March 2004 - Posts

• Baseline alignment in VS 2005

  Now this is cool.  Not only does the WinForms designer do nifty control alignment based on edge position, but it also aligns to the controls' text's baseline!  Fan-frickin-tastic! Posted Mar 31 2004, 07:27 PM by jeffreykey with no comments Filed under: Apps, Development

• I want my WSE

  Looks like things are still moving along in the WSE 2.0 camp -- HarveyW says they're in the final round of bug bashing.  I, and many others I'm sure, am very happy to hear this.  Apparently there are some significant changes from the TP (the namespace the types live in, for one) and I'd love to get those in our code ASAP. As a side note:  Working with the WSE 2.0 tech preview has been great fun, especially considering this is a glimpse into how we'll be doing things in the future Indigo.  Nice job! Posted Mar 31 2004, 08:09 AM by jeffreykey with no comments Filed under: Platform

• Remove default comments in C# files

  How many thousand times have you created a new C# class, then deleted the “Add constructor logic here“ and/or the default, useless XML Documentation comment?  Far too many, I'm sure. Solving this problem is simple:  Remove them from the template that's used to generate new classes.  The file is found at the following location (VS.NET 2003): %programfiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\VC#\VC#Wizards\CSharpAddClassWiz\Templates\1033 Other templates are scattered around below the %programfiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\VC# directory.  Simply do an in-file search for “///“ and you'll find several more. (I think EricGu or someone else posted something about this a while ago, but I can't find the post.) Posted Mar 30 2004, 07:25 PM by jeffreykey with 14 comment(s) Filed under: Development

• Bob Edwards ousted from Morning Edition

  Sad.  'Morning Edition' replacing Edwards Strong reactions to NPR host's removal Update: Save Bob Edwards Petition (already “signed” by 8087 people) Posted Mar 26 2004, 05:24 PM by jeffreykey with 1 comment(s) Filed under: News, Tech-free

• Unheard wish fulfilled

  Man oh man I can't wait to dig further into VS 2005 TP.  I only had a minute before work to very quickly check out a few things and noticed “Generate Method Stub” in the Refactoring menu.  Going on a hunch, I created an event handler for a dummy button on a form: private void button3_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) {      string something = HelloMethod(sender); } HelloMethod didn't exist.  I put the cursor on the HelloMethod and selected Refactoring|Generate Method Stub and got the following: private string HelloMethod(object sender) {     throw new NotImplementedException(); } Are you kidding me?!?  Brilliant!  It inferred the proper return type. Properly named and typed the param. Private visibility. NotImplementedException by default. I need this feature several times a day and I couldn't ask for a better implementation.  Thank you! Posted Mar 26 2004, 09:49 AM by jeffreykey with 5 comment(s) Filed under: Platform, Development

• VS 2005 download tips

  Please suspend your transfer or do not start it until mine is complete.  (Give me another couple hours.) Do not try to do a side-by-side install on your main machine.  I haven't tried this with this build, but I've found in the past that side-by-side installs aren't perfected until late in the product cycle and we're still very early.  This isn't something you want to try out yourself -- bad side effects can cause older versions to not function.  Let someone else give it a go first. If you're going to install to a VPC and already have a VPC w/the PDC VS.NET Whidbey, start uninstalling the PDC Whidbey pronto or create a new OS image.  Uninstalling PDC Whidbey in a VPC running at low priority (the default, I believe) can take a long time. And finally, don't expect to get the bits quickly.  You're going to be competing with a bunch of other hungry geeks for bandwidth/resources and your transfer times won't be optimal.  Acknowledge this and be happy that you'll get the bits eventually.  Posted Mar 25 2004, 11:58 PM by jeffreykey with 4 comment(s) Filed under: Platform

• .NET Assembly -> XMI (UML 2 file) -- any interest?

  I was working on a little app to create an XMI file from a .NET assembly, but dropped it as other things came up.  I think it's 90% or so done, but I'm not sure if it's worth my time to complete it.  Would anyone find something like this useful? (XMI files contain metadata that modeling apps can use to create UML class diagrams.) Posted Mar 25 2004, 10:01 PM by jeffreykey with 7 comment(s) Filed under: Design/Architecture

• VS Wish of the Day

  I use integrated source control most of the time.  Whenever I try to edit some code that's not checked out, I'm presented with the “Check Out for Edit” dialog, which is what I would expect.  Another thing I would expect would be a keyboard accelerator for “Check Out” so I don't need to grab my mouse to click that button.  Sadly, this isn't the case.  I think I'm getting tennis elbow because of it. Please, VS friends, add this tiny “feature” to VS.Next.  Thank you. Posted Mar 25 2004, 01:45 PM by jeffreykey with 6 comment(s) Filed under: Development

• 1 spam in 19,675 emails. Not bad.

  It's great to come home from vacation (I had a great time, thanks) with an inbox full of email and only one spam.  The surprising bit, though, is that it's the first spam in my inbox in five months.  That's right, my friends:  I've been sent 19,675 emails in that time and only one spam (out of 7,951) has come through. I couldn't be happier with SpamArrest.  The service was pretty spotty when I first joined, but they must've added a server or two in late October because it's been on fire since.  I've tried many different approaches to beating spam, and this wins hands-down.  My biggest beef with most other solutions is having to deal with false positives and negatives.  Once per day I check all of the email that wasn't allowed through -- no “false negatives” make it to my inbox.  This is really only necessary to check for any automated emails (recently subscribed newsletters and whatnot[1]) from addresses that haven't been verified.  I love it! [1]  Hopefully all email newsletters will get on the RSS bandwagon and this will eventually be unnecessary. Posted Mar 24 2004, 07:55 AM by jeffreykey with 7 comment(s) Filed under: Apps

• Favorite VS.NET keyboard shortcut of the day

  CTRL+L == Delete line == Happiness Posted Mar 19 2004, 05:05 PM by jeffreykey with 10 comment(s) Filed under: Development