Date: 08/11/05 (C Sharp)    Keywords: programming, software, xml, security, web, google

Hello all. First time posting -- I'm an executive/part owner of a small, 30-40 employee software development company in the US. Can't get any more specific, due to LJ drama that occurred in the past, from which I learned that my constant insistence upon plausible deniability is never a bad thing.

Anyway, all of our current contracts are in .NET, from winforms applications, to windows services, to webservices, to web applications. We write in C#.NET and VB.NET depending on the contract, application, and developer. We've been working with .NET for the past 2-3 years.

I don't do as much programming with my company as I did when I first started there as Lead Developer; a good deal of my responsibilities have changed to software design/architecture, scheduling, project management, and having my time wasted by as many meetings as possible, at the most inconvenient times.

So perhaps these latest developments will lend an excuse to the following ignorance. :)

I am writing an application for myself, completely unrelated to my company, in my "free time." It has a fairly eccentric variety of functionality, all of which is related in a certain way, but the functionality with which this post concerns itself is keypress logging.

I've written a class that uses the SetWindowsHookEx() WinAPI call to install a hook for keyboard events (using WH_KEYBOARD_LL). It sets up the hook, which simply raises an event (passing the keypress data along) before giving the keypress back to the system (which continues down the chain of installed hooks). I've written a parent class which attaches a method to the event that takes the useful information from the keypress data and stores it in a queue. The remainder of this parent class provides access to the queue, functionality to clear it, etc. The class that implements SetWindowsHookEx() is in a DLL (I wrote it as part of a separate application back when I was more comfortable with VB.NET, while the current project is in C#, thus the DLL), and the parent class (in C#) imports this DLL.

The class performs flawlessly in the Windows Forms application I wrote to test all of the classes destined to be part of the final solution. It properly logs all of the keypresses in its queue, its methods provide the proper access to the queue, and the test application could write the keypresses to a file, store them in an XML object, or whatever needed to happen. I was pleased, since the whole mess only took about 2 hours to develop and test.

However, the final application that will be doing the keylogging is a Windows Service. Now that I finished developing and testing all the classes I needed to use in the final application, I've begun building the service. I've got the service properly installing, starting, and logging to the system's event log, so I know the service itself is working. However, the keylogging class is not working. No exceptions are thrown, and the WinAPI call (from user32.dll) returns no error codes. However, the queue count remains at 0, and no keys are logged at all.

I've simply dragged the class from the test Winforms application into the Windows Service application, and used it in the same way. While keypresses were logged efforltessly in the Winforms application, not a single one is being logged in the Windows Service.

I have tried pretty much everything I can think of, from checking the "Allow this service to interact with the desktop" checkbox, to changing the account running the service (currently the Local System account). However, as I said above, programming is not a day-to-day thing for me anymore, so I am most likely ignorant of something here.

I've read many accounts via Google of people successfully using SetWindowsHookEx() in a Windows Service, so I know it can be done. What gives? Is this a permissions/security issue, and if so, why are no errors/exceptions being thrown? Do I need to register the DLL containing the class that calls SetWindowsHookEx() in the GAC for any reason?

Any information or help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance...!

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/csharp/32613.html

Date: 08/10/05 (Apache)    Keywords: web, linux, apache

[Cross posted to apache, httpd, linux]

I've been given the assignment to setup dual web servers behind a ServerIron load balancer in an effort to improve the reliability of my company's website. Unfortunately, I have never done this before where I had to deal with https on redundant servers. My question may be quite simple, but I don't know the answer.

How do I get secure certificates for multiple servers with the same common name? Creating the CSR is the easy part, but last time I tried to get multiple certificates for the same common name, it failed as there was already one certificate created for that name.

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/apache/24184.html

Date: 08/11/05 (WebDesign)    Keywords: html, web

I'm putting together a website to show off my coding skills (not just webdesign applications). I wanted a simple, elegant, uncluttered layout for the site. The layout I have is white with shadowed borders around a title box, a lefthand column containing navigational links, and the main column containing the content. Apparently this layout is boring and amateurish and I need to make a better one that shows how good my skills with dynamic HTML really are. I'd really appreciate any general suggestions on what would make a simple, elegant, uncluttered, yet impressive layout. Thanks in advance ^_^

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/webdesign/954007.html

Date: 08/11/05 (Web Technology)    Keywords: web

As it prepares a new Web site for prospective copyright holders, the agency wants to know what people think of being restricted to IE.

Source: http://news.zdnet.com/U.S.+Copyright+Office+poll%3A+IE-only+OK%3F/2100-9588_22-5827627.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdnn

Date: 08/11/05 (WebDesign)    Keywords: web

Has anyone read the recent comScore stats on Blog use? Some bloggers are excited by the numbers produced from the report.

"One in six Americans visiting blogs"

So, I took time to actually read the report. I was not impressed.

Some of the highest ranking websites used in the report were not blogs!



I don't think I'm gonna trust numbers from comScore anymore.

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/webdesign/954214.html

Date: 08/12/05 (Computer Help)    Keywords: web

I really need help with my Windows XP. It did work right for a bit of time (it's only one year old), but few months ago it started acting up and lately I can't do much without restarting it every five minutes. It get errors, it gets stuck, freezes all the time or stays busy for hours unless I restart it. It's maddening. I know I need to reinstall the Windows, but I have no clue how to do it (and I've heard stories that it's easy to mess up your computer if it's not done right). I asked my brother who has done it a couple of times, but he's too big of a jerk to help me out.

I would extremely appreciate if somebody gave me steps to complete Windows XP reinstalling, or give me a website address that has it.

Please, help?

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computer_help/463180.html

Date: 08/12/05 (WebDesign)    Keywords: css, html, web

Some of you may remember the god-awful redesign I was touting over in this post for a Chinese restaurant website.

Well, I redid the site using the same xhtml from the redesign, but using different CSS so as to make it similar to the first site. I made a few tweaks here and there as well.

Here's a link to the newest redesign version:
http://www.headkablooie.com/chongs/2/index.html

*All pages on the English version are up except the Contact page and the Directions page.


About this company. It's a small family-owned business. The clientele ranges very widely from the homeless and the poor to the Hispanic/Black middle class to the white/Hispanic high class. The decor of the restaurant itself is varied and has no particular style to it.

Y'know, looking at the website, the colors actually do match something in the restaurant - the chairs. And that's it.

So with that said...

1. Is it too plain?


2. Should I change the header image? I think it's fine, but if it seems too simple I may just do a blend of photographs of the restaurant and its food.


3. Should I style the navigation menu? Change the bullets, do something with a:hover, or make it look as if they were graphics instead of plain text links?


4. Are the colors in the footer too dark, thus making the links illegible?

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/webdesign/954875.html

Date: 08/12/05 (Mozilla)    Keywords: browser, web, google

Imitating Rocky's sequel, I have another search tip which is worth its salt. I hope it serves you well. I got this tip on the same PC Magazine article I mentioned yesterday and was published by Sarah Pike under the title "Keywords II: but Wait, There's More".

"For certain search-based Web sites—Google, for example—you can actually use keywords to search straight from your address bar. For example, when you query Google normally, you're accessing the URL http://google.com/search?q=, where anything after the q= is the exact text you're searching for. Try adding that URL to your bookmarks folder, but modify it to read http://google.com/search?q=%s and assign it the keyword google. You can now type google x into your browser, where x is any search term you want to look up, like computers. You'll go directly to the results page, having saved a few steps in the process. This trick works for a lot of searchable Web sites; play around with it."

I'm presently in the middle of a college research project related to the causes and consequences of Socrates' trial in Athens on 399 BC. In an effort to search only for relevant pages I used above tip with the keyword Socrates. In the address bar I typed "Google Socrates". The results were:

GOOGLE DIRECTORY
* Categories: 6 biographies and 8 reviews
* Web Pages: 8 web pages. You can view these pages in alphabetical order or view them in Google Page Rank Order.

All Google's results were very pertinent to the information I was soliciting. This is an excellent research feature using Firefox and Google. If you are a student and don't want to "burn the midnight oil", this tip is for you.

Enjoy,

Omar.-

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/mozilla/305872.html

Date: 08/12/05 (Asp Dot Net)    Keywords: html, asp, web

Is there any way to prevent HtmlAnchor from mangling your URLs? I want it to render exactly what I put there.

I have /trail.ascx, which renders an and exposes the properties Href and InnerText. I'm using it in /admin/user.aspx. Unfortunately, HtmlAnchor thinks it's going to be "smart" and prepend all my URLs with "../". Apparently it thinks links should be relative to the user control, not the web form. Which is bogus.

It won't even let me attempt to treat the a element as an HtmlGenericControl!
The base class includes the field 'mylink', but its type (System.Web.UI.HtmlControls.HtmlGenericControl) is not compatible with the type of control (System.Web.UI.HtmlControls.HtmlAnchor).

I'm more ranting than asking for help, but it would be nice if they fixed this.

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/aspdotnet/39459.html

Date: 08/13/05 (Web Technology)    Keywords: software, web

Gripes about existing process, which requires downloading software, prompt work on a Web-based replacement.

Source: http://news.zdnet.com/Patent+Office+plans+new+e-filing+system/2100-9588_22-5830864.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdnn

Date: 08/13/05 (PHP Community)    Keywords: php, mysql, database, sql, web

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