I am seeing more interest in building richer UX in WPF of late which is great. Since WPF is very powerful and very flexible, we are beginning to see developers hit UX performance issues as they build increasingly rich and exciting UI. The good news is we have a new release of our Performance Profiling...

I have been using ZoomIt during my recent spate of MSDN events to magnify and draw on the screen. It works great – and many of you have dropped me an email asking what tool I have been using. Enjoy!

It was my colleague MikeT who put me on to Fiddler a while back and it has proven to be really useful for my work with Data Services. By chance I just came across this example in which Shawn uses Fiddler to look at performance issues. At which point I decided Fiddler definitely needs a “shout out” :...

I have just finished my regular clean out of tools that I have installed and which have not passed the “Am I still using it 1 month on?” test. The four that remain are: PPTFlex – which gives you a completely different paradigm for delivering a presentation – taking you away from a linear delivery. A...

In simple terms, .NET Reflector is… a must have. It was developer by Lutz Roeder back in 2000 before he went on to join Microsoft. Red Gate have announced that they have acquired it and the good news is a free version will continue to be available (Thanks to Ian for the heads up) There is more detail...

Just started the day with a swift play with my original concept map .

I have had my eye on two tools for sometime. Both tools look extremely useful. Both tools have a very different focus. Both tools look hot! Regrettably – both tools continue to be ignored while I spend time getting myself up to speed on the basics :-( Anyway – would love to hear from anyone with experience...

I need to know so much more about LINQ than I currently do. What I wanted was a “Query Analyser” for LINQ – rather than keep writing code inside Visual Studio. I can’t tell you how excited I was when I discovered LINQPad .  It is written by Joseph Albahari who wrote C# 3.0 in a NutShell . It is...

I have been playing with tools to convert C# over to Visual Basic - given how many samples only exist as C# :-(. I posted a detailed list + recommendation over on Goto 100 .

Every so often I open a CHM and I get the table of contents but no actual contents. I have looked before for the answer, found it, remembered it for a few weeks – then forgotten all about it again. Maybe if I actually write it down, I won’t forget again (I learn best by writing). The problem is Vista...

This is really a thinly disguised test of zoho polls - but also an interesting topic to me as I get back into development. Code Snippets in Visual Studio 2008  have reached a level where they are very useful to "get the job done". However  in some respects they are "lipstick...

My notebook was down to the last 800MB of disk space. Amazingly I just claimed back 17GB through Windows Vista Disk Cleanup! Wow! The big wins were: It turned off Hibernate functionality for me - which I never used (3.4GB) It got rid of a bunch of dmp files from when I had some driver issues causing...

As I get back into development I am struck by a simple truth - two monitors makes you a much more productive developer than one. On the basis of that I have unhooked my monitor from my games machine and stuck it in the back of my notebook (which is spec'd well enough to be a decent dev machine). But...

WPF is an awesome technology - but it has the odd "beauty spot". One example is the absence of a DataGrid control. WPF 3.0 shipped in Nov 2006 without a DataGrid WPF 3.5 shipped in Nov 2007, alas again without a DataGrid WPF 3.5 SP1 will ship later this year, alas again without a DataGrid ...

Just a few randoms which I have come across over the last few weeks while heads down on other stuff. Enjoy! An unexpected (by me anyway) Silverlight fan - TIBCO "This is our strategic direction for rich Internet applications when it comes to our products." Thanks folks! "Hello World"...

One of the ISVs I work with is Memba . Memba last year started to beta a file transfer platform to publish, share, send and transfer very large files over the Internet - Velodoc . From that work they went on to create Velodoc XP Edition, a downgraded version of Velodoc without repository and without...

On October 30th we announced Oslo . This is a very positive statement of commitment and direction for companies that have identified SOA and BPM as a critical element of their future. Oslo is not one product, it is a set of products across a number of releases. You can think of it as a “quest” to make...

Since I switched to Vista and IE7.0, I have been unable to use IE to access my FTP sites. This has proven to be extremely annoying as my FTP requirements are pretty simple, yet I have been forced to use full blown FTP tools. Yesterday I had one of those "Blimey - I never noticed that before!" moments...

I heard of Retrospectives a few years back but only had the opportunity to hear first hand how powerful they can be last year at http://www.spaconference.org/spa2006/ . I am two weeks away from attending (and delivering) at SPA 2007 and in the thick of "if only as a team we could do things a little better...

Ok - I don't really have a "tool of the week" post, nor is Play Speed really a tool in its own right - but I am sure pleased it exists. I set myself a task of watching a number of Webcasts this afternoon - then Dynorod turned up to unblock the drains. An hour later and the drains nearly work - but...

My post on productivity tools prompted Blake to get in touch and point me at his uber lists of "Free software from Microsoft". Truly impressive (and for many surprising?). Great work Blake and thanks for sharing. Free Windows Vista Software Free Office 2007 Software Free Windows XP Software Free Office...

Coming back from an Achilles operation has given me a chance to pause and reflect on which tools I use in my job. These are not dev tools but tools that are just proving very useful to help get things done. In no particular order: RESEARCH: Onfolio (Beta) http://www.onfolio.com/ : This is a great tool...

It is funny how things work out. My post on an opportunity for MicroISVs led to some very good constructive feedback from a UK MicroISV (which I will pass on to the ProjectGlidepath team) which in turn lead me to find, download and try FeedGhost RSS Reader . Early days - but I have immediately warmed...

I am using my return from sick leave and the start of a shiny new year to look again at how I do my role. In essence I frequently: Research lots of "stuff" Organize what I find Reach conclusions about its relevance and importance Share my thoughts and findings with colleagues "Publish...