MCW Technologies' Community Server

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1 available now

BrianR — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:00:00 GMT

~~A quick look at the Microsoft.com downloads site and I don't see it yet for the .NET Framework 3.5 but I imagine soon.~~

Update:

.NET Framework SP1 is here.

VS is here .

Thanks to Paolo Barone for the links.

And now TFS is showing up too here.

SQL Server 2008 RTMs

BrianR — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:00:00 GMT

Wahoo! Congrats from (Tech Ed) South Africa.

As of now it's not on MSDN subscirber downloads.

And as of now the eval is not on Microsoft.com.

But soon baby, soon.

Update: bits are on MSDN Subscriber downloads!

VSLive NYC approaching

KenG — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:15:00 GMT

As I have several times in the past, I'll be heading for New York City for VSLive soon. In the past, this conference has been a lot of fun, full of useful sessions.

The folks at 1105 Media created a video to help promote the conference, and you can watch it here.

I hope to see you there!

Get rid of U3 on your USB stick

BrianR — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 06:08:00 GMT

I have a few SanDisk Cruzer USB sticks. One thing that annoys me is the U3 app. I appreciate what they're trying to do ... OK ... wait ...maybe I don't.

No, really, I just want it off my stick.

Go to SanDisk's site and get their U3 Launchpad Removal Tool.

Happy removal!

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I have the power

BrianR — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 03:40:00 GMT

No, not time for He-Man, just time for a mobile hardware upgrade.

I spend a good portion of my time working with virtual machines. And in doing so, I'm always looking for more power when I'm on the road.

This week I was able to make three great updates to my Lenovo T61p.

First, I upgraded my RAM from 4 GB to 8 GB. I had no issues. Just removed the old RAM and installed the new, rebooted and there it was in all its glory. FYI, you won't find 8 GB listed as an option on Lenovo's site yet or on many of the 3rd party RAM sites. However, just about any laptop using an Intel chip that truly supports 4 GB of RAM and uses the Santa Rosa platform or newer should support 8 GB just fine (YMMV).

Second, I upgraded to a new hard drive, Hitachi's 320 GB, 7,200 RPM monster. I always go for the fastest drive, then size. Watch when you go to upgrade your own. Some of the larger drives out there now are 12.5 mm, not the more common 9mm size used in most laptops.

Third, I installed a fresh copy of Window Server 2008 x64 and the RTM version of Hyper-V. Hyper-V is Microsoft's next generation virtualization technology (I'll blog more about it soon and why you care).

Now I just need to upgrade my VSTS VPC to Hyper-V and I'm ready to go.

I got my RAM from Kingston (FYI, it's on sale right now).

I got my hard drive from OWC (Currently has a $30 rebate)

So, get out there and pump some coin into the economy and feel the power.

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Cross-posted to my Pluralsight blog.

A New Year Starts

BrianR — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:37:00 GMT

Yes, it is July 1, 2008. and while it's not the traditional New Year, for me it is for two reasons. First, Microsoft has decided I didn't cause too much trouble over the last 12 months so I get to continue being a VSTS MVP. Thanks! Second, Microsoft starts their new fiscal year which means there's work to get busy on, now!

Speaking of new work this, I'll be doing a VSTS pre-con at the PDC this year in Los Angeles. Over the next few weeks, I'll expand on what I'm going to be talking about so if you're not busy on Sunday, October 26, come on down!

Also, I'll be flying down to South Africa for Tech Ed so if you're going to be in Durban, stop on by and say Hello.

TechEd 2008 Workshop (Exploring Visual Studio 2008)

KenG — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 17:43:00 GMT

Currently on the plane, heading to Orlando (again) for TechEd 2008. Tomorrow, I'm presenting, along with Marty Schaeferle (from Appdev), a workshop entitled "Exploring Visual Studio 2008". If you're interested in picking up the materials for this workshop, they're available here:

http://www.mcwtech.com/2008/teched

If you're attending, and find yourself in the audience, please introduce yourself. See you there!

Links from today's VSTS workshop at VSLive! Orlando

BrianR — Fri, 16 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Visual Studio® Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server and Team Suite VPC Image (Trial)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c7a809d8-8c9f-439f-8147-948bc6957812&displaylang=en

Visual Studio® Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server VPC Image (Trial)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=72262EAD-E49D-43D4-AA45-1DA2A27D9A65&displaylang=en

Brian Harry's Blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry

Licensing Whitepaper
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8883276

Visual Studio Team System Web Access 2005 Power Tool
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2105C9EE-565E-47B9-A5AC-9A8FF8A07862&displaylang=en

Visual Studio Team System Web Access 2008 Power Tool
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c568fba9-3a62-4781-83c6-fdfe79750207&displaylang=en

Spec available for "Codename TFS Bug Submission Portal"
http://blogs.msdn.com/hakane/archive/2008/03/25/spec-available-for-codename-tfs-bug-submission-portal.aspx

Teamprise 3.0: provides access to TFS from Windows, Mac OS/X, Linux and more
http://www.teamprise.com/

Team Foundation Server Administration Tool
http://www.codeplex.com/TFSAdmin

Team Project Limits
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa974183(VS.80).aspx

Rules changes: Static Code Analysis 2005 to 2008
http://blogs.msdn.com/fxcop/archive/2008/01/07/faq-which-rules-shipped-in-which-version.aspx

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How Not to Make a Conference Presentation

KenG — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:29:00 GMT

Currently at VSLive Orlando, where I did a workshop on Windows Workflow Foundation with Robert Green on Monday, and then three other sessions:

What's New in Visual Studio 2008 for ASP.NET Developers
Investigating LINQ to XML
Build a WPF Application in an Hour

If you're interested, you can view slides and download demos for those talks here.

In preparation for these talks, I entered the schedule for the conference, as it was at the time we first discussed it, many months ago, into Outlook. I had carefully scheduled each session, taking care of time zone differences, into the calendar. What I neglected to do was check the current schedule before heading down to my first session this morning. Yikes. I arrived at 9:44 for the session, thinking I had 30 minutes to hang out, when I noticed that the signage indicated that the session started at 9:45. And the room was completely full of folks eagerly awaiting wisdom on new features in Visual Studio 2008 for ASP.NET developers!

To add to the misery, I was toting a MacBook Pro for the presentation, and had just shut down the Vista VPC I was planning on using for the presentation. Oh, wait. I had also left the stupid VGA dongle in my hotel room. We frantically boot up the VPC, run around looking for an extra dongle (of which the show's speaker manager, the amazing Toby Malina, had an extra), and run sweating and out of breath up on the stage to give the session, which consisted of a demo with about a zillion steps.

Amazingly, once we finally got the video working, the session went fine. The audience was quite patient, and most waited out the five minutes of flailing onstage. Thanks to all who stuck with it!

In any case: the moral learned is to CHECK THE SCHEDULE at the conference. Very simple. D'oh.

Filtering Spam in Foreign Languages

KenG — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:00:00 GMT

I can't speak for anyone outside the US, but here, we tend to get a lot of spam written exclusively in Chinese, Japanese, and Russian. Outlook seems to block this stuff pretty well, but we're using a web-based mail service (so that spam doesn't get to our server), which forwards mail as necessary (or people use POP3 to pick it up from our email host). In any case, way too much foreign spam gets to the server, which adds time to the download, and is just plain irritating. I don't mean to be xenophobic, but any email that isn't written using a character set I can interpret is spam, as far as I'm concerned.

After some research, we found a way to block much of the spam. This will only work for you if your email host allows you to create filtering rules based on any text within the email. In our case, I added rules that sent mail to the Spam folder if the following text appeared anywhere in the email:

charset="GB2312"

I repeated, creating rules for the following character sets, as well:

charset="koi8-r"

charset="iso-2022-jp"

I'm sure there are others I'll need to block over time, but so far, this method has worked 100% effectively. The flow of Russian spam reaching my inbox has halted, finally.

At the LA .NET User Group (Saturday, April 26)

KenG — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 14:53:00 GMT

In case you happen to be in the area, on Saturday April 26, I'll be co-presenting a workshop titled "Exploring Visual Studio 2008" for the LA .NET User Group with Marty Schaeferle (from AppDev). The user group meets near UCLA. We'll be breezing through a large number of new features in Visual Studio 2008, including LINQ (to Objects, DataSets, SQL, and XML), WPF, WCF, Workflow, Data Enhancements, Client Application Services, and creating Office 2007 applications using VIsual Studio 2008.

For more information, drop by http://www.ladotnet.org.

(Thanks to AppDev for allowing us to use the material that I co-wrote for their Developing Applications in Visual Studio 2008: What's New course for this presentation.)

VSLive San Francisco coming up!

KenG — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 17:42:00 GMT

Continuing a long association with VSLive (been doing this since 1999), I'll be again speaking at VSLive in San Francisco, March 30 through April 3. It's a busy few days, for me--I'm co-presenting a workshop (Gentle Introduction to Windows Workflow Foundation) along with Robert Green, and then four sessions as well:

* What's New in Visual Studio 2008 for ASP.NET Developers?
* Build a WPF Application in an Hour
* Investigating LINQ to XML
* Programming the Office 2007 Open XML File Formats

The folks running VSLive have created a special promotion code, SPGET, that you can use when registering to receive $695 off the standard Gold Passport price (that is, rather than paying the standard $2795 for the Gold Passport admission, using this access code, you can get the Gold Passport admission for $2100). Please join me at VSLive San Francisco, learn a ton about Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio Team System, and much more! I hope you'll browse to http://www.vslive.com/sf and sign up now, and please stop by a session and say hello if you do!

General Conference Information:

VSLive! San Francisco – Moscone Center West, San Francisco March 30 – April 3, 2008

Register online (http://www.vslive.com/sf) or call 800-280-6218 using Priority Code SPGET and receive the Gold Passport for just $2,100.

2008 marks the 15th Anniversary of VSLive!, and we’re kicking the year off with our biggest conference of the year – VSLive! San Francisco. Meet industry gurus; network with other professional developers, Microsoft product teams and executives at San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center West on March 30 – April 3, 2008. VSLive! San Francisco offers 160 hours of hard-hitting technical content over five action-packed days. VSLive! San Francisco will provide a depth of resources and perspectives to help you be productive now and prepare for the near future. Learn cutting-edge techniques for today and tomorrow in sessions on VSTS, ALM, Silverlight, AJAX, .NET Framework 3.0 & 3.5, SharePoint 2007, Windows WF, Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008, and much more. Our speakers have years of experience mastering the tools you need to get your job done. www.vslive.com/sf

Open XML File Formats at the Office Developer Conference

KenG — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 17:38:00 GMT

I recently presented a session at the Microsoft Office Developer's Conference, focusing on the Office 2007 Open XML File Formats, using the new Open XML SDK from Microsoft, and using LINQ to XML to interact with the parts within the document.

If you're interested in downloading the content from the session, please visit http://www.mcwtech.com/2008/ODC.

The conference was a big success, as far as I can tell, and I look forward to seeing how it evolves over time.

VSTS 2008 VPC Images are available now

BrianR — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 16:20:00 GMT

Get the details on my Pluralsight VSTS blog.

End of line.

I Guess the Internet Actually IS a Set of Tubes (unless you run a 64-bit operating system)

KenG — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 15:43:00 GMT

Ever since seeing the moronic Senator Ted Stevens describe the internet as a series of tubes last year, I've been laughing about the stupid metaphor. (For more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes).

Recently, however, I noticed this site: http://www.tubesnow.com. Apparently, the Senator was correct. Tubes provide a nice file sharing metaphor, as a convenient place to place files for temporary online storage. Obviously, there are many such services, but this one actually meets a real need in my life. As a courseware author collaborating on writing the content, we need a place to pass files back and forth that doesn't clog our inboxes. I'm willing to try this one, if only to get a chuckle about the intelligence of our elected officials each and every time.

Revised (11/24/2007): The Tubes client doesn't run on Vista x64. So I didn't even get a chance to try it out. Never mind. No excuse for this. I love it when products say they run in Windows Vista, quietly not mentioning that they don't run in Vista x64. Ah, well. Strike this one off.

On my way to Tech Ed EMEA, Developers

BrianR — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 16:35:00 GMT

I'm sitting on UA 934 waiting for them to tell me to "turn that thing off". :-)

In either, case I fly to London, then on to Barcelona, Spain. I'm doing four VSTS talks this year (one with the bright Mr. Woodward).

More details to follow. If you're there, say hello.

End of line.

Indulging One's Hobbies (Again)

KenG — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 15:20:00 GMT

Although completely off the normal topic, I find myself again spending evenings playing the piano for rehearsals of a local San Jose production of a musical theater production. I've been doing this sort of thing since, well, for about 40 years now. It's an expensive hobby, since I must schlep 180 miles from home (where I live, there aren't many community theater products that use full orchestras!), stay in a hotel during the day, and rehearse or perform at night. I figure everyone's got hobbies, and this is mine.

In case you find yourself in the San Jose area over the next three weekends (Sept 28 - Oct 13 2007), and are interested in such things, the Actors Theater Center is producing the 1991 show, Assassins, by the legendary Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman, at the historic Hoover Theater. (Yes, it's really a musical that attempts to explain how, and why, anyone would attempt to assassinate a president. It's unlike any other show I've ever seen.) Yours truly will be covering the Keyboard I book in the orchestra for the entire run. Come by and say hello!

Thinkpad X61 Tablet and Vista x64

KenG — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 23:52:00 GMT

Recently, satisfying the goal of finding a small laptop for travel, I purchased a new Thinkpad X61 tablet. It's the only version of the X61 series that supports a higher-resolution screen (1440x1050), which I feel necessary to actually get work done on the road. It's a very nice machine, including 4GB of memory (and using Vista x64, I can USE all 4GB of memory!)

At the time I purchased it, it wasn't available with Vista x64 pre-installed, so I provided my own copy. The drivers are ostensibly available from Lenovo, but they're not all easily findable, and the video driver is old, and at the time I tried to install, the driver file available on their site won't extract. (It's interesting that I called them to alert them to this fact around July 15 2007, and as of a few days ago, they STILL hadn't updated the driver.)

If you want to install Vista x64 on your Thinkpad X61, you'll need a video driver. You can use the reference driver available from Intel, which you can download here:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/filter_results.aspx?strTypes=all&ProductID=2800&OSFullName=Windows+Vista*+Business%2C+64-bit+version&lang=eng&strOSs=160&submit=Go%21

Beware, however, that the installer inside the downloadable file won't install on your Thinkpad. It tells you that your machine is the wrong type. Instead, you must simply remove the existing driver (resetting back to Vista's built-in VGA driver), and then manually update the driver by pointing to the appropriate folder in the extracted driver you downloaded from Intel.

This driver works fine, and hasn't caused me any trouble. Until Lenovo sees fit to update their own driver download, you can use this driver.

VSLive in NYC (well, officially, in Brooklyn)

KenG — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 15:43:00 GMT

Recently returned home from VSLive in Brooklyn, and had a great time. I always love visiting New York, but VSLive this year had a really great "vibe" and was a lot of fun. Attendees seemed to have a great time, and everyone was really into it. I did a workshop on Windows Workflow with Robert Green, and Brian Randell did a workshop on SQL Server 2005, in addition to various other sessions. Saw lots of friends, even a Broadway show. Much fun was had by all, and if you haven't been to a VSLive show in a while--think about it. It's a great way to learn a lot, network, and have a good time.

Windows Workflow Demos from VSLive NY 2007

KenG — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 15:39:00 GMT

For those of you who attended VSLive in Brooklyn (and those who didn't), you can download the Workflow demos that Robert Green and I did during the workshop (and the two Workflow sessions I did on my own, later) here. In addition to the slides and demos, AppDev, the company for whom Robert and I wrote the courseware originally, graciously agreed to allow attendees to download PDFs of the chapters corresponding to the sessions from their site. You'll find a link to their site (requires free registration) on our download site:

http://www.mcwtech.com/2007/vslive/nyc

If you attended the sessions, please make sure to download the demos and corresponding courseware.

No Rest for the Wicked

BrianR — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 13:30:00 GMT

Well, last weekend they released Orcas Beta 2.

Today, Rosario. Rosario you ask? Yes, this is the post-Orcas version of Team Foundation Server and related bits. Rosario is “built” on Orcas so this isn't a new CLR, .NET Framework, etc.

So, skip the BBQ or getting the kids ready for school. Download this first CTP and let Microsoft know what you think. After all, they're releasing early so you can give them feedback.

Oh, here's the download URL. Also, here's a link to a paper about Rosario.

FYI, they're only posting a VPC for this first release. So what are you waiting for? Download away.

One more thing: Jeff Beehler, VSTS Chief of Staff, has info on his blog blog.

Edit: messed up the URLs. Too excited. :-p

Edit 2: added link to Jeff's blog.

Cross-post from my VSTS blog.

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Of Dates and Blog Posts

BrianR — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 22:50:00 GMT

It’s funny how human beings relate to dates. For example, every 365 days or so (give or take a leap year), many of us on this planet feel a sense of renewal with the coming of a new year. I tend to be this way. It provides a way of tracking one's life. With today being 7/7/7, I couldn’t help but see this as a good “date” to start blogging again. In fact, not only am I going to start blogging more here (really, I mean it :-) ), but I’ve started two new blogs (nothing like going for the trifecta)!

The first blog is over at Pluralsight. Last year, I joined up with the boys to teach VSTS and now I’m going to blog about it (primarily) over there.

The second blog is about trying something different. Go take a look if you’re interested in my journey with a new piece of hardware and its software.

More to come at all three locations. For now, I’m just happy to get writing again. Talk to you soon.

End of line.

Tech Ed 2007, Orlando--Monday Morning

BrianR — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 04:35:00 GMT

What was I thinking? :-)

Yes last night was late; mostly due to it being Ted Pattison's birthday today.

In either case, Richard, Rocky, and I are in the main hall waiting to see if Microsoft has any secrets to reveal. We shall see.

8:35am Eastern.

Update One: 8:49am Eastern

BobMu's keynote started with a video making a parody of Back to the Future with Christopher Lloyd making fun of past "failed" Microsoft technologies like Hailstorm, Cairo, Storage Plus, "Bob", and even Clippy.

Christopher Lloyd just drove on stage with BobMu in a Back to the Future Delorian.

Update Two: 9:00am Eastern

Bob’s been doing his intro but hasn’t said much. “Doc Brown” said he would call BS if he heard Bob laying out some weird vision.

Update Three: 9:02am Eastern (I think you’ve got part now)

It’s all about “The Journey towards Dynamic”. Tom Bittman from Gartner just came out after a video about Energizer. So far all “IT”, all vision, no meat. WTF. Why did I get up this early?

Update Four: 9:05am

Tom’s talking about IT and agility and hot thi is the “major business differentiator in a connected world”. <sigh> I’m not saying I disagree but tell me something I don’t know.

Update Five: 9:10am

Tom’s still talking. Sheesh. He’s using the A word—agile. Now IT pro’s will be using this and so will all the CIO’s where listen to Gartner.

Update Six: 9:20am

Bob’s talking about new System Center tools and virtualization. Finally some I care about. Bob just announced that Windows Server 2008 “Server Core” will support IIS 7. However, he didn’t mention ASP.NET at all. Jeff Woolsey from the Microsoft VM team is on stage demoing a bunch of VMs running on “Viridian” (Windows Virtualization) and using SCVMM to manage things. He’s showing a V2V conversion—a VMWare VM to Windows Virtualization. He’s talking about SCVMM’s support for Power Shell (everything’s scriptable AND the tool generates scripts for you). He’s demoing a big 64-bit box with a VM with 6 GB of RAM and quad “virtual” processors. Now he’s showing “Quick Migration”—moving a running VM from one machine to another server. Nice. Now he’s showing SC “MOM” 2007 for monitoring. Pretty pictures. :-p

Update Seven: 9:41am

A new demo of System Center 2007. Showing so cool stuff based upon SML-based models. Big step up from NT 4.0 Server. He’s showing the tool monitoring a custom application (web service). He’s showing the “Distributed Application Designer” for IT folks. It has a DSL interface similar to TFS’ Whitehorse. Well, Katmai has a new name—SQL Server 2008. The guy doing the demo is showing tools to manage Katmai .. uh SQL Server 2008 servers. They’re building “modeling” into server products.

Update Eight: 9:50am

Service-Enabled Application Platform is the new slide. Maybe we’re getting to some developer stuff? Mike Woods from the BizTalk team is onstage. The reason I got up. My buddy Jon Flanders is supposed to get some time on stage (he did some of the keynote code). Let’s see. He’s showing BizTalk Server 2006 R2. He’s just published a WCF Service into an application. He’s showing SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services. Showing Dundas controls—a map control—in the report designer. Hey there’s Jon on stage bringing a “box” on stage with a RFID. Jon didn’t say a word but he carries a box really well. Alternate career path?

Update Nine: 10:00am

User-Focused Software is the new slide. Brian Goldfarb’s coming out to show Visual Studio 2008—ah Orcas has name. He’s doing a VSTO 3.0 demo, showing Outlook Form Regions for Outlook 2007 and the new Visual Designer designers. He’s putting a custom WPF control on the region. A picture of Jay Roxe and Eric Carter was on the WPF control. LOL. Only one line of code needed to make this work according to Brian. :-p He’s hooking to Excel Services and building a second custom form region. Only two lines of code here! :-p He’s now pimping the Ribbon via the new Visual Studio designer. And guess what, only ONE LINE OF CODE to enable things! Nice demo overall. But only four lines of code. Yeah right. I’ve got some property to sell you if you buy that!

Update Ten: 10:07am

Jamie Cool is here to demo Silverlight. He’s showing the media player playing the Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer trailer in 720p HD. He’s now playing two videos playing at once in FireFox (wait now 10 videos at once). He’s now showing the Silverlight installation experience. New pretty shining interface. It installs in “seconds”. :-p He’s showing a Silverlight Chess App. He’s comparing a version written in .NET and JavaScript—.NET and JavaScript “play” each other in the game and of course, the AI Engine in .NET works. Now he’s showing “Top Banana”—a next-gen video editing application built in Silverlight—all running in a browser (IE7). Total download size of the application is 50K. And they wrote the application in three weeks. :-p Pushing how it was built using tons of things you already know--.NET, the CLR, C#, etc.

Update Eleven: 10:10am

Microsoft’s committed to “heterogeneity”—is that a word? Orcas and Windows 2008 are shipping “late this year” according to BobMu. SQL Server 2008 ships in yes, 2008. We’re in warp up mode. Lots of new stuff shipping.

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VSTO: My Favorite Feature(s)

KenG — Tue, 01 May 2007 13:52:00 GMT

As many readers may know, I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years working with, writing about, and preaching the virtues of creating managed code that automates Office applications using Visual Studio Tools for Office, in its several versions. I believe this “Product That Could” has really reached critical mass, and with its pending release as an integral part of Visual Studio “Orcas”, developers will finally find a rich, powerful means of creating business applications that interact with the data that just about every single Windows user manipulates daily.

The current version, Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (often called Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition, or just VSTO 2005 SE), is available, it’s powerful, and it’s free. If you’ve ever needed to create application-level customizations for Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Outlook, give this great product a look.

I’ve been asked by my old friend Mike Hernandez to list my “favorite feature” in VSTO, and it’s hard to do that—my actual favorite feature is that the product EXISTS. But moving past the obvious, I’d like to point out two features in the VSTO 2005 SE version that I use every single time I create applications using the product, and that you could easily miss.

The add-in template provides a Globals class, which allows access to the ThisAddIn class. Given this reference, you can programmatically interact with the host application at any point in your add-in, simply by referencing Globals.ThisAddIn.Application. When you’ve added a new class to the add-in, for example, it’s otherwise somewhat tricky to refer to the host application, and you’ll need to if you ever want to interact with Word, Excel, Outlook, and so on, from within the new class. Without this useful addition, you’d need to pass the Application reference from the add-in class around to all the other classes in the application.
VSTO 2005 SE makes it incredibly easy to add support for Ribbon customizations to your add-in. Other alternative techniques for adding Ribbon customizations to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Outlook involve ugliness that I wouldn’t impose on anyone. Doing the same with VSTO 2005 SE is elegant, and simply requires adding a new Ribbon Support item to the project. This action adds a partial class that handles loading the Ribbon customization, along with the Ribbon customization class itself. At runtime, the add-in executes a procedure that determines that the add-in has a Ribbon customization to supply, and loads it as it starts up. You just need to provide the RibbonX markup, and the callback procedures. (Yes, this process could be easier, and will be easier when VSTO “Orcas” ships, including a Ribbon designer. But that’s a topic for another day.) Given the current state of tools, I contend that VSTO 2005 SE provides the simplest and most elegant platform for adding Ribbon customizations to the applications that it supports.

For more “VSTO: My Favorite Feature” tips, visit the blog of product manager Mike Hernandez. You’ll find links to them all from there.

Philly .NET Workflow sample

RGreen — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 21:11:00 GMT

Here is the updated version of the sample I showed at Philly .NET on April 18. Thanks everybody for a fun time!

The sample is an order processing state machine workflow. It consists of two projects.

OrderProcessing contains the state machine workflow, the interface the host and workflow use to communicate, and the Windows Form used to manage orders.

CreditCardProcessing is a sequential workflow used by the credit card company to pre-approve charges and then approve or deny once it is time to ship the product. The workflow is exposed as a Web service to OrderProcessing.

In the VB folder is the VB code. I may do a C# version for the next rev. In the Data folder is the database used in the sample.

Because the workflow uses transactions, it uses persistence. So you need to setup the SqlPersistence database. The docs tell you how to do that.

Let me know what you think. Let me know what doesn't work!