The bit that leads us to this tip is the ComboBox that handles the potential day of the week to schedule the task. When these options are saved, the day selected gets stored into UserSetting as text (eg. “Monday”, “Tuesday” etc…). At the next launch of the app, we need to read those settings in and convert them to something we can use in our scheduling algorithm. Do do that, we need to convert a text day into a DayOfWeek enumeration object.

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DayOfWeek theday;
 
if (Enum.IsDefined(typeof(DayOfWeek), daynameastext))
{
	// find it, the "true" means to be case insensitive
	theday = (DayOfWeek)Enum.Parse(typeof(DayOfWeek), daynameastext, true);
}
else
{
	// handle the error and let someone know the string was invalid
	// in our example screenshot this would include the text of the words
	// "Day" or "Never" and thus we also handled those settings here
}

Notice from the typecasts that Enum.Parse is not tied to any specific Enum so you can use it in lots of situations.

Enjoy!

In a recent post Tim Heuer discussed the tools he is re-loading after a fresh install on his laptop. While looking over the list I found some new gems and old favorites. As I have recently done a re-load it seemed worthwhile to piggy-back off his post and compile a similar list.

For the moment, I am concentrating on tools, utilities and applications that I use all the time while working with clients or projects. I will do a similar list for toolkits, components and libraries soon, for now, I will just scream Telerik :)

Stuff we use that is also on Tim’s list…

• Office 2010
• Visual Studio 2010 – we moved entirely off VS2008 a month or so ago
• Microsoft’s Web Platform Installer – simply the best way to get most of the good stuff you need for development, don’t walk, run to grab it.
• Camtasia and SnagIt – as Tim says, “because they rock”. Screen capture and screen recording.
• Balsamiq – I have been a fan of this for a while. Balsamiq allows yout o easily sketch interfaces. This has largely been supply supplanted by SketchFlow in Expression Blend, but still useful.
• Microsoft Sharedview – one of the easiest screen sharing tools around.
• 7Zip – an awesome file archive manager
• Fiddler 2 –when you really need to see what is going on
• TortoiseSVN – we use this for connecting to client repositories, we use TFS internally.
• Windows Live Writer – an awesome desktop blog editor, really fantastic

Stuff we use that is not on Tim’s list…

• GoPlan – we use this constantly for project management and tracking. The company is awesome and the price is not bad. It beats Basecamp like a rented mule.
• Expression Studio – that’s Blend, Web, SketchFlow, Design and Encoder
• Tweetdeck – currently our weapon of choice for Twitter on the desktop. Tim uses Twirl. We keep considering a change to Seesmic, but it isn’t quite there yet.
• Notepad++ – a awesome multi-tab notepad replacement that I love. Tim uses Notepad2 (actually a variant) so I am curious as to the differences between them. Feel free to let me in on your thoughts in the comments.
• InfraRecorder – a ISO burner / disk image tool. Tim is using ImgBurn instead. Again, I wonder why that choice and welcome your comments.
• FileZilla – a great free FTP client.
• Firebug – I consider this tool absolutely essential when working with CSS.
• Windows Grep – a essential utility to handle mass searching and / or replacement.
• WinMerge – a super fast, super useful file differences and merge tool. Note that you can set it up as the tool for resolving Team System conflicts, which rocks.
• Affixia – allows you to use Gmail as the target for “send to email” menu options. Completely useful.
• paint.net – a fantastic free image editor. yes, we use Photoshop and friends but this one is what we reach for when we have minor development images to create.
• Windows Live Messenger – essential IM and messaging tool, allows us to stay in constant contact

Stuff we will look at in the future (thanks Tim!)

• Ninite – a multi installer. It looks like a good way to mass install the apps we like, though we always have security concerns with things like this.
• Axialis Icon Workshop – looks interesting, not sure I have a use for it at the moment though.
• Silverlight Spy – this looks pretty cool for seeing what SL is doing.
• TabsStudio for Visual Studio – again, this looks really useful!
• XAML Intellisense by Karl Shifflett – whoa! A fantastic find!

TDD* is all about getting the code done. We are looking at tools, frameworks, toolkits, environments and educational resources that will make the job of bringing ideas to life in code more efficient.

We represent a wide mix of experiences and skills. Lots of Unix / Linux as well as strong backgrounds in Windows. We expect to cover the whole gamut of what is happening that’s interesting but we have a special place in our heart for .NET, Silverlight and WPF.

We will be putting up tips, tutorials and reviews as we go. We plan a podcast as well, but that may take some time to get off the ground. By all means, please contribute to our discussions in the comments as well if you are moved to do so. We woudl love this to be a conversation, not a monologue.

* Short for “The Developer Dojo” not to be confused with “Test Driven Development”