Extracting Files From an MSI

A co-worker of mine found it is possible to extract files from an MSI by adding this registry entry: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Msi.Package\shell\Extract MSI\command]

@="msiexec.exe /a \"%1\" /qb TARGETDIR=\"%1 Extracted\""

HTML5 doctype and Visual Studio 2010

Rey Bango posts on how to create HTML 5 Website and Page Templates for Visual Studio 2010. By default, VS 2010 creates web pages with an XHTML 1.0 doctype so this is useful if you prefer the HTML5 as the doctype.

ASP.NET Application in F#

This post over at hubFS--a blog about F#--shows you how to create an ASP.NET application in F#. The author, Tomas Petricek, maintains his own F# blog as well.

Microsoft's Introduces WebMatrix

I just saw that Microsoft has introduced WebMatrix, a new web development tool.  Quoting Microsoft:

WebMatrix is a brand new web development tool from Microsoft that includes everything you need for website development. Start from open source web applications, built-in web templates or just start writing code yourself. It’s all-inclusive, simple and best of all free. Developing websites has never been easier.

Microsoft's home page for web development has a lot of other information.

5 Useful Tools for .NET Development

In this post, Intertech's Andrew Troelson lists 5 useful tools for .NET development.

10 Ways to Make the Most of Training

One of Intertech's instructors, James White posts about how to make the most of training.  This got my attention as we are about to implement a new training policy in our shop.

Problems When Pinning To Win 7's Taskbar

The other day I was trying to pin an executable to Win 7's taskbar and having no luck: When displaying its context menu, there was no 'Pin to the Taskbar' option (or 'Pin to the Start Menu' for that matter).  I did some googling around to find out what to do and came across various articles about creating shortcuts to shortcuts, editing the resultant properties, or loading up the .lnk file itself into Notepad and so on--all seemed pretty awful hacks if any actually worked.

Finally, I came across a post by Rick Strahl in his blog that explains what is actually going on. In short, Win 7 keeps a list of 'disallowed' text.  If the pathname contains a disallowed text string, the 'Pin to x' options are taken away.  On my particular machine, it looked the string 'help' might be the issue so I removed that from the AddRemoveNames key.  No luck.  Rebooted.  No luck.  Since I didn't care to fight it any further, I simply deleted everything in the AddRemoveApps, AddRemoveNames, CutList and HostApps keys and rebooted.  That solved the problem.

While trying to figure the issue out, I also came across this forum post that explains where the Taskbar's shortcuts are actually stored:  C:\Users\(User-Name)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar

More Visual Studio 2010 Resources

Here is a list of posts and articles on Visual Studio 2010:

• Scott Guthrie's Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 series (note the debugging tips/tricks in VS 2010)
• Scott Cate's Visual Studio Tricks
• Intertech's Andrew Troelson on Visual Studio 2010 and the GAC
• Troelson's .NET 4.0 Training video
• Intertech's video on C# 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 (If you are on LinkedIn) 
• And Guthrie's announcement of the following free products that build on .NET 4 and VS 2010
• ASP.NET MVC 3
• NuGet
• IIS Express 7.5
• SQL Server Compact Edition 4
• Web Deploy and Web Farm Framework 2.0
• Orchard 1.0
• WebMatrix 1.0

.NET: 10 Things Every Developer Should Know

Over at Intertech's blog, Andrew Troelsen posts about the Top 10 Things Seasoned .NET Developers Understand or 10 Things New .NET Developers Need to Know.  Check it out.