Archive for January, 2010
Support the JQuery Project
Adopting JQuery was one of the smartest technology decisions we made.
Gordon and I faced a lot of technology choices when we began work on Infovark. One of the best decisions we made was using the JQuery JavaScript framework.
Today marks the official release of JQuery 1.4. This new version brings several performance improvements, greater support for JSON, Ajax, and HTML 5, and many other improvements.
What are you waiting for? Go get it.
Share the love
All this programming goodness comes free, but the JQuery Project is asking for contributions to support the effort.
Since the Infovark coffers are a bit thin at the moment, I made a personal donation to the JQuery Project. To celebrate the release of JQuery 1.4, for the next 14 days any donation over $20 will receive a free JavaScript ebook. The details are on the donate page.
I gave the JQuery Project $30. Considering the amount of time it’s saved me, it was a small amount, but I figure every bit helps.
If you’ve found JQuery valuable, consider giving something back to the community. And if you haven’t, you owe it to yourself to check out the latest release with its improved API documentation.
3 Useful Visual Studio Tricks for Spark Templates
This issue on the Spark discussion board inspired several tweaks to my Visual Studio setup. Gordon and I have found these quite useful, so we’d thought we’d share them here.
Spark template file icons
First, I made a couple registry files to give Spark templates a spiffy icon.
Visual Studio gets its icons from the same registry setting used in Windows Explorer. So all we need to do is register the file extension and associate it with a default icon.
I found a free-for-noncommercial-use “S”-shaped lightning bolt icon and used the instructions in this StackOverflow question to create the necessary registry entries.
Add an icon for Spark templates in Visual Studio 2008
You can download the SparkFile.zip package I created from Codeplex. Place the .ico file in C:\Program Files\Spark, and run the two .reg files, and you’ll have a nifty spark icon inside Visual Studio.
(All the usual caveats apply regarding modifying your registry.)
Visual Studio template
Next, I created an item template to use in the Visual Studio Add New Item menu, using this guide to creating item templates.
You can download my SparkVSTemplate.zip package from Codeplex as well. Place the SparkVSTemplate.zip file in My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Templates\ItemTemplates\Visual C#\Web and you’ll be able to create a basic template from the VS menu. You don’t need to unzip it.
HTML syntax highlighting
Finally, I wanted to apply the standard syntax highlighting used for HTML pages.
In Visual Studio 2008, go to Tools | Options, then choose Text Editor, then associate files ending in .spark with the HTML editor.
Set up Spark View Engine templates to use the HTML Editor in Visual Studio 2008
This will set all the colors properly. Unfortunately, it will also flag any Spark-specific attributes or elements as HTML validation errors. I figure this is a small price to pay for proper syntax highlighting.
What’s missing?
I’d really like to get intellisense working Spark. Though I tried the Visual Studio Integration Package, it won’t work right outside of VS Web projects. Syntax highlighting seems like the best I can do for the moment.
If you’ve got other tips and tricks for using Spark inside Visual Studio, I’d love to hear them.
