Customized .Net OpenFileDialog in C#(OpenFileDialogEx)

The Code Project - Customizing OpenFileDialog in .Net

"...

How many times had happen where you want to put some extra control in the OpenFileDialog control and you can’t…

Searching for code on the .Net I found a couple places where they used MFC, but nothing for .Net. OpenFileDialog is not native implemented in .Net, instead it make use of a Win32 API “GetOpenFileName”.

a) Create my own OpenFileDialog from scratch.
b) Create my own OpenFileDialog reusing resources, (using the API “GetOpenFileName” and provide my own template)
c) Hack on .Net OpenFileDialog and add the functionality I need for it.

A – Was not an option because it could require a lot of development time when there is a lot more stuff to be done, later when the product is finished I can review this.
B – Required to provide my own template using calls to Win32 API and resources.
C – Was the more viable option at this time, don’t think of this as a bad hack, basically a hack is when you want make the control do some extra functionality and you must from different thread or process.

So because I like the challenges, I decided to “hack” OpenFileDialog class to create my own customizable control. ..."

I was just thinking about a new/tweaked file open dialog (with a large image preview) for my Picture Post WLW Plugin.

Looks like Castor has just saved me a good bit of time... ;)

Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Announcement

SharePoint Apps: Alexander Malek's weblog - Welcome to VS extensions for WSS!

"Greetings from TechEd Barcelona! Today, we finally got to announce a project I've been working on for the last year: "Visual Studio 2005 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0". Yup, the name's a mouthful :). Explaining it is pretty easy though - make "F5" work for SharePoint stuff in VS! That's essentially what VSeWSS brings to the table. Once you have it installed, you can actually boot VS, create stuff for WSS and have it work. For example, if you want to build a web part, from the "New Project" dialog in VS, choose "Web Part" under the "C#/SharePoint" node. Add some code and you're done. You can hit F5 and immediately debug your web part. Pretty cool, no?

..."

Very nice... When/if I get back into the WSS dev biz, this could come in handy.

I'm very glad these VS2005 Extensions are coming out and we don't have to wait for Orcas to ship... (and thereby giving MS time to get Orcas right?)

Execute T-SQL Scripts (with GO's) Programmatically with SMO (or DMO)

Jon Galloway - Handling "GO" Separators in SQL Scripts - the easy way

"If you've ever had to execute one or more SQL scripts from ADO.NET, you've likely run into the GO batch terminator issue....

Until recently, there have been two ways to handle this problem - execute SQL scripts by shelling to OSQL, or splitting the script on GO separators and running them in sequence. Both solutions kind of worked, but SQL Server Management Objects (SMO) has a better solution for us: Server.ConnectionContext.ExecuteNonQuery(), which parses T-SQL statements and "gets" the GO statement as a batch separator. And the crowd goes wild!!!

..."

This is a very cool tip from Jon. And it smells much better than OSQL or GO parsing based solutions...

And for those of us in SQL2k land, it looks like SQL DMO has similar functionality in its SQLServer/SQLDatabase .ExecuteImmediate, .ExecuteWithResults, .ExecuteWithResultsAndMessages methods.

I tested ExecuteImmediate with a test T-SQL script with a number of GO's (creating a table, SP, dropping the SP, creating it again, all in one script with GO's separating the batches) and it seemed to work just as expected...

Related Past Post XRef:
Call SQLCMD from .Net with Output Capture

.Net 3 RTM's

I know you're probably already be seeing this news, but just in case...

The .Net Framework 3.0 (WCF, WPF, WF, etc) has been officially released/RTM/etc.

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 Redistributable Package 

Microsoft® Windows® Software Development Kit for Windows Vista™ and .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components

Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP

Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (Windows Workflow Foundation)

Now that it's real, it's time to REALLY start playing with it... WF here, I come.  ;)

(via Bryant Likes's Blog - .NET 3.0 Released!!!)

Wow for WoW

Surround gaming with TripleHead2Go
World of Warcraft

OMG, that just rocks... I so want this.

Santa, you read my blog, right?

;)

(via The ADO Guy - Playing WOW With Matrox's Three Headed Card...I am jealous!)

Microsoft VHD Edition Day...

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition VHD

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 VHD - 32-bit version

Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2006 VHD

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition VHD

"The Microsoft VHD Test Drive Program provides customers with an enhanced server-based software evaluation experience that’s faster, better supported and more flexible. You can now access the entire catalog of pre-configured Microsoft and partner products and solutions in the VHD format and start evaluating and testing today from www.microsoft.com/vhd.

..."

Run IT on a Virtual Hard Disk

"The Microsoft VHD format is the common virtualization file format that provides a uniform product support system, and provides more seamless manageability, security, reliability and cost-efficiency for customers.

Using the power of virtual machines, you can now quickly evaluate Microsoft and partner solutions through a series of pre-configured Virtual Hard Disks (VHD). You can download the VHDs and evaluate them for free in your own environment without the need for dedicated servers or complex installations. Start now by selecting a lab from the VHD catalog below.

..."

Very nice and makes good sense. Since Virtual PC is free, this is the near perfect way to let people play with different products.

For example, I'd like to check out Exchange 2007, but didn't want to deal with the whole install thing... This makes it a slam dunk.

Another Weekend, Another WLW Plugin - WLW Picture Post Plugin

I've recently been bitten by the photo post bug... But I'm a lazy guy and want the photo uploading and posting to be easy and to not distract from my writing (such as it is).

While there's an already very cool Flickr browser/search plugin for WLW (Flickr4Writer), it doesn't yet allow uploading or support other Flickr API hosts (i.e. Zooomr).

So that meant it was time to put on my WLW Plugin Coder hat.

The above post is the result (i.e. it works, Yeah!!!)

It's still very alpha at this point, and I need to get permission from work to release it, yada, yada, yada. But it's do'able and it works. I'm waiting on my Zooomr API Key, after which I'll add support for it too...

Hat's off to Sam Judson(FlickrNet API Library) and Tim Heuer (Flickr4Writer) for their outstanding work. I'm standing on the shoulders of giants (which makes changing light bulbs much easier ;)

Zooomr Pro Upgrade Post...

Because I want a free Zooomr Pro upgrade...

Now I wonder if there's a Zooomr plugin for WLW, that includes uploading? Have to look, because if not, well...  ;)

(via plaxoed! - Free Zooomr Pro account? I’m there!)

CORK - ClickOnce community Resource Kit

patterns & practices - Smart Client Software Factory: Downloads: Home - ClickOnce Community Resource Kit

"Deploying client applications with ClickOnce requires a lot of procedural steps to accomplish and there are many variations in the way development organizations want to manage their deployments. This ClickOnce Community Resource Kit contains over 70 pages of written guidance and How-To topics that will lead you through common scenarios. Accompanying the written guidance is a Manifest Manager Utility sample that will make it easier to accomplish those steps through a custom tool. This tool also provides sample code for how to program against the ClickOnce manifest APIs to create other custom tools for manipulating manifests beyond what Visual Studio and the SDK tools support. There is also guidance and a sample implementation for putting a custom server repository source for your ClickOnce application files using SQL Server. This material, written by IDesign architect Brian Noyes, author of Smart Client Deployment with ClickOnce (http://www.softinsight.com/clickoncebook), will help get you up and running with ClickOnce deployment quickly. You can contact Brian at brian.noyes@idesign.net." [Content Leached in full]

I made that up, CORK, but I like it so I'm going to use it... ;)

While the 66 page PDF focuses on ClickOnce and CAB, it also contains a good bit of additional great ClickOnce information. If this is the kind of stuff we're going to see in Brian's ClickOnce book, then I'm glad I have it on my Amazon wish list... :)

(via Eugenio Pace - patterns & practices Client Architecture Guidance - ClickOnce, CAB and SCSF)

Oracle Buys Stellent

ORACLE TO ACQUIRE STELLENT

"EDEN PRAIRIE, MN, Nov. 2, 2006 — Stellent, Inc. (Nasdaq: STEL), a global provider of content management solutions, today announced a definitive agreement for Oracle to acquire Stellent through a cash tender offer for $13.50 per share, or approximately $440 million.

..."

I've been using their OutsideIn technology (The tech behind QuickView, etc) for years now... I wonder how this will affect that product line?

It looks like Oracle bought them for their Content Management System. I hope their Component Division (where OutsideIn lives) doesn't die...

Since OutsideIn is a key technology (at least in the fields/ apps/ areas/ industries/ etc where it's used) with few competitors, they wouldn't let it die...would they? (sigh...)

Slick Edit Gadgets - Free VS2005 Utilities

"SlickEdit has released SlickEdit^® Gadgets, a collection of free utilities or the Microsoft^® Visual Studio^® 2005 development environment. It is completely free. 

SlickEdit Gadgets is an assortment of useful utilities to help programmers monitor, explore, and inspect the contents of their code. 

SlickEdit Gadgets include:

• Editor Gadgets: Four utilities that add visual pizzazz to your editor, such as background images and wallpaper.
• Command Spy: Monitors command execution and allows you to see exactly what commands you've run, how many times you've run them and what key bindings are used to invoke those commands.
• File Explorer: Provides an easy way to open solutions, projects, or single files in Visual Studio.
• Data Object Analyzer: Inspects the contents of any clipboard operation, or drag-and-drop operation, from any other application.
• SLOC Report: Provides a graphical report of the total lines of code in a file, project, or solution.

To download a free copy of SlickEdit Gadgets visit http://www.slickedit.com/gadgets.  "

I just got the above email and while I usually don't post on marketing emails, this one is an exception.

The Editor gadgets look cool and the Data Object Analyzer is something I could have used just a few days ago (when I was playing my clipboard games).

The price is just right too (free)... No strings seem to be attached (no registration or anything is required to download) and you do not need to already have any SlickEdit products installed. It's a free, stand alone product to get you interested in their SlickEdit Tools for VS2005 product.

Downloaded and installed. So far, so good...

Orcas 10-2006 CTP

Microsoft Downloads - Microsoft Pre-release Software Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" - October Community Technology Preview (CTP)

"...

Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" delivers on Microsoft’s vision of smart client applications by enabling developers to rapidly create connected applications that deliver the highest quality rich user experiences. This new version enables any size organization to rapidly create more secure, manageable, and more reliable applications that take advantage of Windows Vista and the 2007 Office System. By building these new types of applications, organizations will find it easier than ever before to capture and analyze information so that they can make effective business decisions.

This download is the October 2006 Community Technology Preview of Microsoft Visual Studio Code-Named “Orcas”.

...

ADO.NET 3.0 Advancements

• Developers can build can create scripts as actual programs –instead of VBS scripts- that are still completely self-contained in a single file and can be trivially modified, compiled and executed in any environment that has .NET installed.
• eSQL language support enables developers to build applications that provide users with an ad-hoc query capability.

A new date time data structure that can specify an exact point in time relative to the UTC time zone.

New IO types that expose almost all pipe functionality provided by Windows.

• Pipes can be used to achieve inter-process communication (IPC) between any process running on the same machine, or on any other windows machine within a network. We’ve added managed support for both anonymous pipes and named pipes.

..."

Some interesting highlights in this release...

Related Past Post XRef:
Missing Base VHD (Base01.VHD) from Orcas September CTP VPC... (Make sure you ALSO download the VSCTPBase.exe)
Visual Studio "Orcas" September CTP Virtual PC Download