About Noel Arlante

Here are my most recent posts

Chrome Error Could Not Create Download Directory

 

I was trying to add a Google Chrome extension for my Twitter and got this error

Chrome Could Not Download Directory Error

Chrome error Could not create download directory. I thought its the same error I encountered using Chrome extension the last time – Google Chrome Download Not A CRX Error . It could be an error due to incompatible extension with my Chrome version. This happens all the time when Chrome updates to a new version and an extension did not.

I searched Google and landed on this helpful link –  http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/_p4jqPSD2mI

Here are the steps I made to fix this.

Go to your Chrome Settings

Chrome  Settings

Chrome  Settings2

Go to Advanced Settings at the bottom

Chrome  Advanced Settings

Downloads -> Download Location. My download location had a default location that is not existing anymore (its an external hard drive I used before).

Chrome Download Location Settings

Change it to a valid location in your local hard drive and you are all set.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Visual Studio 2012 Custom Installation Option Missing

 

TopImageMemeInstaller

I have installed Visual Studio 2012 several times in the past, its just now that I want do custom installation. Thank you to the limited space of an SSD drive, I need to keep the Visual Studio 2012 installation to a bare minimum. Just like past versions of  Visual Studio I can always just install what I want, right? Not with Visual Studio 2012.

Visual Studio Installer Feature Options

In Visual Studio 2012 installation, no option will let you pick only C# as the programming language, uncheck SQL Express or just proceed with complete installation. Every time it is complete installation.

Well not options were removed, you can choose if you want to install Blend for Visual Studio, Lightswitch and other features included in the installer.

Visual Studio Installation Size

My installation of Visual Studio 2012 took 5.24GB of space with Microsoft Office Developer Tools and Microsoft Web Developer Tools features selected.

This post of the Visual Studio team from Microsoft mentioned that they included the option for customisation but its not present with the installer I used. The installer was downloaded directly from the MSDN download site so I guess they remove the option again.

I’m happy with the improvement of Visual Studio 2012’s performance and features but giving me an option to just install what I want would not hurt. Not at all.

 

Google Chrome Extension Download Not A CRX Error

I’m trying to download a Google Chrome extension in my Windows 8 machine. A simple Pop-up blocker like an AdBlock would be a breeze to install right? No.

Chrome Add Extension

CRX Error

After I received an error “Download was not a CRX” I hit the “Reload” button looking at a simple relaunch is required.

The extension gallery was reloaded but nothing happened, no extension was installed. I tried to do the same steps but got nowhere.

After googling the error, the search pointed me to this blog – http://www.ghacks.net/2012/12/07/fix-chrome-error-download-was-not-a-crx/

Apparently, clearing the cache or manually adding the extension will not work. You need to sign “Sign-in to Chrome” to make it work.

Sign in to Chrome

I tried signing-in into Chrome as suggested and it worked. It worked without even me doing the same steps from downloading the extension in the gallery to clicking the “Add to Chrome” button.

Notice the active AdBlock icon below after signing in.

Signed in to Chrome

Adding an extension in my Chrome from my Mac machine did not require the extra step. Perhaps an extra security for Windows?

Add those extensions now as they may help you to be productive in your tasks. Chrome extensions fire away!

How to Install Hyper-V in Windows 8 Pro and Lenovo W530

Hero hyperv

One of the features included in Windows 8 is the Hyper-V client. In the past, the Hyper-V client is only available from Windows 2008 Server OS now you can have the same feature in Windows 8 Pro. Hyper-V, the machine virtualization technology, lets you run multiple operating systems at the same time on the same machine.

I’ve recently purchased a Lenovo W530 laptop which they called “The Beast”. It has Intel 3rd Gen Core i7 and 16Gigs of RAM(up to 32GB) perfect for Windows 8 Pro and Hyper-V. As a developer, I will need all the resources I can get from this machine.

Enabling Hyper-V Feature

Enabling Hyper-V is simple, just go to Windows 8 features panel to enable. But as you can see below the option for the Hyper-V option is greyed out. Message says “Hyper-V cannot be installed. Virtualization support is disabled in the firmware.

Windows8 Feature  HyperV Disabled withMessage

BIOS Configuration

To fix the issue, you need to go to your BIOS and enable the virtualisation option. For Lenovo W530, below is where you can set Virtualization to “Enabled”.

Lenovo W530 Virtualization BIOS rs

Activating Hyper-V

Go back to Windows 8 features and you now can see that the Hyper-V option is enabled.

Windows8 Feature  HyperV Enabled

Windows will need to restart after enabling the feature.

Windows8 Feature  HyperV Required Restart

After restart, Launch Hyper-V Manager and proceed with creating your virtual machines.

Rasberry Pi with Raspbmc and AirPlay Rocks!

Raspberry Pi Logo

I’m very excited to play with a Raspberry Pi and see how a tiny computer the size of an iPhone screen would stream to a HDTV movies and other media using AirPlay. If you do not want to get an Apple TV to have AirPlay this is a good alternative. The actual size of a Raspberry Pi is 85.60 × 53.98 mm (3.370 × 2.125 in). This small computer has 2 USB ports, HDMI for video, ethernet port for network and a SD card slot for storage. It just requires a 500 to 700 mA power source to operate which can be provided by common USB ports.

Raspberry Pi  Features wtmk
Raspberry Pi Features and Specifications

Raspberry Pi in Action RS wtmk
Raspberry Pi with power and ports plugged in

Raspbmc

Raspbmc is a complete installer of XBMC for the Raspberry Pi. XBMC is a free software media player that is available for Linux, OSX and Windows. Raspberry Pi runs on Linux which can be installed with XBMC. Raspbmc made an installer to run XBMC with a Raspberry Pi. It has a Windows and Linux/OSX installer which is very easy to follow.

Installation of Raspbmc

I have an OSX machine so I’ve followed the one for Linux/OS X installation guide from Raspbmc. But there is also available guide for Windows installation here.

Basically from your OS X machine, you need to download the installer and then run the installer (install.py) as root.

Raspbmc Install wtmk

After making sure the SD card is inserted in your OS X machine, you can proceed with the next step which is copying the Raspbmc image to your SD card.

Raspberry Install 2 wtmk

Configuration of Raspbmc

Insert the SD card with Raspbmc image to your Raspberry Pi and power it on.

Raspbmc will boot and install additional settings so grab a coffee and wait!

Xbmc Installer RS wtmk

After installation you will see the menu page for Raspbmc.

Xbmc Front Page RS wtmk

AirPlay

Do not forget to enable the “Allow XBMC to receive AirPlay content” option. Go to Settings – Services – AirPlay.

Xbmc with Airplay RS wtmk

From your iPad or any iOS device with AirPlay you will now have an option to stream to XBMC.

Raspberry Pi Airplay from iPad RS wtmk
Playing YouTube video from the iPad to a HDTV using AirPlay.

iTunes can also stream using AirPlay your videos and podcasts.

Airplay with iTunes

Since my MacBook Pro is not capable of AirPlay (AirPlay only supports Mac models 2011 and up). I’m using Air Video Server App to stream my movies from my MacBook Pro to my iPad and then from my iPad use AirPlay to stream to my HDTV.

AirPlay iPad with Air Video Server

Thank you to Scott Hanselman’s post on Raspberry Pi with Raspbmc for the information and inspiration 🙂 Raspberry Pi with Raspbmc rocks!

How To Disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration on Windows Server 2012 RC

Internet explorer security

This is a guide on how to disable the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration (IE ESC) in Windows Server 2012 RC. I’ve blogged the steps on how to do this on Windows Server 2008 on my previous post – How To Disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration

How to Disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration on Windows 2012 RC

When you access a website such as the website of MSDN in Windows Server 2012, you would get the message below:

IE Prompt 2012

To disable this message, go to the Server Manager

ServerManager win2012

On the Server Manager window, choose Local Server, then click the IE Enhanced Security Configuration option under Properties

IE ESC Win2012

You will be then be prompted with the options window below. You can turn off the IE ESC to both Administrators and Users.

IE ESC Disable Win2012

After following these steps, close all Internet Explorer instances and then relaunch. You will now be able to go to websites within your Windows Server 2012 without the IE ESC message.

How To Disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration

Internet security RS

This is a guide on how to disable the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration (IE ESC) which is enabled by default on Windows servers. You would usually disable this security feature on development instances of your Windows Server. The IE ESC feature reduces the risk of attack when you access external websites from within the server as explained by the following message from Microsoft Support:

Microsoft Internet Explorer’s Enhanced Security Configuration is currently enabled on your server. This enhanced level of security reduces the risk of attack from Web-based content that is not secure, but it may also prevent Web sites from displaying correctly and restrict access to network resources.

How to Disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration on Windows 2008.

Note: See the steps for Windows Server 2012 RC here – Disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration on Windows 2012 RC

When you access a website such as the website of MSDN, you would get the message below:

IE Prompt

To disable this message, go to the Server Manager

ServerManager win2008

On the Server Manager Summary window, click the Configure IE ESC option under Security Information. See exact location below:

IE ESC Win2008

You will be prompted with the options window below. You can turn off the IE ESC to both Administrators and Users.

IE ESC Disable Win2008

After following these steps, close all Internet Explorer instances and then relaunch. You will now be able to go to websites within your Windows server without the IE ESC message.

Quick Tip – Multi Project Solution in VS11

I’m using Visual Studio 11 since it was released as Beta. What can I say, I really get the new design and layout (monochrome and gylphs) which not every developer appreciates. But beyond design and layout I really like the new search feature and the navigation features added in the Solutions Explorer section.

Going to the quick tip, if you have created a project in Visual Studio 11 Beta and would want to add another project under the same solution you would get this:

Solution explorer without add new project

Yes no option to add new project! Normally (like in VS 2010) you will use the solution explorer to add a new project but there is no option on VS11 Beta.

 

Solution explorer in VS2010 with Add Project option

Solution:

To add another project just go to File – New Project – Choose any Template. On the same window at the lower portion you can find the Solution option. You have the option to Create a new solution or Add to solution.

Solution option under file-new project

This is where you can add existing projects to your solution. Note that this option is also available in Visual Studio 2010.

Solution Explorer not showing the Solution file?

If the solution is not showing in the solution explorer check if the Always show solution is enabled in your Visual Studio

Visual Studio Options screen

Go to Tools – Options – Projects and Solutions – General – Tick the Always show solution option.

There it is, a quick tip on working around Visual Studio 11. Enjoy VS!

 

 

 

Creating My First Windows Metro-style App

 

I’ve blogged last month on how to get started on building metro-style applications. Since then, I’ve been trying out the sample projects made by the Windows team to help developers be up to speed with Metro-style application development. The official Sample Pack is 306.4MB in size as of this writing. You can even vote a sample request that you would like the Windows team to add in the samples pack – Metro style apps Requests for Samples. The latest completed request is a sample USB Barcode Scanner, nice!

Blog Reader App

After checking on the samples and creating sample projects, I decided to create a basic application with Metro-style. I do not need to look far since one of the article is on how to create a basic Blog Reader. That will be a great app to start with especially if there is a step-by-step guide available 🙂

Basic Layout

This application sample lets you create the layout using the Metro style Blank Application template first. Using XAML, the layout will be created by manually adding a Grid, ListView and a Webview for the HTML content. Creating the layout in XAML is very similar to creating UI in Silverlight and other projects you created using WPF with XAML.

Blog reader app not using the template

Blank Template Xaml Project

Data Binding

Windows.Web.Syndication

Next we need go to get the data like thd Title, Author, Date of Post and the article from the blog. This data is available through RSS or Atom feed. These feeds will be taken care of by the SyndicationClient class so we do not have to worry about converting the feed or the data to XML.

SyndicationClient client = new SyndicationClient();SyndicationFeed feed = await client.RetrieveFeedAsync(feedUri);

Note that the Windows.Web.Syndication is new in WinRT. The .Net version of this library is the System.ServiceModel.Syndication. Shawn Wildermuth experienced a problem about images being stripped out when using the Web.Syndication namespace. Not the same case with this sample app though. Shawn mentioned from his tweet that this may not be true for all feeds.

Async and Await

Since we are using the SyndicationClient class, we need to implement an asynchronous process to retrieve the feeds. The async and await will help us implement asynchronous calls in WinRT.

public async Task GetFeedsAsync(){    
Task feed1 = GetFeedAsync("http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/developers/atom.aspx");    ...    
this.Feeds.Add(await feed1);    ...}

Notice in the code above, the async keyword is added in the method signature. This is required for us to use await keyword. The await keyword makes our application responsive while the application waits for the result of the call to retrieve the feeds. Simple implementation of an asynchronous operation, nice!


Using the Templates

In Visual Studio 11, you have the option use the Metro style templates like the Split Application and the Grid Application template. Using these templates can save you the time to layout your view just like in this case where we can use Split Page template to show the main blog list on the left and then at the side show the posts made on that blog.

Split view blog reader

 

Other sections described by the blog reader sample application are adding an app bar for your application options and the Storyboard where you can define the layout transitions e.g full screen, snapped.

I’m happy to be able to create this sample app and be able to look deeper into Metro style development. More metro style apps in my future posts!

Reference Links:

Windows 8 Consumer Preview Metro style app samples – C#, VB.NET, C++, JavaScript

Github Repo on Actual Source Code of this project

 

The New iPad Unboxing – My First iPad

Retina logo

I’m one of those persons that did not get it when the first generation iPad was launched in 2010. That time I thought why would someone use such a device for computing and daily consumption of media. I really agree back then with the comment that its a super sized iPod Touch! 🙂 I like ultra portable devices which I can carry in my pocket and discreetly use it whenever I need it for email, internet and games – that’s why I have my iPhone. If I want to use a bigger screen there is my ever reliable Macbook Pro, so I do not need an iPad.

iPad 2

When iPad 2 was released in 2011, I considered getting one because of the improvements in its form factor. It was 33% thinner and 15% lighter than the first iPad. The problem is it still uses the same screen resolution from the first iPad. Games and apps will still look the same in the screen with the same image quality. Nice improvements but not enough to snatch my 30K pesos. I decided not to get one.

My First iPad

When the new iPad was launched last month, everyone is expecting that it will have an improved screen resolution. Same as the Retina display used with the last two recent iPhone versions – iPhone 4/4S. Even the invite from Apple indicates that the screen has to be the main feature that will be upgraded. That is how much everyone wants the Retina display to be in a 9.7 inch screen like the iPad, even Apple knows they have to highlight that feature.

The upgraded processor, memory and camera is nothing compared with the upgrade to the Retina display feature in my opinion. What will the iPad look like if no Retina display was used in this version? An iPad 2S!

I was able to get a friend order the new iPad in the States last March 7. It was released and delivered in the States on the 16th. I got an iPad White 32GB Wifi only. I’m not too optimistic that 4G will be “fully” implemented in the Philippines soon. Anyway, I’m so excited that I even made sure to check everyday that the order did pushed through. After waiting for 2 weeks, I got my very first iPad unit!

Unboxing

Ipad box
iPad still sealed in the box

Ipad box cut
iPad first cut through to the box

Ipad lift from box
iPad first lift from the box

Ipad front
iPad front, first hands-on

Ipad accessories in box
iPad accessories inside the box

Ipad plastic peel off
iPad first peel of plastic

Ipad back buttons
iPad usual buttons at the back

Ipad Thank you Setup
iPad after user setup

Retina
iPad Retina Display

Reviews:

Some noteworthy reviews from the experts.

The Retina display is worth the wait. I would not want to have anything less than an HD screen on my next tablet for sure. Widescreen resolution next for iPad? There is a lot to look forward to for 2012 as Tim Cook said from his last keynote. Do not worry about me for now, I’m a happy camper with my new iPad.

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