Custom Context Menu Entries in Windows 7

As developers, we’re known to tweak things to get them just exactly like we want them.  So here’s a quick tip on getting your own menu entry in Windows 7 context menus, and some sample code that makes a directory listing for a selected folder.  With this sample code, you can choose any Windows folder and create a text file listing of all files and subfolders contained within the selected folder.  Continue Reading

Microsoft’s Free XML Editor

XML is the wonder of the modern programming age. Its plain text can represent objects with properties and attributes to capture complex structures in a simple text file. And it’s even fairly easy to understand. Just look at it. It’s logical. But as logical as XML is, when you look at an XML file in production, it’s huge, convoluted, and impossible to grasp in one glimpse inside of Notepad.  Lucky for us, our friends at Microsoft have come up with an answer in their free XML Notepad 2007 tool.  Continue Reading

Microsoft’s Free XML Editor

XML is the wonder of the modern programming age. Its plain text can represent objects with properties and attributes to capture complex structures in a simple text file. And it’s even fairly easy to understand. Just look at it. It’s logical. But as logical as XML is, when you look at an XML file in production, it’s huge, convoluted, and impossible to grasp in one glimpse inside of Notepad.  Lucky for us, our friends at Microsoft have come up with an answer in their free XML Notepad 2007 tool.  Continue Reading

Autocomplete and IntelliSense

If you’ve been developing programs for a while, you probably either love autocompletion features or you hate them.  If you’re in the former camp, or you’re just getting started with programming, this tip is just for you.  Autocomplete, or the Microsoft equivalent, IntelliSense, is a feature within certain software that tries to automatically complete what you’ve started typing before you finish typing all of the letters yourself.  For a lot of people, this is a real time-saver and can prevent typographical mistakes.  But what if you’re working on code in a text file, or in a development environment that doesn’t have autocomplete?  Here are a few utilities that can help you out.  Continue Reading

32-bit and 64-bit ASP.NET

Many developers struggle with the use of 32-bit and 64-bit address spaces.  In a nutshell, 32-bit assemblies cannot be loaded within 64-bit address spaces and 64-bit assemblies cannot be loaded within 32-bit address spaces.  Web applications are no different.  As a result, special attention needs to be paid to the requirements of web applications running on 64-bit serversContinue Reading

Aras Innovator CMII Affected Items Wizard with Bulk Change

As you may know, Aras offers standard Project Management, Quality Planning, and Configuration Management solutions for their Innovator product.  What you might not know is that there is also a whole community of other open source solutions and projects that are available to download and add to your Innovator environment.  These solutions range from integrations to CATIA, Microsoft Office and Microsoft Dynamics to examples of workflow automation.  You can find the complete list of solutions by selecting the Projects tab at the top of practically any page on the Aras website.  This article will discuss one solution in particular, the CMII Affected Items Wizard with Bulk ChangeContinue Reading

SmarTeam Scripting Character Limit

For those ENOVIA SmarTeam customers with scripts in their environment (just about everyone out there), there is a limitation on naming scripts that is worth noting.  This probably doesn’t impact customers using out-of-the-box scripts, but it is nonetheless worth checking.  It appears that somewhere in the evolution of V5R19 (it is not clear at what service pack – it may have been the GA release), Script Maintenance started to impose a 31-character limit for the names of scripts.  The problem is relatively easy to resolve (assuming that you don’t have scripts calling other scripts), but does require attention; scripts will fail to run and users will receive the error message “can’t find specified entry point.”  Continue Reading