Here it is

Download

…but be warned that it has some serious bugs. However it includes features that are not in my fixed version.

Go here for my fixed version, which omits some broken features that I never got around to fixing (because I don’t use them.)

Naturally I immediately put in the URL of this blog and was told I am an “INTJ”, which it describes as a nerdy scientist type. Then I put in the URL of my other blog, where I write about “fun” stuff. This time it said I was an “ESTP”, which it describes as “active and playful.”

Of course these blogs have very different tones. Nevertheless the term “personality” as used by psychologists (including Meyers and Briggs) is something that applies to people, not blogs, and it is not supposed to change depending on what you are writing about. If Typealyzer gives different results for two blogs written by the same person, then it is not a reliable measurement technique.

Typealyzer also displays a chart purporting to show which areas of the brain were used in writing the blog. I’m not an expert in this field but I suspect this is pure hokum.

Then Sean seemed to vanish from the face of the Internet. His web server went off line, making it impossible to even send him an email, and has been that way for several months.

So I had no choice but to go into the source code and fix the bugs that were bothering me. Since the code is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL) I am making the revised plugin available to anyone who is interested.

New WordPress 3.x compatible version.

Old WordPress 2.x compatible version.

Bugs Fixed

1. aLinks failed to respect word boundaries when identifying keyphrases, causing links to be inserted in the middle of words.
2. aLinks was ignoring the “classes” setting which allows you to assign one or more CSS classes to the links.

Warning

If you are upgrading from aLinks 1.x you must first export your keyphrases to a file, then import them back in after you have installed version 2.0. Otherwise you will lose your keyphrases.

Other Notes

To install, unzip and copy the entire alinks directory to your wp-content/plugins directory.

The documentation is included as a PDF file in the alinks/includes directory.

<system.net>
 <defaultProxy>
  <proxy proxyaddress="http://127.0.0.1:8888" />
 </defaultProxy>
</system.net>


Thanks to Rick Strahl.

Get Fiddler here.

In particular I eliminated the use of pixel metrics, replacing it with logical sizes (inches and points.) I also reduced the dependence on bitmap images for formatting and fixed some malformed relative URLs, which Firefox and IE handled correctly but Safari didn’t like.

If the site now looks WORSE in your browser, let me know what your configuration is and I’ll see what I can do.

You are not authorized to view this page
HTTP Error 403 – Forbidden

It probably just means that you forgot to set a startup page. Earlier versions of Visual Studio gave a more helpful error message.

Here’s a checklist of possible configuration problems:

• Right-click on the top IIS Manager node, select Properties and press the MIME Types button. Make sure a MIME type is defined for the file extension.
• Click the Web Service Extensions node and make sure there is no web service extension defined for that particular file type. If there is IIS will try to pass the file to it rather than download the file.
• If the file is executable (.dll, .exe, etc.) bring up Properties for the web application, select the Home Directory tab and make sure Execute Permissions is set to “Scripts only”. (NOT to “Scripts and Executables”.)

that works in your test environment to mysteriously fail when moved to production. Here are some pointers on how to avoid these problems.

A lot of these problems have to do with the fact that production servers often host multiple web sites, distinguised by some combination of IP address, TCP port and HTTP host header. In IIS Manager these are specified in the “Web site identification” section of the “Web Site” tab. (Press the “Advanced” button to set host headers for the site.)

Since WCF is sensitive to these settings it is a very good idea to put any new WCF web services in a separate web site from any older ASP.NET services. Othewise if you have to tweak the site settings to get WCF to work you may cause problems for some of the older services.

One problem occurs if you use host headers to select the web site. In that case you must use only ONE host header for this. Otherwise WCF (as of .NET 3.0) will break. If you use exactly one host header then all clients must call the web service using the same absolute URL. No use of relative URLs, partial domain names, fixed IP addresses, etc. can be supported.

(This implies that you should install and test the new web services in production before freezing any client code. That is a good idea anyway.)

A related problem occurs if you have code that calls OperationContext.Current.Channel.LocalAddress.Uri (perhaps to determine the address of a related web service.) This will probably work fine in your test environment, but on a production server with multiple web sites with different IP addresses this will tend to break, returning a non-functional URI.

The solution, once again, is to configure your web site with exactly ONE host header, and require all callers to use it.

The elevator pitch

With REST, every piece of information has its own URL.

If you just do that and nothing else, you’ve got 90%+ of REST’s benefits right off the bat. You can cache, bookmark, index, and link your information into a giant, well, web. It works you’re reading this, after all, aren’t you? Betcha got here by following a link somewhere, not by parsing a WSDL to find what ports and services were available.