Archives
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Christmas Fun
'Twas the night before Christmas,
and all through the house,
Not a creature was stirring,
Especially my hot water heater,
which decided to eat itself on Christmas Eve,
the day before we host Christmas dinner for the extended family.
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Generics are now CLSCompliant
Woo-hoo! A while back I was complaining about generics not being CLS Compliant in .NET 2.0. Apparently the folks at MS have changed their mind. Great news. [via Richard Blewitt]
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Work with Visual Studio 2005 begins in earnest
So far most of my time spent with Visual Studoi 2005 has been just playing around. That's changing - I'm ramping up to do some serious development, 05 style, and looking forward to it.
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Visual Studio 2005 November CTP install surprise
After an interminable download, I finally installed the November CTP version of Visual Studio 2005. The first part of the install - the actual IDE - went without a hitch. The second part - MSDN Library - didn't go so well. It complained that Windows XP SP2 was a requirement for the MSDN Library install. Huh? Visual Studio doesn't require SP2, but the help does? Weird. I'm doing this all in a VM, so it's not really a problem to install SP2. It just seems like an odd requirement.
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Can someone explain why this VB.NET code fails to compile?
Imports System.ComponentModel
Public Enum Mode
Mode1
Mode2
End Enum -
ISO CD burning
Ever find yourself stuck on a Windows XP machine with only the built-in CD burning support but needing to burn an ISO image to CD? I did over the Thanksgiving. Luckily I ran across Burn-at-once. It's a nice, simple, free (donation-ware) tool that does the job nicely. Recommended.
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Google Suggests
The geek world is all a-flutter with the release of Google Suggest. My first reaction was "hey, neat". However, it quickly became clear that the hardcore tech stuff that I usually end up searching for (weird error messages that I'm trying to diagnose, or compiler errors, or things of that ilk) wasn't going to benefit much from the suggest feature. But hey, next time I'm looking for Paris Hilton's latest video, it'll be a snap.
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Turkey, stuffing, and service packs
Oh my god, this is so my life.
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No support for ASPCOMPAT in ASMX for Whidbey - disappointing
According to this LadyBug post, Microsoft is not adding support for executing ASMX requests in an STA thread pool (ie the "ASPCOMPAT=TRUE" directive that is available for ASPX pages). This is something that I complained about long ago, and I'm very disappointed that it isn't being addressed in v2.0 of the framework.
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Bug (?) in AxImp in .NET Framework 1.1 SP1
Here's one of those fun issues that may or may not be a bug, depending on how you look at it.
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I'm baaaack
Wow, what a crazy few months it's been. First, my fiance moved in. Next, she ceased to be my fiance and became my wife. Our fabulous wedding was followed by a fabulous 2 week honeymoon in Fiji. Back home for a week and a half, then off to New York for a friend's wedding. From there we were off to Amsterdam for a couple of days - the get-over-jetlag stopover on our way to Tanzania. In Tanzania we went on an amazing 9 day hike up to the top of Kilimanjaro (proof below), followed by a week long safari. Six out of eights weeks away from home, 65 hours on planes - it's good to be home for a while. Now it's time to get back to doing real work, and hopefully a little more blogging.
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Running Assembly Reflector Add-in v.6 Update
I've updated the Running Assembly Reflector add-in to be compatible with newer builds of Reflector (the latest is version 4.1.1.0, as of this writing). Sorry it took so long - been wicked busy with moving and wedding planning. I also fixed a couple of UI quirks, and moved the "Open Running Assembly" menu item under the File menu (thanks to Lutz for extending the Reflector add-in API to support this).
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Nice Tool - PureText
I just found out about PureText, a very nice (and free) little utility for scrubbing formatting info from data on the Windows clipboard. Basically, it lets you add "Paste Special/Plain Text" to any Windows application. Fantastic - I've been looking for something like this for a while.
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So....
Warning – glass house post ahead.
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Lookout download on Microsoft.com
Update - Boy, did I call that or what? Microsoft has pulled Lookout from the MS Download site. Fortunately, it's resurfaced on the Lookout download page (with a massive “this is unsupported, don't plan on any fixes” disclaimer). I'm left wondering what's going on behind the scenes at Microsoft regarding Lookout. Were they really planning on just vanishing the product, but changed their mind because of the community outcry? I'm certainly glad it's available again, but I definitely would like to know what's in store for the product (or the product's capabilites) in the future. Lookout obviously met a customer need, and that need isn't going away in the near future.
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Disabling the web service look up in the "Open With" dialog of Windows XP
When you right-click on a file in Windows Explorer and select “Open With...”, it pops up an option discover the appropriate application to open the file with by calling a Microsoft Web Service. I have never once actually used this option, so it simply adds an extra mouse click to the process (to dismiss the dialog). I've been meaning to find out if it was possible to disable this popup for ages, and finally got around to consulting the Oracle of Google.
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They don't want to be my buddy...
Update - Bruce Williams volunteered to be my buddy and hooked me up with the program. Thanks, Bruce. Only time will tell if he will live to regret it. :)
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Mouse wheel scrolling the Web Browser control
A fairly common interface style these days is the multi-pane reading UI. You see it in Outlook, RSS Bandit, Sharp Reader, Sauce Reader, etc. Outlook 2003 includes a nice feature when using the mouse wheel to scroll a window - the window that the mouse cursor is over is the one that scrolls, rather than the window that has focus. I've gotten quite used to this behavior, and was disappointed when I found that RSS Bandit didn't support it when trying to scroll the reading pane (I don't know about Sharp Reader, I haven't tried it).
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SSE, Visual Studio, and XCOPY deployment
The VSData team blogs about new database features with SQL Server Express and Visual Studio 2005. Apparently when an SSE database is added to the VS project and the project is built, the MDF gets copied to the build directory along with the EXE. When the application runs, the framework automatically finds the MDF in the application directory.
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Unit testing in Visual Studio 2005
A couple of weeks ago there was quite a bit of discussion about adding unit testing support to all versions of Visual Studio 2005. OK, so I'm late to this party, but here's my 2 cents.
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Generics and CLS Compliance
Dan Fernandez blogs a reminder that generics are not CLS compliant in the .NET Framework 2.0. Apparently to make them so would put too large an onus on CLS language developers. This news worried me back when I first heard it, and it still worries me. It worries me on two fronts. As a component developer, it forces me to make some decisions when designing my APIs. Let's say I have an API that could take advantage of generics to make it more extensible or elegant. So do I
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Running Assembly Reflector Add-in
Like most .NET developers, I use (and am eternally grateful for) Reflector for .NET. Aside from Visual Studio .NET and NUnit, it's the most used tool in my development arsenal.
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DataTips in VS 2005
Jim Gries blogs about the enhanced Datatips in Visual Studio 2005 (damn it's hard to stop saying Visual Studio .NET). Somehow this improvement had escaped my attention previously. All I can say is - wow, wicked cool. Even his screen shot doesn't do the feature justice - this is one of the coolest debugger enhancements I've seen in a very long time. I use QuickWatch a ton, and I can easily see this replacing QuickWatch for 90% of my debugging needs. It definitely gives visualizers a run for their money as the coolest debugging enhancement in VS2005.
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Audio editing - the Audacity of it all
This weekend I had the need to do some very basic audio editing. I had no software for doing this, but a quick Google turned up Audacity, an open source audio editing package. It let me do everything I needed to do, and is quite easy to use. Recommended.
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Windows XP flakiness - solved
About 8 months ago, I got a snazzy new development machine at work. From the get-go, I had a peculiar problem – when I opened a bunch of Internet Explorer windows, my machine started going wonky. Actually, the problem wasn’t caused just by IE, but it seemed like IE triggered it more readily. The issue manifested itself as a progression of increasingly worsening UI problems. The first sign of trouble is that the IE toolbars would rearrange themselves. Specifically, the Links toolbar would move from the bottom of the toolbar stack (where I like it) back to the default location (collapsed, to the right of the address bar). If I kept opening windows, the problem would progress to where new IE windows would display without a menu bar, or would sometimes hang and would need to be killed. If I (foolishly) kept opening windows, things really went haywire. Windows became incapable of popping up any new windows. Context menus wouldn’t display, the Start Menu wouldn’t pop up, grouped start menu items couldn’t be selected, etc. Closing open windows would usually restore the system to some semblance of usability, but I usually ended up rebooting at some point, if only for my peace of mind. Needless to say, this was very frustrating.
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Whidbey Unit Testing Generated Code - yikes
I was just poking around in some of the code that the Whidbey Unit Testing framework generates, and was shocked at what I saw:
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VSTS Unit Testing
James Newkirk blogs a Hello World unit test sample for Visual Studio Team System. I'm guessing it's no accident that the test code looks a lot like NUnit test code - making it easy to migrate unit tests from NUnit to VSTS makes a lot of sense. However, if I had my druthers, I'd change one thing. I've never liked the fact that the comparison Assert methods (e.g. Assert.AreEqual) take the expected value as the first argument and the actual value as the second. That just feels backward to me. Assert.AreEqual(9, theValue) reads to me like “if (9 == theValue)”. I just don't think that way, and I frequently find myself reversing the parameters inadvertantly. Unfortunately, that change would complicate the migration from NUnit to VSTS, and so probably isn't feasable.
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More Whidbey Help comments
A couple more cool Whidbey Help System features that I just ran across:
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Whidbey Object Test Bench
The Whidbey May CTP documentation describes a new IDE feature called Object Test Bench. It sounds like this allows you to create instances of objects and poke at them in the design environment, without having to create a test project and write code. Looks neat, but either it isn't hooked up yet or I just can't figure out how to work it. Anybody know?
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Whidbey Help System comments
Now that my Whidbey May CTP help system is working, I thought I’d post some comments on the new help system.
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Anti Gmail Legislation
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FREE XDN Professional for .NET Bloggers during May 2004
Mike Schinkel, president of Xtras.Net, made an offer on his personal blog of a free XDN Professional membership (http://www.xtras.net/xdn) during the month of May 2004 for anyone that blogs about .NET frequently. If you are a .NET blogger, see Mike's post for how to get your free XDN membership.
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Whidbey May CTP first experiences
[UPDATE] - Rob Caron posted a fix for the help problems. Thanks, Rob (and Josh and Saurabh, for responding to my post).
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VS 2005 May CTP on MSDN Subscriber downloads
Microsoft has posted the May Community Tech Preview of Visual Studio 2005 on the MSDN Subscriber download site. Woo hoo!
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WSE 2.0 Final
Looks like Web Services Enhancements 2.0 final release just popped onto MS Downloads. Download here.
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Whidbey indentation changes
I ran across this post recently which mentions that the default indentation character for Whidbey has changed from tabs to spaces for the default C# profile. I'm not sure I like the sound of that. Now, I'll admit I'm a tab guy, not a space guy, but that's not my concern. Won't we end up with a mess of mixed indentation styles as we edit existing code? Sounds potentially very ugly. I realize that you can set the option back to tabs, but I'll bet most people won't.
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Reflector 4.0 coolness
I just discovered that Reflector 4.0 includes a really cool new feature - it can automatically update itself when new versions are released. Wicked cool. Staying up to date on Reflector has always been a bit of a pain, but no longer.
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Visual Studio .NET Add-in for the PInvoke.NET web site
Adam Nathan has posted a VS.NET add-in to gotdotnet.com that lets you easily find and insert PInvoke signatures directly into your code, using the PInvoke.net web site as its data source. Bugger! I had already started writing a similar add-in for my entry to Roy Osherove's add-in contest. Guess I'll have to come up with something else.
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Windows Forms ListBox items
Craig Andera blogs a simple ListItemWrapper class for dealing with Windows Forms listbox items. This is such a common scenario that I’d really love to see a simple ListItem class as part of the framework (no sign of one in the March community preview release). While there’s no technical reason why it has to come from Microsoft (obviously it’s pretty easy to create - I’ve done it myself numerous times), it would cover probably 80% or more of my usage of the listbox, and that makes it worth it in my book. All we need is a ListItem class with a Text string property and a Tag object property. You could even throw in a couple of jazzy data binding bonus features if you really want.
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Mac and PC Interoperability
My fiancé is a Mac person. She’s a web designer (and a damn good one), so I cut her some slack on that one. This weekend she upgraded her Mac to Panther (OS 10.3). On a lark, I decided to check if the new version supported Windows-based VPNs (PPTP, I guess not strictly Windows-based, but I believe it came out of the Windows world). Lo and behold, it did! I configured it to connect to my company’s VPN (a process that was harder than it should have been – sometimes I think Mac’s reputation for ease of use is overblown). Once configured correctly, it worked like a charm. I installed Microsoft’s remote desktop client for the Mac, and connected to my box at work. Bing, bang, boom, I was seamlessly controlling my XP machine from my fiancé’s Mac.
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Outlook 2003 Follow Up items mystery...solved.
I installed Outlook 2003 the last time I repaved my machine, and generally it has worked just fine. But several times recently I've ended up with dozens, sometimes hundreds, of RSS posts in my “For Follow Up” folder (I use NewsGator as my RSS reader). I was mystified as to how they were getting there, because I never right-clicked on a bunch of posts and selected “Follow Up”.
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Whidbey Tech Preview comments
I finally started playing around with the Whidbey March Tech Preview, and thought I'd blog some comments as they occurred to me.
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Whidbey Tech Preview MSDN Help
UPDATE - WallyM posted a fix in the comments section. Thanks Wally!
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Netgear wireless router problems and solution
A while back I bought a Netgear MR814 wireless router for my girlfriend's house. However, I've always had problems holding a strong wireless connection. The back of the house doesn't get a very strong signal, and my connection would frequently drop. For a while I chalked the connection losses up to poor signal strength, but recently I found the following article on Netgear's support site:
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Red vs Blue - it's official
Yes, it's official. Season 2 of Red vs Blue stinks. Actually, it was official 3 or 4 episodes ago, but I was holding out hope that things would improve. It pains me to say this, as I was a huge fan of Season 1. What happened? How did things go so wrong? In my opinion, it went wrong when they took out the f***ing swearing. Half (or more) of the hilarity of the show was the military guys ripping in to each other. Some of the insults have even made it into my friends' vernacular.
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Double your pleasure, double your fun...
Got the email from Comcast today - the connection speed on my cable modem internet connection doubled today. Just ran the speed test - 3150 kbps. Woo-hoo!!
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Navigating to My Documents, keyboard style
On a lark, for no particular reason, I just brought up the Windows XP “Run” dialog and typed My Documents. Much to my surprise, it actually popped up an Explorer window with My Documents selected. Neato. As a keyboard hound, I appreciate this. Desktop also seems to work, though My Computer doesn't.
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Post-build events with VS.NET troubles
Hmm. It would seem that Visual Studio .NET 2003 doesn't like running post-build events for projects loaded from a UNC path. How terribly unfortunate. The error it gives is:
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No more SOAP Toolkit
Eek. Looks like Microsoft is stopping support of the good old SOAP Toolkit. Not terribly suprising, but I think they could have given us a little more time. July 1, 2004? We use the SOAP Toolkit in our (still mostly) COM-based system, and 6 months is an awfully short timeframe in which to rip out that code and integrate the .NET Framework. Guess we'll be working without a net for a bit.
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Indigo concerns somewhat assuaged
Thanks to Dave Bettin et al for pointing me at the “Indigo: Coming Attractions” PDC presentation. That definitely cleared up some of my concerns about the Indigo programming model. If I understood it correctly, ASMX's
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Indigo application concerns
I recently read Yasser Shohoud's article about creating Indigo applications using the PDC Whidbey bits, and it has me a little worried. I missed the PDC, and this article was really my first look at the details of writing code against Indigo.
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Encryption in .NET
Recently an article went up on MSDN about cryptography with the .NET framework. I've seen many articles like this. Know what? Almost every single one does what this article does - creates helper functions that take a chunk of plain text and return a chunk encrypted text. I must have seen this same chunk of code a dozen different times.
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Copying files
Will there ever come a day when Windows Explorer, when it encounters an error during a file copy (due to a sharing violation, for example), actually gives you the option of skipping the problem file and continuing on with the copy? As opposed to the current behavior, where it just bombs out and stops copying.
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Merging assemblies
Fabrice points to an MS Research tool called ILMerge that can be used to merge multiple assemblies into one. This reminded me of some tinkering that I did a while back with creating single-file executables. I didn't have an explicit need for this, really, but from an aesthetic perspective there's something nice about a program that consists of just a single file. Plus, it's the ultimate in xcopy deployment.
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CodeGen and Partial Classes
During a recent chat session on debugging with Visual C#, the following questions and answers came up: