There is a new logo for Visual Studio. Still an infinity symbol, but this time more flowing. Technorati Tags: Visual Studio...
In the October edition of MSDN Magazine, there’s a great article that does a quick rundown of building a component that can be surfaced as a Web Part via the Gallery and placed in Web Part zones on pages. The article by Steve Fox is here: Steve Fox - Visual Studio 2010 Tools for SharePoint Development – MSDN Magazine October 2009 There’s a couple very important aspect that might not be 100% clear from the title – 1st, you’re really visually designing a User Control (ASCX). So, this is really just...
I am having a little problem with Visual Studio 2008 that only started after I had installed Office 2010. I found this interesting post on Visual Studio 2008 Locks or Freezes in ASPX from Rinat Abdullin that was a complete match to the problem I am having. Basically VS just bings at you whenever you click anywhere as if there is a model dialog open after opening and trying to edit an aspx file. If you get this problem then there is a simple solution, well, one that worked for me. You need to run...
We all reuse our windows controls out of the toolbox so why not our WPF user controls? The process is really the same. To show the steps involved let’s first write a simple WPF user control. After renaming the control and adding a WPF application project to my solution(to test with), my solution looks like this Since the functionality of the control is not important in this article, I just pasted in some animation code from msdn into my MyDemoControl.xaml file. <UserControl x:Class="MyDemoControl.MyDemoControl"...
Allow me to quote here some emails I sent to the the Dot NET developers group in my company, Injazat, or, as we call ourselves, Ninjazat. I thought it’ll be useful to share some with you as well. · ASP.NET MVC - 20 Hours of FREE Video Tutorials · LINQ FAQ o LINQ FAQ for Newbie’s o LINQ FAQ Part 2 · How we handle application configuration · ScottGu ASPNETMVC Session Video Available Now (Part 1/2 & 2/2) · Web Validation: Best Practices and Tutorials · Building a Single Sign On Provider Using ASPNET...
Following my FUNdaments presentation tonight to the East Bay .NET user group on the options available to ASP.NET developers for using AJAX type methods for grabbing information/content from a server from the client side browser, the code can be found here and the presentation can be found here. Once again Beth Massi rocked on the main presentation about VB10, C# 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010. Lots of goodies to look forward to. That said it cracks me up that MSFT is adding more capabilities to facilitate...
I am a keen believer when building applications in having a clean logical architecture with separation of concerns as much as possible – taking into account the goals of the project and the environment in which the application will be maintained. As such, when it makes sense I believe in use of MVC, MVP, MVVM etc type patterns to enable efficient development and maintenance of applications. I can testify to the worth of adopting these styles to improve the quality of products developed from my experience...
When building applications we usually want to adopt the write once user everywhere or DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) goals for simpler maintenance, validation, configuration,etc etc. So for business applications the situation is usually develop a control, that can be re-used and that can have different data bound to it for the situation in which it is used. Silverlight has a fantastic mechanism – the Silverlight Property System - that manages data binding among other things. This means that the late...
This is the final post in a four part series to demonstrate how to use the standard MSFT technologies to implement a CRUD data application in Silverlight. The steps in this post build upon those completed in part 3. The goal of this series is to show those of you who are relatively new to Silverlight how analogous building such an app in Silverlight is to say building it in ASP.NET, Win Forms or WPF. This app is built on Visual Studio 2008 SP1, SQL Server 2008, Silverlight 2.0 and the Silverlight...
This is the second post in a series to demonstrate how to use the standard MSFT technologies to implement a CRUD data application in Silverlight. The steps in this post build upon those completed in part 1. The goal of this series is to show those of you who are relatively new to Silverlight how analogous building such an app in Silverlight is to say building it in ASP.NET, Win Forms or WPF. This app is built on Visual Studio 2008 SP1, SQL Server 2008, Silverlight 2.0 and the Silverlight Toolkit...
This is the first post in a series to demonstrate how to use the standard MSFT technologies to implement a CRUD data application in Silverlight. This post is beginners stuff - there’s nothing advanced here. Most readers with some experience of Silverlight will learn nothing from this post, but I want to start at the beginning so those of you who are relatively new to Silverlight can see how analogous building such an app in Silverlight is to say building it in ASP.NET, Win Forms or WPF. This app...
Last month (May 2009) Microsoft has released its first beta for Visual Studio Team System 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 release, two of the most waited and wanted tools in developer community. From my point of view these two releases are going to be one of the most historical releases, as lots of really cool stuffs has been added with respect to the last version. However, as the Beta 1 releases are pretty infant, there are very limited resources available in the web and community, so I just...
Check the add-ins you installed before Visual Studio 2010 if you enabled VS 2010 integration in them. Particularly TestDriven.NET is the problem. Go to “Add Remove Programs” / “Programs and Features”, find Test Driven.NET, click “Change”, and then modify it to remove VS2010 integration from it. Also, if you are using AnkhSVN, make sure to download a new latest daily update build and use that, otherwise, you’ll get an exception when starting VS 2010. I’ll be writing more about VSTS 2010 and .NET 4.0...
It’s here, Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1. This is probably the most exciting product to come out of Microsoft since…well… Visual Studio 2008 ;). The install will be totally familiar to those of you that have installed Visual Studio before, but you will note that there are no options like we had before where we could choose which components we want installed. What we do get is the option to install for Managed or Native or both, this makes it easier for the those of us who just want all of the bits for...
Before we can start this journey together, I should take a moment to declare the foundation upon which everything will be built upon going forward. In other words, I need to tell you which languages and frameworks I currently make my living off of and will be blogging about. And I would like to do so without trying to intentionally fan the flames of the already overblown Microsoft vs. [fill-in-the-blank] wars. While I was in college, I thought I could do it all and be an expert in everything. After...
In Visual Studio click on Debug –> Exceptions, and when the dialog box appears click “Add”. Fill it in as below: Be sure to check when “Thrown”. Now your code will break on the C# code where the error is thrown and you can find it more easily. Technorati Tags: WPF,XAML,Visual Studio...
I few months back, I was having major problems with VS 2008 crashing on me left and right. After trying numerous things to resolve my problem, I finally decided to uninstall all of the .Net Frameworks and VS, then reinstall. My problems started shortly after I installed SP1 (both .Net Framework and VS 2008). I can’t say for certain that SP1 was causing my problems, but since then (after reinstalling without the service packs), I have not experienced the crashing. There are other reasons that I wanted...
Visual Studio had a problem where it would added "a lot of nbsp" when toggling from Design to HTML mode with certain custom controls. I blogged about it originally here. It appeared to be fixed as I described on another post, but it only seemed to occur less often. Finally, there is an official fix. It's not truly a "hotfix" though. It asked me to reboot to complete the update. Tags: Visual Studio, ASP.Net, Server Controls...
I decided to use DocBook to generate documentation for SalesWeb, but I was finding it difficult to remember which tags I could use. Since DocBook is XML-based, it has a schema that can be plugged into Visual Studio 2005/2008 to enable intellisense. I’ve put together a tiny ZIP file that has everything you need to get started: DocBook 4.5 Intellisense for Visual Studio It contains a VS catalog file and the DocBook 4.5 schemas (which I hope are redistributable… if not, let me know and I’ll remove them)....
Kobe is a “getting started” resource kit on planning, architecting, and implementing Web 2.0 applications and services using the Microsoft Platform. I am sure all of you who are interested in this area would be really benefitted with it. Check this out: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/bb194897.aspx Technorati Tags: architecture,starter kit,asp.net,visual studio...
Microsoft’s Visual Studio Team System Test Edition provides a powerful platform to perform high volume load testing. It also provides high end flexibilities to write and utilize external plug-in for extended functionalities. Email Reporter: VSTS 2008 Load Test Plug-in enables users to send the load test reports to one or more pre-configured email addresses automatically, once a VSTS Load Test is completed. This open-source load test plug-in also provides supports for customization by which you can...
My trial ran out a few days ago. And I haven't posted about R# for almost a month. I have to a few more things to share, and perhaps I can save everyone some time. The R# team has done quite a few small things to raise the tool a step above my expectations. There are a lot of things that may seem small, but really turn out to be significant improvements to the way I manage my code. Simple things, like, locating new code (via refactoring) with similar declarations (fields with fields, properties with...
This was my second attempt at installing Visual Studio 2008 on Windows 7 and I ran into a little problem. It failed when trying to install the Microsoft Document Explorer 2008. A quick check found the file in \WCU\DExplore of your installation media, and running the install manually solved that problem… Technorati Tags: Windows 7,VSTS,Visual Studio,Visual Studio 2008,VS2008...
The Watch window (actually there are four different Watch windows you can use) is easily the most powerful aspect of the Visual Studio debugger and the underlying technology it uses actually surfaces in several places: Watch Autos Locals Quick Watch “Data Tips” (the debugging tool tips that appear when you hover over a code element) The thing that most people might not realize is that you can actually call methods in the Watch window. This is useful because it allows you to see data structures that...
We previously talked about the Location, Condition, Hit Count, Filter, and When Hit modifiers for breakpoints. These are great advanced breakpoints that will really make your debug sessions much more useful, but there are also some other advances in Visual Studio that go beyond these breakpoint modifiers. The first advance is the idea of advanced location breakpoints. How many times have you been debugging an issue and as you’re looking at the call stack you realize that you want to set a breakpoint...
We have talked about the Location, Condition, Hit Count, and Filter modifiers for breakpoints which only leaves the When Hit modifier. Using the When Hit modifier allows you to change your breakpoint to a tracepoint. What is a tracepoint? Simply put, it is a breakpoint that continues execution. Why would this be interesting or even important? Tracepoints are great when you want to trace a particular path of execution, such as OnDeserialized events in your WCF DataContract classes. You are interested...
We previously talked about the Location, Condition and Hit Count modifiers for advanced breakpoints. These are great for a lot of different debugging scenarios, but what about tricks specifically for debugging multi-threaded applications. If you have ever tried to debug a multi-threaded application you know that it isn’t always the easiest experience. Hopefully everyone is already familiar with the Treads window. If you aren’t, it is accessed through the Debug|Windows|Threads menu or the Ctrl+D,...
The most basic aspect of any debugging session is the use of breakpoints, which allows you to specify a location in your application (a line of code) where program execution will stop (break) and allow you to inspect the internal state of the application at that exact moment. This is a pretty cool feature, but Visual Studio allows you to do even more with advanced breakpoints. Put simply, an advanced breakpoint is a breakpoint with one or more modifiers applied. A modifier allows you to change the...
I've been using ReSharper now for about one and a half weeks. Now that I am writing some new code, I have more to share. The most helpful and time saving feature that I have encountered so far is code generation. In one case, I had added a couple of new properties to one of my entity objects. In actuality, I add the code in my test first. R# quickly recognized that the property didn't exist and gave me the option to create a field or property. I chose the property option and presto, R# found my class...
Recently I blogged that the Resharper install corrupted TestDriven.Net. I followed up to say that certainly wasn't the case. In fact, there was nothing wrong with TestDriven.Net. The problem was between the keyboard and chair. I kept getting an error about not being able to load one of my base test classes. At compile time everything was fine. I would get the error only when trying to run the test in TestDriven.Net. R# could run the tests with no problem. This led me to believe it was a problem with...
I've discovered what was causing problems with TestDriven.Net and it isn't ReSharper. I had recently refactored my test fixtures and now I have a few that make use of generics BaseTest<T>. I had run into a problem with TD.Net before regarding generics and had to rearrange my classes (I had two classes in one file) to get it to work. I don't remember the details and I am still having problems getting it to work now. Regardless, R# is off the hook. And as an added bonus, R# doesn't appear to...
So day two brought more items of interest. Unit Testing still problematic Apparently, ReSharper installs with version 2.2.8 of NUnit. I am using 2.4.8 which includes syntax helpers. A bunch of my tests were failing with multiple TypeLoadExceptions. To resolve the issue, I ran the tests in debug mode and took a look at where the nunit.framework library was being loaded from. I found that it was being loaded from C:\Program Files\JetBrains\ReSharper\v4.1\Bin. Once I determined that I was dealing with...
I finally installed ReSharper yesterday to try it out. I've been dragging my heals because I didn't want to have to learn a bunch of new commands and pay for that right (I'm cheap, I know). Here are a few things I noticed immediately. Keep in mind that these are first impressions, and they are sure to change over the next couple of weeks. [Update] I turns out that ReSharper is not the culprit here. See this post for more details. TestDriven.Net broken after ReSharper install. Any time I attempt to...
I inherited an app to make some updates. It was an older 1.1 ASP.Net application that was already upgraded to 2.0. All the new files I wrote worked fine and it built error free. I could debug the app and run it locally with no problems. Once I was ready to publish the app it then finally decided to give me some grief. I would get an error after the build completed and the publish started. The error was: Data at the root level is invalid. Line 1, position1. When I clicked on the error line in VS it...
I was a little lazy last time and did not install either Team Explorer, or SP1 on my visual studio instance. So, lets get to it… Everything fine with the Team Explorer install so far, but I have seen other people with this working as well. The fun seams to start when you get SP1 out of the bag, so we will start by Connecting to CodePlex, and using TFS Sticky Buddy… Yea baby! Well it looks like I have been hampered by my proxy server at work… no way round that one… I can get web pages, but application...
I am installing VS2008 in a virtual environment, so this may not be exactly what you would get, but the purpose is to identify if VS2008 does indeed work on Windows 7 and what the experience is like. The first problem is that the auto run does not seam to function. This can be rectified by browsing the CD / Image and running setup.exe So far so good. After you have accepted the licence agreement you need to select the installation components. I am selecting Full so we can make sure it all goes on,...
Though some of you that were on the fence or have not year head about the MSDN Dev Con, are now more interested in coming out. It’s a tiny price compared to PDC and is coming to a city near you! A good group of local celebrities will be presenting along side proven Microsoft experts at the Orlando event. I will be in the attendance and around any community areas. And any social after event :) Bayer White (Jacksonville), Joe Homnick (Boca Raton), Christopher Bennage (Tallahassee), Rob Eisenberg (Tallahassee)...
Rick Strahl from West Wind Technologies in Maui, Hawaii is sharing his presentation that he did at the ASP.NET Connections recently held in Vegas. His session on jQuery with ASP.NET includes his slide deck and several samples for you to view. His slide deck is very informative with how things work along with some do's and don'ts. Check it out to learn more about jQuery. Technorati Tags: Microsoft, jQuery, Visual Studio...
I encountered a repeatable crash in VS2008 for the first time today. I was working on a C# file in the editor. SP1 added some design time hints on syntax or potential compile time problems. The code I was working on had a few red squiggly lines letting me know that I should correct something. Well, when I tried to edit one particular line, VS would freeze on me then throw a nice "Sorry, I'm crashing" error dialog and then close. VS has crashed on me before, but that has typically been because something...
I have found this email sent to the IronPython mailing list yesterday, and thought many of you would love someone to share it :). Hello IronPython Community, This is a special release of IronPython designed to work with the Visual Studio 2010 CTP. This release will let you try out C# 4.0’s new Dynamic feature, which allows you to easily call into dynamic object models such as IronPython modules from your C# code. To get started using IronPython with C#’s Dynamic feature: 1. Install this .MSI on your...
I regularly get this problem. The "Find in files" function of VisualStudio (2008!) stops working. Whatever I search for it always says "No files were found to look in. Find was stopped in progress". It is very annoying. Since I have only found one other blog that mentions it and gives a solution (here - thank you!), I'm going to reproduce it. Solution: press Control + Scroll Lock (yes, it doesn't make much sens but it works). Technorati Tags: Find in files,Visual Studio...
Last February, Bill Gates announced a free software giveaway to college university students and high school students as well. Here is what was offered to them: Microsoft developer tools. Visual Studio is the Swiss Army knife of computer programming. These professional-grade products provide a security-enhanced and reliable environment, enabling students to program everything from a cell phone to a robot or to create their own Web page. Students will also be able to invent compelling new gaming content...
A few days ago in one of the CodeProject disucssion forums someone was looking for a way to easily remove the extra vertical whitespace in a file. This is really handy if you copy and paste code from the web or otherwise have a file that has multiple consecutive blank lines that you want to consolidate to a single blank line. A solution was presented that used a Visual Studio macro, but that macro used pattern matching with find and replace, so it didn’t feel very stable. Taking the opportunity to...
It is a VISUAL STUDIO 2005 PROJECT! Of course we're talking about the Windows version here :). See short note... More Information Source: CodeProject Lounge Post. Technorati Tags: Visual Studio,VS,VS 2005,Visual Studio 2005,Google Chrome,Google,Chrome,browsers Cross posted from weblogs.asp.net/meligy...
Axialis Software and Microsoft worked to create a free Visual Studio add-in to create an icon editing tool that allows you to create high-quality 256x256 PNG-compressed icons for Windows Vista. The editing experience, both inside and outside Visual Studio, is very easy to use and provides various tools, filters, and effects, as well as the ability to create icons from existing images or ready-to-use image objects. *IMPORTANT: Axialis IconWorkshop™ Lite installs ONLY if Visual Studio® 2008 Professional...
Earlier this month Charlie Calvert introduced a potential new feature called Document Map Margins (DMM). The idea behind DMM is to make it easier for you to find and track important features in your code by visualizing the entire file. Overall I like the idea of DMM as it can really provide you with good contextual information, particularly for really large files. While DMM isn’t here now, a very similar tool is. I came across this tool mentioned by ScottHa in this post. What RockScroll does is to...
There are always a lot of posts about various add-ins, code snippets, macros, and other utilities that are designed to make you, the developer, more productive within Visual Studio as an editing environment. However, there seem to very few posts that talk about how to actually improve the performance of Visual Studio itself. Browsing through some of the questions on Stack Overflow, I came across a thread asking this very question. There were a lot of non-answers, but one that definitively listed...
Background (skip if you know Web Application Projects) In VS 2002/2003, the web project model for a website was similar to "class library" projects, where you have a .CSPROJ or .VBPROJ file that keeps track of files "included" in the project, and compiles all the pages and controls code behind to a single assembly under "\bin". Each page/control has an automatically generated .DESIGNER.CS or .DESIGNER.VB file, which contains objects mapping to the server controls in the page/control markup (the generation...
There are still a large number of developers that have both Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 installed on the same machine and probably an even larger number of development teams that use a mixture of VS 2008 and 2005. DJ Park, one of the PM's on the Visual Studio team has a great blog post that explains the possibilities and limitations of using solutions and projects between both versions of Visual Studio. To quickly summarize: Solutions created in Visual Studio 2008 cannot be opened in Visual Studio...
A question was asked yesterday in one of the CodeProject discussion forums by someone looking for a way to easily change the Target Framework version of all projects in a solution. If you don’t know, the Target Framework version is what tells the compiler which version of the .NET Framework to compile against (more information is available here) and can be set to one of the following values: .NET Framework 2.0 .NET Framework 3.0 .NET Framework 3.5 This can be easily accomplished by editing the project...