Thanks. Another thing I hadn't tried. This will work fine in the majority of cases.

-mE

Interesting. I guess I've never tried typing fast enough and just gave up on it. It would be nice to lengthen the time out so you could scan the list before typing, but this is definitely good information. Thanks!

I was looking more in line of a shell extension, but I'll give this a look. Thanks

-mE

Starteam (but moving to git soon, can't wait) ;-)

We are talking about a project that hundreds of people work on. I've been in this group for 2 months. I don't think my voice carries that much weight yet :-( Additionally, a lot of these files aren't source code. We aren't using Visual Studio to build all source code either, for various (and valid) reasons.

Out of my control. Legacy code, political issues, money, etc, you get the idea...

I have to use Windows XP as my desktop environment. I don't have the luxury of having all of my source code organized into a Visual Studio solution. Many of the source code directories have hundreds of files. I find myself clicking on files in explorer quite a bit but many of these directories have hundreds of files. Scrolling down to find a file or group of files is a pain. I can press a character and explorer will find the first file that begins with that character but I wish I could just keep typing and find the file I'm looking for. Windows search is too cumbersome. Does anyone have a suggestion for a tool that would do something similar to this?

--Kevin

I didn't realize that Apache could serve .aspx pages. I've googled the setup. Does this work well? Would I be putting myself through a lot of pain trying? If I wrote a special purpose ftp program, could I write it as an active X control and embed it within the webpage? Would Silverlight be an option for this? I couldn't figure out if the FTPRequest object was supported in Silverlight (without trying of course).

I've been tasked with organizing a photo drive for my church. We've been given a Dell computer with Windows XP Home and a 76 GB hard drive that could be used to store the images. I am looking for a low cost software solution that can meet the following requirements: Allow users to upload multiple images efficiently. (not one at a time) Allow users to enter metadata for the pictures to help keep track of them. Store the images in raw format (doesn't shrink them). Easy to use for users uploading images. Naturally, an off the shelf solution would be ideal. I haven't found such a product. Not having IIS limits my options. I was thinking I could install an FTP server on the computer and I could write an application that would get input from the user and upload the images, but this would require the user to download and run the program, and I fear that some of the inexperienced users might have troubles with this. If I was to do this, would there be a way to make this easier by creating an application that would run in the browser? What technologies would facilitate this? I'm not afraid to learn anything, but I need to be able to program it in less than say 20 hours or so ( I know c# well, but know just enough web programming to be dangerous.) I'm not opposed to using an online service, as long as users aren't required to register and the images sizes are preserved. Any suggestions? Kevin Shaffer www.kevinshaffer.net

I did find the "Methods" button in Visio. I've also found that I can customize much of what goes into the report document. I might be on to something here.

Thanks. I took a look at StarUML. It feels like a good tool, but I seem to be finding UML to be quite unsatisfying. It seems too generalized. When I think of Object Oriented design, I still think in terms of programming. I think of words like inherits, derives, uses, interfaces, references, etc. UML allows you to model this infomation through generalizations, associations, compositions, etc, but these terms seem to generalized and difficult to understand. I would think that if I was creating a class diagram, I would want to use programming terms. What I think would be a great tool would be if you had essentially a class diagram. In each class, I could then define members and methods. You would then be able to described each member, describe the purpose of each method. Then it would be nice to be able to include psuedo code inside the class methods. This would all be done inside of some modeling environment. Then, when I'm done, I could generate a word document that would look similiar to what an API documentation would look like, complete with the descriptions and pseudo code. Then I can hand off the document to programmers that could implement it. I could do all this in MS Word, but it takes too much time formatting and fighting MS Word. I also have to do everything twice. Create the diagram in Visio, then write everything in WORD. Visio has an report tool, but it fills the document with UML lingo. It looks as if you can create Word templates for StarUML, but I couldn't figure out how to document the operations, nor do I have the first clue on how to create a suitable template. Does such a tool exist?

Thanks for the info. I've been introduced to Rational in the past, but I'd be fighting an uphill battle to obtain licensing for it. We are pretty much limited to Microsoft products. I know that there are a lot of features in Visio that I'm not aware of, so that might be a good starting point. Is there anything in Visual Studio Team System that would be helpful? I've watched some demos on the product and I see that it has static code analysis, profiling, testing support etc, but it doesn't appear that it would be helpful for what I'm looking for. Automatic code generation doesn't work well for us either, since we are dealing with existing c++ applications and we generally don't create a lot of new classes. Drawing stuff out on paper (or a white board) is always a good idea. With this offshore design, we are finding that we need a high level of detail in the design. I think what would be helpful would be able to define classes and their member functions and include pseudo code with the member functions. I'm trying to get away from Microsoft Word. I find my self spending more time fighting Microsoft Word than I do thinking about design. I know Rational has some ability to generate some documentation. I think that alone would boost my productivity considerably.

My job role has changed significantly as we have started offshoring most of our coding. Since I have domain knowledge and good relationships with the client, my responsibilities have been relegated to mostly doing design work. We are getting ready to start a fairly large project and I will be overseeing 3-4 offshore developers. Previously, the company I work for has not placed a lot of emphasis on documenting design other than documenting UI and database design, etc. It is critical that designs now be detailed enough that offshore developers can code new design with minimal oversight. I have two questions: 1) What type of training materials would any of you suggest? Specifically ones that focus on communicating design (all other parts of the SPLC are managed quite well). 2) What tools would you suggest to aid in this process? Thanks in advance, Kevin

Ah ha. Private constructors. I knew there had to be a good reason to be able to do that. Thanks

I've come across some classes in the .NET framework that have no constructors defined, but are not static classes. For example, to instantiate an AppDomain class, you call the static function AppDomain.CreateDomain() which returns an instance of the AppDomain class. There are no constructors defined for the class, so you cannot instantiate the class using the new keyword. My question is how does the CreateDomain() function instantiate the class? Thanks in advance, Kevin

I had decided that I was going to buy a retail version of Vista as soon as I could. I figured if I was going to pay that much for it, I would want to use it as long as I could. This completely changes my mind. Why would I buy a copy when I know the first computer I put it on is going to choke on it? What a freakin' load.

Did your friend pay a price per song to purchase these songs, or does he pay a monthly service charge? Now if your freind paid $1 or so for each of the songs, he shouldn't have any problems until he tries to transfer them to another machine. If he's paying a monthly service charge, then what does he expect? I pay 12 bucks a month to yahoo music engine, I add/remove whatever songs I want on my iRiver (192kbs), and as long as I pay my monthly subscription, I can listen to them all I want. Granted, I don't own the music, but hey, I've got access to over a million songs, I can play them on 3 different computers, load them onto my iRiver, and even connect my iRiver to my car stereo.

--
I lack signature.

I wanted to try it as well on my new AMD64, but I downloaded Vista after the beta program was over, so I can't get a key or register it...

-mE

leckey wrote:

you may want to check with the Better Business Bureau

Better Buisness Bureau lists them as Satisfatory, and I guess 20 complaints in 36 months is pretty low for a such a large company.

leckey wrote:

Are you already engaged and just now picking out the ring?

No, but we've been dating for 4 1/2 years and are now living together. It's more of a formality than anything, but she's the best thing that's ever happened to me and I want to give her the best. Thanks for the tip :-D -mE

After spending countless hours learning the 4 C's and spending exhausting days at the mall and local jewelers, I finally knocked all my options on engagement rings down to 1. Not wanting to make such an important decision without mulling it over for a while, and not knowing enough about the diamond buisness to know whether I'm getting screwed, I asked for a buisness card and a list of specs and told the Jeweler that I would think about it for a while. Well, I did what every great geek would do and went online to weigh my purchase againt other diamonds I could find. I was not surprised to find I could by a much better diamond, certified by the GIA at BlueNile.com. I could even get roughly the same diamond for about 25% less. Now I can't get myself to pay the price at the jewelry store knowing I can get a much better diamond online, but I am a little leary of buying a diamond online. Do any of you have any experience with BlueNile.com or other online engagement ring vendors? Would you recommend the site to others? -mE