Andreas' Space

So I'll be heavily testing it for compatibility with my addins for the next couple of weeks.

Go get it from Microsoft Connect (you actually did register for the beta, right?)

Andreas M.

In this release the following changes have been made: 

• New wizard for adding URL shortcuts
  This new wizard makes it easy to add URL shortcuts to the Advanced Admin Console toolbar. This way you can access the web configuration interface of other devices in your home network from within the WHS console.
• Shortcuts to folders and URL shortcuts are no longer opened in external windows. Hold the Shift key while clicking on a folder or URL shortcut  to open it in an external window.
• The tooltip of an URL shortcut displays the URL of the shortcut.
• Update availability notification
  An update notification bar is displayed in the Advanced Admin Console when an updated version is available. You can turn this feature off in the settings dialog.
• Setting for displaying the shutdown button removed from the settings dialog
  This setting was a leftover from an earlier build where the shutdown button was displayed in the toolbar. Since the shutdown button is now located in the status bar the setting became unnecesary.

Here's a screenshot of the new settings dialog:

And this is what the URL shortcut wizard looks like:

When a new version of the Advanced Admin Console AddIn is released the following notification will be displayed:

Download Advanced Admin Console AddIn Version 0.4.3 Beta.

CRC-32 3FBE7E00
   MD5 6439A6F4B19352C1DA6A00B3739155A5
  SHA1 7F619197019ADF6134DCE75493EDF15CE833714F

Important: Before installing the new release, please UNINSTALL any previous version!

Have a lot of fun with this release. Feedback is welcome via Email, at the WeGotServed-Forums (english) or Home-Server-Forum (german).

In this release the following features have been added:

• New Statusbar displaying current folder location and server uptime
• Shutdown and minimize buttons in status bar
• New setting for enabling/disabling the display of the shutdown button

Here's a screenshot of the new release:

The minimize button was added so you can minimize the console in case you have launched a program that sits in the background and is inaccessible to you. To get back to the console simply double-click the minimized window's title bar.

Clicking the shutdown button in the status bar will bring up this enhanced Windows Home Server shutdown dialog:

The Advanced Admin Console adds a Log Off button to the shutdown dialog. It is useful if you connected to the console from a client computer and have started up a couple of programs from the Advanced Admin Console. Clicking the Log Off button will close the Windows Home Server Console and all programs that where launched from the console are closed as well. Please keep in mind that the enhanced shutdown dialog is only available from the Advanced Admin Console's shutdown button in the status bar. The shutdown button from the settings dialog will still display the regular shutdown dialog.

Download Advanced Admin Console AddIn Version 0.4.0 Beta.

CRC-32 7F1C49BC
   MD5 37F940924A1B3389E93D0FC55AC75ABB
  SHA1 20D51508B439EA3B146E64F4A2567EB5844D2A2F

Important: Before installing the new release, please UNINSTALL any previous version!

Have a lot of fun with this release. Feedback is welcome via Email, at the WeGotServed-Forums (english) or Home-Server-Forum (german).

With the download numbers being steadily high and the amount of user feedback declining, I can only assume that the HomeServer community's interest in the Advanced Admin Console addin is unbroken and there are neither major bugs left nor are there any critical features missing.

As my conclusions are only based on non-feedback I 'got' during the last weeks, why don't you do it just like Anonymous here and post your feature requests, bug reports or general feedback. In fact, doing so soon would be great because I'm currently preparing a new version of the Advanced Admin Console that will (optionally) have a shutdown button in the left corner of the toolbar, just as Anonymous requested.

This is what it will look like:

So you see, your feedback can have a direct impact on the next version.

If I won't receive any feature requests until Microsoft's release of Power Pack 1 for Windows Home Server I will consider the Advanced Admin Console 'done' and move on.

I'm looking forward to hearing your ideas about what still can be added/changed. But please keep one thing in mind: The Advanced Admin Console is a tool for advanced users and it's goal is to make things easily and quickly accessible. Thus I won't change anything that will bloat it or have negative impact on it's main use.

If you prefer to share you opinions in the forums rather than commenting on this blog-post, here's your place to go: WeGotServed-Forums (english) or Home-Server-Forum (german). Of course you can also email me.

Andreas M.

A minor bug has been fixed: The navigation buttons stopped working or were disabled.

Download Advanced Admin Console AddIn Version 0.3.2 Beta.

CRC-32 9AB2BF7C
   MD5 226DDA077974DFEDFACC90B460F6EA9F
  SHA1 B43A5C64B1C52AB842D86472D1553413CF5CEBE2

Important: Before installing the new release, please UNINSTALL any previous version!

The new release 0.3.0 brings a new feature: You can now customize the display order of the built-in tabs and program shortcuts or you can disable them.

Here's a screenshot of the new settings dialog:

By checking/unchecking the checkbox of an menu item you can control whether it is to be displayed in the menu. By clicking on "Move Up" or "Move Down" the display order of the menu items can be customized. Clicking on "Default" resets the built-in item settings.

Download Advanced Admin Console AddIn Version 0.3.0 Beta.

CRC-32 B3D05585
   MD5 C874CDDE166EE075CBC200B4E4DE100D
  SHA1 56ABF14A4C6F4CA1D7E50AB533B48BCAE72FE21E

Important: Before installing the new release, please UNINSTALL any previous version!

Have a lot of fun with this release. Feedback is welcome via Email or at the WeGotServed-Forums.

Die neue Version 0.3.0 wurde um die Möglichkeit erweitert, die Anzeigereihenfolge der eingebauten Tabs und Programmverknüpfungen anzupassen. Außerdem kann deren Anzeige nun auch komplett deaktiviert werden.

Hier ein Screenshot des neuen Einstellungs-Dialogs:

Durch Aktivieren/Deaktivieren der Checkbox vor einem Menüeintrag kann die Anzeige des jeweiligen Eintrags gesteuert werden. Durch Klicken auf "Nach oben" bzw. "Nach unten" kann die Anzeigereihenfolge der Einträge angepasst werden. Ein Klick auf "Standard" setzt die Einstellungen ´zurück.

Advanced Admin Konsole AddIn Version 0.3.0 Beta herunterladen.

CRC-32 B3D05585
   MD5 C874CDDE166EE075CBC200B4E4DE100D
  SHA1 56ABF14A4C6F4CA1D7E50AB533B48BCAE72FE21E

Wichtig: Vor der Installation der neuen Version muss zunächst eine bereits installierte, ältere Version des AddIns DEINSTALLIERT werden!

Viel Spaß mit der neuen Release. Feedback per Email oder im Home-Server-Forum ist wieder gerne willkommen.

With the .NET Framework 2.0, Microsoft introduced the WebBrowser control, a managed code wrapper for the WebBrowser ActiveX control. Unfortunately, compared to the ActiveX version, the .NET version of the control lacks some functionality. You can navigate websites, local HTML documents and folder locations using respective protocol handler prefixes ("http://", "file://"). What you cannot do with the .NET WebBrowser control is navigate special folders like "My Computer" or the control panel, as these folders are not identified by a path but by CSIDLs. So my goal was to extend the existing WebBrowser class to provide this ability.

First of all I did some research on the topic and found a Knowledge Base article describing the necessary steps to navigate a PIDL (pointer to an ITEMIDLIST) with the ActiveX version of the WebBrowser control. So all I had to do was convert the code sample to C#.

Here's my resulting Navigate2CSIDL method:

public void Navigate2CSIDL(ShellEnums.CSIDLValues csidl) {

    const int S_OK = 0;
    
    IntPtr pidl = IntPtr.Zero;
    
    if (SHGetSpecialFolderLocation(IntPtr.Zero, (int)csidl, ref pidl) == S_OK) {
        uint cbpidl = LocalSize(pidl);
        if (cbpidl > 0) {
            byte[] abpidl = new byte[cbpidl];
            Marshal.Copy(pidl, abpidl, 0, ((int)cbpidl - 1));
            object location = (object)abpidl;
            Marshal.FreeCoTaskMem(pidl);

            try {
                object nil = Type.Missing;
                ((SHDocVw.WebBrowser)base.ActiveXInstance).Navigate2(ref location, 
                                               ref nil, ref nil, ref nil, ref nil);
            }
            catch (COMException exception) {
                if (exception.ErrorCode != -2147023673 /*Operation was canceled by the user*/) {
                    throw;
                }
            }
        }   
    }
    else {
        throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException();
    }
}

The method takes only one parameter: the CSIDL of the special folder to navigate to. First of all, I use SHGetSpecialFolderLocation() to obtain the PIDL of the desired special folder. Since the Navigate2() method of the ActiveX WebBrowser control takes the PIDL wrapped in a SAFEARRAY, we can copy the PIDL to a byte array. Next we call Navigate2() to navigate the WebBrowser control to the folder. ComInterop handles the marshalling of the byte array to a SAFEARRAY for us. And that's all we have to do.

To be able to conveniently use this funcionality, I created a new class ("WebBrowserExt") which inherits from System.Windows.Forms.WebBrowser. As the control consumer might want to interact with the special folder, I added two properties (FolderView and Folder) in analogy to the Document property of the WebBrowser control class:

/// <summary>
/// Returns the shell folder object displayed in the webbrowser control.
/// </summary>
public Shell32.Folder2 Folder {
    get {
        IShellFolderViewDual2 folderview = this.FolderView;
        if (folderview != null) {
            return folderview.Folder as Folder2;
        }
        else {
            return null;
        }
    }
}

/// <summary>
/// Returns the shell folderview object displayed in the webbrowser control.
/// </summary>
public Shell32.IShellFolderViewDual2 FolderView {
    get {
        return ((SHDocVw.WebBrowser)base.ActiveXInstance).Document as IShellFolderViewDual2;                
    }
}

See the documentation of IShellFolderViewDual2 and Folder2 to find out what you can do with these. These interfaces are supplied by adding references to ShDocVw.dll and Shell32.dll to the project. I put together a small sample project to demonstrate the capabilities of my WebBrowserExt control. This is a Visual Studio 2008 project, so you need at least the free Visual C# 2008 Express Edition to open it.

Here's a screenshot of the sample project showing the control panel:

Download the sample project here. I also posted this on Channel9.

The new release 0.2.0 brings a new feature: The ability to add custom program shortcuts to the drop-down menu.

Here's how it's done:

 
Just click "Customize" on the drop-down-menu.

Custom shortcuts can then be managed in the settings dialog:

 
To add a new program shortcut, just click the "Add Shortcut" button. The familiar Windows shortcut wizard will show up. Your custom shortcuts can be further customized via the context menu (a.k.a. "right-click menu") --> Properties. Renaming and Deletion of shortcuts can also be done from the context menu.

So now it's possible to customize and extend the menubar of the Advanced Admin Console AddIn.

Download Advanced Admin Console AddIn Version 0.2.0 Beta.

CRC-32 05D25260
   MD5 300464E8CA002376B4C312435BDBC9FC
  SHA1 13204D02CC1B42B28C40F0438A5762B2B76157B8

Important: Before installing the new release, please UNINSTALL any previous version!

Have a lot of fun with this release. Feedback is welcome via Email or at the WeGotServed-Forums.

Die neue Version 0.2.0 wurde um die Möglichkeit erweitert, dem DropDown-Menü eigene Programmverknüpfungen hinzufügen zu können.

Und so geht's:

 
Im Drop-Down-Menü einfach auf "Anpassen" (bzw. in der englischsprachigen Version auf "Customize") klicken.

Im Einstellungsdialog können dann die eigenen Verknüpfungen verwaltet werden:

 
Zum hinzufügen einer neuen Programmverknüpfung einfach auf den Button "Neue Verknüpfung" (bzw. in der englischsprachigen Version auf "Add Shortcut") klicken. Es erscheint dann der bekannte Windows-Verknüpfungsassistent. Die Verknüpfungen können zudem über das Kontextmenü --> Eigenschaften weiter angepasst werden. Umbenennen und Löschen von Verknüpfungen findet ebenfalls über das Kontextmenü statt.

Somit ist es nun möglich, das Menü der Advanced Admin Konsole gemäß den eigenen Wünschen anzupassen und zu erweitern.

Advanced Admin Konsole AddIn Version 0.2.0 Beta herunterladen.

CRC-32 05D25260
   MD5 300464E8CA002376B4C312435BDBC9FC
  SHA1 13204D02CC1B42B28C40F0438A5762B2B76157B8

Wichtig: Vor der Installation der neuen Version muss zunächst eine bereits installierte, ältere Version des AddIns DEINSTALLIERT werden!

Viel Spaß mit der neuen Release. Feedback per Email oder im Home-Server-Forum ist wieder gerne willkommen.