I have uploaded to this site a 68 minute video of the Writing Custom FxCop Rules (190Mb) presentation that I gave at VBUG at the annual VBUG Conference in Reading in October 2006. Sincere thanks to Christian Mitchell of VBUG for making this available to me. The slides for this presentation are also available for download here. The video itself is a combination of slides, demos and even live footage of me (there had to be a downside) explaining how to write rules. The version I have uploaded has a low bit rate to keep the size small (ish) so if VBUG make this available then you might prefer a version with a higher bit rate.

As there isn’t much information available on this subject I hope you find this video useful. Almost all of the information is still correct as I write this post (July 2007) but obviously you can replace the code name "Atlas" with "Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX". In addition be aware that this presentation was given before the release of Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 and the comments about using Web Deployment Projects although still correct have been superceded by using the Web Application Projects that were resurrected from Visual Studio 2003.

You can download the FxCop rules that I talk about in this presentation on the .NET Internationalization site here. And if you still feel like you don’t have enough information about writing FxCop rules you can read Chapter 13 of .NET Internationalization entitled "Testing Internationalization Using FxCop".

Technorati Tags: FxCop, Writing Custom FxCop Rules, Internationalization, VBUG, VBUG Conference

Patrick Long has now uploaded parts 2 and 3 of his WPF training course. You can download it for free here.

Technorati Tags: WPF, Patrick Long

And the winner is.... Me! It was a close run thing but I finally managed to almost get Windows Vista Search to search for the files that I wanted instead of the files that it wanted. I’m not a big fan of Vista. There are many new features that are very useful but I absolutely hate a change in any user interface because it destroys my productivity. I can never see why new features cannot be added on instead of having to undo what I already know. Microsoft often state that backwards compatibility is of huge importance but whereas I am pro-Microsoft I rarely find evidence to support this. If this is true then I have to conclude that they are just not trying hard enough.

I don’t mean to rant but as this is my first ever post where I have been critical I am hoping that the rarity of this event lends it some credence.

However, back to the point. The point is that Windows Vista Search is the emporor’s clothes. It takes someone to stand up and say "the emporor is naked" and that someone is me. Why can’t it just do what I ask it to ? Why does it have to show off and try to be clever and find files that have nothing to do with what I was looking for ? Why don’t developers and designers understand that whenever you add a feature that tries to be helpful to one person then it is instantly unhelpful to someone else.

What I want seems such a simple thing. Sigh. I want to search for .cs files that contain a given string. Windows XP’s search lets me do this (once it has been fixed to allow me to search for .cs files). The solution in Vista is to understand that your search string can contain qualifiers (there is an excellent post on advanced search techniques here). So if you type "*.cs" (don’t include the quotes) you get all manner of files that you don’t want (*.cs, *.csproj, *.csproj.Filelist.txt, *.cs.dll). However, if you type "ext: .cs" then you get much closer to what you want. This gives you *.cs files and *.csproj files. So far I haven’t found any way to tell Vista to give me only what I have asked for and not any other item it may care to think I might possibly be interested in (if any one knows where the "Just do what I ask for" check box is please let me know). However, this point is mostly rendered moot because whatever I would be searching .cs files for usually will not turn up in a .csproj file as well so by virtue of their differences the winner is finally me. I confess that Windows Vista Search comes a close second though because I still don’t know how to exclude .csproj files.

So to search for "override" in *.cs files type "override ext: .cs" into the search text box.

Oh, and whilst I’m at it, there is no option to go straight to the Advanced search. You have to search for something before it will give you the chance to do an Advanced search. The emporor is still naked.

Patrick Long is giving away the Windows Presentation Foundation training course that he wrote for Charteris! You can download part 1 of the course for free (there’s no catch) here.

It is the same course that he has already taught at Charteris so if there is enough interest in Bristol we might have a go at getting him down here to present the course (no idea how much the places would be - I’m just floating an idea).

Technorati Tags: WPF, Patrick Long

I think it’s fair to say that the first thing that anyone says after upgrading from Office 2003 to 2007 Office isn’t "wow, that ribbon toolbar is so much better!". Nope, I’ll lay money it’s "where have my commands gone ?".

Whatever else 2007 Office might be it certainly isn’t easy to pick up if you’ve used Office in all of its incarnations for the last 10 years. Which is why I’ve got two bits of information that might help similarly exasperated people like myself.

The first is a list of Word 2003 commands and their counterparts in 2007 Word:-

http://office.microsoft.com/search/redir.aspx?AssetID=AM101938681033&CTT=5&Origin=HA100625841033

If you look on the Office web site you will find similar lists for other Office products.

However, even better than this is Classic Menu for Office from http://www.addintools.com. Classic Menu for Office adds into 2007 Office products a new menu item called Menu which is an almost complete replica of the Office 2003 product’s menu. Now you can install your favourite Office products and be able to use them too!

Here’s an interesting idea from Microsoft: C# For Kids. It’s an e-book for kids on how to program in C#. It includes cartoons and is aimed at first time programmers.

You could argue that Microsoft is getting them while their young but you could also argue that they are giving away a free e-book that many parents have been looking for.

Microsoft has a new site and new technologies for the community called Microsoft Communities: http://www.microsoft.com/communities/beta/default.mspx.

Microsoft Communities is a combination of forums, blogs, TagSpace and ClaimSpace. The forums will eventually replace http://forums.microsoft.com and offers a similar but upgraded experience to its predecessor. The blogs will eventually replace http://blogs.msdn.com and http://blogs.technet.com. TagSpace is like a Favourites for your browser except that the favourites list is held on a server (allowing you to access it from any machine) and the tags are not organised hierarchically as they are in Internet Explorer’s favourites.

Another really interesting idea in Microsoft Communities is ClaimSpace. ClaimSpace allows you to make a statement (a claim) about anything on the web. Other people can assert that your claim is true or false and your reputation is assessed based on the community feedback. It will be interesting to see how such a social exercise works in practice.

The once revolutionary GotDotNet (http://www.gotdotnet.com) is being phased out. GotDotNet used to be the hub of the .NET industry and a site that I visited every day. Now, after drastically reduced traffic over the last 6 months and duplication of content and functionality with other Microsoft sites GotDotNet is being phased out and will be gone entirely by July 2007. Much of the content (including FxCop) will be moved over to MSDN.

Virtual PC 2007 was released on 20th February 2007 as a free download: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx.

The main feature is that it supports Windows Vista as both a host O/S and a guest O/S. It also supports PXE booting, 64bit Windows as a host and multi monitor systems where the VM can be full screen on one monitor.

Wikipedia Explorer is a free Wikipedia search tool. By itself that’s not very interesting. However, I mention it for 3 reasons. Firstly it has an innovative user interface. Select the 3DExplorer tab, enter your search criteria into the search box and click on the Search button to search Wikipedia. Your results are not displayed in the standard dull, dull, dull list but rather in an animated collection of bobbing results.

Now grab hold of any part of the results with the mouse, drag and the list rotates. I’m not convinced that this is necessarily the best UI experience but it is certainly very interesting and innovative.

The other two points of interest in this application are that it is a WPF app and it is deployed using ClickOnce. An excellent demonstration of both technologies. Good job.