The Coding Bug

This subject is probably close to cliché but I’m doing it mostly for myself (and hoping someone else finds it interesting too), to keep a reference of my favorite add-ins so that I can find them again.

Following is the most useful add-ins for Visual Studio in no apparent order.

DPack

DPack is one of the add-ins I use the most day-to-day. It allows you to use the shortcut ALT + U  to get a window where you can search for a file in the current solution and immediately given the file you were looking for – without having to wander around in the Solution Explorer.

A similar feature exists in the ReSharper add-in, with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + T, but I think it fails on the speed and file name matching.

 DPack

VisualSVN

VisualSVN is an add-in that makes it easier to manage SVN repositories through the Solution Explorer in Visual Studio. You can easily see which files haven’t been committed since changed, and it automatically adds files to SVN when you add them to your project.

A trial of VisualSVN exists that lets you run it for 30 days. A license is only $49. If you are looking for a free, equivalent add-in then AnkhSVN is a good bet, but it doesn’t meet up to the stability of VisualSVN.

VisualSVN

ReSharper

I would have been crucified if I didn’t get this on the list as it’s one of the most awesome add-in. ReSharper does so many things I can’t write them all down here. Though, in summary ReSharper helps you become a better and more productive programmer, by giving you tips and quick refactoring shortcuts. If you haven’t already got it—check it out now!

ReSharper

PowerCommands

This add-in adds a number of handy context menu items to Visual Studio. A few of the best is Collapse Projects, Copy/Paste References, Open Containing Folder, Undo Close and an enhanced Show All Files button.

PowerCommands

Auto Build Increment Addin

This add-in might not be useful for the majority of users, but it is really handy when you want to keep track of build numbers for your project. Basically what it does is increase the version number of your assembly for you, on every build. It also allows you to customize how you want to format the version string. I am using this add-in for my blog engine project to identify which version I am running.

Auto Build Increment Addin

GhostDoc

Tired of writing XML comments in your code, over and over again? This add-in automatically does that for you based on how the method is written and named. Although it doesn’t get it right all the times, it saves you time writing it all from scratch.

GhostDoc

Markdown Mode

One I haven’t tried myself, but looks very handy when dealing with markdown documents is Markdown Mode. It adds syntax highlighting and a preview window to Visual Studio 2010 when viewing .mkd files. As if that wasn’t enough it also allows you to copy the markdown code as HTML. This one I will install for sure after Visual Studio 2010 is released in April.

Markdown Mode

Do you have an add-in you just can’t live without? Please share!

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Today, the 14th of February, I began my blog journey that I have been thinking of doing for the last couple of months. In my first post I will be talking about the question all blog writers ask before they start a blog - “which blog engine should I use?” – and I am no exception. I spent a couple of weeks thinking and searching for the right blog engine and this is what I found.

Requirements for my blog

Before I began my research I had a set of requirements that I wanted my blog to handle. Firstly I wanted it to be written in a language I understand, so that I could easily configure it to my needs. The language I am the most comfortable with is C# in the .NET framework by Microsoft. This choice decreased the number of options I had to choose from a lot, and of course also removed the obvious choice of Wordpress which the majority of the blog sphere run.

My next requirement was to be able to easily customize the design and not have to set with the authors own design. Part of this requirement was also to have a nice and clean HTML source view (which you see through “view-source” in your browser). You may think this is totally unnecessary as the page can both look nice and be functional even with an ugly source view – but this is an obsession of mine and I still think it shows a degree of professionalism to have nicely formatted and valid HTML in your websites. This meant I had to throw away almost all of the major blog engines as they are built with ASP.NET Web Forms which has a lot of messy ID attributes, lots of script tags and large View State string lurking in the source. It should be noted though, that many of the blog engines have done a great job at correcting this, but still not enough for me! The skinning part I didn’t look into that much as the blog engines had already failed at another part of my requirements.

Following on I wanted a simple content management system (CMS) for displaying a about-page and listing projects I have created. This is covered by almost all blog engines out there, but I also wanted to be able to create my own dynamic pages (created with ASP.NET MVC) to run alongside the blog. This would most likely get messy and hard to maintain, having two different systems running in the same application.

Nice to have features

These three things was the major requirements I had, but I also had a few nice-to-have features. Like friendly URLs, support for MetaWeblog API and Windows Live Writer, OpenID login to comment and if possible written in ASP.NET MVC.

Finally making a decision

After going through several ASP.NET blog engines – more specifically Subtext, DasBlog, BlogEngine.NET and Oxite – I made the decision to abandon them all! I’m making my own blog engine and have it exactly like I want it. I might not get all the cool features like Trackbacks, Pingback and fancy admin system with statistics – but I will have something I can develop from time to time when I need new features.

Working on and off, it took about a month to create the blog with all the features mentioned above and a simple design. I also gave it a silly name – FriendlyBlog – to be able to refer to it easier. It is created with the ASP.NET MVC framework which lets me separate (most) logic from the presentation layer and have a clean source. I implemented the MetaWeblog API so that I can easily create posts with the excellent Windows Live Writer software. I’m using OpenID for comments which hopefully helps a bit against spam and yet is easy for users to use, and if it doesn’t help I can use Akismet. The blog engine also has Friendly URLs, but that can hardly be called a feature when using ASP.NET MVC, as it is too easy to get.

I’m now looking forward to using my new, shiny, blog engine to share my experience and thoughts in different technical areas.

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