The search provider could not be installed… You might want to try again.

2015-01-08 Andy BurnsBrowsers, Google search5 Comments

So setting up a new machine, I tried adding the Google search provider plugin for IE11; I wanted to add Google as my default provider rather than Bing. However, the Add-On kept failing to install:

The search provider could not be installed.
This might have happened because:

A required file could not be downloaded

The website is unavailable

You are not connected to the internet

You might want to try again later.

Great. The problem was repeatable, and continued after reboot, and reset of IE’s settings. In desperation, I tried change the country that I was in (in the top right)…

I changed from United States to Turkey and back – and when I tried to add the extension, it installed without problem.

Hardly conclusive, but an interesting result nonetheless. Let me know if it works for anyone else!

Why I moved my blog

2014-12-082014-12-05 Andy BurnsBlogs, Wordpress1 Comment

Just a reminder to myself, of why I moved my blog. Continue reading “Why I moved my blog” →

File Path Lengths in Windows

2014-12-01 Andy Burns.NET, IO, LongFilePaths, Windows82 Comments

In the Windows API the maximum length for a path is 260 characters.

Slightly edited for length, but that comes from MSDN. Yes, it’s 2014, we’ve dealt with the 8.3 filename limit, found the Higgs Boson, landed a fridge on a comet, but the Windows API still doesn’t play well 260 character length file paths. That’s unfortunate. Continue reading “File Path Lengths in Windows” →

Website Bandwidth Usage

2014-09-022014-11-30 Andy Burnsbandwidth, CDN, Coding, Development, jQuery2 Comments

Off topic a little for SharePoint, but we all know the value of a Content Delivery Network (CDN), right? In particular, using services that host commonly used files, like jQuery.js, etc.? This has the advantage that other sites that use that CDN may have already cached that file in your visitor’s browser, but it also reduces the bandwidth used by your site.

Well, I found that my site was spending a lot of bandwidth serving jQuery.

Yup, 10% of my site’s bandwidth was being spent on… serving jQuery. That’s not efficient, so I found this post, which describes how to make the site use a CDN instead. Note that the functions.php file it mentions is the one in your theme.

Hopefully, that’ll reduce the bandwidth used. I also changed the css files for the theme, by minimising them; that should save another 200Mb per month. In total, that should be about a 12% saving on bandwidth.

It’s funny how this all mounts up!

Exchange Tasks integration with iOS and OSx

2012-10-192014-11-30 Andy BurnsExchange, iOS, OSx, Outlook6 Comments

Outlook has Tasks. I tend to flag emails that I need to take further action on, and they appear in my tasks list in Exchange:

iOS 5 and OSx (Mountain Lion or later) have ‘Reminders’. I figured that it must be possible to show Tasks from Exchange – after all, I could already sync Email and Calendars. So I set this up … and no tasks came through. Puzzling. Continue reading “Exchange Tasks integration with iOS and OSx” →

Select AirPlay from Volume Control

2012-10-122014-11-30 Andy BurnsAirPlay, OSxLeave a comment

From Mac OSx Hints:

If you have the Volume menu visible in the menu bar, clicking on this icon displays a simple volume slider. But if you hold the Option key when you click on the icon, you can select audio inputs and outputs directly, including nearby devices compatible with AirPlay.

Change Default Save Location from iCloud

2012-10-092014-11-30 Andy BurnsOSxLeave a comment

This is a note for myself, found on Mac OSx Hints.

I don’t like the iCloud UI for OSx – it’s inferior to Dropbox. As each application has it’s own iCloud storage it’s pretty hard to store a heterogeneous set of documents relating to a project or customer. For example, a Contract document and an Expenses spreadsheet would be invisible from each other’s program – and Finder.

So, the hell with iCloud by default – let’s use the filesystem. In terminal, run:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSDocumentSaveNewDocumentsToCloud -bool false

Fixing Duplicate Icons in OSX Launchpad

2012-10-052014-11-30 Andy BurnsOSx2 Comments

I know, a little off-topic for a mostly SharePoint/.NET blog, but after a recent upgrade I found I had duplicate iPhoto icons in Launchpad. That frustrated me. I did a bit of Googling, and found others had the same problem, and were suggesting deleting the database that stores the Launchpad’s details. When the Dock was reloaded, it would recreate that database. Unfortunately, it would also lose the layout of all your folders and icons.

“Delete the database”, I thought, “It’s a database, how hard can it be to fix that?”

So I set out to fix the database without deleting it, and losing all my folders… Continue reading “Fixing Duplicate Icons in OSX Launchpad” →

Lorem() function to create a Lorem Ipsum in Word

2012-06-272014-11-30 Andy BurnsOffice, Word3 Comments

Just a little tip – you can create Lorem Ipsum text in Word 2007 or later. Just type:

=lorem(5,6)

…and press return. The numbers refer to the number of paragraphs and the number of sentences per paragraph respectively.

Outlook Plugin – Finding the ImageMSO for the ribbon

2010-11-142014-11-30 Andy BurnsOffice, Outlook, Ribbon1 Comment

Ages ago, I wrote an Outlook plugin for saving emails (.msg files) from Outlook 2003 to SharePoint 2007. Well, the time had come to upgrade that to Outlook 2010. Broadly speaking, that went well, with one exception – what icon to show in the ribbon?

I didn’t want to go through the pain of designing my own icon (in its various different sizes), so I decided to highjack one of the office ones. The customer I was dealing with wanted the ‘Filing cabinet’ icon of the ‘Auto Archive Settings’ button.

Fine, no problem, it’s built in – in it’s various sizes and resolutions. Except – what is its ID? Continue reading “Outlook Plugin – Finding the ImageMSO for the ribbon” →

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