Windows Azure Language Pack - iis

does anyone know what language packs are installed by default onto a Windows Azure VM? I need to know because I need to support multiple languages for the IIS httpErrors custom errors.

It is only US English. And TimeZone is UTC. You can localize your custom errors page by yourself. The operating system is just in US English.

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Integrating Cortana with Different languages

I am creating an app in which I have integrated Cortana. Its in English version and all is working fine. Now I would like to add one more language(er.French or Italian) I know that I have to add one more commandset with xml:lang tag. But how can I test it? Do I needs to change the phone language also? or with my current English language will work for different language? Please help
Changing the language of the phone is an option, but you can also simply add additional language "packs" to your phone. Go to Settings -> Speech and then open the Speech languages list. You'll see all the supported languages on Windows Phone, along with a download size, which indicates they are not yet installed. Select the language to download and then wait. Installing a new language pack is considered a system update, which means it'll have to reboot the phone and perform the long data migration process. Your phone will be unusable for 20-30 minutes or more. repeat for more languages.
Once a language is installed, you can use Cortana VCD, text-to-speech and speech recognition in your apps in that language.
You can also use the Windows Phone emulator since the images come pre-loaded with all the languages by default. This is a great way to test all the possible languages for an international deployment (provided you are familiar with said languages).
To learn more about speech & Cortana integration in Windows & WP apps, let me recommend this free online course on Microsoft Virtual Academy: http://aka.ms/cortanamva.

Minimal portlet environment for developing?

At our company we are using Liferay for portals. My biggest issue with developing for such a huge framework is that the restart takes a lot of time even on a decent PC. We're trying to use hot deploying were it's possible but this sometimes just doesn't work (dependencies require restart, PermGen space errors occurs sometimes and Liferay have to be killed, etc.)
What i'm thinking about is that with most of our portlet's we are not really using any Liferay specific services just the JSR 168 provided things which is a standard. So i'm wondering if there's any minimal portlet environments available for Jetty or Tomcat which we can use for quicker portlet development? Of course i know that once i encounter a Liferay specific service call this is not an option.
I was testing Apache Pluto earlier which is a full blown but still lightweight portlet container however it works differently the way the portlet wars are assembled (web.xml should be modified) and it breaks compatibility in our build environment with Liferay. So it's not an option but i'm looking for something similar.
I've never used life ray portal, but too much played with GateIn portal because IBM Portal is heay, mostly for quick development on JSR-286 i used gatein
Currently used for visioneo.org, very flexible for every kind of use, large community.
Here is short summary
Liferay Currently used for visioneo.org, very flexible for every kind of use, large community.
eXo Platform Awesome look and set of web applications embedded. Last generation portal, very impressive! Based on Gatein
JBoss EPP Based on gatein, and designed to work with JBoss middleware architecture
Gatein A great portlet container. Light weight, easy to use. But unlike Liferay and eXo, it does not ship with collaborative portlets (Forum, Wiki etc.)
uPortal Beautiful portal, though its CSS are very intrusive: some BIRT styles are broken by uPortal's css.
Pluto Not really a portal, Apache Pluto can be used as a development / test platform. Often considered as a reference for portlet specifications.
Jahia Great look however not based on standards: portlets are supported but not really highlighted, a specific module technology is used instead
You might want to try the JRebel integration for Liferay. There's an introduction Webinar available, I don't know if it fully applies to the current implementation (the webinar is a bit aged) but it will give you an idea of the product/project.

How to define autoscaling rules without using Enterprise Library Config console?

I am working on Windows 7 OS and Visual Studio 2012 Express for Web.
I have tried installing the Enterprise Library Config console but it says that the extension is not installable on this product. Am guessing I need Visual studio 2012 ultimate for it?
Since I cant afford it, is there any way that I can manually write the rules?
I have been reading the mammoth article of WASABi . Its a lot of theory and I have gone through most of it. I understand what kind of rules i should write to scale up or down but its not exactly a tutorial. For starters I dont know where I should store the rules.xml and how i should reference it to my windows azure application. Or where i should mention which roles should the rules.xml apply to etc. I know about AzureWatch which provides a simple UI to define all the scaling rules but again I cant afford it.
Hence I would really appreciate if anyone can throw some light or some sample tutorial etc to help me understand on how to get started on writing the scaling rules manually.
Thanks
Absolutely, you can configure the rules in XML and we worked hard to design a usable schema to help you do that. Also, take a look at Labs 2 and 3 from this set for additional guidance.
Do keep in mind that the built-in autoscaling feature in Windows Azure addresses the basic autoscaling needs without a need for hosting anything. I would recommend to look at that, because if it fits your autoscaling requirements, then it’s easier to use. Wasabi, on the other hand, is more flexible. See my post with the comparative analysis.

Custom discovery with Web Platform Installer

I want to use the Web Platform Installer to perform installations and manage dependencies, but because we store version information in a database, the options for discovery that are supported by the WPI won't work for us.
Based on what I've learned so far setting up a custom feed, I don't even know how you would inject any sort of custom logic into the application, but I thought I'd better throw a question out here before I give up.
Is it possible to add custom logic for how the Web Platform Installer discovers which services have been installed?
Thanks!
As far as I've been able to tell, this is not possible. We ended up coming up with a custom solution to fit our needs.
For those interested, chocolatey (http://nuget.org/List/Packages/chocolatey) is another great utility for custom installations.

Fighting with Protected Mode in Vista

Our application commonly used an ActiveX control to download and install our client on IE (XP and prior), however as our user base has drifted towards more Vista boxes with "Protected Mode" on, we are required to investigate.
So going forward, is it worth the headache of trying to use the protected mode API? Is this going to result in a deluge of dialog boxes and admin rights to do the things our app needs to do (write to some local file places, access some other applications, etc)?
I'm half bent on just adding a non-browser based installer app that will do the dirty work of downloading and installing the client, if need be... this would only need to be installed once and in large corporate structures it could be pushed out by IT.
Are there some other ideas I'm missing?
This client, is it a desktop application and not some software that runs inside the browser? In that case, please just supply a regular download installer application. My personal experience with browser-hosted installers is that they are just confusing and the few I have seen seemed to be poorly coded in some way.
If you use an MSI based installer I'm sure lots of Windows domain administrators will love you too, as Microsoft has tools to deploy MSI based installations onto large sets of machines remotely.
Its far better to do this right than put it off any longer. Vista is Microsoft's way of saying they aren't letting people get away with ignoring security issues any more and encouraging people to update their code.
I'm sure other users here will be able to point you are some MSDN best practices about writing ActiveX controls.
Have you checked out Microsoft's ClickOnce Deployment?
If I remember correctly you can embed a manifests which would help with dealing with protected modes automatically, saving you those headaches with the APIs.
I believe ClickOnce is geared for the same thing your ActiveX installer was designed to do.
Since you say your IT dept could push this out, I assume you could use this kind of technology as well.
Even though you might not be writing applications on the .NET CLR, you can use Visual Studio to generate those manifest and installers for you.

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