Customer-friendly upgrade policies for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008

Do not pay more money if you can have a full version for less money

Customer-friendly upgrade policies for Microsoft Expression products

Recently a colleague of mine recommanded the MS Expression products to me. These tools are very useful and I like the upgrade policies most.

Word 2007: Remove database in mail merge

Remove database in mail merge for Microsoft Word 2007

Map AttachedProperties

Currently I’m trying to implement a reusable control for reflection in WPF. I come to the conclusion that XAML is a very easy way to achieve such an effect but it is not the ‘modern abstract’ way. So after a while I found a very nice example which operates with AttachedProperties to display a reflection (see Reflecting on Reflections).

But the author missed to copy all AttachedProperties for a Panel from the element that has reflection  to the new Panel (which is responsible for the reflection at last).

Here you can find a first and rapid implementation to gain all necessary AttachedProperties for Panels:

DivX Pro for free (again)

You can download the pro-version of DivX and get your registration key for free via mail.

Check it right here: http://www.divx.com/dff/index.php?lang=en&version=win

UPDATE: It’s over!

A long time ago…

… since I wrote my last article. But there were many things to do.

Finally I graduated from university and made my degree in computer science. In a few days I’ll start with my new job and I will be responsible for a redesign with WPF. Wow, that’s great and I’m very excited.

Now all went well, I’m lucky and full of power. So I will continue this blog (in english).

Bye,
Alex

Deobfuscate fonts in an XPS document

XPS is the new portable format from Microsoft. The file structure consists of several parts, which includes the text (the so called “fixed documents”) and, of course, all resources. Images and fonts are embedded in a specific folder but as a general rule fonts are obfuscated to “protect” the copyrights of the author.

To extract the text (which is by the way a subset of XAML) all resources have to be extracted, too. But obfuscated fonts cannot be read, therefore a decryption is required.
The encryption is rather simple: The first 32 bytes are XOR with the GUID of the file (it is also documented in the MSDN). To reverse all font files repeat the exclusive disjunction with the GUID (the file name implies the GUID, thank you) and you will receive the original source (for a better understanding see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XOR).

I attached a little example. Pass the obfuscated font path and streamOut will return the deobfuscated stream. To save the stream to disc, call streamOut.Position = 0 first.

Edit 2008-10-26:
Here you can find my solution:
http://www.bremora.com/index.php/xps-font-deobfuscator

Kinofilm “Gegen die Wand” kostenlos im Internet

Der NDR strahl den mehrfach ausgezeichneten Kinofilm “Gegen die Wand” kostenlos als Flashstream im Internet aus.

Den Link gibt es hier.

DivX Pro kostenlos

Der Video-Codec in der Pro-Version ist für kurze Zeit KOSTENLOS unter DivX erhältlich. Wahrscheinlich im Zuge einer Werbekampagne kann das Programm heruntergeladen werden und man bekommt per E-Mail den Registrierungsschlüssel zugeschickt.

Eine Anleitung und den Download gibt es hier.

EDIT: Die Aktion ist schon abgelaufen, doch wer die Datei schon heruntergeladen hat, kann immer noch den Schlüssel anfordern! 

Expression Blend Release Candidate 1

Der erste RC des WPF-Designers Expression Blend ist nun auf den Seiten von Microsoft verfügbar.

Der Download und der Key für eine 180-Tage-Testversion befinden sich hier.

EDIT:  Expression Blend ist zur Zeit nicht mehr als RC verfügbar. Stattdessen kann nun die Releaseversion 60 Tage lang getestet werden.