amp - Dave's Blog

Search
My timeline on Mastodon

Right-To-Left Override Twitter Name

2020 Oct 21, 3:50

Its rare to find devs anticipating Unicode control characters showing up in user input. And the most fun when unanticipated is the Right-To-Left Override character U+202E. Unicode characters have an implicit direction so that for example by default Hebrew characters are rendered from right to left, and English characters are rendered left to right. The override characters force an explicit direction for all the text that follows.

I chose my Twitter display name to include the HTML encoding of the Right-To-Left Override character #x202E; as a sort of joke or shout out to my favorite Unicode control character. I did not anticipate that some Twitter clients in some of their UI would fail to encode it correctly. There's no way I can remove that from my display name now.


Try it on Amazon.


How about pages that want to tell you about the U+202E. 


PermalinkCommentsUnicode

Multiple Windows in Win10 JavaScript UWP apps

2018 Mar 10, 1:47

Win10 Changes

In Win8.1 JavaScript UWP apps we supported multiple windows using MSApp DOM APIs. In Win10 we use window.open and window and a new MSApp API getViewId and the previous MSApp APIs are gone:

Win10 Win8.1
Create new window window.open MSApp.createNewView
New window object window MSAppView
viewId MSApp.getViewId(window) MSAppView.viewId

WinRT viewId

We use window.open and window for creating new windows, but then to interact with WinRT APIs we add the MSApp.getViewId API. It takes a window object as a parameter and returns a viewId number that can be used with the various Windows.UI.ViewManagement.ApplicationViewSwitcher APIs.

Delaying Visibility

Views in WinRT normally start hidden and the end developer uses something like TryShowAsStandaloneAsync to display the view once it is fully prepared. In the web world, window.open shows a window immediately and the end user can watch as content is loaded and rendered. To have your new windows act like views in WinRT and not display immediately we have added a window.open option. For example
let newWindow = window.open("https://example.com", null, "msHideView=yes");

Primary Window Differences

The primary window that is initially opened by the OS acts differently than the secondary windows that it opens:

Primary Secondary
window.open Allowed Disallowed
window.close Close app Close window
Navigation restrictions ACUR only No restrictions

The restriction on secondary windows such that they cannot open secondary windows could change in the future depending on feedback.

Same Origin Communication Restrictions

Lastly, there is a very difficult technical issue preventing us from properly supporting synchronous, same-origin, cross-window, script calls. That is, when you open a window that's same origin, script in one window is allowed to directly call functions in the other window and some of these calls will fail. postMessage calls work just fine and is the recommended way to do things if that's possible for you. Otherwise we continue to work on improving this.

PermalinkComments

MSApp.getHtmlPrintDocumentSourceAsync - JavaScript UWP app printing

2017 Oct 11, 5:49

The documentation for printing in JavaScript UWP apps is out of date as it all references MSApp.getHtmlPrintDocumentSource but that method has been replaced by MSApp.getHtmlPrintDocumentSourceAsync since WinPhone 8.1.

Background

Previous to WinPhone 8.1 the WebView's HTML content ran on the UI thread of the app. This is troublesome for rendering arbitrary web content since in the extreme case the JavaScript of some arbitrary web page might just sit in a loop and never return control to your app's UI. With WinPhone 8.1 we added off thread WebView in which the WebView runs HTML content on a separate UI thread.

Off thread WebView required changing our MSApp.getHtmlPrintDocumentSource API which could no longer synchronously produce an HtmlPrintDocumentSource. With WebViews running on their own threads it may take some time for them to generate their print content for the HtmlPrintDocumentSource and we don't want to hang the app's UI thread in the interim. So the MSApp.getHtmlPrintDocumentSource API was replaced with MSApp.getHtmlPrintDocumentSourceAsync which returns a promise the resolved value of which is the eventual HtmlPrintDocumentSource.

Sample

However, the usage of the API is otherwise unchanged. So in sample code you see referencing MSApp.getHtmlPrintDocumentSource the sample code is still reasonable but you need to call MSApp.getHtmlPrintDocumentSourceAsync instead and wait for the promise to complete. For example the PrintManager docs has an example implementing a PrintTaskRequested event handler in a JavaScript UWP app.

    function onPrintTaskRequested(printEvent) {    
var printTask = printEvent.request.createPrintTask("Print Sample", function (args) {
args.setSource(MSApp.getHtmlPrintDocumentSource(document));
});

Instead we need to obtain a deferral in the event handler so we can asynchronously wait for getHtmlPrintDocumentSourceAsync to complete:

    function onPrintTaskRequested(printEvent) {    
var printTask = printEvent.request.createPrintTask("Print Sample", function (args) {
const deferral = args.getDeferral();
MSApp.getHtmlPrintDocumentSourceAsync(document).then(htmlPrintDocumentSource => {
args.setSource(htmlPrintDocumentSource);
deferral.complete();
}, error => {
console.error("Error: " + error.message + " " + error.stack);
deferral.complete();
});
});
PermalinkCommentsjavascript MSApp printing programming uwp webview win10 windows

Application Content URI Rules rule ordering

2017 Jun 1, 1:30

Application Content URI Rules (ACUR from now on) defines the bounds on the web that make up a Microsoft Store application. The previous blog post discussed the syntax of the Rule's Match attribute and this time I'll write about the interactions between the Rules elements.

Order

A single ApplicationContentUriRules element may have up to 100 Rule child elements. When determining if a navigation URI matches any of the ACUR the last Rule in the list with a matching match wildcard URI is used. If that Rule is an include rule then the navigation URI is determined to be an application content URI and if that Rule is an exclude rule then the navigation rule is not an application content URI. For example:

Rule Type='include' Match='https://example.com/'/
Rule Type='exclude' Match='https://example.com/'/

Given the above two rules in that order, the navigation URI https://example.com/ is not an application content URI because the last matching rule is the exclude rule. Reverse the order of the rules and get the opposite result.

WindowsRuntimeAccess

In addition to determining if a navigation URI is application content or not, a Rule may also confer varying levels of WinRT access via the optional WindowsRuntimeAccess attribute which may be set to 'none', 'allowForWeb', or 'all'. If a navigation URI matches multiple different include rules only the last rule is applied even as it applies to the WindowsRuntimeAccess attribute. For example:

Rule Type='include' Match='https://example.com/' WindowsRuntimeAccess='none'/
Rule Type='include' Match='https://example.com/' WindowsRuntimeAccess='all'/

Given the above two rules in that order, the navigation URI https://example.com/ will have access to all WinRT APIs because the last matching rule wins. Reverse the rule order and the navigation URI https://example.com/ will have no access to WinRT. There is no summation or combining of multiple matching rules - only the last matching rule wins.

PermalinkCommentsapplication-content-uri-rules programming uri windows windows-store

Application Content URI Rules wildcard syntax

2017 May 31, 4:48

Application Content URI Rules (ACUR from now on) defines the bounds of the web that make up the Microsoft Store application. Package content via the ms-appx URI scheme is automatically considered part of the app. But if you have content on the web via http or https you can use ACUR to declare to Windows that those URIs are also part of your application. When your app navigates to URIs on the web those URIs will be matched against the ACUR to determine if they are part of your app or not. The documentation for how matching is done on the wildcard URIs in the ACUR Rule elements is not very helpful on MSDN so here are some notes.

Rules

You can have up to 100 Rule XML elements per ApplicationContentUriRules element. Each has a Match attribute that can be up to 2084 characters long. The content of the Match attribute is parsed with CreateUri and when matching against URIs on the web additional wildcard processing is performed. I’ll call the URI from the ACUR Rule the rule URI and the URI we compare it to found during app navigation the navigation URI.

The rule URI is matched to a navigation URI by URI component: scheme, username, password, host, port, path, query, and fragment. If a component does not exist on the rule URI then it matches any value of that component in the navigation URI. For example, a rule URI with no fragment will match a navigation URI with no fragment, with an empty string fragment, or a fragment with any value in it.

Asterisk

Each component except the port may have up to 8 asterisks. Two asterisks in a row counts as an escape and will match 1 literal asterisk. For scheme, username, password, query and fragment the asterisk matches whatever it can within the component.

Host

For the host, if the host consists of exactly one single asterisk then it matches anything. Otherwise an asterisk in a host only matches within its domain name label. For example, http://*.example.com will match http://a.example.com/ but not http://b.a.example.com/ or http://example.com/. And http://*/ will match http://example.com, http://a.example.com/, and http://b.a.example.com/. However the Store places restrictions on submitting apps that use the http://* rule or rules with an asterisk in the second effective domain name label. For example, http://*.com is also restricted for Store submission.

Path

For the path, an asterisk matches within the path segment. For example, http://example.com/a/*/c will match http://example.com/a/b/c and http://example.com/a//c but not http://example.com/a/b/b/c or http://example.com/a/c

Additionally for the path, if the path ends with a slash then it matches any path that starts with that same path. For example, http://example.com/a/ will match http://example.com/a/b and http://example.com/a/b/c/d/e/, but not http://example.com/b/.

If the path doesn’t end with a slash then there is no suffix matching performed. For example, http://example.com/a will match only http://example.com/a and no URIs with a different path.

As a part of parsing the rule URI and the navigation URI, CreateUri will perform URI normalization and so the hostname and scheme will be made lower case (casing matters in all other parts of the URI and case sensitive comparisons will be performed), IDN normalization will be performed, ‘.’ and ‘..’ path segments will be resolved and other normalizations as described in the CreateUri documentation.

PermalinkCommentsapplication-content-uri-rules programming windows windows-store

Tweet from David Rousset

2016 Dec 6, 8:45
Creating an extension for all browsers: , , , & : https://www.davrous.com/2016/12/07/creating-an-extension-for-all-browsers-edge-chrome-firefox-opera-brave/ 
PermalinkComments

Tweet from Andy Daly

2016 Dec 2, 11:08
If you find that interesting, you'd probably be FASCINATED by intelligence briefings & state dept consultations. Give 'em a try!
PermalinkComments

Tweet from kottke.org

2016 Nov 20, 10:41
A free album of Beastie Boys remixes using Daft Punk samples http://kottke.org/16/11/beastie-boys-daft-punk-mashup 
PermalinkComments

Tweet from David Risney

2016 Nov 4, 4:08
@David_Risney Example graph https://raw.githubusercontent.com/david-risney/WinMDGraph/master/examples/3/3.dot.png  of the Windows .Services.Maps namespace
PermalinkComments

Tweet from Jen Gentleman 🌺

2016 Nov 4, 8:39
If you ever see a dialog box in this style & need to record what it said, instead of typing it out, just CTRL+C ➡📋
PermalinkComments

Tweet from David Risney

2016 Oct 23, 4:18
Only Child written by @hodgman is amazing & hilarious. Although also showed me various ways in which I'm not special http://www.maximumfun.org/dead-pilots-society/episode-2-only-child-written-john-hodgman 
PermalinkComments

Tweet from Present & Correct

2016 Oct 12, 8:33
Screw Head Typology.
PermalinkComments

Tweet from David Risney

2016 Sep 8, 11:31
@thejohnjansen @k_seks or in the case of hotdog & sandwich, casual communication vs pedantic contrarianism
PermalinkComments

Tweet from David Risney

2016 Aug 23, 1:50
Can I pitch a @SamplerShow spin off that is just like Sampler but covers exclusively PFT podcasts and podcast appearances?
PermalinkComments

Tweet from David Risney

2016 Aug 23, 1:48
Loved @PFTompkins ep of @SamplerShow https://gimletmedia.com/episode/25-paul-f-tompkins-the-mayor-of-podcastland/  including PFTs reaction to Ice-Ts reaction to fake Ice-T PFT conversation.
PermalinkComments

WinRT Toast from PowerShell

2016 Jun 15, 3:54

I've made a PowerShell script to show system toast notifications with WinRT and PowerShell. Along the way I learned several interesting things.

First off calling WinRT from PowerShell involves a strange syntax. If you want to use a class you write [-Class-,-Namespace-,ContentType=WindowsRuntime] first to tell PowerShell about the type. For example here I create a ToastNotification object:

[void][Windows.UI.Notifications.ToastNotification,Windows.UI.Notifications,ContentType=WindowsRuntime];
$toast = New-Object Windows.UI.Notifications.ToastNotification -ArgumentList $xml;
And here I call the static method CreateToastNotifier on the ToastNotificationManager class:
[void][Windows.UI.Notifications.ToastNotificationManager,Windows.UI.Notifications,ContentType=WindowsRuntime];
$notifier = [Windows.UI.Notifications.ToastNotificationManager]::CreateToastNotifier($AppUserModelId);
With this I can call WinRT methods and this is enough to show a toast but to handle the click requires a little more work.

To handle the user clicking on the toast I need to listen to the Activated event on the Toast object. However Register-ObjectEvent doesn't handle WinRT events. To work around this I created a .NET event wrapper class to turn the WinRT event into a .NET event that Register-ObjectEvent can handle. This is based on Keith Hill's blog post on calling WinRT async methods in PowerShell. With the event wrapper class I can run the following to subscribe to the event:

function WrapToastEvent {
param($target, $eventName);

Add-Type -Path (Join-Path $myPath "PoshWinRT.dll")
$wrapper = new-object "PoshWinRT.EventWrapper[Windows.UI.Notifications.ToastNotification,System.Object]";
$wrapper.Register($target, $eventName);
}

[void](Register-ObjectEvent -InputObject (WrapToastEvent $toast "Activated") -EventName FireEvent -Action {
...
});

To handle the Activated event I want to put focus back on the PowerShell window that created the toast. To do this I need to call the Win32 function SetForegroundWindow. Doing so from PowerShell is surprisingly easy. First you must tell PowerShell about the function:

Add-Type @"
using System;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
public class PInvoke {
[DllImport("user32.dll")] [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)]
public static extern bool SetForegroundWindow(IntPtr hwnd);
}
"@
Then to call:
[PInvoke]::SetForegroundWindow((Get-Process -id $myWindowPid).MainWindowHandle);

But figuring out the HWND to give to SetForegroundWindow isn't totally straight forward. Get-Process exposes a MainWindowHandle property but if you start a cmd.exe prompt and then run PowerShell inside of that, the PowerShell process has 0 for its MainWindowHandle property. We must follow up process parents until we find one with a MainWindowHandle:

$myWindowPid = $pid;
while ($myWindowPid -gt 0 -and (Get-Process -id $myWindowPid).MainWindowHandle -eq 0) {
$myWindowPid = (gwmi Win32_Process -filter "processid = $($myWindowPid)" | select ParentProcessId).ParentProcessId;
}
PermalinkComments.net c# powershell toast winrt

Tweet from David Risney

2016 Jun 6, 10:37
History & design of the biohazard symbol ☣: http://99percentinvisible.org/article/biohazard-symbol-designed-to-be-memorable-but-meaningless/  Creator sends angry letter over sartorial usage
PermalinkComments

Tweet from David Risney

2016 Jun 5, 4:10
I played Chrome, Edge, FF & IE against each other in WebDriverChess. Edge just beats out Firefox for #1. Results: https://github.com/david-risney/webDriverChess/#browser-face-off 
PermalinkComments

Tweet from David Risney

2016 Jun 2, 4:40
Answering the important questions: Tab v Spaces https://ukupat.github.io/tabs-or-spaces/  Broken down by programming language & using GitHub as population
PermalinkComments

Tweet from Sampson

2016 May 21, 11:33
Awesome—ScreenToGIF 2 is out! Lets you record a portion of your screen, edit afterwards, and export as animated GIF. https://screentogif.codeplex.com/releases/view/621383 
PermalinkComments
Older Entries Creative Commons License Some rights reserved.