I stared searching for logging framework. At this point, you must be thinking why not log4net. I say mainly because setting that up to usable condition was too time consuming and complex for me. Although I have been using log4net during developing my very first add-in, honestly I still cannot setup log4net without referring its website. Also as pointed out here sometimes your log4net library will be larger than the actual application!

I found a new logging framework known as .NET Logging Framework by The Object Guy. The framework is very simple to implement and framework assembly is also very small. A notable feature for me is (from author’s website),

An InsistentLogger which you can use to wrap any other logger. This logger will continually try to relog to its wrapped logger whenever the wrapped logger fails to properly log. (e.g. You could wrap a SerialSocketLogger with an InsistentLogger. Then, if the end receiving logs over a socket happens to go down temporarily, the log entries will still get logged once the receiver is back online.)

Moderately priced at $5 for a single developer, I was not surprised to know its users list already include big names like Intel, HP, IBM, Bank of America!

1. GhostDoc

This is a free addin that automatically generates the XML comments for your code. Click on the method/field name and press Control + Shift + D and it generates the XML comments for you.

GhostDoc provides two commands.

a. Build Documentation

b. Re-build Documentation

I usually set default keyboard shortcut Control + Shift + D to Re-build Documentation as it helps me in re-writing the documentation whenever I change signature of the method, or rename the parameters.

2. PowerCommands for Visual Studio

This is available from Microsoft itself and it is open source!. I am listing down few of its features below.

• Collapse projects
• Unload/Reload projects
• Remove and sort usings
• Open containing folder
• Open command prompt
• Extract constant
• Clear recent lists
• and more…

3. DPack

This has awesome set of features but I feel it has not got the popularity it deserves. This is the first thing which I install after installing Visual Studio.

From the developer site:

DPack includes various browser tools that allow the developer to quickly find solution files, types, particular type members, methods or properties for instance, or quickly find and reference standard .NET framework types.

I use its “File Browser” window a lot to quickly open the files in the solution. Similarly you can browse through the members/ types in the whole solution using “Solution Browser”. And “Framework Browser” window allows you to locate a type, its corresponding namespace and assembly.

6. Favoroites Menu for Visual Studio

This is the tool I developed long back. This tool provides you the same functionality of any browser favorites menu. To be more clear, this tool allows you to mark any files in Visual Studio as your favorite file. The tool allows you to tag the file for easy searching. You can read more details about this tool in my website under “My Development” section.

7. Source Code Outliner PowerToy

From the author:

The Source Outliner PowerToy is a Visual Studio 2008 extension that provides a tree view of your source code’s types and members and lets you quickly navigate to them with filtering inside the editor.

Developer Tools

1. Console2

A multi-tab based console window. I regularly use this and add VS 2005, VS 2008 and sometimes PowerShell console windows. Some of the special features include multiple tabs, text editor-like text selection, different background types, alpha and color-key transparency, configurable font, different window styles.

2. BareTail

A tiny free real-time log viewer and log message highlighter.

3. Process Monitor

Popular sysinternals tool. While developing the Visual Studio add-ins, I need to watch Visual Studio activity to identify whether my add-in dll is being loaded etc. For this, I usually filter the processes for devenv.exe.

From the author:

Process Monitor is an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity

4. Reflector

Needs no explanation!

System Tools

1. XNeat Windows Manager Lite edition

Tool to hide, roll up windows, change order of task bar buttons etc.

2. Everything

A tiny, super fast indexed search engine for searching files and folders.

3. Launchy

One of the popular launchers.

4. Dexpot

A free virtual desktop creation and management tool.

5. TeraCopy

A super fast copier with features to pause, resume file transfers. I have replaced the default copy handler after I found this.

6. CCleaner

A popular system junk cleaner, registry cleaner, startup manager tool. Freeware.

8. CutePDF writer

A free PDF printer.

Text Editors

1. PSPad

A syntax highlighting text editor. This one is my favorite. I regularly use it for formatting the HTML. Also has downloadable scripts to beautify JS etc.

2. Notepad++

Another open source free text editor.

Messengers

1. Digsby

A multi protocol messenger. Support all major messengers like GTalk, MSN, Yahoo, AIM etc. It can also alert you if you have any new messages in facebook, linked in etc. There is real competition between Pidgin and Digsby. I use Digsby mainly for its social networking capabilities.

Utilities

1. PrintScreen

A free screenshot taking tool.

2. ColorPix

A small free color picker. Once you found the color of your choice, press Space key will lock the color so that you can use it.

Zip Utilities

1. 7-Zip

A file compress/uncompress utility, supporting all major compression types (.zip, .rar, .7z etc).

At the end of the document, a solution architect in my team felt a need of a diagram to explain the control flow inside the system. To draw the diagram, I did not have the Microsoft Visio (which I often use for such kind of tasks), and I was not willing to use MS Paint (you have to draw everything on your own), PowerPoint (very less work area) and Paint.net (not easy to draw arrows etc).

I was searching for alternative free solution and I found this site called www.lovelycharts.com. Its dead simple. Register, login and start drawing.

You have save/export options once you are done drawing, and also different draw objects like network items, flow charts, etc.

I just now found out how to change this behavior. Windows run menu works by identifying the commands in the particular registry entry.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths

The devenv.exe, and its path is defined in that registry key.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\devenv.exe

So when you install VS 2005/2008 and then install VS 2003, this registry key is overwritten.

So you can rewrite this path of devenv.exe to set the proper behavior.

Default path to Visual Studio 2005:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe

Default path to Visual Studio 2008:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe

Default path to Visual Studio 2010:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe

Disclaimer: Modifying the registry can cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Use the information provided at your own risk.

The update includes a minor bug fix i.e, toolwindow icon is not set properly inside Visual Studio 2008. I do not remember from where I got the following code, but this worked for me.

Paste the below code in to a Utililty.cs

Usage:

Note:
1. The code above is not tested extensively on different machines.

2. Before using the above code you can check a nice article by Carlos Quintero. He has also written how the icon can be set for Visual Studio 2010 toolwindow.

There is a nice article about choosing between Singleton pattern and the static class here with examples.

Read it here

Even I was surprised to see this, and wanted to know the reason behind value 17 missing from the enumeration.

I googled and found a link to blog which explains, why the value 17 has been missed from the enum.

From the author:

We’ve had this “hole” in the TypeCode enum since October of 2000, and I can’t find an older set of bits. But, I’m sure that comment in IConvertible is right – this used to be TimeSpan. For TimeSpan, it’s possible we thought it would be interesting for a while, then we realized that frankly not that many people need to convert a Decimal to a TimeSpan, then removed it.

You might ask why we didn’t “fix” the enum when we removed whichever of these values we had originally added. It turns out that whenever we have a breaking change internally, we need to recompile all the code that might possibly depend on the removed or changed public surface area. For us, that would mean rebuilding everything that might have referred to TypeCode.String, whose value would have changed from 18 to 17. While we do go through that process internally in DevDiv, it is costly & painful for us.