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.
You can download the new PowerToys here.
It's been a pretty busy year for me in regards to speaking engagements. I just wrapped up a whirlwind tour speaking at back to back user group conferences, DevLink '06 in Nashville and the Tulsa TechFest in... well... Tulsa. Unfortunately for me I didn't think to check a globe before agreeing to the two conferences and so I had to break the land speed record getting from Nashville on Friday in time to speak in Tulsa on Saturday. But all went well, and everybody had a great time.
Next up for me is VSLive Dallas on November 14th-17th. I'm giving these two sessions:
What’s New for Developers in Office 2007 Intermediate
Paul Ballard, Rochester Consulting Partnership, Inc.
2 p.m.
Office 2007 is just around the corner and includes major improvements for writing applications based on the Microsoft Office System. In this talk you'll see how to use and extend the new UI features in Office such as the Ribbon UI, custom task panes, and document information panels. We'll also look under the covers at the new XML document formats and how they can be used to power your application development.
Threading in Windows Forms Intermediate
Paul Ballard, Rochester Consulting Partnership, Inc.
4:30 p.m.
Windows Forms programming poses some unique threading hurdles. Many of those have been overcome in .NET 2.0 with the introduction of the BackgroundWorker component. In this session we’ll look at how to use the BGW to keep your user interface responsive as well as other threading tricks to ensure that your applications make the most of today’s powerful processors.
Rochester Consulting Partnership, Inc. will also have a booth in the exhibitor space so stop by and say hello if you can.