Grant Holliday

As Darren explained, we’ve been working on a new ASP.NET 2.0 application for a client using the ASP.NET Web Application Projects (preview) download.

We discovered that you lose design-time support for Master Pages if you set the masterPageFile in the <pages> section of web.config (the recommended way), rather than at the top of every web form, like so:

<pages masterPageFile="~/Site.Master" />

You get a nice error control that says “Content controls can only be used in a content page”

The workaround that Darren came up with was to set MasterPageFile to an empty string at the top of the aspx web form.

<%@ Page Language="C#" MasterPageFile="" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="WebForm1.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebApplication4.WebForm1" %>

This works in design-time, (except  you can’t see the master page content), but what I have found is that it doesn’t work at run-time! You end up with an exception:

System.Web.HttpException: Content controls are allowed only in content page that references a master page.

And since we’ve specified a blank Master Page at the page level, it seems to override the setting at the web.config level.

The Solution

As far as I can tell, you just have to cave in and set the masterPageFile at the top of every Web Form, until they fix this.

Schneier’s Security blog provides and endless supply of interesting reading, some of my recent favourites are:

• Jump the corporate firewall by handing out CDs to employees as they go to work
• School Bus Drivers get counter-terrorist training in the US
• Lost your conference badge? It used to be cheaper to get a replacement badge than a second membership

Chainsaws

Last week after using the self check-in services and choosing a good seat, I went to the bag drop-off counter. Another airport employee approached the counter and spoke to the clerk, the conversation went like this:

Just letting you know – we had a passenger check-in about 1/2 an hour ago. The security screening picked up a chainsaw with petrol in one of their bags. CASA has been called, etc.

It was the source for further entertainment on the flight. The safety brief went like this:

Could you please ensure all mobile phones, laptop computers, handheld devices and chainsaws are switched off.

which got a nice chuckle from the 737 load of passengers.

Where I’m working at the moment, the desktop admins have scheduled a full-disk virus scan to start at 12.15PM every day.

That means that every computer in the building is virtually unusable for about 30 minutes while the disk churns and the processor maxes out.

I question the usefulness of full-disk virus scans. If you’re practising safe-computing by using a restricted-privileges user account, running real-time virus scanning and have a decent email border scanning solution, is there really any need to annoy your employees every day?

I guess this explains why the cafeteria is always full at 12:20. I wonder when people will start to schedule a pskill.exe to run at 12:16 every day, I know I would.