Back in the Visual Studio 2003 days, you had to go to File – Page Setup, and check “Line numbers” (in the lower-left hand corner) in order to print line numbers, regardless whether they were visible in the editor.  For Visual Studio 2005, we moved this option to the Print dialog. 

To print line numbers, go to File – Print, and on the lower left, you’ll see two options.

As a bonus tip, (since a "did you know how to hide collapsed regions when printing" makes me yawn), you can also hide collapsed regions.  I’ve used this when I wanted to print out just my test case function, but didn’t want to print out any of the helper functions, since they all lived in the same test case file. 

The picture above (printed to a xps file) shows how the "hidden collapsed regions" will print out as ellipses. 

Technorati tags: VS2005Tip, VS2008Tip

Go to Tools – Options – Text Editor – All Languages – General, and check Line numbers to show line numbers for all files. 

If you just want to see (or not see) the line numbers of a specific file, you can override this global setting by going to the Text Editor – <specific language> – General page.

Technorati tags: VS2005Tip, VS2008Tip

2 years later…

Let’s take a second to raise our morning coffee cups in honor of the people of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast on this day.  And for those in Seattle, try to point towards the space needle (i just always wanted to say that).

NBC Nightly News Coverage

Link to last night’s interview

wow.  My mom, my family, my house, and the street I drove down for 13 years to go to school were all on national news last night.  It is surreal.  A huge salute to Brian Williams and his producers and his crew for honoring their promise to come back to the town.

Some other links to check out

• Brian William’s video blog post on his first arrival.  Definitely check this video out.  He speaks in a very causal tone, in contrast to the Nightly News segment.  Maybe it is just because i’m homesick, but i love the way he shows Coleman Ave (and isn’t that City Hall, not the Post Office?!?).  Remember, I lived on that road for 20 years.
• His corresponding blog entry on his first arrival.  I was blown away when i saw a trackback notification coming in from him about my little katrina cliff notes.  It is really cool he and his crew checked out my blog for the latest info after these past 2 years. 

And of course, since i couldn’t be down there, my family took some photos for me to share on my blog.

Coverage Recap

Okay, time for my quick commentary on the interview…

• Um, yeah, btw friends and cowokers, we found out in March my mom has cancer and my dad was hospitalized on Monday night.  In case you don’t know, i’ve been so stressed out this year from Katrina, my own health issues (busted knee, broken leg) and other personal issues that I actually feel asleep during a MRI last week.  Now you all have another piece of my stressed out puzzle.  =)
• I had to ask who that man was in the blue shirt with the circular saw (whatever that thing is called).  It’s a friend of Linda and Paul’s who came down from Dallas to help work on the tiles
• There is this awesome shot of the 4 sisters in the family (right when they are introducing the dog).  There are 12 brothers and sisters on my mom’s side of the family (yes, 37 first cousins, 55(?) second + third cousins, just one side).  The interesting thing is that they all have moved back home to this house where they grew up and are rebuilding their houses in the order of their births.  It freaks out my uncle, so I figured I would mention it to annoy him that i’m not giving him proper attribution or something.  =)
• Restaurants.  OH MI GOD i would love a burger and some french fries from J’s Restaurant.  I was shopping for posters the other day, some sailing ones, and i saw these America Cups and had this flashback of sitting in J’s restaurant enjoying life as I looked at their America Cup posters.  All i can recall from the memory is the sense of life is good.
• That yellow building at the end is the Waveland Civic Center.  I played my first soccer game ever when i was 6 on the other side of that building.  I’m glad he showed the contrast between the devastation and the rebuilt structures.

MSN.com right now

If you go to http://www.msn.com right now, they have this art gallery of before and after and now shots. 

(i had a friend get married in that church)

But this one got me by the throat this morning…  It is #3 in the series for those following along at home (and have actually read this far).

I grew up down the street from here.  I loved this house with its 5 ceiling fans in the front porch and the 5 on the back porch.  I absolutely loved the pink house (yes, i loved a pink house) that used to be next to it.  I so wanted to buy that pink house one day when i grew up.  but i digress.  I knew someone who lived here in this blue house who died a very long time ago.  The last time I saw him, we were chatting from one of the 2nd story side windows on the left.  There’s just something about having these memory "landmarks" disappear that really come back to get you years later. 

Alrighty, it’s time for me to get back to work and write some more Visual Studio tips and tricks, and maybe release some code…  always makes me feel better.  =)

Not one of my finer tip of the day titles, but it illustrates the point.  =)

With either a single line or several lines selected, you can either use the Increase Indent or Decrease Indent toolbar button found on the text editor toolbar, or from Edit – Advanced menu (listed as Increase / Decrease Line Indent).

Technorati tags: VS2005Tip, VS2008Tip

• Press Ctrl+Shift+U to make the current character or selected characters uppercase
• Press Ctrl+U to make the current character or selected characters lowercase

I got to be honest here and say I had to ask around when these commands would be useful.  One scenario (thanks bill!) is where the caps_lock key is bound to be a control key.  For example, you type a word, then ctrl+shift+left arrow to select, then do Ctrl+Shift+U to upper case (instead of having to hold the shift key down to type the entire word).  Maybe intellisense has made me lazy.  =)

Technorati tags: VS2005Tip, VS2008Tip

Update: There was a trackback here to Brian Williams’s blog, but unfortunately, due to the 100s of comment spam attacks each night, it got lost. 

So 2 years ago this day, I called my mom to tell her I made it to the Visual Studio homepage for my Visual Studio tips and tricks, just to share my excitement.  Then she says, equally excitedly, “the big one is coming.”  (it’s a New Orleans thing to be excited about hurricanes).  I turned on the TV to see “Katrina” for the first time.  My life would never be the same again.

2 days later, my blog became an accidental Katrina Information portal for all things related to the western section of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and I followed suit 6 weeks later as an accidental relief worker. 

And now, 2 years later…  Brian Williams will re-interview my family.  It will air Tuesday, August 28 on King5 at 6pm PST for those in Seattle.

Waveland vs Katrina Cliff Notes:

• USA Today described my hometown of Waveland, Miss (7,000 people) as The Town that Vanished.  If you’ve ever been to Ocean Shores.. that’s Waveland (although Waveland is a lot warmer)
• A single cell phone tower survived, allowing my mom to give me daily updates from the beach, which in turn I posted on my blog…  the story starts here. 
• NBC Nightly News Brian Williams interviewed my mom and dad 2 months after the storm.  Video and Transcript from Oct 4, 2005.
• There’s just no way to describe the devastation unless you were there.  My diary post Blogging from Katrina Ground Zero:  Waveland, MS – Day 1 is my best attempt.

Expanding on "speed" as described in David Whyte’s book Crossing the Unknown Sea… it’s been 2 years since Katrina, but it might as well as happened yesterday, and I’ve been in Seattle for the past 6 years. It’s like we’ve all been a race car in the red, flooring it for 2 years, trying to go as fast as we can, to get back to what we had as fast as we can, or just try to stay in constant motion, because speed blurs everything around us, not having to accept where we are at.

But we can’t maintain this speed, and things start to break down. Our 120% becomes 100%, then our 100% becomes 80%, and the next thing we know, we’re flooring it, but barely going over 30mph. Our speed disappears and we’re forced to finally take a hard look around us. a very hard look.

And now that I’m literally barely moving (I’ve been injured, unable to walk for the past 4 months), I’m forced to realize just how homesick I truly am.  Some things will never change – Mardi Gras, Saints, etc., and some things will never be the same – 411 Water Street, Waveland, Miss.

But if there’s anything to be learned from this, it is that life always goes on.  always.  Eating at a soup kitchen, looking around at the various families sitting beside you, watching as parents entertain and educate their little kids, you realize that life will always go on, it just depends how you chose to go along with it.

I am so proud to be from the New Orleans area.  I am so proud to be from a small town that never gave up hope and survived.  I am so proud of my family for rebuilding. 

Renew Rebuild ReNew Orleans.  (and geaux saints!)

• Yellow – you’ve edited these lines since your last save.  Yellow becomes Green upon saving.
• Green – the lines you’ve edited before your last save.  Save again and Green disappears.

Not seeing it?  Go to Tools – Options Dialog, and on the Text Editor – General page, check the Track changes checkbox.  And now you know how to turn it off =)

Still not seeing it?  Make sure the Text Editor – General page has the Selection Margin checkbox checked. 

Technorati tags: VS2005Tip, VS2008Tip

On the Edit – Advanced menu, you’ll find the Delete Horizontal White Space (interesting, i thought whitespace was one word) command bound to Ctrl+K, Ctrl+\.

To use, put the cursor anywhere in the whitespace that precedes the line, and press Ctrl+K, Ctrl+\.  You can also select multiple lines and delete the whitespace at the beginning of each line.

Technorati tags: VS2005Tip, VS2008Tip

• Press Ctrl+T to transpose a character
• Press Ctrl+Shift+T to transpose a word
• Press Alt+Shift+T to transpose a line

In the above example (where the cursor is placed before the "is" on the commented line "now is the time"),

• Pressing Ctrl+T will swap the ‘i’ and the previous space, creating  // nowi s the time
• Pressing Ctrl+Shift+T will swap the "is" and "the", creating // now the is time
• Pressing Alt+Shift+T will swap the current line with the line below it

Just out of curiosity, I’d love to know how people use this feature, so please leave me a comment. 

Technorati tags: VS2005Tip, VS2008Tip

In the above picture, note the location of the cursor in the middle of the current line.  Pressing Ctrl+Enter will insert a blank line above the current line and Ctrl+Shift+Enter will insert a blank line below the current line.  The cursor will move to the beginning of the new line.

Technorati tags: VS2005Tip, VS2008Tip