Discuss the Coding4Fun In the Box article series

In the Box is Sean Campbell's article series on how to write code to get the most out of Windows.

Current article list:

• Setting Wallpaper

  The application allows you to browse to an image, view a preview, select the display style, and set the image as the Desktop background.   

• Poor Man's Power Monitor

  I wanted an application that made it really easy to know how much power you were using, and specifically where that power was going   

• Researching made easier with ResearchHelp

  I like productivity at my fingertips, so for this post, I'm going to walk through a tool that I've created to save time for online researching. This tool can be made to launch by simply using a shortcut key while you're in any application.   

• Building Network Utilities

  In this, the first In The Box article, Sean Campbell digs into the new System.Net.NetworkInformation namespace, and builds a simple utility that will look for devices on the network.   

There is a bug in your timetracker program in the C# code version that results in a NPE when you left click on the notification icon:
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
   at TimeTracker.ProjectsForm.punchInOutToolStripMenuItem_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) in xyz\MSDN\TrackingTime-CS\TimeTracker\ProjectsForm.cs:line 94
   at TimeTracker.ProjectsForm.projectSelectMenuItem_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) in xyz\MSDN\TrackingTime-CS\TimeTracker\ProjectsForm.cs:line 207
   at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.RaiseEvent(Object key, EventArgs e)

Cheers,
Feint

Thanks Feint!

I've actually got an updated version of the Time Tracker app on my blog: http://www.ariankulp.com.  I noticed that error too late.  It should only bite you if you haven't set a project yet if I remember right.  My new version remembers the last project you selected as has a number of other enhancements too.  The direct blog entry for getting the code or installing (slick ClickOnce installer now!) is at: http://ariankulp.com/archive/2005/11/26/666.aspx.

Take care!
-Arian

Wallpaper Cycler...

WHY MS still not implemented at least "Fit" mode for pictures larger than screen resolution? Most of my pictures are larger than screen and has different proportions.


Also (for TabletPC) will be usefull "Fit and Align" mode. For instance, "align to right", "align to left". It would be useful for screen "rotation".

Tricking out the application....

This is exactly what I'm looking for

How would I go about incorporating a Splash Screen. I'm using VB.
In a normal app I would set the splash screen in the properties of the app, which would require the activation of the application framework. Since I have to deactivate this in order to start the app from a sub, I can't activate the splash screen.
Some help with this would be great, Thanx

Speedy

I've been using your NetLib code to try and create an application which will monitor a large number of devices (20,000+) for connectivity.  Unfortunately as a I run through cycles with my program I can see the amount of memory used by the program increase significantly (monitored via Windows Task Maanger, Processes).   When I've gone back to your original version of NetDetect I see a similar performance issue, though I'm only pinging a class C address space.  Have you tried to run NetDetect repeatedly and have you seen similar memory issues?   Any thoughts on what could be causing it?   I'm going to switch from sending pings syncrhonously on different threads such as with NetScan and use the aynch ping method to see if I experience simiar issues.

Also, can you give me some information as to why you call start a new thread for the PingWorker_DoWork subRoutine?   Why not just call this directly and pass it the pingInfo object?