Mostly tech related...

Expressionistic copying

2011-05-15T20:13:00.001+03:00

Recently I had the need of cloning a number of object, traditionally you’d have to use reflection based techniques if you wanted a generic solution, (unless you go really hardcore with Reflection.Emit)

The sample code below only accounts for public properties, but in many cases that isn’t enough.

Given the performance implications of using reflection, and the fact that you are allowed to include blocks in expressions in .NET 4 I figured I’d do a small experiment and micro-benchmark comparing these two approaches:

I have an entity I want to copy like so

public class Entity
    {
        public int Foo { get; set; }
        public string Bar { get; set; }
        public string Baz { get; set; }
        public int Foo2 { get; set; }
        public string Bar2 { get; set; }
        public string Baz2 { get; set; }
        public int Foo3 { get; set; }
        public string Bar3 { get; set; }
        public string Baz3 { get; set; }
    }

I implemented reflection based copy like so (with some room for optimizations):

public class ReflectionObjectCopier : IObjectCopier
    {
        #region IObjectCopier Members

        public void Copy<T>(T fromObj, T toObj)
        {
            var properties = from prop in fromObj.GetType().GetProperties(BindingFlags.Public | 
                                                                          BindingFlags.Instance | 
                                                                          BindingFlags.FlattenHierarchy)
                             where prop.CanRead && prop.CanWrite
                             select prop;
            foreach (PropertyInfo pi in properties)
            {
                pi.SetValue(toObj, pi.GetValue(fromObj, null), null);
            }
        }

        #endregion
    }

When using this copying 10 000 objects takes 250ms or so.

However, if I create an expression that performs the copying directly it only takes 10ms (with subsequent testruns only taking 4, when reusing the cached expression). That is a pretty decent saving if you ask me.

public class ExpressionObjectCopier : IObjectCopier
    {
        Dictionary<Type, object> cache = new Dictionary<Type, object>();

        Action<T,T> CreateCopier<T>()
        {
            ParameterExpression fromParam = Expression.Parameter(typeof(T), "from");
            ParameterExpression toParam = Expression.Parameter(typeof(T), "to");

            LambdaExpression exp = Expression.Lambda(typeof(Action<T, T>),
                Expression.Block(
                    from prop in typeof(T).GetProperties(BindingFlags.Public | 
                                                         BindingFlags.Instance | 
                                                         BindingFlags.FlattenHierarchy)
                    where prop.CanRead && prop.CanWrite
                    select Expression.Assign(Expression.Property(toParam, prop), 
                                             Expression.Property(fromParam, prop))
                ),
                fromParam,
                toParam);

            Action<T, T> copier = (Action<T, T>)exp.Compile();
            cache[typeof(T)] = copier;
            return copier;
        }

        #region IObjectCopier Members

        public void Copy<T>(T fromObj, T toObj)
        {
            object action;
            Action<T,T> copier;
            if (!cache.TryGetValue(fromObj.GetType(), out action))
            {
                copier = CreateCopier<T>();
            }
            else
            {
                copier = (Action<T, T>)action;
            }


            copier(fromObj, toObj);
        }

        #endregion
    }

The above code obviously isn’t production quality…

Timeline – or restyling controls

2010-11-02T00:14:00.001+02:00

One nice thing with WPF that is slightly different is that the controls are lookless. This means that you can re-style or apply a different template altogether if the behavior of a standard control is what you want, but the looks are not.

A real world example: At work we recently needed to show a list of items with associated timestamps, in a way so that the time differences between them are easily determined at a glance.

Thanks to the lookless controls of WPF I was able to solve this simply by using a ListBox with re-templated ListBoxItems giving the following result:

The style is defined as follows:

        <Style TargetType="ListBoxItem" x:Key="TimelineStyle">
            <Setter Property="SnapsToDevicePixels" Value="true"/>
            <Setter Property="OverridesDefaultStyle" Value="true"/>
            <Setter Property="FocusVisualStyle" Value="{x:Null}"/>
            <Setter Property="Template">
                <Setter.Value>
                    <ControlTemplate TargetType="ListBoxItem">
                        <StackPanel Orientation="Vertical"> <Border
                            Name="Border"
                            Padding="2"
                            CornerRadius="2"
                            BorderThickness="2"
                            SnapsToDevicePixels="true">
                                <ContentPresenter />
                            </Border>
                            <Grid>
                                <Rectangle Width="2" Stroke="LightBlue"
                                           Height="{Binding TimeToNext, Converter={StaticResource HeightConverter}}"
                                           VerticalAlignment="Center"
                                           HorizontalAlignment="Center"/>
                                <TextBlock Text="{Binding TimeToNext, Converter={StaticResource DurationConverter}}"
                                           Background="White"
                                           VerticalAlignment="Center"
                                           HorizontalAlignment="Center"
                                           FontSize="8"
                                           Foreground="Gray"/>
                            </Grid>
                        </StackPanel>
                        <ControlTemplate.Triggers>
                            <Trigger Property="IsSelected"
                                     Value="true">
                                <Setter TargetName="Border"
                                        Property="BorderBrush"
                                        Value="Blue"/>
                            </Trigger>
                        </ControlTemplate.Triggers>
                    </ControlTemplate>
                </Setter.Value>
            </Setter>
        </Style>

and and the listbox uses the style like this:

<ListBox ItemsSource="{Binding DataItems}" ItemContainerStyle="{StaticResource TimelineStyle}" />

The style uses two converters, but those should be fairly trivial.

Setting FocusVisualStyle to {x:Null} is done to hide the indication of keyboard focus, as unless it is fixed properly, will be more confusing than helpful. Fixing it properly is left as an exercise for the reader.

MCTS

2010-02-06T00:16:00.001+02:00

Today I passed the second certification exam 70-502. So now I’m officially a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: .NET Framework 3.5, Windows Presentation Foundation Applications.

Nullable and IFormattable

2010-02-01T18:59:00.001+02:00

If you ever tried to format a nullable type you would soon realize that you cannot directly as Nullable<T> does not implement IFormattable and thus you only have object.ToString() available.

This is easily fixed using an extension method:

public static class NullableExtensions
   {
       public static string ToString<T>(
           this Nullable<T> nullable,
           string format,
           IFormatProvider formatProvider)
           where T : struct, IFormattable
       {
           if (!nullable.HasValue) return string.Empty;
           T notNull = nullable.Value;
           return notNull.ToString(format, formatProvider);
       }
   }

and you can use it e.g. like so:

            DateTime? foo = null;
            ...
            foo.ToString("t", CultureInfo.CurrentCulture);

WPF project building inside of Visual Studio but not with MSBuild/TFSBuild

2010-01-21T22:06:00.001+02:00

At work, I recently run into a strange build error when building from MSBuild and TFSBuild while the same solution built inside of Visual Studio 2008 just fine.

The error message was:

error MC3015: The attached property '?' is not defined on '?' or one of its base classes.

(obviously with real names instead of the questionmarks)

Feeding the above into google provided the following solution to the issue:

One of the differences between building in VS and command line is that a WPF build in VS defaults to

<AlwaysCompileMarkupFilesInSeparateDomain>true</AlwaysCompileMarkupFilesInSeparateDomain>.
Outside of VS, the default is false.

(Answer by Rob Relyea)

Adding that to the relevant .csproj made the project build successfully.

MeasureUp FAIL

2009-11-30T22:37:00.001+02:00

I’m currently studying for the 70-536 on my way towards MCTS certification.

I have the self-paced training kit and thought I’d do the Training Kit Exam Prep “Powered by MeasureUp”

Things go without technical issues until I get to scoring.

Then I am greeted with:

---------------------------
Application Message
---------------------------
An unanticipated error has occurred in the application.InsertScoreHistory

[Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers] [3604] [Microsoft][ODBC Microsoft Access Driver] Syntax error in date in query expression '#30.11.2009 21:51:40#'.
---------------------------
OK Cancel
---------------------------

Trying to review a particular answer fails with:

---------------------------
Application Message
---------------------------
An unanticipated error has occurred in the application.GoToQuestionSelected

[Microsoft.VisualBasic] [13] Conversion from string "7." to type 'Short' is not valid.
---------------------------
OK Cancel
---------------------------

I then eventually end up at the FAQ page at MeasureUp and find

“I'm receiving Error: Mismatch 13.
In order for tests to display correctly, your computer's regional settings should be set to English (United States).

In the control panel, please double click on the icon labeled Regional Settings. Please choose English (United States), and click the box that says "use default properties for this input locale."

Alternatively, in the regional settings, look at the Currency tab. If it is set the decimal symbol to . (dot) instead of , (coma), that may be enough to get it working properly.

If the trouble persists, try setting the keyboard language layout to English (United States). In the control panel, double click on the icon labeled "Keyboard". Then click on the tab labeled input locales. Select the Add button. And then choose English (United States) as the input locale.”

W T F !?!

It’s kinda ironic that one of the skills measured is “Implementing globalization, … in a .NET Framework application”

What’s even more tragic is that if I actually DO change to en-us, trying to start a new test fails, this time with:

---------------------------
Application Message
---------------------------
An unanticipated error has occurred in the application.PreviousSessionTestRecord

[Microsoft.VisualBasic] [13] Conversion from string "30.11.2009 21:58:26" to type 'Date' is not valid.
---------------------------
OK Cancel
---------------------------

roleProvider app.config parsing troubles

2009-11-10T23:01:00.001+02:00

I recently had the pleasure of trying to get our RC out the door, while doing that we realized that for whatever reason, Microsoft seems to use a non-standard parser for the app.config file.

Basically this does not work:

<system.web>
<roleManager defaultProvider="MyCustomProvider" enabled="true">
    <providers>
      <clear></clear>
      <add name="MyCustomProvider" type="Namespace.MyCustomProvider, MyAssembly"/>
    </providers>
</roleManager>
</system.web>

While this does:

<system.web>
<roleManager defaultProvider="MyCustomProvider" enabled="true">
    <providers>
      <clear/>
      <add name="MyCustomProvider" type="Namespace.MyCustomProvider, MyAssembly"/>
    </providers>
</roleManager>
</system.web>

Of course, the well known commercial installer making tool we are using insists of creating the former… :(

A workaround is to throw the file through an identity XSLT transform in a custom tool / custom action run after custom actions from said vendor have done their job.

Oh, the bug reported on connect is already closed as Won’t Fix

Windows Live Movie Maker - FAIL

2009-09-02T18:18:00.001+03:00

As I wanted to edit some movies, and Windows 7 no longer includes Windows Movie Maker I had to give Windows Live Movie Maker a try, as based on the name you’d assume it does something similar?

Turns out I was wrong. This application seems to be geared towards dropping a number of photos and creating a “movie” and not actually editing movies.

While you can import video from a DV camera, it does not split the imported video into scenes, instead it chops it into pieces, the size of which you can determine by dragging a slider !?! And to make matters worse, it does not bother to extract thumbnails from the individual pieces but instead uses what seems to be the first frame of the entire movie. Good luck finding the pieces you need.

Of course, the timeline also seemed unnecessary to include …

Time to look for a Video editor, Windows Live Movie Maker is not one.

</rant>

Generating GUIDs

2009-03-03T00:18:00.001+02:00

This may seem trivial but here we go:

I recently created an installer with WIX and obviously had to create a number of GUIDs along the way. While there is a "Create GUID" option in the Tools menu it has a number of drawbacks:

Clicking around a UI with a mouse is not the most efficient thing in the world
There is not an immediately suitable format available, registry format is closest, but braces need to be removed and the rest uppercased

The obvious? solution to this problem is to create a macro like the following:

Public Sub CreateWixGuid()
    Dim g As Guid = Guid.NewGuid()
    Dim textSelection As EnvDTE.TextSelection

    textSelection = CType(DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection(), EnvDTE.TextSelection)
    textSelection.Text = g.ToString("D").ToUpper()
End Sub

and assign a keyboard shortcut to it (I chose Ctrl+G,Ctrl+G), and voilà a GUID in the correct format is generated and inserted.

How to not do validation

2008-11-11T22:04:00.001+02:00

Yesterday when I was trying to do some online shopping I the e-commerce system in use perfomed input validation in a slightly suboptimal way. Here is what happened:

To be able check out the stuff in my shopping basket I had to create an account.
To create an account I had to enter username, password and address.
Go to checkout
Confirm to use the just entered address as the shipping address
On the following page where the pay button should be there's this small note "The city is not long enough" WTF!?!
Try again with the city name in the other language as it is longer
Same story "The city is not long enough" ...
Only when changing the primary address the order goes through

A validation rule stating that the city cannot be just three letters are just plain stupid, secondly if there is a need to use stupid validation rules, then do the validation when the data is entered and not when it is used ...

This comic comes to mind.

Debugging WPF databinding issues

2008-11-08T00:21:00.001+02:00

Lately due to switching teams and project I've been doing much more WPF than before. I cannot say I have fully mastered the learning curve yet but I'm getting better and it is an interesting journey.

Occasionally the data bindings does not work as expected and then it is nice to get more information about them in order to figure out what went wrong.

The following is useful when you want to know why a particular binding is misbehaving (or rather you want to know where you screwed up...)

xmlns:diagnostics="clr-namespace:System.Diagnostics;assembly=WindowsBase"

ItemsSource="{Binding <snip>, diagnostics:PresentationTraceSources.TraceLevel=High}"

The above information and MUCH more is presented by Beatriz Stollnitz

(This post is also a 'reminder to self')

C# quiz 9/?

2008-11-03T19:20:00.001+02:00

Consider the following:

Guid globallyUnique1 = new Guid();
Guid globallyUnique2 = new Guid();
if (globallyUnique1 == globallyUnique2)
{
    MessageBox.Show("This cannot be");
}
else
{
    MessageBox.Show("Everything is well");
}

What is shown? Why?

Sandcastle to dead tree format woes

2008-10-15T00:23:00.001+03:00

For reasons partially unknown to me, I was tasked with converting Sandcastle generated API documentation to dead tree format.

The best way seems to be feeding some magic XSLT to Sandcastle that would that would directly create PDF via XSL-FO or DocBook or whatever. However, I haven't been able to find such a thing and I'm not ready to put down that kind of work to create it myself at this point.

Another option I pursued was to print the CHM to XPS/PDF but this has its own cons. Firstly directly printing from CHM viewer strips CSS rendering ugliness. This is correctable by finding the correct html file from %TEMP% and a little search/replace magic and providing the stylesheets and images.

Having gotten this far I found out that the stylesheet needs to use something else but relative font size to keep the text legible.

Now as if this wasn't enough the browser or at least the PDF/XPS "printer" chokes on the sheer amount of input, still not finished after N hours, and this just for the documentation of a smallish test assembly. :(

This does not look feasible at this point.

Bright ideas appreciated!

C# quiz 8/?

2008-04-03T22:48:00.001+03:00

Now it's time for some one regarding serialization:

Given this serializable class:

    [Serializable]
    public class Victim {
        public static int InstanceCount;
        public int Data { get; set; }

        public Victim() {
            InstanceCount++;
            Data = 2;
        }
    }

and the following test code:

    class Program {
        static void Main(string[] args) {
            Victim v = new Victim();
            v.Data = 3;
            BinaryFormatter serial = new BinaryFormatter();
            MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
            serial.Serialize(ms, v);            
            ms.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
            v = (Victim)serial.Deserialize(ms);
            Console.WriteLine("Data {0}", v.Data);
            Console.WriteLine("Instances {0}", Victim.InstanceCount);
        }
    }

What is the output, and why?

C# quiz 7/?

2008-04-03T21:25:00.001+03:00

If we compile the following code to a dll, for example using the following command line:

csc.exe /t:library Library.cs

namespace Library {
    public class Library {
        public const int FOO = 1;
        public static readonly int BAR = 2;
    }
}

And refer those in our test program:

    class Program {
        static void Main(string[] args) {
            Console.WriteLine(Library.Library.FOO);
            Console.WriteLine(Library.Library.BAR);
        }
    }

Now, if we change FOO to 10 and BAR to 12 and recompile Library.dll without recompiling the test program, what is the output when we run the test program?

C# quiz: 6/?

2008-04-03T19:53:00.001+03:00

Consider the following:

    class Test {
        private int m_foo;
        public int Foo {
            get { return m_foo; }
        }
        public int set_Foo(int value) {
            m_foo = value;
        }
    }

What happens when you compile, and why?

C# quiz: 5/?

2008-04-02T22:10:00.001+03:00

Consider a console application with the following Main:

        static void Main(string[] args) {
            System.Threading.Timer t = new Timer(dummy =>
            {
                Console.WriteLine("In callback: " + DateTime.Now);
                GC.Collect();

            }, null, 0, 1000);

            Console.ReadLine();
            t = null;
        }

What does the code do? Does it matter if it is compiled Debug or Release, if so, why?

(To give proper credit where credit is due, this example is heavily inspired by CLR via C# by Jeffrey Richter)

C# quiz: 4/?

2008-04-02T18:11:00.000+03:00

Given the following code:

    internal class Test {
        public int Foo { get; set; }
        public int Bar { get; set; }

#if CUSTOM
        public override int GetHashCode() {
            return Foo.GetHashCode() ^ Bar.GetHashCode();
        }

        public override bool Equals(object obj) {
            if (object.ReferenceEquals(obj, null)) return false;
            Test t = obj as Test;
            if (t != default(Test)) {
                return (Foo == t.Foo) && (Bar == t.Bar);
            }
            return false;
        }
#endif
    }

and the following test code:

            Dictionary<Test, string> dict = new Dictionary<Test, string>();
            Test foo = new Test { Foo = 1, Bar = 2 };
            dict[foo] = "Hello World";
            foo.Bar = 42;
            if (dict.ContainsKey(foo)) {
                Console.WriteLine("it's there");
            } else {
                Console.WriteLine("it's not");
            }

Answer the following questions:

With CUSTOM not defined, what does the test code print?

If CUSTOM is defined, does it change the outcome?

What if Test is changed to a struct and CUSTOM is not defined, what is the output?

If Test is a struct and CUSTOM is defined, what happens?

C# quiz: 3/?

2008-04-01T17:53:00.001+03:00

Consider the following class:

    internal class Test {

        public int Code { get; set; }

        public static bool operator ==(Test lhs, Test rhs) {
            if (object.ReferenceEquals(lhs, rhs)) return true;
            if (lhs == null || rhs == null) {
                return false;
            } else {
                return lhs.Code == rhs.Code;
            }
        }

        public static bool operator != (Test lhs, Test rhs) {
            return !(lhs == rhs);
        }
    }

What is the outcome of the following test code, and why?

            Test test1 = new Test { Code = 42 };
            Test test2 = new Test { Code = 42 };
            if (test1 != test2) {
                Console.WriteLine("different");
            } else {
                Console.WriteLine("equals");
            }

C# quiz: 2/?

2008-03-31T20:15:00.005+03:00

Continuing on the series of C# and/or .NET Framework short questions:

        private void Foo(List<int> bar) {
          bar = new List<int>();
          // ...
        }

With the method above and the code below:

        List<int> bar = null;
      Foo(bar);
      if (bar != null) {
          Console.WriteLine("populated");
      } else {
          Console.WriteLine("still null");
      }

If or else ?

EDIT: fixed typo in code sample.

C# quiz: 1/?

2008-03-31T20:15:00.003+03:00

I'm starting a series with small questions C# and/or .NET Framework related questions:

First out, NaN values:

            double foo = double.NaN;
            // ...
            if (foo == double.NaN) {
                Console.WriteLine("NaN");
            } else {
                Console.WriteLine("a number");
            }

If or else ?

Safari - first impressions

2008-03-19T19:52:00.001+02:00

I thought that I might give it a shot after all so I installed it. First impressions:

- it's a memory hog! 4 sites in 4 tabs consumes a whopping 210MB, while Firefox 3 beta 4 for the same sites consumes "only" 74MB

- the UI is ugly

- scroll wheel doesn't work properly in bookmarks

- close tab X button on the left !?!

- As I don't have mouse gestures, I often right-click and choose back. If I happen to have the cursor over a word, (quite likely), safari chooses to select the word and only select search with google or copy. WTF?

...my default browser isn't changing.

Safari for Windows - Apple spamming users

2008-03-18T22:13:00.001+02:00

I have an ipod, and therefore I have ITunes installed. Today Apple Software Update popped up and greeted me with the following totally unrelated thing: Safari 3.1 (22.65Mb)

Safari for Windows is the fastest and easiest-to-use web browser for the PC. It displays web pages faster than any other browser and is filled with innovative features -- all delivered in an efficient and elegant user interface.
For more information on Safari 3.1, please visit http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307467

Hmm, that sounds too good to be true.

...and why does it notify me about it in the first place?

Gotcha: Hidden [Flags] attribute on bitfield enumerations

2008-03-14T00:08:00.001+02:00

Just got reminded of a still unfixed bug.

Consider an enumeration of the following kind:

    /// <summary>
    /// Modes enumeration
    /// </summary>
    [Flags]
    public enum Modes {
        /// <summary>
        /// Yes
        /// </summary>
        Foo = 1,
        /// <summary>
        /// No
        /// </summary>
        Bar = 2,
        /// <summary>
        /// Maybe
        /// </summary>
        Both = Foo|Bar
    }

For the user of this enumeration, it is essential to know that it in fact is a bitfield (as specified by the FlagsAttribute).

However, both Intellisense and object browser fails to give any hint about this fact!?! (Yes, this occurs in both VS 2005 and VS 2008)

So for now, remember to document (within in the summary, so it is visible) this fact for your fellow developers.

New phone

2008-01-15T22:25:00.001+02:00

I received my new phone today, this time I thought I'd try something different for various reasons, so I got a HTC Touch Dual. I haven't really used it enough yet to post any reviews, but first impression is quite nice. Unfortunately it still takes two weeks until I they switch over to the new SIM card (due to carrier change), so until then I cannot really use it fully. But yes, I will keep my old number...

On a related note, things don't seem as bright with the handsfree that I got, it was cheap yes, but first it had the wrong kind of mains plug on the charger, and secondly after I found an appropriate adapter, the thing won't charge !?!

Maximizing a WPF Window to second monitor

2008-01-14T00:22:00.001+02:00

I'm trying to develop and application that utilizes a maximized window on the second monitor.

There's a few issues here. The first is that WPF doesn't offer the same information as WinForms about monitor configuration. WinForms has SystemInformation.MonitorCount and Screen.AllScreens[i].WorkingArea. WPF has SystemParameters.PrimaryScreen[Width/Height] and SystemParameters.VirtualScreen[Width/Height] which almost works (as long as you don't have more than two monitors) but not really. So back to using WinForms API...

Secondly, the obvious solution to display a form maximized on second screen was to me the following:

                fullScreenWindow.WindowStartupLocation = WindowStartupLocation.Manual;

                Debug.Assert(System.Windows.Forms.SystemInformation.MonitorCount > 1);
                
                System.Drawing.Rectangle workingArea = System.Windows.Forms.Screen.AllScreens[1].WorkingArea;
                fullScreenWindow.Left = workingArea.Left;
                fullScreenWindow.Top = workingArea.Top;
                fullScreenWindow.Width = workingArea.Width;
                fullScreenWindow.Height = workingArea.Height;
                fullScreenWindow.WindowState = WindowState.Maximized;
                fullScreenWindow.WindowStyle = WindowStyle.None;
                fullScreenWindow.Topmost = true; 
                fullScreenWindow.Show();

However, when you try that you'll end up with a topmost maximized window on your primary display, which was not what we wanted.

Turns out that we cannot maximize the window until it's loaded. So by hooking the Loaded event of fullScreenWindow and handling the event along the lines of:

        private void Window_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) {
            WindowState = WindowState.Maximized;
        }

...it works.

Oh, and you want to make certain that you are running a dual monitor configuration so you do not put the window somewhere where it is off-screen.

UIAutomation - testing Calculator

2008-01-09T21:58:00.001+02:00

I recently discovered that the UIAutomation library provided in .NET 3.0 doesn't only work for managed code but for any code.

Should you so be inclined, here's how to test that calc.exe provided by Windows in fact can calculate 2+2 correctly.

        [TestMethod]
        public void TestAddTwoAndTwo() {

            Process calc = new Process();
            ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
            startInfo.FileName = @"c:\windows\system32\calc.exe";
            calc.StartInfo = startInfo;
            calc.Start();
            Thread.Sleep(500);

            AutomationElement window = AutomationElement.FromHandle(calc.MainWindowHandle);
            AutomationElement twoButton = FindAutomationElementByName(window, "2");
            AutomationElement plusButton = FindAutomationElementByName(window, "+");
            AutomationElement equalsButton = FindAutomationElementByName(window, "=");

            AutomationElement editField = window.FindFirst(TreeScope.Descendants, new AndCondition(
                 new PropertyCondition(AutomationElement.ClassNameProperty, "Edit"),
                 new PropertyCondition(AutomationElement.IsValuePatternAvailableProperty, true)));
            calc.WaitForInputIdle();            

            InvokePattern clickTwo = twoButton.GetCurrentPattern(InvokePattern.Pattern) as InvokePattern;
            InvokePattern clickEquals = equalsButton.GetCurrentPattern(InvokePattern.Pattern) as InvokePattern;
            InvokePattern clickPlus = plusButton.GetCurrentPattern(InvokePattern.Pattern) as InvokePattern;

            clickTwo.Invoke();

            clickPlus.Invoke();

            clickTwo.Invoke();

            clickEquals.Invoke();
            ValuePattern pattern = editField.GetCurrentPattern(ValuePattern.Pattern) as ValuePattern;

            Assert.AreEqual(4, int.Parse(pattern.Current.Value,NumberStyles.AllowDecimalPoint|NumberStyles.AllowTrailingWhite));            
        }

        public AutomationElement FindAutomationElementByName(AutomationElement parent, string name) {
            Condition c = new PropertyCondition(AutomationElement.NameProperty, name);
            return parent.FindFirst(TreeScope.Descendants, c);
        }

You'll also want a reference to UIAutomationClient.dll and the following using:

using System.Windows.Automation;

To find out what the application under test has eaten i.e. how to automate it, do use UISpy.exe provided with the Windows SDK .

And yes, the syntax is a tad verbose ...

LINQPad - Useful Linq tool

2008-01-08T22:11:00.001+02:00

If you are using LINQ (or want to try it) and want to try out your query expressions dynamically you'll want to check out LINQPad.

Free (as in beer) and very useful!

LINQ - DataContext.Dispose()

2008-01-06T00:29:00.001+02:00

I'm playing around with LINQ for the moment. Actually I tried Entity Framework first, but could not get that to behave as I wanted (that is Table Per Class), so I let that rest for a while until they fix TPC support in a subsequent version and tried "plain" LINQ instead.

I can't say I'm really there yet, but one thing that bit me was that I out of old habit (or whatever) used code similar to the following:

            using (DataClassesDataContext db = new DataClassesDataContext();
            {
                return (from user in db.Users 
                        where user.Name == name 
                        select user).SingleOrDefault();
            }

..and I thought that all was well. However, when testing a little bit more I got ObjectDisposedException:s when returning

return (from user in db.Users select user).AsEnumerable();

instead of

return (from user in db.Users select user).ToList();

Turns out that even though DataContext implements IDisposable, you should not use a DataContext in a using statement or directly call .Dispose() or you'll end up with lots of brokenness.

(In addition I got all kinds of attaching and detaching issues, but I think I've sorted them now. Did I already tell you that this is my first attempt of using LINQ non-trivially?)

TimeSpan.Seconds vs .TotalSeconds

2007-12-22T02:06:00.001+02:00

The difference between the Seconds property and the TotalSeconds property is (or at least should be) pretty obvious, but based on experience it is a common bug to use .Seconds when you actually mean .TotalSeconds. For the readers out there that hasn't gotten the difference, think of a timespan of value 1 minute 23 seconds - here .Seconds is 23 and total seconds is 83.

As a rule of thumb, most often it's the Total variant you want, and yes, the same applies to all the other members too, (e.g. .Minutes, .Milliseconds vs. the corresponding .Total-prefixed ones)

"Practical Functional C#"

2007-12-21T23:17:00.001+02:00

I just found an interesting blog post series about practical functional C#. It starts right here. Maybe I've missed something, but this feels like a fresh breath, being really down to earth and real world. I'm looking forward to future posts.

"Is there a constant for tab like Environment.Newline?"

2007-12-14T17:54:00.001+02:00

..was a question a co-worker asked the other day. My first answer was no, as it is not really needed as a tab does not change between platforms as newline might (think Mono).

Then I realized, there actually *is* one, so I gave the following instructions:

Add a reference to Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll
add a using Microsoft.VisualBasic; statement
use Constants.vbTab

(And to avoid any misunderstandings, no, this was not a serious suggestion.)

"Thank you for the lasting contribution you made to Microsoft Visual Studio"

2007-12-11T23:32:00.001+02:00

..that's what is engraved into the glass cube I got in the mailbox today.

Dependency Visualizer 1.2.7

2007-11-29T20:28:00.001+02:00

Turns out that Dependency Visualizer requires the Visual C++ Runtime version 7.1 (2003), and no-one had noticed (or at least not reported it to me).

The just released 1.2.7 fixes the installer to include the necessary files, otherwise nothing has changed since 1.2.6.

Interesting findings ...

2007-11-28T17:29:00.001+02:00

What would you say if you found a class with the following interface during a code review?

internal static class Internal
{
    // Methods
    private static void CommonlyUsedGenericInstantiations_HACK();
    private static T NullableHelper_HACK<T>() where T : struct;
    private static void SZArrayHelper_HACK<T>(SZArrayHelper oSZArrayHelper);
}

Suspicious to say the least ...

The 'interesting' part here, is that the class actually exists, and not just anywhere but as System.Internal in mscorlib !

Dependency Visualizer now supports VS 2008

2007-11-26T23:27:00.001+02:00

The just released 1.2.6 version of Dependency Visualizer now supports Visual Studio 2008 solutions/projects.

Visual Studio 2008 RTM released

2007-11-19T20:25:00.001+02:00

Visual Studio 2008 just released (to MSDN subscribers) and the Express versions to the rest of you.

Get it now (or wait a few days to get better download speeds).

Stepping through properties in the debugger

2007-11-16T21:25:00.001+02:00

Ever stepped through code in the debugger and ended up in N+1 trivial property getters before you got to the "real code" and felt frustrated?

Enter the DebuggerStepThroughAttribute. MSDN says the following: "For example, the Visual Studio 2005 debugger does not stop in a method marked with this attribute but does allow a breakpoint to be set in the method."

Basically, if you need a breakpoint in there, you'll get there, otherwise Visual Studio won't bother stepping there and just steps over it, which is exactly what we want.

So how do you apply the attribute to a property as its attribute usage states the following?

[AttributeUsageAttribute(AttributeTargets.Class|
AttributeTargets.Struct|
AttributeTargets.Constructor|
AttributeTargets.Method, Inherited=false)]

The point is to realize that while the property itself isn't a method, both the getter and the setter actually are.

So you can do the following:

        public int Foo
        {
            [DebuggerStepThrough]
            get { return m_foo; }
            set { m_foo = value; }
        }

..and now the getter has the attribute, while the setter does not.

Programmatically enumerate WCF endpoints defined in app.config

2007-11-15T19:09:00.001+02:00

For various reasons you might want to enumerate all client endpoints defined in the application configuration file.

For future reference, this is one way to do it:

// Automagically find all client endpoints defined in app.config
ClientSection clientSection = 
    ConfigurationManager.GetSection("system.serviceModel/client") as ClientSection;

ChannelEndpointElementCollection endpointCollection =
    clientSection.ElementInformation.Properties[string.Empty].Value as ChannelEndpointElementCollection;
List<string> endpointNames = new List<string>();
foreach (ChannelEndpointElement endpointElement in endpointCollection)
{
    endpointNames.Add(endpointElement.Name);
}
// use endpointNames somehow ...

..obviously this is not production quality code.

Comparing DateTime structs ...

2007-11-14T16:18:00.001+02:00

Consider the following code:

DateTime localTime = new DateTime(2007, 11, 14, 12, 0, 0, DateTimeKind.Local);
DateTime utcTime = new DateTime(2007, 11, 14, 12, 0, 0, DateTimeKind.Utc);

System.Diagnostics.Debug.Print("Is equal ? {0}", localTime == utcTime);

What do you expect the answer to be?

...and you probably guessed wrong as .NET actually considers them to be equal !?!

MSDN is "somewhat fuzzy" on the subject:

"Calculations and comparisons of DateTime objects are only meaningful if the objects represent times in the same time zone. For that reason, if no time zone is specified for the objects, it is assumed that the developer has some external mechanism, such as an explicit variable or policy, that can be used to determine the time zone in which a DateTime object was created."

Visual Studio 2008 release imminent

2007-11-05T20:01:00.001+02:00

S. Somasegar (Corporate Vice President, Developer Division) just announced at Teched Barcelona that Visual Studio 2008 (and .NET 3.5 Framework) will be shipped before the end of November 2007.

Nice!

Google translation

2007-11-04T21:37:00.001+02:00

Niklas Jansson pointed out that Google managed to screw up the translation of the Calendar print dialog.

The orientation combo box in Swedish has the choices "Bil", "Stående" and "Liggande", the last two makes sense but the first one translating to Car obviously does not. (The original version says auto.)

Funnily enough, they managed to screw up the Finnish version too, where they for the same alternative provided "Autot" which means "the cars", (while auto might actually have been somewhat acceptable).

Well, you can't always win... :)

Integrating Help2 files into VS 2005 - part 2

2007-11-04T00:07:00.001+02:00

The other workaround I hinted in the previous post involves a bit of manual labor the first time (or if you ask nicely, I might just provide the needed parts), if used more than once it is IMO less painful than the ORCA route.

This solution takes advantage of <CustomTable> feature of WiX. By "reverse engineering" the needed table schemas out of the relevant merge module MSHelp2_RegTables__RTL_---_---.msm we can author these tables as <CustomTable>:s and then just add <Row>:s as appropriate.

Next time just edit the row data and you're set.

For brevity, I just post one table here, but the rest can be made available upon request.

The tables I've used are HelpFile, HelpFileToNamespace, HelpNamespace and HelpPlugin.

      <CustomTable Id="HelpFileToNamespace">
        <!-- HelpFileToNamespace table definition -->
        <Column 
          Type="string" 
          PrimaryKey="yes" 
          Id="HelpFile_" 
          Nullable="no" 
          KeyTable="HelpFile" 
          KeyColumn="1" 
          Category="Identifier" 
          Description="Foreign key into HelpFile table (required)." />
        <Column 
          Type="string" 
          Width="72"
          PrimaryKey="yes" 
          Id="HelpNamespace_" 
          Nullable="no" 
          KeyTable="HelpNamespace" 
          KeyColumn="1" 
          Category="Identifier" 
          Description="Foreign key into HelpNamespace table (required)."/>

        <!-- data -->
        <Row>
          <Data Column="HelpFile_">YourHelpFileKey</Data>
          <Data Column="HelpNamespace_">YourHelpNamespaceKey</Data>
        </Row>
      </CustomTable>

Integrating Help2 files into VS 2005 - part 1

2007-11-03T01:38:00.001+02:00

For various reasons (curiosity among others) I've been playing with integrating custom API documentation into Visual Studio, this turned out to be rather laborious.

For future reference I thought I'd document the process here.

- Create the code to be documented, use xml comments and turn on the generate xml comments switch in the project settings.

- Install Visual Studio SDK (yes, really ...)

- Install Sandcastle

- Install Sandcastle Help File Builder

- Open SHFB and create a Help2 project and customize appropriately.

- When the project builds successfully, open all the various .Hx? files (except .HxS) and remove the DTD reference, and from the .HxC file also the <CompilerOptions> element including contents. (For further info refer to the helpware site.)

- Now Microsoft wants you to use the Help Collection Integration Wizard, or manually edit merge files with Orca, neither of which is any fun.

- WiX has a WixVSExtension that among other thing has <HelpFile>, <HelpFileRef>, <HelpCollection> and <PlugCollectionInto> elements which sound promising.

- The problem: the WixVSExtension is currently broken, specifically bug 1588180

- The bug comments include a suggested fix that involves recompiling WiX. Due to dependency issues this seems like a PITA.

- There is however also another workaround ... stay tuned!

Dependency Visualizer - now on CodePlex

2007-10-28T18:05:00.001+02:00

I finally released Dependency Visualizer as open-source on CodePlex. It's new home is now there.

Microsoft to release the source code for the .NET Framework Libraries

2007-10-04T18:07:00.001+03:00

I'm definitely not the first (and probably not the last) one to blog about this, but Microsoft is about to release the source code for a big part of the .NET framework. Yay! Even though Reflector is nice, having the actual source code with comments is nicer.

Ironic, isn't it?

2007-09-27T18:54:00.001+03:00

The screenshot says it all ...

Installing Ubuntu

2007-09-18T19:59:00.001+03:00

I just installed Ubuntu feisty 64bit on one of the computers. For those of you who happen to know the story about that particular computer it might seem somewhat ironic, but that's not the point of this post.

The installation was *smooth*, I just entered:

partitioning info (yes, use all available disk)
keyboard layout
timezone
user account info

and that's all. After a few minutes I asked to reboot out of the livecd and into the new installation and everything just worked! (Well except for my slightly odd screen resolution of 1440x900, but I can live with that)

Anyone can manage such an installation, and excessive OK button clicking.

Kudos Ubuntu!

Enumerating XAML (BAML) files in an Assembly

2007-09-13T00:23:00.001+03:00

I wanted to play around with XAML Pages, and wanted an application that automagically showed me a list of all included (embedded) XAML files in an assembly without me doing more than adding the XAML file to the project.

This turned out to be tricky until you got it...

Well, it is simple when you know how to do it, but until then you'll have some googling to do. (At least that is my experience)

Basically, a XAML file with a build action of Page or Resource ends up in a .resources file named <assemblyname>.g.resources. This .resources file contains the binary version of the XAML file (BAML).

Enumerating the contents of a .resources file can be done using the System.Resources.ResourceReader class as follows:

using (ResourceReader reader = new ResourceReader("Foo.g.resources"))
{
    foreach (DictionaryEntry entry in reader)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(entry.Key);
    }
}

So all that's left to do is to create the application, (and no, it ain't pretty but it works):

MainForm.xaml:

<Window x:Class="AutoToc.MainForm"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
        xmlns:sys="clr-namespace:System;assembly=system" 
    Title="AutoToc" Height="400" Width="600" Loaded="FormLoaded"
    >
  <Window.Resources>    
    <HierarchicalDataTemplate DataType="{x:Type sys:Uri}">
      <BulletDecorator VerticalAlignment="Center">
        <BulletDecorator.Bullet>
          <Ellipse Fill="BlueViolet" Width="5" Height="5" 
                   VerticalAlignment="Center"/>
        </BulletDecorator.Bullet>
        <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=OriginalString}" 
                   Margin="5,0,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Center" />
      </BulletDecorator>
    </HierarchicalDataTemplate>
  </Window.Resources>
    <Grid>
      <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
        <ColumnDefinition Width="200"/>
        <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto"/>
        <ColumnDefinition Width="*"/>
      </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
      <TreeView Grid.Column="0" Name="tocTree" 
                ItemsSource="{Binding}"
                SelectedItemChanged="tocTreeSelectedItemChanged"></TreeView>
      <GridSplitter Grid.Column="1" Width="2" HorizontalAlignment="Left" 
                    VerticalAlignment="Stretch"/>
      <Frame Name="contentFrame" Grid.Column="2" NavigationUIVisibility="Hidden" 
             VerticalAlignment="Stretch" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch"/>
    </Grid>
</Window>

and the interesting parts of the code behind:

private void FormLoaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    // UriCollection inherits ObservableCollection<Uri>
    UriCollection pages = new UriCollection();
    Assembly asm = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
    Stream stream = asm.GetManifestResourceStream(asm.GetName().Name + ".g.resources");

    DataContext = pages;
    using (ResourceReader reader = new ResourceReader(stream))
    {
        foreach (DictionaryEntry entry in reader)
        {
            // for some curious reason, we get "cannot locate resource"
            // if we leave the .baml extension, it needs to be .xaml !?!
            pages.Add(new Uri(((string)entry.Key).Replace(".baml", ".xaml"),
                UriKind.Relative));

        }
    }
}

private void tocTreeSelectedItemChanged(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    contentFrame.Source = tocTree.SelectedItem as Uri;
}

That was easy, wasn't it?

Obviously this is not production quality code but more a proof of concept, and yes, I do use it for playing around with the 3D samples...

Obviously, it would be better to filter out non-Page xaml files, such as mainform ...

DiffuseMaterial.Color vs DiffuseMaterial.Brush

2007-09-06T23:32:00.001+03:00

I've been getting my feet wet with 3D in WPF lately, as I've been reading the new Petzold book 3D Programming for Windows.

It's too early to give any review of the book yet, but back to the subject matter:

As I was trying the examples out I was just getting emptiness !?! I suspected I had screwed up either the MeshGeometry.Positions and/or camera directions so those I checked first, and found no differences.

I looked at my code, and nothing jumped out as wrong.

When I looked closer I noticed that I'd been using DiffuseMaterial.Color instead of DiffuseMaterial.Brush

According to MSDN:

Brush: "Brush to be applied as a Material to a 3-D model."

Color: "The color allowed to emit from the Material. The default value is #FFFFFF. Since all colors make up white, all colors are visible by default."

Obviously? .Color was the wrong choice.

It seems I've got plenty to learn ...

scottberkun.com » Blog Archive » Asshole driven development

2007-06-26T17:23:00.001+03:00

Nowadays with all kinds of development methodologies, it's refreshing to revisit some real-world ones (in a slightly cynical manner..)

scottberkun.com » Blog Archive » Asshole driven development

Playing around with Powershell

2007-06-20T00:58:00.001+03:00

For those living under a rock the newish command shell from Microsoft called Powershell (aka 'Monad') is quite nice.

Get Powershell

It treats everything as object that you can pipe around and you play around with file system, registry, wmi, .net objects, com objects, custom stuff all in the same way.

Let's say you want to play around with WMI and look at your computer.

PS C:\Users\Simon> Get-WmiObject Win32_ComputerSystem

Domain              : WORKGROUP
Manufacturer        : System manufacturer
Model               : System name
Name                : REBORN
PrimaryOwnerName    : Simon
TotalPhysicalMemory : 1609498624

or let's say that you want to find the description of the 3 processes that currently uses the most CPU:

PS C:\Users\Simon> Get-Process |
>> sort-object -property CPU -descending |
>> select-object -first 3 -property Description
>>

Description
-----------
Firefox
Windows Media Player
Desktop Window Manager

Or if you for some reason feel the need to show a messagebox (and yes, the messagebox did show and I hit yes):

PS C:\> [void][System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Windows.Forms")
PS C:\> [Windows.Forms.MessageBox]::Show("Hello World")
OK

Extension methods and Collection

2007-06-20T00:15:00.001+03:00

Visual Studio Code Analysis / FxCop says in rule CA1002 not to expose List<T> but instead something like Collection<T>.

Now List<T> has some nice features such as

List<T> List<T>.FindAll(Predicate<T> match)

among others, not to mention

void List<T>.AddRange(IEnumerable<T> collection)

Now, we could go implementing these on our own base class and return that, or go back to C style object orientation and write a static CollectionUtilities class with methods such as

static void AddRange<T>(ICollection<T> collection, IEnumerable<T> items)

Neither of these makes me really happy.

Enter C# 3.0 extension methods:

public static void AddRange<T>(this ICollection<T> collection, IEnumerable<T> items)

{ /* implementation */ }

Now due to some compiler magic we can use this method just as it had beed implemented directly in Collection<T>... Neat!

Another interesting tidbit is that it is in fact possible to do things like

            Thing foo = null;
            if (foo.IsNull())
            {
                Console.WriteLine("foo is null!");
            }

and NOT get a NullReferenceException due to an extension method along the lines of:

        public static bool IsNull(this object value)
        {
            return value == null;
        }

unfortunately, as they are called extension methods it's only possible for methods and not properties and such.

Microsoft embedding nerdy photo in Vista DVDs? - Engadget

2007-06-13T21:27:00.001+03:00

It seems some guys at Microsoft thought it would be cool to get their pictures on the Vista DVDs, and they seem to have gotten away with it!

Well, obviously I don't know what their managers thought of their ploy...

Microsoft embedding nerdy photo in Vista DVDs? - Engadget

XAML as a better C#

2007-06-07T00:24:00.001+03:00

That was the title of Chris Anderson's talk today. Very different, and very interesting. He explained how CLR and XML fits together in XAML and as a demonstration implemented a "poor-man's Workflow Foundation".

The talk also had it's fair share of humorous moments, when the his computer had a mind of its own.

Conclusion was that although XAML is very powerful, it's not necessarily the best tool for all jobs.

TechEd, day 1

2007-06-05T19:37:00.001+03:00

Surprisingly, our bags *did* arrive during the night, so we got our clothes, that's nice!

First impression, this event is HUGE.

The keynote was more directed towards IT professionals, so not much interesting stuff to get there.

Orcas seems to have gotten its official name Visual Studio 2008, but release date should still be the end of this year.

You'll get as much SWAG as you want...

Going to Orlando/TechEd

2007-06-02T20:56:00.001+03:00

The bags are packed, hopefully I didn't forget anything too important.

Tomorrow we fly from Turku to Orlando via Copenhagen and Chicago. If everything goes according to plans, we'll land 10.47 PM in Orlando. (With 7 hours of time difference that is if it was 05.47 back home...)

It's gonna be a loong day...

On monday TechEd starts!

Windows Live Writer beta 2

2007-05-31T23:35:00.001+03:00

Just noticed that WLW beta 2 is out, and I'm trying it out right now..

As far as I understand, it should support Blogger labels, and that has been one of the IMO biggest limitations with the previous beta.

Hopefully this works out properly, and this will be the blogging application of choice when I'll be blogging random stuff from TechEd. Yay!

Technorati Tags: WLW

Speech Recognition isn't really there yet..

2007-05-28T00:17:00.000+03:00

It seems we cannot really throw away our keyboards just yet, and only use speech recognition, as the following video clearly shows:

(Perl, is perhaps not the most "speakable" language there is, but nevertheless...)

Technorati : humor, vista

Different signing options depending on configuration

2007-05-08T18:58:00.001+03:00

There was a question in the MSBuild newsgroup about the possibility to have different signing settings depending on configuration.

Basically, let's pretend pretend that what we want is the following:

Debug: Delay sign using PublicKey.pk

Release: Sign using KeyPair.pfx

From within Visual Studio it seems impossible, due to the fact that the configuration boxes are grayed out. All is not lost though, by moving the code signing options into the appropriate configurations (by directly editing the project file).

Debug:

<PropertyGroupCondition="'$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Debug|AnyCPU' ">

<snip/>

<AssemblyOriginatorKeyFile>PublicKey.pk</AssemblyOriginatorKeyFile>

</PropertyGroup>

Release:

<PropertyGroupCondition="'$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Release|AnyCPU' ">

<snip/>

<AssemblyOriginatorKeyFile>PrivateKey.pfx</AssemblyOriginatorKeyFile>

</PropertyGroup>

And there you go!

(The obvious? drawback with this method is that the signing behavior isn't directly visible from within the Visual Studio project properties.)

Technorati : MSBuild, Visual Studio

Editing a Visual Studio 2005 project file

2007-05-07T18:33:00.000+03:00

[This is not really news, just wanted to publish it somewhere so I can refer to it]

So how do you do it then?

It is simple actually:

(If the project file is under a locking source control provider e.g. Microsoft SourceSafe, you probably want to check out the project file first, as Visual Studio isn't smart enough to do it for you when you edit the file directly.)

Right-click a project in the solution explorer

Choose "Unload project"

Right-click the same project, that now is grayed out and suffixed with (unavailable)

Choose "Edit <filename>"

Edit away ...

Right-click the project, still suffixed with (unavailable)

Choose "Reload project"

There you go!

Caveat: This doesn't work under the Express versions of Visual Studio. That is, the "Unload Project" menu item is absent, you can still use the editor with schema support.

Technorati : MSBuild, Visual Studio

Where's the QA when you need them?

2007-05-03T18:12:00.001+03:00

Where is the QA when you need them? See the following image for clarification:

It listens to the name of ASUS ACPI Cneter (sic!) ... Product version 1.0.0.0, File version 0.1.0.24

It makes me wonder how something like this have slipped through?

Visual Studio dependencies

2007-05-02T00:02:00.001+03:00

I figured I'd walk through the details on how to find out dependencies of a Visual Studio solution/project. (For those who haven't figured it out yet, this is a description how Dependency Visualizer does it)

1) For MSBuild compatible project types, it's dead simple, just use the following XPaths, where msbuild stands for the MSBuild schema: http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003

Assembly references: /msbuild:Project/msbuild:ItemGroup/msbuild:Reference/@Include

Project references: /msbuild:Project/msbuild:ItemGroup/msbuild:ProjectReference/msbuild:Project/text() returns a relative path to the project file.

2) There are project types that aren't MSBuild compatible (most notably C++ ones), and due to popular demand, I had to add support for these also to Dependency Visualizer.

Assembly references are simple: /VisualStudioProject/References/AssemblyReference/@AssemblyName

Project references: Here is where it starts getting nasty..

/VisualStudioProject/References/ProjectReference/@ReferencedProjectIdentifier gives... you guessed it, a GUID identifying the referenced project. This means we have to parse the freeish text format of the solution file, to find out what project hides behind the GUID. But it gets uglier still, turns out that there's actually dependencies and dependencies. If you go to "Project Dependencies..." window (in VC++) and check a project, then you end up with a reference that's only existing in the solution file like so:


  Project("{8BC9CEB8-8B4A-11D0-8D11-00A0C91BC942}") = "ProjectName",
  "ProjectName\ProjectName.vcproj", "{769945FD-50DC-49E4-B93E-54250D7BF541}"
    ProjectSection(ProjectDependencies) = postProject
      {A4583937-88F4-4C1D-B5A9-E711C3951E3A} = {A4583937-88F4-4C1D-B5A9-E711C3951E3A}
    EndProjectSection
  EndProject

Where the GUID:s fit together like so: the first one is the type, the one on the second row is the project identifier, the thwo on the fourth row is the identifier of the referenced project.

Technorati : Dependency Visualizer, MSBuild, Visual Studio

Adobe Reader on Vista Ultimate x64

2007-04-24T00:20:00.001+03:00

After a lot of work and googling I finally managed to get Adobe Reader to install. The funny thing is that Adobe says that version 8 is Vista compatible. I'd like to question that, at least regarding the installer..

Downloaded

Adobe Reader 8 for Windows Vista

Started the installer, got the downloaded file warning but not the UAC dialog, then... absolutely nothing happened.

Then I tried "Run as administrator", still the same... absolutely nothing happened.

Googled around and found indication that running in XP SP2 compatibility mode might help. It did..

But come on Adobe, get your act together and produce an installer that Joe Average can use without extra fuzzing about!

Somasegar's WebLog : Listening to your feedback - Expression and MSDN

2007-04-03T23:59:00.001+03:00

It seems a miracle has happened. Microsoft revaluated their decision about not including Expression Blend in MSDN subscription. Now it seems both Web and Blend (after its release) are included. Whoohoo!

Link to Somasegar's WebLog : Listening to your feedback - Expression and MSDN

Simple properties

2007-04-03T20:37:00.001+03:00

What do you prefer?

private int m_foo;
public int Foo
{
   get { return m_foo; }
   set { m_foo = value; }
}

public int Foo { get; set; }

public:
 property int Foo;

The first is C#, the second C# 3.0 and the third one is C++/CLI

Nullable in C++/CLI

2007-04-02T01:36:00.001+03:00

I was recently working on a C++/CLI project (which I only rarely do, as you'll soon find out)where there was a need to have a method returning a nullable DateTime.

I look up Nullable in the help, I see "ref class Nullable", think that the following will do it.

Nullable<DateTime>^ GetStuff();

I implement the thing and am a happy camper until I try to use it from a C# project. The intellisense says ValueType GetStuff(), WTF !?!

I take a look once again and find out that Nullable<T> is "public value class", so the correct incantation should have been:

Nullable<DateTime> GetStuff();

oh, and to return a null value you just do:

return Nullable<DateTime>();

(Anyone else finds the C# ? syntax for nullable types more easily digested?)

Dependency Visualizer 1.2.0

2007-03-26T01:33:00.001+03:00

Just released at http://koti.mbnet.fi/tunedude

Whats new:

Optionally hide .NET 2.0 references
Optionally hide .NET 3.0 references
Generate svg and/or png
Configurable (the above mentioned items)
Support for vcproj:s

utmanad..

2007-03-22T19:44:00.000+02:00

Jag har tydligen också lyckats bli utmanad (av trion)

Här är några lagom intressanta påståenden i ingen speciell ordningsföljd:

1. Jag hatar allt som liknar kedjebrev (därmed tänker jag inte heller utmana någon fler..)

2. Har nästan lyckats kapa benet av mej medelst motorsåg..

3. Har deltagit i skönhetstävling.

4. Har blivit halvt korsfäst (ja eller i alla fall blivit spikad i ena handen...)

5. Har diplom i komjölkning

6. Kanin är gott...

const (in C++/CLI) considered harmful

2007-02-20T22:36:00.001+02:00

Today I found the following "gotcha" in combining C++/CLI and C#.
Create a C++/CLI dll containing something along the lines of:

public ref class Foo
{
public:
  static const int BAR = 42;
};

Use that from C#, maybe like so:

int temp = Foo.BAR;
Foo.BAR = -1;
MessageBox.Show(string.Format("The answer is: {0} ...or {1}",
  temp, Foo.BAR), "WTF!?!");

Wait, that should not be possible! We just said that BAR was const in the C++/CLI code didn't we?

The problem is that it is possible (and gives the following screenshot):

Digging deeper reveals that C++/CLI const turns into an ordinary field with an optional modifier IsConst that languages are free to ignore, (which e.g. C# does).

If you in fact want a "constant" constant (which is probably why you wrote const in the first place?), then you will need to use literal in C++/CLI to get the same result as a C# const.

DependencyVisualizer

2007-02-15T22:50:00.001+02:00

The second version of Dependency Visualizer was just uploaded. This time it might actually work :) And in the case it does not, the possibilities to get traces for me should be infinitely better than the first version.

Dependency Visualizer released

2007-02-14T00:22:00.001+02:00

I just put up the first public version of the Dependency Visualizer. You might want to try it out..

Extend right-click menu in Explorer in WiX installer

2007-02-13T22:28:00.001+02:00

I just had the need to make an installer that created a right-click menu item for Visual Studio solution files (.sln)

The easiest way to accomplish this would have been to use the WiX built in support for registering extensions:

<Extension ContentType="text\plain" Id="sln">
 <Verb Id="Visualize" Command="Visualize dependencies"
           TargetFile="DependencyVisualizerExe"
           Argument='"%1"'/>
</Extension>

However, I soon found out that this was a Bad Idea, in the sense that then my software took over as the default handler for .sln files. Not exactly what I wanted...

Turns out that I needed to manually install the registry keys/values in the appropriate place to get it to work:

<Component Id="DependencyVisualizerComponent" Guid="PUT-GUID-HERE">
 <File Name="DependencyVisualizer.exe" Id="DependencyVisualizerExe"
         Source="!(wix.SourceDir)DependencyVisualizer.exe"/>
 <RegistryKey Action="createAndRemoveOnUninstall" Root="HKCR"
                      Key="VisualStudio.Launcher.sln\Shell\Visualize">
   <RegistryValue Action="write" Value="Visualize Dependencies" Type="string" />
   <RegistryKey Action="createAndRemoveOnUninstall" Key="Command">
     <RegistryValue Action="write" Type="string"
       Value="&quot;[#DependencyVisualizerExe]&quot; "%1""/>
    </RegistryKey>
  </RegistryKey>
</Component>

Oh, and the tool I'm working on is a tool for visualizing inter-project dependencies...

BackgroundWorker and exceptions

2007-01-31T20:25:00.001+02:00

Got a bit confused at work today when a piece of software seemingly halted in a place where it should not have been possible.

After looking at the code for a while I found something like the following:

            BackgroundWorker bgw = new BackgroundWorker();
           bgw.DoWork += new DoWorkEventHandler(bgw_DoWork);
           bgw.RunWorkerAsync();

where bgw_DoWork was (basically) implemented thusly:

        void bgw_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
       {
           // ...
            throw new Exception("things went bad");
       }

If you try it out (outside the debugger) you'll notice that the exception is silently swallowed !?!

The moral of the story:

If you use Background worker, either implement a catch all handler within the DoWork method or, hook the RunWorkerCompleted event and check RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs.Error for non-null value.

Browsing old books

2007-01-30T19:53:00.001+02:00

Doesn't sound like much fun does it? Well, consider that the books in questions were hand written by Leonardo da Vinci or that one of the books were Alice under ground or something other like that, then it seems much more interesting. The British library has done just that, published a few selected books in a WPF showcase application that feels close to reading a real book. See for yourself!

Prerequisites: .NET 3.0, Internet Explorer and a reasonably modern computer.

Technorati tags: WPF, .NET 3.0

Anti-commercial for two products..

2007-01-06T20:09:00.001+02:00

I have two products that I'm annoyed with from time to time.

1) Samsung CLP-500

It tells me that the waste toner tank is full (now and then) and that I need to replace it. However I can clearly see that it is nowhere near full. The problem seems to be with stupid design, there is an optical sensor right under one of the inlets that detects if it can see through the waste toner tank (made of clear plastic), to make matters worse, it seems that a tiny toner particle in the sensors way and the tank "is full". Samsungs FAQ entry for the error message is also somewhat funny.

"Waste Toner Tank Full/Not Install" is displayed.
First, replace the waste toner tank.
If the same message is displayed continually after replaced.
- Check whether that replaced waste toner tank is the new.
- If it is the new, the printer may require repair.

2) Logitech MX-1000

Cursor occasionally jumping all over the place
Buttons behave if they are pressed
Tilt wheel get stuck tilted

..need I say more?

Happy New Year, and a late christmas present..

2007-01-02T01:10:00.000+02:00

The break is over and tomorrow back to work again. Meanwhile, it seems that I've been a awarded with a 1-year MSDN subscription with all the bells and whistles thanks to my activity at pellesoft.se

Yay!

(The announcement is here)

Google Santa Tracker and Toy Hunt

2006-12-15T18:09:00.001+02:00

It seems that you can go threasure hunting with Google Earth. You get a clue every day where to find a 'hidden' present, or maybe it's just a package that fell off the sledge in such a way that it opened. Well anyway, just go hunting and maybe learn some geography on the way.

Link to Google Santa Tracker and Toy Hunt

.NET 3.0 artikelserie fortsättning

2006-11-28T22:18:00.001+02:00

Del 4 och 5 är skrivna på pellesoft och kommer att släppas inom kort. Denna gång handlar det om WPF.

Technorati tags: .NET 3.0, WPF, WCF

Implicit UseSynchronizationContext==true may lead to deadlocks ...

2006-11-23T19:32:00.001+02:00

Today I found a little gem on Mahjayar's blog on the use of CallbackBehavior and UseSynchronizationContext. Basically, if you have a duplex contract you might want to switch off UseSynchronization context, particularly if the client is WinForms (or WPF), or you might end up with deadlocks.

Labels: WCF

Technorati tags: WCF

Add blogger Labels to Windows Live Writer

2006-11-23T18:56:00.001+02:00

It seems that the "Insert Tags..." thing in Windows Live Writer is customizable enough that it is possible to add support for blogger labels by doing the following:

Insert tags ... -> Choose (Customize Providers...) in dropdown list
Add...
Set provider name appropriately so that you know it e.g. blogger

Set template to:

<a href="http://obviously-your-blog-name.blogspot.com/search/label/{tag-encoded}"
rel="tag">{tag}</a>

Set tag separator to ", " (without the quotes)
Set htm caption to "<span class="post-labels">Labels: {tag-group}</span>" (without the quotes)

If you do that, and add tags using that provider, the tags should work exactly as when blogging via web-ui.

EDIT: it seems that the labels do not show up on the edit posts page in the web ui. I wonder if that matters?

EDIT2: it looks correct but does not work... (

Technorati tags: WLW

HOWTO: Read attributes from an enumeration member

2006-11-22T20:32:00.001+02:00

Today I needed to read custom attributes from members of an enumeration type. As the found solution did not strike me as immediately obvious, I'm posting here for future reference:

            Thing foo = Thing.Bar;
           FieldInfo field = foo.GetType().GetField(foo.ToString());
           object[] attrs = field.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(Description), false);

where Thing is an enumeration, defined something like:

public enum Thing {
       [Description("Foo thing")]
       Foo,
       Bar,
       [Description("Baz thing")]
       Baz
   }

Technorati tags: .NET, C#

.NET 3.0 artikelserie på gång

2006-11-21T22:31:00.001+02:00

Har börjat skriva en artikelserie om .NET 3.0 på pellesoft.

Del 1, 2, 3 redan klara och handlar främst om WCF. Nästa i tur är ytskrap av WPF. Del 1 släpptes idag. Del 2 kommer i morgon och del 3 i övermorgon.

Technorati tags: .NET 3.0, WCF, WPF

Php and security ...

2006-11-17T16:56:00.003+02:00

I recently had the "opportunity" to look for security problems in an inherited php application. I found the following seemingly innocent line of code:

require($_GET['menu'].'.inc');

Well let's think about it a little..

Imagine there is somewhere one or more users that are not all that friendly ...
Imagine $_GET['menu'] is something that comes from a user ...
Imagine that php treats the include():d/require():d code as php and not html
Imagine that the include():d/require():d file would not have to exist on the same server
Imagine that there somewhere on the Internet exists text/plain file containing php code

If that was true, then we would have a $h*tload of problems, right? Fortunately that's not true... ..right?

..oh, wait.. *all* of those are true. Oops...

Technorati tags: php, security

.NET 3.0 RTM

2006-11-07T22:42:00.000+02:00

It seems the .NET 3.0 platform has officially been released:
Press release

Runtime

Readme

Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0

.NET 3.0 SDK

List of Wix3 'autodetected' products

2006-10-18T23:35:00.000+03:00

Jonathan de Halleux asked for a list of 'autodetected' products in Wix3.

Looking for something to do, I went through the sources for 3.0.2211.0 (src\ext\*\wixlib\*.wxs) for relevant properties.

NetFxExtension:
- NETFRAMEWORK10
- NETFRAMEWORK11
- NETFRAMEWORK20
- NETFRAMEWORK30
- NETFRAMEWORK11SDKDIR
- NETFRAMEWORK20SDKDIR

IisExtension:
- IISMAJORVERSION
- IISMINORVERSION

on steroids...

2006-10-02T20:32:00.001+03:00

One of the long-standing jokes at the office is about using the much hated <Blink> tag in XAML user interfaces. (The other one being about mapping the UI onto the inside of a sphere..)

Disclaimer: This is NOT in ANY WAY suggested for any use WHATSOEVER. We have already seen way too many blinking webpages, thank you very much. And the code is "proof-of-concept" quality..

So basically, I wanted to do a a component that I can use in XAML, making it's content blink. And just for the fun of it, I wanted the on and off durations tunable, and the same goes for the durations of the fade in and fade out between those two extremes.

So here goes nothing...

First a little test case:

<Window x:Class="Blink.Window1"
   xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
   xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
   xmlns:src="clr-namespace:BlinkTest" Title="Blink" Height="300" Width="450">

   <StackPanel Orientation="Vertical">
       <!-- Use default blinking settings -->
       <src:Blink>
           <TextBlock Padding="20" Margin="20" Background="Pink">Hello World</TextBlock>
       </src:Blink>
       <!-- Explicitely specify blinking settings -->
       <src:Blink OnDuration="1" OffDuration="1" FadeInDuration="0" FadeOutDuration="0">
       <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" Margin="50">
           <Label>Some nice text about the button</Label>
           <Button>Click Me!</Button>
       </StackPanel>
       </src:Blink>
   </StackPanel>
</Window>

And then the code for the Blink class

The using statements

using System;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.Windows.Markup;
using System.Windows.Media;
using System.Windows.Media.Animation;

We are inheriting System.Windows.Controls.Control so we have to do some cruft related to layout

        protected override int VisualChildrenCount {
           get { return Child != null ? 1 : 0; }
       }

       protected override Visual GetVisualChild(int index) {
           if (index > 0 || Child == null) throw new ArgumentException("index");
           return Child;
       }

       protected override Size MeasureOverride(Size constraint) {
           Size sizeDesired = new Size(0, 0);
           if (Child != null) {
               Child.Measure(constraint);
           }
           sizeDesired.Width += Child.DesiredSize.Width;
           sizeDesired.Height += Child.DesiredSize.Height;

           return sizeDesired;
       }

       protected override Size ArrangeOverride(Size arrangeBounds) {
           if (Child != null) {
               Rect rect = new Rect(
                   new Point((arrangeBounds.Width - Child.DesiredSize.Width) / 2,
                               (arrangeBounds.Height - Child.DesiredSize.Height) / 2),
                               Child.DesiredSize);
               Child.Arrange(rect);
           }
           return arrangeBounds;
       }

And for the animation to work we need a number of dependency properties for the durations

Now, all that is left is just the blinking animation. An obvious choice for

        // Using a DependencyProperty as the backing store for OffDuration.  This enables animation, styling, binding, etc...
        public static readonly DependencyProperty OffDurationProperty;

       // Using a DependencyProperty as the backing store for OnDuration.  This enables animation, styling, binding, etc...
        public static readonly DependencyProperty OnDurationProperty;

       // Using a DependencyProperty as the backing store for RiseDuration.  This enables animation, styling, binding, etc...
        public static readonly DependencyProperty FadeInDurationProperty;

       // Using a DependencyProperty as the backing store for DeclineDuration.  This enables animation, styling, binding, etc...
        public static readonly DependencyProperty FadeOutDurationProperty;

       public double OnDuration {
           get { return (double)GetValue(OnDurationProperty); }
           set { SetValue(OnDurationProperty, value); }
       }

       public double OffDuration {
           get { return (double)GetValue(OffDurationProperty); }
           set { SetValue(OffDurationProperty, value); }
       }

       public double FadeInDuration {
           get { return (double)GetValue(FadeInDurationProperty); }
           set { SetValue(FadeInDurationProperty, value); }
       }

       public double FadeOutDuration {
           get { return (double)GetValue(FadeOutDurationProperty); }
           set { SetValue(FadeOutDurationProperty, value); }
       }

       static Blink() {
               // register dependency properties 
                OffDurationProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("OffDuration", typeof(double), typeof(Blink), new UIPropertyMetadata(1.0));
               OnDurationProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("OnDuration", typeof(double), typeof(Blink), new UIPropertyMetadata(1.0));
               FadeInDurationProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("FadeInDuration", typeof(double), typeof(Blink), new UIPropertyMetadata(0.2));
               FadeOutDurationProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("FadeOutDuration", typeof(double), typeof(Blink), new UIPropertyMetadata(0.5));
       }

thing to animate is UIElement.OpacityProperty. So that's what I'm using, and to avoid a lot of fuzz with StoryBoards and stuff I set up the animation with the help of a DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames.

                    // setup the animation
                    DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames animation = new DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames();
                   animation.RepeatBehavior = RepeatBehavior.Forever;

                   double currentSeconds = 0; // keep track of cumulated time
                    LinearDoubleKeyFrame start = new LinearDoubleKeyFrame(0,
                       KeyTime.FromTimeSpan(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0)));
                   animation.KeyFrames.Add(start);

                   currentSeconds += FadeInDuration;
                   LinearDoubleKeyFrame fadeInFrame = new LinearDoubleKeyFrame(1,
                       KeyTime.FromTimeSpan(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(currentSeconds)));
                   animation.KeyFrames.Add(fadeInFrame);

                   currentSeconds += OnDuration;
                   LinearDoubleKeyFrame onFrame = new LinearDoubleKeyFrame(1,
                       KeyTime.FromTimeSpan(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(currentSeconds)));
                   animation.KeyFrames.Add(onFrame);

                   currentSeconds += FadeOutDuration;
                   LinearDoubleKeyFrame fadeOutFrame = new LinearDoubleKeyFrame(0,
                       KeyTime.FromTimeSpan(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(currentSeconds)));
                   animation.KeyFrames.Add(fadeOutFrame);

                   currentSeconds += OffDuration;
                   LinearDoubleKeyFrame offFrame = new LinearDoubleKeyFrame(0,
                       KeyTime.FromTimeSpan(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(currentSeconds)));
                   animation.KeyFrames.Add(offFrame);

                   Child.BeginAnimation(UIElement.OpacityProperty, animation);

And here is the whole Blink.cs in its entirety once again:

using System;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.Windows.Markup;
using System.Windows.Media;
using System.Windows.Media.Animation;


namespace BlinkTest {
   [ContentProperty("Child")]
   public class Blink : Control {
       UIElement m_child;

       public UIElement Child {
           get { return m_child; }
           set {
               if (m_child != null) {
                   RemoveVisualChild(m_child);
                   RemoveLogicalChild(m_child);
               }
               if ((m_child = value) != null) {
                   AddVisualChild(m_child);
                   AddLogicalChild(m_child);

                   // setup the animation
                    DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames animation = new DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames();
                   animation.RepeatBehavior = RepeatBehavior.Forever;

                   double currentSeconds = 0; // keep track of cumulated time
                    LinearDoubleKeyFrame start = new LinearDoubleKeyFrame(0,
                       KeyTime.FromTimeSpan(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0)));
                   animation.KeyFrames.Add(start);

                   currentSeconds += FadeInDuration;
                   LinearDoubleKeyFrame fadeInFrame = new LinearDoubleKeyFrame(1,
                       KeyTime.FromTimeSpan(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(currentSeconds)));
                   animation.KeyFrames.Add(fadeInFrame);

                   currentSeconds += OnDuration;
                   LinearDoubleKeyFrame onFrame = new LinearDoubleKeyFrame(1,
                       KeyTime.FromTimeSpan(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(currentSeconds)));
                   animation.KeyFrames.Add(onFrame);

                   currentSeconds += FadeOutDuration;
                   LinearDoubleKeyFrame fadeOutFrame = new LinearDoubleKeyFrame(0,
                       KeyTime.FromTimeSpan(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(currentSeconds)));
                   animation.KeyFrames.Add(fadeOutFrame);

                   currentSeconds += OffDuration;
                   LinearDoubleKeyFrame offFrame = new LinearDoubleKeyFrame(0,
                       KeyTime.FromTimeSpan(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(currentSeconds)));
                   animation.KeyFrames.Add(offFrame);

                   Child.BeginAnimation(UIElement.OpacityProperty, animation);
               }
           }
       }

       protected override int VisualChildrenCount {
           get { return Child != null ? 1 : 0; }
       }

       protected override Visual GetVisualChild(int index) {
           if (index > 0 || Child == null) throw new ArgumentException("index");
           return Child;
       }

       protected override Size MeasureOverride(Size constraint) {
           Size sizeDesired = new Size(0, 0);
           if (Child != null) {
               Child.Measure(constraint);
           }
           sizeDesired.Width += Child.DesiredSize.Width;
           sizeDesired.Height += Child.DesiredSize.Height;

           return sizeDesired;
       }

       protected override Size ArrangeOverride(Size arrangeBounds) {
           if (Child != null) {
               Rect rect = new Rect(
                   new Point((arrangeBounds.Width - Child.DesiredSize.Width) / 2,
                               (arrangeBounds.Height - Child.DesiredSize.Height) / 2),
                               Child.DesiredSize);
               Child.Arrange(rect);
           }
           return arrangeBounds;
       }

       // Using a DependencyProperty as the backing store for OffDuration.  This enables animation, styling, binding, etc...
        public static readonly DependencyProperty OffDurationProperty;

       // Using a DependencyProperty as the backing store for OnDuration.  This enables animation, styling, binding, etc...
        public static readonly DependencyProperty OnDurationProperty;

       // Using a DependencyProperty as the backing store for RiseDuration.  This enables animation, styling, binding, etc...
        public static readonly DependencyProperty FadeInDurationProperty;

       // Using a DependencyProperty as the backing store for DeclineDuration.  This enables animation, styling, binding, etc...
        public static readonly DependencyProperty FadeOutDurationProperty;

       public double OnDuration {
           get { return (double)GetValue(OnDurationProperty); }
           set { SetValue(OnDurationProperty, value); }
       }

       public double OffDuration {
           get { return (double)GetValue(OffDurationProperty); }
           set { SetValue(OffDurationProperty, value); }
       }

       public double FadeInDuration {
           get { return (double)GetValue(FadeInDurationProperty); }
           set { SetValue(FadeInDurationProperty, value); }
       }

       public double FadeOutDuration {
           get { return (double)GetValue(FadeOutDurationProperty); }
           set { SetValue(FadeOutDurationProperty, value); }
       }

       static Blink() {
               // register dependency properties 
                OffDurationProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("OffDuration", typeof(double), typeof(Blink), new UIPropertyMetadata(1.0));
               OnDurationProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("OnDuration", typeof(double), typeof(Blink), new UIPropertyMetadata(1.0));
               FadeInDurationProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("FadeInDuration", typeof(double), typeof(Blink), new UIPropertyMetadata(0.2));
               FadeOutDurationProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("FadeOutDuration", typeof(double), typeof(Blink), new UIPropertyMetadata(0.5));
       }
   }
}

The code was developed on Vista using the RC1 bits of the .NET 3.0 SDK

Technorati tags: WPF, XAML

Windows Live Writer - I18N not complete

2006-09-28T20:38:00.001+03:00

After performing the usual* test when getting a System.FormatException it seems that the I18n has not yet been done properly in Windows Live Writer. Basically (it seems like) the code assumes . (dot) as a decimal separator somewhere, but gets a , (comma) since the Swedish (Finland) locale (sv-FI) uses comma as decimal separator.

Workaround: Change the decimal separator to a dot.

Usual test: Change the regional settings to use English (United States)

Technorati tags: Windows Live Writer

Hello World from Windows Live Writer

2006-09-28T20:26:00.001+03:00

After installing the latest version of Windows Live Writer and applying the workaround for beta.blogger I'm now successfully posting from Windows Live Writer running on Vista x64 (5728)

Technorati tags: Vista, Windows Live Writer

Update: Did not work on first try...

System.FormatException: Input string was not in a correct format.
   at System.Number.StringToNumber(String str, NumberStyles options, NumberBuffer& number, NumberFormatInfo info, Boolean parseDecimal)
   at System.Number.ParseDouble(String value, NumberStyles options, NumberFormatInfo numfmt)
   at System.Double.Parse(String s, NumberStyles style, NumberFormatInfo info)
   at WindowsLive.Writer.BlogClient.Clients.AtomClient.ParseRfc3339(String dateTimeString)
   at WindowsLive.Writer.BlogClient.Clients.AtomClient.Date(XmlNode node, String xpath, DateTime defaultValue)
   at WindowsLive.Writer.BlogClient.Clients.AtomClient.Parse(XmlElement entryNode)
   at WindowsLive.Writer.BlogClient.Clients.AtomClient.NewPost(String blogId, BlogPost post, Boolean publish)
   at WindowsLive.Writer.BlogClient.Blog.NewPost(BlogPost post, Boolean publish)
   at WindowsLive.Writer.PostEditor.UpdateWeblogAsyncOperation.DoWork()

Joke of the day

2006-09-23T00:35:00.000+03:00

The potential effect of the recent (laptop) battery recalls is a brilliant topic for a comic

xcopy deployment deprecated

2006-09-18T00:07:00.000+03:00

(Spotted at Channel9)

It seems that xcopy deployment just got deprecated:

>xcopy /?
Copies files and directory trees.

NOTE: Xcopy is now deprecated, please use Robocopy.

Robocopy shows:

>robocopy /?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ROBOCOPY :: Robust File Copy for Windows
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So I guess that's the end of xcopy deployment and beginning of robocopy deployment, (or are they pushing ClickOnce deployment all the way?)

Oh the joys of UAC (NOT)

2006-09-12T23:02:00.000+03:00

Tried to do a little bughunting on a WCF project, the problem specifically related to dual bindings. However, I did not get so far, since I soon found out through "trial and horror" that in Vista you are not allowed to bind to a port unless running under elevated privileges.

Yes, UAC strikes once again!

I soon found out that this is a known issue and how you should work around it. Basically you add a manifest to the exe requesting elevated privileges.


<assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestversion="1.0">
  <trustinfo xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3">
    <security>
      <requestedprivileges>
        <requestedexecutionlevel level="requireAdministrator">
      </requestedprivileges>
    </security>
  </trustinfo>
</assembly>

However, I couldn't get this working under a debugger !?! (The manifest is there as both exename.exe.manifest and exename.vshost.exe.manifest)

So, how is one supposed to debug a WCF server on Vista !?!

Uninstalling Google Toolbar on Vista

2006-09-11T18:12:00.000+03:00

I recently installed Google toolbar to get "BlogThis" functionality. Alas, I soon discovered that as I use the new beta blogger, this functionality is not supported in the current version of the toolbar :( However, more annoyingly, the toolbar seems to break the right-click context menu..

So I wanted to get rid of the toolbar as soon as possible (at least for the time being).

Now comes the big problem, the thing won't let me uninstall it, complaining about unsufficient permissions, yada yada. Basically because of UAC even though you have admin privileges you are not running with them all of the time. A properly configured installer will ask for elevated privileges, but it seems the Toolbar installer is not clever enough to do this..

So here's how you do it:
Right-click IE icon, choose "Run as Administrator", and then proceed to uninstalling the toolbar. Needless to say, it is probably safest to not go around surfing the 'net as Administrator...

Playing around in WPF land

2006-09-10T00:50:00.000+03:00

With a little (ok, a lot of) help from Josh Smith and Karsten Januszewski/Andrew Whiddett I managed to put together a little ComicBook application that utilizes Asynchronous databinding, animated image transitions. It's not quite finished yet, but the parts that are left should mostly be a walk in the park (i.e. known territory). Not bad for an evenings worth of work, considering this is my first "real" WPF application.

The learning curve is steep...

I probably post more technical stuff when I get it closer to what I want it to be.

Joke of the day

2006-09-08T21:13:00.000+03:00

Ok, I admit I'm a little bit late, but I found this (Userfriendly) comic quite amusing. :-)

Developing WCF without Orcas CTP

2006-09-07T23:10:00.000+03:00

For various reasons I installed the .NET 3.0 RC1 Runtime/SDK as soon as they were available. This meant that I didn't have a CTP of Orcas to go with it. As I currently don't have any WPF stuff to do I figured I'd manage just as fine without it.

However, when I started a new project using WCF it got interesting, I could build already made WCF projects, but System.ServiceModel (and System.Runtime.Serialization for that matter) was nowhere to be found in the Add reference... dialog.

As I also do fiddle around with msbuild stuff I figured that I could work around this quite easily by firing up the project xml file (right-click the project, choose Unload project, right-click the unloaded project, choose Edit .csproj, Edit away..., then right-click project, Reload project)

and add the missing reference to the project by hand

<Reference Include="System.ServiceModel" />

Still, I thought it was kinda funny that the workaround was needed.

EDIT: This is not an issue anymore since Orcas CTP for RC1 has been released.

Scoping issues in C#

2006-09-07T22:50:00.000+03:00

Came across some "interesting" scoping rules of C# at work today.Consider the following:

try {
int answer = 42;
} catch {
// ...
}
int answer = 42;

This one errors out with the somewhat curious error message:
Error 1 A local variable named 'answer' cannot be declared in this scope because it would give a different meaning to 'answer', which is already used in a 'child' scope to denote something else C:\Path\To\File.cs 15 17 TheProject

Out of curiosity we tried the following:

try {
int answer = 42;
} catch {
// ...
}
answer = 42;

This (rightfully IMO) errors out in the following way (the same thing happens by the way if the second assignment is within the catch block):
Error 1 The name 'answer' does not exist in the current context C:\Path\To\File.cs 15 13 TheProject

Vista RC1 is out

2006-09-02T22:58:00.000+03:00

As Vista RC1 was released to β testers yesterday. I naturally had to get it installed right away, so currently AllThingsMedia is happily running Vista x64 build 5600. Expect a more general release of the RC1 sometime next week..