So you just got done prototyping that new Winform or WPF application and the interface is a bit lacking. You are a programmer, not an artist after all. Well, never fear, free icons are here (wow that really rhymed). All kidding aside, most of us are not good at drawing images and icons, so we need some resources for these items.

Our journey starts with Visual Studio 2005. If you recall, it  had  a zip file called VS2005ImageLibrary located at Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\VS2005ImageLibrary\. This file contained a nice collection of icons, animations, buttons and a variety or other objects that you could use within your application. Here are the instructions on how and where to extract the images.

After installing Visual Studio 2008, I checked to see if this library was still available and was happily surprised to find it still located at Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\VS2008ImageLibrary\1033\VS2008ImageLibrary\.   Here you will find images taken from Microsoft programs such as Office and Vista, along with some cool animations for your progress displays.

Our next stop is online, where there are plenty of resources to find images. I ran across an excellent one the other day on Damen Guard's Blog. This collection, Silk Companion #1, looked to be over a 450+ top quality 16x16 icons in PNG format. These were mostly derived from a larger collection at FAMFAMFAM. Here you find over the original 1000+ icons that can be used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.

I also stopped by Icon Factory, but their freeware icons and images were not licensed for redistribution and can only be use as desktop icons. Not much good for a us programmers.

My next step will be to start compiling a list of the best of the best graphical resources, targeted for us, the programmers. If anyone has any suggestions, please feel free drop me a note.

It is launch time again for Microsoft, and this time it is for Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008. The one here in Tampa is not until May 8, but as soon as I can register for it I will.  You can get more information and register on their launch web site, Heroes happen {here}. They also have a RSS feed for a new comic series about IT professionals and Developers. Oh, did I mention that all attendees will being get free copies of all three products. Pretty Sweet !! Make sure and sign up for one in your area.

I wrote some code last year to create an Microsoft Access Database, fill in some data and email it out. It never made it out to production so I thought I would share part of it here. Let's focus on creating the database in this post.

The first thing you need to do is get a COM reference to the Microsoft ADO Ext. X.X for DDL and Security. The X.X represents whatever version you happen to have on your machine. Mine used to be version 2.7, but with Visual Studio 2008, it was updated to 6.0.

Once you have added the reference, ADOX will be added to the using section of your code.

Next you will want to create the catalog for the database. Insert the filename you wish into the following string and pass it to the CatalogClass.

   1:              CatalogClass cat = new CatalogClass();

   2:   

   3:              string tmpStr;

   4:              string filename = "Sample.MDB";

   5:              

   6:              tmpStr = "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;";

   7:              tmpStr += "Data Source=" + filename + ";Jet OLEDB:Engine Type=5";

   8:   

   9:              cat.Create(tmpStr);

The next step is to create the table and columns for your database. This is a pretty straight forward operation as shown in the example below.

   1:              Table nTable = new Table();

   2:              nTable.Name = "PersonData";

   3:                 

   4:              nTable.Columns.Append("LastName", DataTypeEnum.adVarWChar, 25);

   5:              nTable.Columns.Append("FirstName", DataTypeEnum.adVarWChar, 25);

   6:              nTable.Columns.Append("Address 1", DataTypeEnum.adVarWChar, 45);

   7:              nTable.Columns.Append("Address 2", DataTypeEnum.adVarWChar, 45);

   8:              nTable.Columns.Append("City", DataTypeEnum.adVarWChar, 25);

   9:              nTable.Columns.Append("State", DataTypeEnum.adVarWChar, 2);

  10:              nTable.Columns.Append("Zip", DataTypeEnum.adVarWChar, 9);

  11:    

  12:              cat.Tables.Append(nTable);

The final step is very important or you will get error when you close your application. Once the all the tables and columns have been added, you will need to release the com objects properly and in the proper order.

   1:              System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.FinalReleaseComObject(nTable);

   2:              System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.FinalReleaseComObject(cat.Tables); 

   3:              System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.FinalReleaseComObject(cat.ActiveConnection); 

   4:              System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.FinalReleaseComObject(cat);

That is it. You should now have a Access Database that you can write to. Hope this helps.

A coworker showed me this neat new feature of Visual Studio 2008. If you right click within the code editor and roll your mouse over Organize Usings, three options will come up; Remove Unused Usings, Sort Usings and Remove and Sort. The names are pretty self explanatory so I won't bore you and explanation of each; just wanted to pass on the good word.

Have you ever wanted to be able to extend a sealed class like string? With Visual Studio 2008 and C# 3.0, you now can with Extension Methods. You create these new methods to add additional custom abilities to an existing type, even if you don't have access to it. These new methods need to be static methods contained in static classes, and the first parameter should be the keyword this and the hosting type. This is demonstrated in the example below on line 8. This example takes input from the console and validates it against a regex string.

   1:  using System;

   2:  using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

   3:   

   4:  namespace ExtensionMethods

   5:  {

   6:      public static class MyClass

   7:      {

   8:          public static bool ValidPhoneNumber(this string s)

   9:          {

  10:              string valid_phone = "^[\\(]{0,1}([0-9]){3}[\\)]{0,1}[ ]?([^0-1]){1}([0-9])" +

  11:                                   "{2}[ ]?[-]?[ ]?([0-9]){4}[ ]*((x){0,1}([0-9]){1,5}){0,1}$";

  12:   

  13:              Regex regex = new Regex(@valid_phone);

  14:              return regex.IsMatch(s);

  15:          }

  16:      }

  17:      

  18:      class Program

  19:      {

  20:          static void Main(string[] args)

  21:          {

  22:              Console.Write("Please Enter Phone Number: ");

  23:              string newPhone = Console.ReadLine();

  24:   

  25:              if (newPhone.ValidPhoneNumber()) 

  26:                  Console.WriteLine("Good Phone Number");

  27:              else    

  28:                  Console.WriteLine("Bad Phone Number");

  29:   

  30:              Console.ReadLine();

  31:          }

  32:      }

  33:  }

Once the class has been created, it can be used as an extension of the string class as simply as if it was originally part of the it.

Other examples can be found at the blogs for David Hayden, or Scott Guthrie.

This is an announcement that I am moving my feeds over to feed burner this week.  The new feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/JohnRussellPlant. This way I will be able to start tracking my readers, or lack of, better.

Last week a co-worker let me know about these free E-books from Microsoft Press. It looks as if the LINQ book is in fact the full book while the other two on ASP.NET and SilverLight 1.0 are excerpts. More information can be found at the Microsoft Learning Portal.

The free e-book includes content from three recent publications from Microsoft Press:

• Introducing Microsoft LINQ by Paolo Pialorsi and Marco Russo (ISBN: 9780735623910)
This practical guide covers Language Integrated Query (LINQ) syntax fundamentals, LINQ to ADO.NET, and LINQ to XML. The e-book includes the entire contents of this printed book!

• Introducing Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX by Dino Esposito (ISBN: 9780735624139)
Learn about the February 2007 release of ASP.NET AJAX Extensions 1.0, including an overview and the control toolkit.

• Introducing Microsoft Silverlight 1.0 by Laurence Moroney (ISBN: 9780735625396)
Learn how to use Silverlight to simplify the way you implement compelling user experiences for the Web. Discover how to support an object-oriented program model with JavaScript.

Let's face it, a multiple monitor setup is the only way to go for a software developer, or any other computer professional these days. If you are still using only a single monitor, you are not working at your full potential. Here is a quote taken from lifehacker.com.

Survey after survey shows that whether you measure your productivity in facts researched, alien spaceships vaporized, or articles written, adding an extra monitor will give your output a considerable boost -- 20 percent to 30 percent, according to a survey by Jon Peddie Research.

Personally, I feel my productivity increases even more than that, and at minimal my development experience increases ten fold. I do not enjoy switching from layer upon layer of windows searching for the data I need in the proceeding window. Even Microsoft Research states this on their web sites:

You arrive at your office in the morning, sit down, look at your to do list and wonder how you're going to get it all done. If only you had a tool, a genie in a bottle, anything that would help you get more done in less time. And caffeine is out; you gave that up last week.

Microsoft researchers haven't perfected the genie, but they've found a tool that can increase your productivity by 9 to 50 percent and make your work day easier. And you can begin using it right away.

The researchers conducted user studies that proved the effectiveness of adding a second or even third monitor to your workstation, creating a wide-screen effect.

My setup at home consists of two Acer AL2216Wbd 22" Widescreen LCD monitors powered by a single Dualhead GeForce 8600GTS video card. I purchased the three of these for less than 6 hundred dollars from newegg. The cables that came with the two monitors were not long enough reach my computer, so I ordered a couple DVI cables from monoprice.com for less than $15.00 a piece. Previous, I had a much more expense 20.1" gateway monitor, but it recently bit the bucket so it was replaced with my current setup cheaper and I am loving it.  Here is a screen shot of my home workstation as it sits today. Notice that the background stretches across both monitors.

Windows does not do this by default, and you will need a third party program to get this effect. I use a free program called DisplayFusion from Binary Fortress Software.  It will let you adjust the images in case your two monitors run at different resolutions. This is handy if you use an LCD as a second monitor for you laptop.

If you need some good backgrounds, gamewallpapers is a good place to start. They have a wide assortment of some very cool backgrounds for your desktop. Another site with some nice backgrounds is dual-display and a third can be found here.

World of Warcraft

Half Life 2