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WPF performance profiling tools

The WPF Performance Suite is a set of performance profiling tools that allow you to analyze the runtime behavior of your WPF application.

This suite includes the following tools:

• Perforator - for analyzing rendering behavior.
• Visual Profiler - for profiling the use of WPF services, such as layout and event handling, by elements in the visual tree.
• Working Set Analyzer - for analyzing the working set characteristics of your application.
• Event Trace - for analyzing events and generating event log files.
• ETW Trace Viewer - Record, display, and browse Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) log files in a WPF user-interface format.

The screeshot below is presenting how to Visual Profiler tool looks like:

Download WPF Performance Suite (x86 version)

7 free online editors for your asp.net site (part 2)

This is second part of a two-part article about free online editors.The first part of article can be found here

widgEditor

widgEditor is an easily installed, easily customizable WYSIWYG editor for simple content. It replaces existing textareas with an improved editing pane using JavaScript .

Download widgEitor

Demo

JWYSIWYG

This plugin is an inline content editor to allow editing rich HTML content on the fly.

Download JWYSIWYG

Demo

NicEdit

NicEdit is a Lightweight, Cross Platform, Inline Content Editor to allow easy editing of web site content on the fly in the browser.NicEdit Javascript integrates into any site in seconds to make any element/div editable or convert standard textareas to rich text editing.

Download NicEdit

Demo

Whizzywig

It allows to create rich, formatted text through a web form. It actually creates HTML (or xhtml, if you prefer) .Whizzywig is cross-browser: it is written in Javascript, which will run in nearly all web browsers.

Download Whizzywig

Demo

Yahoo! UI Text Editor

The Rich Text Editor is a UI control that replaces a standard HTML textarea. It allows for the rich formatting of text content, including common structural treatments like lists, formatting treatments like bold and italic text, and drag-and-drop inclusion and sizing of images. The Rich Text Editor's Toolbar is extensible via a plugin architecture so that advanced implementations can achieve a high degree of customization.

Examples

markItUp!

markItUp! is a JavaScript plugin built on the jQuery library. It allows you to turn any textarea into a markup editor. Html, Textile, Wiki Syntax, Markdown, BBcode or even your own Markup system can be easily implemented.

Download martkUp!

Demo

Explore Silverlight project hierarchy with Silverlight Spy 2

Use the built-in browser to navigate to a web page. Silverlight Spy will automatically pick up any Silverlight application embedded in the page and display it in the XAML Explorer. The XAML Explorer presents the UI element structure of a Silverlight application. Explore the structure and view and edit the details of the selected UI element in the Details pane.

Features

• Convenient XAML UI element explorer
• XAML object property grid allows for getting and settings object property values
• Regeneration of XAML based on the UI element structure
• Statistics of used objects
• Statistics of used resources (images, video, fonts, etc.)
• UI element preview
• Extensive search
• Event Monitor
• XAP package inspection
• HTTP monitor

Download Silverlight Spy 2

Note: You must download and register(regsvr32) csexwb2 component before installing Silverlight Spy 2

Tag property without inheritance

Tag property is very often used to store a data associated with an object. The simple way to add support for Tag property is to create a base class with the Tag property .I don’t like this solution – the reason is simple .Sometimes I want to inherit from an existing class that doesn’t have the Tag property and I can’t change its source code .In WPF we have dependency properties that can help us in this case.

MyControl cnt = new MyControl();
cnt.SetValue(FrameworkElement.TagProperty, new Info() );

One problem – we still need to inherit from DependecyObject class.
The helper class below uses extension methods – to provide the tag functionality for your classes.
Of course, for better performance, you may change the dictionary(and methods) to be more type specific .

/// <summary>
    /// Implements tag functionality
    /// </summary>
    static class TagHelper
    {

        /// <summary>
        /// Adds the tag.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="element">The element.</param>
        /// <param name="tag">The tag.</param>
        public static void AddTag(this object element, object tag)
        {
            if (!tags.ContainsKey(element))
            {
                tags.Add(element, tag);
            }
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Removes the tag for the specified element.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="element">The element.</param>
        public static void RemoveTag(this object element )
        {
            tags.Remove(element);
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Clears the tags.
        /// </summary>
        public static void ClearTags()
        {
            tags.Clear();
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Gets the tag for the specified element.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="element">The element.</param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        public static object Get(this object element)
        {
            object tag;
            tags.TryGetValue(element, out tag);

            return tag;
        }

        private static Dictionary<object, object> tags = 
            new Dictionary<object, object>(); 
    }

Must Have Tool for ASP.NET Developer

NetFXHarmonics DevServer is a web server hosting environment built on .NET 3.5 using WPF, WCF, and LINQ technologies that allows multiple instances of VS-like web servers to run in parallel. NetFXHarmonics DevServer also includes tracing capabilities for monitoring view status code, date/time, URL, POST data , response data, request headers, response headers, as well as parsed ViewState and Control state for both the request and response, visually enhanced HTTP status codes, IP binding modes for both local-only as well as remote access, and easy to use XML configuration. You can trace text specific files like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JSON, XAML, Text, and SOAP and their content.

Download NetFXHarmonics DevServer

DevServer Announcement and Overview

[Via David Bet'z Blog]

6 free online editors for your asp.net site

FCKeditor this HTML text editor brings to the web much of the power of desktop editors like MS Word.

Download FCKeditor 

Demo

Damn Small Rich Text Editor - very small text editor.Built on top of well known JQuery library.

Download Damn Small Rich Text Editor

Demo

TinyMCE -Cross platform HTML WYSIWYG text editor .Supports templates, easy localizable and can be extended using plugins

Download TinyMCE

Demo

HotEditor - browser-based rich text editor that provides an advantage in simplifying the workload and providing options for integration to forum software

Download HotEditor

Demo

WYMeditor - simple cross platform XHTML  web editor

Download WYMeditor

Demo

SPAW Editor is a web based in-browser WYSIWYG editor control enabling web site developers to replace a standard textarea html control with full-featured, fully customizable, multilingual, skinable web based WYSIWYG editor.

Download SPAW Editor

Demo

String Format - Online Silverlight Reference

My coworker wrote a interesting silverlight tool ,which allows to you test and play with string formatting syntax.
Or you can use it as a interactive online reference when you deal with strings and localization.

Check out string format tool

StickyNotes - VS 2008 Addin

StickyNotes is a Visual Studio Addin that provides sticky notes capabilities to project and project items inside VS 2008 IDE.

Download StickyNotes Addin

PowerCommands Addin for Visual Studio 2008

PowerCommands is an addin for Visual Studio 2008 that contains additional command menu functions for the IDE that most developers would use regularly.
The PowerCommands Addin is available along with source code and documentation.

Below is a list of the features that you will currently find on in PowerCommands Addin for Visual Studio 2008.

1. Collapse Projects - This command collapses a hierarchy in the solution explorer starting from the root selected node.
2. Copy Class - This command copies a selected class entire content to the clipboard.
3. Paste Class - This command pastes a class entire content from the clipboard.
4. Copy References - This command copies a reference or set of references to the clipboard.
5. Paste References - This command pastes a reference or set of references from the clipboard.
6. Copy As Project Reference-This command copies a project as a project reference to the clipboard.
7. Edit Project File-This command opens the MSBuild project file for a selected project inside Visual Studio.
8. Open Containing Folder-This command opens a Windows Explorer window pointing to the physical path of a selected item.
9. Open Command Prompt-This command opens a Visual Studio command prompt pointing to the physical path of a selected item.
10. Unload Projects-This command unloads all projects in a solution.
11. Reload Projects-This command reloads all unloaded projects in a solution.
12. Remove and Sort Using's-This command removes and sort using statements for all classes given a project.
13. Extract Constant-This command creates a constant definition statement for a selected text.
14. Clear Recent File List-This command clears the Visual Studio recent file list.
15. Clear Recent Project List-This command clears the Visual Studio recent project list.
16. Transform Templates-This command executes the associated custom tool with text templates items.
17. Close All- This command closes all documents.

Download PowerCommands for Visual Studio 2008

Measure and record C# code metrics.

SourceMonitor measures and records source code metrics. SourceMonitor parses ASCII source code looking for countable metrics items. As these items are identified, their counts are accumulated for each source code file, and within each function or method. These metrics are then accumulated into summary metrics for all files in each checkpoint.If you develop software with Visual Studio, you can add items to your tools menu in Visual Studio that invoke SourceMonitor. You can also operate SourceMonitor from a batch file using commands stored in a text file. SourceMonitor measures metrics for source code written in C++, C, C#, VB.NET, Java, Delphi, Visual Basic (VB6) or HTML.Exports metrics to XML or CSV for further processing with other tools.

C# Metrics

1. Statements
2. Percent Comment Lines
3. Percent Documentation Lines
4. Classes, Interfaces, Structs
5. Methods per Class
6. Statements per Method
7. Calls per Method
8. Maximum Method Complexity
9. Maximum Block Depth
10. Average Block Depth
11. Average Complexity

Download SourceMonitor

Mass Downloader For .Net Framework - downloads .NET Reference Source Code in batch

MS has released the .NET Reference Source Code, you can only get it one file at a time while you’re debugging. If you’d like to populate the cache, you’d may use Mass Downloader For .Net Framework which allows you do download .Net Framework source code in batch.The Mass Downloader For .Net Framework enables offline debugging of .Net Framework in Visual Studio 2008/2005(including Express Editions).

For configuration details you can check out the article in codeproject.com

Download The Mass Downloader For .Net Framework

DataGridView Extension

DataGridView Extension is a free component that extends the standard DataGridView control, provided with .NET 2.0 Framework.

Features

• Customization the grid in IDE (design mode support for the background color and borders,default cell formatting, alignment,colors,column and row headers formatting, column sizing ...).
• Exporting the data within the data grid in several file formats (MS Excel,Html,PDF).
• Build-in print functionality
• Manage multiple DataGridView controls in a single project and to store all settings for every one of them
• The integrated security allows the developers to control what features are accessible for the end-user depending on the application’s logic.
• Intelligent searching capabilities.
• Set of custom column types (DateTime picker and Numeric Up/Down columns)
• All features are programmable through the API

DataGridView Extension Downloads

CAKE3 - Free archiving .Net library

Cake3 library supports compressing and extracting files  to/from different archive formats .The library can be easily integrated to your projects .

Usage of Cake3 library:

Compress

Cakdir3 cdir3 = new Cakdir3(@"c:\temp\arch.lha");
cdir3.AddOptions.addFolder = AddOptions.folderMode.relative;
cdir3.AddOptions.baseFolder = @"c:\temp\";
//Mask not supported in Cake3.
cdir3.AddOptions.addFile = new String[2] {@"c:\temp\arch.zip", @"C:\temp\test\image.bmp"};            
cdir3.Add();

Decompress

Cakdir3 cdir = new Cakdir3(@"c:\temp\test.lha");
cdir.ExtractOptions.extractItem = new String[1] {cdir.Archive_Contents[0].fileName};
cdir.ExtractOptions.extractFolder = Utils.GetTempPath() + "qztemp";
cdir.ExtractOptions.allowFolder = true;
cdir.ExtractOptions.allowOverwrite = true;

if (cdir.Extract())
 Console.WriteLine("Success");

Supported Archives(compress)

Pex - dynamic analysis and test generation tool for .NET from Microsoft

Pex (Program EXploration) is an assistant to the programmer.Pex takes test-driven development to the next level. Pex analyzes .NET programs. From a parameterized unit test, it automatically generates unit tests cases with high code coverage. In addition,when a generated test fails, it suggests to the developer how to fix the bugs.

Features

1. With Pex, you can write parameterized unit test methods and leave to Pex the task of deciding which input is relevant to cover the code (or find bugs). Actually, parameterized unit tests are nothing but specifications. Pex integrates 'naturally' with existing unit test framework (VSTS, NUnit, MbUnit, etc...) by providing a set of custom attributes to tag Pex classes and tests.
2. Call Pex directly from Visual Studio to start exploring the parameterized unit tests.
3. Pex runs the parameterized unit tests with different input values. Pex monitors the execution and figures out why the program executed the way it did. This is represented as a boolean function over the test parameters. Pex then uses a constraint solver to compute new parameter values that make the program execute in a different way.
4. From the parameterized unit tests, Pex generates classic unit tests that can be re-executed without Pex. Pex also tags the generated tests with additional information using attributes (for tools) and xml documentation (for humans).
5. While exploring parameterized unit tests, Pex explicitly looks for program errors such as index out of bound or failing user assertions. Pex reports dynamically detected errors in the code.
6. Sometimes Pex can automatically fix bugs! When a test fails, Pex traces back the involved values. Pex suggests additional checks to prevent the failure from happening again. Those checks are argument or invariant validation.
7. Pex summarizes all the possible fixes in a prioritized table with quick preview.
8. Pex integrates generated tests automatically inside the test project. Pex also avoids duplicate tests and recycles obsolete tests.
9. Pex comes with a command line tool to execute any assembly containing Pex tests. Great for automation!
10. Pex generates detailed HTML reports about the exploration process. The reports contains details about each generated tests, path conditions, suggested fixes, etc...
11. Pex generates code coverage reports for each test.
12. Pex has a built-in support for mocking interfaces and virtual methods. Pex generates the return values of mocked methods just like it generates test input for parameterized unit tests.

Watch the screencast