Use the System Proxy Settings
I’ve been using Windows Live Writer to post to my blog. All in all, it’s a pretty slick piece of software. However, it does contain one of my pet peeves - custom proxy server settings.
I don’t see what the point of providing custom proxy settings that are usable by only one application. What is the likelihood that a user will need different proxy settings for Windows Live Writer than for Internet Explorer, Windows Update, etc. The fact is, if your proxy is not set correctly in Windows Internet Options, big parts of Windows lose network connectivity (even more so in Vista). Furthermore, if the user has proxy autodiscovery turned on, it is very likely they do not know what their proxy is anyhow.
How about the case where I have one blog outside the firewall and one inside. I have to manually change my proxy settings each time I switch blogs. The system proxy settings allow for this case via the exception list.
What’s more, Live Writer uses the Internet Explorer controls under the covers anyway, and is largely written in managed code. I happen to know that it is exceedingly simple to use the system proxy in this case.
I just don’t get it.
Comments
Comment from spikew
Date: January 8, 2007, 11:01 pm
By default, if no proxy settings are supplied, Writer will use the .NET default proxy settings, which are based on IE’s settings. Unfortunately, there are a few situations in .NET 1.1 where the proxy settings cannot be natively used by .NET, in which case you have to manually enter those settings into Writer:
1. .NET 1.1 does not support the proxy autoconfiguration script, so if IE is configured to use the auto-detect feature, this will not work. .NET 2.0 supports autoconfiguration, but I’m not sure if this let’s it work for Writer (if you have a way to verify this, let me know the result, and if its failing, we can take a look).
2. If your proxy is secured and you have to login into your proxy to use it, you need to manually configure Writer to use your credentials.
While I understand your complaints about the current proxy requirements, please understand that large majority of our users do not use proxies at all, and fully implementing 100% proxy compatibility with IE in .NET was not something we could fit into the original schedule for Writer. .NET 2.0 adds a lot of this support natively, and we have been tackling problematic proxy issues separately on a case by case basis. If you have specific issues I’d like to hear more about your proxy configuration so that we can make sure its on our list of proxy issues to address.
Comment from brentrockwood
Date: January 8, 2007, 11:49 pm
That makes sense. I was mostly curious to know if there was some really good edge case I hadn’t considered.
FWIW, when we implemented this we were using .Net 2.0 which, as you say, makes it much simpler. Then, to deal with the authentication issue, we just pop up a dialog using CredUIPromptForCredentials(). This tends to be an minority case as in most cases the user will already have authenticated to their proxy in the normal course of their day.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa374731.aspx#credentials_management_ui_functions
I hadn’t checked all the autoconfiguration cases though. I’ll have to look into it. 
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