Posted in web-development

link-to-QRCode IE8 accelerator

I have Nokia N78 phone and use it a lot for surfing web (with beautiful Opera Mobile 10), reading RSS (with internal webkit-based browser), tweeting (with awesome Gravity client), reading CHMs (with great mobiCHM tool) or using Skype, or doing and many other tasks.

But mostly I use the phone to read something on the internet when I’m on the way to some place (as it takes at least an hour to get somewhere in Moscow using public transport). And usually when I’m browsing web on a PC and find something worthy to save to mobile, I type its URL  on the phone and save it to bookmarks. Which, even with bit.ly or any other url-shortening service, is a kerfuffle, and T9 doesn’t really help here.

So I was trying to find an easier way to get URLs transferred from my PC onto the mobile. Opera 10 Mobile comes with Opera Link bookmarks synchronisation service, but I don’t surf internet in Opera on a PC. There’re some social bookmarking sites, but I’m not adding every link that I want to read on mobile to my bookmarks, be it a web-service or browser bookmarks.

And here comes QRCode scanning to the rescue. I knew that Nokia provided a nice free easy-to-use QRCode scanner for their smartphones, and I gave it a go. Downloaded, installed, tried with some QRCodes I had, everything was fine, scanning and recognition speed was really high – I just pointed the phone camera onto my computer’s screen and the encoded text was momentarily recognised. I decided to try encoding links in QRCodes using Nokia service, and it worked fine as well – the scanner made them active so I could either copy them to use in Opera Mobile or open with default web-browser (handy if it’s a link to RSS feed).

Of course, encoding each link manually and then scanning resulting QRCode is taking much more time than just typing the link in the phone, so the idea of making the browser show QRCode for any link made more sense to me.

The easiest way to integrate some web-service to IE8 is its beautiful Accelerators platform. I did 10 lines of PHP code which shortens any URL with bit.ly service, and then echoes the IMG tag pointing to Nokia QR Code creation service URL. Here’s the code:

<?php
  require_once('bitly.php');
  $sUrl = make_bitly_url($_GET['url']); //shorten the original URL first
  echo '<img src="http://mobilecodes.nokia.com/qr?DATA='.$sUrl.'&MODULE_SIZE=4&name=&MARGIN=2&ENCODING=BYTE&type=link&MODE=TEXT&a=view">';

Bit.ly is used to make QRCode creation faster and easier as only small chunk of data is encoded.

Then I created a very simple XML file which instructs IE8 what to do with the link:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!-- author: Vitaly Sharovatov (http://sharovatov.ru) -->
<openServiceDescription xmlns="http://www.microsoft.com/schemas/openservicedescription/1.0">
  <homepageUrl>http://sharovatov.ru</homepageUrl>
  <display>
    <name>link QRCode</name>
    <icon>http://sharovatov.ru/qrcode/favicon.ico</icon>
  </display>
  <description>Get the QRCode for selected link</description>
  <activity category="mobile">
    <activityAction context="link">
      <preview action="http://sharovatov.ru/qrcode/createCode.php?url={link}" />
      <execute method="get" action="http://sharovatov.ru/qrcode/createCode.php?url={link}" />
    </activityAction>
  </activity>
</openServiceDescription>

 

And then just uploaded the php script and my accelerator to my site. Dead easy, 10 minutes job.

As wordpress.com doesn’t allow javascript onclick handlers on the links (and accelerator gets added to IE by window.external.addService call), I had to put the install page on my site. Please visit http://sharovatov.ru/current.html for this and few other IE8 accelerators. To get this accelerator installed, just press on “Install now” link in its description.

Now if you right-click on any link, go to Accelerators, and just hover “link to QRCode” accelerator you’ll get the window with QRCode for the current link:

qrcode-accelerator

Then you just run Barcode app on the mobile, get the QRCode scanned and then can do anything with the link – copy it to the clipboard, open right now in the default browser. Seems to be quite handy.

In order to get this accelerator in the main right-click menu, you need to go to Page –> All Accelerators –> Manage accelerators and in the window that appears select “link QRCode” accelerator and press on “Set as default” button.

Here’s some guiding screenshots:

manageaccels manageaddones

Then your link QRCode accelerator will be in the default context menu:

defaultmenu

So now you can get a QRCode for any link, scan it and use it on your mobile.

P.S. There’re QRCode scanners for all mobile platforms, so if you want similar functionality on your phone, google for “QRCode scanner %yourphone%”.

IE9 – sucks much less than other browsers

I won’t repeat everything that’s been said on Mix now, you should read this article and this IEBlog entry and get the IE platform preview. Don’t be afraid that IE9 will spoil your IE8 – IE9 preview doesn’t replace IE8 or anything, it’s got new jscript engine (called “Chakra”), new Trident layout engine version and wininet bundled in one package (31 megabytes installed size!) – first time when Microsoft does it this way – very impressive!

This preview will be updated each few weeks – the work isn’t finished, UI is still in a very “beta” mode:

ie9

Most important changes IE9 has from IE8:

  • JIT-powered js optimisation in jscript engine (Sunspider reports speed faster than Firefox 3.7 alpha2) – looks similar to Apple’s Nitro JIT.
  • new Trident with more CSS3 support – CSS3 Selectors module, CSS3 Borders and Backgrounds module (passes CSS Selectors tests)
  • DOM2 Styles support
  • SVG 1.1 2nd ed support (plus hardware acceleration)
  • XHTML support (with proper namespaces support)
  • complete hardware acceleration support for graphics and text rendering, which makes any animation in IE9 WAY much faster than in other browsers – you should look at videos
  • HTML5 video support with h264 codec with proper hardware acceleration support (kicks Chrome’s ass, allows 2 simultaneous HD 720p video playbacks via HTML5 video on a cheap netbook). Another nail in the OGG coffin :)
  • DOM Events support

And IE9 is ridiculously fast. That’s partly due to the fact that “Chakra” jscript compiles javascript in a separate CPU core in parallel to IE (natural improvement to LCIE), and partly because of hardware optimisation for all rendering and animations.

Unfortunately, IE9 is not available for Windows XP (and it won’t be), the main reason is the security model – basically, XP security model just doesn’t suit for IE9. Quite right, XP is nearly 10 years old! Another reason is that graphical core on Windows XP works in a different way, so IE9 hardware acceleration just cannot work there.

Of course, IE9 follows the same logics IE8 has in terms of backwards compatibility – rules that I described here apply to IE9 – if X-UA-Compatible header/meta is set to Edge, IE9 new engine will run. Of course, it will render sites with correct doctype (but withouth X-UA-Compatible) in IE9 standards mode, and it will continue support for compatibility view lists feature. So old crappy sites designed for IE6 will still work in compatibility mode, and new sites will work in awesome IE9 in the standards mode without any problems. Read the abovementioned post for more details.

Improvements that will be done later:

  • better Ecma262 conformance and as a result, better ACID3 scores (current score is 55), IE team promises to improve this significantly, I think it will pass the test by the time RC ships
  • support for other CSS3 standard modules
  • canvas support – wasn’t announced, but I think this is a natural move when SVG is already done and done properly!

But anyway, the whole feeling after watching IE9 keynote session is IT’S AWESOME!

We’re entering the new era when Microsoft browser is faster than others, more secure (it’s been more secure than others since IE8b1) and provides better level of standards support.

P.S. To see the real speed just run these test on IE9 platform preview  and on any other browser and feel the difference :)

Some links:

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Windows Phone 7 Internet Explorer IEMobile 7.0

I’ve just watched MIX keynotes and as soon as MSFT announced there was free VS2010 Express for Windows Phone 7 with proper emulator, I downloaded, installed it, created sample app and ran the debugger.

Here’s some screenshots:

VS2010 Express for Windows Phone IDE:

Untitled-2

Windows Phone 7 Emulator running in the debug mode:

Untitled-1

The most interesting thing for me was to find out which IE version Microsoft decided to ship with Windows Phone 7. They said it wouldn’t be IE9, but would be something between IE7 and IE8. They also assured that the Windows Phone emulator (which comes bundled into the VS2010 Express for Windows Phone 7) is a proper virtual machine, a real copy of Windows Phone OS sandboxed in the VM engine.

So bearing this in mind I thought that I’d test the WP7 IE in emulator.

And here’s interesting stuff:

  1. navigator.appVersion on Windows Phone 7 IE returns
    4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows Phone OS 7.0; Trident/3.1; IEMobile/7.0
  2. User-Agent string is
    Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows Phone Os 7.0; Trident/3.1; IEMobile/7.0
  3. @_jscript_version reports 5.8 (as IE8 does)
  4. [if IE 7] conditional comments section gets applied
  5. *+html selector { rules } hack works

So at this moment IEMobile/7.0 seems to be a slightly adjusted Trident (layout engine) of IE7 and jscript of version 5.8. (as it turns out below, some features are either disabled or not accessible now, or will not be supported at all)

To dive deeper into the details, I’ve tested several things and prepared the following table:

Feature Supports
native XMLHttpRequest Yes
XDomainRequest No
Selectors API Yes
clipboardData No
data URI No
maxConnectionsPerServer No
sessionStorage/localStorage No
offscreenBuffering No
native JSON No
DOM Objects prototypes No
getters/setters No

 

So from the CSS prospective Windows Phone IEMobile 7.0 is indistinguishable from desktop IE7, it applies the same conditional comments rules, supports the same subset of CSS selectors, same hacks work and same bugs are there. If you know how to support desktop IE7 Trident, you won’t have a problem with IEMobile 7.0.

Completely different situation is with javascript – jscript version is 5.8 (same that IE8 has), but many features that IE8 supports via COM wrappers do not exist on IEMobile 7.0 (does it have COM at all?). Also it lacks support for some native features of jscript 5.8 (e.g. native JSON, DOM objs prototypes, getters/settters). The only feature I can see from IE8 is Selectors API support, which is great, but really – is that what we really expected?

So from what I see now, Microsoft took IE7 Trident (3.1), took jscript 5.8 and cut off as much as possible (all COM wrappers and some native features), put IE8 icon on top and shipped it to Windows Phone 7.

I really hoped it would have IE9 or at least IE8.

The only hope is that it’s still beta and all the IE8 stuff will be shipped with the final version. Hope it’s not just a wishful thinking.

It’s such a frustration to see a beautiful and free VS2010 Express for Windows Phone 7, awesome SL4 which runs everywhere, and then look at this crippled “IE7.234”. If this is a marketing choice to make web-developers write in Silverlight, then it’s silly because it breaks the most important feature Microsoft provided – backwards compatibility. Old sites and current sites which Windows Phone users will want to visit will break in this browser. Gmail works in html-only mode. Surely, some will adapt. But not all.

And by the way, Apple got it right on iPhone.

P.S. Todd Brix said there will be a Windows Update-like service in Windows Phone 7, so let’s hope that IEMobile will get updated.

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critical IIS vulnerability

Just got a link from our system administrator – http://securityvulns.ru/Wdocument993.html 

Go read the vulnerability description now!

Basically – if your users upload files to your site and THEY specify file names, you’re vulnerable:

#Vulnerability/Risk Description:
– IIS can execute any extension as an Active Server Page or any other executable extension.
For instance “malicious.asp;.jpg” is executed as an ASP file on the server. Many file
uploaders protect the system by checking only the last section of the filename as its
extension. And by using this vulnerability, an attacker can bypass this protection and upload a dangerous executable file on the server.

There’s an unchecked patch for this vulnerability, but again this shows that you just can’t allow any user input saved to your system without filtering.

So, if you allow file uploads – your script have to specify filenames, not users.

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Beanstalkapp, FogBugz and now Case Tracker

As a follow-up to my post about free hosted integrated solution for bugtracking and version-control, I’d like to introduce a great tool I accidentally found and then installed – Case Tracker.

It’s a free desktop application which allows you to easily view a list of current bugs, gives you a way to “start working” on the bug – so the time you actually spend on fixing the bug or implementing the feature is carefully calculated. So it’s basically a time-tracking application for a fogbugz – it takes the list of bugs

image

To start working, you need to enter your fogbugz username, password and the URL where you have it installed:

 image

Case Tracker supports both FogBugz On-demand and hosted versions – it simulates all required POST requests as if you’re working with Fogbugz through your browser. As soon as you entered correct username and password, it will show you the list of active bugs:

image

However, by default it shows bugs assigned to anybody, which may be not always desirable. To address this issue, Case Tracker provides a search filter (funnel on the right-hand side of the pause button). For example, I need only those bugs that are assigned to me, so I add assignedto:"Vitaly Sharovatov" as a search filter:

image

Then I press “Go” and get my list populated with only those bugs that I need! Awesome!

For more detailed instructions on the allowed syntax read this.

What’s really great in Case Tracker – it can automatically stop measuring time when you’re away from keyboard for a certain period of time:

image

However, Case Tracker doesn’t allow creating new cases – it opens your fogbugz URL in your default browser so you can enter new case there. But Case Tracker is not a replacement for Fogbugz UI – it’s goal is to simplify time tracking.

So the general flow is:

  1. you choose a bug from a drop-down list
  2. if the estimate hasn’t been set for this bug, Case Tracker prompts you to enter the estimate (using the same syntax rules as in Fogbugz in the browser)
  3. the work is started and time is measured – if you’re afk or just press pause button, it stops measuring the time
  4. when you’re finished – you commit the bug and mark it resolved either by specifying status:resolved in svn comments or using Case Tracker – I prefer to specify it in a submit comment – just got used to it.

So if you use fogbugz – this tool is definitely worth trying!

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