Alan's Development Blog

Just installed MacJournal

2010-03-08T22:28:07.70675+00:00

Installed MacJournal and just writing my first blog post to check it out. So far seems ok for blogging I miss LiveWriter while working on my MacBook and this seems like the best substitute so far.

NW-MTUG Using ASP.NET MVC 2 - Introduction to MVC & What's New

2010-03-05T22:12:57.941125+00:00

Just a shout to let you all know of NW-MTUG's next session on 10th March, it's on Using ASP.NET MVC 2 - Introduction to MVC & What's New and will be presented by Martha Rotter. Check out NW-MTUG's site for all the details.

Burning files to CD/DVD with C# and WindowsXP

2010-03-02T21:23:08.159875+00:00

This is just a very short example of writing files to a CD or DVD using C# on Windows XP. For this I will use the XP Burn Component provided by Microsoft. This is a class library that you can use from C# or any other .Net language to write files to disc, simply down load the MSI file from the XP Burn web site and follow these steps.

Start Visual Studio and create a new Windows Forms Application
Right click on the 'References' folder and select 'Add Reference.'
Browse to the location of the XPBurnComponent.dll file, for me I had chose all the default settings during the installation options and the dll was located under 'My Documents' folder in MSDN\XPBurn.
Once you have added the dll to your project you can begin using the classes it contains by adding a using directive for the XPBurn namespace
```
using XPBurn;
```
Writing files to the disc is now very easy al you have to do is create an instance of XPBurnCD, call the AddFile method to add files to the disc and the RecordDisc method to actually write the files to the disc. This sample method shows adding files in a directory and writing these to disc.
```
XPBurnCD cd = new XPBurnCD(); cd.BurnComplete += new NotifyCompletionStatus(BurnComplete);
MessageBox.Show(cd.BurnerDrive); DirectoryInfo dir = new DirectoryInfo(_burnFolder);
foreach (FileInfo file in dir.GetFiles()) { cd.AddFile(file.FullName, file.Name);
} cd.RecordDisc(false, false);
```

The XPBurnCD class has a number of events that you can use to monitor the progress of the burn process. In the above example I have used the NotifyCompletionStatus so that I can display a message to the user when all the files have been written to the disc. For more information on the classes, methods and properties that XPBurn has take a look at the help file 'XPBurnDocs.chm' which is installed in the same directory as 'XPBurnComponent.dll'.

You can download my Visual Studio 2010 sample application

here

NW-MTUG Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server

2010-01-26T20:31:29.5475+00:00

Just a shout to let you all know of NW-MTUG's next session on 1st February, it's on Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Sever and will be presented by Martin Woodward. Check out NW-MTUG's site for all the details.

Tux @ M&S

2009-11-29T19:38:47.006375+00:00

Looks like Marks & Spencer have ditched the traditional chocolate Santa and Snow men to provide geeks with a chocolate Tux alternative, well maybe not but I think the likeness is a bit uncanny.

Uninstalling PowerShell 1.0 on XP

2009-11-05T20:33:13.203125+00:00

I've had a few questions regarding uninstalling Windows PowerShell 1.0 on XP to make way for PowerShell 20. It's actually quiet simple although not immediately obvious. PowerShell doesn't show up under Add/Remove programs as it's counted as a Windows update so follow these steps it you want to uninstall it.

Click Start -> Run
Type appwiz.cpl and press enter
Windows PowerShell will not show up in the list of programs as it is counted as a windows update, you must click the tick box "Show updates"
Scroll down and look for "Windows XP - Software Updates"
Underneath the Windows XP -Software updates entry is a list of all updates that have been applied to you machine scroll through the list and you will find an entry call "Windows PowerShell(TM) 1.0"
Click the "Remove" button to begin uninstalling PowerShell 1.0

You can find more details on this in the Microsoft knowledgebase at: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926139

Gmail Notifier Plus & Windows 7

2009-11-04T01:52:55.9347125+00:00

If you've got an account that uses Google mail you have got to try out the Gmail Notifier Plus app as it looks so good on Windows 7. Just look at the Jump Menu for the app. At a glance you can see how many new items are in your inbox and most recent 10 have their subjects listed on the Jump menu so that you can go directly to any of them with a single click. Also from the tasks section you have the option to compose a new mail or go to your inbox, both of these options will open a browser with the selected page displayed.

Another very nice feature of the app occurs when you mouse over the icon on the Windows 7 task bar. You get a small preview window that allows you to step through your mail and read the first few lines from each and for convenience you have the ability to open the full email in your browser. Trust me if you have a Google mail account you want to check this little app out as it makes it so easy to work with your gmail.