Visual Basic IDE Team Blog

VB IDE Blog finds a new home - Please Update Your Subscriptions!

Lisa.Feigenbaum — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 03:40:00 GMT

Hi all,

As of today, we are moving this blog to a new location. We've decided to merge our blogging efforts with the rest of the VB team, and thus are moving our posts to the VB Team blog. VS 2005 launches TODAY! Thus, the motivation behind merging is to create one site to be your best one-stop shop for Visual Basic content.

In terms of updating your subscription, you can change your feed from http://blogs.msdn.com/vbide to http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam to take advantage of the diverse content being posted on the vbteam blog. Otherwise, if you would like to continue hearing just about the VB IDE, you can also subscribe to the VB IDE filter on that page.

During the transition period, you may see some duplications while we migrate posts to the new location. However, we will be intermixing new content so you can look forward to seeing new stuff as well.

Thanks!
Lisa

Visual Basic 2005 is now available!

Lisa.Feigenbaum — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 03:23:00 GMT

Today is the official launch day of the new version of Visual Basic:

This page links to the relevant information (how to get it, what's new, etc…)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/

You can also download the FREE Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition from here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/vb/

Happy coding,
Visual Basic Test Team

Missing the Navigate Forward and Navigate Backward commands on your Toolbar?

Lisa.Feigenbaum — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 05:47:00 GMT

Visual Studio has more toolbars and commands than any one person will likely need to use. That is why we ship a variety of development settings: so that you can select the developer profile most like you, and then we can tailor the environment to your needs. In the Visual Basic Development Settings, we surface the commands and tools that you are most likely to use as a VB developer building world-class applications. It is quite common though, that you will want to customize your environment after making your original development settings selection. We try to make this easy to do, by exposing ways to edit your keybindings, modify your toolbars and menus, change settings in Tools->Options, etc. I've written about some of these techniques in previous blog posts...

VS Developers have been using these techniques to customize their environments, but have come across problems with one command: Navigate Backward. This command has been removed from the VB Development Settings, and unfortunately cannot be added back by the usual means. Unfortunately, if you try to drag this command back onto your toolbar using Tools->Customize, it does not add back the dropdown menu. Thus you can only use the added button to navigate back one step at a time. The General Development Settings on the other hand, which contain this command by default, allow you to instead navigate back multiple steps at a time.

Rather than telling you to use the General Development Settings to get this command, and forcing you to miss out on all the other great customizations that we do in the VB Development Settings, I'd like to offer you a new collection of settings!! I've created a new .vssettings file, which contains all the same customizations as the VB Development Settings, but without the removal of the Navigate Forward and Navigate Backward commands on the toolbar. So, if you'd like to get those commands back, just import these settings!

Here are the instructions for doing so:

Save this file to My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Settings.
1. Note: clicking the above link will open the file in a new browser window. You will need to Go to File->Save As, and then save the file to the above location. When you do so, you will also need to rename the file from VB-with-Navigation-commands.html to VB-with-Navigation-commands.vssettings. (Sorry for the extra step - I can't get my server to recognize the .vssettings file extension!)
Back inside Visual Studio, go to Tools -> Import and Export Settings...
Select Import to apply these settings to your current environment, or Reset to do a full reset. => Next
Continuing through the wizard, decide whether or not you want to save your current settings in the next step. => Next
Finally, look under the My Settings directory, and select the settings entitled "VB-with-Navigation-commands." => Next
Keep the defaults in the next step, to import all the settings. Otherwise, to get just modify the menu and toolbar, select only the box next to General Settings -> Menu and Command Bar Customizations.
Click Finish and you're done!

Enjoy,
Lisa

Code Snippets on Channel9

Lisa.Feigenbaum — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 02:02:00 GMT

Hi all,

Ken Levy and I created a Channel9 video, which demonstrates the Code Snippets feature in VS2005. Click here to check out the 38min show.

I've also blogged about this on the vbteam blog, so you can look there for more details.

I hope that you will take this opportunity to learn more about the ways you can use code snippets. If you have been reading this blog, it will also be a good opportunity for us to meet (via video). :)

Thanks!

Lisa

Working with Shortcut Keys

Lisa.Feigenbaum — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 17:58:00 GMT

This post has been moved to the following location:

http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam/archive/2007/04/25/working-with-shortcut-keys-lisa-feigenbaum.aspx

Talking about the Future: LINQ, Atlas, and VSTA at the PDC

Lisa.Feigenbaum — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 12:36:00 GMT

Last week in Los Angeles (Sept13-16), Microsoft hosted PDC05… the11^th Professional Developers Conference. The PDC is a conference to educate, inform and excite the developer community about the future of the Microsoft platform. The conference was sold out, but there are still a number of sites where you can go to learn about what went on:

You can watch the opening keynotes on Tuesday, 9/13 here. You can also see the rest of the show and view PDC presentations, newsgroups, videos, on MSDN and Channel 9. Finally, you can follow PDC blogs at http://pdcbloggers.net;

Additional future-facing sites to watch include the following:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/future/: This page describes the future directions of VB and LINQ.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/pdc05/: This site is a complete online version of the VB PDC 05 Resource CD that was handed out at the conference. Besides combining all of the new PDC related material the CD also has a large section devoted to Visual Basic 2005 and VB 6.0 migration.

Now for a little more content.... Here's a description, from our Corporate VP S. Somasegar, of some of the Developer Division technologies that were announced – Language Integrated Query (LINQ), “codename Atlas” and Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA).

"LINQ is an extensible set of language extensions currently available for Visual C# and Visual Basic.NET. LINQ enables developers to query objects, databases and XML using a unified programming model because LINQ makes data transforms and queries first class NET citizens. Historically, programming and data have been two different islands. The development of data-enabled applications has presented developers with multiple challenges in the past decade. Developers have been asked to master multiple languages to build enterprise scale data-enabled applications. With Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005, specifically the integration of CLR into SQL, we took a first big step towards bridging these two worlds and empowered developers to easily build data-enabled applications. There are still some key challenges primarily related to the semantic differences between the programming world and the data world. I recently heard one of our RDs (Regional Directors) use a nice metaphor to describe the situation – “This is like using one language to order the drinks and another to order the main dinner”. LINQ is going to move us ahead significantly in terms of bringing programming and data together.

Atlas is a next generation Ajax framework for building rich web experiences in any browser, on any platform. If you have used web applications like MSN Virtual Earth, Google Maps, Flickr or Outlook Web Access, you have experienced dynamic web applications that use AJAX – a web development technique that uses a combination of technologies like XHTML, CSS and XMLHttpRequest. All of the pieces of AJAX -- DHTML, JScript, and XMLHTTP – have been available in Internet Explorer for some time. ASP.NET 2.0 makes it much easier to write AJAX-style applications for any browser using asynchronous callbacks. The ASP.NET team is working even further with Atlas to make it significantly easy for anyone to build even richer AJAX-style web applications to deliver rich, interactive, and personalized experiences. Developers starting this week can go to http://atlas.asp.net and download an Atlas SDK and get started building these apps today.

Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA) is a .NET-based application customization technology designed to be embedded into applications to enable developers to create custom experiences on top of those applications. It offers a full-featured interactive development environment (IDE), design-time, runtime and supports both VB.Net and C#. This means that partners, typically ISVs, can license the VSTA engine and integrate it into their applications so that their customers can customize their applications using .NET programming techniques. VSTA notably offers a significantly advanced environment for application customization and extensibility and is the result of over five years of effort and broad industry feedback."

Need to create a new file without opening a project?

Lisa.Feigenbaum — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 09:05:00 GMT

This request has been raised lately by folks working with XML, who want to create XML files without using a project.

If a project is already open, then you can easily create a new file by right-clicking on the project, and selecting Add->New Item. (You can also use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+A). The command that this uses is called Project.AddNewItem.

If the file is not to be part of a project though, then you need to use the File.NewFile command. If you are using the Visual Basic Development settings, then this command is not included in the File menu by default. However, you can easily add it using the process described in our last blog post:

1) Go to Tools->Customize.
2) Click on the Commands tab.
3) Select File from the Categories, and New File from the Commands.
4) Drag “New File” onto the File menu. Keep your mouse down as you move over the File menu, and the menu will expand. Then you can drag the “New File” item down to the precise position that you choose.

One other way that you could access this command, without adding it to your menu, would be to assign it a keyboard shortcut. Then you could just use the shortcut whenever you wanted to create a new file. Here's what that process would look like:

1) Go to Tools->Options.
2) Check the box to Show All Settings.
3) Go to Environment->Keyboard.
4) Type File.NewFile into the textbox labeled "Show commands containing".
5) In the "Press Shortcut Keys" textbox, type in your new shortcut. For example, type 'Ctrl+N, Ctrl+F'. Note: if you try a shortcut that is already in use, you'll see the command name pop up in the "Shortcut currently used by" textbox.
6) Now click "Assign", and you're all done! Start using your keyboard shortcut to invoke the New File dialog from anywhere in the IDE.

Want to Customize your menus in Visual Studio 2005? Here's how...

Lisa.Feigenbaum — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 05:41:00 GMT

This post was inspired by an MSDN Ladybug. However, it exposes a cool trick that you all might want to try!

Consider the case that you want to make the Command Window item appear in the View menu itself (rather than in its current location in View->Other Windows). Here are 2 ways of doing so:

DRAG & DROP:

Go to Tools->Customize...
Click on the View menu in Visual Studio and navigate via Other Windows to Command Window.
Drag the Command Window item from the Other Windows flyout to the location you prefer in the View menu.
Close the dialog, and you're done!

Note: You can use the same process to surface any command that you find yourself using frequently... Just find the command in the Tools->Customize dialog, and drag it onto the menu of your choice. If you'd like to remove an existing command, locate it in the associated menu (while the Tools->Customize dialog is up), and drag it off the current location.

FROM THE "CUSTOMIZE" DIALOG:

Start again by going to Tools->Customize...
Click on the Commands Tab.
Select View from the Categories pane
Click the "Rearrange commands" button
Click the Menu Bar radio button, and select View from the dropdown on the right.
Click Add to add the command.
Select View from the Categories pane, select Command Window from the Commands pane, and press OK.
The command will now show up in the View menu.
Select Move Up or Move Down until you find the exact location where you want it to show up.
Finally, you can do similar steps to remove a command, using the Remove button.

One more tip... Sometimes it can be hard to find the command that you want to customize, if you don't know the Category under which it falls. In that case, click on the Keyboard button in the Tools->Customize dialog. Start typing the description of the command into the textbox labeled "Show commands containing". The list below the textbox will filter down to the command names which match that string. This is a useful way to view these commands, because they are displayed with the category name first. For example, if you want to find the command to navigate back and forth between windows, type "navigate" and you will find View.NavigateForward in the filtered list below. Now you know to look under the View menu for this command!

Interested in Learning More About the Visual Studio Debugger?

Lisa.Feigenbaum — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 01:29:00 GMT

Please join us in an online chat this coming Thursday, July 28th, at 1pm (PST). We'll be answering questions from the audience about the Visual Studio 2005 Debugger. You can bring your own questions or just listen in on the discussion. Click here for more details on the discussion, along with instructions for accessing the chat.

Have a Question about Code Snippets? Try this FAQ!

Lisa.Feigenbaum — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 21:38:00 GMT

Try our list of Frequently Asked Questions below to answer questions that you might have about code snippets.

Don't see the one you need? Then add a comment to this blog or post to the Visual Basic Forum. We'd love to hear from you!

1) What is an IntelliSense code snippet?

An IntelliSense code snippet is a fragment of code that can be inserted into the code editor to accomplish a particular task. Unlike samples, which help by demonstrating a concept in an example, code snippets help by actually accomplishing the task in the context of your own code. There are a few different types of code snippets:

Task-oriented code snippets help the user accomplish a particular code task. These code snippets include one or more lines of code that accomplish a specific task such as writing a message to the application event log, comparing two files or sending an email message.

Expansion code snippets reduce the number of keystrokes required to implement common programming constructs. These code snippets do not include any application specific code and contain the minimum code required by the construction. Examples of expansion code snippets include an If statement, For loop, Property declaration, Try…Catch block, etc.

Code snippets involve more interactive features than just a simple block of code. For example, inserting a code snippet into a source file automatically adds the associated references and imports statements. When the code snippet code gets inserted, various replacement fields appear highlighted. These fields are linked and contain tooltip instructions to allow for easy adaptation of the snippet code to the context of the snippet’s insertion. This functionality is all specified in the code snippet file itself.

2) Does VS have some pre-installed IntelliSense code snippets? Where can I find them?

Yes. Visual Studio 2005 comes with a large number of VB IntelliSense code snippets installed. The range is between 233 code snippets for Visual Basic Express Edition and Visual Web Developer Express Edition and 417 VB code snippets for Visual Studio Tools for Office.

The code snippets manager (found in the Tools menu) displays a list of these files for you, along with the directories in which they are located.

To find these files on disk, look at the location field that is listed in the code snippets manager for each file. For VB Express, files get installed by default to \Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\VBExpress\Snippets\1033\. The default location for higher Visual Studio 2005 products is \Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VB\Snippets\1033\. However, we encourage that you place your own code snippets in your My Documents folder, rather than into Program Files. A code snippet directory already gets created there for you: My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Code Snippets\Visual Basic\My Code Snippets.

You can also search through the set of pre-installed code snippets, when going to insert one in the editor. Either right-click and choose “Insert Snippet…” or type “?” followed by the Tab key in your text editor to invoke the code snippet inserter. A directory structure will appear inline with your code, which you can navigate and browse for snippets.

3) How do I use an IntelliSense code snippet?

To insert an IntelliSense code snippet into your code, either right-click and choose “Insert Snippet…” or type “?” followed by the Tab key to invoke the code snippet inserter. A directory structure will appear inline with your code, which you can navigate and browse for code snippets. Once you find the title of the code snippet you want to insert, either double-click or press Enter to insert it into your file.

If the code snippet has replacement fields, they will appear highlighted in green. Press Tab to navigate through the replacement fields, updating them as you go. If you already know what you want to replace the field with, you can just type over the selected text. Other occurrences of the replacement will update automatically. To view a list of potential replacement choices, type Ctrl+Space while the replacement field is selected and an IntelliSense completion list will arise. This list will provide you with names of other variables in your code that are of the correct type for this replacement. If appropriate, you will also have the option in this list to create a new variable of the required type.

4) How do I do a keyword expansion?

A keyword expansion is a quick way to enter an IntelliSense code snippet in your code. The code snippets pre-installed with VS each have a shortcut associated with them; you can see them in the code snippets manager.

To enter a code snippet in your code, simply type the shortcut (keyword) associated with it in the text editor and press the Tab key.

If you don’t remember exactly the shortcut for your code snippet, you can just enter a few letters in the code editor followed by ‘?’ and Tab, and VS will display an alphabetical list of shortcuts, with the one starting with the letters you entered selected.

You can scroll through this list and insert the code snippet corresponding to the shortcut you select.

5) Where else can I find IntelliSense code snippets?

IntelliSense Code snippets can also be found online. If you’re looking for a particular code snippet try to search the internet using some keywords describing the task you want the code snippet to accomplish.

Some Codezone partner sites also offer download pages with an option to filter their contents for ‘code snippets’ or just ‘snippets’.

Check out also the Microsoft Visual Basic Developer Center. Currently, the dev center page devoted to code snippets posts information about the feature, but in the future, it will also host snippets for download.

6) Where can I find more resources on IntelliSense code snippets?

Helpful code snippet resources include:

Introduction to IntelliSense Code Snippets: a help topic which describes the Code Snippets feature, and contains helpful links for using and creating Code Snippets.

Code Snippets Schema Reference: a help topic which lists and describes the XML schema elements for snippet files.

Microsoft Visual Basic Developer Center: a dev center page devoted to code snippets. Currently it posts information about the feature, but it will also host snippets for download in the future.

Visual Basic Forum: Read answers to questions that have been asked here about code snippets, or post your own!

This blog!: Check back here periodically for new tips and tricks about interacting with code snippets.

7) How can I write an IntelliSense code snippet? Where can I download the Snippet Editor from?

The easiest way to write your own IntelliSense code snippets is to use the Visual Basic Snippet Editor. It’s a free tool that lets you view, edit, create and save code snippets in a convenient way.

The download page also contains additional links and resources for the editor.

That said, code snippets are simply XML files, so if you’d rather follow a different approach you can also edit them with a generic editor. To learn more about the code snippet format check out the resources listed in the previous question.

8) What languages does the Snippet Editor support?

The snippet editor is mainly thought for Visual Basic IntelliSense code snippets, but it also has some C# support built in.

9) I’d like to make some changes to the Snippet Editor myself. Is there a way I can do that?

Yes. The Snippet Editor is a shared source project and was developed through the contributions of several people.

If you visit the Snippet Editor GotDotNet workspace you’ll find lots of useful resources. You can also download the latest Snippet Editor source code to work on your changes.

10) What are the most commonly used IntelliSense code snippets?

We don’t have official data about the most used code snippets, but here’s a list of the ones we think are the most useful and common between the ones installed with VS. They’re ordered by folders as they appear in the Code Snippets Manager. Each code snippet is followed by ‘;’ and its shortcut. To quickly insert the code snippet in your code, enter the shortcut in the code editor and press the Tab key:

Application - Compiling, Resources and Settings -> Load an Assembly at Run Time; appLoad
Application - Compiling, Resources and Settings -> Write to a Text File; appLog
Collections and Arrays -> Iterate through a collection; colIter
Collections and Arrays -> Locate an Element in an Array; arrLoc
Connectivity and Networking -> Create an E-Mail Message; conEmail
Data - Designer features and ADO.NET -> Create a Server based SQLConnection to SQL Server; adoCreateSqlConn
Data - Designer features and ADO.NET -> Create a Parameterized SELECT Command; adoSelectwParams
Data Types - defined by Visual Basic -> Convert an Array of Bytes into a String; typeByteStr
Data Types - defined by Visual Basic -> Parse an E-Mail Address; typeParseEmail
File System - Processing Drives, Folders and Files -> Copy a File; filCopyFile
File System - Processing Drives, Folders and Files -> Create a File; filCreateFile
File System - Processing Drives, Folders and Files -> Read Text from a File; filReadText
File System - Processing Drives, Folders and Files -> Write Text to a File; filWriteText
Math -> Get a Random Number using the Random Class; mathRand
Security -> Encrypt a String; secEncrypt
Security -> Find the Current User's Name; secUser
Windows Forms Applications -> Forms -> Determine which Control on a Windows Form is selected; formSelect
Windows Forms Applications -> Forms -> Display a Windows Form; formNew
Windows Forms Applications -> Controls and Components -> Add Menu Items to Windows Forms; menuAddItems
Windows Forms Applications -> Sound -> Play a Sound; sndPlay
Windows Operation System -> System Information -> Determine Desktop Display Resolution; sysRes
Windows Operation System -> System Information -> Determine the Windows System Directory; sysDir
XML -> Iterate named nodes in XML Document; xmlIter
XML -> Read XML from a File Using XmlTextReader; xmlReadTxt

11) What do the green highlighted areas mean?

The green highlighted areas denote replacement fields in the IntelliSense code snippet. These fields are formatted so that you can easily contextualize the code snippet to the task you are setting out to achieve in your own application. You can navigate between replacement fields by hitting Tab. You can also invoke an IntelliSense completion list to view potential replacements for the currently selected replacement by typing Ctrl+Space. Once the file is closed, the code is committed and the replacements disappear.

12) Are there different kinds of replacement fields?

There are two types of fields that can be turned into replacements: objects and literals. Object replacements are used for variable names when the variable declaration is expected to lie outside the IntelliSense code snippet. Thus, typing Ctrl+Space over these replacements will list names of other variables in your code that match the type of the current replacement. The completion list also contains an option to create a new object of the appropriate type, in case it does not yet exist in your code.

Literal replacements are used for values which do not have dependencies outside the code snippet. Common literal replacements include Strings, Numbers, and Enums. These values often need to be replaced in order to give the code snippet the desired behavior. Since literal replacements are used for values which do not have dependencies outside the code snippet, they do not include the same option in their intellisense list as for objects, to add a variable declaration outside the code snippet.

13) How long do the green highlighted areas (aka replacements) stick around? What makes them disappear?

Snippet replacements stay highlighted until you close the file. This allows you to use the replacement functionalities for the duration that you are working with the snippet.

Some of the replacement functionalities are:

- Linked replacements: renaming one replacement field will cause all other occurrences of the same replacement to update automatically.

- Intellisense completion lists: typing Ctrl+Space while a replacement is selected will invoke a completion list of potential options for the replacement.

14) How do I share IntelliSense code snippets?

IntelliSense code snippets are basically xml files with the .snippet extension in the file name. The code snippet file embeds some useful properties like Title, Author and Description. If these properties are set correctly, code snippet files should enclose all information necessary to describe them without any need for further documentation.

Code snippets can be e-mailed or uploaded to web sites.

To make life easier for users receiving your code snippets, our recommendation is to use the .vsi format. Vsi (Visual Studio Installer) packages allow users to just double-click on the file to start a wizard that will guide them through the installation process.

A .vsi package contains one or more code snippets and a .vscontent file, that describes the package and the code snippet files.

15) How do I create a .vsi package for IntelliSense code snippets?

The procedure to create a .vsi package is pretty simple:

-          put all snippet files you want to include in your package in one directory

-          download the Create_vscontent code snippet

-          create a new VB Console Application in VS and insert the Create_vscontent code snippet into it

-          make the 2 required replacements, build and run the console app. This will create the .vscontent file required for your .vsi package into the same folder where you have your code snippets

-          in windows explorer go to the folder with the code snippets, select all of them together with the .vscontent file, right click and choose ‘send to’ -> ‘Compressed (zipped) folder’

-          select the zipped folder that you just created and rename it to change its extension from .zip to .vsi

One note: the .vscontent file created with the code snippet you downloaded doesn’t allow you to customize the <DisplayName> field for each snippet, it just sets it to the snippet file name. If you want to provide a more descriptive value for this field, you can just open the .vscontent file in any editor and change the field before compressing the package.

16) How do I install a .vsi package containing IntelliSense code snippets on my machine?

To install a .vsi package just double click on it and a wizard will guide you through the installation procedure. On Beta2 drops, when the wizard starts, you may run into a known issue where the wizard throws an exception. To work around this problem open Visual Studio, open the Code Snippets Manager (Tools->Code Snippets Manager), then, keeping it open, double click on your .vsi package again to restart the wizard.

17) When do I use an IntelliSense code snippet vs. a component or API?

While a component API is normally used to accomplish one particular, highly specialized task and may consist of hundreds or thousands lines of code, code snippets have more of a ‘connect the dots’ characterization and should be used for simple tasks. You could use a code snippet to demonstrate how to use several apis in conjunction to accomplish a particular goal, e.g. reading the contents of a text file. Inserting a code snippet into code can have an educative purpose for the user, since she actually sees the code that implements a particular functionality. Code snippets also allow for a higher degree of customization because of the replacement fields.

Visual Basic IDE Tips & Tricks... Cool Ways to Insert a Snippet into Your Code

Lisa.Feigenbaum — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 16:45:00 GMT

This post has been moved to the following location:

http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam/archive/2008/12/07/did-you-know-there-are-many-ways-to-insert-a-snippet-into-your-code-lisa-feigenbaum.aspx

Interested in Learning More about the Visual Studio Debugger?

Lisa.Feigenbaum — Mon, 16 May 2005 00:29:00 GMT

Please join us in an online chat this coming Thursday the 19th at 1pm (PST). We'll be answering questions from the audience about the Visual Studio 2005 Debugger. You can bring your own questions or just listen in on the discussion. Click here for more details on the discussion, along with instructions for accessing the chat.

Code Generation for Overrides in Visual Basic .Net 2005

MikeCarter — Thu, 05 May 2005 02:19:00 GMT

Some subtle changes were made in Visual Basic .Net 2005 to make code generation of overidden methods a little easier. In Visual Basic .Net 2003 and earlier, you used the code dropdowns as in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1

When overriding a Sub, a declaration stub similar to the following was generated in the editor.

Public Overrides Sub MyOverridableSub()

End Sub

In Visual Basic .Net 2005, you never have to leave the code editor.

Figure 2

You can generate a method stub for your overridable methods by just entering "overrides " on a new line in the editor, as in Figure 2. An Intellisense window is displayed with a list of all overridable members of the base class. When you select a method, a declaration stub is generated with a call to the base method similar to the following.

Public Overrides Sub MyOverridableSub()
MyBase.MyOverridableSub()
End Sub

This is just one subtle way in Visual Basic .Net 2005 in which we are trying to make your development experience a little easier.

Snippet Editor to Create Visual Basic Snippets

Sarika — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 17:02:00 GMT

Create your own Code Snippets with the Visual Basic Snippet Editor

Yesterday we posted the Visual Basic Snippet Editor, with source code, on http://workspaces.gotdotnet.com/vbsnippeteditor. The Visual Basic Snippet Editor is a Windows Forms application with UI for creating, editing and testing VB code snippets. You can specify snippet code and metadata (e.g., title, author, description, keyboard shortcut), replacement variables, and referenced assemblies. You can preview your snippet as it will appear when inserted into the code window, and you can even test whether it will compile. The site also hosts a reference doc for the snippet editor.

For more information and to download the product: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/downloads/2005/tools/snippeteditor/

Refactoring Tool in VB Editor

Sarika — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 16:58:00 GMT

Refactoring in Visual Basic 2005

In case you haven’t already heard, last Thursday (4/21) we announced the availability of Refactor! for Visual Basic 2005, a free version of Developer Express Inc.’s Refactor! product that supports Visual Basic 2005. This is a fully functional and licensed version of their product that integrates into the Visual Studio Standard, Visual Studio Professional and Visual Studio Team System products. With this tool VB developers will have a great refactoring solution that really complements the Visual Basic development style. Refactor! for Visual Basic 2005 supports more than 15 individual refactoring operations, including the most commonly requested operations like Reorder Parameters, Extract Method, Encapsulate Field and Create Overload.

Check out http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/downloads/2005/tools/refactor/ for more information (including video demos and a whitepaper) and to download the product.

Unwinding Exceptions in VB.NET 2005

WHorst — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 04:32:00 GMT

This post has been moved to the following location:

http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam/archive/2008/12/08/did-you-know-you-can-unwind-the-call-stack-from-exceptions-bill-horst.aspx

Welcome to the Visual Basic IDE Blog!

Lisa.Feigenbaum — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 19:56:00 GMT

Welcome to the Visual Basic IDE Blog.

This blog is hosted by the program managers, developers, and testers who work on the Visual Basic Integrated Development Environment (VB IDE). My name is Lisa Feigenbaum, and I am a Program Manager on the Team.

There are many new features, as well as enhancements to existing features, in Visual Basic 2005. So, I thought a good way to start this off would be to provide my list of the top 10 new features in the Visual Basic 2005 IDE. In future posts we plan to provide tips and tricks on getting the most out of the Visual Basic development environment, provide answers to frequently asked IDE questions, and most importantly provide a forum for you to voice your thoughts and comments.

1. Edit and Continue

You will again be able to make changes to your code while debugging, back up the code instruction pointer if you want, and re-execute lines of code with the modifications. This allows you to fix bugs or make changes to code while in break mode and have those modifications take effect without restarting the debugger.

2. IntelliSense Code Snippets

IntelliSense Code Snippets are reusable, task oriented blocks of code. Visual Basic 2005 includes code snippets covering tasks ranging from creating a custom exception, to sending an e-mail message, to drawing a circle. Code snippets can also be used for simple expansions of common programming structures. The code snippets are formatted to automatically include the references they require, and contain replacement fields to allow easy customization. The IntelliSense code snippet library consists of 500 prewritten pieces of code, and is extensible allowing you to create new code snippets that suit your business needs, edit the ones that are already exist, or download from third-party vendors and community sites. To insert a snippet, right-click in the code editor and select Insert Snippet from the menu, or use the keyboard shortcut (?+Tab).

3. Error Correction and Warnings

Let’s face it we’re all human and we make mistakes when writing code. The Visual Basic background compiler has always alerted us to these mistakes by placing a blue squiggle under the code associated with the error. In Visual Basic 2005, in addition to reporting the error, we’ll also offer suggestions for fixing common errors and help you apply the appropriate fix to your code. This is similar to the way Microsoft Word offers suggestions to spelling or grammar errors. The functionality is made available to you through a Smart Tag that appears when an error occurs in the code editor. Clicking on the smart tag allows you to open the error correction, read the error description, learn possible ways to fix it, and when appropriate preview the fix.

4. XML Comments

Documenting your code is a crucial part of an application, and Visual Basic 2005 adds support for creating XML-based comments in your code that can easily be extracted, parsed, and turned into documentation. These XML-based comments feed directly into the information displayed via IntelliSense so developers consuming your classes and methods will see the summary and descriptions you’ve provided as they write their code. XML comments can be inserted either by right-clicking on a declaration and selecting Insert Comment from the menu, or typing ‘’’ on the empty line above a declaration.

5. Rename

Rename provides an easy way to rename identifiers for code elements such as fields, variables, methods, namespaces, properties, and types. In addition to changing the declaration of the element, rename will update all calls and references to the code element with the updated name. This is extremely useful when doing iterative development. It can be invoked, either by right-clicking on a code element in the code editor, or by clicking on the smart tag which appears when you modify the declaration of a code element.

6. The new Exception Assistant

The Exception Assistant is a helper window which appears whenever a run-time exception occurs while debugging. It shows the type of exception, troubleshooting tips, help topic links, as well as potential corrective actions that can be applied directly from the Exception Assistant. In most cases when the Exception Assistant appears, you will have the opportunity to fix your code and continue program execution.

7. Project Designer

Visual Studio 2005 moves project properties, configuration and a number of other project specific designers into a central location to create a one-stop shop for project-wide settings. It includes a settings designer that supports the declaration of user and application settings, a resource designer that allows you to easily associate string and image resources with your project, and property pages with options for features like ClickOnce deployment, security and VB windows application framework.

8. Visual Basic Development Settings

When you start up Visual Studio 2005 for the first time after installing, and select the Visual Basic Development Settings, a number of customizations are applied to the IDE. By streamlining the set of menus, toolbars, and windows, this provides a focused and productive development environment for business application developers. Developers gain instant access to the IDE features they use most, without losing access to those used less frequently.

9. IntelliSense Filtering

You can now use IntelliSense filtering to adjust the level of detail supplied by IntelliSense in the code editor. When the IntelliSense window is displayed, you can filter out less commonly used members by clicking the Common tab or see everything that is available by clicking the All tab. By adjusting the level, you can easily filter out uncommon or esoteric members when they are not needed, or include them when they are. Regardless of the current tab, or filtering level, Intellisense will continue to provide full completion support by dynamically switching filter levels to provide the best match for what has been typed.

IntelliSense in Zone is a Visual Basic IntelliSense feature that displays certain items in the statement completion list in a different color if they do not have enough permission to run in the security zone specified. This design-time support allows you to more easily develop applications that run in partial trust.

10. New VB Form Templates

To help you be more productive in your development tasks, Visual Studio 2005 includes a number of new Form templates in the Add New Item dialog. These templates provide logical starting points to common programming tasks. Examples include: Dialog, Explorer Form, MDI Parent, About Box, Login Form, and Splash Screen. It’s also easy enough to create your own!

11. Just My Code Debugging

When you create a new project in Visual Basic, the project generally includes a lot of code that you didn't write. Just My Code debugging provides the option to always skip over any code that you didn't write, when you’re single-step debugging through your code. This also allows you to step through Windows Forms event handlers, much like you could in Visual Basic 6.0.