Microsoft Launches .Toolbox

By DustinPosted on

Budding web designers and programmers wanting to learn how to develop Silverlight applications can look to Microsofts new .toolbox site. You earn badges for completing certain tasks along your way to becoming a Silverlight expert. It looks fun, and isn’t a dry, boring course to take.

.toolbox features two core learning paths: Design Scenarios and Design Principles. Both begin with teaching basic techniques and build skills and knowledge incrementally. In Design Scenarios, designers and developers learn to create dynamically-rich Silverlight applications using Expression Studio. You will learn to add code-free functionality to designs by following step-by-step tutorials that illustrate how to create interactive user experiences. In Design Principles, you will learn fundamental design concepts (e.g., choosing the right colors and the right fonts) along with tips and techniques in how to apply them to your creations.

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Single White Pixel “feature” in Windows 7

By DustinPosted on

I’ve noticed this in the past, but chalked it up as an isolated incident. Apparently, it’s well known, and Microsoft is letting people know about it. However, they aren’t really doing anything about it at this time. Windows 7 users running the Aero interface without transparency, as well as certain Windows 7 Home Basic users, will notice a single white pixel in the upper left hand corner of the screen. It’s not a dead pixel, it’s a small issue with Windows. It doesn’t cause any problems or crash your machine, so Microsoft doesn’t have a fix for this, as it isn’t critical. I think they used to call it a “feature”, not a bug!

One white dot (1 pixel in size), may appear on the top-left corner of the screen in the following scenarios:

  1. In Windows 7 Home Basic Edition, the issue may occur after a user

IE6 Funeral Photos

By DustinPosted on

Last week we posted the news about the funeral for Internet Explorer 6. FavBrowser has photos of the sad moment. My only hope is that it brings attention to the fact that there are still MANY businesses and government insitutions running IE6. Nothing wrong with it, other than it is an extremely old, outdated, non-standards complying, slow….. You get the picture. 🙂 Here’s to upgrading to a better version of Internet Explorer or an alternative browser. If the government or businesses went with Firefox (or Opera or any other browser), Internet Explorers share would plummet. I’m sure IE gets the majority of it’s user base from that demographic.

I especially like the mustache.

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Email Support

By DustinPosted on

I have been getting slaughtered lately by quite a few email requests for support. I try to help out as much as I can, but I am getting a bit overwhelmed. For a fast solution to your issues, and to help others with the same issue, you can post in our forums, or on various other forums around the internet. Also, Microsoft has set up an online support forum, Answers, which is a wonderful place to ask any questions. I frequent there when I’m not working on this site or on my book. Sorry if I can’t get to your email questions, I’ll still try and answer what I can.

Thank you for your support!

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Beyond Backup: Imaging Tools

By DustinPosted on

IT Expert Voice has an excellent article that you should read if you have any value in your data. I’ve seen so many businesses neglect backups on their crucial data until it’s too late. Then they wonder why you can’t restore their data. Sure, they may have a tape drive, but they haven’t put a tape in since 2004. For the quickest way to get your data back and the system back to a usable state in a hurry, imaging is the way to go. A full disk image is a duplicate of the whole drive you are running, hopefully imaged on a different drive or server somewhere. It only takes a few minutes to restore that image, and you’re back in business. It takes a lot more space than traditional backups, but it is much more thorough and a lot faster for recovery.

Ever have a hard drive burn out completely? I have. It

OpenGL to go Head to Head With DirectX 11

By DustinPosted on

The war rages on with the open source OpenGL and Microsoft’s DirectX. OpenGL is working on version 4.0 to bring its features up to par with the newest DirectX 11. The battle has been going on since the start of DirectX, with both sides having advantages.

OpenGL 4.0 adds more support for using a graphics processing unit (GPU) for other computing chores and for tesselation, which subdivides a region on a graphics object into many smaller patches for more detailed imagery. The technology got its start as a graphics library at pioneering Silicon Graphics but has grown into a standard that works on many different computer systems and overseen by the Khronos Group.

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Bing Makes Gains on Google

By DustinPosted on

The search engine, and everything else company, Google is starting to lose more market share to the new Microsoft search engine, Bing. What will Google do to up the ante and get some of those converts back? Who knows… Personally, I think a lot of it is based on demographics. I know a lot of older people use Yahoo search, as it is what they know. The younger crowd uses Google, and the in-betweeners use Bing. They do share a lot of similarities, but it’s that little extra that makes people switch. Anyone can make a search engine, but it takes talent to make one that improves your daily life (maps, phone numbers, pricing, images, etc.). You aren’t just looking for sites that list the terms in the search, you’re looking for information on the terms. Search Engines have a lot of room to grow and improve, and the competition is breeding a lot of new innovation in the market.

Microsoft’s Bing online search service gained usage share in the United States for the ninth straight month in February, according to market researchers at Hitwise and comScore. Google still dominates the market, with about 68 percent of all searches. But Bing now accounts for over 10 percent of searches and, unlike with Google, its share is actually rising. (In second place, Yahoo controls about 15.7 percent of the market.)

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New Hard Drive Technology Will Hurt XP Users

By DustinPosted on

Starting next year, a new standard in hard drive technology will hurt some XP users. While it’s not really a new technology, it is a different way of doing things. Hard drives format using 512 byte sectors, whereas the new format will use 4K sectors. This means that there will be less unused space on hard drives, helping increase capacity over time. Windows Vista and 7 are already set up to use the new 4K hard drives.

Because XP was coded in a time before this standard switch was under consideration, the Windows OS could see compatibility problems at worst, and speed drops at a minimum. Some advanced drives will be able to emulate the older sector sizes for compatibility, but still, those building their own computers or trading up on hard drives may see notable performance problems. If you’re a devoted XP user facing down the future of storage, tell us how you plan to adapt in the comments

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Microsoft Recommends 32-bit Office Installation

By DustinPosted on

It seems like the shift to 64-bit may take a bit longer than expected. Microsoft has been slowly migrating from 32-bit to 64-bit with its operating systems, Exchange Server, and now with Office 2010, its applications. All is not great Wonderland, however. Microsoft itself has recommended that users not upgrade to the 64-bit version if they use Office add-ons.

I have been using the 64-bit version of Office 2010 for some time now, and have had no issues with any of the applications. I do not use many add-ons, though.

This quote came from the Microsoft Office 2010 Technology Guarantee FAQ page.

Yes, 64-bit Office 2010 product upgrades will be available. However we strongly recommend most users install 32-bit version of Office 2010 on both 32 and 64-bit Operating Systems because currently many common add-ins for Office will not function in the 64-bit edition. The 64-bit installation of Microsoft Office 2010 products will be available for users who commonly use very large documents or data set and need Excel 2010 programs to access greater than 2GB of memory. There may be technical issues with the 64-bit version and in order to install a 64-bit version of Office 2010 product users must have a 64-bit supported operating system on their PC.

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