VS.NET

Visual Studio 2008 PowerCommands

Scott Galloway — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 05:49:01 GMT

I keep losing these, the Visual Studio 2008 PowerCommands, these are one of my essential installs for VS 2008, from the site:

Below is a list of the included in PowerCommands for Visual Studio 2008 version 1.1. Refer to the Readme document for additional command details and screenshots.
Enable/Disable PowerCommands in Options dialog
This feature allows you to select which commands to enable in the Visual Studio IDE. Point to the Tools menu, then click Options. Expand the PowerCommands options, then click Commands. Check the commands you would like to enable.
Note: All power commands are initially defaulted Enabled.
Format document on save / Remove and Sort Usings on save
The Format document on save option formats the tabs, spaces, and so on of the document being saved. It is equivalent to pointing to the Edit menu, clicking Advanced, and then clicking Format Document. The Remove and sort usings option removes unused using statements and sorts the remaining using statements in the document being saved.
Note: The Remove and sort usings option is only available for C# documents.
Note: Format document on save and Remove and sort usings both are initially defaulted OFF.
Clear All Panes
This command clears all output panes. It can be executed from the button on the toolbar of the Output window.
Copy Path
This command copies the full path of the currently selected item to the clipboard. It can be executed by right-clicking one of these nodes in the Solution Explorer:
The solution node; A project node; Any project item node; Any folder.
Email CodeSnippet
To email the lines of text you select in the code editor, right-click anywhere in the editor and then click Email CodeSnippet.
Insert Guid Attribute
This command adds a Guid attribute to a selected class. From the code editor, right-click anywhere within the class definition, then click Insert Guid Attribute.
Show All Files
This command shows the hidden files in all projects displayed in the Solution Explorer when the solution node is selected. It enhances the Show All Files button, which normally shows only the hidden files in the selected project node.
Undo Close
This command reopens a closed document , returning the cursor to its last position. To reopen the most recently closed document, point to the Edit menu, then click Undo Close. Alternately, you can use the CtrlShiftZ shortcut.
To reopen any other recently closed document, point to the View menu, click Other Windows, and then click Undo Close Window. The Undo Close window appears, typically next to the Output window. Double-click any document in the list to reopen it.
Collapse Projects
This command collapses a project or projects in the Solution Explorer starting from the root selected node. Collapsing a project can increase the readability of the solution. This command can be executed from three different places: solution, solution folders and project nodes respectively.
Copy Class
This command copies a selected class entire content to the clipboard, renaming the class. This command is normally followed by a Paste Class command, which renames the class to avoid a compilation error. It can be executed from a single project item or a project item with dependent sub items.
Paste Class
This command pastes a class entire content from the clipboard, renaming the class to avoid a compilation error. This command is normally preceded by a Copy Class command. It can be executed from a project or folder node.
Copy References
This command copies a reference or set of references to the clipboard. It can be executed from the references node, a single reference node or set of reference nodes.
Paste References
This command pastes a reference or set of references from the clipboard. It can be executed from different places depending on the type of project. For CSharp projects it can be executed from the references node. For Visual Basic and Website projects it can be executed from the project node.
Copy As Project Reference
This command copies a project as a project reference to the clipboard. It can be executed from a project node.
Edit Project File
This command opens the MSBuild project file for a selected project inside Visual Studio. It combines the existing Unload Project and Edit Project commands.
Open Containing Folder
This command opens a Windows Explorer window pointing to the physical path of a selected item. It can be executed from a project item node
Open Command Prompt
This command opens a Visual Studio command prompt pointing to the physical path of a selected item. It can be executed from four different places: solution, project, folder and project item nodes respectively.
Unload Projects
This command unloads all projects in a solution. This can be useful in MSBuild scenarios when multiple projects are being edited. This command can be executed from the solution node.
Reload Projects
This command reloads all unloaded projects in a solution. It can be executed from the solution node.
Remove and Sort Usings
This command removes and sort using statements for all classes given a project. It is useful, for example, in removing or organizing the using statements generated by a wizard. This command can be executed from a solution node or a single project node.
Extract Constant
This command creates a constant definition statement for a selected text. Extracting a constant effectively names a literal value, which can improve readability. This command can be executed from the code editor by right-clicking selected text.
Clear Recent File List
This command clears the Visual Studio recent file list. The Clear Recent File List command brings up a Clear File dialog which allows any or all recent files to be selected.
Clear Recent Project List
This command clears the Visual Studio recent project list. The Clear Recent Project List command brings up a Clear File dialog which allows any or all recent projects to be selected.
Transform Templates
This command executes a custom tool with associated text templates items. It can be executed from a DSL project node or a DSL folder node.
Close All
This command closes all documents. It can be executed from a document tab.

End of a busy week

Blog Author — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 03:30:00 GMT

Well, that's it...TechReady1 is at an end, as with all conferences there were some high and low points (usual lows, level of content...length of sessions etc). The highs were pretty good though!
C# 3.0 is just looking amazing - you'll just love this stuff when you see it at the PDC; there have been some *sneaks* which may or may not be true and I guess there will be some controversy about some of the new stuff...but I just love it! Seeing Anders Hejlserg's presentation and Chalk Talk you can tell how excited he is about this stuff too...just get your butt to the PDC!
A lot of thought is going into the whole smart client / occasionally connected scenarios - this is going to be a big area for the future and some of the stuff that's planned is pretty cool (new Whitepapers on this stuff are due soonish...).
Some great keynotes - lots of stuff I can't talk about yet (it kills me to say that...working for Microsoft is a two-edged sword!) some great stuff coming in Vista and Office as well as some great stuff for Enterprise customers certainly looks like it's going to be an interesting year ahead! Oh, I have a video snippet of Jim Allchin playing guitar today...hope I grow up to be just like him ;-)

Well, I'm off to try and get a machine loaded up with C# 3.0,Vista Beta 1, VS.NET 2005, SQL Server 2005, Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly Avalon) and BizTalk 2006...wish me luck :-P (actually...pretty sure this is totally impossible right now...just in case you were wondering...)

Visual Studio Team System VPC due next week...

Blog Author — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 16:16:00 GMT

Just heard that there will be a publicly (well, MSDN subscriber) avaialble download of a Virtual PC image of Visual Studio Team System 2005 (plus all the bits you need to run it) avaialble soon. We've been using this internally for a while and if you want to really get to grips with this great product, it's fantastic...not sure about the memory requirements yet - but I'd guess 512MB won't cut it :-)

[HELP] Question on Windows Server 2003 Wildcard Mapping and VS.NET

Blog Author — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 18:06:00 GMT

Here’s what I’m doing – I have a wildcard map set on my IIS 6 server to allow me to do “/” path mapping through my ASP.NET HttpHandler – problem is that VS.NET can no longer open the web project at that address…anyone any idea why?
UPDATE: Looks like it has to do with Front Page Server Extension stuff...sooner that goes away the better (roll on VS.NET 2005!). Anyway, to get around this I used the instructions here which basically tell you how to avoid the nasty FPSE stuff and run Web Projects like a normal class library (which also makes them load faster as a nice side effect!)

Visual Studio 2005 may become Visual Studio 2006 - that sucks!

Blog Author — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 17:33:00 GMT

Just read here, of course this is pure speculation right now but it would seem likely that if this is true (Sql Server 2005 is being delayed until Q3 2005 or so...) the Visual Studio 2005 will also be delayed by at least that much. This would be a terrible move - especially as MS are already encouraging people to move to using the 2005 products early and devoting entire editions of MSDN magazine to the product (which doesn't even have a go-live license yet!). The latest betas of VS 2005 seem pretty stable and ASP.NET 2.0 appears to be pretty feature complete (especially as many of the cooler features have recently been ditched) , for many developers the SQL Server and VS releases do not need to be linked at all - it'd suck if you couldn't use the new cool CLR in DB features but it's not a killer.
In short, please Microsoft just get on and release VS 2005 as soon as it's ready - you'll get a lot of happy developers that way!

Source Control stuff greyed out in Visual Studio .NET 2003?

Blog Author — Fri, 18 Jun 2004 20:37:00 GMT

One of our developers had a problem where his VS.NET 2003 installed on Windows Server 2003 was greying out all of the options under the Source Control menu - took a little while to find the solution but eventually discovered it here - so if you have this problem, run a tool called SSINT.exe from your VSS\Win32 directory.

XMLVisualiser Add-In from Ben Lovell

Blog Author — Fri, 18 Jun 2004 00:20:00 GMT

This is a really handy little add-in which lets you examine the content of XML bearing variables during debug sessions. I just discovered Ben Lovell's blog , lots of useful stuff over there...

Really nice VS.NET 'Paste As' Add-in from Alex P

Blog Author — Sat, 22 May 2004 01:57:00 GMT

Simple idea but really useful! An add-in which lets you past content as various different things in VS.NET. Download it here. For more information, visit Alex's Post

Missing some really interesting stuff...

Blog Author — Tue, 23 Sep 2003 20:33:00 GMT

Today the Design Preview of new versions of ASP.NET happens in London...but I have a prior engagement and can't go...wahhhh!!!
If anyone from the ASP.NET design team is reading this - I love travel - and the Residence Inn in Redmond is lovely ;-)
Anyway, from what I've seen of Whidbey (and I can't even talk about that!) it is looking stunning...well done...oh man, it is going to be fun getting the new stuff into production,,,

XSLT editor for VS.NET

Blog Author — Wed, 17 Sep 2003 01:59:00 GMT

Now this is very cool...why VS.NET doesn't have this built in is beyond me...Visual XSLT pretty much all you need for XSLT development within Visual Studio .NET...costs $295 for commercial users but they have an educational license (which I think is always a good idea!) see here for pricing...