#region Coad's Code (Noah Coad) : Toolbox

Dropbox, Easy File Sharing and More

coad — Wed, 05 May 2010 04:30:38 GMT

Dropbox is a file sync app that installs a lightweight client on your PC, monitors a "My Dropbox" folder on your drive, and automatically syncs files in that folder online and to any other computer you have Dropbox installed on. It also makes sharing files with family, friends, co-workers, projects, etc super easy.

There are plenty of other similar file sync apps, ones I've tried are Microsoft Live Mesh, ZumoDrive, and some of these others. I've found all these either feel 'heavy weight', are tricky to use, or have some other annoyance. Dropbox just beats them all hands down for its pure simplicity.

Get Dropbox using this URL and get 500MB additional free drive space (I get 500MB free too). :)

The key thing to realize is that you’re working with files in a normal folder like any other on your computer. I find this is the trickiest thing for people to grasp at first. You save your files to folders today right? The only difference is that the little background Dropbox app watches the “My Dropbox” folder and copies new and changed files to the Dropbox cloud and any other computer you have Dropbox installed on. Just start editing and saving your files in the dropbox folder. I work out of my Dropbox folder for just about everything these days.

Fun story, just the other day I needed to get a small file from my laptop to a co-worker's to install a driver. I started copying the file onto a USB flash drive, then remembered we both had a shared Dropbox folder, so I copied it there too. By the time I rotated my swivel chair with the USB flash drive in hand, the file was already on the co-worker's laptop in our shared Dropbox folder. Faster and easier than using a USB flash drive. I must say that was cool.

These are the top scenarios that I use Dropbox for:

Keep files in sync between your PCs
All you PCs that have Dropbox installed with your account will be kept in sync. Handy for keeping the same set of files on your home, office, and laptop computers.
Access your files from anywhere
If you're not at one of your machines, your files can be easily accessed by logging into the Dropbox website.
Keep a folder in sync with others
You can create a folder, right-click and choose Dropbox > Share… to share a folder with someone else or a group of people. Then the files in that folder will be kept in sync between accounts. My wife and I use this for our Quicken data and other files and I use this extensively with my business and tech partners.
Easily share a file with anyone
Need to quickly share one file with someone? Just copy the file into your Dropbox\Public folder, right-click and choose Dropbox > Copy public link. This puts a URL into your clipboard that you can then paste into an email or elsewhere to quickly share a file with anyone.
View files from your iPhone
Wherever you go you can access your files via your iPhone too. There are built in viewers for common file types like text files, Excel sheets, Word docs ect. No editing here, but super handy for viewing. I hear there is also an Android app too.
Backup of files
Dropbox also keeps a history of each file online, so if you or a friend you’re sharing a folder with accidently delete a file or folder, you can recover them with just a few clicks. Occasionally a colleague changes a file and I need a previous version, no problem, built in version history w Dropbox.

Some other nice benefits:

2GB free space to start out with
Simple web-based UI for online access
Windows Explorer add-in to show status of synced files
Create photo albums for easy viewing

How it Works
Here is a little bit on how the Windows Explorer extension works. Dropbox's PC UI is nicely integrated with Windows Explorer. When you install Dropbox and create an account, it puts a "My Dropbox" folder under your "My Documents". Then when you drop a new file or folder into the "My Dropbox" folder or sub folders, it puts a cute little blue glyph (see the .pdf file below) over the file to show you it is being copied up or down to the Dropbox server. When it is synchronized, the glyph goes green.

Multiple people can have the same file open at the same time. If a file is saved on more than one computer that would cause a potential conflict, Dropbox automatically renames the files by adding a note in the file name so they you don't overwrite and loose data.

More Resources
For more information… lifehacker.com is quite fascinated by Dropbox and has info such as "The Cleverest Ways to Use Dropbox That You're Not Using" and a Dropbox Tag for their many posts about Dropbox. p.s. That link to download Dropbox and get 250MB additional free storage is here.

Question for You
Have you tried Dropbox? If so, found any new or interesting ways to use it? It seems all my friends and family that try it love it and find new clever ways of using it. Let me know by leaving a comment. thanks

Updated on 2013-04-05: Added reason #6 above, sharing link went from 250MB to 500MB, and added paragraph about how Dropbox is just a folder on your computer.

Tweet from SlickRun

coad — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:53:10 GMT

There are many launchers out there, but my favorite by far is SlickRun. Here's how to post a twitter status update straight from SlickRun. This way even without a web browser open or a dashboard app, you can always do a quick little tweet.

Get SlickRun & cURL (a little cmd app to send HTTP requests)
"setup" from SlickRun
Add an entry called "tweet"…

Where

Filename or URL = path to curl.exe (I put mine in a directory referenced by the tools environment variable)
Parameters = -u <username>:<password> -d "status=$W$" http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/update.xml

Of course there are some real drawbacks to doing this, such as no notification if the post didn't go through (too long, no connection, or invalid characters).

Combing with Take Command
For a more robust solution, if you have Take Command (formally 4NT), I'd recommend wrapping the call in a simple Take Command shell script to report success or an error. Download tweetbtm.zip (which contains tweet.btm), then the SlickRun setup would be:

Filename or URL = %comspec%
Parameters = /c %batch%\tweet.btm `$W$`

Where comspec is an environment variable pointing to tcc.exe (Take Command Console) and batch is an environment variable containing your batch scripts.

References

Twitter REST API for status updates
Download cURL
Info on SlickRun: my blog post, home page
Other Launchers: Review of 10, Google Desktop, Launchy
Blog post on Take Command (formally 4NT)

4NT - Powerful Command Prompt + My All-Time Favorite Utility (now Take Command)

coad — Sun, 20 Feb 2005 02:34:00 GMT

Update: 4NT is now called Take Command

Update (11/6/2012): My latest review is posted here:
Ultimate Windows Command Prompt: Take Command

Take Command by JPSoft is, in my humble opinion, one of the best apps ever created. It is a tool for the 'power user' who appreciates the power of the prompt (C:\>). :) It a console command prompt for Windows on steroids. I've used this app for over 14 years and it is still the one non-MS app I use more than any other.

The History

This page in history starts with MS-DOS. Though the history of the command prompt goes much further back, DOS made the prompt famous. DOS is made up of two parts, the first being a library of functions in two files that are loaded into memory at boot time which other apps used to do common tasks like access files, display text on the screen, and get keyboard input ... these were best known to software developers. The second part of DOS is a collection of separate utilities such as EDIT, HIMEM, XCOPY, SCANDISK, etc. But the most popular utility, which many considered to be 'DOS' is COMMAND.COM, the little app that gives the user the C:\> prompt, interprets what the user types, and starts other apps. It contains a small set of built-in commands such as COPY, DEL, RMDIR, CD, MKDIR, etc.

COMMAND.COM is what most everyone knew when it came to navigating the PC in the days of DOS. Other operating systems, such as Unix, had much more powerful prompts which supported coloring, better editing, and more commands. Until in 1989 JPSoft released the first, truly popular, COMMAND.COM replacement, called 4DOS, which was considerably more advanced than the simplistic COMMAND.COM. Where I entered the light was when Symantec licensed 4DOS 3.0 under Norton Utilities v6.0 in 1991 and called it NDOS with a few enhancements like a nice help system. I totally dug into the enhanced capabilities with the best example being my AUTOEXEC.BAT which had an animated ASCII art GUI powered by NDOS.

Now-a-days, the popular command interface for Windows is cmd.exe, which has come a long ways since COMMAND.COM, but is still a far cry from being a (relatively) powerful prompt. 4NT is JPSoft's Windows NT/XP command prompt replacement with considerable enhancements. This one little apps just keeps impressing me as I've discover new ways of using it continually for the last 14 years. It is the only app I've used for so long and is still the best.

.NET is my choice of programming environment, but some things (usually involving working with files) are just faster to code up in 4NT. I write a lot of console apps in C#, batch apps in 4NT, and use 4NT to bring all the magic together. Working here at Microsoft, I'm amazed at how much the console is used and how it seams that much of a dev's world is spent on the command prompt console.

What's So Cool

Commands & Environment
For starters, cmd.exe (the basic Windows Command prompt) supports about 50 built-in commands, 4NT has 130 built in commands. cmd has a very simplistic help system and 4NT has a full Compiled Help (.chm) cross-linked help system with examples, full descriptions, hints, tips, and more. 4NT supports copying & pasting on the prompt, popup ASCII windows, selection of files for commands, advanced inclusion/exclusion sets on files, full built-in FTP/FTPS/TFTP/HTTP/HTTPS support from any command, file/dir colorization, control of the Windows GUI, send e-mail, and the list goes on ... all of which cmd does not support (at all or without external help). All of the cmd commands are fully supported in 4NT, but with more command line options. But I've only begun!

Variable Functions
cmd supports a few (~7) functions with variables (try 'help set' at the cmd prompt). 4NT contains a library of 150 variable functions (in additional to the 130 commands) that do things such as determine file sizes, system memory availability, type of drives on the computer, file read/write/seek/etc, all common string operations, numeric processing, registry editing, and even regular expressions.

Internal Variables
4NT has over 100 additional internal variables that return information like the state of the alt, ctrl, shift keys, the day of the week, the current directory, the number of milliseconds since Windows started, how many pixels the screen is wide, the battery life remaining on a laptop, and of course, much more.

Batch
All put together, these enhancements make an amazingly flexible and powerful environment to script in. 4NT supports a "Batch to Memory" .btm file format which runs faster, can be compiled, and has a full debugging Interactive Development Environment (IDE). You can create subroutines that pass parameter, use if blocks (iff, elseiff, endiff), and pull all these commands, variable functions, and internal variables, into a substantial scripting experience.

Examples

del /s /r /w /x /y /z c:\temp
Move to the recycle bin all files and directories under c:\temp, removing empty subdirectories & system/hidden/readonly files, and without prompting the user.

dir /o:-s /k /m /2 c:\windows\*.bmp;*.gif;*.jpg
Show all .bmp, .gif, and .jpg files in c:\windows without the header or footer in two columns sorted from largest to smallest file size.

select /a:h-d del (.)
Brings up a selection dialog of the hidden files (no directories) in the current directory to select what to delete.

echo %@eval[%@filesize[c:\windows\explorer.exe]/(1024**2)]
Shows the file size of explorer.exe in megabytes.

drawbox 4 4 8 30 1 bri yellow on blue fill blue %+ scrput 6 9 bri white on blue Hello Fine People
Draws a blue box on the screen with a yellow border with the saying 'Hello Fine People' inside it in bright white.

Screen Shots

My splash screen when I startup the 4NT prompt.

Pressing [PageDown] will show the history of commands from which you can choose to run again. Yes, it is mouse activated too.

A directory listing with my colorizations. Green for docs, purple for text files, red for executables, light blue for zips, and yellow for anything else.

Evaluation

You can download 4NT from JPSoft to try it out. Friends can e-mail me and I'll send them a trial version (covered under the EULA) that is pumped up with my favorite settings, includes the splash screen above, example batch files, WinKey, and a few more enhancements.

The price to purchase is a bit high, $70, but it is the best $70 I've ever spent on software.

I recommend using WinKey, a free hot key app, to assign [WindowsKey+C] or [WindowsKey+4] to run 4NT. This allows to you to rapidly pop up a 4NT prompt with one keyboard shortcut. (update, I now use AutoHotKey instead of WinKey)

Conclusion

When it's all said and done, 4NT is not for the faint of heart, but the user who enjoys feeling the power of command prompt. There is so much more that could be said, but I could go on for hours; so hopefully, if you're a prompt user, you'd see this is worth checking into. One of the reasons I've enjoyed this app so much is that even after 14 years, I'm still discovering commands, functions, and ways of using it all together.

Creating Quick Tests in C#

coad — Fri, 18 Jun 2004 09:51:00 GMT

Update on 5/2/07: This post has nothing to do with Unit Testing (it was written before I was aware of unit testing) but has to do with write little bits of code to try new stuff out. It is also only for VS03. For the current version (VS05), see this post: CoadNet VS Project Templates, Quick Code + Console App for C# in VS05

CoadTools Quick Test C# Project Template (setup .msi) for Visual Studio .NET 2003

Introduction
Very often I need to test a tidbit of code, do some research on a class, etc. In fact, I was creating several times as many quick code test projects as any other project need. I used to start a Console application, change it to a Windows Application, but still needed to add namespaces, etc. So I created a custom "New Project" template for Visual Studio .NET 2003. To use, just install, load VS.NET, choose "New Project"/"Visaul C# Projects"/"Quick Test", and you're good to go.

The Goal
The main goal was to minimize the time to test code. Just start VS.NET, choose the "Quick Test" project, and type code. I wanted to send output to the Trace (VS.NET Ouput Window) and have the most common namespaces already included. You can easily modify the template after it is installed to suite your own needs.

Compare and Contrast
A popular tool is Snippet Compiler, which is a stand-alone mini-IDE for testing code. This is a great tool, especially if you do not own VS.NET 2003. When testing, I find that I want the full VS.NET environment, which I'm most familiar with and productive in, and to perform quick MSDN help lookup and take advantage of the full debugging interface. Just a simple custom "New Project" template like this provides all these objectives in a simple manor.

Saving Code
When creating a new quick test project, I usually just store the project in "C:\Temp\Test". This way I keep my tests for future reference and they are out of the way.

Leave Feedback
This is completely free. All I ask is that you leave a feedback comment. :)

VS.NET 2003 "New Project" Dialog w/ Quick Test Project

Code Template in VS.NET, Fully Customizable

Screen captures have been brought to you by SnagIt. This is my first use of SnagIt, a powerful screen capture utility, and it is fantastic! Extremely easy to use (a big plus for me) and it includes additional editing tools.

Visual Studio Team System is a Go!

coad — Thu, 27 May 2004 04:32:00 GMT

Just announced to the world here at TechEd is the new Visual Studio 2005 Team System for lifecycle management!

Team Productivity
In the past, Microsoft has focused on making the individual developer more productive with better focussed tools like improving Visual Studio, languages, etc. Team System expands that productivity to the entire development team including managers, developers, testers, and architects.

Features
Some of the features included unit testing, profiling, overview management, source control, automatic class diagrams, web load testing, bug tracking, task managing, data mining, infrastructure validation, and much more. All integrated into VS 2005 and using common office applications like Excel and Project.

Official Blog
Check out the new Team System Blog. Sam Guckenheimer (Group Product Planner, Team System) is posting official news about TS and taking feedback.

Newsgroups
The Team System Team Development newsgroup is available at the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Technology Preview newsgroup site as microsoft.private.whidbey.teamsystem.teamfoundation.

Personal Note
This is the product that I will be working on as a Program Manager starting July 5th. Exciting! :)

Two New CoadTools, AdvancedFileProperties & OrderedStringDictionary

coad — Sun, 18 Apr 2004 03:37:00 GMT

My protege, Radoslav (Radi) Ivanov (age 16), has published his first code utilitity! It is an “Advanced File Properties“ reader that retrieves the NTFS extended properties of a file. It provides a DataTable wrapped method for an included COM DLL.

I created an “Ordered String Dictionary“ that implements an ArrayList to create a string key/value pair dictionary that keeps the ordering of its elements. The System.Collections.Specialized StringDictionary uses a HashTable that looses the order of its pairs and NameValueCollection does not support insertion at a specific location. This class is in the “SpecializedCollections“ CoadTool.

Free CoadTools
http://www.coad.net/products/

RSS "FEED Validator" Bombs

coad — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 04:56:00 GMT

ARG! After spending so much time making sure my RSS feeds are valid XML, I have run into a limitation of the seemingly most preeminent RSS feed validator online.

It bombs out right at about 200K. If the feed is longer, it is invalid. There is no warning that this limitation is reached.

FEED Validator by Mark Pilgrim and Sam Ruby

http://feedvalidator.org/

You can attempt to validate my feed, but if it is over 200K (which it currently is), it will fail.

Validate RSS Feed

However, you can attempt to parse the feed as XML, as in my C# example code, and it will parse just fine.

Assimilate XML RSS Feed from URL

Since validating my RSS feed with the copy/pasting from Word has been such a major issue, I added a main link to validate the RSS feed via “FEED Validator”. This link has been removed.

Update: Previously the mentioned limit was about 400K, it is actually closer to 200K. This is due to reporting error with U8-DOS encoding in UltraEdit.