From the Back Cover

Effectively manage and deliver software projects with TFS
Team Foundation Server (TFS) has undergone a complete overhaul as the central tool in Microsoft’s Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) portfolio. This book addresses the many changes that have taken place since the 2005 version of TFS and provides an in-depth look at how these changes can work to your advantage. The team of authors reviews what’s new in TFS 2010, including its ease of configuration and installation, a new platform for testing, work item tracking and usability, and helpful new tools to manage project plans. Packed with detailed coverage, this book arms you with the information you need to effectively manage and deliver software projects with TFS.
Professional Team Foundation Server 2010:

• Walks you through planning and installing a TFS deployment
• Features a comprehensive overview of version control
• Discusses migrating from legacy version control systems,including Visual SourceSafe
• Reviews how to automate and customize the build process
• Discusses project management and testing tools
• Reviews administering a TFS environment, including creating a backup plan, handling disaster recovery, and monitoring server health and performance
• Prepares you for taking the TFS 2010 Microsoft Certification Exam (70-512)
• wrox.com Programmer Forums

Join our Programmer to Programmer forums to ask and answer programming questions about this book, join discussions on the hottest topics in the industry, and connect with fellow programmers from around the world.
Code Downloads
Take advantage of free code samples from this book, as well as code samples from hundreds of other books, all ready to use.

Review

The authors are all well-known Microsoft MVP’s and have a track record of providing valuable must know knowledge in the industry. They really leverage their ability to communicate in a way to reach all audiences. One of the sections I find most valuable is Chapter 2 “Planning a Deployment” where it includes a typical Adoption Timeline that provides an outline to assist with adaptation and avoid some common pitfalls. When you get more in depth into the book, insight is provided into the newly implemented Windows Work Flow (WF) Build Process.  This book guides you by the hand and provides you with TFS 2010 capabilities while also identifying its limitations. It’s an all-inclusive guide to TFS2010 that is useful to all levels of experience users.It’s a must have for anyone interested in understanding and mastering Team Foundation Server 2010.

Amazon Professional Team Foundation Server 2010 (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)

Brian Keller

             Feb 29, 2012 Update: This post and accompanying downloads have been updated based on the Visual Studio 11 Beta which was released today.

I’m very pleased to announce the availability of the Visual Studio 11 Beta ALM Virtual Machine along with 6 hands-on-labs / demo scripts. This marks an exciting milestone in our journey towards RTM. You can now roll up your sleeves and start learning about the many capabilities we announced at TechEd North America last year and have been talking about in greater detail since then. You can download and install the beta of Visual Studio 11 (and Team Foundation Server 11, .NET Framework 4.5, etc.) and even use it in production with our “go live” support. But if you would like a fast way to understand what is new for application lifecycle management in this release, this virtual machine is pre-configured with all of the necessary software and sample data for you.

Before I get into what’s included, there are a few quick limitations to disclose:

• This is a Hyper-V virtual machine and works with Windows Server 2008 x64 (Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 is recommended). If you try to load this with Virtual PC it will blue screen since Virtual PC does not support 64-bit operating systems. I have not yet had a chance to try hosting this VM with the Windows 8 consumer preview, but I was successful using the Windows 8 developer preview to host an earlier version of my virtual machine so it should work. I will update this post later once I have a chance to test that.
• Windows is configured to set the system clock to February 15, 2012 every time you start this virtual machine. This is to support the project management hands-on-lab. If you want to work with this virtual machine beyond the specific hands-on-labs scenarios, you will need to disable the Set Date and Time task (Task Scheduler -> Task Scheduler Library -> Set Date and Time -> Right-Click -> Disable).
• Please take a few minutes to read the attached “Working with…” document for some important instructions on properly importing and working with this virtual machine.

With the limitations out of the way, onto the fun stuff…

This virtual machine is configured with:

• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2
• Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Ultimate Beta
• Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Team Foundation Server Beta
• Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010
• Microsoft Project 2010
• Microsoft Office Professional 2010 (Word, PowerPoint, Excel)
• Sample users and data required to support hands-on-lab scripts which accompany this download and exercise some of the new Visual Studio 11 application lifecycle management capabilities introduced in this release.

Downloading the virtual machine and labs:
I suggest using a download manager for these files since they are very large. My download manager of choice is Free Download Manager. You can use your own favorite download manager, but you may need to adapt the instructions below as appropriate.

1. Download and install Free Download Manager. This utility provides:
- Auto-resume support for interrupted downloads.
- Multiple simultaneous download streams for (usually) a much faster download experience.
- As the name implies, it’s completely free.
2. Select the URL’s below and copy (CTRL+C) them to your clipboard.
###Start – Do Not Include This Line###
http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/Agile Project Management in Team Foundation Server 11.docx
http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/Building the Right Software – Generating Storyboards and Collecting Stakeholder Feedback with Visual Studio 11.docx
http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/Diagnosing Issues in Production with IntelliTrace and Visual Studio 11.docx
http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/Exploratory Testing and Other Enhancements in Microsoft Test Manager 11.docx
http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/Making Developers More Productive with Team Foundation Server 11.docx
http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/Unit Testing with Visual Studio 11 – MSTest, NUnit, xUnit.net, and Code Clone.docx

http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part01.exe

http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part02.rar

http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part03.rar

http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part04.rar

http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part05.rar

http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part06.rar

http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part07.rar

http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part08.rar

http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part09.rar

http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part10.rar

http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part11.rar

http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part12.rar

http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part13.rar

http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part14.rar

http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part15.rar

http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/Working with the Visual Studio 11 ALM Beta Virtual Machine.docx
###End – Do Not Include This Row In Your Selection###
3. Launch the user interface for Free Download Manager (either from the Start Menu or via the system tray icon if FDM is already running).
4. Click File -> Import -> Import List of URLs from Clipboard.
5. When prompted for a download group, accept the default and click OK.
6. You are now free to minimize Free Download Manager while the files download. By default, they will be saved to c:\downloads.
7. Expand the files and self-extracting RAR set and see the “Working with…” document for more instructions.

To remove an existing Work Item Type (WIT) you must modify the Category template to exclude the WIT in order to avoid receiving an error when attempting to delete.

Error

Unable to destroy work item type Test Case

TF237055: You cannot destroy a work item type that is being used.

Verify that the work item type is not being used in any categories.

Operation failed.

Remove the WIT from the Categories XML file.

1. Open the Visual Studio Command Prompt (2010) by browsing to the location below or set the environment via the command prompt by executing the Batch file (VS2010) :
• “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat” or Locating the VS Prompt on your Programs Menu
2. Export the categories using the [witadmin] command:
• witadmin exportcategories /collection:http://AdventureWorksServer:8080/tfs/defaultcollection /p:AdventureWorks /f:c:\mycategories.xml
3. Open the exported categories XML from the location listed for /f: from above using notepad, remove the unwanted work item type by deleting the CATEGORY tag and it’s contents. Then save your changes.

• <CATEGORY refname=”Microsoft.TestCaseCategory” name=”Test Case Category”><DEFAULTWORKITEMTYPE name=”Test Case” /></CATEGORY>

4. Import the modified category file using the import witadmin importimportcategories command.

• witadmin importcategories /collection:http://AdventureWorksServer:8080/tfs/defaultcollection /p:AdventureWorks /f:c:\mycategories.xml

Deleting the unwanted work item type.

1. Executed the witadmin destroywitd command to PERMANENTLY delete the work item type and ALL work items of that type. This command is NOT reversible once executed.
• witadmin destroywitd /collection:http://AdventureWorksServer:8080/tfs/defaultcollection /p:AdventureWorks /n:Test Case
2. Verify in Team Explorer that the work item type is no longer available.

For more information on managing Work Item types visit the MSDN Site. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd312129.aspx

This issue occurs when using Visual Studio 2005 or VS 2008 without the compatibility update installed.  If you already installed the compatibility update then its possible that the URL used is incorrect. Verify that the URL for TFS meets the following format http://YOURTFS:8080/tfs  . If you have not installed the update you will need to do so in the specific order below.

ERROR: TF31002: Unable to connect to this Team Foundation Server: tfs2010.

Visual Studio 2005 to TFS 2010

 The process must be completed in the exact order to work.  

1. Visual Studio 2005
2. Install TFS Team Explorer 2005
3. Install Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite SP1
4. Install Visual Studio Team System 2005 Service Pack 1 Forward Compatibility Update for Team Foundation Server 2010 (Installer)

Visual Studio 2005
On the Visual Studio Toolbar go to Tools and select Connect to Team Foundation Server

Select Servers

Select Add and enter the server details  http://tfs2010:8080/tfs

*The Connection Details on the screen should gray out after entereing the URL. If this is not the case, then the “Forward Compatibility Service Paack” has not been installed or the order it was intalled is incorrect. *

Connection Completed

Connecting to TFS 2010 from Visual Studio 2008

Visual Studio 2008 (The Same process as above with the following software below)

1. Visual Studio 2008
2. TFS Team Explorer 2008
3. Visual Studio 2008 SP1 (installer only) (ISO – Full download)
4. Visual Studio Team System 2008 Service Pack 1 Forward Compatibility Update for Team Foundation Server 2010

From the Back Cover

Effectively manage and deliver software projects with TFS
Team Foundation Server (TFS) has undergone a complete overhaul as the central tool in Microsoft’s Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) portfolio. This book addresses the many changes that have taken place since the 2005 version of TFS and provides an in-depth look at how these changes can work to your advantage. The team of authors reviews what’s new in TFS 2010, including its ease of configuration and installation, a new platform for testing, work item tracking and usability, and helpful new tools to manage project plans. Packed with detailed coverage, this book arms you with the information you need to effectively manage and deliver software projects with TFS.
Professional Team Foundation Server 2010:

• Walks you through planning and installing a TFS deployment
• Features a comprehensive overview of version control
• Discusses migrating from legacy version control systems,including Visual SourceSafe
• Reviews how to automate and customize the build process
• Discusses project management and testing tools
• Reviews administering a TFS environment, including creating a backup plan, handling disaster recovery, and monitoring server health and performance
• Prepares you for taking the TFS 2010 Microsoft Certification Exam (70-512)
• wrox.com Programmer Forums

Join our Programmer to Programmer forums to ask and answer programming questions about this book, join discussions on the hottest topics in the industry, and connect with fellow programmers from around the world.
Code Downloads
Take advantage of free code samples from this book, as well as code samples from hundreds of other books, all ready to use.
Read More
Find articles, ebooks, sample chapters, and tables of contents for hundreds of books, and more reference resources on programming topics that matter to you.
Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

[titled_color_box title="My Review"]

The authors are all well-known Microsoft MVP’s and have a track record of providing valuable must know knowledge in the industry. They really leverage their ability to communicate in a way to reach all audiences. One of the sections I find most valuable is Chapter 2 “Planning a Deployment” where it includes a typical Adoption Timeline that provides an outline to assist with adaptation and avoid some common pitfalls. When you get more in depth into the book, insight is provided into the newly implemented Windows Work Flow (WF) Build Process.  This book guides you by the hand and provides you with TFS 2010 capabilities while also identifying its limitations. It’s an all-inclusive guide to TFS2010 that is useful to all levels of experience users. This book is a must have for anyone interested in understanding and mastering TFS2010.

[/titled_color_box]

http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Team-Foundation-Server-Programmer/dp/0470943327/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1307986871&sr=1-1

Visual C# 2008 How to Program, 3rd Edition

By Paul Deitel Published Sep 18, 2008 by Prentice Hall. Part of the Pearson Custom Computer Science series.
Copyright 2009
Dimensions: 7″ x 9-1/8″
Pages: 1600
Edition: 3rd
Book
ISBN-10: 0-13-605322-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-605322-4

[info_box] In order to learn Visual C# I chose the book recommended in school called Visual C# 2008 How To Program.  I learn through experience and excellent notes!  This will allow me to update this blog and track my growth as I complete the book. If you have an opinion on anything written here, I welcome the discussion and in turn I am sure there’s always something new to learn. This first post will be an overview of the basic terms related to programming in C#. [/info_box]

Basic Object -Technology Concepts

Languages like C# are object oriented. Programming in such a language is called Object-Oriented Programming (OOP).

Objects: e.g. People, Animals, Plants, Cars etc..

• Objects are often divided into two categories – Animate and Inanimate
• Animate objects are “Alive”- They move around and do things.
• Inanimate objects do not move on their own.
• All objects have Attributes
• All objects exhibit Behaviors

Attributes: e.g. Size, Shape, Color and Weight

Behaviors: e.g. A Ball Rolls, Bounces, Inflates and Deflates

Object-Oriented Design (OOD): Encapsulates (i.e., wraps) attributes and operations (behaviors) into Objects.

Classes, Fields and Methods

C# programmers concentrate on creating their own user-defined types called classes.

• Each class contains data as well as the set of methods that manipulate the data and provide services to clients.
• The Data components of a class are called attributes or fields.
• The operation components of a class are called methods.

Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design (OOAD)

OOAD: is a software engineering approach that models a system as a group of interacting objects. Each object represents some entity of interest in the system being modeled, and is characterized by its class, its state (data elements), and its behavior. Various models can be created to show the static structure, dynamic behavior, and run-time deployment of these collaborating objects. There are a number of different notations for representing these models, such as the Unified Modeling Language (UML).

Important Definitions

Syntax: The syntax of a programming language specifies the rules for creating a proper application in that language.

Syntax Error: Occurs when the compiler encounters code that violates the programming language rules. Syntax errors are also called compiler errors, compile-time errors or compilation errors.

Using: A using directive tells the compiler where to look for a class that is used in an application.

Namespaces: Predefined classes that can be reused are organized under namespaces. .NET namespaces are referred to as the .NET Framework Class Library.  (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229335)

Class Declaration: Every application consists of at least one class declaration that is defined by the programmer. Know as User-Defined Classes.

[note_box]C# is case sensitive. [/note_box]

ex. public class Welcome

Variable: Is a location in the computer’s memory where a value can be stored for use later in an application. ( Variables are typically declared with a name and a type before they are used.)

• A variable’s name enables the application to access the value of the variable in memory.
• A variable’s type specifies what kind of information is stored at the location in memory.
• Every variable has a name, a type, a size and a value.

ex. int number1; is a variable declaration statement. aka declaration. (See Below)

Expressions: Any portion of a statement that has a value associated with it.

[titled_color_box title="To Be Continued..."]

This ends my first session of Visual C# Notes. The next part begins with Arithmetic Calculations..

[/titled_color_box]

To wake up on the day that you were born to find a profusion of sincere posts wishing you well and a great time is unfathomable. We spend a great deal of time chatting and posting things to make each other laugh, and try to fill gaps of interaction online due to our daily lives that do not afford us the leisure to get together in person. I could say thank you to every post, but I don’t think the true intent of the saying will come across by doing so. Instead I have written this to let each and every one of you know that I am truly grateful for the relationship that we have, and I am forever appreciative for your wishes on this special day.

Thank You!

Get Your Site Up and Running!

1. Step one should be to register a Domain Name. (More Details )

Call it a “dot-com name,” a URL, or a domain. Whatever you call it, it’s the cornerstone of your online presence, and we make getting one easy. Simply enter the name you want in the search field above, and we’ll tell you instantly whether the name is available. If it’s available, you pay a single fee that is renewable every year, and the name is yours.

2. Find a host for your Site.  Hosting Service (More Details )

A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their own website accessible via the World Wide Web.

3. Install WordPress  WordPress.org (More Details )

WordPress is an open source blog publishing application powered by PHP and MySQL which can also be used for content management. It has many features including a workflow, a plugin architecture and a templating system

How to install WordPress using QuickInstall (Available With NobleWebServices.com or HostGator Hosting)

Prerequisites: Email Address

1.       Login to your control panel.

a.       www.YourSite.com/cpanel or www.YourSite.com:2082

2.        Select QuickInstall under the Software/Services panel.

3.       Select WordPress under the Blog Software Group.

4.       On the WordPress Version Description select Continue.

5.       After you have selected Continue you will need to select where you would like to install WordPress. You will also need to enter an email address in order to have the admin login information sent to you.

6.       After you complete the information and select Install Now you should see the following screen.

7.       Check the email account that was entered above for the admin user name and password.

8.       Once you login to WordPress be sure to go to the Settings-General to update the email address. Then visit the Users options to change your admin password.

9.       Enjoy Your WordPress blog by going over to the appearance panel and installing new Themes to change the look of your site!!!

World Wide Web

• System of interlinked, hypertext documents accessed via the InternetNavigate from page to page via hyperlinks.
• Al Gore really did invent it. Kind of. Al Gore created legislation (Gore Bill) which funded the High-Performance Computing and Communications Initiative and lead to Mosaic, the first graphical web browser.
• It’s all very hyper.Hyper. HyperCard. HyperText. HyperLink. HyperText Markup Language. HyperText Transfer Protocol. Here, hyper does not refer to the frantic pace of the web. Rather, it simply means “linked”
• It’s ginormous
  • Terabyte = 1,000 gigabytes = 1,000,000 megabytes
  • Library of Congress: 11 terabytes
  • Indexed web: 167 terabytes
  • “Deep web”: 7,500 – 91,000 terabytes

  The indexed web is the web that the search engines know about, that you’re capable of finding via google.  The deep web is the web that is not easily accessible. It could be not indexed because it’s not linked from any other page. It could also be hidden because it’s generated from a dynamic web page that requires input

• World Wide Web
• Deep Web
• Hyper Prefix

About HTTP Requests

• HyperText Transfer ProtocolAll requests made for web pages are made via HTTP. HTTP is the “language” that computers use to talk each other.
• Client/ServerThe client is the party making the request for content. It’s typically a web browser, though it could be a spider or programming language. The server is the computer that has what the client wants.Spiders: Spiders are automated programs, or bots, that crawl the web looking for things. The most common example is Google. Another more malicious example are spiders looking for e-mail addresses to spam. They are called spiders because of the way they “crawl the web”
• Stateless modelThis has nothing to do with political boundaries. In this case state means “the way something is with respect to its main attributes; “the current state of knowledge”; “his state of health”; “in a weak financial state”. When we say HTTP is stateless we mean each request stands by itself.
• Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) and their partsURLs consist of a scheme and address. http is the scheme for most web requests.
• Domain NamesDomain names are the name that identifies a computer on the Internet. A Top Level Domain (TLD) is the (usually 3 letter) suffix on a web site, such as .com, .edu, or .co.uk. Domain names, the part just to the left of the TLD (‘scc-fl’) are typically purchased through Domain Registrars. Subdomains are the to the left of the domain name and are used to further specify which computer on the network you want (‘www’).
• HeadersThey define various characteristics of the data that is requested or the data that has been provided. They are the “action” words of the HTTP request.
• Get RequestRequests a representation of the specified resource. By far the most common method used on the Web today.
• Post RequestSubmits data to be processed (e.g. from an HTML form) to the identified resource. The data is included in the body of the request.
• Sample http request:

  GET /tward/week_1.htm HTTP/1.1
  Host: www2.cccc.edu
  User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) ...
  Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9, ...
  Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
  Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
  Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
  Keep-Alive: 300
  Connection: keep-alive
  Referer: http://www2.ccc.edu/scssule.htm
  Cookie: [private cookies go here]

• Sample http response headers:

  HTTP/1.x 200 OK
  Content-Length: 1457
  Content-Type: text/html
  Last-Modified: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 03:05:43 GMT
  Accept-Ranges: bytes
  Etag: "28f1fdd8b558c81:d0bd"
  Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
  X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
  IISExport: This web site was exported using IIS Export v4.2
  MicrosoftOfficeWebServer: 5.0_Pub
  Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 03:08:23 GMT

• HTTP
• Web crawler
• Domain Names

HTTPS

• HTTP over SSL – Secure Socket LayerTechnically not its own protocol. It is the same HTTP protocol, but with encryption to keep the data secure between the client and server. Once the data has been decrypted there is no difference between HTTP and HTTPs
• How secure?It’s very secure in protecting the data while it’s in transit, but once data arrives at its destination, it’s only as safe as the computer it’s on. Gene Spafford states that it is like “using an armored truck to transport rolls of pennies between someone on a park bench and someone doing business from a cardboard box.”

• HTTPS
• Public Key
• Certificate Authority
• Life cycle of HTTPS

Terms Associated with HTTP requests

• CookiesA cookie is plain text sent by the web server to the web browser. The web browser saves the text to a file and sends back this text to the server each time it makes a request to that server only. It’s a way to work around the stateless nature of HTTP.Only the server which you visit can send you a cookie, and your browser will only send cookies back to the server which originally created the cookie. However, you can still get a lot of tracking cookies by the way of ads.
• CacheA way to store things locally to increase performance. While it can greatly speed up the speed of the web requests, it can lead to frustration by developers when users don’t see a new version of their page. There is more than one potential cache location for a web request.
• Content TypeThe way the server tells the browser what kind of data it’s sending and how it should handle the data
• Character encoding – bits and bytesA bit is the lowest level of data storage in computers. It can either be a 1 or 0. 8 bits is a byte. In early computing, a byte represented one character (a letter). With 8 bytes, you have a maximum of 256 different characters possible. For early computing (in English) that’s plenty. However, in many languages there are more than 256 letters. In addition, people wanted to be able to start typing different types of symbols. Now, more than one byte is typically used to represent one character. So, many different character maps appeared. Now, the computers need to know which encoding method is used so it knows whether 01010100… is a ‘d’ or a ^.If you see “funky” characters on the screen, or question marks where there should be something else, there are character encoding issues. The biggest culprit of this is people pasting text from Microsoft Word, which uses ISO-8859-1 (the Microsoft standard), into something meant for the web, which typically uses UTF-8.
• TCP/IP
  • Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol
  • Official Protocol of the Internet™
  • PacketsTCP/IP information is split up into packets. You do not receive the entire web site in one “blob”, rather it gets split into chunks, or packets. Each packet is self contained.Packets consist of a header and the payload. The header contains where the packet is going, where it came from, a sequence number that lets the server put the packets back in order, and a checksum that lets the server validate that the contents of the packet did not get corrupted.Packets allow traffic to be load balanced, sending half of the packets on one route to get there and the other half a different way.Time to download is more dependent on number of packets than the size of the file.Sometimes, one packet will be lost and will need to be resent.
  • Other common TCP/IP Protocols
    • FTP – File Transfer ProtocolA method of transferring files across the Internet. HTTP allows file downloads, but you cannot send files.
    • DNS – Domain Name SystemThe “phonebook” of the Internet. It is a specialized server that converts the domain names you enter into your browser and converts them into the numeric IP address where the computer is located.
    • IMAP and POP – e-mail Protocols
    • SSH – Secure ShellUsed as a way to get access to the server and execute commands on it.

• Cookie
• Cache
• Mime
• Multibyte Strings
• TCP/IP

Browsers

• Market shareNetscape won initially by being first to market. However, their lack of resources allowed them to be overtaken by Internet Explorer. Netscape released their code base to allow other browsers to get a working start. Browsers based off of Netscape’s code base are called “Gecko” based browsers. Mozilla, using this code base, has gained a great deal of ground on Internet Explorer but is unlikely to ever beat out Internet Explorer due to its integration with the Windows Operating System.
• Test in allYou never know which browser your visitor, customer, or instructor will be using to visit your site. Make sure it works in all browsers as best you can.
• The Browser WarIn the 90s, Netscape and IE were fighting for control of the market place. By doing so, they were both trying to push the market forward as fast as they could. They were able to push the technology forward at a very rapid pace, but there were significant growing pains.
• Browser differences – Standards ComplianceIn their rush to push technology forward, each browser developed proprietary elements that the other browser did not have. A number of these were good ideas and have stuck around. A good number of these were bad ideas and are no longer used (hopefully).The rapid development cycle and the rush to be different from each other caused many web sites that took advantage of these new features to only work in those browsers. The infamous “Best viewed in Internet Explorer 4.0″ image.Finally, the best interests of the web won out and standards were created. There are still many differences between the browsers, but for the most part they are minor and not in areas of HTML that are used frequently.
• Internet ExplorerThe most popular browser. The fact that it comes with every Windows computer and thus requires the least amount of effort to use has made it the most popular. However, its status as the most popular caused its development to lag. Features that were appearing in many browsers were absent from IE for a number of years until the release of IE7. In addition, IE is the least standards compliant of any of the browsers. They sometimes adopt the attitude that developers need to conform to their standards.
• FirefoxFirefox is based off of Netscape’s code. It’s an open source project. Open source means anyone in the world can contribute code to the project. This allows a program run by a very small team to add features at least as quickly as a large company like Microsoft. They’re essentially leveraging volunteer work from all around the world. What makes their browser stand out is the Extensions.
• SafariSafari was originally written for the Macintosh. However, as part of the iPhone launch they had to port Safari to Windows and so they released a Windows version of their browser. While Firefox is slightly faster than Internet Explorer, Safari is much faster than either.

• Browser War
• Browser Speed Comparison

HyperText Markup Language – HTML

• HTML”Markup” – HTML was designed as a way to lightly style text. HTML was designed a long time ago when the reach of the web was not imagined. HTML was not designed to allow people to create documents and pages for presentation, as you see today. Originally, HTML was used to share scholarly papers and research. It had a very Spartan appearance.During the browser war of the 90s the focus shifted to creating presentation style web pages that looked pretty. As a result, a lot of new tags were introduced and a lot of bad ways of doing things were created.XHTML and CSS attempt to restore HTML to being a markup language and separate the style from the page content. XHTML gives very narrow definitions of what is valid markup. Perhaps too narrow.
• “Hello World” HTML

  <html>
  <head>
  <title>Hello World</title>
  </head>
  <body>
  <h2>Hello world!</h2>
  <p>Thank you for visiting</p>
  </body>
  </html>

• Any text editor can create HTML.Any word processor can create the markup for HTML. Once its saved to the hard drive, a web browser on that computer can read it and display it as a page.
• Valid XHTMLXHTML is a subset of HTML that’s much more strict about what is allowed and what is not allowed.XHTML defines what is a valid tag and whichs tags are allowed to have which attributes.

Life cycle of an HTTP request

1. Request to DNS ServerBrowser sends a request to the DNS server and asks for the IP address of the server it’s trying to connect to.
2. DNS server converts the domain name into IP addressThe DNS server looks up the IP address and sends it back to the client. The network of DNS servers rely on each other to keep an accurate record. DNS can sometimes take a long time to propagate depending on your ISP.
3. Request to web serverUsing the IP address found from the DNS server, the browser creates an HTTP request and sends it on to the web server.
4. Response of server, hopefully containing HTMLThe web server attempts to fill the request. Once completed, success or failure, the server sends a status code back to the browser. If it’s a successful request, it will also send the requested content.
5. Subsequent requests of additional mediaThe browser reads the HTML. As it encounters things it needs to display the page (images, etc) it makes additional requests to the web server. Remember, HTTP is stateless so each request goes through this life cycle and knows nothing of previous or future requests.The many requests needed to display a page are why “hits” are a bad way to view traffic to a web site. Each page may require a dozen or more hits to the server
6. Browser displays contentThe browser displays the HTML and additional media back to the user, dependent on the browser’s rules. This is where browser differences show.

]]> http://DavidRBrown.com/2011/03/20/how-the-course-and-the-web-works/feed/ 0 http://DavidRBrown.com/2011/03/19/meta-refresh-quick-tip-4-convenience/ http://DavidRBrown.com/2011/03/19/meta-refresh-quick-tip-4-convenience/#comments Sat, 19 Mar 2011 00:51:44 +0000 David http://davidrbrown.com/?p=486 When working on sites I often prefer to view the pages within the browser as I make updates to ensure it renders the same as the preview within the editor. All of the updates are made on my local dev server and only uploaded to the production server once the site is completed. It becomes redundant to hit F5 after every save to refresh the browser so I use the meta tags to refresh the browser every 10 seconds or so. Just remember to remove the tag when you are finish working on the project. It’s also a good time to update all other SEO tags at the same time. Here’s a site that provides a few different options that some may find useful.

http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/document/index_tagsupp_4.html

META for Automatic Refreshing and Forwarding

You can use <META ...> to tell the web browser to automatically move to another web page, or refresh the current page, after a specified period of time.

To have the page automatically refresh itself every x seconds, use a tag like this:

This tells the browser to refresh the page (HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH"), and that it should do so every five seconds (CONTENT="5").

Suppose, however, that you want the page to refresh itself by going automatically to another page. This is common, for example, when someone has moved their home page to a new location, but want someone who goes to the old location to still find a pointer. You could put this <META ...> tag in the page at the old location:

<META
     HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh"
     CONTENT="5; URL=autoforward_target.html">

In this case the <META ...> tag works is like the first refresh example, only with a little added information. The first part is the same: CONTENT="5; URL=autoforward_target.html" tells the browser that the page should be refreshed. CONTENT="5; URL=autoforward_target.html" gives two pieces of information: that the page should refresh after five seconds, and that the new URL should be autoforward_target.html .

In a situation like this, you should also provide a regular link to the new page.

You can also use <META ...> tags to ensure that the browser does not cache the HTML document. Caching is the process of saving the HTML document locally, on the computer’s hard drive, for future use so the browser doesn’t have to download the document again. To ensure that the browser does not cache a particular page use the following code: