16 Dec 09 Module initializers in C#
One feature of the CLR that is not available in C# or VB.NET are module initializers (or module constructors). A module initializer is simply a global function which is named .cctor and marked with the attributes SpecialName and RTSpecialName. It is run when a module (each .NET assembly is comprised of one or more modules, typically just one) is loaded for the first time, and is guaranteed to run before any other code in the module runs, before any type initializers, static constructors or any other initialization code. I wanted to use this feature for a project I was doing but was unable to use it directly in C# so I created my own solution. (more…)
20 Nov 09 Easy way to have custom icons in Visual Studio AddIn
I’ve recently been developing a Visual Studio AddIn and I wanted to use custom icons for a command I had. Looking for a solution I found the offical MSDN article on the subject, that might possibly be the most misleading and useless article ever. Add the resource file in Visual Studio, then exclude from project, rename your images to numbers, edit with Notepad and then build satellite assemblies on the commandline? Really? That is a horrible way to do it and not at all necessary. I’ve found a very simple and easy way to add these icons without all that hassle.
12 Nov 09 ZenCoding Visual Studio AddIn
4 Feb 2010: I’m no longer working on this addin and cannot provide support for failed installations. I gave some information about possible causes for failed installations in this comment, you can see if that helps, or discuss with other users in the comments. There are unlikely to ever be new versions of this addin published by me, but Boris Sevo has forked the project and has a version with a newer zencoding library at http://zencoding.codeplex.com/. So go there for updates 
The original blog post about the architecture of the addin is now completely out of date as 90% of the addin is now written in IronPython with just a tiny shim layer of C# to instantiate the IronPython classes. I’ll probably write a blog post about that architecture seperately (or generally about how to write addins for VS in IronPython). Those interested in the architecture can download the source and look at it.
A nice tutorial with screenshots on how to setup the keyboard mappings and use the addin has just been posted at http://www.netsi.dk/wordpress/index.php/2009/12/02/zen-coding-a-very-fast-way-of-generating-html-elements-in-your-editor/ so go there for your setup instructions. And there is now a dedicated rss feed for updates at http://tech.einaregilsson.com/zcupdates.aspx so subscribe to that to be notified of new versions. Eventually I’ll put an update check in the addin itself.
ZenCoding.VisualStudio v1.1.0.333
20 Mar 09 Coco/R plugin for Visual Studio
I’ve blogged before about the excellent Coco/R parser generator. I’m using it a lot in my masters project and I’m happy with it but there were a few things I wished worked differently. The main thing was that I wanted better Visual Studio integration. I had set up a pre-build event that generated the parser and scanner before every build. However there is obviously no need to re-generate the files unless the grammar file has changed. Generating on every build also had the effect that Visual Studio kept prompting me about reloading changed files and I had to build to see if there were any errors in my grammar. So, I decided to create a Visual Studio plugin for Coco/R myself. (more…)
15 Jan 08 Developing ASP.NET 1.1 in Visual Studio 2008
I have an old ASP.NET 1.1 application that I have to maintain and which for reasons beyond my control can’t be updated to a later .net version. I hadn’t touched it in a few months but recently I had to make some small changes and realized I didn’t even have Visual Studio 2003 anymore. I got a new computer a few months ago and I have Visual Studio 2008 and IIS 7 on it but no VS 2003. I didn’t really want to install it, it’s pretty old at this point and not very well supported in Vista, and like most programmers I like to play with the shiny new toys, not the old obsolete ones. So I decided to try to maintain this application in Visual Studio 2008. Now, VS 2008 can target different versions of the .NET framework, but only 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5 so I was out of luck. But, thanks to a nice article I found by Jomo Fisher on compiling .NET 1.1 in VS2005 and some extra hacking I got it working pretty well. My setup was IIS 7 on Windows Vista, IIS 6 on Windows XP is pretty much the same although some of the options I point to may be located in different places. So, here’s what you need to do to develop ASP.NET 1.1 in Visual Studio 2008:
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