Problem statement: If we want to open a file included in a visual studio project we need  to open the “Solution explorer” and navigate to that particular file. If the project has many files included in it and the files are not organized with proper filters/groups then finding the file may take considerable time.This tip […]

Microsoft Visual Studio (2003/2005) informs about memory leakes in a module by setting the “leak check” bit, _CRTDBG_LEAK_CHECK_DF, to the debugger. The memory leak information is printed on “Output” window. [ This advantage is in “Debug” mode only. ] Example int _tmain() { int* ptr = NULL; ptr = (int*)malloc(sizeof(int)*20); for( int i=0; i<20; ++i […]

The design view in Visual Studio can display the start tag and end tag of the hidden non – graphic elements (such as div, comments, span, form, line breaks and script elements). This feature helps to see where the elements are and avoid unknowingly deleting the non-graphic elements from a page while editing. To enable […]

When we try to install \ run a setup MSI file created using Visual Studio 2003 , in a machine having higher version of .net framework , it will not allow to install the product and throws an exception as follows. “This setup requires the .NET framework 1.1.4322.Please install the .NET Framework and run this […]

Microsoft Visual studio does not allow you to include the PNG image in the resource. It gives the option to include only bmp images. To display the PNG images we need to go for other third party libraries such as CxImage library, gdiplus, ATL class CImage etc. Among these methods CxImage is the simplest one. […]

Searching in visual studio is an easy stuff as its provide a big range of options for searching. Here are some of the ways for advance searching. INCREMENTAL SEARCH IN VISUAL STUDIO:   Incremental search provide a nice way of finding any string instantly. Steps are like: Press Ctrl+I .(No separate window will be appear […]

Debugging a windows service is not that straightforward a task as debugging other web or windows application are in Visual Studio (by just pressing F5). Instead, we need to do some tricky tasks to debug it as the service runs under the context of the Service Control Manager. In my research I found 3 different […]

This is one small but powerful functionality given by Visual Studio for easily managing some external tools in your application.     Using this functionality you will be able to add some external applications like window explorer, MS Paint, Calculator, Browser Instance etc… Moreover it also provide some options to add argument for those external tools. It will […]

Commenting code is an important aspect of programming which affects the maintainability of any software product. Visual Studio provides a feature to list out all the pending tasks in the working code. For detail please go through the tip.. Suppose there is a pending code which you would like to complete after some hours/days/weeks. As […]

Step 1 : Copy the zip file from C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\ItemTemplates\CSharp\Code\1033\Class.zip and paste this some where in the harddrive. Path may vary from machine to machine depending upon the .net  version and installation path.   Step 2:  Unzip the class.zip. You can find a Class.CS file inside the folder. This is the default template file […]

Sometimes we don’t want to go stepping inside methods while debugging though certain break points. Suppose we have more than one method in a page. While debugging we don’t want to step into a particular method, in other words, we want to skip that method. So what do we do ? We can use the “DebuggerHidden” […]

Some times we may need a float value 2.345 instead of complete float value 2.345768. In such cases we need to trim the float value.The function below demonstrates how it can be done..   function name: trimFloat( ) param1: float f; the original float value , i.e., 2.345768 param2:int decimals; how many number of digits […]

It is very common in C++ development to use multiple third-party libraries in a single project. Recently I have faced one problem while dealing with Standard Template Library related things. Microsoft Visual C++ have added one extension to STL for checking iterator and validation. And in visual studio 2005 and 2008 this preprocessor macro is […]