Creating A Snippet From Scratch Step by Step in VS 2010

The following describes how to create a new snippet file from scratch using the Snippet Designer

 

for more –> http://snippetdesigner.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=createFromScratch&referringTitle=Documentation

You can also Right Click "Export as Snippet", “Insert Snippet” menu option added to C#, VB and XML code editor to send highlighted code directly to the Snippet Editor or import it.

download: http://snippetdesigner.codeplex.com/

New Version of the Productivity Power Tools for Visual Studio

 

Solution Navigator

Solution Navigator is a new VS 2010 tool window provided with this week’s update.  It acts like an enhanced Solution Explorer.  It merges functionality from Solution Explorer, Class View, Object Browser, Call Hierarchy, Navigate To, and Find Symbol References all into one tool window – and is pretty darn cool.

Related Links

• http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/06/09/visual-studio-2010-productivity-power-tool-extensions.aspx
• http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/07/19/vs-2010-productivity-power-tools-update-with-some-cool-new-features.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2010/07/18/new-version-of-the-productivity-power-tools-is-available.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2010/07/20/solution-navigator-blog-post.aspx

Snippet Designer for Visual Studio 2010

The Snippet Designer is a plugin which enhances the Visual Studio IDE to allow a richer and more productive code snippet experience.

Features

• A Snippet editor integrated inside of the IDE.
  • Access it by opening any .snippet file or going to File -> New -> File -> Code Snippet File
  • It uses the native Visual Studio code editor so that you can write the snippets in the same enviorment you write your code.
  • It lets you easily mark replacements by a convenient right click menu.
  • It displays properties of the snippet inside the Visual Studio properties window.

Via Snippet Designer

My Favorite Visual Studio Extension

• 
  

  Power Commands

  • Enable/Disable PowerCommands in Options dialog

  • Format document on save / Remove and Sort Usings on save

  • Clear All Panes

  • Copy Path

  • Email CodeSnippet

  • Insert Guid Attribute

  • Show All Files

  • Undo Close

  • Collapse Projects

  • Copy Class

  • Paste Class

  • Copy References

  • Paste References

  • Copy As Project Reference

  • Edit Project File

  • Open Containing Folder

  • Open Command Prompt

  • Unload Projects

  • Reload Projects

  • Remove and Sort Usings

  • Extract Constant

  • Clear Recent File List

  • Clear Recent Project List

  • Transform Templates

  • Close All

• Pro Power Tools

  • * Document Well 2010 Plus
          o Tab Well UI
                + Scrollable tabs
                + Vertical tabs
                + Pinned tabs
                + Show close button in tab well
          o Tab Behavior
                + Remove tabs by usage order (LRU)
                + Show pinned tabs in a separate row/column
          o Sorting
                + Sort tabs by project
                + Sort tabs alphabetically
                + Sort tab well dropdown alphabetically
          o Tab UI
                + Color tabs according to their project or according to regular expressions
                + Miscellaneous options that modify tab UI
    * Searchable Add Reference Dialog
    * Highlight Current Line
    * HTML Copy
    * Triple Click
    * Fix Mixed Tabs
    * Ctrl + Click Go To Definition
    * Align Assignments
    * Colorized Parameter Help
    * Move Line Up/Down Commands
    * Column Guides

• VsCommands

• Grouping items – you can group and ungroup items using IDE, something you would normally need to edit project file (DependentUpon)

• Ungrouping items

• Custom Grouping – you can choose any of the selected items to be a new root for others:

• Locate in solution – some people don’t like auto tracking of current item in solution explorer but would like to locate current item on demand. It’s now easy to achieve, simply rightclick in code editor, select ‘Locate in Solution’ from context menu and current item will be highlighted in solution explorer.

• Open in Expression Blend – open project in Expression Blend directly from Visual Studio interface

• Copy/Paste As Link

• Copy/Paste References – supports assembly, project and ActiveX references

• Build Summary

• Open File Location

• Search Online

• Attach To Local IIS

• Copy Full Path

• Build Startup Projects

• Open Command Prompt

• Thumbnails in IDE Navigator (Ctrl + Tab)

• Zooming

• Show All Items

• Get Assembly Full Name

RegEx Editor

CodeCompare

tangible T4 Editor

Understand your code using Dependency Graphs, Sequence Diagrams and the Architecture Explorer

Have you ever had to work with a legacy codebase?  Designing new functionality on existing applications can be daunting.  There are always differences between the original design and the current implementation.  The new Architecture tools within Visual Studio 2010 help you to understand the application you have, design new functionality you need, and validate that your design and your implementation do not deviate.  In this post, we’ll look at how to understand the application that you have. 

More…

A website that makes it easy to download and share Visual Studio color schemes

Studiostyles.info enables you to easily browse and download Visual Studio color schemes that others have already created.  The color schemes work for both VS 2008 and VS 2010 (all versions – including the free VS express editions):

Ten Cool Features in Visual Studio 2010

1. Pinning variables when debugging

2. Box selection

Brittany Behrens from the Visual Studio Editor Team has an excellent 3 minute video that shows off a few cool VS 2010 multi-line code editing scenarios with box selection

3. On-the-fly search

When pressing Crtl and , (comma) the new Navigate To window appears. This is a real-time search window offering basically the same functionality as the Find and Replace window (opened by Crtl + Shift + F) but doing it on-the fly

4. Zooming

5. View call hierarchy

6. Sequence diagrams

7. Dependency graphs

8. IntelliTrace and dump debugging

9. Multi-monitor support

Click on the document tab or tool window and drag outside the IDE to any location on any monitor.

10. Intellisense improvements

a. When selecting any variable, all instances of it are highlighted

b. Search is not limited to prefixes

Via http://www.scottlogic.co.uk/blog/gergely/2010/04/ten-cool-things-you-didnt-know-about-visual-studio-2010/

Visualizing large code bases with VS2010

Chris Lovett posted a *great* 20 minutes video on how to use custom “Generate Dependency Graph” to manage larger code bases with the new visualization tools in VS2010.

Via Skinner’s Blog : Visualizing large code bases with VS2010

Scott Hanselman – Web Deployment Made Awesome: If You’re Using XCopy, You’re Doing It Wrong

 

Here’s an outline of what Deployment Related topics Scott covered

• Web Packaging – Offline vs. Online
  • From VS 2010
  • From IIS Manager
• Web.Config Transformation
  • Transform Syntax
  • Locator Syntax
  • Why not XSLT?
• Deploying
  • Command Line
  • What If Switch
  • From IIS
  • Content Sync
• DB Deployment
  • Scripting Source DB
  • Adding custom SQL Scripts
• Download and Deployment of Open Source
  • Web PI
  • App Gallery
• One Click Publish
  • Using Web Deploy (Ms Deploy) WMSVC
  • Using Web Deploy (Ms Deploy) Remote Agent
  • Using InProc Web Deploy (Ms Deploy)

Here’s some cool highlights about WebDeployment in Visual Studio 2010. You can right-click on your web.config and click "Add Config Transforms."

When you do this, you’ll get a web.debug.config and a web.release.config. You can make a web.whatever.config if you like, as long as the name lines up with a configuration profile. These files are just the changes you want made, not a complete copy of your web.config.

Fore more visit Scott Hanselman – Web Deployment Made Awesome: If You’re Using XCopy, You’re Doing It Wrong

Validating Application Architecture with Visual Studio 2010 – Layer Diagrams

One of the pretty cool new features of Visual Studio 2010 (in the Premium and Ultimate) is that they have provided you basic modeling abilities inside the IDE.  One of the new features is the Layer Diagram.  A Layer Diagram allows you to visually see how your various components (from assembly all the way down to methods) interact and relate.  One great feature that the Layer Diagram provides you is a way to be able to take a snapshot of your systems architecture and later perform validation against that snapshot to see if your code still conforms to your desired layout.

In this post we will review how to create a layer diagram and then how to validate your architecture against that diagram. To read more goto –> Validating Application Architecture with Visual Studio 2010 – Layer Diagrams

Once you have the Architecture Explorer open, simply drag on items from the view onto canvas.

Click Generate Dependencies and once VS is done, the canvas should look like below:

Lets pretend that some time has gone by and you want to double check to see if your code still reflects your desired architecture as you laid out previous

You can also check out this post on Layer Diagram: http://blogs.msdn.com/jasonz/archive/2010/02/18/favorite-vs2010-features-layer-validation.aspx