Monday, August 30, 2004

Changing the Form1

Ever get annoyed at all the work you have to do to change the "Form1" name on a new .NET project? Well if you didn't I did. There is a lot involved you have to go into the code and rename the class, then rename the constructor then rename the file itself, not really necessary but looks better.

Well after having had enough, and having nothing better to do, I decided to figure out how to change this. I have written wizards for VS.NET before , and I assume those reading this can learn that part on their own, so it is no mystery to me that allot of the wizards are nothing more than JavaScript's. Yes JavaScript's, though you would think MS would use VBScripts but that's one for the philosophers.

On to the point all the wizards have a file called Default.js, usually located in

"C:\progra~1\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\VC#\VC#Wizards\CSharpEXEWiz\Scripts\1033"

(Note:The language name and directory of the wizards not withstanding, and the wizard you want to modify.)

Inside this file you will find a function named "GetTargetName" or some variation depending on the language. Inside this file is the hard coded value "Form1". Here you can change it to whatever you want, myself I have frmMain, but it is a matter of personal preference I think.


Tuesday, August 17, 2004

Eclipsing Windows is inaccurate

Recently I read an article by Luc Hatlestad "Can Microsoft Be Eclipsed?". The article talked in great length about an Open Source project called "Eclipse".

It was very evident from the article that the writer had never used Eclipse for any real development effort. Eclipse is a development tool, and there are many development tools available for Linux. Eclipse however being developed in Java is a cross platform IDE. It mainly focuses on Java, but with third party add-in's it can support other programming languages. However nice this is it still does not lend any support to the theme of the article that Linux, thanks to Eclipse, will take market share in the Desktop space.

There was one line in the article that confuses me to no end.

"But to date, not many application providers have written software for the Eclipse client. These are the folks VARs will want to watch as they try to decide if, when and how deeply to take the plunge into the Linux market."

So VARs should watch to see if some applicatin provider writes an add-in to Eclipse to gauge whether or not they should invest in Linux.

Eclipse has very little to do with this. VARs should watch to see who is writing software for Linux and what type of software it is. Additionally they should gauge the needs of thier customers with whether or not Linux can meet those needs. None of this has anything to do with Eclipse. Eclipse is an IDE and a development tool not a reason to choose Linux over Windows.