You've reached the internet home of Chris Sells, who has a long history as a contributing member of the Windows developer community. He enjoys long walks on the beach and various computer technologies.
Friday, Mar 5, 2004, 11:50 AM in Tools
Reimplementing Mike's cmdline Utility using WMI
Here.
In early 2000, Mike Woodring moved Heaven and Earth to write a tool that would inject a DLL into a process's memory for purposes of finding the command line with which the process was launched. While hanging around Don and Tim this week, Don was all hot on WMI, so we fired it up in .NET and rebuilt Mike's tool like so:
using System;
using System.Management;
class cmdline {
static void
if( args.Length != 1 ) {
Console.WriteLine("usage: cmdline <processId>");
return;
}
ManagementObject obj =
new ManagementObject(string.Format("Win32_Process.Handle=\"{0}\"", args[0]));
Console.WriteLine(obj.Properties["CommandLine"].Value);
}
}
This makes WMI pretty darn cool in my book. I'll be reading Jon Fancey's article on WMI + .NET in the latest MSDN Magazine.
BTW, I have to admit that I'm nowhere near as manly as Mike. I'll take this sissy code any day. : )
Monday, Feb 23, 2004, 7:50 PM in Tools
Genghis v0.5 On the Way, But Baby First
Here.
For those folks asking, another drop of Genghis is on the way, which includes an HTML link class that handles links for you, a user-sizeable panel, a gradient progress bar, a completely revamped FileDocument and a host of fixes and enhancements, including stacking support and terminal server support for toast windows. However, before that can come, Mike Marshall, the Genghis build-master, stopped to email me about the impending arriving of his first child. Now *that's* dedication! I doubt if I'd stop to email any of the folks in charge of the shared source projects I'm involved with on the way to the hospital... : )
Tuesday, Feb 17, 2004, 11:55 AM in Tools
The Facts About The Windows Source Code Posting
MS's official word on what happened with the illegal source code posting and what we're doing about it.
Friday, Jan 9, 2004, 3:57 PM in Tools
My First .NET Tool Gets An Update
Here.
Given Aaron's wonderful set of .NET XML tools, I don't know why Tony Malandain found my little xmlValid tool for checking XML well-formedness and schema validness, but he did and then added the ability to take XML input from stdin (he apparently uses it to check compressed SVG files).
What makes this kind of unusual is that I built this tool almost 2.5 years ago. In fact, it was the first .NET tool I posted on my site. Before that, it was all C++ and COM, although almost none of that has gone up since. It was kind of fun digging into that code again. I spent a bunch of time rearranging it to map more closely to my current .NET coding style not because it added any more functionality but because I couldn't stand not to. This developer thing is just a sickness, isn't it? : )
Friday, Jan 2, 2004, 1:20 PM in Tools
ImCli Classes Updated for MSNP8
Here.
Plenty of folks have asked for updates to my IM client classes to support the new MSNP8 protocol, but only Robert M. Wagner Jr. made the changes and sent them to me. Thanks, Robert!
Tuesday, Dec 9, 2003, 8:36 PM in Tools
Learn the new VC++ from the master
I used to brag that, unlike most C++ programmers, I learned C++ directly from the CFRONT 2.0 release notes and not from Stanley Lippman (his C++ Primer is a key part of C++ canon law). That boast came to a screeching halt when I had Stan in one of my COM courses and he revealed that he'd written the CFRONT 2.0 release notes.
And as if teaching the world C++ wasn't enough, now that he works at Microsoft on the new Visual C++ and it's new support for the .NET Framework in "Whidbey," he's started a blog to teach the world now only how VC++'s new tracking handle syntax (aka "hat") but more importantly to point out *why* the VC++ went in this new direction.
And I can't imagine someone I'd rather learn it from.
Wednesday, Nov 26, 2003, 9:36 AM in Tools
WinForms SDI and MDI wizards?
Here. I noticed that Stephane Rodriguez put an SDI and MDI wizard up on CodeProject. I've been *dying* for those forever, but I couldn't get his to work. Anyone come up with a simplified set up for them? Anyone interested in porting them to Genghis?
Wednesday, Nov 26, 2003, 8:47 AM in Tools
WksSync Updated
Here. Ethan Brown has done a massive update to the wkssync tool, the command line tool for accessing source from GotDotNet workspaces. Thanks, Ethan!
Tuesday, Nov 25, 2003, 1:01 PM in Tools
ADO.NET CSV File Tester
Here. I wrote CsvFileTester to explore the ADO.NET/ODBC/JET support for CSV files and I was amazed at how comprehensive the support was. And, since I can never remember the syntax and limitations between one use of Jet expression syntax and the next, I put a bunch of samples into the program itself.
Tuesday, Nov 25, 2003, 12:00 AM in Tools
ADO.NET CsvFileTester
CsvFileTester is a tool inspired by Shawn Wildermuth's ExcelFileTester, which he wrote 'cuz I kept asking him how to do queries on .xls files. However, because the Excel query language has no where or order by clauses, I gave that up in favor of comma-separated text files.
I wrote CsvFileTester (with Shawn's help) to explore the ADO.NET/ODBC/JET support for CSV files and I was amazed at how comprehensive the support was. And, since I can never remember the syntax and limitations between one use of Jet expression syntax and the next, I put a bunch of samples in the combobox.
Enjoy.
Friday, Nov 7, 2003, 2:19 PM in Tools
The Visual C++ Team Wants You!
Here. The VC++ team has a bunch of cool work they need doing and they're looking for candidates. Don't be shy. Apply today! And if http://microsoft.com/jobs is too slow for you, feel free to send your resume and a bottle of Scotch (OK, that last part is optional : ) to Terry Leeper, a friend of mine on the VS team desperate for help: tleeper@microsoft.com.
Monday, Nov 3, 2003, 10:45 AM in Tools
XmlSerializer Workshop
Here. Simon Steele has posted a most excellent tool for digging through an assembly of .NET types trying to build XML serializers for them. This helps you to figure out which classes are going to succeed at design-time instead of at run-time and shows you what's wrong. Much cooler than my silly command line app. Thanks, Simon!
Saturday, Oct 25, 2003, 10:04 AM in Tools
Another .NET Regular Expression Tool
Here. Regular Expressions seems a popular thing to build a tool around. The Regular looks cool. They all look cool. Why weren't any of these tools around when I started building RegexD?!?
Saturday, Sep 6, 2003, 10:14 AM in Tools
Are You Missing Out on Code Generation?
Here. Oh, sure, I built an entire codegen product a number of years ago. Would it have hurt folks to get excited about it then?!? : )
Wednesday, Aug 6, 2003, 12:00 AM in Tools
.NET FormatDesigner
FormatDesigner is an application to experiment with the format strings used to format data in String.Format and various type's ToString functions.
Click here to launch the application directly (requires the .NET Framework 1.1).
Click here to download the source code.
Enjoy.