Check T-SQL string for invalid characters

Summary: Transact-SQL user-defined function (UDF) that can help you find illegal characters in user input strings.

When programming in Transact-SQL, it's often needed to verify that input strings do not contain any illegal characters. For example, you may want to make sure that an input string does not contain any single or double quotes. Here is a user-defined function (UDF) that can help you perform this check.

The UDF takes two input parameters:

• Input string that needs to be checked and
• String containing characters that are not allowed in the input string

If no illegal characters are found, it will return an empty string; otherwise, it will return a string containing all illegal characters found in the input string.

------------------------------------------------------
-- Description:  
--  Finds all character from a given set in a string.
--
-- Parameters:
--  @String
--    String to search.
--  @CharSet
--    Character set.
--
-- Returns:
--  Characters found in the string or empty string.
------------------------------------------------------
if exists
(
  select
    1
  from
    sysobjects
  where
    id = Object_ID('[dbo].[CheckChars]')
  and type= 'FN'
)
  drop function [dbo].[CheckChars]
go

-- Create function.
create function [dbo].[CheckChars]
(
  @String  as varchar(8000),
  @CharSet as varchar(255)
)
returns
  varchar(255)
as
begin
  declare @Index int
  declare @Char  varchar
  declare @Chars varchar(255)

  set @Chars = ''

  if (@String is null OR datalength(@String) = 0)
    return @Chars

  if (@CharSet is null OR datalength(@CharSet) = 0)
    return @Chars

  set @Index = 1

  while (@Index <= datalength(@CharSet))
  begin
    set @Char = Substring(@CharSet, @Index, 1)
    
    if (CharIndex(@Char, @String) > 0)
     if (CharIndex(@Char, @Chars) <= 0)
       set @Chars = @Chars + @Char
        
    set @Index = @Index + 1
  end

  return @Chars
end
go

if @@Error = 0
  grant execute on [dbo].[CheckChars] to Public
go

You can call this UDF like this:

if (dbo.CheckChars('Hello, world!', ',!') = '')
  print 'Good input.'
else
  print 'Bad input.'

Here is the source code of the UDF creation script:

• Download CheckChars.sql

Technobrief #10

Summary: Recent findings of software, articles, and more.

Blogs

• Top 200 Blogs for Developers (Q3 2009)
  The most recent compilation from Jurgen Appelo.

Freeware

• EncodeHD
  Re-encode all types of video files for use on your home media player or portable device.
• GUUUI
  This article explains how to use Visio for rapid prototyping of the web pages. It includes a reference to the GUUUI Web Prototyping Tool and sketchy interface widgets.
  
• iWisoft Free Video Converter
  Converts videos between all popular formats like AVI, MPEG, WMV, DivX, XviD, MP4, H.264/AVC, AVCHD, FLV, MKV, RM, MOV, 3GP, and audio MP3, WMA, WAV, RA, M4A, AAC, AC3, OGG; directly converts video for playback on your PSP, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, PS3, Xbox, Zune, Creative Zen, Archos, and other digital multimedia devices; supports cropping, trimming, merging, adding watermark and special effects to videos.
• MP3 Diags
  A GUI-based application that allows end-users to identify issues with their MP3 files, fix some of the issues and make other changes, like adding track information.
• multiAVCHD
  A tool for authoring VCHD, Blu-Ray, HD DVD, and SD-Video videos.
• Mute on Lock
  A tiny utility that mutes the sound of the speakers when the Windows workstation is locked.
• Quick Sound Switch
  A small system tray tool, which allows you to switch the default sound device with only one click (it is useful for PCs with more than one sound card, or a sound card and a headset).
  
• Selenium
  A suite of tools to automate web application testing across many platforms.
• Ultimate Windows Tweaker
  A freeware utility for tweaking and optimizing 32-bit & 64-bit Windows 7 & Windows Vista (similar to TweakUI for Windows XP).

Opinions

• Code rant: Why is 'Buy' not always better than 'Build'
  Mike Hadlow explains why.
• iTunes Solves the Nested Clause Dilemma
  Theresa Neil describes UI design patterns for implementing predicate builders for complex rules.
• Software Engineering: An Idea Whose Time Has Come and Gone?
  Tom DeMarco wonders if the advice he gave in "Controlling Software Projects: Management, Measurement, and Estimation" (Prentice Hall/Yourdon Press, 1982) -- a book that played a role in the way many budding software engineers quantified work and planned their projects -- was correct at the time, is still relevant, and if he still believes that metrics are a must for any successful software development effort. [SPOILER ALERT: The answers are: "no", "no", and "no".]
• The Duct Tape Programmer
  Joel Spolsky discusses when worse (coding practice) is better (than good coding practice).
• The Benefit Of Attending User Group Meeting
  Marlon Ribunal explains how a user group can help you.
• The Myth of Usability Testing
  Robert Hoekman, Jr discusses the difficulties and misconceptions related to usability testing.
• Wanted
  Michael "Rands" Lopp proposes a hiring strategy that managers should appreciate (a very insightful perspective on high-tech hiring).

Podcasts

• .NET Rocks!, Show #309: Les Pinter Looks Back
  Listen to a very lively conversation with the guy who sold Microsoft Word to Bill Gates.

Presentations

• OSCON 2005 Keynote - Identity 2.0
  This is an old talk, but I really liked the content and presentation style (it's not long, too).

Programming

• 10+ jQuery Form Enhancement Plugins
  Some handy plugins for HTML forms.
• 1000 Free "Farm-Fresh Web Icons"
  This free icon set includes both 16 and 32 pixel versions of icons in PNG format on transparent backgrounds.
  
• 10 Great Free Icon Packs for Your Website or Web App
  Some great free icon packs.
• 10 Usability Crimes You Really Shouldn’t Commit
  Chris Spooner offers great usability tips for web form design.
  
• 20 jQuery Plugins Worth Implementing in Your Themes
  A nice collection of helpful jQuery plugins.
• Click me Only Once - jQuery
  Explains how to execute an event on the HTML page only once.
• Excellent JQuery Plugins To Enhance Form Validation
  jQquery plugins that are related to all kinds of form validation.
• Jumpstarting Your Next jQuery Plugin with an Online Tool
  Elijah Manor explains how to quickly make a jQuery plugin.
• Mastering CSS Coding: Getting Started
  This article explains and illustrates the fundamental properties and capabilities of CSS: padding vs. margin, floats, center alignment, ordered vs. unordered lists, styling headings, overflow, position, background images, and image enhancement.
• Some Useful JavaScript & jQuery Snippets
  QUite useful code snippets for common tasks (see also part 2, part 3, and part 4).
  
• UI.Layout – The Ultimate Page Layout Manager
  When used along with jQuery UI widgets, this jQuery plugin allows to create a sophisticated application (see demos).
• Web Forms for People
  Luke Wroblewski offers great tips for designing web forms.

Webtools

• 1-800-FREE411
  Allows callers from the continental United States to place free five-minute international calls after listening to two short advertisements. There is no limit on the number of calls they can make in a day, and many countries are supported.
• Mockingbird
  An online tool that makes it easy for you to create, link together, preview, and share mockups of your website or application.
• VoiceMeMe
  Provides a personal voicemail box for your web site, classfieds, auctions, blog, social network profile (see tutorial and alternative).

How to fix movie subtitle (and other text) encoding issues

Summary: Fixing subtitle encoding in DivX videos is easy... once you know how to do it.

I have been hunting for a copy of Moi Ivan, toi Abraham (AKA "Ivan and Abram", "Я - Иван, ты - Абрам") since I saw the movie on cable in mid-90s. The movie has not been released on a DVD, and I do not have a VHS player, but fortunately, I got a decent DivX version of the movie with Russian subtitles (the movie is mostly in Yiddish).


Unfortunately, instead of legitimate Cyrillic, the subtitle captions displayed garbage (accented characters). As I later found out, the subtitle file was encoded in ASCII for Windows-1251 (Cyrillic) code page instead of a Western code page (such as Windows-1252), so they appear fine only on a Russian version of Windows. So, what's a girl to do? I ran a few Google searches and found some posts from people running into a similar problem, but none of them contained any answers. I thought I would write a post explaining how I fixed the problem (really easy) hoping that it would help someone.

First, a quick intro to subtitles in DivX. Well, I do not really know much about this, but this is how much you -- a typical movie viewer -- need to know (if I misstate or omit something important, feel free to correct me). A typical DivX (AVI) file does not contain embedded subtitles. Subtitles normally come from a separate file, such as SRT, SUB, SSA/ASS. Normally, a subtitle file has the same name (and different extension) as the DivX file. For example, this would be a pair of a DivX (AVI) and a subtitle (SRT) files:

Moi Ivan, Moi Abraham.avi
Moi Ivan, Moi Abraham.srt

There is nothing magic about a subtitle file: it's just a text file, which confirms to a certain data format. Here is the format of the SubRip (SRT) subtitle file (directly from Wikipedia):

Subtitle number
Start time --> End time
Text of subtitle (one or more lines)
Blank line

Here is an example:

1
00:00:18,700 --> 00:00:21,889
<i>Говорят по-цыгански</i>

2
00:03:16,190 --> 00:03:21,760
Я - ИВАН, ТЫ - АБРАМ

Many popular video players (KMPlayer, VLC, etc), as well as DVD players, will automatically load and display the default subtitles from the file with the same name (as the DivX file) and the same folder, but you can also load additional subtitle files manually (e.g. you may have subtitles translated in several languages). In my favorite KMPlayer, you can load non-default subtitles via the Subtitles - Load Subtitle menu.

The original subtitle file I got looked like this:

1
00:00:18,700 --> 00:00:21,889
<i>Ãîâîðÿò ïî-öûãàíñêè</i>

2
00:03:16,190 --> 00:03:21,760
ß - ÈÂÀÍ, ÒÛ - ÀÁÐÀÌ

Although this text looks like garbage, it's not useless: it just needs to be re-encoded from one code page to another (and desirebly, to something non-code-page-specific, e.g. to Unicode). But how do you do it?

Help comes from Mozilla Firefox (and I suspect from any other web browser). If you need to fix the encoding of a subtitle file (or any other text file), here is what you need to do (you can use a similar approach to recover text in other types of documents, such as email, text files, and so on).

1. Launch Firefox (or you favorite web browser).
2. Open the subtitle file. To locate file in Firefox 3.5, use the File - Open File menu; in IE 8, use the File - Open menu, and click the Browse button; in Google Chrome 4.0 press the CTRL + O keys (when using Google Chrome, you need to change extension of the subtitle file to .TXT before opening the file; otherwise, it will launch the default program associated with the original file extension instead of displaying the file text in the browser).
3. Once the browser opens the file, it may automatically adjust encoding. If you still see garbage, select a different encoding option until the text appears correctly. To change encoding in Firefox 3.5, select appropriate encoding from the View - Character Encoding menu (Auto-Detect menu for the appropriate language can be helpful); In IE 8, use the View - Encoding menu; In Google Chrome, click the Control the current page toolbar button and pick the appropriate option from the Encoding menu (again, the Auto detect option may help).
4. Once you select the correct encoding option and verify that the text is displayed correctly highlight all text (you can use CTRL + A), and copy the selected text to the clipboard (press CTRL + C).
5. Open Notepad (or your favorite plain text editor, such as Notepad++, PSPad, etc), create a new file (File - New menu option in Notepad) and paste the contents of the clipboard in the new file (press CTRL + V).
6. Save the text file as the new subtitle file. If you decide to overwrite the original subtitle file, make sure that you first make a backup in case something goes wrong. When saving the file, you will most likely be prompted to change the default ANSI encoding, so pick the Unicode encoding.
7. Close the newly created subtitle file in Notepad (or your text editor), and reopen it to verify that encoding is still intact and text appears correctly, and if so, use it as a new subtitle file.

Now, if you need the Unicode version of the Russian subtitle file for Moi Ivan, toi Abraham, you can download it from here:

Moi Ivan, toi Abraham.srt

UPDATE: As I recently found out, the process of correcting the code page related issues in subtitles can be even easier, assuming that you have a free text editor Notepad++ installed. What you need to do is:

1. Back up the subtitles file (just in case something goes wrong).
2. Open the subtitles file in Notepad++.
3. From the Encoding menu, select the Characters Set option.
4. Under the character set, select the appropriate language family and then the code page (you may need to try a few code pages if you don't know which one to use).
5. When you see the characters appearing in the correct format, select the Convert to UTF-8 option under the Encoding menu.
6. Save the file.

That should be it.

See also:
The 3 Best Subtitle Sites For Your Movies & TV Series
How To Add Subtitles To A Movie Or TV Series
SubDownloader: Fast and Easy Subtitle Downloader
DivX Subtitles
DivXLand Media Subtitler Embeds Subtitles into Movie Files
Sublight Labs: Searching subtitles has never been this easy
The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)

Acer Aspire Revo 3610 review

Summary: First look at the Acer Revo 3610 HTPC.

After a long search for a home theater PC (HTPC) and entertaining various options from building my own system (what was I thinking!) to buying something similar to Sony VAIO - VGX-TP1, I finally settled on Acer Aspire Revo AR3610-U9022 Desktop PC:
I chose Revo 3610 for a number of reasons, including:

• Technology
  Revo 3610 is powered by the dual-core, hyper-threaded Intel® Atom™ 330 processor and NVIDIA® ION™ graphics, the combination that is probably insufficient for CPU-intensive tasks (such as editing videos), but well suited for the intended purposes (watching videos, including HD, online browsing, etc).
• Configuration
  The system configuration is optimized for media viewing in a family room. It offers built-in 802.11b/g/n WLAN, HDMI™ port, six USB 2.0 ports, 1080p HD video/HD audio support, muliti-card reader, and other cool features. It also comes with a VESA mount, wireless mouse, and wireless keyboard (the keyboard is not as slick as Logitech diNovo Mini, or IOGear Multimedia Keyboard with Laser Trackball and Scroll Wheel, or Lenovo Multimedia Remote with keyboard, but it's better than nothing).
  [UPDATE: I eventually bought Lenovo Multimedia Remote with Keyboard and found it handy, although the rest of my family does not seem to care for it. I also bought IOGear Multimedia Keyboard with Laser Trackball and Scroll Wheel just because the price was right (haven't used it, yet).]
• Energy efficiency
  Revo 3610 is Energy Star® 5.0-compliant. It's also very quiet (an important factor for HTPC).
• Price
  Among the systems I considered (e.g. Dell Inspiron Zino HD) Revo offered the most attractive price. I was planning to spend around $700, but got it directly from Amazon for $329.99 (no tax and free shipping). I don't think I would've built a system for that much money.
• Size
  The unit is really small.

Now, Revo 3610 has a few limitations, but none of them are critical to me:

• Lack of optical drive
  While it is a major limitation, this is one reason why the system is so cheap, but here is my take on it. I will mostly use Revo 3610 for watching streamed media or media stored on a hard drive. I do not care about Blue-ray at this point, but when I do, I'll buy a Blue-ray player anyway (these things are getting cheaper each month). And for watching regular DVDs/CDs, I already have a DVD player. I will need an external DVD writer, though (to burn system backup disks, etc).
• Small hard drive
  By current standards, the 160GB hard drive is small, but I have a bunch of external hard drives, which I can plug in, so no biggie here.
• Small RAM
  The 2 GB RAM is hardly enough to run a 64-bit OS, so I'm planning to upgrade memory to 4 GB when I find DDR2 800 SDRAM on sale (here is a video explaining how to take Revo apart), or more likely, I'll just plug in a ReadyBoost flash drive (find ReadyBoost flash drives on Amazon).
• Form factor
  I'm not a big fan of the design. Wish the system looked more like a DVD player and were entirely black and/or silver (the "dark blue" color is not offensive, though; it's very close to black). In the vertical position (on the stand), it looks weird.

Once I decided to buy Revo 3610, I could not find it on sale anywhere in the USA. I wasn't sure if it was discontinued, but after a couple of weeks of searching and waiting, I finally managed to snap one from Amazon (when it became available for a few days). I got the system delivered in about 10 days after placing the order. Here are my first impressions.

Where is the optical cable? Duh!
The system supports optical connection via the HDMI or the VGA port, but comes without cables. So how do you connect it to a TV? It would be nice if it came with an HDMI cable (seriously, a stock 6" HDMI cable costs what: $5?). If you decide to get Revo 3610, make sure that you have either a VGA or an HDMI cable ready (the cheap HDMI cable I bought at Meritline works very well; see HDMI cable deals).

Documentation? What documentation?
Once I connected Revo 3610 to my 32" Toshiba HGTV, I could not figure out how to make the supplied wireless keyboard and mouse work. I was expecting to find instructions in the documentation, but there were none. The provided pamphlet includes IKEA-like diagrams and some information explaining how to proceed with OS setup, but there is not a single sentence to explain how to enable the keyboard and mouse. The Revo 3610 documentation is a joke. I'm not kidding. Here is a quote from the User Guide I found on the hard drive after I completed the setup:

"Insert the startup disk you created during Windows setup into the floppy drive and press Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart your computer."

Floppy drive? Anyway, to complete the setup I just plugged in my old USB keyboard and mouse, but I needed to figure out how to actually make the wireless mouse and keyboard work, so I decided to try customer support.

Customer support! What customer support? Ah, that customer support!
I first submitted a question via the web form. It has been over a month, and I haven't received a response, yet. I then tried the online chat, but was told that it only covers Aspire One (whatever it is). I got the support number though (1-800-571-2237). The official version was that the phone support is available Mon-Fri 7 am-9 pm CST and Sat-Sun 8 am-5 pm CST (excluding holidays), but the person I talked to first said that it's available 24 hours. The support technician explained to me that the USB receiver is hidden inside of the battery compartment of the wireless mouse (the receiver is really small, so I did not notice it when I inserted the battery). Once I plugged the receiver into one of the Revo's USB ports and turned the power switch (it's nice that it has one), the mouse started to work, but I still struggled with the keyboard. The support technician told me to push the Connect switch on the bottom of the keyboard (apparently, the keyboard uses the same receiver as the mouse), but I tried and tried and it did not seem to work. After struggling for a few minutes, I finally managed to connect the keyboard, but I'm still not sure what I did differently. So finally I got the devices working.

VESA mount... no mount...
I was planning to mount Revo on the back side of my TV, but the holes in the supplied VESA mount did not match the holes in the TV. I suspect that the VESA mount is intended for smaller monitors. Even if the holes matched I would still be confused by the "instruction" explaining how to use the VESA mount.

Software, badware, goodware.
Revo 3610 comes with 64-bit edition of Windows 7, which is not the optimal choice. Not only the 64-bit OS requires more resources (such as RAM), but since HTPC is intended primarily for media viewing and most of the popular media software (Flash, media players, browsers) only come as 32-bit applications, this seems like a waste of resources. They do work, though, but what's the point! Anyway, as any other system, Revo comes with some bloatware, which took me about two hours to uninstall. I then tried to get the latest updates (OS, NVIDIA drivers, etc), and I screwed up by not following instructions (I did not uninstall Flash before installing Flash 10.1 Beta, forgot to install the latest NVIDIA chipset driver, and made a couple of other goofs, causing a few apps -- mostly web browsers showing videos -- to crash). I finally followed Paul J Roberts' instructions to the letter, and voila: it now works, and seems pretty stable.

One thing that disappointed me was that Revo did not recognize DVD+R in my external DVD writer. It worked fine for burning backup CDs, though. I suspect this is an issue with the DVD writer (I had problems with it before), so I'm currently shopping for another drive (I kinda like Samsung SE-S084C/RSBN, but keep my options open [got the Samsung SE-S084C/RSBN from Amazon for $49.99]).I do not like the Revo's power switch. Every time I press it, I'm afraid it'll break. I'd rather have a conventional power button.

I connected a 1.5 TB Western Digital Elements USB drive for additional storage, but I did not figure out how to access this drive from my other laptops (running Windows XP and Vista).
Although my display is set to show larger fonts (150%), I wish I could make the fonts even bigger. I'm quite satisfied with HD video quality. Streaming video works fine, but at this point, I'm constrained with the speed limitations of my wireless 802.11b/g router (have been waiting for the price of Netgear Rangemax WNDR3700 to drop), so the quality of streaming video varies. Programs like The Daily Show and Frontline show fine, but HD content is choppy (most likely, the router issue). Local HD videos look great. [Update: I have since bought ASUS RT-N13U Wireless-N Router, Access Point, and Repeater; see my review here.]

I have been using Revo 3610 for just a couple of weeks, so I'm still learning the software (Windows 7 quirks, Windows Media Center, Boxee, etc), but so far, I like it. I'm planning to post an update once I get a better grip on it and get more devices (in addition to wireless-N router, I'm also considering a TV tuner, and maybe a remote).

UPDATE (Feb 22, 2009): Just discovered an issue with x.264-encoded MKV files: it plays them, but the video is really slow and gets out-of-sync with the audio. I suspect that this is an issue with the codec, so looking for a solution. Will post an update once I get it fixed. Also noticed a couple of crashes when watching Flash in full-screen mode (this started to happen after a recent Windows update). Will keep an eye on this one as well. [See update below.]

UPDATE (Feb 23, 2009): The x.264 encoding/MKV issue seems to be solved, thanks to recommendations I found at RevoUser board. Now, I'm too cheap to buy the CoreAV Professional Codec, so I somewhat altered the recommendations. First, I installed the latest release of the ffdshow codec pack. Because ffdshow is available in 32-bit version, I also installed the 32-bit version of Media Player Classic Home Cinema. Other than checking a couple of audio settings in the ffdshow options, I did not make any other changes. I opened a couple of x.264-encoded MKV files (1080p) in Media Player Classic, and they ran flawlessly. And the quality was just breathtaking even on my cheap 32" 720p Toshiba LCD. I'm very pleased with the results.

UPDATE (Nov 22, 2010): I have been using Revo 3610 for over 9 months now, and I'm quite happy with it. The only complaint I have is the performance of the wireless-N adapter for streaming HD video, but I'm not sure if this is and issue with my wireless setup (distance to the router, walls), or with the adapter. I don't stream HD video that often, so not a big deal for now. On another note, I have recently been helping some friends buy HTPCs and noticed a few models that appear to be newer and better alternatives to Revo 3610. These were not available at the time I bought it, but if I were shopping for an HTPC now, I would seriously consider the following models (Amazon prices seem reasonable at the time of this post):
Find more HTPCs on sale.

UPDATE (Jan 15, 2011): A few weeks ago, the mouse started to act (the left button kept getting stuck), so I called Acer and received a free replacement withing a few days. No hassle, whatsoever.

UPDATE (Jan 25, 2011): This week I decided to jump on the Windows Media Center wagon (so to speak), and had all kinds of issues. The major problem was that Windows 7 WMC could not play DVDs (from virtual drives mapped ISO images, as well as VIDEO_TS folders; kept getting error: "Files needed to display video are not installed or are not working correctly."). After 3 nights of investigation and a futile effort to reinstall the OS, I finally found the solution at Windows Client TechCenter (see post by CGTracy). It involves 4 step:

1. In Windows Media Center, navigate to Settings > DVD > Audio.
2. Check the Auto volume box.
3. Click Save.
4. Reboot computer.

I'll write a post on WMC migration, in which I'll explain how to make it work and play all kinds of media formats.

See also:
Acer Aspire Revo Review
Acer Aspire Revo 3610 Atom ION 330 Review
Why It's Finally Time To Get a Home Theater PC
My Media Center Setup
Guide to Building a HD HTPC
Diary Of My Switch To Internet TV - Part 2
Diary Of My Switch To Internet TV - Part 4
RevoUser.com (Revo user forum)
Beginner's Guide What is an HTPC?
How I Built the Media Center of My Dreams for Under $500

Going Chrome... Google Chrome

Summary: If you haven't checked out Google Chrome lately, this may be the time.

Well, boys and girls, it looks like I'm switching to Google Chrome.

I have been using Firefox since version 1.5, but lately Firefox' performance turned into a major hassle. It takes me from 15 seconds to over a minute to launch the browser and it's just plain silly. I tried all suggestion I could find -- reducing the number of add-ons, deleting and recreating a user profile, etc. -- but since nothing helped, I have been looking for a browser replacement.

I briefly flirted with every version of IE that came out of Microsoft. IE7, IE8... did not like any of them. I tried a couple of the Chrome betas when they just came out, and did not like them mostly due to missing features, such as lack of extension support. I installed the current version (v.4.0.x) a couple of weeks ago, and the more I use it, the more I like it.

First of all I'm blown away with performance. Compared to Firefox, everything from initial browser launch to page loads seems blazingly fast.

Chrome's user interface is very pleasing. Many minor details illustrate a lot of thought put into the GUI. For example, I like that the status bar only appears when status is changing (this leaves more useful space for the web content). It's nice that the menu options are located under a single toolbar button (again giving more space and reducing the UI clutter).


Finally, I found out that all but few of my favorite Firefox add-ons had been ported to Chrome extensions, which made my transition easier. I would not have made a switch to Google Chrome, had the following extensions not been available:

• IE Tab Multi (alternative: IE Tab)
  Displays web pages using IE rendering engine hosted inside of a Chrome tab.
• LastPass
  Password manager, form filler, and more.
• Xmarks Bookmarks Sync
  Synchronizes my bookmarks across IE, Firefox, Chrome and multiple computers.

I could've lived without the following extensions, but they sure make my web browsing experience better:

• Awesome Screenshot: Capture & Annotate
  Captures the whole page or any portion, annotates it with rectangles, circles, arrows, lines and text, one-click upload to share, and much more (see also Webpage Screenshot, Picnik Extension for Chrome, and Aviary Screen Capture).
• Craigslist Preview
  Displays cached images for Craigslist search results.
• goo.gl URL Shortener
  Shortens URLs using goo.gl, the Google URL shortener service.
• Hover Zoom
  Displays full-size image on mouse hover over a tumbnail. Works with many sites, including Facebook, Amazon, Flickr, and more.
• InvisibleHand
  Notifies you if a product you’re browsing for is available more cheaply from another retailer.
• Ookong
  Checks Amazon product price history and displays price drop alerts for items in your follow list.
• PriceBlink
  Displays lower prices and coupons while you're shopping.
• Search Preview
  Displays thumbnails of websites in the search page results.
• Shareaholic for Google Chrome
  Makes it easier to share pages with social network sites, such as Facebook.
• The Camelizer
  Provides price history for products sold at popular web retailers, such as Amazon, BestBuy, NewEgg, and Overstock.

And here are several extensions that developers will appreciate (courtesy to SitePoint Design View #69):

• Pendule
  Extends the features of the the built-in Developer Tools (available via Ctrl+Shift+I).
• Firebug Lite
  A somewhat crippled version of the most popular Firefox add-on.
• Resolution Test
  Changes the size of the browser window for developers to preview their websites in different screen resolutions (see also Window Resizer).
• Eye Dropper
  Allows you to pick color from any webpage.

These extensions and a handful of bookmarklets, should take care of most of my browser need. (By the way, in case you did not know: you do not need to restart Chrome after installing a new extension. Sweet.)

Too bad, I could not find replacement for the following Firefox add-ons:

• DownThemAll
  Downloads all or selected files pointed by hyperlinks or image references in a web page.
• FireFTP
  In-browser FTP client.

So, I'll keep Firefox just in case I need to use it (as well as IE), but for most of my needs, it looks like Chrome will server me pretty well. Thanks Google.

Essential Visual Studio add-ins and other tools

Summary: Improve your programming experience with Visual Studio add-ins and other enhancements.

If you are a Windows programmer using Visual Studio, here are a few thing which can enhance your programming experience.

Visual Studio add-ins

• Build Version Increment alters the default version auto-increment style (supports simple increment by 1, date stamp, etc).
• Code Convert converts source code between C# and Visual Basic.NET.
• CodeRush Xpress for C# includes hand-picked features taken from CodeRush and Refactor! Pro add-ins.
• Code Style Enforcer checks the code against a configurable code standard and best practices (Visual Studio 2010 only).
• CopySourceAsHtml allows you to copy source code, syntax highlighting, and line numbers as HTML.
• GhostDoc automatically generates XML documentation comments for methods and properties based on their type, parameters, name, and other contextual information.
• NArrange automatically organizes code members and elements within .NET classes.
• Productivity Power Tools offer a set of extensions to Visual Studio Professional (and above) which improves developer productivity.
• SelectionTree adds feature selection tree dialog to appropriate setup and deployment (MSI) projects.
• Regular Expression Tester Extension lets you create or modify regular expressions and test them with any text.
• Spell Checker supports text verification in HTML style comments, ASP.NET server side comments, JScript, C# and C++ comments, CSS and C, VB and VBScript style comments, as well as in JS, CS, VB, CSS, CPP and H files (requires Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and Microsoft Word 2003 or 2007).
• StyleCop analyzes C# source code to enforce a set of style and consistency rules.
• Versioning Controlled Build automates versioning of .NET and VC++ projects (handy for multi-project solutions).

Code snippets

• Visual Studio 2008 Code Snippet Library (C#)
• Visual Studio 2005 Code Snippets (C#, Visual Basic.NET)

Hacks

• How to Automatically Stop a Visual Studio Build on Error: will save you time when the build of dependent assemblies fails (it makes no sense to continue with the solution build when one of the project builds fails).

See also:
Visual Studio Tools and Extensions (MSDN Magazine, January 2011 issue)

Download free music... legally

Summary: Discover and download free music without violating the law.

If there is such thing as a typical music preference of a typical computer programmer, it probably does not apply to me. Sure, I like Pink Floyd, but my musical preferences diverge from majority of popular rock/hard rock/etc icons. My favorite music genre is baroque (Bach, Palestrina, Vivaldi), but I also enjoy The Mamas & the Papas, Cesária Évora, Angelique Kidjo, Al Bano & Romina Power, ABBA, Leonard Cohen, Joe Dassin, Astor Piazzolla, b-tribe, Canadian Brass, Ivan Kupala, and other performers, who have little in common with each other. Within the last year or so, I have been discovering performance by the less known artists (at least, less known by me), such as The Puppini Sisters, Natalia Clavier, Lee Rocker, and Melody Gardot, and I really liked some of them.

If your interests in music are similar to mine, this is how you can find and enjoy new music; it's free and absolutely legal.

• Amazon.com
  Amazon.com offers free MP3 downloads, but the list of songs can be overwhelming. You can use the navigation panel to narrow songs by genre:
  
  
  In addition to individual songs, Amazon.com also offers free albums. To find free albums, use the Sort by Price: Low to High option.
  
  
  Amazon normally offers high quality MP3 files (above 192 Kbps).
• Podcasts
  A number of radio stations offer one-song-a-day podcast downloads, which are normally of lower quality (128 Kbps - 192 Kbps), but they should sound fine to most ears. Sure most of the downloads are crap, but occasionally, you may stumble upon a gem. There must be more podcasts available, but here are the ones from NPR that I like:

  MPR: The Current Song of the Day (RSS)
  KCRW's Today's Top Tune (RSS)
  KEXP Song of the Day (RSS)

  To download podcasts, you can use a device-specific program, such as iTunes or Zune, but I prefer a free, open-source program called Juice.
  
  
  Once you find a track that you like among the downloads, you can use an application like Mp3Tag to edit ID3 tags (you may also want to rename file names, because the downloaded files normally have cryptic names).
• Use RSS tools
  You can automate the process of searching for free MP3 downloads across multiples sources using RSS tools, such as Yahoo! Pipes. The key is to subscribe to the right aggregation service. I would recommend the SlickDeals' Freebes and Hot Deals forums, as well as Front Page (each of these has a subscribe/RSS link). You can follow this tutorial (and this one) to set up a Yahoo! Pipe filtering only posts containing music-specific keywords, such as free, MP3, music, album, etc.
• Keep your eyes (and ears) open
  Many vendors offer free promotional MP3s and CDs, some of which are not too bad. For example, I do not remember how I got it, but somehow I received a free Mommy Mix CD from Safeway.
  
  
  Being a promotional CD, I did not expect much from it, but it it ended up being one of my family's favorite music CDs (in fact, if it were available for sale, I would've bought it). So don't assume that promotional music is always crappy, some may surprise you.

See also:
How to Get Free and Legal MP3 Downloads from… Universal Music!?
Top 10 Websites For Free & Legal MP3 Music Downloads
The 3 Best Free Classical Music Download Sites
10 Best Websites to Find Legal Music