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:

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Visual Studio Keyboard Shortcuts for Compiling (MSDN Flash – Dec. 29, 2008)

December 20, 2008 / No Comment

There is not much point in writing code if you can’t compile it so, in this edition’s keyboard shortcut tips and tricks, we are going to discuss compiling your code.  For both Visual C# and Visual Basic schemes, you can compile the entire solution using Ctrl+Shift+B.  However, three keys (requiring two hands and an elbow) is a little unfriendly for what should be a relatively frequent operation.  Fortunately, the Visual C# scheme also allows F6 for the same activity and you could map the same key for Visual Basic (unless splitting the window is a frequent occurrence for [...]

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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SQL Server 2008 Install Nightmare

December 9, 2008 / 14 Comments

It all started with an installation of Visual Studio 2008 SP1, which included SQL Server Express 2005.  From there I wished to install SQL Server 2008 Standard on the default port and upgrade SQL Server 2005 Express to SQL Server 2008 express.  Unfortunately, this proved to be a troublesome desire.  I have no idea what the cause is exactly, except that I was not the only one on my team to have issues.

At this point, I am not sure the order that things occurred exactly, but I have a host of error messages and ways to handle them.  I can’t [...]

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 [...]

My Favorite Windows 7 Features

October 28, 2008 / 1 Comment

I am a pretty tough critique when it comes to Microsoft Software announcements (perhaps because in many cases I hear about what is happening before it goes public).  However, there are some cool Windows 7 features that I am very excited about: