One of our Windows 2008 IIS 7.0 webservers had an SSL certificate on it that we renewed.  I thought I had it taken care of: I had generated the request, we submitted it to the authority, paid for it, received the new certificate and completed the request.  All good.  Right?  Wrong.  

The old certificate expired and the server was still using it, so users were getting "certificate expired" messages warning them to continue at their own risk.  Not good.  I checked IIS Manager, selected the server, selected Server Certificates and saw both certificates listed with the old one on top.  Ok, fine, I clicked remove for the old one, stopped and started IIS, and had my user test it.  The user confirmed we're good.  ...Except we're not.  

Later, I received an email from another user reporting the same problem.  I looked into it again and found that the server was still serving out the old certificate!  Thinking it might have been cached in my browser, I cleared everything out, but it was STILL serving the old certificate.  In retrospect I think I now know what caused the problem, but my next move probably exasperated the situation: I removed the new SSL certificate.  No SSL certificates installed on the server, but, again, it was still serving out the old cert.

But wait, it got worse.  I try to re-request a certificate from the web server and install the certificate from the authority.  Error message: CertEnroll::CX509Enrollment::p_InstallResponse: ASN1 bad tag value met. 0x8009310b (ASN: 267).  Crud.  But thanks to Google and "chaun" on the Microsoft blogs at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webtopics/archive/2009/01/03/asn1-bad-tag-value-met-error-when-processing-a-certificate-request-in-iis-7.aspx, I was able to locate his very helpful solution #2 and re-install the certificate.  Hooray!

In some other search results I noticed that the SSL certificate needed to be rebound to port 443.  This is probably all I really needed to do before instead of removing certs, but I wasn't aware of that at the time.  And IIS 7 handles SSL Certificates different than previous versions I was familar with.  I guess I thought IIS would have handled this, but no, it doesn't.  So.  In IIS Manager, I navigated to the site, clicked bindings, located https, clicked edit, selected the SSL certificate, and OK'ed/Closed my way out of the wizards.

And that is how I spent a good part of my morning today.  I look forward to reviewing this next year!

Creating a simple background image was easy, I fired up GIMP and created a new image 1600x1200. Next, I needed to know where to put the text, so I did some experimentation and came up with a template to handle multiple resolutions.

I created guides horizontally at 10, 110, 240, 895, and 1015 pixels. This provided 6 columns:

• a margin


• an area for detailed text


• a column for a vertical url


• an space where Twitter will display its content


• another column for to repeat the vertical url


• and a final column the expands off to the sunset

• one for the Twitter header


• the other for the content area.

Because Twitter centers its content in the browser page, it moves around when used with different resolutions. The guide values that I used above allowed me to create a Twitter background that displayed gracefully at the most common resolutions:

• 800x600 - Twitter is optimized for 800x600 so the background image barely displays more than a few pixels.


• 1024x768 - The detail column displays to the left of the the Twitter content whcih conceals the 1st url column, but leaves the 2nd url column to display on the right.


• 1280x1024 - The detail column and the 1st url column displays to the left of the Twitter content which conceals the 2nd URL column.


• 1440x900 - Looks just like 1280x1024 with a little more padding between the 1st URL and the Twitter content.

On Thursday, November 12, 2009 I attended a seminar at Google's Chicago office given by Bob Segal of Fig Leaf Software on the Google Search Appliance (GSA). The following are my notes from that two hour presentation:

• The GSA returns search results according to the user's security. This means that the GSA can index secured content and only include it in search results if the user performing the search has access rights to the secured content.


• Websites used as examples in the presentation:
  http://www.heritage.org/
  http://www.muschealth.com/


• Mozzilla Firefox has a plugin called URL Params that Bob used frequently in the demonstration. It presents all variables in the URL scope in an easy to view form rather than editting the query string in the address bar. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1290
  After installing I found that it also supports editting form fields as well, but there is an extra step required to install the plug-in to make it function as a Sidebar: chrome://urlparams/content/lib/addpanel.xul


• Search results can be categorized using both collections and meta data. The example shown was a column on the right hand side of the page showing number of results found in each category of the site allowing the user to narrow their search focus.


• The term Universal Login was used and my understanding of the definition is that it is "using the same credentials across multiple authentication systems." This means the user still needs to login to each system, but they are using the same username and password rather than a different shema for each. Not quite Single SignOn, but a good workaround for disparate systems.


• Great resource for learning how to use and support a GSA: http://www.learngsa.com/


• Status and Reports > Crawl Diagnostics has a URL Status drop-down which can be used to limit the view to 404 Errors, Robot Exclusions, etc...


• You can view search results in XML format by removing the proxystylesheet parameter. I tested this and you need to remove the variable completely, just setting it to a blank value yields a 500 server error.
  
  
• You can add meta data to be displayed in the XML by setting &getfields=*


• When searching you can limit the results to only include searching specific meta data fields:
  inmeta:author=[specific name]
  inmeta:author~[partial name]
  inmeta:title
  inmeta:site

Links from notes:
http://www.heritage.org/ - example of basic search using GSA
http://www.muschealth.com/ - example of a search integrated into the website using GSA
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1290 - URL Params Firefox Plug-in
chrome://urlparams/content/lib/addpanel.xul - Enables URL Params in Firefox as a Sidebar
http://www.learngsa.com/ - Learning site for the Google Search Appliance
http://gigz.com/google.htm - Collection of useful links for the Google Search Appliance

This training is still available in Dallas at the time of writing this entry. You can register at http://www.figleaf.com/Training/GoogleSeminar.cfm

ColdFusion

<cfobject action="create" type="java" class="jrunx.kernel.JRun" name="jr"><cfset servername = jr.getServerName()><cfoutput>JRun Server Name: #servername#</cfoutput>

• Enterprise Manager > Instance Manager
• Add New Instance
• Server Name: whatever you want to call the instance
• Server Directory: let CFadmin handle this
• Create From EAR/WAR: leave blank
• check Create Windows Service
• check Auto Restart Service
• Submit
• Wait...

• search for JRunProxyService
• change deactivated from true to false
• note port

APACHE Web Server

add virtual mapping JRunConfig Serverstore "C:/JRun4/lib/wsconfig/1/jrunserver.store"JRunConfig Bootstrap 127.0.0.1:_____ *port goes hereJRunConfig Apialloc false

• Add
• JRun Host: localhost
• JRun Server: select instance created in CFadmin
• Web Server: select Apache
• Configuration Directory: browse to where httpd.conf is located
• check Configure web server for ColdFusion MX applications
• OK

• Stop Apache
• Start Apache

IIS Web Server

• Run Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager
• Expand local computer
• Right click on Web Sites and select New > Web Site
• Next
• Description: type name of new website
• Enter the IP address to use for this Web site: (All Unassigned)
• TCP port this Web site should use: 80
• Host header for this Web site: same as recorded in DNS or hosts file
• Next
• Path: Browse to the folder you created above
• Next
• Next
• Finish
• Right click your new site and select New > Virtual Directory
• Next
• Alias: CFIDE
• Path: Browse to wherever your CFIDE folder is, for example: c:\inetpub\wwwroot\CFIDE\
• Next
• Next
• Finish

• Add
• JRun Host: localhost
• JRun Server: select instance created in CFadmin
• Web Server: select Internet Information Server (IIS)
• IIS Web Site: select the site you created above
• check Configure web server for ColdFusion MX applications
• OK

Test your new instance

Digging into the source code of these pages generated by RoboHelp, I began to see a structure and a set of rules that appeared to be followed on each page. I discovered the navigation tree was comprised of 19 webpages each representing a folder with links to the other folders and the documents contained within itself. My initial code looped through each of these files and stripped out anything above <body> and below </body> using the FindNoCase() function. Next, I added code to loop through the resulting HTML looking for links. Again, the code kept to rules, so I was able to parse out the links to folders by looking for target="_self". Any links that didn't refer to "_self" were the documents we were looking to "scrape" the content from. At this point I cheated a little; I now had a list of all the documents and the folder structure that they were stored in, so I manually created the folders mirroring the structure on the website. I figured this was ok, as I was creating a one-time process, not a reusable application. Finally, getting back to coding, I looped through each document stripping out anything above <h1 and below the <script beneath the content.

I appologize that the Blogger template I'm using doesn't handle code very well. You can download the code as well as all the docs in the link below:

Download docs.model-glue.com.zip

<!--- I manually reproduced the folder structure of the Model-Glue docs on my local harddrive ---><cfset pathRemote = "http://docs.model-glue.com/whgdata/"><cfset pathLocal = "c:/docs.model-glue.com/whgdata/"><!--- The navigation tree for the docs in RoboHelp is comprised of 19 html files ---><cfloop index="ptrTree" from="0" to="18"> <cfset fileName="whlstt#ptrTree#.htm"> <cfset fileRemote="#pathRemote##fileName#"> <cfset fileLocal="#pathLocal##fileName#"> <!--- Call up each of the 19 html files that make up the navigation tree and loop through finding each document ---> <cfhttp url="#fileRemote#" method="get" resolveurl="yes" throwonerror="yes"></cfhttp> <cfif cfhttp.statusCode is "200 OK">  <p><strong><cfoutput>#fileName#</cfoutput></strong><br /><cfflush>  <cfset treeHTML=cfhttp.FileContent>  <cfset ptrLink=1>  <!--- Loop through each link it the navigation tree looking for links to documents --->  <cfloop condition="ptrLink lt len(treeHTML)">   <cfset startLink=FindNoCase("",treeHTML,startLink)+3>    <cfset tmpLink=mid(treeHTML,startLink,endLink-startLink+1)>    <!--- Found a link to a document, so parse out the url and link title --->    <cfif Not(FindNoCase("_self",tmpLink))>     <cfset startURL=FindNoCase("http://",tmpLink)>     <cfset endURL=FindNoCase(".htm",tmpLink,startURL)>     <cfset startImg=FindNoCase("<img",tmpLink,endURL)>     <cfset startTitle=FindNoCase(">",tmpLink,startImg)+1>     <cfset endTitle=FindNoCase("</a>",tmpLink,startTitle)>     <cfset pageURL=mid(tmpLink,startURL,endURL-startURL+4)>     <cfset pageTitle=mid(tmpLink,startTitle,endTitle-startTitle)>     <cfoutput>#pageTitle#</cfoutput><br /><cfflush>     <!--- Call up the document and parse out just the HTML throwing out the extra code --->     <cfhttp url="#pageURL#" method="get" resolveurl="yes" throwonerror="yes"></cfhttp>     <cfif cfhttp.statusCode is "200 OK">      <cfset pageHTML=cfhttp.FileContent>      <cfset startContent=FindNoCase("<h1",pageHTML)>      <cfset endContent=FindNoCase("<script type=",pageHTML,startContent)>      <cfset pageContent=Mid(pageHTML,startContent,endContent-startContent)>      <!--- Write out the content HTML using the same folder structure --->      <cfset pageLocal=Replace(Replace(Replace(pageURL,'/whgdata/../','/'),':80',''),"http://","c:\")>      <cffile action="write" file="#pageLocal#" output="#pageContent#">     <cfelse>      <cfdump var="#cfhttp#">      <cfabort>     </cfif>    </cfif>    <!--- Update the ptr used for looping --->    <cfif endLink gt 0>     <cfset ptrLink=endLink+1>    <cfelse>     <cfset ptrLink=len(treeHTML)+1>    </cfif>   <cfelse>    <cfset ptrLink=len(treeHTML)+1>   </cfif>  </cfloop>  <!--- Parse out just HTML in the Navigation Tree file throwing out the extra code --->  <cfset startHTML=FindNoCase("<body",treeHTML)>  <cfset endHTML=FindNoCase("</body>",treeHTML,startHTML)>  <cfset fileHTML=mid(treeHTML,startHTML,endHTML)>  <!--- Write out the Navigation Tree file --->  <cffile action="write" file="#fileLocal#" output="#fileHTML#"> <cfelse>  <cfdump var="#cfhttp#">  <cfabort> </cfif> </p></cfloop></p><h1>Done!</h1>

I needed to be able to have several datepicker tools on the same page, so I used the .filter() to apply the widget to all input fields with a class of datepicker. I also wanted to give the user the ability to quickly pick from other months and even years, so I set changeMonth and changeYear to true. And finally, the users of my legacy app are expecting a calendar icon to click, so I duplicated that functionality with buttonImage and buttonImageOnly.

Demonstration

<html><head> <!-- jQuery JS Includes --> <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery/jquery-1.3.2.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery/ui/ui.core.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery/ui/ui.datepicker.js"></script>  <!-- jQuery CSS Includes --> <link type="text/css" href="jquery/themes/base/ui.core.css" rel="stylesheet" /> <link type="text/css" href="jquery/themes/base/ui.datepicker.css" rel="stylesheet" /> <link type="text/css" href="jquery/themes/base/ui.theme.css" rel="stylesheet" />  <!-- Setup Datepicker --> <script type="text/javascript"><!--  $(function() {   $('input').filter('.datepicker').datepicker({    changeMonth: true,    changeYear: true,    showOn: 'button',    buttonImage: 'jquery/images/calendar.gif',    buttonImageOnly: true   });  }); --></script></head><body> <!-- Each input field needs a unique id, but all need to be datepicker --> <p>Date 1: <input id="one" class="datepicker" type="text" readonly="true"></p> <p>Date 2: <input id="two" class="datepicker" type="text" readonly="true"></p> <p>Date 3: <input id="three" class="datepicker" type="text" readonly="true"></p></body></html>

Blogs - Follow your favorite bloggers along for the ride as they document the key notes, presentations, birds of a feather events, and other activities they attend. Not sure who went? Try starting with a RSS Aggragator to read what is happening now. Two that I am aware of are:
Full As a Goog
Adobe Feeds (nee MXNA)

Podcasts - Listen to some of the more vocal members of the community via a Podcast. I know two that appear to be recording daily and publishing immediately:
CFConversations
The Flex Show

Adobe Labs - Adobe is releasing all sorts of new technologies at this year's conference such as Cocomo, Pixel Bender, Gumbo, and Flash Player 10. Unfortunately they haven't updated their RSS since September (what's up with that?), so you'll have to visit the site for the latest:
Adobe Labs

2008 MAX Awards - Looking for inspiration from other developers' and designers' projects? The Max Awards are always filled with some truly amazing projects. Check out this year's finalists at:
2008 MAX Awards

Presentations - The core of MAX are the presentations. While no one is releasing anything (yet) from this conference, many of the speakers featured there have been kind enough to make available recordings of past presentations. And Charlie Arehart has built the mother of all libraries housing them at:
UGTV

Socialize - You can even follow along with the great social opportunities the conference provides with tools like:
Twitter
Flickr

Have a great conference and maybe we'll see each other at the next one!

UPDATE on 11/18/2008 at 16:04 CST
Adobe has given us yet another way to Socialize, Adobe Groups! View My Profile and add me to your network.

Recently I've been updating a Flash Form application that I wrote last year. It is a form for accepting donations for several charities on behalf of my employer. Originally we only accepted payroll deductions to be processed one time or over 26 pay periods. This meant that I had a pair of radio buttons both named Payments, one had a value of 26 and one had a value of 1.

This year we wanted to add check processing which, of course, would only be a single payment. So I added another pair of radio buttons with the intent that if the radio button for check were clicked it would set the number of payments to 1 and disable the original pair of radio buttons.

I spent hours trying to get this to work right, banging my head against my desk. No matter what I tried nothing worked. I tried onClick, onSelect, onChange on the new radio buttons. I tried binding the old radio buttons. I tried a text box with conditional logic to tie these radio buttons together. I searched and scoured the internet and found nothing.

Finally I made what I originally considered a typo, a mistake; I didn't capitalize the C in onClick. It worked! In ColdFusion 7 (maybe this is fixed in 8), the ActionScript onclick event for Radio buttons must be in lower case for Flash Forms. I created a button and used the traditional casing for onClick and that worked fine.

The following is the code that demonstrates what I've found:

<cfform format="Flash"> <cfformgroup type="panel" label="Testing">  <cfformitem name="mesg" type="html">Select Donation Method:</cfformitem>  <cfinput type="radio" name="paymethod" label="Payroll Deduction" value="payroll" onclick="Payments.enabled = true;" checked="1">  <cfinput type="radio" name="paymethod" label="Pay by Check" value="check" onclick="Payments.enabled = false; Payments.selectedData = 1;">  <cfformitem name="mesg" type="html">Select Number of Payments:</cfformitem>  <cfinput type="radio" name="Payments" label="Per Pay Period (26)" value="26" checked="1">  <cfinput type="radio" name="Payments" label="Single Pay Period (1)" value="1">  <cfinput name="bSubmit" type="button" value="Click Me!" onClick="alert('Click!')"> </cfformgroup></cfform>