Dan Rigby » VisualStudio

Quick and Easy Google (or Bing) Web Search in Visual Studio

Dan Rigby — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 02:48:38 +0000

Here is a quick and easy way to add a Google (or Bing) Web Search link to the context menu in Visual Studio:

Open the Visual Studio macros IDE by navigating to Tools –> Macros –> Macros IDE (or pressing Alt+F11).
Right click on “MyMacros” and select Add New –> Add New Item.
Select the Module template, name the module “Search”, and click Add.

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

Sub Search()
    Dim strUrl As String
    Dim selection As TextSelection = DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection()
    If selection.Text <> "" Then
        strUrl = "www.google.com/search?q=" + selection.Text
        'strUrl = "www.bing.com/search?q=" + selection.Text
        DTE.ExecuteCommand("View.URL", strUrl)
    Else
        MsgBox("Select Text first to Search")
    End If
End Sub

(Optional) If you prefer to use Bing for your search, uncomment the Bing line and comment out the Google line.
Your macro editor window should now look something like this:
Save and close the Macro Editor window and IDE.
Right click on the Visual Studio toolbar and select Customize.
Under the Toolbars tab, check the Context Menus option and the switch to the Commands tab.
Select the Macros Category, and then select the “MyMacros.Search.Search” macro.
Drag the selected macro onto “Editor Context Menus” -> “Code Window” and then drop it where you want it in the context menu (I place mine below the Paste command).
Right click on the new context menu item and change it’s name to “&Web Search”.
Click close on the Customize window.
You are now done! If everything has gone according to plan, when viewing a source code file you should now see a new context menu item that will do a web search on any selected text when you click it:

Automatically Cancelling a Failed Build in Visual Studio

Dan Rigby — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 01:43:19 +0000

Stumbled across this little tip on how to automatically cancel a build in progress after getting an error. You normally have to wait for visual studio to try to finish building all of the remaining projects before getting a chance to fix an the issue and this can take a few minutes if you have a lot of projects in your solution.

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!

Official jQuery 1.3.0, 1.3.1 Visual Studio Intellisense Files

Dan Rigby — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 13:42:29 +0000

It looks like this weekend while I was at the South Florida Code Camp the jQuery team has posted the official jQuery 1.3.1 Visual Studio intellisense file. You can get it from the jQuery downloads page, or more directly from the jQuery Google Code download page.

The official 1.3.0 documentation was posted this weekend as well and is also available from the downloads link above, or this Google Code download page.

Keep your eyes peeled for a jQuery 1.3.2 release anytime in the next few days as John Resig has mentioned there is still one last 1.3 regression they are working on fixing.

For those interested, the regression has to do with the $(document).ready() function waiting until images are fully loaded in Internet Explorer 6 & 7. The jQuery bug ticket ID is #3988 and here’s a Stack Overflow question in which John Resig talks about the issue in some detail.

Update for .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 Available

Dan Rigby — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 23:53:43 +0000

Microsoft has released an update for .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1.

Taken from the update page:

An update for the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is available. This article describes information about the issues that the update for the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 fixes.

The update for the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 fixes the issues that are described in the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

958481 List of the breaking issues with the .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 2 after you upgrade to the .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1

958483 List of the breaking issues with the .NET Framework 3.0 Service Pack 2 after you upgrade to the .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1

958484 List of the breaking issues with the .NET Framework 3.0 Service Pack 1 after you upgrade to the .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1

Joe Healy has blogged about this update and mentions some of the important fixes:

Interesting items fixed (note a full list can be found via the KB) – dynamic data one to one relationships – ASP.NET BrowsCap being broken of FPSE are installed – some broken UpdateProgress control issues – changes in the AutoCommit behavior for Oracle transactions – problems with WPF generating images on the fly via ASP.NET on IIS – and some other fairly freaky stuff – read the kb for all details.

I installed this update today on my Vista x64 work machine and it is actually 3 seperate updates which have to be downloaded and installed in a specific order. Please be sure to read the KB documention as to the order in which to install the updates.

FxCop 1.36 and StyleCop 4.3

Dan Rigby — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 23:26:23 +0000

While this is not new news, I realized that finding the link to download FxCop 1.36 is still not as straight forward as I’d like it to be (most links are still pointing to the 1.35 on msdn code or the 1.36 Beta 2 release), so I thought I would add the link here so I can find it again, or anyone else for that matter.

FxCop 1.36 download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9aeaa970-f281-4fb0-aba1-d59d7ed09772&DisplayLang=en
Whats new in FxCop 1.36 can be found in this post on the MS Visual Studio Code Analysis Team Blog.

For those who haven’t used it before, FxCop is a tool to analyze .NET assemblies based on a set of rules in order to find potential defects or design issues. The tool comes with a lot of very helpful built in analysis rules that are broken out into seperate categories (e.g. Performance, Design, Globalization, etc..). A lot of Continuous Integration tools have the ability to include FxCop analysis as part of a build so that the warnings FxCop generates can be tracked over time (hopefully in the *downward* direction).

And on a somewhat related note, I also wanted to add the download link for StyleCop, which ironically, is easy to find even though I’m pretty sure a lot more people are using FxCop.

StyleCop 4.3 download: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/sourceanalysis/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx
Updates and news about StyleCop can be found on the StyleCop Blog.

StyleCop is a tool which analyzes C# source code using a set of rules (much like FxCop) in order to enforce code styling guidelines. It can be used in Continuous Integration projects to verify code style rules are being met. The rule documentation is also available at the link above. I have found reading the rule justifications to be quite educational at times, especially since many of the StyleCop rules run counter to common .NET programming practices that I’ve seen.

Unofficial JQuery 1.3 Visual Studio Intellisense File

Dan Rigby — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 03:02:09 +0000

In lieu of the official Visual Studio 2008 Intellisense file for jQuery, the jQuery intellisense file generator at http://www.infobasis.com/sandpit/jQuery-Intellisense/ has been updated to support jQuery 1.3.0 (See this post for more details). The will allow you to get proper jQuery 1.3 intellisense in your applications until the official version is released. The above linked script generator uses the official jQuery API documentation to build the intellisense file, so you don’t need to worry about it being inaccurate or imcomplete just because it’s not the “official” version.

Happy jQuerying!

VS2008 SP1 Hotfix to Support “-vsdoc.js” IntelliSense Doc Files

Dan Rigby — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:30:08 +0000

Back in October of last year Microsoft released Visual Studio 2008 SP1 which fixed intellisense support for several javascript libraries, including JQuery. In order to use this with jQuery though, it was necessary to download a seperate jQuery intellisense file and add references to it. If you wanted the intellisense in a js file, you’d reference it using a standard js reference like this:

///

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) { %>

<% } %>

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.

Personal Updates, VS2008/.NET 3.5 SP1 Information, and much more…

Dan Rigby — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 02:01:46 +0000

Sorry for the long delay between posts, a lot has been going on in my world as of late. Here’s a quick run down of the recent personal events that have kept me busy (and postless):

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! (-;