Community developer blogs

Gary Pretty

Recent Posts

• Windows 7 First Impressions…

  Posted: 25 Jan 2009 at 13:41 by Gary Pretty

  First, HAPPY NEW YEAR! I know its late and I want to apologise to anybody that reads this blog regularly.  It has been a while since my last post because I have been very busy with my day job, but I am hoping to write more in 2009. I downloaded the public Windows 7 CTP (community [...]

• Trout Fishery Listings

  Posted: 29 May 2008 at 09:58 by Gary Pretty

  Its been a while since I last posted…..I have been really busy! One thing I have been working on is the latest project for my colleague, James Farrer, a Trout Fisheries directory. Now, although the subject of Trout fishing is not the most enthralling (at least for me), I have been trying to as

• Expression Web 2 and Expression Studio NOT Available on MSDN Downloads

  Posted: 09 May 2008 at 10:57 by Gary Pretty

  UPDATE: Apparently, the Expression Studio is available, but you need to go to the Top MSDN Downloads page. Here is the link to the top downloads page. Plus it turns out that I clearly was not awake this morning when I made this post originally as the blog post I link to below [...]

• Expression Web 2 Released and new Expression web site!

  Posted: 08 May 2008 at 09:54 by Gary Pretty

  Not sure how this one passed me by!  A couple of days ago the new version of the Expression tools from Microsoft, including Expression Web 2, were released.  This was also accompanied by a brand new Expression Studio web site where you can get hold of free trials for the Expression applica

• ASP.NET 3.5 Dynamic Data Tutorial Series - Part 1 - What is Dynamic Data and creating a basic dynami

  Posted: 07 May 2008 at 17:12 by Gary Pretty

  Last week I attended the MSDN Roadshow 2008 (you can read my write up of the event along with some useful links here), and one of the topics presented on the day were the upcoming ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions. Mike Ormond did an excellent presentation on the upcoming release including a hands on demo usin

• ASP.NET 3.5 Dynamic Data Tutorial Series - Part 1 - What is Dynamic Data and creating a basic dynami

  Posted: 07 May 2008 at 16:12

  Last week I attended the MSDN Roadshow 2008 (you can read my write up of the event along with some useful links here), and one of the topics presented on the day were the upcoming ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions.  Mike Ormond did an excellent presentation on the upcoming release including a hands on demo usi

• MSDN Roadshow 2008 Review and Useful Links

  Posted: 07 May 2008 at 11:08 by Gary Pretty

  Ok, so a few weeks ago I posted about my plans to attend the MSDN Roadshow 2008 in Manchester and I said that I would post about the event once I had attended.  So as promised here is that very post along with some useful links; Firstly, the venue for this years event was excellent.  The [

• Windows Live Writer and WordPress Error - Invalid response document returned from XmlRcp Server….SOL

  Posted: 06 May 2008 at 19:37 by Gary Pretty

  Today, I upgraded to WordPress 2.5.1, which I am glad to say was really simple. Along with this, one of my colleagues suggested I try Windows Live Writer as a blogging tool to post to this blog, so I installed it. When you first open Windows Live Writer it has to query your blog via the [...]

• Windows Live Writer and WordPress Error - Invalid response document returned from XmlRcp Server….SOL

  Posted: 06 May 2008 at 18:37

  Today, I upgraded to WordPress 2.5.1, which I am glad to say was really simple.  Along with this, one of my colleagues suggested I try Windows Live Writer as a blogging tool to post to this blog, so I installed it. When you first open Windows Live Writer it has to query your blog via the [...]

• Windows Installer XML (WIX) - Open Source from Microsoft

  Posted: 01 Apr 2008 at 16:03 by Gary Pretty

  To those of you who already know of WIX (Windows Installer XML), it will be old news. But, for those of you who don’t, I thought I would introduce you to it. Windows Installer XML was released some time ago to the open source community by Microsoft. It allows for the creation of Windows Instal

• Do I need a blog for my business?

  Posted: 31 Mar 2008 at 11:56 by Gary Pretty

  I was asked this question this week by one of my clients for whom I produce a couple of web sites for that have been growing steadily for a couple of years. So, I thought I would post about this question from a general point of view; So, do you need one? Before, you we can [...]

• WordPress 2.5 Upgrade Complete

  Posted: 31 Mar 2008 at 10:34 by Gary Pretty

  Hi all, I know I haven’t posted for a couple of weeks now, but I have been really busy! Just a quick post to say that I have just upgraded WordPress 2.3 to WordPress 2.5. This was my first upgrade with WordPress and I must admit, I am very impressed. The upgrade was seamless! [...]

• Internet Explorer 8 Beta Problems

  Posted: 16 Mar 2008 at 05:08 by Gary Pretty

  Usually, I am always pretty keen to start using beta software when it becomes available, and I suppose that this is why I currently have the Firefox 3 beta (which I am writing this from at the moment), Expression Web 2 Beta and the subject of this post, the Internet Explorer 8 beta. With previous IE

• CSS Sculptor by Eric Meyer for Expression Web Released

  Posted: 14 Mar 2008 at 12:09 by Gary Pretty

  The Expression Web Team have announced that CSS Sculptor for Expression Web has now been released. Below is what they have to say; We’re excited to announce that Eric Meyer (http://meyerweb.com/ and http://www.complexspiral.com/), internationally recognized authority on HTML, CSS, and web stan

• Microsoft .Net Framework Releases Summary

  Posted: 14 Mar 2008 at 10:31 by Gary Pretty

  I keep up to date with releases to the .Net Framework and other related technologies such as Silverlight, but it can sometime be hard to remember what was released when and in what version. Ian Blackburn has posted a .Net Release Summary on his blog with a simple table attempting to clarify the cont

• Microsoft Expression Web 2 Beta - What’s New?

  Posted: 12 Mar 2008 at 14:44 by Gary Pretty

  By now you have probably heard that the beta of version 2 of Microsoft’s web design tool Expression Web has just been released. I am a big fan of Expression Web, having used it from the beta of version 1, and like many people I have been eagerly awaiting the release of version 2. So, [...]

• MSDN Roadshow 2008

  Posted: 11 Mar 2008 at 19:10 by Gary Pretty

  Just registered for the 2008 MSDN Roadshow in Manchester on 1st May At last years event, I particularly enjoyed a demo around WPF/E, which ofcourse has now been released as Silverlight. Well, this years event looks to be even better. Below is the event summary from the Microsoft web site; Microsoft

• WordPress Rich Text Editor (TinyMCE) not working….

  Posted: 11 Mar 2008 at 17:01 by Gary Pretty

  After some more playing around with my blog today, I realised that the rich text editor including with WordPress (TinyMCE) was not displaying at all. After some more searching, it became obvious that this again was not a problem unique to myself. Did some digging around and the fix is as follows; In

• WordPress CGI Error (The specified CGI application misbehaved by not returning a complete set of HTT

  Posted: 10 Mar 2008 at 14:37 by Gary Pretty

  This morning, I decided, for the third time, that I was going to start a blog. My previous two ventures led to me simply not writing anything at all :p. This time, I hope it will be different. And, for once, I have something relevant to post because this blog nearly didnt happen! After deciding to [