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Using constants for table and column names

How to generate the VB.NET source code for a class containing the structure of your OleDb database (i.e. table and column names) using GetSchema() on an OleDbConnection.

(April 24, 2009)

New hotkeys in See Through Windows

See Through Windows now supports four more hotkeys. Windows+Up and Windows+Down (i.e. the Windows key in combination with the up and down arrow keys) maximize and minimize the current window. Try it and you'll love it. Also, if you use multiple monitors, you'll wonder how you ever got along without Windows+Left and Windows+Right, which move the current window over to the next (or previous) monitor.

(February 13, 2009)

New Tool: See Through Windows

This tiny tool makes the current foreground window transparent at the press of a hotkey. Both the level of transparency and the hotkey are configurable. Try it, and you'll never want to do without it again!

(September 26, 2008)

Faking Transparent State Images in Tree Views

Transparency is not supported for state images in tree views. Here's how to get around that and fake beautiful transparent-looking state images.

(September 25, 2008)

Text, Encodings, and .NET

Having been wrong-footed by my own incorrect use of text encoding once too often, I decided to figure this one out once and for all. Read more about Text Encoding and .NET.

(September 11, 2008)

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Welcome to MOBZystems, Home of Tools!

Here, you'll find a selection of free developer tools, articles about software development issues, and code you can use any way you please.

Tools

Visit the tools section for a list of tools and utilities that make up the indispensible MOBZuite™ suite of developers tools. Each of these tools is lightweight, easy to use, and *FREE*. Source code is available on request.

QuickCode.NET 2008 - The premier productivity boosting add-in for Visual Studio 2005 and 2008. A complete rewrite of QuickCode.NET 2005, QuickCode.NET 2008 is now freeware. It features an all-new user interface and much-improved ease of use.
See Through Windows - Press a hotkey to make the current window transparent, allowing you to see through it! Also: press hotkeys to minimize/maximize the current window, or to send it to another monitor.
MOBZync - Inspect the differences in the contents of two folders at a glance, and optionally synchronize in one or both directions.
RegFind - Employ the full power of the .NET framework's regular expression engine to search for patterns in text files and directories
MOBZPing - Displays the availability and response time of a series of hosts graphically. Very useful for tracking down connection problems, or simply monitoring a number of hosts simultaneously.
Shell Runner - A command shell tool for testing and running batch files, with a host of other options: timestamping output, saving error and output log files, marking error output in red, etc.
RegName - A small yet flexible regular expression based file rename tool. Supports both a graphical and a command-line interface.
MOBZHunt - Hard disks never seem big enough. Even that huge new disk fills up in no-time. You need some space - but where do you start? With MOBZHunt, hunting down disk hogs is a snap!
MOBZRuler - Very simple but surprisingly useful tool that displays a grid on screen. Great for lining up screen elements, measuring screen distances etc.
MOBZoom - A simple yet powerful zoom tool that supports saving captured images in a host of formats, including Windows icon files.

Of course, you can also go directly to the download section.

Code

See the code section for code samples and articles:

How To Kill a Process Tree - How to terminate a process and all processes started by that process.
Console Process - A Console Process class for .NET 2.0. Runs console processes with a host of other options, such as an automatic timeout, 'near real-time' redirected I/O, etc.
Bug in .NET Command Line Arguments - Read about an insidious little bug in Environment.GetCommandLineArgs and how to get around it.
Events in C# and VB.NET - A look at the different ways in which C# and VB.NET handle event declarations - and how QuickCode.NET can help.
Text, Encodings, and .NET - How and when to use a text encoding when reading and writing text files in .NET.
Auto-Detecting Text Encoding - How to use the built-in Encoding.GetEncodings collection to detect the encoding of text files.
Transparent State Images in Tree Views - State images in tree view controls are second class citizens, because transparency is not supported. Here's how to get around that.
Using constants for table and column names - How to generate a VB.NET source file with constants for database table and column names.