Joe's Blog

VSLive Rocks!

2008-12-15T20:55:56Z

I spent the last week at VSLive in Dallas. Think mental overload. There were more sessions I wanted to attend, than there was time to attend them. John Papa gave some very interesting presentations on the Entity Framework. Miguel Castro gave an excellent presentation on sexy extensibility patterns. Richard Hale Shaw chaired the event and his presentation on applied generics was great! There were just too many great presentations to mention. It was a fun time and it should be on your list of things to do.

Enough Said...

2008-10-24T21:12:55Z

PDC

Slick Tools from SlickEdit

2008-07-10T03:14:00Z

Over the last few weeks I've been using the new suite of tools from SlickEdit for Visual Studio. They are organized in two toolboxes, one for editing and one for version control. Installation into Visual Studio 2008 was smooth and painless. Installation into Visual Studio 2005 was not quite as smooth, but I've been using 2005 for fewer tasks since 2008 was released so I'm not really bothered by that. Your mileage may vary.

The Editing Toolbox does not include the SlickEdit editor, but utilities that make the time you spend editing in Visual Studio more productive. Included in the toolbox are:

Aliases and Acronyms: I doubt I'll be using these much. Aliases for directories save you keystrokes when opening files and acronyms are a few characters that expand to longer class or method names. I find myself typing directory names so few times I forget about aliases and by the time I remember what the acronym is for a class name I could have typed it and been on about my business. Maybe I'm just not used to it, but I don't see myself as an alias and acronym kind of guy.

Auto Code Doc Viewer: This one is a gem. Have you ever wanted MSDN style documentation for your code? Have you been a sad developer since NDoc fizzled? Have you ever wondered what happened to Sandcastle? This little jewel does it on the fly, right in Visual Studio. Very nice!

Code Annotations: This is another keeper. Do you ever write notes on a legal pad about some feature in code or an idea you don't want to forget? Just use annotations. The source code file is not modified and you don't have to look through your desk drawers wondering what you did with that legal pad. I think I could learn to love this one.

Comment Wrapping: This is my favorite in this toolbox! I write comments for at least the public and protected members in my code. Then I read the comments, and thinking I'm going to make them clearer, spend the next five minutes rewriting and moving things around, making sure the lines are about the same length, putting the triple-whacks back at the beginning of the line and driving myself nuts over what should be a simple task. That's all history, now I just edit until I'm satisfied with the comment and comment wrapping takes care of wrapping at the proper line length and keeping the triple-whacks where they belong.

Icon Extractor: I'm kind of lukewarm on this one. I just don't do enough icon extraction to get excited. If you do, then this is worth a good look.

Quick Profiling: A profiler is one of those tools that when you need it, nothing else will make you happy. There have been several times in my career that I've looked for a free profiler because I needed to do some quick profiling and didn't want to spend a few hundred dollars to use one for a couple of hours. Having a good one right in Visual Studio is a good thing. Sprinkle a few Trace.WriteLine calls in your code and analyze the timings in a viewer in Visual Studio.

Regex Evaluator: If you have ever used regular expressions you know how complicated they can be. Now you can express yourself regularly with ease.

Code Navigation: This is another utility that I probably won't use much. It allows keyboard shortcuts to take you from a symbol to its definition and to find everywhere that symbol is referenced. Those capabilities are already in Visual Studio; I'm used to how they work and probably won't change my ways.

Word Completion: I can't really say wow about this one. This feature is available in the IDE and I don't really see a need for a replacement.

The Versioning Toolbox is intended to make using source control easier and more convenient.

CVS and Subversion Source Control: Excellent support for both CVS and Subversion is provided and their commands can be used right in the Solution Explorer. If you use either of these popular products, source control just got easier.

Backup History: Easily compare and restore any version of your files.

DIFFzilla: This is my favorite diff and merge tool. It's easy to use and rock solid. Diffing and merging of anything from files to entire source trees is fast and easy.

Find Version: Do you need to find all the files Frank edited and checked in last week? It's easy with this tool. Now you can easily find which files meet specified criteria.

Line Version Info: We've all looked at information stored about the last check-in that affected a file. Now you can look at the same kind of information for each line in a file. The devil is in the details.

Version Graphs: Get a graphical view of the history of your files. This is interesting, but I'm not sure how useful.

Version History: View the complete history of each check-in of your files. The date, branch, author, check-in comments, and labels are available.

Visualizations: Color schemes indicate specific characteristics about each line in your source file. For instance, who wrote this line and when that line was checked in can be answered visually. Talk about an explosion in a paint factory...

SlickEdit has created a couple of toolboxes that contain some very nice tools. They work well in Visual Studio and don't interfere with your normal workflow. For the price of a tank of gas, get yourself some tools.

Brad Was Here

2008-04-16T02:22:00Z

Brad Abrams came to the TRINUG meeting on April 9 and knocked us all out. He always gives a great presentation and this time he gave us a peek at some of the new technologies from Microsoft. He demonstrated some Silverlight 2.0 features, and showed the MVC framework.

FarPoint came through with a great meal! Barbeque with cole slaw, baked beans, hush puppies and banana pudding, and of course, sweet tea. A regular feast and much better than the typical pizza. And they didn't just bring the food, they cooked it! Way to go FarPoint! Thanks to the whole gang over there, they are great folks.

Brad is Coming

2008-02-26T03:23:55Z

Brad Abrams (the man behind .NET) is coming to town and he will be speaking at the TRINUG meeting on April 9, 2008. He'll be speaking about some of the new technologies from Microsoft for ASP.NET development including the new MVC framework. If you haven't heard Brad speak, you have to be there. If you have heard him speak, well, enough said; see you at the meeting.

Code Camp is Coming to Raleigh Again!

2007-11-29T00:36:30Z

Mark you calendars for February 9, 2008. TRINUG is hosting another Code Camp and it will be better than ever. Watch for the call for speakers if you want to give a presentation and check the TRINUG website for more information as it becomes available.

Visual Studio 2008 RTM is Available!

2007-11-21T17:08:00Z

If you are an MSDN subscriber, you can get the RTM version now. Hurry and get the bits! Be the first on your block! If you've been using the beta, read this. Let the fun begin!!!

Rob Zelt, MVP

2007-10-06T00:51:00Z

Rob Zelt, one of TRINUG's own, has been awarded a Microsoft MVP for his contributions to the community. Great work, Rob! Congratulations!! No one deserves it more. Now, if he will still let me hang out with him at B&N...

Computer Graphics on Steroids

2007-08-06T14:01:00Z

For those of you with excellent graphics skills, doing animations may be just another day at the office. For the graphically challenged like me, it's magic! There are a bunch of video clips on YouTube by Animusic that are just that kind of magic for me. I'm amazed at what they have been able to do and I find myself grinning uncontrollably every time I watch them. Check them out, but don't blame me if your cheeks get sore from excessive grinning.

Wondering What Else You Can Do With Your Fingers?

2007-06-22T20:32:00Z

Computing is about to change radically with Microsoft Surface. Think of it as tablet computing on steroids. Your tabletop has never been so cool! Imagine smart phones, smart credit cards, and smart mp3 players all interacting seamlessly with your tabletop! Watch the demo and prepare to be amazed! I can't wait until this is part of the .NET framework.

TRINUG Code Camp

2007-06-19T00:14:00Z

Don't forget about TRINUG's Code Camp on June 23 at ECPI. It's going to be excellent! Here is a preliminary list of the sessions. If you can't find something interesting in this list, check your pulse.

.NET 3.5 and LINQ - Ashton Hobbs
Adding Compression, Encryption and Hashing to Your .NET Applications - Rod Paddock
AJAX - Creating a Virtual Earth Feed with Ajax and Silverlight - Jeremy Brown
Building a better Updater for WinForms Client Applications - Chris Dix
Content Query Web Part and the Data View Web Part in SharePoint 2007 using Microsoft Sharepoint Designer - Bob Gusek
Creating Casual Games Using WPF - Rod Paddock
DNN - David Wendelken
Extending the CSLA Framework: Standard Business Rule Libraries and Built-in Business Rule Documentation - David Wendelken
Layered Architecture 101 - Greg Pugh
Real World Click Once - Craig Adams
Sharepoint Workflow Development - Josh Carlisle
SQL Server Integration Services for SQL Server 2005 - Charles Asbornsen
SQL Server Performance Analysis and Tuning Potluck Session - Kevin Boles
Visual Studio Codename Orcas - New Language Features - Srinu Tulluri
Web Part Development - Josh Carlisle
Web site architecture - Diane Wilson
Website Security - Steve Jackle
Windows CardSpace - Brian Hitney
Windows Work Flow - Mark Dunn
WPF Controls: Styles, Templates, and Custom Layouts - Rob Zelt
Write Better Code Using the Refactoring Tools in Visual Basic 2005 - Jim Duffy

Thanks to everyone who worked on putting this together. It's going to be an awsome event! See you there.

Acropolis is Here

2007-06-09T03:32:00Z

No, it's not something from Greece being shipped over here. It's a little taste of the good things to come from Microsoft. Acropolis is a set of tools and components in the Orcas version of Visual Studio to make modular business application development easier and faster. The idea is for the developer to concentrate on building the business logic and everything else is generated by Visual Studio. It's an exciting time to be a developer and I think it's going to be a wild ride. Hang on!

TRINUG Gets Rocky

2007-05-25T01:27:00Z

Rocky Lhotka is coming to town and will be speaking at TRINUG on June 13. If you are a fan of business objects, you want to hear him. He is the developer of CSLA, a framework for distributed .NET applications using business objects. Here is what he says about himself:

Rockford Lhotka is the author of several books, including the Expert VB 2005 Business Objects and Expert C# 2005 Business Objects books. He is a Microsoft Regional Director, MVP and INETA speaker. He contributes to several major magazines and regularly presents at major conferences around the world - including Microsoft PDC, Tech Ed, VS Live! and VS Connections. Rockford is the Principal Technology Evangelist for Magenic, a company focused on delivering business value through applied technology and one of the nation's premiere Microsoft Gold Certified Partners.

Free is Better

2007-05-22T11:44:00Z

I like cheap things. Cheap things let me keep more of my money in my pocket and not someone else's. I don't want to lose quality, just expense. With that in mind, I was excited to find some good training on .NET 3.0 for free! And after all, free is better. To see what is available, go here.

What is Popfly?

2007-05-20T14:15:00Z

What is Popfly? It's some very cool technology from Microsoft. This thing takes drag and drop development to a whole new level. If you haven't seen a demo of it, check it out here. This is just an example of the cool new things coming out of Microsoft.