Developer News

Hogmanay Fun This will be my last post of the

Hogmanay Fun
This will be my last post of the year, so here is something fun Have a great new year everyone. I hope that 2008 brings you the best! Technorati Tags: code monkey,jonathan coulton,video…
Colin Angus Mackay

css a:hover background color
I have placed a background color for my links, but want it to fill the whole box, not just the word. Here is my website: www.hmstechnology.com (http://www.hmstechnology.com) You’ll notice that the text turns white when you hover your pointer over the text. BUT, I want it to do this…

VS 2008 crashes on startup when ‘Code Analysis Tools’ feature is not installed

Now that Visual Studio 2008 RTM is out I have started getting reports of Visual Studio crashing on startup when TestDriven.Net is installed. I was pretty dismayed as TestDriven.Net has included Orcas support since January of this year and this support has been pretty well tested. I certainly wasn’t expecting to see any fatal crashes!

It turns out that this crash only happens when the user has opted not to install the ‘Code Analysis Tools’ feature. This is quite common when someone is doing a minimal install of Visual Studio with just the language feature they need.

The issue appears to be related to the Visual Studio command bars. If you simply query for a command bar that doesn’t exist, Visual Studio will quit with an error (rather than throwing the expected ArgumentException)!

I’m happy to say there are now two possible fixes for the issue:

1. If you go into the Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite setup and enable the ‘Code Analysis Tools’ feature, you should find the crash goes away.
2. I’ve just released TestDriven.Net 2.10, which includes a workaround for this issue. Please read the release notes and download it from here. If you’re using Visual Studio 2008 I strongly encourage you to install this version.

Thanks to Aaron Jensen, Chad Myers and Dru Sellers for reporting the problem.

Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management By Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby
One of the reasons good management is so hard to learn is that much of management takes place behind closed doors. We re going to open those doors and allow you to see great management in action.
Click here for the full article.

Silverlight Browser on CodePlex

Last week Ernie Booth announced a SilverlightBrowser plugin for Reflector. The plugin allows you to browse web pages that contain Silverlight elements and display their constituent Javascript, XAML and assembly files.

Ernie released the 0.1 Alpha code so people were free to modify it. The way the 0.1 code obtained the .js, .xaml and .dll files was by searching the HTML and Javascript source for specific patterns. For example it would search the HTML file for ‘Silverlight.createObject’ and extract the .xaml link from its parameters. This is similar to how Lutz’s SilverlightLoader plugin works.

The problem with this technique is that it assumes that the ‘Silverlight.js’ and API (which comes with the Silverlight SDK) is being used. Unfortunately this won’t always be the case. Some people may include the <object> or <embed> tags directly in the HTML or embed the XAML in a <script> block. A good example of this is Sam Ruby’s Inline SVG in MSIE demo. This demo creates a Silverlight <embed> element and converts the SVG content into XAML on the fly!

I’ve modified Ernie’s code so that is searches the WebBrowser object model for the .js and .xaml files. This means it is no longer making the assumption that ‘Silverlight.js’ is being used. It doesn’t yet support XAML that is emended in a <script> block. I’m hoping to have it working with Sam’s demo in the next version.

I have kicked off a community project for the SilverlightBrowser plugin on CodePlex (with Ernie’s blessing). You can download latest version of the plugin from here.