Chris Hynes's .NET Gallimaufry

Optimize Windows Vista for blazing speed

Chris Hynes — Mon, 18 May 2009 21:17:23 GMT

I was working on one of my old laptops the other day, and realized it seemed just as fast as my newer laptop. The newer box is substantially higher specced - dual core proc, 4GB RAM, nVidia graphics etc. For awhile, I couldn't put my finger on just what the difference was, and then it hit me: the old laptop had Aero turned off. I turned off Aero on the new box and bam, it was noticably more snappy. Windows popped in instantly, menus snapped up with no hesitation. Not just a little improvement, but a drastic improvement in speed. You don't get the glitzy glass interface, but it's definitely worth the graphical loss to have a much faster experience.

I haven't tested this on beefier desktop systems, but it gives a great improvement on laptops.

Here are the steps:

Open the computer settings window (quickest way to do this is to right click on "My Computer" and select "Properties").
Click "Advanced system settings" on the left under Tasks
Go to the Advanced tab
Click the Settings button under the Performance item
On the Visual Effects tab, Select "Adjust for best performance"

This will optimize the visual effects for the best performance, but some important visual effects will be missing - especially font smoothing. To get to the optimal settings, check the following items in the list:

Show preview and filters in folder
Show thumbnails instead of icons
Show window contents while dragging
Smooth edges of screen fonts
Smooth-scroll list boxes

The resulting selection will look like this:

Click the OK button, and Windows will recalibrate itself for the new settings.

Enjoy the new snappier performance!

Test if MasterPage ContentPlaceHolder has content or is empty

Chris Hynes — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:12:01 GMT

UPDATE: Thanks to Jon Hynes of InfoMason, added functionality to support nested master pages. Code updates highlighted.

I've seen several articles on the web that lay out a method for checking to see if a ContentPlaceHolder has any content or is empty. These work some of the time but unfortunately fall down in certain situations – like a placeholder that contains an embedded literal code block for example.

In this case, there is no publicly exposed method that will provide the answer and no way to assemble any information that would tell us whether the ContentPlaceHolder is empty or has content. Fortunately, there is an internal .NET framework property that gives exactly what we need. A little reflection magic and we have a method that works in all circumstances.

The MasterPage has a property called ContentTemplates that is a dictionary of all content templates that have been generated by the content page. If we check this, we can determine whether in fact the ContentPlaceHolder has been overridden by the content page. This, combined with the control check gives us a method that tells us if the ContentPlaceHolder has anything in it.

This means we have three methods that work together to provide the resulting boolean. First, a method to check if there are any non empty controls in the ContentPlaceHolder:

public static bool HasNonEmptyControls(ContentPlaceHolder cph) { if (cph.Controls.Count == 0) { return false; } else if (cph.Controls.Count == 1) { LiteralControl c = cph.Controls[0] as LiteralControl; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(c.Text) || IsWhiteSpace(c.Text)) return false; } return true; } static bool IsWhiteSpace(string s) { for (int i = 0; i < s.Length; i++) if (!char.IsWhiteSpace(s[i])) return false; return true; }

Next, a method to check if the ContentPlaceHolder has a content template defined on the content page:

static readonly Type _masterType = typeof(MasterPage); static readonly PropertyInfo _contentTemplatesProp = _masterType.GetProperty("ContentTemplates", BindingFlags.GetProperty | BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance); public static bool HasContentPageContent(ContentPlaceHolder cph) { IDictionary templates = null; MasterPage master = cph.Page.Master; while (templates == null && master != null) { templates = (IDictionary)_contentTemplatesProp.GetValue(master, null); master = master.Master; } if (templates == null) return false; bool isSpecified = false; foreach (string key in templates.Keys) { if (key == cph.ID) { isSpecified = true; break; } } return isSpecified; }

This is where the reflection comes in. We grab the ContentTemplates dictionary off the MasterPage and check to see if the specified ContentPlaceHolder is defined.

Finally, we call both methods to come to a final determination of whether the ContentPlaceHolder is empty or has content defined:

public static bool HasContentOrControls(ContentPlaceHolder cph) { return HasNonEmptyControls(cph) || HasContentPageContent(cph); }

This code will all run on .NET 2.0 and above. If you are using .NET 3.5, you can use the following extension method to add this to the ContentPlaceHolder itself:

public static bool HasContentOrControls(this ContentPlaceHolder cph) { return MasterHelper.HasContentOrControls(cph); }

MasterHelper source

Blog Moved!

Chris Hynes — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:40:10 GMT

I've moved all my technical posts into this blog -- Chris Hynes's .NET Gallimaufry. The RSS url for this is http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChrisHynes. Company news and related posts will remain at the Krystalware Blog, with RSS here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/krystalware.

Do or do not. There is no try.

Chris Hynes — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 17:49:58 GMT

This was originally going to be a comment on Tynan's post Just Doing It, but it developed into something longer so I decided to do a full blown post here.

I totally agree about the doing without thinking and emotion concept. Just do it. It's a matter of focus and drive. Its not something you're born with, its a skill you develop. Make a goal and outline the steps it takes to get there. Then its simple -- just follow the steps you laid out for yourself.

The key for me is the second step -- making a list of things that need to be done to achieve the goal. Without a list, you can get to nebulous states where you don't really know what to do, don't feel like thinking about what to do, and just end up not doing anything at all. If you keep track of everything that you have to do in detailed lists, you always have something to do. Even if you're not feeling creative, just pick a simple item off the list and do it. Check it off. Once you do one item, more often than not I've found you want to do another. And another. And then you're back in the groove, kicking ass.

I've never been a meticulous kind of person that would keep lists of everything. I'd always prefer to list stuff in my head. I've found that its so valuable, its worth the time to create lists. It keeps you focused on what you're doing, instead of trying to remember stuff you need to do. Everything is all in a list so your brain doesn't have to expend effort subconsciously remembering future tasks.

This is the one recommendation I have: Make a goal and lists the steps to get it done. Then do it. If you've seen me on messenger, you'll know my tagline recently has been (as Yoda said), "Do or do not. There is no try." This is the attitude that breeds success.

Import from Community Server to AspNetForum

Chris Hynes — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:20:21 GMT

UPDATE: Added support for importing tracked forums and topics.

I'm in the process of converting my forums from Community Server to AspNetForum. While CS may support every single feature under the sun, its very big and unwieldly to work with. The more recent 2007 and 2008 versions are better, but still behemoth. I just want to drop in one simple forum with a couple subgroups, not host a million forums and blogs on my site. For this, AspNetForum fits the bill exactly.

There's no official importer for Community Server to AspNetForum, so I wrote my own. It turns out to be fairly simple. Just a SQL script will do it. Here are the steps the script goes through:

Import the ASP.NET application, user, and membership tables
Create the AspNetForum single sign-on linkages in its ForumUsers table
Import the groups, forums, topics, and messages

I packaged all this up into a SQL script that handles the whole process end to end. Just edit it to point to your database and forums and it will do the rest. It assumes the following:

You've created and set up an AspNetForum database
You've created the ASP.NET user and membership tables in the AspNetForum database
The AspNetForum and ASP.NET user and membership tables are new and empty

This script will import everything with the same ID values from Community Server, making mapping or redirecting easy.

To use the script in SQL Management Studio, do the following steps:

Open the script (Import.sql) and connect it to your AspNetForum database
Execute a search and replace operation that replaces "CSDatabaseName" with the name of your Community Server database
Set the @applicationId variable to the ApplicationId matching your Community Server instance in the aspnet_Applications table in your CS database
Set the @groupId variable to the GroupId of the forum group to import from the cs_Groups table
Execute the script

Download the script and get importing! – CommunityServer2AspNetForumsImport.zip

Deep file and folder/directory copy in .NET

Chris Hynes — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 19:24:13 GMT

I just ran up against a requirement to do a deep file and folder/directory copy in .NET (C# to be exact). A quick google didn't turn up any code, so I figured I'd post what I came up with. This is a somewhat naive implementation that may run out of steam for very deep folders or 1000s of files, but works great for most things. This implementation takes a source folder and a destination folder and copies the entire structure including files and folders from the source folder to the destination.

So without further ado:

private void CopyFolder(string folder, string destFolder) { Directory.CreateDirectory(destFolder); foreach (string file in Directory.GetFiles(folder, "*.*", SearchOption.AllDirectories)) { string fileName = Path.GetFileName(file); string filePath = Path.GetDirectoryName(file.Substring(folder.Length + (folder.EndsWith("\\") ? 0 : 1))); string destFilePath; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(filePath)) { string destFolderPath = Path.Combine(destFolder, filePath); Directory.CreateDirectory(destFolderPath); destFilePath = Path.Combine(destFolderPath, fileName); } else { destFilePath = Path.Combine(destFolder, fileName); } File.Copy(file, destFilePath); } }

Get the MIME type of a System.Drawing Image

Chris Hynes — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 17:10:18 GMT

I needed a method to get the mime type of a System.Drawing Image instance that I'd loaded from an upload. All articles I was able to find online suggest some kind of lookup table solution. There's actually another way. Given an Image i, you can map from the i.RawFormat.Guid property to an ImageCodecInfo.FormatID. So it becomes a very simple for loop to get the MIME type of an image or bitmap. This works for any format System.Drawing/GDI+ supports (bmp, png, tiff, jpg/jpeg, etc). Here's the code:

public static string GetMimeType(Image i) { foreach (ImageCodecInfo codec in ImageCodecInfo.GetImageDecoders()) { if (codec.FormatID == i.RawFormat.Guid) return codec.MimeType; } return "image/unknown"; }

This won't work for images that were created on the fly (will return "image/unknown"), but will work for all images that were loaded from some source (file, stream, byte[], etc).

Recursively find ASP.NET controls by type with generics

Chris Hynes — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 21:37:51 GMT

Sometimes you want to work with all controls on an ASP.NET page by type rather than id. I finally got fed up with the lack of builtin support, and wrote the following method that returns all controls inside another control (or page) by type:

public List<T> FindControls<T>(Control parent) where <T> : Control { List<T> foundControls = new List<T>(); FindControls<T>(parent, foundControls); return foundControls; } void FindControls<T>(Control parent, List<T> foundControls) where <T> : Control { foreach (Control c in parent.Controls) { if (c is <T>) foundControls.Add((<T>)c); else if (c.Controls.Count > 0) FindControls<T>(parent, foundControls); } }

Save as G4 CCITT TIFF with .NET

Chris Hynes — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 01:19:41 GMT

My friend Rob Garrett recently started a Design Patterns post series on his blog. This seems like a great way to share experience with the community and stimulate thought and discussion. I decided to start a series on imaging with .NET, to share some of my experiences and the techniques that enable advanced solutions with .NET imaging and GDI+. This is the kickoff post for the series.

In my experience, simple things in .NET are well documented, but it can be hard to find information on how to do complex things. One thing that took me awhile to figure out is how to save a bitmap as a CCITT group 4 TIFF. It actually ends up being a simple process.

First, you need a monochrome (1bpp) source GDI+ Bitmap. .NET doesn't have a very good built in mechanism for converting from color to monochrome. The only reliable and performant method is a scale-to-grey algorithm written in unsafe code. That will be a topic for another post. For now, lets assume the GDI+ Bitmap is monochrome.

To set up for the save process, you need two things -- an EncoderParameters object set for CCITT G4, and an ImageCodecInfo that points to the GDI+ TIFF encoder.

First, the EncoderParameters object:

// Encoder parameters for CCITT G4 EncoderParameters eps = new EncoderParameters(1); eps.Param[0] = new EncoderParameter(Encoder.Compression, (long)EncoderValue.CompressionCCITT4);

Then, the ImageCodecInfo:

ImageCodecInfo[] ie = ImageCodecInfo.GetImageEncoders(); ImageCodecInfo tiffEncoder = null; for (int i = 0; i < ie.Length; i++) { if (ie[i].MimeType == "image/tiff") { tiffEncoder = ie[i]; break; } }

If you want to set the image resolution to a standard resolution like 300x300 before you save, call the SetResolution method:

bmp.SetResolution(300, 300);

Once you have those two objects, given a 1bpp Bitmap bmp, it's a simple one method call to the Save method:

bmp.Save(fileName, tiffEncoder, eps);

If the Bitmap has multiple frames, this method will only save a single frame. I'll write another article in future on multiple frame images.

Reflector

Chris Hynes — Fri, 18 May 2007 15:21:28 GMT

Lutz Roeder's Reflector is one of the most useful tools out there. It's a disassembler that allows you to point at any assembly and break down the code. Scott Hansleman shows off a new PowerShell language plugin for Reflector as well as a nice snapshot of the other addins. It's a great read -- I keep forgetting about all the useful plugins you can add to Reflector.