I’ve added code like below to solve the problem:

string appName = "";
try
{
    appName = Path.GetFileName(Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().Location);
    const string IE_EMULATION = @"Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION";

    using (var fbeKey = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey(IE_EMULATION, true))

    { 

        fbeKey.SetValue(appName, 9000, RegistryValueKind.DWord);
 
    }
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
    MessageBox.Show(appName + "\n" + ex.ToString(), "Unexpected error setting browser mode!");
}

There’s a special registry key that must be set before IE9 loads and is navigated … it must be set to the name of your application. Oddly, not the full path to your application, just the name of your executable.

You may want to delete this registry setting when your application exits.

WPF for example, could do something like this:

<DataTemplate DataType="{x:Type local:Task}">
  <StackPanel>
    <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=TaskName}" />
    <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=Description}"/>
    <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=Priority}"/>
  </StackPanel>
</DataTemplate>

When the Task type as shown above was found in a list, it would have been rendered as a StackPanel with three TextBlocks automatically. That rocked.

WinRT (Metro/Xaml, Windows 8 applications) are missing the DataType property of DataTemplates. Yes, some of you might say it’s not missing as it’s V1, but given the heritage of Windows 8 Xaml applications, I consider it missing.

While an exact duplicate of the functionality isn’t possible, it’s relatively simple to get close.

<GridView
    x:Name="itemGridView"
    ItemsSource="{Binding Source={StaticResource groupedItemsViewSource}}"
    ItemTemplateSelector="{StaticResource typedTemplateSelector}"
    SelectionMode="None"
    IsItemClickEnabled="True">

Take the GridView above for example (using the template project in Visual Studio 2012).

I’ve assigned the ItemTemplateSelector to an instance of the TypedTemplateSelector class I’ve created.

In the Resources for the Page, I added a custom DataTemplate:

I’ve added a DataTemplate with a Key called Type : SampleDataItem (without the spaces though – they’re auto converted by my WordPress theme to a squiggle face: ).

There’s nothing special about the Template, just the name. It must start with Type:.

Here the custom template selector is being constructed in the Resources:

    <local:TypedTemplateSelector x:Key="typedTemplateSelector"
                                 DefaultTemplateKey="Standard250x250ItemTemplate" />
</Page.Resources>

Here’s the class that you’d need below. It has a caching feature (IsCacheEnabled) to prevent the search from occurring more than once for a key. It’s set to True by default. When used, the object searches from the current Item through all Parents trying to match the type of the object (via the VisualTreeHelper). Only the ClassName is used as programmed below (and not the full namespace). You could easily change this behavior by removing the Split and Last calls.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using Windows.UI.Xaml;
using Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls;
using Windows.UI.Xaml.Media;

namespace WiredPrairie.TemplateSelector
{
    public class TypedTemplateSelector : DataTemplateSelector
    {
        private Dictionary<string, DataTemplate> _cachedDataTemplates;

        /// <summary>
        /// Fallback value for DataTemplate
        /// </summary>
        public string DefaultTemplateKey { get; set; }

        /// <summary>
        /// Cache search results for a type (defaults to Enabled)
        /// </summary>
        public bool IsCacheEnabled { get; set; }

        public TypedTemplateSelector()
        {
            IsCacheEnabled = true;
        }

        protected override Windows.UI.Xaml.DataTemplate SelectTemplateCore(object item, Windows.UI.Xaml.DependencyObject container)
        {
            // grab the Type name. Type will be searched as Type:NAME as shown below
            /*
                <DataTemplate x:Key="Type:SampleDataItem">
                    <Grid HorizontalAlignment="Left" Width="250" Height="250">
                        <TextBlock Text="{Binding Title}" />
                    </Grid>
                </DataTemplate>
             */
            string key = item != null ? string.Format("Type:{0}", item.GetType().Name.Split('.').Last()) : DefaultTemplateKey;
            DataTemplate dt = GetCachedDataTemplate(key);
            try
            {
                if (dt != null) { return dt; }

                // look at all parents (visual parents)
                FrameworkElement fe = container as FrameworkElement;
                while (fe != null)
                {
                    dt = FindTemplate(fe, key);
                    if (dt != null) { return dt; }
                    // if you were to just look at logical parents,
                    // you'd find that there isn't a Parent for Items set
                    fe = VisualTreeHelper.GetParent(fe) as FrameworkElement;
                }

                dt = FindTemplate(null, key);
                return dt;
            }
            finally
            {
                if (dt != null)
                {
                    AddCachedDataTemplate(key, dt);
                }
            }
        }

        private DataTemplate GetCachedDataTemplate(string key)
        {
            if (!IsCacheEnabled) { return null; }
            VerifyCachedDataTemplateStorage();
            if (_cachedDataTemplates.ContainsKey(key))
            {
                return _cachedDataTemplates[key];
            }

            return null;
        }

        private void AddCachedDataTemplate(string key, DataTemplate dt)
        {
            if (!IsCacheEnabled) { return; }
            VerifyCachedDataTemplateStorage();
            _cachedDataTemplates[key] = dt;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Delay creates storage
        /// </summary>
        private void VerifyCachedDataTemplateStorage()
        {
            if (_cachedDataTemplates == null)
            {
                _cachedDataTemplates = new Dictionary<string, DataTemplate>();
            }

        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Returns a template
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="source">Pass null to search entire app</param>
        /// <param name="key"></param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        private static DataTemplate FindTemplate(object source, string key)
        {
            var fe = source as FrameworkElement;
            object obj;
            ResourceDictionary rd = fe != null ? fe.Resources : App.Current.Resources;
            if (rd.TryGetValue(key, out obj))
            {
                DataTemplate dt = obj as DataTemplate;
                if (dt != null)
                {
                    return dt;
                }
            }
            return null;

        }
    }
}

I didn’t know it was this simple, and am posting this information on my blog so I find it in the future, but hopefully this will help someone else!

I’ve created a number of batch files over the years which routinely copy files from one location to another, usually as part of a backup strategy. However, I’ve always just hard-coded the paths of the drives, etc. into the batch files. While this works for drives which are permanently attached (or internal), it’s more fragile with external (flash/USB) drives. As I’ve never understood the logic of drive letter selection in Windows (letters usually are the same, but occasionally not), it meant that I was tweaking the drive letter in the batch file before running. Annoying, but it worked.

Thanks to more than a few web sites, I now know there is a much better way!

There are basically two decent options, depending on your scenario and requirements.

Option 1

If you are using drive letters (and not a mapped drive\network share), then you can use the variable %CD%.

It contains the “current directory.” So, that actually may be more than you wanted if the current directory isn’t the root of the drive.

Simple, just chop it off:

%CD:~0,2%

The colon and tilde character is a flag which indicates that a substring should be returned rather than the entire string. The first value is the zero-based starting index and the second is the number of characters you want to return:

The above starts at character 4, and includes 3 characters.

For fun, you can use negative values:

With only a single negative parameter, it returns the number of characters requested starting with the rightmost character.  (Check here for a bunch of examples on string manipulation.)

So, you could use knowledge in a batch file:

The above line uses robocopy (available in modern versions of Windows without an extra install) to copy from the folder \\server\Backups to the current path appended with \server\backups. So, if the batch file containing the robocopy command was executing on the J: drive, the resulting robocopy command would be:

By using the :~0,2 syntax, regardless of the folder the batch file is located in, it always copies to the root of the J drive (as the first two characters are J and : ).

Option 2

The other option is a bit different as it only works in a batch or command file.

Parameter zero (%0) in batch file represents the full path of the currently executing file (path and filename). The (dp) modifiers expand the value to be the “drive” and the “path,” excluding the file name.

You can manipulate the value as well:

I’m immediately going to adopt the first option into all of my “robocopy” batch files.