A Blog for Graymad

Quoth Robert :

Just made the switch from the NewsGator plugin for Outlook to SharpReader 0.9.0.1.  So many products, so little time...luckily both support the OPML import/export options.

So far it doesnt look like it will notify you via the systray that a new item has arrived (newsgator didnt either), but Im sure that will come soon enough.

[Robert Chartier]

Sure it does! The normal tray icon has a blue # sign:

while the "new items" indicator is yellow:

Check the refresh rate for your sites to see if perhaps they're just not refreshing as often as you expect.

PS - BlogThis rocks! Thanks to Simon for all his hard work on it.

OK. I think I solved the problem I was seeing with BlogThis and SharpReader, thanks to some advice from Scott. The value for the "Key" key must be the value that you get from the URL for your own key. That is, you must:

1. Take the default value, and alter it for your blog.
2. Use that URL to browse and get your key.
3. Set the value of the "Key" key to the value from the page you browsed.

I hope that makes sense. Now, we'll see if it actually works when I click the "Post" button...here goes.

Scott wrote, of Luke writing:

SharpReader 0.9.0.1 has been released. This version has the following changes:

• Added a "File | Open" menu-item.
• Added a "File | Subscribe" menu-item.
• Mark updated items in italics.
• Added a label before the address text box; ALT-D selects address text box.
• Fixed KeepAlive bug that sometimes kept connections open too long.
• Fixed bug in proxy authentication.
• Better retry-mechanism for failed webrequests.
• Fixed infinite post-threading.
• Fixed unnecessary ListView refresh issue.
• Added debug-statements at app-startup to find Win98/WinME problems. If you're running Win98 or WinME, please try to run SharpReader and send me the sharpreader.log file after it fails. Hopefully this will give me some more information that may help resolve this bug.
• Open links in external browser now always goes to the system default browser.
• implement Simon Fell's BlogThis plugin interface. If you save your plugin into a "plugins" subdirectory, SharpReader will find the plugin and make it available in the listview popup menu (shortcut ^B). Simon's last drop of Relaxer uses this plugin mechanism to post to RESTLog. Make sure you do NOT put IBlogThis itself in the plugins directory as this causes .NET to load this interface twice. Since SharpReader will use one copy of IBlogThis and your plugin another, SharpReader will not be able to find the plugin (because it will implement the wrong copy of IBlogThis)

[Luke Hutteman's public virtual MemoryStream]

Well, read the above. Great work Luke.

BTW, this was post was made with the ASPNETWebLog BlogThis Plugin..its not perfect (OK, its not even close, but it works pretty well). You can get it here.

OK, now this is what I call suh-weet! :-)

Not only has Luke managed to make SharpReader better, including fixing a bug that was annoying the heck out of me (the column width of the feeds window kept getting reset if I exited SR), but by adding the plug-in model and BlogThis, it's now easier than ever to provide follow-ups on what others are blogging, and without having to manually build all the URLs, formatting, etc.

Well, OK, it would be suh-weet if I could actually post from BlogThis, but it's not working for me (yet). I'm just getting a nice little message box that says "Your post was not successful". I'll be patient, since this looks like it'll be worth the wait.

BTW - I wrote most of this entry in BlogThis, invoked from SharpReader, so much of the formatting/quoting pain was still reduced, I just had to open a browser to actually post it.

Yosi Taguri writes:

we've moved our code into vs.net 2003

we noticed a problem when passing parameters to the server that contained xml code

we got "A potentially dangerous request......"

searching thru google came up with this:

http://www.asp.net/faq/RequestValidation.aspx

a neat explenataion to a new feature in 1.1..

u can disable it with :

<configuration>
  <system.web>
    <pages validateRequest="false" />
  </system.web>
</configuration>

in your web.config / machine.config

[Yosi Taguri]

It's very important to point out (for the benefit of those who don't follow the link), that you should NOT turn off request validation unless you have implemented your own input filtering/validation code. It can be very challenging to get this stuff right, which is likely part of why the request validation feature was added.

If you don't need to allow HTML tags or HTML-encoded input, just leave request validation turned on, and provide a handler for the exception it throws.

If you DO need to allow HTML input on a given page, turn off request validation at the page level using the validateRequest attribute of the @ Page directive, rather than turning it off at the machine or application level. That way, if you (or someone on your team) adds a page later than accepts input, that page will be automatically protected..

OK. I've solved Drew's question of how to differentiate an instance of Internet Explorer running as Admin and viewing the filesystem from other Windows Explorer instances (in order to avoid mistakenly running programs as Admin, etc.).

The Internet Explorer 5 Toolbar Wallpaper tool allows you to easily modify the background of the toolbar in IE, in such a way that the window is clearly different from your typical Windows Explorer window. All you need to do is:

1. Download it (note that this tool is unsupported, and the page says it is for IE 5 only)
2. Install it (using Run As... to install from an Admin account, natch)
3. Close your admin-running IE window
4. Re-open it
5. Point (briefly) to a known-safe web address
6. Select Tools | Toolbar Wallpaper
7. Select your desired wallpaper and click OK.
8. Again, close your admin-running IE window
9. Re-open it, and you should now have the new toolbar wallpaper.

I love Google! I was actually searching for information on IE command-line parameters when I ran across the above.

Well, my last post seems to have inspired Drew:

Ha! I thought of the IE idea because of your previous post, now this one got me thinking about another improvement.

So I created a new Shortcut as you did and pinned it. In the shortcut properties, I added C:\ as the only parameter in the command line (the result is similar to your homepage idea without having to change the homepage). Clicking the Advanced option in the shortcut properties and I was able to say I want this shortcut to launch with different credentials.

Finally, renamed the shortcut "Admin Explorer" and gave it a more appropriate icon. I also gave it a shortcut key, but I'm not sure if I'll remember to use it. Habits are hard to form.

I still haven't solved the issue of making it visually obvious I'm using explorer running under admin. But, now its as easy as Easy-Mac to launch explorer as admin.

[Drew Robbins]

Well, other than the reference to Easy Mac (eww...reminds me too much of "yellow death" in college [store-brand mac & cheese with no butter or milk...who could afford those?]), this is helpful. I had made the mistake of trying to pin the exe for IE to the Start Menu, which meant that I could not change the name or icon. One interesting note is that it ignores the Run: parameter, which I set to Maximized. Not sure why. But this is a good start.

One caveat: I don't know if this is peculiar to my setup (XP Pro, Outlook XP), but if I have an IE window open using an Admin account, and then I try to click a link in Outlook to open a Web page, IE crashes, including the window opened as Admin. I tried setting the Folder options to "Launch folder windows in a separate process", to no avail.  If I leave that window closed, however, the links work just fine. It couldn't just be easy, could it? <sigh>

Got the following comment on my recent blog on running as admin:

You can launch Internet Explorer as Admin and switch to folder view while remaining in admin mode.

In XP, you can't do a run as from the "Pinned" start menu. You have to use a shortcut from Program Files, Quick Launch, etc.

Now, if I could just find away to launch iexplore in folder view...any ideas?
[Drew Robbins]

Excellent tip, Drew! While I haven't yet discovered how to make it open in Folders view (a la Windows Explorer), I did find that it's easy to pin IE to the start menu, so you don't have to go hunting for it in order to use Run As... to run it as Admin. And if you set the Home Page setting (Tools | Options | General) to C:\, IE will open to the C drive, rather than the Web, making it easier to avoid inadvertently surfing while Admin.

In another comment on the same post, Drew asks:

I wonder if there is someway I can color the background or make some visual indication just for this Admin explorer. So that I can see clearly what mode I'm in for that explorer. A bright red background, although annoying, would sufficiently warn me when I go to launch an app from this admin iexplore instance.

Alas, I wasn't able to find an easy way to do this, so I'm going to get in the habit of keeping this window maximized to differentiate it from my other Explorer windows, which I never maximize.

So that at least solves the inconvenience of being able to use Windows Explorer as an Admin when running from a non-Admin account. Anyone else have useful tips and tricks for managing common tasks when running as a non-Admin?

Finally got the VS.NET 2003 bits downloaded...even though I complain about the speed (or lack thereof), thank goodness for MSDN Universal. While the lack of an ISO image for VS.NET was a little puzzling, it's definitely faster installing from the hard drive, so I'm not going to complain too much about it.

Now I'm in the process of d/ling the MSDN Library disks for the install, and I thought I'd offer a tip to folks who haven't figured this one out yet. The disk images that are available from the MSDN subscriber downloads use the file extension .img which, on my system at least, is registered to Paint Shop Pro. Needless to say, PSP is not terribly useful for burning CDs. So change the extension to .iso, which Easy CD Creator recognizes as an ISO image. Then you can simply right-click and select Record to CD (this assumes you've got Easy CD Creator, of course).

Can anyone who uses different software for burning ISO images verify whether this works with programs other than ECC?

Samer writes:

Ok let's be honest here... Running as non-Admin ABSOLUTELY SUCKS.  There is no doubt about this one. I've been on the running as non-Admin kick on my home machine for a while and quite honestly it's not easy.  We're all used to the "god powers" on our machines.  Running as non-Admin you are more like a peasant than a god.  I find myself having to switch back and forth between account ALL the time.  I have some setup somethings setup as  "run as" according to Raj Chaudhuri's recommendations (look in the comments).  That makes it easier but hell running as non-Admin is still hard and not everything works.  Andrew is right however.  Running as non-Admin teaches you not to cheat as a programmer and security issues you never knew existed.  Follow Andrew, Anil, and Keith's recommendation but dont fool yourself into thinking it's easy.  It's not.

[Samer Ibrahim]

I just have to disagree somewhat with the "ABSOLUTELY SUCKS" part. I'm not sure what, if anything Samer is doing that I'm not, but I just don't find running as a non-admin to suck even a little. Just for the record, though, I don't think I ever said it was easy. There are a few inconveniences I've noticed, which include:

• You can't conveniently run Windows Explorer as an admin, so changing ACL requires either using XP fast user-switching to switch over to an admin login long enough to change the ACLs, or using CACLS from a command line opened using Run As...
• Norton Antivirus cannot successfully run LiveUpdate from a non-admin account (how stupid is THAT?), so in order to update your virus definitions, you have to switch over to an admin login session (though I think you might also be able to run LiveUpdate standalone using Run As... I'll have to try that next time). What's particularly irritating about this is that LiveUpdate pops up automatically at specified intervals, trys to run, but fails to properly install the updates. Guess what? This software was almost certainly written by someone running as Admin, which highlights why it's so important for developers not to do this.

I'd love it if everyone who has tried/is trying this could post a list of the things that they've run into that "don't work", and any workarounds they have. The more we can build up a knowledgebase of how to make running as a non-admin work, the more likely it is that folks will do it, rather than think that they can't do it.

ScottW wrote:

Paul is absolutely correct when he says, "I can't think of any reason telling people to shut up when they "for what they believe" give solid arguments why_they make statements like the do.".

This is the huge dilemma. Blogs are personal. You should be able to write about what ever you want. Even if I and most of the free world disagree with you.

But in the case of .NETWeblogs, there is a catch (there is always a catch). Here you are part of a community. This not just you writing. This is 150+ people.

The bigger issue is not just related to language postings. Its the sheer size and lack of focus sometimes that is the real culprit. How can we filter out the noise, yet allow the blogs to still remain personal?

[ScottW]

I can sympathize somewhat with Scott's dilemma, but I also think that a lot of what he's concerned about is what gives a community it's "flavor". So here's what I'd suggest (and what I suggested to Scott via email)...

Create two feeds:

- One "pure" .NET-oriented feed

- One free-for-all feed, that includes everything from everybody

It's simple, and it satisfies what you are looking for. People only interested in .NET can subscribe to the "pure" feed, and people who want all of the personality, tom-foolery, argumentation, and just plain nuttiness, can subscribe to the "gimme everything" feed.