Cool VS 2005 Debugging Visualizers for ASP.NET 2.0 Development

One of the cool new features in VS 2005 is a debugging extensibility feature called "Debugger Visualizers".  Basically this provides a way for developers to build and use UI extensions within the VS debugger that provide richer data visualization and analysis of types and variables within a running program.

Feb 6th Update: Frans Bouma just posted a good article that talks about some tips for writing new Debugging Visualizers.

K. Scott Allen published a cool sample today of an ASP.NET control graph visualizer that allows you to obtain a graph of a server control and its children.  Simply hover over a "this" (in C#) or "Me" (in VB) reference on your page while in the debugger, and you'll be able to see the entire server control hierarchy for your page while on a breakpoint in the debugger:

 

A quick search on the web also found this cool Regex Debugging Visualizer by Roy Osherove:

 

As well as really cool ASP.NET Cache Visualizer by Brett Johnson (for seeing what is currently in the ASP.NET Cache Object):

 

And this really cool ASP.NET Control Visualizer by Brett as well that lets you obtain what the html output of a server control will look like:

 

And Howard van Rooijen's really cool XML Visualizer:

All of the above visualizers are free (and most ship the source code).  Definitely some cool things to add to the tool-chest! 

Hope this helps (and a special thanks to the guys above for building these -- they really rock),

Scott

 

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