Scott Hanselman

You ever download some code or a Visual Studio project from the web then start getting warned that the download might be evil?

When you open a project file that was downloaded from the Internet Zone, you'll get a dialog like this from Visual Studio:

If you're wondering "how does it know?" when your browser downloads something from the net, the zone that it came from gets marked in an Alternate Data Stream within the NTFS file system.

If you use the Streams utility from SysInternals from the command-line you can see the streams on file directly. For example:

C:\>streams.exe DownloadFromTheWeb.zip

Streams v1.56 - Enumerate alternate NTFS data streams
Copyright (C) 1999-2007 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

C:\DownloadFromTheWeb.zip:
   :Zone.Identifier:$DATA       24

Even easier, you can right-click on the file and select properties. Notice that "Unblock" button at the bottom of the dialog. Click that, and you're declaring that you trust this file and by removing the alternate stream data you'll not get warned again.

It's not just projects that get these zone ideas, anything downloaded does, including videos, etc. These streams and zone data persist even when you move or rename files so that the system knows where things come from.

Some other programs put stuff in Alternate Data Streams, like older versions of ETrust Anti-Virus. But, after download files, the other most common use of Alternate Data streams is to store the favicon.ico of a URL file on your computer. You know those tiny icons that you see in the address bar when you surf around? Well, if you make a shortcut to a site on your desktop that .URL file will also include a small version of the favicon so you'll still be able to see it when you are offline.

And here's some of the same files using Streams.exe from the command line:

A Whiteboard and Audio Meeting Capture System.url:
         :favicon:$DATA 894
alastairs's buildprogress at master - GitHub.url:
         :favicon:$DATA 1150
Introducing Versatile DataSources - Peter and the case
of the ASP.NET developer.url:
         :favicon:$DATA 1406
johnvpetersen's Nerd-Dinner-with-Fluent-NHibernate at m
aster - GitHub.url:
         :favicon:$DATA 1150
jQuery Templates Proposal - jquery - GitHub.url:
         :favicon:$DATA 1150
metalscroll - Project Hosting on Google Code.url:
         :favicon:$DATA 1150

As with all things internet, of course, be aware and be smart when you download. Don't just Unblock stuff willy-nilly like me. :)

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By

I was chatting with Jonathan Hawkins and some of the folks on the ASP.NET team about performance and Jonathan mentioned the startup time for large ASP.NET applications is improved on .NET 4. There are some improvements in the CLR and in ASP.NET itself that helped. If you have a giant app, you should do some tests.

The word from the ASP.NET team is that you'll see improvements when the .NET framework (CLR) is warm in memory but the Web App is cold on disk. This is for shared hosting scenarios where the web server is loading and unloading web applications while .NET remains in memory.

If you're interested in one of the reasons, there's a switch in C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.xxxx\Aspnet.config called shadowCopyVerifyByTimestamp that ASP.NET uses to startup up the CLR. The CLR optimized in .NET 4 how shadow copy assemblies are loaded by removing an unnecessary file copy if nothing's changed. Hence, part of the improvement in cold web app startup.

What's the biggest ASP.NET application that you've got?

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By

My two-hundred-and-seventh podcast is up. Charles Petzold wrote the book on Windows. Specifically, he wrote "Programming Windows, 1st edition" in 1988. This was the book I learned on and I still have it on my shelf. Charles has never stopped writing and is now working on a free book for Microsoft Press called "Programming Windows Phone 7 Series." I get the scoop from Chuck in this interview recorded in the waning hours of Mix 10 in Las Vegas.

Subscribe:

Download: MP3 Full Show

Links from the Show

• http://www.charlespetzold.com/
• Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
• All Petzold books at Amazon.com
• The Annotated Turing
• Charles Petzold's Blog

Do also remember the complete archives are always up and they have PDF Transcripts, a little known feature that show up a few weeks after each show.

I want to add a big thanks to Telerik. Without their support, there wouldn't be a Hanselminutes. I hope they, and you, know that. Someone's gotta pay the bandwidth. Thanks also to Carl Franklin for all his support over these last 4 years!

Telerik is our sponsor for this show.

Building quality software is never easy. It requires skills and imagination. We cannot promise to improve your skills, but when it comes to User Interface and developer tools, we can provide the building blocks to take your application a step closer to your imagination. Explore the leading UI suites for ASP.NET AJAX,MVC,Silverlight,Windows Forms and WPF. Enjoy developer tools like .NET reporting, ORM,Automated Testing Tools, TFS, and Content Management Solution. And now you can increase your productivity with JustCode, Telerik’s new productivity tool for code analysis and refactoring. Visit www.telerik.com.

As I've said before this show comes to you with the audio expertise and stewardship of Carl Franklin. The name comes from Travis Illig, but the goal of the show is simple. Avoid wasting the listener's time. (and make the commute less boring)

Enjoy. Who knows what'll happen in the next show?

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By

I was installing the RC of Visual Studio 2010 yesterday and while the setup program ran I noticed the words CHECKED and UNCHECKED appearing in the Tree View.

I was thinking I'd found some cool bug, like I was peering into some background world where checkboxes announce their state with text or something. I dunno, it was late, don't judge! ;)

I asked a few people and someone said to to see if I was running a Screen Reader. Screen Readers are what the visually impaired use to find their way around interfaces. It's no at bug at all, it's helping me.

I ran a little program based on this chunk of code found here. I started using the structures found at PInvoke.NET but they were overkill. I didn't need six pages of constants.

[DllImport("user32.dll")]
static extern bool SystemParametersInfo(int iAction, int iParam, out bool bActive, int iUpdate);
   
public static bool IsScreenReaderActive()
{
    int iAction = 70; // SPI_GETSCREENREADER constant;
    int iParam = 0;
    int iUpdate = 0;
    bool bActive = false;
    bool bReturn = SystemParametersInfo(iAction, iParam, out bActive, iUpdate);
    return bReturn && bActive;
} 

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    bool retVal = IsScreenReaderActive();
}

Scandalously, the result was true. What? I am running a screen reader? Um, no.

Well, actually, yes. I give lots of presentations, sometimes just to one person looking over my shoulder so I run the Windows 7 Magnifier via the WinKey and PLUS hotkey. When the Windows Magnifier is running, I'm running a Screen Reader in that I'm running an accessibility assistant.

Interesting stuff. I like it when applications are paying attention and helping with accessibility.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By

I did three talks at Mix 10 this year, and I'm going to do blog posts for each one, sharing what I talked about and some code if it's useful.

I did a talk on Deployment called "Web Deployment Made Awesome: If You're Using XCopy, You're Doing It Wrong."

You can download the talk here, or watch it online:

VIDEO Download: MP4 Video, Windows Media Video, Windows Media Video (High)

I always try to sneak cooler titles into conferences if I can. It's better than "WEB101: Deploying Websites using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010's WebDeploy OneClick Publish Wizard Super Karate Monkey Death Car September CTP R2." Well, maybe not way better, but still.

Here's an outline of what Deployment Related topics I tried to cover

• Web Packaging - Offline vs. Online
  • From VS 2010
  • From IIS Manager
• Web.Config Transformation
  • Transform Syntax
  • Locator Syntax
  • Why not XSLT?
• Deploying
  • Command Line
  • What If Switch
  • From IIS
  • Content Sync
• DB Deployment
  • Scripting Source DB
  • Adding custom SQL Scripts
• Download and Deployment of Open Source
  • Web PI
  • App Gallery
• One Click Publish
  • Using Web Deploy (Ms Deploy) WMSVC
  • Using Web Deploy (Ms Deploy) Remote Agent
  • Using InProc Web Deploy (Ms Deploy)

Here's some cool highlights about WebDeployment in Visual Studio 2010. You can right-click on your web.config and click "Add Config Transforms."

When you do this, you'll get a web.debug.config and a web.release.config. You can make a web.whatever.config if you like, as long as the name lines up with a configuration profile. These files are just the changes you want made, not a complete copy of your web.config.

You might think you'd want to use XSLT to transform a web.config, but while they feels intuitively right it's actually very verbose.

Here's two transforms, one using XSLT and the same one using the XML Document Transform syntax/namespace. As with all things there's multiple ways in XSLT to do this, but you get the general idea. XSLT is a generalized tree transformation language, while this deployment one is optimized for a specific subset of common scenarios. But, the cool part is that each XDT transform is a .NET plugin, so you can make your own.

             
    
  


  
    
    
      NewSetting
      New Setting Value
    
  

Or the same thing via the deployment transform:

Now, to express this concretely, here's my new NerdDinner web.debug.config:

and here's the web.release.config. Note that I update connectionStrings, change appSettings (in this case, Twitter library stuff), and change the system.web section, turning on customErrors and removing the debug attribute.

  
    
    
  

  
              xdt:Transform="SetAttributes" xdt:Locator="Match(key)" />
              xdt:Transform="SetAttributes" xdt:Locator="Match(key)" />
  
  
  

               xdt:Transform="Replace">
      
    

    
  

This is just config transforms, which is a small part of the whole deployment process. I also showed the packaging process and the package deployment that can happen with one-click from within Visual Studio, or can be initiated from IIS, or at the command-line from your Continuous Integration solution.

The WebDeploy packaging and deployment solution is also what the Web Platform Installer uses. It's all the same engine. This screenshot is me importing an open source application directly from a zip file. Note it's more than just what files to use, it's also setting ACLs (Access Control Lists, or permissions) and creating an IIS application. This just scratches the surface.

Check out my talk, I hope it helps you out. There's more content in that 60 min talk than I could easily put in a single blog post.

Related Links

• Web Deploy Team Blog
• Vishal Joshi's Blog - piles of great posts on Deployment in depth
• ASP.NET Deployment Content Map on MSDN
• Example Web Application that uses the Web Deployment APIs directly from Owais Shaikh
• Code Download and the Web Deployment Tool (MSDeploy) - Remote Management options from Kristina Olson
• Overview Post for Web Deployment in VS 2010
• Powershell Scripts and Web Deployment from JC
• MSDeploy Powershell Scripts Part I – Local Functions Only
• MSDeploy Powershell Scripts Part II – Exceptions And Remote Server Syncs
• Web Deployment Forums on IIS.NET

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By