Viewing the CSS in a page with the Firfox browser.  Webmaster 'must have' download

Install in Firefox he add-on

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60

and install the add-on

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/6622

OK restart Firefox, open a webpage and click on the CSS button and choice "View Style Information' or Ctrl-Shift-Y

All info is there

The .NET framework, used to create C# ASP .NET web applications, actually comes with a built-in web browser detector, called the BrowserCaps feature. .NET 2.0 adds an additional detector, called the .Browser feature. Regardless of the .NET version, determining the difference between a user's web browser and an automated web crawler can make a big difference in a web application, and it's easy to do.

In this article, we'll discuss three methods for determining the web browser type. We'll also describe how to tell the difference between a user's web browser and an automated crawler.

What's Inside the User-Agent String

It really all starts with the web browser user-agent string. The user-agent is a string of text, sent in the HTTP header by the web browser, for each request made when accessing a page in the C# ASP .NET web application. The user-agent typically describes the web browser client type, name, version, and other information.

Some example User-Agent strings:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; +http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)

As you can tell from the above examples, quite a bit of information can be parsed out of the user-agent string. We can tell that the first user-agent is a Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser, and thus a regular user. The other two user-agents are web bots. By looking at the details of the user-agent string, you can probably determine the most direct method of detecting the user's web browser is by simply looking for sub-strings.

Looking for Keywords in a User-Agent

The most direct and simple method for detecting web browsers accessing your C# ASP .NET web application is to simply search for a sub-string within the user-agent and classify the web browser accordingly.

if (Request.UserAgent.ToString().IndexOf("Googlebot") > -1)
{
   // We have a GoogleBot web crawler.
}
else
{
   // We do not have a GoogleBot web crawler.
}

By parsing a simple sub-string from the UserAgent property of the HttpRequest, we can determine the type of web client accessing the site. While this method is simple and direct, it suffers from the problem of being unable to classify the many different types of user-agent strings out there. You could certainly obtain a list of user-agent strings and add keywords to parse for each, but this could take a long time. It would also be difficult to maintain the list and keep it updated as new web bots and browsers emerge. There must be an easier way and this is exactly where Microsoft is one step ahead.

Digging Deeper Into Request.Browser

In the above code sample, we pulled the user-agent string from the HttpRequest object. Rather than parse a sub-string from the Request.UserAgent property, the Request object provides us with an additional object for accessing information about the web browser client via Request.Browser. One of the properties of interest for telling the difference between a user and a web bot is Request.Browser.Crawler. This property is a boolean and will indicate true if the web browser is actually a web bot.

if (Request.Browser.Crawler)
{
   // We have a web crawler.
}
else
{
   // We do not have a web crawler.
}

Request.Browser.Crawler Always Returns False

If you try using the above code sample and testing using various user-agent strings to simulate web bots (ie. with the Firefox User-Agent Switcher plug-in), you'll notice that Request.Browser.Crawler always returns false. This is due to missing information in one of .NET's configuration sections, called BrowserCaps. We'll need to populate the list of BrowserCaps (the list of available user-agents that we have information about) in order to use this feature.

Using the BrowserCaps To Detect Web Browsers From Web Bots

BrowserCaps is a section in the web.config file, within the system.web section. BrowserCaps allows you to specify a list of web browser user-agent strings, via regular expressions, to match against. Each item in the list indicates the capabilities of the web browser, version, whether it's a crawler, and much more.

Inside the web.config (or machine.config) file:

<configuration>
<system.web>
<browserCaps>
   <result type="class"/>
   <use var="HTTP_USER_AGENT"/>
        browser=Unknown
        version=0.0
        majorver=0
        minorver=0
        frames=false
        tables=false
      <filter>
         <case match="Windows 98|Win98">
            platform=Win98
         </case>
      <case match="Windows NT|WinNT">
         platform=WinNT
      </case>
   </filter>
   <filter match="Unknown" with="%(browser)">
      <filter match="Win95" with="%(platform)">
      </filter>
   </filter>
</browserCaps>
</system.web>
</configuration>

The above is a sample entry for detecting Windows 98 and Windows NT operating systems in the user-agent string from the web browser. While you can proceed to add entries by hand to match each web browser and crawler of interest, you can actually download a complete and updated list of user-agent BrowserCaps to add to your C# ASP .NET web application.

To add the list of BrowserCaps to your development machine or server, follow these steps:

1. Open the following file for editing:
C:\windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\CONFIG\machine.config

2. Download the BrowserCaps list from http://owenbrady.net/browsercaps (direct download list).

3. Paste the entire contents of the XML file into the machine.config, just before the line </system.web>.

If you only want the BrowserCaps list available to a single web application, paste the BrowserCaps section into your local web.config. If you want all web applications to have access to the information, use the machine.config as noted above.

After saving the changes and refreshing the C# ASP .NET web application, you will now have proper values displaying for Request.Browser.Crawler. The regularly updated list helps you detect the majority of web crawlers, bots, scripts, and web browsers.

Using the Newer .BROWSER

BrowserCaps was introduced in the .NET 1.0 Framework. While it is still active and supported by Microsoft, it has been deprecated with .NET 2.0. The current standard is to use the .BROWSER feature to indicate the list of user-agent strings. It's important to note that entries specified in the .BROWSER feature are merged with the contents of the BrowserCaps, so that both methods may be used.

.BROWSER provides a way of specifying the web browser user-agents via XML in separate files in C:\windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\CONFIG\Browsers. After creating a .browser file, you can execute aspnet_regsql.exe to build the browser files into the global assembly, giving access to the list to all web applications. This allows you to add new entries to the list without restarting the web application process. The actual command line to use is: C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\<versionNumber>\aspnet_regsql.exe -i

The .browser feature provides a more seamless way of incorporating web browser detection into an ASP .NET application. However, at this time, a greater number of entries are available for the BrowserCaps method, which provides a more accurate detection method of web bots in the wild. Since both methods can be used together, there is no harm in combining them.

Perfecting Traffic Statistics with Web Bot Detection

One of the primary reasons to determine a web bot from a regular user's web browser is to allow for accurate recording of statistics. For example, when counting the hits to a particular page in an ASP .NET web application, the numbers would become skewed if you included hits from GoogleBot, Yahoo Slurp, and the many other web bots. By using the Request.Browser.Crawler value, we can easily detect a web bot from a user and provide a more accurate figure.

Cloaking Isn't Just in Star Trek

The discussion about web bot detection in C# ASP .NET web applications wouldn't be complete without briefly cautioning against displaying different content to web bots and regular user web browsers, also called cloaking. More specifically, cloaking is when your web application detects a web bot and shows a different page or content, with the goal of affecting search engine ranking. It's generally a rule of thumb to display the same content to web bots as you would to normal users and only use the web bot detection methods shown above for traffic statistical means or other behind-the-scenes activities.

Conclusion

The .NET Framework provides two powerful features for detecting the web browser client and determining web spiders from users' web browsers. .NET 1.0 provides the BrowserCaps feature, which can be updated regularly with new user-agent strings as they become available. .NET 2.0 provides the .BROWSER feature, in addition to the BrowserCaps feature, for incorporating new user-agent matches more seamlessly in web applications. By using web browser and web bot detection responsibly, you can help enhance web application traffic statistics and features, creating a more powerful and resiliant C# ASP .NET web application.

Every Blogengine.NET user must know and even when you are not using Blogengine.NET the following explain is intresting and usefull. Did you read some of the comments on my website...?

On my BlogEngine.NET website here the added comments are NOT moderated and everyone is free to add comments...  When we take a look at this comments and you will follow the link to the commenter we arrive mostly on a store website...!  Strange.. I asked myself are these comments real because the added comments are most times described with "like your blog" or "will come back soon" or "very informative"

On the Codeplex Blogengine.NET website I found one article about the "strange comments" and that I was not the only one receiving this strange comments... What is going on... Is there a way to stop this comments and moreover WHY they added this comments... After a small investigation I found that SEORebel (nickname) where the cause of this strange comments... and he is a smart guy....

How we could stop this 'automatic' added comments first..

It is simple to stop this comments by disable the comments, or moderated the comments...but that's not what I wanted. Just at that moment BlogEngine.NET developers comes up with a small patch to stop this strange comments... With four line of code the 'automatic' added comments are stopped...but not comments who added by people hands...for GPR

These days I see more and more comments added on my website who are added by hand, talks about the article, but the link from the commenter is still going to a store website... like a example see this article with comments...

Why they take the time to add comments by hand !  The answer is here Google PageRank

First of all what I have to say to the GRP commenters... Google PageRank doesn't work anymore on THIS BlogEngine.NET website for comments !!!!

To the users from Blogengine.NET I want to say... There is a solution and I will share that solution here

Google Page Rank is the heart from Google and for users from Google it's all about money...

Do you sell products then its a huge challenge to be the first in the Google Search Engine.  Google Page Ranks is used by Google Searchengine.  How higher the reach and rank in Google, how more hits, how more selling products...! P1, P2, P3 P4, or P8, your page on your website has a Google Page Rank..

Why the combination BlogEngine.NET and Google Page Rank is intresting for commenters to add their link ? When Google is indexing (crawling) your BlogEngine.NET website by default all documents will be indexed, simple their is no robots.txt  Users from BlogEngine.NET could add a robots.txt in the root and add some rules to follow or not to follow....it could solve the problem but its very intensive to maintenance

The question (and solution) is more HOW did Google visit your webpage to crawl and index your website and pages... yes... the GoogleBot... and if I could tell you the name from Google Search Indexing Bot you could easily redirect the search engine (without robots.txt) !!!!  Do you see already the solution for Blogengine.NET yet ?  We have to redirect Google's search engine to a new page, which on the fly created...! without comments... its so easy... I am for sure the GPR commenters will no longer add comments...!!

try something like this...

[code:c#]

if (Request.UserAgent.ToString().IndexOf("Googlebot") > -1)
{
   // We have a GoogleBot web crawler.
}
else
{
   // We do not have a GoogleBot web crawler.
}

// or try this code in a some deeper way...

            System.Web.HttpBrowserCapabilities clientBrowserCaps = Request.Browser;
            if (((System.Web.Configuration.HttpCapabilitiesBase)clientBrowserCaps).Crawler)
            {
                Response.Write ( "Browser is a search engine. I am creating a page without comments");
            }
            else
            {
               Response.Write ("Browser is not a search engine. Viewing this page with comments ");
            } 

// In the example above you have also to read my other article about detecting webcrawlers

//Here is another approach..based on the User Agent

            if (Request.ServerVariables["HTTP_USER_AGENT"].Contains("Googlebot"))
            {
                //log Google bot visit
            }
            else if (Request.ServerVariables["HTTP_USER_AGENT"].Contains("msnbot"))
            {
                //log MSN bot visit
            }
            else if (Request.ServerVariables["HTTP_USER_AGENT"].Contains("Yahoo"))
            {
                //log yahoo bot visit
            }
            else
            {
                //similarly you can check for other search engines
            }

I believe the developers from BlogEngine.NET will take this advice in the next release as default.

Other Web Links

See example webpage with this comments linked to a webstore...

More about detecting Google Bot within the C# .NET Framework on this website

If you want to know more about Google Page Rank then read this great article about

Open Source BlogEngine.NET information is here

If you ever wanted your own icon in the bars from IE 7/8, Netscape or Google Chrome !

Within BlogEngine.NET you only have to change the refferer to the icon in the sitemaster asp page from your theme...located in the themes dir...

I did change my icon, but converted it first with the trial Any2Icon program/software, to me riding on my scooter....

Put the Icon file also in the theme directory you are using...

Just like other extensions ....

There we go...(official you don't have to install Perl for running Perl on your PC or server!, see below)

First download the latest Perl download Win file

Ola, Perl is only available for 32 bits !  Ola,....and this is the tric where a lot people in the world get stuck.....

Did you already install a Windows 2008 server ! (doesn't matter which version ! even 64 bits)

No, then you have to do something before...Intall Windows 2008 is not described here, but in the future in another page...

Yes you installed a Windows 2008 server, great then we can start....

First question, Did you enable IIS 7 in Windows 2008 ?  Thats the first thing to do...add a role...

When IIS 7 enabled, then the real works start... which modules for IIS 7 you want to use....

IIS 6 and before was 'all' or 'nothing', with IIS 7 you have to think about ! which one....

For an Enterprise Environment , I'll advice you to create IIS 7 profiles...  and don't forget the DMZ ! even when 'as usual' Windows 2008 is great hardened.
Security must coming to the door now.... I expect you are in a LAB environment, before staging to production envorinments

For a correct working from Perl you need for sure two IIS 7 modules to install.... then its up to you to decide which one more...

Security and Serving services in IIS 7

About getting it to work with FastCGI.

Since PHP runs best on IIS with FastCGI, I suppose it was logical to turn to FastCGI for Perl as well.

Sometimes, though, the right tool for the job is not the newest and flashiest thing. It turns out that this is the case for Perl. For many years, ActiveState has provided a free version of ActivePerl that runs great on IIS using ISAPI instead of FastCGI.

It's been a while since I've looked at ActivePerl, so I did some research last week to see the state of things and discovered that there are a few things you need to know in order to get it to work on IIS 7:

ActivePerl is available as an ISAPI for 32 bits only. This does not prevent it from running on a 64 bit install of Windows. It just means that any application pool that contains Perl content must be configured to run as 32 bit.

As of this writing, ActivePerl runs well on IIS 7, but its installer does not properly configure IIS 7 for running Perl scripts. After completing the ActivePerl installation, you will need to create handler mappings to associate requests for Perl scripts to the correct ISAPI based Perl interpreter.

There are at least two different ISAPI extensions with ActivePerl. You should make sure that you use PerlEx30.dll with IIS 7. If you use perlis.dll, you may find that response headers sent from your Perl script are added to your response page instead of going back to the client as headers.

Given the above information, here are the steps to get ActivePerl running on IIS 7:

1. Install ActivePerl from http://www.activestate.com/activeperl/. At this time, there is a link to version 5.10 for Windows (x86) on this page. This link downloads an MSI installer to your machine which you can run.

2. If you are running the 64 bit version of Windows 2008, ensure that your application pool is configured to run as 32 bit. Assuming that you will be using ActivePerl in the default application pool, these steps will do it:

• From the Windows 'Start' menu, pick run and type "inetmgr" (without the quotes). Click on 'OK".
• In the left hand pane of IIS Manager, open up the settings for your server. Click on "Application Pools".
• In the Application Pools page, select "DefaultAppPool".
• In the right hand pane, under "Edit Application Pool", click on "Advance Settings..."
• In the Advanced Settings dialog, ensure that "Enable 32-bit Applications" is set to "True".

3. Create a handler mapping that associates "*.pl" requests with ActiveState's perlex30.dll extension using the following steps:

4. In the left hand pane of IIS Manager, select your server. This will apply the following handler mappings on the entire server. If you would like to do this for just a specific site or application, you can open up the server and select any site or application. In the center pane, double click on the Handler Mappings icon.

5. When the Handler Mappings pane is displayed, click on the "Add Module Mapping..." item in the Actions pane on the right.

6. Fill out the Add Module Mapping dialog as follows:

• For Request Path, enter "*.pl".
• For Module, select "IsapiModule" from the dropdown list. Note that the ISAPI module is a prerequisite. If it does not show up on this list, it will need to be installed an an IIS optional component.
• For Executable, enter "c:\perl\bin\PerlEx30.dll" (without the quotes.) Note that this assumes that you've installed ActiveState Perl using its default location. If you installed it in another location, you will need to look there for perlex30.dll.
• For Name, enter "ActiveState Perl for .pl". Note that this name is just a label and does not affect functionality. It does need to be unique, though. If you are going to be associating other file extensions with ActiveState Perl, the names for those mappings will need to be different.
• You do not need to do anything with the "Request Restrictions..." button. If you wish to limit this mapping to specific HTTP verbs, etc., it can be done there.

7. Repeat the above steps for any additional file extensions you wish to be associated with Perl. On IIS 6, ActiveState Perl creates mappings for "*.pl", "*.plx" and "*.plex". Additionally, some applications are known to map "*.cgi" with Perl.

That's it. After doing this, ActiveState Perl should run on IIS 7.

No Perl to install with ActiveState Perl App, everything in one executable file...

Elk systeem kent requirements, waaraan het systeem moet voldoen. Het opstellen van requirements is geen eenvoudige taak. Er zijn zelfs speciale pakketten op de markt voor het vastleggen en correleren van requirements.

De meeste requirements zijn functioneel (functional requirements). Ze bepalen wat het systeem moet doen, zoals: "Na het invoeren van de klantorder moet een orderbevestiging worden geprint".

Naast de functional requirement zijn er ook Non-functional requirements. Deze requirements worden ook wel de "-abilities" genoemd. Enkele voorbeelden van non-functional requirements zijn:

• Availability (beschikbaarheid)
• Scalability (schaalbaarheid)
• Stability (stabiliteit)
• Reliability (betrouwbaarheid)

Naast deze -abilities zijn ook de volgende zaken non-functional requirements:

• Kosten/licentiestructuur
• Security
• Uptime
• Robustness
• Documentatie
• enzovoort enzovoort

Gebruikers van systemen stellen deze non-functional requirements vaak niet expliciet vast als eisen, maar ze hebben er wel verwachtingen over.

Het is de taak van de IT architect of de requirements manager om ook de niet uitgesproken  non-functional requirements boven tafel te krijgen. Dit kan behoorlijk lastig zijn. Zaken die voor klanten of eindgebruikers vanzelfsprekend zijn, zijn dat niet altijd voor iedereen. Denk ook aan de eisen die de beheerders stellen aan het systeem (is er een back-up window?).

Een groot deel van het budget voor een systeem kan bepaald worden door de non-functional requirements ("het systeem moet natuurlijk wel goed samenwerken met de bestaande systemen" of "De website mag nooit uit de lucht zijn"). Het is daarom belangrijk om deze requirements te kwantificeren: Hoe erg is het als de website elke dag 5 minuten niet beschikbaar is?  En als het 500.000 euro kost om dit te bereiken, is het dan nog steeds belangrijk?

De acceptatie van een systeem is vaak afhankelijk van goed geïmplementeerde non-functional requirements. Een website kan nog zo mooi en functioneel zijn, als het laden ervan 30 seconden duurt, dan zijn uw klanten verdwenen!

Building a complete .NET Platform with Visual Studio 2008 on your Vista Ultimate Desktop or Notebook...

Here is my ... how to

First install the necessary software....

You can use the free trial 90 days Visual Studio 2008 Professional edition or the free Express edition
Download the SQL 2008 Vista Server Management Express for easy setting up your databases... here

Set up the IIS7 Webserver on Vista as I described here

Your IIS7 webserver is installed when you can see the IIS7 page on http://localhost

Install the Visual Studio 2008 suite (all standard, next, next, finish)

Install the SQL 2008 Server Management Express (all standard, next, next, finish)

and there we are ready to go on our new created .NET Platform for developing 'state of the art' applications or websites...

Set up DotNetNuke 5 Development environment on your new created .NET platform !  here is how to do

Download (register first) the DotNetNuke 5 INSTALL edition from the official DotNetNuke website

Unzip the zip file to c:\inetpub\wwwroot\DotNetNuke

In Explorer set 'Full Control' security on c:\inetpub\wwwroot\DotNetNuke for the user NETWORK SERVICE,

Start SQL 2008 Server Management Express and login

In the Databases tab create a new Database with a name....

In the Security tab, select Logins and click with the right mouse and select New Login to create one

Give the new login a name, select SQL Authentication and configure a login user, four configuration items are needed: login name, authentication type, login password, and database permissions.

It is imperative that the “ User must change password at next login ” option is not selected. If this option is selected, then the user account will not be able to properly log in to the server.

Once the needed “ general ” information has been provided for the user, you are now ready to configure the permissions to grant the account full access to the database created earlier. Select User Mapping from the option area in the left pane of the Login - New window. 

Ensure that you check the box next to your database in the top pane, and that the db_owner option is elected in the lower pane, as shown in the figure.

After this is completed, simply click OK.

Your database for DotNetNuke 5 is created (but empty)

Now we need to configure the IIS 7 webserver, type inetmgr in the windows searchbox and click enter for the DotNetNuke website configuration

When clicking on the Default Website tab you can see the DotNetNuke map in the right frame view.

Select the DotNetNuke map and click on your right mouse, select convert to application, when opened the box, simple click OK

That's it for 99%

Now we only need to configure the web.config file with the proper connection Database configuration setup,  only the name from the Dabase !

Tomorrow I believe it's time for a nap !

As IIS 7 is not installed by default on Vista,you will have to install it.

Follow this step by step tutorial

First step ,go to Start / Control panel / Programs and Feature

Then Click on Turn Windows features off or on on the left pane (see below)

In Turn Windows features off or on Select Internet Information Service and expand it.

Make sure to select the following features:

• Web Management Tool
• World Wide web service
• .Net Extensibility
• Asp.net
• CGI
• ISAPI Extensions
• ISAPI Filters

click OK and Vista should be able to install IIS 7 with not problems.

To test your web server , open your browser and type http://localhost in the address bar,you should be able to see the IIS welcome page.If you do ,everything is OK.