Fear and Loathing

Further to my post about the two dozen add-ins I have loading into Visual Studio (wonder what Scott's startup looks like) I have no less than *3* Refactor menus available to me.

First there's the built-in refactorings from Visual Studio (including an additional one, refactor to resource that I added via the VS PowerToys):

Next there's ReSharpers Refactor menu that has a million options:

Finally there's Developer Express' Refactor! Pro menu which is context sensitive so the options change based on what element you pick in the Editor (but I'm sure it's got as many as ReSharper or more):

Round that out with GhostDoc (Document This), the test options (TestDriven), a bunch of other options ReSharper and who knows what else threw in there, plus an addin that let's me jump to a method in Reflector, and all those silly "Create Unit Tests..." options that Team Suite added for which I swore I would never use.

It's enough to drive a guy batty (which really does explain my state of mind after a day working in this environment). Never really noticed it before but Holy Options Batman, that's a crapload of stuff to deal with.

Excuse me while I reboot my brain.

P.S. there is an answer to this madness which makes complete sense. Collapse all "Refactor" menu options into a single menu and filter the refactorings to only show what I can do (like how DevExpress does it, good job guys!). Don't show me stuff that I can't do (even if it is grayed out). It's useless to me if I can't click on it. 

In fact, do that to the entire context menu system in Visual Studio.

Orcas anyone? Can you hear me guys!

Wake up and give us code monkeys some screen real estate back please!

I noticed tonight my splash screen for Visual Studio was getting a little out of control (in addition to taking some time to load):

I run Team Suite (just because I can) and I've got a lot loaded (including a new experiment, running ReSharper *and* CodeRush/Refactor Pro together) but I think I'm at the limit of my splash screen length and the add-ins it can display.

Actually some add-ins (like GhostDoc and TestDriven.NET) don't show up on the splash screen so here's a complete list of what's in my Visual Studio:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005
• Microsoft .NET Framework
• Microsoft Visual Basic 2005
• Microsoft Visual C# 2005
• Microsoft Visual C++ 2005
• Microsoft Visual J# 2005
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Applications
• Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System
• Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005
• Microsoft Web Application Projects 2005
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Architects
• Microsoft Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals Version 2.0.50727.251
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Developers
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Testers
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Explorer
• CodeSmith 4.0
• Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2005
• DXCore for Visual Studio 2.0
• Enterprise Library Configuration Editor 3.0 Jan 2007 CTP
• Extensions for Windows WF
• Microsoft Recipe Framework Package 8.0
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Explorer - ENU Service Pack 1 (KB926601)
• Refactor! for Visual Studio 1.0
• ReSharper 2.5 (build #326)
• SQL Server Analysis Services
• SQL Server Integration Services
• SQL Server Reporting Services
• DevExpress Tools
• GhostDoc
• TestDriven.NET 2.0.1948 Professional

Anyone else have this problem? Wonder what will happen if I install more add-ons? Maybe the makers of laptops need to focus more on vertical space rather than horizontal (or I could turn it on its side, but makes it hard to type that way).

Sometimes things make my blood boil. Other times I just let it pass and move on. As I was trying to catch up on my feeds tonight (only 6182 to go for this month) I stumbled across this post by Andrew Stopford:

Commercial UI components in OSS

The use of commerical UI components in a OSS project is a topic of debate and contention. The standard winforms/webforms components are limited and using commerical UI components allows for a far greater degree of UI functionality and in an eighth of the time. It's such a mine field that certainly in the .NET space they are not used. You run the risk of a ever changing UI, a quote from this post on the use of commerical UI components in RSS Bandit.

I read the quote and it seemed to be very familiar. Wait a minute, it was mine from this post on being a responsible open source developer I wrote back in December.

The problem I have with the post that Andrew links to is it goes to some aggregate site (the World of ASP.NET) but if you visit the page from the link above, you have no idea who wrote it. In fact there's no link back to my original content.

My blog content is licensed under the Creative Commons license and you're free to use it, but there needs to be some professionalism about "borrowing" someone elses content. I mean, at least have a link, credit, or at least a mention of where it came from if it's not your own thoughts.

I've come across other sites where people just downright steal content and even claim it their own which is a whole 'nuther problem. Just as a friendly reminder for anyone who wants to link or quote my content (and you're quite welcome to) please direct people back to the source. It helps me understand if anyone is interested in my message and provides me with a conduit to the outside world in case I'm mistaken (hey, it can happen) or someone wants to leave me for dead in a dumpster.

Just be a little responsible when you blog, that's all I ask.

Congrats to Shane Perran with his splash screen entry for SharePoint Builder as it was the fav (both mine and people who emailed me about the entries).

Shane will recieve a special package from me at this years MVP Summit, including the fabulous home version of SharePoint Builder along with Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco Treat.

Thanks to everyone who entered!

I'm stuck. While some people will disagree with me, I like the Ribbon. It's a cool idea and looks sharp. As a side note, I convinced a customer we would incorporate it into their business app as the corporatation was moving to Office 2007 this year anyways, and they would be stuck with it. We'll be the first app using it and the customer is quite happy after seeing what it does and how they can use it. Anyways, back to my problem.

SharePoint Builder is a free, Smart Client app that is coming out shortly (I think the alpha release is a couple of days away). The Ribbon concept kind of works with it as I can envision Ribbon buttons for different types of site definitions the editor handles (sites, lists, features, etc.) with Ribbon groups inside for items in those files, and the ability to add, edit, and delete them. This paradigm works with the Ribbon with the alternative option using traditional menus and toolbars (which works as well but isn't as sexy looking or functional).

The trouble is finding a library out there to implement the Ribbon control. There are tons of libraries available now that provide the Ribbon control (DotNetBar, DevExpress, etc.) and they all work equally well. If I did have a choice of a commercial package I would probably go with DevExpress. I have a copy of it, it follows the Microsoft Guidelines for the Ribbon pretty closely, works well and is easy to implement. Therein lies my trouble. SharePoint Builder is a free project, and open source to boot. I'm not about to offer up a free, open source tool that relies on an expensive (or inexpensive for that matter), closed, commercial control. I simply won't do it.

The only free, open source Ribbon I found out there was a GotDotNet project however it was pretty far off from the MS guidelines for Ribbon apps. This might spark a debate as most people don't agree that control authors should follow the guidelines put out my Microsoft however they're published and out there and if I'm going to use a Ribbon control in an app of mine, I'm going to do so with one that's as close to the guidelines as possible. The GDN project is too far off from being compatible and while it sort of looks like the Ribbon, it certainly doesn't behave like it (which I think is the main point of the Ribbon control concept anyways).

So it doesn't look like a Ribbon is going to work here unless someone else has some thoughts. I'm already swamped in work so really don't have time to build my own open source Ribbon to offer this project (and everyone else once it was built) and the ones out there don't measure up to the guidelines. A free copy of a commercial package isn't the issue as I don't want others to not be able to build the application, and a trimmed down "donation" copy of a commercial package isn't going to work either as it's only as good as long as the company is out there (and there's the problem of what happens if/when it breaks or needs an update). I guess menus and toolbars it is for this project.

A couple of weeks ago I had my first car accident in 24 years of driving. The car was a write-off and we've gone out and bought a replacement, as one does in this situation.

Here's what the old car (a 2004 Suzuki XL7) looks like (not mine but an incredible simulation):

Here's what I did to it:

And here's what replaced it:

A 2006 Pacifica. Leather interior, heated seats, dual climate control, lotsa buttons. Works for me.

I find that I'm often letting my teams know some norms around Scrum and the process of a task-oriented system so I thought I would throw these out to the world. We sometimes loose sight of these simple things and get wrapped up in bigger, more grandiose ideas so consider this a Wednesday morning reminder.

• Don't assign tasks to other people. You don't want people telling you what to do because frankly I don't function that way and I don't think people work well in this manner (in general). One of the key principles of Scrum is self-organized teams meaning teams that decide what they need to do to get the job done, not others telling them.
• Don't claim tasks as your own but don't do work on them. I often see people stake claim to tasks in Team System (our Scrum tool) and set them to In Progress but they remain that way the entire sprint. It deflates the value of the system and just makes it look like the team is busy (to outsiders) but we're not really doing anything (or you can't tell what you're doing).
• Don't create huge tasks that take days to implement. My rule is generally under 4 hours. If you have an 8 hour task what you're saying is that, uninteruppted, it will take me the entire day to work on this. In reality you'll be interuppted, they'll be meetings, phone calls, coffee breaks and 8 hours of effort will probably take 12 hours of duration which means you have one task that spans 1 1/2 days and maybe even 2. So as a team member, you're saying to the your team mates, leave me alone for 2 days while I do this in isolation. That's not condusive to a good team effort nor is it helping anyone. If you see a task that's more than 4 hours, ask yourself if it's really 1 big task or 2 small ones? The other advantage to smaller tasks is that you might break something up into two 4 hour tasks and each one can be done by two different people, meaning you actually deliver value faster and isn't that what we're trying to accomplish here?
• If you already have something "In Progress" don't pick up a new task. I've been told that I have ADD and while I might (I do have many projects on the go, both at work and home) I try to manage it. Picking something and saying "I'm working on this" then turning around the next day and saying the same thing on something else just looks like you're trying to look busy. It's okay to grab a couple tasks at a time or grab a new one if one task is just waiting on something or needs a small collaboration say with the customer, but knowing that a task has 2 hours of work left, yet grabbing a new one and starting it without finishing the first is just plain dumb. Why would you do that? Would you wash half your car, then go and cut the lawn knowing your car is covered with soap? Even with ADD I wouldn't.

How do you eat an elephant? Easy, one bite at a time.

Here's the first round of splash screen entries for SharePoint Builder. I won't tag who did what yet.

The last one is my fav so far as it shows innovation and is different (that's a hard hat in case you didn't get it). Note that you don't have to include the "Version 1.0" stuff in your entries as that will change so it's better to leave it blank. Remember to submit your entry soon via email and you can comment on the entries on the blog here.

Keep 'em coming!