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Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Html Agility Pack

This is an agile HTML parser that builds a read/write DOM and supports plain XPATH or XSLT (you actually don't HAVE to understand XPATH nor XSLT to use it, don't worry...). It is a .NET code library that allows you to parse "out of the web" HTML files. The parser is very tolerant with "real world" malformed HTML. The object model is very similar to what proposes System.Xml, but for HTML documents (or streams).
Sample applications:

  • Page fixing or generation. You can fix a page the way you want, modify the DOM, add nodes, copy nodes, well... you name it.
  • Web scanners. You can easily get to img/src or a/hrefs with a bunch XPATH queries.
  • Web scrapers. You can easily scrap any existing web page into an RSS feed for example, with just an XSLT file serving as the binding. An example of this is provided.

 

Download Html Agility Pack

[Via Roy Osherove's Blog]

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

How to capture the form and save it to a bitmap

The following example source code shows how to capture the form and save it to a bitmap. Hope you find it useful.

Point point = new Point();
Rectangle rectangle
= new Rectangle(point, this.Size);
Bitmap bitmap
=
new Bitmap(rectangle.Width, rectangle.Height, PixelFormat.Format32bppRgb);
// render the form to the bitmap
this.DrawToBitmap(bitmap, rectangle);
bitmap.Save(
@"d:\MyForm.bmp");

ReSharper 2.5

ReSharper 2.5 is an add-in to Visual Studio 2005. Besides further improvement of ReSharper 2.0 stability and performance in all areas, the new version provides a number of new features:

 

  • Navigate from here - You can view the possible navigation destinations from the place where the caret currently rests
  • Enabling and disabling context actions
  • New context actions and quick fixes
  • Value analysis - Use these options to define the means of code inspections: lists of assertion and terminating methods, and code annotations.
  • Code preview in the Find Results window - Results of usages search display in the Find Results window that enables you to perform a number of actions.

Monday, December 04, 2006

HnD - Customer Support Server

HnD is a Customer Support system, integrating helpdesk features and a forum system, and was built as an example of what you can do with LLBLGen Pro.

 

It's been released as open source software (using the GPL v2 license) and you can download and use it for free.

Requirements

To successfully install HnD, you need to have the following installed / available to you on the webserver:
  • .NET 2.0
  • IIS 5 or higher with ASP.NET 2.0 installed
  • Access to an SMTP server

HnD stores its data in a database, and you can use Microsoft SqlServer 7 / 2000/ 2005 / Express or MSDE.

Features

  • Unlimited forums can be organised into as many sections as you like.
  • Both public and private forums using role-based security
  • Queueing facility for support teams, enabling claiming questions and moving threads between queues. Threads can be auto-queued through forum settings.
  • Role-based security system for easy right management
  • Flexible attachment system for messages which is configurable per forum and user role.
  • Attachment approval system for moderators.
  • Editing all messages, editing thread properties and closing and moving threads for moderators.
  • Powerful search facility utilizing SqlServer's full-text search.
  • Native ASP.NET 2.0 code written in C#
  • Using LLBLGen Pro v2.0 for all data-access functionality.
  • Standard UBB message formatting with various font styles and sizes as well as allowing quoting, code display, attachments and automatic URL linking.
  • Email notification of replies to your topics.
  • Allows fine grained control over access to viewing, posting, replying, marking threads as 'done', thread memos and many other options.
  • Personal profile creation and management.
  • Administration centre with forum and section setup, complete group and member management, extensive ban management, support queue management, role management, mass emailing of groups and users by the administrator and many other options.
  • Complete control of fonts and colors by ASP.NET 2.0 theme support.
  • Open source, so changes and additions can be easily implemented.
  • And many more...

 

[Via Roy Osherove's Blog]

Paint.NET v3.0 Beta 1 is now available!

Change log:

  • New effect: Clouds
  • New menu command: Edit->Fill Selection (shortcut key: Backspace). This will fill any selected area with the primary color.
  • New toolbar item / hotkey: The brush size may be manipulated with +/- buttons in the toolbar. Hotkeys for this are [ and ], and you may hold Ctrl to increment or decrement by 5.
  • New translations: They are not complete yet, and in fact some have just been started. They are mostly in place right now in order to get the code correct: Chinese (Simplified), French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portugese, and Spanish. You will have the ability to choose one of these languages during installation, and from the Help->Language menu, but the text will still be either mostly or completely English. Complete translations will be finished by February.
  • Added left-handed shortcut keys for Cut (Shift+Del), Copy (Ctrl+Ins), Paste (Shift+Ins)
  • Upper-left coordinate of selection is now displayed in the status bar
  • When moving text with the Text tool, the anchor point coordinate is now displayed in the status bar
  • Fixed: In high-DPI mode (120dpi), the color swatch would translate the mouse location to the wrong color palette entry
  • Fixed: Alpha-channel handling for bicubic and super-sampling image resampling methods
  • Fixed: Very slow download speeds for updates in Vista
  • Fixed: In Vista, the updater would relaunch Paint.NET with the same administrator privileges that the installer executed in. Now it will relaunch Paint.NET with the pre-elevation user and privilege level. Note that this fix will not be apparent until the next update to Paint.NET.
  • Fixed some layout and rendering issues with the floating tool windows in Vista
  • Fixed a rendering issue with the font selection dropdown list
  • Fixed a performance issue with the font selection dropdown list in Vista
  • Right-clicking on a color in the palette will now set the secondary color
  • Palette files now allow comments to be placed after color values
  • Fixed: If Edit->Paste in to New Image was pasting a bitmap with transparency (from Paint.NET), it would have a white background instead of a transparent background.
  • Fixed: Right-clicking on a .PDN file in Explorer and then selecting "Print" would not work if Paint.NET was already open
  • Fixed over 10 user-reported crash bugs
  • Fixed several out-of-memory crashes
  • Fixes for many other miscellaneous, mostly minor, bugs

    You can download it at http://www.getpaint.net/files/PaintDotNet_3_0_Beta1.exe

    [Via Rick Brewster's blog]

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