How to update currently expired extensions

If you’re getting a dialog like this for any of our existing extensions:

you surely noticed that the dialog just won’t go away . This unfortunate issue is fairly easy to solve, luckily:

1. Close all instances of VS
2. Run: %localappdata%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Extensions\Clarius Consulting\
3. Just delete the folders for the nagging extensions
4. Open VS, and get the updated bits from the Online tab by doing a search

 

We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience!

Announcing the DevStore!

We have been working hard during this year on extending Visual Studio 2010 to support the in-product selling and buying of extensions in a very easy and smooth way and we are proud to announce today the upcoming availability of the DevStore!

Yes, it actually works as good as it looks

You can purchase paid extensions with a single click (paid via PayPal first, Amazon Payments, Google Checkout and credit cards later based on user feedback). You can read and write reviews right there in the Extension Manager too. And of course, there will be still a dedicated DevStore web site where you can browse for all available extensions.

With the same ease you can also publish your VS extension to the DevStore for others to purchase. All you need to do is add a couple additional entries into the manifest file for your extension (i.e. purchase price and, optionally, upgrade price) and then right click on the extension project and select “Publish to DevStore”:

Easy, ugh?

We look forward to having everyone interested in extending Visual Studio and participating in the DevStore: big and small component vendor shops, VSX experts, independent consultants, hobbyists, bloggers, and pretty much anyone that has developed content for VS and would like to get paid for it

Again, don’t think about this opportunity just for the usual known shops out there, think, for example, of a blogger that has put lots of time writing guidance, samples, best practices, etc. on a particular technology. He can now package that knowledge as a VS extension (i.e. a VS template, source code, library, documents, or any kind of tooling), and publish it in the DevStore asking for as little as $0.99 and get something in return for the time he spent. Some people is already doing this today with PayPal donations but the DevStore can significantly improve this and make the experience much easier and friendlier.

And we’ve been dreaming about some other possibilities too.

Imagine component vendors offering their “big products” split into pieces through the DevStore, instead of purchasing the usual “Big Components Pack” including 40 controls, of which you only need 2 or 3, you could individually purchase just the controls you’re interested in.

Or how about renting a product that you’re going to use just for this short 2-months project you just got?

And why limit what you can purchase to extensions only? Why not purchase other stuff, like a book… or individual book chapter… or even consulting hours?

We would love to get your feedback about what you would like to see supported in the DevStore, post your ideas on the forum and let us know!

Checkout the video we recorded showing the end-to-end experience:

WoVS DevStore

Right now we’re running a closed beta with a bunch of extension developers that are helping us get the bits ready for public availability in January 2011. If you are interested in publishing your content in the DevStore please send us an email and we will get you on our beta program so you can try out the DevStore.

Thanks!

No more “Add Reference” dialog

(You may want to read this previous intro to the Quick Add Reference extension.)

We’ve just released it to the Visual Studio Gallery for free!.

Don’t waste any more of your time firing up the “Add Reference” dialog and browsing or even searching for an assembly through the assemblies list, add it from the code editor, right from where you’re typing:

We hope you really like this extension as much as we do, we’ve been using it internally at Clarius for a couple of months now and we can’t imagine life inside the IDE without it!

Note that only C# is supported right now. If you are a VB developer and you would like to have this extension working in your language make sure you let the WoVS Team know about it.

If you would like to see this feature already built-in in the next version of Visual Studio make sure you vote for it!

Add Reference without ever leaving the code editor!

You remember the time when for adding a new reference you had to wait for a few minutes (usually enough minutes to have breakfast or lunch) for the lovely “Add Reference” dialog to show up and then you had to scroll through a looooong list (which kept updating itself) of somewhat ordered assembly files:

 

 

 

 

 

We introduced back in June the Search Reference extension which made this A LOT faster and simpler by adding a search box and full keyboard support, meaning you type something like “mvc”, key-down, press ENTER and you had your ASP.NET MVC assembly added (no infinite scrolling, no touching your mouse):

 

 

 

 

This was a huge productivity improvement already. But we wanted more.

So we coded a (for lack of a better name…) “Quick Add Reference” extension which augments the smart tag that VS shows for unrecognized types giving you a chance to add the corresponding assembly reference for that type plus corresponding “using” clause if needed in a single shot.

Let’s say I’m working on a Web Application project and I just happen to want to use a type from ASP.NET MVC 2 which by default won’t be referenced by regular web app:

Isn’t this beautiful?

Or you’re working on a WPF application and you need to use configuration from System.Configuration?

And there is more. Yes, more.

Now say you just typed UIElement in a class library which doesn’t have a reference to PresentationCore.dll yet so you get the fancy smart tag:

Now when you try to build the project you will get a few errors complaining that there is an indirect reference to assembly WindowsBase.dll which you need to reference for the project to compile ok:

Is this really the end of our productivity improvement journey and you need to go back to the “Add Reference” dialog? No, not so fast.

You just have to right-click on those errors and choose… guess what… the “Add Reference” menu option!

 

And again, references do get added for you, without paying any visits to the “Add Reference” dialog. Beautiful, indeed.

We’re currently testing out the “Quick Add Reference” bits inside Clarius and with a close group of “crazy enough developers to test our beta bits” (btw, send email if you feel brave enough to join this group).

We plan to make this extension generally available during next week, so stay tuned!

MSDN Subscription for most voted suggestion has a winner

As promised, we looked at the most voted suggestions (from non-Clarius users :)) to improve VS2010 and we got a clear winner!

Ligaz’s idea was:

Code review

I would like to have the ability to make a peer code review inside VS. Developers will be able to annotate and comment different pieces of the code. Code review session can be implemented when multiple people review the same code at the same time.

And it received 108 votes so far.

 

Congrats Ligaz!