Krypton 2.5.1 Released
This is a maintenance release only.

Design Time Errors
The design time errors that occur when accessing the smart tag for a Krypton control have now been fixed. In some cases this even crashed Visual Studio and occured because the design time methods were obfuscated when they should not have been.

MDI with KryptonForm Issues
The caption of the MDI parent not updates immediately when an MDI child is maximized. Using the LayoutMdi method in an MDI parent to Cascade or Tile the children not correctly works. Redrawing issues with the MDI child windows that are using custome chrome are also fixed.

TAB and Navigator Pages
If you placed a custom control inside a KryptonPage of the Navigator it would not correctly handle the use of TAB and SHIFT+TAB to move focus. This is now fixed and focus is actioned in the expected manner.

ButtonSpec Drawing
When updating the enabled state of a ButtonSpec it would not always redraw the button immediately to reflect the changes state. This is now resolved.

Use the following link to download the new release…
http://www.componentfactory.com/downloads/KryptonToolkit251.msi

Regards
Component Factory

Krypton 2.5 Released
This is a major release that includes a new component.

Release Highlights
Krypton Ribbon added to suite.
Vista glass support added to custom chrome.
Performance improvements with custom chrome.
Now installs Krypton Visual Studio templates (except on Vista)
Now auto adds Krypton components to Toolbox (except on W2k)
Bug fixes.

What happened to the blog?

Until today I was using some obscure blogging software that although it worked was actually pretty naff. As a new company website is currently in development I was going to wait for the new website before changing over to using WordPress. However, today the obscure blogging software finally gave up the ghost and so I am forced to switch over right now.

If I was a PHP programmer I could probably investigate and try to resolve the problem myself, but I really do not want to spend the time learning enough PHP to fix it up. So instead I am switching over to WordPress immediately. At the moment it uses the default template which is a little less than exciting. Once the release of Krypton 2.5.0 is out the door (sometime later this week) then I will get back to upgrading the website and improvng the blog template to match.

But what about all the old posts? Well I will of course get those added into WordPress. Either by writing a funky bit of PHP to take them from the old text file and injecting them into the database directly or alternatively just adding them manually. Of the two I prefer the automated approach but that depends on how hard the task turns out to be.

The final stages of making a release always feel like they are never going to end, but we are in the last furlong now.

You can use the following link to download version 2.4.9 which is a beta release of the actual 2.5.0. I gave it a different version number to prevent confusion between versions when the formal release is made.

Download Toolkit 2.4.9

Note that is has two major ommisions. There is no updated documentation and I have not worked on the bug list for the Toolkit. Those are the final two tasks before we go golden.

When you download an installer from the internet you want to know it has not been tampered with. You want to know it really is from the publisher described.

As a component vendor I want to sign my own installers so all users of Krypton can have confidence in the downloads. This is especially important with Vista as it shows the signing information, or lack of, at the slightest opportunity.

Software Publishers Credentials
In order to sign an installer you a private key (extension .pvk) and a software publishers certificate ( extension .spc). Obviously signing system would not be very secure if just anybody could create their own software publishers credentials with whatever company name they like. So instead you need to get your credentials from an approved provider that will then perform some background checking. They check you really are the company you say you are and not just impersonating someone at Microsoft!

I used VeriSign to purchase my publisher credentials at a cost of $499.

I would recommend you start the process of getting your credentials before you need them as it can a few days to work your way through the process. In my case I had to get a legal notary to sign a document proving I was the person I said I was. This is a reasonable precaution when dealing with a small one man company, you might find the process quicker and easier if you work at a large corporation.

So once you have paid your money and proved your identity you end up with two files.
MyCompany.pvk
MyCompany.spc

Signing the Installer
If like me your are signing several installers and/or signing on a regular basis then you will want to automate it as part of your build process. In this case you want to use the SignTool utility to perform the actual signing of the installer .msi file. But you cannot provide your two files as parameters directly because SignTool only takes a personal information exchange file (extension .pfx) as input. As luck would have it there is a utility called pvk2pfx that takes our two input files and outputs a .pfx file.

So to sign your installer you need to perform the following two commands:-

Pvk2pfx
-f
-pi “password”
-pvk “MyCompany.pvk”
-spc “MyCompany.spc”
-pfx “MyCompany.pfx”

Signtool
sign
/p “password”
/f “MyCompany.pfx”
/d “Product Description”
/du “http://www.myCompany.com”
/t “http://timestamp.verisign.com/scripts/timstamp.dll”
/v “MyInstaller.msi”

In practice I put these into a batch file and then just pass to the batch file the password, product description and installer filename. All the other parameters will remain constant.

Now when the user downloads and then tries to run the installer you get some publisher information in the warning dialog.

You can examine the certificate information in more detail by right clicking the installer and looking at the digital signature tab.