How to add a Linked Item to a Visual Studio project

 

This feature is helpful when you need a common file shared among projects, like a bitmap, readme, set of common tools and utilities.

 

Via Sara Ford’s WebLog : Did you know… How to add a Linked Item to a project – #365

Snippet Designer for Visual Studio 2008

 

Features

• A Snippet editor integreated 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 righ click menu.
  • It displays properties of the snippet inside the Visual Studio properties window.

• A Snippet Explorer tool window to search snippets on your computer.
  • It is located under View -> Other Windows -> Snippet Explorer
  • This tool window contains a code preview window which lets to peek inside the snippet to see what it is without opening the file.
  • Maintains an index of snippets on your computer for quick searching.
  • Provides a quick way to find a code snippet to use, edit or delete

• A right Click “Export as Snippet” menu option added to C#, VB and XML code editor to send highlighted code directly to the Snippet Editor

Via Snippet Designer – Home

Visual Studio Theme Generator

 

http://frickinsweet.com/tools/Theme.mvc.aspx

Pex – Automated Exploratory Testing for .Net

 

 

Pex: Automated Exploratory Testing for .NET

Pex (Program EXploration) is an intelligent assistant to the programmer. From a parameterized unit test, it automatically produces a traditional unit test suite with high code coverage. In addition, it suggests to the programmer how to fix the bugs. Watch the screencast!

Pex – Automated Exploratory Testing for .Net

Visual Studio 2008 Training Kit Videos Sessions

 

Aavailable on Channel 9

• Lap around Visual Studio 2008 & .NET Framework 3.5 presented by James Conard
• What’s new in C# 3.0?  presented by Luke Hoban
• What’s new in Visual Basic 9.0? presented by Amanda Silver
• .NET Framework 3.5 Enhancements presented by Jack Gudenkauf
• .NET Language Integrated Query (LINQ) presented by Luca Bolognese
• Using LINQ with Relational Data  presented by Mike Pizzo
• ADO Synchronization Services presented by Steve Lasker
• Introduction to the Microsoft Client Continuum by Adam Kinney
• Introduction to ASP.NET AJAX
• Building Web Applications with Visual Studio 2008
• Introduction to Silverlight
• What’s New in Windows Presentation Foundation 3.5
• Building Windows Presentation Foundation Applications in Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend
• Integrating Windows CardSpace
• Connected Application Foundations using WCF, WF, and Windows CardSpace
• Building Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation Enabled Windows Communication Foundation Services in .NET Framework 3.5
• Web Programming with WCF

Coding4Fun Developer Resources for Visual Studio 2008

Coding4Fun Developer Kits!

• The C4F Developer Kit is an offering of 20+ components and controls that offer developers a great opportunity to create cool, fun applications with technology that may be otherwise too complex or require countless hours of research and coding.  The toolkit hosts controls for things like Bluetooth, Speech, TAPI, Calendar and much, much more.  We’ve rolled this out on CodePlex (http://www.codeplex.com/c4fdevkit) to allow the community to share and add to it. 
  • e.g. Web Services
    Managed code wrappers for sites like:
    • Yahoo Traffic
    • Flickr
    • MySpace
    • Amazon.com
    • Craig’s List
    • Delicious
    • Digg
    • YouTube
    • And more
• The C4F Vista P2P Toolkit offers developers the ability to create peer-to-peer applications for WinForms and WPF with no lines of code.  Built on top of the WCF, we created a set of controls that developers simply drag ‘n drop on their design surface and simply select from the Smart Tags which pieces to hook up.  They have prebuilt controls for Chat, file sharing and streaming audio and video.  This too can be found on CodePlex (http://www.codeplex.com/c4fp2p). 
• Finally, to bring the above apps & samples altogether, we’ve created the C4F Dashboard which is part of the C4F Developer Kit.  This simple WPF application allows developers to launch the samples, source code or documents for a single dashboard.  

Via Visual Studio 2008 is released and much more

Microsoft XML Team’s WebLog : Announcing CTP1 of the XML Schema Designer

 

Announcing CTP1 of the XML Schema Designer

XML Tools team has released the first CTP of the XML Schema Designer – a graphical tool for working with XML Schemas. The XML Schema Designer is integrated with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and the XML Editor to enable you to work with XML Schema definition language (XSD) schemas. If you have used the Visual Studio editor or notepad to edit your schemas, consider downloading this CTP and using it for editing your schema files. You can download it from Microsoft Downloads site. This CTP introduces the Schema Explorer – a tool that helps you navigate, search and work with schema sets. You can view a short video of the new functionality here. 

Here are some of the main features that are included in this CTP. 

Details

Overview

An XML Schema can contain multiple XML Schema files. The new XML Schema Designer lets you work with a schema set. That is, when you open an XML Schema file, the XML Schema Designer opens it as a schema set, which includes any included or imported schemas.

Tree View

The Schema Explorer displays pre-compiled schema set information in a tree structure. The tree structure is organized as follows:

• At the top level is the schema set node.
• The second level contains the namespaces.
• The third level contains the files.
• The fourth level contains the global nodes. This can include elements, groups, complex types, simple types, attributes, and attribute groups.

The following is an example of the tree structure:

Schema Set

    Namespace 1

        File 1

            Global node 1

    Namespace 2

        File 2

            Global node 2

Search

The Schema Explorer enables you to search the schema set in the following ways:

• Keyword search
• Schema-specific search (for example, “Show All Derived Types”)

Filter and Sort Feature

The Schema Explorer includes filter and sort options available on the Schema Explorer toolbar. The following filter options are available from the toolbar. The Show Namespaces and Show Schema Files options are selected by default.

• Show Namespaces
• Show Schema Files
• Show Compositors (sequence/choice/all)

The following sorting options are available from the toolbar. The default is Sort By Type.

• Sort By Type
• Sort by Name
• Sort by Document Order

Microsoft XML Team’s WebLog : Announcing CTP1 of the XML Schema Designer

WCF, WF and CardSpace Orcas Beta 2 Samples

 

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and Windows CardSpace Samples for Orcas Beta 2 Download

Download details: WCF, WF and CardSpace Orcas Beta 2 Samples

VS2008 Beta 2 WPF Designer Cider Features

Part 1: Cider Beta 2 : Feature walkthrough

Part 2: Cider Beta 2 : Styling a WPF application with Blend and Cider

 

  

Silverlight Alpha 1.1 and C# in Orcas Beta 1

 

This post describes how a C# developer can set up and run a Silverlight project in Visual Studio Orcas. 

Here are all the pieces you need:

• Orcas Beta 1
• Silverlight 1.1 Alpha for Windows
• Silverlight Tools Alpha for Visual Studio
• Expression Blend 2 Free Trial
• You will also find it helpful to download the Silverlight SDK as it contains useful documentation and examples.

A First Silverlight Project

More…

Charlie Calvert’s Community Blog : Silverlight and C# in Orcas Beta 1

 

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