The Blog

Exploration Of Thought

Thoughts on autonomy, self direction, digital business and life.

• VS2008 HotFix Posted Yesterday

  Microsoft posted a VS2008 hotfix with HTML source view, design view, editing, and web site build performance fixes. Grab the download here.

  Donn Felker – February 10, 2008

• Podcast for PowerShell – PowerScripting.net

  PowerScripting.net is a solid podcast covering all things PowerShell, worth adding to your toolbelt if you're learning the language.

  Donn Felker – February 9, 2008

• The FooTheory Community

  I've joined the FooTheory blog community and will cross-post everything here too. Check out two of my favorite blogs there: Matt's and Bennie's Weblogs.

  Donn Felker – February 9, 2008

• Gleaning Clarity Through Unit Test Names

  A naming convention for bug-fix unit tests, FIX_TicketNumber_Method_State_ExpectedResult(), that documents the fix right in the test name.

  Donn Felker – February 8, 2008

• MSN Run Once Bombs…

  It happens to the best of us, even the creators of the technology…

  Donn Felker – January 21, 2008

• Usability – Don’t Make Me Think/Remember…

  Why do UPS, FedEx, and your health portal make you re-enter info they already have? A rant on usability, autocomplete, and not making users think.

  Donn Felker – January 14, 2008

• Works in Firefox, But Not in IE? (or vice versa) WTF!!!!

  Cross-browser CSS bugs are a nightmare compared to WinForms rendering. My go-to fix: the CSS Creator Forum, which has solved every issue I've hit.

  Donn Felker – January 14, 2008

• TFS – ItemExistsException Fix

  Tracking down and fixing a TFS ItemExistsException caused by duplicate labels left behind after moving a project, across two build servers.

  Donn Felker – January 9, 2008

• Sending Email in a Development Environment without an SMTP Server

  No local SMTP server? Configure .NET's mailSettings to drop emails into a pickup directory so you can test sending without actually sending.

  Donn Felker – January 8, 2008

• TFS Build Not Publishing Web Applications

  Why TFS builds silently skip copying web apps to _PublishedWebsites: a commented-out MSBuild import in the .csproj file, and the one-line fix.

  Donn Felker – January 8, 2008

• Visual Studio Hangs on a Team Foundation Server UNDO Command

  Visual Studio 2005 hanging on a Team Foundation Server Undo command? The undocumented devenv /resetuserdata switch fixed it for me.

  Donn Felker – December 13, 2007

• Full path to the solution file… too long?

  Hitting Visual Studio's 260-character MAX_PATH limit creating a solution? Build it elsewhere and copy it over, or map a share for a shorter path.

  Donn Felker – December 5, 2007