Notebook video cards

Comparison of graphics cards at Notebookcheck.com.

Making IE6 from Virtual XP Mode access host IIS sites

Need to setup the Microsoft Loopback adapter.

1. Install the loopback adapter on Windows 7. Some more info here.
2. Configure IPv4 settings on the loopback adapter on the host. A quote from this thread:
   "To be able to communicate between the host and guest, give both the loopback adapter on the host and the NIC in the vm IP addresses which are in the same subnet. For example you could make them 192.168.21.1 and 192.168.21.2 with netmask of 255.255.255.0."
   My settings on my host has a static IP Of 192.168.131.200 and submask 255.255.255.0.
3. On the virtual pc, set 2 network adapters, one for Shared NAT, the 2nd for the Loopback Adapter.
4. On the virtual pc, set the loopback connection's TCP/IP properties to use a static IP.
   My settings on my virtual pc has a static IP of 192.168.131.201 and submask 255.255.255.0.

I can now access host sites on my virtual pc using the host's loopback IP (e.g., http://192.168.131.200/mysite).

[When I tried VirtualBox, I didn't need to do all that at all (I realized this after many hours of frustrating firewall blockage). Just set the vm's network card to NAT, and that's it. No need to connect to the loopback adapter.]

Windows Virtual PC Color Depth and ClearType

To get ClearType font smoothing back on your Windows Virtual PCs:
http://winterdom.com/2009/10/windows-virtual-pc-and-cleartype

Also learned from this thread that turning off Integration Features will let you set the color quality to 32-bit (as opposed to just 16-bit when Integration Features is on), and ClearType comes back (at least on my XP vpc).

To enable 24-bit color depth on an XP virtual PC (say, for Virtual XP Mode), see Microsoft's article: HOW TO: Connect to Terminal Services with Color Resolution That Is Greater Than 256 in Windows XP
After making the change described in the how-to, close the vpc and restart it. Then inside the vpc, go to display settings and set it to 24-bit color. At this point, you can also set font smoothing to ClearType, and it looks like it works.

Monospaced fonts

I use Consolas for writing code (for the slashed zeroes). Remember to set ClearType font-smoothing for it, otherwise it looks scraggly.

Samples of monospaced typefaces.
(Also known as fixed-width or non-proportional fonts.)

Converting a physical computer into virtualPC

From the comments in this blog entry, I found these steps:

1. Clean up all the temp files and compressed files to make the image smaller.
2. Run winimage to create the vhd.
3. Use the vhd to create a new virtual PC.
4. Go through windows setup to repair the windows installation (details in the blog entry comments mentioned earlier).

I haven't tried it yet. I'll update this when I do.

Also look here: How to Convert a Physical Server to a Virtual Machine

iPhone/iPod web app development frameworks

This could be promising: developing iPhone/iPod web apps without a Mac.

Started with this article about Dashcode. At the bottom of that, a comment mentions iWebKit, which is an open source framework for building iPhone-friendly websites.

Emulators:

• Googling for “iwebkit jquery” got me this page about Sujay Dutta's iPhone application, which also mentions TestiPhone, “a web browser based simulator for quickly testing your iPhone Applications”.
• Found out about iBBDemo here. Looks like a better emulator.

Found out about another framework, iUI, here: Simulating an iPhone App: iWebKit vs iUI. That led me to jQTouch (which I had come across before without realizing what I had found):

• jQTouch - A jQuery plugin for mobile web development on the iPhone, iPod Touch ...
• jQTouch Offline Support
  
• Search results for iPhone plugins on the jQuery site ...
• Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript by Jonathan Stark (uses jQTouch in Chapter 4)

And another framework: PhoneGap.

(edit/update on 24-jul-2010:)

• iPhone application development, step by step from OpenLaszlo Project Blog

MCMS issues: cannot run SCA

Recently had a problem with Microsoft Content Management System, where it was erroring-out on the Server Configuration Application. Kept getting this error:

Error: File /NRConfig/SCAConfigMain.asp Unexpected error. A trappable error (C0000005) occurred in an external object. The script cannot continue running.

Best thing I did was look at the System event logs. Found a couple things. There was this error:

The machine-default permission settings do not grant Local Launch permission for the COM Server application with CLSID
{0040D22F-54A1-11D1-9DE0-006097042D69}
to the user NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE SID (S-1-5-20).

Found the resolution for that in the MCMS FAQ topic "Problems with SiteManager after installing Windows XP Service Pack 2":

1. Open Component Services, drill down to My Computer, right click and select Properties.
2. On the COM security tab, select Edit Default... for Launch and Activation permissions
3. Give the Internet Guest User Account (IUSR_... or whatever login was mentioned in the error) Launch and Local Activation permissions.

And then got this error:

DCOM got error "The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it. " attempting to start the service AESecurityService with arguments "-Service" in order to run the server:
{0040D22F-54A1-11D1-9DE0-006097042D69}

Turns out the AESecurityService was disabled. It's a required service for MCMS, so I enabled it (set to automatic), and started it.

And then SCA worked. Woohoo! Finally!

VirtualPC wizard goes off-screen

Every now and then, when switching from an extended-monitor environment to a single-display, you end up with windows opening off-screen. Easy enough to move those: Alt-Tab to the offending window, click Alt-Space (this opens the window's System menu), click M, and then use the arrow buttons or the mouse to move the window back into view.

Microsoft Virtual PC decided to do something like this on Vista, but this time it's on the "New Virtual Machine Wizard" window. I found you can't do Alt-Space on wizards, because there's no System menu on them. The Virtual PC Guy's Blog saved the day: edit the options file %appdata%\Microsoft\Virtual PC\Options.xml, and change the coordinates in the <new_pc> element.

Javascript to download instead of open a file

You can use Javascript to setup a link to download a file instead of opening it. Example:

<a href="#" onclick="window.open('mysite/myfolder/test.xlsx', 'Download');">Download my file</a>

For those that might have Javascript turned off, include an alternate link that has href directly going to the file's URL:

<a href="mysite/myfolder/test.xlsx">Alternate Link</a>

There's probably a combined solution that's more SEO-friendly (don't want the "#" as the href). I tried it but ended up with two popup windows. Need some research on that.