I have used C++ for about 5 years now, and it is really a very powerful programming language. But I found one big disadvantage; it is too hard to make a C++ GUI. I used to do that by Windows API, but it is difficult to learn and I can’t learn my students all Windows API concepts for just making some forms and buttons!

Recently I heard about Qt and decided to learn it. As usual I stuck at the beginning; how could I build a Qt Application? and as usual too I do it my way

Building Qt Applications using Notepad

If your favorite text editor is still Notepad!, you must build your Qt Applications using command line.

To let it easy to you, I made a batch file depends on what compiler you want to use to build Qt Applications.

Building Qt Opensource Version using MingW

If you are using Qt Opensource Version you can use this batch file to build and run Qt Applications:

::::::::::::::::::::::: This is Qt building batch by Madhat Alsoos :::::::::::::::::::::::
:: First argument is the directory of the project
:: Second argument is the name of the cpp file without .cpp

@echo off
cd %1
set QTDIR=%1
set PATH=C:\Qt\2009.04\qt\bin;C:\Qt\2009.04\bin;C:\Qt\2009.04\mingw\bin;C:\WINDOWS\System32;%PATH%
set QMAKESPEC=win32-g++
qmake -project
qmake
mingw32-make.exe
IF not ERRORLEVEL 1 start debug\%2.exe

You can use this batch by passing the directory of the .cpp file and its name like this:

build.bat c:\qt\test\helloworld helloworld

It is so easy! First set Qt base directory to directory of file which we want to build (which will be passed as an argument to this batch file), then add Qt installation directory to the PATH system variable (just in case) and set QMAKESPEC to win32-g++ which tells Qt that it should make the project for g++ compiler. After that we make the .pro file (Qt project file) and compile it using mingw32 (which came by default with your Qt open source verison).

Note that you must change Qt path in this batch to where you installed Qt, or simply add your Qt bin folders to PATH system variable.

Building Qt Commercial Version using Visual Studio

If you are using Qt Commercial Version you can use this batch file to build and run Qt Applications:

::::::::::::::::::::::: This is Qt building batch by Madhat Alsoos :::::::::::::::::::::::
:: First argument is the directory of the project
:: Second argument is the name of the cpp file without .cpp

@echo off
cd %1
set QTDIR=%1
set PATH=C:\Qt\4.4.3\bin;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\bin;%PATH%
set QMAKESPEC=win32-msvc2008
call "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools\vsvars32.bat"
qmake -project
qmake
nmake
IF not ERRORLEVEL 1 start debug\%2.exe

You can use this batch by passing the directory of the .cpp file and its name like this:

build.bat c:\qt\test\helloworld helloworld

As you see, I used nmake to build and link the Qt Application which means that you must have Visual Studio installed on your computer to use this batch file. If your using Commercial Version and you don’t have Visual Studio on your computer you can install MingW and use the first batch file which should work in this case too.

Note that you must change Qt path and Visual Studio path in this batch to where you installed them, or simply add you Qt bin folder and Visual Studio bin folder to PATH system variable.

Building Qt Applications using EmEditor

If your favorite text editor is EmEditor, you can make a small button at EmEditor Tools Toolbar and call any of the above batches in it.

Just open EmEditor and go to Tools > External Tools > Customize Tools and click New button, and fill in fields like this:

Then you will find a small button in EmEditor Tools Toolbar which will do all things for you:

Building Qt Applications using Notepad++

If your favorite text editor is Notepad++ then you are my man, so I made a Notepad++ plugin named QtNpp just for you

You can download it (and even change the way it build your Qt Applications) from my post “QtNpp: Notepad++ Plugin to build Qt Applications”.

I really love Qt and began to learn it recently, but I didn’t find a way to build Qt files from inside Notepad++ so as usual I made mine

QtNpp is my Notepad++ plugin to build and run Qt applications.

The idea

The idea of QtNpp is simple; just build the file by using these lines:

@echo off
set QTDIR=%1
set PATH=C:\Qt\2009.04\qt\bin;C:\Qt\2009.04\bin;C:\Qt\2009.04\mingw\bin;C:\WINDOWS\System32;%PATH%
set QMAKESPEC=win32-g++
qmake -project
qmake
mingw32-make.exe

but the implementation of QtNpp is not that simple!

By default QtNpp try to build Qt files by using the above script which works in one of these cases:

1. You have Qt opensource edition installed at the default path: C:\Qt\2009.04
2. You have Qt opensource edition installed at another path and this installation path was added to PATH system variables.
3. You have Qt Commercial edition and you manually installed MingW and both installation paths was added to PATH system variables.

What if that is not the case? If my QtNpp doesn’t work by default, don’t worry you can change the building script yourself!

Just create QtNpp.ini in <Notepad++ installation folder>/plugins/Config and QtNpp will execute QtNpp.ini file as a batch and passing the folder of Qt file and the filename to it.

Yes, that is you can put the above script in QtNpp.ini and change whatever you want to change in it, and QtNpp will execute your new script instead of its one!

Looking inside

I used this template as a start of my QtNpp, also I read the source of some free Notepad++ plugins to learn from.

The build and run function of QtNpp is:

void buildAndRun()
{
	//Save current opened file first
	::SendMessage(nppData._nppHandle, NPPM_SAVECURRENTFILE, NULL,NULL);
	//Get directory and filename of the opened file
	String directory = getCurrentFilePath();
	String filename = getCurrentFileName();
	String command = getBuildCommand(filename,directory,true);
	//Build and run opened file
	RunCommand(filename,directory,command);
}

Here I get the build commands by getBuildCommand and then run these commands with RunCommand function, which replace %1 with directory path and %2 with filename and save them in bat file and execute it by calling ExecuteBatch function:

String ExecuteBatch (String filename,String directory,const char* path)
{
	CreateRedirectedProcess((LPTSTR)TEXT(path),(LPTSTR)TEXT(directory.c_str()));
	String s=ReadFromPipe(showText);
	return s;
}

You can see that I run the batch file in a new process and then read its output from the redirected pipe and send it to NppExec console to print it (which is a Notepad++ plugin comes by default with Notepad++).

int CreateRedirectedProcess(LPTSTR szCmdline,LPTSTR directory)
{
   SECURITY_ATTRIBUTES saAttr; 

   saAttr.nLength = sizeof(SECURITY_ATTRIBUTES);
   saAttr.bInheritHandle = TRUE;
   saAttr.lpSecurityDescriptor = NULL; 

   if ( ! CreatePipe(&g_hChildStd_OUT_Rd, &g_hChildStd_OUT_Wr, &saAttr, 0) )
      ErrorExit(TEXT("StdoutRd CreatePipe")); 

   if ( ! SetHandleInformation(g_hChildStd_OUT_Rd, HANDLE_FLAG_INHERIT, 0) )
      ErrorExit(TEXT("Stdout SetHandleInformation")); 

   if (! CreatePipe(&g_hChildStd_IN_Rd, &g_hChildStd_IN_Wr, &saAttr, 0))
      ErrorExit(TEXT("Stdin CreatePipe")); 

   if ( ! SetHandleInformation(g_hChildStd_IN_Wr, HANDLE_FLAG_INHERIT, 0) )
      ErrorExit(TEXT("Stdin SetHandleInformation")); 

   CreateChildProcess(szCmdline,directory);

   return 0;
} 

void CreateChildProcess(LPTSTR szCmdline,LPTSTR directory)
{ 

   STARTUPINFO siStartInfo;
   BOOL bSuccess = FALSE;
   ZeroMemory( &piProcInfo, sizeof(PROCESS_INFORMATION) );
   ZeroMemory( &siStartInfo, sizeof(STARTUPINFO) );
   siStartInfo.cb = sizeof(STARTUPINFO);
   siStartInfo.hStdError = g_hChildStd_OUT_Wr;
   siStartInfo.hStdOutput = g_hChildStd_OUT_Wr;
   siStartInfo.hStdInput = g_hChildStd_IN_Rd;
   siStartInfo.dwFlags |= STARTF_USESTDHANDLES;
   siStartInfo.wShowWindow=SW_HIDE;

   // Create the child process.
   bSuccess = CreateProcess(NULL,
      szCmdline,     // command line
      NULL,          // process security attributes
      NULL,          // primary thread security attributes
      TRUE,          // handles are inherited
      CREATE_NO_WINDOW,             // creation flags
      NULL,          // use parent's environment
      directory,          // use parent's current directory
      &siStartInfo,  // STARTUPINFO pointer
      &piProcInfo);  // receives PROCESS_INFORMATION 

   if ( ! bSuccess )
      ErrorExit(TEXT("CreateProcess"));
   else
   {
      CloseHandle(piProcInfo.hProcess);
      CloseHandle(piProcInfo.hThread);
   }
}

Here I redirect the output by creating a pipe and pass it to process using siStartInfo.hStdOutput. Also I hide the console window by using CREATE_NO_WINDOW flag in CreateProcess.

Configure QtNpp

As I said above if QtNpp doesn’t work by default with you, just create QtNpp.ini and put all commands you need to build Qt on your PC in it.

I suggest to take these QtNpp.ini as a start:

QtNpp.ini for MingW

@echo off
set QTDIR=%1
set PATH=C:\Qt\2009.04\qt\bin;C:\Qt\2009.04\bin;C:\Qt\2009.04\mingw\bin;C:\WINDOWS\System32;%PATH%
set QMAKESPEC=win32-g++
qmake -project
qmake
mingw32-make.exe

QtNpp.ini for Visual Studio

@echo off
set QTDIR=%1
set PATH=C:\Qt\4.4.3\bin;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\bin;%PATH%
set QMAKESPEC=win32-msvc2008
call "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools\vsvars32.bat"
qmake -project
qmake
nmake

Just replace fixed paths in QtNpp.ini with paths on your computer or add them to PATH system variable.

You may notice that you can build any kind of files with this plugin (not only Qt) because when you make QtNpp.ini, my plugin turns into executer for it only!

Download

You can download QtNpp dll and sourcecode under GNU License:

QtNpp dll	QtNppPlugin.zip
QtNpp source	QtNpp.zip
QtNpp.ini for MingW	QtNpp_MingW.zip
QtNpp.ini for VS	QtNpp_VS.zip
License	GNU General Public License

After reading through a bunch of the .Net Framework Class Library, I noticed they have some samples for download. I really wanted to dive into GUI programming so I checked out the Calculator Demo.

I knew it would be fairly complicated from the description but when I opened the source, I was taken aback by the complexity. As the comments pointed out, it wouldn’t compile correctly in the command line because of “missing files” but I still couldn’t get that to work so I fired up the behemoth Visual Studio and, it’s true, “this example doesn’t build unless…”.

The calculator was running, I played around to experience the features, then went back to the source code. From the tutorials I had looked at previously, I knew every C# program needed to have a static Main() method as a starting point. I searched every file for “Main” but to no avail. I searched the internet for C# applications without Main() but to no avail.

Since the easy path to understanding wasn’t working out, I stretched my arms and began looking through each source file for the starting point of the application. Eventually, I found Startup="AppStartingUp" in app.xaml which quickly led me to void AppStartingUp(object sender, StartupEventArgs e) in app.xaml.cs (conveniently enough).

This discovery didn’t help me understand what was happening but it did lead me to search for xaml which happens to stand for “Extensible Application Markup Language” and, like C# and .NET, was created by Microsoft and looks to be just as complicated.

Of course, since I had never heard of it before, I realized I would need to find a primer on XAML. My First XAML Application is a perfect introduction. As it turns out, the C# language isn’t too difficult but .NET is a tremendously large framework which is going to force me to learn a lot more than just C#. I mean, XAML is just part of the Windows Presentation Foundation!

lol!

Obama is into Visual Studio:

Vous désirez commencer à créer vos propres masters pages pour SharePoint 2010. Ceci est exactement fait pour vous! Starter Master Pages contient une version de master page pour SharePoint 2010 totalement commenté.

Voici le résultat dans SharePoint 2010:

et un extrait de code commenté:

Starter Master Pages

Alors je suppose que vous êtes au courant, Visual Studio 2010 supporte en natif depuis ces premières versions le langage F#.

Basé sur le langage Caml, il intègre toutes les supers fonctionnalités de la plateforme .Net. Enfin bref, aucune démonstration ici, mais je voulais vous montrer un élément à Visual Studio bien utile quand vous voulez jouer un peu avec le F#.

Je suppose donc que comme moi, lorsque vous avez commencé le C#, vous deviez regretter de devoir à chaque fois compiler, lancer votre jolie application console, et attendre le résultat, qui généralement n’était pas le bon ! (Souvenirs, souvenirs …) Vous auriez je pense avoir une joli fenêtre interactive afin de construire votre application pas à pas, mais tout en vérifiant rapidement vos données.

Alors F# et Visual Studio apporte cela, en effet dans les nouvelles fenêtres de notre outil de développement, on peut voir apparaître “F# Interactive” :

Cette fenêtre a toujours été en fait mon rêve, pouvoir rapidement coder et tester en même temps sans à avoir à créer un projet console appelé “ConsoleApplication142”

Alors comment ça marche maintenant, dans votre fenêtre vous pouvez écrire tout code F# que vous voulez tester, par exemple :

On voit donc ici, la création d’une méthode square qui prend une valeur en paramètre, et qui retourne le carré de celle-ci, puis un appel afin de tester.

Mais très important, on peut voir aussi que la fenêtre F# Interactive retient bien la méthode square en mémoire, pour d’éventuel appel, et donc on peut vraiment tester, ou apprendre le F# au pas à pas.

Voilà, j’essayerai de vous publier divers articles sur la technologies F#, qui m’a l’air très intéressante, et qui je pense peut avoir un bel avenir dans la recherche, calcul algorithmique, et bien entendu les mathématiques.

Novos videos mostrando o que tem de novo no Visual Studio 2010 foram publicados no site da asp.net

http://www.asp.net/learn/vs2010-quick-hit-videos/

Destaque para o suporte para multi monitor e melhorias no intellisense.

Why do people complain? Because sometimes, after they complained, things get fixed, and they were right complaining. Other times, if complaints don’t help, they know they still know better

Gabriel provides an analysis and a workaround to the problem that Entity Designer opens an edmx file only once. His solution is for 64bit XP though, and differs from the 32bit Windows solution in the registry path:

Open regedit and navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
  \SOFTWARE
    \Microsoft
      \VisualStudio
        \9.0
          \Editors
            \{c99aea30-8e36-4515-b76f-496f5a48a6aa}

add a string value named LinkedEditorGuid

and set its value to

{FA3CD31E-987B-443A-9B81-186104E8DAC1}.

Applying this registry setting on my machine resulted in Entity Designer and XML Editor opening alternately.

Otomatik bir windows guncellemesi sonrasi calismayan bir visual studio 2008 alinan hata;

Cannot find one or more components. Please reinstall the application.

Sistem kayit entrylerine varana kadar bir temizlik ve tekrar Visual Studio 20008 kurulum denemesi sonrasinda alinan hata;

Cannot find one or more components. Please reinstall the application.

Saatlerce forumlarda gecirilen zaman anlam veremedigim boyle cozum mu olur dedigim bir yoldan geldi.

C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\ klasoru altinda yer alan x86_Microsoft.VC90.ATL* klasoru icindeki atl90.dll dosyasi her ne hikmetse yerinde yok. Yerinde yeller esen dll i onceki kurulumlara ait backup klasorlerinden (Ayni formatla baslayan bir onceki klasor) alip buraya yuklediginizde Visul Studio 2008 i sorunsuz bir sekilde kurabildiginiz goreceksiniz.

Cozmek icin gecen saatleri herhangi bir backup klasorunde aramayin. Bulamazsiniz.

Last night I hosted a session about the Visual Studio 2010. Speaker was Gerard van der Pol from Microsoft NL. This time it wasn’t about what’s new with the (obviously) improved IDE and .NET Framework 4, but it was all about the features regarding Team Foundation Server (TFS). Of course, there are lot of new features to talk about and so little time. I’ll describe some features Gerard was demonstrating.

First, let me say that the title of this post is a bit wrong. The brand Team System will disappear, so it is only Visual Studio 2010.

Also, the editions will change a bit:

Regarding to Team System (or should I say ALM) there are 2 new products: Visual Studio Test Elements and Visual Studio Team Lab Management.

With Lab Management it is possible to create and configure your environments to help testers more easily test a variety of configurations in a virtual lab environment, and help developers more easily repro bugs by delivering snapshots of those virtualized environments after bugs are discovered. For more information, watch this Channel9 video.

With Test Record & Playback you can actually record and playback your test plan and steps. The video’s will be accessible for the developer from the work item. For more information, watch this Channel9 video.

Do you recognize this:

• You’ve received reports of a crash from a tester, but on your local box you can’t get the bug to reproduce.
• You’ve received a crash dump from the tester along with the bug. But the call stack that actually caused the crash was just a cascading effect and you can’t trace the bug back to the root issue.
• The bug that you are currently working at resolving has an extremely long set of reproduction steps and you just accidentally stepped over the function that is returning bad data.

IntelliTrace, formerly known as Historical Debugging, can help you out now! IntelliTrace is similar to that of a black box in a plane. It’s keeping track of important points in your programs execution and allow you to play back what happened at those points at a later time. For more information, click here.

With the new Profiler you get a really great look at how your code is performing. It comes with couple of new features for developers:

• CPU Sampling
  Measures CPU-bound applications with low overhead.
• Instrumentation
  Measures function call counts and timing.
• .NET Memory Allocation (Sampling)
  Track managed memory allocation.
• Concurrency
  Detect threads memory for other threads.
  • Collect resource contention data
  • Collect thread execution data

Profiler includes a new page called the Function Details page, which will depict the caller/callee information in a graphical way along with the performance metric. You can also view your code which includes the line-level performance measurements.

To end this post, I want to tell you about Gated Check-in. We all have colleagues who are checking in their code and you end up with a non building solution. With Gated Check-in you can prevent users to check-in their code unless it all builds! And it is also possible to run your tests too, before allowing to check-in.

For more information, click here.

I was truly amazed with all the new features of Visual Studio 2010 regarding ALM and had a great night. Go explore for yourself!

We have an immediate need for a SENIOR SHAREPOINT DEVELOPER/BUSINESS ANALYST with our client in FREMONT, CA. This is a CONTRACT POSITION for 6 months with possible extension.

The ideal candidate should be able to work with the business team to articulate functional requirements, priorities requirements in terms of business value, prepare technical designs that will accommodate the requirements, and configure /develop the requisite solutions.

• Work with business users to identify, prioritize, and document the requirements
• Work with the requirements and prepare an implementation plan to address the requirements
• Prepare technical design that will accommodate the identified requirements/priorities.
• Develop/program/configure the SharePoint solutions based on the documented requirements and technical design.
• Participate in all development lifecycle activities: unit test, systems test, data migration, integration.
• Experience as a business analyst and Sharepoint developer designing and building MOSS solutions
• Must have experience working with business users to identify and document business requirements related to content management/document management/collaboration needs
• Must have strong experience using Visual Studio/.NET/SharePoint Designer, including the design and implementation of custom web parts and other programs that leverage the SharePoint object model.

If you are interested, please send us your resume along with the hourly rate, contact number, and availability for a phone interview to raj@mindsource.com.

Test driven geliştirme yapmak, eğlenceli olduğu kadar uzun süren bi işlemdir malumunuz. Bu konu ile ilgili bir yazım olacaktı.

Önce test yazacaksınız, sonra testi geçirecek kodu yazacaksınız. Başka bir test yazıp asıl işi yapacak kodu yazmaya zorlarsınız kedinizi. Sonra duplicationları gidermek için refactor edersiniz. Bunları yaparken naming convention a dikkat edersiniz.

Derken ne oldu? Hepi topu 3 ile 5 i toplayıp 8 döndüren bir method yazdınız daha. Bu methodu yazabilmek için en az 4 test yazmış olmamız lazım. Yani sadece basit bir method için 4 test yazıyoruz ki, büyükçe bir projede bu sayı nerelere çıkar varın siz düşünün.

TDD yazıyorsak en çok yazılan şey doğal olarak testtir. Farkettim ki bizim Visual Studio içinde bu durumla ilgili bir snippet yok. Ben her test için şunu kendim yazmak zorundayım:

[Test]
public void TestMethodTest()
{
    Assert.Fail("Not implemented yet!");
}

Halbuki bir code snippet olsa ve biz 1-2 tuş ile bunu şak diye yazmış sayılsak diye düşünerek bir snippet yazdım. İtiraf etmeliyim ki “prop” snippettını referans alarak yazdım.

İndirmek isterseniz buyrun.

Bu dosyayı “My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Code Snippets\Visual C#\[İstediğiniz bir folder]\” altına atabilirisiz.

Test driven geliştirme yapmak, eğlenceli olduğu kadar uzun süren bi işlemdir malumunuz. Bu konu ile ilgili bir yazım olacaktı.

Önce test yazacaksınız, sonra testi geçirecek kodu yazacaksınız. Başka bir test yazıp asıl işi yapacak kodu yazmaya zorlarsınız kedinizi. Sonra duplicationları gidermek için refactor edersiniz. Bunları yaparken naming convention a dikkat edersiniz.

Derken ne oldu? Hepi topu 3 ile 5 i toplayıp 8 döndüren bir method yazdınız daha. Bu methodu yazabilmek için en az 4 test yazmış olmamız lazım. Yani sadece basit bir method için 4 test yazıyoruz ki, büyükçe bir projede bu sayı nerelere çıkar varın siz düşünün.

TDD yazıyorsak en çok yazılan şey doğal olarak testtir. Farkettim ki bizim Visual Studio içinde bu durumla ilgili bir snippet yok. Ben her test için şunu kendim yazmak zorundayım:

[Test]
public void TestMethodTest()
{
    Assert.Fail("Not implemented yet!");
}

Halbuki bir code snippet olsa ve biz 1-2 tuş ile bunu şak diye yazmış sayılsak diye düşünerek bir snippet yazdım. İtiraf etmeliyim ki “prop” snippettını referans alarak yazdım.

İndirmek isterseniz buyrun.

Bu dosyayı “My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Code Snippets\Visual C#\[İstediğiniz bir folder]\” altına atabilirisiz.

Nesta vídeo aula de Dowhile.com.br você irá aprender a criar uma animação estática e dinâmica em Silverlight 4, utilizando o Microsoft Blend 4 e Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2, porém você poderá aplicar os mesmos conceitos utilizando o Silverlight 3 com o Blend 3 e Visual Studio 2008.

Segue o Link

Animação dinâmica

Abraços e bom divertimento,

Flávia Moreira

Finally, i found some time to install the beta 2 of Visual Studio 2010 after playing some time with the first one.

I already did quite some coding in beta 1, and I wanted to open my solutions into beta 2, but double-clicking the solution file in explorer didn’t do much.

10 seconds of quality Bing time directed me to the following post that did the trick: Migrating from VS2010 beta 1 to beta 2.

Very subtle change if you open up the solution file with a text editor:
VS 2010 beta 1 format
Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 11.00
# Visual Studio 10

VS2010 beta 2 format
Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 11.00
# Visual Studio 2010

Replace 10 with 2010, and you’re done.

En esta ponencia, desde la jornada de la Alm’09 sessions de Microsoft en Madrid, se muestran los avances para trabajar el desarrollo en Sharepoint ahora posible en un entorno de Visual Studio, y con todas las ventajas de ahorro de tiempo y esfuerzo respecto a sus versiones previas bastante rudimentarias:

Sesión: Diseño de Arquitectura Top-Down con UML – Roberto Gonzalez (Renacimiento)

(tiny)

Hoy tuvieron lugar las Alm’09 sessions de Microsoft en Madrid, nuevamente en el Palacio de Congresos donde recientemente se desarrollaron las jornadas Ficod 09; y mi lugar preferido para asistir a conferencias. En estas ponencias se pueden ver los avances que tendrá el nuevo Visual Studio en materia de herramientas de diseño de alto nivel, y que facilitarán integrar en forma centralizada la documentación para distribuir al equipo de desarrollo, fácilmente accesible y correctamente versionada.  Los siguientes videos muestran las posibilidades que se explicaron:

Sesión: El Rol del Arquitecto en el día a día con Visual Studio 2010 – Bruno Capuano (Avanade)

Sesión: Diseño de Arquitectura Top-Down con UML – Roberto Gonzalez (Renacimiento)

(tiny)

A third beta release of Visual Assert is now available for download on www.visualassert.com.

Visual Assert, in case you have not tried it yet, is an Add-In for Visual Studio that adds unit testing capabilities to the Visual C++ IDE: Based on the cfix unit testing framework, Visual Assert allows unit tests to be written, run, and debugged from within the IDE. Pretty much like Junit/Eclipse, TestDriven.Net or MSTest, but for real, native code — code written in C or C++.

Bugs, bugs, bugs, bugs

Alas, there were still a few of them in the previous two beta releases. Luckily though, almost all I received from users or found by internal testing were relatively minor in nature. Still, I want Visual Assert to be as high quality as possible and decided to add this third beta release into the schedule and take the time to focus on — you guessed it — bugfixing, bugfixing, bugfixing, and bugfixing.

Speaking of bug reports, I have to thank all users of Visual Assert and cfix who reported bugs, suggested new features or provided general feedback. Your input has been, and still is highly appreciated. Although I had to postpone any feature suggestions to a later release, I tried hard to resolve all bugs and have them fixed in this new release.

Download, Try it, Share Your Opinion

Of course, using the new Beta version is free. So whether you have already used the previous beta or not, whether you are a unit testing newbie or write unit tests on a daily basis, be sure to give the new version a try. And of course, do not forget to let me know about your feedback, suggestions, found bugs, etc.!

Are you a Dot Net Developer ?

If yes, Just follow your assessment…
Ikuti assessment kecil-kecilan dari komunitas INDC (Indonesia .NET Developer Community) untuk programming c# (CSharp) dan VB.NET,  lumayan buat ngetest skill kita seberapa menguasainya terhadap C# dan VB.NET, disini tingkat assessment nya fundamental.

http://geeks.netindonesia.net/learn/Assessment.aspx

untuk mengikuti ujian anda harus login dengan LiveID
kalo udah pass dengan Pass Grade 70, anda akan mendapatkan certificate atas partisipasi seperti ini

certificate

Try it your self…

Teringat pelajaran Software Engineering mengenai Cost Estimation in Software Development beberapa tahun lalu, ada beberapa teknik yang dapat digunakan untuk membantu pengembangan software. Fungsi teknik-teknik ini adalah memperkirakan kompleksitas, effort baik sumber daya manusia, waktu dan juga biaya. Anda dapat menggunakan LOC (Line of Code), Function Point, banyak modul yang di develop dan banyak teknik lainnya yang dapat Anda cari sumbernya di internet.

Code Metric Calculation Results in Visual Studio

Di Visual Studio ternyata ada terdapat fungsi untuk melakukan perhitungan LOC dari aplikasi yang Anda kembangkan. Tool tersebut disebut Code Metrics yang terintegrasi di Visual Studio 2008 dan 2010. (Setahu saya hanya tersedia di versi TEAM SYSTEM)

Penggunaan Code Metric di VS sangat mudah. Dari menu Solution Explorer, pilih project yang akan Anda hitung LOC nya. Klik kanan dan pilih “Calculate Code Metrics” dan “bimsalabim” muncul window yang menampilkan hasil perhitungan.

Calculate Code Metrics

Yang menarik adalah Visual Studio menampilkan hasil perhitungan LOC yang dibagi berdasarkan Project, Namesapace, Class, Method dan keterangan jumlah ketergantungan antar Class. Memang ini hanyalah tools dasar yang belum mampu memperkirakan secara tepat kompleksitas aplikasi yang Anda bangun. Namun setidaknya dapat memberi bayangan seberapa efektifkah dan teraturnya kode-kode program yang membangun aplikasi Anda. Selamat mencoba.

Durante el PDC, Scott Guthrie presentó la versión beta para desarrolladores de Silverlight 4.

Ver Day Two: Steven Sinofsky, Scott Guthrie & Kurt DelBene.

Para esta beta no hay runtime para el usuario final y las herramientas están destinados únicamente a los desarrolladores sin licencia Go-Live –por lo que me parece más un CTP…

Descargas

• Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 o Visual Web Developer Express 2010 Beta 2
• Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2
• Expression Blend for. NET Preview 4

Silverlight 4 (Beta) requiere Visual Studio 2010 (Beta 2), el cual puede ser instalado lado a lado con Visual Studio 2008 SP1. Favor de leer el problema conocido en la instalación de Visual Studio 2010, si ya tiene el Silverlight 3 SDK instalado.

Descargas adicionales:

• Silverlight 4 SDK CHM (o bien lea la documentación On-line)
• Silverlight 4 Beta Toolkit
• Silverlight Media Framework
• Runtimes de desarrollo: Windows y Mac *
• Silverlight SDK 4 *
• WCF RIA Services (anteriormente .NET RIA Services) *

* Incluido en Silverlight 4 Tools for VS2010.

Recursos

• "What’s New in Silverlight 4" por Papa John
• Silverlight 4: "What’s New" [pdf] por Corrado Cavalli
• Channel9: Silverlight 4 Training Course
  • "What’s New in Silverlight 4 Beta"
• PDC’09:
  • Microsoft Silverlight 4 Overview
  • Improving and Extending the Sandbox with Microsoft Silverlight 4
  • Building Line of Business Applications with Microsoft Silverlight 4
• Silverlight.net:
  • Silverlight 4 Beta Information
  • Videos de aprendizaje de Silverlight 4
  • Silverlight Hand On Labs
• Foros Silverlight 4 beta y WCF RIA Services
• Blogs de Tim Heuer, Jesse Liberty, Papa John, Adam Kinney y Silverlight Community
• En castellano, el blog de Rodrigo Díaz Concha.

¿Qué hay de nuevo en Silverlight 4 Beta?

Además de los recursos listados, en el blog de Tim Heuer encontramos un extenso post al respecto (Silverlight 4 Beta – A guide to the new features) que lista las novedades:

• Tooling
• Printing API
• Right-click event handling
• Webcam/microphone access
• Mouse wheel support
• RichTextArea Control
• ICommand support
• Clipboard API
• HTML Hosting with WebBrowser
• Elevated trust applications
• Local file access
• COM interop
• Notification (“toast”) API
• Network authentication
• Cross-domain Networking changes
• Keyboard access in full screen mode
• Text trimming
• ViewBox
• Right-to-left, BiDi and complex script
• Offline DRM
• H.264 protected content
• Silverlight as a drop target
• Data binding
  • IDataErrorInfo and Async Validation
  • DependencyObject Binding
  • StringFormat, TargetNullValue, FallbackValue
• Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF)
• DataGrid enhancements
• Fluid UI support in items controls
• Implicit theming
• Google Chrome support

Maiores detalhes sobre tecnologia, áudio e design dos acessórios para o Project Natal (Xbox 360) serão anunciados na conferência Gamefest 2010, que acontece em Seattle no mês de fevereiro. O encontro terá dois dias inteiramante dedicados às pessoas interessadas em aprender um pouco mais sobre o desenvolvimento de jogos para as plataformas da Microsoft.

No caso do Project Natal, a equipe de engenharia vai orientar no desenvolvimento de jogos do Xbox 360, que substituem os tradicionais controles por câmeras e microfones, permitindo o reconhecimento de gestos e vozes dentro do jogo. De acordo com o site da Gamefest, o ” Project Natal não só revoluciona o modo como as pessoas jogam, mas também muda a forma como os jogos foram concebidos e criados“.

Além do Project Natal, a conferência abordará outras vertentes de desenvolvimento de jogos partindo dos produtos Microsoft, como: Microsoft Visual Studio ® 2010 (software gráfico), LIVE (jogar em rede, em redes sociais, loja e conteúdo gerado pelo usuário), garantia de qualidade e certificação, Arte Visual e XNA Game Studio (editor de games).

Fonte: www.microsoftgamefest.com
Imagem: www.usstar.com.br

I downloaded a really nice Google Maps Intellisense helper.

To make use of this intellisense at the page level you can add a script reference in the HEAD of the page:

 <%-- GMAPJSHelper assists in Google Maps Intellisense --%>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="scripts/GMAPJS/GMAPJSHelper_Release.js"></script>

This works with all JS libs including the SilverLight one.

Recently, I had to use STL Port for a particular project. While debugging, I was hampered by the fact that my data structures were not providing as much information in the watch window as I would have hoped. Using std::vector as an example, here’s a screen shot that highlights the problem.

After a bit of investigation I disovered the wonderful autoexp.dat file for Visual Studio. Visual studio 2005 and 2008 allow you to customize native variable watch: i.e. how a variable previews in the watch window and tooltips. This is done via a file called autoexp.dat (auto-expand), which is hidden deep inside the VS installation (%VS_INSTALL_DIR%\Common7\Packages\Debugger). Official documentation on the specifics of the scripting language is sparse, and Microsoft’s MSDN article contains the disclaimer "The structure of this file and syntax of autoexp rules might change from one release of visual studio to the next".

For most part, the instructions on how to write auto-expand rules for native types are located in the file itself. There are some other resources that are great to get started

Anyway, back to my predicament. After some research and some trial and error, the following visualizer worked for STLPort’s std::vector.

;———————————————–
;  STLPORT visualizer
;———————————————–

;———————————————–

;  stlp_std::vector
;———————————————–
stlp_std::vector<*>{
    children
    (
        #array
        (
            expr :    ($c._M_start)[$i],

            size :    $c._M_finish-$c._M_start
        )
    )
    preview
    (
        #(
            "[",
            $e._M_finish - $e._M_start ,
            "](",

            #array
            (
                expr :     ($c._M_start)[$i],
                size :     $c._M_finish-$c._M_start
            ),
            ")"
        )

    )
}

I copied the above block in the autoexp.dat file of my Visual Studio installation, and tried to look at the data structures again. I discovered that I had to make a slight modification to the above visualiser for it to work properly in the debug mode. STLPort uses debug versions of data structures in debug builds, and as a result I had to rename stlp_std::vector to stlpd_std::vector for things to work as expected. Here’s the visualiser for debug builds, followed by the screenshot of how things acually look in the watch window.

;———————————————–

;  stlpd_std::vector
;———————————————–
stlpd_std::vector<*>{
    children
    (
        #array
        (
            expr :    ($c._M_start)[$i],

            size :    $c._M_finish-$c._M_start
        )
    )
    preview
    (
        #(
            "[",
            $e._M_finish - $e._M_start ,
            "](",

            #array
            (
                expr :     ($c._M_start)[$i],
                size :     $c._M_finish-$c._M_start
            ),
            ")"
        )

    )
}

The resources linked above should be a great place if you want to experiment with autoexp.dat file.

I must point out that there is a potentially better way to create visualizers for custom types. MSDN has a couple of good articles to get you started, particularly Visualizers and How to: Write a Visualizer