I have made available a new download: Ookii.Dialogs.
Ookii.Dialogs is a class library that provides a number of common dialogs for use in .Net applications. The dialogs provided are the task dialog, progress dialog, credential dialog, input dialog and Vista-style common file dialogs.
The download contains two class libraries, one for Windows Forms and one for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). The contents are nearly identical; only the input dialog is not available for WPF. Some utility classes are provided for Windows Forms; these are not available for WPF either.
Most of these dialogs are wrappers around Windows API functionality. The TaskDialog class wraps the task dialog API provided in Windows Vista and later. The ProgressDialog class wraps the IProgressDialog API available since Windows 2000. The CredentialDialog class wraps the CredUI API introduced in Windows XP, and the VistaOpenFileDialog, VistaSaveFileDialog and VistaFolderBrowserDialog classes wrap the IFileDialog API introduced in Windows Vista. Only the InputDialog is not a wrapper; this is a custom dialog that performs the same functionality as the old Visual Basic InputBox function. Visit the link above for more details on each dialog.
Each class has been designed to be not merely a wrapper around their respective native API, but to provide a programming interface that is natural to .Net developers, with full support for the component designer. The complete source code of the class libraries, as well as documentation and a sample application are provided.
The classes aim to give the best experience possible on each OS, where applicable. In the case of the CredentialDialog class, this means that the new Vista-style dialog is automatically used on operating systems that support it (Vista and newer). The Vista-style file dialog classes will automatically fall back to the old style dialogs when using Windows XP. This is also true of the VistaFolderBrowserDialog class for WPF, even though WPF itself doesn't provide a folder browser dialog; the VistaFolderBrowserDialog class is a full folder browser dialog implementation for WPF supporting XP and newer.
This library replaces the Ookii.VistaDialogs library, which contained only the Vista-style file dialogs and didn't offer any support for WPF.
This library is a collection of classes that I have developed for personal use over the years. Because of the difference in age of some of the code, and the many modifications made over time, there may be some inconsistencies.
Let me know what you think of it, if you use it.
I am proud to announce a new utility here on Ookii.org: FormatC.
FormatC is a utility that allows you to add syntax highlighting to your C#, Visual Basic, C++, XML, HTML, Transact-SQL or PowerShell source code, so you can publish it on a web page or blog post.
Why does the world need yet another syntax highlighter? Mainly, because of none of the existing .Net based ones had the features I needed. That's right, FormatC is the utility I've been using to format source code for my own blog. So if you read my site you've already seen many examples, including this one which demonstrates one of those features I mentioned: Visual Basic XML literals. I dare say I'm one of the first to actually support that, although it does have some limitations (which are mentioned on the FormatC page). In fact, I have support for all C# 3.0 and Visual Basic 9.0 features, including Linq.
You can format your source code using the interface on my site and simply copy/paste the results into a webpage or blog post, and customize the highlighting by editing the provided style sheet (or simply keep the default). You can also download FormatC as a class library to use in your own application, or look at the source code. It's designed to be easily extensible, so you can add your own languages if you want.
If you use it, let me know what you think.
In case you missed it (which I think is only possible if you read no blogs except mine),
Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 was released today. Beta 2 fixes some of the issues that beta 1 had and brings a lot of new stuff
to the table especially for the casual user (beta 1 really was only a developer preview, after all). It's
definitely worth checking out.
Some of you may remember that my Find As You Type add-on didn't exactly work very well in beta 1. So what's the story with beta 2?
First of all: IE8 now includes functionality similar to Find As You Type! This will surprise precisely no one since the feature was originally planned for IE7 but postponed. Now with IE8 beta 2, it's finally in there. IE8's new find functionaly works pretty much the same as my FAYT add-on, so there's really not much reason to keep using FAYT.
However, for those of you that do wish to keep using FAYT (for instance for some of features that IE8's new built-in find lacks, such as customization, auto-start, and immediate search while using an IME), there is good news also: unlike with beta 1, Find As You Type works fine with IE8 beta 2. The only thing that appears broken is that if you press CTRL-F when the focus is on the browser chrome (e.g. the address bar or search box), the FAYT toolbar does not open, instead IE's own find opens. If you press CTRL-F while a page has focus, the FAYT toolbar will open just like it does in IE7. I suspect this has something to do with the modified process model that IE8 uses for tabs.
Please let me know your experiences with FAYT and IE8, if you have any.
It appears I had accidentally broken Windows Mobile 2003 support with Pocket Dictionary 1.1. This new version fixes that. Pocket Dictionary 1.2 works on Windows Mobile 2003 and up.
Pocket Dictionary 1.2 is mostly a bugfix release. Besides the Windows Mobile 2003 bug, it has a few other minor fixes. See the Change Log for full details.
One important change: Pocket Dictionary now requires the .Net Compact Framework 3.5. It will not work on 2.0 anymore! The main reason for this change is because it fixes a bug with the ComboBox control that was preventing the context menu (with the cut/copy/paste options) from working correctly on the search field. Make sure you install the new Compact Framework before installing Pocket Dictionary.
Thanks to the great work of Christian Liensberger, who previously did the German translation as well, Find As You Type is now available in Italian.
Enjoy!
Subscribe