Category: Uncategorized

Using the right version of MSXML in Internet Explorer

I have previously written about the Microsoft XML parser (MSXML) and have had quite a lot of fustrations with it and was pleasantly surprised to find a post on the Microsoft XML Team’s WebLog on the subject. The post is called “Using the right version of MSXML in Internet Explorer” and provide details on the different versions of MSXML and which version to use where. The post even has an executive summary section which I recommend you skim though I’ll reproduce the most important 4 bullets for MSXML here:

  • Use MSXML 6.0 – it is “in the box” on Vista and available for download on Win2k, XP, and 2003. It has the best security, performance, reliability, and W3C conformance
  • MSXML 3.0 is our preferred “fallback” – It is installed on every OS from a fully patched Win2k SP4 installation on up, so it requires “zero-deployment” and is serviced regularly with the OS
  • MSXML 4.0 was released to the web about 5 years ago, but at this point has been superseded by MSXML 6.0 and is only intended to support legacy applications
  • MSXML 5.0 for Microsoft Office Applications is purpose-built for Office applications and isn’t intended for broad deployment. Internet Explorer 7 actually has the MSXML5 components “off-by-default” in the Internet zone so your customers will get a goldbar for each MSXML5 control on a page if your code tries to instantiate it. The best recommendation is to avoid MSXML5 in your web apps (only machines with Office 2003 or higher will have it, anyway.).

Skim it now or save the bookmark for when you need to deal with MSXML.

Upgraded to FeedDemon 2.1 BETA 2

Just upgraded my RSS reader of choice, FeedDemon, to version 2.1 BETA 2 and I must say it is nice. I’m not much for beta software for my critical applications, and FeedDemon falls in that category, but I upgraded to have a small bug with FeedStation (the built in podcast-catcher) fixed. The release adds numerous small improvements to the UI and other pieces of small utility functionality (such as copying feed addresses etc.).

I especially like the highlighting of search terms in “Watches” (search based feeds inside FeedDemon) and the pagination of feeds with a lot of content. Previously it was sometimes difficult to see why a post was added to a Watch but not so anymore.

As to the stability I haven’t had any issues with BETA 1 or BETA 2 besides the application taking a little longer than usual to synchronize with NewsGator.

Spot the Domino Administrator bug!

I’m diagnosing some performance problems for a customer and I’m using the realtime statistics on the Server/Performance tab of Domino Administrator. After spending a fair amount of time I saw a strange bug in the display. Can you see it?

Need a hint? Click here to get it…

Be aware who you allow to handle your laptop

Yesterday morning one of our customers calls me since “John” is unable to boot up his laptop into Windows XP due to some Internet Explorer related error. Apart from telling “John” to try and reboot and/or cut the power to the laptop there’s really nothing I can do to help him. Although he did open a strange-looking website yesterday by clicking a link in an e-mail sent to him from some guy in India he can’t think of what he did wrong… 😉

I’m now thinking of his laptop as “SPYWARE CENTRAL” but try to help him as best I can. After a couple of failed attempts to get his laptop going I ask him to call the it-support company they use for Windows related issues since we, strictly speaking, only deal with their Domino servers. He’s reluctant to call them however since they have been having second thoughts about this company lately and have been meaning to switch to another company. I convince him that he really should call them so he does and they come and pick up his laptop for diagnostics and a possible reload. Thankfully we’ve set up id-file escrow on their Domino server so we can restore “Johns” id-file and he can continue working with e-mail and applications on another machine.

So far so good.

Today I talked to “John” again about his laptop issue. It turned out that he was probably right about not calling their it-support company. It turns out that he wont be getting his laptop back since they – get this – ran over his laptop with a car!! Yes – they ran it over with a car! Only positive thing about it is that the guy who did it, also ran over his own laptop in the process. That doesn’t ease the throbbing pain “John” is feeling when thinking about the data that’s was on the laptop.

How crazy is that?

But get this… When the “technician” from the it-support company calls “John” to tell him about his little mishap he decides that he needs something to turn “Johns” attention from his wrecked laptop and what better than to tell him of their special deal on 15″ screen laptops!! As you might have guessed it would probably have been better not to try and sell “John” new stuff when you are unable to take care of existing stuff.

Suffice to say that “John” is looking for potential new it-support companies as I write this.

Have a nice weekend!

Six tips for Firefox 2 – reinstate the Firefox 1.5 close tab button

There has been some discussion on the web lately on how Mozilla for the Firefox 2 codestream has removed the close button at the end of the tab script. It appears you can keep the Firefox 1.5 behaviour by modify a property on the about:config page. Another cool feature I learned from these tips is that you can undo the closing of a tab – nice!!

For more information see Six tips for Firefox 2 over at ZDNet.