Spell check enable your WinForm TextBoxes/RichTextBoxes via a nHunspell based IExtenderProvider

CodeProject - NHunspellTextBoxExtender - A Spellchecking IExtenderProvider for TextBoxes using Hunspell for .NET

“

Introduction

With many applications, spell checking can be a vital aspect to include. Most people are used to the spell checking capabilities of products like Microsoft Word or OpenOffice. There are products available for purchase that can add spell checking capability, such as SharpSpell that can cost hundreds of dollars. But, there is a lack of Open Source, freely available tools that can provide the functionality of Microsoft Word. That is why I began to work on a spell checking IExtenderProvider that could extend any control that inherits TextBoxBase (both TextBox and RichTextBox inherit TextBoxBase).

Background

… I wanted to provide spell checking capability to my GUI application. There were plenty of ways to spell check text, from using NetSpell, to programmatically using Microsoft Word's spell checker in a way similar to this article. Not every user could be assured to have Microsoft Word, and opening a new Word application can take some time and uses resources, so I wanted to stay away from that. I chose instead to use NHunspell. A useful article on it can be found at: hunspell-for-net.aspx.

I also wanted to provide a visual cue to the user that there was a spelling error. With RichTextBoxes, this could be done through simple underlining, such as in this article. My problem was that I had written a lot of code using simple textboxes, and I didn't want to change all of them to RichTextBoxes. Instead, I wanted to use the IExtenderProvider to extend any textbox with spell checking capabilities. To be honest, I had no clue where to even begin to do that. That is, until I found this blog that describes exactly how to draw that wavy red line on a textbox. With that base code, I was able to use NHunspell to determine where to draw the line.

Exploring the code

IExtenderProviders can be very useful, and most of us that code use them regularly, maybe even without knowing it. The simplest example is the ToolTip. When you add a ToolTip to a form, it doesn't show up as a control directly on the form. And, while it has its own properties, it also adds

…

…”

I thought the number of things that this article brings together was pretty cool. That and the fact that it’s VB… :)

 

Related Past Post XRef:
NHunspell - 0.9.2 released and two cool C# & VB.Net Code Projects too
Hunspell (Open Office’s Spell Checker) wrapped for .Net = NHunspell – Your LGPL spell checker, hyphenation library for .Net

The prefect TPS Report use?

CNET - Turn your office expense reports into toilet paper

“If you've ever dreamed of sticking all that paperwork on your desk where the sun don't shine, a Japanese machine can turn it all into toilet paper for you.

Appropriately named White Goat, this device designed for the office can take regular letter-size paper or shreds, including that sales report you cursed until you were blue in the face, and transform it into nearly pristine rolls of white tissue.

White Goat was developed by Oriental Co., a small shredder maker based in Kiryu City, north of Tokyo, which says it's the first product of its kind in the world.

As seen in this vid from an ecological-products trade show in Japan last year, White Goat is very simple to use. All the user has to do is supply the machine with electricity, add paper and water, and remove the rolls of toilet paper when they're done. The pulping and rolling processes are automated.

It takes the machine 30 minutes to make one roll, and each roll is made up of about 40 sheets of paper. Oriental, which has applied for a patent on the tech, says White Goat can save about 60 trees annually…” [GD:News item leach level: 90%]

Awesome…

Using a Wiimote as a Sensor Driver on Windows 7

Code Project - Writing a Sensor Driver for the Wiimote on Windows 7

“Introduction

I was as fascinated with the Nintendo Wii gaming console as the rest of the world was when it came out and thought its unique input system was jaw-dropping awesome. I subsequently happened to stumble upon some incredibly creative work by Johnny Chung Lee on the internet one day where he demonstrates how the Wii remote - also known as the Wiimote - can be used to build innovative new ways of interacting with a computer. He got me so excited with the idea that I almost immediately went out and got a Wiimote myself though I don't even own the Wii console!

When Windows 7 came out and I learnt about the new Sensor and Location Platform, I figured writing up a little bridge driver that exposed the 3-axis accelerometer that each Wiimote comes with to the sensor platform would be kind of cool. This article attempts to explain how the driver works and what it takes, in general, to write a driver for the Sensor platform.

Acknowledgements

The implementation of the Wiimote sensor driver, particularly the communication protocol implementation, has been heavily "inspired" by Brian Peek's WiimoteLib library which has turned into a sort of de-facto standard API for gaining access to the Wiimote from managed code via the Windows HID API. Also, the sample driver implementations from the Windows Driver Kit provided the starting point to get the project off the ground. The I/O management code was taken with some slight modifications from the Sensor Development Kit.

Just show me how to use this thing

If you're looking to just use the driver and don't really care how it works, then here's what you've got to do. The Wiimote is a surprisingly self-contained piece of hardware that really is a stand-alone product by itself. It communicates with the Wii console via standard Bluetooth radio signals and identifies itself as a HID input device. To make it work with your computer, here's what you'll need:

• A Wiimote (duh!)
• A computer with Windows 7
• A Bluetooth card

There have been some reports out there where people had trouble getting their Bluetooth driver stack to recognize the Wiimote. If you're one of them you'll probably need to get updated drivers for your Bluetooth card. Assuming your computer is able to pair with the Wiimote, here's how you do it in Windows 7.

…

Taking her out for a ride!

If you are with me so far, then you should be able to launch the "Wiidiag" tool from "C:\Wiisensor\bin\Wiidiag\Wiidiag.exe" and watch a dull little graph respond to you whenever you wave your Wiimote around! Now, what's cool is that you can pretty much get any app off the shelf and have it work with your Wiimote's accelerometer if it is designed to work with the Sensor platform. You could for instance, download the plane demo app from here and it should just work! In fact I have included the binary for that demo with the download for this article and you should find it in "C:\Wiisensor\tools\PlaneDemo\DemoApp.exe". When you launch it you should see a little plane model rendered on the screen. Just check the 3 check boxes representing the 3 axes and it should immediately start rotating the plane around as you move the Wiimote.

…

…”

Awesome! Need to hurry up and post this so I can go grab a Wiimote and try this out… :)

Work Smart (by letting someone else do the icky document creation grunt work) – “Work Smart Productivity Guides” from Microsoft for your end-user training, re-use and tweaking pleasure

UK Further Education Blog - Ready-made IT user documentation

“When I started working at Microsoft, I hadn’t been in such an open, technology rich culture before. And with so many IT systems around, and so many different software resources, my head was buzzing. In fact, I remember that at the end of the first week, the number of links in my Favorites was massive – just to internal websites.

I’d never used internet telephony, encryption, instant messaging, live meeting, SharePoint or Groove before, so I was all at sea until I could play around and work out how they were supposed to operate. Meanwhile, people who’d been at Microsoft for a while were metaphorically whizzing past me, as they collaborated, shared, published and distributed information. Whilst I was trying to work out how to answer my desk phone.

One of the godsends for me was a set of documents called Work Smart Guides, which walked me through the basics of some of the new technology I was encountering.

…

The subjects covered in the step-by-step guides for users include:

• Environmental sustainability (hints like using Balanced power settings on your laptop)
• Protecting data with BitLocker
• Getting started with email
• Transfer files and settings to a new computer
• Collaborating with SharePoint
• An overview of collaboration tools
• Customizing SharePoint sites
• Integrating Outlook with SharePoint
• Basics of managing email (Are you a stacker or a filer?)
• Office tips
• Outlook email signatures
• New features for users in Windows 7

 

…” [GD: Post Leach Level: 70%]

TechNet - Work Smart Productivity Guides

“Microsoft IT Showcase

Microsoft IT created Work Smart productivity guides (previously Everyday Productivity Education (EPE) guides) to bridge the gap between technology and users. Work Smart guides provide employees with scenario-based, best-use productivity aids on Microsoft products and technologies. As more Work Smart guides are published, Microsoft IT expects to see more consistent, productive, and cost-effective use of products and technologies across the company.

Work Smart Productivity Guides
Download customizable versions of Work Smart materials to use as samples and reusable templates that specifically address the scenarios and processes in your information worker environment.

…”

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen IT, User Support, Training and Doc, etc groups create or buy general, end user documentation for basic things like Office, Windows, SharePoint, etc. Too many.

So when I saw this, I thought it too cool to not mention. What’s cool is that it’s in DocX format and you are not only allowed, but encouraged, to tweak it to fit your environment. Love that…

 

Here’s what you get in the 23MB zip;

Have a PDC09 Acer 1420p? Having the SDTabletPC handle leak issue? Brian Peek as got something you’re going to want to get… [Insert “There’s a Fix for that” humorous comment here]

BrianPeek.com - Acer 1420P Leaky Handle Driver Fix

“I wasn’t lucky enough to receive the Acer 1420P laptop given out at PDC this year since I was “staff”, however I wound up picking one up on eBay for a very reasonable price.  I received it last week, added an additional 2GB of RAM, used my Windows Home Server to save off the original hard drive image, and then repaved the machine, installing Windows 7 Ultimate x64, drivers, and applications from scratch.  Earlier this week I noticed the machine was consuming over 3GB of memory with only 1 or 2 applications open.  Looking at Task Manager, the RAM usage by process looked normal, which didn’t match the total memory usage.  After reading the Performance tab a bit more, I saw that the operating system had over 5 million handles open!

Back on the Processes tab, I turned on the Handles column and saw that a process named SDTabletPC.exe was consuming the 5 million handles, and it was growing by 10 handles per second [GD: Emphasis added].  This file is installed and run after installing the latest accelerometer driver (v1.00.00.16) from Acer’s support site.  This driver and executable are responsible for rotating the screen based on the machine orientation in tablet mode.

…

I was unable to fix the executable by patching in calls to CloseHandle, so I took another approach.  I wrote a very small app in C which finds the SDTabletPC.exe process, opens a process handle to it, enumerates all of its open handles, and forcefully closes all those that are handles to \Device\STHall.  The application then sleeps for 5 seconds and repeats the process forever.

I have put the application and its source code up for download here [GD: Click through for the download link… I don’t want to leach all his traffic].  Note that this fix is only for the latest version of the driver shown here, version 1.00.00.16.  I know it won’t work with the driver installed in the default PDC image and I can’t guarantee it’ll work with newer drivers.  So if you’re still running the original PDC driver, make sure you head to Acer’s support site and download the latest version

…

…”

So there I was, my trusty PDC09 Acer 1420p in hand and looking at the Task Manager, “2 million handles! WTH?” Yeah, a single process had 2 million handles. I just had to laugh out loud, it was so over the top…

Needless to say I killed that beast. Then I went to the Acer site, grabbed the latest version of the driver and tried that. Same issue… sigh

Since I don’t use the functionality that driver provides, I’ve been killing it and checking for updates each time (yeah, yeah, I could have just nuked its Run entry, but I wanted a reminder to check for updates and since I only reboot once a month or two…)

Then Brian pinged me about a fix he was working on.

Talk about humbling… Here I was whining about it, sitting on the sidelines doing nothing and there he is firing up his debugger, Visual Studio and banging out a fix  (+10 Dev Geek Cred’s to Brian, –10 to Greg).

So Brian has not only created and released a “Fix” utility, but documented the process he went through, the resources he used and his source too! Nice…

Hey Microsoft MVP’s, pluralsight has got a great deal for you! A complimentary 1-Year Standard subscription to the entire Pluralsight On-Demand training library

pluralsight - pluralsight announces free on-demand! training for all microsoft mvps

“Pluralsight will provide each Microsoft® MVP with a complimentary 1-Year Standard subscription to the entire Pluralsight On-Demand! training library. We are rolling this campaign out at the upcoming 2010   Microsoft MVP Global Summit in Bellevue on Monday, February 15. MVPs can get hooked up with the 1-Year Standard subscription at the Party with Palermo - MVP Summit 2010 edition, so make you sure you  register to attend here: http://partywithpalermo.eventbrite.com/. We'll also be raffling a Zune HD pre-loaded by yours truly, with Pluralsight On-Demand! content. If you can't make it to the party, be sure to find Aaron Skonnard, Keith Brown, David Starr, Scott Allen or Jon Fancey at the summit. They'll be able to hook you up with the goods, as well. If you aren’t attending the MVP Summit 2010, email me for details.

…

Additionally, Pluralsight will provide MVPs who participate in the offering activation codes for 5-day Standard trials to distribute to their colleagues and peers upon request. 

Eligibility

The Pluralsight Microsoft® MVP Program is available to all current Microsoft® MVPs.

…

”

While I’m in no way associated, linked, connected, etc, etc, with pluralsight when I saw this I said to myself, “Wow, that’s fricken smart!” I mean what a great way to introduce a wide and influential audience to their product, generate good will, would incur little extra cost or lost revenue yet have a possible big upside. Damn smart.

If you’re a Microsoft MVP then this is a deal that you just can’t pass up. Becoming a MS MVP has been a dream of mine for years, I hope offers like this are still around if ever have the honor of earning it…

Plus I love the whole Zune HD preloaded with content angle. I’ve been saying for years that this is something Microsoft should do for its major conferences (give away Zune’s, provide means to hook a user’s selected sessions to auto-download as podcasts when the session’s video become available, yada, yada…)

The Team Foundation Server 2010 Work Item Guide for the Average Guy - “TFS 2010 Work Items Basic Guide”

CodePlex - TFS Guides

“In this project you can find user guides for the most common functionality of the TFS.

I hope I will cover at least most of the important functionality.

What do we have so far?

Guide Name	Version	Description	Author	Downloads
TFS 2010 Work Items Basic User Guide	1.00	This guide is for all TFS 2010 users that uses the Work Items or like to use the Work Items.	Eran Ruso	"Download"
Team System Work Items Basic User Guide	1.00	This guide is for all Team System 2008 users that uses the Work Items or like to use the Work Items.	Eran Ruso	"Download"
Team System and Excel User Guide	1.00	This guide is for all Team System users that likes to have the benefits of the excel used with work items.	Eran Ruso	"Download"
Team System and MSProject User Guide	1.00	This guide is for all Team System users that works with MSProject it shows how to connect a project to the Team System and synchronize the work items both ways. You can still have the benefits of the MSProject with the addition of the Team System advantages.	Eran Ruso	"Download"
Team System 2010 Installation Guide	Beta 2	This guide was published by Microsoft and contain Step by Step instructions and Prerequisites for the Team System 2010 installation.	Microsoft	"Download"

…”

TFS Guides - TFS 2010 Work Items Basic User Guide

“…

TFS 2010 Work Items Basic User Guide.pdf
documentation, 1330K, uploaded Jan 31…

Release Notes

One of the most common parts that are used in the TFS is the Work Items sections.
This section controls the "Management" part of the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and is used by all rolls that take part in the development process.
The Guide is made for the Team Explorer add-in but the concept that is shown is the same as other TFS Clients with small modifications.
This Guide is made for the TFS 2010 and can be used by every user that uses the Team System.

…”

And a snip from the Guide itself;

 

What I liked about this guide is the basic nature of it (funny that given it’s title… ) Meaning there are many people in the MS Dev/QA world who have never used TFS and I felt this guide was a nice, simple and inexpensive introduction. And the fact that it’s VS2010 is also nice… :)

A very nice, and new/non-tech user safe, 48 page Windows 7 Shortcut eBook - “The Complete Windows 7 Shortcuts”

Windows LifeStyle - The Complete Windows 7 Shortcuts eBook released

“We are pleased to release The Complete Windows 7 Shortcuts eBook. Windows 7 includes a lot of new keyboard shortcuts that are unknown to a new user. This eBook comprises of more than 200 keyboard shortcuts containing almost all the keyboard shortcuts that are available in Windows 7 and its default programs like Paint, WordPad, MS Office, Calculator, Help, Media Player, Media Center, Windows Journal, Internet Explorer, etc

The eBook is pretty exhaustive and the topics covered include:

…

General Windows functions keyboard shortcuts

Dialog box keyboard shortcuts

Windows logo key keyboard shortcuts

Windows Explorer keyboard shortcuts

Ease of Access keyboard shortcuts

Magnifier keyboard shortcuts

Remote Desktop Connection keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts for MS Paint

Keyboard shortcuts for WordPad

Keyboard shortcuts for Calculator

Windows Journal keyboard shortcuts

Windows Help viewer keyboard shortcuts

Windows Media Player keyboard shortcuts

Internet Explorer keyboard shortcuts

Windows Media Center keyboard shortcuts.

…”

 

While this ebook seems largely based on Windows 7 Keyboard Shortcut – The full, and searchable, list it does seem to add extra content/value, is nicely formatted, printable and its initial sections look good for the novice, new, non-techie users (cough… family members who got Win7 Netbooks/Notebooks for xmas… cough).

(via Santhosh Sivarajan’s Microsoft Technology Blog - Windows 7 Shortcuts – eBook)

 

Related Past Post XRef:
Windows 7 Keyboard Shortcut – The full, and searchable, list

Use the Visual Studio Data Connection Dialog? Wish you could use it in your app? Maybe even tweak its source a little to better fit your project? The Visual Studio Data team has granted your wish…

Visual Studio Data - Data Connection Dialog Source Code is released on Code Gallery!

“Based on customer requests, we have decided to release the data connection dialog source code on Code Gallery last weekend:

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Connection/

Here, I’ll introduce it briefly to give a basic idea.

The data connection dialog is a database tool component that released with Visual Studio. In order to use the data connection dialog independently of Visual Studio, we published the standalone source code. You can integrate and redistribute the source code with your application according to the license. With the data connection dialog, you can do following tasks:

· Build/Modify connection strings.

· Customize the data connection dialog.

· Write your own custom data providers.

Following are two main snapshots:

…”

MSDN Code Gallery - Data Connection Dialog

“The data connection dialog is a database tool component released with Visual Studio. It allows users to build connection strings and to connect to specific data sources.

In order to use the data connection dialog independently of Visual Studio, we have released the standalone source code. You can integrate and redistribute the source code with your application according to license. This document describes how to modify the source code and also how to write a custom data provider.” [GD: Description Leached in Full]

Data Connection Dialog - Release of Data Connection Dialog Source Code

“Files

Data Connection Dialog Source Code
source code, 313K, uploaded Jan 29…

Data Connection Dialog Document
documentation, 513K, uploaded Jan 29…”

From the Data Connection Dialog Document;

 

And a snip from the source;

I love this… Taking a component that is not fundamentally material to a given project or its revenue and releasing its source. Licensed as MS-PL it’s easily re-usable.

Plus taking the time to provide a write-up on how to use the source? Nice touch…

Azure SDK 1.1, Azure Tools for VS 2008/VS 2010(RC) 1.1 released and Azure Drive Beta

Microsoft Downloads - Windows Azure Software Development Kit (February 2010)

“The Windows® Azure™ SDK provides developers with the APIs, tools, documentation, and samples needed to develop Internet-scale applications that run on Windows Azure.

…

Version:	1.1
Date Published:	2/1/2010
Language:	English
Download Size:	22 KB - 21.2 MB*

…

New in the February 2010 SDK

• Windows Azure Drive: Enable a Windows Azure application to use existing NTFS APIs to access a durable drive. This allows the Windows Azure application to mount a page blob as a drive letter, such as X:, and enables easily migration of existing NTFS applications to the cloud.
• OS Version support: Allows a Windows Azure application to choose the appropriate Guest OS to run on in the cloud.

…”

Microsoft Downloads - Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 1.1 (February 2010)

“Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio extend Visual Studio 2008 and the upcoming Visual Studio 2010 RC to enable the creation, configuration, building, debugging, running and packaging of scalable web applications and services on Windows Azure. Installation includes the Windows Azure SDK. (For VS 2010 Beta 2 please use the November 2009 release)

File Name:	VSCloudService.exe
Version:	1.1.30131.1501
Date Published:	2/1/2010
Language:	English
Download Size:	2.7 MB - 15.2 MB*

…

New for version 1.1:

• Windows Azure Drive: Enable a Windows Azure application to use existing NTFS APIs to access a durable drive. This allows the Windows Azure application to mount a page blob as a drive letter, such as X:, and enables easy migration of existing NTFS applications to the cloud.
• OS Version Support: Allows a Windows Azure application to choose the appropriate Guest OS to run on in the cloud.
• Bug Fixes
  • StorageClient: Expose account key from storage credentials, expose continuation tokens for pagination, and reduce maximum buffer size for parallel uploads.
  • Windows Azure Diagnostics: Fix path corruption for crash dumps, OnDemandTransfer now respects LogLevelFilter.
  • VS 2010: Improved packaging performance.
  • VS 2010: Support for linked files in Web projects.
  • VS 2010: Support for ASP.NET web project web.config transformations.
  • Certificate selection lists certificates from LocalMachine\My instead of CurrentUser\My.
  • Right click on Role under Roles folder to select whether to launch the browser against HTTP, HTTPS or not at all.

Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio includes:

• C# and VB Project creation support for creating a Windows Azure Cloud Service solution with multiple roles.
• Tools to add and remove roles from the Cloud Service.
• Tools to configure each Role.
• Integrated local development via the Development Fabric and Development Storage services.
• Running and Debugging a Cloud Service in the Development Fabric.
• Building and packaging of Cloud Service Packages.
• Browsing to the Windows Azure Developer Portal.

…”

Windows Azure Team Blog - Beta Release of Windows Azure Drive

“Today we are providing access to a beta release of Windows Azure Drive (announced as XDrive at PDC 2009).

Customers have told us that they want to take their already running Windows applications and run them in the cloud using the standard Windows NTFS APIs, and make sure that the data is durable. With Windows Azure Drive, your Windows Azure applications running in the cloud can use existing NTFS APIs to access a durable drive. This can significantly ease the migration of existing Windows applications to the cloud, enabling customers a more seamless migration experience while simultaneously reducing the amount of time it takes to move their applications from your own Windows environment to a Windows Azure environment. The Windows Azure application can read from or write to a drive letter (e.g., X:\) that represents a durable NTFS volume for storing and accessing data. The durable drive is implemented as a Windows Azure Page Blob containing an NTFS-formatted Virtual Hard Drive (VHD).

…”

Azure is one place I’d like to play in in the coming year…

22 Visual Studio 2010 Testing, ALM, Coded UI, Test Elements, Lab Management and more videos

Musings of a tester testing test tools! - VS2010 demos for testing tools – MTLM, CUIT and related features

“Our PM team has put together a great series of demo videos to illustrate the new set of features available for testers as part of VS2010. We will eventually post these on C9 and team sites, but I wanted to publish this now to let you guys get a quick dekko at the videos. Here you go:

  …”

I’ve gotten a view pings from the QA side of our house for information about the coolness that’s coming in VS2010, so when I saw this I knew I needed to grab it for future reference…

(via Microsoft UK Developer Tools Team - Visual Studio 2010 Testing Tools Videos)

Outlook Spy 2.15 is Outlook 2010 (32bit) compatible

Exchangepedia Blog - Outlook Spy 2.15 is Outlook 2010-compatible

“Didn't notice earlier— one of my favorite Outlook/Exchange tools is now compatible with Outlook 2010. Outlook Spy is primarily a tool for Outlook/Exchange developers, but Exchange administrators also find it useful. It allows you to look under the hood of mailboxes and messages. Created by Dmitry Streblechenko, an Outlook MVP, Outlook Spy has been on my list of "must have Exchange tools" for as long as I can remember. Released in November 2009, the latest version of Outlook Spy (v2.15) adds Outlook 2010 compatibility.

…”

Outlook Spy

“OutlookSpy 2.15

OutlookSpy is the ultimate Outlook developer tool. Integrated directly into Outlook, it provides fast and convenient access to all Outlook Object Model objects, lets you examine values of the properties, call functions, browse object hierarchy and monitor Outlook events. CDO is supported too!

If you are a die-hard Extended MAPI developer or just curious about what really goes on under the hood, OutlookSpy will provide you with an access to the Extended MAPI interfaces that Outlook uses internally. See how Outlook data is stored, browse MAPI hierarchy, watch Extended MAPI notifications, or just satisfy your curiosity.

Forget about MdbView, see what you've been missing!

…”

History

“…

11/21/2009 OutlookSpy version 2.15 build 2.15.0.453

• Added support for Outlook 2010 (32 bit only).
• More symbolic property tags
• OutlookSpy now requests PT_UNICODE properties rather than P_STRING8 by default if the object supports Unicode
• Named MAPI properties with Unicode names (MNID_STRING) were being displayed as ANSI strings.
• Numerous performance and stability fixes.

…”

I usually don’t blog about closed source and/or pay packages, but I’m gladly making an exception in this case. I’ve been using Outlook Spy (and Office Spy and Redemption) for years and must say it is a must have utility for any Outlook/MAPI developer. This utility has saved my sanity more time than it’s possible for me to count. That and the fact that Dmitry provides outstanding support and is very active in the community (you’ll see him appear in many MAPI/EMAPI/Outlook dev forums) is all icing on the cake.

Now this isn’t a general user utility, but nearly Outlook/MAPI/EMAIP developer will feel right at home with it and learn to quickly love and rely on it…

 

Related Past Post XRef:
I'll Need This Later Note To Self: .Net and MAPI/CDO Don't Mix
Outlook Redemption 4 Released

Tangible T4 for VS2010 - Tangible T4 Editor V1.6 for VS2008 and VS2010 now available

Tangible T4 Editor Blog - tangible T4 Editor V1.6 for VS2008 and VS 2010 available!

“A nice “Hello back” from the development team. We have been quite busy the last weeks to do side-by-side versions of tangible T4 Editor for VS 2010 and  VS2008. Today we will ship V1.6 for VS2008.

What are the new features? Any fixes?

1. We do support T4MVC now!

…

2. We do support Code Libraries in T4 (Referenced Assemblies)

…

3. Enhanced IntelliSense for C# 3.5 constructs

4. We do support the .t4 file ending better

…

5. We did a fix for users who wanted to generate “.js” code.

…

6. A couple of minor enhancements and fixes to quality and speed.

…”

T4 is being used a number of places in VS2010 and it has slowly been getting more attention by the dev masses. 2010 may be T4’s break through year…

 

Related Past Post XRef:
Tons of tangible T4 tips – Updated Tangible Engineering T4 Editor, Videos and T4 Template Gallery
It’s a T4 kind of day – Free (reg-ware) T4 Editor from tangible (with UML-Style modeling tools added for flavor)

“Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines” – aka the UX Guide for Windows 7 and Vista free eBook

Microsoft Downloads - Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines

“Download the Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines (UX Guide) for Windows 7 and Windows Vista.

File Name:	UXGuide.pdf
Version:	1.0
Date Published:	1/27/2010
Language:	English
Download Size:	35.0 MB - 76.6 MB*

 

Use this page to download the Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines (or UX Guide) for Windows 7 and Windows Vista. These guidelines contain information on design principles, and guidelines for controls, commands, text, interaction, windows, messages, aesthetics, and the Windows environment. They help designers and developers create high-quality Windows applications with a consistent “look and feel.”

…”

“…

The goals for these official Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines for Windows® 7 and Windows Vista® (or “UX Guide” for short) are to:

• Establish a high quality and consistency baseline for all Windows-based applications.
• Answer your specific user experience questions.
• Make your job easier!

What’s new
The following guidelines have been added since our last update:

• Animations and Transitions
• Setup

UX Guide is downloadable and printable!
By popular demand, we have UX Guide in PDF format.

…”

Only 876 pages of UX Guidance… :|

I liked though how “new” technology is included, like guidance UI/UX for Touch app’s as well as other Win7 features like the Taskbar/Jump Lists, etc.

(via meraTechPort - Free E-book: UX Guide for Windows 7 and Windows Vista)

A Feed You Should Read #22 – TechNet Blogs

Today’s feed is another feed only for the hard core, only for those who cannot get enough Microsoft Tech/IT news, only for those who feel a 0 unread post count is a personal insult, only for the die hard news hound.

Hey, that sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it? (cough… A Feed You Should Read #20 – blogs.msdn.com… cough)

Yep, today’s feed is the prefect counter part to blogs.msdn.com…

TechNet Blogs

Background:

Where as MSDN focuses toward development, TechNet is more the Information Technology/IT side of the house. How to use it, how to fix it and how to take advantage of it are just some of the kinds of things you’ll find posted about on TechNet.

Why do I like this feed and think you might also?

Again, I’m torn recommending this feed due to its post volume. Hundreds of posts a day usually, though on average fewer posts than on blogs.MSDN.com. Yet since I already did MSDN, it would be a disservice to not also highlight this side of things, wouldn’t it? Fair is fair and all that…

If you consider yourself a Microsoft Power User, work on the IT side of the business, or like me, are “IT’s worse nightmare” (a dev who likes to pretend he knows some IT stuff ;) then this is a feed to consider.

Remember though, you will get overwhelmed if you don’t keep up or miss a few days. If it’s too much, then just say no and take advantage of the many of topic and link curators out there, some of which I’ve covered in the past, A Feed You Should Read TOC.

Snap of the latest post:

 

Blog Information:

Name:	TechNet Blogs
URL:	http://blogs.technet.com/
Feed:	http://blogs.technet.com/MainFeed.aspx?Type=AllBlogs
Post Types:	Pretty much all things Microsoft, with an IT/Technology focus

 

Related Past Post XRef:
A Feed You Should Read TOC

The PDC09 Keynoted Silverlight Facebook Client is now available (as a developer preview sample and without source)

Method ~ of ~ failed (Tim Heuer) - Silverlight Client for Facebook available

“Remember the final moments of the Scott Guthrie keynote presentation at PDC09?  Where Brian Goldfarb came on stage and demonstrated a completed application using a lot of the features of Silverlight 4?  Yeah, that Facebook application.  Well, it’s here now!

…

The Microsoft Silverlight 4 Beta Client for Facebook has been released as a developer preview sample.  In order to use it you must have Silverlight 4 developer builds installed.

…

What about source code?

At this time no source code is being provided…and probably won’t be.  I’m not the decision maker on ultimately if it will or not, just my assumption.  The Facebook client is meant to be a working demonstration/inspiration of what one could do with existing services and providing different views into an existing application framework.

How can I install this and will it work on my Mac?

You can play around with the app by visiting the Microsoft Silverlight 4 Beta Client for Facebook app on the Silverlight samples site (which also includes the other sample applications from PDC09).  As a reminder, this is a developer preview build and intended for developers. …

Yes, it will work on your Mac (as long as you have an Intel processor version). …

…”

Silverlight Client for Facebook

No source? What the? Na… that’s something that has to change. I mean a developer preview without source? Isn’t that an oxymoron?

While I’ll give this a try on a non-production system, I’m likely to just stick with Fishbowl (which does have the source available ;)

(via Silverlight Show - Silverlight Client for Facebook Available)

 

Related Past Post XRef:
Fishbowl – THE Windows FaceBook client?

A Feed You Should Read #21 – All About Microsoft by Mary-Jo Foley

When I started this series I wanted to share some of the feeds I read, the feeds where I find so many of my cool things. Initially I focused on other curators, link and topic, trying to maybe highlight hidden gems, other “D Listers” like me (though I consider many I’ve covered B and C Listers, you get the idea…). To date, I haven’t included many/any true industry A Listers, those bloggers that are considered the current top of our little corner of our geek world (you know, people you and I would say, “OMG is that SO and SO!?”  :)

That was until today…

All About Microsoft by Mary-Jo Foley

Background:

Do I really need to provide background on Mary-Jo? Really? Come on, she’s Mary-Jo Foley! lol

If you look up “Microsoft News” “A List Blogger” in the dictionary, there’s a picture of Mary-Jo! (sigh… actually, according to Bing, it’s Robert Scoble, but never let the truth get in the way of a good line! LOL… I say it’s Mary-Jo, it’s my story and I’m sticking with it!  :)

Why do I like this feed and think you might also?

Mary-Jo’s contacts, resources experience and clearly evidenced joy of being in our field means she’s simply a must read. Her scoops are 99% accurate, her writing lacks over-the-top drama and provides solid and consistent Microsoft related news.

A Microsoft user? A geek? It/Dev/Power User? Read it!

Snap of the latest post:

Blog Information:

Name:	All About Microsoft - Mary-Jo Foley
URL:	http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/
Feed:	http://feeds.feedburner.com/zdnet/Microsoft
Post Types:	Microsoft News

 

Related Past Post XRef:
A Feed You Should Read TOC

Directory Linker – Simple symbolic directory link utility for Vista/Windows 7

Addictive Tips - Easy Way To Create Symbolic Directory Links In Windows 7/Vista

“The process of creating a symbolic directory link for a folder in Windows 7 and Vista is a serious time waster. Creating a target folder, coping content to this folder, deleting the folder that you want to be linked, and then entering the command in command prompt, doesn’t sound like an easy process.

Directory Linker is a portable opensource tool which makes creating a symbolic directory possible in just a few clicks. Choose the link location and the folder that you want to link too and hit Go. In case the link location already exists, you can choose to delete the content inside it or first copy them to the target folder and then delete the content.

 

…”

CodePlex - Directory Linker

“Project Description
Directory Linker is a small Winforms application that allows the user to quickly and easily create Symbolic Directory links in Windows Vista and Windows 7. (Note XP is not supported)

1. Create the target
2. Copy any existing content to the target
3. Delete the folder you want to be a link
4. Start cmd.exe and then enter the mklink command along with the full paths of the folders you want to link

DirLinker helps with this, it is very basic UI that allows you to enter where you want the link and where you want to link to. You can just delete the link place or copy the contents over first. Use these options at your own risk, …”

Directory Linker - V 1.1.0

“Released: Jan 17 2010
Updated: Jan 17 2010 by WillC
Dev status: Stable

…

Recommended Download

JunctionPointer.exe
application, 46K, uploaded Jan 17…

Other Available Downloads

JunctionPointer.pdb
application, 72K, uploaded Jan 17…

…”

Symbolic links are like the red headed step child of Windows/NTFS. We’ve seen more usage in newer OS’s but I still don’t think its being used to its fullest potential (which can be said about a number of NTFS features…  cough… like its ability to support deep paths, 32K in length [insert MAX_PATH rant here]… cough…)

Anyway, I thought this a simple yet cool utility that not only exposes junctions/symbolic links but that its C# source was also available…

F#, fun projects and being an Evil Genius (and of course world domination)

Chris Smith's completely unique view -  Being an Evil Genius with F# and .NET

“A couple weeks ago I was in glorious Sandusky, Ohio presenting at CodeMash. CodeMash is a community driven conference that’s less about product announcements and typical “rah rah” and more about getting smart people together to talk about what they are passionate about – coding.

Rather than doing the prototypical “Intro to F# Talk” I figured I go with something a bit more fun and relevant to the every day developer. Sure F# is neat and everything – but why bother to learn a new programming language unless you can use it to do something meaningful. Well, in addition excelling at both functional and object-oriented programming, F# is ideal for world domination.

------------------------------------------------------

To be honest, this may be the best talk abstract I’ll ever write.

…

…”

Awesome. Not only F# coolness, but having fun with F#! We’re talking USB Missile Launchers, voice recognition, image processing, facial recognition and more…

(via Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew - Dew Drop – January 25, 2010)

Using wireless networking at home? Have a ton of neighbors with wireless too? Check your channel (and here’s a tip on how)

Derek Hatchard’s Information Flume Ride - Find the Right Wireless Networking Channel

“The hard core geeks know that to optimize your wireless networking experience you want to select a channel that is unused by other nearby wireless devices.

If you run Windows 7 (or Vista), use the following command at the Command Prompt to see the channels and signal strength of nearby networks:

netsh wlan show networks mode=bssid

The channel numbers will be in the range of 1 to 11.  Find a hole, ideally at least five channels away from your neighbours, and change your wireless router configuration to use that channel.  If you are in an area with lots of wireless networks, focus on avoiding interference with the strongest competing signals.

Slightly Deeper Explanation

…”

I love learning something new every day… I’ve used netsh in the past, but never for this (so I guess I’m not a hard core geek… lol…).

We’re a huge UVerse neighborhood and I’m surrounded with everyone’s 2Wire WAP’s (6-9+ WAP’s are in range of my home office). I’ve been changing my channel to try to find a good one, but was obviously doing it the lamer way (i.e. hit and miss). With this knowledge I can now take a much more methodical approach.

[Insert normal disclaimer here. YMMV. Keep arms and hands inside the car. Filmed on a closed track with a professional driver… In short, if you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t do it…]

CodePlex expands source control options with distributed version control support (DVCS) via native Mercurial support

CodePlex weblog - CodePlex now supporting native Mercurial

“What is Mercurial?

Mercurial is a distributed source control management system. For new projects created on CodePlex.com, you will be able to choose from either Team Foundation Server or Mercurial as your source control repository.

To illustrate, in the Create a Project wizard you’ll see the following:

If you are a current project owner and wish to switch to Mercurial, please contact us at CodePlex Support with your project name, and we’ll be glad to help you out.

Why DVCS?

Adding distributed version control support to CodePlex has become a top feature request from users, as the popularity of DVCS for open source development has grown significantly. Mercurial is one of the most popular distributed version control systems and offers great support for Windows based tools as well as works very well as a hosted service.

If you are new to Distributed Source Control Systems, please read this section!

…

…”

CodePlex weblog - Using Mercurial on CodePlex

“There’s ton of documentation out there on how to use Mercurial and its various clients. For this blog post, you’ll see me use a popular client called TortoiseHg. (Hg is the chemical element symbol for Mercury, hence Tortoise ”Hg” in case you’re wondering.) If you’re already familiar with TortoiseSVN, this will be very straight forward. 

…

…”

Do I lose geek-cred if I say I’ve never heard of Mercurial? GIT, another DVCS, I’ve heard of but not Mercurial… Anyway I think it’s cool that CodePlex is expanding their source control options (though the existing TFS implementation works great for me, different strokes for different folks and all that.)

 

Related Past Post XRef:
CodePlex via SVN (For real, no local client bridge/proxy is required anymore…)
CodePlex to support Subversion

Have 1.9 million apps open, but now have to reboot? Cache My Work [so they re-open after your reboot]

How-To Geek - Make Your Apps Open Again After Rebooting Your PC

“It can be very annoying when you have a bunch of different projects open at work, then find you need restart the machine because of Microsoft Updates or some other reason. Today we take a look at a cool free app that will restart everything you were working on after a reboot.

CacheMyWork

CacheMyWork is a handy free utility that is light on system resources and will open everything you were working on after a restart. Many times the culprit is automatic updates that download and install automatically while you have a full screen of work opened up. If you want, you can postpone a restart until your ready, but sometimes that isn’t always an option.

…

…”

CodePlex - Cache My Work: reopen your Apps after reboot

“CacheMyWork is a handy utility that enables you to reboot Windows without losing your place in your work. It builds a checklist of currently open applications, and will restart the apps you've selected the next time you logon to the computer.

Cache My Work is great for occasions when you need to unexpectedly reboot, such as on "Patch Tuesday", after installing new drivers, or when Windows runs out of Desktop Heap, Handles or GDI Objects (which happens more often than I'd like - even with the fixes described here).

If you're like me, you avoid rebooting your computer because it means you'll forget what you were working on. Every time I have to reboot because of some install/uninstall/patch, invariably I forget half of what I was working on because I don't remember all the docs and apps I have to reopen (those 5-15 minutes between "shutdown all apps" and "logged in, Windows quieted down" are huge opportunities for me to be randomized and lose my short-term memory cache).

…”

Not only is this cool, and needed given today’s IE out of band security patch, but the project and Visual Basic.Net source is available too!

Step by step (aka Dummies or Busy Dev Guy) guide to installing SharePoint 2010 in a virtual machine free eBook (Reg-ware)

SharePoint 2007 Tips, tricks and techniques - FREE book (SharePoint2010) “Installing and Configuring SharePoint 2010”

“Have you tried all online links and are still stuck with the SharePoint 2010 installation? Then you certainly need to download this guide.

Introduction

This step by step guide shows how to install SharePoint 2010 on a virtual machine. Each step shows a screenshot that will help users to better understand the step. Host computer used during the preparation of this guide was a Vista (32-bit) machine (IBM 64-bit). Guest machine used was VMware workstation 7.0.

The guide lists hardware and software requirements. It has up-to-date links to download pre-requisite software. Pre-requisite software has to be installed in a particular order. Guide gives you tips on what to avoid during the installation. This is the most comprehensive compilation of SharePoint 2010 installation steps.

…”

I liked the focus toward putting this on a VM. Also how compressive it is, I mean check out all those installs covered in to TOC. LOL (Of course you can tell it’s a little dated since for example, PowerShell 2 has RTM’ed, etc, still this seems like a great resource…)

 

(via meraTechPort - Free E-book: Installing and Configuring SharePoint 2010)

Deep Zoom the .Net Framework 4 Poster

Midnight Programmer - .NET Framework 4.0 Poster

“The new .NET Framework 4.0 poster in deepzoom.

…”

While this is an older post, when I saw it via DotNetKicks today I just had to blog about it…

(via DotNetKicks - .NET Framework 4.0 Poster (www.midnightprogrammer.net))

“What's New for Developers in Outlook 2010”

MSDN - What's New for Developers in Outlook 2010

“Summary: This article presents a top-level view of the enhancements and additions for developers in Microsoft Outlook 2010. It also examines, in depth, some of the new and enhanced objects in the Outlook object model, including their properties, methods, and events. For developers who are eager to learn the Outlook platform, this article provides sufficient detail to begin coding against Outlook 2010.

Randy Byrne, Microsoft Corporation

November 2009

Applies to: Microsoft Outlook 2010 Beta

Contents

• Outlook 2010 Platform Overview
• Outlook Object Model Changes
• Add-in Resiliency
• Improved UI Extensibility
• Comprehensive Object Model
• 32-Bit and 64-Bit Platform Support
• Multiple Exchange Accounts
• Conclusion
• Additional Resources

…

Accessing Rich Text Formats (RTF)

Outlook supports access to rich formatting for the body of an item through the WordEditor property of the Inspector object. WordEditor represents the Word.Document object in the Microsoft Word object model. Inspector.WordEditor works well in cases where an Outlook item is displayed in an inspector. For cases where the inspector window is not displayed, Outlook 2010 introduces the RTFBody property on an item object such as MailItem, AppointmentItem, and so on. RTFBody is exposed on all item types except for NoteItem and JournalItem. RTFBody is a read/write property, and you can set or get a byte array that represents the RTF stream for the item. Depending on your development environment, you must convert the byte array returned by RTFBody to a string, modify the string that contains the RTF, if necessary, convert the string to a byte array, and then set the RTFBody to the modified byte array.

The following code example writes the RTF for the first item in the Selection object for the active explorer window to the Debug trace listeners window in Visual Studio. The code obtains the byte array from the mail object, and then uses System.Text.AsciiEncoding to convert the byte array to a string.

…

…”

There’s a good chance that Office/Outlook 2010 will be my next dev target platform at work, so I wanted to capture this for future reference and review. Initially the new RTFBody property stood out for me. At work that’s “officially a biggie.” :) Then there’s all the new conversation stuff. Not sure if that applies to work, but still I found it interesting…

(via Le Café Central de DeVa - Outlook Object Model enhancements & Changes for Outlook 2010)

Have a family member that got a new PC with Windows 7? They already bugging you about how to use it? Windows 7 Training Videos…

Mediaforma

“…Mediaforma publishes Windows 7 training videos for free. Twenty videos out of a total of 105 are available on the website. Every week, two new videos are added and the two oldest videos disappear.

…

…”

Short video snips for new Windows 7 users to help with common questions and issues…

(via MintyWhite - Access Free Windows 7 Training Videos on mediaforma.com

“Everything I need to know [about developing software] I learned from Dungeons and Dragons.”

MAKE - Everything I need to know I learned from D&D

“Last night I gave a talk at IgniteOKC, Oklahoma City's part of the Ignite series of talking events, called 'All I Need to Know About Life I Learned from Dungeons and Dragons.' I had a ton of fun with it and I think it will be of interest to any fans of roleplaying games in general and D&D specifically. I am especially proud of my slides, which are all hand drawn by me :)

…”

A great quote; “…D&D is a SDK for Creativity…”

This five minute talk provided a great message that directly applies to dev work, and home, life and had me snort-laughing too. :)

UML, T4 and Visual Studio 2010, Oh my…

Oleg Sych -  UML Modeling and Code Generation in Visual Studio 2010

“This article provides an overview of UML modeling in Visual Studio 2010. Assuming that reader is already familiar with UML, it focuses on custom UML profiles - an extensibility mechanism that can be used to tailor UML models to a particular problem domain. Readers will see an example of such a profile, which extends UML Class Diagrams for database modeling. Finally, the article shows how code can be generated from UML models using T4 text templates.

…

UML Modeling in Visual Studio

Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Edition includes a fully-featured UML (Unified Modeling Language) support, integrated into the IDE. You can create Use Case diagrams to summarize who uses your application or system, and what they can do with it, Class diagrams to describe logical aspects of data types and their relationships, Sequence diagrams to display interaction between classes, components and actors, Activity diagrams to document flow of an algorithm or a business process and Component diagrams to show structure of a system, and how it can be deployed to a logical environment.

…

Conclusion

As you can see, Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Edition provides powerful UML modeling tools that can be used for conceptual and logical analysis during software development. UML Profiles can be used to extend standard models and allow modeling information systems at physical level. A limited number of UML profiles is expected to ship with Visual Studio 2010. Custom profiles can be developed to tailor UML models to the needs of individual projects. Combined with T4 Text Templates, this gives developers a powerful tools for model-driven development of information systems, where large portions of the system can be modeled in UML and generated with T4. 

…”

I thought this was a great article on the UML support coming in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate… I appreciated the compare and contrast with the existing DSL diagramming (i.e. why we should be happy and how this support is going to make our dev lives better)

 

Related Past Post XRef:
“Practical UML™: A Hands-On Introduction for Developers” from the Embarcadero Developer Network

“SharePoint 2010: Bits from the Edge” the day long free virtual SharePoint conference (Feb 16, North America, Feb 18, Europe)

Paul Stubbs - Free SharePoint 2010 Virtual Conference

“Are you excited to learn more about SharePoint 2010 but your boss won’t let you go to training? Sign up now for Free the online SharePoint Virtual Conference. My team has been working hard to deliver SharePoint content in a number of formats, such as onsite training, Conference around the world, Online training, downloadable training, and now Online Virtual training. We know that budgets are tight and want to bring you great content that fits your needs.

Sign up now. February 16, 2010

…”

SharePoint 2010: Bits from the Edge

“February 16, 2010 – 9:00 am – 5:30 pm Eastern

Join us for SharePoint 2010: Bits from the Edge, a free online one-day conference for developers of SharePoint products and technologies. Brought to you by SharePoint Connections, this conference brings industry experts to your desktop, offering free, technical SharePoint training.

SharePoint 2010: Bits from the Edge provides everything that an in-person, peer-to-peer-to-expert event offers -- without the travel, without the cost, and without the time away from your desk!

You'll be able to join experts Thomas Rizzo, Steve Fox, Andrew Connell, and others for a series of free technical sessions for developers that will help you get the most value from SharePoint.

The conference's virtual expo hall will also allow you to meet premier SharePoint technology vendors as they demonstrate, showcase, and exhibit their best-of-breed SharePoint products and services.

…

…”

SharePoint is a pretty hot topic; being able to attend a day long conference could be valuable. The fact that it’s free and that you don’t have to change out of you PJ’s to attend makes it even harder to beat… ;)