Microsoft

Visual Studio 2005 PowerToys

Jannik Anker — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 14:40:00 GMT

"Microsoft has just dropped a set of Visual Studio 2005 PowerToys. Here's what you get:

Source Code Outliner : The Source Outliner tool is a Visual Studio extension that provides a tree view of your source code's types and members and lets you quickly navigate to them inside the editor.
Visual C++ Code Snippets:The Visual C++ Code Snippets tool lets you insert snippets in your code by using a pop-up menu that contains programming keywords. VB.NET and C# languages have this functionality in Visual Studio 2005.
Indexed Find : The Indexed Find tool is a Visual Studio extension that uses the Microsoft Indexing Service to provide improved Search capabilities to the integrated development environment (IDE). It sends the results of a search to the Output Window.
Super Diff Utility: The Super Diff Find tool is a Visual Studio extension that compares text files. It uses color coding and graphics to show the difference between the files in deleted text (red), changed text (blue), inserted text (green).
Event Toaster Utility: The Event Toaster tool is a Visual Studio extension that notifies users about specific events within the Visual Studio IDE."

Oh, and you can get them here.

Tricking out your apps (WinForms)

Jannik Anker — Wed, 03 May 2006 17:18:00 GMT

What I've learned today:

The final application startup tweak we'll discuss is preventing a second instance of the application from starting. Of course, some document-based applications make sense to run multiple times, but many utilities make no sense, or can even cause problems when run this way. It turns out that we can easily make a change to accomplish this. In Visual Basic, you can simply click the Make single instance application checkbox in Project Settings to enable single-instance mode. In C# (and VB for that matter), you can create the same effect in the Main method.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

public class MyClass
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        bool exclusive;
        Mutex m = new Mutex(true, "C4F-TrickedOut", out exclusive);
        if( exclusive )
        {
            Application.EnableVisualStyles();
            Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);
            Form1 mainForm = new Form1();
            Application.Run();
        }
        else
        {
            MessageBox.Show("Another instance is already running.");
        }
    }
    
    
}

Very nice. More like this here (Coding4Fun)

Patents v. Microsoft

Jannik Anker — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 11:28:00 GMT

Via Dave Shea @ mezzoblue:

"Who's affected? Well, do you use the

<OBJECT>

element? Then, potentially, you are. Sites that embed PDF, Flash, QuickTime, Windows Media, or RealPlayer files will all get hit by this.

What happens? The page loads, but the controls are disabled by default. In order to activate them, the user must click on them first.

Bad for advertisers? Yep. Bad for CMS/eCommerce vendors that rely on ActiveX controls? Yep. Bad for media sites? You bet. Bad for Adobe? Of course.

Really, there's no good side here. Except that you've got two months to fix your sites. Like you didn't have anything better to do anyway. Enjoy."

Get a free USB drive...

Jannik Anker — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 12:47:00 GMT

Via Mark Harrison:

"A free USB flash drive from Microsoft ... the only catch is that you have to take a very quick 4-question quiz about MS licensing."

A late Happy Holidays - and why I haven't been blogging lately

Jannik Anker — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 16:35:00 GMT

On November 1st, one of two dedicated web developers at my workplace quit. No, not me, the other one ;-).

This left me with twice the workload - and I am now eagerly awaiting January 2nd, when a new colleague joins us. Because of the sharp increase in workload, I decided to cut down on the reading and writing of blogs.

Next year I will try to be a "good blogger", writing lots more articles and so on. First thing on the list for 2006 is a review of the Advanced Microsoft Content Management Server Development book, featuring Stefan Gossner among the authors. I spent a few hours skimming it before Christmas, and it looks pretty darn nice.

The Dark Side of being a Guru (I'm not, but I'd like to be - in spite of the Dark Side ;-)

Jannik Anker — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 19:01:00 GMT

Back in August I mentioned an article from the MSDN Magazine: "Becoming a Guru". I liked it.

Now, the same magazine features an article on The Dark Side of Being a Guru which has a few comments about how real-life guruing (?) can be like:

"I receive a ton of e-mail saying, 'I have a software problem. Please help soon, as I have urgent business to conduct.'" - Dino Esposito, columnist

Hehe... If you look at this the right (optimistic) way, it must be cool to receive mails like this - knowing that so many people think you have the answer for everything - but the downside is that the same people expect you to have the answer for everything. And that you are always available for private lessons.

Ultimately, the satisfaction you get from helping so many people (although not through private lessons) beats the dissatisfaction of not having time to help the (relatively) few - otherwise Gurus wouldn't be Gurus, right?

Jakob Nielsen on Office 12 (no, wait, he's fine with it ;-)

Jannik Anker — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 13:15:00 GMT

Via Joel Ward:

Jakob Nielsen appears to like the new Office UI, which he refers to as "results-oriented user interface". And for once, I think he makes a sound argument in that the current Office UI (and other apps with a huge lot of virtually unreachable functionality) does no good for the average end user. The fancy stuff is simply buried too deep, and there are no ways to bring this functionality to the access level of Bold, Italic and whatnot.

Office "12", as most of us must have seen by now, introduces a fairly different UI that I personally have to experience first hand in order to evaluate properly - but given how Mr. Nielsen tends to critize even things like remote controls, I see no reason not to eagerly look forward to O12...

Jakob Nielsen : R.I.P. WYSIWYG

The New Generation of Microsoft Certifications

Jannik Anker — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 17:02:00 GMT

Once again, I feel like way behind schedule - I haven't gotten around to blogging for a few days due to some work stuff. So in order for me to take time out for blogging, the subject has to be important...

Now, I'm not exactly the first person out there to mention The New Generation of Microsoft Certifications, but it can't get mentioned too much. I was just about to commence my MCAD.NET training when this came out, but it's going to have to wait a while. The new exams are available from early 2006, and I think I'll be going for the Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD) in the Web Developer direction.

If I am to spend money failing exams, I want to fail the best ones! Heh...

Yes! VS.NET 2005 is available for (MSDN) download!

Jannik Anker — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 13:18:00 GMT

Via Andrew Connell...

The newest versions of Visual Studio.NET and SQL Server (2005) are now available for download, if you are an MSDN subscriber! If you are not, you'll have to wait till the official release on November 7th. Download size: 2760 MB... Yawn... ;-)

First look at next version of Sharepoint

Jannik Anker — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 12:53:00 GMT

Very embarassing that I never noticed this before. Thought I'd mention it anyways:

Back in September, over at Channel 9, Robert Scoble interviewed some of the guys from the Sharepoint Services Team. They go through some of the new features of Sharepoint "V3.0", which looks truly promising. Scoble also links to Dustin Millers list of Sharepoint "V3.0" features.