To acces some website, I needed to often change my PC DNS server, using Windows network setting.
When I finally get tired, I looked for an open source soft to handle this in a more convinient way. As I couldn't find exactly what I wanted, I decided to create my own.
What's was, I thought, a simple little program to make, finally, as usual, end a rabbit hole for me.
This mainly become an excuse for me to explore something I wanted for a long time, WPF, as I was used to WinForm back in the days.
Learning several new thing (MVVM in particular), my main goal was to provide something simple and focus more on user friendly than a complete tool. I'm not an Ui/Ux designer, so I'll welcome any thought on how to improve user experience.
I've also stumbled across IPv6 as it became, or must become, new standard. So I choose, in purpose, to promote IPv6 over IPv4 in my app Ui/Ux, as a default choice, but still maintain IPv4 possibility.
I wanted to have a immediate meaning on what DNS server the user play with, so I add an icon that the user can set for each DNS server he create / edit.
I played with JSON serialization to handle saving the created / edited DNS server, and also implementing a delete / restore feature along with JSON serialization too.
The setting up of new DNS server is Handle via WMI win32 call for IPv4 (as it happen to be less slow than netsh Process), and netsh Process for IPv6 (As I didn't find any builtin code equivalent for IPv6). It result as being a Windows only software. It would be a great update to make it cross platform in future. (netsh / win32, openFileDialog are Windows tied, and would also need to handle mobile touch if ported to Android / iOS)
In my journey of learning WPF, I wanted to have a custom window, mainly to offer bigger resize border (I always struggle with vanilla Windows one) This took my in another rabbit hole as it turn out custom WPF window using WindowChrome have a display "bug" when resizing from top/left (due to DWM compositor. more info here) I ended up using ControlzEx solution in my code.
I also explored how to offer a proper installer for this app, looking over different existing solution. I end up using Wix, as it is, in my opinion, the most appropriate installer for Windows that is still free. The new version, MSIX, sounds better, but to actually use it, you need to pay a subscription fee to be "signed" as trusted dev. So the joy of configuring a Wix installer project was mine too.
Finally, I wanted to have a kind of logging system to allow better debug once shipped. That lured me inot another rabbit hole again. Endded myself up to using Serilog 3rd party logger via generic hosting i discovered at the same time.
I didn't used DI one this project, but since generic hosting offer a DI framework along it, it may be a futur revamp of the app to fully use DI.
I will list the 3 ones that mainly comes to me :
- Better Ux/Ui from anyone that master this domain of competence
- Add crossplatform support : exploring new .Net 6 with MAUI may be the proper way to do so.
- Create a website that list major public DNS, maybe with users ranking, comments, and grab it as a distant online ressource for this app
You can build this project in your IDE (I used VS2019 to developt it for example), and use the generated "Simple DNS Changer (64|32 bits).exe" executable. Or you can use the created .msi installers (64 and 32 bits version are provided) here.
I provide a simple description of this tool in this Youtube video (in French language but with subtitles [Fr/En]) :
I decline all responsabily of any damage this app could end up on your device. Be carefull of any hacking, as I didn't implement any security check.
I used some code from ControlzEx to use their WindowChromeBehavior (To handle the flicker bug on resizing the custom window)
I used serilog to perform logging.
I'm not an artist, but I created all my assets .png images. Some may be inspired by other (usually from a Google Image reseach results), but I (re)created them from scratch.
All files inside /Assets folder and the SDC_Ico_128.ico file are made by Aurélien Pascal Maignan licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
I use, in /Icons folder, trademark DNS providers's logos with their permissions or without any answer by then from them. If ever you own one of those logo and, either I couldn't find how to reach you, and / or I misinterpreted your allowance, and / or you doesn't allow the use anymore, feel free to contact me anytime via e-mail so I can remove non authorized logos
- google.png is a trademark of Google LLC.
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Software: Simple DNS Changer
License: CeCILL
Licensor: Aurélien Pascal Maignan
Copyright or © or Copr. Aurélien Pascal Maignan (04 October 2021)
This software is a computer program whose purpose is to offer a WPF UI to handle system's DNS manipulation (Add, Remove, Create, Edit, Store, ...).
This software is governed by the CeCILL license under French law and abiding by the rules of distribution of free software. You can use, modify and/ or redistribute the software under the terms of the CeCILL license as circulated by CEA, CNRS and INRIA at the following URL "http://www.cecill.info".
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