DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by darrenstokes

C# Identify Crisis, You Have To Know Your Identity

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:45:00 GMT

Marking the beginning of the end of C# as language and its ongoing identity crisis.

CodeRush Xpress 9.2

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 05:45:03 GMT

The free CodeRush Xpress from DevExpress provides C# and VB developers with powerful extensions to Visual Studio. These features include editing and refactoring tools that make it easier for you to quickly produce well designed code. Version 9.2 of CodeRush Xpress, which shipped on August 25, 2009, has greatly improved memory and performance characteristics.

Desktop application design tips when using an O/R Mapper

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:45:01 GMT

Blog post including tips about how to make the development of desktop application easier when using an O/R Mapper

Win ReSharper personal licenses in the Cool Snippets Code-Off

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:30:02 GMT

All you have to do is submit a cool code snippet! JetBrains have agreed to provide a ReSharper personal license for every hundred entries.

Zen is Live!

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:00:02 GMT

Zen, the lean project management tool, is now open to the public!

Fast Add Reference Dialog for VS 2010

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT

I have spent a couple of days on implementing a fast add reference dialog box for Visual Studio. The time of adding a reference has been a great time to have some coffee, to have lunch, or even a way to save economy (remember, developer time costs money!).

Visual Studio 2010: Web.config transforms

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:15:00 GMT

Recently I wrote about Visual Studio 2010 and multiple web.config files support. Let's see how to play with web.config transformation so we can use one configuration on development environment and the other for production environment.

Useful Visual Studio Shortcuts-Some new VS 2010 shortcuts included too

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:45:00 GMT

Here's a compilation of some Visual Studio keyboard shortcuts that I personally find useful. I have included some that may make their way into the Visual Studio 2010 release.

The Greatest Exception Handling WTF?!? of All Time

Thu, 28 May 2009 08:00:00 GMT

The Exception object has ONE purpose and ONE purpose only - to represent a runtime error, nothing more. Exceptions should never be used for purposes for which they were not intended -- or you could end up with this monstrosity...

Visual Studio 2008 Built-in C# Code Snippets Cheat Sheet

Thu, 21 May 2009 09:45:34 GMT

A printer-friendly list of all the C# snippets that come with Visual Studio 2008.

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 for MSDN Subscribers

Tue, 19 May 2009 05:46:09 GMT

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 is now on MSDN along with .Net 4 Beta 1. Some highlights from the information: .Net 4.0 Cloud Development - Windows Azure which is basically utility computing where you pay by the hour for your usage. Parallel Development - Not sure if this only means PLINQ for .Net developers or if they are only talking about C++ devs. TDD Improvements - Editor changes for building test cases first, and then writing the code. ASP.NET - CSS grids and design surfaces changes, more Javascript debugging improvements. C++ Compiler - Lots of changes for C++ development, including MFC. Sharepoint templates New Project Templates Windows 7 - MFC updates for Ribbon UI, and WPF changes. Application Model Changes - Reverse existing codebases, and lots of changes in Architect Edition to support more model types (including Class Libraries finally). Test Runner - This is potentially huge as it allows testers to submit bug reports complete with callstacks and traces that you can actually use to resume an app at the error point to avoid the dreaded No Repro on bug reports. I have seen this demo and it is quite impressive. We will see how it actually works though.

Five Reasons for using an ORM Tool

Fri, 15 May 2009 23:46:03 GMT

Gud intro of as what orm tools do...

Creating a Custom Observable Collection in WPF | UX and WPF ramblings

Thu, 14 May 2009 01:16:02 GMT

One of the biggest advantadges WPF has is its Data Binding features. Data Binding can be done in several ways, but the most common is using the INotifyPropertyChanged and INotifyCollectionChanged interfaces. For simple objects, all you need to do is implement the INotifyPropertyChanged, and raise the PropertyChanged event when your properties change. When you want to bind to a collection, you will want to use ObservableCollection<T>. This collection implements both interfaces, therefore notifying you when the items in the collection change and when the items' properties change. This works great if you're using standard collections. The problem arises when you want to use a custom collection. For databinding to work with custom collections, you will have to create a new "Observable" wrapper around it.

YUI Compressor for Visual Studio

Wed, 13 May 2009 02:01:14 GMT

Add a custom tool in visual studio for YUI Compressor.

Open Source or Die - The Real Future of Graffiti?

Tue, 12 May 2009 10:16:02 GMT

Telligent's Graffiti hasn't quite flatlined yet, but the signs aren't looking too good. Could OSS be the way to breathe life back into this once-promising CMS platform?

HowTo: Visual Studio using the Shared Profile feature in Parallels

Fri, 08 May 2009 18:42:10 GMT

Loading projects in Visual Studio using the Shared Profile feature in Parallels

Free T4 Editor for your ASP.NET MVC T4 Templates available

Fri, 08 May 2009 23:01:06 GMT

Found on tangible blog, that the new tangible T4 Editor 1.4 FREE EDITION now includes full Intelli-Sense support for MVC Host and related namespaces used in ASP.NET MVC 1.0 RTM T4 Templates. In addition it provides a nice highlighting for ASP.NET and T4 Code. Seems like anyone can now edit MVC T4 Templates with full comfort without investing a penny. Awesome!

MonoDevelop On Mac OSX

Wed, 06 May 2009 21:59:27 GMT

MonoDevelop and Silverlight development on Mac OSX

NHibernate: Transparent pre generation of lazy loading proxies in VS

Tue, 05 May 2009 17:55:36 GMT

Pre generate NHibernate lazy loading proxies with minimal changes to project, build and deploy configuration, to make whole process of proxies pre generation transparent as much as possible.

Adding Default Assemblies, Namespaces and Control Prefixes in Config

Wed, 06 May 2009 04:16:05 GMT

The fact that you can assign namespace and assemblies in your web.config file is one of the most underused features of ASP.NET

Castle Windsor 2.0 RTM Released!

Tue, 05 May 2009 11:46:04 GMT

Some would say that it is about time, I would agree. Windsor might not be the OSS project in pre release state for the longest time (I think that the honor belong to Hurd), but it spent enough time at that state to at least deserve a honorary mention. f you will look, you won't find Windsor 1.0, only release candidates for 1.0. As I believe I mentioned, Windsor has been production ready for a long time, and for the full release we decided to skip the 1.0 designator, which doesn't really fit, and go directly to 2.0

Boot Image Creation Tool

Mon, 04 May 2009 02:03:06 GMT

Open Source Boot Image Creation Tool in C#. Part of MOSA Project.

Creating Visual Studio Templates from your Web Projects

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 04:16:03 GMT

Visual Studio has the nice capability to create project templates from existing projects and with a little bit of work it's real easy to create a project environment that's ready to roll without having to dig for related components first. This applies to Web projects more than anything for me as I have a fair bit of generic utility code that is project specific and needs to be added to just about all projects. Templates make this real quick and easy. Here's how.

My New Favorite Tool: OneNote

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 05:01:15 GMT

Review of Microsoft OneNote 2007 relating to the developer.

Static Method Interception in .NET with C# and Mono.Cecil

Sat, 02 May 2009 02:01:02 GMT

Interested in Mono.Cecil? A very short introduction to a very cool and powerful tool.