Duncan Mackenzie.NET

Refactoring C# Code Using Visual Studio 2005 […]

Chats on Visual Basic 2005 […]

Defining and Using Generics in Visual Basic 2005 […]

How Long Now? […]

What's New in Help for Visual Basic 2005 Beta 1 Find out about the newest Help features in Visual Basic 2005 Beta 1, including distinguishing Visual Basic from other languages, more task-oriented topics, and an emphasis on code examples. […]

Matthew Gertz, Dev Lead for the VB Compiler, Editor & Debugger team has written an article on operator overloading in Visual Basic 2005... […]

Ah, launch day... what else would have most of my colleagues sitting in their offices at 12:30 am in the morning on a Monday... and there isn't a single Halo game running!! […]

This new article from Ken Getz provides an overview of many of the new features in Visual Basic 2005, including "My", "Edit and Continue", "AutoCorrect", "Just My Code" and more... […]

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Swing by Cabana 5 today (May 26) at 2pm if you want to chat with Anders.... Erica Weichers is here and is going to try and record it, but if you are at TechEd you should come on by. […]

Returning to the room tonight I was greeted by an amazing spread of technology across the bed in my hotel room. Early in the day I had returned to my room only to realize that my cell phone was not in my pocket as expected, so I had proceeded to pull everything out of my backpack, one item at a […]

Paul Vick, language guy for Visual Basic and unofficial spokesman for Krispy Kreme (look at the picture to understand that comment), arrived yesterday at TechEd.... Look for him around the Developer Division Cabanas (5 and 6), the Visual Studio 2005 booth and at the "Meet the VB Team" session (Thurs […]

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I flew down to TechEd today, and I made it to the Marriott without any incidents... and I have my first 'Cabana' session tomorrow at 8:30 am... This means I'll be hanging out in the convention center, in the 'Cabana' area, in case anyone wants to drop by and chat about VB... there will be someone […]

Like Eric, Brad, and Paul I will be at TechEd and am participating in the Rio tool for meetings. Feel free to look me up and schedule something if you'd like to talk about.... umm... VB / C# / Coding 4 Fun / MSDN ... or whatever...   […]

In an earlier post, I mentioned I was going to TechEd... and I said I would post my […]

Look for lots of posts from the upcoming TechEd conference as well as material around all things VB... […]

Check out the full post for info on Eric's talk in particular... […]

Giving us an early peek at his TechEd 2004 talk, Eric discusses how to handle enums in your code, since they are not constrained to the list of options you define in the enum and also because they can change in ways that could break your code in the future... Enums an […]

Paul Vick (Technical Lead on the VB team and author of this book) provides a list of key VB sessions scheduled for the upcoming TechEd conference... and his schedule for the week. TechEd 2004 sessions (from Panopticon Central) I'll be there too... and I'll post my sched […]

Amazing stuff... Adam Nathan creates pinvoke.net, to general acclaim, and then follows only a few days later with a great VS.NET Add-In that allows you to search for, insert and even contribute PInvoke signatures to his site. […]

Joe Mayo posted a great 'frequently asked question' along with a very clear answer, to the C# FAQ recently.... Why did I receive the error: "The type or namespace '<namespace name>' does not exist in the class or namespace '<parent namespace>' (are you missing an assembly reference?)" I […]

From Dan's blog: […]

Very cool article from Code Project; this is something I have wanted for awhile..... from the moment we started outputing RSS from MSDN, it seemed to me that you'd want to view them inside of VS... I'm downloading this right to try it out, but the article is well written and covers a lot of good top […]

Two video interviews with Eric Gunnerson appeared on Channel 9 today: […]

We just launched a series of videos about VB.NET onto the Visual Basic Developer Center, check them out! […]

From Paschal's blog... […]

Check out this post from 'The Wayward WebLog'... it is a good discussion starter for anyone who wants to chat about ORM (object-relational mapping) ... […]

I had read this in the 'offline' version of MSDN magazine (you know, that one that uses paper and is hard to copy and paste from?), but I hadn't noticed it was available online until now: […]

Adam Nathan has created a home for a ton of PInvoke signatures, organized by Module/DLL and pre-populated (by the man himself) with a ton of the most common signatures... I'll let the site describe itself with this text from the "What is this site?" page; PINVO […]

Check out http://msdn.microsoft.com/chats for a full listing of upcoming chats, but here are a couple of VB ones that you might be interested in... […]

With code samples and screenshots based on the recent Community drop of Whidbey (VS 2005), Scott explains how to create your first debugger visualizer: […]

via Kent Sharkey's Blog […]

I've done this myself, including using a C++ shim to authenticode sign my add-in to get around

Scott, one of my colleagues from my first year at MSDN, has a blog now and he just posted a cool entry illustrating the new configuration system in VS 2005... Configuration is a breeze. In the current Visual Studio .NET 2005, you’re going to find that a great thing has happened to configuration. B […]

Eric describes a new Whidbey feature focused on creating those 'utility' classes in the style of System.Math or System.Environment: […]

Waltham 4/14 (Steven Lees and Amanda Silver) New York 4/15 (Steven Lees and Amanda Silver) Louisville 4/20 (Jay Schmelzer and Paul Vick) Chicago 4/21 (Jay Schmelzer and Paul Vick) Philadelphia 4/21 (Sean Draine and Joe Binder) Denver 4/26 (Robert Green and Jay Roxe) St Louis 4/26 (Paul Yuknew […]

Not a long post (I've included it all below), but useful nonetheless […]

If you are using the CTP (Community Technical Preview) or you are just interested in Whidbey/VS2005, then you'll definitely want to check out the new blog created to allow various team members to post info on VS2005. Check it out here. […]

I have to admit that I haven't developed a "wizard" framework yet in .NET, I've just been stacking panels on top of each other, naming them step1...stepN and then showing and hiding them as necessary. Not exactly an easy-to-reuse approach, but it works. Justin Rogers, a developer who has worked on t […]

This is so very cool... a great idea, good explanations, tons of useful bits of code and information, and even a very graphically pleasing set of diagrams in the article!! […]

Make sure you check out your University/College bookstore! "vbjay" mentioned today (on GotDotNet) that he bought the Academic version of VS.NET 2003 from his college bookstore for just a bit over $100.00. I did some googling around and found several University bookstores offering the software for ar […]

If you haven't read much about Refactoring before, I'd suggest you check out Jay's earlier post on the subject, but he is now going into quite a bit more detail. […]

I didn't know this existed... so I'm going to assume that a few of you don't know about it either... there is a Blog site for MVPs at http://www.msmvps.com/, with some blogs hosted on that site (using .Text) and links to MVP blogs on other sites. […]

This came out a few days ago, but in case you missed it... […]

Hey folks, I've been working with the C# Team and two great C# MVPs (Jon Skeet and Nicholas Paldino) to put together a 'live' C# FAQ. This FAQ is being run as a blog, hosted at http://blogs.msdn.com/csharpfaq and is displayed on the C# Developer Center on MSDN (at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vcsharp/t […]

Visit his blog and offer some feedback if you want to influence his presentation... […]

I've been thinking a bit about Generics lately, with the growing conclusion that I will mostly use the ones that ship in the 2.0 version of the .NET Framework, but wrapping my head around a few situations where I could see myself defining Generic classes of my own. With all of these Generics […]

If you follow Eric's blog (and if you are into C#, you should) then you'll have already seen these... but if you haven't then let these three posts be just a taste of what is available over there; Who does Microsoft talk to when they have questions? ... The feedback we got around E&C has been fair […]

Over in the Office side of the world, a set of 6 labs have been released, focused on learning how to use VB.NET and C# to create Office solutions with Office 2003 and Visual Studio Tools for Office... cool stuff if Office development is your thing (and it certainly is mine)... Visual Studio Tools […]

From Dave Wanta, the guy behind kbalertz.com, a detailed FAQ for the SMTP mail classes in the .NET Framework. If you are using System.Web.Mail, then you'll want to check it out: http://www.systemwebmail.net/ […]

I'm just playing around with an internal application, just a tool that hits our internal web services for article ratings (you know, the little box that says "7 out of 9" next to MSDN articles...) and displays the results in a grid. Well, there are a lot of things I've been hoping to add to the […]

Shaykat, a PM on the C# Team, has been posting some great tips on VS.NET 2003 so I thought I would collect them here for your linking pleasure; Tip #1: Stop the solution explorer flashiness when opening a project! Tip #2: Macros Tip #3: View exception information with $exception Tip #4: Demo be […]

Ok... so I'm biased here, Pedro used to be my grand-boss at MSDN, and now works on some very cool and very graphical magic as part of the Whitehorse team... but on the side it appears he has been developing some Windows Forms controls, so I would suggest you check them out; This ControlLibrary con […]

Turns out we (MSDN) are looking for a few good testers to come and work with us in Redmond... if you are interested in a position, and the following job description (which you may have also seen on Laura or Kent's blog...) is appealing, let us know via this link. Are you ready to join an exciting t […]

Min Kwan Park, who works in QA on the C# team (responsible for debugger features) has compiled an amazing document for troubleshooting debugging issues in Visual Studio 2002 and 2003 ... check it out here […]

Gus Perez has posted the binary and source for a little utlity he has dubbed "ezClip"; Back in the 7.0 days I wrote a little tool called ezClip. It's sole purpose was to allow me to copy/paste files from one command prompt window to another. Our test tree can get pretty deep directory-wise and hav […]

Matt provides us with some insights into the world of language design, a field that most of us have only dabbled in via a university course, with his discussion of keywords, operators and the problems with extending an existing programming language after its original release. It amazes me how […]

Brian Randell has written 4 (really 7, but 3 of them are just the same article as both VB and C#) articles on using MSDE in your applications... (via Kent Sharkey's blog); Using MSDE? A whole whack of articles from Brian Randell on working with MSDE in your Web applications […]

Click here to see the first post, which is a request for some questions!!

In a recent post to his blog, Paul Vick discusses the new IsNot Operator (and the history/rational behind the Is operator), which allows you to write;

Dan Fernandez presents how Visual C# “Whidbey” will include several IDE enhancements including a first-class code editor with rich editing features, a powerful debugger, and drag-and-drop visual designers. Click here to check it out in this recent installment of MSDN TV!   […]

This bit of news is getting quite a bit of airplay, so you've likely heard already, but the ASP.NET Resource Kit is now available... full of tons of code, videos, free book chapters, white papers, controls, and more... how can you miss it? Click here for more information! […]

This is so cool, even if you might take it as mostly marketing (sorry in advance)... […]

Provides a great introduction to creating your own custom columns and column styles.... including a drop-down column style, which is a very popular custom column for most folks!! DataGrid Zen Novice by Alastair Stell This project provides a 101 tour of the Windows Forms DataGrid Control, with emph […]

My simple class: […]

Joel Semeniuk, (my former roommate, co-founder of my first software development company, and now a co-founder of Imaginets), is doing a security webcast for MSDN... something about 'threat modeling' or 'model threatening', I'm really not sure which, but I'm sure it will be entertaining either way. […]

Debugging Visual Basic .NET Applications Join members of the Visual Basic .NET and Debugging teams to discuss debugging Visual Basic .NET applications with the Visual Studio .NET Debugger. Almost every program will need to be debugged sometime, so take this opportunity to learn more about […]

From KC Lemson's blog... ASP.Net samples of WebDAV against Exchange 2003 […]

I blogged about it before, but there is a 15-part webcast series starting Tuesday February 3rd, presented by Dr. Joe Hummel, focused on Visual Basic .NET topics for the Visual Basic 6.0 developer (and others!). […]

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dndotnet/html/win32map.asp […]

If you think we are talking about Whidbey too much... don't read this post :) […]

Puppy Luppy just commented: Downloaded the SQL Server/Yukon Hands On Labs...can't find anything in the c:\Labs directory...as in: C:\Labs\DTS Lab\SourceQuery.sql C:\Labs\DTS Lab\DTSLabDimProduct.dtsx but didn't give an email address... so everyone gets to read my reply :) […]

For the next 6 months, many of the PDC Sessions will available at http://microsoft.sitestream.com/PDC2003/Default.htm as streaming audio with synchronized PPT and demos. Check it out!!

Labs, Labs, get your labs here... […]

The Longhorn preview distributed at the PDC is now available on MSDN Subscriber Downloads for active MSDN Operating Systems, Professional, Enterprise, and Universal subscribers as well as for Certified Partner and Breadth ISV/Empower members. […]

I updated a ton of sessions on the PDC site today, many (yep, I'm being vague... I don't have the details with me at the moment) sessions that didn't have slides do now.You may also notice that the location of the PPT files has changed... I moved them all to a different location (the download center […]

Brad Abrams already mentioned these, but we are going to be linking to them from MSDN soon so I thought I would give out the microsoft.com URLs for these 2 images (one in jpg and PDF format); http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/2/f/a2fc47d2-8bdf-4977-8364-1f38b893dba5/LHArch_PDC2003.pnghttp://d […]

If you haven't seen them, check out the blog feeds visible on the PDC Central site. We've seen a problem where they sometimes show up blank... but it appears to be working fine now!

Swing by the Addison Wesley booth at the PDC, in addition to copies of my own sample chapter (which is probably the big reason to drop by there :) ), they have the new C# language specification book... that includes 2.0 features! […]

We updated the PDC site for the week of the event, check it out at http://msdn.microsoft.com/events/pdc/...

Well, those demos have certainly floored me... but I must say I'm torn. […]

Arrived last night, which is sooner than some will be showing up, after flying to Palm Springs and driving up... which worked out quite well. A few moments after arriving, and getting hooked up to the Internet... I put up this letter onto the PDC site, just giving a few helpful bits of info for thos […]

I'm still at SeaTac, but I've given up on my flight to LA (which could turn out to be a mistake, but at this point... it isn't a big risk) and I have a seat on a flight to another city in California (Palm Springs)... then it is time to rent a vehicle and head for LA... should be an interesting […]

Flights are all delayed... smoke... hmm... flights to Juneau are still operating...

On my way, and I'm realizing that I have a bit of preperation to do... this whole trip has been so last minute, and I've been focused on building the web site that will appear at http://msdn.microsoft.com/pdc tomorrow, that I haven't even looked at the conference schedule. To be honest, I'm only […]

I had planned on missing this year's PDC, because we had been planning on launching a new application during that same week (one of many!!)... but now that particular launch has been postponed a bit so I'm free to attend! That wouldn't have made any difference though, since it is sold out (and yes, […]