Develop Reference

Using photoshop files from web application

I want to interact with a Photoshop file and create images using its actions and smart objects.
Is there any php or C# API to can do it?

First of all, I would like you to reflect on the legality of such a thing. Would Adobe let you practically just proxy their application to the web? I see they have a lot of licenses so maybe one of them actually grants you permission to do this (however, there could still be caveats so I suggest you read up on that). As that's not the question, I won't talk about this anymore, I just wanted to to mention it as it should be relevant.
Now, for the actual question - if you look at Microsoft Office Interop, Microsoft states that it is unsupported in a server-side environment. Go to this Microsoft page and read Problems using server-side Automation of Office in the More information section.
There are several issues if you decide to run a regular client application server-side, as stated on the mentioned page, but one of the most significant issues is the following:
Interactivity with the desktop:
Office applications assume that they are being run under an interactive desktop. In some circumstances, applications may need to be made visible for certain Automation functions to work correctly. If an unexpected error occurs, or if an unspecified parameter is needed to complete a function, Office is designed to prompt the user with a modal dialog box that asks the user what the user wants to do. A modal dialog box on a non-interactive desktop cannot be dismissed. Therefore, that thread stops responding (hangs) indefinitely. Although certain coding practices can help reduce the likelihood of this issue, these practices cannot prevent the issue entirely. This fact alone makes running Office Applications from a server-side environment risky and unsupported.
While this is written by Microsoft for their product, these are more or less applicable to any regular client application. And even if you still decided to go with this approach, as Neville K already suggested, it would be a very resource-hungry task.
Considering the above, I would maybe ask a different question, along the lines of "What library or server-side app to use for doing whatever you need to do with images".

Based on this link, you can do this things with Photoshop SDK:
"With the Photoshop SDK, you can enable your apps to drive and/or communicate with Photoshop CS6 (version 13.0.0 or later) via a TCP connection. It’s now possible to create an eBook of Photoshop tutorials that allows users to drive actions in Photoshop CS6 from within the eBook"

This sound like hard but some companies seems to make it work. Xee can read PSD too (and has an epic comment about this format in the source code).
But to quote someone over at HN:
PSD was never intended to be a data interchange format: it is the
serialization format of a single program that has more individual
unrelated features that actual people rely on than almost any other
piece of software and has maintained striking amounts of backwards
compatibility and almost unbroken forwards compatibility during its
over two decades of existence. This product's "file format" needs to
be critiqued in this context, along with similar mega-programs like
Office. I am thereby having a difficult time fathoming why anyone
would think that a PSD file is thereby going to be some well-organized
file format that they should easily be able to parse from their own
application is just naively wishful thinking: even other products
from Adobe have limitations while opening these files; to truly
manipulate these files you really need to be highly-compatible with
Photoshop's particular editing model (hence the conceptual
difference between these two classes of file format).
I would recommand to look at Xee for a server side utility.
Good luck.

You can use the scripting interface to kick off "Shell" tasks from any web language if you really want to.
However, I'd seriously worry about this approach - the memory requirements for Photoshop are such that you could only support a couple of users, and you'd need a fairly complex polling mechanism to check for the results of the "shell" task. Photoshop was simply not designed to power web sites in this way.
Consider using graphics libraries instead - I've used ImageMagick with great effect in the past.

Heed the warnings that you really can't process more than 1 or 2 images at a time with photoshop without crashing your server, so just putting it on your webserver is a non-starter. A lighter weight image library is much better for most tasks.
But you could queue up jobs from your web application and then process them on another computer, or limit it to just one at a time.
Adobe has macros and a full action/javascript based scripting environment that you could kick off from commandline or com.
Adobe Scripting Guide
http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/photoshop/pdfs/photoshop_cs5_scripting_guide.pdf
For older versions of photoshop you can use the macro functionality to Record an action. Then, create a droplet from the action. Call the droplet from the command line with an image file as the sole parameter. The path to the image file probably needs to be an absolute one.

Online updating a C# program

Greetings,
I'm sorry if this question has been asked already. I've tried using the search function but couldn't find any answer that suited my situation.
I have a real simple C# form application of only 1 file, a exe.
I distributed this currently by 4shared where people can download it as pleased.
However, every time I make changes to the program people will have to download the new version from 4shared.
Now this isn't a ideal situation and I'm a noob when it comes to creating upgrade but the situation I wish is that the program looks at a website / ftp server where I deploy a new version.
I'm looking for a way inside my program to look at the file on that website / ftp server and decide wether there's a new version available.
If there is a new version available in the website / ftp server I would like for the program to update itself to the newest version.
Hope you guys can help me out with this and I hope I explained my situation enough !

NetSparkle is a nice alternative to click-once with more deployment options. http://netsparkle.codeplex.com/

Have a look at ClickOnce. It will do this for you.

When I'm developing and publishing such applications, I usually do it the following way:
Develop a .NET Windows Forms application
Develop a tiny ASP.NET application with an ASMX web service.
Publish the ASMX web service to my public web site.
Add a WSDL reference for the web service to my Windows Forms application.
Create a setup (I prefer Unicode NSIS over ClickOnce).
The logic I implement in the SOAP web service is basically a single function:
[WebMethod]
public string CheckUpdateAvailable( string currentVersion )
{
...
}
The Windows Forms application calls this method (e.g. from a background thread upon program start), passing its current assembly version as a string to the function.
The WSDL function in turn checks the passed version against the newest setup version (e.g. being stored inside web.config or extracted live from the setup.exe on the server). If a newer version exists, it return a string with the URL to download from; otherwise it returns NULL.
When the caller of the WSDL function gets a non-NULL string, it can show a message to the user, asking whether he wants to download and install the executable and then simply execute the URL (via Process.Start).

WyUpdate is the way to go here. We've been using it for over a year with great results (they have excellent support too).
It actually uses patches to update files so that when a 5MB executable only has a small change, the client only has to download a file in the order of kilobytes.
They supply an automatic update component for either Windows Forms or WPF that looks nice and works great.
You can host the update files on either an FTP server or a normal website without any server-side configuration.
There's plenty more to it, and the best place to start is with their video tutorial of how to set up an update.

Here's an open-source library I wrote to address specific needs we had for WinForms and WPF apps. The general idea is to have the greatest flexibility, at the lowest overhead possible. All you'll have to do is create an update feed and reference the library from your app.
So, integration is super-easy, and the library does pretty much everything for you, including synchronizing operations. It is also highly flexible, and lets you determine what tasks to execute and on what conditions - you set the rules (or use some that are there already). Last by not least is the support for any updates source (web, BitTorrent, etc) and any feed format - whatever is not implemented you can just write for yourself.
Cold updates (requiring an application restart) is also supported, and done automatically unless "hot-swap" is specified for the task.
This all boils down to one DLL, less than 70kb in size.
More details at http://www.code972.com/blog/2010/08/nappupdate-application-auto-update-framework-for-dotnet/
Code is at http://github.com/synhershko/NAppUpdate (Licensed under the Apache 2.0 license)
I plan on extending it more when I'll get some more time, but honestly you should be able to quickly enhance it yourself for whatever it currently doesn't support.

Creating an installer for multiple applications

Hey, I'm trying to create an installer for multiple games, from one server computer which individual computers then execute.
E.g. BF 1942, WC3, BF2, DOW. However i need to be able to select which applications to Install, which is a simple check box.
I only have a limited knowledge of c#. What is the best way of going about this?
I have looked at NSIS though i don't like the scripting that they use.
I only have C# express.

NSIS. http://nsis.sourceforge.net One section per application, install with ExecWait operation.
Section "BF 1942"
ExecWait '"$EXEDIR\1942\setup.exe"'
SectionEnd

The closest thing that I can think of would probably have to be iexpress.exe
It comes standard with 99% of all windows, just do CTRL+R and type in iexpress.exe.
It's a wizard, so it shouldn't be that hard to generate your own file.
I don't know if it would work for what you're wanting to do, but I'd consider it to be worth trying, saving yourself some time.

How does one inject resources into an already built executable

I am working on a windows application that will need to be branded. The client will be selling this to other businesses, and needs a customized logo and name for each sale.
The client does not know how to use visual studio!
I think I need to write a packager app to inject custom logo and string resources into the executable. I am planning on using WPF. But since this is a critical requirement, I'd be willing to do it in winforms if that is easier.
What is the best way to do this? Any and all suggestions welcome.

It sounds like what you are after is application skinning. This doesn't mean you have to unpack the exe and inject resources. You just need to consider skinning from the start of the project and build the application to support your skinning requirements.
WPF will make skinning your app much easier. There will be several different ways to accomplish what you want.
Simplest is to leave the logo image loose and reference it with a relative path from the XAML file(s) that need to show this image.
You should look into Resource Dictionaries in WPF and how they help you group resources and support skinning. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms750613.aspx
The text will be a little different but I am not sure what you need as far as a text goes. Do you mean you need to localize the strings or do you simply need different text (all the same locale) to show for different clients?

One possible solution (perhaps not the simplest one) is to use a parent application which compiles source code for generating child application. You can do it with CSharpCodeProvider and CompilerParameters classes. Add the image as an embedded resource and retrieve it in the child application. A working demo with a source code is available at Slide Show Builder.

My best suggestion for the exact question you asked (although I suspect there is another way by reconsidering the exact requirements) would be to write a utility which uses ildasm to disassemble the assembly, then use ilasm to reassemble it and include your new resource file.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/496e4ekx%28VS.71%29.aspx

The trivial solution is to provide the bitmap along with the EXE as a separate file. Actually replacing an embedded resource in the EXE requires decompiling it with ildasm.exe and putting it back together with ilasm.exe. Ildasm.exe is only available in the Windows SDK, it can be downloaded separately. Error prone and small odds that your customer can get that right, you'll need to provide them with, say, a .bat file that does this.
Of course, whomever is interested in replacing the logo, for whatever reason, would not be slowed down by replacing either the separate image file or using the Ildasm.exe trick. There is therefore very little point in making it any more complicated then it needs to be.

Proper localization of a WinForms application

I have a WinForms application which I want to translate into multiple languages. However, I do not have any experience with localizing a WinForms app, and I find very contradictory information about this subject.
Basically, what I want is:
In the source code, I want only one file per language
This file gets compiled into the main application on compilation - no satellite assemblies or external data files after building the application
The user can select the language, I do not need/want auto-detection based on the operating system
This should mainly contain strings and ints, but also a CultureInfo
Most solutions I've seen either have one .resx file per Form and/or external satellite assemblies.
Do I have to roll my own?
Or is there something in the framework already?
.net Framework 3.5 SP1 if that matters.
Edit:
For the most part, Visual Studio already offers support for what I want, but there are two issues. When I set Form.Localizable to true I have this nice Designer support, but this generates one resx per Form. The idea of manually overriding it in InitializeComponent fails because it's designer-written code that will regularly be overwritten.
Theoretically, I only want to :
a) override the creation of the ComponentResourceManager to point it to my global resx and
b) change the call to ApplyResources to the overload that takes a CultureInfo as third parameter.
It seems as if I have to add a function call to my constructor that gets called after InitializeComponent() and overrides its behaviour. That seems terribly inefficient, but Visual Studio is right when it warns about touching InitializeComponent().
At the moment, I am indeed rolling my own WinForms localization Framework...

I've just completed a C# .Net 3.5 project with a similar problem. We were writing WinForms plugin for an existing multi-lingual application with 8 languages (including English).
This is how we did it:
Create all our forms and UI in the default language, English.
Put all our internal strings in a resource file (stuff not tied directly to a form like custom error messages and dialog box titles etc)
Once we had completed most of the work and testing we localised it.
Each form already had a .resx file but this was empty. We set the property 'Localizable' to true, the .resx file was filled with things like button sizes & strings.
For each of the other languages, we changed the 'Language' property on the form. We chose the basic version of each language eg: 'Spanish' instead of 'Spanish (Chile)' etc. so that it would work for every 'Spanish' dialect, I think.
Then we went through each control, translated its text and resized, if needed. This created a .resx per language and form combination.
We were then left with, for 8 languages, 8 .resx for each form and 8 .resx for the general strings. When compiled the output folder had the .dll we were creating and then a sub folder for each language with a .resources.dll in it.
We were able to test the versions of the UI in the designer by just changing the language property to check that we had the correct strings & layout.
All in all once we got our heads around it, it was quite easy and painless.
We didn't need to write any custom tweaks to the form loading

I was asking a similar question about ASP.NET and got a first answer - this tool and its workflow might also be something for you - have a look: Lingobit Localizer
It seems to be able to load your Winforms app and allows you to start translating your labels etc. and see the forms while you do it. Lots of other features, too, like incremental translation and translation memory (if you use the same terms over and over again).
Looks quite promising (for Winforms) - haven't used it myself, though.
Here's an extensive list of potential .NET localization tools - not sure, how well they work and what they cover - have a look, maybe you'll find what you're looking for.
Marc

I dont have a solution for your first and second requirement but keep in mind that localizing a form is not as simple as translating each word. You need to check that each translated text fits in their respective control. Also, maybe you have an icon or an image which need to be change in another culture.
For your point three, you can change the language manually with the following lines:
CultureInfo ci = new CultureInfo("fr");
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = ci;

This is a huge subject and there are many ways to accomplish what you want. The framework does provide the basis but a complete solution requires that you implement certain elements yourself.
For example the default framework implementation is to create a .resx file for every resource. In ASP.Net this means each user/server control or page. This doesn't lend itself to easy maintenance and if you want to move resources to a database you need to implement your own provider.
My familiarity with Winforms is limited but if you are using Silverlight or WPF then have a read of Guy Smith-Ferrier's work on the subject at: http://www.guysmithferrier.com/category/Internationalization.aspx. He also has some toolsets that can make your life easier at: http://www.dotneti18n.com/Downloads.aspx.
I've worked with him before and have never come across anyone else with a better depth of understanding of the subject.

What you are asking for:
no satellite resource files
only one size and control placement per form.
lots of languages embedded in the executable.
Is not do-able in vanilla Visual Studio's IDE.
What it would require is some custom work, basically fulfilling all these steps:
Acquire a custom resource manager that handles TMX resource files.
Put all your localizable strings in a TMX file.
Make this TMX file an embedded resource in your project.
In your Form constructor, create your TMX ResourceManager, loading the TMX file from your embedded resources.
In your code, use your tmx ResourceManager instead of the default ResourceManager for getting localized strings.
Let the Form use the default ResourceManager for getting all the designer things except the strings.
Get your TMX file fleshed out with the new language translations.
More can be added in the next release of your project, just by adding them to this TMX file before you compile.
RESOURCES: (not an exhaustive list, by any means)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation_Memory_eXchange
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tmx-editor/

The right way to do this is, suppose you want to add Arabic support witch is RightToLeft language:
Double click the form
Set localizable prop. to true
Change Language prop. to Arabic //This will automatically open a new version of the form so you can customize.
Set RightToLeft prop. to Yes
Set RightToLeftLayout prop. to True
Start renaming controls, and save the form.
Handle Messages/Errors in code // Sorry I don't have a quick solution for now, try duplicate them and If/Else the current local.