Developement

Definition: Error Hangling

David Vidmar — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 21:32:32 GMT

It’s when error handling code hangs the application.

Balsamiq – quick (and dirty) UI mockups

David Vidmar — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 21:28:07 GMT

If you are in the market for simple but efficient program for doing web and desktop UI mockups, I would recommend Balsamiq. They offer web based tool (Flash), a desktop app (Adobe Air) and Confluence / Jira add-in. It’s quite inexpensive - $79 for a single user.

I have been using it on and off for few weeks and I liked it very. Is pretty, fun to used and highly efficient – simple forms can be mocked in seconds. Since we are heavy Jira users at work, its cool that Balsamiq can be integrated and with a click of a button mockup can be added to Jira issue. I'm currently pushing request for purchase up the corporate ladder, but I think once other project managers at our company see it, it's a no brainer…

I was checking out Balsamiq home page today and found out they are offering number of ways how to get a free license. In matter of minutes nice lady replied to my email and now I'm a licensed user!

Watermarked TextBox in Windows Forms on .NET

David Vidmar — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:36:21 GMT

Phew! It's been a while since I posted some code here! Here goes...

I had a modest request from a part-time-UI-designer of application I'm currently working on. He wanted watermarked input boxes as we sometimes see on the web, except that he wanted them in desktop application.

So instead of something like this:

We would have this:

Fair enough, I liked it.

I immediately started thinking about Enter and Leave events and overlaying Label control over TextBox control and I had a good starting point with my old LinkTextBox control.

But, man, I'm glad I googled before I started coding. It turns out, the feature is only SendMessage away.

So here are two implementations:

First one is done with subclassing and creating WatermarkTextBox.

class WatermarkTextBox : TextBox
{
    private const uint ECM_FIRST = 0x1500;
    private const uint EM_SETCUEBANNER = ECM_FIRST + 1;

    [DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, SetLastError = false)]
    static extern IntPtr SendMessage(IntPtr hWnd, uint Msg, uint wParam, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)] string lParam);

    private string watermarkText;
    public string WatermarkText
    {
        get { return watermarkText; }
        set
        {
            watermarkText = value;
            SetWatermark(watermarkText);
        }
    }

    private void SetWatermark(string watermarkText)
    {
        SendMessage(this.Handle, EM_SETCUEBANNER, 0, watermarkText);
    }       

}

Other one is a simple Extension Method.

public static class TextBoxWatermarkExtensionMethod
{
    private const uint ECM_FIRST = 0x1500;
    private const uint EM_SETCUEBANNER = ECM_FIRST + 1;

    [DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, SetLastError = false)]
    private static extern IntPtr SendMessage(IntPtr hWnd, uint Msg, uint wParam, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)] string lParam);

    public static void SetWatermark(this TextBox textBox, string watermarkText)
    {
        SendMessage(textBox.Handle, EM_SETCUEBANNER, 0, watermarkText);
    }

}

MS SQL Server Management Studio Power Pack 2008.1

David Vidmar — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:04:30 GMT

With SQL Server 2008 came new version of MS SQL Server Management Studio that added much anticipated IntelliSense, but even now it's not putting products like SQL Assist or SQL Prompt out of market and it doesn't work with pre-2008 databases even if you use latest Management Studio.

If you would like some more power features in Management Studio, new version of previously mentioned SSMS Tools Pack from Mladen of I want some moore fame is your poison.

My favorite features include:

query history,
insert statement generation,
CRUD statement generation,
full database search,
running single script on multiple databases,
new query template.

But there is more, depending on your needs.

Cannot access MSDN Subscriptions site

David Vidmar — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 07:23:31 GMT

If you get this error while trying to access MSDN subscriptions section you might be victim of a bug of latest update to MSDN site that was done in late September 2008.

The Windows Live Network is unavailable from this site for one of the following reasons:

This site may be experiencing a problem
The site may not be a member of the Windows Live Network

Clearing cookies and logging in again should fix the situation.

When cloud goes down

David Vidmar — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 19:37:36 GMT

Cloud computing is all the rage this days. But what happens when the cloud goes down? CF.

Is seems that Amazon S3 is down. [update: down 3+ hours]

I’m writing an article about Picnik, but it’s behaving strange, Vimeo is missing it’s content, SmugMug is completely down…

GetCanon! 1.7

David Vidmar — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:28:42 GMT

This is a minor release that I made since users asked for it. Please read the note below before asking about why new cameras aren’t supported and why it doesn’t work on Windows Vista!

GetCanon! is a image downloader for Canon digital cameras. It's small, quick and simple. It can download images, rotate them automatically and delete them from camera. If you hate the "designer" interface of Canon utilities and hate Windows messing with image filenames, this is the right tool for you.

GetCanon! is freeware. It includes open-source program JpegTran from Independent JPEG Group's JPEG software.

The program has been downloaded more than 30,000 times from my own server only and is hosted on many sites around the web. This is what user of GetCanon! think about it:

This application is exactly what I've been looking for.
I found GetCanon! as a very useful tool for my PowerShot camera.
Thanks this is exactly what I was looking for: something that just works! Thanks!!!
Wow -- this is a great utility!
I like your hassle free program a lot. It's much better than the annoying canon software included with my camera.
Thanks very much for writing GetCanon and thanks, too, for making it freely available. I love elegant, snappy & simple programs ... just like GetCanon.
GetCanon is the _only_ software, including Canon's CameraWindow, that is able to transfer a ~900MB AVI File from my Cam, at all. I don't know why, all the others crashed, freezed, or produced a NULL Byte file after working for ages.

Download: GetCanon! 1.7 Setup (1016 KB)

This software requires Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0. You probably have it on your computer but if you don't you can download it free from Microsoft.

What's new since version 1.6:

Added Czech language.
Fixed some minor glitches in Dutch translations.
Other minor fixes.

Acknowledgments:

Big thanks to all of translators and testers. These include: Marko Juvančič, Gregor Šuster, Mojca Knaus, Roberto Boriotti, Tobias Sürig, Jac Willekens, Patrick Abi Salloum, Kasper Garns, Adam Nemeth, Marko Justinek and Steffen Klemichen, Josef Remes.

Supported cameras in version 1.7:

PowerShot A10, PowerShot A20, PowerShot A30, PowerShot A40, PowerShot A60,
PowerShot A70, PowerShot A75, PowerShot A80, PowerShot A85, PowerShot A95,
PowerShot A100, PowerShot A200, PowerShot A300, PowerShot A310, PowerShot A400, PowerShot A510, PowerShot A520,
PowerShot S10, PowerShot S20, PowerShot S30, PowerShot S40, PowerShot S45, PowerShot S50, PowerShot S60, PowerShot S70,
PowerShot S100, IXY DIGITAL, DIGITAL IXUS,
PowerShot S110, IXY DIGITAL 200, DIGITAL IXUS v,
PowerShot S200, IXY DIGITAL 200a, DIGITAL IXUS v2,
PowerShot S230, IXY DIGITAL 320, DIGITAL IXUS v3,
PowerShot S300, IXY DIGITAL 300, DIGITAL IXUS 300,
PowerShot S330, IXY DIGITAL 300a, DIGITAL IXUS 330,
PowerShot S400, IXY DIGITAL 400, DIGITAL IXUS 400,
PowerShot SD100, IXY DIGITAL 30, DIGITAL IXUS II,
PowerShot SD10, IXY DIGITAL L, DIGITAL IXUS i,
PowerShot SD110, IXY DIGITAL 30a, DIGITAL IXUS IIs,
PowerShot S410, IXY DIGITAL 450, DIGITAL IXUS 430,
PowerShot S500, IXY DIGITAL 500, DIGITAL IXUS 500,
PowerShot SD20, IXY DIGITAL L2, DIGITAL IXUS I5,
PowerShot SD200, IXY DIGITAL 40, DIGITAL IXUS 30,
PowerShot SD300, IXY DIGITAL 50, DIGITAL IXUS 40,
PowerShot SD400, IXY DIGITAL 55, DIGITAL IXUS 50,
PowerShot SD500, IXY DIGITAL 600, DIGITAL IXUS 700
PowerShot G1, PowerShot G2, PowerShot G3, PowerShot G5, PowerShot G6,
PowerShot Pro90 IS, PowerShot S1 IS, PowerShot S2 IS, PowerShot Pro1

PLEASE NOTE:

Canon stopped development of their DLL library GetCanon! uses. That’s why there is no support for newer cameras Unfortunately there is nothing I can do about it. You might try your luck with Windows Live Photo Gallery image downloader. It’s great, way better that GetCanon! I use it all the time.

It also doesn’t work on Windows Vista for the same reason. Some users reported that turning Windows XP compatibility on .exe file works.

Note: The EOS class of digital cameras is not supported. You can use the version GetCanon 1.02 with EOS class cameras.

Supported languages:

English
Slovenian
Danish
German
French
Hungarian
Italian
Dutch
Portuguese
Czech

Source code:

If you would like to get the source code for this version, you have to sign up for Canon Developer program.

Once you have got your hands on Canon SDK, contact me and I'll send you the source.

These are links where you can apply for Canon SDK, depending where you're from:

All Subversion 1.5 Windows binaries are available!

David Vidmar — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:28:43 GMT

Finally, all three releases for Subversion 1.5 Microsoft Windows binaries are available.

CollabNet and VisualSVN were available since before, today I finally spotted Apache 2.0 or Apache 2.2 Tigris builds, so I can start upgrading servers!

Subversion 1.5 released

David Vidmar — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:47:03 GMT

If news of last weeks was Firefox 3, this week, for devs anyway, is Subversion 1.5.

Big new feature is Merge tracking which should significantly ease use of branching/merging.

Upgrade should be easy. Upgrade your clients first, those will upgrade working copies automatically. The upgrade the server, which will run on v1.4 repository until you manually upgrade it. Some new features will not be available just using new server, you'll have to upgrade repositories too. This is not done automatically, so v1.4 clients can access it. Once you are read, simply run "svnadmin upgrade" and you are done.

For more information I suggest you read through Subversion 1.5 Release Notes.

Right now, Windows binaries by Tigris or CollabNet are not available yet, will have to wait few more days. VisualSVN server 1.5 is available. I use Tigris binaries, so I'll wait few more days before upgrading both home and work servers.

Also, all clients where upgraded. I use TortoiseSVN and VisualSVN so don't forget to upgrade those too..

LINQ: Detecting if entity is already pending insert

David Vidmar — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 10:32:09 GMT

I ran into an issue with my latest project at work that uses LINQ. I was upserting some entities and when I encountered a duplicate, I queried the database, but not the pending inserts of my DataContext, so my import failed with "duplicate primary key" type of error.

It turns out it's fairly easy to query those pending inserts too.

Lets have a DataContext and do an insert of a new Color entity:

DataContext dc = new DataContext();

dc.Colors.InsertOnSubmit(new Color() { Code = "F0F8FF", Name = "AliceBlue" });

Since we didn't do dc.SubmitChanges(), the following query returns nothing:

var r = from c in dc.Colors where c.Code = "F0F8FF" select c;

Enter GetChangeSet(). Let's count inserts:

int allPendingInserts = dc.GetChangeSet().Inserts.Count();

But we can have pending inserts of different types/tables. Let's just count pending colors:

int colorsPendingInserts = dc.GetChangeSet().Inserts.OfType(Color).Count();

And now we are not very far from querying inserted records:

IEnumerable<Color> insertedColors = dc.GetChangeSet().Inserts.OfType<Color>();

Console.WriteLine(
    string.Format(
        "Q: Is color #F0F8FF already pending insert?\n" +
        "A: {0}",
        (from q in insertedColors where q.Code == "F0F8FF" select q).Count > 0));

Did I mention I really like LINQ? (except when crossing WCF, of course)