** English

Just a quick note: I just updated Serendipity to version 1.5.1 on one of our servers; yet afterwards I could not log in anymore. Also, Serendipity reported that version 1.5.1 was present, although I did not run the update script from the admin console yet. At first I thought I did something wrong, but a s9y forum posting described a similar issue.

The fix was actually quite simple: for some reason—may it be due to my own fault or due to a bug in the upgrade logic—the SQL upgrade script was not run, but Serendipity still thought it had been upgraded already. The file sql/db_update_1.5-alpha1_1.5-alpha2_mysql.sql contains the required SQL commands (in case you are using MySQL). Just remember to replace {PREFIX} with the table prefix you are using (s9y_ in my case):


ALTER TABLE s9y_authors ADD COLUMN hashtype int(1);
ALTER TABLE s9y_authors CHANGE password password VARCHAR(64) NOT NULL;


HTH. Once again, Happy Holidays.

Just a quick note that my JSON Gotchas article has just been published. The editors removed the last sentence, so here it is again: Happy holidays everyone!

I just finished my Microsoft TechDays presentation (WEB309: Fixing Ajax Applications). Thanks to everybody who attended! This session will be repeated during the day, so if you missed it you still can tune in.

There was a question at the very end on the history hash ASP.NET writes, but I was too slow to answer it before the session room was closed. The EnableSecureHistoryState property may help in the specific situation and lets you at least toggle between a secure and a human-readable format.

Microsoft have released the first public beta for their upcoming Windows 7 operating system. To me it looks surprisingly similar to Vista (which is a good thing and a bad thing ), so I thought that installing PHP on it should be easy, as well. Actually, it was really easy, but since yesterday two people indenpendently from each other asked me how to do it, I thought I'd write down the required steps.
Continue reading "Installing PHP on Windows 7"

Well, kinda. It's true that you can download the first public beta of Windows 7, but even if you passed the very slow "Server too busy" profile.microsoft.com server, there are still chances that you do not get the desired download afterwards, but this message instead ("next business day" is awesome):


A glimpse at the source code reveals interesting insights:


Debugoutput:

System.Data.Odbc.OdbcException: ERROR [08001] [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][DBNETLIB]General network error. Check your network documentation.
ERROR [01000] [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][DBNETLIB]ConnectionOpen (PreLoginHandshake()).
at System.Data.Odbc.OdbcConnection.HandleError(OdbcHandle hrHandle, RetCode retcode)
at System.Data.Odbc.OdbcConnectionHandle..ctor(OdbcConnection connection, OdbcConnectionString constr, OdbcEnvironmentHandle environmentHandle)
at System.Data.Odbc.OdbcConnectionOpen..ctor(OdbcConnection outerConnection, OdbcConnectionString connectionOptions)
at System.Data.Odbc.OdbcConnectionFactory.CreateConnection(DbConnectionOptions options, Object poolGroupProviderInfo, DbConnectionPool pool, DbConnection owningObject)
at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionFactory.CreateNonPooledConnection(DbConnection owningConnection, DbConnectionPoolGroup poolGroup)
at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionFactory.GetConnection(DbConnection owningConnection)
at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionClosed.OpenConnection(DbConnection outerConnection, DbConnectionFactory connectionFactory)
at System.Data.Odbc.OdbcConnection.Open()
at Futurecom.Microsoft.ProductKeys.Framework.DataAccess.GetProductKeys(String userSid, Int32 editionId, Int32 maxKeys, Boolean getAnotherKey, String fullEditionName, String& debugOutput)
at Futurecom.Microsoft.ProductKeys.Framework.Controls.Win7Distribution.refreshProductKeyList(Boolean getAnotherKey)


Hmmm ... Are they really using SQL Server or maybe rather Access?

Just a quick note that Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2008 (and for TFS, too) has been released for MSDN subscribers. Enjoy!

Update: The Service Pack is now also available on Microsoft downloads:

• Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (Web Installer)
• Visual Studio 2008 SP1 (ISO)
• Team Foundation Server SP1

Another important note for Silverlight 2 Beta 2 users: In order to be able to use the Silverlicht 2 Beta 2 Tools for Visual Studio 2008, you need to upgrade them after the SP1 installation if a previous Silverlight tools version is already installed. Microsoft released a new version yesterday.

Today is a day many people have been looking forward to for quite some time. No, it's not mass-marrying on 8-8-08, it's the day after the release of PHP 4.4.9. The important fact of this release is that it will be the final one for PHP 4. Ever. (Well, of course there might be the scenario of companies offering posthumous security patches, but that doesn't count here.) If you are still not convinced that PHP 4 is at the end of its life, just have a look at the changelog: the previous release is seven months old, and since then only five issues have been fixed.

I am aware that many sites, especially those with really old legacy code, will still not update (heck, I even know of some large PHP 3 based sites running strong [and insecure]), but if you have the resources to update your code base, you should do so really soon. PHP 5.3 will (most probably) be released later this year, and PHP 6 will get rid of a lot of stuff that has only been kept for the sake of backwards compatibility.

It's been a few week since Silverlight 2 beta 2 has been released. Yesterday, Microsoft released a critical update for Silverlight 2 beta 2 which is also distributed via Microsoft Update. The update promises to improve Firefox 3 compatibility, and also mentions streaming and stability. However the most interesting aspect is that the auto-update component has been worked on. The release notes do not state exactly what that means, but I think I know what it is: After installing the update, AutoUpdate can actually be enabled; the original version of Silverlight 2 beta 2 had this option greyed out. This suggests that new versions should be expected in the forseeable future

openSUSE 11 has been released, and as usual I had to try it using virtualization first. And as with some other recent distros, VPC crashes during installation. However, as with some other recent distros, these startup options help:

noreplace-paravirt i8042.noloop clock=pit

So if you have issues getting the new openSUSE version installed, these options might do the trick. At least they worked for me.

Right after yesterday's Firefox 3 release, some readers wrote me that the browser would immediately crash (a really bad crash, without error reporting kicking in, the browser just vanishes) when they visited a Silverlight powered site. I could reproduce that on one of my machines and was investigating this further, when I stumbled upon Tim Heuer's excellent post on the long history of Silverlight/Firefox 3 hubbub. He concludes that Silverlight 2 beta 2 has solved the issue, but what's about the only Silverlight version marked as stable, 1.0? In my case a simple uninstallation of Silverlight, followed by reinstalling the plugin did the trick. Unfortunately I did not write down my previous plugin version number, but I now have version 1.0.30401.0. If you have an older version, you may want to update.
Of course that doesn't help web master too much, but maybe this post can help some users to keep their new shiny browser alive when consuming Silverlight content.

Firefox 3 has been released a few hours ago (congratulations!), and I already got two mails with complaints that Firebug (v1.05) is not compatible with this version. That's actually true, but versions 1.1+ are. Just don't mind that the version numbers sound like beta, but I wouldn't be too surprised if version 1.2 would be put on Firebug's homepage soon.
Update (Jun 18): Updated download link; addons.mozilla.org seems to have the most recent releases.

Just a quick note that Silverlight 2 Beta 2 has been released. It includes a commercial go-live license, if you are brave enough and forget what happened to Atlas' go-live license Microsoft published the Beta 2 runtime and VS 2008 tools downloads, including a new Blend 2 preview release. There is also a list of breaking changes between beta 1 and beta 2. As you would expect, news on Essential Silverlight 2 Up-to-Date will follow shortly.

Just a quick note that the Mono project has unveiled their first (source code only) release of Moonlight, their Silverlight clone. More in the announcement.

As I wrote ten months ago:

Some say SVG is dead, but it has found some niches where it is quite successful. I don't currently do as much SVG as I did some time ago, but I still follow along the current discussions and events. One project I find quite interesting is the Renesis, a feature-rich SVG player that is desparately needed now that Adobe abandoned their SVG browser plugin.

And finally, version 1.0 of the Renesis Player has been released! You can find more information on the product page. As it says there, "[t]he Player runs on all platforms and supports the open stantards CSS 2, XML, DOM 3 and SVG 1.1." Note that "all platforms" might be a bit misleading, as the download page only provides software for Windows XP and Vista.

Two things I recently found out. They may be old news, but hopefully they are useful for some people anyway:

1. Silverlight 2 Beta 1 for OS X only works if you have an Intel processor. The system requirements do mention that (if you click on the correct link — no direct link thanks to JavaScript), but who reads them anyways?!
   Personal opinion: No PowerPC support? WTF?!
   


2. Uninstalling Silverlight (always a good idea before installing new bits) requires these steps performed in a terminal window:

   rm -rf /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/Silverlight.plugin
   
   rm -rf /Library/Receipts/Silverlight*.pkg
   
   rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Microsoft/Silverlight

   Thanks to "Bridgette [MSFT]".