You’re holding in your hands an almost encyclopedic reference of tools to help you boost your development productivity and increase your software’s quality. Each chapter in this book is full of articles describing specific problems you’re likely to face regularly as part of your work. Better yet, those articles offer up specific tools that help you solve those problems!
Each article lays out a compelling case for the particular tool selected for the job and shows you how to get started using it. Some articles make extensive use of code examples where appropriate. Other articles walk you through implementing the tool, complete with screenshots to help you along the way.
These articles aren’t meant to be in-depth, detailed references for the tools. Rather, we’re trying to give you an introduction to how each tool can help you work faster, smarter, and better, getting you started so you can do more exploration on your own.
We show you pertinent details about the tools at the beginning of each article, via tables like the following.
Tool | Rhino.Mocks |
Version covered | 2.7.2 |
Home page | |
Power Tools page | |
Summary | Solid mock-object library supporting strongly typed mock objects with a host of other handy features |
License type | BSD |
Online resources | Mailing list, author’s blog |
Supported Frameworks | .NET 1.0, 1.1, 2.0 |
Related tools in this book | NMock 2.0 |
Each table contains the following important information:
- Tool
The name of the tool covered in the article.
- Version covered
The version of the tool used when writing the article. Open source and freeware tools change often, so please check the tool’s home page and documentation for the most up-to-date information.
- Home page
The URL where you can go to download and read up on the tool.
- Power Tools page
We’ve created a companion web site for this book. This URL links you to a specific area on our site where you can find out more information about the tool, rate the tool via votes, read reviews, and much more (see The Book’s Companion Web Site for more information on the companion site).
- Summary
A brief description of what the tool will do for you.
- License type
The license, if any, under which the tool was released.
- Online resources
The sorts of places where you can expect to find more information about the tool. This might include FAQs, Wikis, online forums, and so on.
- Supported Frameworks
Which versions of the .NET (or Mono!) Framework the tool supports. Note that many tools aren’t tied to a specific Framework, in which case we leave this part out of the table.
- Related tools in this book
Other tools to read up on if you’ve found this one interesting. Those listed might provide similar functionality or might be complementary, filling gaps this one doesn’t cover. If we don’t discuss any related tools, this section will be omitted.
Following this summary table, you’ll find that each article follows the same general discussion structure. This structure is meant to help you quickly understand what’s needed to get the tool up and running and how to go about using it. Here are the sections you’ll see:
- Getting Started
Here you’ll find out where to download the tool, what requirements your system needs to run the tool, and instructions on setting up the tool in your environment. Please note that we won’t repeat the same basic requirements over and over. Unless otherwise specified, all of these tools will require a 32-bit Windows (2000, XP, Server 2003) platform to run on, and most tools will need the .NET Framework installed. We’ll only call out unique issues, such as when a tool supports one of the 64-bit platforms or requires a specific version of the Framework or something else to run.
- Using <Tool>
This is the meat and potatoes of why you’re reading this book. We’ll show you how to implement the tool in your development cycle, and we’ll introduce some (but not all) of the benefits the tool brings to you. In this section, you’ll typically find code examples, screenshots, and lots of information on how to put the tool to work.
- Getting Support
You can read this section to find out what, if any, support is available for the tool. We’ll show you where to go to find mailing lists, discussion forums, or contact addresses.
- <Tool> in a Nutshell
The final part of each article is a concise summary about what the tool brings to the table, and why we (or our contributors) find the tool such a compelling addition to the development cycle.
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