The opinions expressed in these materials are my own and are not necessarily those of Microsoft. Copyright © Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all source code provided is licensed under the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL).
Okay, so I bit the bullet and installed WOW on Vista last night. I am going to install the patches tonight and see how it works. If anyone has had issues, lemme know. BTW, feel free to catch up with me on Eredar (70 NE Priest -- SQLVarChar). I don't play as often as I used to but still try to get in a couple of instance runs on weekends.
Z
Who wants a copy of Visual Studio 2008 Pro? Just put a comment on this post before midnight tonight CST and I will pick someone to receive it. Good luck!
I try not to get political but this is just too good to pass up. I caught this on the news the other day. Talk about no bs I think even i could learn something from these folks.
http://partyunitymyass.com/
I’ve been seeing a ton of posts lately on this feature so thought I would share here as well. I also like to give credit where credit is due so I did a search and it looks like the earliest mention of this ability is by Richard Banks in his post 6\1\2012 here: http://www.richard-banks.org/2012/06/how-to-prevent-visual-studio-2012-all.html If anyone knows of an earlier one done by someone else let me know but this looks like the first mention of it. If I were a betting man I would say he most likely used Process Explorer to make this discovery which is my favorite tool for finding things like this.
Okay so you really, really don’t like the Uppercase menu in VS2012 because you feel like it is shouting at you:
You would rather go back to mixed case for your menu:
Not a problem! Let’s see how:
WARNING: Making changes to the registry can cause unexpected results so do any changes at your own risk!
NOTE: Watch your spelling if you are typing this manually.
If you like to “simplify” this a bit you can use PowerShell to run a nice script to make this happen. However, if you haven’t used PowerShell before this may not be faster for you.
Set-ItemProperty -Path HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\General -Name
SuppressUppercaseConversion -Type DWord -Value 1
Restart Visual Studio and enjoy!
The new book is entering its final stages before we start work in earnest. After much discussion internally we have finally come up with a potential title for the new book and I wanted to get your thoughts. Let me preface this with the following: We wanted to depart from the “tips and tricks” moniker for the book as we feel it doesn’t adequately portray what the book does (or should do at least). With that said, the current thought on a title is (drum roll, please):
Microsoft Visual Studio Productivity Handbook
I really want your feedback on this one. Does it suck? Do you like it? Tell me your thoughts…
Once again we are poised to make history for Microsoft by holding the first ever full-fledged Launch event in Second Life. With less than two weeks to go I wanted to post again about the event and provide more details on what is going on the day of the event.
Things You Will Need to Attend the Launch
In order to attend this event you will first need to do the following things:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Microsoft%20Island/175/84/23
Update: LiveMeeting Links for Each Track
SQL Server 2008 Track
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/join?id=9P9Q7M&role=attend&pw=PN6.%3CQ%5Drb
Windows Server 2008 Track
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/join?id=QGRKQ6&role=attend&pw=PN6.%3CQ%5Drb
Visual Studio 2008 Track
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/join?id=4Z8W44&role=attend&pw=PN6.%3CQ%5Drb
Registration Kiosks
Agenda (Times are Pacific Time Zone)
10:15 - 10:30
Break
10:30 - 11:30
What’s new in Windows Server 2008
Simplify Management of your Data Infrastructure
Breakthrough Challenges with Visual Studio 2008
11:30 – 12:45
Lunch
12:45 – 1:45
Virtualization and your Infrastructure
Mission Critical Applications on SQL Server 2008
Reach End-Users with Next Generation Web Applications
1:45 – 2:00
2:00 – 3:00
Securing your IT Infrastructure with Windows Server 2008
Exploring Business Intelligence and SQL Server 2008
Creating instantly familiar applications with the Microsoft Office System
3:00 – 4:00
Exploring Windows Server 2008 Web and Application technologies
Next Generation Data Applications
Defy Occasionally Connected Challenges with Smart Client Applications
Session Descriptions
Windows Server 2008
What’s New In Windows Server 2008
Windows Server 2008--in addition to incorporating new capabilities and enhancements to existing features--includes a number of improvements in the core OS that enhance the Operating System’s capabilities; such as features aimed at increasing the ability of Windows Server 2008 to support highly critical workloads by improving operational reliability, reducing system failures, and easing management. We will also discuss improvements in other related elements of the platform that help Windows based systems and services move an organization's IT Department forward.
The new Windows Server Virtualization technology, Hyper-V, and Presentation Virtualization technologies like Terminal Services RemoteApp are core features in Windows Server 2008. This session will provide you with an overview of virtualization in Windows Server 2008: the scenarios, features, and benefits that make server virtualization important. Virtualization management is becoming a critical tool for improving overall manageability for the IT environment; join us in this session to learn how Hyper-V and our management technologies build a strong flexible platform and improve overall manageability.
Windows Server 2008 offers rich capabilities for securing your IT Infrastructure and proving tools to ease with compliance mandates. This session will discuss the Windows security and compliance features such as Network Access Protection, Right Management Services, Active Directory Federation Service subsystem, why auditing is important and how to configure an audit policy in the updated Windows Server 2008 event subsystem.
Exploring Windows Server 2008 Web and Application Technologies
Windows Server 2008 includes Internet Information Server 7 perhaps the most important upgrade to IIS since its inception; aimed at creating a seamless environment where administrators and developers can create, maintain, and modify web assets.. We will also discuss improvements in other related elements of the web platform that help Windows based systems and services move an organization's IT Department forward.
SQL Server 2008 / Data Platform
Attend this session to learn how newly enhanced SQL Server 2008 provides you with the highest levels of availability, protects your business critical data and scales across growing data volumes and mixed workloads. This session provides an overview of the new security, scalability, performance and availability features in SQL Server 2008.
Attend this session to learn about the new manageability improvements in SQL Server 2008 that enable you to administer, monitor and maintain your data platform infrastructure while reducing the time and cost of management. This session provides an overview of the new manageability improvements that enable you to manage the infrastructure with policies, monitor and optimize your platform with insights and relevant information, and scale your management across multiple servers.
Attend this session to learn how the new enhancements in SQL Server 2008 provide a comprehensive and scalable Business Intelligence platform that enables you to integrate and manage your growing data volumes, comprehensive analysis and enterprise reporting, and deliver insights through the Microsoft Office System. This session provides an overview of the new data warehousing, reporting, analysis and integration features in SQL Server 2008.
Attend this session to learn about the enhancements in the Microsoft Data platform that enable developers and administrators to build and deploy the next generation data applications. This session provides you with an overview of how SQL Server 2008, the .NET platform and Visual Studio enable you to build data logic faster with the new T-SQL enhancements, deploy applications on any type of data from spatial to documents and on any device, and while accessing the data easily with LINQ, ADO.Net Entity framework and Data Services.
Visual Studio 2008 / Developer
Explore all the new Visual Studio 2008 features, from language enhancements, improved designers, Web and smart-client development tools; to Visual Studio Team System, a suite of software lifecycle management tools poised to transform how you deliver software for Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, and the Web.
Visual Studio 2008 enables developers and IT operators to dramatically reduce the amount of time, effort and code required to develop and deploy real-world Web applications. ASP.NET 3.5, Visual Studio 2008 and IIS 7 each provide much improved administration and management support, on top of dramatically improved performance. Also covered are support for ASP.NET AJAX, JavaScript enhancements, rich support for CSS standards and rapid development of data-bound Web pages.
Create Instantly Familiar Applications with the Microsoft Office System
The 2007 Microsoft Office system has evolved into a business application platform that developers can use to build and deploy Office Business Applications (OBAs), an emerging class of applications that address critical business problems. This session demonstrates how developers can use Visual Studio 2008 to build OBAs, customize Microsoft Office applications, and utilize the Microsoft Office platform to build scalable line-of-business solutions based on Microsoft Office.
This session introduces the new features and improvements incorporated into Visual Studio 2008 for smart client development. This session also introduces new client services that allow your applications to authenticate users providing role-based UI, and be occasionally connected with offline data storage. We demonstrate how you can leverage both Windows Presentation Foundation and Windows Forms in a single application to build the right experience for your customer. Finally, we show feedback-driven improvements to existing features in Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation, and ClickOnce.
If you have started to play with AJAX then you have most likely come across the dreaded 'sys is undefined' error. I found numerous articles on how to get this working but the best ones all point to making sure you have the correct entries in your web.config. So to summarize what I have read:
1) Go to C:\Program Files\Microsoft ASP.NET\ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions\{your version of AJAX}
2) Open the sample web.config file and make sure you have the same entries in your web.config
3) If you don't then copy and paste is your friend :)
4) See if the app works now
Here are a couple of articles to assist if you are still having issues:
Chris Riccio's blog http://weblogs.asp.net/chrisri/archive/2007/02/02/demystifying-sys-is-undefined.aspx
Lorin Thwaits's blog http://geekswithblogs.net/lorint/archive/2007/03/28/110161.aspx
I get a lot of question as to when Vista Service Pack 1 will be out. Here is the answer I received today:
March 18, 2008
SP1 available on Windows Update, Download Center, MSDN & TechNet
April 18, 2008
SP1 pushed via automatic download
Also, many of you know I am a no bullshit kinda guy so I believe there are things that need to be fixed with Vista and, thankfully, SP1 seems to address most of these issues. That notwithstanding I KNOW that Vista is certainly the most secure OS I have ever used and hella lot easier to use than older versions of Windows. Just my .02.
Keyboard: CTRL + P Menu: File -> PrintCommand: File.PrintVersions: 2008,2010Published: 3/9/2010Code: vstipEnv0006
Want to print your line numbers with your code? Don't worry! You can do it by just checking the "Include line numbers" option in the Print Dialog:
Menu: Tools -> Options -> Environment -> AutoRecoverVersions: 2008,2010Published: 6/30/2010Code: vstipEnv0019
Perhaps your best friend is the AutoRecover feature. It can be a real life saver if the dev environment crashes or there is a power outage or a meteor hits your cube (okay, maybe not that last one). It's very simple to use, just go to Tools -> Options -> Environment -> AutoRecover:
If you want to turn this feature off you can deselect the "Save AutoRecover information every" checkbox. Of course, if you do this we will all laugh at you when you lose important work because you didn't have it and I will personally blog about it so everyone knows--you might want to leave it on--just saying. Here is what the other options do:
X minutes - determines how often files have AutoRecover information saved. The default is 5 minutes but you can adjust up or down depending on usage. There is an inverse relationship between this value and the frequency of your updates to code. If you make more frequent updates to code then have a lower number here. Fewer updates to code mean you can increase this number if you desire. If you are going to make a mistake here make it on the side of a number that is too low rather than too high. It's better to take any performance hit from file I/O than to lose a ton of work.
X days - used to decide how long AutoRecover files are kept in the Backup Files directory. The default is 7 days which is usually adequate for most situations. If you work with a lot of projects over a short period of time then you may want to decrease this number to keep the Backup Files directory more clear. If you are going to guess on this value then it's better to guess high and lower the number as needed.
Let's be clear on what a is exactly saved and where it is saved. First, recovered files are stored at \...\My Documents\Visual Studio <version>\Backup Files\<projectname>. Not every file is saved here. Let me show you an example:
Here is the backup folder for one of my solutions when I create it in Visual Studio:
Obviously the folder is empty. Now let me make a change to a file and save the change. Then I'll wait 5 minutes to see the result:
Still nothing because there is no need to recover a saved file. But let me make a change to a file without saving it and wait another 5 minutes:
NOW we have AutoRecover information because if there is crash we will have to make a decision to recover the unsaved changes or keep the last saved version. This is essentially the function of AutoRecover.
When you do finally have to recover a file, this is the dialog you will get:
Recovered files - lists the file(s) that can be recovered with a a checkbox to select/deselect the file as well as basic information.
<File Name> Summary - shows detailed information about the currently selected file including date/time info, location of the backup file, and destination location where the file will be recovered to.
Recover Selected Files - performs a recovery action on the file(s) selected copying the recovered source file to the previously indicated destination.
Do Not Recover - closes the dialog box without recovering any of the files listed.