Laurent Duveau : Tools

[Cool tool] Silverlight Spy

pluginbaby — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 02:24:13 GMT

Silverlight Spy is a ~~free~~(*) tool that allows you to inspect any online Silverlight app.

Just launch it and point to a web page with a Silverlight app, then you can:

Explore the XAP package
Isolated Storage use
Monitor performance
Browse the UI visual and logical tree
Examine objects

Here is a screen shot of the app that shows the UI inspection (Live XAML outline):

You can even decompile code inside the dll, for that you need Reflector installed, then go to Tools / Options to configure it:

It also comes with a tool to check Cross Domain policy files:

This pane shows some info and interesting warnings:

Try Silverlight Spy

You can install it online via ClickOnce:

http://silverlightspy.com/silverlightspy/download-silverlight-spy/

(*) Silverlight Spy now has a version 3 which won’t be free as soon as it leaves beta mode.
As seen on the website: ”Silverlight Spy 2 is no longer maintained and will be phased out eventually.”

My blog in French, or Spanish, or Chinese, or…?

pluginbaby — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 21:25:39 GMT

Use the Microsoft Translator Widget to translate your web site!

Microsoft Translator team has announced a translator widget for web pages at MIX09 (Surprisingly this is not a Windows Live Something…). The Microsoft Translator web page widget allows you to bring real-time, in-place translations to your web site. It uses the Microsoft Translator AJAX API, which was also announced at MIX09, and is a small, customizable widget that you can place on your web page and it helps you instantly makes the page available in multiple languages. Users can hover over the translation to see the original content!

I have put the widget on this blog and it seems to be working pretty well! The only drawback is the translation quality… far from perfect, but on this side there will always be something to improve!

The widget is currently in private Technology Preview and will be available at:
http://www.microsofttranslator.com/Widget/

The TechEd 2008 North America DVD fix you’ve been waiting for!

pluginbaby — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 15:35:01 GMT

I made a little tool to fix the TechEd 2008 North America DVD player because it was built for Silverlight 2 beta 2, no more working now.

The tool generates a fixed htm page that will play the content on your DVD. No need to burn new DVDs.

> Download link:

Instructions:

Download and unzip in a folder.
Run TechEd2008DVDfix.exe, select your DVD drive and click OK.
This will generates 2 htm files (Developers.htm and ITPro.htm) and launch the first one in your browser.
Insert the requested TechEd DVD in your drive.
Enjoy!

Please read notes bellow.

Note 1:
The htm page try to access a local Silverlight app so you’ll probably need to “Allow Blocked Content…” in IE yellow security bar at the top.

Note 2:
You just need to run the app once. Then you can use your local htm files to see DVDs content, no need to burn a new set of DVDs!

Note 3:
I added a menu at the top right of the page so you can navigate from Developers DVDs (1 to 5) to ITPro DVDs (6 to 9).

Note 4:
Do not use the Default.htm in your DVD anymore! Use the local htm files only.

Technorati Tags: TechEd 2008

[Cool Tool] ZoomIt gets an update!

pluginbaby — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 21:01:12 GMT

ZoomIt is a must have free tool for speakers and presenters!

Introduction

“ZoomIt is screen zoom and annotation tool for technical presentations that include application demonstrations. ZoomIt runs unobtrusively in the tray and activates with customizable hotkeys to zoom in on an area of the screen, move around while zoomed, and draw on the zoomed image.” (from the author’s website)

What’s new ?

“This major update to ZoomIt, the Sysinternals screen magnification and annotation utility, adds a LiveZoom mode on Windows Vista and higher, allows you to change the typing and break timer font, adds the ability to copy the magnified screen to the clipboard with Ctrl+C, and introduces a new configuration interface.” (from the author’s website)

Download it for free

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/bb897434.aspx

[via Eric Moreau]

[Cool Tool] Silverlight Defaul Style Browser

pluginbaby — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 21:52:21 GMT

SilverlightDefaultStyleBrowser is a free WPF tool by David Anson that allows you to inspect the styles and templates of the Silverlight controls.

Follow this link to learn more and download the app:
http://blogs.msdn.com/delay/archive/2008/09/26/preserving-access-to-silverlight-2-s-generic-xaml-resources-silverlightdefaultstylebrowser-updated-for-the-silverlight-2-rc.aspx

Technorati Tags: Silverlight

[Cool Tool] Microsoft Office Labs: pptPlex

pluginbaby — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 21:40:01 GMT

“pptPlex is a plug-in to PowerPoint that explores an alternate method for presenting a slide deck. Using pptPlex, you can present your slides as a tour through a zoomable canvas instead of a series of linear slides.”

I tried it and what I found interesting is that pptPlex allows you to group your slides in sections, then you can move slide after slide, and from one section to another with nice animations.

pptPlex comes with several pre-defined backgrounds for your whole deck:

Download and try it for free:
http://www.officelabs.com/projects/pptPlex/Pages/default.aspx

IE8 beta 2: shit that’s good!

pluginbaby — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 05:56:55 GMT

Downloaded it
Installed it
Love it!

www.microsoft.com/ie8

Unlike beta 1, I am gladly surprised by this version!
IE8 really improve the way you browse the web.

The IE team seems to have listened to users more than usual, did a strong research on how people browse the web, and as a result worked a lot on user experience.

First we have a wonderful new tab experience. I am a really heavy tab user, usually after 5 minutes of surfing I have more than 25 tabs opened and my browser start to freeze (I have IE taking 400 MB of memory more than often).

Related tabs are grouped by color, that means all the tabs opened from links on one tab are identified with the same color.
Tabs are more isolated from each other so crashes won’t stop your browsing session anymore.
You can reopen closed tabs, or even your entire last browsing session!

New tab menu:

Related tabs grouped by color:

IE8 also brings nice features I was waiting for (often copied from Firefox):

Find as you type! at least!!!!! I use it every time so I had to install an addin before.

The Search bar also search in your favorites (and history and feeds).

Developers tools: this is a slightly different version of the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar which is now built-in.

I won’t detail but you will also find other features to make your daily browsing more efficient, like Web Slices and Accelerators (new name for Activities).

Conclusions:

After MIX conference my advice to people was to install the beta 1 in a VPC only because it was developers oriented only and not very user friendly. After a few hours I can tell that IE8 beta 2 is safe ton install on your machine. For those who wonder, beta 2 is much more responsive than beta 1, which is not difficult..

Can’t wait for the final version!

Technorati Tags: Internet Explorer,IE8

[Cool Tool] Vector Magic

pluginbaby — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:47:02 GMT

Vector Magic is an online tool that converts bitmaps into vector images. It provides a wizard that helps you through the process, so you can easily generate your vector graphics from bitmaps, then import into Microsoft Expression Designer or Blend. I already used it several times and the results are amazing! It is also impressive to have such a service as a website!

http://vectormagic.com/

First step is to upload your picture (gif or jpg):

At first the tool try to identify your image (logo or photo):

The correct type is automatically selected for you:

Then you match the quality level of your picture:

This step is for logos:

You get a list of colors palettes related to your logo, with the best match selected for you:

Finally the tool vectorizes your image and show a preview of the result with a comparison to the original:

Now you can download your image as a vector file!

Note: this service is not free anymore, but you can try it (upload, vectorize, preview, get unlimited png images and 2 vector results) without any subscription.

Windows Live Writer CTP

pluginbaby — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:08:11 GMT

The CTP of this wonderful blogging tool is now available!
Here is a list of new features:

Video and Image Publishing Enhancements

Upload videos to Soapbox
Image cropping and tilting
Additional border styles (reflection!)
Support for LightBox and other image previewing effects (like Slimbox, Smoothbox, and others)
Support for centering images

Editing Enhancements

Auto Linking
Smart quotes/typographic characters
Word count

UI Improvements

Revised main toolbar
Tabs for view switching
Improved category control with search/filtering

Too bad there is no “Export/Import accounts” feature yet!

>> Download link

Technorati Tags: Windows Live Writer

Useful free online string manipulation tools

pluginbaby — Tue, 13 May 2008 22:11:21 GMT

www.string-functions.com is a set of online string manipulation tools.
Not that it is complex to do by yourself but it can be useful sometimes for quick-edit-stuff.
Direct links to services:

[Cool Tool] FTP Live

pluginbaby — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:35:55 GMT

This is not a "must have" but a "good to know", as it can be pretty useful.

Have you ever been is a situation where you have to upload files to an FTP server but have no access because FTP ports are disable (at work for example) ?

So you can't use any FTP client, even the one in IE, but if you have internet access (at least port 80:web), then you can use ftplive :

www.ftplive.com

With this free online service you can do FTP from your browser, without problems of firewall or ports disabled, and nothing to install.

The only concern is... will you trust a website to get your server/password combination ? you should not.... or at least change your password back home.

[Cool Tool] Meta Tag Analyzer

pluginbaby — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 15:13:39 GMT

Meta Tag Analyzer is a free online tool by SubmitExpress that analyze your web site and tells you how good/relevant your title and description are in relation to your content and chosen keywords.

Try Meta Tag Analyzer:
http://www.submitexpress.com/analyzer/

Features:

- Display tips on how to improve your Meta Tags
- Check the keywords used on the page and find the keyword density
- Check web server operating system where site is hosted
- Check website load time
- Check website file size
- Check URLs and links found on the page

This is my first post on a topic I've been doing for years, developing a high level of expertise: Search engine optimization (SEO). I hope to write more on this!

Technorati Tags: Search engine optimization,SEO,meta tag

[Cool Tool] PhotoZoom

pluginbaby — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 02:14:00 GMT

PhotoZoom is an experimental site developed at Microsoft, running on the Microsoft Live Labs Incubation Platform.

It uses the Deep Zoom technology in Silverlight 2 to create photo albums that you can zoom an pan. This online app take care of processing the images, packages and uploads them to Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live so they are stored "in the cloud".

Please note:

You need Silverlight 2 beta 1
This is not a final product
This may never be a product as is

Check out live my Las Vegas photo Gallery:
http://photozoom.mslivelabs.com/FullscreenZoom.aspx?alias=Laurent&album=1

Disclaimer by Matt Augustine at Microsoft :
"PhotoZoom is an experimental project developed by a small group of Microsoft developers, and it is definitely not an official, supported Microsoft product. Also, I cannot make any guarantees that it will be operational at all times, that it will support a large number of users, etc. This is not an official Microsoft press release and I am not a spokesperson. I can’t make any suggestions about future Microsoft product releases related to this technology or concept. In other words, I hope people will have fun with it, but please set your expectations accordingly."

Technorati Tags: windows live,silverlight,photozoom,deepzoom,las vegas

[Cool Tool] Browsershots

pluginbaby — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 22:13:38 GMT

Browsershots is a free online tool that makes screenshots of your web site in different browsers/versions on multiple platforms (Win, Mac, Linux).

Use it to test the look of your web sites :
http://browsershots.org/

Set your choices then come back later and see the results (here you can see my blog before/after the Opera fix):

On the live app you can click on a picture to get the full version.

Note: IE8 is already available, but no Silverlight yet.

[Cool Tool] Zeta Resource Editor

pluginbaby — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 15:26:51 GMT

Following my Resource Refactoring Tool post, Uwe pointed me to Zeta Resource Editor.

This very nice free win app allows you to easily edit your resx files, each language in the same row!

Download link:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/ZetaResourceEditor.aspx