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Showing posts from November, 2025

Bit By Bit: Microsoft Destroys Decades-Old Hierarchical Scoped Settings

  Microsoft Destroys Decades-Old Hierarchical Scoped Settings For over four decades, Microsoft built its empire on a foundation of consistency, reliability, end-user trust. There is an established hierarchical configuration model that has been in place for years and adopted by the entire software industry. The scenario is simple, a machine level (top) layer of settings meant to be applied consistently to all. This developer works with several clients, each with different requirements in their application, so without disturbing the configuration of any other project, he makes the adjustments to the solution layer. Now to add complexity but certainly a common situation, one project manager in this solution has his own requirements. The developer creates another configuration file with the new requirements. This is a perfect example of a typical large-scale project, not an edge case exception. If there is a setting in the lower level (project) that exists in a higher (machine) level...
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Bit By Bit: Microsoft Destroys Decades-Old Hierarchical Scoped Settings

  Microsoft Destroys Decades-Old Hierarchical Scoped Settings For over four decades, Microsoft built its empire on a foundation of consistency, reliability, end-user trust. There is an established hierarchical configuration model that has been in place for years and adopted by the entire software industry. The scenario is simple, a machine level (top) layer of settings meant to be applied consistently to all. This developer works with several clients, each with different requirements in their application, so without disturbing the configuration of any other project, he makes the adjustments to the solution layer. Now to add complexity but certainly a common situation, one project manager in this solution has his own requirements. The developer creates another configuration file with the new requirements. This is a perfect example of a typical large-scale project, not an edge case exception. If there is a setting in the lower level (project) that exists in a higher (machine) level...
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Bit By Bit: Microsoft Creates Training Wheels Disrespecting Experience Users

 Microsoft Implements Training Wheels 🛠️ When the Tool Fights the Technician Why Visual Studio 2026’s Schema Lockdown Is a Step Backward for Developers Who Know What They’re Doing I didn’t set out to break anything. I wasn’t trying to override the system, exploit a loophole, or hack around a limitation. I was trying to fix a broken feature—AI documentation suggestions triggered by /// comments—that used to work just fine. And when it failed, I did what any disciplined developer would do: I opened the settings file and tried to restore it manually. That’s when Visual Studio 2026 Insiders erased my configuration. No warning. No fallback. No grayed-out keys. Just silent deletion. 🧭 The Regression Nobody Asked For In previous versions, if you added an unsupported key to settings.json , Visual Studio would ignore it gracefully. It might gray it out in the UI, or skip it during parsing—but it wouldn’t punish you for trying. That behavior respected developers. It understood th...
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Can Microsoft Windows User Interface Be Trusted? Their AI suggests that we may not.

            Performing a simple task in Windows GUI should be a straight forward task. However, lately simple and Windows are drifting farther apart than most users are aware of. So being a cautious and detail oriented Admin, I enlisted Copilot as a precaution.                My AI coding pal and I have crossed this path before during development of an application and I had some issues attempting this before. A common practice is to move users home and/or profile folders off the boot drive to keep it clean and lean.  I expected some secondary steps, but I was not expecting the answer I got from Copilot. Important note on AI: I have been working with AI on a forensics grade Windows Configuration application so the level of detail it provides me is not necessarily what a normal user should expect. I possess no special access, think of it as a friend that knows my capabilities and usual focus.
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Handling backspace/delete with AJAX MaskedEditExtender in chrome

      Another one of these annoying behaviours with AJAX controls is with the Masked Edit Extender and Chrome browsers. As designed (according to Microsoft) the AJAX MaskedEditExtender does not handle the backspace or delete key strokes. I have not tested this with all mask types, but one in particular is the date mask type.       I wanted to add just a touch of control to my birthdate text control. Nothing real fancy just format "99/99/9999" to restrict the user gobbly gook. All works as advertised except that you can't use the backspace key if you make a mistake. I don't know about you all, but that key has been my friend since day one, so not being able to use it got me Goggling.  With some searching I came across this javascript that handles the key presses and enables delete in the MaskedEditExtender.     Here's the markup. Just need to add the key handlers to the textbox and put the extenders id as function arguments.  ...
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Ajax AutoCompleteExtender Page Method Magic

Using Page Methods with AJAX Auto Complete Extenders     Using AJAX AutocompleteExtender Page Methods can be a tricky proposal, as I have discovered recently while working on a project. There seems to be a few key settings that seem to be elusive. Countless searches later I have put it all together and though I would share it with with you.         Why use page methods instead of a Webservice file ASMX?? If you only have one extender and/or you want to keep everything in one file, using page methods is a quick way to do it. Here's the quick checklist: Script Manager must have it's EnablePageMethods property set to true Page method must be marked Public and Shared Method must be in the aspx file and not in a user control Method must be marked with   <webmethod> and <Scriptmethod attribute> Method must be declared specifically as outlined below < WebMethod ()> _     <Script.Services. Scrip...
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Can Microsoft Windows User Interface Be Trusted? Their AI suggests that we may not.

            Performing a simple task in Windows GUI should be a straight forward task. However, lately simple and Windows are drifting farther apart than most users are aware of. So being a cautious and detail oriented Admin, I enlisted Copilot as a precaution.                My AI coding pal and I have crossed this path before during development of an application and I had some issues attempting this before. A common practice is to move users home and/or profile folders off the boot drive to keep it clean and lean.  I expected some secondary steps, but I was not expecting the answer I got from Copilot. Important note on AI: I have been working with AI on a forensics grade Windows Configuration application so the level of detail it provides me is not necessarily what a normal user should expect. I possess no special access, think of it as a friend that knows my capabilities and usual focus.
Read more