Windows Insight App

Summary

The Windows built-in Task Manager program is good.  It's my go-to when needed to verify performance, garner information about a program, or kill a pesky process.  At times, it doesn't do enough.

To cover the bases and add the deep-dive functionality that Task Manager lacks, there's now this application:

Screenshot of the Insight App, taken by itself.

Windows Insight App - a program designed to deliver user manipulation and performance data on a targeted process.

Here's how it works:

• On launch, the program finds all processes running on the computer, removing background apps that are more low-level.
• From the list of running processes, clicking the name of the process will populate the name and computer title of the program, further populating other data fields on the Main and Diagnostics tabs.
• Resolution can be changed, screenshots taken, and unlisted (background) processes manually entered.

As it's yet to be optimized and there are a number of features I'd like to add, the program's not yet ready for download.  It'll be up on my GitHub with a link updated here when publicly available.

Considerations / Specs

The Windows Insight App (WIA from here) is made as a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) program in C# utilizing the Model-View-View Model (MVVM) framework.

A positive in the development of WIA is how much control over diagnostic information can be given:

A few data-points about a program and the system it's running on.

A current negative aspect about the program is that it checks target processes repeatedly, which can snag a few MB of RAM, more than I'm comfortable with.  Additionally, the program has fallen into the trap of using Object Oriented Programming classes as merely namespace controls (therefore, no longer resembling the original OOP).

Future

Additional options and exposing diagnostic features (read: checkboxes) to users are planned TODOs.  Further, allowing users to change more aspects of their target process and the WIA itself is coming.

In short, optimize and scale.  Get the project's source up on GitHub.  I'll likely stay away from a complete refactor (something I plan to do repeatedly with another tool, Turn Timer), but may come back to clean-up the many redundant classes and re-apply OOP methodologies.

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