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The SqlDataAdapter has a CommandTimeout property but does offer any method to set any kind of timeout during the Fill method. If you are returning rather large data sets, you can quickly run into a problem. The obvious solution would be to inherit the SqlDataAdapter and simply override the Fill method, except that the SqlDataAdapter cannot be inherited. As a result, we must implement the same methods that the SqlDataAdapter does and attach them to a private internal SqlDataAdapter to do all the heavy lifting. With the use of anonymous delegates, we can easily rework the Fill methods to offer a new FillTimeout property and throw an exception when we exceed our desired timeout.

public int FillTimeout
{
    get { return _fillTimeout; }
    set { _fillTimeout = value; }
}

public int Fill(DataSet dataSet)
{
    if (_fillTimeout == 0)
    {
        return _adapter.Fill(dataSet);
    }
    else
    {
        int rows = 0;
        Thread fillThread = new Thread(delegate() { rows = _adapter.Fill(dataSet); });
        fillThread.Start();
        if (fillThread.Join(_fillTimeout * 1000))
        {
            return rows;
        }
        else
        {
            try
            {
                fillThread.Abort();
            }
            catch (ThreadAbortException)
            {
                Thread.ResetAbort();
            }
            throw new TimeoutException();
        }
    }
}

Download the full ExtendedSqlDataAdapter class : ExtendedSqlDataAdapter.cs

Most of the projects that I have been working on lately did not require any advanced AJAX. Most of the time, stuffing the results of a simple GET into innerHTML has usually been sufficient. Recently, I needed to do some more advanced AJAX work so I started looking into JSON. There a hundreds of helper classes that people have dreamed up already for ASP.NET, however this project was under the Classic ASP (VBScript) umbrella.

I fell upon a nice little utility on aptly called aspjson. It is a nice utility except the implementation of multi-dimensional array support is flawed. Try to JSON an array that has dimensions with more than 10 elements and you will quickly see what I mean.

I rewrote the multi-dimensional array support from scratch and I am releasing the code under the same license as the original author as well as obviously attributing credit to Tuğrul Topuz for his original code.

Download the ASPJSON 2.1 source

One of the first things you learn about XHTML is lowercase. Everything is lowercase. Lowercase tags, lowercase attributes, lowercase, lowercase, lowercase…

I guess it wasn’t obvious enough to the developers over at Adobe because Dreamweaver CS4 has this annoying habit of mix-casing all of the JavaScript event handlers.

Thankfully, there’s a fix. All it requires is to edit the hundreds of entries in the tag library. Doing so through the interface tag library dialog is painful enough to make you want to claw your eyes out. So to save you the insanity, I did some file trickery and fixed all of the event entries within the entire HTML tag library.

Simply download the HTML Tag Library and overwrite your existing one. You’ll find it by default in “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Dreamweaver CS4\configuration\TagLibraries” on x86 systems and “C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Dreamweaver CS4\configuration\TagLibraries” on x64 systems.

Each Microsoft product is identified internally using a ProductID that is in the form of a Globally Unique Identifier (GUID). Software or updates that refer back to Microsoft products tend to generally establish the relationship using the GUIDs instead of the product name. If you ever wanted develop software that dug into some of Microsoft’s software internals, you’ll quickly find that without a way to map those GUIDs, most of the data is meaningless.

Never before documented or published, here’s a list of all known Microsoft ProductID GUIDs :

A post today on the IE support blog got me really curious. Apparently, if you install the Microsoft Software Inventory Analyzer, you lose print preview functionality. The culprit would be the fact that MSIA registers itself to use the .dlg file extension. Feeling unsatisfied, I decided to investigate further. I can confirm that it’s easy to reproduce and it affects more then just the print preview dialog.

Off the bat, as soon as MSIA is installed, not only will you lose the print preview dialog, but the about dialog mysteriously become blank. It also seems to affect rendering of text inside CSS styled textboxes. It certainly flat out killed Wordpress making all text appear white on a white background. I actually reproduced the issue on Windows 7 RC initially but managed to get the issue to reproduce in Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. I don’t have a Vista machine close by but I’d guess if 2008 was affected, so would Vista.

I can’t seem to pickup anything unusual with Process Monitor but I’d imagine that .dlg extensions are used by some internal mechanism of Internet Explorer. Considering that other software Microsoft makes also tends to benefit from Internet Explorer’s code, it wouldn’t be a surprise if other software that had HTML based rendering could be affected. It’s hard to believe that something so easily reproducible could get released publicly.

Anyone else care to install MSIA and see what else they can break?

“Luke, I am your father.”

So now that Internet Explorer 8’s officially been released, it’s to be expected that plenty of users will be upgrading. Even if the common visitor to your site doesn’t immediately install IE8 like a panicked nerd who’s been waiting for his new Amiga, over the next three months the new version of Internet Explorer’s will be pushed out over Windows Update. At this moment, Net Applications reports that 67.44% of all visitors tracked are Internet Explorer users. thecounter.com reported seeing as much as 75% of it’s users as IE users. With such a significant share of Internet users using Internet Explorer, it’s only wise to ensure that your site development works well with the new version of Internet Explorer.

The one-button quick fix.

Microsoft has obviously learned from the past and didn’t want to swiftly speed down the road it’s taken in the past when releasing new versions of Internet Explorer. In the end, it was left with the chicken and egg scenario constantly facing new technologies and software. How do you move development forward and build a new platform to support new technologies (and fix broken already existing technologies) without orphaning the current significantly large user base that depends on what’s already been established? The solution the IE8 team came up with was Compatibility View.

Adding an easy access Compatibility View button tacked on to the end of the url box like a fancy revolving door, a quick click can force the rendering engine to use logic that’s similar to what Internet Explorer 7 previously used. It’s important to understand it does not make the Compatibility View button a sort of one-click IE7 as there are some significant changes that may still break a web page that would normally work just fine under Internet Explorer 7. It is, after all, Compatibility View inside Internet Explorer 8.

Bad dog. Sit.

The Compatibility View button may be a great thing for moving technology forward and still allowing visitors to view pages that appear broken correctly but it also raises an important question. Why is there a Compatibility View button in the first place? Does your site require it’s use? And what do users perceive while viewing a site that displays a compatibility button? The Internet Explorer team focused a lot of their attention on one of it’s most famous stigmas, standards compliance.

The Acid2 rendering test, which was so famously known as the yard stick used to compare browser compliance, was often at the center of debate for browser superiority. In the three years since the release of Internet Explorer 7, new browsers emerged, new standards were ratified and new technologies were developed. With a smaller market share and without the need to provide corporate legacy support, new browsers were quick to adapt and provide active support for all the new changes. This meant that more and more developers were deploying new sites focused around these new technologies and using a never ending spaghetti mess of Internet Explorer 7 (and sometimes Internet Explorer 6) workarounds.

“I’ll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel-Air.”

With the release of Internet Explorer 8, the team started fresh and has put together a new browser that is better, faster and more secure then any previous version. Full compliance with the CSS 2.1 specification means that the previously, sometimes endless, slew of Internet Explorer 7 specific workarounds are no longer necessary. This also means that the same markup will generate the same results between different browsers that are also CSS 2.1 compliant. Ironically, developers who thought they were going the extra mile to provide a uniform user experience between visitors by using Internet Explorer specific style sheets, meta tags and other various workarounds will soon discover that they’ve shot themselves in the foot.

It’s true that the standards that new browsers supported weren’t supported by Internet Explorer 7 and it’s true that you could get away with making things appear the same in all browsers with those workarounds, but it never meant that it was good development to do so. The Internet Explorer development team at Microsoft did what they needed to do to meet standards compliance. Now that it’s here, developers who didn’t use workarounds and simply limited themselves to using a subset of the standards that were supported by all browsers prior to Internet Explorer 8’s release will be rewarded.

Emulate your sanity.

If your site requires the use of Compatibility View to be navigated properly, then chances are you will need to spend more time testing cross-browser compatibility and find ways to offer functionality in a different manner. Where you want the bar to start will determine how many features you can use and will mostly be determined by the types of visitors your sites receive. Corporate customers or developers who write for specific targets may be able to raise the bar to recent browsers only while developers who tend to sites that serve the vast public may have to keep it as low as Internet Explorer 6. It is possible to write HTML, CSS and Javascript in such a way to support visitors using browsers as far back as Internet Explorer 5 while still providing standards compliance and cross-browser support for recent technologies, it simply requires more thought, testing and planning.

Once you’ve managed to develop, test and validate proper rendering and functionality between different versions of Internet Explorer without using version specific markup, the Compatibility View button will no longer have a need to exist when viewing your sites. Visiting a quick recap by the IE team, we learn that “use of the versioning <META> tag” will not display the Compatibility View button. Specifically, the X-UA-Compatible meta tag will allow you to set which rendering mode should be used viewing your page in Internet Explorer 8. If you’re fighting a losing battle trying to get your site to display correctly in IE8, setting the rendering mode to EmulateIE7 may be the only way to save your sanity.

Living on the edge.

If you’re quick to adapt, offer golden compatibility between browsers without workarounds and have simply no need for a Compatibility View button, then setting the X-UA-Compatible to Edge is the solution for you. Although Microsoft points out that it’s meant mostly for testing scenarios, it can be used to simply confirm to Internet Explorer that you want to have your site render in standards mode, regardless of it’s version. Forcing your site to render using a specific version of Internet Explorer may seem like a good idea at first except that doing so will also negate the need for keeping your code up to date, eventually falling into the problems that legacy support can bring. Let’s not forget also that setting meta tags to render to your site to a specific version of IE is no different then creating CSS spaghetti workarounds. It’s the same pasta with fresh sauce.

As for me, I prefer living on the edge and keeping my virtual pencil sharp, so you can bet you’ll be seeing <meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=Edge” /> at the top of my sites.

In case you’ve missed it somehow, Internet Explorer 8 was officially released today at noon. The final build number is 8.0.6001.18702. Looks like neowin got it wrong again.

Setup packages are available for Windows XP (x86 and x64), Windows Server 2003 (x86 and x64), Windows Vista (x86 and x64) and Windows Server 2008 (x86 and x64) from Microsoft’s download site.

Another build of the Windows Updates Downloader, version 2.40 Build 1299, has been published.

Thanks to the user community for helping me identify a rare bug with the windows update agent. I’ve also extended the Update List specifications to support identification of the base service pack. This should go a long way towards clearing up confusion people had between the Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows XP Service Pack 3 update lists. This is also a small but necessary step towards detecting locally installed updates.

I just published a new build of the Windows Updates Downloader, version 2.40 Build 1275.

Mostly little improvements based on community feedback such as allowing the window to resize and removing coloring of alternating rows. I also fixed a bug with the checkboxes that required double-clicking instead of reacting on a single click. Not quite sure how that slipped through in the previous build. At least it’s fixed.

I’ve almost got installed updates identification completed. I’ve managed to plug right into the Windows Updates Agent with a bit of help from a secret agent I know. I’ve identified the active operating system and the processor architecture as well. Once I figure out how to detect the native operating system language (and not the active culture), I’ll be able to implement highlighting and checkbox selection based on installed updates.