microsoft net framework

[hansie]

When I install my parhelia I have to install netframework from microsoft, otherwise I can't use powerdesk.
When I do this each time by reboot I have to loginn by Win XP.
Is there another netframework and when I reboot I do not have to loginn, but Windows goe's direct to my desktop.
Where is netframework on my install cd?
Anyone know about this problem?
thanks

[Jon P. Inghram]

You can either follow the instructions in this link: http://www.mvps.org/marksxp/WindowsXP/welskip.php

Or just delete the ASP.NET Machine user account: http://www.mvps.org/marksxp/WindowsXP/aspdot.php

[Wombat]

Or you can install TweakUI, available from Microsoft.com. It has a setting to choose an account for auto-login.

[Peter Aragon]

Don't simply delete the account. Download Tweakui for XP from the microsoft site. Go to the Logon section and check off the "Show "ASPNET" on Welcome screen" option, and everything is back to normal.
I've made Microsoft aware of this problem some time ago, but they have only responded that they will consider the fix for the future. It's in my opinion a slip-up in the setup routine, as when they internally tested it, they either have autologin enabled, or they are in a domain, or they only had user accounts with passwords.

[leech]

Why again does Microsoft decide that .Net should create a user account on your system?? For someone who has to have the .Net framework for Powerdesk, but isn't a programmer, that user account would be useless, correct?

Leech

[Peter Aragon]

Originally posted by leech
Why again does Microsoft decide that .Net should create a user account on your system??
Leech

If you would buy something ASP.NET related this account would become necessary for it to work (not that there are many consumer applications out there based on ASP.NET ).

It is becomming more and more clear for people that .NET is the direction Microsoft is taking to give Application builders a new API, not only for building applications, but to interact with the OS (Longhorn). At the moment it is still rather difficult in .NET to program something that changes something simple as the desktop background. The goal in Longhorn is to give programmers the same options as they had with MFC programming, plus more. That's because they will keep backwords compatible with current applications, but because of all issues with backwards compatibility they have redesigned the whole interaction with the OS and provide programmers with a completely different .NET based model, that allows you to also use the newer features of the OS, since they don't seem to implement that for MFC. This also seems the wisest thing, because if you would use those new features you couldn't run that program on older platforms anyway...
You can see the same thing as with Windows 3.11 and win'95. 3.11 programs will run in win'95, but not the opposit arround. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if Win3.11 programs will still work in Longhorn. My opinion is that it is good to finally be able to use something without all the junk to keep old applications running smoothly and start off with something fresh. MFC has been around for over 10 years. It was about time there will come something new for Windows. Also in Longhorn you can use a completely different User Interface model, completely vector based and hardware accellerated. My guess is that Matrox will be stupid if they not use this opportunity to build some kick-ass vector accellerated video card for that

[leech]

Well, it's a good thing that I'm working on dumping all need for windows

I'm sorry, but if it starts getting to the point where you have to have a massive GPU on your card just to run the operating system, there is NO point to it. Oh so it'll look nice and pretty.... big deal, what about my Grandma, who has a computer with NO 3D capability, can run Win2k on it at a somewhat decent speed, but it does everything she could possibly want. What would be the incentive for people like that to upgrade to "longhorn"? None. And that's the same reason why there are still millions (billions?) of people using Windows 98.

I do agree with you though that it's nice to finally dump the backward compatibility. Linux all but did this, yet still have a library in place incase you absolutely need it... Much like it sounds like they're doing with .Net. Leaving the functionality of the old MFC way of doing things there, plus adding more.

While we're on the subject of Longhorn, I have one major question.... will the Windows Toolkit be more open so that application makers can actually make a more unified looking desktop environment? It always kills me to read things about "But it still doesn't look consistent" when refering to QT vs. GTK apps. They now have quite a few unified themes that fit between the two. But it's not any less consistent than Windows and it's apps. For example, Photoshop uses it's own widget set. Not to mention all the seperate programs that have to have their own skinning API.....

Recently I installed Libranet on a friend's PC. I had to clarify to him how the themes worked, that you didn't just change the skin of your browser, but of the whole desktop, and that's the way it should be. Everything should match, nice and neat. Well, maybe with the exception of the mp3 player, that way you can spot it on the desktop easier

Leech

[Peter Aragon]

Hi leech

The thing is that in that timeframe those massive GPU's are quite normal. The Longhorn demo's I've seen are mostly with altered NVIDIA drivers, to support the new DirectX10 instructions. But the Windows Experience will have 3 levels, one is the compatibility mode, for example when installing a new graphics card you don't really have all those hardware accellerations, also older cards will keep working, a lot of things will be rendered in software, but that is still the same as with computer games running on older cards. The second one will have the basic hardware accelleration and the third will involve all the visual eyecandy.
On the part of making a unified look for all applications, I have to contradict a little bit on that. A graphics applcation forfills a different need that for example a word processor or video application. The reason that Adobe has its own widgets has mostly to do with having to support it on both Windows and Apple and want as little as possible code divergence when programming against the UI.
The skinning is mostly done to give a sort of branding and recognizability to your application and mostly has more marketing purpose than a real functional one. But indeed, there is a fine line between differentiating your application, toward becoming unrecognizable to operate for your end users. This new Avalon user interface engine and describing language XAML for example is a great opportunity for programmers to create the most awfull and unusable user interfaces. But a good thing is that you would have professional designers able to design applications, in which they finally can design controls, buttons and complete user interfaces, and have programmers attach all the events to it. You can have a look on LonghornBlogs.

[FormerEx-SalesSoup]

i detest .NET

[Peter Aragon]

Guess it was a difficult period for the support department of your previous employer, especially as an early adopter

What did you detest most?

[FormerEx-SalesSoup]

I still detest it. The fact that it overruns the entire registry and takes forever to remove from there if you need to. The fact that Microsoft made it permeate throughout the whole OS, etc.

[schmosef]

I attended a recent Toronto .Net User Group meeting that was held at Microsoft's new facility in Mississauga.

They previewed Whidbey (the next VS.Net), ASP.Net 2.0, and Longhorn.

I was blown away!

First, the sandwiches were really good. Much better than the regular convention fare.

Second, the new features in VS.Net will really add to my productivity. The "My" object in VB.Net will completely simplify the process of manipulating the UI and other system properties. The code of changing a background image (to use Peter’s example) will be something like “My.desktop.background.image = c:\reefsharck.jpg”. (I made up that syntax but it’s going to be something along those lines.) There are a million other features that will take me forever to write about. All I have to say is I can’t wait for the download to be available on the MSDN website. Official Microsoft response when asked for a release date: “When it and Yukon are ready.” Yukon is the next version of SQL Server.

The Longhorn preview was pretty cool too. The MS guy said he wasn’t allowed to show us some of the new 3D elements of the UI (he implied that they were secret but my guess is that they were too buggy). He showed us some graphical things but admitted that anyone with an nvidia card could already do most of what he demoed that night. What he did show us was a cool demo of the new methods for storing files.

He had someone from the audience come up and choose a picture (from his my pictures folder) that included someone facing forward. The person chose a picture of a little girl. He clicked a “find face” button and after a quick animation of the picture being scanned from top to bottom it automatically cropped the area of her face. He then clicked the face and typed “little girl”. Then he was able to have windows scan his folder and find other pictures of the girl. I don’t think he actually let the scan finish; you could tell that Longhorn was chugging really heavily on his laptop. Everyone was impressed nonetheless. He implied that you won’t be restricted to choosing people facing forward in the release version (his laptop was running a daily pre-Alpha build) and he said that the final version will allow for environment scanning. You’ll be able to specify a picture as taking place in Disney World and have windows find all the other pictures at Disney world too!

@Peter, Thanks for the tip on why login is required after installing .Net. I’ve seen the behaviour before when configuring various PCs (and running windows update) but never really cared enough to look into why. Now I know, and can fix it if a customer ever complains.

[Peter Aragon]

Hi Schosef

The picture recognition sounds like a nice but difficult feature and would be impressed to get at least a 70% accuracy...
But I think if there would be such an object in VS Whidbey, it would be called something like MS.Windows.Desktop, and not restricted to VB.NET (which is a nice language, but I changed a while ago to C#) , and maybe the Desktop could be a collection of desktops, if you would have multiple users.... but hey, luckily I don't have to implement this. It would be some kind of emulation layer in the current operating systems (like an interop layer), but in Longhorn it will be incorporated from the ground up. That's why I cannot understand Sales's complain about .NET, it is like you would flame MFC or VB dll's on your system.
I can't wait either. The PDC Longhorn is not stable enough to use the whole day, I hope the first beta's will be a bit more productive. And regarding Whidbey, I don't think they will alter the API's in the last moment, so shipping Whidbey before Yukon shouldn't be a problem. My guess is they have some legal struggles to have some of the Indigo stuff shipped in .NET 2.0, since they would breach the maximum of 10 concurrent network connections deal for consumer operating systems they made with other operating system manufacturers. I guess September would be too optimistic, I won't be surprised if it would be ready in the December timeframe.
BTW, have you seen the picture scrolling control they made? It rocks! You know that 70% from the control designing team is from the Netherlands?

[schmosef]

I promise you that the object is currently called “My”. As in “My.system.etc”. (Although it would not be wholly unlike MS to change the name later on.) It’s currently only for VB.Net. They didn’t rule out adding it to C# in the future but said that there were various strategic reasons for not adding it at the present time. One reason they didn’t immediately add it to C# was because they are pushing the language as an open (platform independent) standard and the My object would be specific to the Microsoft environment. They stressed that the My object didn’t add anything that wasn’t already in the .Net framework, it just repackaged it in a way that made it easier to get at things. They showed it working inside a Whidbey/VB.Net project. They typed “My.” And intellisense gave them a drillable list of subordinate object methods and properties.

I agree the term “My” kind of seems kitschy and not super professional but this is VB we’re talking about...

They stressed that Whidbey would be shipped at the same time as Yukon (not before or after), and that WinFS relied heavily on Yukon technology and that Indigo would ship (in some form) for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. They didn’t get into specifics of how Indigo would work (except for showing a very complex looking flow chart) but they promised that it would radically simplify programming of network communication and web services. I hope they finally add real cross-tab query functionality to SQL Server as they’ve had in Access for as long as I can remember. I hate that I have to know ahead of time what my column heads might be in order to simulate a cross-tabulation in SQL 2000.

I haven’t seen or heard about any picture scrolling control but you’ve piqued my curiosity! I’m in the middle of writing an image slideshow module for a client web site and would love more flexibility in how the images are drawn. Where can I get some info?

[Kurt]

Originally posted by Peter Aragon
BTW, have you seen the picture scrolling control they made? It rocks! You know that 70% from the control designing team is from the Netherlands?

You mean it will not scroll pictures that are not uniformally orange???? yuck!