When creating a unit test project, I normally setup NUnit as the executing program for the unit testing framework by doing this in the project properties, in the debug settings. This makes it easy to debug, by providing the name of the DLL as a command argument. NUnit executes with the current assembly already loaded; all I have to do is run it. But this process can add to extra time, just to run one test. TestMatrix is an alternative to this approach to unit testing, or even unit testing with an NUnit instance side-by-side. TestMatrix integrates into VS 2005 and VS 2008 to test the application right inline. It has a tool window that shows the status of all the tests, and what the last result was.
In addition, TestMatrix now uses code coverage tool to illustrate how much code has been executed with the targeted unit tests. Tests can also be run individually, as an entire test fixture, at the folder level, or for the entire project. This makes it handy to reduce the overall test execution. And all code execution results are shown inline, with a direct illustration of where the error happened, and by mousing over an icon in the left sidebar, the error message appears. It's all inline which is very handy.
The caveat to this is this process may be a little slow to execute, but it's not too bad.
I really like the SnagIt magnification capabilities that are available in this TechSmith tool. One of these features is the ability to spotlight and magnify text. To take a screenshot, simply hit the print screen button. The SnagIt screen capture tool (with a zoom window) appears allowing the user to select a region of the screen. This opens up the SnagIt capture window. On the right side is a list of editing options. The next step is to select an area on the screen to magnify, which is done by using the arrow to select a region on the screen. The spotlight and magnify section does the following:
- Magnify - Magnifies the selection on the screen by a percentage
- Dim Background - Makes the background outside of the selection darker, so the selection is magnified
- Blur Background - Blurs the background so the background contents aren't as readable as the selection
- Position - Change the position by applying a horizontal and vertical offset
- Drop Shadow - Apply a drop shadow around the edges
These tools really help to emphasize regions of the screen. I included a screenshot of what SnagIt looks like when performing these actions.