Tips - eCraft Labs

Update about Snoop

2010-03-29T07:02:52.553

A couple of days after my last post about tools for WPF debugging, I got the word that Snoop has been made open source and released on Codeplex. There are versions for both 32- and 64-bit systems, and even WPF 4.0 is supported.

This version of Snoop is based on version 2 of the original Snoop and contains a merge of the improvements done by different people, so it supports on-the-fly editing of properties, WPF interop scenarios (WPF hosting Windows Forms or vice versa), bug fixes including support for visual trees with more that 255 levels, among other improvements. Check out Cory Plotts’ blog post about the release.

Tools for WPF debugging

2010-02-08T10:47:27.117

Just a short note about a couple of tools I've been using when developing WPF applications. Please refer to the links for more information about the tools.

Snoop provides visual debugging of WPF applications at runtime.

Crack.NET is a runtime debugging and scripting tool. Also supports Windows Forms applications.

Mole is a Visual Studio visualizer allowing unlimited drilling into objects and sub-objects.

Due to the way the hooks are written, neither Snoop nor Crack.NET will work on 64-bit processes. However, there is an x64 version of Snoop available on Dan’s IK Blog (there is an updated version here). This version is based on an earlier version of Snoop where property value editing is supported, so even though you’re living in a 32-bit world, you can take advantage of this version.

Check them out!

Disable hotkey for Microsoft Groove

2010-01-07T10:46:20.423

Microsoft Office Groove has a nifty little hotkey. If you press shift twice, a dialog comes up to let you write a message. This is even more annoying than the accessibility sticky keys or filter keys dialog. And guess what, there is no way to disable the hotkey in the user interface! I haven’t found the place to do it at least.

I got so annoyed with this that I asked our internal IT support how to disable it. The answer was that you have to edit the registry.

Here are the instructions I got. And remember, all the normal disclaimers apply: It is dangerous to modify the registry if you don’t know what you’re doing! We are not responsible for any damage that may occur if you try to follow these instructions. With that out of the way, here’s the information you have been waiting for.

Make sure that Groove is shut down
Locate the path HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Groove
If this does not contain a sub key called InstaGroove, then create it
For the InstaGroove key, create a new DWORD Value called DisableHotkey
Set the value data to 1
Start Groove and verify that pressing shift twice does not pop up the message any more

Really simple, right?