Visual Studio “collapse solution” extension

Have you ever been annoyed by the expanded projects and items in Visual Studio, and lost so much time in collapsing them all manually ? Sure you do, especially if, like me, you have the track active item option checked (which highlights the current opened file in the solution explorer, resulting in automatic expanding of the parent project and namespaces). Wouldn’t it be great if you could right-click on the solution and select “collapse solution” ? You ain’t dreaming

First, click on Tools and select Extension Manager :

Then, select Online Gallery in the left pane, start typing collapse in the search box and select the Collapse Solution extension. Restart Visual Studio and you’re done !

Enjoy

BESUG Silverlight Workshop

The last BESUG edition consisted in a Silverlight workshop where a Twitter client was built using Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend 3.

For those who couldn’t attend the workshop and are interested in that, you can download related ressources here :

• Source code of the application
• Powerpoint slides

Enjoy !

Who’s your coach ?

For the french-speaking readers out there, Microsoft has launched the MSDN coachs program. You’ll find tutorials, screencasts and exercises about many topics such as Mobile and Web development, Silverlight, C#, Sql Server and many more. I really like the idea of going back to basics and learning the most important things, thus making effective use of your time. Some sections are still in development but growing every day. There is currently no english version but I guess it will be done in the future.

Below, an overview of the coachs available for training. Click on the picture to go on the official site.

Books from the Techdays

I’ve bought 3 books from the Techdays as discounts up to 30% were applicable. These books are Code Complete, .NET Architecting - Applications for the Enterprise and Visual Studio Tips. So expect to find reviews of these ones in the Books section later on