ASP.NET Debugging : IE8

ASP.NET Troubleshooting

Tom — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:31:03 GMT

So with how long ASP.NET has been out for now, I am really curious to know how people go about tracking down issues in their project.

I’d like to know things like:

How do you know there is a problem
What tools do you use to confirm that the problem really is a problem
How do you gather data about the problem
How do you determine if the problem is your code or something else (like the network, hard drive failure, etc)
If the problem is your code, how do you ensure your fix resolves the problem (how do you test the fix)

If there are any others, I’d also like to hear them.

Also, if you do anything in the Cloud now, I’d love to hear how you troubleshoot that. And it can be from any cloud service provider.

And have any of these things changed with some of the new ways to program that have come out. For example, AJAX, MVC, Silverlight, IE8, jQuery, etc.

The PDC this year…

Tom — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Not sure how many people are planning on attending the PDC (Professional Developers Conference) this year, but it is going to be a fantastic conference.

We announced some huge announcements on the PDC web site. http://www.microsoftpdc.com/

We have a major lineup of executive keynote speakers representing most of the core Microsoft businesses.
We’ll have 20+ Windows 7 sessions, and we’ll be giving out the Win7 bits.
We also announced our in-depth symposia sessions including parallel computing and S+S.

If you have any questions about the PDC, feel free to check out the site listed above, or you can Ask the Brain.

The conference runs from October 27th to October 30th with the pre-conference on October 26th. You can see the full agenda here.

We have also just announced that all partners and customers attending the PDC will receive a very special gift this year: a 160GB external USB2 hard drive with all of the bits! That is a very cool gift and very useful as well. I’d love to hear if anyone is going or thinking about going to the PDC!

IE8 Beta 2 Update

Tom — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 13:00:00 GMT

So I have now been able to install Beta 2 on my machine and I just wanted to give my thoughts on it so far.

Installation

This was a little bit of a problem for me and the Beta 2 package didn’t uninstall Beta 1 automatically for me on my Vista x64 machine. It told me to uninstall the previous version and that restart the install. So when I went to “Program and Features”, Internet Explorer wasn’t listed in any way there. There was also no uninstall on the start menu.

I did however find it. It was located under the “View installed updates” choice on the left side of the Programs and Features window. After I uninstalled that and rebooted, Beta 2 installed just fine.

Usage

I love the new changes to IE. I didn’t think there was that much new to be added to a web browser, but I think everything I have seen so far makes sense and is very useful. The WebSlices have been mentioned here before and I think they fill and great need especially around getting updates on things like auctions.

The Accelerators are also very cool. Allowing you to look up words, find an address on a map, and many other things very easily. I think there will be a lot of great additional Accelerators created and we will see the web expand in a totally new way.

The other two new things that I like a lot are the Suggested Sites feature and the auto-complete additions. The Suggested Sites feature is really cool in that it will give you other sites around the web that are like the site you are currently on. I think it has a lot of possibility for really enabling you to find other information along a specific topic. The auto-complete features are very useful when you are typing in a URL and maybe aren’t sure about the exact path.

As with any new product updates, I think these things are best to be tried out for yourself. Feel free to post your comments here as I’d like to hear what others think.

IE8 Beta 2 is now out

Tom — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:57:33 GMT

In case you haven't seen already, as announced here, IE8 Beta 2 can now be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/ie8.

Why is this important? Well, Beta 1 was for developers to see the new browser and test their sites with. This beta is about everyone. I'd really suggest taking a look at the IE blog referenced above and see some of the new features that are in this.

I haven't had a chance to install it yet, but it is on my list of things to do in the near future.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 Hands-on Labs

Tom — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Just wanted to pass along some really interesting labs that I came across the other day. These labs cover the following topics:

IE 8 Activities
AJAX
Developer Tools
Standards Support
IE 8 WebSlices

You can check out all these labs at Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 Hands-on Labs for Tech-Ed 2008.

Note: These labs assume you are running Windows Vista. They will work on Windows XP but the visual experience and instructions may vary.

Tips for IE8

Tom — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 06:12:39 GMT

So after using IE8 for a while now, there are a few things that are useful for people to keep in mind. First, there are a lot of changes in IE8. I am really excited about some of them, such as WebSlices. They give you the ability to subscribe to just a part of a page, like an RSS feed, but just for a part of a page. There is a really good discussion about this here.

To give you an example, if you are looking at this blog with IE8, the list below is a WebSlice. I will update this with new articles around IE8 as time goes on.

IE8 articles

Along with the new features, there are some issues that some existing sites may have with IE8. If you are a consumer looking at a page that has an issue, you can click on the IE7 Emulation button and you should be able to see the site like you were browsing it in Internet Explorer 7. If it is your site and you want it to work in IE7 mode, one way you can enable this is to set a meta tag on your page. The meta tag looks like:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7" />

This will make your page work like it did in IE7.

I will try to post some more thoughts around IE8 and my experiences around it. I'd like to hear your thoughts if you are using it.