New Stuff
Resources for Your Developer Toolbox
Nancy Michell
Contents
Enforce Cross-Team Coding Standards
Read RSS Feeds on TV
Ready-Built ASP.NET Components
Powerful Listboxes at Your Disposal
Keep an Eye on Your Network
User-Managed Logon Credentials
Manage Your Internet Passwords Safely
Get More Out of Your Windows Clipboard
Get Clean Screen Shots for Technical Documentation
Enforce Cross-Team Coding Standards
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FlexiSoft Solutions Inc. has just released the latest version of their coding standards enforcement tool, Standards Master 2004, an add-in for Visual Studio® .NET. Standards Master 2004 brings many of the best features of Standards Master 2.0 to Visual Studio .NET and adds several new features to easily enforce standards compliance.
Standards Master 2004 checks your .NET-based code against flexible, configurable coding standards that you define, reporting any violations it finds. It supports just about any naming convention and can even correct the names of your variables automatically as you type. Improved suggestion logic provides numerous choices for violations. When you have misnamed an identifier, simply choose one of the corrected names from the list of suggestions and Standards Master 2004 does the rest.
With Standards Master 2004 you may also define and enforce dozens of code construction standards, including checks for use of gotos, required exception handling logic, lines per file/class/function limits, and many more. Standards Master 2004 can fix many coding standards violations in your code automatically.
In addition to its standards checking options, Standards Master 2004 also includes a full-featured commenting tool, allowing developers to insert header comments (flowerboxes), revision histories, and inline comments at the touch of a button. The new Comment All functionality searches your code for missing comments and prompts you to enter them as needed.
Standards Master 2004 also includes a robust code formatting tool that allows you to indent and unindent your code in a consistent fashion, based upon the options you define. Automatic whitespace control, region creation, and outlining features keep your code neat and tidy.
https://www.flexisoftsolutions.com
Read RSS Feeds on TV
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NewsGator Technologies has just launched NewsGator Media Center Edition, which allows users to read syndicated content feeds on their television with Windows® XP Media Center Edition. Both text and multimedia content is supported, with an interface designed to be used with a remote control.
Audio and video content is only one click away. Users see visual cues when a feed contains multimedia content; they can then instantly view this content using the remote control. There are a number of featured feeds for the launch, including a video feed from Microsoft.
Users typically use more than one device throughout the day, such as Outlook® at work, a mobile phone on the road, a Web browser in their home office, and a TV in their living room. NewsGator Online Services allows users to read one set of syndicated content from any of these devices, without any duplication.
The deep integration of technologies like XML and RSS, combined with rich multimedia, and presented on a device as pervasive as the television, gives consumers access to the information they care about, where and when they want to view it, truly delivering on the vision of a connected home.
NewsGator Online Services also includes three other content reader editions: Web Edition, POP Edition, and Mobile Edition. The service also provides subscriber-only content, as well as the ability to search for content that matches a specific keyword or URL, and return that content in a feed.
https://services.newsgator.com
Ready-Built ASP.NET Components
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As an ASP programmer you've no doubt noticed that many of the functions and features of the desktop development environment are not available in ASP.NET. In order to implement many of the user interface features provided in desktop languages, you would normally use DHTML and JavaScript.
But using DHTML means that if you're new to ASP.NET you not only have to get up to speed with the many changes in the latest version of Visual Studio such as the big leap from ADO to ADO.NET, the syntax changes, and so forth, but you also need to learn JavaScript and DHTML. That is where the idea for ASPXpand came from.
ASPXpand is a server-side .NET component from Can't Be Done Software that does the DHTML dirty work for you. ASPXpand is a library of functions that literally expands the capability of the native ASP.NET components and includes some vital, missing features for the codebehind environment. The goal of this component is to provide a wide variety of functions that are very useful and flexible.
Flexibility is apparent in the data entry functions, which can perform validation of content, among other tasks; in visual functions that can resize windows, provide tooltips, and set the focus; and in non-visual functions that can export data to XML, add events, and lots more.
ASPXpand allows developers to worry less about interfacing questions and focus more on learning the many new changes to their development environment.
Powerful Listboxes at Your Disposal
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EasyListBox, recently released by EasyListBox.com, is a custom control that helps ASP.NET developers build cross-browser listbox applications in very little time, with very little code. The Microsoft® Internet Explorer rendering engine provides features that have been sought after for years, like multiple columns, HTML and image support, combobox functionality, and cooperation with overlapping DHTML.
Version 2 provides dependent lists and linked lists with absolutely no code to write. Extra add-on controls like the ActionButton and DisplayField give even more power to the user with no additional time investment.
Keep an Eye on Your Network
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PAC Software has released Network Console to help network managers monitor the status of their networks. When a failure occurs, information about it is displayed graphically in the Network Console window, and an alarm message can be sent to e-mail addresses, pagers, cell phones, and other devices so network managers can respond immediately rather than waiting for users to report an outage.
Network Console allows managers to draw a chart showing the nodes in their network and how they are connected. The chart shows a real-time view of the status of each node, with failing nodes displayed in yellow or red. Network managers can view the chart from any Windows-based computer in the network or from a Web browser.
In addition to displaying the status of the network, Network Console sends alarms to system managers whenever nodes change status. Network Console can test the status of network nodes through simple pings, or by opening sockets to test such services as HTTP, FTP, and SMTP.
Administrators can customize the frequency of testing for each node, as well as how long a failure must persist before an alarm is sent. Although Network Console can only be run on Windows-based computers, it is not limited to testing Windows nodes—any node can be tested if it can ping or open a socket.
https://www.NetworkConsole.com
User-Managed Logon Credentials
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Wouldn't it be great if your users were able to recover their own forgotten passwords without having to call helpdesk? The folks at ANIXIS thought so, so they have released ANIXIS Password Reset v. 1.0 for Windows. The software package lets users manage their own access credentials by initially asking them a number of personal questions and hashing the answers to those questions. The number of questions is configurable and can range from one to ten.
Later, when a user forgets his password, he is asked to answer the questions. The answers are then hashed and those hashes are compared with the ones stored. For safety, Password Reset does not store the users' passwords or the answers to their questions, just the hashes of each user's answers.
Password Reset saves money with minimal implementation and maintenance costs. There are no database engines to patch or upgrade, and no third-party runtime programs to install. In addition, system overhead is reduced because users can simply use a standard Web browser to access Password Reset.
ANIXIS Password Reset v. 1.0 runs on Windows NT® 4.0, Windows 2000, and Windows Server™ 2003.
Manage Your Internet Passwords Safely
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TK8 Productions has released TK8 Safe, a password manager for Windows that makes it easy to safely store and retrieve user IDs, passwords, serial numbers, and other confidential information required by Internet sites and software applications. All of your private information is stored in a single, encrypted database, and is accessible only to its owner. Unlike password managers that are difficult and time-consuming to use, TK8 Safe's intuitive interface and extra features make it simple to sort, search, and use the confidential information you need.
TK8 Safe's autofill feature lets you log in to password-protected Web pages automatically by locating the required entry and answering the login prompt for you. This feature works with all browsers and programs that ask for passwords. Alternatively, you can click the Web site's URL and use traditional cut-and-paste operations for your passwords.
For ongoing protection, you can lock your password file or set a timer so that the file locks itself during periods of inactivity. With its multi-user support, TK8 Safe can be used in the office, classroom, family room, or any setting where several people need to use a single computer. TK8 Safe runs on all versions of Windows from Windows 95 and above.
Get More Out of Your Windows Clipboard
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How often do you wish you could recover data left on your Windows clipboard before you logged off? With X2Net SmartBoard V4, from X2Net Limited, you and your users can recover that data and even share clipboard contents with other users. This major revision of the utility that enhances the capabilities of the Windows clipboard provides significant new functionality including full multi-user capability and a completely revamped user interface.
X2Net SmartBoard's basic function is to extend the data storage capabilities of the Windows clipboard, storing multiple items even across a Windows restart. All clipboard formats are supported. Captured clipboard items can be organized using the familiar folder and subfolder concept.
X2Net SmartBoard is the ideal repository for commonly used boilerplate text items that you'll paste into a document over and over again. In addition it has spell checking, syntax highlighting, speech, text reformatting, clip analysis, rule processing, and a host of other features. Its capabilities can be extended using scripts written in any popular scripting language.
Get Clean Screen Shots for Technical Documentation
TNT Screen Capture, recently released by EC Software, is a screen capture and image editing tool designed to create enhanced screenshots for technical documentation and illustration.
The tool captures virtually everything from application interfaces to parts of the desktop to popup menus. Available options allow you to add soft shadows, cursor symbols, and image effects like a roughly cut paper edge. An easy screen capture wizard guides you through these options for a positive experience even at the very first try.
Once you take the screen shot, you can add text, bubbles, frames, icons, symbols, and other images quickly from a tool window. Every object has a variety of shadow and transparency options, including a fading semi-transparent overlay. The program also includes standard image manipulation functions for resize and crop, as well as color and effects filters.
TNT Screen Capture even includes a built-in raytracing unit that renders a screenshot in 3D. This is not the usual skew function that you find in many image editors. It is a simple but very efficient raytracer that lets you rotate the screenshot, move the camera, turn lights on and off, and adjust shadows and surface reflection. The result is a screen shot that looks photorealistic, especially on a white background. When you're ready to save, a variety of formats are supported, including bitmap, JPEG, PNG, and TIFF.
TNT Screen Capture runs under all versions of Windows from Windows 95 and above.
Send your New Stuff to newstuff@microsoft.com.
Nancy Michell is a developmental editor at MSDN Magazine where she spends her time manipulating bits of string literals for the good of mankind.