Building Better Software - One Line At A Time

  One of the few annoying things about the Select Branches panel in Branch Visualization is that it looks like a modal dialog that cannot be moved or resized. We are going to address this in V.Next!  :)  Though not resizable, the panel...

  There are a few shortcut keys that can quite useful inside a branch hierarchy or tracking changes visualization. In a branch hierarchy visualization, pressing the Insert while on a node with children (+ visible) drops down the child branch selector...

In a previous posting, I mentioned that Ctrl+G in VS2010 brings up the new Go to Changeset dialog from the Source Control Explorer. In RTM, Ctrl+G from Team Explorer will also do the same. Furthermore, we've added another entry for tracking a changeset...

Visual Studio 2010 extends the concept of a folder as a “first-class” branch and introduces the tools to convert folders to first-class branches to enable exciting new Branch Visualization and Tracking Changes features. For reference, please see http...

In previous versions of Visual Studio, hitting Ctrl+G from Source Control Explorer brings up the Find Changeset dialog. In VS 2010, Ctrl+G brings up the new Go to Changeset dialog which lets you quickly enter a changeset number and get the changeset details...

One very simple thing you can do that can significantly reduce the memory consumption and drastically improve performance of a WPF TreeView is to set the following two properties. In XAML, you would do: <TreeView x:Name=”myTreeView”          ...

We are all familiar with the use of WPF Binding in XAML. For example, the following lines bind the caption of a Button (variableCaptionButton) to the text of a TextBox (sourceText). <TextBox x:Name="sourceText" Grid.Row="0" />...

A WPF value converter accepts a value and an optional parameter. The parameter can be specified in the XAML binding as a string like the following:   <TextBlock Background=”{Binding Path=myElement, Converter={StatisResource MyConverter}, ConverterParameter...

Last time we looked at a tricky problem of setting the initial focus to a specific item in a populated WPF ListView. Most of the time, however, we just want to set the initial focus to a control (like a TextBox or a Button) in our UI. There are a couple...

This blog describes the steps needed to set the initial keyboard focus to an item in a WPF ListView. The items in the list can be static or data bound. The trick is to access the ListViewItem associated with an item and then set keyboard focus to it....

  WPF ListView with Check Boxes and No Clipping   Do you need a simple data-bound WPF ListView with check boxed items without text trimming ellipsis and without header columns? I very often do. In this blog, I would like to share with you a...

Newer version of caspol.exe expects a more precise URL specification. Here is the revised caspol.exe command to give full trust to a network share //MyDevBox/MyTools: caspol.exe -m -ag 1.2 -url file://\\MyDevBox\MyTools Note the adding of "\\" and...

I work on multiple machines and, very often, I need access to my tool sets on each machine that I work on. This is accomplished by sharing out my tools folder/drive and restrict full permissions to myself. There is a little wrinkle. Network shares by...

Have you ever need to find the last synced version of a folder in TFS? Here is a quick way: Change directory to YourFolder tf history . /r /version:W /stopafter:1 /i Note the "." (current directory). This command recursively lists the history...

There have been times where a program failed to load due to missing dependencies or side-by-side inconsistencies. One of the tool available on Windows Vista is "sxstrace.exe" (normally located in \Windows\System32). sxstrace.exe can help you pin-point...

One way to share VS Macro projects is to add the projects to source control and have all users mapped the versioned macro projects to a local folder to be used by VS. Here is a rough outline (an except from one of my forum post) on how you can accomplish...

The work item channels displays the work items in the order specified by the selected query. This means that you can control the sort order by modifying the query's sort preferences. You can do this from Team Explorer, expand Work Items to your query...

WPF uses an underscore character instead of the ampersand character (like with WinForms) to prefix an access (a.k.a. accelerator or mnemonic) key in the text of its elements like Label and Button. You can escape the underscore by using two underscores...

Have you ever come across a need to find out which TFS version control files that are different since some date or some changeset? In VS2008 + VSTF 2008 (Orcas), there is an easy way using Folder Difference. Let take a look at the following command. ...

WPF elements (like Button and Rectangle) do not have the X and Y properties as in the WinForms controls. Using procedural code, to place a WPF element at a specific XY on a free-form work area like a Canvas, you can use Canvas.SetLeft() and Canvas.SetTop...

There has been a couple of requests about the logic for determining the default work item query in the Pending Changes window in Visual Studio. Here is how it works. In the Pending Changes window, the work item query uses an MRU list. In general...

I have gotten some feedback about the perception that the get/checkin/merge conflict resolution workflow for Team Foundation Version Control is a "one-shot" action in Visual Studio and cannot be abandoned and later resumed. Though it is true that the...

Visual Studio Orcas March 2007 CTP - Folder Difference - Part 4 In this installment, we'll wrap up the Orcas' Folder Difference preview witht the results view in Visual Studio. Results View The Folder Difference results view has been...

In this installment, we'll talk about Folder Difference integration in Visual Studio starting with the new Compare dialog. New Compare Dialog When invoked from the Source Control Explorer (SCE), the source and target folders are pre...

Let us start with the Folder Difference invocation. Both Power Toy TreeDiff and Orcas Folder Difference support command line invocation as well as from the Source Control Explorer in Visual Studio. Starting from the Command Line In the Orcas...