Guilty as Charged

January 17, 2009 / 1 Comment

Visual Studio Keyboard Shortcuts for Editing (MSDN Flash -Jan. 19, 2009)

January 3, 2009 / 2 Comments

Knowing all the keyboard shortcuts for editing shows off our programming prowess, just like it would it did for programmers that could use VI.   Rather than describing the well known ones like CTRL+F and CTRL+H, I am going to review some that are more unique to Visual Studio Programming:

Find

Unattended Installation of Team Foundation Server 2008 on Windows 2008 with SQL Server 2008

December 15, 2008 / 1 Comment

The following are my instructions for installing a new Team Foundation Server 2008 with SP1 onto Windows 2008 with SQL Server 2008. Throughout, I followed the
TFS install guide and tried to automate where it didn’t distract me too much from the task at hand. I followed the Single-Server Team Foundation Server Installation.Folder LayoutFor the scripts to work successfully, you need the following placed into a local directory (probably without spaces in the name):

.\
dotnetfx35.exe.\SQLServer2008\ (SQL Server 2008 install).\TFS2008\ (TFS 2008 install) .\
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MSDN Flash: Keyboard Visual Studio Tips & Tricks for Dec 15. 2008

December 5, 2008 / No Comment

Originally, I was going to focus on shortcuts for the various build/compilation options within Visual Studio 2008.  However, things become a little more complicated in terms of which keyboard shortcut to use because it depends on your keyboard mapping scheme.  In this edition, therefore, I am going to discuss the Keyboard Options dialog – where different keyboard schemes are available for selection.

During the first launch of Visual Studio 2008, you are prompted with which keyboard scheme to use.  The typical options are (Default), Visual C# 2005, and Visual Basic 6. Fortunately, you can change your selection via the Tools->Customize… menu [...]

MSDN Flash: Keyboard Visual Studio Tips & Tricks for Nov 17. 2007

November 18, 2008 / No Comment

Frequently, while browsing code, we want to drill down into a method to see the implementation and then jump back out again to continue browsing code at the caller. One invaluable keystroke for doing this is F12. Placing your cursor on any identifier, you can use F12 to drill into its declaration. This works both for types as well as their members. In fact, you can use the same keystroke to jump to the definition of types in the .NET Framework. This is a great way to browse through the type’s members to see header information, including the documentation of [...]

Dynamically Typed Objects with C# 4.0

November 4, 2008 / 8 Comments

One of the announcements that emerged from the PDC is C# 4.0′s support for dynamically typed objects.  These are objects whose type is not determined until runtime.  Variables that point to such types are declared with a new contextual keyword, dynamic.  Support was added so that API calls into dynamically type languages (such as scripting languages) could be supported.  Another example where dynamically typed object support is useful is calling into IDispatch objects (something supported by VB but not C# until now).

In order to investigate how dynamic objects worked I decided to create a working sample that dynamically went against [...]

Downloading Team Explorer 2005/2008

September 17, 2008 / No Comment

While at Microsoft today, I was talking with a fellow developer who was complaining that they couldn’t download Team Explorer 2005 from MSDN, even as a VSTS subscriber.  They wanted v2005 because, although they had Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2008, they were still using Visual Studio 2005.

As it turns out, this isn’t this isn’t quite true.  If you download Team Foundation Server 2005 (either Trial or Workgroup editions), there is a TFC directory on the ISO file for the Team Explorer install.  However, there is a better solution and it doesn’t even require logging on to MSDN.  It turns out [...]

Turning Off IE Enhanced Security from the Command Line

September 12, 2008 / 1 Comment

For the most part I have much of the install for Windows 2008 operating system and programs automated (unattended).  However, one thing that I found a little more difficult to find was a command line way to turn off IE’s Enhanced Security (manually turned off from Server Manager -> Configure IE ESC.

I found an unattended method and created a batch file:

:: Backup registry keys
REG EXPORT “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components\{A509B1A7-37EF-4b3f-8CFC-4F3A74704073}” “%TEMP%.HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.SOFTWARE.Microsoft.Active Setup.Installed Components.A509B1A7-37EF-4b3f-8CFC-4F3A74704073.reg”
REG EXPORT “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components\{A509B1A7-37EF-4b3f-8CFC-4F3A74704073}” “%TEMP%.HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.SOFTWARE.Microsoft.Active Setup.Installed Components.A509B1A8-37EF-4b3f-8CFC-4F3A74704073.reg”

REG ADD “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components\{A509B1A7-37EF-4b3f-8CFC-4F3A74704073}” /v “IsInstalled” /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
REG ADD “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components\{A509B1A8-37EF-4b3f-8CFC-4F3A74704073}” /v “IsInstalled” /t REG_DWORD [...]

Mock Object Frameworks: NMock, RhinoMock, TypeMock

September 3, 2008 / 2 Comments

Recently I wanted to select a mock object framework for a new project I am starting on.  As an early developer (it wasn’t really key to the customer) spike, I decided to investigate different .NET mock object libraries: NMock, Rhino.Mocks, and TypeMock.

To appreciate these differences, consider the code samples in which the goal is to mock out a “stock provider” class (or interface) that returns stock prices (which cannot be controlled so they are tough to test).  Although the code appears to go from simpler to more complex,  that is simply because what [...]