Office 2007 RibbonX resources

Custom UI Editor : Custom UI Editor for Open XML file format.
XML Notepad 2007 provides a simple intuitive user interface for browsing and editing XML documents.
2007 Office System: XML Schema Reference
RibbonX Resources blog by Savraj Dhanjal.
Customizing the 2007 Office Fluent Ribbon for Developers (Part 1 of 3)
Customizing the 2007 Office Fluent Ribbon for Developers (Part 2 of 3)
Customizing the 2007 Office Fluent Ribbon for Developers (Part 3 of 3)
2007 Office System Document: UI Style Guide for Solutions and Add Ins
VSTO version 3.0
How To Create Office COM Add-Ins by Using VBA and Office Developer

~ts

Minimal Debian Lenny install on VirtualBox

Pre-requisite:
- internet connection
- Virtual Box installed on host machine. This exercise will be using Vista as host.

As of this writing, Debian Lenny is still at testing stage. For this exercise we will use RC1, visit http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/ for the netinstall iso. Once download is done, create a new virtual machine using Virtual Box, use the following configuration: 512 MB Memory, 120 GB HD, use Intel PRO/1000T server for the network card. For the VirtualBox networking I am using host network configuration. Once VirtualBox guest configuration is set, start the guest machine and then mount the CD-ROM image. In installer boot menu, select Graphical Install. For "Chose the Language" screen, select English or your language of choice. For the country, select whichever you are currently in. In my case, I will be using Philippines. In "Keymap to use" select "American English" or whichever is much appropriate for your system. After this screen, the system should now start detecting your hardware and configures the system for installation. Few seconds later, it should present you with "Configure your network" screen, in my case I am gonna be using "deb5." Since I am using Vista and Internet Connection Sharing, I have mshome.net as the default domain. Accept this default. This should not matter that much if you are using your system inside a guest machine. In "Partition disks", use Guided - use entire disk. You may use other option if you are confident with playing around with disk partitioning in Linux. Select first HD in your Virtual Box, then select "All files in one partition (recommended for new users)." Then accept the changes to write the partition layout to your HD. Wait while the installation sequence is partitioning your hard drive and installs the base system. In Philippines, one of the nearest mirror sites is Hongkong. We have two mirrors from Hongkong and I will be using ftp.hk.debian.org. In the Http proxy window, you can leave this blank if you are not using HTTP proxy to access outside world. Thus say, if you are using DSL, Cable, WIFI or Wireless connection like HSDPA or the like, leave it blank. After this, the system will pull up installation software from our mirror site. This may take a while depending on the connection speed. Since this is only the few cases where I can help the Debian community, I opted to join the "package survey." I too encourage everyone to participate this survey. Since we want this to be a minimal system, deselect all packaged options. This leaves us with the bare minimum to run our Debian Lenny Linux system. Since this is running of VirtualBox guest, we are sure enough that it is safe to put GRUB boot loader in master boot record. So go ahead, and say Yes. In few moments, installation should complete. Congratulations, you have just installed a minimal Debian Lenny Linux in VirtualBox!!!

Let us now install a minimal GNOME in top of our minimal system. Before we do the installation of desktop environment, it is a good practice to do the ff:

hostname:/# aptitude update
hostname:/# aptitude safe-upgrade

But since we have just used netinstall installation, our system should be up to date. Now, let us get our system configured with X, do:

hostname:/# aptitude install less
hostname:/# aptitude install xorg gnome-core gdm gdm-themes

The above command install xorg, GNOME and gdm (GNOME Display Manager) and associated gdm themes. Wait and relax as this may pull archives of around 250 MB. After the installation, do a reboot to login to GNOME Display Manager. You will notice here that your graphical login screen maybe bigger than your monitor. This can be fixed by installing virtual additions but we can also work around this one by modifying /etc/X11/xorg.conf as root, like so:

Section "Screen"
 Identifier "Default Screen"
 Monitor  "Configured Monitor"
 SubSection  "Display"
  Modes "1024x680" "800x600"
 EndSubSection
EndSection

Let us now install VirtualBox guest additions:

hostname:/# su
hostname:/# aptitude install build-essential
hostname:/# aptitude install linux-headers-`uname -r`
hostname:/# mount /media/cdrom
hostname:/# sh VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run

After reboot, you should now have a nicely integrated Debian Lenny with VirtualBox. Now, to make guest machine auto-adjust with the size of main VirtualBox window, update /etc/X11/xorg.conf with:

Section "Device"
 Identifier "Configured Video Device"
 Driver  "vboxvideo"
EndSection

Enjoy!

~ts

Minimal Ubuntu Gnome Intrepid install on Virtual Box

Pre-requisite:
- internet connection
- Virtual Box installed on host machine. This exercise will be using Vista as host.

Download server edition of Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10 from the nearest mirror. Once done, create a new virtual machine using Virtual Box, use the following configuration: 512 MB Memory, 120 GB HD, enable PAE, use Intel PRO/1000T server network. Start virtual machine of the CD-ROM. During the install sequence, select F4. Select the option which mentions about virtual machine installation. Use the default options, reboot and login to the newly install minimal system.

Update the system and install aptitude, say:

username@hostname:/# apt-get update
username@hostname:/# apt-get safe-upgrade
username@hostname:/# apt-get install aptitude

Then install minimal Gnome, thus say do:

username@hostname:/# aptitude install xorg gnome-core gdm gdm-themes 

My first install of gnome-core didn't work well. Doing

username@hostname:/# apt-get update
username@hostname:/# apt-get safe-upgrade
username@hostname:/# aptitude install gnome-core

fixed it. Go figure.... Let us now make our minimal Ubuntu look prettier, do:

username@hostname:/# aptitude install gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf ubuntu-artwork ubuntustudio-icon-theme

After the installation, log-off then log back in. You should now have a more appealing Ubuntu installation.

See the ff links for related posts:
Installing a minimal Ubuntu installation<@ >.
Now, it is time to install Virtual Box guest additions. From the Virtual Box main menu, select Devices | Install Guest Additions... This will cause the media to be auto-mounted. Open up a terminal then do:

username@hostname:/# sudo su
username@hostname:/# aptitude install build-essential
username@hostname:/# aptitude install linux-headers-`uname -r`
username@hostname:/# cd /media/cdrom
username@hostname:/# sh VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run

Enjoy!
~ts~

Test Automation Useful References

XUnit Test Patterns - Refactoring Test Code

COM hooking research

This post is gonna be a work in progress. What I am trying to embark on is the possibility of inserting hooks to a running COM server to perform automated testing. I have seen applications tried to do this, like TestPartner, but it is crashing my application under test. Summary of available tools that may have a working COM server hooks: TestPartner  - they have ComSpy but this is crashing my application under test. COMslicer - from the help file. COMslicer is a utility that displays information about COM/DCOM components’ activity. It reports all methods and properties called by a client of a COM component and shows values for input/output parameters. COMslicer also reports creation and destroying of COM objects as well as raising events by COM objects. It keeps track of reference counting and interfaces queried by a client. COMslicer works on Windows 98/Me/ NT4/2K. But it seems to me that the development of this tools has halted. A quick visit to their website does not event mention about COMslicer software, rather it shows topics about food stuff. I tried installing the software in Vista and it chokes up, so this one is no good for me as my target applications need to run in Vista and Windows Server 2008

---

Below are some of the information I have scoured over in the internet that may help in COM spying. DLL injection, Detours and Deviare looks interesting.

Component Object Model (link ) - This wikipedia article discussed the history of COM and some high level details.

GUI Hooking

What are test hooks? link

The use of P/Invoke in Automation (.net link )

How to set a Windows hook in Visual C# .NET (link ) Windows Automation API 3.0 Overview (link ) GUI Automation with pyAA (link )

Advanced

SpyStuio - http://www.nektra.com/products/spystudio

Deviare - http://www.nektra.com/products/deviare/download.php

Detours -  http://research.microsoft.com/sn/detours/

Automating Windows Applications - http://www.codeproject.com/KB/COM/automatingwindowsapps.aspx?fid=13658&df=90&mpp=25&noise=3&sort=Position&view=Quick&fr=26

Remote Library Loading - http://www.codeguru.com/Cpp/W-P/dll/article.php/c3651

Discusses about advanced hooking/spying techniques

API hooking revealed  - http://www.codeproject.com/KB/system/hooksys.aspx

Google maps on BlackBerry

Google have mobilized their Google Maps and should now be available in BlackBerry. Actually this has been available in BB eons ago (at least when talking about how fast things change in the Net).

Unfortunately, not all cities have as good coverage as in the US. But it is still a nice to have application in your BB device, anyway if you stay in non-English region and you happen to not understand the local language or in some cases Google shows language that is not really the local language (like maybe your internet gateway is located somewhere else) then you can still force to view the English language, thus say:

http://m.google.com/maps?hl=en

~ts

English Blogger draft on BlackBerry Asia Region

When you are in Asia,draft.blogger.com tries to automatically detect your location and sets the UI to the language that was detected by Google. Unfortunately, sometimes the gateway is provided outside of the country mostly from Hongkong. This leaves you with a Chinese interface which I can't really understand. This is even more challenging if you are trying to access sites using BlackBerry.

Anyway, to access Blogger Draft in English, use the following URL:

http://draft.blogger.com/mobile-start.g?hl=en

~ts