Dev :: Tools

Visual Studio Theme to your taste

Serge Baranovsky — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 17:35:00 GMT

If you get depressed after looking at the standard Visual Studio coloring theme for years, try changing it. Scott Hanselman posted a gallery of ready to use themes to any taste - http://www.hanselman.com/blog/VisualStudioProgrammerThemesGallery.aspx

I like Jeff Atwood's (CodingHorror) scheme most - which one do you like?

CodeIt.Right has been spotted out in the wild

Serge Baranovsky — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 00:04:00 GMT

CodeIt.Right is finally finished after about 3 years in the making. My 7 years long dream come true. The tool it out! Cheers! (I truly believe that code analysis coupled with automatic refactoring will change the way .NET developer teams and solo developers work!)

Read this blog post to find out about CodeIt.Right and the future plans for the product - http://submain.com/blog/CodeItRightV10Released.aspx

Through February 20th, 2008 you can leverage of the introductory pricing on CodeIt.Right.

Tell them Serge sent you ;-)

Free C#/VB .NET Coding Guidelines ebook download

Serge Baranovsky — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 02:47:00 GMT

I've been working on this for some time now but finally I'm happy to announce we have obtained exclusive distribution rights to the latest version of Steve Sartain's C#/VB .NET Coding Guidelines 100+ page ebook, and are offering free download.

More info - http://submain.com/blog/FreeCVBNETCodingGuidelinesEbookDownload.aspx

C#/VB .NET Coding Guidelines home page - http://submain.com/guidelines

Download - http://submain.com/download.aspx?product=guidelines

Win up to $5000 - Visual Studio Extensibility Contest

Serge Baranovsky — Mon, 22 May 2006 03:47:00 GMT

vbCity is part of a contest with lots of valuable prizes! » read more «

CodeIt.Once - Painless Refactoring for .NET

Serge Baranovsky — Mon, 15 May 2006 20:41:00 GMT

We have released CodeIt.Once - refactoring tool for .NET developers.

CodeIt.Once allows so save big on the time you spend writing and maintaining your source code. It also helps when you need to modify or reesign your existing .NET application - saves you hours of tedious search-and-replace-try-if-it-still-runs-or-broken-start-all-over-again... You know what I mean - we all have done that...

First version of the CodeIt.Once includes 14 “auto-magical” refactoring operations:

Why “auto-magical“? Because you just shoot and forget.

CodeIt.Once is Add-In that works with Visual Studio .NET 2003 and Visual Studio 2005, supports both VB.NET and C# - one product, one license covers all of that.

To make things even better (for you) we are offering free personal/evaluation license - you can evaluate it for as long as you feel comfortable to buy it, and it is free for personal, non-commercial use - students and hobbyists.

Interested? See CodeIt.Once page for more details and download.

If you want to stay updated, make sure to subscribe to our SubMain Blog.

Don't forget to send your feedback - good or bad - I want to know all of it. Feedback is the most important and we value it very much - any way that works for you - whether via this blog, SubMain Blog, CodeIt.Once support forum, email support@submain.com or me at my personal sergeb@vbcity.com

Visual Studio 2005 shipped!

Serge Baranovsky — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 09:58:00 GMT

As just announced by Soma Visual Studio 2005 and .NET Framework 2.0 shipped today!

Read on...

CodeIt.Once Release Candidate (build 147)

Serge Baranovsky — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 04:15:00 GMT

The latest verison of CodeIt.Once Refactoring tool - Release Candidate (build 147) for Visual Studio 2003 - is available for download now.

We have made quite a bit of performance optimization and bug fixes since the initial Relase Candidate build 115 last month:

improved performance loading solution on VS startup.
optimized memory use – removed unused types
changed exception handling engine – most errors now logged into a file and not displayed in a dialog box
fixed bugs in Rename, Extract Method and Add Parameter refactorings
improved handing of non-compilable/syntactically incorrect code
resolved the VS slowdown/hanging on project load

Those of you who downloaded please make sure to download the latest build - you will see great deal of performance improvement and it is more stable now.

For more information visit the product page, our refactoring tutorials and download page.

The version for VS2005 will remain in Beta 2 until the Visual Studio relased on November 7th.

Logo & Web site design - going with the professional!

Serge Baranovsky — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 05:51:00 GMT

Do I make mistakes? Yes I do!

For a couple of years now the most embarrassing thing for our product web site SubMain.com was its design. When we were launching our first product two years ago I only had couple of nights to put together a web site. Mistake #1 - while we have put time for the Betas, bug fixing, etc, we should've not discounted the importance of the web site design and planned more time for that.

I said to myself back then "Don't worry it doesn't look good, we will redesign to make it look better in a month or two when we have some 'breathing' space on our schedule". Mistake #2 - this never happens! There is always something that pops to the top of extensive to-do list, something that requires immediate attention.

And Mistake #3 - I should've not designed the web site myself, I should've hired professional designer! Yes, I've been a developer for over 15 years, designed and developed many Windows applications - from (rather) small developer tools to large enterprise systems. I also developed web apps - vbCity.com and DevCity.NET - but these are different from a product web site, both vbCity and DevCity.NET are developer community sites and their unprofessional and a little geeky design works out sort of OK.

I absolutely agree with Ian Landsman:

... you need a professional designer. You need to get your logo's, website templates, and interface designed by a professional who understands color combinations, fonts, etc. If you don't look professional you aren't professional.

Well, they say, smart people learn from others mistakes. I must be dumb then as I can learn only from my own mistakes.

But I digress...

Do I learn from my mistakes? Yes, I do!

With two new developer products coming out - CodeIt.Once and CodeIt.Right - it is just about time to finally redesign SubMain web site.

And, no, this time I'm doing that myself nor I'm going to go with one of those nameless and faceless "i-m-cheap-i-have-4-standard-designs-i-use-for-everyone-you-pick-which-one-of-them-you-want" ventures. Well, you get what you paid for...

I'm going with a designer who has Name and recognition in the (design) industry as well as great portfolio!

The Name

As the question pop up I already the Name in mind - Dmitry Kirsanov! Or as .netArt Magazine calls him -The web designer who came from the cold - referring to the fact that Dmitry comes from Russia.

Dmitry runs Dmitry Kirsanov Studio and writes monthly Design Lab column for webreference.com.

I first learned about Dmitry years ago from his "Web Design" book (in Russian) I ordered from Russian publisher and had it shipped over to the States. I loved the book! Doesn't mean I learned to design - there are lots of people who read programming books but only some of them become good developers ;-)

That was long time ago... Since then Dmitry co-authored HTML Unleashed book and recently published his own book XSLT 2.0 Web Development (both in English). He also moved to Canada which significantly simplified the payment aspect (those who went through a hassle making payments to Russia will understand) and communication (I haven't written a single email in Russian in over 6 years).

As for the rates - you'll be surprised Kirsanov Studio rates are comparable to those "i-will-design-your-web-site-so-it-will-look--just-like-million-other-sites-on-the-net"

The Logo

So, cut to the chase, I emailed Dmitry about a week ago and next day I called him to describe what I want. I was amazed Dmitry picked up on the Sub Main() name idea right away - yes, he is also a developer. We agreed to start with the logo.

Few days later I received drafts of 7(!) custom logos for SubMain - from simple to very sophisticated. I picked one of the simpler ones - that's what I liked, anyway :) And we went for another couple of rounds of "polishing" the logo.

And today ... [Drum Roll] ... let me introduce the new logo!

Meanwhile, we are moving to the most exciting part - the web site design!

To be continued...

CodeIt.Once for VS 2005 Beta 2

Serge Baranovsky — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 18:59:00 GMT

Last week I posted about CodeIt.Once for VS 2003 Beta 2 download.

Today I'm glad to announce CodeIt.Once for VS 2005 Beta 2 build is available for download as well.

CodeIt.Once Beta 2 for Visual Studio 2003 and Visual Studio 2005 are currently available for download through our Beta Experience program. If you want download a copy for evaluation or to participate in Beta testing, fill out a simple form (name and email address) and we will contact you with download instructions.

We are interested to know your opinion on the Beta 2 improvements, especially the Wizard style UI option. Please tell us whether you like it or hate it, is it easy/intuitive to switch between the Wizard and Pro options, are the wizard hints useful? Tell us what you think.

CodeIt.Once Beta 2 - Refactoring Add-In for VS 2003 and VS 2005 is available

Serge Baranovsky — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 04:14:00 GMT

It's been over two months since I announced the first Beta of CodeIt.Once. We took all that time to listen to your comments and suggestions, rework the user interface to introduce new option - there are two UI alternatives now - Wizard and Pro. And of course testing, bug fixing, more testing and more bug fixing :)

Today I'm happy to let you know that we have just released CodeIt.Once Beta 2.

What's New in Beta 2 (build 1.0.76)

New Wizard style UI option
Enabled support for C# projects - Beta 1 only supported VB
Added keyboard shortcuts for all refactoring operations
Improved support of overloaded methods
70% of CodeIt.Once code is covered by unit testing
Numerous bugs fixed - reported by you and those found during in-house testing.

CodeIt.Once Beta 2 for Visual Studio 2003 is currently available for download through our Beta Experience program. If you want download a copy for evaluation or to participate in Beta testing, fill out a simple form (name and email address) and we will contact you with download instructions.

We received a lot of feedback on the Beta 1 - all of your comments are very much appreciated and be sure we do listen!

Beta 2 version for VS 2005 (Whidbey) download will be ready early next week. Stay tuned!