Nonnenberg's Notes : visualizers

Chat: The Visual Studio Debugger, November 3rd @ 1pm Pacific Time

scottno — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 02:24:00 GMT

The Visual Studio Debugger
"Do you have some burning questions or comments about SQL, C#, VB, C++, or script debugging support in Visual Studio? Want to know more about Visual Studio 2005's enhanced datatips, improved interop debugging, Managed Debugging Assistants, debugger visualizers or Just My Code? Join the Visual Studio Debugger team to discuss the past, speculate on the future, and debate the present of the tool you work with and they work on."

There are all sorts of great new Debugger features coming in Visual Studio 2005. Show up to this chat and talk to the people who designed, developed and tested 'em!

The official chat schedule entry. The chatroom itself. Mark your calendar with this iCalendar (.ics) file. The new official C# chats page and all upcoming developer chats.

[check my chats category for the next C# chat]

TechEd 2005 Content: DEV370 (with Mystery Visualizer)

scottno — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 03:02:00 GMT

Well, here's the session I did at TechEd. As a refresher, the session title is "Microsoft Visual Studio 2005: Debugging Smart Client Applications with Visual Studio 2005." This complete package has the PPT, the solution and a demo script. Check out the included Mystery Visualizer! The PPT is all flashy. :0) Mmm... gradients...

If you'd like to talk about this session, any of the content, the features discussed (or not discussed), or really anything else, be sure to show up at the C# Team TechEd Wrapup Chat happening this Thursday.

Okay, I can't stand it; I'll give the Mystery away. The visualizer is associated with strings - if the string is a path pointing to a file, it will launch notepad on that file. A little different from your standard viewers, eh? At the very least it's super-simple - about 10 lines with error checking...

[(I suppose this post classifies...) see my visualizers category for discussion/documentation and links to other visualizers]

Debugger Visualizer: Advanced Dataset Visualizer

scottno — Sat, 28 May 2005 01:01:00 GMT

This is the most advanced visualizer I've seen so far. And it's also the first restricted visualizer I've seen: it has an expiration date, and no source code to help you build your own for this one...

With that preface out of the way, let's talk about the visualizer. This is an industrial-strength Dataset Visualizer. Miha Markič has taken all of his experience coding with datasets, and included everything he thought he'd ever need while debugging code dealing with datasets. It results in a user interface which is borderline cluttered at times. But Miha assures me that everything in there will be useful. :0)

Check it out! Or at least check out the screen shots...

[see my visualizers category for discussion/documentation and links to other visualizers]

Can't Wait? Debugger Visualization on VS 2003

scottno — Tue, 10 May 2005 05:12:00 GMT

Can't wait for Visual Studio 2005 to get some rich data visualization while debugging? If you haven't already seen these, check 'em out. I admit that I haven't tried them myself, but people appear to be using them...

XML Visualizer - supports lots of data types
Special Dataset Quickwatch - conquers the infamous dataset

Know of any other VS 2003 visualizers? Send 'em in and I'll link 'em. And don't forget my request for your VS 2005 visualizers...

[see my visualizers category for discussion/documentation and links to other visualizers]

Debugger Visualizer: ASP.NET Cache

scottno — Tue, 10 May 2005 05:08:00 GMT

This was one of the scenarios we brainstormed (how would people use it?) while developing Debugger Visualizers. The ASP.NET cache - a very difficult bit of memory to try and understand. It would be fair to say that it's even more difficult than the dreaded dataset.

Well, Brett Johnson has done it again. I've previously linked to his ASP.NET Control Visualizer, and now he's really raised the bar. Brett's ASP.NET Cache Visualizer will help you navigate the ASP.NET cache as you attempt to get that last drop of performance out of your server's melting innards. :0)

Jump skyward from his giant-sized shoulders! And then send me the results! Link link link!

[see my visualizers category for discussion/documentation and links to other visualizers]

Debugger Visualizer MSDN Article Update and Webcast

scottno — Mon, 02 May 2005 22:21:00 GMT

The Beta 2 update to my MSDN article on debugger visualizers was published last week! It's even headlined on the C# and .NET Framework developer centers! :0)

There's a webcast on visualizers tomorrow morning. I'm not giving it, but I am signed up!

Debugger Visualizer Target Confusion

scottno — Thu, 28 Apr 2005 22:10:00 GMT

I've seen this idea a few places now:

"Each implementation of a DebuggerVisualizer can be associated with only one type."
"Debugger visualizers for different classes must reside in a separate project."

And I'm really not sure what to make of it. What we call a "debugger visualizer" is a loose constellation of classes working together, communicating via streams and method calls, brought together by a DebuggerVisualizer attribute. It is true that per DebuggerVisualizer attribute, only one target type can be specified. But the same set of classes can be specified in any number of DebuggerVisualizer attributes, and any one assembly can have multiple assembly-level DebuggerVisualizer attributes.

So, to be completely clear: one assembly/project/set of classes can support any number of target types.

[see my visualizers category for discussion/documentation and links to other visualizers]

Debugger Visualizer: ASP.NET Controls

scottno — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 02:54:00 GMT

I've received a second response to my call for Debugger Visualizers. And I must say, folks, that this is one sweet visualizer. Brett Johnson's ASP.NET Control Visualizer is a perfect example of what visualizers can add to your debugging experience. What does it do, you ask?

As you debug through your ASP.NET code, it allows you to see any control's rendered output both as plain text and as it would look in a browser. Its nice, clean UI also shows some other properties of the control and buttons to refresh the view or save the text. Beautiful.

Take Brett's ideas and run with them! (he provides source) When you do, send me an email so I can link to you!

[see my visualizers category for discussion/documentation and links to other visualizers]

Debugger Visualizer: String Encodings

scottno — Sat, 16 Apr 2005 05:35:00 GMT

The first response to my request for debugger visualizers is from Daniel Moth. His little String Encoding Visualizer is great for anyone dealing with string encodings. It could easily become an absolutely essential tool for this kind of development. I should mention that Daniel's visualizer is based on a fairly recent CTP, which means that he won't have any problems moving to Beta 2.

Thanks for sending your visualizer in, Daniel! Everyone else, tell me about your visualizers!

[see my visualizers category for discussion/documentation and links to other visualizers]

Beta 2 and Debugger Visualizers

scottno — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 00:52:00 GMT

Howard Van Rooijen recently emailed me about the XML Debugger Visualizer he's developing, wondering about upcoming changes to the API in Beta2.

First let's talk about Howard's visualizer. It looks quite flashy and cool - at least check out the screenshots in his post about it. The cool thing about his visualizer is its use of a custom VisualizerObjectSource. VisualizerObjectSource is the class on the debuggee side which has access to the data itself and sends it across the wire in stream form to the debugger side, which is responsible for displaying the data (and possibly allowing edits). So congratulations to Howard for being the first person I've seen outside of Microsoft to create a visualizer like this! (just did a search on VisualizerObjectSource, found nothin'...)

Howard has inspired me - I'd like to link to most of the visualizers out there to help start the community around them. If you have developed one, let me know, I'll link to it. Keep in mind, of course, that installing any of these third-party visualizers will involve running that code, so watch yourself.

Here are a few links:

Super-basic Image Visualizer - The canonical example. You can see mine as part of my TechEd demos here):
String Visualizer - Though VS2005 will ship with string visualizers, the save capabilities are nice (this guy complains that XmlNode isn't serializable - Howard found the solution to that problem)
Dataset Visualizer - I should mention that VS2005 will ship with a Datagrid-based Dataset visualizer by default (which supports modifying the data, and only sends the necessary data across) - perhaps this one will improve upon it...
Hashtable Visualizer - Very flashy; written as part of an MSDN Magazine article.
Visualizer Article - Unfortunately this isn't available to the unpaid masses, but it does discuss Visualizers. And Julia has been excited about Visualizers for a long time, so I thought I'd throw this link in there.

I did some searches, but I couldn't easily find any others. Submit your visualizer and I'll (probably) link back to you!

Alright, now for Howard's question and the partially bad news. Anyone in the list above or who has created a visualizer already will be affected by the upcoming API changes in Beta2. They have been in the last few Community Tech Previews, but not everyone installs those. :0) I have an update to my MSDN article just about ready for publication, so watch for that. In the meantime, I'll describe at a high level what the changes are:

We've modified the APIs to no longer require VisualizerUIType, since we only support modal visualizers in VS 2005
We've made the DebuggerVisualizer attribute much easier to use - the default case without the Target named parameter only requires one argument: the debugger-side class (you'd probably want to specify a description for the visualizer too...)
We've simplified the debugger-side class - where before it implemented an interface and required you to check the VisualizerUIType, now you derive from DialogDebuggerVisualizer, which assumes that the UIType is modal dialog. Again, this fits with our VS 2005 support.
We've made all the APIs more consistent: DebuggerVisualizer, VisualizerDevelopmentHost (didn't know about this? it's a great way to test your visualizer - it's in Microsoft.VisualStudio.DebuggerVisualizers), etc. - they all use the same naming conventions, etc.

I'll post my TechEd demos ported to Beta2 in the next week or so to help the Beta2 early adopters... Seeya next time, and let me know if you're developing a visualizer!

[see my visualizers category for discussion/documentation and links to other visualizers]