Snowball - The Blog

This week, Microsoft announced WebsiteSpark, a new program designed to jumpstart business development for small Web development/design companies that helps drive new business opportunities by providing tools, solutions, support, training, and increased visibility and connections with partners and customers.

The program offers companies with 10 members Microsoft software and solutions, including training, support and market exposure for their products. This way, Microsoft offers them the help they need in the crucial first years. Certainly in these hard economy, this program can help a starting business a lot.

The program offers an entire ecosystem of customer, partners and professionals to connect with one another. This way, a company can broaden its customer base (available via www.microsoft.com/web/websitespark/market, available later this fall). Also, support in provided where needed, including technical support from Microsoft, managed newsgroups and MSDN dev community resources. Last, but certainly not least, the program offers immediate access to all software your company may need: Microsoft dev tools and web server and database production licenses!

All the info you need to sign-up, can be found at www.microsoft.com/web.

A few weeks back, JetBrains released version 4.5 of ReSharper, probably the most popular and most widely-used plug-in for Visual Studio. All of the features included in the product, can be found here.

I have to admit, while I liked the plug-in earlier already, I've been always a bit afraid of the performance implications it brings along. Since it does background compiling, it is putting more load on your machine, mostly in memory usage. This also resulted in longer loading times for projects. I remember when loading a DotNetNuke website, it took quite long to load the project.

The main goal of the 4.5 release was performance and memory usage. In the newsletter that announced the release, you could read the following:
" As announced, the new version features major improvements in performance and memory usage. After all, what is a productivity tool for if not for being agile, robust and responsive?"

I was eagerly awaiting this version, mainly because of this improvements, so I installed it immediately. I'm currently doing a project where I work on a VPC (Virtual PC image), so that would be a good test.

Since then, I'm really blown away by it. It has great performance now, you only notice a small delay when loading or creating a project. Once running, there's no noticeable difference anymore between running with or without ReSharper. The memory usage of the devenv.exe process is still higher than without Resharper, but again, it went down since previous releases.

My development machine is also the one I use most of the time to do presentations and demo's. I do disable Resharper when giving presentations, since it may confuse attendees when seeing other IntelliSense. Also, like I said, creating an application is a tad slower still, so for demo purposes, that's not a good thing.

Some people argued that running Visual Studio without Resharper was not what a professional developer should do. My only argument against that, up until now, was the performance hit you suffered. Since that is now also gone, I don't see a reason why you should not have it in your toolbox.

More info on the product can be found at www.jetbrains.com.

PS: I'm not sponsored by JetBrains to write this review, it's my personal opinion.

While doing my sessions @Techdays Belgium, I used for the first time a little application called Snippet Manager to drag code snippets into my code. It's not something I created myself, it's created by Karen Corby (Microsoft).

You can download it here.

The Visual Web Developer created V2.0 of the spell checker for Visual Studio and makes it compatible with Visual Studio 2008 at once.

The spell checker now supports text verification in:

• HTML style comments <-- HTML -->
• ASP.NET server side comments: <%-- ASP.NET --%>
• JScript, C# and C++ comments: // C++ style comments
• CSS and C style comments: /* C style comments */
• VB and VBScript style comments: 'This is VB comment

The free plugin can be downloaded here.

Kris has a link to a new little tool named LinqPad on his blog.

From the site:
Tired of querying in antiquated SQL?
Well, you don't have to!  LINQPad lets you interactively query SQL databases in a modern query language: LINQ.  Kiss goodbye to SQL Management Studio!

LINQPad supports everything in C# 3.0 and Framework 3.5:

LINQ to SQL
LINQ to Objects
LINQ to XML
LINQPad is also a terrific tool for learning LINQ: it comes preloaded with 200 examples from the recently released C# 3.0 in a Nutshell.  There's no better way to experience the coolness of LINQ and functional programming.

LINQPad is free and needs no installation: just download and run.  The executable is only 1MB and is self-updating.

I came across 2 interesting plugins for Visual Studio 2005 today, that could make your life as a developer a little easier again.
The first one is a UML designer that integrates with the IDE. Best of all, it's completely free. To download it, go here (registration required, but as said, free!).

As with everything, best things come in pairs. The second plugin is a new ORM tool that also integrates with Visual Studio 2005. It provides a rich API and a powerful definition generator which, with a few clicks, transforms your database into a full featured business object model, following the powerful Active Record pattern.

To download (a free edition is available, see website for details on usage), go here.

Now go and play with these new tools! If you have any good (or bad) experience with them, please share.

One of my favorite tools of SysInternals is ProcessExplorer. It's a nice replacement for Task Manager in Windows XP/2003/Vista, as it shows much more detailed info on the running processes.

It even allows you to check which processes are hosted by which svchost process, and that in turn can help you determine what process it using more memory than allowed (handy when trying to find memory leaks in your programs).

Version 11 was released earlier this week, bundled with even more features and a crisper looking UI. You can get it, as always for free, here.

A new updated version of XML Notepad 2007 was released earlier this week.
Here's what changed:

At its partner conference in Denver, Microsoft unveiled the launch dates of their most anticipated products: Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008. All 3 products will be released on February 27, 2008 on an official launch party in Los Angeles.

It was expected that at least Windows Server 2008 would be released this year, since Microsoft is hosting their websites currently already on the new platform. This prediction is thus not true, however, just as with Windows Vista, it's expected that Microsoft will release an RTM version as early as November via MSDN and Technet.

Visual Studio 2008, currently still in Beta 1, will soon be brought to beta 2 status, probably in about 3 weeks from now, as rumour has it in the Microsoft hallways .
SQL Server is currently available as a CTP.

Microsoft wants to present the combination of this 3 products as the premium platform for developing webapplications and services.

On a sidenote, Microsoft will release Vista SP1 as a beta around July 16th, with the final release coming mid November.

Now, that's a lot of joyous news on the release front, isn't it?

A new CTP was released of SandCastle. Here's what's new:

Via DotNetKicks, I found a program that can come in handy when developing webapplications, certainly if you're also doing some layout stuff: StyleSpread. Also when testing your design in several browsers, it might come in very handy!

An ebook is always good to have near when you come across some problem or question. When it's one that you can get for free, it's even better.
I found a free one on Powershell here.

The book gives you a short introduction with many exercises about the interactive part of Windows PowerShell as well as some hints how to use other objects like WMI, .NET or COM objects like Excel or Internet Explorer.

Introduced way back in 2005, the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar is not in beta anymore. A final version for Windows XP, 2003 and Vista is available!
For those of you who don't know what this plug-in is, it's a handy tool that let's you explore everything on a webpage: see table borders, change size of the browser window, explore the DOM...
In short, it has become an unmissable tool for developing ASP.net webapplications.

The most important features are the following:

• Explore and modify the document object model (DOM) of a Web page.
• Locate and select specific elements on a Web page through a variety of techniques.
• Selectively disable Internet Explorer settings.
• View HTML object class names, ID's, and details such as link paths, tab index values, and access keys.
• Outline tables, table cells, images, or selected tags.
• Validate HTML, CSS, WAI, and RSS web feed links.
• Display image dimensions, file sizes, path information, and alternate (ALT) text.
• Immediately resize the browser window to a new resolution.
• Selectively clear the browser cache and saved cookies. Choose from all objects or those associated with a given domain.
• Display a fully featured design ruler to help accurately align and measure objects on your pages.
• Find the style rules used to set specific style values on an element.
• View the formatted and syntax colored source of HTML and CSS

You can download the tool here.

Last year, I had the opportunity to have a lunch meeting with Lutz Roeder. I was able to talk with him about life at Microsoft in Redmond, the creation of the Expression suite, and of course, Reflector, the very popular .net class browser, used by every .net programmer that respects himself!
Since a few weeks, the new version of this popular program was released, version 5 that is.
In this article, I’ll discuss some of the new functions and also some of the lesser known functions that were already in previous versions, so you can get the most out of this magnificent tool.

Obtaining the newest version
First, if you haven’t done already, download Reflector here: http://www.aisto.com/roeder/dotnet or if you have an old version installed, you can have it auto-update via the Help menu. There are a great number of extensions available. These are put together on a codeplex site that can be found here: http://www.codeplex.com/reflectoraddins.

Getting started with version 5

One of the very handy new functions is the possibility to register Reflector with Explorer. This way, Reflector will become the default option for your DLL files.

Double-clicking on any .net DLL will open Reflector, and you’ll be able to see the contents of the assembly.
To do this, open a command window, browse to the directory where you have extracted Reflector and run the following command: Reflector /register .You should now get a message that registering went OK, as can be seen on the image below.

Assembly lists

If like me, you use Reflector a lot, perhaps on different projects, the list of assemblies in Reflector can become very long. On top of that, the memory use is way higher (I noticed that on my PC, don’t know if this is the case everywhere though) if you have more assemblies loaded in the browser.

There is however a feature that can help solve this annoyance: assembly lists. Press CTRL-L or File à Open List to open the Assembly List Management dialog.

As you can see, I have a number of lists in my window. Each of these corresponds to a list of DLLs that will be displayed in the browser when loaded.
You can create a new list, which is blank by default. In the browser, you can then load assemblies that will only be displayed when that particular list is selected.

Code URL

Something completely new in version 5 is the so-called “Code URL” support.
Simply select any item in the browser and press Ctrl-Alt-C. This will copy the code-URI for that item in the following format (I selected System.Web.HttpCookie): code://System.Web:2.0.0.0:b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Web.HttpCookie.

If you have Reflector installed, clicking the following link in IE will fire up Reflector and immediately browse to the class/method/assembly described in the URL. You can test it with the following link: code://System.Web:2.0.0.0:b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Web.HttpCookie.
This feature can also come in handy to pass a link to a colleague, even over MSN!

.net 3.5 support

Even though it is still some months away, Reflector already offers support for .net 3.5. You can enable it via the Options window.

Included in .net 3.5 are C# 3.0 and LINQ. Reflector now includes full support for both of these.

Also, it now offers support for anonymous methods and nullable types.

The new assembly browser
The most important part of Reflector is of course the assembly browser itself. While it was already fast, it didn’t include the possibility to open multiple windows at the same time. That limitation is now gone! For example, you can open the Analyzer and the Disassembler at the same time.

Disassembler and Analyzer

Both the Disassembler and the Analyzer got some new functions in this new release.
The Disassembler now has a “Expand Methods” function, that, like the name says, will expand all functions right in the same window.

The result:

The Analyzer, which you can find by right-clicking an assembly, also has some new functions: Exposed by, Instantiated by and Assigned by.
These functions can greatly help you in funding where certain classes are used within the assembly.

BAML Disassembling

While Reflector is great, the extensions available for it make it even greater.
Personally, I do a lot of WPF, and it’s very handy to be able to read the XAML code for things you encounter on the net. For this, we now have the BAML Disassembler. You can read more on this extension here: http://wpfwonderland.wordpress.com/2007/01/27/reflector-and-wpf-baml-disassembler-revisited/

"Refactor! is freely available to all ASP.NET 2.0 developers and offers a comprehensive suite of tools that enable you and your team to simplify and shape complex code and HTML markup - making your web applications easier to read and less costly to maintain."

You can download it here: http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/IDETools/RefactorASP/

Appearantly, I missed this one on release...
It's the January CTP of Orcas, the next Visual Studio.

Go here for the download (a hefty 5GB): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1FF0B35D-0C4A-40B4-915A-5331E11C39E6&displaylang=en

And another interesting release for webdevelopers like myself is the beta 3 of the web developer toolbar. It has been very long since that has been updated (I think I was even working at real at that time...). Anyway, here it is: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=e59c3964-672d-4511-bb3e-2d5e1db91038&displaylang=en&tm

I found this post very interesting. It contains a list of all tools a .net developer should have installed to work efficiently.
Take a look here.

My article on WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) triggers and styles is online on the MSDN website! You can read it here!

From MSDN:
In this article, Gill Cleeren focuses on the aspect of styles and triggers in Windows Presenation Foundation. Styles make it possible to create applications with a uniform look and with a high level of maintainability. Triggers allow WPF styles to change one or more properties in response of a user interaction. In this document, we will use both these technologies to create a richer user experience.

This is my first article on MSDN (more will come, now that I'm into it )

Here's a screenshot of the MSDN Belux site (Click for larger version)



Thanks to the MSDN Belux team, Wim Verhaegen and Tom Mertens.

From the site:

Web.UI for ASP.NET AJAX is deeply integrated into the AJAX Library client-side type system:

All controls inherit from the Sys.UI.Control client-side base class;
All controls implement AJAX Library type descriptors, providing type information at runtime;
The namespace and all types are registered with the AJAX Library type system;

Web.UI for ASP.NET AJAX exposes comprehensive client-side APIs:

An industry first, the same level of programmatic control is available on the client as on the server;
The new APIs fully comply with the AJAX Library client-side syntax and semantics;
State of the art client-side API reference documentation is included with the product;

Web.UI for ASP.NET AJAX is optimized to work with the ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanel control:

All client-side programmatic changes are persisted to the server upon callbacks or postbacks;
Proper client-side dispose mechanisms are used to optimize browser's memory consumption;
Control footprint is highly optimized in order to provide the fastest callback response time.

More here: http://atlas.componentart.com/

Microsoft has released a new add-in tool to help Visual Basic developers preserve Visual Basic 6 applications and breathe .Net into them.  Microsoft released its Interop Forms Toolkit 1.0 as a free add-in that simplifies the process of displaying .Net WinForms in a VB6 application.

The new toolkit not only helps to preserve VB6 applications, but also lets developers add functionality to them through additional .Net forms. For example, a developer could provide more dynamic content by adding a WinForm that accesses Web services or RSS feeds, Microsoft said.

Moreover, instead of upgrading the entire code base, VB6 applications can be extended one form at a time, Microsoft said.

"The goal is a phased upgrade, with production releases at the end of each iteration containing both Visual Basic 6 and Visual Basic .Net forms running in the same Visual Basic 6 process," according to a Microsoft Web page describing the new toolkit.

More here.

Yesterday, Microsoft announced during the Gamefest 2006-event in Seattle, the XNA Game Studio Express. Like the name says, it is a development tool to allow developers, hobbyists and students to write games for the PC and XBox360.

Like the other express editions, it will be available for free, at least if you want to develop for the PC. If however you want to develop for the 360, a fee of 99 dollar is to be payed. This way, developers get access to the "Creators Club". Members of this club can build and test their games on the 360 platform. The distribution of these home-brewn games is probably to be done via the Xbox Live Arcade.

The mayor reason Microsoft wants to attract more people to developing games, is the current cost involved these days to develop a full-blown game. "Big" games cost big money and take up to 3 years to develop. Companies like EA, MS... don't dare to take risks to develop anything new, so the creativity is limited. Developers can't really try out new concepts. With these tools, more people are able to make their ideas into reality, perhaps opening up a whole new world for the game-industry.
Over time, MS hopes to have an entire community where people can distribute their games, and can express their opinion on other games, seperating the hits from the flops.

Now, about the launch date... Microsoft is expecting to launch the first CTP by the end of August. The final version will be released be released in November or perhaps December of this year!
The programming language used will be C#.

Microsoft is said to be doing this to keep get more people on the 360 platform, and keep them away from the PS3, which is due somewhere later this year.

My favorite documentation tool in Visual Studio 2005 is updated to a new version, namely 1.9.5.

Don't know GhostDoc? Here's some info:
GhostDoc is a free add-in for Visual Studio that automatically generates XML documentation comments. Either by using existing documentation inherited from base classes or implemented interfaces, or by deducing comments from name and type of e.g. methods, properties or parameters.


Go here to download the tool.