.NET Framework
All .NET Framework Developer Topics belong here.
If you experience the error message:
The 'Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0' provider is not registered on the local machine
this is caused by the Jet provider not being available in native 64-bit.
You will have to target x86 with your .NET apps to make it work.
If you try to drag tables from the Server Explorer of Visual Studio 2008 to the designer surface of the Link-to-SQL designer you'll probably be surprised to see the error message stating:
"The selected object(s) use an unsupported data provider"
However you can use SqlMetal.exe to generate the .dbml file manually (obviously: command line instead of drag & drop).
If you get that nice error message change your solution configuration to target 32-bit (x86) using configuration manager.
For more information read this.
Microsoft released a hotfix [1] for Visual Studio 2008 (also targeting Visual Web Developer Express) that corrects several issues with the web development features.
At this time the hotfix is only available for the English and Japanese versions.
List of things that were corrected according to this post [2] by Vinaya Reddy:
HTML Source view performance
- Source editor freezes for a few seconds when typing in a page with a custom control that has more than two levels of sub-properties.
- “View Code” right-click context menu command takes a long time to appear with web application projects.
- Visual Studio has very slow behavior when opening large HTML documents.
- Visual Studio has responsiveness issues when working with big HTML files with certain markup.
- The Tab/Shift-Tab (Indent/Un-indent) operation is slow with large HTML selections.
Design view performance
- Slow typing in design view with certain page markup configurations.
HTML editing
- Quotes are not inserted after Class or CssClass attribute even when the option is enabled.
- Visual Studio crashes when ServiceReference element points back to the current web page.
JavaScript editing
- When opening a JavaScript file, colorization of the client script is sometimes delayed several seconds.
- JavaScript Intellisense does not work if an empty string property is encountered before the current line of editing.
Web Site build performance
- Build is very slow when Bin folder contains large number of assemblies and .refresh files with web-site projects.
Make sure to read the installation instructions at [2].
Enjoy!
[1] https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=10826
[2] http://blogs.msdn.com/webdevtools/archive/2008/02/09/downloadable-hotfix-performance-and-editor-fixes-for-microsoft-visual-studio-2008-and-visual-web-developer-express-2008.aspx
The program
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
foreach (System.Environment.SpecialFolder value in Enum.GetValues(typeof(System.Environment.SpecialFolder)))
{
Console.WriteLine(Enum.GetName(typeof(System.Environment.SpecialFolder), value) + " = " + System.Environment.GetFolderPath(value));
}
}
}
The output on Windows XP
Desktop = C:\Documents and Settings\Neno\Desktop
Programs = C:\Documents and Settings\Neno\Start Menu\Programs
Personal = D:\My Documents
Personal = D:\My Documents
Favorites = C:\Documents and Settings\Neno\Favorites
Startup = C:\Documents and Settings\Neno\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
Recent = C:\Documents and Settings\Neno\Recent
SendTo = C:\Documents and Settings\Neno\SendTo
StartMenu = C:\Documents and Settings\Neno\Start Menu
MyMusic = D:\My Documents\My Music
DesktopDirectory = C:\Documents and Settings\Neno\Desktop
MyComputer =
Templates = C:\Documents and Settings\Neno\Templates
ApplicationData = C:\Documents and Settings\Neno\Application Data
LocalApplicationData = C:\Documents and Settings\Neno\Local Settings\Application Data
InternetCache = C:\Documents and Settings\Neno\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files
Cookies = C:\Documents and Settings\Neno\Cookies
History = C:\Documents and Settings\Neno\Local Settings\History
CommonApplicationData = C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data
System = C:\WINDOWS\system32
ProgramFiles = C:\Program Files
MyPictures = D:\My Documents\My Pictures
CommonProgramFiles = C:\Program Files\Common Files
The output on Windows Vista
Desktop = C:\Users\Neno\Desktop
Programs = C:\Users\Neno\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs
Personal = C:\Users\Neno\Documents
Personal = C:\Users\Neno\Documents
Favorites = C:\Users\Neno\Favorites
Startup = C:\Users\Neno\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
Recent = C:\Users\Neno\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent
SendTo = C:\Users\Neno\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo
StartMenu = C:\Users\Neno\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu
MyMusic = C:\Users\Neno\Music
DesktopDirectory = C:\Users\Neno\Desktop
MyComputer =
Templates = C:\Users\Neno\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Templates
ApplicationData = C:\Users\Neno\AppData\Roaming
LocalApplicationData = C:\Users\Neno\AppData\Local
InternetCache = C:\Users\Neno\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files
Cookies = C:\Users\Neno\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies
History = C:\Users\Neno\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\History
CommonApplicationData = C:\ProgramData
System = C:\Windows\system32
ProgramFiles = C:\Program Files
MyPictures = C:\Users\Neno\Pictures
CommonProgramFiles = C:\Program Files\Common Files
Note: On the Window XP machine the My Documents folder was moved to drive D.
I often see people staring at the slides where it states Vista (and Windows Server 2008) does have a transactional files system and registry.
Yes, it’s true and you can read find out more in this MSDN Magazine article.
Dominick [1] pointed me a great tip today how to turn of the hosting process (vshost.exe) [2]. This might be interesting for those of you who are debugging applications on Windows Vista with UAC manifests, which sometimes has strange side effects.
[1] http://www.leastprivilege.com/
[2] http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms185330(VS.80).aspx
If you build DirectX applications or serious games using DirectX and want to use the benefits of the .NET Framework, then XNA is the way to go.
The XNA Framework is a class library built upon the .NET Framework 2.0. Right now only the Express Edition of the Developer IDE is available. XNA can target Windows as well as XBox.
(Note: the previous Managed DirectX class library was depricated by Microsoft.)
- Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express 1.0
XNA Game Studio Express enables hobbyists, academics, and small, independent game developers to easily create video games for Windows and the Xbox 360 console. Requires an Express Edition of Visual Studio. - Microsoft XNA Framework Redistributable 1.0
The XNA Framework Redistributable provides game developers with the XNA Framework runtime libraries that they can include with their product for redistribution on Windows XP.
As Tim Sneath puts it [1], the WPF team made a very special announcement in their WPF3D Team Blog [2] and released the 3D Tools for the Windows Presentation Foundation [3] as a free, open-source download on CodePlex.
These tools allow you to create WPF applications with 3D user interfaces - where you can use the well-known controls like sliders, text boxes, etc. and hit testing, hovering etc. just works!
Hopefully people we will not get the same effect which appeared after the first version of Visual Basic where all buttons got pink just because all of a sudden it was extremly easy to specifiy a color for it...
So use the new feature set wisely and in a decent manner!
[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2006/12/13/new-in-wpf-build-a-true-3d-application.aspx
[2] http://blogs.msdn.com/wpf3d/archive/2006/12/12/interacting-with-2d-on-3d-in-wpf.aspx
[3] http://www.codeplex.com/3DTools
Now available for download: