Visual Studio 2005

Microsoft releases Oct CTP of Visual Studio Orcas

Peter Himschoot — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:34:00 GMT

"This CTP targets early adopters of the Microsoft technology, platform, and tools offerings. It enables developers to experience the upcoming toolset and underlying platform improvements. We designed this release to enable developers try out new technology and product changes, but not to build production systems. This limitation is fully covered in the EULA that accompanies this CTP."

Link

Microsoft releases Visual Studio 2005 IDE Enhancements

Peter Himschoot — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 16:23:00 GMT

Visual Studio 2005 IDE Enhancements are a set of Visual Studio extensions that are designed to make you more productive. These enhancements are directly integrated into the Visual Studio IDE. This set of enhancements includes Source Code Outliner, Visual C++ Code Snippets, Indexed Find, Super Diff and Event Toaster tools. All these tools except the IDE Event Toaster can be invoked from Visual Studio’s View.OtherWindows menu group. The Event Toaster tool can be configured from the Tools Options dialog under the PowerToys node. The Visual C++ Code Snippets can be invoked on any C++ source file. Previously, these enhancements were only available via the Visual Studio 2005 SDK. This installation does not require Visual Studio 2005 SDK.

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.

Link

Windows Vista RC2 is here! Installing the SDK

Peter Himschoot — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 03:41:00 GMT

Vista RC2 is probably the last public drop of Vista before it goes RTM. This build contains updated drivers, and yes, finally my Tecra M4 plays video's without problems (no hickups, etc...). Now to the interesting problem: installing the SDK and VS integration...

Since there is no official SDK available for RC2 (yet), I've tried installing the Sep 2006 SDK, and I must say, works like a charm! Visual Studio integration too. Although I might be a little too early, there is a lot to test :)

Next on my list is intalling Camtasia and recording a session on WPF, which I want to make public.

Visual Studio Tips 'n Tricks (Free book!!!)

Peter Himschoot — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 03:54:00 GMT

A free book loaded with tips and tricks for visual studio... Nice!

Found it through Craig McMurtry's blog

Better Oracle development with Visual Studio

Peter Himschoot — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 00:15:00 GMT

Oracle today released two new free downloads that are designed to let developers of Microsoft .NET applications work more efficiently with Oracle Database 10g.

Link.

Generating documentation from XML comments with Sandcastle.

Peter Himschoot — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 18:27:00 GMT

Project Sandcastle is MS its tool for generating documentation from the XML comments you put in your code.

Visit the Sandcastle Blog on MSDN and download the CTP over here.

Thanks to Bart's blog.

More on LINQ and ASP.NET

Peter Himschoot — Mon, 15 May 2006 15:40:00 GMT

And Scott Guthrie has a nice post on using LINQ with ASP.NET:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/05/14/446412.aspx

Clemens Vaster's presentation on WCF

Peter Himschoot — Sun, 14 May 2006 03:48:00 GMT

Next wednesday (17 may) Clemens is coming to Belgium to give a presentation on WCF during the next VISUG meeting.

Don't miss this, and, first come first serve (50 seats available).

http://www.visug.be/

Microsoft releases LINQ CTP (May 2006)

Peter Himschoot — Sun, 14 May 2006 03:40:00 GMT

Great news! LINQ CTP is available for download

http://msdn.microsoft.com/data/ref/linq/

Data News Article on Team System - Talk about misinformed

Peter Himschoot — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 17:55:00 GMT

Data News published an article (end of march) that made my hairs stand up (and those who know me personally know there are only a few hairs left).

They argue about Team System that you could be off a lot cheaper by simply buying a couple of tools to have the same functionality as Team System.

Don't they know that the real power of Team System is the INTEGRATION of the tools? Team System isn't just about source control, project management, unit testing, etc..

It's about integration of these tools. The fact that source control is integrated with work item management and unit testing makes this tool a lot more powerfull. For example when you wonder what you did a couple of months ago to fix a bug, Without integration this means running through the history in source control, ... With integration this means running through the bug fixes that were done in a certain period in work item management (this is a lot less work than running through history in source control), and then following the link to the changeset in source control. Same thing about checkin policy.