Please visit the KeeFox help centre for KeeFox support.

Next week I will probably eat cake anyway… just like last week.

This website is made with a large amount of Joomla 1.5, a salad of third party Joomla extensions and a lot of secret herbs and spices (custom PHP templates, CSS, etc.). You’ll have to read on to find out what temperature I had to pre-heat the oven to.

OK, I lied. I won’t really talk about oven temperatures or cooking anymore – it’s not really my strong point after all. If you only arrived at this page after being drawn in by the allure of a new cake recipe, I’m sorry – there must be lots of decent cookery websites for you to look for, or you can see the photo of mince (cunningly disguised as rat) on the only page that’s remains from my first website.

The real point of this page is a brief outline of what I used to put this site together. Feel free to ask about any particular aspects and see the about page.

So this is all based on a Joomla 1.5 content management system. This means I can add new pages quickly and make use of the variety of Joomla add-ons so that I don’t need to concern myself with writing yet another web contact form (for example).

Some parts of Joomla have been more customised than others. For example, the contact page is very basic and only superficially modified to make it roughly fit the style of this website. Other areas are more customised, including my own site-wide Joomla template.

Two of Joomla’s key failings are the default reliance on tables for page layout design and the rigid hierarchical content structure. My custom template should have pretty much eliminated all tables from the layout and the Joomla Tags component allows me a much more flexible tagging system which allows each article to be part of more than one “category”.

The site is valid XHTML / CSS at launch. We’ll have to wait and see how well it holds together if user generated content appears – it’s not something I’ve had time to test completely.

The actual migration process was simple due to the relatively small amount of content on the website: in most cases I just copied and pasted from the old website and set the publish dates and permalinks to match the original Joomla system.

The previous announcement of a “new website” is below for posterity.

I thought it was about time that I replaced my personal website from last century so I’ve played around with some interesting new software and techniques and come up with something a bit more suited to this millennium.

I hope that I’ve managed to make the best of the limitations of the CMS I’m using in order to come up with a user-friendly way of interacting with the site but there are a lot of things I’ve not had time to get perfect yet. I’ve made a separate post about some of the technologies behind this new site so please feel free to leave a comment or contact me in a more traditional* way if you have any suggestions about how the technical aspects of the site could be improved in the future. No doubt I’ll tweak things along the way but I’ll probably be putting most of my IT-related spare time into KeeFox for the next year or so.

I hope that you should be able to navigate the content here in the usual manner, via tags, related content links and the super crumbtrail (menu) above.

*Yes, I mean an e-mail contact form, not a wax-sealed telegram (though try that if you really want…).

I am very keen to get feedback from a wide range of users on a variety of Windows systems so please take a look if you can spare the time. There are still some known bugs and some missing features (and probably many unknown issues) so please check the issue tracker to see if any issues you encounter have already been reported and then let me know what you think. There are more details and a link to the issue tracker at http://keefox.org where you can also subscribe to the RSS news feed for future updates.

I’ll post here when the 1.0 final version is ready but the main source for KeeFox news from now on will be the new official website at http://keefox.org

This article outlines how I moved my KeeICE plugin to the new format and shows how the PLGX build can be integrated with Visual Studio. (KeeICE is the KeePass plugin that the KeeFox firefox add-on communicates with – a beta release is (still) not far away).

First, check out the documentation and maybe the forum post where the feature was first announced.

I found that they explained the benefits (and small limitations) of the new format and it wasn’t long before I had a PLGX version of my plugin built and loaded into KeePass.

After a variety of changes to my installation routines (so they know to deal with one PLGX file rather than the previous two DLL files) the only remaining challenge was to find a way to package the PLGX quickly. To do this I modified my post-build event so that once Visual Studio has built the plugin DLL, the PLGX creation process happens automatically. This fits in nicely with my existing build process and ensures that I can quickly build a fully packaged Firefox add-on, ready to be shiped onto test virtual machines and the few other PCs I usually have bleeding-edge versions of KeeFox running on.

Of course, I also want to debug my KeePass plugin from time to time so my post-build script needs to put the actual plugin DLL (and dependancy) into the KeePass plugins directory whenever I am running Visual Studio in the Debug configuration (my debug command is set to load KeePass and Firefox so the plugin and add-on need to be in place by the end of the build process).

I have put the post-build script below in case anyone else finds it useful. You will need to read through it and modify it in a few places to suit your particular plugin and its dependencies (or lack thereof) but it should be almost ready for a quick copy and paste into your Visual Studio configuration. NB: The script assumes that the KeePass plugins directory already exists.

echo POSTBUILDSTEP for $(ProjectName)

set KPDir=C:Program FilesKeePass Password Safe 2
set KPPDir=%KPDir%plugins
set KPPTempDir=%KPPDir%$(ProjectName)

IF NOT "$(ConfigurationName)"=="Debug" Goto :NotDebug
REM In debug mode we want to move the generated DLLs and PDBs to the plugins
REM directory so we can easily set breakpoints, etc.
REM In this case, we don't care if the Firefox add-on has missing or outdated
REM files (they are only used at install time so it won't affect debugging)

REM delete the PLGX from any previous Release build
del /Q "%KPPDir%$(ProjectName).plgx"
if errorlevel 1 goto BuildEventFailed
echo Release plgx deleted

REM copy output DLLs to KeePass plugins directory
copy "$(ProjectName).dll" "%KPPDir%$(ProjectName).dll"
if errorlevel 1 goto BuildEventFailed
copy "Ice.dll" "%KPPDir%Ice.dll"
if errorlevel 1 goto BuildEventFailed
echo Debug DLLs copied to plugins directory

goto BuildEventOK

:NotDebug
IF NOT "$(ConfigurationName)"=="Release" Goto :NotRelease
REM In release mode we want to make sure that we are working with the PLGX version.
REM For the KeeFox project we will be in this mode quite a lot (whenever working
REM primarily on the Firefox add-on part of the project rather than KeeICE)

REM delete the DLLs from any previous Debug build
del /Q "%KPPDir%$(ProjectName).dll"
if errorlevel 1 goto BuildEventFailed
del /Q "%KPPDir%Ice.dll"
if errorlevel 1 goto BuildEventFailed
echo Debug DLLs deleted

REM create temporary directory
rmdir /S /Q "%KPPTempDir%"
mkdir "%KPPTempDir%"
if errorlevel 1 goto BuildEventFailed
echo Temporary directory created

REM copy relevant project files to temporary directory
REM (for simple KeePass plugins you may need to
REM copy only *.cs files and .csproj file)
copy "Ice.dll" "%KPPTempDir%Ice.dll"
if errorlevel 1 goto BuildEventFailed
copy "$(ProjectDir)*.cs" "%KPPTempDir%"
if errorlevel 1 goto BuildEventFailed
copy "$(ProjectDir)$(ProjectName).csproj" "%KPPTempDir%$(ProjectName).csproj"
if errorlevel 1 goto BuildEventFailed
mkdir "%KPPTempDir%Properties"
copy "$(ProjectDir)PropertiesAssemblyInfo.cs" "%KPPTempDir%PropertiesAssemblyInfo.cs"
if errorlevel 1 goto BuildEventFailed
mkdir "%KPPTempDir%generated"
copy "$(ProjectDir)generatedKeeICE.cs" "%KPPTempDir%generatedKeeICE.cs"
if errorlevel 1 goto BuildEventFailed
echo Files copied to temporary directory

REM create the PLGX
"%KPDir%KeePass.exe" --plgx-create "%KPPTempDir%"
if errorlevel 1 goto BuildEventFailed
echo PLGX created

REM copy PLGX to Firefox addon folder (for packaging in a .xpi later)
REM copy "%KPPDir%KeeICE.plgx" "$(SolutionDir)Firefox addonKeeFoxdepsKeeICE.plgx"
REM if errorlevel 1 goto BuildEventFailed
REM echo PLGX copied to Firefox add-on

REM delete the temporary directory and its contents
rmdir /S /Q "%KPPTempDir%"
if errorlevel 1 goto BuildEventFailed
echo Temporary directory deleted

goto BuildEventOK

This is all tested on Visual Studio 2008 on Windows XP SP3 but I have had this page bookmarked for a while in case I come across similar problems on newer versions of Windows. It might be useful if you’re running Vista or 7 and run into any problems copying the files into the KeePass directory (basically, take a sledgehammer to the permissions on the plugins directory).

If you have installed previous versions of the KeeFox XPI or the KeeICE KeePass plugin please remove them first and make sure you are running KeePass 2.07 (although if you do not have KeePass installed yet, KeeFox will do that for you).

I do not advise trusting this software with your important passwords. I know of no way that data could be lost or exposed but it is simply not mature enough for me to guarantee that there will be no problems. So keep backups of everything and don’t let anything too sensitive near it just in case.

Download the 0.6 XPI

A list of recent improvements is available in the full release notes.

For the next version I hope to have 95% of the essential functionality complete so that KeeFox can start being used every day. So most (if not all) of these features should be complete in 0.7:

• Multiple password fields in one form (e.g. password and PIN)
• Multiple page login procedures
• Custom form field support, e.g. “use HTTPS login” checkbox
• Add passwords to a specific group
• HTTP authentication dialog box support

First, there is a registry key on the end user system which should record the location into which the installer deployed the output of your project (maybe the end user choose this through an install wizard). I mistakenly assumed that Microsoft’s Visual Studio installer project would automatically handle the basics like this, but no. The answer was in this recent blog post: Using a Post-Build Script to set the InstallLocation property in VS Setup Projects – the author includes a handy script which you can just drop into your project to fix this problem.

The second problem was an error message I received when installing my project:

Error 1001. Unable to get installer types in the [...] assembly. Unable to load one or more of the requested types. Retrieve the LoaderExceptions property for more information.

Although missing DLL dependencies and pre-requisites are already published known causes for this problem, that didn’t quite reveal the true cause in my case. The reason I experienced this error is because:

1) I had set up a custom install action in my main project assembly (to add the install folder to the system path)
2) I had redirected the primary project output to an alternative folder (rather than the default “Application folder”)

So the quick fix was to add a second project output to the installer so it now puts the DLL into my alternative folder as well as the main output folder (along with all its other DLL dependencies). Hopefully there is a neater way to do this which doesn’t clutter the end user’s system with two copies of the same file but I’m in no rush to find it because I just want to get on with some real development work rather than trying to understand VS2008 installer project limitations.

I would not (and indeed do not) yet trust this software with my important passwords. I know of no way that data could be lost or exposed but it is simply not mature enough for me to guarantee that there will be no problems. So keep backups of everything and don’t let anything too sensitive near it just in case.

Go to the KeeFox website to find a link to the firefox addon and the full details of this release.

The source code is in the subversion (SVN) code repository at https://keefox.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/keefox/

Over the next couple of months I hope to do the following, leading to a 0.6 release which is suitable for wider testing among existing KeePass users.

• Add all configurable options to the options panel
• Make KeeFox understand KeePass groups
• Provide a way to log in to websites by clicking on a password entry in a Firefox toolbar button dropdown
• Support a wider array of login forms (maybe dynamically generated forms or forms with multiple password fields)
• Add all other outstanding tasks to a public task tracker

I have postponed the integration with other areas of Firefox (such as the address bar or bookmarks) but still hope to achieve something in this area before the version 1.0 release. If you think you can help with this task, please

You could start by downloading the binary version (Windows only). I can’t promise it will work and I’m sure it’s not necessary for me to suggest early and regular backups of any important data on your machine so I won’t. It is in the form of a Firefox add-on but please only install it on a development Firefox user profile because it’s not been tested alongside many other add-ons and data loss is a possibility. I have done limited testing as an administrator on a 32bit Win XP machine with .NET, KeePass 2.06 and Firefox 3.0.5 already installed. I recommend reading the information on this KeeFox project page first. Please let me know if you do try it out and say how successful it was and what environment you were working in.

There were two main groups of tasks I wanted to finish by version 0.4: an installation process via a firefox add-on and a very basic UI to allow passwords to be saved and filled in. These have been pretty much finished although there are a number of little tweaks still to be made and there will no doubt be gradual improvements to both of these aspects for many months to come.

There are a number of main tasks I want to get finished before the release of 0.5:

1. Handle multiple KeePass databases (or at the very least, don’t crash in their presence!)
2. Develop the UI far enough that using and saving passwords is pretty intuitive
3. Create an options panel to allow the user to manage some configurable add-on options
4. Create a UI for the user to choose to load a site and auto-login (in the form of a drop down menu)
5. Extend (4) to integrate with the user’s bookmarks (and history) probably via a customised firefox places view with annotations

The last three tasks can be separated from the other parts of the code easily enough so I think that they are ideal candidates for other people to help with. They will be written using mainly javascript and XUL, with CSS being required at a later date too (although this can be added by me or someone else if you prefer). If you’re interested in knowing more about what’s involved, leave a comment below or contact me.

I’m not updating the road-map for this release because I feel that the above list is more useful in the short term; in the long term I’m aiming to start using a public task tracker for version 0.6 onwards. The rough ideas in the road-map still apply, although I think it’s unlikely I’ll catch up the extra month it took to reach the 0.4 stage so it may be more realistic to expect a final release in late summer 2009. Of course, if I get a lot of help, this could be brought forward a bit!

If I get no offers of help for the three items mentioned above by the end of January 2009, I’ll start work on them myself and I roughly estimate that 0.5 would be released in mid-March. If others can help out then it could happen around a month earlier.

The version 0.4 code may be useful for:

• developers that are keen to learn more about how KeeFox will be architected
• developers that would like to help develop KeeFox, maybe through one of the tasks described above

Developers that are interested in seeing how a Firefox C++ XPCOM extension can be built using Visual Studio 2008, have a particular interest in seeing an ICE IPC example or are looking for ideas about how to integrate third party software with Firefox could also find it useful although version 0.2 may be a better place to start since it is less specific to the eventual aims of this project.

Compilation requirements and guidelines are on the sourceforge KeeFox project site

I was just about to get stuck into writing the actual code that will handle reading and writing passwords from KeePass to/from Firefox but thought it might be a good time to take a new source code snapshot and call it version 0.2 so the code is now available from the KeeFox sourceforge project website

I’ve also updated the roadmap at KeeFox task list

There’s still nothing much to look at from an end-user perspective and I’ve now abandoned the idea of integrating directly with the existing Firefox 3 login manager becuase it is not completely suitable (see Who will implement nsILoginManagerStorage? for a more in depth reason).

I think I’ve identified a pretty workable installation process which should get new users up and running with minimal fuss – I’ve done enough work on this so I can be confident it will work but there are still a few missing links that I will fill in over the coming months.

As with 0.1, I’ve not really tested the compiled application at all so I would recommend restricting yourself to just reading the source code (and maybe attempting a compilation) for a little while longer.

The code may be useful for:

• developers that are keen to learn more about how KeeFox will be architected
• developers that would like to help understand KeeFox in order to help me get it on the road to a beta release early next year
• developers that are interested in seeing how a Firefox C++ XPCOM extension can be built using Visual Studio 2008
• developers with a particular interest in an ICE IPC example
• developers looking for ideas about how to integrate third party software with Firefox

Compilation requirements and guidelines are on the sourceforge KeeFox project site