Visual Studio 11 RC UI Changes
The Visual Studio blog just shared an update on the UI improvements coming the VS 11 beta. I know the 2 biggest complaints I had and heard from others was on the complete lack of color and the ALL CAPS SCREAMING AT YOU FROM THE TOOL WINDOWS. Both of these have been fixed for the upcoming Release Candidate.
Microsoft has added color throughout VS 11, and are saying they’ve increase the “energy” level of VS. Maybe this just means that glancing at it doesn’t make you want to fall asleep. They’ve done this by adding color to the most commonly used icons, more accent colors throughout, and adding color to object icons, such as file type and Intellisense icons.
Apparently someone on the VS team is a screamer, because they haven’t gotten rid of all caps. They just moved them. Now, tool window titles will be properly cased, but the top level menu titles are now all caps.
I do like the changes. I think the toolbar buttons now have a nice balance between the busyness of the 2010 icons and the beta icons being indistinguishable from each other at a glance. I’m not crazy about the top menu titles being all caps, but at least the toolbar window titles will be a little easier to read.
Here’s a screenshot from their original blog post showing the differences between VS 2010, 11 beta, and 11 RC.
Microsoft hasn’t announced when the RC will be coming, but I’m looking forward to getting my hands on it!
Blend 3 RC Available
Today Microsoft shipped the Release Candidate (RC) of Expression Blend 3. You can download it from here. It also includes Sketchflow, whatever that may be.
If you’ve been waiting for Intellisense and Team Foundation Server source control integration in Blend, this is a must for you. I’ve been able to try them out, and it works great. For TFS integration, you’ll also need a Team Foundation Explorer patch from http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/KB967483.
Improvements from ScottGu’s blog:
- Sketchflow: SketchFlow makes it significantly easier to create prototypes, experiment with dynamic user experiences, and incorporate feedback from customers. If you haven’t seen or tried it yet – you must. It really is a game changing new way to create great user centric applications.
- Intellisense: Blend 3 includes C#, VB and XAML intellisense support. You can now write code and event handlers within Blend without having to switch to VS.
- Behaviors: Blend 3 includes behavior support which can encapsulate complex design interactions into reusable components that can be directly applied to a control within the design surface. This enables designers to quickly add functionality and behavior to applications without having to write code.
- Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator Import: Blend 3 now has built-in support for importing Photoshop and Illustrator files. As part of the import process you can view and pick individual Photoshop layers to import, customize and regroup layers, and have Photoshop/Illustrator elements retain their original formats within XAML: including layer positions, editable text and font settings, and vector element conversion to XAML.
- Sample Data: Blend 3 adds design-time sample data support which makes it easy to mock up data-connected applications and see what they look like without requiring access to live data. You can generate sample data or import sample data from an XML file and it is available to controls on the artboard at design-time. You can customize your sample data details, and you can easily switch between using sample data and using live data at run-time.
- TFS: Blend 3 now includes Team Foundation Server (TFS) support – allowing you to use source control and enlist within projects. Blend shares the same project and solution format as Visual Studio – allowing both VS and Blend to work simultaneously on the same projects and enabling seamless editing between them.
- Other Improvements: Additional enhancements including improved animation and easing function support, 3D transform support, visual effects support, and an improved visual state manager designer.
The Intellisense is good (faster than I’ve experienced in VS2008) and the general speed of the XAML editor seems much better. It’s a rather timely release, too, considering Blend 2 just started locking up on me, today.
Hyper-V Has Arrived!
I just saw an announcement on Microsoft’s Server and Tools blog that Hyper-V is going to be available for download at noon PST (2PM for us Central folks), today. Just in time, too, since we have a Server 2008 RC server that finally needs to be updated to 2008 RTM (or SP1, for those who are picky about it).
Check out their post for some Hyper-V interviews, or just go download Hyper-V.
I guess I’ll have to update our RC0 Hyper-V, too. That’ll have to be in the evening, though, or I’ll definitely here from the rest of the users…
Hyper-V RC1 Release Today
Paul Thurrott let us know that he received an e-mail saying Hyper-V RC1 will be released, today.
The RC1 Evaluation copy of the code will be made available here for download by EOD on May 20th. For more information, please check out the STB News Bytes Blog or Virtualization and Consolidation.
Since upgrading from the CTP to RC0, we haven’t had any problems running machines on Hyper-V. We’re even running our Exchange 2007 server in a 64-bit, 2-core virtual machine. Since it’s running so well, and I’m going on vacation next week, we’ll probably hold off on upgrading until RTM (or RTW, whichever).
I guess that’s the biggest problem with Hyper-V. When you have 6 or 7 machines running on one, it can take a little longer to shutdown all the guests for a reboot. With its reliability at RC0, though, we’ll probably never reboot after the final release (yes, we’ll still patch!).
The Windows Virtualization Team Blog has some cool information on Microsoft’s use of Hyper-V for MSDN and TechNet.
The success of Hyper-V as a web platform for both MSDN and TechNet for performance and stability has given us the confidence to accelerate our plans to implement Hyper-V for many of the other sites we run, such as the live traffic testing of www.microsoft.com on Hyper-V, which we have already started.
Microsoft Office Genuine Advantage KB949810 Breaks Office 2007 – Resolved!
Since I am developing applications for Office, I have enabled "Show add-in user interface errors" in the Advanced options of my Office applications. Yesterday, I installed KB949810, which was handed down from our WSUS server, which got the update from Microsoft.
Now, whenever I open any Office application, I receive a series of error messages all saying they couldn’t find an Office control.
Error Title: Custom UI Runtime Error in Office Genuine Advantage Add-in
Error found in Custom UI XML of "Office Genuine Advantage Add-in":
…
UPDATE/RESOLVED (4/19/2008 9:00AM)
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Paul Berg of Microsoft has provided a patch for this issue with OGA. The patch appears to be working on my system. The add-in is still running, but I’m not receiving any error messages. His original post is in the Microsoft forums.
Thanks, Paul! |
UPDATE (4/18/2008 7:45AM)
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The solution I originally posted ended up only being a temporary fix. Now I receive the same error messages from OGAAddin. If you’re not a developer and want to hide the error messages, do the following:
I was also able to stop the error messages by deleting OGAAddin.dll, but I wouldn’t recommend anyone do that. It could lead to more problems. Hopefully Microsoft will let us know soon how to uninstall this add-in that we never should have received. |
To stop the error messages, I removed the Office Genuine Advantage Add-in:
- Go into the application’s Options (i.e. click the Office Button
and select "Excel Options")
- Select "Add-Ins" from the navigation pane on the left.
- At the bottom of the Add-ins form, select "COM Add-ins" in the Manage: drop-down, then click "Go…"
- In the COM Add-Ins window, highlight "Office Genuine Advantage Add-in" and click the Remove button.
- Click the Okay button.
For me, this seemed to remove it for all applications, so I didn’t receive the error message.
The default is to not show user interface errors, so unless you turned it on for a reason, you will most likely not see these messages.
Declan Rides, Again! (For the First Time)
Today was the first really nice day of the year that we could take Declan outside to play. This was a great opportunity for him to ride his Easter present he got from his Godmother. He had plenty of practice inside, so we knew he’d enjoy it.
He can’t steer, yet, so he keeps one hand on the handle to push the button and holds on to the center bar for his life. The four-wheeler starts off pretty quick and gives him a good jolt. He loves it.
The whole time outside he spent looking around. He’d drive a few feet, look around, drive a few more feet, look around, again. He really used the four-wheeler more to get to the next thing to look at then as a toy. You can see the intense concentration on his face.
Usually, when you offer to carry him, Declan won’t hesitate to come to you. After about half an hour of riding around, there was no way I was going to coax Declan to let me take him. I had to peel him off the four-wheeler, and he still held on tight to the handle bar.
I can’t wait to get him out more this summer. I have no doubt that he’ll love it.
Alerts for Windows Live Spaces Comments
I recently found out that one of my posts had been getting some attention, since it helped solve an uncommon and difficult error. Unfortunately, I incorrectly thought I would automagically be notified when a comment was added to one of my posts. It wasn’t until a couple of months later when someone sent me a message through Windows Live which I did receive an e-mail for that I learned I had been helping people. (Why would I read my own blog?)
I spent some time searching through all the settings in Spaces, but couldn’t find anything about getting notifications for comments. Finally, tonight, I was trying to find some kind of workaround when I started looking for my RSS feed link. After scrolling down to the bottom of my sidebar, I found the RSS link in the Visitor Tools module. I noticed there was a Sign up for alerts link, so I thought I’d try it.
When I clicked on it, I was happy to see there was an option for Comments! And they even recommended it for me.
Now, hopefully, I will receive an e-mail notification when someone posts a comment to my blog.
