In Absentia - a blog by Igal Tabachnik

Configure Fiddler to use a 3rd party Diff tool

2009-09-16T12:08:52Z

I use the awesome Fiddler2 to debug HTTP, and I needed to compare sessions. Fiddler has a support for this, but when I clicked Tools → Compare Sessions, it prompted me to install Windiff.exe.

I haven’t found a way to set the preferred Diff tool in the UI (via Options), so after looking at the click handler for the menu in Reflector, I found out that the value can be set via Registry key:

Open Registry, go to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Fiddler2

Add a new String Value called CompareTool and set the value to the path of your favorite Diff tool

(e.g. "C:\Program Files\Beyond Compare 3\BCompare.exe")

Restart Fiddler

That’s it!

This is why I love Google

2009-07-23T15:56:40Z

Google “recursion”.

WinForms bug: NodeMouseDoubleClick event in TreeView will sometimes have the wrong node in EventArgs

2009-05-21T22:46:15Z

Here’s a strange bug I’ve encountered today in a WinForms application. Usually, double clicking on a collapsed tree node (which obviously has child nodes) will expand it. Most of the time when we need something to happen when a child node is double clicked, but not the parent, we write something similar to:

   1: void NodeMouseDoubleClick(object sender, TreeNodeMouseClickEventArgs e)

   2: {

   3:   if (e.Node.Nodes.Count == 0)

   4:   {

   5:     // ... handle child node

   6:   }

   7: }

To my surprise, I discovered today that by double clicking on a collapsed parent node, the e.Node parameter was not the node I actually double clicked on, but one of the child nodes. Since the sub-child nodes count was 0, the event handled the (incorrect) node.

I noticed that it was not the same node all the time – it was different. I made a small WinForm application with just a TreeView, and I filled it with the contents of my C:\Windows directory. I placed a MessageBox.Show(e.Node.Text); in the NodeMouseDoubleClick handler. And that helped me realize that the e.Node is actually the node that is currently under the mouse cursor!

Here’s the initial state:

Double clicking on Fonts makes the following happen:

Notice where the cursor is – that’s the node that was passed in the event handler. Apparently, during the expand, if there are more child nodes that fit on the screen, the parent node scrolls to the top, but the cursor stays in the same place where the double click occurred.

I googled up this problem and I found that this bug was reported on Connect, and it will be fixed in the next version.

In the mean time, the workaround is to use the TreeView’s SelectedNode property instead.

Smart Paste Add-In for Visual Studio 2008

2009-05-19T11:57:18Z

Say you need to paste a chunk of XML (or WKT) into Visual Studio as a string literal (for your unit tests, or what not). How would you do it?

In C# string literals can be represented in two ways:

C# supports two forms of string literals: regular string literals and verbatim string literals.

A regular string literal consists of zero or more characters enclosed in double quotes, as in "hello", and may include both simple escape sequences (such as \t for the tab character) and hexadecimal and Unicode escape sequences.

A verbatim string literal consists of an @ character followed by a double-quote character, zero or more characters, and a closing double-quote character. A simple example is @"hello". In a verbatim string literal, the characters between the delimiters are interpreted verbatim, the only exception being a quote-escape-sequence. In particular, simple escape sequences and hexadecimal and Unicode escape sequences are not processed in verbatim string literals. A verbatim string literal may span multiple lines.

So when you have a chunk of text that looks like this:

    PROJCS["OSGB 1936 / British National Grid",
        GEOGCS["OSGB 1936",
            DATUM["OSGB_1936",
                SPHEROID["Airy 1830",6377563.396,299.3249646,AUTHORITY["EPSG","7001"]],
                TOWGS84[375,-111,431,0,0,0,0],
                AUTHORITY["EPSG","6277"]],
            PRIMEM["Greenwich",0,AUTHORITY["EPSG","8901"]],
            UNIT["DMSH",0.0174532925199433,AUTHORITY["EPSG","9108"]],
            AXIS["Lat",NORTH],
            AXIS["Long",EAST],
            AUTHORITY["EPSG","4277"]]

How would you go about turning this into an escaped string literal (verbatim or regular)?

Being as most programmers are, well, lazy, I didn’t want to do yet another find/replace session. I googled for the first thing that came to mind, “Smart Paste Visual Studio 2008”. I found this great add-in called Smart Paster by Alex Papadimoulis (creator of TheDailyWTF), which adds a highly configurable “Paste As…” context menu:

And now, all I need to do is “Paste As” string, to get this (with a few tweaks):

"    PROJCS[\"OSGB 1936 / British National Grid\"," +
"        GEOGCS[\"OSGB 1936\"," +
"            DATUM[\"OSGB_1936\"," +
"                SPHEROID[\"Airy 1830\",6377563.396,299.3249646,AUTHORITY[\"EPSG\",\"7001\"]]," +
"                TOWGS84[375,-111,431,0,0,0,0]," +
"                AUTHORITY[\"EPSG\",\"6277\"]]," +
"            PRIMEM[\"Greenwich\",0,AUTHORITY[\"EPSG\",\"8901\"]]," +
"            UNIT[\"DMSH\",0.0174532925199433,AUTHORITY[\"EPSG\",\"9108\"]]," +
"            AXIS[\"Lat\",NORTH]," +
"            AXIS[\"Long\",EAST]," +
"            AUTHORITY[\"EPSG\",\"4277\"]]"

Thanks for the Add-in, Alex!

P.S. The add-in written in Visual Basic, and the installer targets .NET 1.1. For 2008 you need to compile from source yourself, but if you don’t have Visual Basic installed, you can download the compiled assemblies from my SkyDrive. Place them in your C:\Users\<username>\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Addins directory.

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Awesome tip: make View Code default double click action on a WinForm control

2009-05-10T17:51:34Z

Here is something I wish I’d known years ago – you can make the “View Source” action default when you double click on a WinForm control.

Here’s how:

Right click any Form/UserControl file, and choose Open With…
Select CSharp Editor, then press Set as Default
????
Profit!

That’s it! Now you won’t break the keyboard when you accidentally double click on your MainForm.cs file.

(I'm crying) Amazon Kindle DX - the 10" PDF reader

2009-05-07T10:28:47Z

Amazon just went ahead and announced the new Kindle DX – a bigger Kindle with native PDF support. The major difference is of course the size: the new Kindle DX has a 1200x824 resolution, and it is priced at $489. It is scheduled to ship at Summer 2009.

Here are some additional details:

Size: 10.4″ x 7.2″ x 0.38″ (Kindle 2: 8″ x 5.3″ x 0.36″)
Display: 16 shades of gray eInk 9.7″ 1200×824 pixels (Kindle 2: 6″ 800×600)
Weight: 18.9oz (Kindle 2: 10.2oz)
Storage: 3.3GB (Kindle 2: 1.4GB)
Battery life: 4 days with 3G modem on, 2 weeks with modem off
Connectivity: 3G wireless modem, USB 2.0 port and 3.5mm audio jack

Dr. House says it best:

ReSharper: Fixing array and object initializer indentation

2009-04-22T10:55:49Z

There are tons of options when it comes to configuring your coding style in ReSharper. Somehow I managed to screw the indentation of array and object initializers’ variables. This is what it looked like (I use At Next Line (BSD style) setting):

int[] array = new int[]
{
1, 2, 3
}

To fix this, go to Formatting Style –> Other, and set the Continuous line indent multiplier to 1 (mine was 0)

And now it’s back to normal:

int[] array = new int[]
{
  1, 2, 3
}

Skype finally comes to the iPhone

2009-03-31T12:32:23Z

Skype for the iPhone was released in the App Store today. Unfortunately, it was crashing on startup – it showed the Skype blue logo and then crashed back to the home screen. A quick Google query led me to discover that I’m not alone – this affects many “jailbroken” iPhone users.

UPDATE: To fix this on a jailbroken iPhone, update the package “Mobile Substrate” on Cydia to version 0.9.2803-1 (or higher). After the update Skype works great!

ReSharper 4.5 Beta Released - First Impressions

2009-03-18T10:46:28Z

JetBrains just announced that ReSharper 4.5 has reached Beta status, and now available to download.

Here are some of my first impressions:

The installation was a snap – it asked to remove the previous version (4.1), and installed the new version instead, while keeping the previous settings.
There is a noticeable improvement in the Visual Studio 2008 responsiveness after startup, Start Page appears to be frozen much less than before.
Memory usage has dramatically improved! devenv.exe is no longer the hungriest process on my system, Firefox has regained its rightful place at the top of the Task Manager:

The Options dialog contains a new page for Naming Style settings, allowing much more control in customizing the naming conventions:

Finally, there is now a solution-wide analysis of unused public/protected methods, as well as visibility (works only when solution-wide analysis is on):

That’s it for now. The beta seems stable and fast! Another quality product from the wizards at JetBrains. Can't wait for the final version!

Kindle 2 in Israel part 2: What works, what doesn't

2009-03-17T11:39:23Z

One of the main selling points of the Kindle is Whispernet – a free EVDO Internet (provided by Sprint), which allows downloading content on the Kindle, browsing the web, reading RSS feeds, and searching Wikipedia. This is all brilliantly illustrated in this xkcd comic:

Unfortunately, Sprint’s coverage of Israel is pretty bad :)

There are two “registrations” of the Kindle. The first one is on the Amazon site. Since I purchased the device for myself, in my own account, the Kindle had automatically been assigned to me. This allows me to purchase Kindle content on the Amazon site, since it knows that I own a Kindle. The second registration is needed to be performed in the device itself. Since there is currently no way of connecting the Kindle to the Internet, I cannot register the device. Until Kindle is online and registered, many features are disabled; even the clock on the Kindle is set wirelessly. This is unfortunate – all the free book samples from Amazon can be only delivered wirelessly to the Kindle, although some alternative eBook stores exist.

Until it becomes possible to register the device in some other way, the only thing I can enjoy are books manually transferred to the Kindle via USB. It appears as a removable thumb drive on my PC, having only 1.4GB of free storage (the rest is used by the OS), so copying content to the Kindle is very easy – just drag and drop. Once disconnected (or ejected) from the PC, the new content immediately appears in the Home page.

One more issue with the Kindle is that it comes with Latin-only characters font. It supports Unicode (there was some confusion on this point – Kindle reads Unicode characters, it just lacks the fonts to display them correctly). There is some progress being made by the community to have additional fonts available on the Kindle.

Bottom line: without realizing it, I’ve spent 3 hours last night reading on the Kindle. No eye strain, no stiff hands, no uncomfortable positions – the Kindle is a joy to read on, and I intend to do so much more of that.