scott.hodson.blog

I just noticed on MSDN Subscriber Downloads that the final release DVD ISOs of VS.NET 2005 and SQL Server 2005 are available for download for MSDN subscribers. Enjoy!

Following up on the mash-up theme, PlaceOpedia allows users to link a Wikipedia article with a Lat/Long on Google maps. Check it out. I did Trabuco Canyon, CA.

I’ve been doing a lot of PHP work lately and found this PHP plug-in for Visual Studio .NET to be very nice. Provides debugging, collapsable code sections, color-coding, intellisense w/auto-complete and comes with an embedded web server (no need to create IIS virtual paths!). $99 after 30-day free trial. I also tried to work with PhpEd but after not getting the debugger to work properly I abandonded it until I found VS.PHP.

Nov 7th update – I went ahead and purchased the full version.

One more thing I forgot to add to my list of favorite tools is Copernic Desktop Search. I have compared it to Windows Desktop Search and Google Desktop Search and I still think Copernic is the best. Though, to be fair, I haven’t tried out Google’s v2 of their desktop search, but that’s still in beta (like most of what Google does) so I’ll have to go back and try that one when it’s released.

Copernic has the best user interface, allowing me to easily search emails, contacts, files, bookmarks, music, browser history, video, and the web. I use Outlook a lot but never use the Outlook search anymore because it’s barely useful when trying to search someone by company or area code or any other field than a contact’s name. The indexing is non-intrusive, search results appear rapidly and I can specify powerful searches for different content types.

One nod to Windows Desktop Search though is that when you download the search tool it comes part of the MSN toolbar, which adds some nice new features to Internet Explorer like tabbed browing (finally) and pop-up blocking and form-fill, all features which made Firefox a popular choice to switch to way back in, oh, say…2002!

So I thought I oughta publish my favorite development tools. Some are well-known, some perhaps not as much. Hopefully you may find this list helpful. Most of these are free or inexpensive.

• Web Development Tools. I have a lot of tools in this category I cling to. Here are some worth mentioning:
  • Debugging/Validation- FireFox WebDeveloper Plugin – Great tools for doing web development, debugging your HTML, Javascript, etc.
  • Editing – Macromedia HomeSite+ – not as feature rich as Dreamweaver, but more nimble and lightweight and perfect for my HTML hand-coding ways.
  • Screen Resolution – JRuler – Since I usually develop at 1600×1200 it comes in handy when I want to see what the rest of the internet will see when viewing the site I’m working on.
• Version Control – SourceGear Vault If you hate SourceSafe, and dread the thought of using CVS, this is a good alternative that’s not as costly as some of the others (Perforce, Bitkeeper, StarTeam, etc) out there. However, with their rising prices from v2 to v3, I may be giving Subversion another looksie. It will be interesting to see how well this product does with the advent of VSTS, though after having looked at it there are plenty of holes where companies like SourcegGear can add value, not to mention the high cost of VSTS.
• SQL Server – Query Analyzer – this is one of the most underused development tools used by developers. Often thought of as just a CLI into SQL, it provides a lot of un-obvious features for creating and managing SQL objects. WARNING: knowledge of T-SQL required, get out of Enterprise Manager when designing views or stored procedures you sloth!
• MySQL – phpMyAdmin – I love being able to manage my database remotely from any browser with this installed on my server. The interface is extremely thoughtful and feature rich.
• .NET Development – ReSharper – Goes way beyond what’s provided in VS.NET out of the box in terms of refactoring, real-time colde analysis, etc. This has been worth every penny I spent on it.
• Java Development – IntelliJ IDEA – Another great JetBrains product, this is a must for anybody doing lots of serious Java work. While Eclipse is a great product and continues to garner broad industry support, it hasn’t reached the capabilities offered by IntelliJ (yet).
• General Productivity
  • SnagIt! – great for grabbing screen shots for documentation, when Alt-PrtScn is just not enough
  • EditPlus – great multi-tabbed text editor, very quick and light-weight, Notepad on steroids.
  • GoTo Meeting – great for online meetings, demos, walking customers/partners through code, invaluable collaboration tool at a fraction of the cost of competitors like WebEx
  • Trillian – Because I have IM accounts on AIM, Yahoo, and MSN, and my friends and colleagues are spread across these different networks, Trillian allows me to connect to all of these networks and more from 1 interface. Saves me from having 3 IM programs loaded in RAM. For Linux users check out GAIM or Adium for Mac OS X users.

LATE UPDATE: Here’s PC World’s Top 100 Products of 2005, interesting to see so many web sites or web services show up in a Top 100 “Product” list such as Gmail and Flickr.