Andreas M's Windows Home Server AddIns

As I’m getting ready for the final release of the Advanced Admin Console 2011 AddIn for the 2011 range of Microsoft Windows Servers I’ve now created a Facebook page for it. This will allow for better interaction with AAC users and give you a place for sharing your feedback and suggestions with me and other AAC users.

Please visit the Page here and ‘Like’ it!

If everything works out as planned, Advanced Admin Console 2011 licenses will be available for purchase before the end of January 2012.

The previous beta version of the Advanced Admin Console 2011 will stop working on December 1, 2011. Download the latest release now!

Since its release in late July 2011 the Advanced Admin Console 2011 Release Candidate has proven that it’s ready for its final release. No bugs have been reported and I’ve got plenty of emails from users telling me that it’s fulfilling their needs and it’s running smoothly on their servers.

In order to test the update check and upgrade installation mechanisms there will be a final test release (version 0.9.6) dubbed the “Release Candidate Refresh”.

Download

Go to the downloads page to download the Advanced Admin Console 2011 Release Candidate. You can share your opinion and discuss the new release over at the HomeServerLand forums.

License

The Advanced Admin Console 2011 Release Candidate Refresh will work until February 1, 2012. Starting that day it will switch to reduced functionality mode for home users and will cease to function for business users. Both groups of users will need to purchase a license (pricing TBA) in order to be able to make use of the Advanced Admin Console 2011 feature set after that date. Please see my previous post for more licensing details.

The previous beta version of the Advanced Admin Console 2011 will stop working on August 1, 2011. Download the latest release now!

The Advanced Admin Console Beta 2 has been out since March. Several thousand people have downloaded and used it since then and have given valuable feedback on its features and reported some minor bugs.

As a result, the Release Candidate (Version 0.9.5) includes a number of fixes, changes and some new functionality (see changelog below). Most importantly, I’ve decided to no longer offer AAC 2011 entirely for free.

I’ve been working on the Advanced Admin Console and my other first-generation Windows Home Server AddIns since December 2007. During the last year I have spent countless hours on developing AAC 2011 from scratch to make it one of the most popular and useful AddIns for the 2nd generation of Windows Home and Small Business Servers. I hope you’ll understand my decision to charge for the new version in order to compensate for my work.

Licensing changes

AAC 2011 will remain free for use on Windows Home Server 2011 and Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials if it’s not domain joined. However, on Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials and domain-joined Windows Storage Server 2008 Essentials (=business users) the latest version of AAC 2011 can only be used until December 1, 2011. After that date, business users must either purchase a license (pricing to be announced) or uninstall the AddIn. On Windows Home Server 2011 and non-domain-joined Windows Storage Server 2008 R2, AAC 2011 will work until after that date but switch to reduced functionality mode. In reduced functionality mode the Favorites Tab is disabled which means you can no longer access custom links and shortcuts. By purchasing a license you can keep using the full functionality of AAC 2011 on these platforms as well.

Summary of licensing changes

To sum it up, in regards to licensing the latest version of AAC 2011 includes the following changes:

• Users are categorized in two groups: Home and Business. Users of Windows Home Server 2011 and non-domain-joined Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials are regarded as home users. Users of Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials and domain-joined Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials are regarded as business users.
• AAC 2011 has a trial period of 30 days (extended to December 1, 2011 for the Release Candidate). During the trial period the full functionality can be used on all platforms.
• When the trial period expires, AAC 2011 will switch to reduced functionality mode for home users and cease to function for business users. In reduced functionality mode the Favorites Tab is no longer available.
• Home and business users can purchase a license to use the full functionality of AAC 2011 for an unlimited time.
• Pricing is to be announced shortly.

Changelog for release 0.9.5:

• FIXED: When running the Dashboard from a client PC resizing the Dashboard window may result in improper drawing of the AAC portion of the Dashboard window.
• FIXED: Update notification didn’t work for some users.
• FIXED: An exception occurred when a favorite was created via the web page context menu.
• CHANGED: User interface polished (Removal of MS Office style context menus, other minor changes).
• ADDED: IE ESC notification can now be disabled.
• ADDED: Open, Open in new window and Properties now available for folder in Favorite Tree.
• ADDED: Support for Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials.
• ADDED: German localization.
• ADDED: About dialog.
• ADDED: Licensing system, Activation wizard.

Download

Go to the downloads page to download the Advanced Admin Console 2011 Release Candidate. You can share your opinion and discuss the new release over at the HomeServerLand forums.

Since the first public beta of Advanced Admin Console 2011 was made available for download on February 24th I’ve received some user feedback about the restrictive behavior of its web browser functionality. A couple of users were wondering why the web browser kept blocking any kind of active content (like JavaScript and ActiveX controls) on the sites they were browsing:

The reason for this is that Internet Explorer’s Enhanced Security Configuration is enabled on the server by default.

When you get this message in Internet Explorer you can normally allow the blocked content by clicking ‘Add…’ and adding the browsed web site to the ‘Trusted sites’ security zone. Unfortunately, when you do this in AAC 2011 Beta 1 (version 0.9.1) your screen will quickly be filled with error dialogs:

This issue was also discussed on episode 126 of the Home Server Show podcast.

Improvements in this new release

Version 0.9.2 beta of AAC 2011 has been improved in three ways:

1. The error messages mentioned above will no longer appear.
2. The web browser tab status bar shows whether Enhanced Security Configuration is enabled.
3. Enhanced Security Configuration can be directly configured from the web browser tab.

This new feature is detailed in the Evaluator’s Guide which is included in the AAC 2011 Beta download package.

Changelog for release 0.9.2:

• Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration (IE ESC) status is displayed in the web browser status bar.
• IE ESC can be configured by clicking on the status bar icon.
• FIXED: When opening a web page with IE ESC enabled, a standard IE security dialog is displayed. When the site was added to the Trusted sites zone from this dialog, a large number of Exception dialogs could appear.
• FIXED: An exception occurred when a favorite was created via the web page context menu.

Download

Go to the downloads page to download the Advanced Admin Console 2011 Beta. You can share your opinion and discuss the beta over at the HomeServerLand forums.

As promised earlier this week, the public beta of my new Advanced Admin Console 2011 AddIn for Windows Home Server 2011 and Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials is finally available for download.

The Advanced Admin Console AddIn (AAC) for the first version of Windows Home Server was a huge success and AAC 2011 has been developed from scratch in order to fully harness the new features and capabilities available in the 2011 range of server operating systems from Microsoft.

Key features

Advanced Admin Console enables full Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer integration in the server Dashboard:

The Server Administration Tasks Panel brings a comprehensive list of administrative tools and resources to your fingertips. The goal is to make the Dashboard the central place of administration not only of your server but your entire network.

Windows Explorer links and Administrative Tools

This is accomplished by the Favorites Panel’s support for custom links to ‘pretty much everything’ (Web URLs, URLs to local services and other intranet URLs, files, folders, programs and other executables, etc.).

You can even access other machines and devices on your network and connect to them via Remote Desktop Connection if they are running a supported operating system.

Since AAC is fully integrated with the standard Windows Favorites functionality, all your custom links and shortcuts will also be available to you if you’re using Remote Desktop Connection to connect to your server. You don’t even have to use the Dashboard in this case:

Why would I want this, why do I need this?

Because it’s awesome! And because it’s pretty darn useful!

Ok, seriously: Windows Home Server 2011 and Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials are very powerful operating systems with lots of functionalities. Due to their expandability you can add additional server software like a blog (e.g. WordPress), a media streaming service (like Twonky) and a lot more. You also may have a couple of devices (like a router, switches or WiFi access points) on your network which support web based configuration interfaces. AAC 2011 makes it easy for you to access all of these from one central place of administration: The server’s Dashboard.

Once you have experienced it you won’t want to miss it again, I promise.

Installation on Windows Home Server 2011 or Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials

This video by Timothy Daleo shows the installation and first use of the AAC AddIn. Note: It’s mentioned several times in the video that AAC will expire on December 1, 2010. This is because the video is based on an earlier private technical preview version of AAC. The version published today (0.9.1 Beta) will work until August 1, 2011.

Download

Go to the downloads page to download the Advanced Admin Console 2011 Beta. You can share your opinion and discuss the beta over at the HomeServerLand forums.

This is a maintenance release which fixes a number of minor bugs and one major bug in the update discovery mechanism which prevented Japanese and Chinese users from being notified when an update was available. In addition, a possible conflict with other AddIns has been resolved. This update improves the stability and reliability of the Advanced Admin Console and I recommend to all current users to upgrade to the latest release.

Download Advanced Admin Console AddIn Version 0.5.4.

   MD5 11ee6485fe85f62917a20bdad37962a3
  SHA1 0830c1b2d5e3dfb3c45d657eb7e2ccee66a39101

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

As always, feedback is welcome. See the support page on how to get in touch with me.

This is just a quick announcement to inform you that the release of the public beta of Advanced Admin Console 2011 for Windows Home Server 2011 and Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials is imminent. The bits will be available for download from this site later this week. Everyone who contacted me regarding the beta test will be notified via email. Stay tuned!

Version 0.3.0 Beta was released back in September 2009. Since then not a single bug has been reported. This means that the time has come to remove the beta tag from the Update History AddIn.

Nonetheless, two things have been improved since the previous release:

• A possible conflict with other AddIns has been resolved (thanks to Alex Kuretz from MediaSmartServer.net)
• It’s no longer possible to install the Update History AddIn over an existing installation. In this case you now are prompted to uninstall any existing version first.

Download Update History AddIn 0.3.2.

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

As always, feedback is welcome. See the support page on how to get in touch with me.

You may have read about the Technical Preview over at homeserverland.com, wegotserved.co.uk, mediasmartserver.net or maybe the German blogs and news sources Bjoerns Windows Blog or home-server-blog.de.

Today, I’m proud to announce that the new version of my popular Advanced Admin Console AddIn (AAC) for the upcoming Windows Server offerings for home users and small businesses has reached an important milestone.

I made a first technical preview version of AAC available to tech-bloggers and the (p)reviews they’ve written so far tell me that I’m on the right track.

The next step is now to give AAC to about 30 beta testers to try it out and give feedback. If you’d like to take part in the beta test please write a short comment on this post, describing on which configuration you would be able to test AAC. Please include the following information:

• Windows Server Version you would install AAC on (‘Vail’, ‘Aurora’ or both)
• Client operating system version(s)
• Client operating system language version you normally work on
• Whether you’ll be using real machines or virtual machines for testing
• Whether you have experience with AAC on Windows Home Server (v1)
• Your general level of experience with Windows Home Server v1 and/or ‘Vail’/’Aurora’

Make sure to enter a valid email address so that I can send you your beta invitation. Beta tester invitations will not go out before September 22, 2010 – please be patient.

In the meantime please refer to these resources to find out more about the new version of the Advanced Admin Console and Windows Server codename ‘Vail’ and ‘Aurora’ in general:

In English

• Sneak Peek at Advanced Admin Console vNext Technical Preview
• Add-in: Advanced Admin Console vNext (Technical Preview)
• Technical Preview: Advanced Admin Console vNext Add-In for Vail & Aurora

In German

• Bjoerns Windows Blog
• Add-In: Advanced Admin Console vNext

You may have seen examples of pixel art in Excel like these examples here and here. The way this is done is by setting the background color of each cell of the worksheet just as you would set pixel colors in a graphics editor.

I always wondered how much work it would be to import photographic images into Excel this way. Our code would have to perform these basic steps:

• Iterate over all lines of the image
• Iterate over all pixels in each line of the image
• Get the color of the currently iterated pixel
• Set the background color of the worksheet cell with the currently iterated x/y coordinates to the color of the image’s pixel
• Set the column width and row height of the worksheet cell so that it is approximately 1 pixel big

As it turns out, you can do this with less than 30 lines of C# code:

        private const String _bitmapFile = @"C:\Users\Public\Pictures\Wallpapers\Photo.jpg";
        private const int xlAutomatic = -4105;
        private const int xlSolid = 1;

        private void ThisAddIn_Startup(object sender, System.EventArgs e) {

            try {
                Application.ScreenUpdating = false;

                using (Bitmap bitmap = (Bitmap)Bitmap.FromFile(_bitmapFile)) {
                    // Set row heights to 1
                    for (int y = 1; y <= bitmap.Height; y++) {
                        Application.ActiveSheet.Rows[y].RowHeight = 1;
                    }
                    // Set column widths to 0.1
                    for (int x = 1; x <= bitmap.Width; x++) {
                        Application.ActiveSheet.Columns[x].ColumnWidth = 0.1;
                    }

                    for (int y = 1; y <= bitmap.Height; y++) {
                        for (int x = 1; x <= bitmap.Width; x++) {
                            var color = bitmap.GetPixel(x - 1, y - 1);
                            var range = Application.ActiveSheet.Cells[y, x];
                            range.Select();
                            dynamic interior = Application.Selection.Interior;
                            interior.Pattern = xlSolid;
                            interior.PatternColorIndex = xlAutomatic;
                            interior.Color = ((int)color.B * 65536) + ((int)color.G * 256) + ((int)color.R);
                            interior.TintAndShade = 0;
                            interior.PatternTintAndShade = 0;
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
            finally {
                Application.ScreenUpdating = true;
            }
        }

Simply create a new Excel 2010 Add-In project in Visual Studio 2010 and paste the above code over the ThisAddIn_Startup method stub. After you have compiled the project Excel will import the image file _bitmapFile on the next startup (give it some time).

Here’s a sample of what it looks like:

I know it’s not very sophisticated but it was fun to do and I learned something about VSTO 2010. If you’re looking for some really cool stuff to do with Excel I recommend you check out this 3D rendering engine made with Excel.