YSlow?

This is quite a common question – YSlow? So this nifty Firefox plugin can help to analyze how to improve the client/user experience of web-applications. It acutally integrates into Firebug and gives you some hints on what you might want to consider to improve your site.

Although this is nothing complete new, but these are things we might tend to forget from time to time.

Need a GUID?

Seems like every piece of XML-code I recently write (mainly for WiX and MOSS these days) needs just about a dozen of GUIDs all over the place – well maybe just a bundle :=) … anyway!

OK, so guidgen.exe is a lot of help, but it’s also kind of a PITA to leave the keyboard, grab the mouse, do the clicking … in this time you could think of a new GUID yourself! So there must be a better way – and there is!

Just create a simple macro returning a new GUID – and you’re all set.

  1. start a new macro-project, maybe rename the default-module to something more appropriate
  2. use DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection.Text = System.Guid.NewGuid().ToString("D").ToUpper() to grab a new GUID
  3. assign the newly created macro a keyboard shortcut (tools\options\environment\keyboard) – ALG+G seems to be pretty intuitive
  4. ready to roll the GUIDs

Updating Mantis Categories

I just stumbled across this error: I have a project in Mantis with a project-manager assigned. While this manager can add new categories alright, whenever he tries to update an existing category he gets an ACCESS_DENIED error (see issue 9728).

I figured, that in the manage_proj_cat_edit_page.php the project_id field is missing, so the:

access_ensure_project_level( config_get( 'manage_project_threshold' ), $f_project_id );

always tests for the permission on ALL_PROJECTS (because of:

$f_project_id = gpc_get_int( 'project_id', ALL_PROJECTS );

However, by adding:

<input type="hidden" name="project_id" value="<?php echo $f_project_id ?>" />

to the manage_proj_cat_edit_page.php the problem could be resolved 🙂

When MOSS is behaving differently

When working with documents in document-libraries the default behavior of MOSS 2007 is to offer whether or not you want to check-out a file. However – this can be disabled.

To check whether this feature is altogether disabled, you need to open up the central-administration, check application management\authenticationprovider\[your zone]\enable clientintegration. When this feature is disabled, checkin/checkout will not be available at all.