Intellisense in the Immediate Mode Command Window

Here is the tip of the day. But you already propably know. The command window is a great tool to use when you are debugging. But it seems some people doesn't know about it, and now thoses ones will knows.

Open the Command Window from the View Menu. If you see an ­­>, type "immed" (without "") to switch to immediate mode.

Now you can see all values you can normally see in debug mode. So if you are tired to "Add Watch", "Add Quick Watch", etc, you can now be happy about the fact that you can debug without using the mouse. Enjoy.

Standards Master 2005

I have signed for the Standards Master 2005 Beta for the Visual Studio 2005. I hope I get choosed, because, I'm currently using VS2005 to test home, and soon we will introduce it to the company I work for in the next weeks I believe. I strongly believe in coding standars and hope we can approve some soon. You sould check those links, if you are interested in the subject :

.NET Naming Conventions

Design Guidelines for Class Library Developers

Google-Suche

Naming Guidelines

Visual Basic .NET Sample Guidelines

MSDN User Group Tour: Interoperability - Resume

Great confenrence done by Luc Gauthier. Again it was not in-deep, but enough to understand the basic to allow you to go on your own. Web Services is the way to interoperate. I highly recommend, if you go in that direction, to read and learn as much as you can. It is not easy as it seems. By example, Java.Lang.Util.String is not the same as System.String. I'll try to go on Msdn and bring some link back here, in the next days.

MSDN User Group Tour: Interoperability

I'm attending to this event, in about 30 minutes. I wil write a resume tomorrow.

Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code

This book is all about refactoring. And God knows we need it. In my short carreer, I have seen entire systems who should have had a major refactoring. Before buying it, you should know you need a basic understanding of Java. If you do, you'll like it. Excellent book !

Visual Studio Tips and Tricks

Visual Studio IDE Tips and Tricks

I'm very interested in macro, so if you have any good advices to help me start with, don't be afraid to share please.

Edit : Current favorite

Crtl-Space - Show intellisense
Ctrl-K-C - Comment line
Ctrl-K-U - Uncomment line
Ctrl-Z - Undo

Custom shortcut

Alt-A - Add a Watch
Alt-Ctrl-Q - Quick Watch

I also use VbCommenter on VB projects to comment functions and class.
Also XmlVisualizer to see what a data control contains ( dataset, datatable, datarow, etc.).

Visual Studio IDE

If you have something to share on tips you have to get the most of Visual Studio, don't hesitate. My current favorite is Ctrl-Space to get the intellisense, when it does not show. :)

70-310

That's it, I'm seriously beginning to study for this exam. I'm planning to take it in the middle of april. I will share with you whatever I'm doing to learn everything I can.

Deep Dives - Web Platform

2 days ago, I went to a Deep Dives about Asp.Net 2.0. Everyone of my team has agreed to call it 'DDO' (Drag and Drop Oriented). It have been a real pain to listen it until the end. Maybe we got 10 minutes of code, that is when the presentator's computer wasn't freezing because he was running Virtual Pc on it (why didn't he shuts it down for the presentation). Well, it's not his fault, the one who was supposed to do it, was too late because of his plane, and it was not in English but in French because of that. We get some great gifts to compensate. A book to introduce Asp.net 2.0 and a backpack.

So, here is a resume :

The first 3 hours, the presentator talked about Master Page, Theme and Skin. Really interesting in the fact that everything will be so easy in the futur. Just drag your theme into a specified folder, and modify Web.Config to get it activated on the run. Oh and some really interesting stuff in the Code (or app_code later) directory. Just drag a code file in here to get it compiled and ready to run in the project. Also we can now have multiple programming languages on the same project. And there is no more vbproj or csproj file on a Web Site project. A project will be a directory. We did not talk about Edit and Continue.

For the next hour, we talked about Data Acess, MemberShip, IdeaBlade, WebPart, SharePoint. This was so much condensated that we didn't learn a lot, but enough to get a general idea about it. There is now a DataSourceObject object that is supposed to get better separated layer in the tiered application. MemberShip will really be a joke from now on. No more login, managing user, role, personal information, etc.. Everything is now integrated and can be accessed via WebAdmin.axd (maybe wrong). We have also taked a look at Web Part, who really simplified dynamic Web Page. The user will only see what he wants to see and can reorganize everything.

Now for Idea Blade, we do not had the time to look at it, but I have done some research on my own. For what I have seen in the demo, it's an advanced ORM, to link with database, and create our Data Acess Layer. I will take a look at it, in the next few days.

Deep Dives - Web Platform

Tomorrow morning i'm attending to this presentation about ASP.NET 2.0 (since it's what I working with). This one is presented by Adam Gallant who is a .Net Developer Specialist and has been working for Microsoft since 1993. I hope it will not be a marketing speech but a code-oriented one (that's what I'm interested in). 4 hours of full new things for me and I will probably not be deceived (and probably get another bunch of cd that will stay on the desk for another 3 months...). I will get you informed as soon as I can.

Oh and another thing, we switched to C# at my job :) Can't be better I think :)

SharePoint 2003 - Adventure

I now have the mission of setting a SharePoint portal in the company I work for. Today, I just tried to put a page in it, and so far I have not been able. So if you have any good links, suggestions or anything else.. please help me!