Toluu : Thom Robbins .NET Weblog

Thom Robbins .NET Weblog

A blog of the technical and only sometimes uneventful side of programming in .NET and life within Microsoft

Windows Live Messenger translation bot now availableDecember 17 2008

Pretty cool idea for a messenger translation bot

Introducing the Syndicated Client Experiences Starter Kit Beta & Reader Beta SDK!December 15 2008

This looks pretty cool –

We are very excited to take the wraps off of our newest addition to .Net client development – a Starter Kit designed to make it easy to create rich, syndicated multimedia and content experiences which engage the user, from documents and photos to videos and podcasts.

These Syndicated Client Experiences (SCE) applications exploit the push capabilities of RSS in a model where content is synced down to the local computer and each application retains full control over the presentation of the content. Microsoft’s Sync Framework-based Subscription Center takes care of syncing, local storage, subscription management and the safe caching of authentication credentials. These building blocks and services are designed to help application developers focus on what matters to them most: providing an optimal, highly-differentiated content experience on the desktop with very rich content, branding, skinning and custom user interface elements.

Available here

A Quick Look at XML LiteralsDecember 8 2008

XML literals are new to Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Basic. Simply put they enable the incorporation of XML directly into application code. Essentially this allows a quick way to create XML objects. At their core XML literals represent a LINQ to XML object and follow syntax similar to XML 1.0. At run time XML literals are turned into their equivalent calls to the LINQ to XML object. This makes it easier to create XML elements and documents programmatically because you code has the same structure as the final XML. One of the clear advantages of using XML literals is that they can span multiple lines without need a line continuation. This makes code look similar to an XML file. At run time the compiler treats the line continuation characters as part of the XML literal. For example, using the XElement, which represents the fundamental XML construct we can create the following code.

Dim CProduct As XElement = _

<name>Stereo</name>

<deptname>Engineering</deptname>

</department>

</Product>

Tabbing within Visual StudioDecember 3 2008

Tabs are everywhere within Visual Studio. By default each time a new window is opened a new tab is creates. Many times a lot of tabs can make moving around quickly seem a bit difficult. Within Visual Studio the <CTRL> + <TAB> key open a dialog similar to the Windows Alt-Tab dialog that shows all the open documents.

Using this dialog you can choose files to open by pressing the <CTRL> + <TAB> again. Also, the arrow keys allow the selection of the Active Tool Window.

Selecting a Block of textDecember 1 2008

Regardless of the new framework features – copy and paste is still one of my favorites. One of my favorite tricks is selecting a block of text. By default normal text selection is line by line. For example it’s not possible to select just the items to the right of the equals sign.

However, Visual Studio does offer this ability using block selection. Block selection is sued to select text in a block as opposed to line by line. Essentially allowing you to select text regardless of what line you are on. For example, select the <ALT> key while selecting text to do the following.

Block selection can be used with both the keyboard and mouse. When using the keyboard hold down the <ALT> + <SHIFT> and use the arrow keys to perform the block selection.