Jostens yearbook-making web site does not seem to support Unicode

Today I made a start on my yearbook page (the school dedicates a full page to each graduating senior). The yearbook is authored using Jostens' web app. I immediately noticed when trying to insert a character that falls outside the non-control-ASCII range that the app does not seem to handle such characters at all. As in, it's not possible to put in a non-ASCII character into a text box in any way; the character just doesn't get added. It's not just the one character I tried; the same thing seems to happen for at least CJK ones as well.

I couldn't find a way to make that work, but it's possible I missed something. It would be very nice if Jostens could support non-ASCII.

PowerShell-defined classes' methods are restricted by the runspace they're invoked in

In PowerShell 5, you can define your own .NET types in a script. They can have fields and methods, just like all .NET classes. Method bodies are written in PowerShell. Therefore, you can implement full cmdlet types (not just advanced functions) in PowerShell and allow them to be used in constrained-language runspaces.

Unfortunately, when the method body is run from such a limited runspace, it is subject to the caller's restrictions. This doesn't appear to be for security reasons, since you could just define the type in C# with Add-Type and then approve that cmdlet type for execution in the runspace. Here is a script to test this:

Class TestCmdlet : System.Management.Automation.Cmdlet {
 [void]BeginProcessing() {
  $this.WriteObject('It worked!')
 }
}
$iss = [InitialSessionState]::Create()
$testssce = New-Object System.Management.Automation.Runspaces.SessionStateCmdletEntry ('Test-CustomCmdlet', [TestCmdlet], '')
$iss.Commands.Add($testssce)
$rs = [RunspaceFactory]::CreateRunspace($iss)
$rs.Open()
$rs.LanguageMode = 'ConstrainedLanguage'
$p = $rs.CreatePipeline('Test-CustomCmdlet')
$p.Invoke()

It should return the string It worked!, but it will actually fail with CmdletInvocationException because the script-defined type cannot call its own methods.

I have written a very simple change to a fork of the PowerShell code base that makes this example work. I will see if it can/should be implemented in the real PowerShell.

Runaway string literals

The newest version of Visual Basic .NET allows multiline string literals, so that the resulting string values can contain linebreaks with no messing around with vbCrLf. The downside is that when the closing quote is removed (e.g. while backspacing out a string), the string literal can just go on and on. When that happens, code is temporarily reinterpreted as part of the string, blowing away syntax highlighting, causing errors in the Error List window, and slowing the machine. There does not appear to be a way to turn off multiline string literals or fix the runaway problem. I sincerely hope Microsoft fixes this soon, and I'll keep on the lookout for workarounds.

Chrome UI Bug: Menu doesn't disappear on mouse leaving

I have noticed - after several accidental window closings - that Chrome's menu (the one called up by the hamburger icon) leaves the last-moused-over menu item selected even after the mouse leaves the menu entirely. This means that when I accidentally hold down the mouse on the hamburger icon and take the mouse off the menu before releasing the button, I'm probably going to activate some item, and since I tend to drag down, that's usually Exit.

Note that normal Windows menus don't have this infelicity - dragging off the menu and releasing just causes the menu to disappear. I wish Chrome obeyed that convention.

Always let "Open in new tab" work

Since it's New Year's Day, I've started looking for my best posts of 2015. To do that, I held down Control while clicking to open the list of posts in Blogger in a new tab so I could drag it onto my second monitor (yay for tearable tabs!). I noticed immediately that it did not open in a new tab.

Once I actually right-clicked the object, I saw that it was actually just a normal div, not a link, so only JavaScript was responsible for opening the page. Still, that's quite unfortunate, since it looks like it should be a link - it goes to a different page, after all. Whenever websites stop me from doing normal web things, I subconsciously feel appalled.

Netstat Surprise: Process Headers are Footers

Sometimes I need to examine the list of network connections/listeners and what process created them. For that, I generally use netstat -bna because the netstat utility is guaranteed to be on every modern Windows machine. However, the output format recently caused me a good deal of confusion and some lost time.

See, the utility prints the name of the owning process on the line after all the connections it owns. I would expect those headers to be, well, headers, but no no, they are footers. I suppose I should have seen this - it's reasonably intuitable if you check the top or bottom of the list - but in my defense, I was dealing with a massive amount of connections, so I had to Ctrl+C the program so as to not scroll the interesting ones out of the console buffer.

It would make more sense, in my opinion, for these markers to actually be headers.

URLs Are More Than Strings

Every so often, I see a program that assumes one page/site is represented by exactly one URL. That's not right because of things like extra slashes and percent-sign escape characters. Now, it's perhaps unreasonable to expect every application to condense URLs into some standard form (and avoid breaking them in the process), but I just noticed this in Blogger's statistics page:

What's up with those two Google entries? One has a trailing slash, one doesn't. If I was direly needing to analyze my traffic sources, this would make it a bit more complicated. URLs are more than strings, they are the string representation of pages.

Chrome Surprise: "Prevent this page from creating additional dialogs" Not Taking Effect

Some annoying web pages, upon being exited, produce dialog boxes begging you to not leave. Somehow, the pages manage to produce yet another, similar dialog after you choose to indeed leave. Chrome, fortunately, has a checkbox called "Prevent this page from creating additional dialogs" designed to combat such behavior.

Interestingly, though, checking that box and then pressing the X in the upper-right of the JavaScript dialog seems to cancel the entire closing action. The checkbox, if the page produces another dialog, is still unchecked. That's understandable, given that the user chose to remove the entire dialog and not save what was in it. I do wish, however, that the checkbox's state would be saved, as I believe it would lessen the confusion of panicked novice users.

Where's My BIOS Setup Key?

I have noticed a disturbing trend in modern BIOSes. It has been a good long while since I've seen a machine that says "Press [key] to enter Setup." The lack of message would be fine if BIOS manufacturers decided on a setup key, but they haven't. I've seen Delete, Enter, F12, F10, F1, and F2. The result of these circumstances is that I end up pressing all the keys hopefully quick enough to make the computer give me a menu before the OS starts.

I'm sure the manufacturers removed the message because it was scary, or ugly, or something, but could we please either have a subtle message or a standard key?

Blogger UI Glitch: Overlapping Highlight

I just noticed while examining my blogs' statistics that mousing over an element in the left menu produces a highlight box that appears over the content in the main pane:

Notice how the gray highlight around "Stats" spills over into the URL section. It's not important in the least, but it's interesting to note.

The Invisible Windows Defender Icon

After some Windows update a few months ago, the icon for Windows Defender turned completely white. It's not following the style of the network connectivity and volume control icons; it's just a white outline of what it used to be. I only know it's there because there's a conspicuous blank space in my notification overfill area:

What's up with that center area?

Holding my mouse down over it reveals its shape:

It was really hard to press Alt+PtScn while holding the mouse button

It would be nice if the icon was either visible or not there.

(For the curious: the icon in the upper-right is Folding@home, the one at the bottom is f.lux, and the one in the bottom-right is the Adobe Application Updater.)

Idea: "Hide" for Network Adapters

I have a couple virtualization solutions installed on my machine, so I have lots of virtual network adapters. In fact, I have no fewer than six Ethernet adapters, five of which are virtual and almost never used. The last seems to be my actual network adapter, plus stuff from Hyper-V; it's a virtual switch.

Anyway, when I want to look at my network usage in Task Manager, it's kind of difficult:

Wouldn't it be great if I could hide or at least rename some of these? I understand that the possibility of hidden network adapters throws the door wide open for suspicious activity, but maybe a "Show all" link in the Task Manager UI could help with that; programs using the normal enumeration API would still see the full list.

Position of Newly Installed Windows 8 Program Tiles

It would be really nice if the Start screen tiles for newly installed programs in Windows 8 were arranged in an intuitive fashion. Currently, there is no pattern that I can discern:

My Start screen (or part of it)

I don't remember ever explicitly pinning anything to my Start screen, though I may have unpinned some bothersome default apps (creating the blank space under Access). All the programs I've installed have been jumbled into various groups, apparently without regard for publisher, type, name, or even color. That just clutters up the first picture of my computing experience^TM.

Actually, it would be even better if every new program shortcut was left down in the "all apps" section so I alone would be responsible for the arrangement of my Start screen. (It belongs to me, after all.)

Even so, I should organize my Start screen.

Windows 8 Won't Pin Control Panel Items to Start

I check Windows Update semi-frequently, especially after I install a new device or a large Microsoft program. Windows 8 makes it a bit inconvenient to get to the desktop Windows Update - typing "windows" at the Start screen never makes it bring Windows Update to the top of the list even though "windows update" is the only thing I ever type there that starts with "windows". At least it eventually learns that I prefer the desktop version to the "Check for updates" Metro settings option.

Anyway, I went to pin Windows Update to the Start screen (I had just decided to use the screen for its intended purpose - as a dashboard - and make a "Management" section), but I found that Windows will not allow me to pin a Control Panel entry, even the desktop ones that are basically applications in their own right, to the Start menu. In fact, right-clicking on them in the search results list does nothing at all. Metro settings and files also don't make the pinnability cut, but folders do. Huh.

Centering Objects on Other Objects

There are several programs in which I frequently find myself wanting to align some object to the center (either horizontal or vertical) of another object. Unfortunately, I rarely see that feature. Visual Studio has Format | Align | Centers (or Middles), but there does not appear to be such an option in Adobe Flash Pro (the IDE/designer, not the player). That's a shame, because a lot of the arrangements I would like to produce require perfect centering of objects on other objects.

There might be such an option in Flash, but I am not seeing it and Googling has not helped me yet.

Keep My Place in Disconnected Network Folder Structures

I frequently have to browse the directory trees of remote machines, and since mapping a network drive for each place would create a big mess (there are lots of places I need to look at), I have to use double-backslash UNC paths to get where I want. That works great, and I do my work until I need to go somewhere else. I then close my laptop - disconnecting it from the network - and carry it with me. When I reopen it, all the Explorer windows browsing network folders are showing me the Network screen (the list of computers on the domain).

That's rather inconvenient, because there is no indication of what I was doing with that window. It would be really nice if Explorer instead grayed everything and put up a "remote session disconnected" panel that could be clicked to attempt a new connection.

What Happened to Outlook Online's Reply Button?

Microsoft seems to be constantly updating Office Online, and that's nice, but one recent change has annoyed me slightly. It appears that Reply is no longer accessible with one click from the normal message view. It used to be right in the menu bar, but that area seems to have been repurposed for navigation and categorization. There is a small drop-down menu off to the right with Reply All as the default, but I almost never want to reply to everybody who received the message. (Bedlam DL3 ahoy!) Pulling that menu down produces Reply as the first option, but using it doesn't make it the default action for the button/menu.

May I have the Reply button easily accessible again, please?

Unexpected Connections Between Windows

I'll be out of communication when this goes live - this post is pre-scheduled.

I really like Google Chrome; it is an excellent browser. But it has one infelicity that nettles me from time to time: all open Chrome windows are connected in some invisible way. (Well, invisible to a normal user. I'm sure they have pipe connections or TCP sessions or mutexes or something between each other.) That normally wouldn't be a problem, because the close button in the upper-right works as expected; it closes the window on which I clicked it.

However, because of the pen-and-touch that I use as a mouse (which is amazing), I frequently accidentally end up clicking on and dragging down from the hamburger/menu icon. I notice my mistake immediately, and drag the mouse cursor down and off to avoid clicking anything, but most of the time I release on an entry anyway (activating it), and that entry is usually Exit at the very bottom. That's a shame, but it's my mistake. The problem is that clicking the Exit menu item in any Chrome window closes all the Chrome windows.

So, even if I meant to click Exit to close one window (maybe I was looking through the menu options and decided that I didn't need this window anymore), any other windows - even ones not at the top of my mind but needed for some other in-progress task - get closed too. Fortunately, Chrome has a really nice way to recover an entire window, but I would still appreciate a confirmation before all browser windows get closed.

Query String to Binary Response Echo Server, Please

I learned that the Dropbox Saver control does not currently support data URLs, which is a real shame since I'd think it'd be easy to implement and would make a lot of people (including me for Abiathar Online) very happy. I now have to either produce a real URL to save the levels or abandon Dropbox integration, which I don't really want to do.

That's why I would very much appreciate a public echo server that can transform a Base64 (or URL-encoded) query string to a binary response. I would tell Dropbox to save the resource from that server with the URL that includes the file data and it would receive the binary version of that (as an application/octet-stream resource).

If somebody knows of such a server, I would love to hear of it.

Windows Automatic Update Settings Also Control Windows Defender

A few weeks ago, I finally got tired of automatic restarts wrecking my workspace while I was AFK, so I changed my Automatic Updates settings to download updates, but not install them until I told it to. This has been working well.

The funny thing is that Windows Defender also seems to be controlled by that setting. Rather than updating itself automatically (which doesn't require a restart), it throws up a notification balloon saying that virus/spyware protection is out of date. It doesn't update until I click that balloon, which opens Windows Defender, which causes it to start the definition update installation.

I really wish there was a separate setting for Windows Defender, or even a setting to allow auto-installation only of updates that don't require restarts. Currently, I have to click a little balloon once or twice a day to keep my malware definitions up to date.

Maybe I'll mess with the local Group Policy to prevent the automatic restart when I'm logged on.