Unfortunatly, due to scheduling conflicts both Brendon and I missed the SQL Server meeting (they chose to move their meeting back a week rather than cancel for Valentine's Day.  That meant they met the same day as the Mobility group).  Since we couldn't be there I got this review of the meeting from David Rodriguez - the Microsoft guy at all of the SQL Server UG meetings.

"The presentation focused on SQL Server backup and system monitoring best practices.  Part of the presentation included details on how Idera’s products support these best practices above the capabilities of SQL Server integrated tools. The slides for the presentation should be available on the web site for Atlanta.mdf

DRR"

Thanks David!

-- Matt Ranlett

The dangerous thing about learning more about something is that you usually learn that you don't really know anything about it at all.  Here's a great pair of blog entries talking about interview questions which MIGHT be asked of prospective developers in general and .Net developers in particular.  Now, I've been a professional developer (ok - amateur masquerading as a pro) for nearly six years and I can't answer a lot of these questions.  Like I said, I've got a lot to learn:

Chris Sells posted some "fun" interview questions - http://www.sellsbrothers.com/fun/msiview/.  Actually, this page is a bunch of links to interview sites, but the bottom of the page has a link to the questions - divided into 4 categories.  Great stuff that brings you back to your early CS classes (implement a linked list...)

Scott Hanselman has posted some interview questions divided into experience levels - if you're a guru you should be able to answer everything where entry level should be good with the top set.  There are also some targeted questions for ASP.Net and XML developers.  Check Scott Hanselman's post (and a previous post about ASP.Net questions) out at http://www.hanselman.com/blog/WhatAGreatNETDevelopersOughtToKnowMoreNETInterviewQuestions.aspx

Thanks guys, for reminding me that I need to spend more time with my nose in books!

-- Matt Ranlett

I was flipping through the OldNewThing blog for some reason when I got sidetracked by this post about Power Toys and their history.  The entire blog is fascinating reading, but this one really caught my eye.  Perhaps that's because of the reference to the Mobile Developer's Power Toys.  Included in the power tools are several command line utilities (anyone question how MS developers prefer to work?) and some neat tools to work with ActiveSynch.  I've never tried them out, but they might be helpful.

-- Matt Ranlett

ps - even BizTalk has Power Toys now!

I've updated the previous post as well.  Now the MSDN Photostory Brendon put together is hosted on two sites:

Chris Wallace - http://tamasii.com/dotnet/feb2005msdnevent.wmv

Glen Gordon - http://www.msdn.tv/glengordon/feb2005msdnevent.wmv

Thanks guys!

-- Matt Ranlett

Wednesday.  6:30pm.  The New Horizons training center on LaVista Rd.

Or are you chicken?

— Matt Ranlett

keep an eye on the calendar – I’ll soon be updating it with the date, time, and location for the next Atlanta Geek Dinner

If you want to present to the community during the Atlanta Code Camp this May 14th, you need to download this form, fill it out, and mail it to Mark Dunn – mark AT NOSPAM dunntraining.com (sorry you can’t just click on the link – I’m doing my part to fight spam).  This is true even if you have previously announced your intention to present.  Your name doesn’t make it onto the final speaker listing without this form being in Mark’s hands.

— Matt Ranlett

Before I mention anything else, I want to thank Doug Turnure and Microsoft for hosting us and ordering us pizza!  Thanks!

Despite the truly horrific storm (we actually took a break so people could go move their cars to lower levels of the parking deck in case of hail) we had a great turnout.  Twenty people came and participated in the round table discussion group style of presentation.  We were very relaxed and informal tonight, peppering our presenters with questions in the middle of their presentations.  I don’t know if they enjoyed it, but I sure like that style of presentation – the level of group involvement shows interest and attention.

First up on the big screen was Michael Earls.  He presented an idea that he credits to Keith Rome.  Basically, if you have a PocketPC device and want to watch movies (and with 1Gb compact flash cards, why not?), wouldn’t it be easier to do so with a Media Center type of interface?  So Michael dreamed up the Pocket Media Center and downloaded the OpenNetCF classes from www.OpenNetCF.org.  If you’ve never seen these tools before, you owe it to yourself to check them out, they’re one of the truly invaluable open source developer toolkits out there for anyone working with the .Net Compact Framework.  In the course of his presentation, Michael learned a valuable lesson for all of us – the CE emulators which come with Visual Studio require a network connection or loop-back adaptor for communication and debugging to be successful.  Michael’s short presentation was mostly dominated by people discussing the merits of the emulators and other developer toolkits they had experience with.  The other toolkit I remember being mentioned was the GDI+ wrapper and charting tool set from www.XRossOne.com. 

Our feature presenter for the evening was Shawn Wildermuth.  Shawn is widely recognised for his database programming expertise, and using databases on the .Net Compact Framework was the focus of the talk this evening.  Before delving into the actual methods of data access on the compact framework, Shawn pointed out some differences between the traditional networked PC and the mobile devices.  Aside from the obvious differences - screen real estate and small memory room, there are other differences between the PC and the mobile device.  Low bandwidth and range/access problems force you to think about your apps differently.  Input restrictions (no keyboard/mouse) make you think differently.  How you think about data has to change.  The CF allows access to System.Data (Datasets) and XML, but not serialisation.  The SQLClient requires connectivity. SQL CE allows offline data access but is not supported on the Smartphone platform.  Web services do work on all the platforms.  
Shawn's first demo was of the SqlClient.  While the code looks remarkably similar to what you would write with the full framework.  One caveat - there is no local cache on a mobile device.  Of course, that makes sense when you think about it - you wouldn't want to cache lots of data on a memory restricted device.
Next up was a discussion of SQL Server CE - a database engine that actually runs a database on your mobile device.  The neatest thing about it is that it uses HTTP for communication with SQL Server.  SQL Server CE allows two methodologies when it comes to data access - either remote data access or merger replication.  Remote Data Access is when you execute queries against a remote host.  Merge replication is when you bring some or all of the database to the device and make your changes locally.  SQL Server CE will handle sending changes to the server database.  Something nice about SQL Server CE is that the database engine handles compression for you, making it easier to send larger amounts of data across the "wire"
Web Services as a data access method is really Shawn's preferred method for accessing data.  Shawn really seems to like how much control he gets when he's designing his own web services.  Of course, the trade off for this amount of control is an additional amount of code.
Other topics of conversation included data binding (slow on the CF devices so push this off to another thread!) and some new features promised in SQL Server 2005's SQL Server Mobile Edition.  I won't go into all of the details of these two topics.  Instead, visit www.adoguy.com and look for his presentations section - the presentation and all the code he showed us is available for download.  Also look for his data factory class - he promised us that his magic base class for database work is freely available.

The evening wrapped up with some prize giveaways – no one walked away empty-handed.  We had books, hats, t-shirts, notepads, and more all thanks again to Doug Turnure and his magical swag closet.

Be sure to join us next month for Kirk Evans present the upcoming .Net Compact Framework 2.0.

— Matt Ranlett  

I wonder if anyone else is obsessed with planning and organizing as much as I am. I have set up the calendar for people to download from our site for the Atlanta .NET events, but is that enough? Heck NO! There needs to be more options and more connections for people to be able to use the calendar in the way they want to, not the way I tell them they need to. That is the way I would feel if I was the person using the calendar.

Well I was signing up for a BizTalk event for tomorrow and they had a link to add it to my calendar. Now I know everyone has seen the little link you can make from Outlook to create an event file (.cvs), but I wanted to know how to really create one of these events. So I downloaded the file and opened it with Notepad. As expected I found text in the file and without hesitation I wanted to know what the specification of this file was. Luckily I found out that it is an open standard so I downloaded the developer reference and I am on my way to making a way for the website to allow people to add Calendar appointments to Outlook or any other program that uses vCalendar. I will be getting with Kirk who is the first person that told me that he had already looked into doing this with enclosures for RSS feeds, so I will hopefully get something going soon for people to have choices.  I will post any of the code if it is good enough on www.devcow.com/projects when we are done with that section.

--Brendon Schwartz

A little while ago Brendon, the local vocal community, and I came up with an idea to help bring us all closer together.  Brendon and I, your humble Atlanta .Net Regular Guys, would invite some local member of the community out to lunch or dinner and chat with them about their personal experiences with .Net development.  We'd then summarize and paraphrase that interview and post it to this blog for everyone to read.  No one is sure about what will come of this, but we're hopeful that some helpful information might leak out.  It might be interesting to hear what people around you but outside of your own development teams are doing, succeeding at, and struggling with.

               "Tales from the Trenches" - beginning Thursday, Feb 24th.

Our inaugural interview will be Chris Wallace, a VB.Net developer who works as a one man development shop in the medical field.  Expect the first post to be Thursday night or Friday.  We are not sure yet if this will be a weekly or semi-weekly feature, but we intend to have some fun with this.  If anyone has any interview topic requests, start sending them in!

-- Matt Ranlett

I was reading though my blogs and came across this entry from Scott Watermasysk discussing INETA Academic and his personal drive to get students involved in the local community.

http://scottwater.com/blog/archive/2004/12/22/INETA_Academic_And_You#Feedback

This got me to thinking about what Brendon and I have been doing with this blog and our other activities as "Atlanta .Net Regular Guys".  The two of us have been working hard to bring the local developer community closer together.  We've been providing User Group recaps so those who can't make it to the meetings aren't left out of the loop.  We've worked to... blah blah blah.  I'll just paste the comment I wrote to Scott into this entry rather than paraphrasing myself.  I'm not sure that my comment will make it to his blog b/c I was looking at a post nearly 2 months old.

"Here in the Atlanta community, we've begun to consolidate our local user groups and online gurus through the blogsphere.  One concept that I'm particularly proud to be a part of is the "Atlanta .Net Regular Guys".  I and my partner Brendon Schwartz attend all of the .Net user group meetings in town (that's seven meetings a month, baby!) and blog about the content (http://www.devcow.com/weblogs).  We are integral parts of the planning and advertising for the upcoming May 14th Atlanta Code Camp (www.atlantacodecamp.com).  We are beginning a new (to Atlanta anyway) weekly or semi-weekly column - "Tales from the Trenches".  This column will include the personal war stories of local area developers, including several area Microsoft MVPs.

All of these efforts and more are all directed at one major goal - to create a vibrant local community of developers who can turn to each other for friendship and advice.  We've created a centralized calendar.  We've helped solicit for resumes and passed those resumes we've received to those who need them most.  We've organized social outings and are now involved in the leadership of several of the user groups.

We do all of this for free.  I don't want personal fame, I just want to be part of the incredible group of people that make up the Atlanta area development community and I'm doing everything I can to bring everyone closer together.  I was lucky enough to find a friend who challanged me to keep this going, and together Brendon and I have, in my opinion, added something to the local community that was previously missing."

-- Matt Ranlett

If you missed the MSDN Event we have tried to bring it to you in a new format I wanted to try out.  I took pictures of the event and used Photo Story 3 to put it all together.   With the help of Chris Wallace and Glen Gordon we are getting it hosted on the web.  It is 7.5MB so you might want to download it before you watch it, but I tried to make it tell the story of the day.  Let me know if you like it and if you would like me to do this for other events.  Have fun!

Here is the link http://tamasii.com/blog/archive/2005/02/18/48807.aspx

I will post Glen's link when he puts it up.  Thanks to both of you guys, any help is always appreciated.

--Brendon Schwartz

PS - the photostory is also being hosted by Glen Gordon - http://www.msdn.tv/glengordon/feb2005msdnevent.wmv

The winter MSDN event was a great success. Thanks to Glen and Michael for putting on such a great show. It was funny how this event started out. First I emailed Glen to get a head count so I would know how many flyers to print out about the local user group community. He told me 400 people were registered, which I thought was a large number. The next day Michael calls me on up and said “You should try to get here early if you can, if everyone shows up there won’t be enough seats”. So I left a couple minutes early and had no trouble getting in, actually I don’t think they would really turn people away unless it became really crowded, but I appreciate Michael looking out for me.

The presentations were excellent; it is amazing how much information you can learn from such an event, unless you are Keith and you know everything already, just kidding ;). The first presentation was about DataBinding. Actually have you ever wanted to write your own MediaPlayer and be able to change the look of your application? Well if you do you should have been at this presentation. Glen showed how to add some life to your products with new looks and the drag and drop functionality.

Next up was our local friend Michael Earls. It appears, or as the story goes, Glen changed some of the content on Michael so it was an exciting beginning. Luckily Michael can think on his feet quick and made it seem like it was part of the presentation. Good job on the presentation Michael. We learned some cool tips and tricks on debugging like how to break into a running ASP.NET application and how to use trace. I think trace is a great tool for everyone to use and if you don’t already know how to use check out the MSDN event content DVD. Keith who I was sitting next to said the funniest thing joking around while we were there, he said, “Trace is for the weak, real men use Response.Write for debugging”. This was a joke that Michael brought up in his presentation about the old way of doing trace in ASP applications.

The last presentation was a great intro and overview of what is soon to come with VS 2005. People are still waiting to see what the final release will have in it, but he did show the modeling tools and how to generate code from an architect’s point of view. It seems to me that .Net is really going to take off with VS2005 because they have so many features that help in the entire development cycle. This is really going to be a good area to watch for in the coming year for how to articles and what is good practice.

On that note look for Me and Matt to put out some posts on VS2005 over the next year we might start looking deeper into it and the new features that will help in your daily work. Also Microsoft has released “Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) for Agile Software Development, Beta” so check it out and let us know what you think about it and VS2005 in general.

P.S. – I will be working on getting the pictures and Photo Story to Glen who will post it for us somewhere because we don’t have the bandwidth for it. If you have suggestions for a back ground song let me know. An interesting guy I met at the MSDN event was Boris. He wrote a tool called Regmagik. Let me know if anyone else is using this. http://www.regmagik.com

--Brendon Schwartz

I've been looking around on the web and have seen loads of people criticize Microsoft for announcing that they were "moving quickly" with the Internet Explorer 7 announcement.  Don't be too quick to knock Microsoft - they sat back on the IE front after they totally killed Netscape and concentrated on other areas.  Now that Google and FireFox showed Microsoft that there are still growth areas out there on the internet where consumers are concerned, expect to see lots of action on that front.  We've recently had mention of a new version of IE (the focus will be security - think phishing), a new search tool, a new version of their mapping software which kicks MapQuest's butt, and more.  Microsoft is a big company but it's competing on a hundred fronts at once.  Even the US Army prefers fewer battlefronts!

-- Matt Ranlett

Shawn W rants about the new HHGTTG trailer in his blog post.  I think this movie has great geek potential.  Anyone up for a social geek gathering to go watch this?  I think Chris Sells is planning something like this out on the west coast.  If he can do it, so can we!

-- Matt Ranlett

If you didn't already register for the May 14th Atlanta Code Camp, you are now too late.  In just 17 days since the official announcement at January's Atlanta Dot Net User Group meeting, all of the spaces have been taken.

ATTENTION PRESENTERS:  If you would like to present at the Atlanta Code Camp, we are still looking for you.  You may request a space by doing one of the following things:

1. Add a comment to this blog requesting a speaker's berth
2. Send an e-mail to Mark Dunn (mark AT NOSPAM dunntraining.com) or Michael Earls (mearls AT NOSPAM hotmail.com) requesting a speaker's berth

ATTENTION PEOPLE WHO DID NOT REGISTER IN TIME:  There is a waiting list that is already so long we'll never get through it.  You have missed this code camp.  I apologize from the bottom of my heart, but our venue has serious space limits which prevent us from opening more spaces.  However, we are still looking for the following (which might get you entry to the code camp sessions)

1. volunteers to help set up before the event, manage the crowd during the event, and clean up after the event.  If you are interested in volunteering, post a comment to this blog entry stating such.  I do NOT guarantee entry to the code camp.

While we're still tremendously early in the process, I want to thank everyone for helping to spread the word and make this as successful as an event still three months away can be!  If our successes continue in this vein, there will be more code camps in the future.

-- Matt Ranlett

450 people signed up for the MSDN Event at Phipps Plaza today!  That number is well over capacity at the theater, but several people didn't show up so there was still room to sit.  Still, all the publicity seems to be working for Glen - more people are learning about his FREE developer training events and planning to show up.

Unfortunately I was not one of the people who could show up.  My evil boss required me to be at work today so I could only attend the after-party.  I, and about 50 of my closest friends, congregated at the American Cafe underneath the AMC theater in Phipps Plaza.  Microsoft was kind enough to purchase some free appetizers for us (Thanks Glen!) and give away some prizes.  Everyone at my table won something except me!  That's what I get for not showing up to the event, bad karma.

Brendon will be posting a blog entry to cover the actual MSDN Event content as well as some photos he took.  He'll probably get those up in the next day or so - he's actually visiting with his Grandmother tonight.  Hello, Brendon's Grandma!

Upcoming meeting reminders!
Monday the 21st - Atlanta Mobility Group.  Shawn Wildermuth presents ADO and the Compact Framework.
Wednesday the 23rd - Atlanta Visual Basic.Net Study Group.  Brendon and I tag-team the group with presentations.
Monday the 28th - the main Atlanta Dot Net User Group meeting, featuring Dennis Hurst teaching you how to hack (ok, maybe not)
May 14th - Atlanta Code Camp - sorry, already filled up!
May 18th - newly announced Wednesday visit from David Chappell to discuss Indigo.  This will be a great session and takes the place of the end of the month Atlanta Dot Net User Group meeting (May 30th is now a free Monday night).

-- Matt Ranlett

 

Does anyone think I went a little too far with all the links in this post?  Aside from me, that is?

Seventeen days after the official announcement of the Atlanta Code Camp, all the spaces have been filled.  We had 200 spaces available and those are now gone!  We actually have a waiting list!  I think that's totally awesome!  Way to go, Atlanta!

Another planning meeting happens next week and we'll begin sorting speakers into the tracks and deciding who presents what and where.  Look to www.AtlantaCodeCamp.com for these details as soon as they become available.  I'll also be posting that information to this blog.

-- Matt Ranlett

Check out what Keith Rome learned about SQL 2005 in his two posts:

Post #1: http://www.mindfusioncorp.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,2e0f3720-20c3-4766-8917-5e1d3069b8eb.aspx

and

Post #2: http://www.mindfusioncorp.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,082d98a6-8586-4f6a-b359-968a08f08e51.aspx

I'm really jealous that I didn't get to go.  Ah, the joys of being your own boss.

-- Matt Ranlett

 

PS - click on the BOSS link - MarkTAW did some hilarious analysis of the Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers.

I guess I'll have to start editing the images when I am ready to post them to the website.  Oh well.  I'm not going to bother with my existing images.

I received a web project to help make some changes.  When I tried to open the project, I got an error that the web project could not be opened.  IIS couldn't open my project and I got the following error message: "unable to open web project 'ProjectName;.  The file path 'C:\blah\blah\blah' does not correspond to the URL 'http://localhost:/projectname'.  The two need to map to the same server location.  HTTP Error 404: Object not Found."

 

The problem was that the virtual directory was not set up in the IIS Administration tool.  I had to create a new virtual directory with the correct name, path, and permissions (see the next three images)

 

 

 

Finally, once I got the virtual directory all set up, Visual Studio 2003 allowed me to open the project but I got the following error when I tried to open the form in the designer.  "The file could not be loaded into the Web Forms designer.  Please correct the following error and then try loading it again:  The designer could not shown for this file because none of the classes within it can be designed.  The designer inspected the following classes in the file:  _Defulat --- The base class 'Project.Form' could not be loaded.  Ensure the assembly has been referenced or built if it is part of the project.  Make sure all of the classes used in the page are built or referenced in the project.  Click help for more information".

I rebuilt the solution and everything was fine.  I was able to make my tiny change and post the change to the website.

-- Matt Ranlett

 

Nothing kills my productivity at work more than interruptions, from both people and computer based interruptions.  Sometimes those interruptions are warranted but frequently they're not.  One of the main killers is Outlook - it keeps popping up those cool e-mail notifications.  I think they're neat but I tend to pay too much attention to them.  43Folders.com has a set of 5 e-mail productivity tips that I'm going to start following tomorrow.

http://www.43folders.com/2005/02/five_fast_email.html

The calendar of Atlanta .Net user groups and events has been updated at www.devcow.com/calendar.  The calendar now is complete through to December and should be accurate.

New to the calendar - the Atlanta Code Camp and a May 18th visit from David Chappell for a talk about Indigo.

Note:  the downloadable calendar is not quite as complete yet.  Stay tuned for more updates.

-- Matt Ranlett

Update2****

Check out Don's site, I told you he would agree that COM is not going away.  Look at Project E - Essential COM, 2nd Edition

EndUpdate2***

Actually I can't look at OLEView because I only have Visual Studio .NET 2003 installed on my machine.  So why do you think that OLEView is not shipped with Visual Studio anymore?  Is it because we don't need to use COM anymore, or is it because the Visual Studio package was too large already.  A lot of people will argue that COM is dead and that we don't need these silly tools anymore, but I think Don Box would agree that it is still around if not in person than in sprit.  He might even tell you COM is love, but I think he was really trying to tell you that the ideas of COM are love not the implementation.

I hope they do ship something that will do the same thing, but I have not been able to find anything yet.  If anyone knows what I can use without having to go download OLEView from a machine that already has it please let me know.

The reason I am looking into this is for two reasons.
1) I am doing a presentation on COM interop and Excel
2) I have been working with Microsoft Office, which is still written in unmanaged code.

Both of these reasons are making me think that Microsoft is not just dropping support for COM as we know it; they are helping us move away from it and not use it.

Update****

Matt pointed me to a great page that shows what tools are installed, and even though it says OLEView should be there it was not.  It seems my install did not go right, but that I was never told about the problems.  You don't really need COM tools anyways. =)  So I found that under the Visual C++.NET section there is a place for Win32 tools.  I am going to have to check out what happens if you just install C# or VB.NET, do you still get the COM tools you don't need. ;)

--Brendon Schwartz

At my workplace, we have machines out in the field which were having problems that caused them to require frequent reboots.  The problem turned out to be SQL Server seg-faulting, but that's not what this entry is about.  What I wanted to talk about here were some free tools you have already or can get easily that can tell you all about your system.  One of the great features of these tools is that they are command line tools which can have their output piped to a file.  Once you have a file on disk, what you do with it is your business.  We tend to FTP and e-mail them around.

You already have these!
SystemInfo - go to a DOS Prompt and type 'systeminfo' to get a huge amount of valuable information, including processor types, physical and virtual memory, and a list of OS hotfixes which have been applied.  Have you got two "identical" machines behaving differently?  Compare the systeminfo output from both to ensure they are actually identical.  NOTE: hyperthreaded processors show up as two processors

Net statistics server/workstation - see how much network traffic your server and workstation services are dealing with, including sessions started and print jobs spooled!  Just go to a DOS prompt and type 'net statistics server' or 'net statistics workstation'

Netstat - run 'netstat -a' from a DOS prompt to see what TCP ports are opened and listening.  This was useful for a problem with an antivirus program blocking all network traffic to and from a machine due to an over-abundance of opened ports.

Download this for free!
Uptime.exe - download this tool and run it with the /s command to get some really great statistics, including a history of shutdown and boot times over a period of months.  You'll see how many times that machine has bluescreened as well as an availablility statistic.  Here is a sample of the output analysis AFTER a huge list of reboot times:
                  Since 1/12/2005:

                             System Availability: 99.9930%
                                    Total Uptime: 34d 22h:2m:17s
                                  Total Downtime: 0d 0h:3m:31s
                                   Total Reboots: 4
                       Mean Time Between Reboots: 8.73 days
                               Total Bluescreens: 0

                     Notes:
                     1/12/2005 is the earliest date in the event log where
                     sufficient information is recorded to calculate availability.

I wanted to put a referral to Deepak Sharma's blog entry about this same topic.

-- Matt Ranlett

So I am trying out OneNote today in an attempt to try and use all of the Microsoft products I can. Hopefully this will allow me to become more efficient in my daily activities. At the moment I am trying to put my thoughts down, so I thought, "Oh, a program that helps me collect my notes would be great". I have tried out OneNote before and didn’t like it when I couldn’t figure out how to make it change my voice into notes, then I remembered "Matt figured out how to make it work when he bought his Tablet PC". So I ask Matt, "Matt, how do you get OneNote to work correctly?" Here is where the problem comes in. He responded "You don’t and You can’t you have Windows XP, hahahahahaha (evil laugh)". It turns out that the voice to text feature of OneNote, as far as he knows, is only part of the Tablet PC OS. This seems to be crazy to me and I cannot for the life of me figure out why Microsoft wouldn’t put the voice to speech features in the XP OS. Maybe I missing something here, but are you telling me I have to buy the Tablet OS to get some of the features I want, but buy XP Pro if I want other features? Hopefully someone that either works on XP or Tablet PC will read this and help straighten things up because I can’t believe that I am going to have to buy and install another operating system just to get OneNote to "work".

--Brendon Schwartz

Aren't we cute?  This is who I've been dating since Dec. 27th.  We just spent our Valentine's day eating at Savu - an excellent French/Asian fusion restaurant inside of the W Hotel on Ashford Dunwoody.  The food there was absolutely FANTASTIC!  Be sure to bring your wallet though - it's a tad bit pricy!

-- Matt Ranlett

I was just asked this question and I didn't know the answer:

When you're working on a Winform project in C# (and probably VB) you have the ability to modify the form through the GUI editor and modify the code behind the form through the IDE.  However, there is also generated code hidden inside the form which some people like to be able to modify.  The only way I know of to edit this generated code is to open the form file in Notepad, make your changes, and save it.  Is there a way to modify this code inside of the IDE?

Here is the reason I ask:  Say you are creating a form.  You want to set some of the property values based on constants rather than having to modify the properties via the IDE.  Let's say you want to set the Visible property to FALSE.  I don't really want to accept the default values then reset them in the form load or constructor.  That just leads to a larger code base for no reason.  It would be cleaner to have the code just use the constant value.

Thoughts?

My fear was that if you modify the generated code with Notepad or any other tool, that this code would be regenerated by Visual Studio and any changes would be lost.  My initial recommendation was to modify the code in the form's constructor but my questioner wasn't convinced this wasn't just resetting the value after it defaulted to something else.

-- Matt Ranlett