Contents tagged with Tools
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Emaroo 1.2.1 Released
Emaroo is a free utility for browsing most recently used (MRU) file lists of
multiple applications. Quickly open files, jump to their folder in Windows Explorer, copy their path - all with just a few keystrokes or mouse clicks.
This bugfix release has been sitting on my hard drive for quite some time now, but it’s only now that I’ve finally gotten around to do the “release dance” (write the ReadMe, update the website, test the downloads etc.).
The most visible fix is that right-clicking a list item will now select it before opening the context menu.
Download and more information
Please visit the Emaroo website at www.roland-weigelt.de/emaroo
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ClipTextify for Converting the Clipboard Content to Plain Text
When you copy and paste text from application to application via the clipboard, you'll sooner or later run into a simple yet annoying problem: Often the text is copied as rich text, i.e. including colors, different text sizes and so on.
Intended to be a feature, this can be a real pain if all you want is plain text.
If you're not pasting into an application which lets you choose the format of the pasted text (Office 2010 does a good job here), you are forced to paste the text to Notepad first, then copy it again before you can paste without formatting.ClipTextify allows you to convert the content of the clipboard to plain text by pressing a hotkey (e.g. Win+V), before you paste the text into the target application.
Download
- Visit the ClipTextify website: www.roland-weigelt.de/cliptextify
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Welcome 2011
Things that happened in 2010
- MIX10 was absolutely fantastic. Read my report of MIX10 to see why.
- The dotnet Cologne 2010, the community conference organized by the .NET user group Köln and my own group Bonn-to-Code.Net became an even bigger success than I dared to dream of.
- There was a huge discrepancy between the efforts by Microsoft to support .NET user groups to organize public live streaming events of the PDC keynote (the dotnet Cologne team joined forces with netug Niederrhein to organize the PDCologne) and the actual content of the keynote. The reaction of the audience at our event was “meh” and even worse I seriously doubt we’ll ever get that number of people to such an event (which on top of that suffered from technical difficulties beyond our control).
- What definitely would have deserved the public live streaming event treatment was the Silverlight Firestarter (aka “Silverlight Damage Control”) event. And maybe we would have thought about organizing something if it weren’t for the “burned earth” left by the PDC keynote. Anyway, the stuff shown at the firestarter keynote was the topic of conversations among colleagues days later (“did you see that? oh yeah, that was seriously cool”).
Things that I have learned/observed/noticed in 2010
- In the long run, there’s a huge difference between “It works pretty well” and “it just works and I never have to think about it”. I had to get rid of my USB graphics adapter powering the third monitor (read about it in this blog post). Various small issues (desktop icons sometimes moving their positions after a reboot for no apparent reasons, at least one game I couldn’t get run at all, all three monitors sometimes simply refusing to wake up after standby) finally made me buy a PCIe 1x graphics adapter. If you’re interested: The combination of a NVIDIA GTX 460 and a GT 220 is running in “don’t make me think” mode for a couple of months now.
- PowerPoint 2010 is a seriously cool piece of software. Not only the new hardware-accelerated effects, but also features like built-in background removal and picture processing (which in many cases are simply “good enough” and save a lot of time) or the smart guides.
- Outlook 2010 crashes on me a lot. I haven’t been successful in reproducing these crashes, they just happen when every couple of days on different occasions (only thing in common: I clicked something in the main window – yeah, very helpful observation)
- Visual Studio 2010 reminds me of Visual Studio 2005 before SP1, which is actually not a good thing to say about a piece of software. I think it’s telling that Microsoft’s message regarding the beta of SP1 has been different from earlier service pack betas (promising an upgrade path for a beta to the RTM sounds to me like “please, please use it NOW!”).
- I have a love/hate relationship with ReSharper. I don’t want to develop without it, but at the same time I can’t fail to notice that ReSharper is taking a heavy toll in terms of performance and sometimes stability.
Things I’m looking forward to in 2011
- Obviously, the dotnet Cologne 2011. We already have been able to score some big name sponsors (Microsoft, Intel), but we’re still looking for more sponsors. And be assured that we’ll make sure that our partners get the most out of their contribution, regardless of how big or small.
- MIX11, period.
- Silverlight 5 is going to be great. The only thing I’m a bit nervous about is that I still haven’t read anything official on whether C# next version’s async/await will be in it. Leaving that out would be really stupid considering the end-of-2011 release of SL5 (moving the next release way into the future).
- MIX10 was absolutely fantastic. Read my report of MIX10 to see why.
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Emaroo 1.2 Released
Emaroo is a free utility for browsing most recently used (MRU) file lists of
multiple applications. Quickly open files, jump to their folder in Windows Explorer, copy their path - all with just a few keystrokes or mouse clicks.
New in this release
- MRU lists can be filtered in real-time by typing parts of file or directory names
- It is now possible to define a list of directories to be excluded from the MRU lists (e.g. to exclude certain drives or UNC paths)
Download and more informationPlease visit the Emaroo website at www.roland-weigelt.de/emaroo
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Emaroo 1.1 Released
Emaroo is a free utility for browsing most recently used (MRU) file lists of
multiple applications. Quickly open files, jump to their folder in Windows Explorer, copy their path - all with just a few keystrokes or mouse clicks.Features
- Quickly access most recently used Visual Studio / Blend projects and Office documents.
- Open a Window Explorer at the file location
- Copy the file path
- Open Visual Studio 2008 projects in Visual Studio 2010
- Open Visual Studio projects in Expression Blend
- Start Visual Studio / Blend as administrator
- Open recently used directories typed into the address bar of Windows Explorer (New)
Release Notes and Download
- Visit the Emaroo website: www.roland-weigelt.de/emaroo
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Introducing: Emaroo 1.0
I have just released a small tool which I have worked on every now and then during the last months (and which has already gained some popularity among my colleagues).
Emaroo
A free utility for browsing most recently used (MRU) file lists of multiple applications. Quickly open files, jump to their folder in Windows Explorer, copy their path - all with just a few keystrokes or mouse clicks.
Features- Quickly access most recently used Visual Studio / Blend projects and Office documents.
- Open a Window Explorer at the file location
- Copy the file path
- Open recently used Visual Studio 2008 projects in Visual Studio 2010
- Open recently used Visual Studio projects in Expression Blend
- Start Visual Studio / Blend as administrator
Supported ApplicationsThe following applications are supported (but not required):
- Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2010
- Expression Blend 4
- Microsoft Word 2007, Microsoft Word 2010 (32bit), Microsoft Word 2010 (64bit)
- Microsoft Excel 2007, Microsoft Excel 2010 (32bit), Microsoft Excel 2010 (64bit)
- Microsoft PowerPoint 2007, Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 (32bit), Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 (64bit)
Download and more informationPlease visit the Emaroo website at www.roland-weigelt.de/emaroo
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My Font and Color Settings for Visual Studio 2010
One of the first things I do each time I start using a new version of Visual Studio is to customize the font and color settings.
For Visual Studio 2010 this turned out to be a bit more complicated, though, because of the way XML documentation comments are rendered in the new editor.
I like my doc comments to be shown with a background color, but different from earlier versions of Visual Studio, VS2010 will not continue the background color until the right margin, but instead until the last character of the line – which turns out to be kind of ugly.
Fortunately, there’s an extension for that.
So in order to get something similar to this…
…you’ll need the Background Color Fix extension by Noah Richards. Note that the extension doesn’t always reflect changes you make to the colors immediately; you’ll have to close and open documents or even restart Visual studio. But once you’re set, this is a non-issue.
My personal font and color settings for Visual Studio 2010 shown in the screenshot above can be downloaded here (right-click the link and "Save Target/Link As").
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SonicFileFinder 2.2 Released
My colleague Jens Schaller has released a new version of his free Visual Studio add-in SonicFileFinder, adding support for Visual Studio 2010.
- Announcement on his blog
- Download on the SonicFileFinder website
As far as I can tell, there are no new features compared to version 2.1, but good to know that this add-in is now available for VS2010.
For those who a wondering what SonicFileFinder is about: SonicFileFinder implements a command for searching and opening files in a Visual Studio solution, which is very nice especially in large projects.
This may sound familiar to users of JetBrain’s ReSharper, which has a “Go To File” feature. But in my opinion SonicFileFinder does a better job overall:
- While ReSharper (4.5) does a prefix search by default, SonicFileFinder searches for any occurrence of the entered text inside a file name. In a long list of file names (e.g. all starting with “Page…”), this allows me to focus on the part that makes the difference (e.g. “Render” in PageRenderBuffer.cs). In ReSharper I would have to type “*Render*”, which can be shortened to “*Render” (which isn’t even correct). Note that SonicFileFinder does support wildcards, of course.
- SonicFileFinder remembers the last input (and thus the last result list) without a noticeable delay of the popup. If I want to search for something different, I can type right away, so this behavior doesn’t slow me down. But where it really shines is when I’m not even sure what file exactly I was looking for – I open one file, notice that it’s not the one I want, re-open the pop-up dialog and now I can choose another one from the result list without re-entering the search text.
- SonicFileFinder allows me to open multiple files at one (nice for service interfaces and implementations).
- SonicFileFinder lets me open either a Windows Explorer or Command Line window in the directory containing a specific file.
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Upgrading from “Weigelt” GhostDoc to “SubMain” GhostDoc
As I wrote in an update to my “The Future of GhostDoc” blog post, the uninstaller of GhostDoc 2.1.3 contains a bug which (under specific circumstances) may lead to losing your Visual Studio settings – I’m really sorry about that.
In the days after the first SubMain release in May (version 2.5.09150) I have helped the guys from SubMain in developing a working uninstaller for old GhostDoc versions, which is now included in the setup of the current GhostDoc version 2.5.09166 (published mid-June, though the website has been only updated recently).
So the “right way” to upgrade from an old “Weigelt” GhostDoc version (up to 2.1.3) to a new “SubMain” GhostDoc version (starting with 2.5.09166) is:
- DO NOT uninstall Weigelt GhostDoc
- Just run the SubMain GhostDoc setup
Everything else will be taken care of. Future updates (from one version of SubMain GhostDoc to another) also involve just running the installer of the new version.
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The Future of GhostDoc
Today is the day that I'm finally able to speak about why things have been pretty quiet lately regarding the future of GhostDoc.
I'm happy to announce GhostDoc has been acquired by SubMain, developer of tools like CodeIt.Right. The agreement covers the usage of GhostDoc's documentation generation technology in their products, as well as the availability of GhostDoc as a standalone product. SubMain will continue to maintain and distribute a non-crippled version of GhostDoc free of charge, and will make sure that it will work with future versions of Visual Studio like the upcoming VS2010. The first step is a new version 2.5 of GhostDoc that has been released just moments ago.
For more information please take a look at a Q&A with Serge Baranovsky from SubMain and me that covers past, present and future of GhostDoc.
As I already mentioned in the Q&A, from my experiences of working with the guys at SubMain (both on the legal and the technical stuff), I can say that GhostDoc is in good hands. The developers now have my issue tracking database where I collected and annotated all the feature requests of the recent years, but I also would like to ask every GhostDoc user to please let them know if you have ideas how to improve this tool.
I'd like to use this opportunity to say a big Thank You to all GhostDoc users out their for their (overwhelmingly positive) feedback over the recent years. Thank You!
Update: Important note for existing GhostDoc users
There are uninstall issues with the old GhostDoc version 2.1.3 (and versions before) that under specific circumstances may lead to losing your Visual Studio settingson Vista machines. I'm already working on a solution to the problem (with help from one of the SubMain developers), in the meantime please back up your settings as described inthis step-by-step guidebefore uninstalling the old GhostDoc version. During uninstallation, if a Visual Studio instance pops up and asks you to choose a developer profile, choose one and continue. This will lead to the loss of the settings, which then can be restored by importing the backup you just made before. Note that you have to choose a profile; cancelling the dialog will lead to a corrupted state of the uninstallation.The new GhostDoc from SubMain is using different install/uninstall/VS integration technology that has been proven in their other products and does not have such problems.
Update 2: Please read this blog post on upgrading to GhostDoc 2.5 and later.
