Powertoys WebLog : Powertoys News

If I had to rename this blog, what would you call it?

saraford — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 01:25:00 GMT

Hi all, I’m Sara Ford, a Program Manager on the Developer Solutions team. I’m going to be helping Josh with this Power Toys blog. On my personal blog, I asked the question What sort of tools would you expect to see under “Power Toys for Visual Studio”? Another way of asking the same question is to say, if I absolutely had to rename this blog to Power Toys for ________ blog, what would go into the blank? Does Power Toys for Visual Studio make sense? Or would you like me to leave well-enough alone? =)

Feel free to leave comments or drop me a note.

Thanks for the help!

Happy Birthday to our Friends @ SharpToolbox

Powertoys — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 00:36:00 GMT

Fabrice has been aggregating all sorts of Developer productivity enhancing tools for just over two years now and I wanted to say thanks for all the hard work and Happy Birthday!

Via Fabrice: SharpToolbox is two years old

Two years ago, I started collecting development tools for .NET on this weblog. This list quickly became a web site: SharpToolbox.com.
Two years after, it references 680 tools including 186 libraries in 49 categories. To date, 33 tools have been flagged as discontinued.
I believe SharpToolbox is a comprehensive directory of the available tools for .NET. Let's hope its sister site, JavaToolbox, will have the same future.

- Josh

IAccessible Implementation Sample for a Custom Push Button Published!

Powertoys — Sat, 19 Jun 2004 02:02:00 GMT

Fiona, one of the devs on my team VSCore, has put together a really nice sample on how to implement IAccessible for a Custom Push Button. If you’re using standard Windows controls, you get MSAA implemented for free. However, if you’re using custom drawn controls, it is imperative that you implement MSAA (aka IAccessible); otherwise, the control will not be accessible to Assistive Technologies.

There’s lots of documentation on MSDN how to support MSAA, but here’s an actual sample of how to implement IAccessible! Just point one of the MSAA SDK Testing Tools (Inspect or AccExplorer) at the custom button for a proof of concept.

This sample follows the MSAA SDK guidelines on how to implement IAccessible for a push button.

The sample is located on GotDotNet at

http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/Workspaces/Workspace.aspx?id=4b5530a0-c900-421b-8ed6-7407997fa979

Enjoy!

-sara

Updated Features and new links for the Smart Paster

Powertoys — Wed, 26 May 2004 00:13:00 GMT

I've updated the Smart Paster entry based on new information from Alex. This is why I'm working towards getting a site where community authors can update their own information in the collection :-) Anyway, check it out...

http://weblogs.asp.net/powertoys/archive/2004/05/21/136882.aspx

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

Introducing MsaaVerify - an Accessibility testing tool

Powertoys — Tue, 11 May 2004 22:04:00 GMT

Have you ever used AccExplorer or Inspect and wondered whether the information presented was correct? Have you ever wanted to know which controls really need Names, Keyboard Shortcuts, Descriptions, and so forth? It's time to MsaaVerify! MsaaVerify will verify 9 Microsoft Active Accessibility properties for 10 Microsoft Active Accessibility Role types. It doesn't matter whether these controls are standard Windows controls, managed, owner drawn, or custom drawn, just use MsaaVerify!

MsaaVerify is located at the following GotDotNet workspace:

http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/Workspaces/workspace.aspx?id=678c467f-3724-40f0-9de7-db440e4fa148

-Sara

Pinvoke.Net Add-in Link Update

Powertoys — Thu, 06 May 2004 23:07:00 GMT

If you have the post about the Pinvoke.Net Add-in for VS in your RSS reader cache you should note that the link has changed. It should be more permanent this time. I've updated the post to have the new link and it's also here:

http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/UserSamples/Details.aspx?SampleGuid=75122f62-5459-4364-b9ba-7b5e6a4754fe

Josh

Write an Add-In or a Macro and Win!

Powertoys — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 20:16:00 GMT

Roy has organized a coding contest challenging you to build and submit the coolest Add-In or Macro you can for Visual Studio. I suggest watching Craig's webcast and getting started! Here is a look at the current prizes for a bit of motivation.

[UPDATE - 4/26] - Updated prize list.

1st prize:

Essential Suite by SyncFusion (1,295$ !)
CodeSmart 2003 pack by AXTools (299$)
XTra Grid suite by DevExpress (399$)
Book: “Coder To Developer” by Mike Gunderloy (21$)
Book: “Inside Visual Studio.Net“ signed by One of the authors (Craig Skibo) (34$)
Book: “.NET Framework Standard Library Annotated Reference Vol 1“ (44$)
Book: “Test-Driven Development in Microsoft .Net“ (33$)
XDN Pro Membership by Xtras.Net (99$)
A tour of MS Offices in Redmond (if you can get there by yourself) (priceless)
Total Worth: 2,224$

2nd prize:

CodeRush for VS.Net by DevExpress (249$)
LLBLGen Pro - by Solutions Design (210$)
XDN Pro Membership by Xtras.Net (99$)
Book: “Coder To Developer” by Mike Gunderloy (21$)
Book: “Inside Visual Studio.Net“ signed by One of the authors (Craig Skibo) (34$)
Book: “.NET Framework Standard Library Annotated Reference Vol 1“ (44$)
Book: “Test-Driven Development in Microsoft .Net“(33$)
Total Worth: 690$

3rd prize:

XDN Pro Membership by Xtras.Net (99$)
Book: “Coder To Developer” by Mike Gunderloy (21$)
Book: “Inside Visual Studio.Net“ signed by One of the authors (Craig Skibo) (34$)
Book: “.NET Framework Standard Library Annotated Reference Vol 1“ (44$)
Book: “Test-Driven Development in Microsoft .Net“(33$)
Total Worth: 231$

Bonus:

the most crazy and innovative add-in (not necessarily useful!) will get a special prize from me:

CodeSmart 2003 for VS.Net by AXTools (189$)
XDN Pro Membership by Xtras.Net (99$)
Total Worth: 288$
Josh

PS: The “official” home for this contest is here:

http://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/archive/2004/04/21/117663.aspx

Welcome to the Powertoys Blog

Powertoys — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 22:05:00 GMT

In June 2003 Visual Studio team members worked to release the first set of Powertoys for Visual Studio 2003. There have since been several requests for us to start featuring add-ins, packages, macros, and other tools developed by the community on that web site. This blog has been created for that purpose. If you have, or know of a tool, that you would like us to talk about on this site feel free to use the contact form or leave a comment on this post with a link and description to your favorite tool.

Eventually Ken and I feel that this could evolve into a community driven site where tool authors submit their own tools to the directory and visitors could easily search, rate, and comment on them. If you are interested in helping with that effort check out this feed.

Enjoy,

Josh

Hello World Test Post

Powertoys — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 20:26:00 GMT

This blog will have something to do with http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/ide and the extensibility developer center.