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Creating IIS7 web applications from the command line

October 9, 2008 While trying to decide if I should create a Windows Installer for Dovetail Mobile Agent. I was doing some research on how to automate the setup of web applications on IIS7. Turns out it is quite easy from the command line when you are local to the web server using AppCmd.   With the helpful batch prowess of of Chad Myers I cooked up this batch file which creates a web application with its own application pool. @echo OFF SETLOCAL SET webSiteName="Default Web Site" SET vdir=/mobile SET physicalPath=C:\projects\mobile\source\Dovetail.Agent.Mobile SET applicationPoolName=dovetailmobile SET APPCMD=%SYSTEMROOT%\System32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe   %APPCMD% DELETE APPPOOL %applicationPoolName% %APPCMD% DELETE APP %webSiteName%%vdir%   %APPCMD% ADD APPPOOL /name:%applicationPoolName% %APPCMD% ADD APP /site.name:%webSiteName% /path:%vdir% /physicalPath:%physicalPath% /applicationPool:%applicationPoolName% ENDLOCAL

Keyboard Shortcuts for Dovetail Mobile Agent

October 7, 2008 In a past post, I discussed how to use GreaseMonkey to modify a web application, particularly, Dovetail Mobile Agent. In my last post, I linked to a GreaseMonkey script that added keyboard shortcuts to Basecamp. Now let's combine the two together. Access Keys for Mobile Clients Keep in mind that Dovetail Mobile Agent already has Access Keys (shortcuts) that are geared for mobile devices. The access keys are numbers. This works well on a mobile device, but it doesn't make as much sense for non-mobile devices. Notice in the image below that each link has a numeric access key. In a previous post, I showed you how to use Stylish to restyle the app.  One of the styling changes I made was to hide the numeric access keys: .access-key-label{    display:none; } This hid the mobile-centric numeric access keys. Keyboard…

Deploying an ASP.Net MVC web application to IIS7

The next installment in my exciting series where I capture what I know about deploying Dovetail Mobile Agent which could be boiled down to How To Be a Web Server Administrator in the year 2008. Moving from IIS6 this time we take a look at getting an ASP.Net MVC application deployed to IIS7. Thankfully this is pretty easy.   To try out this experience I created a Vista SP1 Enterprise virtual machine and added the IIS 7 windows feature. I know. I know. Most enterprise customers will want to use Windows 2008 as their favorite IIS7 platform, I had to use Vista because I use VMWare Server v1.x which supports Vista not Windows 2008. Revenge of the Basics   Install the .Net 3.5 Framework.   Add the Internet Information Services Windows Feature To Vista. In Windows 2008 this process is very similar in cases you will…

Keyboard shortcuts for Basecamp

October 6, 2008 Greasemonkey script Quickcamp adds keyboard shortcuts to Basecamp.   We use Basecamp for our keeping track of our professional service engagements, and as you can probably tell from my recent posts, I'm quickly becoming a huge fan of GreaseMonkey.   So Quickcamp makes a nice add-on to for my environment.   Cool stuff.  

Installing a ASP.Net MVC web application on IIS6

Getting ready to release Dovetail Agent Mobile I am working on what our installation story will look like. I want to keep things simple (for me) right now because it is currently tricky to support IIS6 and IIS7 using a Wix based windows installer. For the documentation I am compiling a list of operations to get what is essentially a ASP.Net MVC web application up and going on different web servers.   Later we may later add an installer that encapsulates this pain but right now it is just too darn hard to do this well usingWix. Do you hear me Microsoft? Getting Down With The Basics   Install the .Net 3.5 Framework.   Copy web application files to a directory our your web server.   Create a Virtual Directory using Internet Information Services Manager that points to this directory. ASP.Net…

Clarify Additional Features Forms

October 3, 2008 I recently responded to a  question about adding a Save button to the CR (Change Request) form in Clarify. Dusting off my Clarify knowledge, I gave some details about how to simply copy the Save button from the Additional Features form. I'm sure not everyone knows about these forms. We wrote about this years ago, in one of our newsletters, but I figured it couldn't hurt to share it again here. Additional Features Forms   There are three forms in the Clarify Classic Client that are never displayed in a Clarify client session, but which are extremely valuable. Clarify has placed a variety of controls on these controls that can be copy and pasted directly on to specific forms in Clarify, and they will work for you automatically.   There are two forms provided for ClearSupport, and one provided for…

Getting WebDev.WebHost to work on 64 bit Windows

October 2, 2008 In the past I wrote on how we are doing integration testing of a web services using the WebDev.WebHost assembly. This technique has found its way into Dovetail Seeker and is really handy to do an end to end test against a live web server. I ran into trouble running the tests now that I am running a 64bit OS.   You get this error when trying to spin up the test web server:   An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format.   It turns out the WebDev.WebHost assembly is flagged as a 32bit which forces it to be run only within a 32bit version of the framework. In my build automation nunitconsole.exe is the test runner and it is likely flagged as Any CPU and thus running in 64bit mode by default. After checking out Scott Hanselman’s post…

Using Ubiquity to "edit" web pages

September 29, 2008 I commonly take screen-shots of our web applications, and use them here within my blog. Occasionally when I do this, I want to hide or obfuscate certain pieces of information. For example, I may want to share a screenshot of a case from one of our production systems, or I may have some data that I use in my dev system, that isn't exactly "professional", so I wouldn't want the outside world seeing it. Or perhaps even a URL that I don't want to expose. I used to do a bunch of work, and jump through some hoops in order to make everything professional, hide data, etc. But using Ubiquity, its really easy to change the page on the fly - no programming necessary. For example, lets say that I start with this page: I then invoke Ubiquity (ctrl-space), and…

Commenting on Solutions

One of the things I've wanted to do for a long time is have the ability to add comments on objects within the Clarify/Dovetail system. As a specific example, I've wanted to be able to add comments to a solution. For those not versed in Clarify/Dovetail speak, a Solution is essentially a KnowledgeBase (KB) article. By allowing comments, I (and others) can (hopefully) enhance the information that is within the Solution. For example, consider a  KB article that is available on the web, such as a Microsoft KB article, or a Dovetail KB article. Now, lets say that I use the information in that article, but I run into a bit of a snag, discover another tip or workaround, or perhaps I've even found something wrong in that article. What can I do? I'd like to be able to leave…

Microsoft + jQuery

Totally rockin announcement today: Microsoft will be shipping jQuery with Visual Studio. If you follow the Dovetail Developers, you already know that we're big fans of jQuery at Dovetail. ScottGu has details on his blog about this announcement, as does John Resig. Scott Hanselman also has a good write-up. From ScottGu's post: We will distribute the jQuery JavaScript library as-is, and will not be forking or changing the source from the main jQuery branch.  The files will continue to use and ship under the existing jQuery MIT license. We will also distribute intellisense-annotated versions that provide great Visual Studio intellisense and help-integration at design-time. The jQuery intellisense annotation support will be available as a free web-download in a few weeks. We will also extend Microsoft product support to jQuery beginning later this year, which will enable developers and enterprises to…