Hello, I'm   Jason

I came across a post on Barry Gervin’s blog (a Solutions Architect MVP) that MSN Search now supports Algebraic expressions. That’s pretty cool. I can just see some students now trying to cheat in Algebra class. Go ahead and try it. Type in (x*2)^3=1000. You should receive x=5.

I read a post last week by Steve Smith about DotNetSlackers. It’s pretty cool. All you have to do is create a profile and choose receive newsletter. Once you create a profile, click on Email Service in the profile menu. Choose the technologies you’d like to receive blog entries on. Then, you’ll receive an email in your inbox that appears similar to this:

All Microsoft Office “12” applications will have the ability to save documents as PDFs. You can find out more specific details about this feature by visiting Cyndy Wessling’s blog. Cyndy is the Program Manager on the Office team and her team is the one working on this feature.

Repost of Q&A from Cyndy’s Blog on 10/13/2005:

Is this a one-way publish only, or do we support opening and editing PDFs as well?

Save as PDF is a one-way “publish” operation only. We are neither shipping a special viewer nor doing any work to make PDF files readable or editable by the Office applications.

**Why is this built directly into Office as opposed to a print driver available to all applications?

**Because this functionality is native to Office applications, we can capture richer document data further upstream than we would be able to do with a print driver. For example, we annotate our PDF output with tags for accessibility and we support internal and external hyperlinks. An additional advantage to capturing document data further upstream is that we render some visual effects, such as transparency and gradients, better because we are working with native information that has not been converted to bitmap for printer output.

**Do we support tagged PDF (for accessibility)?

**Yes, Office PDF output contains tags to assist with reading order for screen readers, and alternative text on images and on rasterized (bitmapped) text (to avoid interrupted text flow when portions of a text run are rasterized due to text effects or other document constructions). We also tag documents and, in some cases, text runs with language tags to assist with accurate pronunciation, and we export Unicode text for nonstandard glyphs to enable screen readers to access the actual text content. I appreciate the feedback we have received in this area as to what tags people would like to see implemented.

**What choices were made with font embedding/subsetting/outlining?

**For our Standard intent, we both embed and subset embeddable fonts (when permitted). For our Minimum Size intent, we do not embed “Web safe” fonts, but we do embed and subset all other embeddable fonts. We are not doing font outlining in the general case.

**Do you support automatic bookmarking?

**Yes, document structure is implemented for some applications to support bookmark navigation in PDF viewers. In Word, for example, you have the option to generate bookmarks by page, by heading, or by Word bookmarks.

The 22nd ASP.NET podcast has now been posted by Wally. The show includes a summary of Spang, the MVP and ASPInsider Summits, and an introduction to Atlas. To download the show, click here. For the entire list of show notes, click here.

I’ve finally posted some pictures from the NJ Code Camp this weekend in Edison/Iselin, NJ. You can check them out by visiting http://www.jasongaylord.com/photos/Photos.aspx?AlbumID=104. Also, the .NET Rocks show was posted to the website. You can check that out by visiting http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showID=141.

Don Demsak (DonXML) and Scott Watermasysk (ScottW) did an awesome job putting together the NJCodeCamp. For my 9:00am session on Web Parts in ASP.NET 2.0, I’m proud to say that we had “standing room only.” For my 10:15am session on Membership and Role Management in ASP.NET 2.0, we moved to a room 2-3 times the size of our earlier room and it was probably 80-90% filled. I stayed around for a bit and saw that many of the other sessions were packed in as well. Thanks to both Don and Scott for inviting me to come and present. I have pictures I’ll be posting very soon.

I’ll be presenting at the 2005 NJCodeCamp being held this Saturday, October 15, 2005 at the Microsoft Office in Iselin/Edison, NJ. The two topics I will be presenting are Web Parts in ASP.NET 2.0 and Membership and Role Management in ASP.NET 2.0. Both of these presentations have been revised quite heavily since the last time I presented these topics and will be posted on my website by Sunday.

The schedule for this event has been posted at njcodecamp.org. Scott Watermasysk mentioned to me this morning that there were 20 open slots. I’m not sure if these are still available, but you can visit the registration site at http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032283191&Culture;=en-US to check it out.

In an original post, I mentioned a few bugs or annoyances with the first IE 7 Beta. In addition to the controls already mentioned that have issues with IE7 Beta 1, the WYSIWYG controls such as FreeTextBox have issues as well. For instance, I’m typing in the full HTML of this post right now because the FreeTextBox control doesn’t know how to render this control. I can’t wait for a new build and this to be resolved.

It was kind of funny to see the graphic below on Microsoft’s website this morning. I knew it would eventually come to this as Palm devices were actually really good, it was just the PalmOS that wasn’t.

If you plan on installing Small Business Accounting 2006 on Windows Server 2003, be aware that the multi-user setting menu will throw an error unless you enable Internet Connection Sharing (ICS). ICS can be found be right-clicking on the active network adapter and going into properties. You’ll find the setting under the Advanced tab. Enable ICS and add a new service for TCP Port 56183. This will allow SBA 2006 to communicate and open itself up to external boxes.