Internationalization support in Orcas Beta 1

I have been doing a lot of Internationalization work in ASP.NET2 lately (in fact I am doing a presentation at QMSDNUG in May) and have in general been really impressed by the level of support VS and .Net 2 has for it. However you do not have to dig down too much to see the deficiencies as well. Fortunately for the most part if you are not happy with it then you can write your own custom resource provider (this is not fun – I have done it – be warned – but if you are really keen check out what Rick Strahl has been doing).

So with the release of Orcas Beta 1 I was keen to get in and see what new support there is. After the 5.5GB download I am sad to announce that the support for internationalisation does not appear to be very high on their list of priorities. Indeed, doing a Generate Local Resources actually fails in beta 1 with the message…

Start creating resource content and adding 'meta' attributes to server controls and directives.

A resource writer could not be found.Finished creating resource content and adding 'meta' attributes.

The Help makes no mention of anything "Whats new" to do with Internationalization.

Maybe this will change with the next beta.

This is a bit disappointing. I was really looking forward to getting in, having a play and blogging about my experiences.

 

 

 

Linking multiple Visio pages into Word

I posted this question on AusDotNet the other day. I have reposted it here in case it may help someone...

At the risk of sounding like I am using Word for the first time today, how does one insert a DDE link from Word (aka Insert Object, Create From File,  Link to File) to the second or third page of a Visio document?  I can get the first page in just using the standard Link to File, but how do you tell it to link to the second page?



I have attempted to edit the links in Word where you can change the location of the source document and can even specify an "Item" in the source. I have entered the name  of the page in question but that did not work. It seems to be very Excel specific.

I have also attempted to split the Visio into multiple documents but since I am editing UML diagrams I then lose the automatic update of other diagrams when a shared class is edited – not good.

I have attempted to define a named range in Visio (just like you do in Excel) but it does not exist in Visio.

I am using Office 2007.

 

The answer is simple but like some parts of Visio it is totally different to the rest of Office. In Visio, select Edit->Copy drawing and then in Word, select Paste-Paste Special->Paste Link. The Copy drawing feature does not appear to be in any other Office program. The DDE does not look like it is supported.

Thanks Ken!

Word 2007 Blog post test

OK – this is a big step. Fed up with Blogger's editor, I have taken the plunge and am writing this post in Word 2007.

This is a MUCH nicer and convenient interface. I think I will use this in the future.

IE7 tabs - very stange

In a legacy ASP application we have some web pages that do some routine maintenance - precalculating some tables, deleting old data, etc. We schedule the running of these pages through Windows Scheduler. Its a low tech and reliable solution.

One of the pages takes about 12 min to run. It required some maintenance today. So I navigated to the URL to test it - and waited. So I opened up a tab in IE7 to go to another part of the same web site expecting the home page of the site to come up instantly. But it sat there with the thumper thumping, the progress indicator ticking over and no page. Hmmmm.... I opened another web browser and navigated to the home page and it came up instantly.

Back to the first browser on the second tab. Clicked Stop and Go - still nothing. After about 3 min the home page eventually turned up. I created other tabs and navigated to other sites OK.

I reproduced it a second time.

Why would IE have a problem opening up a socket connection to web site that is being accessed on another tab - very, very strange.