You may have noticed the zoom keyboard shortcuts (CTRL+mouse wheel forward/back, CTRL+PLUS SIGN, and CTRL+MINUS SIGN) are not enabled by default when hosting the WebBrowser control if you have installed IE7, while it does without any problem with older IE versions. This was now an issue for a long time in RSS Bandit, that we couldn't fix. Yesterday I did a research again and found this page: MSDN about IZoomEvents. We already implemented the font size change using a menu (see KB 304103) but it offers not the same usability that you have with older IE x and loose if you switch from IEx to IE7 and run RSS Bandit. Now it works again like a charm and for your convenience I repeat the important part you have to apply in your own IE hosting code:

"To enable this behavior, call IWebBrowser2::ExecWB with OLECMDID_OPTICAL_ZOOM, passing 100 in pvaIn. Once set, the keyboard shortcuts remain available as long as the host navigates to HTML content because the same instance of MSHTML is used. However, if the host navigates to Active documents, such as XML or Portable Document Format (PDF) files, optical zoom is disabled and will need to be enabled again."

What the docs are not mention: you should call this at a time the hosted control is visible and fully initialized, or you will get wired COM exceptions...

Today I helped a coworker to get the local mapped network drives using WMI instead of COM Interop/native windows API. Just to keep the code as a reminder and help others with the same problem I provide it here.

The result of the code below is in general the same you will get if you hit the "net use" command at the windows command shell prompt. For further infos and reading I suggest http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394173.aspx (Win32_LogicalDisk; MSDN WMI Reference); for immediate results of query the WMI you should use Scriptomatic (download from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=09DFC342-648B-4119-B7EB-783B0F7D1178&displaylang=en).

Little bit optimization is yet possible providing the drive type in the WQL as a where clause parameter, so here it is:

/// <summary>

/// Container for Share entries

/// </summary>

public struct SharePathEntry

{

  public string Name;

  public string Path;

  public SharePathEntry(string n, string p) {

    Name = n;

    Path = p;

  }

}



// for other types see: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394173.aspx

const int NetworkDriveType = 4;



public static List<SharePathEntry> GetLocalShares()

{

  List<SharePathEntry> allLocalShares = new List<SharePathEntry>(); // a container 



  WqlObjectQuery objectQuery = new WqlObjectQuery("select DriveType,DeviceID,ProviderName from Win32_LogicalDisk");

  ManagementScope scope = new ManagementScope(@"\\.\root\cimv2"); // local WMI namespace

  scope.Options.Impersonation = ImpersonationLevel.Impersonate; 

  scope.Options.EnablePrivileges = true; 

  ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher(scope, objectQuery);

  foreach (ManagementObject share in searcher.Get())

  {

    int driveType = Convert.ToInt32(share["DriveType"]);

    if (driveType  == NetworkDriveType) {

      object objName = share["DeviceID"];

      object objPath = share["ProviderName"];

      if (null != objName && null != objPath)

      {

        allLocalShares.Add(new SharePathEntry(objName.ToString(), objPath.ToString()));

      }

    }

  }

  return allLocalShares;

}

I read about portable apps (applications, that are running from a stick without any further installation) in my favourite magazine and it just took a hour to set the sources to get RSS Bandit running from a stick:

There is at least one issue left: the .NET framework must be installed at the machine running the portable Bandit...

Tomorrow I will walk to different machines to get it more tested.

Just because requesting the Handle (IntPtr, see remarks section) will create the handle internally in case it is IntPtr.Zero and may cause issues on disposing or closing! How to get around? Just use the this.IsHandleCreated property...

Today I stumbled over a wired issue in both VS.IDE 2003 and VS.IDE 2005: they did not compiled my project anymore! Error was:

Compiler Error CS1583 (CSC583.tmp is not a valid Win32 resource ...

I just refreshed the french resources, so my first thought was it also caused that error, but I'm wrong. Just before this change I fixed a issue with our Vista Icon - added more ico image resolutions - and also a 256x256 Vista compressed image. What I forgot: I did not compiled after the icon change! All the google'd answers did not matched my case. I simply removed the 256x256 icon image - then it compiled successfully!

So my question is: how do I compile a .NET application with a Vista compressed icon? Do I have to compile under Vista? But how about VS 2003?

I'm now again at BASTA! 2006, Mainz - Germany. Had alreda some interesting discussions here with some of the speakers, also the SOA architecture day yesterday was very interesting. Lesson learned: SOA is not really new, and it is not a technology. Just a idea to live.

Most interesting session today was about advanced debugging, by Ingo Rammer. He introduced some tools I never heard of and pointed out how to catch the most often issues debugging is used for, such as memory leaks in Windows Forms applications, or how to debug a CLR windows service. We had look inside WinDbg - what a cryptic tool, just remembered my time using the vi/unix years ago...

Most impressive was the keynote by Jason Zanders the "father of .NET Framework 3.0" today: about .NET Framework 3.0 and Vista. Live programming on Vista (RC) in Python using CLR 3.0, WPF and speech support (build in in CLR 3.0). Just one issue: the presentation machine with the slides just stopped working and required a (live) reboot. Lesson to learn: don't use beta software to just show slides

Just got this message from my IE 6 this moment:

Yes, indeed!. Short moment after: yesss, I do. Once again: yes!
Did I got a silent "featured" security update last week?

Today I installed the Visual Web Developer/C# 2005 Express editions and just want to get the simple Homepage template running. The express editions install also the new MSDE 2005 Express (silently) - so I assumed it would run out of the box.

Bang! SQL failure: "Failed to generate a user instance of SQL Server due to a failure in starting the process for the user instance". Yes, I read all the articles I found at the net here and here and there: no success. Now are three hours fighting the problem are lost, out of ideas. I installed all of them as a normal domain user (member of the local adimistrators group) while I'm offline from the company's local network. Is this also a kind of remote desktop issue (and if so: a bug within the OS)? Should it gone if I would work from within the local area network@work?

And: I really miss the system tray console window to control the SQL Server Express engine like that of v2003...

Back from vacations today I found the article Shell Extensions for .NET Assemblies at codeproject.com: really useful tool (must have) to get our projects organized (old VB6 stuff vs. newer .NET stuff). It visually distinguish between normal windows DLL's and .NET assemblies and shows if the assembly is signed via a public key token column.

Dunno if anyone else ever noticed that small resizable dialog form issue of the "Replace" dialog within Visual Studio 7.1 (.NET):

At least the form widgets does not resize as the form resize. But please keep it resizable if it gets fixed! Or is it already done...?

PS: the missnig picture is now there.

Double check your mails you get from xyz.com comercial domains! They may have viruses attached with exactly the name of the domain xyz.com
[Clever Virus Attack]

Yeah: it was not as difficult to add the new topic, once I figured out how to get it work

See http://www.pinvoke.net/default.aspx/urlmon.FindMimeFromData and get your MIME sniffing work...

Recently I found a link from the Rss Bandit referrer stats that points to the Microsoft Technet Security Site: there you can read about RSS, but more important you find a link to the security bulletin feed! Subscribed.

Today I stumbled over this little balloon window popping up as I pressed Ctrl-C on a simple textbox with password char set to '*':

BTW: who wonders about the green progressbar - it is a password quality meter you may know from Mozilla browser...

Doug Lawty posted at Weblogs@ ASP.NET a very useful tip: don't press Alt-PrtScn to get a clipboard copy of the content of a messagebox (as a image), instead use simply Ctrl-C (just text)! It also works for .NET messageboxs like the Rss Bandit About box:

---------------------------
About RSS Bandit
---------------------------
RSS Bandit 1.2.0.114 written by
* Dare Obasanjo Obasanjo (www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/)
* Torsten Rendelmann (TorstenR, www.rendelmann.info/blog/)
* and all the active members of RSS Bandit community.

Credits:
* Mike Krueger (#ZipLib)
* Chris Lovett (SgmlReader)
* SandBar Copyright (c) 2004 by Tim Dawson, http://www.divil.co.uk/net/
* Portions Copyright ©2002-2004 The Genghis Group (www.genghisgroup.com)
* sourceforge.net team (Project hosting)
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

But maybe that's little bit too much to just get the version number copied

Today I got a technical support mail from my e-mail provider (GMX):

Does it looks like a real warning? Yes, reading the first two lines of the mail in my OL2003 preview (I'm careful) of the inbox I opened that (bad! But who knows?) and got another warning:

Scan type:  Realtime Protection Scan
Event:  Virus Found!
Virus name: W32.Beagle@mm!zip
File:  Readme.zip
Location:  Mail System

Morality: spamers and worm/virus mass mail senders are real humans. They did not simply take over random e-mail addresses to spoof the sender address, they impersonate it! Fortunately nothing badly happens to my system :-/

You are carefully enough?

Inspired by Stuart Hamilton's post I got my first time practice today with Mozilla XUL extension programming: hacked together a working extension for firefox to enable right-click subscription of feeds. The context menu extension for Internet Explorer is already implemented and will be available with the next Rss Bandit release.

These extensions work the same way: if you have a default feed: Uri scheme handler registered, this handler will get called via the extensions. So it should work not only with Rss Bandit, but also with SharpReader, NewsGator and other popular aggregators that support the feed: Uri scheme!
Here are some screenshots:

• Internet Explorer
• Firefox (tested with Gecko/20040206 Firefox/0.8)

Peace!

Update: the link to the extension should now work...

What to write about blank? An empty post? Nope. Today I want to ask a simple question: why does Windows starts always Internet Explorer if you provide the pseudo-url about:blank on the command line? At least one user complains about that in Rss Bandit. I used the following line of code to start the configured default browser:

Process.Start(url);

That works fine as long we have a valid url unequal to about:blank. I'd never configured my default browser over Setup Program Access and Defaults, thought it is not needed because the browsers detect that state by itself. And it seems, some of the web browsers does not handle it well: configuring Firefox over it's options only as the default browser seems to be not enough. IE gets called for about:blank. Switching via Setup Program Access and Defaults does it well: Firefox get's called also for about:blank. What is the save way to handle such cases? A user expects if he says open url in default browser to get it opened in the correct browser, also if it is a empty blank page. So I really have to read/deal again with the registry? The hive HKLM\SOFTWARE\Clients\StartMenuInternet seems to play the role to store the settings of dialog Setup Program Access and Defaults. No other way around this?

As a RSS Bandit user you know we are hosting a IE Control. So we have to consider all the security vulnerability related to Internet Explorer. Don Park pointed to Zap the Dingbat, that provides a exploit to test Url spoofing. We use our own Url toolbar, so my first idea was: we should be aware of this. But the used control is not under our control, so I really had to test it out. Here is the result:

You see: it displays the full address not cutted after the magic character... Doh!

Thoemmi.NET posted here today, that he does not feel right. He is right. Outlook 2003 bars are not enough to get the right feeling: so I just added this feature today because it seems to be easy. And yes, it was and it's more powerful than OL2003..., currently only available via GDN source control (build 1.2.0.63 and higher). You can select the new style(s) from the "Feed Details" Tab context menu.

[DllImport("wininet.dll", CharSet=CharSet.Auto , SetLastError=true)]
public static extern bool InternetGetCookie (
  string url, string name, StringBuilder data, ref int dataSize);

That's it. To wrap the call we define a wrapper function:

private static string RetrieveIECookiesForUrl(string url) {
    StringBuilder cookieHeader = new StringBuilder(new String(' ', 256), 256);
    int datasize = cookieHeader.Length;
    if (!InternetGetCookie(url, null, cookieHeader, ref datasize)) {
        if (datasize < 0) 
            return String.Empty;
        cookieHeader = new StringBuilder(datasize); // resize with new datasize
        InternetGetCookie(url, null, cookieHeader, ref datasize);
    }
    return cookieHeader.ToString();
}

OK, now we have the cookie content string, that looks usually like this: "KEY=Value; KEY2=what ever". Now we simply create managed cookies by creating instances of System.Net.Cookie. But stop! Did we really have to parse the cookie content string (aka cookie headers) to create the instances?

Again, good news: no, we did not have to do this. There is already build in support provided by the CookieContainer class we also need to set on the HttpWebRequest! The code:

public static CookieContainer GetCookieContainerForUrl(Uri url) {
    CookieContainer container = new CookieContainer();
    string cookieHeaders = RetrieveIECookiesForUrl(url.AbsoluteUri);
    if (cookieHeaders.Length > 0) {
        try { container.SetCookies(url, cookieHeaders); } catch (CookieException){}
    }
    return container;
}

Done

Strait adrenaline. Inspired by a TV spot this week I visited the ghostrider site: special care to the trailers! Unbelievable that this is reality, not a stunt! I didn't recommend to drive this style, but you can get the kick...

Funny e-Mail client. Accidently found IncrediMail. And I thought, only Mac users really have fun with their machines and programs. On my machine I had some trouble importing my contacts and mails from Outlook 2003, it crashs each time I tried, maybe I should give the next Beta a chance.

Don't think so: Outlook 2003 Sucks Ass. Bigtime. [Chris Pirillo] I'm not always with Microsoft, but I really like Outlook2003 (compared to v.2000). I'm happy with the hotmail account integration, search folders, per account signatures, my last beta of Cloudmark Spam filter still runs, the new GUI. I don't like: my rules does not apply/work in Offline mode, archived mails (.pst) are incompatible with 2000 archives. Constructional criticism is a better base to discuss on.

Found this via [Don Park's Daily Habit], and checked: it also works for Windows 2000 -

How to replace Notepad.exe on Windows XP/2000

Windows XP/2000 has file protection so Notepad.exe will get restored if you just replace the file with renamed Sc1.exe. Follow these steps:

1. Download Sc1.exe from SourceForge or Notepad2 and rename it to Notepad.exe
2. Save a copy of the original Notepad.exe somewhere.
3. Replace Notepad.exe in following three locations (order is significant):
    
   • %WINDIR%\ServicePackFiles\i386 (if any SP is installed)
   • %WINDIR%\System32\DllCache
   • %WINDIR%\System32
   • %WINDIR%
     
     *%WINDIR% is your Windows folder (i.e. C:\Windows)
      
4. Press Cancel when a warning dialog appears.

That's it. Enjoy.

Update: have a look at simonguest's post how to get that work on Vista too.

"Thank God for Chris Brumme's blog. Too bad most people who develop for Microsoft platforms get their information from MSDN and the docs not random blogs." [Dare Obasanjo Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life]

Right, such important parts should be published on MSDN. But to get more background informations is also one of the reasons I read so much MS blogs...

Found this these days:

Windows XP ships with a number of icon overlays.

• A small arrow. Everybody knows this one: It's the shortcut overlay.
• A hand, palm up. This is the "sharing" overlay. A folder with this overlay is the root of a file share.
• A downward-pointing blue arrow. This is the "to be written to CD" overlay.
• A pair of blue swirling arrows. This sometimes baffles people. This means that the item is available offline. (You have to enable offline folders to get this.)
• A black clock. This really baffles people. This means that the file has been archived to tape and will take a very long time to access.
  [The Old New Thing]

Love to read Raymond Chen and learn about all the hidden, unknown and backgrounds on Windows. My favourites: What is in the "Windows 95 Special Edition" box? and Windows brings out the Rorschach test in everyone.

Mused about the story Mark Pilgrim wrote about how he reinstalled Windows XP and to get it work like a Unix system. With an image software (e.g. Symantec Ghost we use at the company) he could reduce the 147 steps needed to just these (assume he had done the 147 steps some time ago to create an image :

1. Cleanup/format the system drive,
2. Boot the image software,
3. Install the image.

BTW: a dual boot system does not make sense for Windows/Unix only, also Windows/Windows is a good combination (one is a clean and lean install to boot safely, if you would examine the "normal" one for viruses, damage or driver problems).

Just found this at Don's blog and Adrian: you are right. Don's theory isn't new: read a book written by Allan and Barbara Pease a few weeks ago named: "Why Men Don't Listen: And Women Can't Read Maps: How We're Different and What to Do About It" at amazon.com (the german one is "Warum Männer lügen und Frauen immer Schuhe kaufen", at amazon.de). There are many answers to such questions and you can certainly get a better understanding of both your own behavior and the mysterious behavior of the opposite sex. Just read it with an open mind and have fun - don't take it too seriously, but it's amusing! If Don would read the book (may be it is just done?) he will find it's refrigerator problem explained

Read on Feedster: new variant of the Sobig worm appears. Yesterday I got a mail from "System Administrator" titled "Your mail could not be delivered" with a completely unknown receiver mail address and an attachment. Clear that I have not opened the mail. Especially wondering about that message itself: have not send any message within the last 3 days (weekend). Also received some of the messages from support[at]microsoft.com which are reported to be virus last week. Spam-/Virus is filtered here by a server side running antivirus software (also my GMX account now filters) and on the client Cloudmark also helps.
But the best workaround to not open malicious mails in Outlook/OE is to disable the preview pane and enable the auto-preview for the Inbox folder. This way I can read over the first three lines of the message, display the mail header (Right-Click-Options) and then press "Block", the Cloudmark plugin button to move the mail to the Spam folder where they are deleted every 3 days. Missing /dev/null on my machine ...

Found on Harry Pierson aka DevHawk: PowerToys for VS.NET 2003. What I have missed a long time: the Custom Help Builder. Thanks for the links!

If you are an experienced windows programmer using VB5 or 6 the last years, C++ of course (don't know about Delphi) you should be familiar with the Win32 SendMessage() call. Ever thought you don't need them anymore with .NET? Then you are not alone...

My first impression around the time .NET was published was: never again I must call Win32 API. That is definitively wrong for any productive code that uses any GUI. Yes, there are nice new features like inheritable forms and controls and much more: but to solve specific user interaction problems you still needs the API calls, especially the Win32 API. So my todays talk goes about a well known control: the listview. (Full Story).

Just read via Sellsbrothers: Ghost Installer Studio 3.6 released. Looking around a few minutes on their website, decided to give it a try. Should be easy enough to use for small .NET community software distribution (there is also a free edition on the compare chart). For professional use I miss some language packs like italian and spain or japanese.
InstallShield Installer can be very expensively over the time: our business software has only two major releases over the last 4/5 years: release 5 (a VB5 solution) and release 6 (VB6). The first installer software used was IS 5.0 International West (3K US$). Then we bought IS 5.5 (1.5K US$), IS 6 (but not used because of the many re-imported bugs there) IS 7 (1.5K US$) and upgraded to IS 8 Developer (1K US$). Each was a International West edition. Now calculate: ...

iTunes not only for Mac: MP3 serversoftware Slimp (OpenSource).

From Heise newsticker (german): Microsoft buys Unix license of SCO.

I really do agree here [via Don Box].

Which is the question, you would answer. But I do not mean: who produces Windows, but which humans puts behind. Who is interested in should read here.

Just a reminder: I should have a look to managed wrapper for BITS, thanks to Chris.

The seminar "Making sense of Windows Installer" gave me really somewhat! Now I really know what all the GUID's are for. Thanks again to Sophie T. from InstallShield!