Which browsers should I test in?

I needed to answer the question "Which browsers should I test in?", but was frustrated by how difficult this was to answer in Google Analytics. After months of frustration and not being able to easily give solid figures from our websites, I knocked up a one-page site that aggregates the Analytics data of the logged in user and allows them to play around with various scenarios to decide which browsers to test in. Most importantly, this uses data from the target market, not from a generic or randomised sites.

Please note that this site uses the Google GData JavaScript API, so none of your Analytics data is sent to my servers.

The site is here:
browsertest.info

One day sales site - example of jQuery widgets and QUnit unit tests

I have made a small site that uses some Javascript features such as drag and drop so that I could try writing QUnit unit tests. The tests were refreshingly easy to write, including testing things such as dragging and dropping by simulating mouse clicks.

The site allows users to view popular one-day sale sites in New Zealand, and the tests can be found here.

Microsoft Money Deluxe: "There has been an error reading or writing the file '.'"

I ran into the following error using Microsoft Money Deluxe (version 14.0.120.1105) while trying to view the Account Transactions report:

There has been an error reading or writing the file '.'

A quick Google search turned up KB281865 on Microsoft's site, but that only helped by confirming that this is a known issue. I was seemingly unable to get into the configuration dialog box to effect the fix, so not sure what to do.

The fix that worked for me was to view the report and wait for the error dialog saying There has been an error reading or writing the file '.'
to appear. Then, I positioned my mouse over the Customize... button and hit enter to dismiss the error dialog. Immediately after closing the dialog, I clicked the Customize... button, and the report customisation dialog popped up. After resetting the report using the Reset button, I was good to go!

Note that the Money 2005 Deluxe comes out of the box as version 14.0.120.805, so upgrading to version 14.0.120.1105 requires the installation of a QFE (aka SP1). This used to be downloaded automatically by money, but now must be downloaded directly from Microsoft here.

Installing ReSharper 6 causes several error dialogs

I recently installed ReSharper 6 (6.0.2202.688) into Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and was greeted with some error dialogs:

It looks as though this is a known issue, caused by a conflict between some plugins, Visual Studio 2010, and SQL Server 2008 R2.

The solution for me was to install \WCU\DAC\DACProjectSystemSetup_enu.msi from the Visual Studio 2010 installation media.

Using the File Checksum Integrity Verifier (fciv.exe) to ensure file integrity

The File Checksum Integrity Verifier (fciv.exe) can be used to calculate and verify that file contents have not changed.

Calculating Hashes

The following PowerShell command line will calculate the hashes for the current folder and all subfolders, saving the results into ..\Hashes.xml.

fciv -add (resolve-path .) -bp (resolve-path .) -r -xml ..\Hashes.xml -sha1

Verifying Hashes

The purpose of calculating a hash is to compare it at a later date to see whether the file has changed or not.

Use the following command to list all the hashes in the databases.

fciv.exe -list -xml ..\Hashes.xml -sha1

This command will verify the file content.

fciv.exe -v . -r -xml ..\Hashes.xml -sha1

NLog logging levels

NLog logging uses the following levels:

• Trace: 0
• Debug: 1
• Info: 2
• Warn: 3
• Error: 4
• Fatal: 5
• Off: 6

TFS/MSBuild error with null character in compiler output

I ran into the following error on the TFS build server, which is building a MicroFocus Cobol.NET program:

Based on the stack trace, it looks like there was a problem converting the build output to XML, so it was just a matter of finding the culprit. A quick search through the build output using PowerShell located the offending \0 character (which it is not possible to represent in XML), so I loaded the build log into NotePad++ to confirm:

Hopefully this will help anyone else who may run into this issue in TFS.