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Mike Ormond's Blog

In my world, things would be simpler than this...

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August 2007 - Posts

As it's Friday...
...and I've recently figured out how to embed Soapbox videos in posts, this just makes me laugh every time I watch it. Never fails. 100% success rate. Technorati Tags: nonsense Read More...
Content Controls & Repeating Data Nuggets Published on MSDN
Now published on the MSDN Nuggets site so you can enjoy them in their original high res format with Dobly surround sound etc :-) http://www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/nuggets Technorati Tags: office , open xml , nuggets Read More...
Live Search Maps Gadget
The "real" gadget I've created has now been published on Windows Live Gallery (quite a lengthy process but good to see that updates get approved very quickly) so I can share my gadget with the world! It's a mapping / driving directions gadget. Simply Read More...
Make our Gadget do Something Useful
I've added some functionality to the gadget we've been building in part 1 and part 2 but I think it's going to be very difficult to share this in a blog posting. Partly this is because I've tweaked things all over the place and to record the chronology Read More...
Content Controls and Repeating Data - Nugget Part 3
Link to video on Soapbox (from here you can watch full screen) Technorati Tags: office , open xml Read More...
Content Controls and Repeating Data - Nugget Part 2
Link to video on Soapbox (from here you can watch full screen) Technorati Tags: office , open xml Read More...
Content Controls and Repeating Data - Nugget Part 1
Okay, slight problem publishing to the MSDN nuggets site currently so instead of waiting around, I'll embed a Soapbox version here and follow up with Parts 2 & 3. Expect them to appear on the MSDN site in the fullness of time... Link to video on Soapbox Read More...
New Nuggets - Content Controls and Repeating Data (or Can I Make a Table?)
I blogged back here about what is required to handle repeating data with dynamic documents (ie Word documents using content controls to bind to custom XML). In the meantime I've had numerous emails from people with very similar problems all asking how Read More...
Mix:UK, Hurry or You'll Miss It
There really are a very limited number of tickets for Mix:UK remaining. I know because I'm having to set expectations with a lot of internal Microsoft folks who'd like to attend but we simply wont have space. (Usually we can squeeze a couple of extra Read More...
Take Our Gadget, Give it a Design
This is where you can let your creativity loose. You have lots of options here; you can change the size of the gadget, the flyout, the undocked gadget as well as defining your UI and styling. Go crazy... As I haven't got much creativity, I've stuck with Read More...
So You Want to Build a Vista Sidebar Gadget?
I've spent a bit of time building a SideBar gadget recently and had a lot of fun doing it. I thought it might be worth sharing some of the stuff I learned along the way by building out a gadget that does something. Maybe not something useful but something Read More...
Tafiti
I'm a bit late with this news but if you haven't seen it already it's worth checking out http://www.tafiti.com , a Silverlight front-end to Live Search. The description in the FAQ is: What is Tafiti? Tafiti, which means "do research" in Swahili, Read More...
I've Just Bought a VW Camper
Beep beep! Am I mad? Technorati Tags: vw , camper , money-pit? Read More...
Silverlight 1.1 Projects Running From Filesystem
I've seen the same question a few times now about how you can create a Silverlight 1.1 project that doesn't run from the filesystem. By default, when you create a Silverlight 1.1 project in Visual Studio 2008 and hit F5 (run), IE will fire up with a filesystem Read More...
NxtGenUG Cambridge
NxtGenUG have just announced they're adding a new region to their already extensive collection (Birmingham, Oxford and Coventry) - Cambridge this time. The new regional group will be run by Chris Hay and Allister Frost and they've managed to secure a Read More...
Office Open XML Article Now Available Online
I noticed this morning that the article I wrote about Office Open XML is now available on the VSJ website . Hurrah! I get lots of questions about Office Open XML as often people find it difficult to get up and running with it and get to grips with the Read More...
More JavaScript Debugging in Visual Studio 2008
Well I confess that I perhaps underestimated just how good a feature the JavaScript debugging in Visual Studio 2008 is. I've been building a Vista Sidebar gadget over the last couple of days and was surprised (and impressed) with the support I got from Read More...
I Saved Up For Guitar Hero II
I did save up for Guitar Hero II and it arrived last week. I did the tutorials, played half a song and then my Xbox fell over. I was gutted. There I was with my "guitar", ready to rock n roll and instead I found myself staring at three red lights. Read More...
Vista + FireFox + Cassini Web Server (Visual Studio Web Server) Revisited
A long time ago (and I do mean a *long* time ago) I posted that I was having problems with this combination . I've been chatting on and off with the ASP.NET team about this as we tried to track down the issue on a simple repro I'd set up in the office. Read More...
Imaginary Facebook Friends
I know Steve's blogged a bit about Facebook recently but this story about how willing Facebook users are to add "friends" they don't know really made me sit up and take notice. 43% of the sample accepted a friends request from someone they didn't Read More...
Belkin Wireless G USB Network Adapter - Why did I buy this thing?
Okay so it was (relatively) cheap but the reviews were, well, mixed. Still I splashed out £9.99 (down from £16.41) as I was buying some stuff from Amazon anyway (this limited my choice a little) and it seemed like a good deal. The horror stories Read More...
Silverlight Controls
There's been a lot of talk about Silverlight 1.1 controls ( or the current lack thereof ) so I thought I'd highlight something I stumbled across on Tim's blog which you may find as useful as I did. He's shared a couple of presentation decks in this blog Read More...
Spider Pig
Gem and I went to see the Simpson's Movie the other night (hurray for Orange Wednesdays - half price cinema!) and I was pleasantly surprised. I do like the Simpsons, I just haven't watched them for a long time (this corresponds with a number of reviews Read More...
Content Controls and Repeating Data (or Can I Make a Table?)
The most frequently asked question I receive on Word content controls and databinding goes along the lines of "That's great. No really it is. But you see I've got this list of data and I'd really like to populate a table in Word with it. How do I Read More...
Two More Open XML Nuggets
I've published another two Office Open XML nuggets. Actually I published them a couple of weeks ago but they got "stuck in the system" somewhere so I republished them again today. One's on document inspection (it happens to focus on PowerPoint Read More...
Moving to Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Refresh - A Quick Checklist
Here are a few things you'll have to change in your Silverlight 1.1 apps to get them working with the 1.1 Alpha Refresh: Replace the current Silverlight.js file with the new one from the SDK *** Change any references to Sys.Silverlight.* namespace (like, Read More...
//TODO (before rebuilding your machine)
I rebuilt my machine earlier in the week (the Remote Installation Service lets me flatten and rebuild to a Windows Vista + Office Enterprise 2007 image in about half an hour). Of course there's still a lot of work to do to install VS, SQL Server etc etc Read More...
Silverlight: IsHitTestable = IsHitTestVisible
Intellisense may suggest there is an IsHitTestable property on your elements, but the property's actually called IsHitTestVisible . This stumped me for a while as I was trying to set this property on a Canvas and when told that the property IsHitTestable Read More...
Silverlight Breakpoints Not Being Hit?
After rebuilding my machine I found that breakpoints on the Silverlight 1.1 project I was working on were not being hit. All worked fine in the same project before the rebuild. Much head scratching (is that event handler even executing? okay, let's put Read More...
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