Digital Signatures - Code Signing the TX Text Control files

Blogged by Björn Meyer on May 15, 2008 and tagged with .NET, Code signing.

Code signing is getting more and more important. It adds a digital signature to software files. These signatures can identify the publisher and verify that the software has not been altered or corrupted. The files themselves won't be altered, but a signature is appended to the executable. Malicious code can't be added to the file thanks to a checksum that would not be correct if there were a modification.

Since SP2 for Microsoft Windows XP was released, a security warning dialog indicates the "Unknown Publisher" if the digital signature is not included. Otherwise, the company name and an optional link is displayed.

Windows Vista comes with UAC - the User Account Control. These new security policies can make it so that only signed executables can be run on the system.

For software developers it is important to know that Microsoft requires all files with the following extensions to be signed with an Authenticode certificate to receive the Windows Vista Logo Certification:

• *.exe
• *.dll
• *.ocx
• *.sys
• *.cpl
• *.drv
• *.scr

Distributable files of software components like TX Text Control must be signed by the vendor of the component.

As a matter of course, we offer this service for our customers free of charge.

The process is quite simple:

1. Open a support case here and request your code signed files.

www.textcontrol.com/support/case/

2. Our support engineers will ask you to send them your distributable files as a zip file.
3. After your files were signed, you will receive them by email.

We can offer this service only for version 14.0 of TX Text Control. If you have any questions about code signing or our sign process, feel free to contact me.

Resize images to fit into page

Blogged by Björn Meyer on May 08, 2008 and tagged with .NET, Samples, Images.

I just got the requirement that pasted screenshots should be resized to fit into the current page. The best and easiest way to realize that is to trap the ImageCreated event. This event returns the image that just has been created.

All we need to do, is to calculate the ratio to resize the image. Therefore, the page width of the current section excluding the page margins must be devided by the width of the image. This factor can be used to scale the image afterwards. The following code shows this ImageCreated event:

private void textControl1_ImageCreated(object sender, TXTextControl.ImageEventArgs e)
{
	// get screen resolution to convert twips to pixel
	int iTwipsPerPixel = (int)(1440 / textControl1.CreateGraphics().DpiX);

	if (((float)(e.Image.Size.Width / iTwipsPerPixel)) >= (textControl1.Sections.GetItem().Format.PageSize.Width - textControl1.Sections.GetItem().Format.PageMargins.Left - textControl1.Sections.GetItem().Format.PageMargins.Right))
	{
		// resize the image
		float fScaleFactor = ((textControl1.Sections.GetItem().Format.PageSize.Width - textControl1.Sections.GetItem().Format.PageMargins.Left - textControl1.Sections.GetItem().Format.PageMargins.Right) / ((float)(e.Image.Size.Width / iTwipsPerPixel))) * 100;
		e.Image.VerticalScaling = Convert.ToInt32(fScaleFactor);
		e.Image.HorizontalScaling = Convert.ToInt32(fScaleFactor);
	}
}

In the following screen-video you can see the sample in action. Feel free to contact me, if you have any questions about this solution.

BrowserTextControl: Using post-build events in Visual Studio

Blogged by Björn Meyer on May 07, 2008 and tagged with Visual Studio, Samples, BrowserTextControl.

When developing with TX Text Control .NET Server and it's BrowserTextControl class, you might have learned that you need to clear the .NET download cache (dl3) everytime you create a new version of the wrapping user control. Otherwise, Internet Explorer won't download the user control again due to the fact that the codebase has been modified.

This only happens on the development machine. In production, if the server provides a new version of the user control, Internet Explorer downloads this new version in order to install it in the .NET download cache.

To avoid cleaning the download cache manually using the Visual Studio command line, you can add this command to the post-build events of Visual Studio.

1. Open your website's properties using the main menu Project entry.
2. On the third tab, add the following command to the Post-build event comment line:



"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin\gacutil.exe" /cdl

TX Text Control Blog is now integrated into the main web site

Blogged by Jonathan Maron on April 29, 2008 and tagged with Web Site, Blog.

The content from the TX Text Control Blog has been migrated to the main TX Text Control web site.

In the past eleven years, the TX Text Control Blog has become the central information organ in the TX Text Control community, dissipating technical information about TX Text Control, detailed sample applications, as well as the latest tips and tricks with TX Text Control.

Previously, the TX Text Control Blog had a number of categories. These categories have been replaced by tags, an overview of which can be seen in the tagcloud and below.

All the links from the old blog are still valid, as they are automatically redirected to the new integrated blog.

Please do not hesitate to contact us, about the new blog and/or for any matter relating to TX Text Control.

New video tutorial: Building an ASP.NET word processor

Blogged by Björn Meyer on April 22, 2008 and tagged with Video Tutorial, Documentation, BrowserTextControl.

This video tutorial shows in very easy steps how to build an ASP.NET web site project using TX Text Control .NET Server.

Such solutions consist of an ASP.NET web site project and the client-side user control that encapsulates the BrowserTextControl class. I plan to show you a lot of other tricks and applications using this video approach in the future. Feel free to share your thoughts on this idea.