What’s New in ReflectInsight 5.3.1

The following is a brief highlight of just some of the new features, improvements and fixes coming in ReflectInsight 5.3.1

Live and Log Viewers

The following are some of the new features and enhancements we’ve made to the Live/Log Viewers.

Splash Screen

We updated the Splash Screen with a loading/initialization indicator to display progress of what is being loaded on startup.

Viewer

The Live and Log Viewers status bar  were cleaned up. We also fixed some missing icons in the viewer when you started to resize the viewer smaller.

We also enhanced the user interaction with the viewer when live messages were being received. Previously if there was high volume of messages coming in, the viewer sometimes was non responsive. This has now been addressed.

Refined Ribbon Tabs

We rearranged the layout of the Ribbon to make the most used commands on the left and we exposed some existing commands to make it easier to get to.

We also changed the Show/Hide Docked Panes buttons to Toggle Buttons.

User Defined Views

When creating a new User Defined View, all message types are now selected by default. Based on user feedback we found that more often than not, all message types were desired when your focus is on the message properties, like Machine Name.

We also simplified the Options for filtering out empty Enter/Exit methods for User Defined Views:

Updated Themes

We included new themes: Visual Studio 2013 Blue, Visual Studio 2013 Dark and Visual Studio 2013 Light.

Check for Updates

Before making any network calls out to determine if there are updates, you now have the option to disable this if you want. This is useful for servers that might not have access to the internet and you don’t want any alarms going off because of unauthorized network access.

Touch UI Support

For those of you using a touch enabled laptop and/or  tablet (like a Surface Pro) with ReflectInsight installed, you can now enable the Touch UI mode that is part of the Ribbon. When enabled everything becomes BIGGER and more usable from a touch point of view.

Quick Access Toolbar Customization

We’ve enabled support to add any of the Ribbon button commands to the Quick Access Toolbar. Just right click any of the commands and say “Add to Quick Access Toolbar”.

Auto Purge

Added 75% and 100% values for Auto Purge.

Licensing

Version 5.3.1 marks the start for being able to purchase and license ReflectInsight. License information is displayed in the Account backstage and in the About dialog.

Documentation

We’ve finally put together proper documentation for the ReflectInsight library, the Logging Extensions and our RI.Utils libraries. Going forward we will continue to refine and expand upon this documentation. Any feedback you have on this is greatly appreciated.

We’ve also included the XML documentation with the ReflectSoftware.Insight.dll library, so you should see proper intellisense now when calling any of the ReflectInsight logging methods. This was previously available in the past but broke somewhere along the lines.

Router Service

The Routing Service has been split off from the ReflectInsight installer and is now its own MSI installer. Router service startup mode has been changed to Automatic.

New Message Types

We’ve added the following messages types:

• SendMiniDumpFile
• SendTypedCollection (renamed from SendEnumerable which is now deprecated)
• SendString (can send String and StringBuilder objects, will also show NULL for null strings)

We also added args to all Send methods where the str parameter has been defined.

Miscellaneous

• Added Desktop shortcut to Log Viewer installation
• Code signed all EXE, DLL and MSI’s
• Added ExceptionHandler to TraceMethod
• Added named CheckPoints
• Force config change in by code
• Ignore physical config change
• Numerous bug fixes and performance improvements
• Added event OnConfigSettingsInitialized
• Viewer Scratchpad has been renamed to Watches
• New sample application for sending to the Windows Event Log

Please download the latest release candidate version of ReflectInsight now and enjoy!

We welcome any feedback you may have. Feedback can be given at our UserVoice site.

Thanks
ReflectSoftware Team

Breaking Changes coming in ReflectInsight 5.1

We will be releasing an updated build of ReflectInsight, version 5.1.

This new build will include some minor bug fixes and enhancements, but primarily we’ve added in support to have the ReflectInsight Viewer be able to open both older and newer file formats starting with version 5.1.

The goal and purpose of this new update was to ensure that all binary log files and and messages being sent to the Viewer and Routing Service, are upward and downward compatible, regardless of version starting from ReflectInsight 5.1 onwards.

If you try to open a v5.0 file in the v5.1 or newer Viewer, you will encounter the following error:

However, starting with version v5.1 of ReflectInsight, if you try to open a 5.1 or newer file, then the file will still open and you will see everything pertaining to v5.1. You will not be able to see any specific details that are part of the newer file format. This is if the file format were to change to support new functionality.

If however you have a v5.1 or newer Viewer and try to open a v5.1 file or newer, then the file will open and you will see everything as expected.

We decided to get this update out sooner than later so that everyone gets on the version that includes this logic for maintaining compatibility between the viewer and file format versions.

What does this mean for your current applications using ReflectIsight?

You should consider upgrading to 5.1 as soon as possible.

If you need to keep the old 5.0 version due to applications in production, then download and install the 5.0 redistributable log viewer for viewing those 5.0 files. Then migrate to 5.1 as soon as you can.

The ReflectSoftware Team