Tag Archives: Tools

Announcing LearningLine: Instructor-led online training from DevelopMentor

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I am very proud to announce an exciting new online learning platform from DevelopMentor:


http://www.learninglineapp.com

At DevelopMentor we have been thinking deeply about online training. We wanted to create an environment that combines the best parts of online learning and classroom training, the best parts of self-directed exploration and expert-led mentoring. We believe we have created just such an environment and I am thrilled to publicly announce it today.

Here’s a short 2-minute video which will give you a quick overview. You can get more details at http://www.learninglineapp.com.

Online training today

There are many shortcomings in how developers learn online today. Continue reading →

Preventing JavaScript Files from Loading Multiple Times

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This post is about ensuring that you do not execute a particular JavaScript file more than one time. Let’s start by asking:

What happens if you link to a js file twice in your page?

Here is a contrived example.

Notice that we are including bad-example.js twice. Do modern browsers somehow realize they loaded this file already and skip this? Not yet, as we’ll see!

Imagine bad-example.js had this code in it. Continue reading →

Building a Cloud OS for .NET Developers – Part 1

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Let’s talk about cloud operating systems. This article explores the options and potential of moving entirely “To The Cloud” for developers who normally demand significant offline power from their applications (IDEs, compilers, debuggers, etc). We’ll focus on .NET / Visual Studio developers, but I’m sure you can adapt this to your technology of choice.

I’ve been fascinated with what Google is doing with Chrome OS. I think finding a way to fully “live in the cloud” has a lot of promise. However, in practice Chrome OS is entirely unappealing to me. It’s just a single browser window, maximized. Yuck. I don’t mind doing most things in the browser, but I’d like multiple non-maximized browser windows and a desktop to organize things like shortcuts. That’s OK though because Chromebooks aren’t the only option. We have decent operating systems right now that can function largely in the same way if we set them up with discipline.

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11 Killer Open Source Projects I Found with NuGet

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So maybe I’m late to the party, but I recently started playing with NuGet. It’s a killer new way to find, install, maintain, and manage references to open source libraries in Visual Studio 2010. Plenty of people have written about it (Phil Haack and  Scott Hanselman for example). Let’s just say you should learn about NuGet if you don’t know it already.

What I want to talk about is all the cool open source projects I found just by flipping through the pages of the NuGet directory in the Visual Studio “Add Library Package Reference” dialog.

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Gmail New Mail Notifications for Windows 7

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[Update: Renamed this tool from Gmailer to Gmail 7 due to pre-exiting product name conflicts]

I’ve been using Windows 7 as my sole operating system since Beta 1 in January. I’m completely loving it and I was pleased to see how many apps worked seamlessly on it. One that didn’t and I really miss is Gmail Notifier. No matter how I try, I always get this:

It’s insane to me that $130B company can’t provide any more than this outdated tool for this job, but I digress…

I’ve looked and looked for a replacement and they are either no longer online, are crappy applications, and so on. Finally I decided to take matters into my own hands. Introducing a clean, simple, unobtrusive, and free Gmail notification application that works on Windows 7 – Gmail 7:

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Commercial Skip and Instant Replay for Any Computer (Not Just Media Center Anymore)

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Do you watch a lot of video on your computer? I sure do. I download conference talks and interviews. I especially watch a lot of TV recorded by my Windows Media Center PC by copying the video files to my laptop. Media Center is SO much better than TiVo because you can copy / transfer / save video to other places (like your laptop).


A cool Media Center Setup (love it!)

That’s all well and good, except I really miss the ability to skip commercials and pause video via my media center remote control.


Media Center Remote (love this too!)

That’s been a pain to say the least inside Windows Media Player. Well goodbye days of frustrating commercials and TV via the mouse!
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Visual Studio Recent Files Utility Now OpenSource on CodePlex

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If you’v been using my Visual Studio Recent Files Utility, then you may be interested to find out that I just released it as open source on CodePlex here.

Visual Studio Recent Files Utility on CodePlex

Enjoy!

Email Something Huge: Introducing the Big Mailer Utility

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I often have to send large files around by email. For example, I had to email a colleague a 10 MB file. It seems a little rude to hit him out of the blue with a 10 MB email. I wanted something cleaner and less intrusive.

So I created a simple utility I called “Big Mailer”. I figured I’d blog about it and share it with the world. Feel free to use it as you see fit. This program consists of both a client and server piece that simplifies uploading content to your web site. Then the program gives you a regular web link you can send via email.

Here’s a screen shot:

BigMailer

Continue reading →

Visual Studio Tricks Series: #3 Managing the Recent Projects List

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Welcome to my third Visual Studio tricks post. This time it’s more of a utility, than a tip. I want to talk about managing the recently projects list. If you’re like me, then you work with many different projects (especially after I teach a class) and your recent project list becomes polluted with projects you don’t care about.

In this post, “Recent Projects in Visual Studio 2005″, .net DEvHammer discusses how to access the registry to alter that list.

Well, I didn’t feel like going to the registry everytime I wanted to clean that list. So I whipped up a simple UI to manage that list (basically manage that registry list).

You’re welcome to download this program if it looks useful to you. I decided to publish it via ClickOnce so it will always be up-to-date. If you’re using FireFox, you’ll need to FFClickOnce add-on to make this work.

Install Visual Studio Recent Files Utility (approx 200 KB)

I hope you enjoy it!

This project is now hosted on CodePlex and is Open Source.