Please note, the solution and project files in the archives are for Visual Studio 2008 beta 2.

Last week, when my diskspace was running low (again), I decided to uninstall Visual Studio 2005 and Team Explorer 2005. I had already installed Visual Studio 2008 beta 2, so I only needed Team Explorer 2008 beta 2. I used the Team Foundation Server 2008 ISO to extract the Team Explorer 2008 beta 2, and installed that version.

When I fired up the .NET 1.1 project, the MSSCCI provider was missing a required assembly: Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client, version 8.0.0.0, publickeytoken b03f5f7f11d50a3a. Of course, I should have known that Team Explorer 2005 is a requirement for the MSSCCI provider. However, I didn’t want to install Visual Studio 2005 only for Team Explorer 2005. There should be another way. Luckily, there is.

The .NET runtime allows redirection between different versions. Since Team Explorer 2008 installs newer assemblies, with version 9.0.0.0, we have to redirect the requests for version 8.0.0.0 to 9.0.0.0. This can be achieved by using a .config file. I created the file TfsMsscciSvr.exe.config in the directory C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider (where my MSSCCI provider is installed, this directory should also contain the file TfsMsscciSvr.exe).

At first, I created the following config file:

After enabling fusion logging (with fuslogvw.exe), I restarted Visual Studio 2003 and opened the project. Another messagebox popped up, with another missing assembly. The fusionlog showed me that the first assembly was indeed rerouted to the new version, so the assemblyBinding actually works in this case! After changing the config file and restarting Visual Studio 2003, I came up with the following config file:

After this configuration, check out and undo checkout worked flawlessly. However, when trying to check in some workitems, some other assemblies were missing. This time, the requested assemblies were not available in the GAC, so the bindingRedirect trick didn’t work. After searching for the assemblies on internet, I found out that the missing assemblies were private assemblies of Visual Studio 2005. The beta 2 version of Visual Studio 2008 also had the same private assemblies, so this time, we should also add a codebase to the config file.

The configuration file printed below is my final configuration file.

You can also download the file here.

Final note

Of course this is not the recommended way to use Team Explorer. I cannot give any guarantee that this will work on your machine, or with your configuration, or with your Team Foundation Server. If you think this can harm your environment in any way, I think you should wait until Microsoft releases a MSSCCI provider for use with Team Explorer 2008. This config file can only be used at your own risk!

Background

I wanted to create a redirection from that post to another post, but that doesn’t seem possible. Strange, since WordPress does have a redirection possibility; the permalink structure uses this, and my download counter uses this system also. However, adding or removing "normal" page url’s to this redirection facility is not built into the WordPress administration (or I couldn’t find it, of course).

Since I really required a redirection from /projects/wp-downloadcounter to the correct page, I’ve created this plugin for WordPress.

What does this plugin do

This plugin redirects a visitor who requests page A to page B. This visitor will be either redirected to page B, or WordPress will just show page B instead of page A. The difference between those two methods is that the first redirection is a so called external redirection, which uses the Location header and thus redirecting the browser to a new page. The second method just changes some internal variables, causing WordPress to show page A. In this case, the visitor has no idea that you’ve just redirected him.

Why should I use this?

When you’ve just been as stupid as I am Or when you want your posts to be accessible trough different URL’s. Or… (fill it out yourself).

Installation

Download the zip-file and extract the wp-redirect directory to you wp-content/plugins directory. Go to the plugins page in your wordpress administration panel, and Activate the Redirect plugin. On Activation, a table with the name [$prefix]redirect gets created. The table will not be removed when deactivating the plugin!

Management

After activation, a new page will appear in the Management tab. Choose Management -> Redirect for the redirection screen. Click on Add Redirection to add a new redirection. Enter the url which needs redirecting in the source field, and the redirected url in the destination field. Finally, choose the type of redirection.
If you’ve entered another host as the destination field, the redirection will always be externally.

Downloading

You can download the plugin here.

Note

This plugin is only tested on WordPress 2.2 and 2.3. Adam let me know that this plugin does not work with WordPress 2.0. He found another plugin doing the same thing for the WordPress 1.5 and 2.0 codebase. You can find that plugin here.

This version also adds a overview of who downloaded which file and when it was downloaded. Also the referer is stored, so you can see where your downloaders are looking for your files.

You can download the updated version at the Download Counter page. Do not forget to re-activate the plugin, to create the new database table.

I should mention statistical information is a big word for just another download counter, since that is main purpose of this plugin.

Features:

• Keeps track of the amount of downloads of a certain file.
• Keeps track of the last download time
• Allows you to reset the counter
• Allows you to add counters to both internal and external urls
• Can use fancy urls (like /downloads/file.zip)
• Can print the amount of downloads in a post.

Installation

Download the zip-file and extract the wp-downloadcounter directory to you wp-content/plugins directory. Go to the plugins page in your wordpress administration panel, and Activate the Download Counter plugin. On Activation, a table with the name [$prefix]downloadstats gets created, and two options will be added. The table nor the options will be removed when deactivating the plugin! After activation, it is important that you update the Permalink Structure. You can do this at your Site administration, under Options.

Management

After activating the plugin, you can manage the downloads under Management -> Downloads. Choose Add Download to add a download to the list. In the topmost editbox, you should fill in a unique name, since this name will be used in the created url. In the second editbox you should fill in the target URL. Click Save and the download is added to the list. The overview window allows you to reset the counters for a download, to edit a download (which will not reset the counters) and to delete a download. Of course, when deleting a download, only the download counter for that download will be removed, the file at the target URL will not be removed.

Using tags in your posts

When writing a post or a page, you may want to add the URL or the amount of downloads in your post. Using [ download(downloadname) ] (without the spaces) will be replaced with the download url, [ downloadcounter(downloadname) ] will be replaced with the amount of downloads. When creating a link, you could, for instance, use <a href="[ download(file.zip) ]">Download</a> (of course, again, without the spaces within the [] brackets).

Downloading

You can download this plugin here. This plugin has been downloaded 1081 times. If you have any comments (nice or not), please don’t be shy. Post them on this page!

Changelog

2008-03-19

• Local downloads are now handled by the script, so that the filename can be send to the browser. This should prevent the browser from download .htm or other named files.
• Changed some PHP tags which could cause errors on some configurations.

2007-07-08

• Fixed bug posted by Steve in the comments (thanx to Dave for submitting the fixes).
• Added a second table to store the ip-address, referer and date/time for each download.
• Added a configuration section to change the settings.

private System.Windows.Forms.ProgressBar progressBar = new System.Windows.Forms.ProgressBar();

to

private ExtControls.ExtProgressBar progressBar = new ExtControls.ExtProgressBar();

To reach that goal, I wanted my control to inherit from the .NET progressbar. Unfortunately, Microsoft decided, in all it’s wisdom, that the ProgressBar control should become a sealed class. Therefor, I had to create a new control from scratch, which implemented every property and every function of the original .NET progressbar.

What does it do?

As you should have guessed by now, the control is capable of drawing a progressbar in a lot of different ways. On the right is a screenshot with some of the possibilities of the control.

Features

• A smooth progressbar, as seen in the first progressbar in the screenshot.
• A label inside the progressbar, which uses String.Format to insert the progress in percentages, the actual progress value, the minimum value and the maximum value.
• You can define two colors for the text label. One color will be used for the text which is printed inside the progressbar, the other for text which is outside the progressbar.
• You can choose from three different brushes: the TextureBrush (progressbar #6 and #9), the GradientBrush (progressbar #2, #4, #5 and #7) and the HatchBrush (progressbar #4 and #5).
• You can define the block size and the gap width (progressbar #2 and #3).
• Gridlines can be printed inside the progressbar (progressbar #8). You have control over the alignment (top, middle and bottom) as well as over the heights, widths and spacing.
• You can define a horizontal or a vertical progressbar (progressbar #5, #9 and #10 are vertical oriented) and two different directions (progressbar #3 is drawn with a right to left direction).
• Label can freely rotate (progressbar #9)

Using the control in your code

The ExtProgressBar control inherits from the Control class. Using it should be as easy as adding a reference to the ExtControls assembly or adding the source files to your own project. After compiling your project, the ExtProgressBar control should show up in your toolbox.

The code

One of the most annoying things of the .NET progressbar is the flickering when the bar is repainted. The solution is simple, and SetStyle is the answer. I won’t go into details here, since there are a lot of articles out there which can explain the usage and working of the following SetStyle call a lot better then I can.

SetStyle(ControlStyles.AllPaintingInWmPaint | ControlStyles.UserPaint | ControlStyles.DoubleBuffer | ControlStyles.SupportsTransparentBackColor, true);

These four ControlStyles allow me to paint the control completely trough my own code, flickerfree and with a transparent background.

The properties

When creating a control which can be used from the toolbox and which has a lot of settings, you’ll going to need the Properties Window. Therefor, I wanted all the properties to make use of that usefull window. Since my control only uses simple types (like integers, floats, strings, structures and enumerations) we can just use some Attributes here. Typing

[Description("The size of the control in pixels"), Editor("Size", typeof(UITypeEditor)), DefaultValue(typeof(Size), "100, 23")]

above a property was enough to let the property show up in the Properties Window. All properties with the above Attributes defined, will show up in the category "Misc". If that’s not what you want, add a CategoryAttribute, like this:

[Category("Layout")]

Drawing the control

To draw the control, one could choose between two different approaches. You can attach a delegate to the OnPaint handler, or override the OnPaint method from the Control class. The latter is preferred, because calling a function trough a delegate is generally a little bit slower then calling a overridden one.

protected override void OnPaint(PaintEventArgs e) {     ... }

In this function, we draw the control in five steps:

1. Draw the background
2. Draw the progress indicator
3. Draw the gridlines
4. Draw the label
5. Draw the borders

Drawing the background and progress indicator

Drawing the background can be done in a few different ways. We can override the OnPaintBackground method, or draw the background in the OnPaint functions. In this case, we draw the background in the OnPaint function, as we’ve specified earlier using the SetStyle call (AllPaintingInWmPaint). Drawing the background itselft is no high tech programming. In fact, creating a brush and filling a rectangle is all there is to it.

Brush brush = GetBrush(...); g.FillRectangle(brush, g.VisibleClipBounds); brush.Dispose();

The GetBrush function creates a brush based on the arguments given. The arguments are filled by the properties set at design time. The GetBrush function is used to create all brushes in the control. Check the code if you want to see what it does exactly, but it’s nothing more then a few switches and if statements. We call the Dispose method manually when we don’t need the brush anymore, because we wan’t to free the unmanaged GDI resources immediately. Download demo project ~ 16 kB Download source code (control + demo project) ~ 19 kB

Thanks to

• James T. Johnson for his article Image Rotation in .NET.
• Bob Powell’s GDI+ FAQ.
• Steve Medley for notifyng me of the incorrect version on this website.