Channel 9 - Discussions by object88

Coffeehouse - Agile methods for Longhorn?

object88 — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 18:36:06 GMT

My whiteboard has been indespensible in terms of keeping track of my extreme programming tasks. And NUnit / NMock have been indespensible in terms of testing. I can re-test 80% of my code in under 2 minutes, including all those odd-ball special test cases that a human is bound to forget.

Agile programming isn't the end-all / be-all, but it's been really helpful on my current project.

Coffeehouse - I LOVE INTERNET EXPLORER!

object88 — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 18:31:09 GMT

Blkbam wrote:

object88 wrote: Tabbed browsing saves me untold amounts of screen clutter.

So does a second monitor.

You try to convince my boss that I need a second monitor, not to mention a second graphics card or a whole new one to support multiple monitors.

You try to convince my wife (or even me!) that it's better to spend $500+ on a second decent LCD-- there's no way or room to go back to a CRT-- when instead it could be spent on a vacation or other fun project.

Second monitor? Not gonna happen. Firefox / tabbed browsing? Been happening for a long time now.

Coffeehouse - I LOVE INTERNET EXPLORER!

object88 — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 19:31:48 GMT

Loadsgood wrote:

"I want tabbed browsing. Waa waa waa!" Well put this up your pipe and smoke it. Now do you want tabbed browsing?

There are bugs in IE, but you still want to use it, right? A bug in something does not make me stop wanting it. Tabbed browsing saves me untold amounts of screen clutter.

Tech Off - .NET WinForms toolbar glitch?

object88 — Fri, 22 Oct 2004 16:58:09 GMT

Darn.

Tech Off - Specified cast is not valid in asp.net/c# foreach loop

object88 — Fri, 22 Oct 2004 16:56:12 GMT

Although with just plane "as", you still have to check for null. I'd like so see something like

with (CheckBox chk = o as CheckBox)
{
   // body
}

where body is only executed if o is a CheckBox. This could be expanded out to...

with (CheckBox chk = o as CheckBox)
{
   // body
}
else with (ToolBarButton tbb = o as ToolBarButton)
{
   // other body
}
else
{
   // another body
}

That would be useful to me, and quite compact. But I think "with" is a VB keyword, isn't it?

Tech Off - .NET WinForms toolbar glitch?

object88 — Fri, 22 Oct 2004 01:04:51 GMT

Is this a glitch or am I doing something wrong?

I create a .NET ToolBar, and dock it on the right or left of some control. I fill it up with ToolBarButtons, some of which are seperators. Where there are seperators, there is a vertical line to the right of the icon, and one below. Although, this does not happen if the last button before a seperator is a dropdown button.

When the toolbar is docked on the top, I only get one seperator, as expected.

I haven't played with this much, so there is quite likely something I've missed. Thanks for any advice!

Tech Off - .NET control designer help

object88 — Fri, 22 Oct 2004 01:00:14 GMT

Thanks! A Microsoft guy on another site recommended that I call OnComponentChanging / OnComponentChanged directly, and that ended up taking care of the problem.

What will participating in a DesignerTransaction get me? I'm wondering if I should change my code to follow your suggestions.

Thanks again!!

Tech Off - .NET control designer help

object88 — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 01:36:29 GMT

OK, I've been coming up with a few more test scenarios.

In one, I have a simple string property on Foo, let's say, Foo.Number. When I go to the designer property page to edit it, I create a modal form with a text box and enter a new value. This works-- I can enter the new value, and the parent form page gets marked as changed, so I can hit Ctrl-S, and the changed value gets persisted out to the Windows Form Designer generated code.

In another, I have another simple string property on Foo, named DropNumber. I chose this name because when I edit the value in the designer, I have a dropdown with a textbox in it. This also works.

In a third, I have an object, FooOptionsDrop, which has an drop-down (textbox) editor that only manipulates one property on FooOptionsDrop (not on the actual Foo control). That does NOT work.

So, I'm drawing the conclusion that the problem lies with editting an object; no matter what kind of editor I use, the parent form fails to recognize that I've made a change. If the property in question is directly a part of the control, the changes are recognized.

Again, please, tell me why! What do I need to do so that the parent form recognizes changes to a control's property object? It looks like changes to the DynamicProperties on a form are recognized, but I can't find anything that talks about how it works (nor does it show up in Reflector).

Help!!

Tech Off - Specified cast is not valid in asp.net/c# foreach loop

object88 — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 20:34:33 GMT

Does using "as" not throw a cast exception if "o" is of the wrong type? Neat, I didn't know that... I always did soemthing like

if (o is CheckBox)
{
CheckBox chk = (CheckBox)chk;
// ...
}

Tech Off - Specified cast is not valid in asp.net/c# foreach loop

object88 — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 20:09:01 GMT

Perhaps there is some non-CheckBox control within pnlCheckboxes? Can you step through the code and manually validate that each item in pnlCheckboxes.Controls is a CheckBox? If not, the foreach will throw the error.

Tech Off - .NET control designer help

object88 — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 02:08:36 GMT

Argh. This is driving me crazy. I'm going to concentrate on one property on my ViewOptions object: InitialMode. Since this is an enum, I implemented ResetInitialMode and ShouldSerializeInitialMode. (I know the documentation says you can use the DefaultValue Attribute, but that doesn't seem to work.) On the Viewer control, there's the Options property as I mentioned-- I've attached DesignerSerializationVisibilty and Editor attributes to it, as I mentioned above. I also implemented a pair of ResetOptions and ShouldSerializeOptions methods, which at this point just reset and check the one property for changes.

The UI editor itself is working. The property editor is working. And when the code generator gets called, it works.

I cannot get the danged code generator to get called!

This is what I can fathom in terms of series of events:

1) I load a form into the designer which has my View. I select the control and get the properties page. I find the "Options" property and double-click the ellipsis to trigger my ViewOptionsEditor.

2) In the ViewOptionsEditor, I create a new Options object (from the values previously set) and pass that into my ViewOptionsUIEditor, and bring up the form. I make a few changes in the GUI and hit OK, which brings me back into the DovumentViewEditor. I save the changes onto the original Options object.

3) My View.ShouldSerializeOptions method gets called, and I return true.

4) At this point, I think that the main form code-- the one holding my View control-- should be marked as "changed" in the editor, but it's not. If it were (and I can make it so my changing some other property, either on the form or my View control), then when I save the form, ViewOptions's serialization object gets called, and the form's Windows Form Designer code area gets updated.

So why isn't the IDE recognizing that the Options object is getting changed in the designer?

Help!

Tech Off - .NET control designer help

object88 — Mon, 18 Oct 2004 21:29:48 GMT

A little update... in my Viewer class, the ViewOptions property is named Options. I changed the decloration to:

[DesignerSerializationVisibility(DesignerSerializationVisibility.Content)]
[Editor(typeof(ViewOptionsEditor), typeof(UITypeEditor))]
public ViewOptions Options {...}

This has given me code in the Windows Form Designer generated code area related to Options properties which I don't have default values set for yet... which is a step in the right direction. However, any changes that I make in the ViewOptionsEditor (the form I mentioned above) are not getting persisted. Any advice on that?

Thanks again!

Tech Off - Asynchronous or Synchronous WS calls

object88 — Mon, 18 Oct 2004 19:39:05 GMT

Gravy wrote:

I would be interested in hearing your views on this, does everyone still use an RPC style when calling to a web service, even when the web service is your own??

I'm using a synchronous model, mostly because I'm far too lazy at this point to implement the obviously-better asynchronous model. Once I have a chance to spend some time with it, I'll be checking out asynchronous webservice calls.

Tech Off - .NET control designer help

object88 — Mon, 18 Oct 2004 19:25:46 GMT

I need some help with a .NET form designer. I have a control (View) that I've written, and it has a object hanging off it (ViewOptions). ViewOptions is essentially a bunch of simple properties (ints, strings, enums) with the occasional changed event. For the control itself, I haven't changed the designer, but the ViewOptions shows up as a property, so I added a form to ease changes to it.

I can make changes in the ViewOptions form, close that form, and reopen it, and my changes are still there. However, should I close the designer, all my changes go away... so how do I persist my changes to the ViewOptions object (via the form) into the user's code?

Are there any examples out on the web that I could check out?

Thanks!

Tech Off - .NET WinForms and drawing menu items

object88 — Thu, 14 Oct 2004 01:30:26 GMT

Nevermind; just found the MeasureItem event. This should really be put into the DrawItem documentation or example, and I don't just mean a link to it at the botton. Something more like "if you don't also implement the MeasureItem event, you're wasting your time".

Tech Off - .NET WinForms and drawing menu items

object88 — Thu, 14 Oct 2004 01:09:24 GMT

I want to draw the contents of a ContextMenu menu item myself, but I can't get it to work. I'm getting the event to draw, but the space to draw is in small. The context menu itself is very small onscreen, and irregardless of where the menu item is in the menu, the DrawItemEventArgs.Bounds X and Y are always at 0.

I have tried a menu with two user-drawn menu items and no system-drawn items, and one where only the first was user-drawn (with many system-drawn ones after).

It seems like the system does not know how much space to give the menu item to draw in, so it gives almost nothing. It also doesn't seem to want to keep track of the menu item offset (or is that something I'm supposed to do, with the DrawItemEventArgs.Index property?)

None of the MSDN examples I've found seem to do anything my own code is doing, so I'm at a loss. Help?

Tech Off - .Net, WinForms, and RadioButtons

object88 — Fri, 24 Sep 2004 07:56:20 GMT

Both good suggestions, but I have several groups of radio buttons for different purposes, and I need to know what button is selected outside of the scope of an event.

I ended up writing a simple wrapper class that just manages an ArrayList of RadioButtons.

Coffeehouse - Not exactly what it was meant for...

object88 — Fri, 24 Sep 2004 02:38:37 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

So I was wondering, do any of you have any computer related stuff lying around that isn't exactly doing what it was designed to do anymore?

Quite a bit. I have a corner of a closet that has several ancient and dead computers that are waiting to be sacrificed in the name of art, performance or otherwise.

Tech Off - .Net, WinForms, and RadioButtons

object88 — Fri, 24 Sep 2004 02:31:30 GMT

Maybe I'm hallucinating, but in the Win32 world, wasn't there a way to access a group of RadioButtons? So you could do something like:

RadioButton checkedButton = myRadioButtonGroup.SelectedButton;

or something?

Is there any way to do that in .Net? I have a collection of 16 radio buttons, and I need to programmatically select 1... and at the moment, I've got this stupid-long switch statement calling out each radio button individually if it's to be selected. I.e.:

RadioButton checkedButton;
if (myRadioButton1.Checked)
{
   checkedButton = myRadioButton1;
}
else if (myRadioButton2.Checked)
{
   checkedButton = myRadioButton2;
}
...
else
{
   checkedButton = myRadioButton16;
}

That just seems silly.

Tech Off - Double pointer in C# / .NET

object88 — Tue, 21 Sep 2004 17:08:22 GMT

Good questions, lemme throw in some more background.

I'm working on a WinForms user control, and the "server" object is a 3rd party wrapper for a WebService object. At some point, the server may timeout, and any further calls on the same server object will fail.

As for race conditions, that is a danger, but I'm combatting that by wrapping calls to the server object in locks on the server object itself. I'm only ever making one call to the server at a time (typically to get a bit of binary data), and I don't have to send any updates to the server, so I don't have to worry about inconsistent state.

It's outside the realm of my control to replace the server object. I *may* be able to repair the object, but if the server requires a new login, I don't have the user's password. So it would be good if I simply responsibly reported a failure and let the application handle the cleanup.

Yesterday, I implemented a simple wrapper object for the server object to share it as necessary. I think this is the solution I'll stick with.

Coffeehouse - Why is there there no - Office Home Edition

object88 — Mon, 20 Sep 2004 21:12:47 GMT

What about Microsoft Works? I don't know what it would run in Europe, but stateside, you can get Works 8 directly from MS for $50, which includes a word processor, spreadsheet, calendar, email, and powerpoint viewer. Supposed to be Word and Excel compatible. I have no idea what the specific feature differences are.

Tech Off - Double pointer in C# / .NET

object88 — Mon, 20 Sep 2004 20:16:22 GMT

I have a service object that I want to pass around to a bunch of child objects. This service may go dead at various points, so I'll need to replace it from time to time.

In C++, I could have kept a double pointer around, and when the object went belly up, I would just have to fix the original pointer.

Is this possible in C#? I would have thought I could have used "ref", but that seems to only apply to parameters, not fields.

Or do I need to suck it up and either create a wrapper object that maintains the service reference, or just update all child objects when the service goes dead?

C++ example:

class CMainObject
{
   CFoo *pFoo;

   void ReplaceFoo(CFoo *pNewFoo)
   {
      this->pFoo = pNewFoo;
   }

   void CreateChildObject()
   {
      CSubObject *pSubObject = new CSubObject(&pFoo);
   }
}

class CSubObject
{
   CFoo **ppFoo;

   CSubFoo(CFoo **ppFoo)
   {
      this->ppFoo = ppFoo;
   }

   void DoSomething()
   {
      *ppFoo->DoSomethingInteresting();
      *ppFoo->DoSomethingBoring();
   }
}

(I'm sure I screwed something up in the example above; it's been a good long while since I've used C++.)

Tech Off - How to force a process-focus switch in .NET?

object88 — Sat, 18 Sep 2004 01:13:34 GMT

Thanks! It looks like the Process.MainWindowHandle should do get the handle for SetForegroundWindow. Thanks again for the really-frickin'-fast help!

Tech Off - How to force a process-focus switch in .NET?

object88 — Sat, 18 Sep 2004 00:40:32 GMT

I have an application which launches another app (to edit a file) based on some user activity. Due to historical reasons, I can't change the UI, so the user may be able to do the same thing again. I want to be able to programatically switch the focused process to the one I already launched.

How do I do this?

I've found out how to launch a process (System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(...)) and check to see if it's still running (Process.HasExited), but I don't see anything that gives that process focus.

I'm more than happy to use the Win32 Shell API, if there's something in there. I'm just not very familiar with it.

Coffeehouse - What would you say....

object88 — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 18:58:02 GMT

Like many others have said, the key lies in asking "what do you want to do"?

I'm guessing that the average user wants web and email, and maybe some combination of a little word processing, digital music and games... and not much else for now. I'm also guessing that the average user does not have a lot of money to throw around. That said, get a cheap (i.e., NOT bleeding edge) Windows machine. Take a little time to learn how to keep it secure (i.e., learn about Windows Updates, good email practices, etc.), and you're good.

Once you start getting into particular hobbies or interests-- video editting, music production, hacking (by which I mean hardcore programming, not cracking), gaming, web design-- you have particular needs.

I know a little about some of those hobbies:

For music production, get yourself a Windows machine-- there's a lot of keen software and hardware, and a lot of it just works. You can end up spending a lot of money... or not much at all.

For hacking, you go with Linux. You can get the source to just about anything, and tinker until the cows come home... maybe even after. There are a million projects to work on, and you'll never run out of things to tweak.

Channel 9 - Discussions by object88

Coffeehouse - Agile methods for Longhorn?

Coffeehouse - I LOVE INTERNET EXPLORER!

Coffeehouse - I LOVE INTERNET EXPLORER!

Tech Off - .NET WinForms toolbar glitch?

Tech Off - Specified cast is not valid in asp.net/c# foreach loop

Tech Off - .NET WinForms toolbar glitch?

Tech Off - .NET control designer help

Tech Off - .NET control designer help

Tech Off - Specified cast is not valid in asp.net/c# foreach loop

Tech Off - Specified cast is not valid in asp.net/c# foreach loop

Tech Off - .NET control designer help

Tech Off - .NET control designer help

Tech Off - Asynchronous or Synchronous WS calls

Tech Off - .NET control designer help

Tech Off - .NET WinForms and drawing menu items

Tech Off - .NET WinForms and drawing menu items

Tech Off - .Net, WinForms, and RadioButtons

Coffeehouse - Not exactly what it was meant for...

Tech Off - .Net, WinForms, and RadioButtons

Tech Off - Double pointer in C# / .NET

Coffeehouse - Why is there there no - Office Home Edition

Tech Off - Double pointer in C# / .NET

Tech Off - How to force a process-focus switch in .NET?

Tech Off - How to force a process-focus switch in .NET?

Coffeehouse - What would *you* say....

Coffeehouse - What would you say....