Fix: make ownCloud installer display in English language

OwnCloud is an interesting solution for setting up a file sharing cloud for a group of people.

However,one issue I’ve found with its Windows desktop client’s current version (which looks clean of any viruses since I always check first) is that if your Windows 10 is configured with a preferred language that the desktop client’s installer doesn’t have localization support for, then it doesn’t show up in English as you’d expect, but in Czech or someother language that most of us don’t know how to read.

So I tried running it’s MSI installer (ownCloud-2.6.1.13407.13049.msi) with –? parameter from the command-line and the /g languageCode parameter mentioned there looked promising, but trying /g en for English didn’t work. I guessed it needed some specific language code number (and not double-letter language code like en for English), since the help text was mentioning to see Windows Installer SDK for more help.

After a quick search I found an article that suggested passing the parameter Productlanguage=1033 to an msi installer on the command-line for it to ALWAYS show in English. And indeed it worked.

To open a command window one can click the Search icon on the windows taskbar and type CMD then press ENTER.

Then they can drag-drop the .MSI file of ownCloud installer onto the black command-line window that opens up and type an extra space char and then Productlanguage=1033 before pressing ENTER to launch the ownCloud installer in English. After that they can close the command-line window at anytime.

Since many users may be uncomfortable with such instructions, one could provide an msiEnglish.bat file that just contains

%1 Productlanguage=1033

User could drag-drop the .msi they want onto that msiEnglish.bat file and it would run the msi installer being displayed in English language, irrespective of any preferred language settings at the Windows operating system.

Of course the best thing would be if ownCloud fixed their desktop client installer to fallback to the Engish language (set it as default) if it can’t find localization strings for the currently prefered language of the user. Have filed an issue at https://github.com/owncloud/client/issues/7825

HowTo: Make Project Linker extension’s VSIX install at Visual Studio 2012

Project Linker is a Visual Studio Extension that “helps to automatically create and maintain links from a source project to a target project to share code that is common to Silverlight and WPF”.

In ClipFlair, where I have shared code between a Silverlight and a WPF project (I guess same would be for XNA projects for Xbox360 and for PC), a practice I use is to put shared files in a “Source” project and add them to both projects as links (using “Open as link” action available from Add file dialog if you press the dropdown arrow next to the “Open” button).

An alternative is to put such files in say the WPF project and use the Project Linker tool from Microsoft Patterns & Practices group to link to those files from the Silverlight project easily.

However, that tool seems to be only available for Visual Studio 2010, not for the newer 2012 version. Luckily, some users have posted a workarround at the discussion there (Reviews and Q&A tabs):

1. Download the .vsix
2. Extract contents with 7-Zip (since .vsix is a .zip file which you can see by renaming to .zip or .vsix.zip)
3. Modify file with extension .vsixmanifest to add <visualstudio version="11.0"> to the <supportedproducts> node
4. Change MaxVersion to <supportedframeworkruntimeedition minversion="3.5" maxversion="4.5" /> (this may not be necessary)
5. Zip up contents again
6. Rename extension back to .vsix
7. Install extension

According to comments there, this works but not for all project types. It works if one links the Silverlight project to the WPF one, but not the other way around. It throws a NullReferenceException somewhere in the extension.

HowTo: Tell AddThis to not append tracking suffix on addressbar

ClipFlair’s project description website is based on WordPress (a quite extensible blogging platform based on PHP). The other day we had an issue with the AddThis Plugin for WordPress, which was adding tracking suffices (in the form #.UAxxxxx) to the end of our URLs on the browser address bar.

Moreover this wasn’t occuring in Internet Explorer, since it doesn’t support the History API – probably for more security against Phishing scams – that the AddThis plugin uses for its Address Bar Shares tracking feature.

At first I didn’t spot that setting at the Settings/AddThis menu in WordPress dashboard and was looking into configuring it manually (it’s “addthis_addressbar” boolean setting, probably kept in wp_config.php), but eventually our designer spotted it at the “Advanced” tab there (wonder how I missed that 2nd tab altogether in the first place).

Κοινόχρηστο Ημερολόγιο (Group Calendar) με Microsoft Outlook ή Hotmail

1) Δημιουργείς ένα Windows Live Group:

http://explore.live.com/windows-live-groups-help-center

Επιλέγοντας να εγκρίνεις ποιοι γράφονται (να μην μπαίνουν στο group αυτόματα) αν έχει τέτοια επιλογή.  Μπορείς μετά να στείλεις προσκλήσεις εγγραφής στο group μέσω e-mail.

Στη συνέχεια φτιάχνουν Windows Live ID όσοι είναι να συμμετέχουν στο group για να βλέπουν το group calendar. Μπορούν να χρησιμοποιήσουν μια διεύθυνση @hotmail.com, @hotmail.gr κλπ. που παρέχει το Windows Live Hotmail δωρεάν ή το δικό τους e-mail συνδέοντας το με Windows Live ID στο http://www.passport.net (αν δεν έχουν ή δε θέλουν Hotmail αλλά μόνο Windows Live ID για να εισέρχονται σε υπηρεσίες της Microsoft όπως τα Windows Live Groups).

Έπειτα εγγράφονται στο group με το Windows Live ID τους

2) Όσοι έχουν hotmail μπορούν να το βλέπουν εναλλακτικά στο web στο ημερολόγιο του hotmail όπου δείχνει και τα ημερολόγια των group όπου είσαι εγγεγραμμένος.

3) Για όσους έχουν πρόσφατο Outlook (2007 και άνω), μπορούν να βλέπουν τοπικά το κοινόχρηστο ημερολόγιο εγκαθιστώντας το Outlook Social Connector

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=7985

Αφού εγκατασταθεί το ρυθμίζεις με το e-mail που χρησιμοποίησες για να εγγραφείς στο Windows Live Group και στην περιοχή Calendar του Outlook έχει δυνατότητα να επιλέξεις να βλέπεις και το κοινόχρηστο Calendar (ή μόνο αυτό).

 

Αν πάλι διαθέτεις Windows Exchange Server μπορείς να χρησιμοποιήσεις αυτόν:

http://www.outlookipedia.com/outlook/group-calendar.aspx

ή κάποιες άλλες λύσεις τρίτων (εμπορικές)

http://www.outlookipedia.com/outlook/share-calendar.aspx#Group_Calendar_Solutions_for_Outlook

 

Τέλος, το παρακάτω δείχνει έναν τρόπο να κάνεις Group/Team Calendars χωρίς Exchange (π.χ. με κάποιο δικό σου web server):

http://www.commodore.ca/windows/shared_calendar/share_outlook_calendar.htm