Maarten van Stam - Soft As In Software :-)

LiveWriter blogging

2008-08-22T20:10:00Z

Usually I blog without using any other tools on the OZ website. Today I try something different by using Windows Live Writer as blogging tool.

So if you can read this LiveWriter was able to post my (obviously not so interesting) blog item.

Office Open XML (OOXML) is now officially an ISO standard.

2008-08-16T11:50:00Z

The ISO organization announced in its press release that despite of appeals OOXML now is an official standard.

Press release:
http://www.iso.org/iso/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1151

Quote:
The two ISO and IEC technical boards have given the go-ahead to publish ISO/IEC DIS 29500, Information technology – Office Open XML formats, as an ISO/IEC International Standard after appeals by four national standards bodies against the approval of the document failed to garner sufficient support.

So the appeals did not get enough support to stop the ISO certification process and Office Open XML can now be used even if you have policies active (often governmental departments) that say only to use ISO standards.

How to find SP1 changed features for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 SP1

2008-08-14T21:14:00Z

If you are curious to find out what is updated in Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 SP1 there is an easy search 'trick' you can use within the online MSDN library documentation.

What you can do is go to the MSDN pages at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/default.aspx

and there you enter in the right top search box (the one that said Search MSDN with Live Search:
"SP1 feature change."

The reason is that in the MSDN library the Service Pack 1 documentation is marked with a change remark on the bottom of the MSDN article. So if you go down to the bottom of one of the found pages you'll find a change history table. The Service Pack 1 items are marked with the reason "SP1 feature change.".

So if you want to find information related to the bugfix I entered and was fixed in SP1 you can go and search for:
"SP1 feature change." Protected Document

If all goes well you'll find among others the pages:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.office.tools.excel.workbook.protectdocument.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.office.tools.excel.workbook.unprotectdocument.aspx

Changes to Cached Data not saved in password protected documents

So why did I write all this down? I was searching for the documentation on the bugfix for the bug that I entered on Connect (connect.microsoft.com). I was happy to see that not only the bug was fixed, but it was also documented:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc668203.aspx

By overriding the Document.ProtectDocument method and the Document.UnprotectDocument you are as of Service Pack 1 now able to unlock and lock the document to give the Cache the opportunity to save the data without having the document crash.

So if you had protected documents and you weren't able to make the Cached Data work together with these documents, quickly move over to SP1, research the documentation above and fix your project!

Lost my notebook ... and Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 + .NET 3.5 Service Pack 1 released

2008-08-11T21:55:00Z

Today my vacation came to an end. Due to the SLA I agreed on with my wife I had to store my work-notebook three weeks ago and had to promise not to use that ... or otherwise a divorce would be filed. So that was that.

I survived, as you noticed, but when I wanted to use my notebook today I totally forgot where I stored the machine ... I stored it in a safe place before hitting the road but forgot about it so my day started with a search for my machine. Of course it was in a complete obvious location, stored it in our fire safe to make sure that if I returned from France and the house by some circumstances would be burned down the machine would survive (haven't tested it ...).

Anyway ... found the machine and worked through my first day after the holidays.

And now the other thing.

A couple of months ago I started to work on the SP1 beta bits for Visual Studio to check and see if one of my showstopper bugs that I found in VSTO was fixed. I found out that it appeared that password protected documents could end up in a corrupted state losing the cached data from the documents but it was just after going RTM when I filed the bug.

List of VSTO fixes in SP1, my feedback ID was 328329. Fix no four in the list :
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949258/

The result was that we had to wait releasing our VS 2008 project until SP1 would be released. This however gave us some air to think of a couple of new features to add to the original design ;-)

It all happened today August 11 2008 and ths Service Packs 1 are now released on http://www.microsoft.com/downloads !

Here are the links:

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (exe)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=FBEE1648-7106-44A7-9649-6D9F6D58056E&displaylang=en

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (iso)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=27673C47-B3B5-4C67-BD99-84E525B5CE61&displaylang=en

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack Preparation Tool, to remove pre release bits from your dev machine.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=A494B0E0-EB07-4FF1-A21C-A4663E456D9D&displaylang=en

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=AB99342F-5D1A-413D-8319-81DA479AB0D7&displaylang=en

Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server Service Pack 1
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9E40A5B6-DA41-43A2-A06D-3CEE196BFE3D&displaylang=en

Visual Studio 2008 Shell (integrated mode) with Service Pack 1 Redistributable Package
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2E9A8C35-EB3D-43EB-9122-A5EC195CD7BB&displaylang=en

Visual Studio 2008 Shell (isolated mode) with Service Pack 1 Redistributable Package
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=021B3BEE-B2AD-42A8-854A-C5EAEF69E927&displaylang=en

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 Remote Debugger
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=440EC902-3260-4CDC-B11A-6A9070A2AAAB&displaylang=en

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 Stand-Alone Profiler
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=FD02C7D6-5306-41F2-A1BE-B7DCB74C9C0B&displaylang=en

There is a lot more ... VS 2008 Expression Service Packs, SQL Server Compact Edition 3.5 Service Packs, books online updates etc etc.

I am sure you can find the goodies in the download site or otherwise on MSDN.

Update:
Here is another entry to find some Service Packs ...
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/products/cc533448.aspx

Have fun, it's working time again!

Open XML Format SDK

2008-06-13T22:05:00Z

A couple of days ago the Open XML Format SDK was posted on Microsofts download site:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ad0b72fb-4a1d-4c52-bdb5-7dd7e816d046&displaylang=en

With this SDK you get a set of strongly typed part classes for use with Open XML documents

Here's more info:

http://blogs.msdn.com/erikaehrli/archive/2008/06/10/announcing-the-open-xml-format-sdk-1-0.aspx