November 2009 Entries

Windows Home Server PP3

On Friday I updated my WHS to PP3 without much drama. I say “much” because one of my drives disappeared briefly, but came back after a reboot (a hardware issue I think). PP3 adds better support for Windows 7 and improves the search query times. It also adds a little file named health.xml (http://servername:55000/health/health.xml) which makes certain pieces of information about your server and clients available to your internal network. There’s some useful info in that file, but I’m having a hard time thinking of anything useful one could do with it! Tags: Windows Home Server

posted @ Sunday, November 29, 2009 11:40 PM | Feedback (0)

Interesting bits from Notes/Domino 8.5 and 8.5.1 Redbooks

The other night I spent a bit of time reading a couple of IBM Redbooks on the Domino Wiki, the Upgrade Cookbook:  Upgrading to Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1 and the Lotus Notes and Domino version 8.5 Deployment Guide. To some people that probably doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun, but I ended up coming across quite a few useful bits of information that I was surprised to not have already read about elsewhere. A few of the larger examples were: Windows® single sign-on for Web clients You can set up...

posted @ Friday, November 27, 2009 12:23 PM | Feedback (0) Filed Under [ Notes/Domino ]

Client-side JavaScript file processing

W3C has published a new working draft of a proposed standard that will enable limited filesystem access from JavaScript – be afraid, be very afraid. The trend towards significantly faster JavaScript engines is enabling powerful client-side processing on a level that simply wasn't feasible before in browsers. Local file access will make it possible to take advantage of client-side processing for a number of common and innovative tasks.   The new File API spec isn't particularly revolutionary or game-changing, but it's a nice bit of added functionality that will broaden...

posted @ Friday, November 27, 2009 11:53 AM | Feedback (0)

Pinning the IE8 developer tools

IE8’s developer tools are much improved over what was available in previous versions. They’re still not quite comparable to what Firebug gives you but they’re definitely a step in the right direction and as such I’ve been making an effort to use them more to become familiar with them. Until a couple of days ago, every time I used them I wished they could be pinned to the current browser instead of creating a new window, like the Firefox developer tools behaves. So I was pleased to find that IE8’s tools do that too, it’s just not the default...

posted @ Wednesday, November 25, 2009 6:18 PM | Feedback (0)

Update from Intel's NAND Solutions Group - Firmware issue

Update from Intel's NAND Solutions Group - Firmware issue – as a Windows 7 64 bit user I’m not really looking forward to the end of November when I’ll be tempted once again by speed improvements at the risk of a catastrophic system failure. Yay!

posted @ Monday, November 23, 2009 11:17 PM | Feedback (0)

Domino Designer 8.5.1 fixed a lot of things…

But removing utterly stupid error messages wasn’t one of them.

posted @ Tuesday, November 17, 2009 5:24 PM | Feedback (0) Filed Under [ Notes/Domino ]

An alternate fix for 'WebForm_PostBackOptions' is undefined

“'WebForm_PostBackOptions' is undefined” is one of those errors which can have a variety of causes. Here’s another one to add to that list – it’s pretty obvious, but easy to overlook if you’re in a rush. Firstly, check your httpModules, as custom modules can often cause this issue. However in my case I didn’t have any custom modules, in fact I’d just removed a couple – ripping out Intelligica’s ReWriter to replace it with the stock functionality provided by System.Web.Routing.. which of course was where the problem lies. I’d forgotten to add the StopRoutingHandler for all *.axd calls....

posted @ Thursday, November 12, 2009 2:05 PM | Feedback (0)

Give great add-ins to power up your WHS Console

Use Windows Home Server? Want Add-ins? Then read Five Great Add-Ins to Power Up Your Windows Home Server Console. At the top of the list yet again is WHS Disk Management by Sam Wood of Tentacle Software and Ignition Development. Tags: Windows Home Server

posted @ Tuesday, November 10, 2009 8:49 PM | Feedback (0)

A quick jQuery collection

A quick collection of a few jQuery plug-ins and snippets which I’ve found useful over the past couple of weeks. jQuery listmenu plugin - allows you to easily convert a long, hard to navigate list into a compact, easily skimmable 'first-letter' based menuing system. Looks like a slick plug-in if you have the need for something like this. jQuery Style ASP.NET Form Validators – useful styling additions to ASP.NET’s stock validator controls to give you more control over the styling of the warning/error messages. Comes with 2 versions – one with animation, and one without (my preference being...

posted @ Friday, November 06, 2009 7:02 PM | Feedback (0)

Incorrect Domino Web Access ‘from’ address

One of my clients occasionally encounters an issue where a user’s return email address shows up incorrectly when they send email via Domino Web Access. It seems to only happen when someone has made an error with the initial user registration which has later been corrected by a rename or an edit. The person documents always look correct post rename and the from addresses of all other users in the Domain are showing up correctly. Here’s the fix which seems to work for me: Make a trivial change to the person document – just open it for...

posted @ Wednesday, November 04, 2009 9:57 PM | Feedback (0) Filed Under [ Notes/Domino ]

The Office live add-in and MRU documents

I’ve been using the Office Live add-in for quite some time now. It’s proved incredibly useful to me and I wouldn’t be without it, but all along I’ve had a minor niggle with its recently used documents list – when accessing documents hosted in an Office Live Workspace, it’s always felt a bit random as to whether a document appears in the MRU list or not. I think I’ve finally figured out how to make documents appear in the list. As silly as this sounds, it makes a large difference to the usability of the thing, especially if you’re...

posted @ Monday, November 02, 2009 9:45 AM | Feedback (1)

About me

My name is Ross Hawkins and I'm a Developer, Consultant and Writer based in Auckland, New Zealand (pictured below!). My current work revolves around ASP.NET, C#, jQuery, Ajax, SQL Server, and a mix of other Microsoft development technologies.

I also have about 14 years of experience with IBM Lotus Notes/Domino and associated technologies. While Notes/Domino is no longer my primary focus I still like to dabble and keep my skills up to date.

I own and run 2 businesses - Hawkins Consulting Services, and Ignition Development.

Bethells Beach, located in sunny West Auckland, New Zealand


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