The Image Format Is Unrecognized

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As I started my new WPF application, I got greeted with FileFormatException - “The image format is unrecognized”. I was confused since application was so new that I haven’t added any images to it. After checking and double-checking I found which image exception was referring to - my application icon.

It seemed like normal icon to me. As I compared it to icons that I already used successfully with WPF there was only one difference. This icon had 256x256 size. As soon as I deleted it, my program started working again (ok, it was empty application so making it work was not that big of task).

Side effect of this solution was that I lost my big images. That felt dirty to me so I ended up with two icons in my application. First one was with all images (including 256x256) and I used it as application icon (Properties, Application, Icon). Second one was without 256x256 images and I just set it’s Build Action to “Resource”. Whenever I needed WPF window icon, I just pointed to second one.

I must confess that I am quite annoyed by this. WPF was all about making Windows look and feel better. Using brand new .NET 4 and restricting icons to sizes before Vista just does not seem right. And I better not start about how useful XAML exceptions are…

P.S. If you do not have icon editor available, I would recommend IcoFx. It is good and it is free.

Android Debug Bridge on HTC Desire

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Debugging Android programs on real device is easy. You just need to follow guide and everything will work. That is theory at least.

All instructions worked just fine up-to point where USB driver had to be installed. Dreadful “Driver not found” was all I was getting. Problem was obvious. My HTC Desire was just too new to be included in driver pack.

However, I had a hunch. “USB Driver for Windows, Revision 3” that was available to me was one that included support for Nexus One. Since Desire seems pretty close to it, I wanted system to use Nexus drivers anyhow.

First thing to do is right-click on My Computer, select Manage and go to Device Management. There you will see ADB device with yellow question mark. Right-click on that device and select properties. Under tab Details there is one combo box with properties. There we need to see “Hardware Ids”.

In case of HTC Desire hardware IDs in question were “USB\VID_0BB4&PID_0C87&REV_0100&MI_01” and “USB\VID_0BB4&PID_0C87&MI_01”. In “android_winusb.inf” file I just copied two entries for Google Nexus (“%SingleAdbInterface%” and “%CompositeAdbInterface%”) and replaced their hardware IDs with hardware IDs for Desire (with slight trimming). Changes are highlighted:

...
;Google NexusOne
%SingleAdbInterface%        = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_0D02
%CompositeAdbInterface%     = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_0D02&MI_01
%SingleAdbInterface%        = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_4E11
%CompositeAdbInterface%     = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_4E12&MI_01
;
;HTC Desire
%SingleAdbInterface%        = USB_Install, USB\VID_0BB4&PID_0C87
%CompositeAdbInterface%     = USB_Install, USB\VID_0BB4&PID_0C87&MI_01
[USB_Install]
...

And voilà, we have our driver ready.

P.S. While I talk about HTC Desire here, there is no reason why same method would not work for any other Android phone, providing that it is compatible (on USB communication level) with Nexus.

[2010-06-17: At least in case of Windows 7 and it’s “No driver found” error, it is enough to add only %CompositeAdbInterface%. I haven’t tested on other operating systems but I think that %SingleAdbInterface% is not used at all.]

Microsoft Kinect

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I wrote some time ago about Project Natal. It seemed like great technology but I heard no news about commercial release for quite a while.

Yesterday (2010-06-13) it was presented at Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles (E3) under it’s new name - Microsoft Kinect. Somebody ought to shoot marketing department since developer code names are pretty much always better than final product name.

Although release date was not specified, technology seems to be quite ready and I do hope that it will be released this year. Even with it’s new name it remains best thing to have in living room and, for me, single reason why I might buy XBox.

Get Application's Icon

When I was building “About” dialog for my applications, I wanted it to be as reusable as possible. That meant that all data should be retrieved while program is running. Only thing that I could not discover within .NET code was application’s icon.

Windows API came to rescue. In short we just load our own assembly for purpose of extracting one icon resource. That gives us “good old” pointer which can be used to create bitmap.

IntPtr hLibrary = NativeMethods.LoadLibrary(Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().Location);
if (!hLibrary.Equals(IntPtr.Zero)) {
    IntPtr hIcon = NativeMethods.LoadIcon(hLibrary, "#32512");
    if (!hIcon.Equals(IntPtr.Zero)) {
        Bitmap bitmap = Icon.FromHandle(hIcon).ToBitmap();
        if (bitmap != null) { return bitmap; }
    }
}

Probably most curious thing is “#32512” string. This is resource identifier that goes way back into non-CLR past (also-known-as IDI_APPLICATION constant) and it is not only one that can be used.

Here is full sample.