FireFox Browser Issues With Asp.Net

 
Here's a guy who has become aware
of an issue with the Firefox browser
and ASP.NET:

Asp.Net and Firefox browser issues


He seems to be drawing information
from this web page here:

BrowserCaps and
other Browser Testing/Detection Resources

I don't pretend to understand all of this.
So often, I rely on people who know more
than I do. Other's know much much more
than I do about ASP.NET.

I suppose a good starting place for me
is to learn how to spell ASP.NET correctly.
On Microsoft's official site, it is spelled
in all caps:

The Official Microsoft ASP.NET Site

I checked to make sure that this really and
truly is the official site by looking at the
domain name registration for asp.net.
Indeed, Microsoft does own this domain.

Without people who know more than I, I would
be so lost. So, whenever I get the opportunity
to, I link to a web page or web site or blog
that knows more than I do.

Ed Abbott

What Is An ASPX File Extension?

 
There seems to be two basic file
formats for Microsoft's Active
Server Pages. There's .asp
and there is .aspx.

What's the difference?

Here's a web page that describes
the .aspx extension:

What is an ASPX File?

As the web page above says, .aspx
is for a ASP.NET application. That's
the new form of ASP. The old form
was just simply called ASP.

I suppose the lesson here is that sometimes
a new file format also gets a new face. In
this case, the new file format is the one
with the .aspx extension.

I'm using the term file format very
very loosely here. Neither one of these
file extensions is really a file format.
Rather, it is a file that contains programming
code for specific programming languages
offered by Microsoft.

So, comparing a .aspx file to a
.asp file, a .aspx file is
more likely to have the most up-to-date
code. Not a guarantee, just a probability.

I'm not an expert on Microsoft products.
Just trying to learn myself.

To write more about this, I'd probably
have to immerse myself in the Microsoft
programming culture. In all probability,
they have their own way of expressing
themselves in the Microsoft world. In
the Microsoft programming culture, they
also probably have their own generally
accepted solutions to common problems.

That's how programming cultures work.

Ed Abbott

ASP FormMail, Part IX

This post picks up where
the last post left off:

ASP FormMail, Part VIII

OK. Now I don't feel
so bad. I'm not the
only person out there
who has illusions about
SMTP authentication and
FormMail scripts:

Here are some links to
postings by people more
or less having the same
problem:

Formail with SMTP Authentication

Authentication for FormMail.asp

Here's the best page
that I've found so far
dealing with this issue.

Scroll down to the bottom
of the page.

There you will find the
following points being
made about SMTP
authentication

I'll paraphrase:

1. In many cases, SMTP
   authentication is not required
2. If the SMTP server itself
   is local, you may not need
   SMTP authentication
3. If the mail is being
   sent to a local mail box,
   you may not need SMTP
   authentication
4. Both the SMTP
   server and the email
   recipient should be local
   to avoid having to
   use SMTP authentication
5. Since the above conditions
   are so common, it is also
   very common for FormMail
   programs in general to
   not provide an obvious
   means for SMTP authentication

I've taken some liberties
in paraphrasing what is
being said on this page.

Basically, though, it seems
that not using SMTP
authentication on a FormMail
program is normal.

The more I think about it, the
more sense this makes to me.

No web hosting provider wants
to be responsible for email
sent to a third party.

Since, potentially, the email
address of the recipent could
be a third party, providing
SMTP authentication opens up
a can of worms that I've not
thought of before.

OK. I accept the facts now.

Not providing SMTP authentication
is normal when it comes to FormMail
programs.

Here's a nice comment about this:

PHPMailer Comment

By the way. Here's a FormMail
program that does support
SMTP authentication. It is
PHPMailer, mentioned in the
previous comment:

PHPMailer


I start my investigation into
ASP FormMail here:

ASP FormMail, Part I


Ed Abbott

ASP FormMail, Part VIII

This post picks up where
this post left off:

ASP FormMail, Part VII

I have to say I've been
acting like someone who
is in a stupor.

I don't know why I've had
the idea that you can
use a mail server to relay
mail without authentication.

For some reason, I have developed
the strange illusion that you
can do this. I've had the illusion
that you don't need SMTP
authentication when using a FormMail
program.

A lot of mental errors work like this.

Because I typically have access to
the control panel for a website, I
typically set up an email address
for myself there.

Currently, I've been working on a
website where I don't have access
to the control panel. Therefore,
I've been trying to use my own
email address which, of course,
is native to another mail server.

I've written to the client and
asked him to give me an email
address on his server which I
can check.

I figure that is the minimum that
I need to get by.

Instead, I'm having to write to
him to check the email for me.
In other words, I write and ask,
Did the form arrive OK?

Not a great way to work, I can
assure you. I won't be working
this way again.

However, I must say that working
in this way has forced me to
dispel some silly illusions.

My primary illusion has been
that formmail programs do
not need to do SMTP authentication.

A silly illusion, for sure, but
an illusion I've let slide just
simply because I left it unexamined.

Illusions are like that. They
don't stand up to the light of
day for ten seconds. Yet, they
continue to exist in the dark
only because they are unexamined.

Just submitted a form to the email
address that the client has supplied
me with. It seems to have submitted
just fine.

However, I won't know until the client
tells me that his email address received
my form submission OK.

What a dumb way to work!

By the way. The formmail program, ASP
FormMail, in fact needs no SMTP authentication.

However, that's because the email I sent
is native to the system itself. That is
to say, the website knows the email address
as one of its own.

Because I'm now using the email address the
client supplied me with, I need no SMTP
authentication.


I continue my investigation into
ASP FormMail here:

ASP FormMail, Part IX

Ed Abbott

ASP FormMail, Part VII

OK. I'm learning more
Microsoft terminology.

This post refers to a
valid email address.

Unable to Relay Email

Obviously, I know what a
valid email address
is. I've had the same email
address for the last 7 years.
I consider my email address
to be very much valid.

So what does this mean?

Here are the keywords from
the article:

Make sure the MailMessage.From
is a valid email address that
exists on the SmtpMail.SmtpServer.

OK. Now I'm starting to understand.

In the culture of Microsoft products,
a valid email address is one
that exists on your own email server.

This seems like such a vague term to
me, valid email address.

I guess I understand. It's a form of
shorthand.

However, this term has thrown me off
because I've been unwilling to admit
that my email address, which i've used
for the last 7 years, is not a
valid email address.

That's what happens when you change
programming cultures or computer
cultures. You have to learn a whole
new terminology.

I feel I now know what a valid
email address is in Microsoft-
speak. It is a local email address.

Of course, I could be wrong about
all of this.

However, I've seen the term valid
email address serveral times on
several different websites.

Each time, they seem to be saying,
make sure you have a valid email
address.

At first, I skim-read this part
because I naturally assumed that
my email address, which I've used
to send and receive thousands of
emails over the past 7 years,
is valid.

Apparently, my email address is
not a valid email address
in this context.

Finally! The above link sheds a
little light on the frequent use
of the term valid email address
in the literature.

By the way, this series of posts
about ASP FormMail starts
with this post:

Choosing an ASP FormMail Program

Here's an update:

I now realize I've unfairly maligned
IIS. Because it wants me to
supply a local email address, I'm
assuming that that's something
unusual.

It is not!

It would not matter what kind of
mail server it is. A mail server
is always going to require SMTP
authentication for a non-native
email address that is unknown to
it.

How could I have thought that
this was a Microsoft issue?

I guess because I've always
had such an easy easy time of
it using NMS FormMail that
I've developed this illusion
that FormMail programs don't
need SMTP authentication.

I'm shaking my head now. Can't
believe I was thinking that.

I say more about this in my
next post:

ASP FormMail, Part VIII

Ed Abbott

ASP FormMail, Part VI

OK. Learned a new
term. The term is
relay server.

Here's an article:

What is a relay server?

Basically, the article
seems to be saying the
following:

1. Relay errors are
   the most common problem
   when sending emails
   via a program on a
   Microsoft server.
2. If it is a 550 error,
   it is, in all probability,
   a relay error

Sometimes the hardest thing
to figure out when you are
having computer problems
is to figure out what to
call your problem.

I now know what to call my
problem. I have a relay
error problem.

This is a new term to me as
formmail programs running under
Linux seem to be much more
liberal about relaying email.

The key phrase here is
seem to be. Relaying
email has long been a problem.

Here's a Wikipedia article
about open email relays:

Open Mail Relay

My misconception has been that
Linux mail servers tend to rely
on methods other than refusing
to relay the email altogether.

More and more, I think I'm wrong
about this. I realize that
pretty much all mail servers
these days have restrictions
on relaying email.

The Wikipedia article above has
convinced me of this.

I'm certainly very sympathetic to
any hosting company that does not
wish for their mail servers to be
used as an open spam relay.

Spam is such a disaster for us all.

For a hosting company, spam is a
double-disaster. Not only do they
have to deal with it, but it can
also effectively shut down the
hosting company itself.

Too much spam originating from
a certain hosting company can
result in the hosting company
being blocked by others.

If this post sounds confused,
it is because I'm still a little
bit confused.

Basically, I'm a little bit
confused by the fact that under
Linux, I've not encountered
this problem before.

When using NMS FormMail, it seems
to me that I'm able to relay email
without having problems.

Why do I think this way?

Well, I guess it is maybe because
I've never tried to send the email
anywhere but to a valid email
address that ends in the domain name
of the website itself.

In other words, I've always sent
email to my-email@mydomain.com.
That is to say, I've never ventured
beyond the website domain.

My ignorance is showing here. It's
amazing how long I've gone letting
such a simple little thing pass me
by.

I had no idea when I started working
on this how many different directions
it would take me.

This has been a very humbling
experience.


I continue my investigation into
ASP FormMail here:

ASP FormMail, Part VII

Ed Abbott

ASP FormMail, Part V

OK. This post picks up
where the last post leaves
off:

ASP FormMail, Part IV

I've had a night to sleep
on it and I think I might
know why I'm stuck where
I am.

Last post, I was stuck
with the following error
message:

Form could not be processed 
due to the following errors:
Email send failed: The server 
rejected one or more recipient 
addresses. The server response 
was: 550  No such user here .

Here are the keywords that I
really should be paying more
attention to:

No such user here

This implies that the mail
server is set up at this
hosting company in such a
way as to require that the
email recipient be a user
at the hosting company.

In other words, the user
is an email user. This
implies that the email address
must be native to the hosting
company.

That is to say, if your domain
name is something.com
than the email should be
someone@somthing.com.

Not only that, but
someone@something.com
should not be a fake. It should
be a real email address that you
control.

This is also implicit in the
part of the error message that
says:

Email send failed: The server 
rejected one or more recipient 
addresses.

Meaning recipient addresses
must be email accounts that are
native to the hosting company.

This, clearly, is an anti-spamming
strategy.

The next step is to see if setting up an
email address that is native to the hosting
company (myself@mydomain.com) works.

OK. I'll try this next.


I continue my investigation into
ASP FormMail here:

ASP FormMail, Part VI

Ed Abbott

ASP FormMail, Part IV

Here's my last post:

ASP FormMail, Part III

I'm back working on an
ASP FormMail Program.

Last episode, I said
I would try CDOSYS as
my mail component.

OK. I'll try CDOSYS
next. I'm going to
change this line from
this:

mailComp   = "JMail"

to this:

mailComp   = "CDOSYS"

All I'm doing is changing
the mail component.

OK. New error message:

Form could not be processed 
due to the following errors:
Email send failed: The server 
rejected one or more recipient 
addresses. The server response 
was: 550  No such user here .

Wow! This blows me away.

You mean you can only send emails
to recipients who have accounts
on the web hosting company email
server?

I guess that's what it means.

That makes it difficult for me
as now I have to go into the
server and set up my own email
account.

That's my understanding.

Wow! What a pain.

At this point, I may abandon
this job.

I'm just not very good with
Microsoft products. I seem
to have very little talent
or inclination to work with
Microsoft software.

Maybe I should leave this
kind of work to others.

Update: In re-reading
this post a day or two later,
I find I'm way premature in
my conclusions.

Turns out that being able to
send email outside the domain
hosted by your hosting company,
without taking extra steps,is
not all that common.

I've had the wrong idea on this
all along.

You'll see this if you continue
to read my posts.


I continue my investigation into
ASP FormMail here:

ASP FormMail, Part V


Ed Abbott

ASP FormMail, Part III

OK. I'm back working
on that FormMail program
again.

Not my favorite thing but
somehow I'll get through
it.

Here's the error message
I'm currently getting:

Server object error 'ASP 0177 : 800401f3' 
Server.CreateObject Failed 
/aspFormMail_ed.asp, line 482 
800401f3

I assume this is because
I'm using an unavailable
mail component.

I wrote about mail
components here:

ASP FormMail Part II

Just a little review.
The ASP FormMail
program I'm working with
gives 4 choices of
mail component.

Here they are again:

• ASPMail
• CDONTS
• CDOSYS
• JMail

I'll try JMail next.

I figure this makes
sense. Both ASPMail
and JMail are products
from companies other
than Microsoft.

After eliminating these
two as possibilities, I'll
try the Microsoft mail
components next.

OK. Just tried JMail.
Oddly enough, it fails
with this message:

Form could not be processed 
due to the following errors:
Email send failed: The message 
was undeliverable. All servers 
failed to receive the message.

Right now, that seems like such
a weird message. So weird.

Should I try a Microsoft
mail component next?

That would make sense. Trying
a Microsoft component will give
me some kind of sense as to
whether it is a mail component
problem or something else.

OK. Here goes.

Here's a web page that
helps you decide whether
to use the CDONTS
mail component or the
CDOSYS mail component:

CDOSYS or CDONTS,
Which Will It Be?

The article seems to make
it clear that CDOSYS
is the way to go because
it is newer and better.

Favor CDOSYS over
CDONTS.

I notice that CDONTS
seems to have a mneumonic
built into it.

There is a don't in
the middle of CDONTS,
so don't use it.

I continue my investigation into
ASP FormMail here:

ASP FormMail, Part IV

Ed Abbott

ASP FormMail, Part II

OK. I'm back to figuring out
how to make the ASP Formmail
script work that I found
yesterday.

I wrote about it here:

Choosing an ASP FormMail Program

Now I'm back to figuring out
the script which is found
here:

Brainjar ASP FormMail

The first step that I need
to figure out is what SMTP
server to send it to?

OK. I think I have it
figured out. In this
case, the name of the
SMTP server is fairly
conventional. It is:

smtp.mydomainname.com

This is a very very
common naming convention
for SMTP servers, in
my experience.

SMTP server names tend
to be web-hosting company
specific. However, this
is a very common way to
do it.

In effect, the hosting
company is giving every
domain their own virtual
SMTP server.

The field name in this
case is smtpServer.
That's the name of the
field in the script.

Thus I need to say
in the code:

smtpServer = "smtp.mydomainname.com"

The next thing I need
to figure out is the
from-address. The from-
address field name is
fromAddr.

I'll put my own email
address in this field
for now.

Thus I'll say in the
code:

fromAddr   = "my-email@mydomain.com"

Later, I think I will
change it to the email
address of the person
submitting the form.

When using NMS FormMail,
I've found there's an
advantage to doing this
and this is that it
makes it very easy to
reply to the person.

Just hit reply and you
can compose a reply email
to the person who submitted
the form.

That's the advantage of
setting the fromAddr
field to the email of the
person who submitted the
form. It makes the
submitted form easier
to reply to.

For now, though, my own
email address will do as
all I care about right
now is getting the thing
to work.

Here's a field I just
barely understand:

mailComp

I believe this stands for
mail component.

IIS is a Microsoft
server and mail component
is Microsoft terminology.

The script seems to support
the following components:

• ASPMail
• CDONTS
• CDOSYS
• JMail

These two are Microsoft
products:

• CDONTS
• CDOSYS

These two are commercial
products produced by
companies other than
Microsoft:

• ASPMail
• JMail

The script seems to
default to ASPMail
so I will too. If it
doesn't work, I'll try
one of the other three
mail components.

Here's how it looks in
the original script when
initially downloaded:

mailComp   = "ASPMail"

OK. The next variable
is allowedHosts.

Basically, you put your
domain name for your website
here. It's that simple.

The idea is to stop someone
from another website from
hijacking your form. That's
the basic idea.

The next one is
allowedRecipients.

This one is extremely important!
Basically, you only want yourself
to be the recipient of your form.

Therefore, you only put your own
email address here, generally
speaking.

Script Parameters
Versus Control Fields

The documentation for the script
seems to differentiate between
script parameters and
control fields.

What's the difference?

Basically, control fields
are client-side and script
parameters are server-side.

In other words, control fields
are part of your HTML form and
script parameters are part
of the script that processes the
HTML form.

This is consistent with Matt Wright's
original FormMail script. He too
had variables in both the client
and the server.

In this case, the client is your
form on your web page. The server
is the FormMail script that processes
the form and send it to you.

I continue my investigation into
ASP FormMail here:

ASP FormMail, Part III

Ed Abbott

ASP Net 2.0 Form

OK. Here's a form
program that needs
ASP Net 2.0 to run:

Contact Form Generator for Expression Web

Since the server I'm
currently working on
runs Microsoft .NET
Framework Version:1.1,
I will not try this
program.

Otherwise, it looks
like it might have
met my needs.

Ed Abbott

ASP FormMail, Part I

I'm long been a fan of the
program Matt Wright wrote
called FormMail. Matt wrote
the original in Perl.

Here's Matt's website:

Matt Wright's Site

Matt deserves lots of kudos
for the scripts he wrote in
the early days of the web.

Perhaps no script is more
famous than Matt's FormMail
script.

In later years, Matt's script
has undergone much criticism
because of the security problems
it has created.

In particular, spammers are
particularly fond of hijacking
Matt's FormMail script and using
it as a spam relay.

None-the-less, Matt seems to have
been first in this effort and we
owe him a debt of gratitude.

On his site, Matt recommends that
you use NMSFormMail instead. This
is a safer version of FormMail.

Go to Matt's site to read more.

In any case, I'm writing about
Matt's scripts because I think I'd
like to use an ASP equivalent.

That is to say, Matt's FormMail
script was always so easy to
customize.

Surely there must be an ASP
equivalent. This is my thought.

Here's an ASP script that I
hope will replace Matt's
script on IIS servers:

ASP FormMail

I'm going to investigate this
further. In particular, I'm
going to try to figure out
whether or not this script
is safe.

Here's where I continue my
investigation:

ASP FormMail, Part II


Ed Abbott

Choosing Between ASP and ASP.NET

OK. I'm writing from a place
of ignorance here. I know very
little about Microsoft solutions.

According to this article, it would
seem that you have two choices to
choose from, ASP (the old solution)
and ASP.NET (the new solution).

Here's the article:

Getting Started with ASP.NET

This is an old old article. Looks
like it was published in 2002.

Therefore, it must be quite dated.

However, it does seem to be saying
that there is this well-established
thing called ASP and then there is
this new thing called ASP.NET.

That's a good start. That's what I
understand so far.

Server-Side Versus Client-Side

As I read further into the article,
I see that it is inferred that both
ASP and ASP.NET are server-side, not
client-side.

Server-side versus client-side are
a lot simpler than they sound.
Client-Side simply means that the
program is running on your home
computer, not a web server.

For example, web pages are done
using HTML. HTML is a client-side
phenomena. Why? Because your
web browser figures out what the
HTML is supposed to look like.

The web browser runs on your home
computer. Therefore, anything that
the web browser runs, generally
speaking, is client-side.

Front-End Versus Back-End

In many ways, this parallels the
front end and back-end of a web
site.

Generally speaking, the back-end
of the website runs on your web
server and the front-end of your
website runs on your home computer.

Undoubtedly, someone could come
up with an example where this
might be untrue.

More importantly, though, is the
fact that it is almost always
true that the backend of a web
site runs on the web server that
the web site originates on.

ASP is the Back-End

ASP anything, whether it be
ASP or ASP.NET, is used to
implement the backend of
a website running on an
IIS server.

This is what I've gotten
so far out of this article.

Again, I speak more from
ignorance than from experience.
I have very little experience
with IIS.

ASP.NET Is Based on the
Microsoft .NET Framework

The above title is really a
direct quote from the article.

According to the author of the
article .NET is a framework
that allows you to do website
development in over 20 different
languages.

This is an approach I've not seen
before. Rather than require a
programmer to learn a new language,
let the programmer rely on
the language he or she knows
best.

This seems to be the idea.

I can't help but be a bit
skeptical.

I know the tendency in
programming languages is
that there is just one
language that does it
best.

For example, when C Language
took over the world of
Fortran programming, it would
seem that Fortran pretty
much went away.

There are other examples I can
think of.

Though others might dispute this,
I feel that Perl is still your
best bet for processing and
manipulating raw data as strings.

This is where Perl is so strong.
It's such a wonderful language
for looking for things in files
and then reformatting what's
there or extracting what is there.

Do I need something that lets
me write in 20 different languages?

Well, I don't know. I don't have
enough experience to say.

I'm just getting started with IIS.

Learn ASP First?

One thing that the article has
given me an inclination towards
and that is that maybe I should
learn a little bit about ASP
first before attempting ASP.NET.

I learned C language before I
learned C++ and I feel that this
put me at an advantage.

Bjarne Stroustrup, creator of C++,
seems to think that learning
C++ before learning straight C
is better.

I'm not so sure about this.

For me, learning the subset
language was probably a better
choice.

I know. I know. I'm way
off-topic.

Learning ASP First

I'm going to experiment with
learning ASP before ASP.NET
and see how it works out.

Ed Abbott