Dennis "D.C." Dietrich
C#, .NET and the Curse of the Resource Fork - A Tester's Tale
Decoding standard output and standard error when redirecting to a GUI application
The Process class allows you to redirect the three streams basic I/O streams of a process: standard...
Date: 11/08/2010
D.C. and the Wrapper Factory
A while ago I wrote about using reflection for testing non-public members. Since then I've been...
Date: 01/24/2010
DTACM (D.C.'s Test Automation Coding Manifesto)
I find myself getting more and more frustrated whenever I see test code that is best described as...
Date: 11/20/2009
All the wonderful colors of code coverage
I'd like to share my colors with you: R G B Coverage Not Touched Area 230 128 165 Coverage Partially...
Date: 10/21/2009
EMTF 2.0 Beta released
It's been a couple of months since I first blogged about EMTF. Since then I've been busy refining...
Date: 07/14/2009
Adding and removing websites to/from security zones programmatically (C#)
When you're searching binging for how to add or remove websites to/from IE's security zones you'll...
Date: 06/24/2009
HTTP debugging for Silverlight developers (Mac OS X edition)
Many posts have been written about how to debug problems with issuing HTTP requests from Silverlight...
Date: 06/08/2009
Back from Portland Code Camp
The Portland Code Camp yesterday was a blast. In fact, it was one of the best (un)conferences I've...
Date: 06/01/2009
Creating an API testing framework 101
Writing a fully featured API testing solution is a lot of work. You have to deal with things like...
Date: 02/24/2009
Introducing EMTF
A while ago a needed to do what I like to call quick and dirty testing, i.e. getting as much test...
Date: 02/17/2009
It's all about systems - even if you're testing only a component
Earlier this year I bought a brand new computer and wanted to play what turned out to be one of my...
Date: 10/22/2008
MIX09 announced
Don't make any plans for March 18-20 next year (or cancel the plans you've already made) since...
Date: 10/22/2008
I Am The Seattle Code Camp (And So Can You!)
I have to admit something embarrassing: I've never been to a code camp! So, I thought, before people...
Date: 10/14/2008
Which Microsoft virtualization solution to use for software testing
I have to admit the title is a bit misleading this time since - if you ask me - there is only one...
Date: 09/29/2008
A poor man's approach to testing with databases
Say you are working on software that accesses a database server and you need to test it. To some...
Date: 09/26/2008
Unit testing non-public types using reflection
Let's say you want to unit test the following class: using System; internal class Foo { internal...
Date: 06/19/2008
How would you test a... C# code generator with Visual Studio Team Test
Introduction I spent some time this week thinking about how to test a code generator that generates...
Date: 06/14/2008
Compiling code at runtime, C# 3.0 and "Compiler executable file csc.exe cannot be found"
Compiling code at runtime is incredibly easy thanks to the CSharpCodeProvider class. But as always,...
Date: 06/12/2008
Transitionals - About a little piece of Acropolis that wanted to become open source
While Microsoft is certainly not an open source company there are some instances of code drops from,...
Date: 04/30/2008
Reflections on MIX 08 part II: What's the secret Formula?
One of the outstanding sessions I attended was What's the secret Formula? (PNL14). The panelists...
Date: 03/24/2008
And another award for Skinkers...
If you read my Silverlight-based P2P live streaming client wins MediaGuardian Innovation Award post...
Date: 03/20/2008
Reflections on MIX 08 part I: First day keynote
This is the first on an n part post series about my personal thoughts on this year's MIX based on...
Date: 03/19/2008
Reflector add-in (proof of concept) for highlighting platform APIs
I was talking to one of our partners at MIX about the new security model in Silverlight. In case...
Date: 03/11/2008
Silverlight-based P2P live streaming client wins MediaGuardian Innovation Award
The first MediaGuardian Innovation Awards were held two days ago in London. Its motto - at least...
Date: 03/08/2008
What happens in Vegas...
Well, I published a post on Tuesday and haven't ever since (not counting the remote debugging post...
Date: 03/07/2008
Setting up Silverlight 2 remote debugging on Mac OS X
Let's face it: Silverlight is awesome! So are the Visual Studio Tools for Silverlight. One reason...
Date: 03/05/2008
The day before MIX...
So, I finally made it to Las Vegas. However, not without a four hour delay in Portland due to a...
Date: 03/05/2008
Join the family - Become a UI Framework Tester!
By the time I made up my mind that I really wanted to work at Microsoft I was already really excited...
Date: 02/17/2008
YACVCP (Yet another CurrentCulture vs. CurrentUICulture post)
The CultureInfo class and particularly its properties CurrentCulture and CurrentUICulture are often...
Date: 02/05/2008
Configuring Outlook 2007 for using a Hotmail Plus account with POP3 and SMTP
I finally signed up for a Hotmail Plus account. While the web interface is awesome I wanted to...
Date: 12/02/2007
Happy Usability Day!
Today is the World Usability Day 2007 and I'd like to encourage everyone to look into it especially...
Date: 11/08/2007
Want to get HD audio out of a low profile PC? No problem!
A disclaimer first: The following post is my personal opinion and by no means an official...
Date: 11/04/2007
Referenced assembly 'filename' is a localized satellite assembly (why it's not wise to ignore warning al1056)
Usually you should fix all warnings you see when building your code right away and personally I'm a...
Date: 10/13/2007
Building a Windows Home Server: The Parts
My Windows Home Server (WHS) has been threatening me to quit for the last couple of days. In its...
Date: 10/12/2007
Fun with events and delegates
So how can you verify that a given class raises an event? Well, you can simply write some code that...
Date: 10/01/2007
Additional information on the garbage collector and weak references
I received some feedback on my previous post A good reason for calling GC.Collect() basically saying...
Date: 09/30/2007
A good reason for calling GC.Collect()
You've probably heard that you should not call GC.Collect() and generally speaking this is...
Date: 09/23/2007
Command Connection Points and Exception Handling Reloaded
In Debugging of and error handling for synchronous Commands I explained why you can't handle...
Date: 07/09/2007
Windows Home Server RC released
Today the Windows Home Server team announced the availability of the Home Server Release Candidate...
Date: 06/12/2007
Extending the Notepad sample with a Web Browser View - VB.NET Edition
Ricky Tan wrote a really cool post for the Acropolis Team Blog titled Extending the Notepad sample...
Date: 06/12/2007
Acropolis' "Hello World"
"Hello World" code samples are a long tradition whenever you're trying to introduce someone to a...
Date: 06/08/2007
The Parts Portal's Dependency Resolver and the Factory Pipeline
One of the features of the Parts Portal is that it supports the instantiation of parts which have...
Date: 06/07/2007
Debugging of and error handling for synchronous Commands
So you might have your first Acropolis application up and running and everything works just fine....
Date: 06/06/2007