waiting / writing

It's friday so I'll keep this short: I really like the new package designer in Sitecore 5.3. It's heaps better than the old one, and even tho this is pretty much identical to a solution a collegue of mine wrote last spring (so he's probably gonna have to come up with something even better yet again) I like the way things are moving forward.. Haven't had a chance to do all the things I hoped to accomplish this week since a middle-hand has been keeping me from completing a milestone in one of my current projects. Oh well, guess that's life. Not much to do there but hope that next week will be better. However, since I've been waiting a lot this week I've kept myself busy testing out the new release of ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions (or "Atlas" if you're like me and still use that name since it's -heaps- easier to say). First thing that still strikes me when working with it is how easy it is to implement. I'm really impressed at the dedication and level of development that has gone into this project. Good stuff! My next post will probably be a tutorial on the new release of ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions, but more on that when I do so.. Good stuff, bring on the beers (and the final release of Sitecore 5.3, please?). Take care, P.

Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX v1.0 Beta

Yesterday Microsoft made the Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX v1.0 Beta (previously known under codename "atlas") available to the public, it's up for grabs at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=90E0CCDF-D246-4929-A027-D5EE6F806851&displaylang=en Also, alongside the release of that beta version, the new ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit (previously known as Atlas Control Toolkit) was also made public, and you'll find it at http://www.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ProjectName=AtlasControlToolkit Have fun! P.

IE7 roll-out

Well, actually it seems that some people -still- get the same errors (KB918899 related), even if they install the update. Wierd. For these people (and for the rest of you/us all) the perhaps good news is that a majority of clients will get Internet Explorer 7 as an automatic update - today. To read more about this see the excellent IEBlog, including posts IE7 to be distributed via Automatic Updates and IE7 Is Coming This Month...Are you Ready?) Now, there's -always- a catch (I feel like a broken record, but there usually is): This automatic update is only available for the users running on english/american locale. Seems the swedish version will be ready for roll-out as an automatic update sometime during december. Oh well. (You could always change your/your clients/whomever's locale to english in the system since that'll tell IE to use the same, and then it'll get updated..) Personally I like the idea that IE7 has been made an "update" since it's a lot better and it gives more to the people developing websites. That's all folks - Take care, P.

Annoying KB918899 issue resolved

As -many- have noticed the Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer (KB918899) that came a while ago caused major problems with IE6 (Internet Explorer 6) on XP and 2003 Server. Well, there's another fix now available (KB923996) that you can download directly (instead of the previous one where you actually had to get microsoft to send it to you). Update for Microsoft Windows XP (SP2), English version http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ff9bc431-01f3-48e8-9a58-d701d2e60c1d&DisplayLang=en Update for Microsoft Windows XP (SP2), Swedish version http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ff9bc431-01f3-48e8-9a58-d701d2e60c1d&DisplayLang=sv Update for Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 x64 Edition, English version http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2b7b1d5b-0b08-432a-b552-857997513476&DisplayLang=en Hopefully this helps to make your experience smooth once again, P.

Sneaky, sneaky..

Seems Sitecore has released a new version of 5.3, namely Sitecore 5.3 RC3. Interesting.. feels like the final version will be arriving shortly. UPDATE The installer is a lot friendlier now, and it didn't crash once for me when installing it on my laptop that runs Vista. Good stuff! However, might just be my setup, but i was unable to create a new website in my IIS7, I just had the option to install it on the already existing website. Oh well, that's a really petty problem anyway since you can change it manually anyway you want. Take care, P.

Sitecore 5.3 & Vista RC2

So, i've been running Vista RC2 now on my laptop and I have to say that all this fuzz about bugs and crashes and whatever people keep screeming about all over the net seems -way- exaggerated.. well, either that or these people are trying to install it on a pc that was outdated even back when bellbottoms were cool.. Anyway, that's not the point. What i was getting to is that, for me, Vista is a huge improvement compared to todays systems, and that's good. However, there's always a catch, otherwise there's no point in writing about it, but considering that it's still just RC2 -hopefully- these issues will be fixed when it's released. Configuring things like IIS7, or even installing Web Applications Projects update for Visual Studio 2005, or "Atlas"/ASP.NET AJAX is anything but easy and user-friendly. After hours of failed installations I finally got them all running the way they should, and then I proceeded to my final goal, installing Sitecore 5.3.. Again, another no-go-zone (at least, for me). The installer crashed, bigtime, and pretty much won't let me do anything.. First up it crashes in the background after selecting the licence file, I get a notification saying that InstallDriver Module has stopped working.. What's interesting though is that I'm simply able to close the popup and continue with the installation. At this stage i'm going "Heeey, that's neat." but unfortunately that only lasts a minute until it throws another error: Error 1609:.. ASPNET user is not a valid user or group.. And that's where I'm at right now. Might have to manually configure the ASPNET user (shouldn't tho, but who knows?). If/When I get this up and running i'll post again.. UPDATE: Well, here's what has to be done:

1. Make sure Vista is configured to recognize IIS6 actions/scripts etc. This can be done by checking the appropriate boxes under the IIS part of the "Turn Windows features on or off".
2. Install .NET Framework 1.1 (and updates).
3. Turn the UAP off (not sure if this really is needed, but that's what I did).
4. Run the installer as administrator (right click the installer, "Run as Administrator").

For me it still crashes in the beginning with that InstallDriver Module error, but after that the installer runs (read "is now running" since i'm installing right now) smoothly..

UPDATE 2:

Well, the happiness of the first update was not kept alive for long. After the installation finished (which it did and that was nice) I'm now stuck at the next obstacle - When trying to access localhost all I got at first was an error message saying it couldn't read the config file and a wierd "Could not load all ISAPI filters for site". So, like every other time something goes wrong, I added Network Service and the other system roles to the website and it's content, allowing full access for ease of use. Voila, time to see the next error, and this one is regarding changes made to the handling of the actual web.config file itself. This part was a little more tricky since it's not at all that well documented..

Below is what i've done so far (and as of right now I'm not at all sure about this solution, maybe there's a best-practice way to go about all this, but since I haven't seen one yet I'll keep on trying).

1. Create a system.webServer node
2. Move HttpModules and HttpHandlers from system.web to system.webServer
3. Rename HttpModules to modules
4. Rename HttpHandlers to handlers

So far all I get is that it's missing a http handler and nothing will load, but perhaps I'll have it fixed soon..

UPDATE 3:

Well, this is a situation with IIS7 having two options to run the site in: "Classic .NET Mode" or "Integrated .NET mode", the later of the two is what they recommend for IIS7 and future versions. Fine, they want us to move up, that's alright. But right now I don't care, I just want it to run. So, if you want to try and load it into the Integrated .NET mode (which I'm trying to), keep thinking and comment, otherwise you can run a command in the command promt to switch it to Classic .NET mode.

%systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe set app "SITENAMEHERE/" /applicationPool:"Classic .NET AppPool"

FINAL UPDATE:

When all else fails, admit you've probably done something stupid and save yourself the worry by simply scrapping the old installation and do a new one. Lesson learned.

Hope this will help you install it on Vista if you run across these problems as well.

Take care, P.