Erwin's Blog

Visual Studio Window Layout

Erwin — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:27:36 GMT

Today I was playing around with my windows in Visual Studio to get them in place exactly how want it,, but how do I save my window layout settings? I found it on Sara Ford's weblog, simply close Visual Studio and the window layout will be saved.

When you mess-up your windows your can reset them by pressing "Window" -> "Reset Window Layout".

jQuery Visual Studio Autocomplete Documentation

Erwin — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:34:48 GMT

jQuery a fast and concise JavaScript Library has release a version with autocomplete documentation for Visual Studio. You can find it here next to al other versions.

Please don't use the Visual Studio version on production machines, it's way bigger than the other versions of jQuery.

From C++ to C#

Erwin — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:50:55 GMT

In a new article on CIO.com Anders Hejlsberg tells next to a lot of other things how C# get's his name. Below a quote of the article:

[CIO] Why was the language originally named Cool, and what promoted the change to C#?

[AH] The code name was Cool, which stood for 'C like Object Oriented Language'. We kind of liked that name: all of our files were called .cool and that was kind of cool! We looked seriously at keeping the name for the final product but it was just not feasible from a trademark perspective, as there were way too many cool things out there.

So the naming committee had to get to work and we sort of liked the notion of having an inherent reference to C in there, and a little word play on C++, as you can sort of view the sharp sign as four pluses, so it's C++++. And the musical aspect was interesting too. So C# it was, and I've actually been really happy with that name. It's served us well.

Compare this in a nice image and you get something like this:

From: http://blog.donnfelker.com/post/How-Did-C-Get-Its-Name.aspx

Microsoft Enterprise Library 4.1 Released

Erwin — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:33:38 GMT

Microsoft Enterprise Library 4.1 has been released with some improvements and fixes.

What's new

Unity interception mechanism and integration of the Policy Injection Application Block with the Unity Application Block
Added support for generics in the Unity Application Block
Added support for arrays in the Unity Application Block
Performance improvements
Usability improvements to the configuration tool
Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 support
Bug fixes

Enterprise Library homepage
Quick Starts

CTP for Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0.

Erwin — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:37:46 GMT

The CTP for Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0 is now available! Is available as a virtual image.

More info you can find at the links below:

Using a download manager to get the VPC: http://blogs.msdn.com/briankel/archive/2007/09/06/a-more-reliable-and-faster-download-experience-for-rosario-vs08-vpc-s.aspx
Dealing with Activation messages within the VPC: http://blogs.msdn.com/briankel/archive/2008/10/27/visual-studio-2010-ctp-vpc-dealing-with-activation-messages.aspx

From: http://blogs.msdn.com/angelab/archive/2008/10/27/latest-and-greatest-vsts-2010-vpc-available-now.aspx

New .NET Logo

Erwin — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:29:26 GMT

After 8 years it was time to change the .NET logo. The new logo stand for consistency, robustness and great user experiences.

The design look like a "wave" with a suggestion of the letter 'N' that will become recognizable over time as shorthand for the .NET brand name.

From: http://blogs.msdn.com/msmossyblog/archive/2008/10/25/embrace-the-new-net-logo.aspx

Intellisense not working in Visual Studio 2008

Erwin — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:43:29 GMT

Recently my intellisense on Visual Studio 2008 stops working, after some search I found a solution at http://blogs.blackmarble.co.uk/blogs/rfennell/archive/2007/12/01/intellisense-not-working-in-visual-studio-2008.aspx

I had a poke about in Tools|Option and found that on the Text Editor|All Languages that the three checkboxes for Statement Completion where showing neither empty or checked but a fully coloured box - which usually means an unknown settings. So a set these all to checked (a tick) and my Intellisense started working.

This saves me a reinstall of Visual Studio.

Microsoft ASP.NET MVC Beta Released

Erwin — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:26:26 GMT

Micrsoft's ASP.NET MVC is in BETA phase now.

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a24d1e00-cd35-4f66-baa0-2362bdde0766&DisplayLang=en#filelist

New features:

MvcFutures.dll is not included in the beta (as it wouldn't be included in the final release)
The Beta installer installs the ASP.NET MVC assemblies (System.Web.Mvc.dll, System.Web.Routing.dll, and System.Web.Abstractions.dll) into the GAC.
New Simple Membership Features in the Default Project Template
New Filter Types for Authorization and Exception Handling
New Output Cache Filter
Changes for ASP.NET AJAX
Namespaces in Routes
New Interface for Enhanced Testability of TempData
ActionInvoker Extensibility Improvements
ViewDataDictionary (minor change)
ViewEngine Improvements
Helper Improvements
Controller and Filter Improvements

Bug fixes:

Fixed a bug in which the ignore-routes setting (created by using the IgnoreRoute extension method) affected URL generation.
Fixed a view engine caching bug when the application is not in debug mode (that is, when debug="false" is set in the Web.config file). This bug occurred if different action methods in different controllers had the same name. In that case, an action method could render the view for the wrong controller.
Fixed a bug in OutputCacheAttribute in which cached authenticated content did not require authentication. Even though the content is cached, if it requires authentication, the user should be required to authenticate first before seeing the cached content.
Fixed a bug in which RenderPartial does not work when tracing is turned on.
Fixed a bug in the Html.TextArea helper method in which an overload was not looking in ViewData for its value when the provided value is null.
Fixed the OutputCacheAttribute.CacheProfile property so that it works in Medium Trust.

Great! It's very cool and give us as developers a new way of creating websites.

SDN Conference Day #2

Erwin — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 02:37:15 GMT

(Sorry A blog post in Dutch about day 2 of a software conference in the Netherlands)

Vandaag (7 okt) was het dag #2 van de SDN Conference. Zelfde opzet als dag #1 alleen 1 sessie ronde minder, maar daardoor niet minder interessant.

De volgende sessies had ik op mn lijstje staan voor vandaag:

DB.04 Rock Star Common Table Expressions door Stephen Forte

Common table expressions (CTE) is een nieuwe feature in SQL 2005/2008. CTE is erg handig voor recursive queries, ranking en voor het zoeken naar dubbele records. In de sessie werden veel practische voorbeelden gegeven waarvoor je CTE's kan gebruiken.

IW.10 3D WPF: Leuker kunnen we het wel maken, makkelijker ook! door Dennis Vroegop

In deze sessie werd ingegaan wat nou precies informatie is en wat gegevens zijn en hoe we deze informatie voor de gebruiker op een manier kunnen tonen zodat de gebruiker er wat aan heeft. De applicatie die gebruikt werd in de sessie was gemaakt in WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) , er werd een voorbeeld gegeven hoe we een driehoek, vierkant en kubus konden tekenen in WPF m.b.v camera, light en brushes, dit alles werd geprogrameerd in XAML.

NE.04 Localization - Going Beyond Translation door Chad Hower

Bij deze sessie werd diep ingegaan op alle aspecten van het vertalen van applicaties en/of websites, denk hierbij niet alleen aan tekst maar ook aan plaatjes, tekst in plaatjes, kleuren enz. Er werden veel praktische tips en tricks gegeven en waar je allemaal aan moest denken bij het vertalen van je website, denk hierbij aan valuta, datum, tijd, nummers, formatting, flows, culturele verschillen.

UX.06 Building Data Rich Internet Applications door Christoph Rooms

Adobe heeft een pakket Flex waarin Rich Internet Applications (RIA) gemaakt kunnen worden in flash, in deze sessie werden voorbeelden gegeven hoe we data kunnen tonen en beheren in Flex, hierbij werd gebruik gemaakt van messaging en liveCyle Data Services.

GN.05 Domain Driven Design fundamentals in .NET door Pieter Joost vd Sande

In deze sessie werd uitgelegd wat nou precies een Domain Driven Design (DDD) is en hoe je dit praktisch kan invullen. Aan bod kwamen Services, Entities, Value Objects, Repositories, Aggegators. Met veel best practices en voorbeeld code werd een goed beeld gegeven hoe je DDD kan modelleren en gebruiken.

En toen waren de 2 dagen SDC voorbij, het was goed georganiseerd en ik weer veel geleerd en gezien, hopelijk ben ik volgend jaar weer van de partij.

SDN Conference Day #1

Erwin — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 05:32:47 GMT

(Sorry A blog post in Dutch about a software conference in the Netherlands)

Vandaag (Maandag 6 okt) waren we met z'n 3 afgereisd naar het pittoreske Noordwijkerhout waar de SDN Conference werd gehouden, oftewel SDC.

Op de SDC waren sessies over bijv .NET, Information worker, DotNetNuke, Delphi, Database, Architecture en User eXperience. De sessie waar ik vooral naar toe was gegaan waren de .NET/Architecture sessies.

Voor vandaag stonden voor mij de volgende sessies op het programma. Ik zal niet te diep op de sessies ingaan:

Sessie NE.19 Introduction to ASP.NET MVC door Alex Thissen

Deze sessie ging over het nieuwe door Microsoft ontwikkelde framework om webapplicaties te ontwikkelen. Microsoft heeft hier een implementatie gedaan van het MVC design pattern, in de sessie werd bekeken hoe je een applicatie bouwt in het ASP.NET MVC en hoe je het zou willen gaan inzetten in de praktijk.

Sessie NE.13 LINQ to Everything door Beth Massi

In deze sessie werd een introductie gegeven over hoe LINQ kan worden ingezet op verschillende datasources, zoals LINQ to DataSets, LINQ to SQL, LINQ to Entities en LINQ to XML. Bij elk van deze implementaties werden voorbeelden en practische invullingen gegeven.

Sessie NE.11 Introducing the Entity Framework door Julie Lerman

Bij deze sessie werd een introductie gegeven over het Microsoft Entity Framework dat is meegekomen met het .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. Er werd gepraat over views, schemas, mappings, models. Hier werd ook weer LINQ gebruikt voor het querien van de data maar er kan ook eSQL (Entity SQL) voor gebruikt worden.

Sessie NE.03 Introductie in Enterprise Library 4 door Pieter de Bruin

Hier in deze sessie een Introductie van een product dat al wat langer bestaat, namelijk de Enterprise Library van Micosoft in dit geval versie 4. In de sessie werd kort uitgelegd wat EntLib 4 allemaal bevat bijv logging, validatie, data access, exception handling, dieper werd er in gegaan op data access, logging en exception handling er werd ook nog een klein stukje over validatie verteld.

Sessie NE.21 What is new in visual Studio 2008 & SP1 door Marcel de Vries

In deze sessie werd een overzicht gegeven welke nieuwe features binnen Visual Studie 2008 Team System en SP1 aanwezig zijn. Er werd gekeken naar bijv. CI (Continuous integration), Destroy, Annotate, Offline mode, Web test Compontents, Ajax recording, load Test Features, Code Metrices enz.

Sessie NE.20 Technology Deathmatch: LINQ to SQL vs. ADO.NET Entity Framework door Alex Thissen en Paul Gielens

Deze sessie was opgezet als een soort van webstrijd waarin het publiek werd opgedeeld in 2 kampen LINQ to SQL en ADO.NET Entity Framework, waarbij Alex Thissen het LINQ to SQL verdedigde en Paul Gielens het ADO.NET Entity Framework. Na lang strijden kwam met een kleine voorsprong LINQ to SQL als beste uit de bus, maar het ADO.NET Entity Framework was een goede 2de maar doordat het nog niet helemaal af is (de eerste versie is net uit) en de complexiteit/omvang van het Framework moest het onderspit delven t.o.v LINQ to SQL.

Morgen (Dinsdag 7 okt) staan er weer een aantal sessies op het programma, eens kijken of het weer zo'n geslaagde dag gaat worden als vandaag.

Best Practices Analyzers

Erwin — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:29:26 GMT

On an other blog I found some interesting analysers like:

SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer

The SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) gathers data from Microsoft Windows and SQL Server configuration settings. BPA uses a predefined list of SQL Server 2005 recommendations and best practices to determine if there are potential issues in the database environment.

Best Practice Analyzer for ASP.NET

The Best Practice Analyzer ASP.NET (alpha release) is a tool that scans the configuration of an ASP.NET 2.0 application. The tool can scan against three mainline scenarios (hosted environment, production environment, or development environment) and identify problematic configuration settings in the machine config or web config files associated with your ASP.NET application. This is an alpha release intended to gain feedback on the tool and the configuration rules included with it.

More you can find at this blog post: http://blogs.technet.com/peteh/archive/2008/09/25/best-practices-analyzers.aspx

300+ Visual Studio Tips & Tricks

Erwin — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:36:42 GMT

Recently Sara Ford passed the 300+ mark for her Visual Studio Tips & Tricks section. See gives some usefull tips to work better and faster with Visual Studio 2005/2008. You can find them here:

From: http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam/archive/2008/09/22/did-you-know-300-visual-studio-tips-tricks-lisa-feigenbaum.aspx

C# vs Ruby vs PHP vs Perl vs Java

Erwin — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 05:16:04 GMT

A few days ago I posted a comparison of C# vs Ruby. So I thought what about adding some more populair programming languages to the graph. And what to we see below:

2.05

ruby

1.00

php

3.65

perl

0.75

java

7.65

The other languages (php, perl, java) has the same drops during the weekends as C#. Ruby on the other hand stays stable during the whole week.

So can we say:

That Ruby isn't very common language at 9-5 Mon-Fri jobs, so it more used by hobbiest then by professionals.
Ruby programmers can't stop programming.

Network Monitor 3.2 has released

Erwin — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:08:18 GMT

Network Monitor 3.2 is a protocol analyzer. It allows you to capture network traffic, view and analyze it.

One of the nice features of the Network Monitor, is that the packets are group per process.

Network Monitor 3.2 is available on Microsoft.com. The link is: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f4db40af-1e08-4a21-a26b-ec2f4dc4190d&DisplayLang=en.

New features in version 3.2:

Process Tracking: Now you can identify rogue applications sending network data! View all the processes on your machine generating network traffic (process name and PID). Use the conversation tree to view frames associated with each process.

Capture engine re-architecture to improve capture rate in high-speed networks. Network Monitor 3.2 drops significantly fewer frames that Network Monitor 3.1.

Find conversations: You asked for this. Many of our users found conversation tracking to be difficult to use as the view grew hard to manage, and it was difficult to correlate the frames they were seeing with the conversation nodes in the tree. Now, you can quickly isolate frames in the same network conversation. Just right-click on a frame and select a conversation to track, and you will see all the frames in that conversation. View TCP streams, HTTP flows etc.

Extensive parser set: Parsers for over 300 protocols! As before, the parsers are fully customizable.

Better parser management: By default only a subset of parsers are loaded. You can load the full parser set by going to Tools>Options>Parser and choose Full vs. Stub implementations.

CodePlex Ready: In the upcoming months, we plan to place all our Windows parsers on the Microsoft open-source CodePlex site and allow the community to modify and contribute parsers. You can find out more information on this here. This version of Network Monitor seamlessly integrates new parser packages.

Network Monitor API: Create your own applications that capture, parse and analyze network traffic!

More extensive documentation of the API and NPL. Access the documentation from Help > NPL and API Documentation.

IA64 builds.

PCAP capture file support.

ContainsBin Plug-in: Search frames for arbitrary byte sequences or strings.

From: http://blogs.technet.com/netmon/archive/2008/09/17/network-monitor-3-2-has-arrived.aspx

C# vs Ruby

Erwin — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 04:35:44 GMT

A product of Google labs called "trends" is usefull to investigate search trends.

What happes if we compare the search terms "C#" and "Ruby"?

2.02

ruby

1.00

What do we see in the graph, the Ruby line (red) stays pretty constant during the whole week, but the C# line (blue) drops during the weekend. Interesting isn't it?

What conclusion can we make up with this info:

Ruby is used by people that don’t have a personal life and spend the weekend developing stuff?
C# is used by people that develop only on their 9-5, Mon-Fri job?

A fair conclusion or does anybody has an other idea?

From: http://codeclimber.net.nz/archive/2008/09/16/c-vs-ruby.aspx