Monthly Archives: November 2008

Running Cropper on a 64-bit OS

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I use Cropper as my primary screen capture utility.  Unfortunately, it will not run on Windows Vista 64-bit (it causes a Bad Image Exception), despite it being built on the .NET Framework.

Having discovered this, I thought “surely, I could not be the only individual who has ran into this issue” and headed to the Cropper Issue Tracker where, lo and behold, I found this item.  The fix turns out to be quite simple: Change the platform from ‘Any CPU’ to ‘x86’, recompile and then replace the installed assemblies.  This fix will also work on Windows XP 64-bit.

The installation directory is <drive>\Program Files (x86)\Fusion8Design\Cropper.  You will need to replace not only the assemblies in this directory, but also those in the plugins sub-directory.

Publishing to Graffiti CMS from Diarist

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Some folks out there (like me, on occasion) prefer to use a client application for blogging from their Windows Mobile device, as opposed to using a web interface.  The client I like to use (which I have also used with Community Server) is Diarist  Diarist (download here) (note: requires .NET Compact Framework 2.0) from Kevin Daly.

I recently had cause to hard reset my Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional Edition device, so I needed to reinstall all of my apps.  Diarist, of course, being one of them.  It is also telling that I have not blogged from my device since before I switched from Community Server to Graffiti CMS, but that’s another story.

After launching Diarist for the first time, click the Menu soft key, then Weblog > Add > Generic MetaWeblog as in Figure 1.

GenericMetaWeblog

Figure 1

Once on the screen for entering blog information, enter in the API URL, username, password, and blog URL (see Figure 2).  For Graffiti CMS, the MetaWeblog endpoint is at /api/MetaBlog.ashx.  If your site is at http://yoursite.com, the URL for the MetaWeblog endpoint (i.e. API URL) would be http://yoursite.com/api/MetaBlog.ashx. After entering this information, click the Confirm soft key and you are ready to post to your blog!

APIInfo

 

Update: Check out my additional post on this topic for an even easier way to configure Diarist

Internet Explorer Mobile 6

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Microsoft has officially announced Internet Explorer Mobile 6 – yes, the IE6 desktop experience in Windows Mobile is here for Windows Mobile 6.1. (The fabled ‘6 on 6’ lives!) 

I have had the opportunity to spend some quality time with the new emulators and I’m very happy to see Microsoft bring IE Mobile 6 to market. Of course, I wish it had been done long ago. . .

What is available today?  Emulators (WM 6.1.4 Professional and Standard)  and documentation; download from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=1A7A6B52-F89E-4354-84CE-5D19C204498A&displaylang=en  Note that the PDF download is throwing a 404 at the time of this posting (0555 EST, 20081112). The PDF is now available, and I recommend pulling it down and giving it a read-through.

When can I get the bits on my WM device?   Soon. . . stay tuned for details.

What devices will be supported?  TBD (see above), but hardware requirements are 128MB RAM, 400MHz processor

What has changed?  Lots!

  • Support for full-fidelity desktop rendering via the IE6 rendering engine from the desktop
    • What you see in IE6 on the desktop, you will see in IEM6 on the device.
    • The user gets to choose what browsing experience they want.
  • Layout fixes for the mobile screen  (e.g. text wrap)
  • Enhanced script and AJAX support (JScript 5.7 from IE8)
  • Adobe Flash Lite 3.1 for Adobe Flash content (note: this will be optional for OEMs to include)
  • Deeper search integration – address bar and homepage
  • Improved UX
    • Enhanced cursor navigation model
    • Touch and gesture support / pan support
    • Multiple zoom levels
    • Mobile / Desktop view easily switchable
  • NTLM authentication support
  • Performance
    • I’m still gathering numbers but, it is definitely a good bit (25%+ ?) faster than current IE Mobile.

I will be referring to Internet Explorer Mobile 6 as IEM6 and Internet Explorer Mobile as IEM throughout the remainder of this post.

After installing both the WM Professional 6.1.4 an WM Standard 6.1.4 emulators, I open Visual Studio and launch the Device Emulator Manager (DEM) from the Tools menu. I now see [for WM 6.1 editions], a bevy of emulator options. You can also install these emulators standalone if you do not have Visual Studio installed. I have highlighted the 6.1.4 emulators for both Standard and Professional edition below:

DEM_614Emus

For purposes of demonstration in this post, I will be working with (and using screen captures from) the WM 6.1.4 Professional Emulator and the WM 6.1.4 Standard Emulator and the WM 6.1 Professional Emulator and WM 6.1.4 Standard Emulator (for comparison). 

Launching IEM6 on each of these presents the user with the new home screen.  Note the search bar integration, cursor, and cleaner look to the home screen.  (IEM6 on the left, IEM on the right)

 

WM61IEComparO

 

If we bring up the menu on the WM Professional emulators, we see that the menu options have received increased spacing (much better for use with a finger).  We also see that some of the items have been reordered (well done!).

IEM_Menus

 

If we select Home Page under Options, we see a much improved UI for setting the home page:

IEMHomePage

StdIEMHomePage

 

I am not going to drill through all of the option sub-menus, but I do want to call out a very important, and new, screen – Other. From the Tools > Options > Other screen, you are able to set the browsing experience of mobile or desktop (which determines the user-agent string sent by the browser, as we will see shortly), and select whether or not to show pictures and play sounds (the latter two items could be bandwidth and memory intensive for devices browsing with the desktop experience).  Note that you are also able to make the browsing experience selection from Menu > View > Mobile | Desktop   which makes for changing your browsing experience very convenient.

Other

 

If we enter about:version into the address bar in our browser (Professional edition emulators shown, but it does work in Standard edition as well), we see the differences in how the browser presents itself (i.e. user-agent string).  In the image below, from left to right, we have:   IEM6 (Desktop Computer), IEM6 (Mobile Device), IEM   

 

IEAbouts

Notice the user-agent changes, developers:

IEM6, Desktop mode
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1) 

IEM6, Device mode
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 8.12; MSIEMobile 6.0)

IEM
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 7.11)

 

Here is eBay in IEM6 (left) and IEM (right).  Note that with IEM, we get taken to m.ebay.com; however, with IEM6 set to Desktop mode, we are able to fully render the site (with IEM6 in Device mode, we get the condensed UI as well).  Also in desktop mode, we are able to pan around and then zoom in to a desired area of the page.

ebay

 

Another example is http://speedtest.net , which uses Flash.  Also note that I have Flash running full-screen in IEM6, which is an option if you hold down the cursor/stylus to get a context menu to select from. You return to non- full-screen the same way.

speedtest

 

So far, I have  taken a quick look at some of the new rendering and multimedia capabilities of Internet Explorer Mobile 6.  In the next post I will spend more time examining the behavior on Standard edition devices, the cursor navigation model, search integration, NTLM support, and have some scripting fun.

Windows Mobile 6.1 POP and IMAP Send Mail Patch

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Microsoft has released a patch for a feature that was introduced in Windows Mobile 6.1.  From the download page:

This behavior is associated with a feature that is introduced in Windows Mobile 6.1. The feature allows for mobile operators to specify an alternate SMTP server name that is used if e-mail messages cannot be sent by using the user-specified SMTP server name. If the mobile operator does not specify an alternate SMTP server name and if the Windows Mobile 6.1-based device does not connect, the e-mail account is corrupted and cannot send e-mail messages.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=d9d71b2e-d2dd-44f2-86e5-1e53aad7fb7a&displaylang=en&tm

And now, with Graffiti CMS power

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Telligent Community Server is a good product, but a bit overkill for a single blog instance like this.  I have been looking for a turnkey solution to replace it, and I have found that in Telligent’s Graffiti CMS (1.1).

For my readers who subscribe to my feed (powered by FeedBurner), you will be blissfully ignorant of any changes; visitor’s to my site will notice some changes in layout.  They will also notice that my file downloads are currently unavailable – I will have this addressed shortly. 

After some trial and error (and re-reading the documentation <gasp!>), I achieved a flawless import of all my existing posts in CS to Graffiti (well done, Telligent).  I have set up redirects (so everyone using the old CS-based URLs won’t get lost, but the old-old URLs I was redirecting in CS are now toast) using James Avery’s Graffiti.Redirect (0.2).   Also, I have installed Graffiti Extras; however, I’m having some trouble getting the Windows Mobile theme selector to work correctly, but that seems to be an issue with this extension – stay tuned for some updates there.

Having gone through several CS version upgrades, I will say that the migration to Graffiti was painless by comparison (and frankly, painless overall).  Nice to see the product quality improvement, Telligent. Seriously, I wanted to love CS (2.x, 2007.x) with all my heart, but, damn it, there was some cruft in there that was just painful to deal with.

This time, it’s all milk and honey.  <AustinPowersVoice>Yeah, baby.</AustinPowersVoice>     Well done, Telligent, and I look forward to the 2.0 release.

 

Note: I was not bribed, threatened, blackmailed, blackballed, coerced, spammed, given the evil eye, or otherwise influenced by Telligent or their employees (even the ones here in Ohio) to write this ‘review’. I’m just seriously happy with this product.

The Mobile Minute 166

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The Mobile Minute 173

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