Visual Studio
There are 16 entries for the tag
Visual Studio
SSW has a list of 41 rules that they've put out there that can be used as guidelines for running successful projects. I perused the list, and for the most part, they're spot on.One item I hadn't seen was number 5 - about synching up development vs. production web.config settings. SSW uses an approach based on machine name - so if you have a key for WebServiceUrl, you'd have DevLaptop_WebServiceUrl for your local machine, and DevServer_WebServiceUrl as the key for your dev server. I've never done...
If you've used Visual Studio, and ever switched to SQL Server (Query Analyzer, for example), you've probably wished for Intellisense. I know I have. Now, Red Gate, makers of the best SQL products (besides the server itself) out there, is offering SQL Prompt for free until September 2006. I've downloaded it, and will be installing it soon, considering I work with SQL stored procedures on a daily basis right now. It adds intellisense to a whole slew of products, including Query Analyzer and Visual...
I've harped on Visual Studio 2005's website projects quite a bit lately, and I'm going to move to the web application model now that it's been officially released. But, I did want to talk about one last issue I've seen, because it's a doozy.Some background: We have three projects that we're building and deploying. One is at the root of the website, and the other are sub applications (virtual directories) under the root. Of the two sub applications, one was set to compile all of the code into one...
After reading my post on how I use virtual machines, Andrew Connell pointed me to an article he wrote about his extensive use of Virtual PC, including how he uses Differencing disks to his advantage. He also says he doesn't see the huge differencing disks that I'd heard about in the past. I'm now rethinking my plan, and when I update my base image to have Visual Studio 2005, I may give it a try.My biggest hang up with using differencing disks wasn't the size - I really do find it hard to believe...
We made a decision on a project I've been on for over a year now to upgrade to ASP.NET 2.0. This is my first major upgrade project, and to be honest, it was fairly smooth. Now that we're on .NET 2.0, we have a few issues, but we'll get to that. First, the upgrade process. We upgraded two projects that shared a library. We ran a test ahead of time, and did it disconnected from source control, and ran into one immediate issue: the first project upgraded just fine, but as soon as we tried to open the...
A reader recently (well, recently when I first starting writing this!) asked me to expound upon how I use Virtual PC for development, and I'm more than happy to do so. I made the switch to Virtual PC for development early last year, so I've worked through quite a few of the issues I ran into, and I'll talk about those, as well as highlight some of the issues that I'm still struggling with, and how I've been able to work around them so far.The first thing I did was build a base image that had everything...
Version 0.6 of thinktecture's WSCF tool has been released, and it now supports .NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005! Very nice.If you're unfamiliar with WSCF, you should be. It stands for Web Services Contract-First, and allows you to build your web services by first defining the contract that the server and client will agree to. Now, I'm not a complete contract-first guy, but I do like the tool because the client proxy class generation is much better than the default proxy generated by Visual Studio...
Dave Donaldson, the maker of the wonderful site CodeKeep, has released an add-in for Visual Studio 2005. Since I am doing all of my development in .NET 2.0, I hadn't been using CodeKeep as much as I could have been, but having the add-in again will be helpful.Oh yeah. If you're using CodeKeep, why are most of the code snippets private? Isn't the point to be able to share? And if you're not using CodeKeep, why not?Technorati Tags: CodeKeep | VS2005 | Utlities...
I have a gripe about web projects in Visual Studio 2005, and it's already come up to bite me in the butt a few times. The idea that every file in the folder is part of the site never really sat well with me, but I couldn't put my finger on why. But, after using it with a development team, I now know why. When I delete a file, it's removed from my local site, and from source control, which, by the way, is awesome! But here's the problem: when one of the other developers checks in, it picks up that...
While most of the focus today is on the other side of the state (on the Visual Studio 2005 launch event in Detroit), there's still a meeting in Grand Rapids tonight, and it looks like it'll be a dandy. Tim Huckaby is going to be doing a presentation on smart clients - probably pretty similar to what he did at Tech Ed, which I missed.I'll be there tonight, as well as at least one other NuSoft'er that I know of (and he happens to be the other half of Tourney Logic). If you're going to be there, let...
A while ago, I blogged about wanting to find a way to share code snippets for a team. Ben Carey (who used to work at Sagestone, before we became NuSoft), read it, talked to Dave Donaldson, and Dave contacted me to help him test CodeKeep. I didn't do as much as I would have hoped to help him out, but it's now public.You can read Dave's announcement or just go to the website. So far, I've only added three snippets (all public). It's a very cool idea, and Dave plans to add to it as it goes. One of the...
Via Ed Bott, Dwight Silverman wants to know what's on your start menu.No, not what programs you have installed. He wants to know what your top 6 programs are that you use - you know, in Windows XP, the left side of the start menu, where it has an MRU program list.I'm game. Here's my two lists. The first one is on my base machine - where I don't do any development. Here's my list:1. Excel - This is unfair. I recently had a small project working on an excel sheet. No need for a dedicated VPC just to...
Apparently I'm not the only one who's hearing the buzz around the new web projects in Visual Studio 2005. Scott Guthrie is too. And he's on vacation in Mexico!Anyway, he has a great post explaining a few things. Both of the issues I listed earlier (references and excluding files) are handled in post-beta builds, something I wasn't aware of. Here's another example of Microsoft listening to what the developers want.Seriously though, with a guy like Scott running the ASP.NET team, you knew there had...
Well, today was finally the day to take the plunge. Performance of my laptop was WAY down, and it was time to start fresh. It actually didn't turn out to too bad. I had two things going for me: First, we have ghost images for our laptops, and that got me quite a base - Windows XP SP2, Office 2003 all patched up, Visual Studio .NET 2003, SQL Server, etc. That was loaded in 20 minutes. Second, I don't use my base box for most of my development - I've switched to using VPC. So, there wasn't much else...
I'm trying to find an easy way for our team to share code, and the best way to gain adoption of something is to make it easy. Well, most of us spend all day in Visual Studio.NET, so why not find something that can be used in the IDE?I found CodeShare. It's a VS.NET add-in that allows you to add and retrieve code snippets from a central repository. It looks pretty cool, and I'm looking for a server to install it on so I can test it out. If it works as advertised, then I'll start talking to the "higher...
Well, now that I'm back from Tech Ed, it's time to look back through my notes and start writing down my thoughts on what I did and what I saw. I'm starting that right now, but I wanted to get some things out there first. While the technical content at Tech Ed is awesome, I'm debating if the content was better than the people you get to meet and interact with. I'm not sure. I think I've made a few contacts that could potentially be life long relationships. That's more important than the technology...