TurboVBLite V3.3 - Freeware version of an add-in for VB6, including a property builder, procedure builder, template coder, word complete, and other tools. (via Programmers Heaven)
Exchanger XML Editor V3.1 - With new grid view and XSLT 2.0 debugger. Cross-platform, trial download, pricing from $130.
SecureTrieve Pro - Data protection for lost or stolen laptops. 30-day trial.
ColorPicker.NET - .NET application that mimics the Adobe PhotoShop color picker.

Information

The Bloggers Guide to BizTalk - All the info you could ever want about BizTalk, built into a help file with pointers back to online. (via Owen Allen)
Project Aardvark Revealed - Christopher Hawkins has apparently tracked down the secret Fog Creek summer intern project.
TechEd 2005 - Visual Studio 2005 Team System Presentations - Lots of PowerPoint slides for your viewing pleasure. (vis Rob Caron)
MS Office XML Formats Not OK with GNU - So, the Office 12 XML file format license is most likely incompatible with the GPL. This is not surprising. And, despite the protests from the Microsoft spokesman, I expect it's by design.

Community

To CTP or not to CTP, that is the question - SearchVB.com offers me the soapbox again, and I take it.

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The Daily Grind 648

by Mike Gunderloy
20 June 2005

The tomato plants are finally in the ground. Well, most of them. I just hope I didn't spend my weekend planting a deer smorgasbord.

Software

Special Folders Browser - Kenny Kerr provides a tool for translating special folders (like CommonProgramFiles and MyPictures) into regular Explorer paths.
Extended ProgressBar - A progress bar with a percent done indicator built in.
Navicat 2005 - Graphical manager for MySQL databases that includes import/export for Access and Excel. Available for Windows, Linux, and Mac. 30-day trial, pricing from $99.
Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 Performance Advisor - Diagnostic tool from Microsoft.
Speech Utilities for Microsoft® Speech Technologies - But really, didn't anyone think before naming a utility "GetPron"?
VMTN Virtual Machine Center - VMTN has their first selection of preloaded VMs up for download, including software from Red Hat, Novell, Oracle, BEA, MySQL, and SpikeSource.
Scott Hanselman's 2005 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List - More utilities than you can shake a stick at. If you enjoy the Daily Grind, this link is a must-visit: but make sure you set aside plenty of time, because Scott has collected a heck of a list!

Information

Write clearer more powerful tests with the unofficial NMock 2 Drop - Roy Osherove has the dope on a new mock objects library for .NET.

Community

The Ecosystem Grows - Tom Hollander reports on some of the activity building on top of the latest Enterprise Library release.

Sponsor

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Review: ConceptDraw V Professional

ConceptDraw V Professional, $299
CS-Odessa
http://www.conceptdraw.com/en/

There are a batch of drawing programs out there (and not all of them come from Microsoft). Over the weekend I took a look at ConceptDraw Professional, which appears to owe quite a bit in conception to Visio. The basic concept is the same: you've got various palettes full of shapes that you can drag to a drawing surface, properties that control the way that the shapes look and behave, and connectors that can hook the shapes together. And of course as you drag the shapes around, the connectors stay hooked up. If you've ever used Visio, you'll be able to get up and running with ConceptDraw in very little time.

There are, naturally, differences between the two applications. While CS-Odessa may have been originally influenced by Visio, they've gone their own way on some things, and some of the divergences are definitely improvements. I'm really quite fond of the docked editing tools on the right-hand side of the screen, which give easy access to all of the properties of the current shape; they seem to me to be easier to work with than Visio's mix of toolbar buttons, menu items, and dialog boxes. ConceptDraw also offers a good selection of basic drawing shapes on its various templates, as well as enough clip art to get you started. The Professional version that I worked with covers web and Windows design, floor plans, organization charts, various types of software diagrams, forms, mechanical engineering, and other odds and ends. They have other editions with specialized content for such areas as mind-mapping, project management, or medical illustration.

ConceptDraw offers a good set of choices for import (including PowerPoint and Visio XML) and export (including HTML, PDF, Flash, and EPS), as well as a Visio converter. They've also got their own documented XML format, as well as support for ODBC database connectivity. Programmability is via ConceptDraw Basic, which allows scripting on various levels from the shape to the full application. The script editor is pretty primitive - lacking even color-coding - but the language does provide object-oriented access to the entire application. There's also a version available for the Mac, which I didn't test, but they say it's completely compatible with the PC version.

So, is it worth considering ConceptDraw instead of Visio? Well, with Visio 2003 Pro listing for $499 (and selling for around $425 street price for legitimate copies), the pricing is certainly attractive. You don't get some of the more advanced programmability and integration features of Visio in ConceptDraw, of course; if you're looking for something that integrates tightly with Office and Visual Studio, you'll want to stick with the Microsoft product. But if your interest is in a standalone diagramming product that's easy to use and can turn out attractive charts, it looks to me like ConceptDraw can do just as good a job.

Click for larger screenshot

The Daily Grind 647

by Mike Gunderloy
17 June 2005

You know, there are days I wish my Inbox would just vanish in a puff of smoke.

Software

SmartInspect - Unified logging tool for .NET, Java, and Delphi applications. Free personal edition, trial download, pricing from $229.
Meta Programming System EAP - "MPS is an implementation of Language Oriented Programming, whose goal is to make defining languages as natural and easy as defining classes and methods is today." A new early adopter program from JetBrains. (via Andres Aguiar)
AppForge Announces Support for the New Windows Mobile 5.0 Platform - Crossfire targets Windows Mobile 5.0 now. They recently added Nokia Series 80 support as well.

Information

Free Book - Introducing Visual Basic 2005 for Developers - Microsoft Press eBook free for the grabbing. (via Stefano Demiliani)
Skip the June CTP for Team Foundation - Buck Hodges says it's worth waiting for the July CTP.
GrokTalks - The first videos of the 10-minute Tech Ed presentations by the RDs are ready to download now. (via Julia Lerman).

Community

Will RSS advertising help the misappropriation problem? - Tim Marman speculates on a way to keep jerks from assuming that RSS is a license to ignore copyright. Good luck.

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The Daily Grind 646

by Mike Gunderloy
16 June 2005

Yesterday it took till 5PM to get through the morning e-mail. A new record, sigh...

Software

Scrolling Credits Control - Potentially cute addition for your About box.
AutoRuns - A major upgrade to the SysInternals utility for discovering the cruft that launches when you boot. If you haven't run it lately, take a fresh look; you'll probably be surprised.

Information

Mock Object testing can cause trouble - here's why and possibly how to avoid it - More advice from Roy Osherove, who's turned into quite the agile testing guru.
Start working with XMLStarlet - Jack Herrington digs into an open source command line toolkit for XML munching.
Exploring Metro: the Longhorn Document and Print Model - Tim Sneath digs into some of the infrastructure of Longhorn.
Is the June CTP for Me? - Rob Caron offers some guidance on whether it's worth picking up the latest Team System bits.

Community

Code Talking: The key to great software? - Steve Hebert ruminates about spreading the ownership of code among team members.
PDC05: What's the latest? - If you're planning on going to PDC, here's a blog where the RSS feed will give you all the latest news.

Sponsor

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Review: DesktopX

DesktopX Pro, $69.95
Stardock Corporation
http://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/

There have been times when I spent quite a bit of time and effort on customizing my Windows desktop to be just so. Nowadays, I'm mostly too busy reformatting to drift too far away from the defaults, but when the time comes that I feel like obsessively customizing again, this is one of the products that I'm going to turn to. DesktopX lets you put objects directly on your WIndows desktop, from a single analog clock to an entire new user interface. This leads to a level of control over the interface that Windows itself doesn't offer you by a long shot. Better yet, you don't even have to do all the work yourself: cruise on over to WinCustomize and you'll find thousands of objects and themes for DesktopX that others have created already, from silly to sublime.

DesktopX is priced at several levels, starting at $14.95 for an end user version that can just load objects create dby others. The $69.95 Pro version is the one you want if you're a developer, though: it lets you create your own objects and themes, and program them using VBScript or JScript, and export them as standalone programs (incorporating a runtime version of the DesktopX engine). The programming interface is quite simple to deal with; it's largely based in setting properties in dialog boxes. A color-coded script editor lets you deal with customizing behavior. I installed a copy on my Windows XP text box, and it wasn't long before I was happily creating popup menus, mucking around with transparent animating icons, and otherwise drifting away from the Windows user interface standards.

Although one thinks of utilities like DesktopX as being "just for fun," I can see a couple of possibilities for using it in commercial settings. Its ability to effectively hide and completely customize the Windows user interface means that it would be a very nice way to build sexy-looking kiosk applications, for example. I also think there might be a niche for catering to power users who want a bit more at their fingertips than Windows provides out of the box - though here you're competing with the thousands of free themes available on WinCustomize. There's also the possibility of providing simple applications as DesktopX widgets (precompiled applications with the runtime included). In any case, DesktopX combines a smooth engine for customizing Windows (I didn't see any glitches at all in my testing) with a simple and easy programming interface. And heck, in the end it's fun too.

Click for larger screenshot

The Daily Grind 645

by Mike Gunderloy
15 June 2005

Spring is finally in the air here, now that it's only a week until summer.

Software

Shavlik HFNetChkPro 5.1 - Shavlik's commercial patch-management solution is moving beyond Microsoft products to support FireFox, RealPlayer, and various Adobe products as well.
DataDirect XQuery™ Beta Program - Now open for registration.
VB's *My* for C# Developers - As if we really needed a That class.
IronPython 0.7.6 - Another alpha build of Microsoft's Python for .NET.
OpenSolaris - Well, if you're really interested in Sun's Solaris operating system, now you can get a big chunk of it as open source.
IconPackager - Commercial app to change all of the system icons on your Windows XP/2000/ME/98 PC at one fell swoop.
Microsoft RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer for Windows XP - New digital camera software for Windows XP SP2.

Information

StrikeIron U.S. Census Information Premium Web Service - StrikeIron has added a boatload of census data to their already-extensive array of charge-per-use Web services.
Overloading Operators in VB.NET 2.0 - Paul Kemmel explains how it works.

Community

11 Clients You Need To Fire Right Now - Christopher Hawkins offers some advice on which consulting clients to throw back into the pond.
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Book Review: Data Crunching

Data Crunching, $29.95
by Greg Wilson
Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2005
207 pages
Examples for Windows and *nix
http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/gwd/index.html

The subtitle of this one is "Solving Everyday Problems Using Java, Python, and More." No, that doesn't mean that this book will help you find the keys that you lost or cook up that pork roast for dinner. Instead, Wilson delves into the little ways that good programmers use software to help out in the passing tasks of the day - munging a legacy data file to fit a new format, ferreting some information out of a crash log, checking that the data in an XML file is internally consistent. These are the tasks that get performed once or twice and then never repeated, so they don't warrant going through an entire design and development cycle with a UML diagrams and a sturdy language. But they also don't warrant wasting your time with a text editor and manual cut-and-paste. Between the two extremes lies a happy medium of little one-off programs the run quickly and do the job a single time, and that's what this book is about.

Wilson starts by looking at techniques for handling plain text files, with advice on such topics as handling multiline records and using Unix shell tools instead of writing code at all. He then delves into basic regular expression use, and looks at tools for simple XML processing (concentrating on DOM and SAX, with a nod to XSLT). He discusses techniques for handling binary data and the bits of SQL that will get you through 80% of what you'll ever need to do with relational databases, and ends with a chapter of "horseshoe nails", talking about unit testing, encoding issues, dates and times, and other odds and ends.

More than a book of particular techniques, this is a book of attitudes. Wilson has (like most experienced programmers) written a whole heap of these little programs, and he's drawn soem general conclusions about what works (normalizing data rather than duplicating lookup tables, for example). Even if you don't like his particular toolset (perhaps you prefer a copy of SnippetCompiler and write C# console applications for your quick crunching needs), the general lessons about the shape of a sensibly robust crunching program will carry over. Recommended for anyone whose job delivers them a steady stream of interruptions and small unplanned problems to deal with.