Inside Scoop: News for WebHub Developers

• Memory leaks found and fixed
  In the last week, we were able to reproduce and chase down several memory leaks. One has been in since v2.073 and the others are much older. One shows up only under high traffic. The v2.094 build is still being published as a pre-release because we are still testing. If you have the ability to test with us, on a non-production server, that would be most appreciated.
  17-Apr-2008 19:00
  
  
• WebHub v2.093 available for customers
  Customers will find setup installers for v2.093 on ftp now.
  Includes very minor fixes; of primary importance is the change to AJAXTimedEvent.
  8-Mar-2008 19:40
  
  
• Releasing updates to shareware utilities
  We are releasing documentation updates to RemBoot, IIS Backup, FuzRegex and StreamCatcher right now.
  26-Feb-2008
  
  
• WebHub, new ipc, prototype working
  We have cross-platform base classes now for interprocess comms. We also have a prototype of the Hub, Runner and an App working, delivering the "adv" demo. Now working on performance.
  This is a huge milestone for the core programming group.
  27-Nov-2007
  
  
• WebHub v2.092 available for customers
  Customers will find setup installers for v2.092 on ftp now.
  A number of features were added to the runner for v2.092, namely the ability to block file uploads larger than N kbytes; the ability to send files from a network share; new naming scheme for the temp files that appear during file upload.
  Detailed notes about all new features are in the release notes (links at the top of this page).
  27-Nov-2007 22:00
  
  
• Maestro and Solo card support added
  Thanks to Sigi in New Zealand, we have support for detecting Maestro and Solo cards in the ccValid.pas unit. WebCCard has also been updated. Changes will ship in WebHub v2.092.
  26-Oct-2007
  
  
• WebHub v2.091 available for customers
  Files are on FTP for Delphi 6 through 11 (Delphi 2007). This is an extremely minor upgrade.
  12-Oct-2007
  
  
• Donate to Firebird Foundation
  
  If you use Firebird SQL and have not made a donation to them in the past year, please do so now. Associate membership costs $50 a year; voting membership costs $300/year. Any donation, even $10, will show your support of this award-winning, open-source, cross-platform, high-power SQL database.
  03-Oct-2007 7:40
  
  
• WebHub Online Docs
  See http://webhub.com/dynhelp for our new online documentation system.
  01-Oct-2007 10:00
  
  
• General News
  There are currently two teams of developers working on WebHub for you. One team has been working on the IPC rewrite, which will FINALLY remove our dependency on the Windows operating system. The second team has been working on a new web application which presents documentation about WebHub, including all the content formerly in webhub.hlp plus all the technotes.
  31-Aug-2007 10:00
  
  
• WebHub v2.090 available for customers
  Files are on FTP for Delphi 6 through 11 (Delphi 2007).
  22-Aug-2007
  
  
• HREF web sites running latest build
  We publish this list to give you an indication of the scope of applications suitable to the latest WebHub release.
  The following have been upgraded to run a recent version of WebHub:
  • www.href.com v2.090
  • demos.href.com (including several dozen demos) v2.090
  • dsp.href.com v2.090
  • secure.href.com v2.090
  • www.delphiprefixregistry.net v2.090
  • www.earthwaverecords.com v2.090
  • photovisionsbydc.com v2.090
  16-Jul-2007 21:00
  
  
• WebHub v2.089 available for customers
  Files are on FTP for Delphi 6 through 11 (Delphi 2007).
  14-Jul-2007
  
  
• WebHub v2.088 available for customers
  Files are on FTP for Delphi 6 through 11 (Delphi 2007).
  2-Jul-2007
  
  
• WebHub v2.087 available for customers
  Files are on FTP for Delphi 6 through 11 (Delphi 2007).
  20-May-2007
  
  
• WebHub v2.086 available for customers
  Files are on FTP for Delphi 6 through 11 (Delphi 2007).
  05-Apr-2007 13:30
  
  
• WebHub v2.085 supports multi-core CPUs
  The very latest release knows to count dual-core AMD and Intel chips as single processors. This means that your hub license for v2.085 costs half the price of previous editions, for anyone with dual-core equipment.
  23-Mar-2007 02:45
  
  
• WebHub INI to XML converter wizard ready
  The WHZMConverter.exe is ready now for use in converting INI files to XML format, to make it easier to upgrade to WebHub v2.08x.
  19-Mar-2007 03:08
  
  
• WebHub v2.084 tested on 8cpu server
  Thanks to one of our long-term customers, we had an opportunity to test the latest version of WebHub on a new 8cpu (Intel) server running Win2003 Web Edition this week. After a few false starts, everything ended up working. While many, many of our customers run WebHub sites very successfully on very inexpensive hardware, we thought you might like to know that WebHub runs on some very high-end platforms as well.
  8-Mar-2007 23:15
  
  
• ZaphodsMap Help File started
  download.
  4-Mar-2007 17:35
  
  
• WebHub Help File edits have started
  A massive search and replace effort is underway, to bring the webhub.hlp file up to date with all the latest syntax and terminology. So far, we have the unit names almost cleaned up. There is a lot more to do. But at least this documentation project is finally off the ground.
  We have also expanded our documentation team to include someone who works only on typesetting issues. This means that as documentation content becomes available, we should be able to publish it better and faster for you.
  15-Feb-2007 00:30
  
  
• Top 7 reasons to upgrade your WebHub projects
  
  1. Much better WebHub-HTML code readability
     The parentil affixes are easier to read than the original percent-equal affixes, especially when expressions are nested; the latest keywords are more standard in the industry, e.g. "Request" instead of "WebServer" and "Response" instead of "Output"; the .whteko syntax has several tags to encourage clarity, such as whdoc for documentation, whprep for non-visual initialization, and whsketch for design ideas that should be stripped from the production version automatically.
     New users should be able to get up to speed with .whteko syntax much more quickly than with the original syntax, especially if one takes the many "best practice" suggestions in the WebHub Designer for Dreamweaver manual to heart. That manual is current for WebHub v2.081.
     For existing sites, after a short (3 hour?) learning curve with syntax stage 0214, you should find the new code much easier to read and therefore to maintain.
     
     
     
  2. Integration with Dreamweaver
     The fact that you can use Dreamweaver's Design mode to immediately see how a page will look, even if that page has web action components, and to a large extent, even if the surfer needs to be logged in to use the page.... that capability means that you can use talented graphic designers on your team, without forcing them to abandon the very tool (Dreamweaver) which makes them efficient.
     If you do use Dreamweaver and set up your pages with all required tags as outlined in the WebHub Designer manual (i.e. avoid using automatic page headers and footers), you will be able to take advantage of Dreamweaver's code validation feature which will syntax-check your .whteko files. You can also use the custom "edit WebHub expression" dialog which gives you very detailed prompting for each piece of syntax of an individual command.
     
     
     
  3. Error/maintenance messages are far better, especially when multiple sites are hosted on one server
     You can now customize error messages based on AppID; and you can also re-use the same error message file for more than one problem situation (e.g. Hub not running, app not running, timeout). So you have more flexibility, and you can get away with customizing few files.
     Error messages now come back with status 403, making it easier to monitor for those conditions. The "reason" is provided in a standard way -- to make monitoring easy.
     Error situations now include "covering" an application - intentionally - for planned maintenance. This is better than the old option of suspending or exiting an application, because (a) there is a GUI for quickly telling your users which AppID you have taken offline, how many minutes you expect it to be down, and what you are doing; and (b) you can set an admin domain name and session number which will be allowed into the application while all other hostnames and session numbers are blocked.
     
     
     
  4. AJAX support is built-in
     There are some extremely powerful AJAX commands built-in to WebHub now. These commands simplify AJAX (compared to Ruby on Rails), without taking away any of the capabilities.
     
     
     
  5. Closer to a Cross-Platform Solution
     By upgrading, you are many steps closer to having WebHub application source code that will compile under Delphi for Dot Net, Kylix 3, and FreePascal. No, we are not there yet. But a great deal of the refactoring that has occurred has been with the aim of lessening all of our dependance on the Delphi win32 platform.
     All of tpack (except ucWinAPI.pas) is compiling for win32, Dot Net and Kylix 3 at this time. The configuration subsystem, ZaphodsMap, does too (i.e. no more Windows registry dependence).
     
     
     
  6. Search engine placement
     If you have a public web site and you want your WebHub pages listed well with google etc., you can combine WebHub with StreamCatcher with very successful results. You just have to configure StreamCatcher to know about your AppID, and configure WebHub to know that StreamCatcher is there, and then a reserved session number will be given to web robots (i.e. googlebot) based on user agent. This ensures that session numbers do not end up in your public search engine links, and also cuts down on the overhead on your server.
     
     
     
  7. Lingvo support
     Lingvo is the Esperanto word for human language. We use it when we want to talk about human language (English, German, Chinese, etc.) as opposed to programming language (Pascal, Java, etc.).
     WebHub now has tags for putting in translated content, which will be served automatically for site visitors who select that language. Any non-translated pieces of content will appear in the default language.
     WebHub also supports a "jump with lingvo" idea, whereby, if StreamCatcher is used, the lingvo code (e.g. eng, deu, chi) will appear as part of the URL. This helps people and search engines to realize that a given page contains content in a given lingvo.
     
     
     
  So yes, we would like our long-term customers to continue with WebHub into the future, and we think we are at the point now where there are enough new features and enough conversion utilities to make it worth your time to upgrade. You can wait until April or August 2007, or even April 2008. Just start to put this onto your roadmap.
  As long as everyone does not upgrade during the same week (ha ha) we are extending an offer of two free hours of tech support to any existing customers who need assistance with the process. Please coordinate through techsupport at href.com email.
  Go WebHub!
  10-Feb-2007 15:19
  
  
• WebHub Docs: renamed classes and properties
  Please download WHNewNames2006.pdf for details on all the renaming done between v2.053 and v2.080.
  05-Feb-2007 17:44
  
  

 
 
StreamCatcher News
 

20-Jan-07: StreamCatcher v1.8.0.0 is fully compatible with WebHub v2.8x.

02-Dec-06 10:00: StreamCatcher v1.8.0.0 supports regular expressions!

16-May-06 21:00: StreamCatcher v1.5.2.5 is ready for download, and the help files have been updated. The manual has not been modified. The latest feature makes it easier for ASP programmers to remap their obsolete URLs because the equal symbol is now allowed in more syntaxes.

25-Feb-05 21:45: StreamCatcher v1.5.2.3 is ready for download, and it is suitable for use with IIS6 on Win2003. The SCHelpWH.hlp file has been updated to include notes for IIS6 usage, and all the latest versions.

23-Sep-04 19:00: Minor release adds support for optional lingvo at beginning of short URL, e.g. www.href.com/deu/hrefsite/menu where "deu" is the lingvo code.

13-Aug-04 21:00: Major new release, SecureLinks, is an additional DLL for people who do not use WebHub and find themselves in a compromised situation and need to urgently make all links unique and spoof-proof. Available by special order only.

17-Mar-04 00:55: StreamCatcher v1.5.2.0 is available for immediate download. This is a recommended upgrade for security reasons.

15-Mar-03 11:30: StreamCatcher v1.5.1.9 posted. This version adds support for rewriting headers. Search help file for "rewriting headers" for new syntax.

28-Feb-04 20:45: StreamCatcher v1.5.1.7 posted. StreamCatcher now forces leading dash before AppID when remapping for web robots, but not when bouncing web robots. This applies on servers running multiple AppIDs with cgiUseHandle=true.

If you're interested in forcing HTTPS, search for "HTTPS" in the newly posted help file for instructions. (You will receive the new help file when you run the new SCSetup.exe.)

14-Jan-04 01:45: We have confirmed that StreamCatcher (as-is) works on Win2003 IIS 6 in "IIS 5 compatibility mode" and that it works in regular "worker process isolation mode" as long as you do not enable the Bytes Transferred report. Is anyone outside HREF using this report? We do not know. In any case, research has shown that the popular books on IIS are WRONG and that many things are still possible with filters that are documented as being impossible. So there you go.