Speed up Visual Studio 2005

Like most developers I hate waiting for my PC especially once I have hit F5, in Visual Studio, I do not want to wait for it to compile all 20 projects I want it done NOW! Ok maybe I am a bit impatient, for those of you who find Visual Studio 2005 to run a little slow there are a few little tweaks you can do to make it run that little bit faster.

You can find these very helpful tips here

10 types of programmers you’ll encounter in the field

When working in the IT industry it is hard not to pigeon hole your fellow codes by their actions. Normally the only people I tend to categorise are the ones who do not work efficiently and without passion for doing a good job, these people I tend to categorise as the ‘9-to-5ers’ for their commitment to fitting all IT related learning and working to the hours between 9am and 5pm.

However there are many other categories you can use to identify the type of programmers you are surrounded by and a recent article by Justin James gives you the top ten, by his own experience. It’s a very interesting read as I have worked with nearly all 10 types of people and I am sure you have too.

Read it here

DDD6 Registration

You can now register to attend DDD6. The event is on Saturday 24th November.

Registration link : http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032357828&Culture=en-GB

The aganeda will be posted shortly on the DDD site.

If you are thinking of going register NOW

Estimation Poker

The skill of task estimation is something we all have to deal with, I like to lean more towards overestimation rather than under, however when you are sat there after completing your 1 day task with still the majority of the day left you cannot help feeling that if you could have done better in your estimation. Now you can spend the rest of the day working on those research tasks or the next item in your project plan or you can plan a game!

This is not any old game this is a game that will actually help increase yours and your teams estimation skills, this game is called Planning Poker. I know you can hardly contain your excitement, you can buy your own copy of this game or play the online version at www.planningpoker.com. The idea of the game is that you come up with an outline for a task then all the players put in they estimation of how long it will take to do the task and between each player you talk about your decision.

The game is a good idea and it may work for your team to help increase your teams skills for estimation but this is never a replacement for historical data.

Entry inspired by Coding Horror by Jeff Atwood on October 21st 2007

DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper 6 – Voting Opened

I cannot believe we are so luck to have another Developer day event, this years event is due to be held on Saturday November 24th at the Microsoft Reading campus.

If you visit the web site(www.developerday.co.uk) for the event you will be able to vote for the topics you wish to see, every year the votes are used to create the schedule for the coming event.

If you have not heard about the DDD events, it’s a community event run by the developer community for the developer community. This event is so popular that each year they run out of spaces within three days of registration opening, not that amazing, but when you think that blogs like mine are the only way the event is publicised its no mean feet.

Also did I forget to say its FREE FREE FREE

To find out when registration for the event opens add my blog to your RSS reader or you can add the blog of one of the committee members who is always the first to inform the community Guy Smith-Ferrier.

.Net Developer Network - WPF and Silverligh

This is just a reminder that Bristol’s only FREE user group is holding its next event, next Tuesday 16th October. This meeting is called ‘WPF and Silverlight’ and is being presented by Oliver Sturm. So far over 40 people have registered and we can still fit in more people in our new meeting location at the UWE in Frenchay.

Please visit www.dotnetdevnet.com for detailed information and FREE registration.

Hope to see you there.

C# Coding Standards

I am all about the standards, the reason being that it means I have to concentrate less on how to structure the code in a methodical manor and more on what the code will actually do standards are the leveller between all developers.

Code Complete by Steve McConnell is a great book but it’s not specifically geared to C# development, however Juval Lowy has created such a document. The document is 26 pages long, and rather than give you a long explanation of why you should code in a certain way it is just a list of what you should do, which you either agree with or you don’t (I do), either way they are a good starting point.

To download the pdf go here http://idesign.net

10 Usability Nightmares You Should Be Aware Of

If you are like me, you are designer, developer and tester of your web application. Microsoft spends a lot of time talking about collaborating with designers, but in the ‘real-world’ we have yet to be able to employee one of these people so you design your site the best you can taking ideas from other sites and putting your own twist on them. Often I find myself so immersed in technical function of the site that I can loose focus on the fact that my interface has to appeal to the common denominator, at these points I find myself referring to a top 10 worst list to help me take out those features which do not work for everyone.

Smashing Magazines has just published an article where they review the top 10 things not to do with web user interface design, to read what they have to say go here http://www.smashingmagazine.com

.NET Source Code Release

Have you been debugging that .NET code and watched the stack window fill up with calls to the many .NET framework classes and wondered what is .NET class doing? Or why is it not working how I expected? And how does it do that?

Well put that copy of reflector away and just step into the code!

In Visual Studio 2008 you will be able to step straight into the .NET Framework code and debug as if you where one of Microsoft’s employees. The code can be automatically downloaded on demand and, unlike a reflection tool, will have the variable names and comments as you would expect any normal production code to contain. The download feature will mean you always get correct version of the code for your framework version but to save time you can always download all the source to your machine, however you will need the space to store it.

The code is released to you under the Microsoft Reference License so you cannot change or redistribute, and initially you will only be able to get the source code for version 3.5 of the framework although this will change and be added to as time goes on.

Jscript intellisense and now framework source code on demand, what super feature will they think of next?

To read more about this see Scott Guthrie's blog, see a video at Channel 9 and listen to Scott Hanselman talk to the guy who headed up the project

Java Script Tips and Tricks

As a web developer I often find myself involved with writing Jscript, which is something I quite in enjoy….and yes I am a geek. I do find the challenge of finding out about how Jscript will handle certain events and debugging it to find out what it knows, a nice change of pace, Besides the language is not that far from C# which I enjoy working with.

However my knowledge did not go far beyond short functions used with ASP.NET validation controls to provide that instant user feedback.

With the recent invention of AJAX frameworks I have found that my tiny validation code knowledge does not event scratch the surface of what Jscript can actually do for me, in fact it’s a very powerful language which implements some language features that C# has only recently gained or will not gain until the next version.

To help me get a better understanding of what Jscript can actually do and hopefully allow me to better understand what I can do within the AJAX framework I came across my favourite kind of article, tips-and-tricks on Jscript but for the ASP.NET developer…that’s me! This article covers all those advanced features of Jscript I did not think I needed to know, although now I do I cannot wait to take advantage of them, and tips on other functions to help provide a more responsive application.

To read this two part article on Tips for ASP.NET Developers please go here http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/JavaScript_Tips.asp

Team Foundation Server – Power Tools (September 2007)

Team System is something I use almost every day and it is a great product, however like most software there are a number of features that never made it into the final product which I actually need. Microsoft understands this which is why almost all developer software produced is accompanied by some Power Tools, and Team Foundation Server is no different.

The Power Tools, which have been updated and released this month, offer a number of invaluable features to anyone involved with TFS these include;

‘Best Practices Analyser’ for checking your server is set up correctly
Check-In Policy pack for new ways of stopping bad code making it to the final product
A Process Template Editor to make those company specific tweaks
Number of command line tools for managing your projects

You can find the full information and detail on how to download the tools here http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/teamsystem

Devexpress – Refractor! Free (ASP.NET)

Last week Devexpress released an update to their popular Refactor! For ASP.NET. This tool provides a number of refactorings to ASP.NET developers using VB.NET or C#.

Refactoring is the method of taking existing code and reducing its complexity. This may sound scary to some especially as you used to have to be very careful refactoring as you could disable your whole program but Refactor removes the risk and gives you some time saving methods.

The tool integrates with Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 and provides the same refactoring that C# already supports and more, and the best thing is it’s faster and uses animation to show you the result of you refactor before you commit to it.

To download this great free tool go here http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/IDETools/RefactorASP/

.Net Developer Network : Team Foundation Server with Richard Fennell

Last night I attended a great presentation on Team Foundation Server, at my local user group '.NET Developer Network'.

Being a leader in this technology and responsible for its implementation and administration at my company, I have spent a lot of time watching sales videos on how this is ‘Complete Solution’ to my development project needs, yet the actual knowledge on the day-to-day use information is very thin. However Richard brought his own experiences to the presentation and gave a real insight in to the pains and joys of using Team Foundation Server 2005 and the Orcas verson.

Richard started from the begging of the implementation with how to setup your Team Foundation Server and the pitfalls associated with this, something I have first had knowledge of, then took us through how a developer would actually use the system. The later part of the presentation was give us an overview of the many Power Tools available which fill the gaps in Team Foundation Server.

It was a great presentation, with well thought out content, aimed squarely at the developer who needs an insight into this mammoth technology.

Richard has made his slides available and has included a number of speaker notes in the Power Point slides, which is a great help as it is the detail of what is said that you usually need when you look back at these things.

You can download the slides from www.dotnetdevnet.com


Richard is an active blogger and you can find his blog at http://blogs.blackmarble.co.uk/blogs/rfennell

If you think this presentation sounded interesting then the .NET Developer Network User Group hold free monthly meetings available to anyone, all you need to do is register at www.dotnetdevnet.com.

Beginners Guide to Silverlight

I know everything coming out of Microsoft at the moment is Silverlight-this-and-Silverlight-that and I have tried to keep clear of being another voice in a sea of thousands saying the same thing, and at the risk of falling on def ears I thought I would tell you about a short article which should give you a background to what Silverlight is all about.

This is a concise article detailing what you need to know about Silverlight, so if you have not had time to watch a video or listen to a Podcast yet then you may want to give this a read.

The article is written by non Microsoft staff so gives a more rounded view, you can find the article here http://www.itbusiness.ca/

Debugging ASP.NET Server Requests and Response

How often have you gone to a client site or worked with your production server and wondered what is IIS receiving? This sort of information, like all information needed, is in the memory of the server but you cannot see it as you would need to interrogate the servers memory using something like WinDbg and workout at what position (memory address) the request and response are and work back to re-piece the information into a form you can read.

Now do not get me wrong this would be great thing to do and I would learn so much but like you, I have a heap more things to do with my day like actually creating that new web widget.

However do not fear as someone has already done the hard work for you, Tess Ferrandez, who works for Microsoft in Sweden is the person you want on your side as she spends her free time working out how to debug code. If you want to read how to get the request and response data from IIS or just copy the scripts, read her blog article here http://blogs.msdn.com/tess

User Interface Design

When I learnt about how to program and application design in College we spent a lot of time reading old books and using them as our reference for assignments, as I my knowledge increased I left a lot of that text behind me in the notion that is was all out of date and not valid in an industry which seem to move at a million miles a minuet. Although technology has moved on how we actually design software and the problems we have to overcome when doing so are quite old and in their simplest form date back to the early years of Computer Science.

For example take interface design, it is still the same as it’s always been, present an easy to read interface which is intuitive to the users business function while presenting any information to the user in a structured and ordered manor. This idea has not changed since Clayton Lewis and John Rieman wrote their book on User Interface design in 1993.

The book covers the theories and methodologies of user interface design with step-by-step guidance on how to create the best user interface for your application, after all, without a good interface no amount of well structured class will help you. The book is now over ten years old but is still as relevant as it was back then.

You can read the book on line at http://hcibib.org/tcuid/ or download a PDF version. You are not charged to read this great resource but you can donate $5 to the authors through the site.

ASP.NET Performance Tips

I spend my life reading as much as I can about how to squeeze that little bit of extra performance out of my applications and in the Web deployment world there are so many areas you need to be aware of, the client browser, the server config and your ASP.NET application. So when ever there is a list of techniques to employ or avoid when developing ASP.NET I lap it up especially as each time I developer I like to do as little boilerplate coding as possible and use the framework controls which are not always the most efficient.

Miguel Angel Carrasco has just release 20 ASP.NET development tips on his blog at http://www.realsoftwaredevelopment.com. The list is short but comprehensive with some very useful tips on ASP.NET do’s and don’ts.

Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications

When developing all applications you came to that point in the project, usually near to shipping, when you think about looking at the performance of the app. Hopefully you have read the books and persuaded your stakeholder to give you some metrics to work by or you just want the app to run on the smallest amount of hardware possible allowing your customers to have little reason to not use your new widget.

The guys over at the patterns and practices team have a lot of information to help developers like us with information on how we can tune our apps and they have just released a new document on how to tune your web applications using performance testing. I have not read the whole document but from I have seen it is to the usual high standard and contains a wealth of information on the subject of performance for web applications, for those of you who also do Windows apps I am sure that you will be able to use some of the same methodologies in this area as well as the document gives you a strong grounding in the methodologies (I expect nothing less from these guys).

To read the document on line or download the PDF go here http://www.codeplex.com/PerfTestingGuide

skydrive.live.com

Microsoft have just released a new service called ‘SkyDrive’. This new service provides storage for any data up to 500mb. It secured to your passport account and but you can also share your storage area with selected people.

The web pages only allow you to upload 5 files at a time but you can download a tool which allows you to upload more than five at a time making far more usable.

You can find more information here skydrive.live.com

Team System Web Access Power Tool

Yesterday Microsoft released the updated version of their Team System Web Access Power Tool, this free tool allows you to control your Team System projects entirely through a web interface. This tool is the updated version of the DevBiz tool which Microsoft bought earlier this year.

The development team at Microsoft has put some time into improving the tool over the original, which was already quite feature rich, by putting it through their own release cycle which includes many rigorous checks. They have also spent some time putting increased support for AJAX to make the interface more response and have removed the need for keys to activate the product, it is now accessed using Windows Authentication.

This tool is available to download from here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/.
Remember you need to have Team System already installed for this to work.

To see a full list of changes read this blog http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/