Powertoys WebLog : Collaboration Tools

WDriven - Use Word Templates to Integrate with TFS Server

Powertoys — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 23:40:50 GMT

WDriven is a Microsoft WORD document template integrated with Microsoft Team Foundation Server. It enables you to communicate and collaborate on Visual Studio 2005 Team System projects from within Microsoft Word.

Through VSTS Smart Tags, you can add/edit/track work items.
Tables of Items gives you an overview on all the works items referred by your documents.

WDriven doesn't impose any special format on your word documents. You can add Work Item Tracking to your existing regular doucment easily.

DotNetIdeas > Home.

HelpStudio Lite to Author Help Content in VS 2005

Powertoys — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 03:59:00 GMT

From the MSDN Forums...

The VS 2005 SDK contains a new tool for authoring Help and integrating it with VS 2005. The tool is called HelpStudio Lite. It is lightweight version of the full HelpStudio product, developed by Innovasys.

HelpStudio Lite is recommended for anyone extending VS 2005 - for example, by creating add-ins, controls, or packages. You will likely also want to author and include Help content with your extensions to VS. You can use HelpStudio Lite to author your content and compile it to the Help 2.5 (hxs) format, so it can be integrated with VS 2005.

The HelpStudio Lite documentation includes details on how to create deployment projects for your content (your hxs files). There are a couple options. One option is to use the Help Integration Wizard to create a VS setup project, which can be compiled into an Windows Installer package (msi or msm). Another option is to incorporate the InnovaHxReg tool (included with HelpStudio Lite) into your setup. You can invoke InnovaHxReg to register your content and merge it with existing VS 2005 content.

If you have existing Help 2.x files for VS 2003, you can upgrade them to work with VS 2005 by importing your collection into HelpStudio Lite and then compiling the HelpStudio Lite project. Similarly, you can import HTMLHelp 1.x (chm) files into HelpStudio Lite projects.

Here are some related links for more information.
HelpStudio Lite Press Release
Visual Studio Extensibility Center
Download the VS 2005 SDK

gotdotnet CodeGallery for ongoing Sample Sharing and Development

Powertoys — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 22:39:00 GMT

Via Korby

I am proud to announce the public release of CodeGallery, the newest member of the gotdotnet family. Gotdotnet.com is the community website where professional Windows and .NET developers from around the world can contribute and consume code samples, snippets, scripts, and developer tools, as well as participate in ad hoc collaborative development projects with friends and colleagues. Whether you're new to computers or a hardcore developer, gotdotnet has something for you.

My boss, Sandy Khaund broke the news about the launch of CodeGallery on his blog. He writes, "[CodeGallery is] focused on the experience of community feedback. While Workspaces concentrates on the joint development of code and code check-in process, CodeGallery limits code activity to upload and download and instead orients the collaboration around idea sharing and feedback from members about the uploaded items. Each CodeGallery project is a “micro-community” on GotDotNet that is focused on collaborative feedback and code, documentation and idea sharing. To support this, we [provide] customization, message board creation, online reporting, bug tracking and message boards that enable members to work together in evolving a project whether it is code, documentation or conceptual."...

CodeGallery--Continuous Feedback-Driven Development
As mentioned, this is the newest member of the gotdotnet family. At CodeGallery, you can download an application, its source code, or both. You can evaluate the application, discuss the latest online version with its creator and other users, as well as create bugs that the owner can fold into the next version of their application. CodeGallery is a great place to see how some of the best developers in the world develop software, find useful utilities and take advantage of reusable code.

Check it out today and feel free to leave Korby and the team feedback.

CodeXchange Snippet Sharing Community for Visual Studio

Powertoys — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 17:47:00 GMT

I really believe good rich client interfaces to online communities are going to be big. Why should you have to leave Visual Studio to share code with other developers? Why should you have to browse to a web page just to download a code snippet.

There have been a couple of these add-in/site combinations in the past, but so far I like what I see with www.codexchange.net and its package add-in for VS. The community on the site is small today, but should grow over time. I'm looking forward to seeing them work well with VS 2005 and the actual snippet format we use to make things even easier.

From the Site:

In short , CodeXchange is an Visual Studio.NET add-in and a standalone application providing you with instant integrated access to an online repository of ready to use .NET code snippets.

The CodeXchange addin is a dockable toolwindow inside the Visual Studio.NET IDE, allowing you to integrate it with your standard development environment layout.

Josh

VBCommenter 1.2.5 FINAL Released for Adding XML Comments to VB.Net

Powertoys — Sun, 20 Mar 2005 01:08:00 GMT

I continue to be impressed by the people from the community that step up and make serious improvements to the VBCommenter tool. The new release, from Doug, is very impressive. Here are just some of the improvements he highlighted on his blog.

Major speed improvements (mostly related to schema and XML validation handling). For example, a large project that took 14 minutes to build using 1.2 and 2 minutes without VBCommenter takes about 2.5 minutes with 1.2.5.
Improved comment schema (includes all NDoc extensions to the XML comment schema)
Improved XML validation and task list reporting
cref resolution is much better - If your class has a method called "Log" and you want to reference it, the generated cref will be correct instead of pointing to System.Diagnostics.Log
Reads assemblies in read-only mode to avoid locking the file or the inability to load the assembly if the IDE has it locked
Renders variables declared as "WithEvents" as properties (which is how the WithEvents keyword is implemented in IL) to allow NDoc to find the appropriate comments for the field (See More)

Josh

Read Blogs Without Leaving Visual Studio

Powertoys — Sat, 19 Mar 2005 23:35:00 GMT

Jon, the creator of SharpTools, sent me mail to let me know about his latest creation... a plugin that lets you read blogs indide the Visual Studio IDE. I've gave it a shot and I have to say that it looks pretty cool.

From the site.

This open source plugin ships as part of SharpTools 2.0 and is a full-featured RSS / Blog aggregator which integrates into the familiar dockable panes of the Visual Studio.NET IDE. You're gonna love it when you start blogging from within the development environment! Features include:

Support for folders or individual feeds
Drag-and-drop support for feeds and folders
Preview a new feed as you add it
Easy control of all feed properties
Automatic and on-demand refresh of feeds
Automatic feed search based on a site URL
Keyword searching for published feedsusing Synic8
Keyword search within all subscribed feeds
Import of feed subscriptions from an OPML file

CodeShare Addin for your Enterprise

Powertoys — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 00:56:00 GMT

Nauman sent me mail about his latest VS Addin that can be used to share code snippets across your internal enterprise. It looks pretty cool. - Josh

Official Article: http://weblogs.asp.net/nleghari/articles/codeshareaddin.aspx

"With this new plugin and setup instruction, you can share source code from websites into a central database and insert them into VS.NET using the same interface.
See screen shots and download the plugin
Read these instructions to contribute code from any application"

1) If you would like to edit the web service URL then you can do so by putting the new URL in the text box and press "Save" to update it into the registry.
2) Keywords to search code snippets.
3) A list box to display results.
4) To display code for the selected item in the list box.
5) Filter the list to only show snippets posted by you.
6) Insert the selected code into the IDE

Check it out!

CopySourceAsHTML: Get Code into HTML without Word from the Editor

Powertoys — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 21:37:00 GMT

Earlier this month I let you know about a macro that converts code to HTML for use on web pages or blog posts. Since then Colin sent me a link to his "Wordless" tool for accomplishing the same thing. The users reviews for Colin's tool are pretty positive.

" This tool rocks! " - Jake

"wow, yet another amazing addition to the already great IDE environment." - Steve

"This is freakin' awesome!" - Hacked

"One of the cooler VS.NET addins that I've come across" - Ryan

Good Times! Check it out yourself.

http://www.jtleigh.com/people/colin/blog/archives/2004/10/visual_studio_a.html

Simple Macro for Formatting Code to HTML from within VS 2003

Powertoys — Thu, 07 Oct 2004 23:43:00 GMT

Via .Avery: "Code -> HTML in VS.NET - Cory comes up with a cool macro to send your code to word then back to your clipboard. Quick HTML formatting for your code."

It's been a while since we've posted an interesting Macro to the Powertoys blog. This one is useful for those of you looking to put code into your blog posts. For more information on using macro code in VS.Net check out this article.

Check it out: http://addressof.com/blog/archive/2004/10/06/966.aspx

Good Times! Josh

Annotation Package

Powertoys — Thu, 22 Jul 2004 00:34:00 GMT

Do you want to be a part of this cool VSIP package that allows you to annotate your source code and share your comments with other team members? If so Dr Extensibility (Dr eX) has a great project for you and him to build. Visit here for more information. If you have any stumper question on Visual Studio Extensibility or have any great ideas to use do feel free to drop Doctor a line via his blog.

Accessibility Macros for Visual Studio .NET 2003

Powertoys — Sat, 15 May 2004 01:25:00 GMT

As I demo'ed at CSUN, here are the Accessibility Macros for Visual Studio .NET 2003. These macros allow users to tweak the Visual Studio .NET 2003 IDE by easily increasing and decreasing font size, toggling colors in the editor to pure black on white (or vice versa), and maximizing tool windows.

I've created a GotDotNet workspace for the macros in hopes that people would add their own macros for better tweaking the IDE, leave ideas for future macros, and of course to track the number of downloads.

Even if you don't use Accessibility Features, definitely check out the Increase and DecreaseTextEditorFontSize macros. These simple macros will allow you to painlessly increase and decrease the text editor font size by assigning a keyboard shortcut to each macro. Please see the readme for more information on how to bind macros to keyboard shortcuts.

Thanks!
-sara

Get Pinvoke.Net Native Method Signatures directly into Visual Studio

Powertoys — Thu, 06 May 2004 02:22:00 GMT

I know I suggest that everything is cool, but this is really cool IMO! Via Kevin I found this add-in that lets you search for and insert pinvoke signatures right into your code from the Pinvoke.Net web site. You can also add content to the site right from the editor! I just love the concept... there is this wiki where anyone can add useful content... then that content can be sucked down directly into your application in a useful fashion right when you need it without invoking a web browser and doing a clumsy cut/paste operation.

Click here for the Add-In

The Description from AdamNathan:

This add-in for Visual Studio (7.0 or later) communicates with www.pinvoke.net, making it easy to copy signatures and types from the PINVOKE.NET repository into your source code. It also highlights alternative managed APIs that help you avoid PInvoke altogether, and makes it easy for you to contribute your own signatures and types! Because the latest information in the repository is displayed, the number of signatures and languages supported should grow over time. This also means that an Internet connection is required to make use of the add-in (although it behaves gracefully when no connection is present). Defining PInvoke signatures (also known as Declare statements in VB) without any help is an error-prone process that can introduce extremely subtle bugs. It's time to stop writing PInvoke signatures from scratch! Instead, copy and paste your way to productivity! Think of this as the 21st century version of VB6's API Text Viewer. For more information, visit www.pinvoke.net.

Good Times! - Josh

Update - Adam walks you through it personally on his blog here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/adam_nathan/archive/2004/05/06/127403.aspx

Set IDE to Demo Mode Fonts

Powertoys — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 07:29:00 GMT

Via Devhawk comes a macro to set the editor fonts to and from a preset demo mode size and font combo.

Private Sub SetEditorFonts(ByVal size As Integer, ByVal family As String, ByVal bold As Boolean)
    Dim Props As Properties
    Props = DTE.Properties("FontsAndColors", "TextEditor")
    Props.Item("FontSize").Value = size 
    Props.Item("FontFamily").Value = family
 
    Dim clritems As EnvDTE.FontsAndColorsItems = Props.Item("FontsAndColorsItems").Object
    clritems.Item("Plain Text").Bold = bold
End Sub
 
Sub DemoConfig()
    SetEditorFonts(18, "Lucida Console", True)
End Sub
 
Sub NormalConfig()
    SetEditorFonts(10, "Courier New", True)
End Sub
 
Check out these instructions for more information on using macros in the ide.