I recently needed to use C# to programmatically create a shortcut (.LNK file) to a console executable. This is easily done in native C/C++ using the ShellLink CoClass , the IShellLink interface and their related interfaces. I looked around and couldn...

I recently needed to style a WPF expander control for a prototype project. Our team’s UX designer came up with a nice visual design.    So, I began to build my prototype and match his visual style (mocked up in Visio) in WPF.  ...

I’ve made a key improvement to my BizzySpinner control form my last post . It now starts and stop smoothly instead of abruptly. This is quite visually attractive. But it was somewhat non-trivial to do. In my first example, I had a single simple animation...

I’ve been working on a pet project that does a lot of network I/O and database queries. One of the things I need to do is run long running things in the background – off the UI thread and keep the UI responsive. So, I’ve built a spinning busy state indicator...

Bruce Dawson is a performance analyst on the client performance team.  He has written this guest post on enabling stack walking using xperf for both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows systems (Vista and Win7).  For more posts on xperf see this page ...

In my last post I talked about how multi-threading can be used to improve responsiveness while loading a file. I’ve put together a sample program (source included) that shows how to do this in C# 3.0, .NET 3.5, and WPF using Visual Studio 2008. You can find a zip file with a complete project attached....

I must admit, I’m addicted to Stackoverflow .  Its a great site, being both interesting and easy to use. Recently, I ran across this question “ Are you concerned about multicore ”.   HenryR , a PhD candidate at Cambridge is asking if the...

There is a lot of information in a typical kernel trace.  While the Performance Analyzer tool is quite powerful and makes it easy to view a trace graphically, sometimes you just need to see what is in the trace directly.  Xperf makes this easy...

Using the xperf tools, ETW, and the kernel sample profile interrupt all together provides a very effective and easy to use sample profiler for the analysis of both application and system wide performance.  At each sample interrupt, the ETW sub-system...

"Do the xperf tools support XP or Windows Server 2003?" is a frequently ask question.  The answer is no mostly, and yes for a few things.  The next article in this series is Using the Windows Sample Profiler with Xperf xperf.exe can...

Lets get to it!  Here is how to take a basic trace then look at CPU and disk utilization.    Its really simple, just three commands to turn on tracing, turn it off, and then view the trace. The next article in this series is Xperf...

I just love this add for the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 .... its just barely an add.  Its really a pretty cool music video...

The WHDC folks now have web page setup for the Windows Performance Toolkit (aka the 'xperf tools').  The page includes downloads for updates to the versions that ship in the SDK.  In the near future, this page will include pointers to updated...

The SDK team just shipped the latest version of the Windows SDK which supports Windows Server 2008 and Vista SP1.  The SDK now includes an important new tool; the Windows Performance Tool Kit from the Windows performance team (we call them the xperf...

One of my favorite blogs is Worse Than Failure (WFT). Many of the articles are very interesting. But gee, you just can't believe everything you read on the web. Recently, Alex Papadimoulis posted an article titled Job Interview 2.0: Now With Riddles!...

Walt Ritscher has a really handy tool on his blog called 'Style Snooper' . This utility will display the style of any WPF control from its assembly. It does this by parsing all the public, concrete, non-generic classes in the assembly that derive from...

CLCV V5 now has a fully working TreeMap control that zooms, supports mouse over events and looks pretty good. But there are two major performance problems: 1) WPF rendering seems to be very expensive. 2) Tree Map nodes are relatively expensive in terms of memory size. Source code is included....

Rico's recent post is interesting as it hints at things some developers do that sound like a good idea, but really pose some big performance problems and can sometimes be hard to repair disasters of ship stopping proportions. Rico, here are some other...

CLCV V4 now loads files about 27 times faster than V3 when running on my laptop. The tree view is also about 5 times faster. ...

I've learned a lot in working on my first real WPF application such as implimenting multi-threaded file reading, how to use the dispatcher object, how to use control templates to customize controls, the basics of application configuration, using abstract...

Ok, I'm officially and old fogey - I had no idea how big the car audio business is... its HUGE. Most of the 409 thousand square feet of the CES north hall was packed full of car audio companies selling anything and fevering for car audio. There array...

Here are a few pictures of some of the crazy cars in the Car Audio section at CES....

Steve really doesn't understand what it means to build a platform. Apple's deicsion to close the iPone ensures its success only as a niche product. His recent comments about the iPhone are telling - quoting from the MSNBC article here : “You don...

You can find Bill's key note video here: http://www.microsoft.com/winme/0701/29031/ces.asx The MIcrosoft CES blog is here: http://microsoftatces.com/Default.aspx Enjoy!

I'm finally back from CES - what a HUGE show! There were 2,700 exhibitors spread over all 3.2 million square feet of space. Its the biggest show Las Vegas has each year and the whole town is full of technology folks. I spent a total of about 10 hours...