VS2005 Power Toys Pack Installer

CodePlex - Welcome to the Power Toys Pack Installer

"The Pack Installer is a tool that will let you see the latest Power Toys for Visual Studio, and other great developer oriented tools. It allows you to easily mark any tool or set of tools for download and installation, and streamline the installation process.

...

In addition to being a tool for us to help distribute the Power Toys for Visual Studio the Pack Installer is a great starting point for your own software distribution tool. Although the current version uses openly available files to download and install, the code could be easily modified to connect to a secure software repository instead.

..."

The JPK Experience - Pack Installer Feed Update

"The list of tools included by the Pack Installer has been updated this week to include some cool new updates to some popular tools.  Now included are:

• ILMerge 2.0.7.0102, this is an update from the 2.0.6 release
• XML Notepad 2007, this is an updated version of the XML Notepad 2006 utility.  This includes a couple of new features as well as a nice list of bug fixes.  More details can be found here.
• Resource Refactoring Tool Beta, moving up from our previous Alpha release, the Beta is a good step towards having a full 1.0 release.
• TFS Administration Tool 1.2, this updated release includes the ability to administer TFS installations configured to use only SSL." [Post leached in full]

I just found the cool Pack Installer project yesterday... It looks like a great way to keep my VS Power Toys up to date.

I usually don't blog about this stuff, but this is just too funny to skip...

KPMG in dispute over TV cartoon

"Two senior KPMG partners are embroiled in a bitter court battle in which they are accused of criminal breach of trust, perverting the course of justice and perjury.

Mick McLoughlin, head of global restructuring and recovery at the Big Four firm, and Allan Graham, partner, are facing the charges over their administration of EDI Realisation Limited, part of an animation group which owned rights to television cartoon characters the Butt Ugly Martians. ..."

The fact that a KPMG Member Firm (i.e. KPMG UK. I'm employed by KPMG LLP, US...) is in a dispute over "Butt Ugly Martians" made me laugh so hard I spit coffee all over my notebook.

Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals [aka Data Dude] Samples CodePlex Project

CodePlex - Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals Samples

"Samples project for Microsoft Visual Studio Team Edition 2005 for Database Professionals

Welcome to samples project for Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals also known as "DataDude". The goal of this project is to share and collaborate on Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals related sample projects and sample code.

In order to put some organization in place we create five categories in which the samples have to fall, with the last one being our escape clause if it does not fit in the more explicit ones.

• Data generators
• Data distributions
• Test conditions
• Sample projects
• Miscellaneous: tools and other helpful item that make the live of DataDude easier

..."

A project I'll be monitoring...

The first items have already been checked in, which include some Test Conditions and a RegEx string data generator helper.

(via Data Dude - Need Samples?)

File Version Numbering Information to Amaze your Friends and Family With (or how to win at Geek-Trivia)

MSBuild Team Blog - Why are build numbers limited to 65535?

"...it's imposed by the operating system:

Binary version number for the file. The version consists of two 32-bit integers, defined by four 16-bit integers. For example, "FILEVERSION 3,10,0,61" is translated into two doublewords: 0x0003000a and 0x0000003d, in that order. Therefore, if version is defined by the DWORD values dw1 and dw2, they need to appear in the FILEVERSION statement as follows: HIWORD(dw1), LOWORD(dw1), HIWORD(dw2), LOWORD(dw2).

..."

MSBuild Team Blog - Fixing invalid version number problems with the AssemblyInfoTask

"The arrival of 2007 bought a flurry of e-mails to the MSBuild team from people having trouble with the AssemblyInfoTask. The symptom is simple to describe - the builds start to fail with the following error:

Error emitting 'System.Reflection.AssemblyVersionAttribute' attribute -- 'The version specified '1.0.70102.1' is invalid

The fix to get builds going again is to change the date format used to generate the build number to something other than the default "yyMMdd". The date formats are in Microsoft.VersionNumber.target, located in %program files%\MSBuild\Microsoft\AssemblyInfoTask, and there are two of them (one for file version and one for assembly version). You can use any format you want. Within Visual Studio we're now using 01MMdd. ..."

I was thinking of moving to a date based version number scheme too. I may have to rethink that... :|

TFS Administration Tool 1.2 Released

We > Me: Joe Morel's Blog - TFS Administration Tool 1.2 Released

"I'm happy to announce yet another release of the TFS Administration Tool, incorporating another code gift from a great community member.  This release of the tool adds the ability to administer TFS installations configured to use only SSL.

Thank you Oren--your help is much appreciated!

As always, you can download the newest version of the tool from CodePlex:

http://www.codeplex.com/tfsadmin" [Post leached in full]

If you're running TFS via SSL only this update is for you...

Related Past Post XRef:
TFS Permission Manager 1.5 Released
TFS Permission and Administration Tools
TFS Administration Tool

Virtual PC 2007 RC Released

Scott Woodgate's OutBursts - Happy New Year - Virtual PC 2007 Release Candidate ready for download

"Version 6.0.142 is now on the connect site. Go get it.

The Release candidate includes one new feature, PXE boot.  In addition it address a number of issues including installation on Windows 2003 as a host; Audio in Vista; DVD support for Vista installation; binding to wireless network cards etc."

Downloading it now...

CABpedia - Composite UI Application Block (CAB) wiki

CABpedia

"Welcome to CABpedia, a place to share knowledge and ideas about the Composite UI Application Block created by the patterns & practices group at Microsoft, and related resources. I set this site on August 5, 2006, so it's very new. Please feel free to contribute your own content.

The vision I have is pretty simple. I'd like this to become a place for both new and experienced users of CAB. New users should be able to jump in and learn how little parts work without reading all the documentation. And at the same time. As your experience grows, it should also be a place where you can find cool things you can do with CAB.

..."

I think I need to block a bit of time and play through the stuff on the Where to Start page...

(via Infragistics DevCenter - FAQ:Getting started with CAB)

Related Past Post XRef:
Thinking about Composite UI App Block & Smart Client Software Factory Again...

Infragistics - Installing NetAdvantage for .NET on Windows Vista

FAQ:Installing NetAdvantage for .NET on Windows Vista

"Summary

Starting with NetAdvantage for .NET 2006 Volume 3 for CLR 2.0, Infragistics supports the use of NetAdvantage on the Windows Vista operating system (currently only the 32-bit version). There are a number of points to consider, however.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2003 (and older) are not supported for use on Windows Vista. Because of this, all NetAdvantage for .NET CLR 1.x installs are also not supported on Windows Vista. You may still install the standalone version of AppStylist on Vista.

To successfully install NetAdvantage for .NET, User Account Control (UAC) must be disabled. This setting is enabled by default. Steps to disable UAC are provided below. To our knowledge, you may again enable UAC once the installation is complete, without affecting the behavior of the NetAdvantage for .NET toolset.

If you've installed Internet Information Services (IIS) on Windows Vista, you must edit the system registry prior to running the NetAdvantage installer, whether for AppStylist or for NetAdvantage for .NET CLR 2.0.

IMPORTANT: Also note that additional setup is required to run the ASP.NET Samples Browser in Vista, especially if you are using IIS 7.0. Please refer to the "Related Articles" section for more information.

..."

Since I'm NetAdvantage user this info may come in handy...

Essential SQL Server T-SQL Date/Time User Functions

Jeff's SQL Server Weblog - Essential SQL Server Date and Time Functions

"I've posted some variations of these before, but here they all are in 1 easy package:  The essential date and time functions that every SQL Server database should have to ensure that you can easily manipulate dates and times without the need for any formatting considerations at all.

...

create  function DateOnly(@DateTime DateTime)
-- Strips out the time portion of any dateTime value.
returns datetime
as
    begin
    return dateadd(dd,0, datediff(dd,0,@DateTime))
    end
go

create function Date(@Year int, @Month int, @Day int)
-- returns a datetime value for the specified year, month and day

...

create function Time(@Hour int, @Minute int, @Second int)
-- Returns a datetime value for the specified time at the "base" date (1/1/1900)

...

create function TimeOnly(@DateTime DateTime)
-- returns the only the time portion of a date, at the "base" date (1/1/1900)

...

create function DateTime(@Year int, @Month int, @Day int, @Hour int, @Minute int, @Second int)
-- returns a dateTime value for the date and time specified.

...

Part II:  Introducing TimeSpans to SQL Server
With those functions in place, we can add two more that will give us further flexibility when working with dates and times: The concept of a "TimeSpan", very similar to what is available in the .NET framework.

..."

I re-intent the "get Date only from DateTime" wheel to darn often. Hopefully posting a version here will help me find it in the future (assuming I remember I posted it... I'm getting old now...  ;)

eXPired

Michael Howard's Web Log - eXPired Poster Available!

This made me laugh... I can't say my home office can be certified yet, but I'm working on it...  ;)

(via this.Pose() - eXPired)

Windows Sidebar Gadget Development Tutorial

OdeToCode - Developing Gadgets for the Windows Sidebar

"In this article we will develop a new gadget for the Windows Vista Sidebar. The gadget pulls images from Flickr.com to display on the desktop.

...

In this article, we'll take a look at developing gadgets for Windows Vista using DHTML, JavaScript, and CSS. We'll introduce the object model, and security aspects of gadget development. By the end of the article we'll have built a real gadget. You can download the code / gadget from OdeToCode

..."

This is a cool and complete article on creating a Sidebar gadget for Vista.

Related Past Post XRef:
Vista Sidebar Gadgets - Beyond the toy zone...

XML to HTML via XSLT

Rodney Vinyard - Microsoft .NET & SQL Developer - XSLT to HTML Primer

"This tutorial will focus on the generation of HTML documents.

XSLT is a programming language for translating an Input XML Document into another format, say an HTML Output Document.

..."

Rescuing XSLT from Niche Status. A Gentle Introduction to XSLT through HTML Templates, David Jacobs

"...

So how do we solve this problem and help deliver XSLT’s promise to the masses?  For XSLT to be successful it must be presented and used in a way that adopts those attributes discussed earlier (reuse of knowledge, fast start, and gradualism). This tutorial will attempt to ease XSLT’s introduction by focusing on these attributes. First, it is only going to focus on the generation of HTML documents and users who are familiar with HTML. If your goal is to immediately start transforming one XML document into another XML document this tutorial is not for you.

The second is to reframe the problem so the XSLT solutions programmers write are more naturally extensible and intuitive. Instead of trying to translate an XML source document into an HTML presentation document, the programmer should see the XML document as a complex data structure with XSLT providing powerful tools for extracting that information into their HTML documents. This allows us to leverage the experience most people have with using an HTML templating language (e.g. ASP, PHP, JSP, Cold Fusion, Web Macro, etc). These templating languages are all based on the basic premise that HTML comes first and all enhancements are then embedded in special tags.

With some caveats, this tutorial will show how XSLT can be used in this same way. The benefit of this approach is it allows the quick use of many of XSLT’s powerful functions while letting you learn its more esoteric capabilities as the need arises. In addition the resulting XSLT files are more intuitive and maintainable. ..."

Rodney Vinyard - Microsoft .NET & SQL Developer - Dataset to XML then transform with XSLT to HTML on WebForm

Because I'm going to use XSLT to transform the incoming ATOM XML from the GData component in my Blogger Backup utility to other formats (BlogML, HTML, DocX, etc) these articles are nice and timely.

To say that I have a learning curve on using XSLT and using it in .Net is putting it mildly... ;)

Using a Windows PE Boot-CD with Windows Vista and Windows Automated Installation Toolkit to Manage Demo/Test PCs

mszCool's thoughts and cents revealed - Creating a Windows PE Boot-CD with Windows Vista and Windows AIK to get rid of your Demo-Machines

"About two months ago I discovered the Windows Automated Installation Toolkit (Windows AIK or just WAIK) to be able to work with different demo images for the sessions I did at TechEd Europe with physical machines instead of the (still much slower:)) Virtual PC images. The WAIK includes imagex.exe, which is a tool that allows you to create images of a partition of your machine and package them into the new Windows Imaging Files (WIM).

The first steps using WAIK and imagex.exe

These files can be used for centralized deployment via the Windows Deployment Services (successor of Remote Installation Services). But in my case I used it to image and restore different types of demo images for my physical machines as I did not want to work with the slower VPC counterparts at a conference such as TechEd Europe.

...

...So my idea was creating WIM images for each of the servers and either deploying them via Windows Deployment Services from my PDC or just from external hard disks. But I don't want to have two OS instances on each machine (one for imaging and image restore and the other one for "productive work"). So I required a CD-bootable version of Windows to be used as imaging and restore OS-instance with imagex.exe installed. Finally the WAIK includes all the tools for creating Windows PE instances which are bootable from either CDs, DVDs or USB sticks (!!).

..."

This is a cool post on some practical ways to use the new Windows Imaging Files (WIM) (think Ghost) to help manage demo/test PC's. While I'm a fan of Virtual PC images, sometimes you need to be a little closer to the hardware (or the hardware just isn't up to being a good VPC host).

The above post provides a real world look at using WIM/WAIK/ImageX/Windows PE/etc...

Another TFS Checkin Policy - Code Comment Checking Policy

this.Pose() as Expert - Code Comment Checking Policy - Take Two

"Work progressed much faster than I thought, so I can present you today with the next iteration of CCCP, the Code Comment Checking Policy for VSTS / TFS. What is new and improved over yesterday's release:

• VB.NET code comment verification enabled
• Code comment statistics tracking implemented, off by default
• Reference.* excluded (Web Services auto-generated files)
• Visibility special-casing of class type removed, CodeCommentCheckingVisibility honored
• Refactoring of CheckCodeComments, CreateInstance added for cleaner construction
• Unit testing automated and initial tests added
• Use String.Compare instead of == where potentially case sensitive or culture dependent

This equates to: the policy itself is feature-complete! It now sports the following functionality:

• Code comment verification for C# and VB.NET using a real parser engine
• Options to enable verification based on elements (methods, ...) and visibility (public, ...) - note that C# and VB.NET is auto-detected, no need to enable or configure this

...

Further information:

• CCCP - Code Comment Checking Policy aka "Policy Triple-Slash" for VSTS / TFS, the initial post about the making of the checkin policy.

"

This is a cool TFS Checkin Policy.

Personally I feel this demonstrates just how powerful a checkin policy can be. If you can verify code is commented (let's put aside the code comment wars for now) then think about all the other stuff you can do.

The C# source is available too...

Related Past Post XRef:
Team Foundation Server Check-In Policies
"Visual Studio Custom Checkin Policy Template"
TFS Check In Policies, Code to Police Code

Create Your Own Sequential GUIDs (like NewSequentialID() in SQL 2005)

Scott Bellware - A Class that Creates Sequential GUIDs

"My current project uses GUID primary keys in a SQL Server 2005 database.  The primary keys are created in the middle tier.  I want to use the equivalent of SQL Server 2005's NEWSEQUENTIALID() function to create GUIDs that are friendly to clustered indexes.

The NEWSEQUENTIALID() function uses the UuidCreateSequential function from the rpcrt4.dll library in the Windows API.

Here's a class that generates sequential GUIDs much in the same way that SQL Server 2005 does: 

..."

That could handy. I might even be able to use this in my existing VB6 app suite (where we're using SQL2k and guid's generated in the middle tier)... hum...

VS2005 PowerShell VB & C# Templates (Project, Cmdlet & PSCmdlet)

Channel 9 - Windows PowerShell Visual Studio 2005 Templates (C# and VB.NET)

"This Visual Studio template adds a C# and/or VB.NET project template for building Windows PowerShell Cmdlets and item templates in both languages to build CmdLet derived and PSCmdLet derived Windows PowerShell Cmdlets.

..."

If you're creating PowerShell cmdlets this may (will) save you some time. Packaged as a VSI (Visual Studio Installer), both the C# and VB versions installed with no problems.

(via notgartner - PowerShell Templates for Visual Studio 2005)

Related Past Post XRef:
VS2005 (C#) PowerShell Cmdlet New Item Template

Play Dark and Light (MMO) for Free (Up to level 10)...

Dark and Light Discovery Mode

"Dark and Light, new access mode revealed: Discovery Mode
Come to Ganareth and invite your friends to join you in this adventure!

Farlan Entertainment offers to Dark and Light forum members to freely play with no time limit.

It’s all very simple: All you need is an active Dark and Light forum account.

This access is valid for the whole lifetime of Dark and Light. Invite your friends to join you now in the hostile lands of Ganareth!

The goal is to give all players the chance to start an unlimited adventure in the world of Ganareth.

From the 10th level, the gamer continues the adventure with no limit but he cannot collect more XP points (Fighting, Social, and Craft).

If he decides to keep progressing though Ganareth, he will have to buy a Dark and Light activation key and will have to choose to be either a Freedom or a Master player. For more information about the different offers available of Dark and Light, click here.

..."

Want to check out the Dark and Light MMO, but don't want to pay for a game you might not like? Well you can now play D&L for free, for forever (up to level 10).

This is an interesting way to let people into the RTM game to check it out...

Since it's free and I'm waiting for my current closed beta MMO addiction to come online (today is patch day), I think I'll check this out...

VMware Workstation 6 Beta - Includes Visual Studio Integration

VMware - VMware Workstation 6 Beta Program

"...

Integrated Virtual Debugger - Workstation integrates with Visual Studio and Eclipse so you can deploy, run, and debug programs in a VM directly from your preferred IDE

Automation APIs (VIX API 2.0) - You can write scripts and programs to automate VM testing

..."

Okay, the VS integration sounds cool.

Depending on how it works, it could be a big time saver... I've reached my beta burnout point for the year, so I'll wait and see how this looks when it RTM's.

It would be cool if it was something like the Device Emulator/mobile/smart device development already in VS...

(via RightHand blogs - VMWare Workstation 6.0 beta is available)

Network Monitor 3 (aka NetMon 3, aka NM3) Re-released for Vista

Via an email from Paul Long;

"Hi Folks,

Microsoft Network Monitor 3.0 (hereafter referred to as "NM3") was one of the first applications that worked on released version of Windows Vista, (both 32 and 64 bit).

Weeks after release we uncovered an issue with NM3 running on Windows Vista. Specifically, we had a new driver on Windows Vista that was forced to expire after a fixed period of time for our beta builds. Inadvertently, we left this forced expiration code in our Release build. The NM3 driver on Windows Vista will stop working after April 2007.

This email is being sent to inform you that we are releasing a new version (3.0.0372.0001) of NM3 that fixes this issue.

If you are running NM3 version 3.0.0372.0000 on Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, you will NOT encounter this issue and you DO NOT need to upgrade to this release.

If you are running NM3 version 3.0.0372.0000 on Windows Vista, it is advised that you DO upgrade to this release.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.

Please do keep sending your feedback and suggestions!

The Microsoft Network Monitor Team"

If you're running NM3 on Vista you'll obviously want to download this re-release from the Network Monitor 3 Connect site

Related Past Post XRef:
NetMon 3.0 RTW

Writing Managed Control Panel Items for Vista

The Moth - Writing managed control panel items

"In the past, if you had to develop control panel items you would start thinking about .cpl files. With Windows Vista, there seems to be a tendency to take advantage of the new ability to create them in separate executables! Those of you that know me long enough can see where I am going with this... it means that we can develop these in managed code now :-)

I will assume that you have a scenario for actually integrating with the control panel and I will just share the mechanics. Create your managed Windows Forms application and give it whatever UI you want. You actually don’t have to do anything special in the project. In fact, you could even reuse your existing main application and just use a command line option for when it gets launched from the control panel.

So once you have the exe, how do you integrate it with the control panel? The answer is by adding some registry entries. ..."

Daniel makes it look easy to create/add managed control panel apps/items/applets/etc to Vista.