Andreas Rynes' Two Cents

Microsoft Surface

2007-05-31T12:35:00Z

WOW! Microsoft announced Microsoft "Surface"....and I can't wait to get one for my living room!

PDC 07 Rescheduled

2007-05-25T12:06:46Z

Unfortunatley PDC07 will be postponed, but we still be at a few other conferences like VSLive! and TechEd!

WM6 and Battery Life

2007-04-01T23:21:00Z

no comment ;)

hmmmm, I guess upcoming devices will be planned accurately

Windows Mobile 6

2007-03-28T14:31:00Z

I just love it....

Things that make my life much more fun with Windows Mobile 6:

- Smart Dial: just dial your number and it works great with an outstanding performance, even special characters work

- Word, Excel and Powerpoint: great functionality in all of those three apps

- Outlook: OOF and you are able to see your free time in the calendar view

- eMails: HTML-enabled and IRM-enabled *perfect*

...and Compact Framework 2.0 already installed in the ROM and an overall performance boost no matter what you click it is there !!!! ;)

Nikon RAW and Windows Vista

2007-03-24T00:00:00Z

If you're using Windows Vista and the RAW codec from Nikon (e.g. by installing Nikon Capture NX), you'll probably have some problems...here is a fixed version from Nikon: http://www.nikonimglib.com/nefcodec/index.html.en

Gadget Template for Visual Studio

2007-03-23T12:25:00Z

If you like to build your own Vista Sidebar Gadget, get you a template for Visual Studio from here: http://www.box.net/public/ky35h4eq6z

Ö3 Gadget available

2007-03-20T21:55:00Z

Today we announced the Ö3 Gadget for Windows Vista at the keynote of the Austrian Roadshow "Big>Days 2007" in Bregenz, Austria.

The Gadget plays a live stream of the most important radio station in Austria called Ö3. I do also demonstrate the implementation of the Gadget and how to change some behaviours of the Gadget in my session! Don't miss that in Linz, Graz or Vienna. More information about the Roadshow on http://www.microsoft.com/austria/events/bigdays/default.mspx

More information about the Gadget could be found (in German only) on:

http://oe3.orf.at/extra/stories/179744/

http://www.vistablog.at/

Alert and Sidebar

2007-03-19T12:52:00Z

Have you ever tried to use an javascript Alert in your Sidebar Gadget?

It won't work...you'll have to use a little trick to make that work. I do advise you not to use it in your deployed version, but it makes sense for some sort of debugging or testing

You can use ActiveX and WScript.Shell object to create popups:

var objShell = new ActiveXObject("WScript.Shell");

objShell.Popup("This is a popup from Sidebar");

How generate a cabinet file?

2007-03-18T23:32:00Z

Well, generating a zip file is very easy....there are a lot of tools out there and even Windows has a built-in command for that! If you need to generate a cabinet file instead, you'll have to use another tool, makecab.exe, that is available in the Windows SDK Components for Windows Installer Developers, which you can download here

In Windows Vista makecab.exe is already available and you can use it from command line.

More information are available online http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa368616.aspx

Gadgets and Mimetypes

2007-03-16T12:22:00Z

If you finished you Vista Sidebar Gadget, you probably would like to provide it to download it from a website. If you just put it as a <a> tag link in your website, you'll be facing a problem. Users won't be able to download and install it right from your site, but rather have to download it and install it from harddisk.

What you have to do is the following:

Change the mime type of your <a> tag to type="application/x-windows-gadget" and add that mime type to your webserver. Within IIS you can use the module Mime Types to add a new mime type by clicking on Add...

Have fun!

Big>Days Talk

2007-03-14T22:46:00Z

Today I had a final session with Max about our Big>Days Talk about UX, Web 2.0 and the Windows Vista Developer Story. Unfortunately we had too much content until today, so we cut off a bunch of slides and samples. We will only have 70 minutes and time is running, if you talk about that wide area.

Nevertheless we're looking forward to get your feedback on the Big>Days and see how you like our session. We really focused on samples rather than slides. So we only cover same sort of basic overview and try to dive into samples as soon as possible.

See you in Bregenz, Linz, Graz or Vienna :)

How to detect docked/floating State of Sidebar Gadgets?

2007-02-12T18:37:00Z

You may like to change the layout and behaviour of your sidebar gadget in docked and floating style. This could be easily done, by handling two events that are fired when docked/undocked.

onDock and onUndock are triggered in the case that a Gadget is moved to the Sidebar or from the Sidebar to the desktop. Use a javascript file that defines the following functions as handlers for those events:

System.Gadget.onUndock = undockedState;
System.Gadget.onDock = dockedState;

Into a function dockedState() you should call System.Gadget.beginTransition() that stops all visuell updates on the gadget on the transition way from docked to floating and vice versa. After that you're able to make all changes to the layout and behaviour a Gadget might have. Before finishing call System.Gadget.endTransition() to resume updates and refresh the Gadget, so that all changes that are done get applied to the Gadget.

function dockedState()
{

System.Gadget.beginTransition();

(..)

System.Gadget.endTransition(System.Gadget.TransitionType.none,0);

}

You can also use the Gadget API to check, in which state the Gadget is with:

if (!System.Gadget.docked)
{
//do something
}

There are several more events and methods in System.Gadget namespace that could be used for different requirements. Use the MSDN Help to discover more options at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms723683.aspx

BigDays 2007

2007-02-08T21:27:00Z

Here are we again with another exciting BigDay events in Bregenz, Graz, Linz and Wien. Get you registered soon: http://www.microsoft.com/austria/events/bigdays/

I'm doing a session talking about "User Experience, Web 2.0 and the Windows Vista Developer-Story"

Windows Vista and Gadgets

2007-01-30T23:55:00Z

Since today Windows Vista and Office 2007 is broadly available for end consumers and I'm really excited about the first feedback of the end users at home.

One new feature of Vista is the Sidebar and its Gadgets, a kind of small applications running on the desktop. In the next couple of weeks I'm going to prepair my session ("Vista Development") for a conference taking place in a couple of locations in Austria. Gadgets will be one part of that, so I really would like to show a very cool Gadget and how easily this is could be done.

If you like to start developing Vista Gadgets, having some experience in Web development would definitive help. However a good start are the following links:

Overview: http://microsoftgadgets.com/Sidebar/DevelopmentOverview.aspx

Windows Sidebar Reference, API: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/sidebar/sidebar/reference/refs.asp

Guide, Part 1 http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/topics/vista/gadgets-pt1.mspx

I'll post a cool Gadget using Outlook API in the next couple of days, maybe others will follow :)

Here is my blog...

2007-01-27T22:19:00Z

Well, after working for Microsoft for more than 1 year now, I thought a blog writing about all the new technologies that I'm working with would make sense. so here we go....

I'm working as a Application Development Consultant in Product Support Service, focusing on .NET and SQL Server development. But there are so many other technologies, I'd like to share some thoughts and samples on that. In the near future I'll post about Vista Sidebar Gadget and Mobile Device Development on this blog. So don't miss that :)

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