Jay Harris is Cpt. LoadTest

The day is here: Internet Explorer 7 released this morning, though it is only available to users running Windows XP SP2 or Windows Server 2003. Though it does not yet appear on the list of available updates through Windows Update, you can download it from Microsoft.com. [ News: ZDNet | CNet ] In a CNet review, the reviewing editor notes how the browser is still not compliant with standards set by W3C and recommends switching to Firefox.

“IE 7 was Microsoft’s one chance to leapfrog ahead of the competition, but the company has only barely caught sight of the current front-runners. For more features and greater security, switch to Mozilla Firefox.” ~ CNet [ article ]

There is already a version branded by Yahoo! that includes the Yahoo! toolbar, links to Yahoo’s tools (like Yahoo! Mail), and the default homepage set to Yahoo. Of course, Yahoo! is catching some flak, since it released its “optimized” version prior to Microsoft’s own official release. [ ZDNet ]

Mozilla plans to release Firefox 2.0 in the coming weeks. You can download the current beta, Firefox 2.0 RC3, or the current public release, Firefox 1.5.0.7, from Mozilla.com. [ v2.0 RC3: download | release notes. v1.5: download | release notes ]

Both NAnt and NAntContrib released version 0.85 on Sunday. The changes to NAnt from 0.85 rc4 only include a few bug fixes. NAntContrib has added the ability to specify the encoding on SQL files. All-in-all, not much has changed since 0.85 rc4, but that is a good thing, since it indicates the version is finally ready for release. The first release candidate was made available nearly two years ago.

Despite the minimal changes in the final package, consider upgrading just to get rid of the ‘release candidate’ tag.

NAnt v0.85 [ homepage | download | release notes ]
NAntContrib v0.85 [ homepage | download | release notes ]

I’ve been working on creating a Flash component for within our LMS that allows a student to view their completion statuses in a curriculum, as well as allows managers to view the curriculum status of all of their students. The component relies on Web Services to volley data with the server. I was having some trouble binding data from my WebServiceConnector to my DataSets because, as it turned out, Flash was holding on to a cached version of the WSDL–a cached version that was ultimately obsolete.

I was on the hunt to find the source, and kill the evil cache file. After clearing out every Temp folder I could think of, I started playing around in my Local Settings folder and it turns out that Flash will forever-store cached copies of your WSDL deep within your ‘Documents and settings’.

C:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Local Settings\Application Data\Macromedia\[your flash version]\en\Configuration\WebServices\

I just booted every file in the WebServices directory, but I am assuming that you could get away with just deleting ‘WSDLCacheMap.xml’, or if you want to keep the remainder of your cache, just delete the appropriate WSDL cache file (ex: WSDLkgzmcu.wsdl). In any event, once you have exercised your delete button, simply restart Flash and reload the WSC instance, and you will be good to go.

For those that missed the announcement last week (like I did), the latest version of CruiseControl.Net has been released.

I plan on checking it out this week, then possibly upgrading our Build environment on Saturday. There are some modifications that I am really excited about:

• Log4Net is used. (Default: Rolling file appender for logging server output.) If the traditional Log4Net configuration block is included in the application configuration file, I will probably change that to the ADONet appender, instead.
• Users can volunteer to fix a broken build. How sweet is that!?!
• <prebuild /> section allows custom tasks to run prior to the build. This one is a big bonus; previously, if something went wrong with the build, often the external log files (NUnit, FXCop) from the previous build would get included in the current build’s report. Now the prebuild can give them the boot.
• Caching is used on WebDashboard. We have some huge log files and some not-so-powerful build servers. Sometimes it takes the machine a while to process the XSL. I am hoping that caching will help with that.
• WebDashboard can stop and start projects. I am very excited about the ability to pause individual projects without having to modify the setup or stop the entire service.

This seems like a nice package (Release Notes). I am eager to pull it down and give it a go.

One gotcha that everyone should be aware of: Old versions of the dashboard and CCTray are incompatible with the new version of the service, so both will need to be replaced. Give your development team a heads-up, so they know to replace their tray installation as soon as the new server version is installed and online.