Automated TFS Testing

TFS is a great tool for doing automated testing. Last year I did a presentation and the twin cities code camp on automated testing using TFS. 

Using automated testing you can take a task that would take a QA analyst days to complete in just a few minutes. 

In this demo I show how to create an web performance test and also how to create your own web test plugins to extend the functionality that Microsoft gives you out of the box.

Power Point Presentation

Sample Code

Visual Studio Themes

I spend up to 40 hours per week staring at visual studio. Visual studio is the best IDE for development in the industry.  However, there is always room for improvement.  And I am always looking for ways to be that lazy coder and make things easier and faster.  

One simple tool I use to accomplish this is to change my visual studio themes.  Its really easy to change and saves eye strain, and just is a way to personalize my Visual Studio experience.  

Of course you can always create your own themes, but being lazy I would rather have some one else create them for me.  And of course I don't really want to pay for them either.  Luckily someone has put together an cool site where users can upload and share there visual studio themes.  

http://studiostyl.es/

When you download your themes you can make your life easy by putting them in the folder

C:\Users\[your user name goes here]\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Settings

The site is simple, and easy to find your favorite Visual Studio theme.  I personal favorite is humane studio.  http://studiostyl.es/schemes/humane-studio

To install your downloaded theme in visual studio 

1. From the tools menu in visual studio select import and export settings

2. Import selected environment settings

3. Click next

4. you can choose to backup settings here, I usually don't

5. Click on browse to choose your settings

 6. pick your downloaded theme

7. Finish and your visual studio experience is customized.

MVVM Light

On a recent WPF project I had to choose a pattern to follow.  After researching WPF patterns I landed on MVVM.  I evaluated more traditional routes such as using the classic code behind event driven pattern taken from ASP.net.  However MVVM offers benefits that the code behind model just cant match.

Following the MVVM pattern your application is
- Testable the #1 reason to use this.  Ever try to write a unit test against a
- Blendable, or at least it can be based on the framework you use
- Decoupled design
- Simpler code, less code

After deciding that MVVM was the way to go, I had to decide on a framework.  I looked at a bunch, but they all seemed very complex to implement.  And I was working on a pretty simple application.  Wasting hours implementing enterprise type design did not make sense for this application.  Based on this criteria I decided on MVVM light.  It was easy to understand, and implement.  And had all of the key pieces I needed to implement the MVVM patter, but no more.
http://mvvmlight.codeplex.com/

NUGET
Of course you can get MVVM light through nuget in visual studio.  I cannot say enough good things about nuget, every Microsoft developer should use this!
http://nuget.org/

MVVM 
This is not just a Microsoft pattern, but it works well with xaml based applications.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_View_ViewModel

I will follow up with more details and a sample project for MVVM.

UI Mockup Software

Writing software is not the hard part, its understanding what the users want.  You can build great software, but if its not what the users want, you cannot turn your hard work into success. One method I find works well is creating screen mock ups.

I have tried many tools to do GUI mock ups.  Many of them tend to be two complex. I have tried Microsoft Sketch flow, Power Point, Photo Shop.  To me they were all to complex.  I was looking for a tool that I could use quickly.  My goal was not to make it look like the real thing. But to make sure I was building what the users want.  I so far have found two different tools I love for doing wire frame mock ups.

Balsomiq
The first tool I fell in love with was Balsamiq http://www.balsamiq.com/.  This was super easy to use and kept users out of worrying what type of font they wanted. The only problem is the freeware stuff is online only and you cannot save.   If you have the money this is all you need.

Pencil Project
The Other tool that I use is Pencil.  http://pencil.evolus.vn/en-US/Home.aspx  This works great and is free.  You can run it through fire fox or install it on your pc.  I usually use chrome and dont have firefox installed so I opted for the installed version.

Visio Crashing on windows 7

I was having a problem with Visio 2010 crashing on my Windows 7 64 bit PC.  After searching I found that the send to blue tooth com plugin was causing it to crash.  I found about this here.

Visio Blue Tooth Plug In

To disable this in Visio 2010
1. For Vista or Windows 7 you will need to open Visio in as Administrator. To do this Hold the shift button and right click on the Visio shortcut on your start button.

2. go to the file tab and select options

3. click on manage

4. Click Remove

5. After the remove your screen should look like this