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The whole configuration/solution/project thing becomes actually useful when your projects no longer have one-to-one dependency, but are like "Debug OEM build with feature X", "Debug Retail build with library Y" etc. and you need to have precise control with which lib, option etc, the whole thing is linked.
I agree that the way MS exposed these settings is somewhat cumbersome though.
Sometimes I use "Batch build" to setup quick and dirty build sequence. It (exposed via toolbar icon or shortcut) works quite well when I need to rebuild some projects and do not want to mess with configurations.
What I am missing though is "build startup project", I presume there might be some obscure thing to do this (like writing a macro in VB  ), but I never needed to venture so far.
From your s/solution/workspace/g remark I assume you are using "The Editor"  , if this is the case, do you, by any chance, know, if there is some support/tool/script that allows invoking MSDN on <cword>? I found some undocumented COM interface for MSDN Help 2 engine, but using this will need to write some sort of COM out proc server wrapper, which I want to avoid.
Richard
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Richard Musil wrote:
From your s/solution/workspace/g remark I assume you are using "The Editor"
vi? Alas no, I was using a Perl regex there, not an editor command. I haven't used vi since about 1995.
--
I'm Michael Dunn and I approve this post.
Vote Trogdor in oh-four!
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In this post, I'll list the worst "features" VC 7 has foisted on me. If anyone knows how to fix/workaround anything I mention here, please respond. You will be making my life easier, and I will send you cookies. 
The IDE looks like VB
There, I've said it. Now that that's out of the way...
No way to turn off the whacky toolbars/menus
In VC 7 the toolbars are all flat (I have a distaste for flat UI elements in general, but that's for another rant...) and the colors don't obey your system settings. Hooray for following the user's preferences!
Plus, when you mouse over a toolbar or menu item, the icon hops up and down to say "hey! look at me! I'm 3-D!" I care about none of this. Fluff like that belongs in apps you sell to non-techy users like Office, or media players where a "hook" is necessary to distinguish yourself from the competition, or in Longhorn. Having weirdly-colored hopping UI elements is basically MS showing off how many graphic designers they have. I want to turn it off like I could in VC 6.
The MSDN viewer is hateful
This also has the "we're showing-off our GDI-fu" UI. But what's really hateful is the awful keyboard navigation. I do as much as I can with the keyboard. Using the new MSDN viewer with the keyboard is horribly broken and complicated.
First off, there are the hateful keyboard shorcuts - what kind of "shortcut" is Ctrl+Alt+F2? 
And second, the mnemonics don't work. In the VC 6 viewer, if I'm reading a page and want to set the focus to the Index tab, I hit Alt+N and it works. In the VC 7 viewer, if I'm reading a page and I want to set focus to the Index, I can hit Ctrl+Alt+F2 (which is too hard for me to hit easily) or... well, nothing else. The Index page has a label that reads Look for: however hitting Alt+L does nothing but beep at me.
VC 7 failed miserably in converting VC 6 projects
At work we use VSS, and our code base has about 15 different VC projects, built in various ways. I took on the work of converting these to VC 7 and hit various walls along the way, including:- VC 7 didn't preserve some settings like "what kind of CRT to use"
- VC 7 couldn't keep its own source control settings straight. In one dialog it would act like VSS wasn't installed, yet in the options dialog it clearly said VSS was installed.
- During the project conversion, the above VSS problems resulted in a totally incomprehensible dialog, which I think was asking me to tell it where some projects were in the repository. Unfortunately, the dialog was pre-filled with the right locations so I didn't know what else I could do to make it find the projects.
Due to all those problems I gave up and rebuilt the projects manually.
F4 behavior changed for the worse
When you are moving through a list of build errors, you still hit F4/Shift+F4, however the caret now stays in the Output window. You have to hit Enter to move the caret to the text editor. This is dumb since, as far as I know, you cannot change code from the Output window.
Also, (Shift+)F4 only applies to the Output window. If you want to move thru Find in Files results with the keyboard, tough luck.
VC 7 removed the ability to bind "open this include" to a key
And I have no idea why. Ctrl+Shift+G worked perfectly fine in VC 6.
Incremental search annoys me
Incremental search, which I use all the time can be case-sensitive. In VC 6, when it was in case-sensitive mode, the status bar indicated this, and you could hit Ctrl+C to toggle case-sensitivity off.
In VC 7, it still can be case-sensitive, however there is no indication that case-sensitivity is on, and you can't toggle it with Ctrl+C.
As if that isn't bad enough, when you do a Find in Files and turn case-sensitivity on there, that also sets the case-sensitivity mode for incremental search. This one problem had me convinced that incremental search was broken (maybe it didn't wrap around a file?) until I happened to make the connection in my mind.
And what's even worse, if you hit Ctrl+F for the regular find, the case-sensitive checkbox is unchecked, which makes incremental search case-insensitive again. 
The Properties window in the resource editor has this one annoying behavior
Double-clicking an item changes the value, which I find mystifying. Now I can't select, say the control ID field ("IDC_ABOUTBOX") by double-clicking the text, because that changes the ID to whatever is next alphabetically, I guess.
That's all for this rant... this is just the stuff that annoys the hell out of me on a daily basis, I have more to come.
--Mike--
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----
Ford, what's this fish doing in my ear?
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What about not being able to close a source file tab by double-clicking it or wheel-clicking it, like any decent tabbed application (Mozilla, UltraEdit, Visual C++ with WndTabs)? Or have I miss anything?
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Shmulik Flint wrote:
What about not being able to close a source file tab by double-clicking it or wheel-clicking it
That's a good one too. I recently tried out Maxthon[^] and in it you can close tabs the same way. I hate having to hunt for the little gray X in the row of tabs in VC 7.
--Mike--
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----
Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?
I think so Brain, but if we shaved our heads, we'd look like weasels!
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Michael Dunn wrote:
The IDE looks like VB
There, I've said it. Now that that's out of the way...
It does grown on your after a while. Or maybe it just brain-washes the user 
Michael Dunn wrote:
The MSDN viewer is hateful
Don't get me started about Dynamic Help. You close the window, it comes back again. You try and turn it off from the options, it still comes back. I wouldn't mind but it never shows any useful help anyway.
Michael Dunn wrote:
F4 behavior changed for the worse
Amen. After using VS.NET for all this time, this is the one thiing that annoys me more than anything else.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Turns off dynamic help for good:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\7.1\Dynamic Help]
"Never Show DH on F1"="YES"
http://blogs.msdn.com/joen/archive/2004/03/15/89975.aspx
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If I've been in a pissy (pissier?) mood lately, it's because I've been forced to use Microsoft Visual Studio .Net 2003 (or VC 7.1 or just VC7 for short).
Longtime readers will know that I've been pretty sour on VC7 ever since trying out a beta of 2002. I believe the "He-Man VS.Net IDE Haters Club" came up a couple of times. I was initially repulsed by the IDE (which is a pretty common reaction), and the buggyness of 2002 kept me away. And all kidding aside, VC 6 + WndTabs[^] is so bloody good of an IDE that I had zero reason to change. Didn't care about .net, didn't care about working templates, didn't want a VB-ized IDE.
So anyway, fast-forward to 2004. At work[^] we use a static lib provided by the WMP team. Prior to 2004, we had a lib built with VC 6, and all was fine. Then a couple months ago, we got a new lib from them that was built with (you guessed it) VC7. argh 
So we could no longer build our stuff with VC 6. It was VC 7 or nothing, and since our company wants to stay in business, "nothing" was quickly ruled out as an option. Now that I've actually used it for production code, I can form opinions more detailed than "the IDE sucks". I have opinions, and I will be presenting them here. Not just to bitch, but to seek solutions to what I perceive as bad problems with VC 7. I guess I could use the VS.NET IDE issues[^] forum, but what I have really aren't questions, and a blog is really the better place for ranting/venting/griping/bitching anyway.
PS: I totally understand why the new WMP lib was built with VC7. Doesn't mean I have to like it.
--Mike--
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----
I just performed the Heimlich Maneuver on SQL #1.
-- Chris Maunder
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Michael Dunn wrote:
I have opinions, and I will be presenting them here.
I'm interested in what you have to say about the IDE.
- Nick Parker
My Blog | My Articles
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| Looks like Alyson has chopped her hair off:
WTF??!! Why?
Women reading this: NEVER CUT YOUR HAIR! I don't care how good you think you will look. Don't do it. Trimming a couple inches off the ends is fine. Chopping it off so you look like a frumpy mother is not.
--Mike--
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----
Laugh it up, fuzzball.
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Michael Dunn wrote:
Women reading this: NEVER CUT YOUR HAIR!
Got to disagree. I love women with short hair. And Alyson look mighty fine in that photo. I think the new hairstyle suits her. She'd been looking a little ropey in the last few times I saw her, but now she's back to near her best.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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I'm with Dunn, keep it long! Please, my ex cut her hair short and a month later we broke up. Coincidence? I think not...
regards,
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
South Africa
Christopher Duncan wrote:
"I always knew that somewhere deep inside that likable, Save the Whales kinda guy there lurked the heart of a troublemaker..."
Crikey! ain't life grand?
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NOOO!!!! How could she do that??? It must be the lies Alexis is telling her. 
BTW, did you manage to catch her play in London? I would've given a lot to see it.
"if you vote me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine" - Michael P. Butler.
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Nick Seng wrote:
BTW, did you manage to catch her play in London? I would've given a lot to see it.
No, since I'm about 6000 miles from London, I wasn't able to go.  I did see a few pictures of her and Luke Perry together though.
--Mike--
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----
Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?
I think so Brain, but how will we fit the hamster inside the accordion?
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Michael Dunn wrote: Women reading this: NEVER CUT YOUR HAIR! I don't care how good you think you will look. Don't do it.
Amen to that.
Jeremy Falcon
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I was driving to work this morning and in front of me was a car that had those silly spinning hubcap things. That wouldn't be noteworthy except the car was a Toyota Camry. Not a low-rider, not a tricked-out car or anything. Just a plain, stock Camry. Not lowered, no detailing, not even a license plate frame with a catchy saying on it.
WTF?!
--Mike--
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----
"That probably would've sounded more commanding if I wasn't wearing my yummy sushi pajamas."
-- Buffy
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I was riding my bike in Venice beach a couple of weekends ago, and I had a WTF moment. (Not a coding WTF[^] though )
I was going south on the bike path. Coming north, there were two people riding Segways[^]. WTF?! They were getting no exercise of course, I guess they just wanted to show off.
After doing some checking, there is a Segway rental place[^] nearby so I guess the two people rented from there. But still... 
--Mike--
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----
This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. This is only a test.
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep
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After posting about my bike ride[^] this morning, some folks responded and asked where I went, so I figured I'd make a blog out of it. I don't usually post about personal stuff here, because I figure no one really cares, but since y'all asked...
I bought myself a bike a few weeks ago. I've had some bad luck with it, as the first time I went riding the back tire got f'ed up (turned out to be defective), and then the next time I went out I ended up getting sick and laid up for a week. But I've gone 2 weeks without a mishap now.
I live in Mar Vista, which is next door to Venice and Marina Del Rey. Basically it's on the border of rich neighborhoods that I could never afford to live in. The nice thing is that it's near the beach, and there's a bike path that runs along the beach for 20 miles or so.
What I've been doing is picking up the bike path in Marina Del Rey and riding south to this bridge that's over this river that's used for rowing/kayaking events by nearby colleges. It seems like a good distance for me because I can ride there, rest for a few minutes, and ride back home, all in about 1 hour.
Since I'm just starting out with regular riding, I'm doing that 2 days a week (Tuesday and Thursday). I get up at 6 (not hard to do since it's already light), eat and stretch and I'm out by 6:30.
On Saturdays I'll ride a bit farther. Today I took the path north (opposite direction from the bridge) through Venice and Santa Monica. This isn't quite as nice because there are always idiots walking on the bike path, but whatever. Once I get past the Santa Monica Pier, the path is less crowded and it's a nicer ride. This morning I was there at about 9:30 and the marine layer was still around, so the water looked really nice.
That path is really the only place I ride. I have a road bike, and I'm in no shape to tackle mountains yet, so I'll keep up that routine until I start feeling better. I rode on the path when I was in college, and I could do the whole trip down to Redondo and back in about 3.5 hours. Give me a few months and I might be doing those trips again on the weekends. 
--Mike--
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----
You cannot stop me with paramecium alone!
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For those not familiar, the US TV season runs from roughly September to May. There are three month-long periods in there - November, February, and May - called "sweeps" periods, during which all the stations run their best shows (eg season finales in May) and basically do anything to improve their ratings. This is done because the ratings that a show/station gets during a sweeps period are used to determine advertising rates for the following months. Higher ratings == more people watching == higher ad rates.
Unfortunately, this system creates a dead zone between Thanksgiving and Feb 1, during which you might get the occasional holiday-themed new episode, but most of the time it's reruns. I can deal with this, it's the holiday season and I'm usually not concerned with watching TV anyway during that time.
Summer used to be all reruns, all the time. This was all well and good since you could catch reruns of shows you liked, but not sweat things if you missed a show. Then, networks got the rather good idea of premiering new shows in the summer to see if they would catch on. Sometimes a gem popped up like The O.C. (well, I don't watch it but it's popular, so I'll go with that one as the example since it's the most recent summer success). Other times, shows that were popular (but not popular enough to make the normal schedule) were aired, such as The Amazing Race or Dog Eat Dog.
But now, summer has turned into a wasteland of horrible "reality" shows, and not just from Fox. NBC is on the bandwagon with its Bachelor ripoffs. What's worse is that the reality TV craze has drifted into "but there's a surprise!" territory and many shows are about making the contestants look foolish. Witness WB's Superstar USA (they let the bad singers advance, kick off the good ones). It's not enough to show unscripted or semi-scripted action with non-actors, noooo now we have to humiliate them for the viewers to get their jollies.
So, what am I going to watch today? Well, if there's ever a rerun of Las Vegas I'll watch that. Not sure if Dog Eat Dog is coming back, but if it is, I'm all over it. Otherwise, I'm counting the days until The Amazing Race 5 starts, the only show I'm really looking forward to this summer.
Side note: Phil Koeghan has like the ultimate dream job. Fly to various cities around the world, narrate introductions, and greet the arriving contestants. See the sights of the world on CBS's tab!
--Mike--
Personal stuff:: Ericahist | Homepage
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----
If my rhyme was a drug, I'd sell it by the gram.
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Sticking with the "Blast from the Past" theme (I sound like a bad radio DJ), I give two big thumbs up for two video game publications well worth your time:
- The Ultimate History of Video Games[^]
- A huge (600+ pages) and extremely well-written history of the video game industry, starting in the pre-Pong era and ending in 2000. It's a great read and literally hard to put down. If you were around for the initial 80's boom but weren't keeping up with the politics and flying lawsuits (for example, Nintendo vs. Universal over Donkey Kong being too close to King Kong) this book will be especially enlightening. If you're a youngun' who has never had a computer slower than 300 MHz, well...
- Behind the Games: Daikatana[^]
- Getting a little more modern, this is a long article on probably the second-biggest modern game debacle (Duke Nukem Forever being #1), documenting the beginning of Ion Storm and what the game went through during the years of development.
--Mike--
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----
If my rhyme was a drug, I'd sell it by the gram.
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Or, How to Make Your Audience Feel Old in Ten Easy PowerPoint Slides.
A couple days ago at work the dev team and some management had a long meeting with some Longhorn evangelists from MS. The evangelists' job is basically to get other companies to write software for Longhorn to be ready for launch. It's the equivalent of, say, Sony going to video game companies to get them to write launch titles for the next PlayStation.
This isn't a Longhorn post though, it's a historical post. At the beginning of the presentation, the first evangelical speaker went through a "ten years ago" section. He listed the goals MS had ten years ago with Windows 95. The biggies were run on affordable hardware (meaning 386s), run Win16 and DOS programs, and the ultimate goal, "A PC on every desk".
Now, aside form thinking "damn I'm old, I remember all that", I got to thinking that was a pretty remarkable feat to get a Win32 OS, with memory protection (even if it was only for 32 bit code), device drivers, VxDs, DOS compatibility, long filenames on FAT, and so on and so on... get all that running on a 386 machine that had less RAM than your current hard drive's cache.
My first PC was a P120 with 24 MB and man did Win 95 fly on that thing.
--Mike--
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----
Actual sign at the laundromat I go to: "No tinting or dying."
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I've been sitting on this release for quite a while because I haven't wanted to update the SearchBar article to describe the new features. I've gotten burned out on writing, as evidenced by the 8 months since my last article[^]
I just remembered that I have this blog thingy and I can put up pre-release stuff for anyone who wants to see the new features and happens to read this.
The big new feature is a signature manager. I know there are already a few of those, however AFAICT they all require you to have VC 7.x installed because they use a DLL that comes with VC. Since I don't use VC 7 (I actually installed it at home a couple weeks ago [but that's for another entry]) and since I'm a native code guy, I wanted to have a normal C++ signature tool.
The good news is that I use an XML file in the same format as the existing sig managers, so if you use another one, you can import your sigs into the SearchBar.
To use the new SearchBar, install the current version from the SearchBar article[^]. Then grab this zip file[^] and extract the DLL over the one you just installed.
Go to the options and there's a new Signatures tab:
Hopefully this is self-explanatory. When you hit Ctrl+Shift+Space on a posting page, there are signature commands on the Commands submenu.
Let me know how y'all like this.
--Mike--
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----
Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?
I think so Brain, but if we shaved our heads, we'd look like weasels!
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With the recent Ad Banner SnafuTM I thought I'd do a little historical post.
Some time ago (a couple years at least), a lot more HTML was allowed in posts, including script. Some people used this to do neat sigs, like David Wulff with the anger/humor/sincerity scales. But of course, some a-holes always have to ruin it for everyone and exploit it.
That's what happened here. Someone made an account and put some script in the signature. The script changed the properties of the ad banners to point to their own banners, which were (naturally) for some adult chat site. When you viewed one of their posts, the HTML in the sig was parsed and the script ran, which switched the banners.
After that happened, Chris tightened up the restrictions on what tags are allowed in posts.
--Mike--
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----
Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?
I think so Brain, but how will we fit the hamster inside the accordion?
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