Reflection IT Blog

I have just watched the live PDC05 Keynote Webcast. I'm very impressed. Great demo's showing LINQ, Indigo, Atlas and Avalon. The problem for Microsoft will be to get us 'the developers' to use these new technologies as soon as possible. I'm afraid it is all to much for a 'normal' developer too cope with.

I will be speaking at the SDN Software Developer Event on the September 16 2005, De Reehorst - Ede . I will talk about the integration of NDoc with Visual Basic 2003 and 2005. Hope to see you there.

• C# 2.0
• Class Designer
• Unit Testing
• Code Coverage
• FXCop Integration
• Debugging: DataTips, Visualizers and Viewers
• Refactoring
• Improved IntelliSense
• Code Snippets
• Profiles
• Strongly-typed resource class generator
• Improved (not perfect) Windows Forms controls

Microsoft has released a free LibCheck tool that allows you to compare two versions of an assembly, and determine the differences. The tool reports the differences as a combination of 'removed' and 'added' APIs. The tool is limited to looking only at APIs (i.e, it can't check for behavioral changes), and only compares public differences, or changes which are deemed to be 'breaking'. The tool can be used to quickly determine what has changed between one version of your assembly and another, and can help ensure that you won't introduce any breaking changes to clients of your assembly. Instructions and intended use of the tool are described in the 'libcheck tool specification' document with the zip file.

This was a feature I always was missing. VB6 had this, VS.NET didn't. Thanks MS.

For a long time I thought that I only had to set the Cursor.Current to a WaitCursor before a long running operation, the .NET runtime would reset it back to the Default cursor. Turns out that this is only true when the mouse is moved. Bummer.

The solution for this problem is very easy. I created a helper class called WaitCursor which set the Cursor.Current and restores it to the original value when it it disposed.

I create the instance of the WairCursor class inside a using statement. This will automatically call the Dispose() method when it goes out of scope.

There is a difference in disposing Modal and Non-Modal forms. In a training I gave last week I noticed that even experienced developers didn't know that Modal Dialogs don't dispose automatically, Non-Modal do.

The solution to this problem is very simple by creating the Form instance within a using block. This will dispose the Form when it is closed.

An alternative solution uses a try/finnaly. Personally I prefer the previous, it is easier to read and write.

The C# code editor in Visual Studio.NET 2003 does not handle whitespaces automatically like the VB.NET code editor does. This Add-In solves this problem by adding the 'Handle WhiteSpace' menu option to the Visual Studio.NET 2003 Tools menu. This option formats the C# code of the active code editor. This includes:

• Space before:  method declaration parentheses, method call parentheses, statement parentheses, braces and brackets
• Space after: comma and semicolon
• Space around: operators
• Double space

I have found a solution for a problem which I had for a long time. I was unable to set the ToolboxBitmap attribute for a component using the (type, string) constructor. I found the solution for this problem (using an internal ResFinder class) on www.bobpowell.net. This site has also some other Windows Forms Tips and Tricks. Great!

I'm testing Visual C# 2005 Express Edition Beta and I really like it. It has all of the features which I need to build Windows Forms applications. The Editor has also all new IntelliSense, Refactoring and Code Snippets features. They work great and really can boost productivity.

I have tested it on a PC with only 256Mb of ram. This is for the beta not enough. You need at least 512Mb.

I'm using the Online MSDN Help, it works OK. The looks are good but I find it difficult to get to the 'overview' of a class.

For professional development I would advise to use Visual Studio. For hobby work use the Express versions.