Just code - Tamir Khason : Visual Studio, soft

New year – new blog or how to migrate Community Server to any other engine, supports XML-RPC

Tamir Khason — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 02:33:04 GMT

Please update your bookmarks, because the new url of this blog is http://khason.net/ (you have not update RSS feeds, it will be done automatically). Why I did it? Why I decided to go to “stand-alone”… Well. there are some reasons. Generally, I do not want to explain all those here, but trust me, there are some. The main reason is, that there is no responsible person in charge for this blog platform in Microsoft Israel. This why, if your blog is popular and you have a respect to your blog visitors, you cannot host it here… Take a look into new comments notifications in my inbox. Would you answer your readers with such “small amount” of SPAM and capcha, that cannot be fixed already for three years in this platform? This how my inbox looks like for last three years. So now, you should not ask me, why I not answered your email or comments. Aren’t you? :)

Currently, all comments in this blog are disabled, so if you want to comment, please use new url of posts (this will appear shortly in the beginning of each post). Also, this post will not be syndicated in RSS.

So, this post is the last. I loved this platform, and loved people started it. But, unfortunately, it seemed, that bloggers community is not important enough for new platform managers.

Also, If you want to learn how to use C# and XML-RCP to migrate from CS2007, used in this platform, visit my new home :)

Have a great year and, as always, be good people. This post marked with all possible tags automatically. Sorry.

Visual Studio snippet designer

Tamir Khason — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 08:48:12 GMT

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Chicks love CodePlex as well as Microsoft loves it too and today they release extremely useful tool, that was internal for more, then three years. It named: “Visual Studio Snippet Designer”.

As you can, probably, understand. This tools is used to create and manage VS time savers - snippet files (introduced in VS2005)

This is great tool, that will help you a lot to save your time during regular everyday development. Any other word is unnecessary. Download, install and use it!

What’s new in MSDN Downloads?

Tamir Khason — Tue, 20 May 2008 18:02:41 GMT

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Just look how many new releases those days in MSDN Download web site.

Virtual PC 2007 SP1 – download and release notes
Scriptomatic 2.0 - download (uses PowerShell 1.0)
Windows PowerShell V2 CTP2 - download
Office Live Update 1.1 - download
.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 beta – download
Visual Studio 2008 SP1 beta - download
Microsoft Expression Blend 2.5 March 2008 Preview - download
Microsoft Office for MAC SP1 – download
Windows XP SP3 – download as ISO or as NEP + release notes
Symbols package for Microsoft XP Service Pack 3 – download
Outlook 2007/2003/2002 Add-in for Personal Folder Backup – download
XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP – download

Too much – too cool. Turn your download managers on

Have a nice day

XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP is now available!

Tamir Khason — Wed, 07 May 2008 22:00:00 GMT

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Do you want to build XNA games for Zune? Do you want to do in from Visual Studio 2008, rather, then from Visual Studio 2005? Download new technology preview of XNA Game Studio. Currently you cannot build games for XBox with XNA GS 3.0 – only for Zune and PC? What does it mean? Actually nothing, but worth a try. Also, you can see in my blog what you can do with it.

Where to get it? From XNA Creators Club online. For more information, visit XNA team blog.

Localization fix for SAP ES Explorer for Visual Studio

Tamir Khason — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 01:21:00 GMT

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A couple of days ago, new great product [PDF] was released by SAP together with Microsoft. It named SAP Enterprise Services Explorer for Microsoft .NET (you can download sneak preview for free). It come to exchange SAP.NET Connector and enables to use SAP Enterprise Services as regular Web references or WCF services. This product still in beta, however there is already major issue - it does not work in localized version of Visual Studio. Neither 2005 nor 2008. Why this happens? The reason is simple. Visual Studio always asks for localized resources for addins and there is no way to work around it.

From one hand, it's bad, that such global company as SAP does not want to localize it's products. From the other hand, there are very few developers, who working with localized versions of development environment. Anyway I started to look into the product to understand what has been done by developers. Oh, my god. They put resources into GAC. How to get them out there?

Actually, GAC is regular windows directory, that exists in %windir%\assembly\GAC\ or %windir%\assembly\GAC_MSIL\. But smart Windows replaces regular Explorer view by customize ActiveX. This does not mean, that you cannot pick files from there. To prove it map GAC folder to another disk. From command line run following command "subst z: %windir%\assembly\GAC_MSIL\". Now you have your GAC mapped to network virtual drive Z

So, if it is regular directory, you can get files from there and put it into any place you want. But why copy it if we can use hard links?

What's the hell are "hard links"? Hard links are symbolic links or symlinks, we know from Unix environment. Yes, you ca ln -fs in Windows :) To do it, you should use file system utility, named fsutil. Actually, those only pointers to real files in your file system. So, "fsutil hardlink create <copy> <original>" will do the work.

Now, when we know where to get those files and how to make symbolic links to them, we should know what versions of Visual Studio we have installed and what are languages of those products. To do this, we have to make a small trip into registry and look into HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DevDic\VS\Servicing. There we will find node 8.0 if VS2005 installed and 9.0 if VS2008 installed. Actually, we can pick all necessary information there. Let's see. This key build according following pattern: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DevDiv\[Product Family]\Servicing\[Product Version]\[Product Edition]\[Product Language]. That's exactly what we need. But what are possible values?

Product family

URT - .NET framework
VB - Visual Basic Express
VC - Visual C++ Express
VCS - Visual C# Express
VJS - Visual J# Express
VNS - Visual Web Developer Express
VS - Visual Studio (all versions)
VSTF - Visual Studio Team Foundation Services

Product version

8 (or 8.0) - 2005
9.0 - 2008

Product Edition

VSTD - Standard
PRO - Professional
VSTS - Team System

Product Language

Integer of Culture identifier (or other words LCID)

Now, when we know what versions and what languages are installed we should detect where Visual Studio is installed. In this case, we'll need another registry key "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\". Under this node we'll find again 8 or 9 and then value "InstallDir", that, actually, tells us where the current version of Visual Studio is installed.

Last thing to remember, that Visual Studio looks into it's root directory (that we detected in previous step) for directory with two letter ISO language code and resources there.

At this point we know all necessary information in order to work, so we have our program ready. You can, even download and use it :)

So, after running and clicking "Apply fix" button (if possible - you have SAP ESA Explorer and localized version(s) of Microsoft Visual Studio), we can start using this great product in any available version of Visual Studio. In English of cause)

Have a nice day and do not forget, that not everyone work with English version of development tools.

Download Localization fix for SAP ESA Explorer for Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 (no installation needed - just unzip and run) >>

Some new post-mix downloads

Tamir Khason — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:01:44 GMT

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Today is download day at MSDN. There are some very interesting things published.

New release of Windows SDK (new classes for WPF 3.5, bugs fixes, and enhanced support for Windows Server 2008, including speech, error reporting and UAC). Download it here. For more information, visit SDK blog
Windows XP SP3 RC2 (it's not final release), but if you want to try it (not in production environment) download it here. As well as if you are ready to harm your system. Give a try to Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for XP (or for Vista/Home Server 2008, or Windows Server 2003 SP2).
There are some fixes for Microsoft XNA Game Studio 2.0 (make sure, that you know what is it. If not, come to see my TechEd session). Also, you can download Games for Windows - LIVE redistributable .
If you are lucky Zune owner, you can download PC software 2.3 for it
If you Virtual Earth fun, add realistic 3D capabilities to use online Live Search Maps.
If you still have no Silverlight Tools for VS2008, be sure to download it (this is not chained installer, tools only)

Enough for this morning. Warm up your download machines and start downloading.

Web editor performance fix for Visual Studio 2008

Tamir Khason — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 20:46:49 GMT

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After VS2008 was released, there were a lot of "buzz" from web developers, that complain about bad performance of new HTML editor, especially with large HTML and JavaScript pages.

Today Web Tools team of Visual Studio released patch, that fixes those issues

Freezes while typing in page with custom controls
Conversion between source code and designer view
Very slow behavior, while opening large HTML document
Visual Editor stops response with big HTML files
And more performance oriented issues.

You can download and install this patch from here.

Hope it'll help some of you.

A couple of updates - mega update post

Tamir Khason — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:37:55 GMT

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Today, only updates

Yahoo finally releases Yahoo! Messenger for Vista - this was one of very first prototypes, shown in Mix last year. I did not install it, however, here a couple of review Erik Burke, Tim Sneath and Ryan Stewart. As for me, they lost "wow effect" last year

Microsoft Expression Blend 2 - December Preview. What's new? VS2008 integration, inheritance, no SL2.0 support (strange, maybe, because of breaking changes toward near beta)

Vista SP1 RC1 available for MSDN subscribers (via Nick Whites). Nothing special, 40 minutes of installation, profile information loss and performance fixes

Office 2007 SP1 is expected to ship 10-December week. This time it is not RC or Beta, but final product (via Mary Jo Foley). Great work.

Windows XP SP3 is very close to RC1, but nothing about public beta yet.

Starting today, you can configure Messenger presence. Some cool features become available (via Angus Logan). Here is how.

PDC 2008 (canceled last year) will be on October 27-30 in LA (hello, Peter). It promised to be great event about the company's emerging services platform efforts, .NET, Windows and Mobile technologies.

A little about mobile devices, while waiting for my new mega-device (more information soon): Dell is about to enter mobile phone industry in 2008, Opera compiled their browser for Brew platform (hello, Pelephone), while Google create their mobile version for IPhone. Windows Mobile 6.1 is going to be cool. Here screenshorts. Meanwhile, you can update your Mobile Office to version 6.1 for free or your Nokia (N-series) with Internet Radio application. As for me, 8 hours speak time and 30 days standby, quad-band. Those are features, that you need from your handy.

Well, that's it for now. Have a nice weekend.

Now I have a question for you. What do you think, about such format of posts? Should ?I go on with it or continue to write post-per-event?

Thank you

Silverlight tools for Visual Studio 2008 RTM

Tamir Khason — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 21:51:00 GMT

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After upgrade to Visual Studio 2008 RTM from Beta 2, you, probably, will need Silverlight tools for VS2008. Download and install it from here. Please note, before installation, you should completely uninstall previouse version of Silverlight tools for Visual Studio 2008 beta 2.

Visual Studio Windows Live Tools - November CTP

Tamir Khason — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 13:47:02 GMT

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For all those, who want to incorporate Windows Live into their applications, new Windows Live Tools from Visual Studio will be great place to begin. Download November CTP on Microsoft Connect.

via LiveSide

Visual Studio 2008 beta 2 is crashing? Install this patch

Tamir Khason — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:28:21 GMT

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Most of clients, installed VSTS 2008 Beta 2 complained about rapidly crashing IDE. The core problem was found in IntelliSense feature of C# and yesterday new patch was released. So, if you are running into this problem and using English SKU, please install the patch to fix the problem.

Microsoft Expression Blend 2 August Preview is available

Tamir Khason — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 06:20:01 GMT

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New refreshment of great XAML editing tool is available for download as Preview version. What's new? Silverlight (working with Silverlight 1.0 RC) and Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas) integration support, User controls authoring, XAML editor got some improvements, such as changing font sizes, word wrapping, etc. You can now target your build by using $(BuildingExpressionBlend) property. New storyboard picker replaces old Storyboard combobox and you can finally manipulate (scaling, resizing, etc) multiple objects.

We're looking forward for your feedbacks

Download Microsoft Expression Blend 2 August Preview

Visual Studio "Orcas" June 2007 CTP is available

Tamir Khason — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 16:56:35 GMT

[This blog was migrated. You will not be able to comment here. The new URL of this post is http://khason.net/blog/visual-studio-orcas-june-2007-ctp-is-available/ ] After a limited beta Visual Studio 2008 ("Orcas") June CTP VPC is available to wide public. A lot of bugs fixed (thank you all those who tested it), some new features added. Nice work! Download VS2008 June 2007 CTP VPC Technorati Tags: orcas , visual Studio.beta , VSTS , download , CTP , .NET framework 3.5 , WPF , WCF , WF...(read more)

Orcas June CTP for limited beta is available

Tamir Khason — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 19:33:37 GMT

[This blog was migrated. You will not be able to comment here. The new URL of this post is http://khason.net/blog/orcas-june-ctp-for-limited-beta-is-available/ ] After releasing June CTP of .NET framework 3.5, June CTP bits of Visual Studio 2008 (Team Suite and Visual Web Developer) are also ready for limited beta as Layout or VPC image. If you want to test it, please let me know via comments or by contacting me directly. Technorati Tags: Orcas , Visual Studio , VSTS , beta , download , CTP , .NET...(read more)

VS2005 SP1 update for Vista is rather pity

Tamir Khason — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 16:45:48 GMT

[This blog was migrated. You will not be able to comment here. The new URL of this post is http://khason.net/blog/vs2005-sp1-update-for-vista-is-rather-pity/ ] I was rather disappointed by the new patch for Visual Studio 2005 SP1 for Windows Vista . WTF, the most significant problems such as re-rendering, JIT and elevated account requirement were addressed, but not solved. So what the patch is really for ?...(read more)