disable venkman output to console

Venkman produces a lot of output to console which makes it hard to see the output from your extensions. To disable output from venkman, you can update venkman_utils.js in venkman.jar by replacing dd function with an empty function dd = function (){};

debug output from firefox extension

Start firefox with -console flag

Call dumpln function from your code (copy of code from venkman)

var dumpln;

if (typeof document == "undefined") /* in xpcshell */
{
    dumpln = print;
}
else
{
    if (typeof dump == "function") {
        dumpln = function (str) {dump (str + "\n");}
    } else if (jsenv.HAS_RHINO) {
        dumpln = function (str) {
                     var out = java.lang.System.out;
                     out.println(str); out.flush();
                 }
    }
    else {
        dumpln = function () {} /* no suitable function */
    }
}

Firefox vs Chrome #2

Made another attempt to use Chrome 2.x and 3.x. Layout issues seems to be fixed. However there are still problems like
- Navigation back from 404 does not always work (never hit such problems in FF)
- Adding RSS to google reader is not supported

Back to FF.

Windows7. Disable hiding windows during Alt-Tab

Win7 alt-tab hides windows after few seconds timeout. To disable this behavior uncheck “Enable Aero Peek” in the performance dialog.

FireFox vs Chrome

After trying Chrome for a week I got back to FireFox. Main problems with Chrome are
- Increased battery usage. Battery time decreases ~30% when Chrome is running. Does not happen for FF on the same sites
- Chrome renders some sites (like google reader) differently than IE / FF
- Address bar shows prompt for visited sites instead of typed sides like FF.
- In the default configuration does not allow to subscribe to RSS feeds. Shows XML dump in a window

myDock 0.9.1051 is released

New version is available on alexezh.googlepages.com. Update includes minor fixes.

Subsclass UserControl in SilverLight

By default Expression creates custom controls derived from UserControls

partial class MyControl : UserControl
{
}

In order to derive from a different class you will have to change code in several places

Define new base class with required virtual methods. Do not make class abstract

public class MyUserControl : UserControl
{
public virtual void Foo() {;}
}

Change MyControl to use MyUserControl

partial class MyControl : UserControl
{
public override void Foo() {;}
}

Change XAML for MyControl to use

&ltMyUserControl x:Class=”MyControl”&gt
&lt/MyUserControl&gt

To make Blend happy, add following lines to AssemblyInfo.cs

// Make blend happy
using System.Windows.Markup;
[assembly: XmlnsDefinition("http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007", "YourNamespace")]

Better version of VS windows hiding tool

Remembers which windows were shown the last time. Source is available at http://alexezh.googlepages.com/MyMacros.txt

Optimize VS workspace by hiding tool windows

Simple macro toggles all tool windows

Dim showToolWindows As Integer Public Sub MyToggleToolWindows() If (showToolWindows = 1) Then showToolWindows = 0 Else showToolWindows = 1 End If For Each window As Window In DTE.Windows ‘ Check that this is a tool window and not a document window. If (window.Document Is Nothing) Then ‘ hide window. Try window.Visible = showToolWindows Catch exception As Exception End Try End If Next End Sub

SL unmanaged helpers on codeplex

I posted updated version of unmanaged helpers for accessing SL object model. With helpers you can write code in C++ which matches C# or jscript.

For example here is how to add an event handler to an object

vObj.addEventListener(L”MouseEnter”,
CXcpDelegateT(CObject)::create(this, &CObject::OnMouseEnter));

Source code is available on http://www.codeplex.com/mydock