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Cascading Style Sheet Color chart
While digging around the Net today, I ran across an extremely valuable color chart for cascading style sheets.
They actually created the chart by scanning paint samples from a major household paint manufacturer.
The samples art well organized and they provide facilities that show the color values in both Hex and RGB.
Development
(No Ratings Yet)2,652 views
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ASP.NET 2.0 Starter Kits: Customizations
[via Brian Goldfarb]
Sue Googe has a site called edream that really shows you what you can accomplish by customizing the Personal Web Site starter kit.
Sue has included links to sites that were made using customized versions of the starter kits and has posted several articles for adding features and functionality to the several of the default starter kits.
So, if you plan to use one of the starter kits as the basis for one of your sites, check out edream first.
Development (No Ratings Yet)1,766 views Loading ... -
Showing Associated Activities In An IFrame
Matt Wittemann has an excellent post that shows you how to show imbed the list of activities associated with a contact or an account directly on a data entry form.
Besides being cool, this technique shows you a couple of interesting customization tricks including iFrames and working with CRM URLs to show normal CRM web pages in new ways.
Great work Matt.
Customization, Dynamics CRM (No Ratings Yet)2,483 views Loading ... -
For Microsoft Partners: Obtaining the CRM Competency
We have been working toward our Gold Partner status ( up from Certified ) for the past few months which included me taking the CRM certification tests.
In addition, you have to have to electives from a list very much like the one below. I say very much like, because depending if you are on the Microsoft Partner's web site or PartnerSource, you may see a different list.
It was during this process that I found a very irritating caveat that is causing me to waste my time and my money.
I am mentioning it here because I have a feeling that if I am running into this issue, then I am sure a ton of other people will hit it as well.
The Electives list only takes into account people who are becoming newly-certified. it does not take into account those of us who have had our MCSE certification since the NT4 days.
Every time that Microsoft introduces a new MCSE program they always take the time to create Upgrade exams that will allow those with existing certifications to upgrade to the new level with as little energy as possible. This is really cool because it keeps us from wasting our time and money studying for and taking tests.
The upgrade test from NT4 MCSE to the Windows 2000 MCSE was 70-240, which encompassed exams 70-210, 70-215, 70-216, and 70-217. From MCSE 2000 to 2003, you need to take 70-292 and 70-296.
Now, if you look at the list below, you will see that only one of those upgrade tests are listed ( 70-292 ).
And Why am I concerned about this? Well mostly because I already met the requirements by not having two of the required electives but by having four (210, 216, 217, & 220).
And yes, I have spoken to Microsoft about this and yes, I had much more luck explaining the situation to the rabbit living in my back yard.
So, it looks like over the next week I need to block out some time to study for 70-292 and take it early next week so we can go ahead and get to Gold level.
I guess the only question that I have at the moment is for Microsoft: Which is more important to you: 1) For me to be out selling and supporting CRM or; 2) Spending 20+ hours prepping for a test that I have already taken?
Mostly-Correct Dynamics CRM Competency Electives List:
- 70-210 Installing, Configuring, and Administering Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional+
- 70-216 Implementing and Administering a Microsoft Windows 2000 Network Infrastructure
- 70-217 Implementing and Administering a Microsoft Windows 2000 Directory Services Infrastructure+
- 70-224 Installing, Configuring, and Administering Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server
- 70-228 Installing, Configuring, and Administering Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition.
- 70-270 Installing, Configuring, and Administering Microsoft Windows XP Professional
- 70-284 Implementing and Managing Microsoft Exchange Server 2003
- 70-290 Managing and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Environment +
- 70-292 Managing and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Environment for an MCSA Certified on Windows 2000
- 70-298 Installing, Configuring and Administering Microsoft Windows XP Professional+
- 70-297 Designing a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Active Directory and Network Infrastructure
- 70-305 Developing and Implementing Web Applications with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET
- 70-315 Developing and Implementing Web Applications with Microsoft Visual C# .NET and Microsoft Visual Studio.NET
- 70-431 TS: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 – Implementation and Maintenance
- CRM 12-228 (MB2-228)Microsoft CRM Extending Microsoft CRM with .NET
Dynamics CRM (No Ratings Yet)1,850 views Loading ... -
Rabbits are stupid
So I have this wild rabbit living in my back yard. Mostly because I have grass to eat and no dogs so it doesn't have to worry about being eaten, etc.
Yesterday morning, while I was making coffee, I looked outside and saw the rabbit nosing around the door to my storage shed.
Dumbass.
There's no beer in there.
Rabbits are stupid.
Meanderings (No Ratings Yet)1,300 views Loading ... -
Tracking checkboxes in a .NET ListView ( VS2003 )
I encountered a pretty interesting situation this morning as I am working on a utility containing a ListView control in Visual Studio 2003.
I have a Start button that I would like to be disabled until the user actually selects items from the ListView by clicking on a checkbox associated with the list item.
The ListView has a list items collection called .CheckedItems that contains the list of items that have been checked inside the ListView. The problem surfaces because the update of this collection takes a bit of time and if I am using the .CheckedItems.Count to enable or disable my start button, it will produce a very inconsistent user experience depending on how quickly the user clicks the checkboxes.
To get around this problem, you actually need to create a variable to store the number items that have been checked. Starting off at zero, of course, and incrementing or decrementing the value each time the user clicks an item's checkbox.
The code to do this will go into the ItemCheck event, as shown below:
private void listAvailable_ItemCheck(object sender, System.Windows.Forms.ItemCheckEventArgs e)
{
if(e.NewValue==CheckState.Checked)
iCheckedCount++;
else
iCheckedCount–;
btnStart.Enabled = (iCheckedCount > 0);
}Hopefully, this will save you a bit of time should need to implement the same practice.
Development (No Ratings Yet)2,199 views Loading ... -
Speed Up Dynamics CRM 3.0 Web Service Calls
I was reading the latest feeds from Phil Richardson's blog where he mentioned a post regarding some tests that Aaron Elder of Invoke Systems had conducted using some of the more esoteric web service properties that he used to speed up data retrieval using the CRM web services.
I have been working on a bulk delete utility for CRM, which I call CRMClean. ( Phil has one he calls CRM Nuke, btw. )
Anyway, after inserting Aaron's suggested changes into the code ( and rearranging some things I had done badly ), the performance absolutely freaking screams. It finishes processing so fast that I actually had to go check the log file to make sure it actually produced the same results as the unmodified code.
Run 1: Before making Aaron's suggested changes:
16:33:11 Processing completed. Deleted 57 items from 2 entities
16:33:11 =========================================
16:33:11 Deleted 55 items from new_1atest.
16:32:59 Deleted 2 items from account.
Run 2: After making Aaron's suggested changes ( and cleaning things up a bit ):13:35:05 Processing completed. Deleted 57 items from 2 entities
13:35:05 =========================================
13:35:05 Deleted 55 items from new_1atest.
13:35:05 Deleted 2 items from account.As you can see, the first run too about 12 seconds to process and the second run, took a second or so.
After reading Aaron's article, and implementing his suggestions, I started looking at how I was interacting with the CRM web services. As I mentioned above, I had done some things that I should not have, like reconnect to the CRM web service at the start of each delete process. This is not very smart since each reconnection to the web service creates more overhead.
I had done it this way because I wanted a stand-alone function that would allow me to delete the contents of any CRM entity. At the time, it made perfect sense and I had never questioned the performance. But, newly educated, I determined that the connection to CRM should probably only be created once so that you only take that initial hit and don't punish the user later.
I guess I should spend just a little more time studying the examples and code from guys like Michaeljon Miller, huh? :)
Anyway, if you are going to be working with Web services, give Aaron's article a read.
Customization, Dynamics CRM (No Ratings Yet)2,927 views Loading ... -
Dynamics CRM 3.0 Installation Notes
When you install CRM 3.0, the installation logs are written to a directory under the installation user's Documents and Settings directory:
C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Microsoft\MSCRM\Logs
You should make a backup of these files because they contain a ton of information related to the choices made during the setup process.
Basically, every question you answered during Setup, including the product key, is written to those logs and should you ever need to recover or recreate an installation, that information will come in handy.
Dynamics CRM, Installation
(1 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)1,864 views Loading ...
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