Mark Monster

Microsoft published a white paper about Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. I read it and discuss it in a brief summary. The white paper discuss the different customer experiences that Visual Studio 2008 delivers through seven different technology areas.

1. Develop Smart Client Applications
2. Create Microsoft Office Applications
3. Build Windows Vista Applications
4. Handle Data More Productive
5. An Improved Developer Experience Overall
6. Enable New Web Experiences
7. Improve Application Life-cycle Management (ALM)

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Mocking with Rhino Mocks: Expecting a method not to be called

This morning I thought about trying out some Mocking with Rhino Mocks. First of all I was having some little trouble of testing method’s that returned void. Oren Eini suggested somewhere to make use of method chaining, so I changed it to use method chaining.

So what’s next? Expecting a method not to be called. For example the situation on line 12: I expect the WriteLog method with parameter EventLogEntryType.SuccesAudit not to be called. I think the test I wrote should work.

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Last week I found out about Launchy an Open Source Keystroke launcher. I use Launchy to launch application very quickly without using my mouse.

The combination ALT + SPACE pops up Launchy. You type some characters that are in the application name, for example "studio" for Visual Studio 2005. Press ENTER to accept your choice. Sometimes there are more options available, you can browse those using the UP and DOWN keys.

Besides this basic launching there are some enhanced actions available. For example type "Google" press the TAB key and type your search words. And the Google webpage pops up in your default Internet Browser with the search query you entered.

Read also the other productivity enhancements:

• 5 Minute Productivity Enhancement: Virtual PC and VMware Virtual Machine
• 5 Minute Productivity Enhancement: Windows and Resharper

I’ve read a few things about Boo. About what Boo is and what you can do with it. I understood Boo is a new object oriented statically typed programming language for .NET. It has a Python inspired syntax and has a special focus on language and compiler extensibility. It’s actually a language to create your own domain-specific languages (DSL).

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Almost a month ago I restarted blogging. In the past I’ve build my very own blogging engine, but now I’m using WordPress as my blogging engine. And as result of using Wordpress I’m able to make use of a standard blogging client. I started using Windows Live Writer (Beta 2) but not without troubles. I can no longer synchronize my online post with Windows Live Writer, I get a very annoying ArgumentOutOfRange exception. Besides this the upload picture feature seams to be broken.

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SOA in the Real World is a book that introduces a set of SOA capabilities and explores them. You can download this book for free from the Microsoft site. I think this is the ideal time for me to get to know SOA better and how it can be applied in the Real World.

Some time ago I posted I started learning for the Microsoft 70-554 exam. Today was the day. I took the exam, and it was hard, very hard, but YES I PASSED!

I have to wait for the arrive on my Transcript, but from that time on I’ll be a MCPD Enterprise Application Developer.

Update: 29 Juli 2007

I do not have to wait anymore, my Transcript is updated and the Logo Builder has my MCPD logo available.

Do you, just like me, make use of Virtual Machines very often? I might become handy to know some short cuts about them too. For example, I’ve had some trouble navigating back to my host system without using my mouse. Some more short cuts this time for both Virtual PC and VMware.

Other productivity enhancements:

• 5 Minute Productivity Enhancement: Windows and Resharper

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Every now and then I have the feeling I can work more productive with the Software I use. So from now on, I will share my thoughts about this on my blog. Most of the time this will be short-cuts for a program that aren’t well know, but very handy to know. Let’s start with the first set.

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I thought it was time to start trying out some Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). So I downloaded the latest VPC with Orcas CTP (June 2007) and Expression Blend 2 (May Preview). But starting the Expression Blend 2 setup gives an error about the .NET 3.0 framework that needs to be installed. After some research I found out .NET 3.0 SP1 is installed on the Orcas VPC. Some more research gives the following solution.

You can fool the Expression Blend 2 setup by changing a registry key. Follow the steps:

• Search for the “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v3.0\Setup\Windows Presentation Foundation\ProductVersion” registry key
• My original ProductVersion value is: 3.0.04506.577
• I changed it to ProductVersion: 3.0.6913.0
• I ran the Expression Blend 2 setup
• And changed the ProductVersion back to: 3.0.04506.577

Now let’s play with WPF.