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Make your Task Switcher Window bigger

One of the best features of Windows is the ability to Cut and Paste data within an application or from one application to another. You can alt-tab or click on the task bar to switch between actively running applications, like Word and Visual Studio. When

Process Explorer and Process Monitor can help you understand a program

Process Explorer and Process Monitor are must-have free utilities that you can download from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb795533.aspx For example you can use ProcExp to examine a particular behavior of Visual Studio. Start Visual
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You can use Visual Studio to debug itself!

How do you find out why your computer or a running program is so slow? Here’s one way. Let’s attach the VS debugger to VS itself. The main executable for VS is devenv.exe. Start Visual Studio 2008. This will be the “debugger” Choose File->Open Project
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Write simple Debug helpers to help you debug and maintain your code

Much of my time is spent using the Visual Studio debugger examining code to figure out how it works and how to fix it. When stepping through a function, the values the function uses are very useful for code understanding. The debugger shows these values
Posted by Calvin_Hsia | 3 Comments

How fast is interop code?

How fast is interop code? If you’re in one kind of code and your calling another, what is the cost of the interop? For example, .Net code can call native C++ code (like Windows APIs) and vice versa. Similarly with Foxpro and C++ code. .Net code is often

Examine .Net Memory Leaks

Writing programs using .Net is very productive. One reason is because much of memory management is “managed” for you. In C, C++ and other “native” languages, if you allocate memory, you’re responsible for freeing it. There were stopgap measures, like

Persist user form size and location settings per session

My prior post ( Create your own Test Host using XAML to run your unit tests ) shows how to create a form and present it to the user. The user can resize and reposition the form, even on a 2 nd monitor. When the user exits the form, we can persist or remember

Create your own Test Host using XAML to run your unit tests

A few days ago, somebody came into my office and plopped down a box. It seemed very light. He said that it was a new PC. I thought hmmm…. The box seems empty…Why am I getting a new PC?. Apparently an inventory was made and my current hardware was at the

Use Visual Studio Test framework to create tests for your code

While writing software over a period of weeks or months, various components of the software get completed at various times. You’ve tested and you’re satisfied they work, and you move on to develop another feature. Or you might check in the source code

Use XLINQ to query the references in your project

Visual studio creates project files for you for the various languages, such as C++, C#, VB. These files are XML format, and can thus be queried. Try this: open any non-temporary Visual Studio project (see Use temporary projects in Visual Studio ) , right
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Customize the display of types in the Debugger using Extension Methods and DebuggerDisplay Attribute

I was writing some code using System.Text.StringBuilder . : Dim sb As New StringBuilder( "Init SB String" ) At a breakpoint the debugger Locals Window shows + sb {System.Text.StringBuilder} System.Text.StringBuilder If I expand by clicking on the "+",
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Create your own web browser on your SmartPhone

Windows Mobile 5.0 comes with a Web Browser (v6 is due out any day now). It runs on Pocket PCs and SmartPhones. That browser only allows one web page to show at a time: to show another page, you have to navigate away from the current page. I created a
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How to generate dynamic images for your web application

Typically, a web site might show some pictures. These could be pictures of items for sale from a catalog, personal photos, etc. Usually, the web author places these pictures as files in a directory on the web server, and just puts links to them in the

Use Stored Procedures when you can for efficiency

In this post ( Install Northwind for SQL Express and use Visual Studio and DLINQ to query it ) I posted a fairly complex SQL command. Of course, it’s important to keep in mind that a more efficient way of executing this query may be by keeping all the

Install Northwind for SQL Express and use Visual Studio and DLINQ to query it

SQLExpress is free and comes with Visual Studio, but the sample Northwind database isn’t included. You can download sample databases Northwind and Pubs from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=06616212-0356-46a0-8da2-eebc53a68034&displaylang=en
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