Virtual Subdomains on IIS7

I have been googling on net to find out how to generate virtual subdomains for my application which hosted on IIS7 and developed with ASP.net, but could not find a appropriate information.

What do i mean Virtual sub domains?

1. when user types http://subdomain.DomainName.com it should get hit your server and
2. Rewrites/redirects to formatted url based on the rules set in URL Rewrite module in IIS7 ( say will redirect to http://DomainName.com?userid=Anysubdoamin)

To accomplish the point 1 mentioned above, you need to set the wild card DNS entries on DNS name server for the sub domains. This will ensure that what ever the sub domain name you give will hit the server.

To accomplish the point 2, you need to use the url rewirte module and need write the rules to transform the sub domain into ASP.net engine understandable format.

Save Office files as PDF or XPS files with MS Office 2007

Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS, office 2007 add-in allows to save or export a word document as either PDF or XPS format. Now, you don’t have to depend on any other products for creating PDF files.

What are these formats?

Portable Document Format (PDF) is compressed format, that takes less disk space than DOC or DOCX formats. This format is very useful for sharing and publishing the files.

XML Paper Specification (XPS) is propriety format of Microsoft. This has been using as, an alternate to the existing and widely used formats. You need to install viewer to view XPS files.

What are supporting applications?

This add-in will work with the following office programs

• Microsoft Office Access 2007
• Microsoft Office Excel 2007
• Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007
• Microsoft Office OneNote 2007
• Microsoft Office OneNote 2007
• Microsoft Office Publisher 2007
• Microsoft Office Visio 2007
• Microsoft Office Word 2007

Where to download?

Go to Microsoft Download center and search for PDF. You will find links to download

MS Office Themes

Most interesting features of Office 2007 is themes. Microsoft has more focused on attracting the users with the magic of UI. With the themes you can change the appearance of MS office as you do in Windows OS.

By default Office 2007 comes with only three themes Blue, Silver and Black which is very disappoint one, and does not provide any customization options.

How to change the Theme?

• Click on Windows button on left top corner, and click on Word Options

• Select Popular option, on right pane select the choose Color scheme.

Disable drag and drop in MS Office 2007

Have ever noticed using drag and drop function, for moving the text around the document?

Most of the time users don’t use the drag and drop functionality to move the text around the document, instead general usage is copy and paste.

If you don’t want to use this, you can disable this option

• Click on the MS Office button on the left top corner, and click on Word Options

• Select Advanced in word options window

• In right pane, under Editing options uncheck Allow text to be dragged and dropped

Internet Explorer in Firefox

Firefox does not support some languages to render. Right now it is possible to view your own regional language sites, in Internet Explorer, as it supports more number of languages. So to view non supporting sites, you will have to open a separate instance of an IE.

IE Tab plug-in allows to open IE inside Firefox, this is a cool extension of Firefox and very useful if you don’t want to see IE on your taskbar.

Steps to install and configure:

• Install IE Tab from here, after installation you need to restart the Firefox to take the effect of this extension.

• After restarting go to view->Toolbars and select Customize… option

• From Customize Toolbar pop up window drag and drop IE Tab icon over to tool bar.

• Click on IE Tab icon to view a page in IE, you can also do the same by right clicking on tab and selecting Switch rendering engine from the context menu.

Finally you can configure the IE Tab from Tools->Add-ons, under Extension choose options button of IE Tab.

Minimized tabs in Firefox

You would have been very much happy with the tabbed feature of the Firefox. But when you open more no of pages, you need to scroll across the tabs for invisible ones, which is the least one you probably want to do. Here is a tool Feviconize Tab, allow you to minimize the tabs, so that you can get more room to keep more tabs.

How to install and use it?

• Install Feviconize Tab from add-ons of Mozilla’s site.

• After installing the plug-in go to Tools select Add-ons option.

• From Add-Ons popup window, select Extensions option

• Click on Options button of Feviconize Tab to configure it.

• Chose your desire option to minimize tab from Quick Feviconize options ( preferably Double click). This is more like a short cut key to minimize tab.

• Click OK, close all pop up windows. Try minimizing tabs with selected short cut option.

You can also minimize the tabs from context menu, to do this, right clicking on the tab, and select Feviconize Tab option

Firefox Themes

Have you got bored with the default theme of the Firefox? Yes, and then look at the Themes feature, which is one the major attraction of the Firefox.

Go to the Tools and select Add-ons. Choose the Themes option from pop up window. On bottom right corner click on Get Themes link which will takes to Mozilla’s sites there you can download wide range of themes of your choice.

Samples...

Some useful links to download

Smashingmagazine

takebacktheweb

Customize