Tip of the Day – Great Silverlight Programmer utilities

Personally, one of the reasons that I opted to move to Microsoft tools long ago  was I got tired of LightSpeed telling me that the problem was the debugger and Periscope telling me it was the editor, and XYWrite telling me it was the compiler and… well you get the idea. 

Visual Studio 2008 is pretty amazing, but it isn't (yet) the end of software utilities for me, so here is my personal list of indispensable utilities for serious Silverlight programming.

NB: the usual rules apply – these opinions are mine alone, your mileage may vary, no warranty is express or implied, contents are hot, opening or using of product may void warranty.

1. Video Capture. A lot of material is now available via video; some of it is even good; and some of that is free. If the following conditions apply to you:-

Frequent access to videos (e.g., tutorials) that are legitimately yours to save to disk and
A relatively high speed (broad band connection and }
No easy way to save the video

Then you really want to take a look at WM Recorder.  Truly great.

2. Exam Diff Pro – best software I know for examining differences in files and directories. Incredibly easy to use, to customize and very reliable. Great for those times when you're either not sure which file is the one with the critical change, for merging two branches or for figuring out what it is you did that finally fixed that bug!

Finally, if you are going to do a presentation on Silverlight (or virtually anything else, you must have Mark Russinovich's Zoomit which is truly spectacular, and which you can used incredibly well in Scott Hanselman's presentation of MVC at Mix.

Once you get comfortable with Zoomit, it offers a few features you won't find anywhere else, including (a) very focused zooming and (b) the ability to draw straight lines and real rectangles.