Why not ending URL with a slash resulted in 404 File not found error

Came accross an issue I have not encountered before - excluding trailing slash after URL.

The path to the web application I was accessing (sent to me in an e-mail) was http://ServerName/MainDirectory/Subdirectory. When I opened it in IE, I received 404 error - File not found.

The thing is that traditonally, when URL is pointing to a file, it does not include a trailing slash, but URL pointing to a directory does. So whenever the user does not put a trailing slash into the URL, the web server looks for a file with that name as opposed to a directory. leaving off a trailing slash results in a redirect if the file with that name is not found and goes to the folder with that name and looks for a default file in the directory. And that is why it takes slightly longer to load the URL without a trailing slash.

In my case I got an error and was quite puzzled as to why I get an error instead of redirect. I looked in IIS Manager and saw something strange - not only the application directory was configured as an application but all its subfolders. So that was why redirect didn't take place - web server did not see a subfolder as a subfolder but as an application.

I am going to look into it further and try to figure out why did developer configured each subdirectory as an application...

How to utilize Microsoft SharePoint via Visual Studio .NET

First download appropriate installer for Visual Studio 2008 Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=14154 - VSeWWSv13_x64.exe

Then, download Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=14117 - SharePoint.exe

If you attempt to install Visual Studio 2008 Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, it will ask you to first install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, which, in turn, will give you an installation error. There is one thing you need to do before attempting to install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: Run SharePoint on Vista Installation Helper File. It is created for Windows Vista, but works just fine on Windows 7 and can be downloaded from here

http://community.bamboosolutions.com/media/p/193/download.aspx

After downloading Vista Installation Helper File, run WssVista.msi.

After install is compete, run C:\Program Files (x86)\WssOnVista\Setup\SetupLauncher.exe and when it prompts, navigate to SharePoint.exe that you have downloaded in previous steps.

After all this is done, you can safely install Visual Studio 2008 Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 - the first file you have downloaded.

Now, in order to add SharePint dll to your project, right-click on the Visual Studio project name, select Add Reference and browse to "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\ISAPI\Microsoft.SharePoint.dll" and add Microsoft.SharePoint directove to your .NET class.

Changing desktop wallpaper on Windows 7 programmatically

All the programmatic wallpaper changes from previous versions of Windows do not work on either Windows 7 or Vista. I have tried many different ways and many technologies untill i found a way that worked on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

I created a dll using C#. Here is the C# code for it:

[DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto)]
private static extern Int32 SystemParametersInfo(UInt32 action, UInt32 uParam, String vParam, UInt32 winIni);
private static readonly UInt32 SPI_SETDESKWALLPAPER = 0x14;
private static readonly UInt32 SPIF_UPDATEINIFILE = 0x01;
private static readonly UInt32 SPIF_SENDWININICHANGE = 0x02;

public void SetWallpaper(string path, ref string err)
{
    try
    {
        if (File.Exists(path))
        {
            SystemParametersInfo(SPI_SETDESKWALLPAPER, 3, path, SPIF_UPDATEINIFILE | SPIF_SENDWININICHANGE);
             err = string.Empty;

         }
         else
         {
              throw new Exception("Path '" + path + "' does not exist!");
         }
      }
      catch (Exception ex)
      {
           err = ex.Message;
      }

}

The function above accepts a file path of a wallpaper image as an argument along with a variable passed by reference that will return an error message in case of a failure. An empty string will be returned in case of a success.