Hello Everyone,
Finally, i did it. I got myself a full featured domain name and space of my own in this entangled world that we call internet. I am finally shifting this blog to its well deserved place on the web.
You can find all of the previous posts along with the new ones at www.sumitbhardwaj.co.in/blog.
www.sumitbhardwaj.co.in website will also serve as my professional homepage in the future.
See you there :-)
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Changing Office 2007 Product Key without Reinstalling
Hello Everyone,
Once in a while, we all encounter sme strange, unknown problem. Think of it, you accidently got a counterfeit version of the Shiny new Microsoft Office 2007 and suddenly you got the "news" about it while downloading a template from Office Online, by the OGA system. So your conscience tells you :-D that it is wrong and you go an purchase a legal product key for yourself. Now comes the hard part! Where to insert this key? There is no visible place on UI from where you can change your product key. So now all you can think of is just uninstalling and reinstalling Office and all the other Service Packs etc. That is indeed a time consuming process and is cumbersome.
So here is the way to do it without reinstalling :
1. You have to be login as an administrator for this, as standard users cannot edit the registry directly. Apart from that, please back up your registry or create a manual restore point first as messing with registry can be quiet dangerous. :-)
2. Go to Run, type regedit and press enter. In Vista, press OK when the UAC prompt comes, if it is enabled.
3. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Registeration.
4. Under this key, u'll see one or more subkeys with GUID type names (names made of random nos and words enclosed within { } )
5. In all of these subkeys, one by one click on them and check for the presense of these two values
(i) DigitalProductID - Type : Binary - Data: some long binary string written in multiple pairs of two characters .
(ii) ProductID - Type: String - Data: A product id made of numbers only in the form xxxxx-xxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxx.
6. Delete these values from each of these sub keys. Please be sure what you are deleting. If you delete something wrong, you might end up ruining your system.
7. Exit the Registry Editor and start any of the Office Applications. On starting, it will ask you automatically for the new Product key.
And thats that! Your office will turn to legitimate without reinstalling.
Enjoy! :-)
Once in a while, we all encounter sme strange, unknown problem. Think of it, you accidently got a counterfeit version of the Shiny new Microsoft Office 2007 and suddenly you got the "news" about it while downloading a template from Office Online, by the OGA system. So your conscience tells you :-D that it is wrong and you go an purchase a legal product key for yourself. Now comes the hard part! Where to insert this key? There is no visible place on UI from where you can change your product key. So now all you can think of is just uninstalling and reinstalling Office and all the other Service Packs etc. That is indeed a time consuming process and is cumbersome.
So here is the way to do it without reinstalling :
1. You have to be login as an administrator for this, as standard users cannot edit the registry directly. Apart from that, please back up your registry or create a manual restore point first as messing with registry can be quiet dangerous. :-)
2. Go to Run, type regedit and press enter. In Vista, press OK when the UAC prompt comes, if it is enabled.
3. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Registeration.
4. Under this key, u'll see one or more subkeys with GUID type names (names made of random nos and words enclosed within { } )
5. In all of these subkeys, one by one click on them and check for the presense of these two values
(i) DigitalProductID - Type : Binary - Data: some long binary string written in multiple pairs of two characters .
(ii) ProductID - Type: String - Data: A product id made of numbers only in the form xxxxx-xxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxx.
6. Delete these values from each of these sub keys. Please be sure what you are deleting. If you delete something wrong, you might end up ruining your system.
7. Exit the Registry Editor and start any of the Office Applications. On starting, it will ask you automatically for the new Product key.
And thats that! Your office will turn to legitimate without reinstalling.
Enjoy! :-)
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Introduction to Silverlight Development Environment
Hi All,
Its been a long time since i last posted, i apologise for that, if you are a regular visitor that is. So here is the first one for all you silverlight developers. I have seen many of the new Visual Studio 08 developers wondering around the silverlight technology and all the tools associated with it and how they are important and useful for a Visual Studio 08 developer. So here it is...
In simple words, Silverlight is a plug-in. Many people who have not begun development on Silverlight, confuse it to be a tool of some sort with a UI. I have observed that this notion usually comes from Flash developers/designers. In the case of Flash, the tool used to build applications is called Adobe Flash and the plug-in required to run Flash applications is called the Flash Player.
On the Microsoft end, Silverlight is the name of the plug-in - which contains all the runtime elements required to render the UI of your applications and execute the code of your applications. The Silverlight runtime is installed one-time on your computer. You could install this be going to www.microsoft.com/silverlight or by visiting any page that uses Silverlight and clicking on the "Get Microsoft Silverlight" icon when prompted.
Installing Silverlight has enabled your browsers to view Silverlight content. For development of Silverlight content, you require a set of tools.
These can be categorized as designer and developer tools.The designer tools you'll require is primarily Microsoft Expression Blend. Expression Blend helps you create Silverlight projects and WPF projects. WPF stands for Windows Presentation Foundation, which is part of .NET Framework and is a superset that is used to create rich desktop applications. Silverlight projects created in Expression Blend follow the same project structure that developers working with Microsoft Visual Studio are familiar with.
Expression Blend is primarily used by designers to:
Create the front-end design for your application: This is created using vector elements from the toolbox such as Rectangle, Ellipse, Line, Path, MediaElement, Canvas, etc. and using the properties pane to set various properties such as Fill color, Fill type (Solid, Linear Gradient, Radial Gradient, etc.), Stroke color, Width, Height, etc. Each element has several properties that can be applied to it and most of these can be set from the property pane directly.
Organize elements: Elements added to the application can be named to help in identifying them later on. Multiple elements can also be grouped. Grouping automatically creates a Canvas element (with the width and height of the boundary of elements) and groups the elements as child elements of the newly created Canvas element. (Remember: Canvas is the only container element in Silverlight 1.0). You can also use Expression Blend to change the z-order of the elements. This basically means which element resides on top of which other element - something that is done automatically based on the order of the elements - and can be changed by either changing the order itself or by changing the Canvas.ZIndex property. Animation: Animations are created using Storyboards. It is helpful to switch to the Animation workspace (from the Window menu) to help in creating Storyboards. Once a Storyboard is created, timelines are recorded using the Timeline Recording feature. Microsoft Expression Blend is currently available in two versions - Expression Blend v1 was released in May 2007 and only supports WPF development. For Silverlight development, you will need Expression Blend v2 which is currently under development and preview releases are available from www.microsoft.com/expression. Look for the latest preview release and be sure to download Blend 2!
All design created in Expression Blend is automatically translated (as you add elements) to XAML. XAML is an XML-markup to describe the UI. The Silverlight plug-in parses the XAML when a Silverlight project to render the UI in the browser. Anything you do in Expression Blend creates the XAML in the background. You can also switch to the XAML view in Expression Blend to view the markup. This is akin to creating HTML pages using a tool when the tool is generating HTML markup in the background. XAML is a common UI description language across WPF and Silverlight, though the number of XAML elements you can use in WPF is much larger than Silverlight 1.0. Expression Blend automatically changes the available toolbox elements based on whether you are creating a WPF project or a Silverlight project.
Microsoft Expression Design is the other tool you can use in the Silverlight development environment. Expression Design is used for much finer elements of design, with support for layers, various brushes, effects, path transformation tools, etc. It is a vector design tool that can help you create design assets for use in Silverlight. Say that really cool looking button with extra-fine detail. Since many of the tools and shapes you use in Expression Design do not have a straight-forward mapping to XAML (which is what Silverlight can understand), you export your design to XAML once it is ready. The export process looks at the design, rasterizes (converts to images) stuff that is incompatible with XAML, converts vector shapes to paths or other supported elements and provides XAML that is compatible. Such XAML can then be included into Expression Blend to add further animation or interactivity.
Microsoft Visual Studio is what developers use to add event-handling code that can then call back web services or can trigger other actions based on user-input. Every element has event handlers for mouse, keyboard or ink input and these are handled in code - JavaScript is used as the programming language for Silverlight 1.0.
As a developer, you can use notepad for authoring both the XAML and the JavaScript and for embedding the Silverlight object on to the HTML page. However, Blend and Visual Studio provide a much richer development experience and most of the code for embedding the object is automatically generated.
To get Visual Studio to understand the XAML semantics, it is worthwhile to install the Silverlight SDK available on www.silverlight.net. The Silverlight SDK also comes with some sample code and quickstart examples, as well as the all-important documentation. The documentation contains a full reference for all objects, methods, properties and events and also several basic articles to get you started with the concepts.
So in summary, Silverlight is the plug-in that you or your end-users require to install to enable your browser to render Silverlight content. Expression Blend and Expression Design are part of the Microsoft Expression Studio which enable designers to design Silverlight projects. Visual Studio is the developer tool for developers to write the required code for the applications. Silverlight SDK gets you started with required files, project templates, documentation and samples.
Really simple, right? Happy coding!
Source : Pandurang Nayak's Blog
Its been a long time since i last posted, i apologise for that, if you are a regular visitor that is. So here is the first one for all you silverlight developers. I have seen many of the new Visual Studio 08 developers wondering around the silverlight technology and all the tools associated with it and how they are important and useful for a Visual Studio 08 developer. So here it is...
In simple words, Silverlight is a plug-in. Many people who have not begun development on Silverlight, confuse it to be a tool of some sort with a UI. I have observed that this notion usually comes from Flash developers/designers. In the case of Flash, the tool used to build applications is called Adobe Flash and the plug-in required to run Flash applications is called the Flash Player.
On the Microsoft end, Silverlight is the name of the plug-in - which contains all the runtime elements required to render the UI of your applications and execute the code of your applications. The Silverlight runtime is installed one-time on your computer. You could install this be going to www.microsoft.com/silverlight or by visiting any page that uses Silverlight and clicking on the "Get Microsoft Silverlight" icon when prompted.
Installing Silverlight has enabled your browsers to view Silverlight content. For development of Silverlight content, you require a set of tools.
These can be categorized as designer and developer tools.The designer tools you'll require is primarily Microsoft Expression Blend. Expression Blend helps you create Silverlight projects and WPF projects. WPF stands for Windows Presentation Foundation, which is part of .NET Framework and is a superset that is used to create rich desktop applications. Silverlight projects created in Expression Blend follow the same project structure that developers working with Microsoft Visual Studio are familiar with.
Expression Blend is primarily used by designers to:
Create the front-end design for your application: This is created using vector elements from the toolbox such as Rectangle, Ellipse, Line, Path, MediaElement, Canvas, etc. and using the properties pane to set various properties such as Fill color, Fill type (Solid, Linear Gradient, Radial Gradient, etc.), Stroke color, Width, Height, etc. Each element has several properties that can be applied to it and most of these can be set from the property pane directly.
Organize elements: Elements added to the application can be named to help in identifying them later on. Multiple elements can also be grouped. Grouping automatically creates a Canvas element (with the width and height of the boundary of elements) and groups the elements as child elements of the newly created Canvas element. (Remember: Canvas is the only container element in Silverlight 1.0). You can also use Expression Blend to change the z-order of the elements. This basically means which element resides on top of which other element - something that is done automatically based on the order of the elements - and can be changed by either changing the order itself or by changing the Canvas.ZIndex property. Animation: Animations are created using Storyboards. It is helpful to switch to the Animation workspace (from the Window menu) to help in creating Storyboards. Once a Storyboard is created, timelines are recorded using the Timeline Recording feature. Microsoft Expression Blend is currently available in two versions - Expression Blend v1 was released in May 2007 and only supports WPF development. For Silverlight development, you will need Expression Blend v2 which is currently under development and preview releases are available from www.microsoft.com/expression. Look for the latest preview release and be sure to download Blend 2!
All design created in Expression Blend is automatically translated (as you add elements) to XAML. XAML is an XML-markup to describe the UI. The Silverlight plug-in parses the XAML when a Silverlight project to render the UI in the browser. Anything you do in Expression Blend creates the XAML in the background. You can also switch to the XAML view in Expression Blend to view the markup. This is akin to creating HTML pages using a tool when the tool is generating HTML markup in the background. XAML is a common UI description language across WPF and Silverlight, though the number of XAML elements you can use in WPF is much larger than Silverlight 1.0. Expression Blend automatically changes the available toolbox elements based on whether you are creating a WPF project or a Silverlight project.
Microsoft Expression Design is the other tool you can use in the Silverlight development environment. Expression Design is used for much finer elements of design, with support for layers, various brushes, effects, path transformation tools, etc. It is a vector design tool that can help you create design assets for use in Silverlight. Say that really cool looking button with extra-fine detail. Since many of the tools and shapes you use in Expression Design do not have a straight-forward mapping to XAML (which is what Silverlight can understand), you export your design to XAML once it is ready. The export process looks at the design, rasterizes (converts to images) stuff that is incompatible with XAML, converts vector shapes to paths or other supported elements and provides XAML that is compatible. Such XAML can then be included into Expression Blend to add further animation or interactivity.
Microsoft Visual Studio is what developers use to add event-handling code that can then call back web services or can trigger other actions based on user-input. Every element has event handlers for mouse, keyboard or ink input and these are handled in code - JavaScript is used as the programming language for Silverlight 1.0.
As a developer, you can use notepad for authoring both the XAML and the JavaScript and for embedding the Silverlight object on to the HTML page. However, Blend and Visual Studio provide a much richer development experience and most of the code for embedding the object is automatically generated.
To get Visual Studio to understand the XAML semantics, it is worthwhile to install the Silverlight SDK available on www.silverlight.net. The Silverlight SDK also comes with some sample code and quickstart examples, as well as the all-important documentation. The documentation contains a full reference for all objects, methods, properties and events and also several basic articles to get you started with the concepts.
So in summary, Silverlight is the plug-in that you or your end-users require to install to enable your browser to render Silverlight content. Expression Blend and Expression Design are part of the Microsoft Expression Studio which enable designers to design Silverlight projects. Visual Studio is the developer tool for developers to write the required code for the applications. Silverlight SDK gets you started with required files, project templates, documentation and samples.
Really simple, right? Happy coding!
Source : Pandurang Nayak's Blog
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Microsoft .NET - 10 Great Resources for One Great Technology
.NET is the hottest thing these days in developer circles specially now with the release of Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas) from Microsoft. It can take advantage of all the new features introduced in Windows Vista and the 2007 Office System. The .NET technology specially became very popular when the 2.0 version of it was released. The response was huge and lakhs of sites are using this technology to deliver rich content. Silverlight technology and the Microsoft Expression series of products added to it and briged the gap between the designer and developers. Silverlight specially makes it very much easy to created RIAs(Rich Internet Applications). So .NET is not a small thing, its includes a truckload of components to learn and implement be it the disconnected data model of ADO.NET or the highly scaleble server side programming model of ASP.NET. Almost any type of application can be developed in the .NET Framework including Desktop Application, Class Libraries, Windows Services, Web Applications, AJAX enabled Web Applications, Web Services, Data enabled Web and Windows Applications etc. The only thing that the .NET framework is not suitable for are low level device drivers and stuff like that.
.NET framework is platform independent, provides language interoperability, cross language integration, integration with older technologies like COM and Windows DNA, a large number of languages to program in, and lots more. Now to leverage all of this stuff, you need to have proper resources with you. Books alone are not good enough.
Fortunately there are a lot of websites that have good information and training material on .NET that one can use. I am posting here the ones that i use the most:-
1. http://msdn.microsoft.com/
The very first place you should look at for anything related to .NET
2. http://www.asp.net/
A good place for learning material related to ASP.NET and related technologies like AJAX.
3. http://www.codeplex.com/
A community driven forum for open source projects on .NET
4. http://www.neowin.com/forums
A good place for any query regarding computing. The members are very helping and you'll get response almost always.
5. http://www.codezone.com/
Codezone connects you with top-rated user groups, meetings, community sites, blogs, forums, events and breaking news. It’s a place for developers to share and promote top-notch content and community resources.
6. http://forums.msdn.com/MSDN
The MSDN Forums allow you to search a growing archive of technical questions and answers.
7. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/events/default.aspx
The MSDN events and Webcasts homepage is a nice place to get live webcasts and videos from Microsoft employees themselves.
8. http://channel9.msdn.com/
Channel 9 provides direct, unfiltered, and open access to Microsoft’s cockpit. Meet the people who think up and build Microsoft’s technologies, interact with your peers, share your ideas and applications.
9.http://msdn.microsoft.com/newsgroups/topic.aspx?url=/MSDN-FILES/028/201/317/topic.xml
Microsoft .NET Development Newsgroup. Get involved in discussions on various aspects related to .NET Development here with MVPs and Microsoft Employees, as well as other people like you.
10. http://www.learnvisualstudio.net/
A great place to find video tutorials related to .NET technologies. Although the site is paid, you can get many free videos there as well as signup for the monthly newsletter for getting free videos every month.
So thats all for now. Whenever i get more resources, i'll update this list (as well as its title :-) ). Hope these resources help finding your way in world of Microsoft .NET. :-)
.NET framework is platform independent, provides language interoperability, cross language integration, integration with older technologies like COM and Windows DNA, a large number of languages to program in, and lots more. Now to leverage all of this stuff, you need to have proper resources with you. Books alone are not good enough.
Fortunately there are a lot of websites that have good information and training material on .NET that one can use. I am posting here the ones that i use the most:-
1. http://msdn.microsoft.com/
The very first place you should look at for anything related to .NET
2. http://www.asp.net/
A good place for learning material related to ASP.NET and related technologies like AJAX.
3. http://www.codeplex.com/
A community driven forum for open source projects on .NET
4. http://www.neowin.com/forums
A good place for any query regarding computing. The members are very helping and you'll get response almost always.
5. http://www.codezone.com/
Codezone connects you with top-rated user groups, meetings, community sites, blogs, forums, events and breaking news. It’s a place for developers to share and promote top-notch content and community resources.
6. http://forums.msdn.com/MSDN
The MSDN Forums allow you to search a growing archive of technical questions and answers.
7. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/events/default.aspx
The MSDN events and Webcasts homepage is a nice place to get live webcasts and videos from Microsoft employees themselves.
8. http://channel9.msdn.com/
Channel 9 provides direct, unfiltered, and open access to Microsoft’s cockpit. Meet the people who think up and build Microsoft’s technologies, interact with your peers, share your ideas and applications.
9.http://msdn.microsoft.com/newsgroups/topic.aspx?url=/MSDN-FILES/028/201/317/topic.xml
Microsoft .NET Development Newsgroup. Get involved in discussions on various aspects related to .NET Development here with MVPs and Microsoft Employees, as well as other people like you.
10. http://www.learnvisualstudio.net/
A great place to find video tutorials related to .NET technologies. Although the site is paid, you can get many free videos there as well as signup for the monthly newsletter for getting free videos every month.
So thats all for now. Whenever i get more resources, i'll update this list (as well as its title :-) ). Hope these resources help finding your way in world of Microsoft .NET. :-)
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
{Heros Happen Here} The Mega Launch Event!
Good news for developers and IT pros working on Microsoft Technologies, Microsoft is organizing a mega launch event for 3 of its greatest developer and IT pro tools, namely Microsoft Server 2008, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008. The event is taking place at 3 places in India. The schedule is :
Bangalore: March 4, Rex Theatre.
Mumbai: March 5, Regal Theatre.
Delhi: March 7, PVR Priya Theatre.
The launch will be featured on the 75 mm screen of cinema and will include a free showing of the movie Gladiator. Whats more, every participant of the even will be given free copies of all these software as a promotion.
Everyone who is intrested in attending the event can register on http://msevents.microsoft.com/?Culture=en-in or from http://www.heroeshappenhere.co.in/. You need to have a hotmail or windows live id for that.
Also note that laptops are not allowed in these events and parking is very limited, specially for two wheelers. So plz be aware. See you there! :-)
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