Today I finally took the time to check up the annoying Windows feature called "My network places". My goal was to stop adding it stuff into it. I found a solution at How can I stop UNC shares automatically being added to my network places which works like a charm.
In Windows 7 it is easy to check if your system is 64-bit capable.
You just go to Start -> Right click on Computer -> Click Properties. Click on Windows Experience Index.
More methods can be found on the following link:
How to check if my processor is x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit) in Windows?
A great tool to compress all your javascript and css files can be found on the following website: http://www.refresh-sf.com/yui/
It is very useful to make your websites footprint as small as possible. Doing so makes your website load faster. With this tool you have a choice to just minify the source or to minify and obfuscate the source code.
A good set of tools to inspect and debug webpages is the “Internet Explorer Developer Tools”. Although I use them regularly, I have never used the browser and document mode until very recently (probably because I did not have a good understanding of what browser and document mode meant).
In one of the links below I found the following explanation:
While the Browser Mode affects how Internet Explorer reports version information to servers and webpages, the Document Mode affects the document compatibility mode reported by the Web page to Internet Explorer.
So in other words with Browser mode a user / developer can test how a website looks like in another browser. Here we say to the web browser: “Render the content as if you were another browser”.
However using Document mode one – most likely a developer – can test which is the best document mode to use in his webpage. The document mode gives information to the web browser about how it should be rendered. Here the webpage states to the web browser: “Please render me like this”. In this case the browser version remains the same.
Discovering Internet Explorer Developer Tools
How to use F12 Developer Tools to Debug your Webpages
Testing Browser and Document Compatibility Modes with the Developer Tools
Today I tried one of those MS Virtual labs. I needed to install the following ActiveX component: ‘Virtual Server VRMC Advanced Control’. I clicked the link and a new tab opened up. The page was immediately recovered by my Internet Explorer 8 browser and then displayed some message that it was not possible to return to the microsoft website. Result? No activeX control installed.
After googling the component I found that by disabling the option "Enable memory protection to help mitigate online attacks" in the advanced options of my IE browser I was finally able to install the activeX component.
Recently I installed Visual Studio 2010. I got following messaging:
Visual Studio 2010 runs faster when the Windows Automation API 3.0 is installed
Apparently this Windows Automation API is responsable for speeding up things like the IntelliSense. I found following description on msdn:
The Windows Automation API consists of two technologies—Microsoft Active Accessibility and Microsoft UI Automation. Microsoft Active Accessibility is the legacy accessibility technology that was introduced as a platform add-in for Windows 95, while UI Automation is a newer, more capable technology that overcomes the limitations inherent in Microsoft Active Accessibility.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/981741
More info on the Windows Automation API : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd561932.aspx
Here is a good tutorial of how to setup a vpc for MOSS 2007 development:
http://www.pptspaces.com/sharepointreporterblog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=28