Disable the Welcome screen in Windows

The welcome screen is something I find annoying - I don't really like the look of it. A good enough reason to disable it then! To turn it off, so that you can log on and log off using the classic login prompt:

1. Open the Registry editor (Start->Run->Regedit) and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version\WinLogon 
2. Change the value for LogonType, from a "1" to a "0". you can guess that 0 gives Classic Mode and a 1 shows the Welcome Screen.  If there is no LogonType key, add it manually as a String-type key.
3. Exit the registry editor when you are finished.
4. Restart and you should be done.

Note that you must be an administrator on the computer / domain to make these registry changes.

Solution doesn't show in solution explorer in Visual Studio

This can happen when migrating your web application project to a different location.

By default, the Visual Studio IDE doesn't show any file unless it is explicitly referenced / included.

To show the solution node in the tree, go tothe Tools menu, select Options, choose Projects and Solutions, and check the "Always show solution" checkbox:

Internet Explorer losing more market share - web devs rejoice!

I've read a number of reports today detailing that IE's overall market share in the browser market has dipped below 60% for the first time.

This is undoubtedly good news for web developers and designers who are trying to adhere to open standards. Microsoft, to their credit, have come along way on that front, and are at last trying (or being forced) to come over from the Dark Side.

I'm by no means a Microsoft-basher. In fact, I make my living using Micosoft technologies. I think they make a lot of top class products and I know that Microsoft engineers are some of the best in the world. However, in a monopolistic market, creativity is definitely affected, that's just the nature of business.

Google's high-profile advertising campaign for Chrome has, I think, caught everyone by surprise (chrome's market share is at 7% after jsut a couple of years) and this has on some level raised the awareness of the everyday user to the fact that there are alternatives to IE. Microsoft's next hurdle will be competing with chrome's performance without compromising security.

Hopefully then, with a more competitive field, the power will be leaning more toward the developers, with browser makers using the same standards. I look forward to the day when I can get more development done, because I only have to test once.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/10095730.stm

Actionscript deep copy function

Here is an recursive function I found that allows you to deep-copy objects (other then MovieClips) in ActionScript. #ctionscript doesn't have this functionality built in yet, so this may prove useful to someone. Credit to the original poster - http://theolagendijk.wordpress.com/2006/09/04/actionscript-object-duplication/.

/// duplicate any given Object (not MCs)
Object.prototype.copy = function()
{

var _t = new this.__proto__.constructor(this) ;
for(var i in this)
{

if(typeof this[i] == “object”)

_t[i] = this[i].copy()

else

_t[i] = this[i];

}
return _t;

};
ASSetPropFlags(Object.prototype,["copy"],1);

This is very useful to me, as copying objects, usually arrays, is something that crops up often, at least for me ;). This way I can be sure that the contents get copied, not just the reference.

This is how it’s used.

var x:Array = new Array(“1″,”2″,”3″,{a:1,b:2});
var y:Array = x.copy();

The class or interface 'uint' could not be loaded. Actionscript 2

If you're trying to migrate your flash project from Actionscript 2 to Actionscript 3, or you're interrating some Actionscript 3 code into your AS2 project, you may encounter this error in numerical calculation functions:


The class or interface 'uint' could not be loaded.

The reason is that the uint (and int) types only became available with AS3. with As2, your stuck with good old Number.

If you're confident that your project is AS3 ready, just change your Publish settings like so:

Note: AS3 requires flash player 9+ selection