You've reached the internet home of Chris Sells, who has a long history as a contributing member of the Windows developer community. He enjoys long walks on the beach and various computer technologies.
Thursday, Dec 30, 2004, 9:52 AM in .NET
Fix for VS05b1 Avalon compilation perf problems
If his solution doesn't work for you (it didn't for me, but I think I have a weird build), under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\CSharp\Options\Editor, try setting the UpdateRegisterDesignViewOnIdle value to 0 instead of 1. I don't know what this turns off, but it makes the problem go away. If you trust me, I've put together a reg file that sets this value for you here.
BTW, if you're wondering what happens when you turn the UpdateRegisterDesignViewOnIdle option off, it's the feature that notices if you take a random code file and add a System.Windows.Forms.Form as a base class so that when you open the file, it's opened in the Windows Forms Designer by default. Without this flag, VS will never notice a new Form in a code file and they'll be no way to edit the Form in the Windows Forms Designer (not even Open With [even though every other editor is in the list...]). If you add a new Form by choosing to Add->Windows Form to the project (as most folks do), all works as expected.
However, if you absolutely need to turn a code file into a file that
will open in the Windows Forms Designer, you can close the project in VS, open
it in notepad and change the following:
<Compile Include=”Foo.cs”>
or the following:
<Compile Include=”Foo.cs”>
<SubType>Code</SubType>
</Compile>
to the following:
<Compile Include=”Foo.cs”>
<SubType>Form</SubType>
</Compile>
Thanks to Cyrus Najmabadi and Izzy Gryko -- hard-working MS employees answering
my emails on New Year's Eve even when they're officially Out Of Office -- for
this tips!
Thursday, Dec 30, 2004, 9:37 AM in .NET
BackgroundWorker and Sample for Compact Framework
Not only has Daniel Moth implemented the Windows Forms 2.0 BackgroundWorker component for the .NET Compact Framework, but he's also ported my pi calculation application to use this new implementation as an example of the savings in code that the BackgroundWorker component provides.
Wednesday, Dec 29, 2004, 10:19 AM
Microsoft Wants You To Speak At TechEd'05
Are you ready to speak in the Big Room? Then you've got two days left to submit your proposals to speak at TechEd 2005:
"The Tech•Ed 2005 organizers invite you to submit proposals to speak at Tech•Ed in our conference breakout sessions. Tech•Ed is one of Microsoft’s most important annual technical training events, and our speaker selection process is extremely rigorous to ensure that attendees experience outstanding quality technical training. Successful proposals will be technical presentations that target best practices and tips & tricks, delivered by experts with significant and highly-rated speaking experience. ... Proposals Due by December 31, 2004." [ed: my own emphasis added]
Many are called, but few will serve. Have you got the right stuff? TechEd is the toughest job you'll ever love...
Wednesday, Dec 29, 2004, 10:05 AM in The Spout
SlashDot is Wrong: MCE05 Rocks
Here.
I'm a very happy user of Windows Media Center Edition 2005 and have been for some months. Not only does it allow me unfettered access to audio, video and recorded TV from any PC in the house, but with the XBOX Media Center Extender, I can access all of this from any TV in the house as well (so long as its equipped with an MCE Extender). Further, I was able to use MCE to record several episodes of a yoga TV show for my sister-in-law and burn them onto DVDs with an evaluation copy of WinDVD Creator, making her very happy. I don't know what the "content restrictions" who-ha is about, but MCE05 works great for me.
Thursday, Dec 23, 2004, 10:33 PM
Concurrency: The Next Important Thing
Because CPU speeds have topped off recently even though I/O speeds continue to increase, Herb Sutter posits that the Moore's Law free performance lunch is over, i.e. no more getting faster software by waiting for the next gen of faster hardware. Instead, we'll have to write our apps to be a lot more concurrent to take advantage of hyper-threading, multi-core CPUs and multi-CPU machines if we want our apps to continue to run faster.
What this means to me is that we'll have to have much better language-level support for concurrent programming. What we have now sucks. Rocks. Hard.
Thursday, Dec 23, 2004, 10:18 PM in .NET
Mobiform Aurora XAML Editor
"Aurora is a graphical designer developed to create and edit Avalon Windows, elements, and controls. Aurora is built on top of Avalon and renders using the Avalon API. Aurora is designed for use with the November 2004 Avalon Technology Preview Community for Windows XP (CTP)."
Cool!
Wednesday, Dec 22, 2004, 8:56 AM in .NET
Hosting An Avalon Application in a Browser
Karsten has some tips on converting a stand-alone Avalon application into an application that can be hosted in IE.
Wednesday, Dec 22, 2004, 8:21 AM in .NET
SVG to XAML Converter
"The Adobe® Illustrator® SVG Edition of XAMLConverter is now available for free evaluation. The process is as simple is running XAMLConverter, dragging an SVG exported from Adobe® Illustrator® onto the application and the file is automatically converted to XAML. In addition, XAMLConverter runs the XAML file so you may view the results.
"This edition can convert SVG created by tools other than Adobe® Illustrator®. But SVG exported from Adobe® Illustrator® is the only fully supported subset of SVG."
Monday, Dec 20, 2004, 9:28 AM in The Spout
We Need NetFlix for TV
Sometimes I miss some made-for-TV movie or series that I'd really like to see and that I didn't know about before hand so that I could point my ReplayTV or MCE at it. The world needs NetFlix for TV.
Sunday, Dec 19, 2004, 10:29 AM in Fun
A Limerick in Rory's Honor
In honor of Rory Blyth's birthday, Jim Blizzard has posted a Haiku. I'm not so cultured as Jim, as I could only manage a limerick:
There once was a lad named Rory,
who told many a bawdy story.
He came right out,
like an orgasmic shout,
spreading mirth in drum-beating glory.
Happy birthday, pal. : )
Thursday, Dec 16, 2004, 4:48 PM in The Spout
Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
Am I the only one actually looking forward to this movie?
Thursday, Dec 16, 2004, 2:37 PM in .NET
Ian Dives Deep Into Animation
I said that animation in Avalon is simple. Ian said that it's hard. We're both right (I was talking about the programming model and Ian is talking about the nuts and bolts of the implementation), but Ian seems more right because of those fabulous example pictures that explain why wagon wheels look like they're going backward. Now if he could only explain why computer screens in movies always look like they've been engineered to invoke seizures, we'd have something!
Thursday, Dec 16, 2004, 10:50 AM in The Spout
Getting Out The Vote: Save Ctrl+F5 in VS05!
When I noticed the behavior that Ian describes in VS05b1 (that Ctrl+F5 no longer works to launch a console app with "Press any key to continue..." at the end), I assumed it was a temporary bug. To learn that this feature was removed "by design" is devastating. As a presenter and technology experimenter, I've probably used this as much as any single feature in Visual Studio with the possible exception of the text editor.
Don't just site there! Vote to Save Ctrl+F5 in VS05! (I love MSDN Product Feedback : )
Thursday, Dec 16, 2004, 10:36 AM in .NET
JohnMont Wants Feedback on WinForms/Avalon Interop
John Montgomery wants to know:
"[W]hen it comes to Avalon and Windows Forms interop, I'm curious: how many people will use it and what will they use it for? What are the scenarios that we'll see? I have my own opinions, of course, but I'm curious about what you think. I'd like to be able to have a conversation with both teams about what scenarios we should optimize for."
Don't be shy! Let him know what it is you're looking for from Avalon and Windows Form integration!
Thursday, Dec 16, 2004, 7:09 AM in .NET
Best of the Blogs: VS Tools for Office 2003
Kevin Schuler and Drew Robbins have compiled a list of dozens of the best VSTO blog entries in 2003 across seven categories ranging from architecture to troubleshooting. If you're into VSTO, this should provide some pleasant holiday reading for you. Enjoy!