Websites, HTML, ASP.NET

PostXING: .TEXT desktop blog publishing tool

Juan Ignacio Gelos — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 21:20:00 GMT

In case you've been looking for a decent .Text blogging tool for the desktop, you should check PostXING.

It's a WYSIWYG editor tool that outputs decent HTML (at least tags are lowercase, etc.), and allows you to edit previous posts, unlike "IMHO Instant Blogger" which was my previous choice. It includes built-in syntax high-lighting for C#, VB.Net, JScript and XML.

Some of its other features include:

customizable CSS stylesheet for the preview function,
a crosspost function to publish the post to several blogs at once,
an Upload function to a configurable FTP server, which allows you to automatically insert a link to the file on your post or insert it as an image.
extensible by means of plugins and IBlogExtensions
and WMP plugin integration.

Version 2 is currently in alpha mode, and you can find recent news about the development in the author's blog, or the brand new PostXING's website.

HOW TO Enable ClickOnce Compression on IIS

Juan Ignacio Gelos — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 10:11:00 GMT

ClickOnce supports using HTTP compression for the file downloads, a Web server technology that uses the GZIP algorithm to compress a data stream before sending it to the client. The client—in this case, ClickOnce—decompresses the stream before reading the files. This results in shorter download times for your ClickOnce deployments.

If you are using Internet Information Services (IIS), you can enable HTTP compression easily.

Enable Compression in IIS

From the IIS snap-in, right-click on the Web Sites node and click on Properties
Select the Service tab - Enable Compress application files
Enable Compress static files
Change Temporary Directory to a folder that you created (the IUSR_{machinename} will need write permission to the folder), or leave it at it's default
Set the max size of the temp folder to something that the hard drive can handle. i.e. 1000.
Save and close the Web Site Properties dialog

However, this only activates it for certain file types—namely, HTML and text files. In order to activate compression for assemblies (.dll), XML (.xml), deployment manifests (.deploy) and application manifests (.manifest), you must add these file types to IIS's list of types to compress. Until you do this, none of the files in your deployment except text and HTML files will be compressed.

To add the document types for ClickOnce deployment files (.application, .manifest, .deploy, .dll, .exe, etc.), follow these steps:

NOTE: The commands in step 3 replace the previously defined file extensions. It does not append them to the existing file extensions.

1. Open a command prompt session. To do this, click Start, click Run, type CMD, and the click OK.
2. Change the directory to your \InetPub\AdminScripts folder. To do this, type CD \Inetpub\AdminScripts, and then press ENTER.
3. Type the following commands:

CSCRIPT.EXE ADSUTIL.VBS SET W3Svc/Filters/Compression/GZIP/HcFileExtensions "htm" "html" "txt" "application" "manifest" "deploy" "exe" "dll"

CSCRIPT.EXE ADSUTIL.VBS SET W3Svc/Filters/Compression/DEFLATE/HcFileExtensions "htm" "html" "txt" "application" "manifest" "deploy" "exe" "dll"

IISRESET.EXE (this will reset Web services)

In case you also want to enable compression for ASP.NET Web pages and Web services, drop in these (extra) two lines before the IISRESET:

CSCRIPT.EXE ADSUTIL.VBS SET W3Svc/Filters/Compression/GZIP/HcScriptFileExtensions "asp" "dll" "exe" "aspx" "asmx"

CSCRIPT.EXE ADSUTIL.VBS SET W3Svc/Filters/Compression/DEFLATE/HcScriptFileExtensions "asp" "dll" "exe" "aspx" "asmx"

Testing

To test the web server is compressing you can do two things:

1. Check the "...WINDOWS\IIS Temporary Compressed Files" folder on the server and see if new files are added as you go through the ClickOnce installation process.

2. Use netcat (yes, yes, from the old days of hackerish "security tools", nothing beats netcat yet) to manually send an HTTP request to the server and see if the HTTP response contains the header "Content-Encoding: gzip"

A sample HTTP request header you would send is:

GET /clientes/ventas/Ventas_1_0_0_8/Ventas.exe.deploy HTTP/1.1
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: es-ar
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Host: youhost.yourdomain.com
Connection: Keep-Alive

where the "replaceable parameters" are "youhost.yourdomain.com" for your webserver HOST, and "/clientes/ventas/Ventas_1_0_0_8/Ventas.exe.deploy" for the URL path to your application's exe .deploy file

Sources

IIS Compression in IIS6.0
http://www.wwwcoder.com/main/parentid/170/site/3669/68/default.aspx

HOW TO: Enable ASPX Compression in IIS
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;322603

Troubleshooting ClickOnce Deployments
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/fb94w1t5(en-us,vs.80).aspx

"The test form is only available for requests from the local machine"

Juan Ignacio Gelos — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 16:57:00 GMT

If you simply open the web config file and add the following, you will be able to access the test form outside of the localhost:

Server Performance Advisor

Juan Ignacio Gelos — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 16:18:00 GMT

Server Performance Advisor

"Service Performance Advisor is a server performance diagnostic tool developed to diagnose root causes of performance problems in a Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 operating system, particularly performance problems for Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 and the Active Directory® directory service. Server Performance Advisor measures the performance and use of resources by your computer to report on the parts that are stressed under workload.

Other server roles include system overview (hot files, hot TCP clients, top CPU consumed), print spooler, context switch data and preliminary File Server trace data."

Application Pool Identity permissions

Juan Ignacio Gelos — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 11:03:00 GMT

Important When you configure an identity for an application pool by using a configurable account, you must add the account that you created to the IIS_WPG group in order for the worker processes serving the application pool to run.

Check: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/WindowsServ/2003/standard/proddocs/en-us/Default.asp?url=/resources/documentation/WindowsServ/2003/standard/proddocs/en-us/sec_acc_wpenable.asp