I woke up in the middle of the night with the answer to a problem that I was fighting for most of the day. I was having a problem with tabbing in a winform where I couldn’t see which control(s) were getting the focus. But I was sure that if I could just see which events were being fired I could figure out the cause this idiopathic condition.

Suddenly I could see the MSDN Magazine article that I briefly glanced at a few months ago. Incredibly I could recall the exact issue and article layout including the screenshot of a utility that could spy on managed applications. I always wanted a photographic memory!

The ManagedSpy utility allows you to not only see events of a managed application but also you can drill down to individual controls on the screen and set their properties! What power! I bet with this you could create your own WinRunner type or custom UI regression tester.

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