Wanta .NET ?

Registry Hacks

AdvanIntel — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 20:56:00 GMT

I just rebuilt my laptop last night, and after 10hrs of installs, I’m finally back to a ‘usable’ state. One of the things I had forgotten about, that I take for granted was all of the registry hacks that I was used too. Basically, these hacks were ones I made so that additional options would show up when I either right-clicked on a folder or a file, in explorer.

DISCLAIMER
DANGER WILL ROBINSON! DANGER!!!
Modify your registry at your own risk. If you hose your computer, I am not responsible.

Ok, so here are some of the keys I just added, and a brief explanation of what they do. They point to additional tools and utilities, so you may need to modify the paths to fit your system. I’ll list all of the keys at the end, so you can create a .reg file, and import them.

1.)This key allows you to right-click on a COM dll, and register it, just like you ran regsvr32 against it, from a command prompt.

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dllfile\shell\Register\command]
@="regsvr32 /s %1"

2) Same as above, except un-registers the dll.
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dllfile\shell\Unregister\command]
@="regsvr32 /u /s %1"

3)Register a COM .exe
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\Register\command]
@="regsvr32 /s %1"

4)Un-Register a COM .exe
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\Unregister\command]
@="regsvr32 /u /s %1"

5)Right-click on a .NET assembly, and install in the GAC
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dllfile\shell\Register In GAC\command]
@="C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft.NET\\FrameworkSDK\\Bin\\gacutil /i %1"

6)And most importantly, right-click on a folder, and open it’s path in a command prompt.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\CMD Here\command]
@="cmd.exe /k pushd %L "

Here are all of the keys at once. Do you have any cool hacks! Add them below in the Comments section.
Cheers!
Dave

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dllfile\shell\Register\command]
@="regsvr32 /s %1"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dllfile\shell\Unregister\command]
@="regsvr32 /u /s %1"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\Register\command]
@="regsvr32 /s %1"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\Unregister\command]
@="regsvr32 /u /s %1"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dllfile\shell\Register In GAC\command]
@="C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft.NET\\FrameworkSDK\\Bin\\gacutil /i %1"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\CMD Here\command]
@="cmd.exe /k pushd %L "

New OBJECTDATA virus

AdvanIntel — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 12:49:00 GMT

From the IMAIL list I'm on. Thought I would spread the love.

During the past few weeks, virus writers have come up with at least 6 new
tricks to get their viruses past mailserver virus scanners. They started
by spreading in .ZIP files, then moved to static encrypted .ZIP files, then
moved to dynamic encrypted .ZIP files, then started using pictures to give
out the passwords, then started using encrypted .RAR files. The latest
trick, first announced this morning, is that they are now using the OBJECT
DATA exploit. With this, the virus isn't spread in the E-mail, so it can't
be detected. Worse, a user doesn't have to open an attachment for it to
spread.

There is now a new interim release of Declude Virus that will automatically
detect the OBJECT DATA exploit, which is the only way for a mailserver
virus scanner to prevent Bagle.Q or Bagle.R from spreading. For people
using Declude Virus, we recommend upgrading to the latest interim release
(at http://www.declude.com/interim ). Please note that you MUST have an
up-to-date Service Agreement to download this release. If you do not have
an up-to-date Service Agreement, you can order it online at
http://www.declude.com/order.htm , and then you can immediately download
the latest interim release.

If you are using another brand of virus scanner, you should upgrade as soon
as the vendor has an upgrade available to detect the OBJECT DATA exploit.

Patch, Patch, Patch.

Cheers!
Dave

Postmaster, why isn't my email being delivered?!?

AdvanIntel — Tue, 24 Feb 2004 19:12:00 GMT

This is classic!

Some of my products integrate with IMAIL, and I'm on an IMAIL technical listserver. This post just came across, it had me in stiches.

<quote>
Our town USPS postmaster called in and asked one of the tech guys this:

He wants us to change the heading on our undeliverable emails from
"Postmaster" to something else.......because he is getting phone calls
at the post office from people questioning why their email is not going
through.

I kid you not......

Now, after you quit laughing is this even possible?
</quote>

What a riot!

Using the Flags Attribute

AdvanIntel — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 20:06:00 GMT

Using the Flags attribute

The other day I had to implement a method that works the same way as the Regex ctor (allow multiple options to be set). Basically, I needed to have an enumeration that used the Flags attribute. Since I had never done this before, it was rather interesting. The 1.0 Framework help docs are pretty sparse (which is what I had to use) on this topic, so I thought I would write about my implementation here.

I have a method I was exposing called:

public void ExecuteColor( ColorOptions options ){
//in here I had to check to see which color was selected.
//I also wanted to provide the method caller with the option of specifying many colors, or no colors,
// but did not want to use the params keyword.
}

Creating the Enum
This can be accomplished by creating an enum with the Flags attribute.
It looks like:

[Flags]
public enum ColorOptions
{
    None =0,
    Red = 1,
    Blue = 2,
    White = 4,
    Black = 8,
    Green = 16
}

By using the Flags attribute, you can perform bitwise manipulation on the enumeration, to check and see which color options where set.

To do this, I used a helper function called:

  public static bool IsColored( ColorOptions color, ColorOptions myColor )
  {
       if( ( myColor & color ) != ColorTypes.None )
          return true; //if the color was selected, return true
       else
          return false; //if the color wasn’t selected, return false
}

Putting it all together
So, now my ExecuteColor() method looks like

public static void ExecuteColor( ColorOptions options )
  {
   //For demo, check to see if each color was called, and write out True or False
   string line = "The color {0} was set: {1}";
   Console.WriteLine( string.Format( line, ColorOptions.Red, IsColored( ColorOptions.Red, options ) ) ); //Red
   Console.WriteLine( string.Format( line, ColorOptions.Blue, IsColored( ColorOptions.Blue, options ) ) ); //Blue
   Console.WriteLine( string.Format( line, ColorOptions.White, IsColored( ColorOptions.White, options ) ) ); //White
   Console.WriteLine( string.Format( line, ColorOptions.Black, IsColored( ColorOptions.Black, options ) ) ); //Black
   Console.WriteLine( string.Format( line, ColorOptions.Green, IsColored( ColorOptions.Green, options ) ) ); //Green
}

And this allows developers to call ExecuteColor() by setting 1 color, multiple colors, or no colors. Here are some example method calls

   ExecuteColor( ColorOptions.Red ); //Set only Red
   ExecuteColor( ColorOptions.Red | ColorOptions.White ); //set Red and White
   ExecuteColor( ColorOptions.None ); //don't set any colors
   ExecuteColor( ColorOptions.Green | ColorOptions.Black | ColorOptions.Blue ); //Set Green, Black, Blue

Cheers!
Dave

System.Web.Mail Explained - Part 3

AdvanIntel — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 18:25:00 GMT

Wow, I can’t belive how long its been since I’ve last blogged. Time has just flown by.

Well, I’ve been putting off Part 3, which deals with specifically working with System.Web.Mail, but I finally got around to it. Every time I started on this part, I kept saying this is way too large, and felt it needed its own website, in the form of a FAQ. So I built one. You can see it here: System.Web.Mail, OH MY! at http://www.SystemWebMail.com If I’ve missed anything, feel free to let me know.

Just as an outline, here are some of the FAQs I cover.

Cheers!
Dave

Demeanor Just Rocks

AdvanIntel — Mon, 21 Jul 2003 21:59:00 GMT

I just have to blog about the AWESOME obfuscator Demeanor. I ran into a problem today while testing an upcoming version of aspNetEmail. It seemed that when I obfuscated aspNetEmail with Demeanor, the obfuscated version was throwing an exception that the non-obfuscated version wasn’t. So I quickly fired off an email to Brent at Wiseowl explaining my dilemma. Within 10 minutes I had an updated version of Demeanor in my inbox and I was back in business!!!. Not only did he provide me with a solution, he gave me some additional tips and tricks for better obfuscation. He just ROCKS when it comes to customer service.

Cheers!
Dave

123aspx.com has RSS

AdvanIntel — Sat, 19 Jul 2003 21:22:00 GMT

Well, I finally exposed the latest resources on www.123aspx.com as a RSS feed. If you want to stay up-to-date with all the latest and greatest articles, tutorials, and products, you can subscribe to the feed here.

Cheers!
Dave

kbAlertz has RSS Feeds -- Finally!

AdvanIntel — Sat, 19 Jul 2003 04:32:00 GMT

If you haven’t heard of kbAlertz, it’s a website I setup to email me (and other subscribers) when Microsoft publishes new KB articles for their technologies.

I’ve finally gotten around to exposing the Kbs as a RSS feed. Basically, pick the technology you want to subscribe to, and I’ll expose the latest 10 Microsoft Knowledge base articles as a RSS feed.

You can pick from the list of technologies here.

This is my first attempt at RSS feeds, so if I’ve buggered something up, let me know.

Cheers!
Dave

System.Web.Mail Explained - Part 2

AdvanIntel — Wed, 16 Jul 2003 20:31:00 GMT

Introduction
Ok, in my last blog entry you’ve seen how SMTP works. This article will delve into System.Web.Mail to see how it was built.

I’m sure when Microsoft was building the CLR framework they had many thousands of priorities on what to build first, and how to build it. Many of the namespaces and classes in the CLR framework are simply wrappers around some of the legacy COM components. System.Web.Mail is one of those namespaces.

CDOSYS and CDONTS
System.Web.Mail is unique when it is a wrapper round the COM components, because it is actually a wrapper around two COM components, CDOSYS and CDONTS. Internally, System.Web.Mail will check what the operating system it is being executed on, and then all the respective COM component. This makes troubleshooting interesting, because moving System.Web.Mail code from OS to OS can cause different exceptions to occur.

Using Anakrino, let’s look internally at what System.Web.Mail is doing.
In this first screen shot, I’ve expanded the System.Web.Mail.SmtpMail class to see some internal classes called CdoNtsHelper and CdoSysHelper.

These classes merely wrap CDONTS.NewMail and CDO.Message respectively. In fact, here is what their cctor()'s code looks like

[ CdoNtsHelper ]
private static CdoNtsHelper() {
CdoNtsHelper._helper = new LateBoundAccessHelper("CDONTS.NewMail");
}

[ CdoSysHelper ]
private static CdoSysHelper() {
CdoSysHelper._helper = new LateBoundAccessHelper("CDO.Message");
}

Ok, so now that we see System.Web.Mail is a COM wrapper, lets look at how System.Web.Mail.SmtpServer.Send() determines what class to call. Internally, the Send() method looks like

[ SmtpServer.Send() ]
public static void Send(MailMessage message) {
if (Environment.OSVersion.Platform != 2)
  throw new PlatformNotSupportedException(SR.GetString("RequiresNT"));
if (Environment.OSVersion.Version.Major <= 4) {
  CdoNtsHelper.Send(message);
  return;
}
CdoSysHelper.Send(message);
}

From this code we can see that System.Web.Mail requires NT. It also checks to see if NT is version 4.0 or less. If so, it will use the CDONTS.NewMail object. If the OS is greater than 4.0, it uses the CDO.Message object.

So now that we know how System.Web.Mail was built, it makes troubleshooting ‘easier’. We also begin to realize some of the limitations of System.Web.Mail, and realize that it can’t outgrow the limitation of the CDONTS.NewMail or CDO.Message object.

What's Next?
In the next blog entry, I hope to discuss some of common exceptions thrown by System.Web.Mail and how we can troubleshoot them.

Questions? Comments? What do you think?

System.Web.Mail Explained

AdvanIntel — Wed, 09 Jul 2003 18:46:00 GMT

System.Web.Mail and SMTP Explained

Building aspNetEmail, aspNetMime, and aspNetMX, has caused me to debug quite a few different email scenarios, for both client and friends. Over the next few blog entries, I’m going to explore SMTP and System.Web.Mail to explain what is happening.

Lets first start with SMTP. SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol ) was first introduced around 1982 with RFC 821. Its now been updated to RFC 2821. SMTP is *ONLY* used for sending email. It is not used for retrieving email from the server, or managing email, or parsing it. Its only used for client to server, or server to server communication. SMTP is totally text based. Which means, if we want to troubleshoot a SMTP session, its as easy as opening a Telnet session to a mail server and issuing commands.

SMTP Commands
Speaking of commands, lets talk about a couple of them. HELO, MAIL FROM, RCPT TO, DATA, RSET, QUIT. These commands are issued during a SMTP Session. The also need to be issued in a certain order.

Each of these commands take a line of text (with the exception of DATA), and are executed with a Carriage Return Line Feed Combination.

DATA is actually executed with a Carriage Return Line Feed . Carriage Return Line Feed combination
[VB]
vbCrLf + "." + vbCrLf
[C#]
"\r\n.\r\n"

After each of these commands are executed, the server will reply with a 3 digit reply, followed by a textual description. From server to server, this description may be different, but the command has to be the same. For a detailed look at the possible replies, check out RFC 2821.

HELO, MAIL FROM, RCPT TO, RSET, QUIT Commands

HELO
HELO is merely used to say "hello" to the server and introduce yourself. And example of the command is
HELO davesLaptop

Here I basically told the mailserver who I was.

MAIL FROM
The next command, in the SMTP session is the MAIL FROM command. This command will tell the server who the mail is from. Its issued like
MAIL FROM: <dave@aspNetEmail.com>

RCPT TO
The next command, is the RCPT TO command. It tells who the mail will be going too. For example:
RCPT TO: <you@yourcompany.com>
RCPT TO: <him@hiscompany.com>
RCPT TO: <her@hercompany.com>

As you can see, there were multiple RCPT TO commands issued here. A RCPT TO command must be issued for everyone listed on your ‘TO’, ‘CC’ and ‘BCC’ line of the email.

DATA
The next command issued is DATA, which will actually send the text content of the email. The text content includes all of the email headers and the body. Because the content contains multiple lines, the DATA command is terminated with a CrLf.CrLf sequence. For example:

DATA
This is my text email. It will
contain
a
few
lines of data

(notice the period at the end, on a line by itself? That’s how the DATA command was terminted).

RSET and QUIT
The last two commands that can be issued anytime during the SMTP session are the RSET and QUIT commands. They are executed on a line by themselves. RSET resets the SMTP session back to its original state, and clears any previously issued commands. QUIT gracefully closes the SMTP session.

To see this in action, here is a screen shot of a telnet session between me and my SMTP server.

Conclusion
In this blog entry, I’ve explained some of the SMTP commands used during a SMTP session. In the next blog entry, I’ll delve more into the System.Web.Mail namespace.

Google Dance Syndrome

AdvanIntel — Wed, 09 Jul 2003 17:48:00 GMT

You’ve used google before, but did you know they keep copies of their index around the world? And when the index is being updated, you can search on the same phrase at different times, and get different results. If you would like to see how that phrase looks across all clusters of their indexes, check out http://www.google-dance.com/ .

Cheers!
Dave Wanta

So you've decided build a Newsletter, huh?

AdvanIntel — Mon, 07 Jul 2003 20:43:00 GMT

Building a Newsletter

Building some of the most popular .NET email components (aspNetEmail, aspNetMime, aspNetPOP3 ) has taught me a lot about email publishing. I thought I would share some tips with you about building a newsletter.

So you’ve got a site up and running, or you have an online business. Do you have a newsletter yet? If not, why not? Email is the life blood of the internet (will it soon be replaced by RSS?) If you have a website, evidently you have content or a product that you want people to be interested in. And if they are interested in it, maybe they want to get notified when there is new information or a product upgrade available. I subscribe to at least 10 different newsletters, because I want to be proactively notified about new things.

In fact, newsletters can become a huge avenue of people staying up-to-date with your content. For example, my newsletters at www.123aspx.com or my www.kbAlertz.com daily newsletters. I probably do just as much traffic through my newsletters (if not more), than I do through the actual web pages.

TEXT or HTML?

So, you’ve decided to publish a newsletter, what should it be TEXT or HTML? Well, I can tell you what people tell me they like, and then I can show you the stats. The die hard TEXT only guys seem to be pretty outspoken, they claim that’s the only type of newsletter they like to see. That’s fine, but according to my stats on www.123aspx.com and www.kbalertz.com I do about 10x more HTML newsletters than TEXT newsletters. So I’d have to recommend you have a HTML newsletter, minimum, no questions asked. However, if at all possible, you need both. Why alienate 10% of your audience if you don’t have too? The only difference in recording the type of subscription should be a bit field in the database. Designing the letter may be a little more tricky, but again, its worth that 10%. Especially if you’re like me, sending out over a 1/4 million newsletters a week (Yes, they are opt-in, not spam).

So what client do you design for?

Well, unlike the browser, there isn’t any way to tell what type of reader your client is using to read that newsletter, so you have to go based upon surveys. Let me just say that Outlook and Outlook express rule this market, with Yahoo Mail and Hotmail close on their heels. Designing a safe newsletter for either of these clients should keep you covered nicely. But how much does MS actually control the email client market? Well, here are the results from a study I revisit from time to time:

The study is a little old, but you can view it here. The numbers may change, but I believe the trend stays the same, at least for now.

Q. Which of the following email clients/accounts do you primarily use for work-related email?
Email/Client	Adjusted Percentage
AOL 7.0	4.92
AOL 6.0	0.61
AOL 5.0	0.61
AOL 4.0 or lower	0
Microsoft Outlook	39.14
Microsoft Outlook Express	25.20
Eudora	4.30
Netscape	5.33
Hotmail	25.82
Yahoo! Mail	19.67
Lotus Notes	6.35
UNIX Command-Line Based	1.43
Juno	0.61
Other (write-in optional)	19.06

Q. Which of the following email clients/accounts do you primarily use for personal email?
Email/Client	Adjusted Percentage
AOL 7.0	6.52
AOL 6.0	0.81
AOL 5.0	0.81
AOL 4.0 or lower	.20
Microsoft Outlook	24.03
Microsoft Outlook Express	27.70
Eudora	3.67
Netscape	5.30
Hotmail	33.20
Yahoo! Mail	27.29
Lotus Notes	0.41
UNIX Command-Line Based	1.22
Juno	0.81
Other (write-in optional)	16.29

Are you capable of receiving HTML as well as text email formats?
Response	Adjusted Percentage
Yes, I can receive both HTML and text.	89.18
No, I can not receive HTML-formatted email.	2.65
Don't know/not sure	8.16
Total	100.00

Questions? Comments? Got any gripes about a newsletter you subscribe to? Or would like to see done differently? What email client do you use?

Securing Site Content/Images

AdvanIntel — Mon, 07 Jul 2003 12:24:00 GMT

Lets face it, its pretty difficult to secure site content and/or images on the internet. If it can be accessed via the web, it can probably be automated in someway to retrieve/download it.

A year or so ago, someone was telling me, the way they secure some image data, for their gallery, was to check the Http Referer, and if it matches their site, they let the images through.

This is great, however, the Http Referer is actually sent from the browser, so this technique depends upon two things:
a. The browser sends the correct Http Referer (which I’ve seen bugs with this).
and
b. Someone doesn’t spoof the Referer.

And with .NET this has even gotten easier, in fact, I whipped up a console app and was able to generate this code.

Imports System.IO
Imports System.Net
Imports System.Net.WebRequest

Module Module1

Sub Main()

Console.WriteLine(FetchURL("http://www.google.com"))

Console.ReadLine()

End Sub

    Function FetchURL(ByVal SomeURL As String) As String
        Dim WebResp As HTTPWebresponse
        Dim HTTPGetRequest As HttpWebRequest
        Dim sr As StreamReader
        Dim myString As String

        HTTPGetRequest = WebRequest.Create(SomeURL)
        HTTPGetRequest.KeepAlive = False
        HTTPGetRequest.Referer = "http://www.microsoft.com"
        WebResp = HTTPGetRequest.GetResponse()
        sr = New StreamReader(WebResp.GetResponseStream(), System.Text.Encoding.Default)
        myString = sr.ReadToEnd()

Return myString

End Function

End Module

Cheers!
Dave

The tools I like to use

AdvanIntel — Mon, 07 Jul 2003 01:13:00 GMT

A number of people have pestered me about blogging, so here I go. I don’t know how often I’ll blog, but I guess well see.

Just a smidge about me, if you don’t recognize my name, I’ve written www.123aspx.com and www.kbAlertz.com , and I’m also an INETA speaker. I actually just spoke at the Boulder .NET usergroup, where I got to meet Joe from ORM. Super nice guy. If you need a data modeling/code generation tool, you need to check these guys out.

Well, I was trying to figure what I wanted to blog about, and I got to thinking about all of my INETA presentations. All of them eventually turn to the tools and resources I use to help me write code. So I thought I would share some of them with you here.

Tools I Like to use:

Anikrino
This is a must have for any developer. If you don’t have this tool in your arsenal, then set that browser process on "HIGH" and scream over and grab this gem. If you’ve ever wanted to see how the framework was built, then this is the tool to do that.

Demeanor
Demeanor stops people from using Anikrino on your code. Yes, there are cheaper obfuscators, but I must say Brent has done a superb job with it, and it simply rocks. Worth it for any serious developer who needs to publish production code.

Rotor Source Code
When Anikrino isn’t working properly then I try and go to the source. Rotor Source. Last year some time I found myself going over and over the source code, but I wished I had a browser for it. So I wrote a web based interface that categorizes rotor’s namespaces and classes.

Alex Lowe’s Super Duper C# Translator
Have you ever wanted to know what that C# code looks like in VB? Well, then this is the code to do that. Since I write in C#, my VB is pretty rusty. But when someone asks me for a VB code snippet, I’ll just pull up this page, enter the code in the TEXTAREA, and translate. Need to check this out.
BTW, Alex, if you read this, when are you going to add a "Email this code to someone" button on that page?

Reflector
If you like Anikrino, then you may also like Reflector. Lutz has incorporated a decompiler in his browser tool, and it decompiles down to C# or VB. (Anikrio only does C#)

ILDASM
When Reflector and Anikrino don’t work, and it’s not listed in rotor, then it’s time to look at some good ‘ol IL. ILDASM to the rescue.

Resources that Keep me up to date
I subscribe to tons of newsletters. If I had to subscribe to any two that would keep me up to date they would be:

www.123aspx.com Daily Newsletter
This is my little newsletter that I try to publish every day. It contains all the new resources I just added to 123aspx.com. It keeps you on top of the new products, tutorials, applications and resources you might be missing. Yes, it’s a plug for myself, but if you really want something new in your inbox every day, you need to subscribe.

www.dotnetwire.com
.NET Wire is the only other .NET newsletter I like. It seems to catch some of those resources I end up missing.

These are the basic tools I use. There are a few others but these are the main ones that I use just about anytime I’m coding.

Am I missing any? Lets hear ‘em. C’mon, share with the rest of us.

Cheers!
Dave