Offline Email in GMail

Have you checked offline GMail in action?

GMail team had developed GMail to work even when there is no internet is available.

It is a cool thing to us because we always are not connected to internet. Adding to that it is simply great since we don't have to install anything and it will work in Microsoft Internet Explorer as well.

Check it out by enabling it by going to settings page in your GMail account, click on Labs, select the Enable radio button of Offline feature and press on Save Changes button.

Then a link named Offline will appear in the top right of the GMail page. You can initiate the mail synchronization by clicking on this. It will guide you in setting up the feature.

IE Developer Toolbar not Working

Recently I needed to install IE Developer Toolbar to get some values of some applications. But after the installation I found out that it is not displaying any information about the loaded site.

Later I got to know that IE Developer Toolbar is not working if Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration is installed.

So if you are also facing the same problem go to Add / Remove Programs and open up the Windows Components wizard and uncheck Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration to remove it and when the wizard is finished and after you have restarted the Internet Explorer the IE Developer Toolbar will function as usual.

Changing Execution Timeout in SharePoint

If any of the tasks that you are performing in your site takes more time than usual and if the page is timing out then one solution that you can do is to increase the execution timeout value.
To change this value you need to edit the web.config files of SharePoint and the web site.

1. Open the SharePoint web.config file located at
Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS
(C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS)
using NotePad or Visual Studio.
2. Find the section and insert executionTimeout value there as shown below. 3. Save the site config file.4. Now you need to edit the web applications' web.config file. Normally this can be found under Drive:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\VirtualDirectoryFolder(C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\82)using NotePad or Visual Studio. 5. Find the line maxRequestLength and add executionTimeout in to it as shown below. 6. Save the application config file.7. Do an IIS restart and then your change will be in effect.

Changing the IIS Connection Timeout

For many reasons you might need to increase the IIS connection timeout.

The many reasons can be many time consuming processes, large transactions, slower connections, etc.

As a result if your application is timing out, one thing you can do is to increase the connection timeout.

• To change the timeout value you need to open Internet Information Services (IIS) manager. Either type InetMgr in the Run window or click on Start -> All Programs -> Administrative Tools -> Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.
• In the IIS Manager expand the main node and right click on the Web Sites and click on Properties.
• In the Web Sites Properties page give the appropriate value in the Connection timeout field under Connections section in Web Site tab and press Ok.
• Now to make the setting take effect restart the IIS by either typing IISReset in the Run window or right clicking on the machine name and going to All Tasks and clicking on Restart IIS... in the IIS Manager.

Configuring Large File Uploading in SharePoint

As you have noted the maximum file size that is supported by SharePoint by default is 50MB. What if you want to upload larger files?
Luckily we can change this limit to support larger files by increasing the default upload size in SharePoint Central Administration.
1. Go to SharePoint Central Administration by clicking on Start -> All Programs -> Administrative Tools -> SharePoint x.x Central Administration.
2. Click on Shared Services Administration link on the administration home page. 3. Click on SharedServices1 (Administration site host) link in Manage this Farm's Shared Services page to open the Web Application General Settings page. 4. Find the Maximum Upload Size property and change it to the maximum upload file size you want. Note that you can put file sizes up to 2GB (2047MB). Now you will be able to upload larger files than 50MB.

But to support uploading large files you also may need to increase the default timeout value.

I will be posting the next post of mine on how to increase the timeout value.

Windows 7

Next version of Microsoft Windows is here.
It is still in beta, but in Microsoft site you can preview it and even download a beta version.
Have a look at it.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7

Exception from HRESULT: 0x80040E14

Recently in SharePoint server I got an error when trying to do almost any action.
The error was Exception from HRESULT: 0x80040E14.
After sometime I did find out, that my C drive has gone out of disk space, and that caused SQL transaction log creation failure which resulted this error.
So freeing up more space on C drive solved my problem.
You will be able to get more details of the error by checking SharePoint log files.

Planning to Buy a Vehicle?

Thought to share some expensive and valuable information that might help you if you are planning to buy a vehicle. Lookout for two main things.
1. Quality of the Vehicle
2. Legal Side of the Vehicle

Although most of the things I mention in this are specific to Sri Lanka I definitely know there are similar things to check in other countries as well.

1. Quality of the Car
If you are buying a brand new vehicle this is not required because the company will give you the details technical overview and will also give you a warranty.
But if you are going for a used vehicle then you have to check for its quality. Anyway I am not that good in the technical side so you have to rely on the knowledge that you have or someone who knows better.

2. Legal Side of the Vehicle
This is one area most people are not paying that much interest. But this is the most important side, imagine a vehicle that you buy having problems with its documents, If that happens you wont be able to transfer it to your name with ease. Sometimes you even might need to go to courts. If that happens you face the difficulty when selling as well because no one would buy a vehicle from you that you don't own. Further more I advice you to check the vehicle documents because if you buy a technically unfit vehicle you can go to a mechanic and get the vehicle repaired after spending some time and money. But if documents are not good then it will be a big issue.
So what are these documents that you have to look for?

1. Certificate of Registration (CR)
This certificate will have all the details of the vehicle such as Make, Model, Year of Manufacture, Registration Number, Chassis Number, Engine Number, Present Owner, Absolute Owner, Previous Owners, Etc.
All of these are important to check, but for a successful legal transfer of ownership to you present and absolute owners are important. Always it is better to buy a vehicle from the person mentioned in the present owner field. Because the vehicle is owned by him. There are cases which people will keep vehicles with open papers.
Open Papers means that the owner will not get the vehicle transferred to his name, but he will get a set of forms filled from the seller and keep with him.
For example if Mr. ABC is buying a vehicle from Mr. STUV (Mr. STUV is the current owner in the CR). Mr. ABC will keep the transfer documents signed by Mr. STUV after doing the payments to Mr. STUV, but he will not fill them or submit them to the Department of Motor Vehicles for registration.
One advantage of open papers is the number of owners will be lesser.
One disadvantage of this is, if buyer needs to transfer the vehicle to his name he will not be guaranteed that the transfer will happen smoothly since his transferee will be an unknown person. For example in the above case if Mr. ABC is going to sell the vehicle to Mr. XYZ and if Mr. XYZ is needing to get the vehicle transferred to his name the legal transferee will be Mr. STUV who is unknown by Mr. XYZ. In which case while the transfer process is happening problems might arise.
Absolute owner - In normal case this field should be empty. If this is filled with some name that means the vehicle is on a finance or lease. In this case you cannot buy directly from the current owner. That is because when the absolute owner is superior to the current owner. So you will be needing a no objection letter from the absolute owner.
Also note in either case a company is printed under Current Owner or Absolute Owner you will be needing a no objection letter from the company in a company letter head, with the emboss seal and signed by a rightful director of the company.

2. Vehicle Identity Card (VID)
All the English number registered (HE, KA, KC, ...) vehicles will have a VID. you will be requiring this VID to carry out any legal things on the vehicle (Transferring the vehicle to you).
This is only applicable to English numbered vehicles since it is issued new.

If you follow these I think you would be able to buy a vehicle and live peacefully.

Visual Studio not Showing Errors

Is your Visual Studio showing error line numbers and respective pages while you develop?
If not read on, recently I came up to a machine which was having Visual Studio error. Visual Studio was showing errors when a project is compiled but the error details (error code line number, error file) which we can use to identify the error are not displayed.
After trying out several things found the cause of it and thought to share it.
The problem was not with the project but with the path the project was kept.
In the machine the failing project was stored under a folder which was having parenthesis or brackets "(".
For example the solution path was like C:\ProjectsA(V1)\MyProj\.
The (V1) part was confusing Visual Studio making it stop displaying the error details.
If you also have the same problem simply remove the brackets by renaming the folder and reload your project to Visual Studio from the new path. The error details will be shown correctly.

Regular Expressions

In the resent past I had to write some simple regular expressions.
So thought of sharing them with you.

An EMail Address Validator

^([a-zA-Z0-9_\-\.]+)@((\[[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.)(([a-zA-Z0-9\-]+\.)+))([a-zA-Z]{2,4}[0-9]{1,3})(\]?)$
This will validate the entered EMail address.

A Password Validator

(?=.{6,})[a-zA-Z]+[^a-zA-Z]+[^a-zA-Z]+[a-zA-Z]+
This will validate the password to have at least 1 alphabetic character and 1 numeric digit, and altogether the password will be more than 6 characters long.

A Telephone Number Valdator

\d{4}\s\d{3}\s\d{6}
This will expect the telephone number to be in international format. For example (0094 777 123456).

A Simple Length Validator

[\s\S]{1,200}
This will allow only only 200 or lesser characters for input.

A Length Validator Which Works With Linefeed (Return, Enter)

^(.\n){0,500}$
This will validate and allow only 500 input even in a multi line field when linefeed (enter) is used in between.

A Date Validator

(0[1-9]1[012])[- /.](0[1-9][12][0-9]3[01])[- /.](1920)\d\d

This will check for the date validness. The date format should be mm/dd/yyyy to correctly validate by this.

If the date format is required as yyyy/mm/dd then use the following.

(1920)\d\d[- /.](0[1-9]1[012])[- /.](0[1-9][12][0-9]3[01])

Following are some good sites that you can refer for regular expression help.

http://www.visibone.com/regular-expressions/

http://books.google.lk/books?hl=en&id=NYEX-Q9evKoC&dq=Regular+expressions&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=qok1lUQubw&sig=XVd8_Z3hM_CWqk5r9dupyAWIllk&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=6&ct=result#PPP1,M1

http://regexlib.com/CheatSheet.aspx

Installing HyperV Integration Services

I think at least some of you might have started using Hyper V.

Did you feel how difficult to move from your Host Operating System (OS) to Guest OS (You have to click some keyboard combinations to move in and out).

To make our life easier you can install HyperV Integration Services to the guest OS.

To install, after starting your virtual machine click on the Action menu and click Insert Integration Services Setup Disk. This will start the installation process. After this finishes you no need to click key sequences to go back and forth among the OSs.

This will also install the required components so that the virtual machine will be able to communicate with local area networks and internet.

Please note that you need to install the Integration Services in each and every virtual machine separately.

Google Video Chat

Check out the new Google Video chat.
Now you can video chat using GMail.

http://mail.google.com/videochat