Sara Ford's Weblog

Yep, today is the Sara Birthday Edition v3.0. Sara’s First Tip She Ever Learned When i started on the Visual Studio team back in Sept 17th, 2001, the first feature my test lead ever gave me to test was the /safemode feature.   If you have 3rd party...

Writing tip of the day is *really* time consuming. So, today's extra post is a "go sara go" post. If you like Tip of the Day, please just leave me a quick comment, even if it is just "go sara go". I really, really helps me keep going when I get emails...

I want to get a sense of how many people use Visual Studio with a mulit-monitor display.  I’ve seen some feedback in my blog comments requesting that we add a feature to drag a code file onto the secondary monitor.  Currently, in order to have...

Update 12/2/2004:  Uploaded an image from Visual Studio 2005 Beta.  Note the image below shows guidelines at column numbers 5 and 30, but the regkey value is RBG(255,0,0), 4, 29.  The Guideline column numbers are 0-based in the registry...

I met with my team’s automation experts a few weeks back to get their input on when to automate and when to manually test. The general rule of thumb has always been to use common sense. If you’re only going to run the test one or two times or the test...

As I've mentioned before, I own feature area testing outside of Accessibility Testing. One of the feature areas i own is Window Management. Here is a listing of some of the new Window Management features you'll see in the Technology Preview release. ...

In May 2007, when Rob Caron and I put together the game plan for Tip of the Day, I agreed I would do the series for a year, ending with tip #300. All good things must come to an end. In the past couple of months, a “rumor” started going around within...

I am very proud to announce the Amazon pre-sale of my first book Microsoft Visual Studio Tips .  Here you’ll find the best 251 tips from the Tip of the Day series , categorized and edited into a reference book with me as your narrator. But wait,...

With four people in my office chanting “Do it! Do it!” I pressed the send button. Last Friday afternoon, I forwarded the Business Week article to Bill Gates. I highlighted the first sentence of the article that mentioned my name and my blog, and, most...

Warning! This article contains spoilers. If you haven’t finished reading The Dark Tower Book VII, leave now ! Special thanks to The Dark Tower Forums . Some of the ideas in my theory about the ending come from there. Although the ideas were on the tip...

Cause nothing lasts forever… even cold November rain My most sincere thanks to you for reading the 17 month series. Because of you, people from my hometown are going to college. All because of community inspiring community. I want to part ways saying...

Update 3: 9/3/2005:  For every 1 comment left on my blog, i’m getting 5 emails via “contact me”.  Unless you know me or know one of my friends, i honestly don’t have any information for you, so i’m going to start posting all inquiries for love...

Update 7/20 @ 11:53pm: We have a bug:  Please vote and leave your suggestions / feedback at http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/ProductFeedback/viewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackId=cf3597fc-2acf-43c7-b09f-a7e1dd7474f5   Many thanks ShadowChaser! Update 7...

In January 2006, nearly 4 years ago to the day, I created my first account on CodePlex, when the site was still in internal-only alpha preview. A the time, I was the Program Manager for the Visual Studio Power Toys, where my team created the 5 th , 6...

Update 17 Jan 2008:  Note there isn’t a way to re-show all your tool windows, when you apply this command. However, i’ve posted a workaround – which requires you to export and reimport your settings before you play with auto-hide all. Happy Birthday...

ust like last time we did a pop quiz, you can leave your answer as a comment, and i’ll approve all comments the next afternoon.  In the picture above, you see ‘x’ marks the spot.  If you click the mouse pointer there, it will toggle the state...

Today’s tip is especially helpful if you are going to write code in a presentation.  Now you don’t have to code in front of everyone, but rather have it all typed up on the side, ready to go! You’ve probably noticed the Toolbox General tab showing...

Agile is the single greatest things a team could do to significantly improve the user experience and quality of their site. Now having said that… If I could go back in time… 3 things I would tell myself about Agile For a long time, I’ve said that my biggest...

There’s something about me that keeps hitting Ctrl+C instead of Ctrl+V whenever i’m on a blank line.  I just don’t understand it.  So, what happens is I copy a blank line, erasing the text i was trying to paste right there.  And to my dismay...

Ctrl+L will cut the current line (including EOL) Ctrl+W will select the current word Let me know if you like this style of hints (just giving you keyboard shortcut tips and tricks), and I’ll do more of them. Happy Editing!

If Gretchen can have her Will Weaton , I can have my MacGyver . As a young and impressionable kid (I was still in the single digits), I watched this guy escape a swinging pendulum trap by using his shoe.  It wasn’t until many, many years later I...

I got my vibrams about a month ago, and have slowly been trying to break my feet in. I can now drive in them and wear them almost 3/4 of a day. I haven’t tried running yet, although i did try a small baby hike (slight elevation, 1.5 miles roundtrip at...

Just like the kiwi bird down here in New Zealand, I proved that I too am flightless. The 7 minute video explains it all. You can find this full version at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcc4KRrZpI0 Or watch just the jump from the ground looking up at...

Zoe’s post Are you a good enough developer to be a Microsoft SDET got me thinking about what I do during a typical day. However, a 3 day period gives a much better impression of an average day in a SDET’s life than just some random day… Wednesday, May...

I heard this one the other day and wanted to share…. Two strings walk into a bar.  The first one says, “Bartender! Bartender! I want a drink!” The second one says, “Bartender! Bartender! I want a drink too! blaaaaaaaaah Eeeeeeeek yaaaaaaak oooooooh...