couldn't find Attensa's supposed free service...  I've tried the Outlook addins for both in the past, tho, and they're fine (since it's Outlook).

Hm, should I post my 296 feed OPML?  ..or I guess Google Reader has a sharing feature -- maybe that's something to try out.

Busy?  Oh yeah.

• TRAFFIC WAVE EXPERIMENTS -- I've been wanting to write this article for a very long time.  Someone finally did it for me (tho' at much greater length).
  
• You can improve IE.next - The Web Standards Project -- cool this is being done, uh, again.
  
• And interesting variations on a theme -- also interesting is that you'll never see anything like this on Slashdot or Digg (which is theirfanboyism):
  • Seven reasons IE is better than Firefox (from a developer's point of view)
  • Firefox Myths
  • Firefox - A New Religion
    

IE7 now requires the same trick to be like so:
SELECT {
min-width:11em;
_width:expression(this.currentStyle.getAttribute('minWidth'));
}

Unfortunately, forking logic inside CSS expressions is a bit of a pain.  That, combined with the limitations of this technique (IE6 treats width as min-widthonly when the contained elements can't be wrapped), prompted me to write a solution script.  Here it is:

It uses a shim technique to fix it only for IE (other browsers don't support currentStyle).  The remaining limitation here is that it only works on elements which canHaveChildren, so it does not work on childless elements,like form INPUTs or SELECTs.  Any suggestions for this case are welcome!

To use it, just call fixMinWidthForIE() in the window.onload, or better yet when the DOM has loaded, and you're set.

2006-11-20: I updated the script for better standards-mode compatibility (it was causing extra blank lines).  I had missed the doctype switch in my current project.  The good news is that IE7 in standards mode does do min-width.  (I wish I'd noticed that sooner!)  However, I still have a lot of IE6 miles to go before I can put it to sleep...

Windows XP Professional?  Check.

But what about 64-bit?  Apparently it's actually not supported on 64-bit Windows XP Professional.

Anne van Kesteren just posted about the Opera 9 Preview.  More notable to me is the testcase for Linking to style sheets with HTTP headers.

Here's the code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html lang="en">
 <head>
  <title>CSS: Linking to style sheets with HTTP headers</title>
  <meta name="Author" content="Krijn Hoetmer ~ http://ktk.xs4all.nl/">
 </head>
 <body>
  <h1>Linking to style sheets with <abbr title="HyperText Transfer Protocol">HTTP</abbr> headers</h1>

  <p>This line should (or could) be red.</p>
  <hr>
  <h2>Code</h2>
  <pre><code>Link: &lt;index.css&gt;; REL=&quot;stylesheet&quot;; MEDIA=&quot;screen&quot;</code></pre>
 </body>

</html>

The testcase already works (P element in red) in the current Firefox 1.07 (but not IE, natch).  Style code is utterly missing from the document -- there are no style attributes, and no <style> or <link> elements.

That's because they're not in the document.  It's in the headers of the HTTP response which delivered the document.  I had to find the style insertion with the Fiddler tool (a great IE addin), and this is what I found in the HTTP headers:

Link: <index.css>; REL="stylesheet"; MEDIA="screen"

I must've missed the memo where this became a standard (since multiple browsers now support it).  I miss how it's a good idea too...

Yes, there's a gee whiz factor to it.  I could even think of possible uses for HTTP style includes (like configuring includes at the website level via the web server, something which IIS already can do with normal include files). 

But it just seems like a bad idea.

Granted, the line between protocol and document was crossed long ago with HTTP-EQUIV META tags.  This, however, crosses it in the opposite direction, by putting not meta-data, not layout or behavior data, but style data into a transport protocol!

Now I'm no code purist -- I feel most like a "SAVD" on Molly's scale  (What's bizarre is that I'd consider Anne much closer to a purist, a "SASS" to Molly.) 

We have CSS to get the font tags out of HTML.  Why not cram it into something even more poorly suited like HTTP?!

VERY bad idea.

I upgraded another client's SBS 2003 machine to SP1 this past weekend.  It went remarkably smoothly, but we forgot to check their smartphones' access to Exchange til today.  No connection, we checked the /OMA virtual directory, and got this error:

"A System error has occurred while processing your request. Please try again. If the problem persists, contact your administrator."

Much "jiggling" (yknow, rerunning wizards, regenerating the web certificate, etc), and googling got me no answer.  I did see this error in the Application Log, though:

An unknown error occurred while processing the current request:
Message: The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden.
Source: Microsoft.Exchange.OMA.ExchangeDataProvider
Stack trace:
   at Microsoft.Exchange.OMA.ExchangeDataProvider.OmaWebRequest.GetRequestStream()
   at Microsoft.Exchange.OMA.ExchangeDataProvider.ExchangeServices.GetSpecialFolders()
   at Microsoft.Exchange.OMA.ExchangeDataProvider.ExchangeServices..ctor(UserInfo user)

Message: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
Source: mscorlib
Stack trace:
   at System.Reflection.RuntimeConstructorInfo.InternalInvoke(BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object[] parameters, CultureInfo culture, Boolean isBinderDefault)
   at System.Reflection.RuntimeConstructorInfo.Invoke(BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object[] parameters, CultureInfo culture)
   at System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceImpl(BindingFlags bindingAttr, Binder binder, Object[] args, CultureInfo culture, Object[] activationAttributes)
   at System.Activator.CreateInstance(Type type, BindingFlags bindingAttr, Binder binder, Object[] args, CultureInfo culture, Object[] activationAttributes)
   at Microsoft.Exchange.OMA.UserInterface.Global.Session_Start(Object sender, EventArgs e)

Message: Exception of type Microsoft.Exchange.OMA.DataProviderInterface.ProviderException was thrown.
EventMessage: 
UserMessage: A System error has occurred while processing your request. Please try again. If the problem persists, contact your administrator.
Source: Microsoft.Exchange.OMA.UserInterface
Stack trace:
   at Microsoft.Exchange.OMA.UserInterface.Global.Session_Start(Object sender, EventArgs e)
   at System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateModule.RaiseOnStart(EventArgs e)
   at System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateModule.CompleteAcquireState()
   at System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateModule.BeginAcquireState(Object source, EventArgs e, AsyncCallback cb, Object extraData)
   at System.Web.AsyncEventExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication+IExecutionStep.Execute()
   at System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously)


For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp. 

What a mess.  But I recognized that "(403) Forbidden" as a web server error (although not on the actual OMA directory).  Combining that with info from similar OMA issues, I checked the /exchange-oma virtual directory's settings, and aha! it was denying access to all IP addresses except 127.0.0.1 and one we don't use.  It was not making an exception for the primary local address.  So I added that and all's now good.

So when you're having OMA problems, try the usual stuff (including checking the OMA virtual directory), then also check settings on the exchange-oma virtual directory.

Lesson learned.

related docs:
• http://www.eggheadcafe.com/ng/microsoft.public.exchange.mobility/post612531.asp
• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817379
• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/898131
• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/883380