Michael Flanakin's Feedback

Run Tests After Code Changes

Michael Flanakin — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 22:00:00 GMT

Most developers don't run tests after they change code. This is mostly about habit, but also about perceived inconvenience, I imagine. There's an easy way to get around that... make VS smart enough to have tests automatically run in the background when the code they're testing is changed (and obviously recompiled). To do this, there might need to be a way to specify what class members are tested in each test method, but that'd be good anyway. I find myself putting that in all test method comments, anyway. Whether that's added via a code comment or attribute, I don't care; although, the latter makes a little more sense.

Improve Built-in Check-in Policies

Michael Flanakin — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 21:47:00 GMT

As I mentioned yesterday, I like the idea of check-in policies, but they are pretty annoying for those of us who like to check-in as much as possible. Why? Because you always have to rerun code analysis and tests before checking code in. Most of the time, this isn't a big deal. If I make a minor change like correct spelling in comments, I have to rerun both. Tell me what test is going to change based on a comment. None. Admittedly, some code analysis rules check for that, but is that really going to provide you much of anything? I just want check-in policies to have some sort of logic to identify whether or not there's any value in running them.

Check-in Policy Exceptions

Michael Flanakin — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 21:33:00 GMT

I love check-in policies, but there needs to be more options. For instance, I like code analysis and would like to have it on all of my projects, but it just gets annoying when I have to run code analysis on test projects, which don't really benefit from the recommended changes. In order to do this, we need an exception rules engine of some sort.

Return to Inbox After Sending Email

Michael Flanakin — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 23:12:00 GMT

One thing I've always hated about Hotmail is the fact that, after sending email, the app sends you to a page to add the people you've just sent an email to to your contact list. I guess I could stand this if I used it, but the fact is I don't; at least not often. My main annoyance is that you're sent to this page even if everyone you just sent an email to is already a contact. The page is just a waste of time that forces users to make an extra click. At least skip it in this scenario. This minor change would definitely lessen the annoyance. If you really want to improve the experience, show me that info on the follow-on page in a small module, which would give me the same capability. Alternatively, Gmail automatically added these people as contacts in one of the early versions of the system. I think that'd be a good option, but wouldn't force it across the board.

I mentioned this internally, but didn't really get much out of it. I'm not sure what the thoughts are for the future. Others did, however, agree the page was wasteful.

Check-In Policy Exceptions

Michael Flanakin — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 00:27:00 GMT

I love the idea of check-in policies, but there are just some scenarios where you want to apply them on one project, but not another in the same solution. One obvious instance of this is with test projects. I'm all about some code analysis, but it makes no sense to waste the time applying or even scanning for code analysis violations. For this, I'd really like the ability to apply check-in policy exceptions to certain projects. This would make check-in policies much easier to deal with.

Consolidate and Integrate WL Storage

Michael Flanakin — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 20:17:00 GMT

I like the fact that Hotmail now supports 5 GB, but SkyDrive is limited to 500 MB. 500... megabytes!? You've gotta be kidding me, right!? Well, I guess I'll get over all that because I know that limit will be raised in time. What I'd really like to see, tho, would be to have all of my Windows Live storage grouped together. That way, I have 5 GB across everything. I imagine this including mail, SkyDrive, and even files I'd like to upload on Spaces. I think Google just did this and I have to commend them for it. I'm sure some would like 5 GB on each individual service, but I don't need that much. I'm also hoping this would add additional integration between the services to allow me to attach SkyDrive files in email and/or show them on my Spaces profile.

Skip C# Component Designer

Michael Flanakin — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 20:03:00 GMT

I hate when I open certain C# classes and Visual Studio shows me a designer to tells me to drag items from the toolbox to get started. I'm not a drag-n-drop guy. I want the code. This makes sense for VB, but not C#, in my mind. I simply want the ability to default to the code view.

Generic Delegate

Michael Flanakin — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 17:36:00 GMT

I'd like to have the ability to create a generic delegate to specify strong types of parameters. I imagine this should be fairly simple for the compiler team, but don't know if it's come up before. This would save casting in event abstract event handlers. For instance...

delegate void EventHandler<T>(T sender, EventArgs e);
delegate void EventHandler<T, E>(T sender, E e);

I want to say every event handler I've seen sends this (or Me, for you VB hedz), so there's no reason we should have to cast, leaving room for invalid casts and declining performance (albeit minor) for developers who aren't keen on these issues.

Organize my Music

Michael Flanakin — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 10:29:00 GMT

I'm sure there has to be something that does this somewhere, but I'd really like to see Windows Media Player and the Zune player (not the device) have the ability to organize your music in several ways. I'm not one to keep up playlists. I hate the idea of updating different playlists when you add new music. Instead, I like to organize music by genre. Granted, we've had the ability to add a genre to music for years and players have been able to filter based on genre, too; but I guess I just liked the idea of right clicking on a directory and selecting Play with Windows Media Player. Very simple. Of course, Zune doesn't have this comfort. What I end up doing there is changing all of my genres to be in a handful of groups, like electronic, hip hop, rock, pop, etc. Typically, when I listen to music, I want one or the other, so this works best for me. After ripping a new CD, tho, the directories and file names are wrong. Sure, I have a little control with WMP, but not much. I don't think the ripping part is where I need the flexibility, tho. What I'm really looking for is a way to say, "Here is my music library; now reorganize it based on these constraints."

Like I said, I'm sure there are tools out there that do this. I haven't looked. While I love the partner ecosystem Microsoft has built around itself, I want these features in the tools themselves.

Add AddNew(new) Method to Generic Collections

Michael Flanakin — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 01:02:00 GMT

I can't remember where I first saw the AddNew() method Add(new) concept -- or, at least the concept behind it -- but I liked it. I'd really like to see the same thing added to all generic collections. For instance...

List<Person> people = new List<Person>();
Person person = people.Add~~New~~("Michael", "Flanakin");

I admit, this doesn't save you a whole lot of typing, but it is very convenient. Essentially, I'd like every constructor to be represented by a corresponding Add~~New~~() method. So, if I have default, id only, and a first and last name accepting constructors, I want 3 additional Add~~New~~() methods...

public Person Add~~New~~();
public Person Add~~New~~(int id);
public Person Add~~New~~(string firstName, string lastName);

As is, generics alone cannot do this with the level of integration I'd like to see, which would include reusing XML documentation already in place for the constructor. You can, however, hack something to give you this capability by using the params keyword powered by reflection in the back-end. Of course, I'd be worried about performance with an implementation like that. I don't see this being added, tho. The cost of implementing it probably wouldn't be worth the 6+ characters you'd save ("new " + name of class + "(" + ")"). Then again, perhaps this could be a mod to generics, which is already lacking, when it comes to constructor constraints.

Edit: I realized after posting this that it wasn't an AddNew() method I was looking for, but simply additional Add() methods. While this would save an additional 3 characters, the "is it worth it" argument is still there. I'd still say its convenience makes its case, tho. Maybe I'm just lazy. I changed the code samples are referred to this idea as the Add(new) concept, even tho you don't actually use the new keyword.

Open in Windows Explorer from Source Control Explorer

Michael Flanakin — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 19:01:00 GMT

This is something like my request to go to the Source Control Explorer from the Solution Explorer in Visual Studio ; only this time, I want to go from the Source Control Explorer to the local directory I have a file checked out to. This would create perfect, seemless integration between the three file explorers. Of course, if the VS and TFS teams had any say in it, you'd never go to the Windows Explorer to get anything done. As nice of an idea as that is, it's just not feasible. Hell, I'm still looking for integration directly into the Windows Explorer shell. That'd be the best integration story, in my mind.

Support Protected Members in Interfaces

Michael Flanakin — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 14:49:00 GMT

I thought I mentioned this before, but I guess not. I really want to have the ability to create an interface which has protected members. An interface is all about forming a contract with consumers, right? Well, isn't a child class a consumer? I'd argue that it is. An example of what I'm looking for might be an interface for a domain object. I want everyone to get the id, but only want the class itself to set it. Another instance might be in a situation where you'd need to execute some method internally, like validate prerequisites for an event or something like that (see below). I typically need something like this when I want to enforce a standard implementation across the board.

public interface ICommand
{
public long Id { get; protected set; }
protected bool ValidatePrereqs();
}

Reported @ http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=291006

Edit: Looks like this is "being considered" for a future release. Not sure what that means, but we'll see.

Edit: Well, I guess "being considered" doesn't mean a whole lot. The idea was pretty much shot down by someone on the C# team. I feel like I didn't explain my point well enough; however, I understand his point. Essentially, protected members can only be accessed by child classes, so what's the point in having an interface member for a class that knows about its members? Sure, that makes sense, but that doesn't mean I don't want the capability. I guess I like it more for standardization than anything.

Move Files/Folders in WL Folders

Michael Flanakin — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 17:53:00 GMT

I'd really like to see the ability to move files/folders around in WL Folders. I'm guessing this will be added in the future, but haven't gone thru the process of investigating that. That seems like a big deal to me. Perhaps in an updated release.

End-to-End ASP.NET Instrumentation

Michael Flanakin — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 11:44:00 GMT

I love the new profiling capabilities in Visual Studio, but there's still a gap when doing end-to-end performance testing and tuning. I'd really like to see the app get instrumented from beginning to end. While local devs won't see how constrained networks might affect their app, I think the perf tools can be smart enough to take the local tests and apply a few algorithms to show what kind of range of response times users should see, depending on their bandwidth and/or distance from the server. I know a lot of this might be a guessing game, but it'd be nice to at least have some numbers to see how big pages are and what user-focused response times are. At a minimum, I'd like to see the size of pages and the time spent requesting, processing, responding, and loading the page in the browser. Anything else would be icing on the cake. There was an entire office setup to do this when I was in the Air Force. Having it all built into the dev environment would save an immense amount of time and money; especially considering most devs aren't fully aware of all the factors that come into play and how they can tune their apps.

That kind of brings up another possible area of this end-to-end instrumentation. I'd like to tack on a ~~best~~ proven practice analyzer to the output that would make recommendations. Of course, not all recommendations are universal, but at least providing some pros/cons to each would give devs more info than they have right now.

Add IntelliSense to PowerShell Console

Michael Flanakin — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 22:43:00 GMT

PowerShell, along with a number of console environments, have the ability to tab thru some options, usually files and directories. Unfortunately, this doesn’t support enough, if you ask me. Even if it did support more, it doesn’t compare to true IntelliSense. I know this isn’t quite a feature of the standard console app, but to have the Visual Studio style IntelliSense would definitely make it easier to learn and work with PowerShell.

Speed up PowerShell Load Times

Michael Flanakin — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 22:38:00 GMT

This is one of my big complaints about PowerShell: load times can be slow. I’m not sure why it’s so slow, but it needs to be as fast to load as the regular command line. I posted a question about this internally, but I haven't been too impressed with the response times on getting answers from them. We'll have to see.

Disconnect from Network Connections Graphical Tooltip

Michael Flanakin — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 19:26:00 GMT

The network icon in the system tray for Windows Vista has definitely been improved, but there's still some room to grow. As is, when you hover over the icon, a small, graphical tooltip is displayed showing the active connections. When you click the icon, you get the same thing with two additional links: Connect or disconnect and Network and Sharing Center. I like this view, but I hate the fact that I have to click "Connect or disconnect...", select the desired network, click disconnect, wait for the actual disconnect, and finally close that window. I hate all that. I just want to click a disconnect icon from the tooltip.

I will say that there is a context menu on the icon. So, you can simply go to Disconnect from > [desired network]. Out of habit, I never use this. For some reason, I seem to like the graphical tooltip more. Either way, I think the functionality should be in both places.

Convert Literal to Constant

Michael Flanakin — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 13:55:00 GMT

This one's fairly simple. I would love to see the ability to select a literal string and convert it to a string. Heck, while I'm at it, it might be nice to convert a literal to localized text. Either would be good; both would be great.

Software Update for Windows

Michael Flanakin — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 03:18:00 GMT

With the coming of Server Core, there's been a lot of talk of the modularization of Windows. This has been long-coming, of course. The first time I remember hearing about this was around 2001. Those prophesies never seemed to come to, unfortunately -- at least, not in the time frame I was expecting. Well, as late to the game as it may be, it'll be welcome when it is here. What I'd like to see is for Microsoft to take that the extra mile and start making Microsoft Update be the source for installing and updating all Microsoft software. I thought about this after having to track down one after another piece of software online via MSDN or some random download page, which you never can tell if its the latest release or not. Managing it all thru Microsoft Update would be absolutely a dream come true.

Of course, this is only phase 1. Phase 2 of the "new" distro model would be to provide this as a service to othe customers. Allow others to integrate their update software into the Microsoft Update infrastructure. Of course, this would mean we'd need another re-branding of what was originally the Windows Update service. I can't think of any simple name for this, so you know it'll have to be one of those long names we all hate. Perhaps something like "Software Update for Windows" would be relatively simple. This could be a very lucrative offering, as I see it. I can think of a dozen permutations, but the result is all the same.

Possible BCC Replacement

Michael Flanakin — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 02:45:00 GMT

As I participate more and more in different distribution lists at Microsoft, I'm starting to here more and more poeple complain about BCC emails. Honestly, I've always wondered what the purpose of BCC was if not to send an email to yourself when you send one to someone else. Honestly, that's probably the only use I've gotten out of it for the past 8 years or so. Then, I noticed people replying to email that pertains to one distribution list and not another by BCC'ing the one it doesn't apply to, noting that it was BCC'ed. The purpose here, as I've come to understand, is that unrelated email is moved to a different, more appropriate thread and anyone who's interested will know where to go find it. The problem with this is that, when you BCC someone, you break email rules that people have setup. While I completely understand this, BCC is not the norm, so I just accept it. Besides, email rules are never 100%, anyway -- at least not for me. I can see both sides of the coin, so it's definitely not cut-and-dry. To get around this, people suggest you send 2 emails: one explaining that you're moving the conversation to another location and another to that other location with all pertinent parties CC'ed. I like that this abides by rules, but this is just too much effort. Plus, I like seeing what the comment is that is sending someone away from my distribution list when it is transferred elsewhere. This, of course, is what led me to my suggestion: add the capability to fork or branch an email into two (or more) emails. In its simplest form, you would identify one or more people that you want to be broken off of the re-all list and send your email to everyone as you currently do. Then, Outlook (or perhaps the mail server) would send out multiple messages to the only the parties you specified. This would allow you to send one email to everyone who was being removed from the list and another to those who are staying on it. The only problem I see is that the logic and selection process to choose who is and isn't to remain on the list could be a pain. Nothing horribly difficult, but you'd definitely want to make sure it has a nice user experience.

Link to Test Code in Failed Tests

Michael Flanakin — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 16:12:00 GMT

One thing I am continually annoyed with when working with the Visual Studio test framework is that, when a test fails, I have to look at the error to figure out what line of code in my test method caused the problem, then separately find that class, browse to the line, and figure out what's going on. This isn't how we do our development, so why is it how we do our unit test development? I know this was a v1 release -- although I hate that excuse -- but I hope we'll see some significant improvements in Orcas.

Edit: Looks like this was reported on VS 2005 beta 2 and ultimately closed with a claim that it was added to the RTM release. Obviously, it wasn't, so I added another suggestion . We'll see what they say.

Edit: According to the folks at Microsoft Connect, this will be in VS08. I look forward to it!

Provide Pre-Branch Info in File History

Michael Flanakin — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 23:32:00 GMT

I can't stand the fact that a file's history only goes back as far as the last branch. When a file is branched, the history should include everything. I'm not sure why this wasn't the default action. As far as I know, this is how all (or at least most) other version control tools work.

Support Pen-Only Input in Ink Desktop

Michael Flanakin — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 21:49:00 GMT

Ink Desktop is a great idea, but I can't stand it. Actually, I was able to use it 10 mins after installing it and haven't used it since. That's not a testament to how great of an idea it is, tho. If it weren't for this mouse vs. pen input issue I have, I'd love it to death. Well, I'd like it a lot, at least. My problem is two-fold. First, you can't select anything on the desktop when the app is running because clicking the desktop is treated as inking. This is my main aggravation. Second, I never plan on inking with my mouse, so don't treat the mouse like a pen. I can't imagine anyone would try to write with their mouse, but if that's important, provide some configuration setting to allow me to disable the mouse for inking. Without these two things, I don't see myself ever using Ink Desktop.

Custom Web Mail UI for WL Custom Domains

Michael Flanakin — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 23:39:00 GMT

Windows Live Custom Domains allows you to utilize WL Mail for your domain. There are a few things I'd like to see, tho. First, I'd like to customize the URL I use to access the site. Instead of mail.live.com, I'd like mail.michaelflanakin.com, for instance. Next, it'd be nice if I could sign in without specifying the domain name. Not a big deal, but it'd be nice. Lastly, I wish I could customize the look and feel of the site used to access email. Since WL Mail is built with .NET, a master page seems the best solution here. I'm sure there are certain requirements of the UI, but I'd be willing to work around those to get the look and feel I want.

Edit: I just reported this, but seeing as tho WL feedback isn't published, I doubt we'll hear back about this anytime soon. I need to see if there's an internal resource to discuss feature requests.

Global Spell Checker and Thesaurus

Michael Flanakin — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 18:16:00 GMT

For the most part, I've been very happy with the spell checker and thesaurus (synonym) features of Office. One thing I'd like to see, tho, is the ability to spell check and/or lookup synonyms/antonyms from any application. This could be done using a global shortcut that would spell check based on what's in the clipboard or just open a window where you could copy/paste in what you want to check. There are various add-ons and extensions that will add this capability to browsers and other tools, but I want one dictionary/thesaurus that's global. I can see this going into Office or Windows; either way, I'd be happy. If you want this to be provided to everyone, put it in Windows; otherwise, put it in Office. I'm thinking of Word's spell checker and thesaurus shortcuts are F7 and Shift-F7, so I'm thinking Win-F7 and Win-Shift-F7 would be perfect.

There is a tool I found which does this, which was a partial inspiration to this suggestion, but I'd really like to see a global solution with a shared dictionary. Honestly, the clipboard may not be the best data source for this, but it's the only shared location I can think of that wouldn't reach into running applications to pull out data, which I'd see as a security risk.