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  • Favorite Visual Studio 2010 Extensions, Update

    - by Scott Dorman
    With the release of the Visual Studio Pro Power Tools (and many other new extensions having been released), my list of favorite Visual Studio extensions has changed. All of these extensions are available in the Visual Studio Gallery. Here is the list of extensions that I currently have installed and find useful: Bing Start Page CodeCompare Collapse Selection In Solution Explorer Collapse Solution Color Picker Completion Extension Analyzer Find Results Highlighter Find Results Tweak (Available from CodePlex) Format Document HelpViewerKeywordIndex HighlightMultiWord Image Insertion Indentation Matcher Extension ItalicComments MoveToRegionVSX Numbered Bookmarks PowerCommands for Visual Studio 2010 Regular Expressions Margin Search Work Items for TFS 2010 Source Outliner Spell Checker Structure Adornment This also installs the following extensions: BlockTagger BlockTaggerImpl SettingsStore SettingsStoreImpl StyleCop Team Founder Server Power Tools TFS Auto Shelve Visual Studio Color Theme Editor Visual Studio Pro Power Tools VS10x Code Map VS10x Code Marker VS10x Collapse All Projects VS10x Editor View Enhancer VS10x Insert Debug Names VS10x Selection Popup VS10x Super Copy Paste VSCommands 2010 Word Wrap with Auto-Indent   Technorati Tags: Visual Studio,Extensions

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  • The future for Microsoft

    - by Scott Dorman
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/sdorman/archive/2013/10/16/the-future-for-microsoft.aspxMicrosoft is in the process of reinventing itself. While some may argue that it’s “too little, too late” or that their growing consumer-focused strategy is wrong, the truth of the situation is that Microsoft is reinventing itself into a new company. While Microsoft is now calling themselves a “devices and services” company, that’s not entirely accurate. Let’s look at some facts: Microsoft will always (for the long-term foreseeable future) be financially split into the following divisions: Windows/Operating Systems, which for FY13 made up approximately 24% of overall revenue. Server and Tools, which for FY13 made up approximately 26% of overall revenue. Enterprise/Business Products, which for FY13 made up approximately 32% of overall revenue. Entertainment and Devices, which for FY13 made up approximately 13% of overall revenue. Online Services, which for FY13 made up approximately 4% of overall revenue. It is important to realize that hardware products like the Surface fall under the Windows/Operating Systems division while products like the Xbox 360 fall under the Entertainment and Devices division. (Presumably other hardware, such as mice, keyboards, and cameras, also fall under the Entertainment and Devices division.) It’s also unclear where Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Nokia’s handset division will fall, but let’s assume that it will be under Entertainment and Devices as well. Now, for the sake of argument, let’s assume a slightly different structure that I think is more in line with how Microsoft presents itself and how the general public sees it: Consumer Products and Devices, which would probably make up approximately 9% of overall revenue. Developer Tools, which would probably make up approximately 13% of overall revenue. Enterprise Products and Devices, which would probably make up approximately 47% of overall revenue. Entertainment, which would probably make up approximately 13% of overall revenue. Online Services, which would probably make up approximately 17% of overall revenue. (Just so we’re clear, in this structure hardware products like the Surface, a portion of Windows sales, and other hardware fall under the Consumer Products and Devices division. I’m assuming that more of the income for the Windows division is coming from enterprise/volume licenses so 15% of that income went to the Enterprise Products and Devices division. Most of the enterprise services, like Azure, fall under the Online Services division so half of the Server and Tools income went there as well.) No matter how you look at it, the bulk of Microsoft’s income still comes from not just the enterprise but also software sales, and this really shouldn’t surprise anyone. So, now that the stage is set…what’s the future for Microsoft? The future I see for Microsoft (again, this is just my prediction based on my own instinct, gut-feel and publicly available information) is this: Microsoft is becoming a consumer-focused enterprise company. Let’s look at it a different way. Microsoft is an enterprise-focused company trying to create a larger consumer presence.  To a large extent, this is the exact opposite of Apple, who is really a consumer-focused company trying to create a larger enterprise presence. The major reason consumer-focused companies (like Apple) have started making in-roads into the enterprise is the “bring your own device” phenomenon. Yes, Apple has created some “game-changing” products but their enterprise influence is still relatively small. Unfortunately (for this blog post at least), Apple provides revenue in terms of hardware products rather than business divisions, so it’s not possible to do a direct comparison. However, in the interest of transparency, from Apple’s Quarterly Report (filed 24 July 2013), their revenue breakdown is: iPhone, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 51% of revenue. iPad, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 18% of revenue. Mac, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 14% of revenue. iPod, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 2% of revenue. iTunes, Software, and Services, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 11% of revenue. Accessories, which for the 3 months ending 29 July 2013 made up approximately 3% of revenue. From this, it’s pretty clear that Apple is a consumer-and-hardware-focused company. At this point, you may be asking yourself “Where is all of this going?” The answer to that lies in Microsoft’s shift in company focus. They are becoming more consumer focused, but what exactly does that mean? The biggest change (at least that’s been in the news lately) is the pending purchase of Nokia’s handset division. This, in combination with their Surface line of tablets and the Xbox, will put Microsoft squarely in the realm of a hardware-focused company in addition to being a software-focused company. That can (and most likely will) shift the revenue split to looking at revenue based on software sales (both consumer and enterprise) and also hardware sales (mostly on the consumer side). If we look at things strictly from a Windows perspective, Microsoft clearly has a lot of irons in the fire at the moment. Discounting the various product SKUs available and painting the picture with broader strokes, there are currently 5 different Windows-based operating systems: Windows Phone Windows Phone 7.x, which runs on top of the Windows CE kernel Windows Phone 8.x+, which runs on top of the Windows 8 kernel Windows RT The ARM-based version of Windows 8, which runs on top of the Windows 8 kernel Windows (Pro) The Intel-based version of Windows 8, which runs on top of the Windows 8 kernel Xbox The Xbox 360, which runs it’s own proprietary OS. The Xbox One, which runs it’s own proprietary OS, a version of Windows running on top of the Windows 8 kernel and a proprietary “manager” OS which manages the other two. Over time, Windows Phone 7.x devices will fade so that really leaves 4 different versions. Looking at Windows RT and Windows Phone 8.x paints an interesting story. Right now, all mobile phone devices run on some sort of ARM chip and that doesn’t look like it will change any time soon. That means Microsoft has two different Windows based operating systems for the ARM platform. Long term, it doesn’t make sense for Microsoft to continue supporting that arrangement. I have long suspected (since the Surface was first announced) that Microsoft will unify these two variants of Windows and recent speculation from some of the leading Microsoft watchers lends credence to this suspicion. It is rumored that upcoming Windows Phone releases will include support for larger screen sizes, relax the requirement to have a hardware-based back button and will continue to improve API parity between Windows Phone and Windows RT. At the same time, Windows RT will include support for smaller screen sizes. Since both of these operating systems are based on the same core Windows kernel, it makes sense (both from a financial and development resource perspective) for Microsoft to unify them. The user interfaces are already very similar. So similar in fact, that visually it’s difficult to tell them apart. To illustrate this, here are two screen captures: Other than a few variations (the Bing News app, the picture shown in the Pictures tile and the spacing between the tiles) these are identical. The one on the left is from my Windows 8.1 laptop (which looks the same as on my Surface RT) and the one on the right is from my Windows Phone 8 Lumia 925. This pretty clearly shows that from a consumer perspective, there really is no practical difference between how these two operating systems look and how you interact with them. For the consumer, your entertainment device (Xbox One), phone (Windows Phone) and mobile computing device (Surface [or some other vendors tablet], laptop, netbook or ultrabook) and your desktop computing device (desktop) will all look and feel the same. While many people will denounce this consistency of user experience, I think this will be a good thing in the long term, especially for the upcoming generations. For example, my 5-year old son knows how to use my tablet, phone and Xbox because they all feature nearly identical user experiences. When Windows 8 was released, Microsoft allowed a Windows Store app to be purchased once and installed on as many as 5 devices. With Windows 8.1, this limit has been increased to over 50. Why is that important? If you consider that your phone, computing devices, and entertainment device will be running the same operating system (with minor differences related to physical hardware chipset), that means that I could potentially purchase my sons favorite Angry Birds game once and be able to install it on all of the devices I own. (And for those of you wondering, it’s only 7 [at the moment].) From an app developer perspective, the story becomes even more compelling. Right now there are differences between the different operating systems, but those differences are shrinking. The user interface technology for both is XAML but there are different controls available and different user experience concepts. Some of the APIs available are the same while some are not. You can’t develop a Windows Phone app that can also run on Windows (either Windows Pro or RT). With each release of Windows Phone and Windows RT, those difference become smaller and smaller. Add to this mix the Xbox One, which will also feature a Windows-based operating system and the same “modern” (tile-based) user interface and the visible distinctions between the operating systems will become even smaller. Unifying the operating systems means one set of APIs and one code base to maintain for an app that can run on multiple devices. One code base means it’s easier to add features and fix bugs and that those changes become available on all devices at the same time. It also means a single app store, which will increase the discoverability and reach of your app and consolidate revenue and app profile management. Now, the choice of what devices an app is available on becomes a simple checkbox decision rather than a technical limitation. Ultimately, this means more apps available to consumers, which is always good for the app ecosystem. Is all of this just rumor, speculation and conjecture? Of course, but it’s not unfounded. As I mentioned earlier, some of the prominent Microsoft watchers are also reporting similar rumors. However, Microsoft itself has even hinted at this future with their recent organizational changes and by telling developers “if you want to develop for Xbox One, start developing for Windows 8 now.” I think this pretty clearly paints the following picture: Microsoft is committed to the “modern” user interface paradigm. Microsoft is changing their release cadence (for all products, not just operating systems) to be faster and more modular. Microsoft is going to continue to unify their OS platforms both from a consumer perspective and a developer perspective. While this direction will certainly concern some people it will excite many others. Microsoft’s biggest failing has always been following through with a strong and sustained marketing strategy that presents a consistent view point and highlights what this unified and connected experience looks like and how it benefits consumers and enterprises. We’ve started to see some of this over the last few years, but it needs to continue and become more aggressive and consistent. In the long run, I think Microsoft will be able to pull all of these technologies and devices together into one seamless ecosystem. It isn’t going to happen overnight, but my prediction is that we will be there by the end of 2016. As both a consumer and a developer, I, for one, am excited about the future of Microsoft.

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  • String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace

    - by Scott Dorman
    An empty string is different than an unassigned string variable (which is null), and is a string containing no characters between the quotes (""). The .NET Framework provides String.Empty to represent an empty string, and there is no practical difference between ("") and String.Empty. One of the most common string comparisons to perform is to determine if a string variable is equal to an empty string. The fastest and simplest way to determine if a string is empty is to test if the Length property is equal to 0. However, since strings are reference types it is possible for a string variable to be null, which would result in a runtime error when you tried to access the Length property. Since testing to determine if a string is empty is such a common occurrence, the .NET Framework provides the static method String.IsNullOrEmpty method: public static bool IsNullOrEmpty(string value) { if (value != null) { return (value.Length == 0); }   return true; } It is also very common to determine if a string is empty and contains more than just whitespace characters. For example, String.IsNullOrEmpty("   ") would return false, since this string is actually made up of three whitespace characters. In some cases, this may be acceptable, but in many others it is not. TO help simplify testing this scenario, the .NET Framework 4 introduces the String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace method: public static bool IsNullOrWhiteSpace(string value) { if (value != null) { for (int i = 0; i < value.Length; i++) { if (!char.IsWhiteSpace(value[i])) { return false; } } } return true; }   Using either String.IsNullOrEmpty or String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace helps ensure correctness, readability, and consistency, so they should be used in all situations where you need to determine if a string is null, empty, or contains only whitespace characters. Technorati Tags: .NET,C# 4

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  • Enum.HasFlag

    - by Scott Dorman
    An enumerated type, also called an enumeration (or just an enum for short), is simply a way to create a numeric type restricted to a predetermined set of valid values with meaningful names for those values. While most enumerations represent discrete values, or well-known combinations of those values, sometimes you want to combine values in an arbitrary fashion. These enumerations are known as flags enumerations because the values represent flags which can be set or unset. To combine multiple enumeration values, you use the logical OR operator. For example, consider the following: public enum FileAccess { None = 0, Read = 1, Write = 2, }   class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { FileAccess access = FileAccess.Read | FileAccess.Write; Console.WriteLine(access); } } The output of this simple console application is: The value 3 is the numeric value associated with the combination of FileAccess.Read and FileAccess.Write. Clearly, this isn’t the best representation. What you really want is for the output to look like: To achieve this result, you simply add the Flags attribute to the enumeration. The Flags attribute changes how the string representation of the enumeration value is displayed when using the ToString() method. Although the .NET Framework does not require it, enumerations that will be used to represent flags should be decorated with the Flags attribute since it provides a clear indication of intent. One “problem” with Flags enumerations is determining when a particular flag is set. The code to do this isn’t particularly difficult, but unless you use it regularly it can be easy to forget. To test if the access variable has the FileAccess.Read flag set, you would use the following code: (access & FileAccess.Read) == FileAccess.Read Starting with .NET 4, a HasFlag static method has been added to the Enum class which allows you to easily perform these tests: access.HasFlag(FileAccess.Read) This method follows one of the “themes” for the .NET Framework 4, which is to simplify and reduce the amount of boilerplate code like this you must write. Technorati Tags: .NET,C# 4

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  • Visual Studio, .NET Framework, and language versions

    - by Scott Dorman
    Every so often a question comes up about how Visual Studio, the .NET Framework, and a .NET programming language relate to each other. Mostly, these questions have to do with versions. The reality is that these are actually three different “products” that are versioned independently of each other but are related. Looking at how Visual Studio, the .NET Framework version, and the CLR versions relate to each other results in the following: Visual Studio CLR .NET Framework Visual Studio .NET (Ranier) 1.0.3705 1.0 Visual Studio 2003 (Everett) 1.1.4322 1.1 Visual Studio 2005 (Whidbey) 2.0.50727 2.0 Visual Studio 2005 with .NET 3.0 Extensions 2.0.50727 2.0, 3.0 Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas) 2.0.50727 2.0 SP1, 3.0 SP1, 3.5 Visual Studio 2008 SP1 2.0.50727 2.0 SP2, 3.0 SP2, 3.5 SP1 Visual Studio 2010 (Hawaii) 4.0.30319 4.0 The actual Visual Studio version numbers are: Product Name Version Ship Date Visual Studio .NET 7.0.???? 02/2002 Visual Studio .NET 2002 SP1 7.0.????   Visual Studio 2003 7.1.???? 04/2003 Visual Studio 2003 SP1 7.1.6030 09/13/2006 Visual Studio 2005 8.0.5072   Visual Studio 2005 SP1   12/14/2006 Visual Studio 2008 9.0.21022.8 11/19/2007 Visual Studio 2008 SP1 9.0.30729.1   Visual Studio 2010 10.0.30319.1 04/12/2010 (For those entries that are missing information, it simply means that I didn’t already know it and/or couldn’t easily find it online.) So far, everything seems fairly reasonable and isn’t terribly difficult to keep coordinated. However, when you start trying to find language versions and how those relate to .NET Framework, CLR, or Visual Studio releases it becomes more difficult. The breakdown for the programming languages that are part of Visual Studio are: Framework CLR Language     C# VB F# 1.0 1.0.3705 1.0 7.0 - 1.1 1.1.4322 1.1 7.1 - 2.0 2.0.50727 2.0 8.0 - 3.0 2.0.50727 2.0 8.0 - 3.5 2.0.50727 2.0 9.0 - 4.0 4.0.30319 4.0 10.0 2.0   Technorati Tags: Visual Studio,.NET

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  • Visual Studio 2010 and Target Framework Version

    - by Scott Dorman
    Almost two years ago, I wrote about a Visual Studio macro that allows you to change the Target Framework version of all projects in a solution. If you don’t know, the Target Framework version is what tells the compiler which version of the .NET Framework to compile against (more information is available here) and can be set to one of the following values: .NET Framework 2.0 .NET Framework 3.0 .NET Framework 3.5 .NET Framework 3.5 Client Profile .NET Framework 4.0 .NET Framework 4.0 Client Profile This can be easily accomplished by editing the project properties: The problem with this approach is that if you need to change a lot of projects at one time it becomes rather unwieldy. One possible solution is to edit the project files by hand in a text editor and change the <TargetFrameworkVersion /> and <TargetFrameworkProfile /> properties to the correct values. For example, for the .NET Framework 4.0 Client Profile, these values would be: <TargetFrameworkVersion>v4.0</TargetFrameworkVersion> <TargetFrameworkProfile>Client</TargetFrameworkProfile> Again, this is not only time consuming but can also be error-prone. The better solution is to automate this through the use of a Visual Studio macro. Since I had already created a macro to do this for Visual Studio 2008, I updated that macro to work with Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0. It prompts you for the target framework version you want to set for all of the projects and then loops through each project in the solution and makes the change. If you select one of the Framework versions that support a Client Profile, it will ask if you want to use the Client Profile or the Full Profile. It is smart enough to skip project types that don’t support this property and projects that are already at the correct version. This version also incorporates the changes suggested by George (in the comments). The macro is available on my SkyDrive account. Download it to your <UserProfile>\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\VSMacros80\MyMacros folder, open the Visual Studio Macro IDE (Alt-F11) and add it as an existing item to the “MyMacros” project. I make no guarantees or warranties on this macro. I have tested it on several solutions and projects and everything seems to work and not cause any problems, but, as always, use with caution. Since it is a macro, you have the full source code available to investigate and see what it’s actually doing. If you find any bugs or make any useful changes, please let me know and I’ll update the macro. Technorati Tags: Macros,Visual Studio

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  • CLR 4.0: Corrupted State Exceptions

    - by Scott Dorman
    Corrupted state exceptions are designed to help you have fewer bugs in your code by making it harder to make common mistakes around exception handling. A very common pattern is code like this: public void FileSave(String name) { try { FileStream fs = new FileStream(name, FileMode.Create); } catch (Exception e) { MessageBox.Show("File Open Error"); throw new Exception(IOException); } The standard recommendation is not to catch System.Exception but rather catch the more specific exceptions (in this case, IOException). While this is a somewhat contrived example, what would happen if Exception were really an AccessViolationException or some other exception indicating that the process state has been corrupted? What you really want to do is get out fast before persistent data is corrupted or more work is lost. To help solve this problem and minimize the chance that you will catch exceptions like this, CLR 4.0 introduces Corrupted State Exceptions, which cannot be caught by normal catch statements. There are still places where you do want to catch these types of exceptions, particularly in your application’s “main” function or when you are loading add-ins.  There are also rare circumstances when you know code that throws an exception isn’t dangerous, such as when calling native code. In order to support these scenarios, a new HandleProcessCorruptedStateExceptions attribute has been added. This attribute is added to the function that catches these exceptions. There is also a process wide compatibility switch named legacyCorruptedStateExceptionsPolicy which when set to true will cause the code to operate under the older exception handling behavior. Technorati Tags: CLR 4.0, .NET 4.0, Exception Handling, Corrupted State Exceptions

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  • The Dispose Pattern (and FxCop warnings)

    - by Scott Dorman
    [This is actually a response to Bill’s blog post, but since it isn’t possible to leave this as a comment on his blog it’s a post here.] There are many different ways to implement the Dispose pattern correctly. Some are (in my opinion) better than others. In Bill’s blog post he presents a particular pattern, which is an excerpt from his book (Effective C#). The issue centers around the fact that a reader took the code sample presented in the book and ran FxCop (Code Analysis) on it, which generated a warning: “Ensure that base.Dispose() is always called.” The “lesson learned” that Bill presents is that “tools are there to help us, not control us.” While I completely agree with the belief that tools are there to help us, I think it’s important to understand why FxCop is raising this particular warning. The code presented in Bill’s book looks like: // Have its own disposed flag.private bool disposed = false;protected override void Dispose(bool isDisposing){ // Don't dispose more than once. if (disposed) return; if (isDisposing) { // TODO: free managed resources here. } // TODO: free unmanaged resources here. // Let the base class free its resources. // Base class is responsible for calling // GC.SuppressFinalize( ) base.Dispose(isDisposing); // Set derived class disposed flag: disposed = true;} This code does follow all of the guidelines for implementing the Dispose pattern. In this case, it’s presumably part of a larger example showing how to implement the pattern as part of a base class. The reason FxCop is warning you about this code is the first if statement in the Dispose method, which will cause the method to exit if disposed is true. The problem here is that there is the possibility that if the disposed flag is true, the call to base.Dispose() will never be executed. As Bill points out, it is possible for some other code elsewhere in the class to set this flag. He states that this is an “unlikely occurrence.” While that is probably true, it can be a potentially dangerous assumption to make and is one that can be easily corrected. By changing the code slightly you can remove this assumption and correct the FxCop violation. private bool disposed = false;protected override void Dispose(bool disposing){ if (!disposed) { if (disposing) { // Dispose managed resources. } // Dispose unmanaged resources. disposed = true; } base.Dispose(disposing);} Using this implementation allows the call to base.Dispose() to always occur, which ensures that the the disposal chain is always properly followed. Technorati Tags: .NET,C#,Dispose Pattern

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  • Microsoft StyleCop is now Open Source

    - by Scott Dorman
    I have previously talked about Microsoft StyleCop. For those that might not know about it, StyleCop is a source analysis tool (different from the static analysis that FxCop performs) that analyzes the source code directly. As a result, it focuses on more design (or style) issues such as layout, readability and documentation. In an interesting move (and one that I am happy to see), Microsoft has decided to make StyleCop an open source project (under the MS-PL license) available on CodePlex. (The project site isn’t up  yet, but should be in the next few weeks.) This will give the development community the opportunity to help contribute to the project, expanding support to other languages (currently it only supports C#), adding features, and fixing bugs. Shortly after the CodePlex site is up, StyleCop 4.4 will be released which includes support for C# 4.0 as well as a large number of bug fixes and other improvements. Technorati Tags: Code Style and Standard,StyleCop

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  • Visual Studio Extensions

    - by Scott Dorman
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/sdorman/archive/2013/10/18/visual-studio-extensions.aspxAs a product, Visual Studio has been around for a long time. In fact, it’s been 18 years since the first Visual Studio product was launched. In that time, there have been some major changes but perhaps the most important (or at least influential) changes for the course of the product have been in the last few years. While we can argue over what was and wasn’t an important change or what has and hasn’t changed, I want to talk about what I think is the single most important change Microsoft has made to Visual Studio. Specifically, I’m referring to the Visual Studio Gallery (first introduced in Visual Studio 2010) and the ability for third-parties to easily write extensions which can add new functionality to Visual Studio or even change existing functionality. I know Visual Studio had this ability before the Gallery existed, but it was expensive (both from a financial and development resource) perspective for a company or individual to write such an extension. The Visual Studio Gallery changed all of that. As of today, there are over 4000 items in the Gallery. Microsoft itself has over 100 items in the Gallery and more are added all of the time. Why is this such an important feature? Simply put, it allows third-parties (companies such as JetBrains, Telerik, Red Gate, Devart, and DevExpress, just to name a few) to provide enhanced developer productivity experiences directly within the product by providing new functionality or changing existing functionality. However, there is an even more important function that it serves. It also allows Microsoft to do the same. By providing extensions which add new functionality or change existing functionality, Microsoft is not only able to rapidly innovate on new features and changes but to also get those changes into the hands of developers world-wide for feedback. The end result is that these extensions become very robust and often end up becoming part of a later product release. An excellent example of this is the new CodeLens feature of Visual Studio 2013. This is, perhaps, the single most important developer productivity enhancement released in the last decade and already has huge potential. As you can see, out of the box CodeLens supports showing you information about references, unit tests and TFS history.   Fortunately, CodeLens is also accessible to Visual Studio extensions, and Microsoft DevLabs has already written such an extension to show code “health.” This extension shows different code metrics to help make sure your code is maintainable. At this point, you may have already asked yourself, “With over 4000 extensions, how do I find ones that are good?” That’s a really good question. Fortunately, the Visual Studio Gallery has a ratings system in place, which definitely helps but that’s still a lot of extensions to look through. To that end, here is my personal list of favorite extensions. This is something I started back when Visual Studio 2010 was first released, but so much has changed since then that I thought it would be good to provide an updated list for Visual Studio 2013. These are extensions that I have installed and use on a regular basis as a developer that I find indispensible. This list is in no particular order. NuGet Package Manager for Visual Studio 2013 Microsoft CodeLens Code Health Indicator Visual Studio Spell Checker Indent Guides Web Essentials 2013 VSCommands for Visual Studio 2013 Productivity Power Tools (right now this is only for Visual Studio 2012, but it should be updated to support Visual Studio 2013.) Everyone has their own set of favorites, so mine is probably not going to match yours. If there is an extension that you really like, feel free to leave me a comment!

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  • Favorite Visual Studio 2010 Extensions

    - by Scott Dorman
    Now that Visual Studio 2010 has been released, there are a lot of extensions being written. In fact, as of today (May 1, 2010 at 15:40 UTC) there are 809 results for Visual Studio 2010 in the Visual Studio Gallery. If you filter this list to show just the free items, there are still 251 extensions available. Given that number (and it is currently increasing weekly) it can be difficult to find extensions that are useful. Here is the list of extensions that I currently have installed and find useful: Word Wrap with Auto-Indent Indentation Matcher Extension Structure Adornment This also installs the following extensions: BlockTagger BlockTaggerImpl SettingsStore SettingsStoreImpl Source Outliner Triple Click ItalicComments Go To Definition Spell Checker Remove and Sort Using Format Document Open Folder in Windows Explorer Find Results Highlighter Regular Expressions Margin Indention Matcher Extension Word Wrap with Auto-Indent VSCommands HelpViewerKeywordIndex StyleCop Visual Studio Color Theme Editor PowerCommands for Visual Studio 2010 Extension Analyzer CodeCompare Team Founder Server Power Tools VS10x Selection Popup Color Picker Completion Numbered Bookmarks   Technorati Tags: Visual Studio,Extensions

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  • Retrieving Custom Attributes Using Reflection

    - by Scott Dorman
    The .NET Framework allows you to easily add metadata to your classes by using attributes. These attributes can be ones that the .NET Framework already provides, of which there are over 300, or you can create your own. Using reflection, the ways to retrieve the custom attributes of a type are: System.Reflection.MemberInfo public abstract object[] GetCustomAttributes(bool inherit); public abstract object[] GetCustomAttributes(Type attributeType, bool inherit); public abstract bool IsDefined(Type attributeType, bool inherit); System.Attribute public static Attribute[] GetCustomAttributes(MemberInfo member, bool inherit); public static bool IsDefined(MemberInfo element, Type attributeType, bool inherit); If you take the following simple class hierarchy: public abstract class BaseClass { private bool result;   [DefaultValue(false)] public virtual bool SimpleProperty { get { return this.result; } set { this.result = value; } } }   public class DerivedClass : BaseClass { public override bool SimpleProperty { get { return true; } set { base.SimpleProperty = value; } } } Given a PropertyInfo object (which is derived from MemberInfo, and represents a propery in reflection), you might expect that these methods would return the same result. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. The MemberInfo methods strictly reflect the metadata definitions, ignoring the inherit parameter and not searching the inheritance chain when used with a PropertyInfo, EventInfo, or ParameterInfo object. It also returns all custom attribute instances, including those that don’t inherit from System.Attribute. The Attribute methods are closer to the implied behavior of the language (and probably closer to what you would naturally expect). They do respect the inherit parameter for PropertyInfo, EventInfo, and ParameterInfo objects and search the implied inheritance chain defined by the associated methods (in this case, the property accessors). These methods also only return custom attributes that inherit from System.Attribute. This is a fairly subtle difference that can produce very unexpected results if you aren’t careful. For example, to retrieve the custom  attributes defined on SimpleProperty, you could use code similar to this: PropertyInfo info = typeof(DerivedClass).GetProperty("SimpleProperty"); var attributeList1 = info.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(DefaultValueAttribute), true)); var attributeList2 = Attribute.GetCustomAttributes(info, typeof(DefaultValueAttribute), true));   The attributeList1 array will be empty while the attributeList2 array will contain the attribute instance, as expected. Technorati Tags: Reflection,Custom Attributes,PropertyInfo

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  • TechEd 2010 Twitter Book Give Away

    - by Scott Dorman
    If you’re going to TechEd North America this year, Sams Publishing will be giving away 9 advanced reader copies. In order to win a copy, be sure to follow the InformIT Twitter account and the #TechEd hash tag. Sporadically throughout the day a tweet will be sent out stating that the first person who comes to the booth and mentions my book will get a copy. The give away will probably occur over multiple days, so be sure to keep an eye on Twitter. Technorati Tags: Books,Sams Teach Yourself C# 2010

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  • Cloud hosted CI for .NET projects

    - by Scott Dorman
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/sdorman/archive/2014/06/02/cloud-hosted-ci-for-.net-projects.aspxContinuous integration (CI) is important. If you don’t have it set up…you should. There are a lot of different options available for hosting your own CI server, but they all require you to maintain your own infrastructure. If you’re a business, that generally isn’t a problem. However, if you have some open source projects hosted, for example on GitHub, there haven’t really been any options. That has changed with the latest release of AppVeyor, which bills itself as “Continuous integration for busy developers.” What’s different about AppVeyor is that it’s a hosted solution. Why is that important? By being a hosted solution, it means that I don’t have to maintain my own infrastructure for a build server. How does that help if you’re hosting an open source project? AppVeyor has a really competitive pricing plan. For an unlimited amount of public repositories, it’s free. That gives you a cloud hosted CI system for all of your GitHub projects for the cost of some time to set them up, which actually isn’t hard to do at all. I have several open source projects (hosted at https://github.com/scottdorman), so I signed up using my GitHub credentials. AppVeyor fully supported my two-factor authentication with GitHub, so I never once had to enter my password for GitHub into AppVeyor. Once it was done, I authorized GitHub and it instantly found all of the repositories I have (both the ones I created and the ones I cloned from elsewhere). You can even add “build badges” to your markdown files in GitHub, so anyone who visits your project can see the status of the lasted build. Out of the box, you can simply select a repository, add the build project, click New Build and wait for the build to complete. You now have a complete CI server running for your project. The best part of this, besides the fact that it “just worked” with almost zero configuration is that you can configure it through a web-based interface which is very streamlined, clean and easy to use or you can use a appveyor.yml file. This means that you can define your CI build process (including any scripts that might need to be run, etc.) in a standard file format (the YAML format) and store it in your repository. The benefits to that are huge. The file becomes a versioned artifact in your source control system, so it can be branched, merged, and is completely transparent to anyone working on the project. By the way, AppVeyor isn’t limited to just GitHub. It currently supports GitHub, BitBucket, Visual Studio Online, and Kiln. I did have a few issues getting one of my projects to build, but the same day I posted the problem to the support forum a fix was deployed, and I had a functioning CI build about 5 minutes after that. Since then, I’ve provided some additional feature requests and had a few other questions, all of which have seen responses within a 24-hour period. I have to say that it’s easily been one of the best customer support experiences I’ve seen in a long time. AppVeyor is still young, so it doesn’t yet have full feature parity with some of the older (more established) CI systems available,  but it’s getting better all the time and I have no doubt that it will quickly catch up to those other CI systems and then pass them. The bottom line, if you’re looking for a good cloud-hosted CI system for your .NET-based projects, look at AppVeyor.

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  • TechEd 2010 Schedule and Twitter Tool

    - by Scott Dorman
    If you’re going to TechEd 2010* (North America), be sure to check out the TechEd 2010 Schedule and Twitter Tool. If you have a mobile device (Windows Mobile 6.5, Android, iPhone), a tablet (Windows 7, iPad), or even a laptop (Windows Vista or Windows 7 gadgets) then this tool is essential. It allows you to view all of the session details and build your own customized schedule. You can also keep up with all of the TechEd related Twitter traffic from the same application. By default, the #TechEd hashtag is tracked, but you can add your own favorite hash tags as well. You can also send tweets using SMS. Technorati Tags: TechEd

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  • Sams Teach Yourself Visual C# 2010 in 24 Hours at TechEd 2010

    - by Scott Dorman
    We are still ironing out some contract issues with Microsoft legal to include the Express Edition DVD with the book, but in the meantime there will be about 9 galley copies of the book which Sams will be giving away during TechEd 2010. If you’re going, be sure to stop by the Sams booth for the details on the giveaway*. Once the contract issues are resolved, the book will be officially available for purchase, but you can pre-order it now from Amazon or your favorite online book-seller. Be sure to become a fan too. *Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend TechEd this year to help promote the book so please help me by spreading the word. Technorati Tags: Books,Sams Teach Yourself C# 2010

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  • Strings in .NET are Enumerable

    - by Scott Dorman
    It seems like there is always some confusion concerning strings in .NET. This is both from developers who are new to the Framework and those that have been working with it for quite some time. Strings in the .NET Framework are represented by the System.String class, which encapsulates the data manipulation, sorting, and searching methods you most commonly perform on string data. In the .NET Framework, you can use System.String (which is the actual type name or the language alias (for C#, string). They are equivalent so use whichever naming convention you prefer but be consistent. Common usage (and my preference) is to use the language alias (string) when referring to the data type and String (the actual type name) when accessing the static members of the class. Many mainstream programming languages (like C and C++) treat strings as a null terminated array of characters. The .NET Framework, however, treats strings as an immutable sequence of Unicode characters which cannot be modified after it has been created. Because strings are immutable, all operations which modify the string contents are actually creating new string instances and returning those. They never modify the original string data. There is one important word in the preceding paragraph which many people tend to miss: sequence. In .NET, strings are treated as a sequence…in fact, they are treated as an enumerable sequence. This can be verified if you look at the class declaration for System.String, as seen below: // Summary:// Represents text as a series of Unicode characters.public sealed class String : IEnumerable, IComparable, IComparable<string>, IEquatable<string> The first interface that String implements is IEnumerable, which has the following definition: // Summary:// Exposes the enumerator, which supports a simple iteration over a non-generic// collection.public interface IEnumerable{ // Summary: // Returns an enumerator that iterates through a collection. // // Returns: // An System.Collections.IEnumerator object that can be used to iterate through // the collection. IEnumerator GetEnumerator();} As a side note, System.Array also implements IEnumerable. Why is that important to know? Simply put, it means that any operation you can perform on an array can also be performed on a string. This allows you to write code such as the following: string s = "The quick brown fox";foreach (var c in s){ System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(c);}for (int i = 0; i < s.Length; i++){ System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(s[i]);} If you executed those lines of code in a running application, you would see the following output in the Visual Studio Output window: In the case of a string, these enumerable or array operations return a char (System.Char) rather than a string. That might lead you to believe that you can get around the string immutability restriction by simply treating strings as an array and assigning a new character to a specific index location inside the string, like this: string s = "The quick brown fox";s[2] = 'a';   However, if you were to write such code, the compiler will promptly tell you that you can’t do it: This preserves the notion that strings are immutable and cannot be changed once they are created. (Incidentally, there is no built in way to replace a single character like this. It can be done but it would require converting the string to a character array, changing the appropriate indexed location, and then creating a new string.)

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  • Windows Metro Requests

    - by Scott Dorman
    Windows 8 and Windows Metro style apps have a lot of potential, but only if application vendors realize there is a demand to see their app as a Metro style app and not just as a desktop app (or worse, only as an Android or iOS app). As consumers, the only thing we can do is be vocal about our desire to see these apps on Windows 8 as a Metro style app. In an effort to raise awareness, I just launched WinMetro Requests. This is our opportunity to request Windows Metro style apps  and show those companies just how much interest there is for seeing their app as a Metro style app. This site is running on UserVoice, so it allows you to easily submit application requests, add comments, and, more importantly, vote for your favorite applications to come to Windows as a Metro style app! As I find out the status of requested applications, I will update the status of the request. If you know and have official communication from one of the companies indicating they will be or are working on a Windows Metro style app, please let me know and I'll update the status of the request after verifying (or at least trying to verify) the information.

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  • Excel macro, to copy and paste a cell value based on another cell value?

    - by Keziah Dorman
    Hi I shall try to explain clearly what I need to be able to do, here goes: I have an Excel spread sheet 1 with postcodes in column a and a number in column b. I need to create a macro/formula so that it will see the number (i.e 4) and copy and paste the postcode that number of times into sheet 2 column a underneath each other. I need to do this for the next row down etc until it comes to a blank. Sheet 1 A,B DE43PP,3 DE43PQ,8 Sheet 2 A,B DE43PP, DE43PP, DE43PP, Thanks

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  • Can regular expressions be used to match nested patterns?

    - by Richard Dorman
    Is it possible to write a regular expression that matches a nested pattern that occurs an unknown number of times. For example, can a regular expression match an opening and closing brace when there are an unknown number of open closing braces nested within the outer braces. For example: public MyMethod() { if (test) { // More { } } // More { } } // End Should match: { if (test) { // More { } } // More { } }

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  • GWB | 30 Posts in 60 Days Update

    - by Staff of Geeks
    One month after the contest started, we definitely have some leaders and one blogger who has reached the mark.  Keep up the good work guys, I have really enjoyed the content being produced by our bloggers. Current Winners: Enrique Lima (37 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/enriquelima Almost There: Stuart Brierley (28 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/StuartBrierley Dave Campbell (26 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/WynApseTechnicalMusings Eric Nelson (23 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable Coming Along: Liam McLennan (17 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/liammclennan Christopher House (13 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/13DaysaWeek mbcrump (13 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/mbcrump Steve Michelotti (10 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/michelotti Michael Freidgeim (9 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/mnf MarkPearl (9 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/MarkPearl Brian Schroer (8 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/brians Chris Williams (8 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/cwilliams CatherineRussell (7 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/CatherineRussell Shawn Cicoria (7 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/cicorias Matt Christian (7 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/CodeBlog James Michael Hare (7 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/BlackRabbitCoder John Blumenauer (7 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/jblumenauer Scott Dorman (7 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/sdorman   Technorati Tags: Standings,Geekswithblogs,30 in 60

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