24/7/dev&coffee

Very talented developer is available for hire

A bit of self-boasting ;)

My new article on windows2003.pl (in Polish)

For those of you who speak Polish (how many? ;) ) - my new article got published on www.windows2003.pl. It's title is Preparing Windows Server 2003 for work as an internet web server and it is focused on standard features and securing/hardening default instalation. Windows Server 2003 is here for awhile, but there was no such thorough article in my native language. Maybe somebody will find it useful ;)

Injection attacks - spread it around!

It's very disturbing how few web application developers know anything about injection attacks. Like Bertrand LeRoy noticed, web forums are full of questions accompanied with code showing that the person who wrote it was completly clueless in that matter. So here comes Bertrand's article explaining those problems. It's very well written and should be easy to understand for everybody who knows anything about web applications and web programming.

Spread it around and make web a safer place!

[OT] The picture of everything

Just sitting on Oracle 10g training...

UPDATE: You can use this software as an example of UI usability. Not.

Why is IE going down so much?

Having enough of problems with IE, I'm switching to Mozilla Firefox today.

Why?

First, there are all those security problems. Last update to ADODB.Stream seems to be only a quick-fix for particular problem and it isn't even trying to address many other, *known* issues with ActiveX security - for example with much-discussed Shell.Application component (more info here). There is even example exploit ready - opening harmless command prompt, but it is only a matter of time, when somebody find some more “practical” use of that technique. On abovementioned site you can find also an instruction how to patch registry to disable this component, just in case.

Second, features. IE was for some time beautiful in its simplicity. Now it looks only outdated. Popup filters and download manager? A praised features of upcoming version, while other browser have it for ages. Tabbed browsing? Nope. Mouse gestures? No way. Zoom? Are you kidding? Extensible support for search engines? No way, and probably it will never be included because MSN tries to build on search now. Etc.

Third, web standards. Yeah, I know it is vague. But just try to make XHTML+CSS complaint site, which will look the same in all browsers. IE always goes in the way. Just look what it means: IE, which was always feature-rich for developers, now is the most annoying browser for the same people. Statistics show that IE is losing users, but the loss of developers is the crack that will be most difficult to fill.

To summarize: IE guys, you have to get out of year 1999 as soon as possible. When people say Microsoft, they think Windows and IE. This is the most common. Losing IE for Mozilla or Opera you are giving away a lot more than some small percent of users - you're giving away a lot of brand recognition. How can anybody forget about the first and most used application of his clients? Is this arrogant or just overlooking? How can you say you want to provide the very best experience to users when the most important tool, an icon of our times, browser which is the very first computing experience of many people, is so broken?

So, make me come back to IE. Or maybe nobody cares?

071-340 beta exam - strange results

I just received my score report for 071-340 beta exam (Implementing Security for Applications with Microsoft Visual C# .NET) I took on April, 21st. It was the first time I was participating in beta exam program. It was interesting experience, but waiting for results for 2.5 month is long. I wanted to prepare for that exam, but I couldn't find any time to do it - it was very stressful and crazy time in my life, so studying for beta exams wasn't a priority. I went to the exam without a minute of preparation and came home sure that I failed it. But, to my surprise, I passed.

What is very strange (or maybe not, looking at my preparation technique ;-) ), the comments under each of exam sections say that I need to develop that skill:

It is so even if I scored “strong” in that particular field. Is this a bug, or maybe 100% strong is normalized to my highest score of all subjects, or maybe they put that “Needs Development” label always, to encourage people to develop their skills constantly? ;-)

Does anybody know?

Anyway, I'm very happy that I passed. It was a very pleasant surprise.

UPDATE: In fact, I'm using this stuff daily. So there probably was a bit of preparation, maybe only not so formal :-]

UPDATE 2: Oh,my! This is how it goes when one sorts his mail at 3 AM. As some people said in comments, it is a label - opposite to “Strong”. Now I see it and I'm embarassed :-/

Is that new or I missed it all the time?

I just installed .NET Framework 2.0 and some Express Tools and I noticed something (maybe) new.

When I open IIS Manager, right-click my website and click properties I have a new tab:

Then there I have a GUI tool for editing of my Machine.config and Web config - it looks interesting:

Or was it there all the time? Quick check... nope, on my .NET 1.1 machine there is no such tab.

So, I have something new&cool to play with :-)

UPDATE: So, this is definitely new :-) I'm used to manualy edyting web.config and machine.config, but it is anyway a great tool. Increases discoverability of .config features a lot. Best way to start playing with those files in .NET 2.0 and see what's new.

My contribution to The Daily WTF