Visual Studio 2005
by on 27.Oct, 2005 under Uncategorized
fast and very useful, and unlike some Microsoft software, I’ve never
seen VS 2003 crash. Many say that Linux offers more in it’s IDEs like
kDevelop or Anjuta but I disagree. While kDevelop and Anjuta are more
than good I feel a lot more comfortable developing in Visual Studio.
fast and very useful, and unlike some Microsoft software, I’ve never
seen VS 2003 crash. Many say that Linux offers more in it’s IDEs like
kDevelop or Anjuta but I disagree. While kDevelop and Anjuta are more
than good I feel a lot more comfortable developing in Visual Studio.
any Microsoft software the installation is easy, just slip the DVD in
the drive and follow the instructions. The only thing I noticed was
that it takes quite some time to install this IDE, not like installing
the full KDE on Gentoo but still quite some time. After the .NET
framework 2.0 is installed you need to do a reboot.
the installation completes you are presented with the same quiestions
as in VS2003 installation, update, install MSDN and exit. For my sample
there were no updates and I didn’t feel like installing the MSDN
library to the desktop.
VS2005 asks you for information on what you are mostly developing, in
my case I answered web applications, but there are a whole lot of
different option to set up the IDE the way it should be.
feel like they have once again made a nice IDE, it looks even better
than the old one and the improvements are more than good. For example
when creating a new web project, you don’t have to run IIS on the
development station anymore, VS2005 comes with a built in http server
to show you the content on the pages you are developing. This is a
really good thing because is far more flexible to work with and if you
want you can always use IIS instead. I didn’t. What I liked most was
the new IntelliSense, it starts showing as soon as you start typing.
While some can find this very annoying I find it helpful and it speeds
up my work. See the example in the picture below.
always wanted this feature and once again I see myself working faster
and more efficient than ever before. And if you look closely at the
picture above you can see that it’s even possible to choose to
highlight parts of the code. For example choosing the form tag
highlights everything inside the tag. Another thing worth to mention is
that the “html” editor now supports + and – code blocks, this is very
useful when you are working on large sites.
with a lot of code examples and it’s really nice, for web developers
there are Personal website starter kit and a few others. See picture
below.
also has a community menu integrated into the IDE. It enables searching
for help on MSDN posting questions and a few other features. Se picture
below.
you create a new webform it now defaults as Flowlayout and not
Gridlayout which is a good thing for us developing for more than
Internet explorer. Also the default language is now XHTML.
almost jumped up and down in my chair when I first saw the new login
menu. This must be the best added feature I’ve seen so far. Can it get
faster than dropping the login box into the design? I hardly think so.
The best part is that it also has a control for registration, password
recovery, login status and change password. It looks more and more like
I would have to invest to an update from 2003 to 2005.
are still a lot of cool features for me to test and form an opinion
about but for now my four hour quick look session is over. With this I
leave you and urge you to try this new IDE out. You can download the
trial version from Microsoft and see for your self just how many
improvements they have made on a already very good product. I’ll add up
articles on this software when I have more time to test it’s features.
Watchguard Firebox III
by on 26.Oct, 2005 under Uncategorized
After working with Watchguard
products for some time I decided to submit an short article about them.
Why I like working with them and some of the conns I find using them.
After working with Watchguard
products for some time I decided to submit an short article about them.
Why I like working with them and some of the conns I find using them.
As
I said I have been working with theese firewalls for a few years now
and I see myself fit to talk about them. The firewalls are quite nice
and they do work exactly like they should. They keep the bad stuff out
and have alot of nice features.
Mobile VPN
One
of the things I find not so good is that the Watchguard Mobile user VPN
client only works on a Windows workstation. I find myself using alot of
different operating systems and I work as an administrator for the
local security company. I like to use different operating systems for
different tasks and usually Linux seems to be very very cost effective
when it comes to running public servers. For my testing I run a
dualboot on my laptop and it would be nice to be able to connect to the
company network even from a *NIX workstation.
I guess it’s wrong to
call it a big problem since our company mostly use Windows, all
desktops are Windows and some of our servers so everyone who has the
need to connect to the company network over VPN has the chance to do
so. And it’s fairly easy to set up an mobile user. Even PocketPC users
are supported, though I have never tested this part. If anyone reading
this has, please contact me on how it turned out.
Logging
Logging
on theese firewalls are not as good as it could be, for example, the
default way of loggin is to use Watchguards own system, WSEP (
Watchguard Security Event Processor). To run a search in the log system
is not as good as, well for example Microsoft ISA server
that stores logs in an SQL database. You can search but the log files
are roled and it might be quite a hassel to find the record you are
looking for. The other minus on using WSEP is that you need a Windows
based workstation/server to run it.
A good thing about WSEP is
that you can and you should connect all the local firewalls to this
logger, and I usually even set the branch office ones to log to this
logger. This way I don’t have to connect to multiple log servers to
find a record.
Administration and configuration
This
is where I give a full ten to Watchguard. The administration utility is
very and I mean very simple to use. It has very nice features and you
can follow the firewall in real time to se connections and other
statistics. Also adding rules and settings is very easy. There are a
whole bunch of ready rules and packet filters by default but you can
easily add you own to the list. The configuration wizard finishes in
about ten minutes depending on you speed and the default settings are
good enough to use while setting the rest up.
Even publishing
servers from the DMZ is easy, the wizard asks for the IP:s of a few
standard servers like http and mailserver. So they are published as
soon as the wizard finishes, if you want it to.
After the wizard
you need to manually tweek services and the first thing I usually do is
deny the default "outgoing any" policy. After that just start opening
ports from the inside out as you see fit.
