Step 1: Open the Visual Studio macros IDE by navigating to Tools –> Macros –> Macros IDE.

Step 2: Double click on “MyMacros” and then on “EnvironmentEvents”. You should now be looking at a VB code editor window.

Step 3: Paste the following code directly before the “End Module” line:

Private Sub BuildEvents_OnBuildProjConfigDone(ByVal Project As String, ByVal ProjectConfig As String, ByVal Platform As String, ByVal SolutionConfig As String, ByVal Success As Boolean) Handles BuildEvents.OnBuildProjConfigDone

    If Success = False Then
        DTE.ExecuteCommand("Build.Cancel")
    End If

End Sub

Step 4: Save and close the Macro Editor window and IDE.

All done!

I’m just starting go through my WPF books, so I wanted to capture some useful WPF / Silverlight links that I’ve discovered over the last year.

Windows Client – Winforms and WPF Home. Information, tutorials, links.
http://windowsclient.net/default.aspx

Silverlight Home – Information, tutorials, links.
http://silverlight.net/default.aspx

Web Platform – Microsoft Web Platform Information. Web Platform Installer download.
http://www.microsoft.com/web/default.aspx

Codeplex WPF Home – Portal for accessing the WPF Toolkit and the WPF Futures releases.
http://www.codeplex.com/wpf

WPF Toolkit – Additional Controls, Themes, and Tools for WPF.
http://wpf.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=29117

Silverlight Toolkit – Additional Controls, Themes, and Tools for Silverlight.
http://silverlight.codeplex.com/

Patterns and Practicies: Composite WPF and Silverlight (Prism) – WPF /Silverlight Application Framework and Patterns.
http://compositewpf.codeplex.com/

Caliburn – WPF / Silverlight Application Framework.
http://caliburn.codeplex.com/

Visifire – Free (for GPL’d works) Silverlight and WPF Charting Controls. Has dual licensing model for closed source usage.
http://www.visifire.com/

Kaxaml – Lightweight XAML Editor.
http://www.kaxaml.com/

WebAii – Free Web Application Testing Framework for IE and Firefox. V2 Will support Silverlight.
http://www.artoftest.com/products/webaii.aspx

Ninject – Fast, Lightweight .Net Dependency Injection
http://www.ninject.org/

I should mention up front that jQuery was an indispensible tool when I was working on this project as in many cases I was able to replace the offending JavaScript with a jQuery equivalent that was cross browser compatible. If you’re a web developer and are not familiar with jQuery, you probably should be.

So a couple of things to look out for… I wanted to list the easiest ones to spot first as you can do a text search and usually find all of them:

1. CSS Expressions:
   • Were implemented in IE5 and allow you to assign a JavaScript expression to a CSS property.
   • Were deprecated in IE8 standards mode, see http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/10/16/ending-expressions.aspx for details.
   • IE specific.
   • Search for: “expression(”
   • Replace with JavaScript that dynamically modifies the CSS properties in response to specific browser events (onresize, etc).
     • In many cases this can be more performant than CSS expressions because you can choose to bind to specific events (CSS expressions are reevaluated *every* time a JavaScript event with at least 1 listener fires.
2. outerHTML:
   • “Get or set the HTML of the entire node x, including the outermost tag (element x itself).”
   • Example: x.outerHTML = “Let’s <u>change</u> it!”
   • IE specific.
   • Search for: “outerHTML”
   • Replace with innerHTML or W3C DOM methods. innerHTML is in theory faster, but IE and Konquerer have some issues when innerHTML is used with tables. Replacing outerHTML with calls to innerHTML will also require some changes to the logic using outerHTML as innerHTML is slightly different in behavior.
3. Visual Filters:
   • Used commonly to create gradients without using images.
   • More information on Visual Filters: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms532853.aspx
   • IE specific.
   • Example: <ELEMENT STYLE=”filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Gradient(sProperties)” … >
   • Search for: “DXImageTransform”
   • Replace with… Unfortunately there really isn’t an equivalent for this. Some of the visual filters can be replicated using standard CSS properties, but not all of them. As convenient as the visual filters are, they will only work in internet explorer at the moment.
4. Window.Event:
   • Used to access JavaScript event information in IE.
   • IE Specific.
   • Search for: “window.event”
   • This item could have several pages written about it, but the short story is that IE handles passing JavaScript event information differently than other browsers. You will need to code your JavaScript to accommodate this difference. jQuery can again be useful here as it can abstract a lot of this problem away from you. I recommend reading the section on events here: http://www.reloco.com.ar/mozilla/compat.html as it will give you an overview of the problem and how to address it.
5. Custom Attributes:
   • Used to defined custom element attributes.
   • Getting or setting custom attributes without using DOM methods is not cross browser compatible.
     • Example: element.MyProp = “This doesn’t work in all browsers.”
   • Search for… No good search string for these. You just need to keep your eyes out for JavaScript that makes calls to custom attributes without using DOM methods (or jQuery).
   • Replace with: calls to .getAttribute(“MyProp”) or setAttribute(“MyProp”) or if using jQuery, element.attr() as shown here: http://docs.jquery.com/Attributes/attr.

This list is by no means exhaustive, but I wanted to point out many of the common issues I have come across. Your mileage may vary. I recommend checking out the references listed below for a lot more good compatibility information. I’ve tried to check all of my facts, but if you notice anything that seems off, let me know so I can fix it!

References:

• http://www.reloco.com.ar/mozilla/compat.html – “Making your web browser compatible with Firefox”
  • A good overview of many of the common browser compatibility problems faced when making an web app written for IE work in Firefox
• http://www.quirksmode.org/compatibility.html – “Compatibility Master Table”
  • The holy grail of browser compatibility information. Seriously… Want to know if a browser fully supports CSS2, CSS3, DOM, etc? It’s here.
• http://reference.sitepoint.com/ – “CSS/HTML/JavaScript Reference”
  • Reference site for CSS, HTML, and JavaScript information. Its got a clean layout and additionally contains browser compatibility information for each of the items.
• http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/03/12/site-compatibility-and-ie8.aspx – “Site Compatibility and IE8”
  • A page detailing potential issues and fixes for making your pages compatible with IE8 in Standards Mode. This is actually a good reference for potential cross browser problems as most of the items listed are cross browser compatibility issues as well.

StyleCop for ReSharper is a ReSharper 4.1 plug-in that allows Microsoft StyleCop to be run as you type, generating real-time syntax highlighting of violations. StyleCop for ReSharper also contains a collection of Quick-Fixes and Code Clean-Up Modules to help you easily fix StyleCop code styling violations.

StyleCop for ReSharper also comes with a ReSharper Code Style Settings File which you can import into ReSharper to make ReSharper’s auto formatting features compliant with StyleCop’s recommendations. If you don’t want to import a whole code style settings file and would rather just tweak some specific formatting settings that are responsible for most of StyleCop’s complaints about ReSharper, I recommend reading these 2 blog posts at Hock Blogs:

• http://www.hockblogs.net/post/2008/10/4-great-Resharper-tips-for-use-with-StyleCop!.aspx
• http://www.hockblogs.net/post/2008/11/Another-set-of-great-Resharper-tips-for-use-with-StyleCop!.aspx

Navigating around the StyleCop for ReSharper project page on CodePlex also turns up a lot of additional useful information:

• List of all the fixes currently in StyleCop for Resharper
• Configuring StyleCop Friendly Code Clean-Up Settings
• Configuring a Company Name for StyleCop File Header
• Configuring Inspection Severity for StyleCop Warnings

All in all, I’m enjoying this ReSharper plug-in. It has taken a lot of the pain out of being compliant with StyleCop’s rules.

Happy jQuerying!

/// <reference path="MyIntellisenseFile.js" />

However, if you needed intellisense in an ASP.Net page, you needed to add the reference to the intellisense file in a server tag that would prevent it from being sent to the client, usually by wrapping the script reference tag like this:

<% if(false) { %>
<script src="MyIntellisenseFile.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<% } %>

Unbeknowst to me, Last November the VS Web Tools team released a hotfix to VS 2008 SP1 that alleviates a lot of this trouble. Now all you have to do is just reference the jQuery library and have the intelisense file in the same directory following the naming convention of filename-vsdoc.js (e.g. if your jQuery file is named jQuery.js, your intellisense file would be named jQuery-vsdoc.js) and Visual Studio will automatically find the file and provide you with intellisense support. No more conditional ASP.Net server tags. Woo! The VS 2008 hotfix is currently available on the MSDN Code Gallery.

If you’re looking for the official Visual Studio intellisense file for jQuery, you can grab it from the jQuery downloads page (It’s found in the Current Release section). Thanks to Joe Healy for pointing out to me that there was an official version.

Free Developer Tools.pptx

It’s in PowerPoint 2007 format, so if you don’t have PowerPoint 2007 installed, you can download the viewer here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=048dc840-14e1-467d-8dca-19d2a8fd7485&displaylang=en

Thanks to all who attended!

• I was promoted to “Software Engineer II”.
• I got married (I love you Erika!). The wedding was wonderful. Many thanks to all who were in attendance.
• Spent a week on honeymoon in Seattle, Washington and Vancouver, Canada (4 days and 3 days respectively).

So, enough of the mushy stuff.

This last Saturday was the Jacksonville Code Camp and it was a very nice event despite the last minute change in location due to after effects of Tropical Storm Fay. There were a lot of great sessions and the speakers all did a great job. (I even won a copy of CodeSmith Professional Tools in the raffle… woot!) This was my second year in attendance.

For those in the Jacksonville area, the Jacksonville Developers User Group website can be found at http://www.jaxdug.com/ and contains information on Jacksonville area Developer events. I have agreed to do my first user group talk in October and well be covering what free tools are available to make .Net developers’ lives easier. (I will be posting the slides here on my site afterward.)

VS2008 & .NET 3.5 SP1 Fun!: Service Pack 1 for Microsoft .NET 3.5 and Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2008 have been released! (about a week ago…) Information on the updates included with the service packs can be found here, and for the impatient, you can download the service packs directly from here. If you have trouble with the installation of the service packs, try running the Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack Preparation Tool. Microsoft has also released the Framework 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit which has even more information about the new features in the service packs and how to use them (This is in addition to the regular Visual Studio 2008 & .NET 3.5 Training Kit.) Another important release that got lost a little in the hype over .NET 3.5 SP1/VS2008 SP1 is the release of SQL Server 2008. This includes SQL Server 2008 Express Edition which you can grab here for those interested.

Now if that wasn’t enough for one post…. on with the show!

XAMLPad 4.0 has been released and can be downloaded from here. But wait.. what is XAMLPad?:

“XamlPad (xamlpad.exe) is a basic visual editor for Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML). XAMLPad is installed with the SDK and can be found from the start menu at All Programs/Microsoft Windows SDK/Tools/XAMLPad. ”

While you’re downloading XAMLPad, be sure to grab LINQPad if you don’t already have it.

And there’s still more…
NHibernate 2.0 Final has also been released! It can be downloaded here. And while the main NHibernate page doesn’t have the link up yet, the release notes for this release can be found here.

Finally, bringing up the rear on the notable release train is the official release of Microsoft Live Labs Photosynth. If you’re not familiar with Microsoft’s Photosynth technology, Photosynth’s About Page and this CNET Article about the launch should give you a good head start.

My very last news item for today (I promise!) is that Sara Ford has announced the pre-sale of her first book, “Visual Studio Tips: 251 Ways to Improve Your Productivity“. If you’re not familiar with Sara Ford and her blog… then you have a lot of reading to do… Sara has an almost daily piece of information about Visual Studio IDE and its various components. Well worth the read if you can squeeze just one more item into your daily blog diet.

Wooo! Hows that for an “I’m not dead, just busy” post! (-;

Windows Vista Performance and Tuning Guide
“Windows Vista and SP1 focus on delivering greater performance and overall system responsiveness. By striking a balance between speed and responsiveness, Windows Vista and SP1 deliver a level of performance that has the greatest positive impact on the system’s usability.This guide looks at the following areas of performance improvement…”

Virtual Earth ASP.NET Control – CTP Release
“Finally at long last we have released the Virtual Earth ASP.NET control (CTP Release). I spent a few minutes with Angus Logan from the Windows Live Platform Team to show off the control and give a quick demo to get you started. …”

Regionerate – Automatic layout enforcement tool for C#
“Regionerate (pronounced ri-jeh-neh-rate) is a new open-source tool for developers and team leaders that allows you to automatically apply layout rules on C# code. …”

Today’s links courtesy of the Channel 9 Blog and Greg’s Cool Thing of the Day.