I recently learnt a new shortcut to get to the task manager: Ctrl + shift + Esc. It's especially useful on Vista and Windows Server 2008. On these OSs, ctrl+alt+del maps to another screen where you can select the task manager. One screen lesser to get...

A number of developers who have tried the SharePoint workflow features in VS 2008 wanted to know more about our support for InfoPath forms deployment. So I'm blogging it here for everyone's reference. Before diving into details of InfoPath forms deployment...

I will continue from my last post on authoring SharePoint workflows in VS 2008 by providing a walkthrough. In order to work with SharePoint workflows in VS you will have to setup your development machine as follows: 1) Install Windows Server 2003...

As mentioned in earlier posts , I was one of the developers on the SharePoint Workflow feature in VS 2008. (shipped as one of the VSTO components - available in Professional SKU upwards) The feature include a set of VS project templates, wizard, and...

With a lot of fanfare, VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 released on Nov. 19th. Talking to customers and early adopters, I have received a lot of positive feedback on the product. Check out the excitement in the blogsphere: With more than 400 comments (and counting...

This is a good article on performance tips of the .NET Framework Base Class Library - http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/01/CLRInsideOut/default.aspx . I learned something new about lock-free tracing and DateTime comparisons. The great numerical...

The "Orcas" release train has been keeping me busy. For a long time I have been thinking of blogging about the feature that I worked on in Orcas. As the title of this entry suggests it is a VSTO feature that has to do something with SharePoint Workflow...

Some people have been running into this issue with VS2008 Beta 2 as posted on the MSDN forum . I am posting a workaround here for everyone's reference. When you change the default program for the .vsto file extension, VSTO solutions cannot be deployed...

This is a significant milestone in the VS 2008 development cycle. Almost all our features have completed in this broadly available public release and you can expect a significant upgrade in features when compared to Beta 1. If you haven't already got...

Today I attended an interesting talk on Performance Signatures by Rico Mariani . According to his experience, a high proportion of performance related problems are due to: Bad choice of algorithm Dependencies we take on other frameworks or platforms...

A good read for developers: How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive, and Personal Summary. Check it out here: http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html#id2794476 . Other books that I think every developer should read: ...

I'll take an exception form the technical tone of this blog and comment on a a great speech by Bill Gates at the Harvard commencement ceremony. It touches on a very important subject - all of us in our small, little way, can make a huge difference to...

I do not remember how many times I have tried to connect to a remote desktop using terminal services, only to realize that Terminal Services are not enabled on the machine. I found this article recently on how to remotely enable remote desktop . This...

In the last few years, blogs have been largely instrumental in increasing transparency into Microsoft. From celebrity ex-Microsoft blogger, Scoble to the over 3000 bloggers now on MSDN blogs, we have been sharing more and more details of our development...

VS 2008 Beta 1 has been out for a while, and there are ton of features in it. Lately, people have been asking questions about Beta 1 on the VSTO forums. I thought it would be a good idea to post some details about Beta 1. VSTO has a ton of new features...

I recently took a Debugging class by John Robbins where he mentioned how he used the task manager to identify handle leaks in debugging one of the ASP.NET applications for a client. I had never used this feature of the task manager to understand what...

I use an external hard drive on my Windows XP box at home. What bothers me is that everytime I turn my hard disk on, the Explorer Shell starts its autoplay dialog. It scans the drive to determine the type content on the drive (audio, video etc) and suggesting...

Visual Studio Building - Building 41 - Image added using Windows Live Writer. I decided to try some of the new features of Windows Live Writer (beta). It allows me to search a location, find a map, and add it to a blog post without leaving the application...

I recently got myself a T-Mobile Dash aka HTC Excalibur. It is indeed a lovely piece of machine - a great usable QWERTY keyboard, Bluetooth, Wi-fi, Edge, touch-sensitive Jog Dial - you name it, it has it. All this is packed in a very sleek, elegant package...

The Office 2007 system is a truly extensible platform for creating applications. There are some great new features for developers in the latest release. There are now so many new technologies (ribbon customisations, XML file formats, Outlook form regions...

VSTO 2005 Second Edition (SE) Beta (codenamed "Cypress") has been released on the web. I had been working on some of the features for this product and let me briefly highlight some of the great features that we are offering: Addins - Excel 2003...

This is my first post using the Windows Live Writer . I found this tool really slick - extremely lightweight, no frills, easy to use. It took me under 5 mins to install it, set my account up and get this post done. It even intelligently downloaded the...

Recently I have been working with a project that requires me to place an updated assembly in the GAC and ensure that IIS (Sharepoint) picks up the new assembly. I have been looking to do it programmitically and interestingly there are a number of alternatives...

Recently I had been working on VSTO 2.5 codenamed "Cypress ", which includes runtime support to enable VSTO 2.0 customisations to keep running in Office 2007. I had been working on the ListObject runtime compatibility of it, to ensure that databound ListObject...

Back again to blogging - lets see how long will this spurt last. Hopefully for a longer duration as i get deeper into technology and find more interesting stuff to share. The singleton pattern is interesting. Recently, while working on a project, I...