The new incarnation of the Visual Studio product has many improvements but unfortunately also a few issues. I will be collecting a list of Hot Fixes which may be useful to developers. The place to go when having any issues with any Microsoft product would be there Microsoft Connect site.

The list is as follows and will be updated regularly:

• Large Visual Basic project crashes when closed
• Fix for scrolling unnecessarily in VS context menus

As the internet increases in popularity and more families have access to computers than ever before, security should be our main concern.

Unfortunately the current generation of parents and some children have not been educated about computer security and the implications of being online or sharing files etc.

Some statistics for January 2010 can be found here and gives us an idea of how far/fast malware is spreading.

This post describes how to protect your machine from malware,spam, hackers etc without spending a penny. This is by no means an exhaustive list of available security solutions but rather the solutions that I use to secure my own machines.

• Firewall
  • Windows Firewall with advanced settings (Windows Vista/7/2008) (http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-6098592.html)
  • Comodo (http://www.comodo.com/home/internet-security/firewall.php)
• Anti-Virus
  • Microsoft Security Essentials (http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/)
  • AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 9.0 (http://free.avg.com/gb-en/download-avg-anti-virus-free)
  • ClamWin Free Antivirus (http://www.clamwin.com/content/view/18/46/)
• Anti-Spam
  • Agnitum Spam Terrier (http://www.agnitum.com/products/spam-terrier/index.php)
• Anti-Spyware
  • Spybot - Search & Destroy (http://www.safer-networking.org/en/spybotsd/index.html)
• Intrusion Detection Systems
  • Snort (http://www.snort.org/downloads?)
• DNS
  • OpenDNS (http://www.opendns.com)

If you are using windows XP and upward you will already have a perfectly decent firewall pre-installed, if you are not happy using the windows firewall I would reccomend comodo which has an excellent reputation and has been around for ages.

Configuring and Installing Windows Firewall with Advanced Settings

Configuring and installing Comodo

Download and install comodo from the link above, run the executable on your local machine, I opt out from installing any of their other products as I'm only looking for a firewall.

On the following screen select Firewall or Firewall with Optimum Proactive Defence, click next

You can opt in to the comodo network also I dont usually use their DNS servers.

Do not make hotsurf my homepage or Ask.com my search provider thank you.

More...

I switched from git to mecurial this week by following these articles.

http://www.jeremyskinner.co.uk/mercurial-on-iis7/

http://vampirebasic.blogspot.com/2009/06/running-mercurial-on-windows.html#comment-form

http://weblogs.asp.net/bleroy/archive/2010/02/26/setting-up-a-continuous-integration-server-for-a-codeplex-project-using-teamcity-and-mercurial.aspx

http://linux.die.net/man/5/hgrc

The only gotchas I faced were, "Bad Gateway" exception when trying to run hgwebdir.cgi from a web application which existed on a different drive to my main system drive. Also be sure to install the 2.5.4/32-bit version of python otherwise it wont work.

Its a harsh thing to say but subversion has a fair amount of issues with regard to the model it uses for for maintaining all the history that a version control system needs.
For one it uses deltas, which makes recovering corrupt repositories a nightmare if not impossible. Git doesn't suffer from this same affliction, Git also has a heap of other features.

So I have decided to use git instead check out the link below for the windows version and detailed instructions below that on installing and using git on windows.

http://code.google.com/p/gitextensions/

I have recently had to redirect all requests for certain pages which have been renamed to their new conterparts. This is simple
Windows Server 2008 & IIS 7/7.5 using the following config section in the web applications web.config.

An example would be:

<location path="ocr.aspx">       
 <system.webServer>           
  <httpRedirect enabled="true" destination="http://www.soft-cor.com/Home/OnlineOCR/" exactDestination="true" childOnly="true" httpResponseStatus="Permanent" />       
 </system.webServer>    
</location>

More documentation can be found here

Anyone run a Nessus scan lately?

Got the following results??

Synopsis : The remote service supports the use of weak SSL ciphers. Description : The remote host supports the use of SSL ciphers that offer either weak encryption or no encryption at all. See also : http://www.openssl.org/docs/apps/ciphers .html Solution: Reconfigure the affected application if possible to avoid use of weak ciphers. Risk Factor: Medium  / CVSS Base Score : 5.0 (CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N) [More]

Go here to sort it out!!

http://www.curtis-lamasters.com/2008/06/21/windows-iis-ssl-restrict-weak-ciphers/

Here are a collection of useful links related to development on Windows 7

1. Turning off the annoying "Attach Security Warning" when debugging in Visual Studio
   

   

   
   http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/vsdebug/thread/b3c55b8d-4f5e-4db8-8bce-cca921f2678a/
2. Slipstreaming .NET Framework 1.1 + SP1 for install on a windows 7 box
   

   http://saranspot.blogspot.com/2009/02/installing-dotnet-framework-11-on.html

And more to come soon...

Check out my developer favourites bar links, I use these links everyday.
I have also attached an the exported file from IE

Bookmarks 

AJAX The Official Microsoft ASP.NET Site.url

API Reference WebKit DOM Reference.url

DevExpress Forums - Presentation Components, IDE Productivity Tools, Reporting, App Frameworks - Developer Express Inc.url

DOM - MDC.url

Forums The Official Microsoft Silverlight Site.url

Forums - ASP.NET Forums.url

Highlights of Telerik RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX.url

HTML and DHTML Reference.url

JavaScript Switch Statement.url

jquery The Write Less, Do More, JavaScript Library.url

jTemplates - template engine in JavaScript.url

Lorem Ipsum - All the facts - Lipsum generator.url

msdn Microsoft Developer Network.url

ninject Lightning-fast dependency injection for .NET.url

NUnit - Home.url

Regular Expression Library.url

Stack Overflow.url

TestDriven.Net Home.url

The Official Microsoft IIS Site.url

Visual Studio Gallery.url

WebDeveloper.com.url

welcome home vim online.url

WindowsClient.net.url

World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards.url

 

bookmark.htm (5.30 kb)

One of the best things any developer who is using vs 2008 can do is change to a low contrast color scheme.
one of my favourites is Ragnarok Grey which can be found on winterdom, Tomas Restrepo's blog.