Once upon a time, Pete Blois at Microsoft created the awesome WPF utility Snoop. Snoop is an indispensable utility for inspecting and debugging WPF applications. It’s also just cool to play with.

Snoop is a small toolbar that sits up in the corner of Windows, waiting for WPF applications to show up. When you select one, you can then “snoop” around to see what’s in there.

For example, here’s Snoop working on Seesmic. Notice the hover preview you get for items in the tree. There’s a wealth of info contained in this not only for folks learning WPF for the first time (to see how other apps are built), but also for people trying to debug and drill down into the runtime existence of their own applications.

Snoop also provides the awesome 3d separation view which lets you see all the visible elements in your application in exaggerated z-space. Sweet!

What’s Up with Snoop Now?

Back in December, Cory Plotts upgraded snoop to work on 64 bit. Prior to that, Cory also did a bunch of work on Snoop to enhance it to work in a number of different scenarios. He’s even modified snoop to work on WPF4 (awesome!)

Now, Cory has set up a codeplex site and put the source code there for anyone to peruse, download and contribute to. If you’re interested in contributing, contact Cory directly.

Thanks and kudos to Cory for picking up the torch and keeping Snoop going, and of course to Pete Blois for creating snoop to begin with. I’m glad to see this tool continue onward.